She looked up sharply. “No.”
He grimaced and shook his head. “Someone should have told you . . . The raid went to shit. Vanderveen set a trap and took out a bunch of guys from HRT. They didn’t find a vehicle in the barn.”
“How did he do it?”
“Some kind of bomb. They’re still looking into it. Anyway, they assume he’s coming our way. So . . .”
She closed her eyes and thought about it. “I don’t know what else to do,” she finally said, giving a little shrug of her shoulders. “We don’t have the manpower to extend the perimeter anymore. Did you pass this along to Storey?” Jeff Storey was the Agent in Charge of the president’s detail, and scheduled to arrive in two hours with the main party.
“Of course. I took it to the president as well. Obviously, he wasn’t happy about it. We’re still on, though.”
“Well, hell,” she said in frustration. “What’s with this guy? Doesn’t he realize how serious the threat is?”
“He knows.” There was a pause. “He’s desperate, Rivers. If he pushes this through, he might pick up enough support to start thinking about another four years. Otherwise, he’s done.”
“It’s kind of hard to run the country if you’re dead,” she mumbled.
McCabe winced. “Don’t let anybody else hear you say that, for God’s sake. Listen, I’m needed back at Tyson’s Corner. You can reach me there if you need to, okay?”
“Okay, thanks.” He nodded and walked back to his waiting car.
Jodie Rivers stared into the gray waters of the channel as a series of awful scenarios raced through her mind, one after another. After letting her imagination run rampant for five minutes, she reluctantly moved off to double-check the perimeter and the list of foreign dignitaries who had been cleared for access.
Please,God. Not on my watch.
The TTIC was a nonsmoking facility, and Jonathan Harper had given up the habit years ago. With the pressure he was currently under, however, he needed some way to vent, and he wasn’t a screamer.
He smoked outside as dawn broke, with Ryan standing next to him. The younger man was crossing his arms one minute, shoving his hands deep in his pockets the next, as if unsure of what to do with himself. They were alone on the broad expanse of concrete, and they had known each other for seven years. There was nothing awkward in the silence. The deputy director sensed that Kealey was coming to a decision, and waited for him to speak.
“I want to go to the marina.”
Harper took another long drag and exhaled slowly. “Not much for you to do down there,” he observed.
“I know that.”
“What do you need?”
“Some kind of identification,” Ryan said. “I want people to know who I am. I don’t want somebody stopping me every five feet.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Not through us . . . through the TTIC, maybe. And I’ll talk to McCabe.”
“I need my gun. I have it with me . . . I just don’t want it to be a problem.”
“It won’t be.”
Harper finished his cigarette, and they stood in companionable silence as the sun topped the trees. “What do you think of Naomi?”
“I like her. She’s . . . tough.”
“Not bad-looking either.”
Ryan smiled. “Not bad.”
Harper tossed his butt toward the sandpit, missing badly. “I didn’t really want her in on this at first. She’s kind of rough around the edges, you know? Hasn’t really learned to handle people yet. She’s learning, though . . . Think she’ll find anything?”
“I don’t know. She’s pretty quick. It depends on how lucky she is.”
“Luck is part of it,” Harper conceded. Then, after a few seconds:
“Go to the marina. I’ll call ahead for you. Would you know him if you saw him?”
“Maybe . . . Yeah, I’d know him,” Ryan decided. He hesitated: “I think I’d know him.”
“He’ll know you,” Harper said. “So watch yourself.”
“I always do.”
The room was just about what he’d expected: comfortable, but not lavish, with a few tastefully framed prints on the walls. There was the obligatory television in a tall wooden credenza, twin beds, and a nightstand, along with a small desk that sat adjacent to the door.
Upon entering the room nearly twelve hours earlier, he had moved straight to the window to check his line of sight. It was perfect. The van was about 200 meters away, facing toward him, and approximately 75
meters away from the intersection of 13th and Pennsylvania Avenue.
The worst moment had come the night before; he had been forced to circle the block three times before finding a suitable location. Fortunately, he didn’t think anyone had noticed. A considerable amount of pedestrian traffic had cropped up since daybreak, but not one of the passing people seemed too intently focused on the large commercial van that was parked at the curb. Since 12th Street had been closed to through traffic less than a half hour after his arrival, there were very few moving cars on this adjacent street, which made keeping an eye on the van easier than it otherwise might have been.
He had needed to rearrange a few things inside the room. The DO
NOT DISTURB sign was hanging on the doorknob in the hall, a minor detail, but an important one. He had pulled the armchair out of the corner and maneuvered it in between the beds. Then he had grabbed the credenza from the narrow end and dragged it over to the space vacated by the armchair, turning it so it was at a right angle to the big picture window. The wooden chair had been taken out from underneath the desk, and placed next to the window in front of the credenza.
These minor efforts meant that he could watch the television and the vehicle at the same time. Vanderveen knew that MSNBC was scheduled to carry the president’s address live from the waterfront.
With any luck, he would be able to verify the president’s approximate time of departure; he already knew from Shakib’s document that Brenneman was scheduled to return to the White House at 11:40 AM, but it didn’t hurt to double-check.
FOX News was already showing, on what appeared to be a continuous loop, coverage of the aftermath in Virginia. They had little footage and less information, settling instead on wild conjecture and a long shot of the smoking ruins provided by a low-flying helicopter with a shaky pilot at the stick.
Vanderveen did not know how the FBI had tracked him to that location, but he was not overly concerned. He was only hours away from achieving his goal, and there was no way they could stop him in time. Besides, he was pleased by the efficacy of his improvised device. If the anchor’s estimates were correct, he had managed to kill eight members of the Bureau’s vaunted Hostage Rescue Team. Hearing about it secondhand was somewhat less satisfying than watching the realtor bleed to death, but satisfying nonetheless.
He felt good, despite the fact that he was nearing the end of a long wait. The ringer on the cell phone was on, but the covered switch in the cab was in the OFF position, so there was no power going to the exposed circuitry. The phone he would use to trigger the device rested by his side, but if he was to call now, nothing would happen. He glanced at his watch, a cheap Timex, perfectly suited to his current persona. The digital display read 7:25 AM. At about eleven, he would go down to the van, ostensibly to pick up the notebook he’d deliberately placed on the passenger seat. With any luck, the president and a healthy number of his aides would be dead less than an hour from the time he flipped the switch.
He had done all he could. He leaned back in the chair and went back to watching the street below his window.