by James Rosone
“Hey, you knew the risks when you signed up for this mission,” Lucky replied. “If there’s an armed helicopter, then we have to hope Delta Team is able to take them out. Chances are, they won’t have one, not for this short of a trip. The target’s just going from the White House to Langley. Plus, the government is closed for the week, so traffic should be light.”
“I sure hope you’re right, Lucky.”
“I know I’m right. Now shut up, sit tight and wait. It shouldn’t be much longer.”
*******
Washington, D.C.
White House
Agent Bill Cartwright had been assigned to the President’s Secret Service detail now for more than four years. When it had become clear that Sachs was going to be the Republican nominee in 2016, his boss had told him he was being promoted and placed in charge of the candidate’s security. While Bill was thrilled by the advancement in his career, he hadn’t initially respected the man who he’d sworn to protect. In time, though, he had grown to like the President. He might not always like or agree with everything he said or did, but he had a certain appreciation for Sachs as a person. He was a straight shooter and typically told it like it was, and he was a staunch supporter of law enforcement, even when it wasn’t popular. That certainly won him a lot of accolades from the LE community.
The past ten weeks had been rough—not just on the President and the country, but on the Secret Service as an organization. They’d had to field more threats against Sachs in the last ten weeks than they had during the past four years. Now the FBI and the NSA had alerted them that there was a credible threat against the President’s life, and this time, it was being orchestrated from someone within the West Wing. That alarmed Bill—not because he was in charge of the President’s security, but because someone he knew and worked with on a daily basis was actively planning to kill his charge. The challenge now was trying to flush that person out so they could deal with the insider threat.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” asked one of his fellow Secret Service agents.
Bill nodded. “Yes. The NSA has confirmed it. We know they’re going to ambush the President along the route, and we know how they’re going to do it.”
He could see the looks of concern on the faces before him. These people routinely put their lives on the line to protect the President, but this was something different. He was asking them to be decoys.
Bill raised his hand to quiet them down. “OK, listen up. We know a private military contractor group is going to carry out the actual attack—that means these guys know what they’re doing. This isn’t some lone wolf crazy guy. These are former military or Special Forces guys who’ve been trained to do these exact types of missions, so stay sharp.”
He paused for a second. “I know you’re all nervous, but we need to find out who in the White House is orchestrating this whole thing. That means we have to go through with this plan so we can root them out. We’ve taken every possible precaution we can, but I can’t guarantee that none of you will get hurt. This is a voluntary mission—if you want to opt out, this is your chance. No one will think less of you. But once we leave, we’re committed. Is that understood?” Bill asked. He saw the men and women nod their heads in agreement, looks of determination written on their faces.
“All right, then let’s saddle up and head out,” he ordered. He lifted his sleeve to his mouth. “It’s time to get Carnegie on the move,” he announced.
A few minutes went by. The President’s vehicle pulled up to the White House side entrance and a couple of agents unfurled some umbrellas to help block the view of the President leaving the building as he climbed in. Once POTUS was situated inside “the Beast,” as his vehicle was commonly called, it made its getaway from the White House grounds.
As they drove past the main gate, the rest of the security detail formed up, and the small convoy drove down 17th Street until they hit Constitution Avenue and turned right, heading toward the on-ramp of the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge on their way to the George Washington Memorial Parkway. From there, it was a pretty easy trip to the CIA headquarters in McLean.
*******
Fort Meade, Maryland
NSA Headquarters
“Got it!” shouted one of the SIGINT analysts who’d been monitoring all electronic activity happening on the White House grounds. The RQ-4 Global Hawk that had been loitering some 10,000 feet above D.C. had been specifically monitoring all signals emanating from the White House for the past few hours in preparation for this very moment.
“What do you have, Shelly?” asked Leah Riesling as she walked over to her terminal.
“A one-word text message to an unknown number in New York. When it reached that phone, that connection shotgunned the text out to ten different phones in Rosslyn, Virginia.”
“Whoa, that was fast. What did the message say?” Leah asked. “Do we know who sent it, and do we have the locations in Rosslyn it was sent to?”
“Share the data with us. We’ll track some of that down for you,” called out another coworker. They all wanted to get in on the action—it wasn’t every day you got to stop a presidential assassination.
Shelly looked at the cell phone number that had sent the call and raised an eyebrow. Without speaking, she motioned for Leah to come closer. Leah leaned in and looked at who the number belonged to and did a double take.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“One minute. I’m going to look at the CCTV cameras we put in place. I’ll know in a second.”
Shelly and Leah watched as they pulled up the footage from the room the text message had been sent from and pulled it back to the exact time stamp of when the message had been sent. Once they’d narrowed it down, they zoomed in and saw the traitor—the person who had deliberately sent a message letting their co-conspirators know the President was in the vehicle and on his way to the ambush point.
Leah looked at Shelly. “Keep this between us,” she said in low tones. “I’m going to get the Director. We need to alert the FBI and Secret Service as well.”
