Gideon's War/Hard Target (52 page)

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, who are you?”

“Goddammit, I just told you! Are you deaf? Agents Dillard and Koons with the State Department.”

“Where’s your clearance? Where’s your pass?”

“Here, look, talk to Secretary Bonifacio, okay?”

Gideon extended his phone to the guard, and the man regarded it as if it were radioactive. Secretary Bonifacio had a notorious temper, and Gideon could see the guard debating whether he wanted to risk her wrath. Then he said, “Go ahead. You’ll have to surrender your weapons.”

“Sure,” Gideon said. “Of course. Mine is stowed in my vehicle already.” He lifted his coat to show an empty holster.

Tillman unholstered his pistol and laid it on the table by the door.

The two guards then checked them with a metal detector and waved them on. Gideon and Tillman walked through the door, into the concrete tunnel, and began walking toward the Russell Building a few hundred yards away.

“I’m impressed,” said Tillman. “You’re very convincing.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” said Gideon.

They hadn’t taken more than a few strides when one of the guards called, “Oh, gentlemen, I’ll need to see your IDs.”

Gideon and Tillman, of course, had only their real IDs, which would undoubtedly set off alarm bells.

“So much for talking,” said Tillman.

“I’ll take the one on the left,” Gideon whispered.

They turned and walked back toward the two guards. When they got within two yards of the men, they both put their shoulders down and charged forward, smashing the two guards into the concrete wall. Tillman and Gideon were both sizable, fit men. But so were the Secret Service guards. Having spent his life training in the fighting arts, Tillman was better prepared than Gideon for what came next.

Tillman planted the heel of his hand under the Secret Service man’s chin and slammed his helmet against the concrete wall. Even wearing a helmet the impact was enough to stun the man. Tillman then hit him with a short left hook to the jaw, and the man went down in a heap.

Meanwhile Gideon found himself grappling with a younger, stronger man. Within seconds, things were not going well. The Secret Service agent had recovered after being momentarily caught by surprise and was now wrestling Gideon to the ground.

Tillman grabbed him from behind, hooking both heels around his hips and slipping his arms around the guard’s head in what Brazilian jujitsu practitioners call a rear naked choke. It was the same move that police used to call a sleeper hold.

The guard attempted to scream for assistance. But his call for help amounted only to a spluttering, choking noise.

“Grab his arms!” Tillman hissed. “He’s probably got a panic button somewhere.”

Gideon immobilized the struggling officer’s arms just as his fingers clawed for a small red button on the radio unit clipped to his belt. Within seconds the officer’s entire body went limp, his brain succumbing to the sudden loss of blood.

“Get their clothes, IDs, and weapons,” Tillman whispered, pulling a pair of flex cuffs off the unconscious agent’s belt. “We have to move fast. He’ll regain consciousness very quickly.”

They undressed the guards and stashed them in the back of the car. Five minutes later they were crawling into the mouth of the ventilation duct above the old subway line.

Tillman crawled to the grate at the end of the tunnel and peered out. In front of him was the deserted platform of the older subway. There were no guards, no dogs, nothing. He pushed the iron grate out of the wall. It pivoted on rusty hinges with an ear-piercing shriek. On the opposite end of the platform a shadow moved across an open doorway.

“Hold olin>

The lights flickered on, bathing the entire room in bright fluorescence. A tall Secret Service agent entered, hand under his jacket on the butt of his gun. A second agent followed. The second agent shined a small but intense flashlight down the end of the platform to a larger tunnel.

“Clear,” the agent with the flashlight said.

“I heard something,” the tall agent with his hand on his pistol said. He signaled toward the tunnel. “Where does that lead?”

“To a ventilation shaft that connects to the bomb shelter.”

Tillman had heard there was a bomb shelter underneath the Capitol. But this was his first confirmation of that rumor.

“Think we should check? That area is a rat’s nest.”

The agent with the flashlight shook his head. “There’s a door at the end of the tunnel. It’s been welded shut.”

“Check it.”

The agent disappeared, came back after a few minutes. “Like I said, welded shut.”

“Well, goddammit, I heard something.”

“So you said.”

“What about that ventilation duct?” He nodded in Tillman’s direction as he flicked on his flashlight.

Tillman froze. He knew that if they shined the light at the grate, he’d be spotted. But if he tried to back away from the grate, they’d spot his movement.

