Rule of Law

by Randy Singer

  Either way, today he would die a martyr. There was no turning back.

  The president started her countdown timer and caught a long stroke. The first few would be powerful and deep, churning the water and lifting her boat to glide on the surface. Then she would settle into a hard pace, clipping off two-minute sprints as fast as she could go, feeling the burn.

  It was on her third stroke that she heard something hit the water behind her, a few feet from the end of the boat. The agents must have seen it as well because they pivoted in their seats, guns drawn. Another stroke and something hit the stern of her Kevlar hull, the cracking noise startling her, the bullet slicing through the boat.

  “Over there!” somebody yelled.

  “Get down, Madam President!”

  She dropped the oars and rolled out of her boat, the cold water sucking her breath away. She dove under, her mind reeling, her breath short. She tried to go deeper, thinking that if she stayed beneath the surface long enough, it would give the agents time to react. Someone was trying to kill her! How many assassins were out there? She was running out of breath. She would surface, quickly take stock, and figure out the next move.

  As she broke through, one of the agents dove into the water next to her. He grabbed her by the arm—“Keep your head down!”

  The two boats protected her—one on each side, positioning themselves between the president and the riverbanks. The agents in one of the boats grabbed her and pulled her in, pushing her down on the deck of the boat.

  “I’m sorry, Madam President,” one of them said. “There’s an active shooter.”

  The pilot gunned the engine as the boat whirled in the water and headed back toward the boathouse. Lying flat on her stomach, Amanda could hear the radio traffic. They were calling in backup. Block the roads. Search the riverbanks. Alert the aircraft.

  She said a prayer of thanks. There would be no more morning rows on the Potomac—she knew that much. And this would be a Memorial Day that she would never forget.

  VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA

  Paige was getting ready for the Virginia Beach service when she received the text from Kristen.

  Have you heard about the pres?

  Paige turned on the TV. The anchors were breathless. The president had been rowing on the Potomac when a lone gunman had tried to kill her. That man was now dead, killed by a Secret Service sharpshooter from a nearby bridge. The would-be assassin had been wearing a suicide vest. The president was not hurt.

  Paige thought about the upcoming service at Neptune’s Park on the boardwalk. Things were getting crazy in this country. The families of twenty slain SEALs would be in attendance, and the former commander of JSOC was speaking. She hoped the organizers had a handle on the security risks.

  She was genuinely relieved that the president was not hurt. It was moments like this that brought the country together. Despite the lawsuit, Paige wanted to believe the president would not have intentionally sent Patrick and his team into Yemen knowing they would be killed.

  She remembered how moved she had been by the president’s kindness just a few short months ago when she met with every family at the White House. Her speech at Arlington Cemetery had brought Paige to tears. She still couldn’t bring herself to believe that it was all a fraud.

  Philip Kilpatrick and John Marcano were a different story. As far as Paige was concerned, they were obviously lying and needed to be held accountable. But the president? Paige had her differences with the woman, but she thanked God that Amanda Hamilton was still alive.

  49

  The news out of Washington dominated the chatter in Virginia Beach prior to the Memorial Day ceremony. Admiral Paul Towers and his chief of staff, Daniel Reese, spent a half hour before the service in the ballroom of a Hilton hotel next to Neptune’s Park mingling with the families of the slain SEALs. Daniel was cordial to Kristen and Paige, as if the awkward phone call two days earlier had never happened, but he was also stiff and formal. It seemed to Paige that he was uncomfortable around her, perhaps because she had mentioned his prior visit at the court hearing.

  The security for the event that day was airtight. The FBI and local police had cleared out every guest room in the Hilton overlooking the park. Police snipers were stationed on the roofs of nearby buildings. Uniformed officers by the dozens mingled with the crowd and established perimeter entry points, where they searched guests for weapons or explosives.

  The place was packed, the sun was blazing, and Admiral Towers delivered a stirring speech. It had been rumored that he was going to blast the president by talking about the bravery of the SEALs who had died and the fact that no SEAL should ever be left behind. He was also supposedly going to ask the president to stop using the state secrets doctrine as a shield in the Anderson lawsuit and voluntarily testify about what she knew and when she knew it.

  But none of that happened. Perhaps Towers was too much the soldier to criticize his commander in chief, or perhaps he had changed the speech after the assassination attempt. Either way, his remarks were devoid of any political overtones or references to the president.

  For Paige, it was good to be back with the family members of the other SEALs. It wasn’t until she was leaving the ceremony and bumped into Wyatt Jackson that her mood soured.

  “They’re saying it’s a lone gunman,” Wyatt said, his voice so low that only Paige could hear. “Another Islamic terrorist.”

  “I know. I saw the reports.”

  “Bad break for us. In one day, the president goes from Richard Nixon to JFK. She’s lucky—what else can you say?”

  Paige didn’t even bother responding to the tasteless comment. She had actually been impressed that despite the assassination attempt, the president had still delivered her speech at Arlington. But why should Paige waste her breath trying to convince Wyatt Jackson of anything?

