by Dan Kelly
“I’ve told you before; I also have friends in low places.”
Don doesn’t say anything. He just shakes his head.
At twenty-five minutes after ten my cell rings. It’s a Sergeant Hadley. “Mr. Dawson, we’re in the parking lot. Where do you want us?”
“I’ll be right out.”
“Don, that was one of the soldiers I told you about. They’re outside in the parking lot and he’s asking for instructions on where we want them.”
“Men in uniform would be a normal sight around here so they can position themselves somewhere out in the open close enough to the platform so if the smoke bombs are needed they’ll be in a good position to use them. I’ve brought some communication gear so we can communicate with them sight unseen, ear buds and two way radio packs they can put in their pockets.”
Opening his briefcase, he takes out the gear and hands it to me. “Take this to them and pass on what I just told you. If Aldrich is on the grounds and he spots you, he’ll be less suspicious as to why you’re here than he would be if he spotted me. Besides, once he sees Janet he knows you two have been working together so he’s less likely to think your being here is a sign of potential trouble.”
“Let’s hope you’re right.”
The soldiers have driven here in an Army vehicle and it will blend in with other such vehicles in the parking lot. I give them the communications gear and pass on Don’s instructions and then ask, “Do you have any weapons with you?”
Sergeant Hadley answers with, “We were told to bring a couple of M9s with us and additional ammo.”
“Okay, good. Carry them until this party is over. Have you been briefed on what we might be dealing with here?”
“Yes sir.”
“You don’t have to call me sir. I’m not an officer in the military. Feel free to call me Chet.”
Okay, Chet. Where is this press conference to take place?”
I tell him and we part company.
When I get back to the supply room, Don is on the phone with Piedmont. I know this because he has his phone on speaker so he can better handle the binoculars he brought with him to scan the sky and the ground area surrounding the press conference platform area. It’s now 10:45 and there’s nothing else to do but wait for the curtain to go up on Act one, scene one of our little play.
Looking out one of the windows, I see the ‘reporters’ arriving and Janet is right in the middle of them as they walk under the canopy. When Don is finished talking with his boss, he looks out the other window to check on the whereabouts of his fellow agents roaming the grounds. Turning to me he says, “It looks like we’re good to go. The two soldiers are sitting off to the side on that little knoll about 15 yards away from the platform. There in a good spot if we need them.”
“Those M9s they’re sporting are only accurate for a distance of sixty yards or so if the shooter knows what he’s doing. If Aldrich shows up, he should be within their range as well as ours.”
At eleven on the dot Andy Barrows walks out of the hospital and up onto the platform to the podium. For the next forty minutes he puts on quite a show. If I didn’t know he was an impersonator, I’d have been completely fooled. As noon time approaches, I‘m beginning to think Aldrich is going to be a no show. Scanning the sky for the umpteenth time, I see nothing but a large bird of some kind way off in the distance. A couple of minutes later Sergeant Hadley is alerting everybody to something strange approaching from the east. “It might be a bird, but the sun is in my eyes and I can’t see it clearly. Anybody got a pair of sunglasses I can use for a bit?”
One of the roaming agents gives him his. I say, “I spotted the same thing a minute or two ago and drew the same conclusion.”
As the UFO gets closer, one of the roaming agents yells out, “That’s no damn bird. That’s a Drone Quadricopter. You can pick one up at a hobby store for about three hundred bucks. My neighbor bought one for his kid. They’re remote controlled, equipped with a camera and can hover in mid-air.”
Don says, “I don’t like this, Chet, not one damn bit. It may belong to someone living in the area or it might be the Crusader’s. We could try to shoot it down, but it’s still out of range of our hardware. If we shoot it down when able to and it belongs to an innocent citizen, I’ll be joining the ranks of the unemployed if Piedmont has his way.”
The drone approaches to within about seventy yards of the conference area and then begins to hover about fifty feet above the ground and stays in that position for over five minutes. We don’t know if it’s just somebody who wants a ringside seat to see what there is to see or if it’s the Crusader who has come up with an ingenious way to settle his score with the President.
Don says to me, “I can’t stand here and wait to react to whatever happens with that damn thing. It’s too risky.”
Without any more preamble, Don gives the orders to try to shoot the drone down, for the soldiers to toss the smoke grenades and lead everyone on the platform and directly in front of it to the door of the supply room we’re in and for everyone else to seek cover and hit the ground. About fifteen seconds after the smoke bomb grenades do their thing, the drone shoots towards the canopy in a dive and just before it reaches the canopy it and everything within a radius of approximately fifty feet or so shatters, debris flying everywhere, and a mini-second later the sound of an explosion hits our ears.