“Hold on,” the agent with the flashlight said, cocking his head, as though hearing something in his earpiece. “POTUS will be arriving in four. We need to clear the corridor.”

The tall agent frowned and shook his head grudgingly. A bead of perspiration ran down Tillman’s face. Then the agent switched off his flashlight, turned, and both agents walked out of the room.

“Go,” Gideon whispered.

Tillman pushed the grate as slowly as possible. This time it only let out a soft, low groan.

The brothers climbed out from the ventilation tunnel.

“Where to?” Tillman said softly.

Gideon pointed at the tunnel the two agents had checked. “Let’s try to pop the welds on that door. If we can get into an elevator shaft or a mechanical tunnel we should be able to get down into Basement two.”

“Sounds good. We’re way past bluffing our way through at this point.”

They entered the tunnel. Tillman used the flashlight he’d lifted from the agent back in the Russell Building garage. When they reached the steel door, Gideon examined the three weld beads on the steel frame. All the welds were on the side of the door where the handle was. There was no welding on the side of the door where the hinges were located.

“Pull the hinge pins,” Gideon said.

“Just what I was thinking.”

Tillman pulled a folding knife off the belt he’d harvested from the agent. It was a good knife, a Benchmade automatic. The guy had good taste in knives.

“You take the top, I’ll take the bottom,” Tillman said, thumbing the button that triggered the blade to pop out with a satisfying click.

No further communication between the brothers was necessary. They knew exactly what to do. Tillman hunkered down and shoved the blade of his knife under the flange at the top of the hinge pin. Gideon stepped onto Tillman’s back and got to work on the top pin.

Within seconds they had the pins out. Unlike those on the ventilation grate, these hinges had been recently lubricated with a heavy lithium grease.

Gideon hopped down, pried out the third hinge pin, and inserted his knife into the crack. Tillman did the same.

“One,” Tillman said. “Two.”

“Three,” they said together. With a sharp twist of their knives, they were able to move the door about a quarter of an inch out of the frame.

“You brace, I’ll go deeper,” Gideon said.

Tillman applied steady pressure to the haft of his knife while Gideon drove his a little deeper into the crack.

“Go,” Gideon said.

He braced this time, while Tillman moved his blade deeper still.

“One. Two. Three.”

Another quarter of an inch. Now the welds were offering more resistance. So they were only able to move the door about an eighth of an inch.

They repeated the same process several times until finally the edge of the door cleared the frame. They stuck their knives in all the way, this time wrenching backward with all their strength. The welds popped and the door came free.

“Whatever happens,” Gideon whispered, “I’m glad we did this. And I’m proud to be your brother.”

“Don’t be such a girl,” Tillman said.

Gideon smiled and set the door against the wall. Tillman probed the other side with his flashlight. Beyond the door was a low tunnel made of crumbling red brick that looked like it might be 150 years old.

Gideon looked at his watch. He had eight minutes before the president began speaking. Eight minutes before he would either save Kate or die trying.

52

WASHINGTON, DC

At that moment Kate was enjoying the pomp and circumstance of the political pageant. Senators and representatives she had only seen from a distance or viewed on C-SPAN milled about her. Smart men and women in crisp suits shook hands or slapped each other on the back. Partisan differences were set aside as the anointed few hobnobbed and glad-handed, congratulating themselves and one anodeoooooooooosan dther for their exalted positions and good fortune.

She was surprised when she felt a rough hand on her shoulder and turned to see a Secret Service agent with a wired earpiece summoning her as if she’d been a bad girl in school.

“Please come with me, ma’am.”

Her first thought was that the Secret Service discovered she was just a low-level oil company executive who didn’t belong among the movers and shakers. That thought was quickly followed by a fear that something had happened to Gideon. But as the Secret Service agent led her through the throng of politicians and government officials, it occurred to her that Gideon didn’t even know she was at the Capitol, and there was no one here who would bother to tell her if he was injured or hurt.

By the entrance to the Russell Building, the agent handed her a device that looked like an old-fashioned transistor radio with a stubby rubber antenna. It wasn’t a radio, however; it was a secure VOIP wireless phone, operating on the NSA’s proprietary network, as the agent was pleased to inform her. He told her there was a telephone call for her.

