other elected officials.”
The screen switched to Presidential Press Secretary Rachel Pollack, who was speaking from the White House Press Room. “Come on, people,” she said. “The president is the most carefully guarded human being on the planet. The Secret Service takes every precaution every day. If we start altering the president’s schedule in response to random acts of violence, then the violent offenders win. The Marine Corps Anniversary celebration will go on as planned at the Iwo Jima Memorial. Be sure to dress warmly, because tomorrow’s supposed to be even colder than today.”
And so the newscast went, deeper and deeper into the possible ramifications of the ongoing terror killings across the country. Muslim clerics expressed outrage that Americans were so willing and ready to assign any acts of terrorism to them. Then there were the ongoing Jonathan’s eyes snapped open. “Shit,” he said aloud. The head of the snake was scheduled to speak at Iwo Jima Memorial tomorrow.
Venice already had the information he’d requested up on the big War Room screen when he arrived.
“This is everything I could find on the president’s schedule,” she said as he crossed the threshold. “At least what they make public. I could try to dig into the White House system, but that’s a terminal course.”
“The public schedule will be fine,” Jonathan said. He took his usual seat at the head of the teak conference table. “Michael Copley won’t know what’s not on the public schedule.”
Venice froze. “What’s going on, Digger?”
“I think that asshole is planning to assassinate the president.”
“You say that as if it’s easy to do.”
“It is, if you plan well enough and you have the right weapon.” He read through the list of scheduled appearances. The president would be attending a number of events over the next few days, including a lunch at the Capitol, a show at the Kennedy Center, and various bits of ceremonial bullshit at different federal building auditoriums.
“I was right,” he said triumphantly, pointing with his finger to the second listing on the page. “The Marine Corps anniversary celebration is the only outdoor ceremony.”
“Why is that important?” Venice asked. She was getting progressively more agitated with every moment.
Jonathan wasn’t in the mood to explain just yet. “I need you to pull up everything you can find on Appalachian Acoustics again and tell me if the Secret Service is one of their customers.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” she said. “For something like acoustic reflectors or whatever they call those things they make, the General Services Administration would make the purchase.”
Jonathan shot her an impatient look. “Fine. Then go to the GSA site and see if the Secret Service is one of their customers.”
“But I already know-” She saw the look. “Fine.”
In his heart, Jonathan knew he was right-he felt it-but a little confirmation wouldn’t hurt. It was just too on- the-nose not to be true.
Cut off the head of the snake.
That deathbed phrase, combined with Appalachian Acoustics’ celebration of its government contracts, was just too convenient not to be connected. Something about those panels.
Jonathan pulled on a drawer just under his spot at the table and slid out a keyboard for the computer that controlled the War Room’s main screen. He Googled Appalachian Acoustics and navigated to their website. The breadth and variety of their products was truly impressive. It took him a minute to find exactly the line of products he thought was applicable-“Major Outdoor Venues”-but once there, he took his time studying the photographs.
The common arrangement of the acoustic shells formed a semicircle around the speaker or performer. According to the specifications list, they could be designed as tall as twenty-five feet, or they could be as short as a standard office cubicle wall. Jonathan wondered what they’d use for a presidential speech. He imagined that taller was better.
In fact, he was certain that taller was better. He remembered from his early days in the Unit, back when their mission and capabilities hadn’t quite settled out and they did a lot of executive protection for dignitaries in war zones overseas, that anything you could use to block vision from potential bad guys was a good thing. Protectees are routinely transferred from one place to another-say, from the front door of a building to a waiting limousine- under cover of tarpaulins of some sort.
He clicked deeper into the information on the taller models of acoustic shells. The Model 9000 Symphonic Reflector seemed to show the most versatility. It was modular in design and could be built in four-foot segments. Plus, it had an angled reflector at the top that would provide “the greatest degree of sound reflection available anywhere.” If Jonathan were selecting the reflectors as a shield for his own protectee, that’s the one he would use, and he’d max it out in height to block out any target that a sniper might try to scope.
They had access to Barrett rifles. Would aim even matter?
Aim always mattered. If you’re going to risk everything on a shot at the most powerful human on the planet, you want to make sure it works. Or you name yourself Squeaky and become a punch line among your fellow terrorists for decades to come.
What about explosives? If Copley designed the panels with explosives embedded, an initiation in this configuration would create one hell of a blast wave. Explosions and sound were both mere variations in pressure, after all, so a configuration designed to focus sound would likewise focus a detonation. But how would that work?
“Okay,” Jonathan said aloud, trying to pull up his EOD training from back in the day, “how much explosive would it take?”
There were a lot of variables, the most important of which was distance to target. The inverse square law of physics said that for every tripling of distance from the surface of the explosive-say from three feet to nine-the energy of the blast is reduced by a factor of nine. Assuming the president wasn’t going to be sitting on the panels-in fact, assuming that the panels were going to be a good fifteen or twenty feet behind him, maybe more-Copley would need pounds of explosives to get the desired effect.
“How the hell would you do that?” Especially in a product whose primary selling feature is its light weight? Plus, he assumed that the Secret Service x-rayed and dog-sniffed every bit of equipment and organic matter that came that close to the president. Surely an explosive would be detected.
Or, maybe not. Jonathan wasn’t an expert in state-of-the-art explosive compounds, so maybe if there was some non-nitrate formulation, the dogs wouldn’t find it. Besides, the explosive would have been planted ages ago. Maybe once a purchase is made and the objects get into the warehouse, nobody pays much attention to them anymore.
He decided to assume that to be the case. So, how do you set it off?
Jonathan ruled out a standard detonator or fuse, simply because there’d be no opportunity to place it.
Again, he thought of the Barrett. He’d never believed in coincidences, and he wasn’t about to start believing in them now. The Barrett was too specialized a weapon-and one that had not been deployed in any of their previous terror raids-not to have some momentous importance.
“I suppose he could shoot Marine One out of the sky,” he mumbled, referring to the president’s helicopter. Certainly the Barrett had enough wallop to pull it off. When he navigated back to POTUS’s schedule, though, he saw that he was scheduled to arrive by limousine, and it was back to square one. Everyone in the Community knew that the presidential limousine-not so affectionately referred to as The Beast-was armored to the point where even the Raufoss would be impotent.
Which again left him with the explosives, and with it the whole weight ratio thing. Contrary to what many people think, most popular explosives are not easy to detonate. You can shoot at a block of C4 or PETN all day, and chances were pretty good that it would never explode. They need the hard hit of a primary explosive to really get going. Primary explosives, on the other hand-the azides, picrates, and others-are so sensitive to impact, friction, and heat that they’re impractical for use in large quantities, and suicidal for use in the explosive-laden panels that Jonathan had conjured in his mind.
So what Venice appeared in the doorway. “Yes, the Secret Service uses Appalachian Acoustic panels. Their most commonly used model is-”
“The Model 9000 Acoustic Reflector,” Jonathan interrupted, stealing her thunder.
She looked stunned. “How did you know?”
“I’ve been looking at their website,” Jonathan explained. “It’s the one that made the most sense. Now I have to
