“As you can see,” she was saying, “the security fencing closes off the end of Water Street
underneath the bridge. It’s a dead end anyway, but we’re waiting on concrete barriers that will go
up on the other side of the fencing. We’ll have at least three, and probably five checkpoints for
pedestrian traffic moving through the area — I haven’t finalized those arrangements yet, but
we’re taking a hard look at the spots where 6th, 7th, and 9th streets run into Maine. Those areas
worry me because they’re so open. We’ve designated 4th Street as the eastern edge of our
perimeter, and we want to use Arena Stage as the command post. I have to talk today with the
artistic director to see if that’ll work… The main thing is keeping vehicles out of the area.
Explosives are the big concern, so that’s where we’ll focus our efforts.”
“What about the background checks?”
An agent was calling for her attention. She gestured for the man to give her a minute, and then
focused on the assistant director’s question. “It’s going well so far — nobody’s come up on our
radar yet. We still have a long list to run through, though. We started with the business owners,
because they’re the ones who are going to give us the most grief over the vehicle restrictions.
From there, we’ll concentrate on the people who have boats docked at the marina. We’ve
already gotten a lot of cooperation from the GPSA… That’s the Gangplank Slipholders
Association.”
McCabe nodded. “That was a good call, getting them involved. You’ve closed off the marina
parking lot, right?”
“Of course.” She hesitated. “Sir, pulling all civilian craft out of the marina is not a realistic
option. In fact, that would crowd up the channel and work against us. We need to clear out all
the slips within about a thousand feet of the Sequoia, though. Even a thousand isn’t good
enough to serve as a standoff, but we won’t get much more than that. Keeping vehicles out is the
easy part — it’s these boats and the channel itself that have me worried.”
“If you weren’t worried, Rivers,” McCabe said, “then I’d say you weren’t doing your job.” He
gave her a little smile to show her he was joking. “Besides, that’s the navy’s baliwick. They’ll
bring in their minesweeping equipment tomorrow. One other thing I want you to do is
coordinate with the Coast Guard. I want to see cutters positioned at the entrance to the channel
and at least two other points on the Sequoia’s route, in addition to our own personal escort.
Also, make sure we have a designated UHF channel on marine radio. Apart from that,
everything looks good to me. What about the motorcade?”
With McCabe’s words, she felt a little bit of the tension start to drain away. Jodie Rivers had
always tried to place herself above the politics of her job, but praise from her superiors felt as
good to her as it did to anyone else. “We’re going to stay with the route we’ve got. If we take
Maine through the tunnel to 12th and follow it north to Pennsylvania, we can limit the number of
sharp turns and push the speed up. Furthermore, 12th will be a whole lot easier to close than
7th, and we don’t have too many options; most of 14th and 12th north of Pennsylvania are shut
down for construction, so we have to detour on 13th Street—”
“I’m aware of that,” McCabe reminded her. “The construction was covered in the preliminary
report.”
Rivers shrugged off the momentary lapse in her memory. “The route will be shut down on the
night before the event, anyway — that’s when the crews are scheduled to weld the manhole
covers and remove the mailboxes.”
McCabe was genuinely impressed with what she had already managed to accomplish. He
touched her lightly on the shoulder, careful not to make it seem like anything more than a
friendly gesture.
“You’re working too hard, Rivers,” he said. “Let some of your people help carry the weight.
Come on, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. You look like you could use it.”
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The explosion was nothing more than a sharp crack muted by the weight of the sandbags. When
he pulled them off to examine the blasting caps, he was pleased to note that not one remained
intact.
Vanderveen was slightly bothered by the delay that was inevitable when using a cell phone
trigger. When the ringer on the exposed circuit board was activated, the circuit was closed and
the power found its way from the wet-cell battery to the blasting caps. The process took time,
though, and Brenneman’s motorcade would not indulge him by stopping right next to the van.
He would have to time it well. The news of the recent security escalations surrounding the State
visit had not given him cause for concern. Most of the changes would be made around the
marina itself, but he would be far away from the checkpoints and rooftop observers when the
bomb was triggered.
