vehicle for explosives with CCTV wands, which projected the undercarriage onto a 4.5-inch
screen positioned at waist level. Credentials and faces were scrupulously checked against existing
documentation while other agents looked on with MP5s held low by their sides. Two junior
aides from the French embassy who were missing their passes were pulled out of their vehicles
and held for twenty minutes while their identities were confirmed, much to the consternation of
the French ambassador and his head of security.
The preparations had been endless, and they seemed to be paying off, Rivers thought. Still, the
integrity of the perimeter was largely dependent on the mind-set of a potential assassin. She
knew that there was no way they could guarantee protection if an individual was willing to die
himself in order to kill the president. An individual alone on a suicide mission was the greatest
fear of any Secret Service agent, and Rivers was no exception. She found herself thinking about
William Vanderveen: God, I really hope he wants to live.
“Daydreaming again, Jodie?”
She turned her head to smile at Joshua McCabe. “No, just enjoying the scenery. Pretty, isn’t it?”
He followed her eyes to the golf course opposite the channel. “Yeah. Too bad for the golfers,
huh?”
“I guess.” The course had been shut down under PDD-62, on the grounds that it was too large a
space to cover with their limited manpower. “What’s going on?”
“Everything’s moving right along. You did a good job getting the French and the Italians on file,
by the way. We’ve been able to clear them pretty quick.” She bobbed her head at the
compliment. “Did you hear about Virginia?”
She looked up sharply. “No.”
He grimaced and shook his head. “Someone should have told you… The raid went to shit.
Vanderveen set a trap and took out a bunch of guys from HRT. They didn’t find a vehicle in the
barn.”
“How did he do it?”
“Some kind of bomb. They’re still looking into it. Anyway, they assume he’s coming our way.
So…”
She closed her eyes and thought about it. “I don’t know what else to do,” she finally said, giving
a little shrug of her shoulders. “We don’t have the manpower to extend the perimeter anymore.
Did you pass this along to Storey?” Jeff Storey was the Agent in Charge of the president’s detail,
and scheduled to arrive in two hours with the main party.
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“Of course. I took it to the president as well. Obviously, he wasn’t happy about it. We’re still on,
though.”
“Well, hell,” she said in frustration. “What’s with this guy? Doesn’t he realize how serious the
threat is?”
“He knows.” There was a pause. “He’s desperate, Rivers. If he pushes this through, he might
pick up enough support to start thinking about another four years. Otherwise, he’s done.”
“It’s kind of hard to run the country if you’re dead,” she mumbled.
McCabe winced. “Don’t let anybody else hear you say that, for God’s sake. Listen, I’m needed
back at Tyson’s Corner. You can reach me there if you need to, okay?”
“Okay, thanks.” He nodded and walked back to his waiting car. Jodie Rivers stared into the gray
waters of the channel as a series of awful scenarios raced through her mind, one after another.
After letting her imagination run rampant for five minutes, she reluctantly moved off to
double-check the perimeter and the list of foreign dignitaries who had been cleared for access.
Please, God. Not on my watch.
The TTIC was a nonsmoking facility, and Jonathan Harper had given up the habit years ago.
With the pressure he was currently under, however, he needed some way to vent, and he wasn’t a
screamer.
He smoked outside as dawn broke, with Ryan standing next to him. The younger man was
crossing his arms one minute, shoving his hands deep in his pockets the next, as if unsure of what
to do with himself. They were alone on the broad expanse of concrete, and they had known each
other for seven years. There was nothing awkward in the silence. The deputy director sensed that
Kealey was coming to a decision, and waited for him to speak.
“I want to go to the marina.”
Harper took another long drag and exhaled slowly. “Not much for you to do down there,” he
observed.
“I know that.”
“What do you need?”
“Some kind of identification,” Ryan said. “I want people to know who I am. I don’t want
somebody stopping me every five feet.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Not through us… through the TTIC, maybe. And I’ll talk to McCabe.”
“I need my gun. I have it with me… I just don’t want it to be a problem.”
“It won’t be.”
Harper finished his cigarette, and they stood in companionable silence as the sun topped the
trees. “What do you think of Naomi?”
