The American (34 page)

Larsen was maybe a few years older than she, with a narrow face and blond hair trimmed close to the scalp. His features were blurred by green-and-brown camo, but she noticed that his dark brown eyes were carefully appraising her. She watched as he called his team members to make sure the chem lights weren't visible from their position. Then he pulled a topographic map out of his pack.

The HRT commander grabbed a few rocks and placed them on each corner of the large sheet of paper. “Let's see what you got.”

Larsen's finger hovered over the myriad of light brown contour lines. “I have one team here,” he said, pointing to an area of heavy vegetation on the north side of the house. “I'm going in with them, if it comes to that. I gave the second team to Aguilar. He's across the road to the west. That was a problem…I wanted someone on the front door, but there's no cover and they have to cross about 200 feet of open space before entry.”

“We'll work around it,” Maginnes said. “What about the open-air option?”

Larsen pulled a grease pencil out of a loop on his flak vest and used it to mark several locations on the map. “Grierson stacked most of the snipers next to my second team of assaulters, because that's where most of the windows are facing. We've been sitting out here for hours, Al. I went over the sectors of fire and moved everyone accordingly. Then we checked it again and came up golden. My people know where they can and can't shoot. Oh, and one other thing: Jones is a couple hundred yards up the way with his .50. If, by some miracle, the subject manages to get to his vehicle, Jonesy can easily punch one through the block at that distance.”

Maginnes gave an approving nod. “Good. Who's up on explosives?”

Larsen hesitated. “Canfield has the most practical experience, but Hudson spent a month training with Delta, so he's—”

“When was that?”

“Uh…January.”

“Make it Canfield,” Maginnes said. “Hudson's still a little green, but he can sit in on it. I want them to give your people a quick briefing on booby traps. Take these plans back with you, and have them look for trouble areas.” A brief pause. “I want to take it slow, Chris. We know he's not on the ground floor, so that gives us time to maneuver. We'll use that time to get it right. I want everyone to walk away from this.”

Larsen bobbed his head in acknowledgment and turned his attention toward Naomi. “We haven't gotten any specifics on this guy yet. What can you tell us?”

“He was a Special Forces engineer. He applied to EOD in 1993, then became an instructor in '94. They had to get a three-star general to sign the waiver; no one in the army has ever made that transition faster. He did the sniper school at Benning, and then the SERE course at Camp Mackall. You know about Senator Levy and the Kennedy-Warren…” Both men nodded. Larsen smirked a little as if to show that he wasn't impressed by Vanderveen's record, but she sensed it was mostly for show. After a brief hesitation, Naomi decided that they deserved to have all the facts. “One other thing…He killed five of his fellow soldiers in 1997 while on deployment in Syria. After that, he basically disappeared from the face of the earth, at least until now. I don't know what else to tell you.”

Larsen's arrogant grin faded. He was about to respond when Maginnes held up his hand and cupped the other around his ear. He listened for a moment, then said, “Roger that, TOC. Give us a couple minutes, over.”

He dropped his hand and looked up at them with pinched features. “Search warrant didn't come through.”

Naomi dropped her head, and Larsen muttered an expletive. No one said anything for almost a full minute.

Finally: “How bad do you need to get in there?”

She looked up at Maginnes. “Pretty bad.”

“How bad?”

“Bad enough.”

He nodded his head slowly, then seemed to come to a decision. “Chris…”

“Yeah?”

“You got your throwaway?”

Larsen slapped the pack that rested at his feet. “Always.”

The commander said, “Is it clean?”

Larsen looked offended. “Of course it's clean.”

Al Maginnes nodded his head again, then turned his dark eyes onto Naomi's. When he spoke, his words were slow and precise. “What happened was, we decided to get a little bit closer, okay?”

“I can buy that,” she said, and felt a little tingle between her shoulder blades.

“Chris, when you looked in the window, you saw a handgun lying on the floor.”

“Right.”

“Right.” Maginnes scratched his head and considered. “Okay, so he's hardly going to have a registered pistol. An unlicensed firearm gives us cause to enter the premises.” He looked up at her. “Are you okay with that?”

