The American (30 page)

 

He would not be satisfied without first test-firing the device. It was already laid out across the cement. Standing in the shadows cast by the late afternoon sun, he quietly examined the work that had cost him the better part of the morning.

From the battery, the bare copper wire separated into two distinct paths, then came back together at the exposed terminals of the toggle switch. Conduit would be used to insulate the wire from the sheet metal of the van, but it would not be necessary here, as the cement served the same purpose. The wire split from the switch and reunited after 10 feet at the exposed circuit board of the cell phone. From there, it began to resemble a ladder. There was nothing unusual about the rails, but each of the four rungs was covered by a five-pound sandbag. Each sandbag, in turn, concealed a number 6 blasting cap. He had wanted the number 8 caps: the seismic detonators were both more powerful at eight grains of PETN per cap, as opposed to six, and safer, with a lower chance of hydrostatic discharge. All the same, he was relatively satisfied with what he had. It would do the same thing in the end.

He hadn't taken any chances, though. He had used the digital ammeter for the first time that morning to check the resistance over each blasting cap. It came out to roughly 1.9 ohms per cap, and a little more than 2 ohms over the switch itself.

The calculations had appeared in his mind like a sudden gust of wind on a calm summer day. The reciprocal of the sum gave him the total resistance in the circuit, 0.384 ohms, which in a parallel circuit is always less than the resistance over each component. From there, 12 volts divided by the reciprocal provided him with the total current moving through the circuit: 31.26 amperes. This translated to a little over 6.31 amps moving through the legwires of each electric cap. Using the ammeter to check his calculations, he had allowed himself a small smile at the numbers that appeared on the LCD display. Everything was working out perfectly.

Vanderveen understood how dangerous a test fire could be. Even now, with nothing more dangerous than four blasting caps at his immediate disposal, he took all necessary precautions.

After all, he didn't need to see the detonation. He only needed to see the effects.

He stood behind the bulk of the Econoline van and pulled the second cell phone from his pocket. The number to the first was on his speed dial. His breath came faster than usual, despite the fact that nothing important was about to happen. His finger hovered over the button. All around him, still air and dust particles floated in the dim light of the barn.

There was no sound from the woman.
Why not?
He peeked around the corner of the van to examine her still form. He realized, with a start, that he had not heard her move for at least twenty minutes. She must have died when he first started to run the wire out over the cement.

He was a little surprised that she had gone so quietly, but it didn't really matter. He returned to his position, completely focused on what was about to occur. His back was against the cool metal of the van, the number was on his screen. He breathed deeply, felt the dry air of the barn enter his lungs.

He pushed the button.

 

Joshua McCabe, the assistant director of the Secret Service's Office of Protective Research, arrived at midday to confer with the head of the advance team. Jodie Rivers was a petite, pixie-faced woman with inquisitive hazel eyes and shoulder-length auburn hair. At thirty-two years of age, she was young for her position, but a sharp intelligence, combined with the ability to spot problem situations long before they developed into full-blown situations, had earned her rapid escalation through the ranks, along with the grudging respect of her superiors.

After instructing his driver to wait with the Lincoln Town Car, McCabe followed her along the gangplank as she pointed out the various implementations that had been made. The assistant director knew her reputation within the Service as a go-getter with unparalleled energy, but he thought Rivers now looked tired and overwhelmed by the magnitude of her task.

“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.”

 

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.

T
he 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 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.

 

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.”

Turning to look into the other man's face, Kealey could do nothing more than hope to God he was right.

“Trust me, it's almost over.”

 

When Jonathan Harper went looking for Kealey in the early afternoon at Tyson's Corner, he found him seated back at Naomi's side. Ryan had taken his earlier suggestions and now looked almost presentable, although his choice of clothing still left something to be desired. In a room filled with clean-cut FBI agents and representatives from the State Department, Kealey was wearing faded jeans and a threadbare dress shirt—over a T-shirt, untucked—with the first three buttons undone.

Harper shook his head at the younger man's pointed efforts to avoid conformity, but knew that he would let it slide. As far as results were concerned, the deputy director thought that Ryan was the most valuable person in the room, and at the moment, results were all that he cared about.

They looked up from the maps they were going over as he approached. “Got a minute?”

Naomi nodded and pulled out a chair. As Harper sat down, they immediately noticed that he was wearing a slight smile. He placed a pile of bank statements on the table in front of them.

