“Nobody followed me,” he replied, climbing down from the cab. “Name’s Jeremy.” He reached out and shook the man’s hand.
“Malachi,” the man said. He stood about a foot shorter than Jeremy and moved as if he had worked at manual labor all his life. He could have been thirty or forty; the beard made it hard to tell.
Jeremy noticed two other men at the far end of the body shop, but Malachi didn’t acknowledge them. They looked busy lugging heavy bags from the back of a Ryder box truck onto a forklift pallet. He couldn’t see the writing on the bags, but there was no mistaking the smell: phosphate-based fertilizer, and lots of it.
“What do you want me to do now?” Jeremy asked, assuming none of these men had time for small talk. “They told me to deliver the truck. That’s all they told me.”
“And they told us to load it up,” Malachi said. “By our ownselves.”
“Should I wait?” Jeremy asked.
“Come back at eleven,” the Phineas priest called out over his shoulder. “Somebody will be here when you get back to brief you on what’s next.”
Jeremy looked at his watch. That was three hours from now.
“There a place to get a cup of coffee around here?” he asked, but Malachi had already joined the others with their lifting.
Perfect, Jeremy groused to himself. He had three hours to sit and wait while Ellis and his men prepared for a devastating round of attacks. Deep breath, he told himself. You’re not the only one working this operation.
The HRT sniper walked back out into the cold night hoping somebody else was making better progress.
SIRAD SMELLED HAMMERTIME even before she carded her way into the highly secure Mind Lab. He exuded a sharp, acrid odor that reminded her of Stilton cheese steeped in vinegar.
“For God’s sake, isn’t there a shower around here somewhere?” she asked.
“There’s a w-w-washroom at the other end of the b-b-building,” the wave theorist said, seemingly happy to see her. “But I wouldn’t w-w-worry about it. You smell f-f-foxy.”
She shivered at his compliment, then dropped her coat on a table near where Ravi worked at his terminal.
“Any news?” she asked.
“Some,” he replied. “What did Mitchell say?”
Sirad caught herself before speaking. She had spent so much time wondering about Mitchell’s intentions, she hadn’t even considered what to tell her three partners.
“He wants us to go after them,” she decided to say. “To go inside.”
“Go inside the WHCA?” I Can’t Dunk asked. “You must be kidding. It would be easier to explain the origins of the universe and provide three examples.”
“Jordan Mitchell? Kidding?” Ravi responded.
“I guess he has confidence in you,” Sirad told them.
“The WHCA holds the keys to the castle gates,” I Can’t Dunk pointed out. “They control all presidential communications, including launch-code encryption in the event of nuclear war. They have the most secure communications firewalls in the world.”
“No, Borders Atlantic has the most secure firewalls in the world,” Sirad corrected him. “And you have already demonstrated that you can identify White House tracking efforts. Why is it so hard to believe we can penetrate their defenses?”
“F-f-fucking A,” Hammer Time said.
“I guess that means yes?” Sirad asked. Her nose wrinkled reflexively at his body odor.
“He’s a wave theorist,” Ravi countered. “What does he know?”
I Can’t Dunk looked less optimistic.
“Getting in is one thing,” he said. “Doing it without showing ourselves . . . that’s another.”
“Well, look on the bright side”—Sirad smiled—“we’ve got about eight hours to do it. After that, most estimates say it won’t make a whole helluva lot of difference.”
“F-f-fucking A,” Hammer Time called out again. He seemed to come alive with the energy of a challenge. “I wanna r-r-rub up on some m-m-mathematics!”
“Tell you what, Hammer Time,” Sirad said. “We’ll get started on the math while you go rub up on a bar of soap. I don’t want to sound rude, but you’re starting to make my eyes water.”
“IS IT YOUR arm, sweetie?” Caroline Waller asked. Bedtime had never been an issue for the little boy, particularly after a hard day playing outside, but tonight, he refused to go. “Is your arm bothering you?”
They sat on the living room couch in the soft glow of a table lamp. The sounds of Kim Possible drifted out of the family room television at the other end of the house. Maddy had insisted on watching one last cartoon.
“My tummy hurts,” Christopher complained.
“That’s probably from the medicine, honey,” his mom assured him. “Remember? The doctor told you to eat it with your dinner so you wouldn’t get a tummyache.”
Caroline ran her fingers through the little boy’s hair. He lay snuggled up in her lap, the smells of baby shampoo and freshly laundered SpongeBob pajamas filling the room with family warmth.
“I don’t want to go to sleep,” he started to cry, and Caroline hushed him.
“It’s OK, baby,” she whispered. “I’ll hold you ’til you doze off.”
She didn’t mind. How could she? With Jeremy gone all the time, her children had become her only solace. No matter how hectic it got with work and bills and the demands of being a de facto single mom, she always looked forward to the last quiet cuddles before bedtime.
“I’m not going to sleep! Never, ever!” the little boy blurted out. Tears welled up in his eyes, and he buried his head in her arms.
“Hey, hey . . . ,” she said. “What’s the matter?”
This wasn’t a little boy trying to con his mother into a few moments alone. This was fear. Something had disturbed him terribly.
