Designated Survivor (16 page)

“Or they were told to wait here for further instruction . . . ” Ben said.

“In case the operation failed,” Grace said.

“Which it did,” Ben said.

“Does Cunningham have any active contracts in the area right now?” Grace said.

Ben turned back to his computer and began going through files he’d retrieved from the office of the Architect of the Capitol. “Not on Capitol grounds.”

“Get me their number in Maryland,” Grace said.

Ben pulled up the website for Cunningham Construction and read the phone number off as Grace dialed his phone. He greeted Mattie on the other end of the line and had a short conversation then hung up.

“They have one other contract in the area right now,” Grace said. “Asbestos and black mold removal at Walter Reed Medical Center’s Building 18.”

“Isn’t that the building that shut down a few years ago?” Ben said.

“It is, but before demolition, they have to get rid of any contamination,” Grace said. “It was actually an out-patient resident dormitory, not part of the main hospital campus. Not many people want to step foot in there until it’s done. Which sounds like a great place to hide stuff.”

CHAPTER 28

With their two cars out of commission, the team loaded up in the black Mercedes Sprinter van with Netty at the wheel. They all wore their Kevlar vests and had filter masks ready for entering the former hospital building once they got there. The garage door opened and the van pulled out and followed the tracks through the field to the street then turned left.

“Did you see that?” Levi said.

“I did,” Grace said. “Netty, circle back around but stay a couple blocks away from the building.”

The van turned right while Levi and Grace watched out the side window at the green Ford Explorer they’d seen parked on the street across from their building. Just as they began to lose sight of it the driver’s door opened.

“Step on it, Netty,” Grace said. The van sped up and she made another right. “One more block then stop. We can’t get too close in this whale. They’ll see it a mile away.”

Grace dialed his cellphone as they climbed out of the van, already dressed for battle. The phone rung four times before Ben Murray answered and Grace began talking to him.

The team checked their weapons as they left the van behind. Each had their Sig Sauer assault rifle and sidearm with extra magazines of ammunition for each. After a few short commands from Grace, the team separated and groups of two began running down the road. Holden and Corbin took the first corner while Levi and Avery were at a sprint to get to the next street. Netty stayed with Grace. She was still the newest and greenest of the team, and although Grace knew she could handle herself in sticky situations, he wanted to watch over her. They headed back the direction they’d come from in the van then turned left to head towards the building at Buzzard Point.

Netty and Grace reached the northeast corner of the lot and took cover behind a deserted car. He knew the other two teams would already be in position. Grace raised his rifle and used the scope to scan the exterior of their building when his radio popped to life in his ear.

“I count four,” Avery said.

“Copy,” Grace said. “Only have eyes on two from here. Looks like they have AR-15’s.”

“Same here,” Holden said. “Definitely AR-15’s. Nothing you can’t get at a Virginia gun show.”

As Grace watched the men through his scope he thought about Chip for the first time. He knew the sniper could have taken the targets out quickly and easily with no threat to the rest of his team. Most of them were proficient and long range but not with the speed Chip had of acquiring and firing on multiple targets.

“What’s the play, chief?” Avery said.

“We watch and wait,” Grace said. “Copy that?”

He received confirmation from the team.

“Tango has gained entry,” Holden said. “Repeat, front door has been breached. All four tangos have entered the building.”

“What about Ben?” Netty said. “He’s still in there.”

“He’ll be fine,” Grace said. “These guys only want one thing or they’d have come in while we were still there.”

They waited.

It took only seven minutes. Four men had entered the building and five came out and made their way through the field and climbed into the Ford Explorer.

“Take cover, they’re passing.”

The three team members dropped to the ground behind cars and trees to be blocked as the green SUV sped past them then turned and went out of view.

“Netty, get to the van but don’t come back home until I tell you,” Grace said. “Holden and Corbin, you’re in first. Watch for anything suspicious, these guys like to make things go boom.”

