chance to come to a complete stop. Those agents who had already been in the process of slowing down and could stop, instinctively drew their weapons, but they had one major problem. They couldn’t see a thing.
Not knowing where their fellow agents were or, more important, where the president was, every single agent, weapon drawn or not, had been rendered not only totally useless, but helpless as well.
Useff gave the go command over his lip mike as he shouldered the glare gun and switched off the safety of his silenced German-manufactured Heckler amp; Koch MP5 submachine gun. The pleasure of being able to freely kill so many agents of the Great Satan was almost unbearable. He had already shot two Secret Service agents before the rest of the team had fully sprung from their hiding places.
As the Lions’ silenced machine gun rounds drummed into the bodies of the defenseless Secret Service agents, Miner made his way toward where the president had fallen.
“Harp, Harp,” mumbled the president from where he lay in the snow, still blind and disoriented but alert enough to call out for the head of his protective detail as he tried to raise himself into a seated position.
Miner dropped to his knees next to him and removed the president’s gloves and jacket. As he helped him sit up, he placed a copy of USA Today on his chest, pulling the president’s hands in so he could feel it. Instinctively, the president grabbed hold of it. Miner shot several quick Polaroids and slipped the slowly developing pictures into his pocket. Then he took the paper away and, with a pair of trauma scissors, began to cut through the left sleeves of the president’s sweater and turtleneck.
“Toboggan! Where is that toboggan?” Miner yelled.
“Harper? What’s happening?” repeated the president.
“There’s been an accident, Mr. President,” responded Miner in perfectly American accented English. “You need to lie back now and remain still, while we start an IV.”
“Who are you? Where’s Harper? What’s happened to my eyes? I can’t see.”
“Please, Mr. President. You need to be completely quiet and completely still. My team is attending to the others. There you go. Let’s just lie back. Good.” Miner knew the effects of the glare gun would be wearing off soon. From his pack, he withdrew an insulated medical pouch, unzipped it, pulled out a bag of saline solution, and began an IV on the president, who continued to call for members of his protective detail and complain about his eyes.
Once the IV was in place, Miner filled a syringe with a strong sedative called Versed and piggybacked it into the IV line. The effect was almost instantaneous. The president’s eyes rolled back, closed, and his body went limp.
As one of Miner’s men rushed past, towing an all-white ski-patrol-style transport toboggan, Dryer made his way over to Hassan Useff.
Without even turning, Useff began speaking, knowing Dryer was behind him. “This is Sam Harper, head of the president’s protective detail, is it not?”
Though Harper was badly injured from his fall and couldn’t see who was standing above him speaking, he knew the Middle Eastern accent didn’t belong to anyone on his team. “Yeah, I’m Sam Harper, and whoever you are, you are in a lot of trouble. Give yourself up.”
“Typical American arrogance. Even in the face of death,” said Useff.
“Fuck you,” snarled Harper as he attempted to draw his weapon.
“Once again, typical. Is nothing original in this country?” asked Useff as he squeezed off a three-round burst into the career Secret Service agent and father of two’s head.
Ever since Dryer had recruited Useff for this assignment, he had marveled at the man’s hatred for the United States. That hate, coupled with the Lebanese man’s intense religious fervor, made him perfect for this job. Hassan Useff was the only non-Swiss on the team.
As he began walking away, Useff said, “Protecting the president, he should have been the best. A pity he won’t be remembered that way. The pathetic coward never even fired a shot.”
When Useff had his back completely turned, Dryer withdrew an empty Evian bottle from the pack he was carrying and picked up Harper’s SIG-Sauer P229. “I think the Americans might beg to differ,” were the last words Hassan Useff heard before the.357 bullet, effectively muffled by being shot through the plastic bottle, ripped through the back of his skull, killing him instantly.
Dryer placed the SIG-Sauer in Harper’s dead hand. He then withdrew a model 68 Skorpion machine pistol with a silencer and fired indiscriminately into the bodies of the dead Secret Service agents lying around him. He blew through two more twenty-round magazines before placing the Skorpion on the ground next to Useff and shouldering the dead Muslim’s glare gun and H amp;K.
The waters were now sufficiently chummed.
4
“Sound, this is Birdhouse. Do you copy? Over. Norseman, this is Birdhouse, do you copy? Over.”
Secret Service agent Tom Hollenbeck, head of the command center for the president’s ski trip, had been trying to reach both details for the last seven minutes.
Communications had been sporadic throughout most of the day. The mountainous terrain, the secluded location of the command center just outside the home the president was staying in, and the terrible on-again, off- again weather, made things extremely difficult.
Hollenbeck called out to his assistant, Chris Longo. “Hey, Longo. Can’t we do anything at all to pump this up?”
“For Chrissake, Tom. What do you think I’ve been doing for the last five minutes?”
“All right, all right. No need to get pissy. Just fix it.”
“Hollenbeck, if I knew what was wrong, I would have fixed it already.”
“Hold on a second. We’ve got the Deer Valley radios. Have we tried those?”
“Yes. I already thought of that.”
“And?”
“They’ve also been having trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Same as us. The radios just aren’t working.”
“Is that normal?”
“It happens, but not often.”
“Damn it. How about the Smocks, then? They transmit on a different frequency than our radios, don’t they?”
The Smock, or Doc Smock, as it was officially known, was a new piece of technology made for monitoring soldiers in battle. It was a skintight vest with sensors, worn under the clothes, that transmitted the wearer’s vital signs, via a small unit in a fanny pack. It could also indicate if the vest had been breached.
Even though the technology was still experimental, two duty agents on each detail were wearing one.
“Yeah,” said Longo, “the Smocks are on a different frequency.”
“Well, see if you can punch them up.”
“See if I can punch them up? Do you want me to work on boosting our Motorolas or do you want me working on the Smock signals?”
“No, you work on the radios and reaching the teams. Who’s watching the Smocks now?”
“Palmer is.”
“Fine. Palmer!” yelled Hollenbeck as Longo went back to trying to raise the two details.
“Yes, sir?” responded an attractive, young female agent from a corner of the Secret Service command center.
“Can you give me a full sit rep on all four Smocks?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
“They’ve been off and on all day.”
“What do you mean?”