“You got it, boss,” Shelly answered.
“I’ve got the locations in Rosslyn now,” announced one of the other analysts. “It appears several of them are located at the Marriott, and a few are at other points along the GW Parkway.”
Using the drone’s advanced cameras, they swiftly identified several attackers lying in wait with what appeared to be some sort of anti-tank weapons, ready to deploy when the President’s motorcade arrived in the kill box.
The NSA Director had just walked into the room a moment before. “Alert the detail of the pending attack,” he barked. “Have our agents move in now to apprehend the attackers. Take ’em alive if you can, but dead or alive, take them down.”
He swiftly spotted Leah and made his way over to her. “I heard you found our traitor,” he said quietly.
Nodding, Leah pointed down at the frozen image of the person holding the phone.
Shaking his head, the NSA Director replied, “I never would have thought. Let’s make sure the President knows, and let’s figure out how we can use that person to our advantage.”
*******
Key Bridge Marriott
Peering his head slightly over the lip of the roof of the hotel, Lucky still didn’t see the President’s motorcade yet. He reached down and looked at the time stamp on the text message.
That was five minutes ago, he realized. Something’s not right.
“Did they take a different route?” asked Joe as he nervously fidgeted with the Javelin.
“I don’t know. Let me check something,” Lucky replied. He reached for his pocket binoculars. Placing them up to his eyes, he scanned further down the GW to see if he could spot the motorcade.
There they are…what are they doing? he wondered. Instead of turning onto the GW to head in their direction, the convoy had stayed on I-66 and now appeared to be parked along the side of the road, not moving at all. Suddenly, he had a sick feeling in his st
omach.
“Drop the missile, we need to get out of here. It’s a trap!” Lucky said in an urgent voice. He swiftly put the binoculars down and reached over for his pistol.
“I knew this was too good to be true,” Joe responded. He released his grip on the Javelin and pulled his own pistol out.
The two of them got up and dashed toward the rooftop exit they’d left partially ajar. They got within fifteen feet of the door when it suddenly busted open. In the flash of an eye, several men clad in black body armor with yellow lettering that read “FBI” across the front of it appeared, guns at the ready.
Before Lucky could even say anything, Joe brought his pistol up and fired off a shot. Lucky watched Joe get hit multiple times in the chest before he fell backwards, riddled with bullets. Not wanting to share the same fate, Lucky threw his pistol on the ground and raised his hands as quickly as he could, all the while cringing in anticipation of his own death.
“Down on the ground!” shouted one of the FBI agents.
Lucky dropped to the ground, making sure his hands were fully extended and open. A string of gunshots went off a little further away, probably from one of the other ambush teams. More agents stormed the roof of an adjacent building in search of the other attackers.
An FBI agent ran up to Lucky and patted him down before throwing a set of handcuffs on him. In mere seconds, he found himself being led down the stairs to an uncertain future.
*******
President’s Motorcade
Sachs breathed a sigh of relief when the head of his Secret Service detail, Bill Cartwright, told him they’d successfully thwarted the attempt on his life.
This is getting out of control, he thought.
Just then, the secured phone in his vehicle chirped. The other agents in the vehicle, all heavily laden with body armor and weapons, watched him as he reached over and answered the phone.
“This is the President,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper.
“Mr. President, this is Deputy Director Tony Wildes from the NSA. We have the assassins in custody, and we’ve identified the traitor. Before you ask, I have a proposition for you.”
Sachs looked at the receiver quizzically. “First, tell me who the person is that betrayed us.”
A brief pause ensued before Tony responded, “It’s Deputy National Security Advisor Ava Marx. She’s the one who sent the text message that you had left the White House. Once we knew it was her, we backtraced all her text messages, phone calls and any other piece of electronic data we could over the last three months. She’s sent a number of encrypted messages, all to a person in New York. We’re still tracking down who that person is, but right now, she’s the mole.”
The President let out a stream of obscenities.
Tony cleared his throat. “Sir, what I wanted to propose was—now that we know it’s her, we could spin this,” he offered. “We could selectively use her to leak misinformation to whoever her handlers are. This could give us a leg up on whatever is coming next.”
Sachs thought about that for a moment. It might be an advantage to use her like that, but at the same time, leaving her in place to continue spying for whoever she was leaking information to could continue to hurt them.
God only knows who else is working with her, Sachs thought.
Returning his attention to the phone in his hand, the President replied, “No, have her detained. I want her interrogated. I know we could use her to leak false information, but I don’t know that we can contain what she’ll see and learn of our future plans—not in her current position. Let’s find out what she knows, and maybe we can uncover some of her co-conspirators.”
“I understand, Mr. President,” Tony replied. “I’ll let the FBI know of your decision. Stay safe on your way back, sir. Until we know who else she’s working with, there may be other plots we’ll need to look out for.”
The call disconnected, and the President looked nervously to his Secret Service agents. “OK, boys, let’s head back to the barn. Good job today saving my bacon, and yours as well.”