As Netty turned and began to run back to the van, Grace moved towards the building and in his peripheral vision saw the other two teams come in to view. As they reached the door, Holden went in first to look for explosives the terrorists may have left behind. Grace went in after him. At the back of the garage bay Grace found the door to the downstairs detention area open and the lights on. He continued upstairs where the secure door to the workroom was open and all of the lights still on.

He worked his way through the room watching for tripwires and saw only the tables with computers just as he’d left it with Ben.

“I’ll huff and I’ll puff . . . ,” Grace said.

A five-foot wide section of the brick wall behind him began to move, swinging into the room on a hinge. Once it had opened Grace looked into the open area as the steel door to the panic room unlocked and opened inward to reveal Ben Murray standing there, a wall of video monitors showing all of the rooms of the building inside the safe area.

“Was that fun?” Grace said.

“Screw you,” Ben said.

“Missed you, too,” Grace said. “Guess you made it into the panic room in time?”

“Barely. I got downstairs and opened the door and turned on the lights to detention just like you said,” Ben said. “I left the key on the hook at the bottom of the stairs. But as I was running up the stairs I heard them come through the front door. I wasn’t even sure the brick wall was back in place.”

Grace stepped into the panic room and looked at the wall of monitors. “You get them all on video?”

“Sure did,” Ben said. “Audio, too. Clear enough to hear one of them call another Arash.”

“Arash Abbasi was with them?” Grace said. “Dammit. Maybe we should have taken them down.”

“Why didn’t you?” Ben said. “These aren’t nice guys.”

“That would have been the short play,” Grace said. “We don’t know what they have planned next or where they may have planted C4. We stop them now and we might be leaving a building wired to blow with the dialing of a wrong number.”

“And we still don’t know what they’re up to, because they’re gone,” Ben said.

The rest of the team came into the room.

“Holden,” Grace said, “Is the tracker in place?”

“Sure is,” Holden said.

“Tracker?” Ben said. “You put a tracking device on their car?”

“Not only on their car, but while Efraim Khouri was knocked out from the sedatives we gave him, a tracker was put in the sole of his shoe.”

CHAPTER 29

It was 9:30pm on the side street next to the old Walter Reed Medical Center. Grace and Levi had taken first watch and sat in a late 1990’s model Honda Accord with tinted windows. The tracker placed on the Ford Explorer had led them straight to where they had expected to find Arash Abbasi, Building 18. The notorious structure had been the end for the hospital complex. In 2007 newspapers and news channels began reporting on the horrendous conditions inside the facility, with black mold and rat droppings found everywhere. Congress saw to the closing of the building and the reestablishment of the medical center up the road in Bethesda in new facilities. Since then the buildings had sat unused and empty, waiting to be cleared out for demolition.

Building 18 sits just across the street from the main entrance to the Walter Reed complex and had been outpatient military housing. Once cleaned out and torn down the lot was to be used for a new fire station for the District of Columbia

“We can’t see a damned thing from here,” Grace leaned his head back against the headrest in the drivers seat while Levi sipped coffee and stared at the building. A black box sat on the floor between his feet with the dimmed screen showing the location of the Explorer only a couple hundred feet away in the parking garage below the abandoned building.

Grace’s early days with the NSA had been spent infiltrating foreign government buildings and embassies to put eavesdropping equipment in place, the primary purpose of the Special Collection Service. Derek Arrington always had other ideas for him and once he’d proven his abilities he moved him into a new role at the agency, one they hadn’t ever officially had before. By nature the NSA is a peacekeeping organization. They listen to our enemies, and even our allies, to ensure the safety of Americans. But sometimes things are heard that require action, things that aren’t right for the military to handle. Smaller, discreet operations are necessary to take down a threat even before it can completely materialize: a suspected coup in a third world country that could destabilize an entire region the United States has ties to or the black market purchase of plutonium by a combatant country that isn’t known to have a nuclear program. That’s where Grace’s team came in. Fast, quiet resolution to a problem.

