“Bill, there’s a man who’s always within 20 feet of me with the ‘football.’ At any moment, anywhere I am in the world, I can authorize the launch of nuclear weapons aimed at any point on the globe. The safeguard against me being crazy, is the NCA; the National Command Authority.”
Back at the White House, Naomi Spence hit the roof when one of her aides reported seeing a rerun of an MSNBC piece in which the reporter gave accurate information on the president’s location. First, she called the Secret Service office down the hall. She hadn’t even hung up when they immediately sprang into action. She then called Wally to chew him a new asshole!
“With all respect, sir,” Hiccock said. The presidential contingent was now on the other side of the building heading for the presidential limousines. There was a line of local cops looking outward and Secret Service agents all along the route. “Nuclear weapons are big, noisy, and leave a giant mess. You also don’t need to send a card along with them. The recipient will know who sent them. The weapon we have just seen is a stealth system; as long as it is secret it can be used with impunity. That may be too great a temptation, sir.”
“Bill, you are a real piece of work,” the president said as he turned to a Two Star General who had accompanied him to the test.
Samovar was 25 feet from the president, who was walking his way and chatting with a soldier and another man. There were seven agents loosely around the president and in three more seconds Samovar would be inside that ring of men. His hand stealthily unsnapped the leather holster’s strap, his hand flexed not unlike the mannerism displayed by gunfighters in the old west right before a gunfight. His hand was on the butt of his gun when his simple plan dismantled before his very eyes.
A Secret Service agent suddenly put his hand to his ear and requested, “Repeat!” He then dropped his hand and yelled, “Close ranks!”
Instantly ten agents surrounded the president. The pace picked up as the now small, tight circle of agents almost swept him off his feet and rushed towards the limousine. Hiccock didn’t know what had happened as he was left in the dust. Then he saw one of the police officers turn and pull his weapon out of its holster. The cop fired just as someone yelled “gun.” An agent, blocking the line of fire, went down. The cop, now crouching, fired again and was immediately hit by return fire. It was like a bad movie seeming to play back in slow motion. The cop’s arms and legs were shattered. The agents, and there must have been ten firing at him, didn’t aim for his vital organs. It was immediately apparent to Hiccock that they wanted him alive! The local cops reacted as well, albeit not as quick on the draw, and a split second later, three fired. One of the officer’s bullets slammed into the ground and skidded off the asphalt a foot in front of Hiccock. Another one of the cop’s bullets caught the shooter cop in his head; just as the Secret Service was yelling “hold your fire!”
The president was immediately flung into the back of the limousine. It peeled away, as Hiccock watched the rear door slam hard on one agent’s leg. The man grunted as he continued to shield the president with his body and re-shut the door after pulling in his leg. Agents brandishing blue metal and black machine guns were now yelling for everyone to get down. Hiccock hit the dirt. The Secret Service then ordered all the cops to drop their weapons. Captain Yates repeated the order, and the cops placed their weapons on the ground. Agents collected them and had the Captain identify each of his men until the Service allowed them to stand again.
In the limo, one Secret Service agent checked the president for wounds, while the other two had their sub-machine guns trained out the partially opened bulletproof glass windows. Soon other Secret Service cars joined the limo.
“Where’s the football?” the driver shouted to the agents in the back seat, as sirens blaring from more and more police and unmarked cars cleared the way for the limo’s return to the White House.
Eventually, Hiccock was allowed to get up. As he passed the bullet-riddled body of the cop on the ground, he was struck by the wild look in the man’s eyes frozen there by death. He wondered if he had just seen the common face of the enemy; the one who was unleashing terror on his country, attempting to assassinate the national courage as well as our leaders. He never thought much about the face of the man or men he was after. He now had a reference from which to draw upon for any future nightmares he might have.
He was driven back to the White House by the same agent who drove him out. This time he shared his ride with the Two Star who had arrived with the president.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The letter that Dennis Mallory entrusted to Jack Flanagan for analysis set off a number of alarms at the NYPD forensics lab. Federal watch lists and a dozen other law enforcement advisories were tripped when it was analyzed. This was more than Flanagan had bargained for and he had to cover his tracks. As a senior detective he had the juice downtown to have any forensic guy’s curiosity over the origin and purpose of the letter squashed. The Feds, however, would be rabid dogs looking for an ass to bite. To save his own, he reached out to an agent he once helped “get on the right track” many years back. As the operator at the FBI connected him, he hoped the agent on the other end would remember his hometown roots and an NYPD detective sergeant who looked the other way when the young G-man made a small mistake.
“SAC Palumbo.”
Jack felt an immediate cold wind through the receiver. This might not be easy. This guy sounded hardened, in that been-a-fed-too-long way. “Joe Palumbo? It’s Jack Flanagan, Manhattan North squad.”
“Hi ya, Jack. How ya doing?”
That glimmer of familiarity gave Jack new hope that he just might be able to pull this off. “Joe, it’s been a long time. SAC, huh? Good going.”
“Nah, they just couldn’t get anyone else to head up the San Fran office, so they got down to me on the list. You’re still gumshoeing, I see.”
“Yeah, still can’t get it right after thirty-six years, so I keep trying.”
“So what can I do for the finest of New York’s finest?”
“It’s a long story, but essentially, one of the good guys here, an ex-detective, needed some help with a case he took on freelance. His wife’s dying …” Jack caught himself and, not wanting to will anything in, amended his words “… fighting a brain tumor or something. So he needed money. He took a private security job. His protectee received a threat letter. He asked me to run the letter through our lab.”
“I see, go on.”
“Anyway, the letter he gave me to do a scratch and sniff on wound up getting the bureau’s attention.”
“Hold on,” Joey said as he riffled through his in-box. “Yeah, I got a report here. A threat letter to one Miles Taggert. You’re damn right we are interested. It might be tied into the recent wave of terrorist attacks.”
“Yeah, I got all that. Look, I’ll take a lecture from the chief of detectives on misuse of police assets. Hell, I’ll even pay the lab bill. But what I need is to get my ass out of this loop and for Dennis to be kept in it directly. It’s his case, you know, and he ain’t a cop no more. So can you help me out here, Joe?”
“That’s a pickle. I got the director all over my butt on this one.”
Jack could read from the tone of the agent’s voice that he was going to do something. He added a little incentive. “You know, Joe, at the end of the day, we are all after the bad guys, not the good cops.”
“I hear you, Jack. I still got some friends in the New York bureau. I’ll see what I can do. What’s this guy’s name and number?”