Triggers (3 page)

“Anybody try pushing the button?” Cheung asked. There was just one button, since the elevator could only go up from here.

“I did,” said one of the uniforms. “Nothing happened.”

Cheung pushed the button himself. The door remained shut. “He’s definitely got a key, then,” he said.

“And he’s armed,” noted the other Secret Service agent.

Cheung judged the brass door sufficiently sturdy that the would-be assassin probably couldn’t shoot through it. He rapped his knuckles loudly against one of the metal panels. “Secret Service!” he shouted. “Come out with your hands up!”

“EVERYONE
, attention please! We need to evacuate the White House and the surrounding buildings immediately. Do
not
assemble at your fire-muster stations; just keep going. Get as far from the building as you can. Exit right now in an orderly fashion. Don’t stop to take anything; just get out. Move!”

“ARE
we sure he’s in there?” Agent Manny Cheung asked.

“There were guards at the outside door the whole time,” replied the other Secret Service man, “and we’ve looked in the exhibit space and the restrooms. He’s got to still be in the elevator.”

Cheung spoke into his sleeve. “Cheung to Jenks: make sure the elevator shaft is guarded at the top, in case he tries to ride up again.”

“Copy,” said a voice.

“Sir,” said one of the DC cops, “this is bullshit. There are three of us, and dozens more if we need them. Look at that door.” Cheung did so. It was an old-fashioned elevator, and the door consisted of two parts—but
they didn’t separate in the middle. Rather, the left part tucked behind the right part as the door opened, and both parts slipped into a pocket on the right side of the elevator shaft. “If we pull on the right-hand part in the middle, there, the left-hand part will draw away from the wall.”

Cheung wondered at the wisdom of talking just outside the elevator; although the heavy door probably muffled the sound, whoever was inside could doubtless hear some of what they were saying. Nonetheless, the plan made sense. He nodded at the officer, who was the biggest of the three of them, easily six-five and 280 pounds. The man grabbed the right-hand panel by its edge, near the centerline of the door, and put his back into it, pulling it aside so that it slid with a grinding sound into the pocket hidden behind the beige wall. Cheung, the other Secret Service agent, and the other cop, had their guns trained on the left side, which was now showing a crack, then a sliver, then a strip of light from within. The big cop grunted and pulled again, hard, and the door opened to eighteen inches—but no gunfire hailed from the interior.

Another yank, and the right-hand leaf was now all the way into its pocket, leaving the entire left-half of the elevator’s width open now, and—

And there was no one inside.

Cheung looked up, and—
ah hah!
There was a service door in the roof of the elevator. He tried to reach it but wasn’t tall enough. He gestured to the big cop, who had no trouble pushing the roof door aside. The cop then immediately stepped out of the way, and Cheung craned his neck to hazard a peek. It was dark in the shaft, but—Christ, yes, there was someone there, illuminated from below by light coming out of the elevator. He was shimmying up the thick cable.

“Cheung to Jenks: the suspect is climbing the elevator cable. He’s about ten feet shy of the top.”

“Copy, Manny,” Jenks replied.

The elevator door started shuddering shut. Cheung wheeled around, going for the rubber bumper at its edge at the same time the tall cop moved for the “Door Open” button; they collided, and the cab lurched into motion—

—and through the open roof Cheung could see the cable moving. There was a massive thud, and the cab shook violently. The assailant must have lost his grip and fallen the twenty feet or so he’d climbed. One of his arms flopped down through the roof hatch.

There was no stopping the elevator’s ascent now, and Cheung hoped there was enough clearance to keep a downed man from being squeezed against the top of the shaft.

But, yes, there
must
be enough clearance! The assailant must have entered the elevator yesterday, when it was announced that Jerrison would give a speech here, and had simply hauled himself up onto the cab’s roof and waited; doubtless when they did finally get to examine the roof, they’d find blankets and whatever else he’d needed to survive overnight in the shaft.

The elevator came to a stop, and the door opened, revealing a crowd of agents and dour Lincoln off to the right.

“Who the hell pushed the button?” Cheung demanded.

