Andrew Britton Bundle

by Andrew Britton

  As Zaid maneuvered for position in the lobby, radio calls were steadily streaming out to the static posts that had already been set up on both ends of Abu Nuwas Street, 300 yards in either direction. Inside the building, the reporters had been watched from the start by a rotating group of plain-clothes officers with the Iraqi Police Service. The men who comprised the advance team had been carefully selected for their religious and political affiliations; all were Shiite Muslims, and most belonged to the Dawa Party, not unlike the man they were assigned to protect. From their position on the second floor, the security officers were able to maintain a constant watch on the crowd below. As they scanned for suspicious activity, the frequent reports they muttered into their radios were routed straight through to the lead vehicle of the approaching convoy.

  Five minutes after the advance team vetted the group of reporters, a black Ford Explorer squealed to a halt in front of the building. The doors swung open, revealing four additional security officers. Each man carried an M4A1 assault rifle and an M9 Beretta pistol, weapons supplied by the U.S. Department of Defense. They climbed out of the vehicle and scattered, two moving across the road as the other two formed an identical pattern in front of the Babylon Hotel. The goal was to set up a hasty perimeter for the car that would follow, a close-quarter protection technique perfected by the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service many years earlier. Having learned the maneuver from their American training officers, the guards put it to use with rapid precision, calling in on a dedicated radio link once the area was secure. A white Mercedes sedan appeared a moment later, hunkering low on its wheels, gliding to a gentle halt beside the curb. A security officer reached for the door handle; the man stepped into the street, carefully avoiding a minefield of muddy puddles. The officers converged, and the man was swept from view.

  Inside the building, Anita Zaid was navigating the outskirts of the crowd when the reporters pressed forward without warning, their voices erupting in a torrent of unintelligible questions.

  “Oh, shit,” Hoffman said. “Come on, we’ve got to—”

  “No! We do it right here.” Anita swore under her breath, furious at being caught out of position, but determined to make the best of it. She turned her back to the crowd and fixed her hair, checked her mic, and smoothed her shirt in one fast motion. “Give me the count, Tim. Let’s go. We’ll make it work.”

  As Hoffman settled the camera onto his shoulder, Anita felt herself slipping into the mode she knew so well: restrained enthusiasm, shoulders back, chin up…She was completely calm, a poised professional. This was the best part of her job, and as she looked into the lens and silently composed her introduction, she was reminded of why she loved her work so much.

  “Okay, you’re on in five, four—”

  Hoffman’s voice was suddenly drowned out by a thunderous boom overhead. Confined by the building’s walls, the sound was strangely muffled, and Anita didn’t immediately recognize it for what it was. Apparently, neither did anyone else; they were all looking up in confusion, except for the visitor’s bodyguards, who were already dragging their charge back to the doors. The noise was almost like thunder, but sharper, not as prolonged….

  And then came the second explosion.

  Turning to the right, she saw it unfold with terrible clarity. A massive fireball emerged from the eastern stairwell, engulfing Penny Marshall, her crew, and a dozen bystanders in a blossoming cloud of orange fire. Anita had no time to react as something hard and hot heaved her into the air, twisting her limbs in directions they were simply not designed for.

  When she finally hit the ground, she did so awkwardly, something sharp lancing up her right arm. She blacked out for a split second, and when she came back, the pain was the first thing she noticed, but it was more than pain; it was pure agony.

  She hurt all over, but her injuries, as bad as they were, were eclipsed by the surrounding images. She couldn’t hear for some reason, and the silent scenes played out in a nightmarish collage: bloodied arms and splayed fingers tearing the air, mouths stretching open in silent screams, the dancing, blazing figures of those who’d been closest to the opposite stairwell.

  It was just too much. Too much, too fast. Anita tried to let out her own scream of horror and pain, but it lodged in her throat. She squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to block out what she was seeing, but it was too late; the images were already seared into her mind. If that wasn’t enough, an elusive piece of information was pressing against her subconscious, trying to inform her of a more serious problem.

  And then she realized she didn’t hurt anymore.

  The knowledge swept over her in a terrible wave. No pain meant no chance…She didn’t know where that thought had come from, but it played over and over in her mind like a terrible mantra, and she knew it was right. No pain, no chance. No pain, no chance. No pain…

  She desperately wanted to feel something, anything, but her surroundings were already slipping away. As the darkness moved in, she wasn’t sure if the debris falling around her was real or part of a panic-induced hallucination. Pieces of plaster and marble were dropping down from the ceiling, smaller chunks at first, and then giant slabs of heavy material, crashing down to the blood-streaked floor.

  Only a few seconds had passed, but no one was dancing anymore; the bodies lay still, black figures wreathed in orange flames. Anita tried to move her arms, her eyes fixed on the shattered main entrance and the open air beyond, but nothing was working.

  And then she felt a sharp, sudden pressure at the back of her neck, and the darkness closed in once and for all.

