“What are you talking about?” asked Elise.
“Don’t bullshit me, Campbell,” said Porter, as he smiled and shook his head. “It’s written all over your face.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“C’mon. I saw you two canoodling in Lafayette Park.”
“Me and Hutch?” stated Elise. “You’re crazy. Besides, who even uses the term canoodling anyway?”
“Whatever it was,” said Porter. “It looked pretty serious to me.”
“You’ve got an overactive imagination. It was nothing.”
“Well, you’re a big girl. You can make your own mistakes, but Hutch? You can do so much better than that. In fact, Claire and I’ve got at least a dozen guys we could set you up with.”
Elise looked him right in the eyes so he’d know she was serious. “Matt, there’s nothing going on between me and Hutch. We were talking shop.”
“Sure,” said Porter as he made quotation marks in the air with his fingers. “Talking shop. Without being crude, that guy’ll nail anything that moves.”
“News flash, Matt. That was crude.”
Porter shrugged. “You know what? You’re right. It’s none of my business.”
“Thank you.”
“I just have to admit, I don’t know what women see in him. Especially girls like you.”
“Girls like me,” repeated Campbell. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean women who are not only out of Hutch’s league, but out of his planet system.”
It was an interesting remark, and since Porter had brought it up, one that Elise felt worth pursuing. “Women like the first lady?”
Porter had a coffee cup in his hand and had made the mistake of just taking a sip. Though he tried to hold it in, he coughed the coffee back into his cup. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he laughed as he picked up a paper towel to wipe his mouth. “Hutch and Mrs. Alden? Now, that would be incredible.”
Campbell looked around. At the moment, there was no one else in earshot. “So what did you mean then?” she asked.
“I meant very good-looking women, like you,” Porter replied awkwardly. “Not that the first lady isn’t attractive, she’s just-”
Elise put up her hand to stop him. “Setting aside the first lady for the moment, what other women were you referring to when you alluded to girls like me?”
“I feel like I’m getting grilled by my wife.”
“Don’t change the subject, Porter.”
“All right, all right. Wow, you don’t have to be so touchy.”
“I’m not touchy,” replied Elise.
“I was just talking about some of the hot women Hutch has managed to land. I meant it as a compliment.”
“Who are we talking about? Anyone I’d know?”
“What are we, girlfriends all of a sudden?” asked Porter. “I didn’t come in here to gossip. I just want some coffee.”
“Porter, you started this.”
“Hey, you were the one in the park with the guy. And if you’ve got something going with him, that’s cool. Just be careful.”
“Careful?” said Elise.
Porter dumped his coffee out and reached for a new cup. “The last hot chick Hutch hooked up with ended up drinking herself into a stupor and slamming her car into oncoming traffic.”
Campbell knew Hutchinson had been lying to her, but she still had trouble believing what she was hearing. “Are you talking about Nikki Hale?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Yeah, I am,” said Porter, “and why are we whispering? Was she a friend of yours?”
Elise shook her head. “No, she wasn’t.”
“Good. For a second there I thought maybe I’d really put my foot in it.”
“How do you know he hooked up with her?”
“Because I saw the two of them the night of the accident.”
“Together?” asked Elise.
“No, they were down on the beach doing semaphore. Of course, together. Come on, Campbell.”
Elise grabbed hold of Porter’s lapel and led him further away from the other agents in the room. “I want you to tell me everything you saw. Right now.”
“You know what?” said the agent as he removed his colleague’s hand from his jacket. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I actually feel for the guy. Short of turning a woman gay, I can’t think of a worse thing that could happen. Let’s just forget I said anything, okay? Hutch has been through enough.”
“He hasn’t even come close,” replied Campbell. “Not yet. Not by a long shot.”
Twenty minutes later, Elise Campbell had finished her conversation with Porter, left the White House, and was headed west on E Street, her BlackBerry pressed to her ear. “That’s exactly why I called you,” she said.
“Elise, you saw the whole file,” replied Rita Klees from her office in East Hampton. “Why would we screen a drunk driving victim to see if they had sex before they died? Especially with the budget cuts we’ve suffered. We don’t do that. Not without a reason, and in this case there was no reason.”
“So pull an inspection report out of one of your other files, or better yet, get me a blank one I can fill in myself.”
“Okay, I’m hanging up now.”
“Damn it, Rita. Help me out here.”
“Elise, what you’re asking me for is-” began the detective.
“Trust me,” said Campbell. “I’ll explain later. Just get that stuff for me. Please.”
Before Klees could respond, Elise had already hung up. Though she hadn’t yet figured out how she was going to navigate the minefield she was about to enter, something in the back of her mind told her that she might have made a decent detective after all.
CHAPTER 47
NANGARHAR PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN
Bullets began slamming into the Land Cruiser before the lead vehicle that had been hit by the RPG had even come back to the ground.
Opening the driver’s-side door, Gallagher grabbed his rifle and dumped out with Harvath right on his heels. Fontaine leaped out the rear passenger door, pulling the interpreter with him.
Harvath was trying to identify the firing positions of their attackers when all of a sudden Gallagher, who had been crouched behind the tire right next to him, yelled, “Cover me,” over the din of heavy machine-gun fire and ran for the middle vehicle.
As soon as he took off, green tracer rounds began chewing up the dirt behind him. It was as if someone had a phosphorescent marker and was trying to draw a line to him.
Angry as hell at his friend, but left with no other choice, Harvath rolled out from behind the left front tire of the Land Cruiser and began firing.
Based on the tracer fire, Harvath could make out two distinct positions from which the belt-fed machine guns were being fired. When Gallagher had made it to the second vehicle, Harvath rolled back behind the tire, pulled out his NODs, and powered them up.
He could tell by where the rounds were hitting that their attackers knew they were hiding behind the tires on the opposite side of the Land Cruiser. But, because their attackers were higher up the hillside, all they could do