In fact, he already had a perfect seat for the show.
Will tossed the shredded sandbags into the straw, then cleared the cement before taking a seat at
his worktable, which was now empty with one exception. The document that lay on the wooden
surface was 134 pages long, double-spaced with diagrams.
The first page was titled, “Program Events and Protocol.” It was stamped CONFIDENTIAL.
He had never asked Shakib where the document had come from, and had made a conscious
decision to force the question from his mind. It would not help him to dwell on the fact that his
success was entirely dependent on the accuracy of the information contained in its pages.
He knew that the report was authentic. He had seen the same economical wording and
phraseology used in countless other documents in his former profession. What he didn’t know
was how the recent NSSE designation would affect the security arrangements, and with Shakib
gone, he had no way of finding out.
His fingers tapped out an irregular beat on top of the document as he considered. It would be a
shame if the report turned out to be worthless after all. There was a wealth of knowledge at his
fingertips. Page four told him that there would be thirty-six cars in the motorcade. Pages five
through ten gave him the order of the vehicles, and a circled paragraph on page seven informed
Vanderveen that the sixth vehicle in the procession would contain the president of the United
States. Brenneman’s Cadillac would be neatly tucked in between a GMC Suburban carrying four
Secret Service agents and a backup limousine. The fourteenth vehicle would carry the Italian
prime minister, and the twenty-first would contain the French president.
Despite what he had told the Director while deep in the caves, Will did not think it likely that he
would manage to include all three of the targets in the blast radius. In fact, he had come to
realize that it was almost an impossibility. The separation between the vehicles was just too
great.
At the same time, the devastation that would be unleashed by a 3,000-pound bomb on a
crowded city street was completely unpredictable. Even Will Vanderveen, with his intricate
knowledge of blast theory and physics, could not be certain of the final result.
He was looking forward to finding out, though.
Vanderveen walked toward the entrance to the barn and stared out across the fields. He absently
studied the tree line in the distance and wondered if that would be a reasonable place to bury
Milbery’s body and conceal her vehicle.
CHAPTER 29
TYSON’S CORNER, VIRGINIA? CAPE ELIZABETH ? HANOVER COUNTY
The Terrorist Threat Integration Center first started life at CIA Headquarters in Langley,
Virginia, but was moved to a state-of-the-art facility in Tyson’s Corner when construction on the
new building was completed in spring 2004. As one of many changes made within the American
intelligence community following the disastrous events of 9/11, the joint venture was initially
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staffed by more than 125 people from the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, and the State
Department. Although the people now assigned to the TTIC have full access to the resources of
their parent agencies, the main goal of the facility is to sort incoming information into usable
intelligence, as opposed to actually going out and gathering credible information in the first
place.
It was this distinction that was troubling Naomi Kharmai as she slumped in her chair and stared
at the pile of maps and papers lying before her. Despite the fact that the full measure of the
center’s resources had been dedicated to the search for Will Vanderveen, very little progress had
been made in the past two days. She had first realized how difficult it would be during her own
preliminary research, when she discovered that 381 farms under 180 acres had been sold the
previous year in Hanover County alone. And that was just one out of the 135 counties in the
state of Virginia. The worst part of all was the limits on their search parameters: if Ryan was
mistaken about any part of Vanderveen’s intentions, they could very well be looking in the
wrong place entirely.
For the third time in the last hour, she swiveled in her seat to look for Ryan. The room was filled
with people hovering over computer screens, talking into telephones, standing over fax
machines, and generally trying their best to do the impossible: find one man who could be
anywhere in three states with a combined population of more than 13 million people.
She saw Deputy Director Harper standing across the room in deep discussion with Patrick
Landrieu, the director of the TTIC. Naomi couldn’t be sure, but it looked like they were arguing
about something. That’s not a good sign, she thought to herself as she continued to scan the
room for Ryan.
