“That whole area is locked down tight. They doubled up on the barriers, and the CAT team is moving into place,” Harper said, referring to the Secret Service’s Counter Assault Team, a highly secretive group that managed to keep a low profile, despite the fact that they accompanied the president wherever he went. “They’ve been able to keep it pretty quiet so far.”
“That won’t last,” Ryan said, already breathing hard from the exertion of a full-blown sprint. He was passing cars in a flash, and there was a white van right there . . . But no, it was a Chevy. He didn’t break stride, racing past the parked vehicle as a number of pedestrians turned to gawk in his wake. He was scanning faces, too, looking for anyone who might resemble the description that Harper had just given him.
He made a quick decision. “Can’t walk and talk, John. Gotta go.”
“No, Ryan, WAIT—”
He cut the connection and jammed the phone into his pocket, slowing down for a second to feel for the Beretta and get a long look both left and right down Constitution Avenue.
Nothing. He stayed straight on 12th, running hard.
Jeff Storey, the agent in charge of the president’s detail, was floored by the message that he had just received. A terrorist, in the city with a van full of fucking explosives, and they wanted him to sit tight? It was beyond belief . . .
Storey had been a special agent in the Secret Service for nearly sixteen years, with the last four spent on the president’s detail, and the last two of those four in charge of that detail. He looked around nervously. Jesus Christ, the assistant director had said 3,000 pounds.
The concrete bollards would stop the van itself, but the kill radius for that kind of weight was at least . . . what? He tried to remember. It had to be at least 1,500 feet, and from his position on the podium, Storey could easily make out the medium-sized print on the barriers where 6th turned into Maine. Sit tight, my ass, he thought. We’re sitting ducks.
Standing there on the podium, listening to the French ambassador lead up to the introduction of President Chirac, thinking about how easy it would be for a van to come barrelling down that street, Jeff Storey came to a decision. He was the one in charge of the president’s detail, not Joshua fucking McCabe, and there was no way that he was going to see the president dead on his watch. In sixteen years with the Secret Service he had never found the need to draw his weapon on the job, but he did so now. He was standing on the podium with a group of diplomats and aides, blending into the background with the others behind the three heads of state when he convinced himself it was time to act. As the Sig 228 came up and out of his holster, the eyes of the two agents standing next to him went wide, and there was no turning back.
The AIC lifted his sleeve to his mouth and said, in a calm but forceful tone, the words that caused the world to come crashing down around him: “Storey to detail! Hurricane! I repeat, Hurricane! ”
Moving behind the press pool with two junior agents in tow, Jodie Rivers looked up in surprise at the sudden movement on the podium. Her surprise quickly turned to horror, however, when she saw that Storey had grabbed the president roughly, and was pulling him back as the other agents surrounded the pair with their weapons out. The French president and his aides were looking on with confusion clear in their faces, as was the Italian prime minister, when the DSS agents assigned to each man came crashing onto the stage, following the lead of Storey and his detail.
The reporters and photographers on the gangplank were in a frenzy at the scene, cameras flashing everywhere as the people in the press pool tried to make sense of the situation. Their screamed questions went unanswered as a line of agents formed to block the president’s predetermined escape route, but the metal barriers came crashing down as the media let go of the last shreds of decorum. The thin line of agents was quickly overrun by the huge crowd of reporters and cameramen.
Rivers couldn’t believe what she was seeing. This was exactly why McCabe had ordered Storey not to do anything rash. “What the hell is he DOING!” she screamed, before realizing that the two junior agents standing next to her had even less of a clue than she did.
Back in the CT watch center, McCabe, Susskind, Landrieu, and Harper were also staring in horrified disbelief at the scene that was playing out live on MSNBC.
McCabe was the first to lose it, his face flushing a very deep red.
“This is exactly why I told him to sit tight!” he shouted, unconsciously giving voice to the thoughts of Jodie Rivers. “We need to cut that feed right now!”
Harper’s face was pale, and he was shaking his head. “It’s too late.
If Vanderveen saw that, he has nothing to lose by blowing it.”
“Fuck!” McCabe slammed a closed fist down onto the table in front of him. A moment of clarity cut through the reactionary anger, and he suddenly realized that his career with the Service was almost certainly over, not to mention the fact that a lot of people were probably about to lose their lives. “FUCK!”
Ryan crossed the street when he reached the Pavilion at the Old Post Office, cutting under the arches of the Ariel Rios Federal Building and breaking into a wide open space less than 100 meters away from the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center. He ran north as 13th Street loomed ahead, and then found himself facing the pink-gray granite expanse of Freedom Plaza. He was breathing hard and there was a painful stitch in his side, but he kept his head up as his eyes scoured the line of cars in front of the National Theatre.
There. He knew immediately that it was the right one, even though the vehicle didn’t have a ladder rack and he couldn’t tell for sure if it was a Ford from the side. He knew because the van was sitting low to the ground, much lower than it should have been.
Whatever that vehicle was carrying, it definitely wasn’t light.
Then he was running again, despite the fact that Vanderveen was probably just waiting for him to get closer to the van before blowing it. Something inside Ryan’s head told him that he should be feeling fear, that there was definite cause for it, but he couldn’t lock on to any single emotion. He only knew that he had to get to that van as soon as possible.
Although he didn’t make a conscious effort to do so, his right hand went back to the holster and came up with the pistol. It turned out to be a bad move; Vanderveen wasn’t anywhere in sight, but there were a lot of people walking around, and a lot of people eating lunch on the benches around the fountain. One woman saw the gun in his hand and began to scream, and then there were a lot of screams . . .
Trooper 1st Class Jared Howson couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He was about 50 meters east of the Ford on Pennsylvania when he saw a distant figure with what looked like a gun in his hand, racing through a crowd of cowering pedestrians.
Howson just stared for about ten seconds before he remembered that he was a police officer, and had a gun of his own. He pulled the standard-issue Glock 17 out of its holster and sprinted back down the street toward the van, not once taking his eyes off the other man or the weapon he was holding.
Although Jeff Storey had undeniably broken standing orders, he was still a Secret Service agent with sixteen years of experience, and knew that, given the current situation, he would be a lot better off on the water than he would on the streets. Still surrounded by the members of his detail, he dragged President Brenneman, who was still too shocked to be angry, down the dock as a number of agents peeled off to cover their movements.