His right hand was wrapped around the grip of his still holstered weapon.
Warch quickly approached the president’s side, not taking his eyes off the dark-featured man standing by the fireplace.
“Excuse me for the intrusion, Mr. President, but I need to talk to you for a second.” The president stopped in his tracks, alarmed by the forceful entrance. He looked to Warch and then his chief of staff.
There was a moment of uncertainty. As Warch eyed the president’s visitor, he couldn’t quite discern the intent of the well-dressed man he was staring down. Then he saw it, something in the other mans eyes.
Gripping his gun tighter, he pulled it up a half an inch out of the smooth leather holster.
The president was saying something, but Warch wasn’t listening.
He was waiting for one more sign that this man standing in the Oval Office was not who he said he was.
Back downstairs in Horsepower, the young agent sitting at the security console looked intently at the array of surveillance monitors before him. His eyes searched for anything that could be even remotely construed as a threat. Midway through his sweep, his focus was broken by the beeping of his computer. The agent’s eyes snapped from the monitors to his computer screen to find four capitalized words flashing.
Grabbing the arm of his headset the agent blurted out the words,
“HORSEPOWER TO DETAIL! WE HAVE A SECURITY BREACH IN THE TREASURY TUNNEL!
I REPEAT, WE HAVE A SECURITY BREACH IN THE TREASURY TUNNEL!”
Up in the Oval Office the stream of words blared into Warch’s right ear like Klaxons. His gun was out of his holster and aimed at the president’s guest in a split second. His left hand snapped to his lips, and he barked into his hand mike, “WARCH TO DETAIL. HARDEN UP ON WOODY IMMEDIATELY!”
Three of the four doors to the Oval Office burst open instantly, and four agents rushed to surround the president, their weapons drawn and ready. As the wall of agents closed around the commander in chief, the next sign of danger came blaring over their earpieces.
“AGENTS DOWN! AGENTS DOWN! HERCULES IS UNDER FIRE!”
With his SIG-Sauer aimed at Aziz’s forehead, Warch screamed, “EVAC, EVAC!”
Ellen Morton was standing directly behind the president when the evacuation order was given, and in a tribute to her training, she didn’t waste a second. Morton reached up and grabbed President Hayes by the back of his shirt collar and yanked him to the left. Two more agents rushed through the main door with their guns drawn and joined the crowd that was moving toward the president’s private study. Morton kicked a chair out of the group’s way as they moved in unison.
The president’s chief of staff was caught up in the wave of bodies and was rushed out of the room with them. Jack Warch stood his ground and covered the evacuation, his eyes still locked in a stare with Aziz.
THE HEAVY FORKLIFT screamed down the smooth concrete tunnel, gaining speed as it went. The two men riding on the sides wrapped their inside arms around the cage and aimed their armor-piercing shells at the door in their path. Both men sighted in on the hinges and fired. There was a loud swooshing noise marked by a white trail of smoke as the warheads raced forward in unison and then slammed into the steel door. The ensuing explosion was deafening as debris, smoke, and fire erupted back down the throat of the narrow passageway.
Bengazi closed his eyes and kept the accelerator to the floor.
The forklift maintained its speed, passing through the bright showering debris and then into total darkness. There was a moment of silence, and then a foundation-cracking collision as the forklift thudded into the steel door, knocking it off its twisted hinges and lurching to a stop inside the basement of the White House.
The collision had jolted Bengazi forward, knocking his foot from the gas pedal and sending his two men flying from the vehicle. His ears were ringing from the explosion, and he couldn’t see past the cage of the forklift due to the thick smoke and dust. By the time he had righted himself in the seat, his two men were back at his side and climbing back onto the vehicle. Bengazi pressed the gas pedal to the floor, the engine roared, and the forklift lurched forward.
The heavy machine continued through the thick smoke, finding its way down the main hallway of the White House’s first basement. Without warning, the butted front end of the forklift slammed into what Bengazi knew to be the first set of double doors. The center bar and two doors peeled away from the frame as if they were tin. On the other side of the double doors, there was no smoke. Bengazi’s men immediately opened up with their AK-74s on full automatic as three uniformed Secret Service officers, rushing to head off the security breach in the Treasury tunnel, were caught in the open. The bullets cut them to the ground instantly, and what little life may have been left in them was squeezed away as the forklift rolled over them.
WARCH STEPPED BACKWARD to cover the president’s retreat.
With his gun still leveled on the man across the room, he listened to the frantic radio traffic coming over his earpiece and tried to decide where to take the president. A decision had to be made, either evacuate him from the compound via the south ground’s limo or stash him in his new bunker. Right as Warch reached the doorway to the study, the building was rocked by an explosion.
Aziz had been waiting for the explosion and sprang. Taking a quick step to the side, he grabbed Chairman Piper around the throat with one arm and drew his knife with the other. Aziz stuck the tip of the knife into Piper’s throat, breaking the skin and drawing blood. Careful to keep his head shielded behind Piper’s, Aziz yelled, “Order your men to stop with the evacuation, or I will kill him!”
The request fell on deaf ears. Warch’s primary, immediate, and only concern was the president. Nothing else mattered, especially not the political operative who had brought this snake into the White House. Warch took one final step backward into the study and closed the door to the Oval Office.
Seconds earlier Special Agent Morton had pressed a hidden button in the short hallway. There was a hydraulic hiss, and an entire section of the wall lurched inward, revealing a hidden staircase. Morton started down the steep stairs first, followed by two agents who had the president sandwiched in between them. Valerie Jones, caught up in the human freight train, was grabbed by one of the last two agents and thrust forward.
Warch was now at the top of the stairs yelling, “BUNKER! TAKE HIM TO THE BUNKER!” Warch then stepped into the hidden passageway and sealed the wall behind him. As he started down the stairs, he raised his hand mike to his mouth and said, “Horsepower, fromwarch. We are moving Woody to the bunker! I repeat, we are moving Woody to the bunker!”
The group clambered down to the first landing. Waiting for them at the bottom were two Secret Service agents who had just come out the side door of Horsepower. They had already opened the heavy steel door to the tunnel that ran underneath the Rose Garden and over to the mansion. One of them took the lead and started down the next flight of stairs, while the other one waited to cover from the rear.
The caravan, now totaling eleven people, continued into the tunnel. The wide passageway was covered with an ugly brown carpeting. The group raced ahead at full speed, the agents almost carrying the president.
When they reached the far end, they had two choices. They could proceed either up a set of stairs and into the first basement of the mansion or down a short set of stairs on the right. The lead agent hustled down the steps on his right. He came to an abrupt halt at a riveted steel door and punched an access code into the control panel.
As soon as he heard the metallic release of the lock, he threw his shoulder into the door and burst into a large anteroom. The first two agents into the room fanned out to the left, and with their guns leveled, they covered a second door to the twenty by-ten-foot anteroom.
As soon as the last agent had cleared the tunnel, the door to it was closed and locked.
Jack Warch pushed his way through the group, grabbing the president firmly by the upper arm. The two large agents who had been glued to Hayes on the way down the stairs and through the passageway moved forward, staying with their charge.
A dazed President Hayes looked to Warch and asked
“What in the hell is going on?”
