by Vince Flynn
shooting out of the helicopter next to them, the violent jerking of the craft as it banked and then dropped like a rock, pulling up just short of the river’s water, Stu Garret screaming and demanding to know what was going on, the escorts scattering and the red streaks shooting up in front of them. Stevens became unsteady again, and he started to shake. He grabbed his drink with both hands to keep it from spilling, his body trembling as he pulled the glass to his lips with both hands wrapped tightly around it. He took four large gulps, finishing the rest of the vodka, and stood to pour another. As he walked to the bar, the murders of Basset and the others flashed sharply across his mind, and he realized for the first time just how vulnerable he was.
The crystal tumbler with the Presidential seal engraved on the side slipped from his hand and shattered on the stone floor. Stevens continued to the bar and started to pour another drink, the glass neck of the vodka bottle clanging off the rim of the tumbler as his hands continued to shake uncontrollably. Garret arrived at the main cabin just minutes after the President and went straight to the conference room. He grabbed the nearest phone and punched in the number for Ted Hopkinson’s office. After several rings
Hopkinson’s secretary answered and Garret barked, “Get me Ted!” As each second passed, Garret became more and more irritated. With sweat forming on his forehead, he gripped the phone tighter and tighter. According to Garret’s watch, which he looked at about every five seconds, he had been on hold for two minutes and thirteen seconds when
Hopkinson finally came on the line. “Where in the hell have you been?” Garret spat into the phone.
“Stu, it’s a zoo around here! The press is crawling all over the place. They want to know what the hell is going on. A couple of them just asked me if the President is dead!”
Shit. “Stu, we’ve got to get control of this thing!” I know, .just shut up for a minute while
I think of the best way to handle it.”
There was a moment of silence while Garret scrambled to come up with a plan of action. “We’re going to have to put him on TV. Grab a cameraman and a reporter from the press pool and get your ass up here.”
“I can’t.
The Secret Service has shut the compound down. They’re not letting anyone come or go.” Garret screamed into the phone, “Screw the damn Secret Service. Thanks to those idiots I almost got my ass blown out of the sky twenty minutes ago. You find Lortch and tell him I said if he wants to keep his job to get a chopper for you pronto. If he gives you any shit, find Mike Nance and have him get one from the Pentagon.
Get moving!”
“What are we going to have him say to the press?”
“Goddamn it, Ted, do I have to do everything around here! You’re the damn communications director! You’re paid to figure out what he says to the press! Get
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moving!” Garret slammed the phone down and headed for the door. On his way through the main living room he ran into Special Agent Terry Andrews. Andrews was the Secret
Service agent who had been carrying the President’s bulletproof trench coat when they boarded Marine One. Garret approached him and said, “Andrews, I don’t want any crap, just straight talk. What in the hell happened while we were airborne, and how did they know which bird we were on?” The tall ex-Marine looked down at Garret and replied, “We don’t know how they knew which helicopter we were on, sir.”
“What about missiles? Were there any missiles launched?”
“We’re not sure at this point, sir.”
“What do you mean, you’re not sure? You get ahold of your boss and tell him I want some answers, and I want them quick!” Without waiting for a response, Garret turned and left.
The SCENE AT THE CHAIN BRIDGE WAS INTENSE, TO SAY THE LEAST.
THE media, the Metro Police, the Virginia State Police, and the FBI had all descended on the scene within minutes of each other. McMahon arrived shortly thereafter with an FBI
special-response team and ordered that the media be moved back with whatever force necessary, short of shooting them. The Virginia State Police closed off the west end of the bridge, and the D.C. Metropolitan Police were manning the east end. Traffic was being diverted, and the FBI had taken over the crime scene.
Two Park Police helicopters were busy warding off the media helicopters that came swooping in like vultures, trying to get live footage of whatever was so interesting to the
FBI. Skip McMahon stood looking over the south edge of the Chain Bridge, watching
Kathy Jennings and two other agents carefully inspect the devices they’d found.
McMahon had decided to send only Jennings and two other agents down until the special evidence team arrived with their equipment. The fewer agents the better for now. Until they knew exactly what they were dealing with, there was the chance of contaminating evidence. Jennings was pointing at the ground and one of the agents was taking photos, while the other one stuck small yellow flags into the ground. McMahon heard the sound of an approaching helicopter and looked up to see one of the shiny green-and-white
Presidential VH-3s approaching. The large helicopter swung in over the bridge and descended, its churning rotors blowing sand into the air. McMahon turned away, shielding his face from the flying debris. When the bird touched down, the pilots cut the engines and the swooping sound of the blades lessened. The swirl of sand started to subside and McMahon turned to see Jack Lortch approaching.
McMahon extended his hand and greeted the younger man. “I’ll bet you’ve had better days, Jack.” Lortch shook his head and frowned.
“This ranks with the worst of them.” McMahon grabbed Lortch by the shoulder.
“Come on, let me show you what we’ve found.”
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McMahon led Lortch over to the side of the bridge and pointed down at Jennings and the other two agents. “My agents found a small, gray metal box with a dish attached to the top and a piece of wood with some vertical tubes. Both have batteries and transponders attached, so it would appear that they were activated by remote control.
