Even so, when I looked down the stairwell all I saw were flights of stairs at right angles that descended beyond the effective range of the NVP optics.
We went down slow and careful, expecting traps.
We found the first trip wire thirty-seven steps down. In my goggles it was a slender spider’s web of glowing green. Whoever placed it was smart, setting it close into the back of the riser so that it wouldn’t trigger as someone stepped down on the ball of his foot but would catch the fall or rise of the heel. Smart.
I showed it to Bunny, who nodded his appreciation, but Top shook his head dismissively. He was more seasoned than Bunny. The trap was smart, but it was too soon to be smart. The best way would have been to rig an obvious trip wire and then the more subtle one. Set and then exploit the expectations of the person you’re trying to trap.
We moved forward slowly and found one more trip wire. Same as before. Like the first, it was attached to a Claymore and set back near the riser. Bunny disabled them both. If backup came, we’d like them to arrive in one piece.
A few times we encountered something smeared on the banister, but with the night vision it looked like oil. It smelled of copper, though. Blood.
“Maybe a guard clipped one of those Russian boys,” Top suggested in a whisper, but I didn’t think so. The smears were on the outside of the railings that surrounded a central drop all the way to the floor. You might get smears like that if something was thrown down the shaft and hit rails on the way down.
At the bottom of the stairwell we solved that mystery. A man in unmarked black BDUs lay twisted into a rag-doll heap at the bottom of the stairwell. It was clear he had been thrown over the rails and had struck several times on the way down to the concrete floor. His body was torn to pieces. I looked up through the vacant hole around which the stairwell curled for over a mile. It was a long, long fall. I wondered if the man had been alive during any of that horrible plummet.
Top knelt by the man. He checked first for booby traps, and when he found none he went through the man’s pockets. No ID, no personal effects. All he had on him were gun belts and equipment bags. Some hand grenades and lots of spare magazines. The ammunition was 7.62x39mm FMJ. Russian.
Top weighed a magazine thoughtfully in one hand and looked up at me. “Jigsaw?” he suggested.
“I don’t know,” I said, but in truth I didn’t like the feel of this.
Bunny was by the door to J-level, checking it for traps. “We’re clear here,” he reported.
I pulled up the floor plan on my PDA and we studied it. Right outside the stairwell door was a wide corridor with elevators on one side and the first of the storage units on the other. The schematic couldn’t show us anything more than a blueprint, so we had no way of knowing what kind of actual cover might be out there.
“Scope,” I said, and Bunny fished a fiber-optic scope from his pack and fed it under the door. The scope fed images to a palm-sized screen that folded down from his chest pack. He had it set for night vision, but that couldn’t show thermals. Bunny turned the scope in all directions. We saw a row of electric golf carts and stacks of file cartons. Thousands of them standing in rows that trailed off far beyond the visible range of the optics. Nothing moved.
Using hand signals, I indicated that we would open the door and give cross-fire cover as we exited. I’d use the shelter of the stairwell landing to provide cover while they ran out and went left and right. They nodded and Bunny stuffed the scope back into his pack. I finger counted down to zero, and then we went through into the cavern.
Gunfire shattered the silence around us and suddenly we were in one hell-storm of an ambush.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“How is the President?” asked Mr. Church.
“Unhappy, unwell, and unwilling to deal with this crap,” barked Linden Brierly.
“Tell him that he has my sympathies, but I need to speak with him.”
“I can probably set up a call later this—”
“Linden… I need to speak with him now.”
Silence washed like a cold tide back and forth between their phones.
“You’re killing me, Church,” said Brierly. “The doctors here already want me lynched, and if I ask the First Lady to let him take a call she will have my nuts for lunch.”
“Tell her that this concerns Joe Ledger,” said Church.
Brierly was quiet. Two months ago Joe Ledger and Echo Team had saved the First Lady and half of Congress from terrorists who wanted to release a deadly plague. The First Lady had seen Ledger in action, had seen his heroism and his absolute viciousness. It had changed her as a person, and Brierly had not yet put his finger on whether that change was good or bad. He’d been part of that fight, and it had been a step up for him.
But this was asking a lot.
“I’ll see what she says,” Brierly warned, “but don’t expect much.”
Mr. Church sat in his office and waited. He did nothing else. He didn’t even eat a cookie, though he eyed the plate of vanilla wafers with interest. The wall clock ticked and the boats in the harbor sloshed noisily through the choppy water.
“Mr. Church?” The First Lady’s voice was soft, but it was like silk wrapped around a knife blade.
“Good afternoon—”
“Is Joe Ledger in trouble?”
Right to the point. Church admired that. “Yes, ma’am.” In a few short sentences he explained what was going on. He even told her about Joe’s mission to Deep Iron. Church was a good judge of character who was seldom let down by his expectations.
The First Lady said, “And you want my husband, who has just come out of surgery, to not only take back the reins of office but take on the stress of a major political upheaval in his own administration?”
“Yes,” said Church. She would have fried him for an attempt to sugarcoat things.
“Will this help Joe?”
“Because of the NSA, Joe has had to go into an exceedingly dangerous situation without proper backup and no hope at all of rescue if things go wrong. That should never have happened.”
“Can you tell me what this mission is about? Not the incidentals but the big picture?”
“I could,” he said, “but you’re not cleared for it.”
“Mr. Church,” she said quietly, “I’m speaking to you on a secure line and I will have the final say as to whether my husband takes back his office. Not the Vice President, not the doctors here at Walter Reed, not the AG or the Speaker of the House. Believe me when I tell you that you need to convince me of the importance of this or this conversation is going to end right here and now.”
“You do that well,” he said.
“What?”
“Play the big cards.”
“My God… is that a compliment from Mr. Church?”
“It is. Call it respect from one pro to another.”
“So you’ll tell me?”
“Yes,” he said. “I think I’d damn well better.”