  “I’ll talk to you later,” she said, peeling off and walking in another direction. It had already been a stressful day, and she didn’t need Wyatt making it worse.

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Philip Kilpatrick got a call from the president at nine o’clock that night.

  “I need you to free up one of my evenings in the next two weeks,” Hamilton said.

  Kilpatrick sighed. He spent half his life negotiating the president’s schedule. Every minute was accounted for. He would squeeze crucial meetings into tiny slots and find ways of turning down thousands of important people. It was easier to pass a piece of major legislation than to free up a night of the president’s schedule.

  “What’s the occasion?” he asked.

  “I’m throwing a pizza party for our Secret Service detail. I want to invite all of their spouses and kids. I should have never put them in the position that I did.”

  “That’s a good idea. I’ll see what I can do,” Kilpatrick promised. “And by the way, Madam President, I’ve ordered an indoor rowing machine.”

  50

  VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA

  The Tuesday after Memorial Day, Philip Kilpatrick’s lawyers filed an emergency motion for a stay with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. If granted, the motion would prevent Paige and Wyatt from taking any depositions until the Fourth Circuit could rule on a full appeal. Accompanying the motion was a long brief that the lawyers had apparently been working on the entire three-day weekend. As an attachment to the brief, they had filed an affidavit from Daniel Reese.

  In the affidavit, Reese told the court that even though the SEALs had received CIA benefits, they were still directly accountable to the Joint Special Operations Command as part of their military service. They were subject to military court-martial and were still drawing a salary from the Navy during the mission. Moreover, Reese said that he had been on a video call and had personally heard Director Marcano tell the president that the CIA had a 95 percent confidence level in its sources. To his knowledge, the president had never been told anything different.

  For Paige, the affidavit raised a lot of questions. She assumed they�
��d had Reese sign it only because Paige had mentioned him during her argument in front of Solberg, and the defendants wanted to make it clear that Reese supported them.

  As for its substance, the affidavit ignored the fact that the president might have been told one thing in official meetings and another through backdoor channels like the park-bench meeting between Marcano and Kilpatrick.

  A few hours after she had reviewed the affidavit, Paige got a call from Wyatt Jackson.

  “Let’s depose Daniel Reese right along with Kilpatrick and Marcano,” Wyatt said.

  It was typical Wyatt Jackson—lash out and strike back.

  He was also upset about the application for security clearance he was filling out that day. “You might as well prepare to take these depositions yourself,” Wyatt griped. “They’ll never give me security clearance. I’ll just work on the appeal to the Fourth Circuit.”

  “If you got security clearance, I’d lose all faith in the system,” Paige said.

  “That’s the problem,” Wyatt shot back. “You still have faith in the system.”

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Two days later, in his West Wing office, Philip Kilpatrick fired up his computer and opened a chart that he consulted religiously. It had the inconspicuous label Popularity, and on this day Kilpatrick proudly plotted a new point—the first time the president’s approval rating had broken through the 50 percent barrier in nearly a year. It had been that kind of week.

  The president’s Memorial Day speech following the failed assassination attempt had been a big hit with a nation starved for heroism. Investigators had discovered that Najir Mohammed had been stalking the president for almost a year. He had been inspired by ISIS and a half-dozen radical Muslim clerics whose sermons he had watched on the Internet.

  The Israeli prime minister’s visit and his glowing words about the president’s get-tough stance on Iran had also provided an aura of international respect that had been previously lacking. Though the president was having difficulty rallying allies to support the new Iranian sanctions, Israel’s PM had reminded the joint session of Congress that leadership sometimes required standing alone. Who knew that better than Israel? He was grateful that the United States had not bowed to those countries made of lesser stuff. It was a rousing speech with a number of ovations, and the president’s popularity had surged in its aftermath. If they could stay above 50 percent, the midterm elections in November might not be so bad.

  Later that day, after watching the president’s joint press conference with the Israeli prime minister, and before the Secret Service pizza party, which had become the talk of the West Wing, Kilpatrick slipped into a conference room to meet with a half-dozen others who would determine the fate of Saleet Zafar, the most recent radical Muslim imam to be considered for the kill list. Zafar now had the additional qualification of being one of the clerics who had inspired Najir Mohammed’s assassination attempt.

  “This is the new face of ISIS,” Dylan Pierce argued. “Religious leaders spew their hate on the Internet, and lone wolves carry out terror attacks in our country. San Bernardino. Orlando. Fort Hood. And now an attempt on the president of the United States. And it’s not just preaching jihad. We know for a fact that Zafar has met with leaders of the Houthi rebels and ISIS. Preaching is one thing, but acting in concert with terrorist groups who kill Americans is another.”

  Seth Wachsmann slowly shook his head. Kilpatrick could sense that the taciturn attorney general, with his trim gray beard and receding hairline, knew the tide was turning against him. But he would not be dissuaded—not by the visit from the Israeli prime minister, not even by an attempt on the president’s life.