“Christopher,” she said, trying to calm him, “sweetie, what’s wrong?”
Caroline tried to lift him away from her so she could look at his face, but he clung to her.
“It was the pirate,” Maddy said. Caroline looked up to see her daughter standing in the hallway. “The pirate said he was going to come get us when we went to sleep.”
“What?” Caroline asked. “I thought I told you kids not to watch cartoons like that.”
“It wasn’t a cartoon, Mom,” Maddy said. The little girl crossed her arms, trying to act brave. She was the big sister, after all, and her dad had told her to watch over things while he was gone. “It was a real-life pirate.”
Caroline sat up on the couch.
“Christopher, listen to me, honey,” she said. The tone of her voice shifted instantly from gentle consolation to maternal concern. “What happened today? Did someone scare you?”
The little boy moved his head up and down against her chest, sobbing now but refusing to show his face.
“I told you, it was the pirate,” Maddy insisted. She sounded resolute.
“What pirate?” Caroline asked. A child’s imagination was a powerful thing. She had often seen it transform fantasy into real emotion. “There’s no such thing as pirates anymore.”
“The man in the truck. He drove up out front and asked if our name was Walker.”
“When?” Caroline asked. Suddenly the dimly lit room seemed a little more menacing to her as well. “Tell me what happened.”
“We were playing war and this truck stopped,” Maddy said. Her voice began to crack, exposing the little girl behind the facade.
“Come here, baby,” Caroline said, opening her lap. Christopher held on tightly. “I want you to tell me what happened.”
Maddy climbed up onto her mom’s leg. She had never been much of a cuddler.
“He had a pirate’s patch on his eye, and he was all white like snow,” Christopher said. “He said he was going to come back when we were sleeping and take us to his lair.”
Maddy began to cry. Softly, trying to hide it.
“It’s OK,” Caroline assured them. “Nobody’s going to take you anywhere.”
She nuzzled them with her nose, trying to make this whole thing sound like some campfire ghost story.
“I bet he’s waiting outside right now,” Christopher argued. They lived in a subdivision, but the house backed up to a wooded area that often inspired frightened questions at bedtime. “He’s just waiting for us to go to sleep.”
“Not with me to protect you,” Caroline said, summoning a voice like a Nickelodeon superhero. “Here, I’ll prove it to you.”
Her first impulse was to call Mason; HRT had a twenty-four-hour number designed just for occasions like this. If the kids were right, someone indeed may pose a very real threat.
“How?” Maddy asked. She was never an easy sell.
“Come with me.”
Caroline wiped tears out of their eyes and scooted them out of her lap.
“There’s snow all around the house, right?” she asked. They nodded, sniffling and following her as she led them by the hands to the back window.
“What if he sees us?” Maddy asked.
“There’s no one out there, honey. See?” Caroline pointed outside to the snow-covered back lawn. “All the footprints are from little people’s feet. Pirates have big feet. If anyone was out there, we’d see his tracks.”
The logic reassured her a bit.
“But what if he comes after you go to bed?” Christopher asked.
“I’ll stay up while you sleep. If I see any big footprints in the snow, I’ll know the pirate is around.”
Caroline coaxed the little boy right up to the window. Moonlight afforded them a clear view into the backyard.
“I wish Dad was home,” Maddy said.
“I do too, sweetie, but your daddy taught me how to take care of silly old pirates. They are not allowed in my house, and they are not going to take you to any secret lair.”
“You promise?” Christopher asked. His mother’s assurances seemed to be working. He pressed his face against the glass, examining the footprints to make sure they were all small enough.
“I promise,” Caroline said. She knelt down between her kids, confident that they felt safe, even if she no longer did. “I promise.”
Christopher turned back from the window, a bit more sure of himself.
“Well, my tummy still hurts,” he said. “But I think I can . . .”
“EEEEEEEE!”
Before he could finish, Maddy screamed as if Death himself had appeared in the window.
Crash!
A gloved hand smashed through the window and grabbed the little boy by the throat. Christopher tried to scream, but the hand choked his cries to a muffled wheeze.
Caroline fell over backward, then instinctively regained her balance, yanked Maddy behind her, and clawed at the fingers wrapped around her horrified son’s throat.
“EEEEEEE!” Maddy yelled over and over, twisting and thrashing her hands up and down like a cat falling.
“No!” Caroline heard herself calling out. It was the desperate, detached voice of a woman who suddenly realized that as long as she lived, her children would never again believe her promises.
“I HAVE A prepared statement I’d like to read,” the vice president announced to the forty-eight members of the White House press pool. She stood behind the famous Blue Goose podium and cleared West Wing phlegm from the back of her throat. “After that, I’ll answer a few brief questions.”
She tried to concentrate on the notes in front of her and the reporters in the room, but there was no way to overlook the fact that this hastily called press conference would beam instantaneously to the four corners of the earth.
“At three PM eastern standard time, terrorists struck at three critical aspects of our national infrastructure. These were just the latest attacks, of course, in a series of barbaric attempts by foreign enemies to thwart the will of the world’s most powerful democracy.”