Which of course means the people we’re after are long gone.”
“Can I take a look at the stuff?.” asked Lortch. “Not yet. I have a special evidence team and a mobile crime lab on the way. I want to keep the area as sterile as possible until they get here.” Lortch nodded and McMahon changed gears.
“Jack, how did they know which helicopter he was on?”
“I have absolutely no idea. We didn’t even know until just minutes before he took off.”
“How did they know which route he would take to Camp David? Don’t you guys send all the choppers along different flight paths?”
“Yeah, they all fly in different directions, but this was not the route they were supposed to take.” McMahon had a confused look on his face.
“Well, how did they end up down here?”
“Right now we think they were forced to fly into the river valley.”
“How?”
“Do you have a map of D.C.?” McMahon said yes and the two walked over to the car.
Skip retrieved a map from the glove box and spread it out on the trunk, using his gun, handcuffs, and digital phone to weigh down three of the four corners. Lortch pointed to the White House and said, “The squadron commander tells me that when the group left the White House, they were lit up by fire-control radar from the south. About ten minutes ago my people found a small, gray box with a radar dish.
It was concealed inside a Washington Post newspaper box on the corner of
Fourteenth and Constitution.” Lortch tapped his finger on the spot .just a block to the south of the White House. “The group took evasive maneuvers and fled to the north.
About ten seconds after they were lit up by radar to the south, they were lit up again by radar to the north and east. The helicopters headed west away from the threat, and as they approached the Potomac, they were lit up again from the west.
The squadron commander tells me his
boys are trained to head for the weeds when something like this happens, and that a river valley offers the perfect protection because they can dive below the radar and an approaching missile. So when these guys reached the Potomac, they went for cover and headed in the only direction that they hadn’t been
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threatened from. to the northwest.” Lortch took his hands and set them on the map forming a V, the base located at the White House and the open end at the Chain Bridge.
“They created a trap and drove the helicopters into it.”
“So what happened when they got here? Did they fire a missile?”
“Supposedly the pilots thought they were in the clear. They have threat sensors that tell them when a missile is locked onto them, and I guess they make this screeching noise. Well, when they dove into the river valley, these things stopped screeching and they thought they’d avoided the threat, and then all of the sudden these red streaks; pop up in front of them and the threat sensors start screaming again.
The lead escort thought they were missiles and he broke formation.”
Lortch shook his head in frustration. “Which he’s not supposed to do.
The whole idea behind this strategy is that the escorts are supposed to protect the
President’s bird, and if need be, take the hit.” McMahon put his hands up in the air, palms out. “Hold on a minute. I’ve got a bunch of people telling me they saw a missile, and I’ve got some other people telling me that they were flares. I’m inclined to believe the second group because no one reports hearing an explosion, and my agents found several warm but burned-out flares. Now, what do your pilots tell you?
Were there missiles launched or not?”
“The other pilots don’t think so.
They say they were flares.” Perplexed, McMahon shook his head. Lortch said, “I
don’t get it either. The pilots that were flying Marine One said they were dead meat ….
They said that when the lead escort broke formation, they thought they were going to be blown out of the sky.
We’re either very lucky or these terrorists screwed up somewhere.”
McMahon stared at the horizon and rubbed his forefinger across his lips as he sifted through the new information. A short while later he announced, “We’re missing something …. Something doesn’t fit here.
Why go to all of that effort and not take a shot?” Both of them pondered McMahon’s question, and then McMahon shook the dazed look out of his eyes and said, “We’ll have time for this later. How’s the President?”
“My people tell me he’s pretty shook up. I guess the ride was rough.”
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Lortch stopped and his jaw tensed. “They also tell me that damn Stu Garret is on one of his rampages, yelling at everyone and demanding answers. This whole stupid thing was his idea from the start.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told them I didn’t think having the meeting at Camp David and moving the
President was worth the risk.” Lortch brought his hand up to his eyes and said, “I’ve had it up to here with Garret.”
“Jack, let me give you a little piece of advice. There’s only one way to deal with a jerk like Garret. You meet him head-on, and you don’t take any crap.
Half the reason why he’s the way he is, is because people let him get away with it.”
“Believe me, I’ve thought about punching his ticket more than once, but I like my job too much.” McMahon was about to add another editorial comment on the behavior of
Garret when he heard Kathy Jennings yell from below. McMahon and Lortch looked over the edge of the bridge.
Jennings craned her neck upward and held a digital phone in her outstretched hand.
“Hey, Skip, I just got off the phone with some Air Force people over at the Pentagon. I
read them the serial numbers off this thing and they say it’s one of ours. It’s an older—
model radar unit that they used to put in the nose cones of fighters like the F-4 Phantom.”
Lortch and McMahon traded glances, and McMahon yelled back down, “Did you ask them how someone would go about getting their hands on one of them?”
“Yeah, they said there’s thousands of them available on the surplus-military-hardware market.”
“I assume they keep records of what they do with all this stuff.”