Just before the explosion I hear the door to the supply room open and then the windows shatter and I hit the floor with a ringing in my ears. The first thought that enters my mind is not the number of casualties or dead bodies, but whether or not Janet got hurt. This lady has definitely gotten to me.
When the smoke clears, I am a witness to a miracle. Except for some cuts and bruises everyone in the supply room seems to be safe and sound. When the window I was looking out of shattered, pieces of glass flew into my face, but I only got one minor cut on my forehead and a deeper one on my chin. Most of the pieces of glass must have hit me with the flat side and not one of the edges or missed me completely.
Anxiously looking around for Janet, I don’t see her anywhere and panic sets in. Then I spot a hand sticking out from behind a rack of shelves which hold packages of toilet paper, piles of towels and other toiletry items. Running over to take a closer look, I find the rest of the body covered with stuff from the shelves. The hand is the only body part not covered. Carefully removing the items from around the head area, I see that it’s Janet. She’s unconscious and has a deep gash on the top of her head and there’s blood all over the floor. I check for a pulse and find a strong one, thank God, and then she stirs. Looking up at me she says, “If I look the way I feel, shoot me.”
Removing the stuff that she’s buried under I ask, “Can you move your arms and legs? Don’t try to get up. You took a hit to the head by something flying around and you might have a concussion or some other internal injuries.”
“Boy, Dawson, your bedside manner sucks you know that?”
She moves her arms and legs and that makes me feel a whole lot better. I call out to Don to get some medical help for Janet and then take hold of her hand and say, “I was scared to death you didn’t survive that blast.”
Looking into her eyes, I realize our relationship has just escalated to a much higher level. Smiling she says, “As stupid as this might sound, I’m glad you were scared.”
Five minutes later a doctor and a nurse show up and I head outside to check on the status of the people out there. The news is not good. Two agents are dead, one has a broken arm and a bystander got his nose flattened by the microphone as it was hurled out into the crowd of onlookers by the blast. Fortunately, none of the other bystanders were hurt.
Pieces of the platform are strewn all over the lawn, the canopy was blown up into the upper branches of a tree nearby and there is no immediate sign of the audio equipment or the podium. What a disaster this turned out to be.
Don joins me where the platform was a short while ago and says, “A toy plane did thi
s, a bloody toy plane!”
“It must have been carrying some explosive like C4 which can be detonated by remote control.”
“Where would Aldrich get something like that?”
“Don, there are websites all over the internet that give you the recipe and instructions for making that stuff. The ingredients are readily available. It’s a very dangerous process, but for someone like Aldrich who is highly motivated that wouldn’t deter him one bit.”
“I read something a while back about remote controlled drones and they can be controlled from quite a distance. It would be a waste of time to start a search of the immediate area. He’s probably long gone by now.”
“He’ll be anxious to know if he killed the President and when he finds out that he failed that’s really going to mess with his psyche. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll take himself out in utter despair.”
“I wish.”
“It might be a good idea not to let the cat out of the bag about our scheme. Let everyone believe, especially the Crusader, that it was the President standing on that platform. Keeping him in the dark might encourage him to continue to take greater risks to assassinate the President and improve our chances of taking him down. If he finds out about our trap here today, it will most likely mitigate his inclination to take those greater risks and make it harder for us to draw him out and put an end to his vendetta. At this point, I don’t think anything will completely dissuade him from trying to accomplish what he has set out to do, but let’s not do anything to give him second thoughts.”
“I’ll go along with that.”
“I’m going to check up on Janet now. I’ll leave you to deal with the backlash from this fiasco. I’ll touch base with you tomorrow morning to discuss what our next step is going to be if we can come up with one.”
I find Janet in the Emergency Ward along with the doctor that came to the supply room earlier. “How’s the patient doing, Doc?”
“She took quite a clout to the head. The laceration on the top of her head is fairly long but not deep. There’s been no damage to the skull. Scalp wounds bleed profusely even when no serious damage has been incurred. She has a minor concussion, but there are no signs of internal injury. However, I want to keep her overnight for observation. She’s going to have a nagging headache for a while, but I can prescribe something for that.”
Smiling down on Janet I say, “I expected that diagnosis. Reporters have a reputation for being hard headed, especially this one.”