Beechum adjusted her reading glasses, trying to make sense of handwritten notes she had scribbled down on two three-by-five cards.
“Within the past two hours, I have been advised that elements within our Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation have made significant breakthroughs in identifying the people responsible for these attacks.”
The room bustled from dead still to nearly uncontrollable excitement as four dozen of the world’s most distinguished journalists smelled page-one print. They desperately wanted to call out questions, but this was the vice president of the United States and one renowned for toughness at that. Questions would have to wait.
“Because this is an ongoing investigation, I cannot offer many details, but I do want to say on behalf of President Venable, that the full faith of the American people will be justified. We feel cautiously optimistic that the murderous thugs behind these attacks will be brought to justice before they can strike again.”
She looked up at what any politician would have viewed as man-eating predators and removed her reading glasses.
Forty-eight hands shot up at the same instant. With almost a single voice, they called out, “Ms. Vice President.”
“Harold,” she said, pointing to the NBC correspondent. He caught her eye first.
“Where is the president and why is he not making this announcement himself?”
She had anticipated that, of course. America expected their commander in chief.
“As you can imagine, the president has taken an intensely personal interest in the welfare of the American people. He asked me to speak with you so he can attend to the more important business of leading our law enforcement and intelligence assets.”
The language sounded canned, she knew, but the reason behind it made sense. Besides, this was a time for language of state, not personality and wit.
“Ms. Vice President, are you talking about the group Ansar ins Allah, the group that has repeatedly claimed responsibility for these attacks?”
Beechum turned toward the ABC reporter.
“As I said, national security prohibits further details. All I can say is that we feel confident that we have identified those responsible. And yes, it is safe to say that there is an element of support from foreign interests.”
“Meaning the Saudis?” someone blurted out.
Beechum ignored the question and pointed to the New York Times.
“I’ll ask the same thing,” he said. “The Saudi government has taken great pains to deny involvement by the House of Saud. Are you looking directly at renegade members of the Saudi royal family? Prince Abdullah, perhaps?”
Beechum tried not to appear ruffled.
“We have longtime and proven ties with Saudi Arabia,” Beechum said, walking a very fine line. “These are times of transition for the royal family, but they have been an important ally and we aim to maintain that relationship.”
“But are they a target of your investigation?” another reporter called out. This among all press rooms understood protocol, but emotion was beginning to take over.
Beechum pointed to a reporter off to her right. She didn’t recognize the woman’s face.
“We have unconfirmed reports that an Islamic charity in Columbus, Ohio, was raided this morning by federal agents,” the woman said. “Up to five suspects killed. Can you confirm this raid and tell us if this is the development you are referring to?”
Beechum glanced down at notes that held no answers to this one. It had only been a matter of time before the story leaked out.
“I came here this afternoon to reassure the American people that this White House is doing everything humanly possible to stop these terror attacks,” she said. “I’m sure you and everyone else in this room understand the delicate nature of this investigation. You wouldn’t want me to say anything that would place innocent lives at risk. I think I’ll leave it there.”
With that, the White House press secretary stepped up to Beechum’s side and waved a hand, ending the press conference. The questions rose to crescendo, but the vice president excused herself and disappeared resolutely back
into the West Wing.
“I trust you know something we don’t,” Andrea Chase said as she caught up to the vice president. She had not received any briefing that showed positive developments in the case.
“I know that two hundred and eighty million citizens need some reason to get out of bed tomorrow morning,” Beechum responded. Even in times of calm she walked quicker than most. “I know that members of our press pool were starting to wonder what happened to the president, and I know that we need to keep these terrorist bastards guessing until we can catch a break. If you have a better plan, I suggest you spit it out.”
Chase said nothing at first, then, “David is going to wake up in less than twelve hours with a lot of questions. I would rather not have the first be ‘Where the hell do I round up the usual suspects?’”
Beechum left the chief of staff at the door to the Oval Office.
“You worry about tomorrow,” the vice president called out. “I’ve got a country to run today.”
DELTA FLIGHT 272 from Kansas City arrived ten minutes before nine into Reagan National.
The tall, distinguished-looking man in the port-side emergency row carried a canvas duffel and a copy of Time magazine. Its cover showed a split screen with President Venable on one side and Saudi prince Abdullah on the other. The caption read: ALLIES OR ARMAGEDDON?
“Enjoy your stay,” the flight attendant said as he followed the rest of the passengers into the terminal.
Not much enjoyment in any of this, he thought to himself as he walked out into a nearly deserted terminal. The clap of his cowboy boots on the marbled floors echoed through the beautifully renovated space. But then again, duty and pleasure seldom share the same bunk.
Colonel Ellis met his driver outside in a cold winter air that he well remembered from his Pentagon years. The Phineas priest behind the wheel drove a charcoal Ford with Virginia tags.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Cell Six has pre-positioned in the Adams Morgan safe house. The intelligence unit has provided guard logs, shift rotations, and maintenance schedules at the McMillan Reservoir. We’ll have the drop packs ready by nine tonight.”
White: A Novel Page 29