“Sounds kind of iffy, but…Yeah, I'm okay with it.”

He looked at Larsen. “How about you?”

The younger man shrugged, tilted his head. “Sure.”

“Then it's settled.” Maginnes cupped his mike to block out the sound of the wind. “TOC, this is Magpie…Uh, there appears to be a handgun in the house. Does the subject own a registered firearm? Over.”

Harrison caught his meaning and came back immediately: “HQ advises that the subject has not registered any firearms in the state of Virginia.”

“We're going to check it out, over.”

Coming back, with a little excitement over the static: “Roger that, Magpie.”

 

Larsen was back with his men ten minutes later. Maginnes and Kharmai hunched together and watched the house through the trees.

“I could kill for some hot coffee right about now,” he said.

She thought about that for a minute. “Figuratively or literally?”

“Literally.”

“Wow, they weren't kidding when they said you guys were hard-asses.” She yawned, leaned back and scratched her butt, then caught him smiling. “What?”

He shook his head. “I never saw a woman do that before.”

“Then you haven't been paying attention,” she said in a whisper. “We do it all the time.” Then, a second later: “Besides, there's too much testosterone flowing around here. I was kind of feeling left out.”

 

Another twenty minutes passed. A little snow started to fall, and although it was freezing cold and windy as hell, Naomi couldn't help but start to drift off a little. It was 5:05 in the morning when Maginnes furrowed his brow and cupped his ear.

“Roger that, Alpha One. Standby, over.” He reached over to shake her, and she started, then looked up. “We're ready to go.”

She was still shaking off the sleep. “Umm…okay. How? I mean, how are they going in?”

“If he's in there, I can't give him time to barricade himself,” he said in a low murmur. “We're gonna go with Primacord on the door frame.”

She said, unnecessarily, “They need to be careful.”

“They will be.” Maginnes had the individual teams call in, then got back on with Larsen. “Okay, Chris. Let's go.”

“Roger that, Mags. Breachers are moving in, out.”

Several minutes passed. Naomi couldn't see anything other than their own quiet breath condensing in the frigid air, and she said so.

The commander handed her the night vision goggles. “Try these. Don't watch the door when they shoot the charge.”

Pulling on the goggles, she immediately saw dark figures advancing through the light snow. One stayed back with his weapon up, facing the front of the house, as the other moved up and started priming the door.

“Where are they?”

“Already at the door,” she said.

Maginnes murmured into his mike. “Sierra One, what do you got? Over.”

“No movement in the windows.”

“Sierra Three, Magpie. Anything?”

“Negative. I'm drawing a blank, over.”

Then, a moment later: “This is Alpha One. Door is primed.”

“Take those off, Kharmai.” When the goggles were up on her forehead, he cupped his hand and said, “Blow it.”

There was a brief flash of light through the snow, followed immediately by a sharp crack. After a few tension-filled seconds, Larsen came on and said, “No secondary explosions, Magpie. Clear to advance, over.”

“Head on in, Chris. Take it slow.”

“Roger that.”

Maginnes waited as long as he could bear it, then reached over to pull the goggles off her head. “Ouch.”

He saw that he had caught a few strands of her hair. “Sorry.” When he focused on the house, he didn't catch any movement in the windows.

Naomi was getting impatient. “What do you see?”

He shook his head in frustration. “Nothing.”

 

Chris Larsen was the third man in the house after Canfield and Hudson. He was immediately followed by a team of five assaulters, who quickly followed his hand signals and moved to their predetermined positions.

“Magpie, Alpha One. Moving to secure ground floor, over.”

“Roger, Alpha One.” Larsen watched as his men cleared the first two rooms to the right, then followed them silently into the living room. The kitchen was past the open space, and he moved forward smoothly with the Heckler and Koch MP5 up tight against his shoulder, his eyes scouring the walls at knee-and ankle level, searching for anything that might indicate a trip wire. Then he was moving slowly against the textured wallpaper, taking a deep breath before poking his gun and his head around the corner…nothing.