“I did,” said Jenks. “I thought—”

“Jesus Christ,” said Cheung, cutting him off. “You!” he pointed at a female agent. “In here.”

The woman hurried forward, and Cheung motioned for the tall cop to boost her up. She placed a finger on the wrist that was dangling through the hatch and shook her head. The cop lifted her higher so she could stick her body through the roof hatch. After a moment, she signaled that she wanted down.

“Well?” Cheung demanded as soon as she was standing again.

“It’s not pretty,” she said.

AGENT
Susan Dawson spoke into her wrist microphone. “Dawson to Central: Prospector secured in the Beast. Tell Lima Tango that he’s got a severe gunshot wound—shot in the back. His physician, Captain Snow, is with us.”

The Beast had bulletproof windows and five-inch-thick hull plating. There was a presidential seal on each of its rear doors. A small American
flag flew from the right side of the hood, and the presidential standard flew from the left. The vehicle had a blue emergency light that could be attached to the roof; the driver—himself a Secret Service agent—had already deployed it. Motorcycle escorts with sirens blaring were out in front and following behind.

The car took a hard right onto 23rd Street NW. It was only 1.3 miles to Luther Terry, Susan knew, but the traffic was heavy with the tail end of Friday-morning rush hour.

Dr. Snow was still trying to stop the flow of blood, but it was all over the president’s gray-haired chest; even with the transfusion, it seemed clear he was losing blood faster than it was being replaced.

“Where’s the vice president?” asked Agent Darryl Hudkins.

“Manhattan,” said Susan, “but—”

A male voice came over their earpieces: “Rockhound is
en route
to
Air Force Two.
Will be at Andrews in ninety minutes.”

Despite the siren—and the driver leaning on the horn—they’d slowed to a crawl. Those motorists listening to the radio might already have heard that the president was being rushed to the hospital, and that might make them slow down for a look: would-be Zapruders hoping to catch the moment of presidential demise.

“This is ridiculous,” the driver said over his shoulder. “Hold on.” He pulled a hard left onto E Street, and Susan did her best to keep the president from sliding out of his seat as the car careened onto its new course. They were now heading directly toward the Kennedy Center. The limo then took a sharp right onto 24th, and the president pressed against Susan. She gently pushed him back into place, but the hip of her dark jacket was now soaked with his blood.

A voice came over Susan’s earpiece: “They’ve got a stretcher waiting at the ambulance entrance, a thoracic team is assembling, and they’re clearing an operating room.”

“Copy,” Susan said. They were doing better than when Reagan had been shot decades ago. Back then, the Secret Service had started taking the president to the White House, not realizing he’d been hit until he began coughing up bright, frothy blood.

Mercifully, some cars were pulling aside to let the Beast pass. Susan looked into the rearview mirror, catching the driver’s eyes there. “Maybe two more minutes,” he said.

At last the car made the forty-five-degree turn onto New Hampshire Avenue, paralleling the longest side of the hospital, which was shaped like a right-angle triangle. After some deft maneuvering, the driver got the Beast up the ramp into the ambulance emergency bay. There was indeed a team waiting at the side of the curved, covered driveway with a stretcher.

Susan jumped out into the cold air, but by the time she was around to the other side, Darryl Hudkins and the two paramedics were heaving the president onto the stretcher. As soon as Jerrison was secure, they rushed him through the sliding glass doors. Susan put a hand on the stretcher and ran—experiencing an eerie echo of all the times she’d run alongside the Beast, holding on to it with one hand.

“Susan Dawson,” she called across the stretcher to the tall, handsome black man on the opposite side. “Secret Service special-agent-in-charge.”

“Dr. Mark Griffin,” he replied. “I’m the hospital’s chief executive officer.” He looked behind Susan at the president’s physician. “Captain Snow, good to see you.”

They hustled the stretcher into Trauma, which had two beds separated by an incongruously cheery purple, yellow, and blue curtain. There was a patient in the other bed—a white teenage boy, who, despite having a mangled leg, sat up to try to get a glimpse of the president.

“On three,” said one of the doctors. “One, two, three!” He and two other men transferred Jerrison to the bed.

