Bennett elbowed his way through the crowds, finally pushing free and spotting the camp’s primary care clinic, not far from the front gate, heavily armed by U.N. peacekeeping forces in their distinctive blue helmets. His pulse was racing. The muscles in his arms were burning. His legs were ready to give way. But he pressed on for Erin’s sake, racing across an empty helicopter landing pad and bursting in the front door.
“Help, quick, I need a doctor.”
The senior nurse on duty came over and began asking him questions in Arabic.
“English,” he insisted. “Do you speak English?”
Apparently not. She kept asking him questions he didn’t understand, insisting on information he couldn’t give.
Bennett looked to the right and then to the left. He called out for anyone who spoke English. But no one responded. His panic intensified. Erin’s olive skin was rapidly turning gray and clammy, and he had no idea what else to do.
Suddenly, a young woman appeared through a side doorway.
“What seems to be the trouble, sir?” she asked with a slight accent that might have been British but could very well have been Australian.
“I don’t know,” Bennett conceded, his voice catching. “We were just getting ready for bed when she started vomiting, over and over again. She couldn’t stop. Eventually she started dry heaving, and then she just collapsed.”
“What did she have for dinner?” the nurse asked.
“Nothing — maybe a few crackers,” he replied. “She hasn’t had much of an appetite for the last week or so.”
“She’s burning up,” the nurse said, feeling Erin’s forehead and sticking a digital thermometer in her ear. “One hundred five,” she said a moment later.
Jon gasped. It was so high. Too high. And it was spiking so quickly. He didn’t remember her having a fever when this had begun. Where was all this coming from? What was happening? And why?
3
It had been twenty excruciating minutes.
But the secure call he’d been waiting for finally came. Tracker checked the ID. Sure enough, it was the senior watch commander in the ops center.
He picked up on the first ring. “Tracker, go.”
“Umberto Milano is dead, sir,” the commander confirmed. “Delta just made a positive ID.”
“They’re sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And they got off scene in time?”
“It was close, but yes, sir, they made a clean exit.”
Tracker knew he should be ecstatic. But there was something else. He could hear it in the commander’s voice, and twenty-three years in the clandestine services told him what was coming next would ruin his night.
“What else?” he asked reluctantly. “What’s wrong?”
“Well, sir, we may have a situation.”
“Talk to me.”
“Well, sir, the Delta teams were able to grab Milano’s cell phone, but it was fried. They found his laptop, too. It was badly damaged, and most of the data they have been able to recover is encrypted. It’s going to take some time to sort out.”
“Cut to the chase, Commander,” Tracker demanded, his patience wearing thin. “What are you saying?”
“Sir, the tech team was able to recover the last two e-mails Milano sent, and they’re troubling, sir.”
“How so?”
“One contains detailed maps of Los Angeles — streets, subway lines, sewage and electrical facilities, and so forth. The second e-mail contains detailed schematics for Staples Center.”
Tracker’s stomach tightened. “The convention center?”
“Yes, sir,” the watch commander confirmed. “I don’t know where they would have gotten it. It’s not available online. We checked. They had to have gotten it from the office of the architects who designed the place, or from a city office.”
“When were they sent, Commander?” Tracker asked, racing to process what he had just learned.
“Yesterday, sir.”
“To whom?”
“We’re not sure yet, sir. The tech team’s still working on that.”
“Find out fast and call me back,” Tracker ordered.
“Will do, sir.”
Tracker hung up the phone, swiveled his chair, and turned to look out his seventh-floor windows at the woods of the Virginia countryside. Was he hearing this right? The evidence was circumstantial but terrifying. Air Force One was en route to Los Angeles International Airport. By now, it was probably on final approach. Once on the ground, the Secret Service motorcade would take MacPherson directly to Staples Center. Twenty thousand delegates were standing by for the kickoff of the Republican National Convention. The president of the United States was about to address his party for the last time before handing over the platform to the man he hoped would succeed him.
Was the Legion planning an attack? an assassination? Was it coming tonight?
He had been working with the Secret Service, FBI, Homeland Security, and local and state law enforcement agencies for months to ensure the safety of both the Republican and Democratic conventions. At this point, he considered Staples Center impenetrable. Even in the highly unlikely scenario that a terrorist or team of terrorists actually did get inside the building, there was absolutely no way to smuggle weapons in. Pre-positioning weapons inside the convention center or somewhere on the grounds was out of the question as well. Every square inch had been checked and double-checked by the best security teams on the planet. But still …
What if it was an inside job? It had happened before during the MacPherson administration, hadn’t it? That was what eventually forced Jack Mitchell, his predecessor, to step down as DCI, wasn’t it?
Al-Nakbah had been able to penetrate the Treasury Department and the Secret Service six years earlier and nearly assassinated MacPherson twice. Not long after — and maybe before — the Legion had penetrated the CIA and somehow turned Indira Rajiv, one of the Agency’s top Middle East analysts, into one of the most damaging traitors in the history of the Agency. Wasn’t anything possible at this point?
The Republican National Convention, of course, was the ideal target. Especially tonight. The eyes of the world would be riveted on the president’s prime-time address. By all media reports, this was not going to be an ordinary campaign stump speech by a lame-duck president. Leaks from “senior White House sources” suggested MacPherson was going to make major news, though no one was sure what it might be.
European leaders were urging the president to cut off U.S. aid for Israel if Prime Minister David Doron continued to insist upon constructing the new Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, now rapidly nearing completion. Editorials in several leading American newspapers were urging the same course of action, and there were rumors MacPherson was growing impatient with Doron. Might MacPherson throw down the gauntlet with Israel tonight?
Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, were pushing MacPherson to back a sweeping new Middle East peace plan being crafted by U.N. Secretary-General Salvador Lucente. The central element of Lucente’s proposal involved the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from the Middle East, particularly from the oil-rich Persian Gulf area. These would be replaced by U.N. peacekeeping forces contributed from every corner of the globe. Secretary of State Marsha Kirkpatrick was rumored to be sympathetic to such an approach. Was the president going to announce a “phased redeployment” of U.S. forces tonight?