He lowered the weapon and turned to see one of his men standing in front of a closed door. Larsen was the only one to spot the towel stuffed underneath. The operator said, “I think we got something here…”

Larsen had just enough time to say, “No—” before the door disintegrated. Kevin Hudson, who had been the one to pull it open, was thrown back and up by the blast. He passed through 8 inches of dry-wall before his head collided with the ceiling, snapping it forward and breaking his neck instantly.

Larsen turned to run, but then found, to his astonishment, that his feet were not touching the ground, and actually seemed to be going in
opposite
directions, as were the rest of his appendages…

 

Naomi saw a blinding flash, then heard a muffled
wumph
as the house was ripped apart. Maginnes was on top of her in an instant, shielding her body as fragments of brick, wood, and glass rained down around them.

Then there was silence and his crushing weight on her back. Nothing else, until he rolled off and she saw that there was part of a leg sitting two feet in front of her face.

That was when she began to scream.

B
ack at the TTIC, Ryan had finally stopped trying to fight the fatigue and decided to get some rest while he could. He tried to crash out in a secretary's office, but sleep didn't come. His mind was too occupied by everything that was going on, but most of all, it was Katie who held his thoughts.

Ryan recognized that he was largely responsible for their current situation, but he couldn't help but feel let down by the fact that she had just run out on him without even trying to talk about it first. He was thinking about this, and getting angrier, when he realized that he had done exactly the same thing to her when Harper first asked him to come to Washington.

He was not pleased by this recollection. It would have been a whole lot easier to blame the whole situation on her, but at the same time, he wanted nothing more than to see her again. If being the first to apologize made that a possibility, then it was a sacrifice he was more than willing to make.

And all it would take was a phone call. In the dim light of the office, Ryan looked up at the clock on the wall: 5:23
AM
. He knew she wouldn't be awake, and Katie wasn't a morning person in any case. She would be much easier to apologize to in a couple of hours.

He shut his eyes and tried to let the exhaustion overtake him. He was curled up uncomfortably on the cot, thinking about how he would explain everything to her when the door swung open, the lights came on, and he heard a distant voice calling his name.

Suddenly, it didn't seem so distant. When he opened his eyes and saw the expression on the deputy director's face, he was instantly wide awake. “What? What is it?”

Harper's voice was strangled. “Vanderveen just got seven guys from HRT in Hanover.”

Ryan was standing now, looking around for his shoes. “How? Was he there?”

“No, he rigged something up in the basement. They're still trying to figure it out.”

Ryan stopped what he was doing and suddenly felt cold. He didn't want to ask it, but knew he had to. “Naomi?”

He breathed out a long sigh of relief when Harper shook his head. “She was 300 meters away when it blew. She's pretty shook up, though.”

“Oh, fuck,” Ryan said. He rubbed the stubble on his cheeks with open palms. “Oh, fuck.”

 

The area around the house was swarming with police cars and ambulances by 6:45, their flashing lights less pronounced now that the sun was occasionally peeking through the heavy clouds. The fire-fighters had pretty much finished their work, slightly aided by the damp snow that was still drifting down over the wreckage and surrounding fields.

The barn, for the most part, was still intact. Naomi was sitting with her back against the timbers, wearing a thick blanket around her shoulders and staring at what was left of the house.

Looking around, she saw a group of Bureau investigators trying to determine the outer boundaries of their search area. Maginnes was aimlessly wandering around the charred remains with a strange mixture of pain and confusion on his face. He had lost Larsen, Canfield, and Hudson, as well as four other members of his unit. One assaulter had been blown back through the front door, and had managed to escape with second degree burns, a broken leg, and a concussion. He had already been airlifted to a hospital in Richmond.

Naomi's own injuries were minor; a few scratches was all she had suffered physically, but she couldn't get the sight of that blackened stump out of her mind, nor the sound of Maginnes's anguished moan when he had caught sight of it a few seconds after she did. She closed her eyes to block it all out, then opened them again when she heard someone calling her name.