She could not have been more surprised if Gideon himself had appeared before her. But she was even more surprised when the voice on the other end was not Gideon’s, but a woman’s.

“Kate Murphy?” the voice asked. It had the slightest trace of a southern accent, and Kate immediately knew it was Nancy Clement. She recalled that Gideon said she grew up in Tennessee, the daughter of a tobacco farmer. A girl of privilege who had gone on to work a low-paying job as an FBI agent, which, despite herself, Kate admired.

“Is it Gideon?” she asked. “Is everything okay?”

“Gideon is fine,” said Nancy. “But you’re in danger. You have to get out of the Capitol building right away.”

“Why?”

“I can’t explain everything. The agent next to you is Ron Livingston. He’s a good friend. He’ll escort you out of the building.”

“I can’t just walk out of the State of the Union address. I’m a guest of Secretary Fitzgerald. What do I say to him?”

“Worry about that later. There’s an attack planned in the House chamber, and there’s no time. Gideon told me to get you out of there.”

“Gideon?”

“He’s there now. He’s trying to stop it. But you have to get out.”

She couldn’t just abandon Gideon. “He might need my help,” she said.

“Kate. Listen to me. These men who are planning the attack are fanatics. They won’t stop unless they’re successful, or dead.”

“But Gideon—” She was interrupted by a large, gruff man whom she immediately recognized as Deputy Director Dahlgren, the same man who had visited her earlier looking for Gideon. He was accompanied by two other agents, and he signaled to Livingston to give him the phone. Livingston grimaced and reluctantly took the phone from Kate’s hand and delivered it to Dahlgren.

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“Now,” said Dahlgren. “Let’s talk.”

53

WASHINGTON, DC

POTUS is arriving in sixty seconds,” said the voice in Wilmot’s ear. By now Wilmot recognized the calm, clipped tones of the communications specialist. He wasn’t the detail commander but a sort of dispatcher who relayed orders throughout the security detail.

Dale Wilmot felt more alive than he had ever felt in his life. It was all coming together. Collier had screwed the first tank into the HVAC system. He was now working on the second one.

The voice of the comm specialist said, “Agent Busbee, Agent Weiner, radio check.”

Every agent was supposed to check in every fifteen minutes with the command station. If they didn’t, Command sent a radio check. They were supposed to respond immediately. If they didn’t, it meant something was wrong.

“Agent Busbee, Agent Weiner, radio check.”

Still no answer.

“Why aren’t they responding?” Wilmot leaned closer when Agent Klotz didn’t respond. “Tell me why they’re not responding.”

“They’re in the parking garage of the Russell Building,” she said. “Sometimes radios don’t work right in these bomb-hardened concrete structures. The rebar in the concrete creates interference.”

Wilmot studied her face.

“Agents Dennis and Roberts, Level Two station check, post nine,” said the comm specialist.

“So those guys are going to check on the other two guys, right?”

“Right.”

“Level Two, what’s that mean?”

“Guns drawn, possible assault.”

“How often does that happen?”

Agent Klotz cleared her throat nervously. “Not often.”

“If there’s a problem, will that affect us here?”

“Not unless there’s a general alarm.”

Collier nodded and straightened. “Then we’re all set.”

The Command voice came out of the speaker again. “POTUS arriving Station One. Two minutes to Station Two.”

Station One, Wilmot knew, was the entrance to the Capitol. Station Two was the door of the House chamber. There were still a few minutes to go. The plan was to wait until the president had begun his speech to release the cyanide. They had considered doing it as soon as he entered. But they wanted the doors closed, and they wanted him in the center of the room where he would be harder to protect.

Until then they had to endure the political theater of the president’s addres">

Collier armed the tanks while Wilmot waited. He inserted a screwdriver into the set screws under the valve stems. He cranked hard, and the set screw moved. One, two, three turns and there was a tiny hiss within the tank. Then he pulled out a small box with a red switch on it. It was a triggering device that would override the HVAC’s normal on/off switch. It worked remotely on a shortwave frequency as long as it was within twenty-five meters of the unit. Any distance greater than that and the jamming frequency would block the signal. When the red switch was flipped, the heat would come on. Then, ten seconds later, a solenoid inside the HVAC system would vent the two cyanide tanks directly into the hot air chamber, the squirrel cage blowers would kick on, and baffles in the system would direct all the air in the system directly into the House chamber.