Warch decided not to answer the obvious and proceeded forward. At the opposite end of the anteroom, Warch approached a large, smooth vault door. The special agent in charge of the presidential detail flipped open the cover to the control panel and punched in a nine-digit code.
There was a brief moment of silence and then a hissing noise as the rubber airtight seal on the door contracted. Next, the locking stems retracted and an electric motor began to whine as the two foot-thick solid steel door swung open, revealing the president’s newly completed bunker.
ANNA RIELLY WAS standing near the center of the
White House mess holding a paper cup of black coffee and listening to Stone Alexander explain why the room was called a mess instead of a dining room. Apparently it had something to do with the U.S. Navy. She was only half listening to Alexander as he rambled on. Two men in dark suits sitting at a nearby table had caught her eye. They had a police-officer look about them that was common to most of her father’s friends and more than one of her brothers. Almost simultaneously, the two men brought their hands up to their ears and held them there.
Rielly guessed from the gesture that they must be Secret Service.
She was about to turn her attention back to her tour guide when the two agents abruptly stood and raced across the room with their weapons drawn.
Oblivious to what had just transpired not more than twenty feet away.
Stone Alexander continued with his oral dissertation on the West Wing.
Being new to the job, Rielly wasn’t sure if what she had just witnessed was normal, but common sense told her that law enforcement officers didn’t draw their weapons unless there was a good reason. Rielly looked around the room and concluded from some of the faces she saw that she wasn’t the only one who had noticed the brandishing of firearms.
Rielly set her coffee down and looked at Alexander.
“I think there’s something going on.”
Alexander looked down at her and smiled. “Don’t worry; I have that effect on a lot of women. You’ll get used to it.” It was apparent from the full-fledged grin on Alexander’s face that he found himself quite amusing.
Rielly shook her head.
“Jesus, do you ever give it a rest? I’m talking about those two guys who just ran out of here with their guns-“ An explosion rumbled from somewhere in the building and stopped the young reporter in mid-sentence. The noise was so startling, and out of place, that Stone Alexander flinched and spilled half of his coffee down the front of his shirt. The next brief moment seemed like an eternity. Everyone in the White House mess froze with the same wide-eyed look, and then the silence was shattered by loud cracks of gunfire.
MUAMMAR BENGAZI slammed on the brakes, and the forklift came to a skidding halt in the first basement of the Executive Mansion. He could hear the higher pitch of the ATVS’ engines not far behind. Bengazi swiftly jumped to the ground and ran through a door to his left. Bounding up the stairs two at a time, he kept his AK-74 aimed upward as he climbed.
The two men who had fired the RPGS followed close behind.
When they reached the first landing, the door above them opened and two uniformed Secret Service officers rushed into the stairwell with their pistols drawn. Bengazi unleashed a quick burst of bullets, striking both men in the chest and sending them backward. The fallen officers blocked the door from closing, and as Bengazi reached the last step, he rolled a smoke grenade and then a fragmentation grenade into the hallway.
The double explosion was followed by a chorus of screams and falling debris. Bengazi and his men burst from the stairwell through the thickening gray smoke and began firing their weapons in all three directions. With their gas masks secured, they moved unhindered by the smoke toward the South Portico. Bengazi grabbed another grenade from his vest and yanked the pin. Fifty feet ahead, directly down the hall, was the Palm Room-the same room the president walked through every morning on his way to the Oval Office. Bengazi threw the grenade forward and ducked into an alcove on his right, while his men took shelter in a doorway on the left. There was a clinking noise as the grenade hit the tile floor and then a glass-shattering explosion as it detonated.
Bengazi rushed forward again; every second was precious. As he reached the Palm Room, he turned the corner and almost tripped over a bloody Secret Service officer, who lay dying on the floor, his body eviscerated by shards of glass. Bengazi looked through the shattered windowpanes out onto the South Lawn and saw four black- clad men running toward him, their machine guns searching for a target.
They belonged to the Secret Service Uniformed Division’s Emergency Response Team or ERT, and they had been expected. Bengazi raised his weapon to take aim at the lead man, but before he had a chance to dispose of him, the officer was struck by a high-velocity round that separated a large chunk of his head from the rest of his bodywithin seconds the other three Secret Service officers were all lying on the ground, either dead or dying.
Bengazi was happy to see that Salim Rusan was doing his job. From his spot on the roof of the Washington Hotel, Rusan was to cover Bengazi and the others as they broke out into the open for the West Wing.
Bengazi yelled over his shoulder, “RPG!”
While he searched the South Lawn for more targets, one of his men stepped to his side with a rocket- propelled grenade launcher steadied on his shoulder and dropped to one knee.
The man sighted in on the double doors at the other end of the Colonnade. The clicking of the trigger was followed by a low swooshing noise and another deafening explosion. Bengazi broke into a full sprint along the Colonnade, his AK-74 aimed at the burned and smoking entrance to the West Wing.
THE FLOOR SHOOK, and several chunks of plaster fell from the ceiling of the Oval Office. Rafique Aziz had his back pressed against the fireplace and was holding Russ Piper tightly at knife point The loud cracks of rifle fire told him his men were close. Aziz was enraged with himself for letting the president get away. He had been so close.
Seconds later Bengazi burst into the Oval Office, sweeping the smoking muzzle of his rifle from one end of the room to the other and back. The only two men in the room were Aziz and Chairman Piper. Bengazi’s other men joined him within seconds and covered the hallway. Not daring to ask the obvious, Bengazi lilted his gas mask and retrieved a pistol from his thigh holster. He extended the grip toward Aziz.
Aziz threw Piper to the side. The chairman of the DNC stumbled over a chair and fell to the ground. He propped himself up on one elbow, still not quite sure what he had done.
“What are you doing?” Piper yelled with a look of utter shock on his round face.
“This can’t be happening!”
Without hesitation, Aziz pointed his weapon at Piper and squeezed the trigger. The bullet struck the chairman right between the eyes and sent his heavy head thudding to the floor. A pool of crimson blood flowed from Piper’s head and began to work its way across the plush blue carpet and onto the presidential seal. “I have been waiting to do that all morning,” growled Azizthen extending his hand, he said, “Give me your radio.”
Bengazi turned his back, and Aziz withdrew the small radio from Bengazi’s combat vest. Aziz unplugged the headset jack and brought the radio to his mouth. With the gun in one hand and the radio in the other, Aziz started for the doorway.
“The president has made it to his bunker. Cut the communications immediately, secure the building, and take as many hostages as possible.”
THE SMALL JET cleared the dark expansive water of the Atlantic, and within minutes the jagged shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay came into view. Mitch Rapp looked down at the familiar body of water with a determination and focus that had been missing just hours earlier.
When Irene Kennedy had called and recounted the startling events at the White House, Rapp found himself