It was Brett Harrison. He was standing next to a group of forensics people and holding a cell phone in his hand. As she stood up and walked over on shaky legs, she thought, if anything, the SAC looked worse than Maginnes. His face was as white as a sheet, and he couldn't seem to focus on anything for more than a few seconds at a time. When she reached him, he muttered, “TTIC,” and handed her the phone.

“This is Kharmai.”

It was Kealey. “Naomi! Are you okay?”

When she heard the concern in his voice, it finally caught up with her. She turned her back to the group and tried to stifle a sob. “No.”

“Jesus,” he said. She couldn't read his tone of voice. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I'm just…” Ryan heard some strange noises over the line and realized she was trying to hide the fact that she was crying. “It was pretty bad, you know? God, this was
my
idea, Ryan. I'm the one who—”

“Naomi, it's not your fault,” he interrupted forcefully. “Those guys knew the risks going in. Vanderveen did this, not you. Okay?”

There was a long pause. “I'm sorry,” he said in a softer tone. “I should have been there—”

“No,” she said emphatically, unconsciously shaking her head in agreement with her own words. “You would have been in the house. I couldn't have…dealt with that.”

On the other end, Ryan was lost for words. What he came up with, after about four seconds, was: “Come back to Washington, Naomi. I don't think you ca—I just think you should come back.”

She could see that he was trying to make it easy for her. It would be so easy to give up being tough. She could go back to Washington, where he would show her some friendly concern and nothing more. She could sit behind a desk in the CT watch center and sip coffee, watch it play out on CNN, and remain perfectly safe.

But Vanderveen was still running free, and she wasn't ready to give up just yet. And Ryan had been about to say, before he caught himself, that there was nothing else she could do in Virginia.
Well, screw you, too.

“I'm not coming back,” she said. On the other end, Ryan was surprised by the sudden steel in her voice. “I'm going to grab one of Harrison's aides and go talk to some people. I want to know what he's driving, what he looks like. Otherwise, we're still running blind.”

“Okay,” he said, after a moment of indecision. “Hold on a second.” He relayed the message to Harper, who broke off from another heated conversation with Patrick Landrieu to give his approval. “Harper says that's fine. And he's glad you're okay. I am too, you—”

“I know,” she interrupted. “I'll let you know what I come up with.”

Pressing the
END
button before he could respond, she looked once more at the surrounding devastation and wiped away her few remaining tears.
Okay, Naomi,
she told herself.
Time to get back to work.

 

Washington, D.C., in the half light of morning. The clouds were rolling in from the south, but the sun still poked through occasionally, sending bright beams spilling down over random objects and people. Looking around the waterfront, Jodie Rivers sipped from her travel mug and stood in quiet appreciation of the sight. She had worked herself to the point of exhaustion over the past week, and although there was a lot going on, she'd be damned if she wasn't going to enjoy her morning coffee. Especially after getting called to the TTIC at one in the morning and the sleepless hours that had followed the meeting.

The colors of the city had that vivid look that is peculiar to a certain type of overcast weather. Across the sparkling surface of the channel, the grass of the East Potomac Golf Club seemed like an endless sea of emerald green. Although there was no precipitation, the air felt heavy and still, and she had received numerous reports of a storm moving in by early afternoon.

It would come too late to do her any good, though. For now, there was no trace of rain or snow on the ground, and no reason to cancel the boating excursion that was scheduled to begin in less than two hours. At least no reason that she could successfully argue to President Brenneman or his chief of staff, Ed Rigney.

She was painfully aware that they were presenting an irresistible target less than three weeks after two successive terrorist attacks. Unfortunately, the Secret Service served at the pleasure of the president, and once he had his mind made up, all they could really do was set up a good perimeter, surround him with as many agents as possible, and hope for the best.

