registered any firearms in the state of Virginia.”
“We’re going to check it out, over.”
Coming back, with a little excitement over the static: “Roger that, Magpie.”
Larsen was back with his men ten minutes later. Maginnes and Kharmai hunched together and
watched the house through the trees.
“I could kill for some hot coffee right about now,” he said.
She thought about that for a minute. “Figuratively or literally?”
“Literally.”
“Wow, they weren’t kidding when they said you guys were hard-asses.” She yawned, leaned back
and scratched her butt, then caught him smiling. “What?”
He shook his head. “I never saw a woman do that before.”
“Then you haven’t been paying attention,” she said in a whisper. “We do it all the time.” Then, a
second later: “Besides, there’s too much testosterone flowing around here. I was kind of feeling
left out.”
Another twenty minutes passed. A little snow started to fall, and although it was freezing cold
and windy as hell, Naomi couldn’t help but start to drift off a little. It was 5:05 in the morning
when Maginnes furrowed his brow and cupped his ear.
“Roger that, Alpha One. Standby, over.” He reached over to shake her, and she started, then
looked up. “We’re ready to go.”
She was still shaking off the sleep. “Umm… okay. How? I mean, how are they going in?”
“If he’s in there, I can’t give him time to barricade himself,” he said in a low murmur. “We’re
gonna go with Primacord on the door frame.”
She said, unnecessarily, “They need to be careful.”
“They will be.” Maginnes had the individual teams call in, then got back on with Larsen. “Okay,
Chris. Let’s go.”
“Roger that, Mags. Breachers are moving in, out.”
Several minutes passed. Naomi couldn’t see anything other than their own quiet breath
condensing in the frigid air, and she said so.
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The commander handed her the night vision goggles. “Try these. Don’t watch the door when
they shoot the charge.”
Pulling on the goggles, she immediately saw dark figures advancing through the light snow. One
stayed back with his weapon up, facing the front of the house, as the other moved up and started
priming the door.
“Where are they?”
“Already at the door,” she said.
Maginnes murmured into his mike. “Sierra One, what do you got? Over.”
“No movement in the windows.”
“Sierra Three, Magpie. Anything?”
“Negative. I’m drawing a blank, over.”
Then, a moment later: “This is Alpha One. Door is primed.”
“Take those off, Kharmai.” When the goggles were up on her forehead, he cupped his hand and
said, “Blow it.”
There was a brief flash of light through the snow, followed immediately by a sharp crack. After a
few tension-filled seconds, Larsen came on and said, “No secondary explosions, Magpie. Clear
to advance, over.”
“Head on in, Chris. Take it slow.”
“Roger that.”
Maginnes waited as long as he could bear it, then reached over to pull the goggles off her head.
“Ouch.”
He saw that he had caught a few strands of her hair. “Sorry.” When he focused on the house, he
didn’t catch any movement in the windows.
Naomi was getting impatient. “What do you see?”
He shook his head in frustration. “Nothing.”
Chris Larsen was the third man in the house after Canfield and Hudson. He was immediately
followed by a team of five assaulters, who quickly followed his hand signals and moved to their
predetermined positions.
“Magpie, Alpha One. Moving to secure ground floor, over.”
“Roger, Alpha One.” Larsen watched as his men cleared the first two rooms to the right, then
followed them silently into the living room. The kitchen was past the open space, and he moved
forward smoothly with the Heckler and Koch MP5 up tight against his shoulder, his eyes
scouring the walls at knee- and ankle level, searching for anything that might indicate a trip wire.
Then he was moving slowly against the textured wallpaper, taking a deep breath before poking
his gun and his head around the corner… nothing.
He lowered the weapon and turned to see one of his men standing in front of a closed door.
Larsen was the only one to spot the towel stuffed underneath. The operator said, “I think we got
something here…”
Larsen had just enough time to say, “No—” before the door disintegrated. Kevin Hudson, who
had been the one to pull it open, was thrown back and up by the blast. He passed through 8
inches of drywall before his head collided with the ceiling, snapping it forward and breaking his
neck instantly.