“We finally got something on those Saudi passports the Feds picked up at National Airport. Theresa Barzan held accounts in three major banks in London, accounts into which several large deposits were recently made. Want to guess where the money came from?”

“Tehran?” Naomi ventured.

“Try Sudan. First Central Bank of Khartoum. Clever move on the woman's part…We have no diplomatic relations with the Sudanese, so we can't pressure them to release the depositor's name.”

“But we can track the money from London, right?” Ryan asked. He frowned slightly. “It wasn't actually the Feds that came up with this, was it?”

“No, it got kicked up to the FATF. The Treasury Department figured that would result in more British cooperation.”

Ryan nodded in approval. The Financial Action Task Force on money laundering had been set up in the late-1980s to combat organized crime, but since 9/11 had become increasingly involved in the process of tracking terrorist funds. Both the U.S. and the U.K. were charter members. “This is a definite lead, but the problem is time.”

“I agree,” Naomi said. She traced a finger down one of the long columns of numbers. “This is pretty typical, what she's done here. It's called smurfing. By breaking down the funds into tiny amounts, it usually ends up getting lost in the huge number of transactions that take place each day. And this is only the beginning. From London, she would have routed the original sum through at least another dozen banks. Even with the starting point, it's going to take a while to trace it to the recipient.”

“All the more reason for us to follow up on Ryan's idea,” Harper responded. He pushed a second sheet of paper toward them. It was the letterhead that immediately caught their attention. “This one is nothing helpful,” Harper said. “So don't get your hopes up. The French Foreign Office sent off a rocket to the State Department earlier today with an inquiry as to ‘the current state of our terrorist threat.' Basically, they wanted to know if we have things under control, and they weren't too delicate about letting us know what they thought of our security measures.”

Naomi looked surprised, and Ryan let out a low whistle. “I'll bet that didn't go over too well.”

The deputy director smiled ruefully. “You don't know the half of it. If Chirac ever gets a look at the response we sent them, he'll probably have to break off diplomatic relations on principle alone. Same thing with the Italians. Nevertheless, they've decided to stick to the schedule. I just thought you should know that they're on their way. Whether we find him or not, this event is going to happen.”

 

Standing before the open doors of the cargo area, Vanderveen stared with satisfaction at the simple elegance of his creation. It was almost a shame, he thought with a brief smile, that he would soon have to destroy it.

The Ford E-350 van had been purchased from a retired electrician, and the cluttered cargo area looked as if it might contain anything other than 3,000 pounds of high explosives. The previous owner had rigged up handmade wooden shelves that were bolted into the upper portion of the frame, running from back to front the length of the van. Beneath the shelves on either side were broad sheets of flat pegboard, from which hung tools of every type imaginable. All of it had been thrown in for a modest fee by the electrician, who had quickly discovered that retirement was much more expensive than he had anticipated.

Along with the tools had come four large steel trunks that were 32" x 18" x 14". It had not been enough, of course; after running some quick calculations, and allowing for space for the conduit on top, Will had purchased one additional trunk through a wholesale warehouse in Richmond. Then he had bolted the five steel boxes to the floor of the van. Even with the additional trunk, he still had nearly 25 pounds of the grayish-white material that would not fit in the compartments. He wasn't bothered by this development, though, as he was sure that the excess could be put to some good use.

His decision to use the trunks had necessitated a slight change in the circuit he had devised, but he still had plenty of number 6 caps at his disposal. At one cap per trunk, there was a little over 37 amperes running through the circuit, but the current moving over each detonator was the same as he had previously calculated: at just over 6.31 amps, it was enough to ensure the destruction of each cap, but not so much as to run the risk of an electrical arc, which would almost certainly result in a misfire.

He recognized that the use of the trunks was, at best, a weak effort at shielding the van's true cargo from prying eyes. At the same time, he didn't want to have to hang curtains in the rear windows if it could be avoided. Doing so would almost certainly arouse the suspicion of the police officers checking vehicles in the vicinity of the motorcade's route. The drive into the city, when detection was most likely, would be the most dangerous part of the operation. Once the van was parked, he would be able to detonate the bomb from the safety of his overwatch position if it appeared that the device was about to be discovered.

Even if the president managed to escape unscathed, a possibility that Will found highly unlikely, he knew with complete certainty that nothing would stop his creation from realizing its full potential.