The barriers leading into Maine Avenue were already doing their work. High above, using their high-powered binoculars the rooftop observers were scanning the assembled groups of demonstrators, now and then whispering a quiet description over the Service's dedicated radio link. In response to the description, someone would get bumped in the crowd by one of the interspersed agents. In each case, the target of the bump was completely oblivious to the fact that he or she had just been thoroughly checked for weapons. The Secret Service agents posing as demonstrators carried no signs and dressed neatly, if not conservatively, but they did shout out the occasional slogan to keep up appearances. So far the demonstration was peaceful enough, for which the uniformed Metro cops were grateful as they looked on with watchful eyes and neutral expressions.

Headed south toward the waterfront was the endless procession of embassy limousines bearing French and Italian diplomats. USSS personnel from the Uniformed Division checked each vehicle for explosives with CCTV wands, which projected the undercarriage onto a4.5-inch screen positioned at waist level. Credentials and faces were scrupulously checked against existing documentation while other agents looked on with MP5s held low by their sides. Two junior aides from the French embassy who were missing their passes were pulled out of their vehicles and held for twenty minutes while their identities were confirmed, much to the consternation of the French ambassador and his head of security.

The preparations had been endless, and they seemed to be paying off, Rivers thought. Still, the integrity of the perimeter was largely dependent on the mind-set of a potential assassin. She knew that there was no way they could guarantee protection if an individual was willing to die himself in order to kill the president. An individual alone on a suicide mission was the greatest fear of any Secret Service agent, and Rivers was no exception. She found herself thinking about William Vanderveen:
God, I really hope he wants to live.

“Daydreaming again, Jodie?”

She turned her head to smile at Joshua McCabe. “No, just enjoying the scenery. Pretty, isn't it?”

He followed her eyes to the golf course opposite the channel. “Yeah. Too bad for the golfers, huh?”

“I guess.” The course had been shut down under PDD-62, on the grounds that it was too large a space to cover with their limited manpower. “What's going on?”

“Everything's moving right along. You did a good job getting the French and the Italians on file, by the way. We've been able to clear them pretty quick.” She bobbed her head at the compliment. “Did you hear about Virginia?”

She looked up sharply. “No.”

He grimaced and shook his head. “Someone should have told you…The raid went to shit. Vanderveen set a trap and took out a bunch of guys from HRT. They didn't find a vehicle in the barn.”

“How did he do it?”

“Some kind of bomb. They're still looking into it. Anyway, they assume he's coming our way. So…”

She closed her eyes and thought about it. “I don't know what else to do,” she finally said, giving a little shrug of her shoulders. “We don't have the manpower to extend the perimeter anymore. Did you pass this along to Storey?” Jeff Storey was the Agent in Charge of the president's detail, and scheduled to arrive in two hours with the main party.

“Of course. I took it to the president as well. Obviously, he wasn't happy about it. We're still on, though.”

“Well, hell,” she said in frustration. “What's with this guy? Doesn't he realize how serious the threat is?”

“He knows.” There was a pause. “He's desperate, Rivers. If he pushes this through, he might pick up enough support to start thinking about another four years. Otherwise, he's done.”

“It's kind of hard to run the country if you're dead,” she mumbled.

McCabe winced. “Don't let anybody else hear you say that, for God's sake. Listen, I'm needed back at Tyson's Corner. You can reach me there if you need to, okay?”

“Okay, thanks.” He nodded and walked back to his waiting car. Jodie Rivers stared into the gray waters of the channel as a series of awful scenarios raced through her mind, one after another. After letting her imagination run rampant for five minutes, she reluctantly moved off to double-check the perimeter and the list of foreign dignitaries who had been cleared for access.

Please, God. Not on my watch.

 

The TTIC was a nonsmoking facility, and Jonathan Harper had given up the habit years ago. With the pressure he was currently under, however, he needed some way to vent, and he wasn't a screamer.

He smoked outside as dawn broke, with Ryan standing next to him. The younger man was crossing his arms one minute, shoving his hands deep in his pockets the next, as if unsure of what to do with himself. They were alone on the broad expanse of concrete, and they had known each other for seven years. There was nothing awkward in the silence. The deputy director sensed that Kealey was coming to a decision, and waited for him to speak.