“I like her. She’s… tough.”
“Not bad-looking either.”
Ryan smiled. “Not bad.”
Harper tossed his butt toward the sandpit, missing badly. “I didn’t really want her in on this at
first. She’s kind of rough around the edges, you know? Hasn’t really learned to handle people
yet. She’s learning, though… Think she’ll find anything?”
“I don’t know. She’s pretty quick. It depends on how lucky she is.”
“Luck is part of it,” Harper conceded. Then, after a few seconds: “Go to the marina. I’ll call
ahead for you. Would you know him if you saw him?”
“Maybe… Yeah, I’d know him,” Ryan decided. He hesitated: “I think I’d know him.”
“He’ll know you,” Harper said. “So watch yourself.”
“I always do.”
The room was just about what he’d expected: comfortable, but not lavish, with a few tastefully
framed prints on the walls. There was the obligatory television in a tall wooden credenza, twin
beds, and a nightstand, along with a small desk that sat adjacent to the door. Upon entering the
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room nearly twelve hours earlier, he had moved straight to the window to check his line of sight.
It was perfect. The van was about 200 meters away, facing toward him, and approximately 75
meters away from the intersection of 13th and Pennsylvania Avenue.
The worst moment had come the night before; he had been forced to circle the block three
times before finding a suitable location. Fortunately, he didn’t think anyone had noticed. A
considerable amount of pedestrian traffic had cropped up since daybreak, but not one of the
passing people seemed too intently focused on the large commercial van that was parked at the
curb. Since 12th Street had been closed to through traffic less than a half hour after his arrival,
there were very few moving cars on this adjacent street, which made keeping an eye on the van
easier than it otherwise might have been.
He had needed to rearrange a few things inside the room. The DO NOT DISTURB sign was
hanging on the doorknob in the hall, a minor detail, but an important one. He had pulled the
armchair out of the corner and maneuvered it in between the beds. Then he had grabbed the
credenza from the narrow end and dragged it over to the space vacated by the armchair, turning
it so it was at a right angle to the big picture window. The wooden chair had been taken out
from underneath the desk, and placed next to the window in front of the credenza.
These minor efforts meant that he could watch the television and the vehicle at the same time.
Vanderveen knew that MSNBC was scheduled to carry the president’s address live from the
waterfront. With any luck, he would be able to verify the president’s approximate time of
departure; he already knew from Shakib’s document that Brenneman was scheduled to return to
the White House at 11:40 AM, but it didn’t hurt to double-check.
FOX News was already showing, on what appeared to be a continuous loop, coverage of the
aftermath in Virginia. They had little footage and less information, settling instead on wild
conjecture and a long shot of the smoking ruins provided by a low-flying helicopter with a shaky
pilot at the stick.
Vanderveen did not know how the FBI had tracked him to that location, but he was not overly
concerned. He was only hours away from achieving his goal, and there was no way they could
stop him in time. Besides, he was pleased by the efficacy of his improvised device. If the anchor’s
estimates were correct, he had managed to kill eight members of the Bureau’s vaunted Hostage
Rescue Team. Hearing about it secondhand was somewhat less satisfying than watching the
realtor bleed to death, but satisfying nonetheless.
He felt good, despite the fact that he was nearing the end of a long wait. The ringer on the cell
phone was on, but the covered switch in the cab was in the OFF position, so there was no power
going to the exposed circuitry. The phone he would use to trigger the device rested by his side,
but if he was to call now, nothing would happen. He glanced at his watch, a cheap Timex,
perfectly suited to his current persona. The digital display read 7:25 AM. At about eleven, he
would go down to the van, ostensibly to pick up the notebook he’d deliberately placed on the
passenger seat. With any luck, the president and a healthy number of his aides would be dead
less than an hour from the time he flipped the switch.
He had done all he could. He leaned back in the chair and went back to watching the street
below his window.
CHAPTER 34
WASHINGTON, D.C. ? ASHLAND
Driving east on Interstate 66, it didn’t take Kealey long to work his way into the city and toward
the waterfront. In fact, the security check he endured on arrival took nearly half as long as the
trip had, but it was still less than forty-five minutes after leaving Tyson’s Corner that he was
granted access to the Gangplank Marina. From there, it took him another five minutes to locate
the person he was looking for.