“The bullet obviously missed his heart,” Griffin said to Susan, as a swarm of doctors, including Alyssa Snow, surrounded Jerrison. “But it looks like a major vessel has been clipped. If it’s the aorta, we’re in real trouble; the mortality rate for that is eighty percent.”

Susan couldn’t see what was being done to Jerrison’s chest, but a new transfusion bag had already been set up on a stand beside him; of course, they had Jerrison’s records on file here and knew his blood type. Four more pint bags were on a tray next to the stand, but she guessed he’d already lost more than that; the backseat of the limo had been sodden.

•   •   •

A
DC police helicopter deposited a bomb-disposal robot onto the roof of the White House. Secret Service sharpshooter Rory Proctor was now on the far side of the Ellipse, along with a hundred White House staffers who had decided they had evacuated far enough; many others, though, had headed further south, crossing Constitution Avenue onto the Mall.

Proctor looked north across the grass at the magnificent building. He’d had binoculars with him up on the roof, and still had them: he used them to watch as the squat robot, visible through the columns of the balustrade, rolled on its treads toward the second chimney from the left. Listening to the chatter on his headset, he gathered that the original notion—just winching the bomb into the sky—had been vetoed, out of fear that there might be a switch on its underside that would detonate it as soon as it was lifted.

“Stand by, everyone,” said the calm male voice of the bomb-squad leader, who was operating the robot remotely from a police truck parked on the far side of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which had also been evacuated, along with the Treasury Building and the buildings on the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue. “I have the bomb in sight…”

“LET’S
get him into the O.R.,” said one of the doctors.

The trauma bed was on a wheeled base. Susan Dawson followed as they rolled it out of the room and down a corridor. They came to a metal door with a sign next to it that said, “Trauma Elevator—DO NOT BLOCK.” Susan made it inside with the president, Dr. Griffin, and two other physicians, and they rode up to the second floor. Dr. Snow—who wasn’t a surgeon—headed to the ICU to make arrangements for Jerrison, who would eventually be taken there if the surgery was successful.

The president was wheeled out of the elevator, down another corridor, and into an operating room. More Secret Service agents were already up here. Susan took a moment to deploy them. Rather than piling them all in front of the door to the operating room, she spread them out along the
corridor; she didn’t want any unauthorized personnel getting anywhere near Jerrison. When Reagan had been shot, a dozen Secret Service agents had crammed into the O.R., but they’d gotten in the way of the surgical team and represented an unnecessary infection risk; protocol now called for only a single agent to actually go in—and she designated Darryl Hudkins, who had the most EMT training.

Susan pointed to two occupied gurneys a short distance away, one with a thin white-haired man in his sixties, the other with a plump younger woman; they were attended by a nurse. “I want them out of here.”

“They’ll be gone in a few minutes,” Griffin said. He led Susan up a steep narrow staircase to the observation gallery. As they settled in, she heard, “Rockhound is airborne” in her ear, and then, a moment later, she received a report about the discovery of a bomb at the White House. She looked down at Darryl Hudkins just as he looked up at her, his face a question. She shook her head: no point distracting the surgical team with this awful news; they needed to focus. Darryl nodded.

People in the operating room were working rapidly. The anesthesiologist was the only one sitting; she had a chair at the head of the surgical bed the president had been transferred to. A nurse was cleaning the president’s chest with antiseptic soap.

“Which one is the lead surgeon?” Susan asked.

Griffin pointed at a tall white man, who, now that the nurse had stepped aside, was applying the surgical drape over the president’s chest. The doctor’s features were mostly hidden by a face mask and head covering, although Susan thought he perhaps had a beard. “Him,” said Griffin. “Eric Redekop. A doctor of the first water. Trained at Harvard and—”

They were interrupted by the sound of a bone saw, audible even through the angled glass in front of her. The president was being cut open.

Susan watched, fascinated and appalled, as a chest spreader was used. Jerrison’s torso was a mess of blood and bone, and her stomach churned looking at it, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the spectacle. One of the doctors replaced a now-empty bag of blood with a fresh one.

Suddenly, the whole tenor of the room changed: people rushing around. Griffin stood up and leaned against the glass with splayed hands. “What’s happening?” demanded Susan.