While taking lives wasn’t always their mission, it was a side effect of their work. In a perfect world everybody was left standing on both sides. But their world wasn’t perfect and the enemies tended to shoot first. His team was the best at what they did, but Grace worked to insulate them from the inner workings of the NSA and CIA. Still, the entire team accepted their fate when they signed on. Histories, and criminal records, were erased. Your past was no longer your own. If captured in an incriminating position, their orders were to kill or be killed.

“I think my coffee just froze,” Levi said. The engine was off to avoid the warm exhaust alerting anyone to their presence. Plenty of cars were parked along the street with numerous apartments and townhomes in the area. They both wore cold weather gear that would keep them alive to negative 20 degrees but was designed with the idea that the wearer would be in motion and creating body heat. The cardboard ring around the coffee cup did nothing to help the liquid inside from becoming solid.

“Then lick it,” Grace said.

Levi put the cup in the cup holder between the seats then looked back out the window. “We have movement.”

Grace lifted his head and watched as the green Explorer pulled out from the alley where the ramp to the garage was located and drove past them headed south on Georgia Avenue.

“We gonna follow them?” Levi said.

“No. It looked like there were only two people in the car when they went under the streetlight,” Grace said. “They could be looping the block to see if they’re being watched. The other three men might be watching for any cars to follow. Hand me the tracker.”

Levi picked the box up and handed it to Grace, who tapped a button to switch sources.

“Khouri, or at least Khouri’s shoe, is still in the building,” Grace switched back to watch the tracker from the SUV and gave it back to Levi.

“It stopped a few blocks down,” Levi said. He pulled his cellphone out and opened the maps application and scanned the area for businesses. “Looks like they’re on a pizza run.”

“Makes sense. You don’t call for delivery when you’re hiding out in an asbestos lined deserted government building,” Grace said.

They sat and watched the stationary blip on the screen as each exhale of breath fogged the air.

“It’s moving again,” Levi said. “U-turned on Georgia and should be coming past us in a few seconds.”

The two men waited until the lights passed them and watched the green Explorer turn back into the alley behind the condemned building and the taillights faded from view as it went underground.

“I don’t know about you, but I’d really like to see what’s going on in there,” Grace said.

Levi raised his arm and checked the time on his Ironman digital watch. “9:42. I believe Corbin is the big winner tonight.”

“Everyone bet on how long before I’d go in?” Grace said.

“We did,” Levi said. “I lost 30 minutes ago.”

“Nice,” Grace said. “We only got here 40 minutes ago. They’re going to be busy eating. It’s the best time to get in.” He opened the door.

Earlier in the day when they’d taken the car from the impound lot in Northeast DC Avery had disconnected all interior lights and put in a quick kill switch for the brake lights. Grace opened the trunk and pulled out a small pouch and put it in his coat pocket.

“Am I coming with you?” Levi said. “Or are you a loner tonight?”

“What’s the Lone Ranger without Tonto?” Grace said.

“One of these days I’m going to human resources. I swear it, white man,” Levi climbed out the other side.

Grace tapped out a message on his phone to Ben to watch the trackers from the office to make sure nobody went mobile while they went in to take a look. The temperature was in the teens with no wind as they worked their way across the street, avoiding the arcs of the streetlights on the pavement. Levi fell in 20 feet behind Grace, leaving enough distance to see what went on in front of him to have time to react. They didn’t have their radios and relied on hand signals to communicate. Grace had his Glock and Levi had his Walther P99. Both had silencers mounted to the barrels.

Grace watched Levi go around the corner at Butternut Street then stopped to watch the perimeter for any motion. With only five terrorists inside he felt they didn’t have the manpower to have a watch on the whole building and the streets surrounding it. Seeing nothing he continued and went into the alley. He knew Levi would go all the way around the building and they’d meet at the far corner. It wasn’t anything they had to discuss or plan; they both just knew that was how they’d approach the urban building.

Grace kept to the far side of the alley away from the ramp to the underground parking for Building 18 in case anyone saw him. In this neighborhood it was not uncommon for people to cut through side streets and even yards. As he approached the back end of the building he saw a shadow at the corner of the building and paused. Levi stepped out of the narrow opening between the building and a house built feet away from it.