  CHAPTER 1

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Dusk was settling over the city skyline, layers of gray falling through rain-laden clouds as a black Lincoln Town Car sped south along the river on the George Washington Parkway. From the front passenger seat, Jonathan Harper gazed out across the Potomac as riverside lamps pushed weak yellow light over the black water. Although his eyes never strayed from the passing scenery, his mind was in another place altogether, fixed on the news that had come into his office less than four hours earlier. As a result, he wasn’t really paying attention to the radio, which was tuned to a local news station and playing softly in the background. When the commentary began to align with his own ruminations, though, he leaned forward and turned up the volume.

  “In Baghdad today, U.S. and Iraqi forces were put on high alert. Additional checkpoints were set up throughout the city, and the State Department updated the travel warnings already in place. This, following the attempted assassination of Nuri al-Maliki in the Iraqi capital. At approximately 12:14 AM Baghdad time, a pair of massive bombs tore apart the second and third floors of the Babylon Hotel, located just south of the International Zone. According to embassy officials, the prime minister survived the near-simultaneous blasts, although his condition is believed to be critical. Preliminary reports indicate that as many as twenty-five American civilians, mostly reporters embedded with the U.S. forces, are still unaccounted for and believed dead in the aftermath of the attack.

  “In a press briefing held earlier today at the White House, President David Brenneman condemned the bombing and offered condolences to the families of those who were killed. In a surprising sidebar, he also reaffirmed his commitment to the goal of force reductions in the region. These reductions are an integral part of the president’s reelection platform, as they provide for the scaled withdrawal of U.S. forces over the course of five years. The president’s plan, which also calls for the return of four of eighteen provinces to Iraqi control by next April, has been ridiculed by the Democratic leadership as too conservative in scope. Even so, with this most recent incident, many are wondering if the president will be forced to rescind his promise to the families of America’s servicemen and women, a move which would almost certainly cost him the election in November.

  “Moving on to other news, demonstrations in Beirut were brought to a halt yesterday when—”

  Harper switched off th
e radio. The report hadn’t told him anything new, which wasn’t surprising. He already knew far more about the current situation than the Washington press corps ever would, despite their collective fact-gathering abilities.

  As both the deputy director of operations (DDO) and director of the newly formed National Clandestine Service, Jonathan Harper shared the number three spot in the Central Intelligence Agency with his counterpart in the Intelligence Directorate. Despite his seniority, only a handful of people on the Hill could have picked him out of a crowd. The reason for this was simple: the name of the presiding DDO was almost never released to the public, the sole exception being Jim Pavitt’s appearance before the 9/11 Commission in 2004. Even Harper’s appearance seemed to lend itself to anonymity. His wife often joked that the conservative Brooks Brothers suits he favored were hardly worth the cost, as they made him all but invisible in a well-dressed city such as Washington, D.C.

  It was, of course, an image he had long cultivated, and for good reason; his ability to blend into the background had saved his life on more than one occasion in his early years with the Agency. He’d spent much of the eighties running agents in the former Soviet Union, as well as sneaking high-value defectors out of the country through the western wastelands of Belarus and Bulgaria. Recently, his roles had been better suited to his age and station, which made them more ambiguous and much less interesting. Among other things, he had been assigned to the National Reconnaissance Office and a number of foreign embassies before assuming his current position four years earlier.

  Harper’s gaze drifted back to the window as his driver turned left on 17th Street. He wasn’t looking forward to the upcoming meeting, as he knew it probably wouldn’t go well for him. As it stood, the Agency’s presence in Iraq was extremely limited, despite popular belief to the contrary. He had made a case for additional funding and personnel earlier in the year, only to see his proposal shot down by the newly installed deputy executive director. This fact, he was sure, had not been revealed to the president. Harper’s immediate supervisor was a skilled politician in her own right and more than capable of presenting the facts in accordance with her own ambitions. As a result, Harper was sure that she had managed to relieve herself of most of the blame for this latest intelligence failure.

  Worst of all was the timing. With the presidential election looming on the horizon, Brenneman was facing public unrest over the ongoing war, sagging approval ratings, and a popular adversary in California Governor Richard Fiske. Iraq, of course, was the key issue; the governor’s proposal called for a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces on the order of 72,000 soldiers over the course of eighteen months, with scaled reductions to follow. Privately, Harper believed it to be an empty promise, but the American public had seized the opportunity to rid itself of a war for which the costs were rapidly becoming untenable. Brenneman’s proposal was far less ambitious by comparison, calling for the gradual replacement of U.S. forces by combat-ready units of the Iraqi Army. Since the latest statistics suggested that less than 20,000 Iraqi troops currently met the requirements, the president’s plan had taken fire from politicians on both sides of the partisan divide, as well as from the public at large.

  Harper’s vehicle approached the southwest gate of the White House, braking to a gentle halt next to the guardhouse. A pair of officers from the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service emerged immediately and proceeded with the security check. The gates swung open a moment later, and the Town Car rolled up West Executive Avenue to the first-floor entrance of the West Wing.

  Harper climbed out of the vehicle and immediately caught sight of his escort. Darrell Reed was a senior advisor to the president and the deputy chief of staff. He was a lean black man with an easy smile and a genteel manner, but Harper knew that Reed’s affable nature did not extend to the cutthroat world of D.C. politics. The deputy chief could be as ruthless as the next man in the exercise of his considerable power, as he had demonstrated on countless occasions.

