He had already been airlifted to a hospital in Richmond.
Naomi’s own injuries were minor; a few scratches was all she had suffered physically, but she couldn’t get the sight of that blackened stump out of her mind, nor the sound of Maginnes’s anguished moan when he had caught sight of it a few seconds after she did. She closed her eyes to block it all out, then opened them again when she heard someone calling her name.
It was Brett Harrison. He was standing next to a group of forensics people and holding a cell phone in his hand. As she stood up and walked over on shaky legs, she thought, if anything, the SAC looked worse than Maginnes. His face was as white as a sheet, and he couldn’t seem to focus on anything for more than a few seconds at a time.
When she reached him, he muttered, “TTIC,” and handed her the phone.
“This is Kharmai.”
It was Kealey. “Naomi! Are you okay?”
When she heard the concern in his voice, it finally caught up with her. She turned her back to the group and tried to stifle a sob. “No.”
“Jesus,” he said. She couldn’t read his tone of voice. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m just . . .” Ryan heard some strange noises over the line and realized she was trying to hide the fact that she was crying. “It was pretty bad, you know? God, this was my idea, Ryan. I’m the one who—”
“Naomi, it’s not your fault,” he interrupted forcefully. “Those guys knew the risks going in. Vanderveen did this, not you. Okay?”
There was a long pause. “I’m sorry,” he said in a softer tone. “I should have been there—”
“No,” she said emphatically, unconsciously shaking her head in agreement with her own words. “You would have been in the house.
I couldn’t have . . . dealt with that.”
On the other end, Ryan was lost for words. What he came up with, after about four seconds, was: “Come back to Washington, Naomi. I don’t think you ca—I just think you should come back.”
She could see that he was trying to make it easy for her. It would be so easy to give up being tough. She could go back to Washington, where he would show her some friendly concern and nothing more.
She could sit behind a desk in the CT watch center and sip coffee, watch it play out on CNN, and remain perfectly safe.
But Vanderveen was still running free, and she wasn’t ready to give up just yet. And Ryan had been about to say, before he caught himself, that there was nothing else she could do in Virginia. Well, screw you, too.
“I’m not coming back,” she said. On the other end, Ryan was surprised by the sudden steel in her voice. “I’m going to grab one of Harrison’s aides and go talk to some people. I want to know what he’s driving, what he looks like. Otherwise, we’re still running blind.”
“Okay,” he said, after a moment of indecision. “Hold on a second.”
He relayed the message to Harper, who broke off from another heated conversation with Patrick Landrieu to give his approval.
“Harper says that’s fine. And he’s glad you’re okay. I am too, you—”
“I know,” she interrupted. “I’ll let you know what I come up with.”
Pressing the END button before he could respond, she looked once more at the surrounding devastation and wiped away her few remaining tears. Okay, Naomi, she told herself. Time to get back to work.
Washington, D.C., in the half light of morning. The clouds were rolling in from the south, but the sun still poked through occasionally, sending bright beams spilling down over random objects and people. Looking around the waterfront, Jodie Rivers sipped from her travel mug and stood in quiet appreciation of the sight. She had worked herself to the point of exhaustion over the past week, and although there was a lot going on, she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to enjoy her morning coffee. Especially after getting called to the TTIC at one in the morning and the sleepless hours that had followed the meeting.
The colors of the city had that vivid look that is peculiar to a certain type of overcast weather. Across the sparkling surface of the channel, the grass of the East Potomac Golf Club seemed like an endless sea of emerald green. Although there was no precipitation, the air felt heavy and still, and she had received numerous reports of a storm moving in by early afternoon.
It would come too late to do her any good, though. For now, there was no trace of rain or snow on the ground, and no reason to cancel the boating excursion that was scheduled to begin in less than two hours. At least no reason that she could successfully argue to President Brenneman or his chief of staff, Ed Rigney.
She was painfully aware that they were presenting an irresistible target less than three weeks after two successive terrorist attacks.
Unfortunately, the Secret Service served at the pleasure of the president, and once he had his mind made up, all they could really do was set up a good perimeter, surround him with as many agents as possible, and hope for the best.
The barriers leading into Maine Avenue were already doing their work. High above, using their high-powered binoculars the rooftop observers were scanning the assembled groups of demonstrators, now and then whispering a quiet description over the Service’s dedicated radio link. In response to the description, someone would get bumped in the crowd by one of the interspersed agents. In each case, the target of the bump was completely oblivious to the fact that he or she had just been thoroughly checked for weapons. The Secret Service agents posing as demonstrators carried no signs and dressed neatly, if not conservatively, but they did shout out the occasional slogan to keep up appearances. So far the demonstration was peaceful enough, for which the uniformed Metro cops were grateful as they looked on with watchful eyes and neutral expressions.
Headed south toward the waterfront was the endless procession of embassy limousines bearing French and Italian diplomats. USSS
personnel from the Uniformed Division checked each vehicle for explosives with CCTV wands, which projected the undercarriage onto a 4.5-inch screen positioned at waist level. Credentials and faces were scrupulously checked against existing documentation while other agents looked on with MP5s held low by their sides. Two junior aides from the French embassy who were missing their passes were pulled out of their vehicles and held for twenty minutes while their identities were confirmed, much to the consternation of the French ambassador and his head of security.
The preparations had been endless, and they seemed to be paying off, Rivers thought. Still, the integrity of the perimeter was largely dependent on the mind-set of a potential assassin. She knew that there was no way they could guarantee protection if an individual was willing to die himself in order to kill the president. An individual alone on a suicide mission was the greatest fear of any Secret Service agent, and Rivers was no exception. She found herself thinking about William Vanderveen: God, I really hope he wants to live.
“Daydreaming again, Jodie?”
She turned her head to smile at Joshua McCabe. “No, just enjoying the scenery. Pretty, isn’t it?”
He followed her eyes to the golf course opposite the channel.
“Yeah. Too bad for the golfers, huh?”
“I guess.” The course had been shut down under PDD-62, on the grounds that it was too large a space to cover with their limited manpower. “What’s going on?”
“Everything’s moving right along. You did a good job getting the French and the Italians on file, by the way. We’ve been able to clear them pretty quick.” She bobbed her head at the compliment. “Did you hear about Virginia?”