“I don’t care,” Ryan said. “I’m not sitting behind the desk on this one. If I can prove to Gumelar that China is behind this, that would be a different story.”
Cathy studied the tablecloth for a moment, thinking. She looked up suddenly. “That’s why you need to let me help. You’re busy saving Father Pat. Let me help save this little girl’s eye — and talk to the general. I want to do my bit as the President’s wife.”
Ryan groaned softly, reaching across the table to take his wife’s hand. “I stepped into that one, didn’t I?”
“I’ll say,” Cathy said. “Come on, this’ll be fun. No one outside of our people and the general will ever even know I was there.”
“Hon,” Ryan said. “Make no mistake. What you are doing is good, but it is espionage, pure and simple. And that is never, ever, ever, that easy.”
She smiled broadly, raising her eyebrows up and down, squeezing his hand.
He gave her a wary look. “What?”
“You know,” she said, eyes soft now. “Speaking of Edmund Burke, a long time ago — eons, really — I heard you quote him to my father while you were downstairs waiting for me to get ready to go. I fell in love with you right then and there.”
“Was it the one about women? Burke was kind of…”
She gave him a playful punch on the arm.
“You said to my father, No one ever made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.”
“Boy.” Ryan chuckled. “Your dad must have thought I was a sophomoric idiot.”
“Thank you for letting me do this, Jack. It’s a little, but it’s something.”
29
Baltimore Homicide Detective Emmet Ryan taught his son Jack early in life to listen to experts. The two United States Secret Service special agents sitting across the Resolute desk certainly qualified. Together, Gary Montgomery and Maureen Richardson had almost forty years of experience in dignitary protection. A GS-15, akin to an assistant special agent in charge in other government agencies, Maureen Richardson reported directly to the special agent in charge of PPD. Mo, as she preferred to be called, served as lead agent for the satellite detail that protected the First Lady. Much smaller than the big show surrounding POTUS, the FLOTUS detail was low-key and fluid. Mo and her Secret Service agents followed Dr. Ryan wherever she went, and then blended seamlessly, amoebalike, with Montgomery’s larger detail when the Ryans traveled together. They integrated but stood ready to go their separate ways if the schedule or situation dictated it.
It was a dance, and Montgomery and Richardson were experienced and savvy enough to make the intricate steps look easy.
Jack Ryan generally steered well clear of specifics regarding his own security. Where Cathy was involved, his instincts as a husband stomped back those of the nation’s chief executive.
Hundreds of agents from Protective Operations, Protective Intelligence and Analysis, and Uniformed Division officers conducted travel advances, executed logistical plans, liaised with medical personnel and Air Force and Marine support, and formed multiple concentric rings of electronic, structural, and personal security around the President and his family. Though he didn’t get into their business, Ryan made it a point to know everything he could on the agents assigned to the inner circle. Inside the bubble, within arm’s reach of the President, they lived under the constant eye of the television camera, not to mention the active threat of people who wanted to see their boss with a bullet in the head. Threats came in daily on social media, over the telephone, or in written communication. These men and women were, by necessity, the cream of the crop.
Ryan hadn’t handpicked Maureen Richardson to protect his wife, but he would have, had he been given the opportunity. She was a shooter — which he liked. Her record showed she’d had two OISs — officer-involved shootings — during her time as a uniformed officer with the Denver Police Department, once with her AR-15 rifle, the last with her Glock sidearm. Both times she’d fired four shots and hit her intended target with each round. She’d been cleared after each shooting and commended by her department and her community. Ryan found it particularly noteworthy that on both occasions she’d left cover, advancing toward violence when she saw others under attack. A good quality to have in someone you wanted to watch over your wife. This propensity also fit perfectly with the mission of the Secret Service — who were trained not to take cover during an assault, but to make themselves the larger target while getting their protectee out of danger.
Cathy liked her, too, and that didn’t hurt.
Mo’s mouse-brown hair was cut just above strong shoulders. A perpetually rosy complexion made her look as if she’d just come inside from a brisk wind — no matter the weather. A prominent chin and roundish cheeks gave her face a resting smile, even when she was upset. The look was more than a little disquieting, which Ryan counted as a plus, considering it was her job to put people off guard. Secret Service agents had to exude a certain gravitas. A collegiate judo champion, Mo Richardson moved with the centered grace of an accomplished martial artist. Her husband was an agent on the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, and one got the impression that the two of them spent hours in the dojo each day, trying to kick each other’s ass, when they weren’t on duty. While not as tall or imposing as Gary Montgomery was, Mo still possessed the don’t-screw-with-me persona that caused would-be attackers to stutter-step before taking any action, buying time.
Gary Montgomery was listening to her plan.
Sort of.
“We’ll send in a larger advance team than usual,” Mo said. “They’ll filter in with local agents by onesies and twosies, so we’ll establish a significant boots on the ground presence before SURGEON arrives—”
Arnie van Damm knocked and then stuck his head in the door that led directly across to the Roosevelt Room. His office was to the left, down that same hall.
“Mr. President,” van Damm said. “Senator Chadwick is here to discuss that new information we were talking about.”
It shouldn’t have been this way, but Secret Service personnel were accustomed to their meetings being interrupted by seemingly more important business. Code name CARPENTER, van Damm also had Secret Service protection, albeit a small detail of mainly portal-to-portal security. He often said to his detail that if he ignored them, it meant he trusted them to do their jobs without his input. Fortunately for the agents, Ryan didn’t see his wife’s security as taking a back burner to anything. Ever.
“Go ahead and have the senator brief you,” Ryan said. “See if this mysterious constituent of hers has anything we don’t already know. We’ll be done here in a few minutes.”
The chief of staff ducked out as quickly as he’d come in, shutting the door behind him.
Ryan motioned for the agents to continue.
Richardson laid out the rest of her plan to keep Cathy safe while getting her close to General Song.
“You’re planning a tarmac pickup in Detroit?” Montgomery asked.
“Of course,” Mo said. “We’ll take an Airport Police vehicle from the plane but move the First Lady to an armored Jeep Cherokee once we get her inside the hangar, out of sight. Local law enforcement will be present but hanging back. The entire package will be covert vehicles, moving with the flow of traffic but ready to go overt lights and sirens immediately, should the need arise.”
Montgomery nodded. “She shouldn’t be on the ground long.”
“We’ll arrive at four a.m.,” Mo said. “The operation will be that same morning, minimizing SURGEON’s time on-site.”
“There’s a bridge over the Huron River across the road from the Eye Center,” Montgomery said. “And the Amtrak station is right there, no vagrants to speak of, but plenty of opportunity for people to loiter and say they’re waiting on the Wolverine to Chicago. And no underground parking at the Eye Center. She’ll have to walk in from the open.”