  In a measured tone, the scholarly Wachsmann pleaded his case as if he were a defense attorney trying to spare the life of a client facing the world’s new electric chair. “First it was Anwar al-Awlaki. Then Yazeed Abdul Hamid. Now Saleet Zafar. Don’t you see? When one dies, another rises up to take his place. We cannot win a war against terrorists by becoming like them.”

  Wachsmann stopped and looked around the table, one person at a time. “This cannot become a religious war,” he argued. “I detest the ideology of Saleet Zafar. That man will not rest until he annihilates my people. But if you think we will silence him by killing him, you are badly mistaken. We will only give him a megaphone. Najir Mohammed was not listening only to Muslim imams who are alive. He was also listening to those who have died for the cause.”

  Wachsmann turned to address President Hamilton directly, knowing she was the only person in the room who really mattered. “Madam President, I have never been more proud of this administration than I was last night, when the prime minister of Israel addressed the joint session of Congress and expressed his thanks for the way we have stood for the peace and security of Israel. And we must continue to do so, fighting enemy combatants and isolating radical regimes like Iran. But we do not stand tall as a nation when we stoop to drone attacks on a religious leader, carried out under cover of darkness, especially when we have no hard evidence that he is part of the operations or command of any terrorist group. I respectfully urge that we not subvert our ideals for the sake of expediency.”

  “Thank you, Seth,” the president said. “Your restraint and principled analysis of these issues is why I believe you are one of the best attorneys general this country has ever had.”

  Listening to that statement of thanks, Philip Kilpatrick knew what was coming. From the look on his face, so did Seth Wachsmann. First you compliment; then you hit them with the bad news. The president was about to authorize adding someone to the list whose main transgression was that he preached jihad. Other imams had been added to the list, but they had all been conclusively linked to the operations side of terrorist groups, not just their ideology. This was a turning point, and everyone around the table knew it.

  “I am trying not to be swayed by the fact that Zafar’s sermons were found on the computer of the man who tried to kill me,” the president said. Kilpatrick could see the weight of this decision on her face. “But we can’t ignore the evidence. He preaches a strident form of Islam and calls on its followers to become martyrs. We know he has at least met with ISIS leaders and Houthi rebels. We also know that somewhere in this country, even now, someone is probably listening to one of his sermons and planning the next attack on American soil.”

  Hamilton paused and looked into the distance as if seeking guidance from some of the great leaders who had occupied her chair. These were the kinds of moral issues that defined a president’s legacy.

  “My first responsibility is to protect the American people and our way of life. Seth, we can either let these leaders bring the fight to us, or we can take it to them. This is a different kind of war—one we didn’t want but one we cannot run away from. And if there is a more persuasive spokesman for our enemies, I’m not sure who it would be. How can we kill the foot soldiers and not strike the head of the serpent?”

  Seth looked down and subtly shook his head.

  The president turned from him to Director Marcano. “You have my authority to use a targeted strike against Saleet Zafar,” she said softly. “But I don’t want his family to be collateral damage. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Madam President.”

  A few minutes later, the meeting was adjourned. Philip Kilpatrick followed the president out of the room and glanced over his shoulder at the head of the CIA. Marcano was watching them leave, his eyes cold and calculating.

  The thought of the power vested in that one man chilled Kilpatrick. And there was something else eating at him as he headed down the hall, one step behind the president of the United States.

  There had been three people in the conference room who knew things about Saleet Zafar that the others did not. Himself, Director Marcano, and the woman he was now following. Kilpatrick had no way of knowing how much her decision had been influenced by the role Zafar had played not in the assassination attempt but in the events of the past three months.

>   And as he tried to mentally shift gears for the next meeting, he couldn’t erase that look on Marcano’s face or something that Marcano had said to him on multiple occasions, only partly in jest: “Two people can always keep a secret—as long as one of them is dead.”

  51

  VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA

  For over thirty days, armies of lawyers hired by the defendants did their best to stop the scheduled depositions of their clients. They had already requested that Judge Solberg stay her ruling so that they could appeal to the Fourth Circuit before the depositions commenced. She had refused. Now they had petitioned the Fourth Circuit for an emergency stay postponing the depositions until the case could be fully briefed and considered by the appellate court.

  Wellington and Paige responded to each filing with briefs of their own, arguing that the case should be allowed to proceed on the limited basis that Judge Solberg had outlined. Every time the defense firms filed a brief, there was a string of about six lawyers for each firm in the signature line. But when briefs were filed on behalf of Kristen Anderson, they had the same three lawyers every time. And one of them—Wyatt Jackson—hadn’t actually written a word. By the beginning of July, Paige and Wellington were sleep-deprived and jumpy.

  As it stood, the first deposition was scheduled for Friday, July 13, when Director Marcano would be deposed by Paige. As predicted, Wyatt had not obtained security clearance and could not even be in the courtroom when Paige questioned the director. Wyatt wanted to file a motion claiming that the government improperly denied him security clearance, but when Paige saw his long list of contempt citations and ethics complaints, she talked him out of it. No sense picking a fight they couldn’t win.