Her eyes went wide at the numbers. “Jesus, the city is packed-”
When he cut back in, McCabe’s voice had the clear ring of authority. “Listen to me, Jodie: Your only concern is for the president, okay? You have that waterfront locked down, I’ve seen it myself. There’s nothing Vanderveen can do to you there unless he’s suicidal, and the general consensus, the hope, is that he isn’t. Normally we’d move the president as fast and far as possible, but that’s not going to work in this case. So we’ll keep him at the marina for now; Storey knows what to do, just follow his lead. As soon as I get off here, I’m headed to your location.”
Yet another voice, coming fast before she could respond: “Agent Rivers, this is Emily Susskind. HRT is already up and running. They’re fanning out around the area, and some are in plainclothes, okay? You need to get that to your observers as soon as possible. I don’t want my people getting shot by mistake.”
She was nodding to herself as the instructions came fast over the phone. “Got it.”
Then, from Deputy Director Susskind: “Hold on.” Over the sounds of the crowd around her, Rivers heard static and voices raised in excitement. It seemed like minutes later when McCabe came on and said, “Got a name, Jodie. Claude Bidault, French national. The vehicle was registered in Virginia less than a month ago. Plate number is… RND-1911. Ready for a description?”
“Go.”
“Black hair and brown eyes. He might have a beard, but that’s not 100 percent. A little heavier than Vanderveen, at about 200 pounds. We’re not sure how he’s doing that; padding, maybe. Same height, of course. There’s nothing he could do there.”
“I’ll get it out to my observers.” Rivers was a little bit frantic now. “Sir, I have to move.”
“I know.” McCabe’s voice was tense over the line. “Get to it, Jodie.”
Ryan had been on the street for two-and-a-half hours. Nothing so far had grabbed his attention, although he had to remind himself that Vanderveen wasn’t exactly going out of his way to appear conspicuous.
There had been nothing planned out or expedient in his route; he had headed north from 7th and Maine, scanning faces and checking vehicles along the way. There wasn’t much he could do other than to look through the windows and drop down to visually inspect the undercarriages, and his strange behavior had earned him some curious glances, as well as a few fearful ones.
He recognized the futility of his search, but there was one overriding fact that bothered him more than anything else: there was no feasible way to detonate a bomb by command wire on a crowded city street, and a timer wasn’t practical, either, even if Vanderveen had somehow managed to get hold of the Secret Service’s list of scheduled movements.
In other words, the only realistic way for Vanderveen to succeed was by remote detonation, which meant that he would be close by in an overwatch position. Kealey knew the man well enough to know that he would detonate the device regardless of whether the president was in target range; the public would believe it because of what they had seen him do to the Kennedy-Warren on national television, but proof enough for Ryan was the raised scar that resided an inch to the right of his own sternum.
He stayed on 7th until the National Air and Space Museum appeared on his right, then crossed the street onto the wide open space of the Mall. Heading northwest over the grass, with the dome of the Capitol Building framed high at his back, he smiled at the excited noises coming from a group of schoolchildren who were lined up at the glass doors to the Smithsonian. The smile soon faded, though, as he was too tightly wound to share in their enthusiasm. For all he knew, their bus might be passing Vanderveen’s position on its way back to their school…
He pushed the thought from his mind as he came up on 12th Street. It was better not to think about it. When he heard his cell phone ringing, he was grateful for the distraction, but not for long. “Ryan, it’s Harper.”
“John, listen-”
“No time, Ryan.”
He caught the urgency just as Rivers had done less than a minute earlier, and fell silent immediately.
Harper continued: “Naomi turned out to be lucky, after all. Our man has a driver’s license and a French passport in the name of Claude Bidault. The passport is real, but the actual owner reported it lost six months earlier while on vacation in Crete. Got that?”
“Yeah. Keep going.”
