What the hell is happening? I can’t believe it — no, this isn’t real. I’m dreaming.
The Rottweiler muttered a low warning growl. Not a dream. All too real.
I’ll just walk out and deal with them. There’s obviously some sort of misunderstanding — something we can clear up right away. Hell, it’s probably the boys playing a trick on me, anyway. For just a moment, Kyle considered that possibility.
The Rottweiler growled again. He waited.
To Kyle’s right, a front window shattered. Something hit the floor, then rolled, followed by a hissing noise.
Tear gas! Dear God, it’s real!
Kyle ran to the kitchen and grabbed a dish towel. He wet it down and held it against his nose and mouth. The Rottweiler’s growl turned to a whimper as the tear gas enveloped the room.
Another canister, the metallic gleam noticeable even in the faint moonlight leaking through the curtains. Kyle coughed, the wet towel helping some but not enough.
“FBI with a search warrant!” a loudspeaker blared out. “Open the door slowly, and come out with your hands up!”
Kyle tried to answer, but every time he opened his mouth the gas forced its way into his lungs. His eyes were watering so badly he could barely see. Beside him, the Rottweiler was moaning, writhing in its skin.
“You’ve got until I count to five,” the voice said. “One.”
Kyle stumbled through the living room, headed for the front door. He heard the short, distinctive noise of a round being chambered in a shotgun. If he set foot outside the door, they would kill him. Coughing hard now, he waited.
“Two.”
The back door burst open at the same time the front one did. Men looking like bugs clad in gas masks swarmed into the room, black silhouettes with fluorescent yellow FBI letters on the backs.
“Drop the gun!” one shouted, his voice distorted by the gas mask. “Put it down. Now!”
Kyle stumbled and fell forward, keeping his hold on his rifle. He hit the ground, his finger inside the trigger guard, and the gun discharged.
“Three, four, five.”
Kyle had just a split second to realize how fatal his error was before the man opened fire.
“Hold fire!” the voice shouted, commanding. “Fall back, regroup.” The men pulled back, and the man who’d shouted advanced to check Kyle’s body. “Get some windows open and get this area cleared out.” He turned to other men. “The computer — don’t touch it. The rest of the team is on its way in.”
Suddenly, the lace curtains framing the front window burst into flames. The man swore, and another darted over to put it out. But the flames consumed the thin fabric and, fanned by the breeze from the open windows, jumped to the couch, then the carpet and the rest of the furniture. Before they could even begin to control it, the room was an inferno.
“Pull back!”
They retreated, swearing, not entirely sure who’d given the order, but recognizing the futility of trying to fight the fire. There was no chance that the local rural fire department could deal with this, not as quickly as it was spreading.
Greenfield was the last man out of the building. He staggered, coughing up the last of the tear gas as he crouched on the ground. In his brief glimpse of the interior of the house, Greenfield had seen nothing to confirm the reports that this man was a renegade leader. Nothing at all.
I told them not to do it this way, not to plan a commando-type strike, not the kind that had gone wrong so often enough in the past. But no — somebody at the top had decided that this was going to be a demonstration, that this would be the one arrest that made the rest of them sit up and take notice.
The noise increased as the flames consumed the structure. But even over the roar of the fire, Greenfield could hear the thin screams start from the basement.
Four hundred yards away, Special Agent A. J. Bratton watched the fire race out of control through the small house. He was too far away to hear the screams himself, but his directional microphone aimed at the scene picked up the shouts of the agents trying to brave the flames and the anguish in Greenfield’s voice in the intercepted phone calls demanding local firefighting assistance. Bratton stayed in position until he was certain he understood what had happened, then moved silently through the trees and brush to clear the area. Five minutes later, there was no trace of his extended surveillance on the Smart house.
There couldn’t be. After all, the CIA had no jurisdiction inside the United States. There was no reason for Bratton or the CIA to even be involved.
Yet.
EIGHT
The President kept his handwritten scribbles jotted down on election night in the top left-hand drawer of his desk. Although they were barely legible, the increasing disorganization reflecting his state of mind that night, he could still recite every number by heart. Looking at each stroke of the pencil, he relived his feelings of the moment when that state’s electoral votes were tallied.
His mood swings were reflected in the scribbles: the broad, bold, and exuberant tally of California’s electoral votes, the dejected abbreviations trailing off as North Dakota and Idaho went to his opponent. And then, the state that had sent him over the edge to victory — Texas — written in almost incomprehensible scrawls of large letters suitable to the size of the state. Over and over again he had written the name, waiting for the number, and finally putting a big circle around it at the very moment Dan Rather announced the projected results.
It had all been over then. Sure, the projected results could have been wrong, but they weren’t usually. Ever since the Bush-Gore debacle, the networks had been exceedingly cautious about announcing any information that might keep last-minute voters away from the polls.
Texas. Who would have thought? They were joking that TX was just my shorthand for tax, and I guess that’s not going to be far from the truth.
The cost of increased domestic security was mounting daily. Even his Homeland Defense Secretary, confident though he might be in public, was worried. Maintaining security in an open society was virtually impossible, and over the last few years they had begun to realize the full extent of the problem. Sure, there had been a decent start made on the problem, but he could not escape the feeling it was more for show than effect.
Every day, he glanced at the scribbles, letting them remind him of those moments when he had been certain he would not be reelected, of the odd, unsettling feeling that in just a few hours he might become a lame-duck President, and just months after that an ordinary, mortal civilian, deprived of all the trappings of power and perks that came with this office.
But that fate had been averted, and here he was, a better President than he’d been last term. He felt an increased freedom in his choices, free from the constraints of considering what effect his actions might have on public opinion, free to do what he thought best for the country regardless of public opinion and considerations of reelection.
There had been a time not so many months ago when he’d fallen into that trap, of contemplating the political fallout from his decisions. That he’d let himself be caught up in that chafed even now.
“Mr. President?” His Chief of Staff stood at the door, holding another scrap of paper. Were all great decisions made in this way, all important news scribbled notes on the backs of envelopes or on memo pads?