Ryan felt more than a little foolish as he chased Jodie Rivers through the throngs of reporters
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positioned behind the metal crowd-control barriers. As they moved, they were jostled by the
photographers and cameramen who were jockeying to get a good shot of the president’s
motorcade, which was due to arrive any minute. He needed to talk to her, but the woman
seemed to be in perpetual motion.
He almost slammed into her when she stopped abruptly at the press gate. There were two men
in dark suits and sunglasses checking IDs and the passes that had been specifically designed for
the event and distributed the day before by the White House press office. Rivers turned her
attention to the covering agent, leaving the other to continue his work.
“Did you get the photographs?” The man nodded. “Let me see them.”
The man, who was at least 7 inches taller than Rivers and twice as heavy, immediately reached
inside his suit jacket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.
“You guys have been keeping an eye out?” she asked.
“Yes ma’am. Everybody’s checked out on the list.”
Ryan thought the deference showed by the burly agent to the diminutive Jodie Rivers was
vaguely amusing, but kept the thought to himself.
The advance team leader turned to show him the sheet. It contained a blown-up shot of
Vanderveen’s driver’s license in the name of Timothy Nichols, as well as several other images,
showing him with glasses, long hair, dark hair, and a beard, among other things.
“These are enhanced photographs,” she needlessly explained. “We took the original and made
some minor alterations. It’s not much, but it makes my people look a little bit harder, helps to
keep them on their toes.” Turning back to the agents: “Okay, good work, guys. Stay sharp.”
She handed the sheet back to the man and moved off with surprising speed, Ryan close on her
tail. She suddenly seemed to remember that he was there, and turned her head to address him as
they pushed through the crowd. “I already talked to Deputy Director Harper, Mr. Kealey, as
well as Director Landrieu. You’re free to come and go in this area as you please… In fact, I’m
happy to have you here. Every warm body helps. What do you need from me?”
He finally got an uninterrupted minute when they stopped to examine another checkpoint.
“Actually, Agent Rivers, what I want to do is check the surrounding roads. You look like you
have everything pretty much under control here, so I figure that the best place for me is where
you’re short on manpower.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know. Something that catches my eye, I guess… I would just feel better if I was on the
move.”
She was skeptical. “Sounds kind of pointless.”
“I know, but there’s not much else to do.”
That seemed to satisfy her. “So, again, what exactly do you need from me?”
He shrugged. “I’m carrying… Harper told you that?” She nodded, her eyes instinctively passing
over his body. He was wearing a loose-fitting dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, untucked,
over a pair of khakis. She didn’t see the pistol, but realized it was probably under the shirt at the
small of his back. “I don’t want any problems from your people on the perimeter. Can you let
them know that I’m coming?”
She frowned, then said, “I can tell my people, but we’re having a hell of a time with
communications. The boys from Metro are pulling a lot of the vehicle checks, and they’re using
UHF radios. It’s been giving us problems all day, but I’ll see what I can do. How are you for
ID?”
It was Ryan’s turn to frown. “Harper couldn’t get me anything. You know, technically speaking,
I’m retired from the Agency, and Landrieu had some problems with that. He wasn’t backing
down.”
Wincing, she said, “That could be a problem.”
“I know.” He hesitated. “If you can just get word to your top guy out there, then I can probably
start looking around without causing any distractions.”
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She thought about that, began to nod when her earpiece sparked to life. She listened intently as
Ryan looked on.
Rivers glanced up at him. “The president is about to arrive.”
Over her shoulder Ryan could already see the long procession of vehicles sweeping around the
corner onto Maine Avenue. The lights on top of the Secret Service Suburbans were flashing,
though the sirens remained silent. The sight of the motorcade’s approach caused a storm of
activity in the press pool, as cameramen and photographers hustled for position in the
overcrowded area. The distant roar of the demonstrators started to pick up as well, despite the
fact that their view of the motorcade was all but obscured.
Ryan saw that Rivers looked nervous. She caught his attention and tried a weak smile. “That
