afternoon was clear, and the range of jagged and purple Rocky Mountains, some still topped with snow, commanded his attention. They could be a problem.
After checking into a hotel, he strolled into Lower Downtown, LoDo, which had been a run-down part of the city until the Colorado Rockies were given a major league franchise. Coors Field was dark tonight because the Rockies were playing out of town, but Juba studied how the big stadium had been built right in the heart of the area, near Mile High Stadium, the home of the Denver Broncos football team, and the Elitch Gardens amusement park. Redevelopment flooded in and gentrified the entire former warehouse district. Nightlife now throbbed in fashionable LoDo.
Juba slept late and about noon showed up at Coors Field and joined a group of tourists being given an escorted visit through the ballpark by a charming young woman in a cowgirl hat who was a fountain of information. He watched the flags beyond the outfield, which were stuttering in the steady wind from the mountains, gusts that his sniper’s eye judged to be about thirty miles per hour. The guide said high winds were not unusual around the city.
He considered the situation. Looked west beyond left field to the ridges of mountains. That kind of wind would blow the bubble of poison gas…where? Kansas? New Mexico? Empty states. It wouldn’t work. He had misjudged this one, too.
Denver was the metropolitan area, but the real population of Colorado lived far out in the suburbs, and commuters thronged the big highways after work, driving seventy-five miles an hour to reach their homes many miles away in bedroom communities.
The West was too spread out for his purpose, big enough to swallow some small nations whole. He could cause severe damage, but even the new and stable gas would dissipate too quickly on those mountain winds. Coors Field was not the answer.
He was looking for more than just a baseball stadium-something that was more of a net, a trap, somewhere with no way out. He checked out of his hotel and headed back to DIA and bought a ticket to California.
20
THE WHITE HOUSE
THE PRESIDENT OF THE United States looked over the top of his rimless reading glasses as his chief of staff, Steve Hanson, came into the Oval Office through the door on the left, which led into the staff offices area. Almost at the same moment, the door on the right opened and Secretary of State Kenneth Waring came through the visitor’s entrance. The president tossed his glasses onto the big desk. “Whatever it is, tell me outside.”
The three moved out the double French doors to the right of the president’s desk, across the narrow covered stone walkway, and into the Rose Garden. Secret Service guards shifted their stations accordingly along the columns of the walkway to the living quarters as the president moved down the few steps and onto the perfect rectangle of grass, raising his face to catch some of the bright sun after being indoors all morning. As he stretched his big arms over his head, then bent from side to side, he could see other black-clad agents on the roof of the White House. Sniper teams. Troubled times. “What’s up? Ken, you start.”
Secretary of State Waring’s eyes gave away his excitement. His manner remained formal, but his foot was poking at some grass. “Mr. President, we have good news.”
“Well?”
Waring spoke. “It looks like the whole Saladin thing has been resolved. Fizzled.” He snapped his fingers like a stage magician. “Poof and gone.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“There was a shooting in Paris a few days ago, and some gang lord took a bullet or two in the head. So did a couple of his bodyguards. Police ran his prints and identified him as an Algerian Muslim leader, a rich guy with a lot of terrorist contacts.”
“Why is that important?”
“It took some time to make the real identification. The dead gangster was Saladin himself!”
The president pumped his fist like Tiger Woods sinking a twenty-foot put for an eagle. “Awwright!”
“And the best part is that we didn’t have anything to do with it,” Steve Hanson said. “The French are laying the shooting on al Qaeda. Cops found a sniper’s lair in a sewer right across the street, beneath an abandoned car that was rented with a phony credit card and driver’s license.”
The secretary of state said, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend…but who really was our enemy on this one?”
“All of them were, and remain, our enemies. We remain at war with terror as a whole, not with a specific name or group.” The president headed back to the Oval Office, taking big, confident strides, and plopped onto a sofa.
The secretary of state took a wingback chair, crossed his legs, and straightened a perfect crease in his trousers. “This started with an extremely deadly device in the hands of a crazed fanatic,” he said. “Now the fanatic himself is dead.”
“But where is the poison gas? Has it fallen into the hands of someone or some group we know nothing about?” The president was somber, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
“So go on television with an address to the nation.” Steve Hanson was already arranging the details in his mind. “No politics at all, no swipes at our critics, just a direct appeal to all Americans to pitch in and help. Better than that, make it a worldwide appeal, because the other nations also remain at risk until that poison threat is nullified.” The secretary of state nodded agreement.
“Pulpit time,” said the president. “We need to warn the people without unduly alarming them.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Steve Hanson.
“Ken,” he asked, “what’s the international community doing? Anything?”
“They are all keeping their cool right now, Mr. President. The strike in London sobered them all, and none of them want to be on the wrong side of this issue. Until that weapon is located, nobody wants to create problems. They may need the help of their neighbors in a big way if they are picked as the next target.”
“Anything new on the Saladin auction?”
“Apparently that is at a standstill. Any nation or group that entered the bidding is keeping its actions very private, but who would be around to orchestrate that show now? With Saladin dead, the auction may be dead, too.”
“Hopeful speculation,” said the president. “There is always a number two man who becomes the number one man. If he has the plans, he can just step in and run the show. How do you rate the chances that somebody else is going to get hit?”
“Honestly, Mr. President, my gut tells me that it is going to happen.”
The president nodded and went back to his desk and sat down. “Yeah. We’ll keep up the pressure. I don’t like having the United States of America in the crosshairs.”
“We are doing everything we can, sir. We will lay out all the details at the National Security Council briefing. The news of Saladin’s death will be leaking out of France by then. Pressroom will be in an uproar.”
The president put his glasses back on and picked up a pen. As always, paperwork awaited. “Thanks for coming by, Ken. See you downstairs in a little while.” When the door closed, the president touched the intercom and told his secretary not to let anyone in for the next fifteen minutes and to pass the word along to the Secret Service guards on all the doors.
Hanson stood before the big desk. “I just finished the debrief with General Middleton. Kyle Swanson got in and did the job, but the house blew up before he could grab any papers. Then he was snatched by our joint task force, brought back here, and worked over a bit, even waterboarded. He kept his mouth shut until Trident got him out.
