“Please turn around, exit the building, and return to your vehicle,” said O’Hare in a nearly monotone voice. “If you need assistance, I will be happy to assign two agents to help you. If you prefer female agents, that can be arranged.”
“So, this is a roust?”
He studied her for a moment, then took her by the elbow and exerted gentle pressure. Not toward the exit, but to one side, away from the others. She allowed it, interested to see what he wanted. O’Hare spoke very quietly. “Listen, ma’am, I used to work for Linden Brierley. I was on the presidential detail during the incident at the residence when POTUS went missing. I worked on his team during the whole Black Book project.”
“And…?”
“And I’m just about the last man standing from those days. Ask Brierley, he’ll vouch for me. You need to back down. We got word that you harassed the AG. He is going to file charges.”
Auntie snorted.
“Not saying they’ll stick,” said O’Hare, “but, like it or not, he is the attorney general. He has POTUS’s ear. Word went out, and you’re not going to get in to see anyone today. No one. Whatever you hoped to do here in D.C. is a wash. Best thing you can do is go back to your office and lawyer up. I wish I had something better to say. I wish it wasn’t me saying this to you, but at least you’re not in cuffs. If you push this, you will be.”
Auntie could feel her pulse hammering, and heat was rising from her chest and up her neck. She didn’t even want to think what her blood pressure was right now.
“This is horseshit, O’Hare.”
“Yes it is, ma’am, and I wish it were otherwise. Please… you can’t win this fight. Not here, and not today.” His professional demeanor had cracked to reveal a fully human face. She could see the concern and pain in his eyes. It made her suddenly feel very old. And more than a little scared. “Please,” he begged.
Aunt Sallie sighed and nodded. “Okay, O’Hare.”
He looked incredibly relieved. “Thank you.”
She lingered a moment longer, though. “Why do you stay in the middle of all this shit?”
O’Hare almost smiled. “Probably for the same reason you do, Aunt Sallie. Someone has to.”
She studied him. “The war is the war,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “The war is the war.”
Aunt Sallie turned, feeling her years more than she had in a long time. Feeling the frustration and anger boiling inside of her. Feeling the humiliation as the six younger agents watched her go. Feeling the defeat.
O’Hare walked her to the door, and she let him help her down the steps and into the back of her car. D.J. Ming gave him very hard looks and started to say something, but Auntie shook her head. O’Hare leaned on the frame of the car. “Are you going to be okay, Auntie? You don’t look…”
He trailed off because she shook her head. Then he stepped back and closed the door. When Auntie turned to look through the rear window of the DMS limo, he was standing on the curb watching, like a lone soldier lost in enemy country.
“You okay?” asked D.J.
“Don’t start,” she warned.
“Oooo-kay. Then where to, Auntie. Back to the hotel? Or the airport?”
“No,” she said wearily. Her brown fists were clenched like a stranger’s hands around the shaft of her cane. “The Capitol Building.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Sam Imura shook my hand without much warmth, gave me one of his uninformative kind of smiles, and told me to have a safe flight home. Which I took to mean, Go away and don’t hurry back.
He gave Top and Bunny more comradely handshakes, complete with chest bumps and lots of back slapping. He patted Ghost’s head, who seemed indifferent to whatever emotional dynamic was going on at the moment because no one was handing out Snausages. Our driver, one of Sam’s people, pulled the car up, and Bunny loaded our bags. I literally had one foot in the car when my cell phone rang. The screen display told me it was D.J. Ming, Aunt Sallie’s driver and bodyguard.
“Hey, D.J.,” I said as I continued to slide into the front passenger seat.
“Joe, hey,” said D.J., “are you still in Baltimore?”
“About to head to the airport now. Why?”
“Any chance I can talk you into coming down to D.C.?”
I snorted. “Pretty sure everyone with a badge there wants to arrest me.”
“I know, but this is important.”
“Yeah, well, so is not going to Gitmo.”
“I’m serious, Joe,” said D.J. “It’s about Aunt Sallie.”
The driver was about to turn the key, but I touched his wrist and shook my head. “Has something happened to her?”
“Not… exactly. And, man, she will absolutely kill me when she finds out I called you.” He explained about Aunt Sallie’s trip to D.C. to try and get to the truth about the pickup order on me. D.J. hadn’t been in each of Auntie’s meetings, but she’d told him the bones of it, including how she was ushered out of the Secret Service headquarters with an armed escort. “Frankly, Joe, I’m getting worried about her. She’s been going way off her diet. Stress eating, I guess, though you couldn’t force me to say that to her face if you put a gun to my head. Her BP’s off the scale, she’s always flushed and sweating, and I’m afraid she’s going to have a heart attack or something.”
“Okay, D.J.,” I said, opening the car door, “text me her itinerary and I’ll catch up. Can’t promise she’ll listen to me, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks, Joe. I just dropped her at the Capitol Building. She thinks I’m just parking the car. She’s here to ambush some congressmen.”
“Be there in an hour.”
I got out and told the others about the call. Top never complains and he didn’t wait for me to ask him if he was in. Instead he popped the trunk and grabbed his suitcase.
“Sam,” I said, “you got some wheels for us?”
“Yeah,” said Bunny, “something that a bunch of cranky Secret Service mooks can’t shoot through.”
Sam sighed. “Sure. Take a Betty Boop.”
We turned to look where he was pointing. A line of black SUVs stood in a row. Two Escalades, two Land Rover Sport Diesels, and a Nissan Armada. They were the latest in a long series of gradually mutating urban transport. The first generation, known as Black Betty, was designed by the head of the Vehicles and Transportation Design Center, otherwise known as the Shop. Our chief mechanic, Mike Harnick, is — how should I put this nicely? — out of his damn mind. He watches all those scenes in James Bond movies where 007 gets tutored on the bizarre extras Q has built into his cars, and Mike thinks they’re real. Point is, Mike tends to go a little beyond beyond when he builds a car for one of the field teams. My own car back home in San Diego has an ejector seat, which is something I once joked about wanting. Mike took me seriously. Very seriously. The demonstration of that ejector seat put four fifty-pound sacks of sand forty feet into the air. The ceiling in his garage is forty feet. You see where I’m going with that.
Anyway, roll forward until Mike meets the new head of the DMS Integrated Sciences Division, Dr. Joan Holliday, aka Doc Holliday. Doc is a Jedi Master of geeky weirdo gadgets. The two of them spent a week at the Shop and I swear dark clouds gathered overtop and there were peals of demonic laughter. Or so I’ve been told. The result is that the Black Betty model is yesterday’s leftovers. The new line — improbably known as Betty Boops because… well, I really don’t know why — look exactly like top-of-the-line SUVs. However, the only part of them that came out of the catalogs of Ford, Nissan, or other car companies is the silhouettes. The skin of each car is a polycarbon blend that infuses spider silk, Kevlar, and some kind of new polymer that will stop anything short of an RPG. And an RPG will dent but not penetrate. From gel-filled self-repairing tires to window glass that can shrug off fifty-caliber rounds, they are rolling tanks. The polymers and alloys keep the weight down so the supercharged engines aren’t slowed at all.