This is a heavily trafficked public facility, so there are limits. That puts the pressure on us to conduct intense screenings and scans during the twenty-four hours prior to the speech. That’s what we’re doing now.” She pointed to a man waving a wandlike device over the rear wall of the building. “We use all the standard technologies: nonlinear junction detectors, chemical sampling devices, Geiger counters, IR scanners. We use RF detectors to search for two-way comms, bugs, and so on. We also jam all cell phone traffic on the mall. No calls in or out during the speech as well as during the arrival and departure of POTUS and the other principals. And for identifying bombs and other explosive material, sniffer dogs are still our best tool.”
“How do you control access?”
“Every person who passes through any door or checkpoint has been vetted and is on a master list. Plus, they all need to pass through full-body scans.”
“Even dignitaries?”
“Everyone.”
“What about mechanical failures, electrical problems, things of that nature?”
“There is a vetted list of federal employees who’ve been precleared to handle any infrastructure emergencies we might encounter. As a backup for more serious problems, contractors for all mechanical systems and subsystems maintain a list of on-call employees, all of them vetted and on standby. We have their pictures, fingerprints, and other pertinent informaint, ftion in the system so we can ID them if we need them. Electrical, plumbing, pipe fitters, heat and air, elevators, masonry, carpentry, roofing, even contractors for the subway system going from the Russell Senate Office Building to the Capitol. Same with fire and rescue personnel.”
“How many agents total?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you the exact number. But north of five hundred when you include all the duties involved, including comms, electronic countermeasures, transport, EPD, countersnipers, dog handlers, perimeter, tactical standby, logistics, civilian employees and so on. And when you add in Capitol Police, DC Metro, FBI, military . . .”
“Now I know what’s causing the deficit,” Captain Steele said.
Agent Klotz smiled. “Our counterparts in other countries think it’s overkill. But I can tell you that even with all this, I won’t sleep for twelve seconds tonight.”
Her cell phone rang, and she excused herself. Her husband was defrosting one of the six meals Shanelle had cooked on Sunday night and left for him and their daughters in the freezer, but he didn’t know how long to cook it.
“Men,” she said after she hung up. But it was clear she took great pleasure in being needed. “If you’d like, we can go over the rest of tomorrow’s protocols in my office.”
28
PRIEST RIVER, IDAHO
Evan rolled aimlessly around the house. He felt full of an anxious, twitchy energy now that he was off the pills. His mind was a kaleidoscope of splintery questions about this whole ethanol thing with John Collier and his dad. Why had his father been so emotional? And what was up with the African woman who’d run out of the woods? None of the explanations quite made sense, but he hoped to find some answers in the woods. A few days earlier, he’d seen a pillar of smoke rising over the treetops a half mile away.
Outside the sky had gone leaden. A storm was gathering.
“I’m going outside for a while, Margie,” he said.
Margie stood in the doorway with her arms crossed. “It’s too cold.”
“Just for a few minutes.”
“No.” She shook her head.
“What do you mean ‘no’?”
“Mr. Wilmot won’t allow it.”
“I am Mr. Wilmot,” he said with an edge in his voice that made her flinch. He felt the tiniest bit bad. It was kind of an asshole thing to say. But it was also true. He was not some kid who could be told what to do in his own house.
Other than a brief flash in her eyes, her big ham of a face did not move. “Your father would not allow it,” she repeated.
Evan rolled toward her, stopping only just short of whacking her on the shins. “I served my country through one tour of Iraq and two tours of Afghaniem“”“”“”" juststan, and I’ll be damned if you’re going to stop me from going out in my own yard.”
“Mr. Wilmot would not allow it.”
Evan slammed the joystick forward on his wheelchair, but Margie grabbed the arms of the chair and held it like a nose tackle on a blocking sled. The electric motor whined loudly, and after a moment the chair began to emit a burned rubber smell. Finally Evan let go of the joystick. It wouldn’t do him any good burning out the motor on his sled.
“All right, whatever,” he said. He hit the reverse on his joystick, backed up, and rolled to the chairlift that took him up the stairs to his room.
When he got upstairs, he called down the stairs, “If you’re going to be a pain in the ass, can you make me a sandwich? Ham and swiss on rye, okay? With a pickle.”
He knew that there was no rye bread in the kitchen, that the only rye bread in the house was in the basement freezer. He waited until he heard Margie clumping down into the basement, then rolled his wheelchair out onto the side balcony of the house. The house was built on a hillside. His father had installed a wheelchair ramp, but he’d never really used it because the hillside was too steep to navigate in the chair.
Today, though, he figured he’d be okay because the remnants of the last snow still left on the ground would slow the wheels of the chair and keep him from accelerating down the hill too fast and turning over.
He figured wrong. The minute he came off the ramp, he could feel that his center of gravity was too high. He slammed the joystick forward, hoping to power down the hill without tipping, but the wheels caught, and the chair went end over end down the hill.
Next thing he knew he was lying in a heap about eight feet from his overturned chair.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. Luckily he was unhurt. He had the wind knocked out of him, but that was about all. It was no worse than a good solid hit on the football field. He grinned and stared up at the ominous gray sky. It actually felt kind of good. “Pain is just the feeling of weakness leaving the body,” he said out loud, recalling one of the many goading comments that Master Sergeant Finch used to yell at everybody during Ranger training down at Benning.
He wormed himself across the ice over to the chair. Getting back into the chair took nearly five minutes of struggle. But curiously he didn’t feel daunted or angry or depressed the way he’d always felt doing therapy back at Walter Reed. In fact, he felt a steely determination, the same quality he thought had been blown away in the explosion.
Finally he settled back into the chair and moved down the walk, the nubby tires of the chair biting into the ice and snow with surprising efficiency.
Jesus but it was cold.
He’d put on a coat before leaving the house, but now his chest and hair and legs were wet from the snow he’d been lying on. And he should have worn a hat.
Nothing to do but keep moving.
He powered on down past the stables and onto the trail heading back into the forest. He was about five minutes down the trail when the first snow started falling. Within another ten minutes, the snow wa“0et=”s coming down so hard that he kept having to knock the flakes off his eyelashes in order to see. Visibility was down to thirty or forty feet.
He didn’t feel nervous, though. The wheelchair actually started riding better once half an inch of snow had accumulated. Soon, however, he was shivering.
But he was on a mission. He didn’t have gloves, but he’d pulled his ruined hand back inside the sleeve of his coat.
The snow was beautiful, sifting down out of the sky in fat gray-white lumps. Every sensation felt bold, sharp, clear. Even the cold and the lump on his head where he’d whacked himself in the fall lifted his spirits, made him feel complete for the first time in a long time.
Why the hell had he been sitting around feeling sorry for himself all this time? Yes, it sucked having no legs. Yes, it sucked having to rely on Nurse Margie. Yes, it sucked having a face like Freddy Krueger. But there were guys who didn’t make it back, who would never again feel the clear, bracing cold of a day like this.