Having never before been in the State Department, Carly had no way of knowing that her two male escorts were not delivering her to her rightful place in the press room. Instead, they entered the State Department security office. There she was introduced to a bald headed man who was too mean looking and too serious to ever mistake for anything but a cop.
“What’s this all about; where’s the press room?”
“Miss Simone, I am assistant agent in charge, Glenn Durban. I am placing you under arrest for violation of the National Security Act. You have the right to remain silent; anything you say can and will…”
Carly’s head started to spin. She couldn’t comprehend what was going on. “What are you doing? This must be a mistake!”
“You have the right to an attorney…,” the bald man continued on in a drone more accustomed to a common criminal than Carly Simone, ace reporter from MSNBC.
“Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?”
Stunned and shocked, Carly instinctively just nodded, her eyes frozen in space.
“Agent Grimes, you are witness to the fact the prisoner nodded in the affirmative as to the understanding of her rights.” The word “prisoner” ripped through Carly’s brain like a jagged-edged knife. She quailed as her arms were suddenly grabbed and she felt the cold hardness of handcuffs clamping down on her wrists; the burly agent behind her sliding her bracelet up so it wouldn’t interfere with the ratcheting action she heard and felt as the restraints were tightened.
She was led through the halls of the building and out onto the steps with her hands secured behind her, an agent on each arm. As additional news vans and satellite trucks were pulling up past the C Street North West entrance, the MSNBC guys caught sight of Carly being loaded into the back seat of a Secret Service black car, and watched it leave with its grill lights and rear deck array flashing. Bill, a CBS technician keyed his PL line that connected him with his network’s Washington control room. They’re gonna love this, he thought as he dialed, anxious to report on what he had just witnessed. Members of other news organizations were also making calls.
Naomi was handling the impromptu conference well, especially since there were already conspiracy questions abounding. For her part, she stayed on the “this is what we know at this moment” and “that’s all I can speak to” disciplines which prompted repetitive, probing questions on the same topic. Although it was an effective way for the press, as a body, to hammer away at the “talking points,” to the outside observer it made the press look bad, not the press secretary. Of course, if in the heat of repetition, Naomi changed any part of her answer even one iota, it could open a door to an onslaught of news.
“Naomi, are you saying this man acted alone?” a practicing member of the art of repetition asked.
“Gill, again, it’s just too early to know that for sure. We do know he was the only one arrested at the scene.”
She then called on a reporter from Fox news. “Harry.”
“Naomi, my producer just informed me that Carly Simone from MSNBC was just led away from this building in handcuffs. Can you comment on that report?”
“What aspect of it would you like me to comment on?”
“Is it true?”
“I don’t know. I have been in here with you.”
“Why would she be arrested?”
Naomi glanced in the direction of the Secret Service’s public information officer. He nodded, having just heard that Carly was in their custody over his earpiece. She planted her feet and spoke. “Miss Simone has been taken into custody for alleged National Security Violations.” The room erupted. As bad as the events of the last 24 hours had been for the country with the explosion and deaths on Long Island and now the attempt on the president’s life, no one in the room would have believed it was soon going to get worse.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It was a shit job and Jerry knew it. Especially out here on the cold, damp tarmac on this foggy night. The only good news was that this was his last plane. A 767 with 300-plus-passenger capacity. Six bathrooms. Jerry watched as the four-inch flexible pipe started to constrict, telling him what the gauge on his lav-cart’s pump confirmed. The waste holding tanks on the big Boeing jet were sucked dry of the 1,200 pounds of human waste deposited during its last flight. Judging from the amount he just pumped, Jerry figured the plane had just completed a seven-hour flight. What’s seven hours from SFO, he thought as he mentally drew a compass circle from San Francisco International Airport out 4,000 or so miles. Jerry climbed to the platform at the front of the lav-cart, which put his head directly under the fuselage of the giant bird. Maybe Hawaii or Argentina. He disengaged the internal release valve first. That closed the petcock within the outlet housing, making it safe to disconnect the hose’s main fitting without having the formaldehyde-laced blue liquid and residue pour out over him. Does this airline even go to South America?
Having topped off the fuel tanks of the 767, the fuel truck operator proceeded to disconnect his single-point refueling hose. The flight line, turn-around ground operation was smoothly and routinely nearing completion.
On board, the passengers were settling in and surely fighting for what little overhead compartment space was left. Jodi, a female baggage handler, pulled her motorized luggage ramp back from the closing cargo door; otherwise, Jerry would have seen him. A man in a long coat, both hands in his pockets, had just blown by the inner door marked “Authorized Personnel Only.” The man had not responded when a security guard called out, “Sir, that’s a restricted area!”
Instead, he wheeled around pulling a 9mm automatic from the right pocket of his coat and fired two shots into the guard, whose bulletproof vest temporarily saved his life. The kick of getting hit, even wearing a Kevlar vest, caused the guard to fall back stunned as he fumbled for his fallen gun. The gunman continued through the glass doors that led to the flight line. Walking behind Jodi as she backed up her luggage conveyor belt, he passed most of the ground crew. The roar of the turning engines from an MD-80 pushing back from the next gate drowned out all sound on the ramp. That, however, was not the reason the man disregarded another security guard blasting through the door wielding his gun and commanding, “Freeze. Drop your weapon!”
The workers scrambled and hit the deck. The man pulled something from his left pocket while simultaneously drawing the gun again from his right and firing. The second guard’s shot slammed into the man’s shoulder, spinning him around and sending him down. The guard ran toward the downed man with his gun fully extended, his eyes wide and heart pounding in his chest, as this was the first man he ever shot. He was less than a yard from him when he realized what was in the wounded man’s other hand.
“Oh, my God!”
It was too late. The man released his grip on a grenade and flipped it with his last ounce of strength. It rolled ten feet, under the fuel truck. Just as the guard registered what the dying man had done, his face was flashed by the blast as his entire body was lifted and blown back, along with flaming debris and an expanding ball of flame engulfing the area. The female baggage handler’s body, perforated by grenade fragments, was also thrown back like a rag doll from the force of the explosion. Her ton-and-a-half conveyor belt truck was cart wheeling end-over-end, eventually ripping open the bottom of the plane’s huge wing, which contained a completely filled and topped off fuel tank. The machine landed on top of Jodi, wedging her body into the corner of the terminal building. The breached wing tank exploded and the plane split in two, each 200,000-pound section lifting fifty feet into the air and crashing back down. The rising orange ball of flame was visible for fifty miles, and falling debris shattered the twenty-six-foot-high glass windows and crashed through the roof of the terminal building. The aluminum halves of fuselage that were once the giant plane melted away instantly in the intense heat, dropping the 324 already-dead passengers and crew into the pyre of flaming Jet-A fuel.