haven’t finalized those arrangements yet, but we’re taking a hard look at the spots where 6th, 7th, and 9th streets run into Maine. Those areas worry me because they’re so open. We’ve designated 4th Street as the eastern edge of our perimeter, and we want to use Arena Stage as the command post. I have to talk today with the artistic director to see if that’ll work… The main thing is keeping vehicles out of the area. Explosives are the big concern, so that’s where we’ll focus our efforts.”
“What about the background checks?”
An agent was calling for her attention. She gestured for the man to give her a minute, and then focused on the assistant director’s question. “It’s going well so far — nobody’s come up on our radar yet. We still have a long list to run through, though. We started with the business owners, because they’re the ones who are going to give us the most grief over the vehicle restrictions. From there, we’ll concentrate on the people who have boats docked at the marina. We’ve already gotten a lot of cooperation from the GPSA… That’s the Gangplank Slipholders Association.”
McCabe nodded. “That was a good call, getting them involved. You’ve closed off the marina parking lot, right?”
“Of course.” She hesitated. “Sir, pulling all civilian craft out of the marina is not a realistic option. In fact, that would crowd up the channel and work against us. We need to clear out all the slips within about a thousand feet of the Sequoia, though. Even a thousand isn’t good enough to serve as a standoff, but we won’t get much more than that. Keeping vehicles out is the easy part — it’s these boats and the channel itself that have me worried.”
“If you weren’t worried, Rivers,” McCabe said, “then I’d say you weren’t doing your job.” He gave her a little smile to show her he was joking. “Besides, that’s the navy’s baliwick. They’ll bring in their minesweeping equipment tomorrow. One other thing I want you to do is coordinate with the Coast Guard. I want to see cutters positioned at the entrance to the channel and at least two other points on the Sequoia ’s route, in addition to our own personal escort. Also, make sure we have a designated UHF channel on marine radio. Apart from that, everything looks good to me. What about the motorcade?”
With McCabe’s words, she felt a little bit of the tension start to drain away. Jodie Rivers had always tried to place herself above the politics of her job, but praise from her superiors felt as good to her as it did to anyone else. “We’re going to stay with the route we’ve got. If we take Maine through the tunnel to 12th and follow it north to Pennsylvania, we can limit the number of sharp turns and push the speed up. Furthermore, 12th will be a whole lot easier to close than 7th, and we don’t have too many options; most of 14th and 12th north of Pennsylvania are shut down for construction, so we have to detour on 13th Street-”
“I’m aware of that,” McCabe reminded her. “The construction was covered in the preliminary report.”
Rivers shrugged off the momentary lapse in her memory. “The route will be shut down on the night before the event, anyway — that’s when the crews are scheduled to weld the manhole covers and remove the mailboxes.”
McCabe was genuinely impressed with what she had already managed to accomplish. He touched her lightly on the shoulder, careful not to make it seem like anything more than a friendly gesture.
“You’re working too hard, Rivers,” he said. “Let some of your people help carry the weight. Come on, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. You look like you could use it.”
The explosion was nothing more than a sharp crack muted by the weight of the sandbags. When he pulled them off to examine the blasting caps, he was pleased to note that not one remained intact.
Vanderveen was slightly bothered by the delay that was inevitable when using a cell phone trigger. When the ringer on the exposed circuit board was activated, the circuit was closed and the power found its way from the wet-cell battery to the blasting caps. The process took time, though, and Brenneman’s motorcade would not indulge him by stopping right next to the van.
He would have to time it well. The news of the recent security escalations surrounding the State visit had not given him cause for concern. Most of the changes would be made around the marina itself, but he would be far away from the checkpoints and rooftop observers when the bomb was triggered.
In fact, he already had a perfect seat for the show.
Will tossed the shredded sandbags into the straw, then cleared the cement before taking a seat at his worktable, which was now empty with one exception. The document that lay on the wooden surface was 134 pages long, double-spaced with diagrams.
The first page was titled, “Program Events and Protocol.” It was stamped CONFIDENTIAL.
He had never asked Shakib where the document had come from, and had made a conscious decision to force the question from his mind. It would not help him to dwell on the fact that his success was entirely dependent on the accuracy of the information contained in its pages.
He knew that the report was authentic. He had seen the same economical wording and phraseology used in countless other documents in his former profession. What he didn’t know was how the recent NSSE designation would affect the security arrangements, and with Shakib gone, he had no way of finding out.
His fingers tapped out an irregular beat on top of the document as he considered. It would be a shame if the report turned out to be worthless after all. There was a wealth of knowledge at his fingertips. Page four told him that there would be thirty-six cars in the motorcade. Pages five through ten gave him the order of the vehicles, and a circled paragraph on page seven informed Vanderveen that the sixth vehicle in the procession would contain the president of the United States. Brenneman’s Cadillac would be neatly tucked in between a GMC Suburban carrying four Secret Service agents and a backup limousine. The fourteenth vehicle would carry the Italian prime minister, and the twenty-first would contain the French president.
Despite what he had told the Director while deep in the caves, Will did not think it likely that he would manage to include all three of the targets in the blast radius. In fact, he had come to realize that it was almost an impossibility. The separation between the vehicles was just too great.
At the same time, the devastation that would be unleashed by a 3,000-pound bomb on a crowded city street was completely unpredictable. Even Will Vanderveen, with his intricate knowledge of blast theory and physics, could not be certain of the final result.
He was looking forward to finding out, though.
Vanderveen walked toward the entrance to the barn and stared out across the fields. He absently studied the tree line in the distance and wondered if that would be a reasonable place to bury Milbery’s body and conceal her vehicle.
CHAPTER 29
TYSON’S CORNER, VIRGINIA.CAPE ELIZABETH.HANOVER COUNTY
The Terrorist Threat Integration Center first started life at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, but was moved to a state-of-the-art facility in Tyson’s Corner when construction on the new building was completed in spring 2004. As one of many changes made within the American intelligence community following the disastrous events of 9/11, the joint venture was initially staffed by more than 125 people from the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, and the State Department. Although the people now assigned to the TTIC have full access to the resources of their parent agencies, the main goal of the facility is to sort incoming information into usable intelligence, as opposed to actually going out and gathering credible information in the first place.
It was this distinction that was troubling Naomi Kharmai as she slumped in her chair and stared at the pile of maps and papers lying before her. Despite the fact that the full measure of the center’s resources had been dedicated to the search for Will Vanderveen, very little progress had been made in the past two days. She had first realized how difficult it would be during her own preliminary research, when she discovered that 381 farms under 180 acres had been sold the previous year in Hanover County alone. And that was just one out of the 135 counties in the state of Virginia. The worst part of all was the limits on their search parameters: if Ryan was mistaken about any part of Vanderveen’s intentions, they could very well be looking in the wrong place entirely.
For the third time in the last hour, she swiveled in her seat to look for Ryan. The room was filled with people hovering over computer screens, talking into telephones, standing over fax machines, and generally trying their best to do the impossible: find one man who could be anywhere in three states with a combined population of more than 13 million people.