“Yep, they told me they’ll start tracing it for us.”
“Great,” responded McMahon, and then he continued in a sarcastic voice, “By the way, you didn’t happen to find any unused missiles down there, did you?”
“Not yet.”
“All right, good work.”
McMahon turned back to Lortch. “Well, at least it’s a start.”
“Yeah, listen, I’ve got to get out to Camp David and brief the President on what happened. Give me a call if you find anything out, otherwise let’s plan on talking later.”
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“Will do.” During Lortch’s short flight to Camp David, he’d prepared himself for what he knew was an assured confrontation with Garret. He thought about the way the chief of staff had treated Dorrell after the Basset assassination and knew he was in for the same treatment. What McMahon said was right, he’d put up with Garret’s reckless and unprofessional abuse for almost three years, and now was the time to put an end to it. He knew exactly how to handle it.
It would be kept between him and Garret, no one else needed to know.
Special Agent Terry Andrews was waiting for Lortch on the porch of the main cabin when the Suburban pulled up. Lortch walked up the steps, and Andrews led him over to a more secluded area of the porch. Andrews spoke in a low voice. “What have you found out?” Lortch relayed the discussion he’d had with McMahon and then asked, “How’s the
President?”
“He’s trying to get some rest.”
“Where is Garret?”
“He’s in the conference room with Hopkinson trying to figure out how they’re going to spin this story to the media. I was in there just when you landed, and they were debating whether or not they should hold a big ceremony and pin some medals on those
Marine pilots. I tell ya, Jack, it takes all the strength I have to not crack that damn idiot across the head. He’s been screaming his head off for the last hour demanding to know what’s going on. He told me the Secret Service is going to pay for this fuckup.”
“We’ll see.” The two men walked into the cabin and down the hall to the conference room. Lortch opened the door and entered first. Garret was standing over Hopkinson’s shoulder telling him what to write. He looked up at Lortch and pronounced, “It’s about time you got here.
You’d better have some answers for me.” Lortch ignored Garret and looked at
Hopkinson.
“Ted, would you please excuse us?” Hopkinson did nothing for a moment and then started to stand. Garret put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into his seat.
“Anything you have to say to me, Ted can hear.”
Lortch glared unwaveringly into Garret’s eyes and said, “Not this, this is for your ears only.” The lean Lortch took off his jacket, laid it over the back of a chair, and pointed at the door with his thumb.
“Ted, please excuse us, this will only take a minute. Terry, you, too.”
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Hopkinson got out of his chair, and he and Andrews headed for the door.
As they were doing so, Garret snapped, “This had better be good.”
Lortch continued to stare at Garret and said, “Terry, please close the door.”
Andrews closed the heavy wood door behind him, leaving Lortch and Garret alone.
Garret stayed on his side of the table and started in. “You’d better have some answers for me. First you guys screw up and get Basset killed, and then you almost get my ass and the President’s blown out of the sky.” Garret continued to bark while Lortch walked around the table.
Lortch was just a little s
horter than Garret and weighed slightly less.
Because of his slight size advantage and position of authority, Garret incorrectly thought there was no reason to physically fear Lortch instead of backing away, Garret took a step forward and pointed his finger at Lortch. “Heads are going to roll over this one, Lortch, and yours is at the top of the-” Before Garret could finish his sentence, Lortch grabbed his Adam’s apple and slammed him backward into the wall.
Garret stood pinned against the wall, his eyes wide open, and both hands wrapped around Lortch’s wrist. Lortch brought his face to within inches of Garret’s and in a tense, quiet voice said, “Stu, I think it’s about time you and I had a man-to-man talk. I’m finished taking your shit, and my people are done taking your shit! We’re sick and tired of your emotional outbursts! Today’s little ride up to Camp David was your idea! I told you it was an unnecessary risk, but you went ahead and for your own stupid reasons convinced the President that he should have the meeting up here. It was your idea, Stu, so
I don’t want to hear you say another word about it, or I’m going to start airing some of your dirty laundry in the press. “No heads are going to roll. You are not going to ruin my career or any of my people’s. In fact, you’re gonna start treating them with respect, because if you don’t, I’m gonna leak the story of how you and Mike Nance blackmailed
Congressman Moore.” Garret’s eyes opened wide, and Lortch smiled. “That’s right, Stu, I
know all about the little arrangement you and Nance had with Arthur Higgins.” Lortch paused to let Garret sweat a little more.
“I’ll make a deal with you, Stu. From now on you start listening to me when it comes to security issues. What I say goes, and I don’t want to see any more juvenile tirades. You start treating me and my people with the respect they deserve, and we’ll get along fine.
But I’m warning you, Stu, don’t piss me off again, or I’ll turn everything I have over to the
FBI. And believe me, there are plenty of people at the Bureau who would love to take a bite out of your ass!”
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MICHAEL WAS PARKED IN FRONT OF A BRICK APARTMENT BUILDING
IN THE Adams Morgan neighborhood of D.C. He sat behind the wheel and sipped a cup of piping hot Colombian coffee he had just picked up at the Starbucks two blocks away.
