“Thanks for the warning,” Lonnie replied, “but I've got a pass.” She flashed her badge at them and kept moving until she came up to Caufield’s group.
The group acknowledged her presence with a few greetings and pleasant smiles, then turned back to their work. That work, no matter how much she worried about it, was not hers. Not this time. The mission was in other people’s hands. Lonnie surrendered to the facts of her condition. While a part of her wanted to be deeper into it, she knew her part was done and she needed to step out of the way of those whose job it was. Marcus split off from the group.
“Don’t you need to stay here and work with them?” Lonnie asked.
“No, they’ve got it under control,” He said. “Besides, its not my job. I’m just a civilian here, remember?”
“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing.”
“Let’s get back to the hotel and get some rest,” He said.
She didn't protest.
Marcus glanced out the hotel window toward the Park Strip and buildings around it. He caught sight of the sniper posts on the roofs of buildings nearer the park, shooters and spotters settling into their deadly task. His memory flared with images of the countless times he had been sitting in just such a position himself, high on a building, on a mountainside, or on a flat-roofed two-story building in an urban Iraqi alley. He thought back to the fear and tension that he’d always felt in the hours before a mission went live, a nervous energy that curled tightly, deep in his gut. It came from knowing that soon you'd be called upon to perform an act that was very unnatural for mankind — to kill another human being. As the moment drew near, the shooter would descend into the battle zone within their psyche. The feeling settled into a low thrum of energy coursing through the body as the sniper calmed and employed the well-practiced breathing exercises, focusing on scanning the target area, broken into quadrants, sections, segments, and positions, the mind seeing the battle space as if overlaid with grid lines. He had sometimes compared the image to a life-sized game of Battleship — only he could see over the opponent’s board and knew where he'd placed his ships. And when the battle came, a surreal quiet descended, like a physical force ebbing through the body at a molecular level. Every ounce of the sniper's being slid into an ethereal existence of man against man. And then it was over. Just like that. Things got packed up, the shooter exfiltrated, slinking through city streets, jungle undergrowth, or a shattered building. The danger never ended until you were back at the barracks.
Unlike the FBI and Secret Service sharpshooters, when Marcus set out on a mission there was almost near certainty he would be killing men. Luckily for these men, most of them would never see the face of the dead in their rifle scopes. The majority of law enforcement sharpshooters spend their entire career training to deliver personalized death to a suspect, only to retire without ever firing a shot to end another man's life. Marcus prayed this was going to stay true today.
As he watched them scoping the area, sweeping their fields of fire, getting into the groove of the positions from which they would quietly sit and stare for the next fifteen to twenty-four hours, another realization crept into his thoughts. Two years after retiring from the Corps, he still struggled with the concept of being outside the chain of command. Those in charge, in real positions of authority, would allow him to help to a certain point, but he was no longer a member of the team and wondered if when everything hit the fan in the morning, they would shove him out of the way and force him to the sidelines.
He turned from the window and looked at his wife, sleeping uncomfortably in the hotel bed. He marveled at how beautiful she was, how lucky he was to survive twenty-plus years in the warrior life to be able to come home and marry the girl he'd loved since high school. He wondered if they'd survive the day.
Chapter 27
Hilde and Mike stayed with the FBI and Secret Service teams until late, making their way back to the Captain Cook after midnight for a few hours’ sleep. At four thirty, they were both back on the green, walking, searching, inspecting barricades and police officers and park workers.
At that hour, every second person on the park strip was an armed officer, soldier, or undercover agent. Warner, dressed in jeans and a crisp green polo shirt, looked like a TV stereotype of a not-so-inconspicuous undercover agent. There was no hiding his military bearing. Even if he wasn’t wearing an earpiece and bone mic, anyone looking at him would have automatically assumed he was Secret Service. The man simply could not blend in. Tonia, on the other hand, looked like a grumpy office clerk who had been ordered outside without explanation at the unreasonably early hour and was very pissed.
Marcus was still back at the hotel, trying to talk Lonnie into staying inside. Hilde had given her an earpiece so she could hear what was happening and monitor from the restaurant tower, but Lonnie insisted on being on the ground.
The steel-gray morning brightened quickly. By six a.m., the city was bathed in sunlight. It was a beautiful start to the day. Hilde inhaled deeply, letting fresh air fill her lungs, then let out a sigh. She and Mike crossed 9th Avenue and I Street toward the center section of the park where the Veteran’s Memorial flag poles stood at attention atop the raised concrete platform flags twisting lazily in the light breeze eighty feet up from the ground. 9th and 10th Avenues were barricaded several blocks in either direction, as were all the cross streets, E through P. The presidential stage was set facing west toward the ocean, with the flag poles framed by the backdrop of the majestic Chugach mountains.
“This feels like a movie,” Hilde said. “Like it isn’t real.”
“Yeah,” Mike replied. “I pray it isn’t real. That we’re overreacting and we’ll all be laughing about it in a couple of hours.”
“Do you think Kharzai really turned?”
“I wish I knew.”
Tonia saw them from the raised platform, where she was watching a group of technicians laying cables for the microphones and speaker system. She left the work and crossed toward them quickly, an uncharacteristically serious expression on her face, her lips pursed and her eyes hard with what was either determination or anger.
“Hey,” she said. “Have you seen Tony?”
“No,” Hilde answered.
“He’s supposed to liaise with me during the speech so we can make sure our agencies talk to each other.”
As she spoke, Tomer’s huge frame lumbered around the stage and moved toward them. Tonia’s expression instantly brightened until she noticed Hilde restraining a smile. She cleared her throat and forced her face back to a stern expression. Her eyes still sparkled as he approached.
“Sorry, got hung up with some last-minute orders from the SAC. We just got a set of frequency jammers to block cell phones and the majority of frequencies used in most types of detonators. We tried them out and discovered a bit too late that they also block the same frequency as a lot of the radio equipment.”
“What?” Hilde said. “Didn’t anyone think to check that ahead of time?”
“Apparently not,” Tomer said. “Any agency radios less than fifty feet from the stage will be fine, but anything outside of that is likely to be jammed. We can’t jam right around the stage because we need to guarantee the security detail radios work, but our guys put together the stage and everything, and we’ve been manning it from the beginning so I can’t imagine a bomb up there.”