“Susskind finally hooked up with this guy Thompson in Norfolk. Using the Nichols ID, Vanderveen picked up 3,000 pounds’ worth of material at NIT exactly eight days ago. The arrogant bastard walked right under our noses twice at the same port… Anyway, he has a vehicle that we can’t account for. It’s a Ford Econoline van, white, maybe with a ladder rack on top.”
Ryan was already running. Standing on 12th when the phone rang, he had taken two long looks either way down the street, then decided to go north, for no particular reason he could think of. Harper’s voice seemed to bounce at his ear as he dodged the heavy crowds of pedestrians, most of whom were people leaving work for a quick lunch. Some of them shot him angry looks or curses as he pushed through the throngs, and the whole time the deputy director’s words were hitting him with the force of a sledgehammer: “…and Virginia tags, Ryan, RND- 1911. HRT is moving out in plainclothes, but they-”
“Tell them to stay north of the Mall.” His mind was moving in a blur, trying to recall a white Ford van, but… No, he hadn’t seen one. He was sure of it. He said again, “North of the Mall, John. That’s where he’s gotta be. What’s happening at the marina?”
“That whole area is locked down tight. They doubled up on the barriers, and the CAT team is moving into place,” Harper said, referring to the Secret Service’s Counter Assault Team, a highly secretive group that managed to keep a low profile, despite the fact that they accompanied the president wherever he went. “They’ve been able to keep it pretty quiet so far.”
“That won’t last,” Ryan said, already breathing hard from the exertion of a full-blown sprint. He was passing cars in a flash, and there was a white van right there… But no, it was a Chevy. He didn’t break stride, racing past the parked vehicle as a number of pedestrians turned to gawk in his wake. He was scanning faces, too, looking for anyone who might resemble the description that Harper had just given him.
He made a quick decision. “Can’t walk and talk, John. Gotta go.”
“No, Ryan, WAIT-”
He cut the connection and jammed the phone into his pocket, slowing down for a second to feel for the Beretta and get a long look both left and right down Constitution Avenue.
Nothing. He stayed straight on 12th, running hard.
Jeff Storey, the agent in charge of the president’s detail, was floored by the message that he had just received. A terrorist, in the city with a van full of fucking explosives, and they wanted him to sit tight? It was beyond belief…
Storey had been a special agent in the Secret Service for nearly sixteen years, with the last four spent on the president’s detail, and the last two of those four in charge of that detail. He looked around nervously. Jesus Christ, the assistant director had said 3,000 pounds. The concrete bollards would stop the van itself, but the kill radius for that kind of weight was at least… what? He tried to remember. It had to be at least 1,500 feet, and from his position on the podium, Storey could easily make out the medium-sized print on the barriers where 6th turned into Maine. Sit tight, my ass, he thought. We’re sitting ducks.
Standing there on the podium, listening to the French ambassador lead up to the introduction of President Chirac, thinking about how easy it would be for a van to come barrelling down that street, Jeff Storey came to a decision. He was the one in charge of the president’s detail, not Joshua fucking McCabe, and there was no way that he was going to see the president dead on his watch. In sixteen years with the Secret Service he had never found the need to draw his weapon on the job, but he did so now. He was standing on the podium with a group of diplomats and aides, blending into the background with the others behind the three heads of state when he convinced himself it was time to act. As the Sig 228 came up and out of his holster, the eyes of the two agents standing next to him went wide, and there was no turning back.
The AIC lifted his sleeve to his mouth and said, in a calm but forceful tone, the words that caused the world to come crashing down around him: “Storey to detail! Hurricane! I repeat, Hurricane! ”
Moving behind the press pool with two junior agents in tow, Jodie Rivers looked up in surprise at the sudden movement on the podium. Her surprise quickly turned to horror, however, when she saw that Storey had grabbed the president roughly, and was pulling him back as the other agents surrounded the pair with their weapons out. The French president and his aides were looking on with confusion clear in their faces, as was the Italian prime