Larsen turned to run, but then found, to his astonishment, that his feet were not touching the
ground, and actually seemed to be going in opposite directions, as were the rest of his
appendages…
Naomi saw a blinding flash, then heard a muffled wumph as the house was ripped apart.
Maginnes was on top of her in an instant, shielding her body as fragments of brick, wood, and
glass rained down around them.
Then there was silence and his crushing weight on her back. Nothing else, until he rolled off and
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she saw that there was part of a leg sitting two feet in front of her face.
That was when she began to scream.
CHAPTER 33
TYSON’S CORNER ? HANOVER COUNTY ? WASHINGTON, D.C.
Back at the TTIC, Ryan had finally stopped trying to fight the fatigue and decided to get some
rest while he could. He tried to crash out in a secretary’s office, but sleep didn’t come. His mind
was too occupied by everything that was going on, but most of all, it was Katie who held his
thoughts.
Ryan recognized that he was largely responsible for their current situation, but he couldn’t help
but feel let down by the fact that she had just run out on him without even trying to talk about it
first. He was thinking about this, and getting angrier, when he realized that he had done exactly
the same thing to her when Harper first asked him to come to Washington.
He was not pleased by this recollection. It would have been a whole lot easier to blame the
whole situation on her, but at the same time, he wanted nothing more than to see her again. If
being the first to apologize made that a possibility, then it was a sacrifice he was more than
willing to make.
And all it would take was a phone call. In the dim light of the office, Ryan looked up at the clock
on the wall: 5:23 AM. He knew she wouldn’t be awake, and Katie wasn’t a morning person in
any case. She would be much easier to apologize to in a couple of hours.
He shut his eyes and tried to let the exhaustion overtake him. He was curled up uncomfortably
on the cot, thinking about how he would explain everything to her when the door swung open,
the lights came on, and he heard a distant voice calling his name.
Suddenly, it didn’t seem so distant. When he opened his eyes and saw the expression on the
deputy director’s face, he was instantly wide awake. “What? What is it?”
Harper’s voice was strangled. “Vanderveen just got seven guys from HRT in Hanover.”
Ryan was standing now, looking around for his shoes. “How? Was he there?”
“No, he rigged something up in the basement. They’re still trying to figure it out.”
Ryan stopped what he was doing and suddenly felt cold. He didn’t want to ask it, but knew he
had to. “Naomi?”
He breathed out a long sigh of relief when Harper shook his head. “She was 300 meters away
when it blew. She’s pretty shook up, though.”
“Oh, fuck,” Ryan said. He rubbed the stubble on his cheeks with open palms. “Oh, fuck.”
The area around the house was swarming with police cars and ambulances by 6:45, their flashing
lights less pronounced now that the sun was occasionally peeking through the heavy clouds. The
firefighters had pretty much finished their work, slightly aided by the damp snow that was still
drifting down over the wreckage and surrounding fields.
The barn, for the most part, was still intact. Naomi was sitting with her back against the timbers,
wearing a thick blanket around her shoulders and staring at what was left of the house.
Looking around, she saw a group of Bureau investigators trying to determine the outer
boundaries of their search area. Maginnes was aimlessly wandering around the charred remains
with a strange mixture of pain and confusion on his face. He had lost Larsen, Canfield, and
Hudson, as well as four other members of his unit. One assaulter had been blown back through
the front door, and had managed to escape with second degree burns, a broken leg, and a
concussion. He had already been airlifted to a hospital in Richmond.
Naomi’s own injuries were minor; a few scratches was all she had suffered physically, but she
couldn’t get the sight of that blackened stump out of her mind, nor the sound of Maginnes’s
anguished moan when he had caught sight of it a few seconds after she did. She closed her eyes
to block it all out, then opened them again when she heard someone calling her name.
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It was Brett Harrison. He was standing next to a group of forensics people and holding a cell
phone in his hand. As she stood up and walked over on shaky legs, she thought, if anything, the
SAC looked worse than Maginnes. His face was as white as a sheet, and he couldn’t seem to
focus on anything for more than a few seconds at a time. When she reached him, he muttered,
“TTIC,” and handed her the phone.
“This is Kharmai.”
It was Kealey. “Naomi! Are you okay?”
When she heard the concern in his voice, it finally caught up with her. She turned her back to the
group and tried to stifle a sob. “No.”