She finally gave up and tried to focus on her map of northern Virginia. Taking another sip of
lukewarm coffee, she stared through bleary eyes at the myriad of roads. After much debate, she
had finally decided to focus her efforts on the six counties directly north of Richmond: Caroline,
Hanover, Spotsylvania, Stafford, Prince William, and Fairfax. Her specific interest was I-95
running north into Washington, and she had branched out her search according to Ryan’s
suggestions: anything more than 5 miles away from the interstate had been immediately removed
from the list, along with any property larger than 180 acres.
What she was left with was a staggering list of 564 farms sold in six counties in the past three
months. Naomi shook her head in disgust as she lifted a thirty-page fax from the Virginia Farm
Bureau Federation, only to slap it back down a second later without reading a word. She was
about to reach for another sheet when she realized that someone had slumped down in the chair
next to her.
Her eyes opened wide when she saw the state he was in. “Oh my God, Ryan! Where have you
been? Do you have any idea what time it is?”
He ignored her as he reached over to grab the coffee from her desk. “Anything come up yet?”
Her eyes drifted over his clothes — the same jeans and T-shirt he had been wearing the day
before. His face was covered with at least a week’s worth of stubble, and his eyes were
red-rimmed and raw. He looked exhausted. “Nothing yet. Sixty-seven people are working on
this, and that’s just in this room. I’m starting to think it’s impossible.”
He snorted and said, “Of course it’s impossible. The whole thing is a huge fucking waste of
time.” She watched as he drained the Styrofoam cup and tossed it onto the desk in front of him.
“You don’t know this bastard like I do, Naomi. He could be anywhere. He could be sitting in
this room, for all we fucking know. He’s just too damn good at what he does.”
His voice had gotten louder with each passing syllable. When he stopped talking, Kharmai was
aware of the silence around her. She looked up to see that the deputy director had crossed the
room and was standing right behind them. Harper leaned down to whisper something in Ryan’s
ear, and she watched as both men walked out of the room a few moments later.
With a heavy sigh, she turned her attention back to the fax pages in her hand and tried to block
out the cacophony around her that soon returned to its elevated pitch.
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Jonathan Harper stood outside the glass doors of the CT watch center and jabbed a finger into
the younger man’s chest. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Ryan? I needed you here four
hours ago. This was your idea, remember? What’s the problem?”
“I was wrong, John,” he snapped. “It’s all bullshit. We’re not doing anything. We’re just sitting
around waiting for the other shoe to drop—”
“That’s all we can do at this point. We can’t exactly go house to house and ask for William
Vanderveen, can we?”
Kealey pushed a hand through his lank hair. “No, I…” He shook his head as he searched for the
right words. “Jesus, I don’t know. I just think we could be doing more.”
Harper’s voice dropped as he reached out to squeeze the younger man’s shoulder. “Look, you
made some good points yesterday, threw out some good suggestions, but I still need you. I
listened to what you had to say because I trust your judgment. I know it’s too passive for your
taste, but I think this could work. In any case, it looks like our best option for the moment.” He
saw that his words hadn’t changed anything. It was time to take a shot in the dark. “Something
else is bothering you. Katie?”
When Kealey looked away, Harper knew he had it right. “What happened?”
There was a long pause. “She walked out on me at the hotel, went back to the Cape. She said she
couldn’t handle it…”
“She’ll come around, Ryan.” The dark gray eyes came up to meet his own. “She knows the deal.
I went through the same thing with Julie a thousand times when I was in the field. The sooner we
finish it, the sooner you can get back to her. That’s how you have to look at it.”
The younger man nodded his head. “I guess so.” He let out a long breath and leaned back
against the wall. “This shit is killing me, John.”
“I’ve seen the way she looks at you. She’ll be waiting when you get back to Maine, I guarantee it.
Listen, go back to the hotel. Shower, shave, get some food and a change of clothes. Then do me
a favor and get your ass back here. Naomi’s lost without you.”
The last part was said with a smile. Ryan managed to return it briefly before pushing off the wall
and moving toward the elevators. He was almost there when Harper’s voice rang out behind
him.
“He’s close, Ryan.”