  Reed smiled as he approached and offered his hand. “John, how are you?”

  “Well, I think that remains to be seen. Ask me again when this meeting is over.”

  The deputy chief shook his head, the small grin fading. “The president is not a happy man, I can tell you that much. Ford’s already here, and they’ve had some words.”

  Harper grimaced. “She’s supposed to be in Israel with the director.”

  “She was on her way back to take care of some routine business,” Reed replied. “The president called her in this morning.” He cleared his throat. “It’s the timing, John, and the civilian casualties. He wants some answers.”

  “So do I, but it’s going to take some time.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s the one thing we don’t really have.”

  Harper nodded glumly; he knew what Reed was referring to. In the press briefing earlier that day, the president had assured the American public that the murder of U.S. civilians in Iraq would not go unpunished. With the election less than two months away, those words would not be soon forgotten.

  “We haven’t even seen a claim of responsibility yet. I just hope he can follow through on the promise.”

  “Well, that’s where you come in. He’s expecting you.”

  Harper shrugged. “Lead the way.”

  CHAPTER 2

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Once inside, they passed through another security check and began the 70-foot walk to the Oval Office. As always, Harper couldn’t help but think about how easy it was to get into this building. It was all an illusion, of course; despite the apparent lack of security, he was well aware that the Secret Service had eyes, electronic or otherwise, on virtually every part of the West Wing, including the adjacent hallways that led to the president’s corner office. When they stepped into the room, the deputy chief of staff gestured to one of the couches scattered over the presidential rug and said, “Take a seat, John. I’ll go and see what’s holding him up.”

  “Thanks, Darrell.”

  Reed walked out, giving the DDO the opportunity to briefly examine his surroundings. It wasn’t often that he found himself alone in the president’s office, and the small space contained enough of his country’s past to keep Jonathan Harper, a self-proclaimed history buff, absorbed for hours. His eyes drifted over numerous oil paintings, most of which had nautical themes, before coming to rest on the towering colonnade windows. Soft light from the bulbs in the Rose Garden spilled through the panes, working with the dim interior lamps to illuminate the polished surface of the president’s desk.

  Harper knew that the beautifully detailed piece had been crafted from the hull of the HMS Resolute, a British vessel abandoned in the Arctic Circle in 1854. In 1855, the ship was discovered by an American whaler as it was drifting over 1,200 miles from its original position, having dislodged itself from the ice in which it was mired. Over the course of the following year, the vessel was restored by the American government and returned to England as a gesture of goodwill. When the Resolute was retired in 1879, Queen Victoria commissioned a desk made from the timbers, which she then presented to Rutherford B. Hayes. Almost every president since had used the desk during the course of his administration.

  He was about to stand to get a closer look when the door leading to the Cabinet Room was pulled open. Harper rose as President David Brenneman walked in, followed soon thereafter by Rachel Ford. The deputy director of Central Intelligence, or deputy DCI, was a pale, trim woman in her early forties. As usual, her shoulder-length hair was slightly askew, tendrils of dark red framing her attractive, albeit sharp-featured, face.

  Brenneman approached and offered his hand. “Good to see you, John. How’s Julie?”

  Harper nearly smiled at the mention of his wife, but stopped himself when he saw the president’s grave expression. “She’s doing well, sir, thanks.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Brenneman forced a tight smile of his own and gestured to the couch. “Please, take a seat, both of you. Make yourselves comf
ortable.”

  The president walked behind his desk, shrugging off his suit jacket as the two CIA officials picked out chairs. A navy steward moved into the room and deposited a tray bearing a small carafe, cups, and creamer. The man withdrew as Brenneman joined them in the meeting area, smoothing a blue silk tie against his crisp white shirt.

  “So,” he said, fixing them both with a serious look. “I have quite a few questions for both of you, but first, let’s make sure we’re on the same page. My advisors seem to agree that this was a deliberate assassination attempt, as opposed to a random attack on a target of opportunity. I know how it’s being carried in the press, but I’d like to hear your opinions.”

  “I don’t think there’s any question.” Ford crossed her legs and focused her gaze on the president. “Of course, I’d like to know what he was doing outside the zone in the first place. Setting that aside, though, it’s just too much of a coincidence. A ‘target of opportunity’ would warrant nothing more than a suicide bomber on foot or an RPG. We certainly wouldn’t be seeing anything like the devastation that actually transpired.” She didn’t need to expand on this; they had all seen the video footage aired by CNN.

  “I agree,” Harper said. “And there’s something else: the Babylon has gates that are manned by the Iraqi Police Service. It would have been almost impossible to get something past them without a great deal of planning.”

  “Or their help,” Brenneman muttered.

  “That, too,” Harper conceded. “We’ll be looking into that, sir, but it might be difficult, since they’ll be the ones tasked with the investigation.”

  “That’s true.” Ford fired her subordinate a disapproving glance. “We do need to be careful about whom we trust in the IPS, but I wouldn’t recommend trying to cut them out of the loop. That will set a negative tone at a very sensitive time, especially if al-Maliki doesn’t survive the assassination attempt.”