“Please don’t stay long. She needs some rest after what she’s been through.”
“Will do and thanks, Doc.”
After the doctor leaves Janet says, “Where’s my purse?”
“Why do you want your purse?”
“My cell is in it. The biggest story to come down the pike in months and I’m lying in a bed in a hospital. I can’t be scooped on this one. If I am, I’ll have nightmares for months.”
“You’re something else you know that? You just survived a bomb blast and find yourself in an emergency ward in a hospital and all you can think about is to file a story before your competition does.”
“Don, I want my purse. Where is it?”
“I don’t know. I gave it to the nurse that was with the doctor when they came to the supply room?
“Let me use yours.”
Seeing how determined she is to get her hands on a phone, I relent and give her mine. She dials someone at her paper and while she’s waiting for the person to answer I say, “Don’t include in your story anything about the trap. Portray it as the real thing. I’ll explain later.”
The person answers and I am forgotten. I head out to the admittance area to give her some privacy. The two army sergeants are sitting in the waiting area. When they see me they jump up from their chairs and Sgt. Hadley asks, “How’s the lady doing?”
“She’s got a gash on her head, a minor concussion and a headache, but other than that there doesn’t appear to be any other damage. They’re going to keep her overnight for observation.”
“Man, that’s good news. I saw her take cover behind that rack of shelves and thought she’d be safe there.”
“What? Are you blaming yourselves for her getting hurt? Don’t be ridiculous. You did a remarkable job leading all of those people to safety as quickly as you did. You saved a lot of lives. I don’t know how you found the door in all that smoke.”
“Well, we’re glad she’s going to be okay. If you don’t need us for anything else, we’ll be heading back to Fort Meade.”
“Okay and thanks, guys.”
The soldiers head out and I’m left twiddling my thumbs until Janet finishes filing her story and I can get my phone back. I ask the people at the admittance desk if they know the whereabouts of Janet’s purse and one of them reaches under the counter and hands it to me. Now I’m twiddling my fingers with a woman’s purse hanging over my shoulder and getting strange looks from passersby. Not the best image for someone in my profession.
I was saved from further embarrassment by a nurse coming out of the ward to tell me Janet wanted to talk with me.
Janet’s now sitting up in her bed and when she sees me she says, “You look like one of those European men who carry a shoulder bag, but somehow the look doesn’t suit you.”
Seeing my discomfort, she starts to laugh and then winces because it hurts her head to laugh. “Thanks for finding my purse and thanks for letting me use your phone.”
“You’re welcome. Did you leave out any mention of the ruse?”
“I did, but I felt guilty about lying to my readers. Why did you ask me to do that?”
I tell her about the conversation Don and I had and she gently nods her head in agreement. “I think my readers will forgive me for omitting some of the facts of the story when I can tell them why I did it. So, it looks like we’re back to square one with the Crusader. Where do we go from here?”
“Don and I are going to talk about that tomorrow. If you’re up to it, you can join me at my office when I call him.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve been asked to only spend a few minutes with you so you can get some rest, so I better split.”
Then, like it is the most natural thing in the world for me to do, I lean over and give her a kiss goodbye. She smiles and says, “I think we make a pretty good team, don’t you?”
“And getting better by the minute. Stay off the phone and get some rest.”
Chapter 30
Driving back to my office I call the President to let him know about how everything has become unraveled before he reads about in the newspaper. After I finish he says, “This guy is full of surprises. What’s your next step?”
“As of this moment, sir, I haven’t a clue. Don Ericson, Janet Vanderhill and I are going to get together tomorrow to discuss that. We’ll probably cut back on the media blitz to 30 second spots during prime time but keep the signage up with respect to billboards and mass transportation. The number of phone calls coming into the FBI has diminished drastically, so Don has disbanded the special Crusader Sighting Response Force he set up. We’re going to have to come up with some new tactics. Our full court press blew up in our faces.”
“Keep me posted.” Click.
When I get back to my office, Felicity, Bob and Shirley surround me and bombard me with questions about what happened at Walter Reed. At first I think they want to know if the trap worked, but when Felicity asks me about the explosion I know I’m out of the loop on something.
“How do you know about that?”
“It’s all over the news. All the commentators have been saying is there was a big explosion outside of the hospital and to stay tuned for more details which will be aired as soon as they receive them. No one at the hospital can be reached for comment and they have no word on what caused it or whether or not anyone was injured. What happened to your face? Come on, spill it!”