“Jesus,” he said. She couldn’t read his tone of voice. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m just…” Ryan heard some strange noises over the line and realized she was trying to
hide the fact that she was crying. “It was pretty bad, you know? God, this was my idea, Ryan. I’m
the one who—”
“Naomi, it’s not your fault,” he interrupted forcefully. “Those guys knew the risks going in.
Vanderveen did this, not you. Okay?”
There was a long pause. “I’m sorry,” he said in a softer tone. “I should have been there—”
“No,” she said emphatically, unconsciously shaking her head in agreement with her own words.
“You would have been in the house. I couldn’t have… dealt with that.”
On the other end, Ryan was lost for words. What he came up with, after about four seconds,
was: “Come back to Washington, Naomi. I don’t think you ca — I just think you should come
back.”
She could see that he was trying to make it easy for her. It would be so easy to give up being
tough. She could go back to Washington, where he would show her some friendly concern and
nothing more. She could sit behind a desk in the CT watch center and sip coffee, watch it play
out on CNN, and remain perfectly safe.
But Vanderveen was still running free, and she wasn’t ready to give up just yet. And Ryan had
been about to say, before he caught himself, that there was nothing else she could do in Virginia.
Well, screw you, too.
“I’m not coming back,” she said. On the other end, Ryan was surprised by the sudden steel in
her voice. “I’m going to grab one of Harrison’s aides and go talk to some people. I want to
know what he’s driving, what he looks like. Otherwise, we’re still running blind.”
“Okay,” he said, after a moment of indecision. “Hold on a second.” He relayed the message to
Harper, who broke off from another heated conversation with Patrick Landrieu to give his
approval. “Harper says that’s fine. And he’s glad you’re okay. I am too, you—”
“I know,” she interrupted. “I’ll let you know what I come up with.”
Pressing the END button before he could respond, she looked once more at the surrounding
devastation and wiped away her few remaining tears. Okay, Naomi, she told herself. Time to get
back to work.
Washington, D.C., in the half light of morning. The clouds were rolling in from the south, but
the sun still poked through occasionally, sending bright beams spilling down over random
objects and people. Looking around the waterfront, Jodie Rivers sipped from her travel mug
and stood in quiet appreciation of the sight. She had worked herself to the point of exhaustion
over the past week, and although there was a lot going on, she’d be damned if she wasn’t going
to enjoy her morning coffee. Especially after getting called to the TTIC at one in the morning
and the sleepless hours that had followed the meeting.
The colors of the city had that vivid look that is peculiar to a certain type of overcast weather.
Across the sparkling surface of the channel, the grass of the East Potomac Golf Club seemed
like an endless sea of emerald green. Although there was no precipitation, the air felt heavy and
still, and she had received numerous reports of a storm moving in by early afternoon.
It would come too late to do her any good, though. For now, there was no trace of rain or snow
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on the ground, and no reason to cancel the boating excursion that was scheduled to begin in less
than two hours. At least no reason that she could successfully argue to President Brenneman or
his chief of staff, Ed Rigney.
She was painfully aware that they were presenting an irresistible target less than three weeks after
two successive terrorist attacks. Unfortunately, the Secret Service served at the pleasure of the
president, and once he had his mind made up, all they could really do was set up a good
perimeter, surround him with as many agents as possible, and hope for the best.
The barriers leading into Maine Avenue were already doing their work. High above, using their
high-powered binoculars the rooftop observers were scanning the assembled groups of
demonstrators, now and then whispering a quiet description over the Service’s dedicated radio
link. In response to the description, someone would get bumped in the crowd by one of the
interspersed agents. In each case, the target of the bump was completely oblivious to the fact
that he or she had just been thoroughly checked for weapons. The Secret Service agents posing
as demonstrators carried no signs and dressed neatly, if not conservatively, but they did shout
out the occasional slogan to keep up appearances. So far the demonstration was peaceful
enough, for which the uniformed Metro cops were grateful as they looked on with watchful eyes
and neutral expressions.
Headed south toward the waterfront was the endless procession of embassy limousines bearing
French and Italian diplomats. USSS personnel from the Uniformed Division checked each