His usually stoic counterparts allowed themselves to smile ever so slightly at that comment.
*******
Three Days Later
Washington, D.C.
White House, Situation Room
The President and the National Security Council were still in a bit of shock at the revelation that there was a mole in their midst. They all knew Ava personally and had worked with her in the NSC for the past two years.
I still can’t believe she was working to undermine me and my agenda the entire time, thought Sachs.
“All right, Polanski, tell me what you’ve got,” the President said. He needed to wrap his head around what could have caused this woman to participate in an attempt on his life.
“Yes, sir,” answered the FBI Director. “Well, during the interrogation, Ava revealed that she was initially approached around two years ago by three men. At the time, they were asking simply for information that could be used against you, mostly about trade deals with Europe. She says that she initially refused, but then they showed her pictures of her kids and told her that if she didn’t comply, they would be kidnapped and returned to her one piece at a time.”
“Has the FBI secured her family?” Sachs asked.
“We have,” Director Polanski confirmed. “Once she saw they were safe, that’s when she began spilling the beans on everything else she knew.”
The President nodded. “So, what else did she have to say?” he inquired.
“For nearly a year, they’d ask her to provide details about trade deals with the EU and China, but that was about it. They would also occasionally send her a picture of one or both of her kids playing at a park, or in school, or at some restaurant to remind her that they were still watching her.
“When you found out about the election shenanigans, they tasked her with keeping tabs on what the NSC was doing and what your next moves were. They then told her to propose that you travel to Langley to give a pep talk to the staff there in preparation for what was about to come. She was told that once it had been arranged, she was to send a one-word message, ‘Spark,’ when you left the White House. After that was done, they promised her they’d leave her alone.”
The President was torn for a moment between feelings of anger and betrayal and a sense of compassion for Ava. He was very grateful that the Secret Service had been tasked with protecting his family, and he couldn’t imagine what he would do to protect the people he loved the most. His mind drifted down the rabbit hole for a moment, until Polanski pulled him back.
“Mr. President?” he asked.
“Uh, yes,” Sachs responded. “So, tell me, Polanski, did we get any useful intel out of her?”
“Unfortunately, a lot of the names she’s given us have already crossed over to Senator Tate’s faction in Canada, so she’s not providing a lot of new information. That said, we just identified the person she was sending the messages to in New York.”
The President nodded and uncrossed his arms, hopeful that this might turn into a solid lead.
“The number was to a burner phone that was later traced back to a 7-Eleven store in Queens. We checked with the store, and it just so happens that this particular location has been robbed more than a few times over the past several years, so the store owner has all of his CCTV video backed up at a remote location. We acquired the data and reviewed all the people who bought burner phones over the last two months. It took us a while to crunch the data, but with some help from the NSA, we were able to identify eight individuals who bought burner phones from that store. We ran their facial images through the NSA, CIA, DoD and Homeland Security databases and turned up a hit to two of them from the DoD’s records. The other six individuals were nothing of note.”
“Please tell me we know who these guys are—it better not just be a match to some obscure piece of information the DoD collected,” Patty Hogan asserted.
The President chuckled. Patty
had made her opinion about the Department of Defense’s biometric database well known in the past. He remembered her referring to the DoD as a “vacuum cleaner” that sucked up information without knowing if it might be valuable one day.
Brushing aside Patty’s comment, Polanski continued, “As it turns out, the two individuals are active members of the German KSK, or Kommando Spezialkräfte—German Special Forces. They had apparently gone through a very specialized training program back in the early 2010s that US Special Operations Command Europe had been providing to selective NATO members.”
“Whoa, these were German Special Forces? Exactly what kind of training did we provide them with?” asked the President. He leaned forward, his interest now piqued.
General Vance Pruitt, the Army Chief of Staff, replied, “Counterintelligence and kidnapping operations. Essentially, we trained them to do exactly what they did to Ava and her family. God only knows who else they’ve blackmailed and done this to.” The general shook his head solemnly. This wasn’t the first time US Special Forces had provided some very specific training to an allied force only to have that exact training turned and used against them.
“Where are they now?” asked Robert Grey, the man who’d first hired Ava to work on his staff at the NSC. The President looked at Robert and could easily detect that the man was broken—he obviously felt utterly betrayed by what had happened with his deputy.
“We have them under surveillance now that we know who we’re looking for,” Polanski explained. “We’re not sure how they entered the country just yet or who else they’re working with, but we’ll know more in the coming days as we keep them under surveillance. Eventually, they’ll meet up with someone else or make a phone call. When they do, we’ll begin to see who else they’re connected to.”
Patty Hogan readjusted her ponytail. “Geez, if we have German Special Forces running long-term kidnap and counterintelligence operations on our soil, how many other European nations are doing the same?” she asked. “Hell, they may have other sabotage teams ready to carry out all sorts of attacks if given the order.”
