The Eighth Day (17 page)

As they walked through the building, the president queried Hiccock, “So you think we shouldn’t put this weapon system on-line?”

“No sir; I didn’t say that. I would just suggest ensuring some safeguards against its abuse.”

“Bill, there’s a man who’s always within 20 feet of me with the ‘football.’ At any moment, anywhere I am in the world, I can authorize the launch of nuclear weapons aimed at any point on the globe. The safeguard against me being crazy, is the NCA; the National Command Authority.”

Back at the White House, Naomi Spence hit the roof when one of her aides reported seeing a rerun of an MSNBC piece in which the reporter gave accurate information on the president’s location. First, she called the Secret Service office down the hall. She hadn’t even hung up when they immediately sprang into action. She then called Wally to chew him a new asshole!

“With all respect, sir,” Hiccock said. The presidential contingent was now on the other side of the building heading for the presidential limousines. There was a line of local cops looking outward and Secret Service agents all along the route. “Nuclear weapons are big, noisy, and leave a giant mess. You also don’t need to send a card along with them. The recipient will know who sent them. The weapon we have just seen is a stealth system; as long as it is secret it can be used with impunity. That may be too great a temptation, sir.”

“Bill, you are a real piece of work,” the president said as he turned to a Two Star General who had accompanied him to the test.

Samovar was 25 feet from the president, who was walking his way and chatting with a soldier and another man. There were seven agents loosely around the president and in three more seconds Samovar would be inside that ring of men. His hand stealthily unsnapped the leather holster’s strap, his hand flexed not unlike the mannerism displayed by gunfighters in the old west right before a gunfight. His hand was on the butt of his gun when his simple plan dismantled before his very eyes.

A Secret Service agent suddenly put his hand to his ear and requested, “Repeat!” He then dropped his hand and yelled, “Close ranks!”

Instantly ten agents surrounded the president. The pace picked up as the now small, tight circle of agents almost swept him off his feet and rushed towards the limousine. Hiccock didn’t know what had happened as he was left in the dust. Then he saw one of the police officers turn and pull his weapon out of its holster. The cop fired just as someone yelled “gun.” An agent, blocking the line of fire, went down. The cop, now crouching, fired again and was immediately hit by return fire. It was like a bad movie seeming to play back in slow motion. The cop’s arms and legs were shattered. The agents, and there must have been ten firing at him, didn’t aim for his vital organs. It was immediately apparent to Hiccock that they wanted him alive! The local cops reacted as well, albeit not as quick on the draw, and a split second later, three fired. One of the officer’s bullets slammed into the ground and skidded off the asphalt a foot in front of Hiccock. Another one of the cop’s bullets caught the shooter cop in his head; just as the Secret Service was yelling “hold your fire!”

The president was immediately flung into the back of the limousine. It peeled away, as Hiccock watched the rear door slam hard on one agent’s leg. The man grunted as he continued to shield the president with his body and re-shut the door after pulling in his leg. Agents brandishing blue metal and black machine guns were now yelling for everyone to get down. Hiccock hit the dirt. The Secret Service then ordered all the cops to drop their weapons. Captain Yates repeated the order, and the cops placed their weapons on the ground. Agents collected them and had the Captain identify each of his men until the Service allowed them to stand again.

In the limo, one Secret Service agent checked the president for wounds, while the other two had their sub-machine guns trained out the partially opened bulletproof glass windows. Soon other Secret Service cars joined the limo.

“Where’s the football?” the driver shouted to the agents in the back seat, as sirens blaring from more and more police and unmarked cars cleared the way for the limo’s return to the White House.

Eventually, Hiccock was allowed to get up. As he passed the bullet-riddled body of the cop on the ground, he was struck by the wild look in the man’s eyes frozen there by death. He wondered if he had just seen the common face of the enemy; the one who was unleashing terror on his country, attempting to assassinate the national courage as well as our leaders. He never thought much about the face of the man or men he was after. He now had a reference from which to draw upon for any future nightmares he might have.

He was driven back to the White House by the same agent who drove him out. This time he shared his ride with the Two Star who had arrived with the president.

The letter that Dennis Mallory entrusted to Jack Flanagan for analysis set off a number of alarms at the NYPD forensics lab. Federal watch lists and a dozen other law enforcement advisories were tripped when it was analyzed. This was more than Flanagan had bargained for and he had to cover his tracks. As a senior detective he had the juice downtown to have any forensic guy’s curiosity over the origin and purpose of the letter squashed. The Feds, however, would be rabid dogs looking for an ass to bite. To save his own, he reached out to an agent he once helped “get on the right track” many years back. As the operator at the FBI connected him, he hoped the agent on the other end would remember his hometown roots and an NYPD detective sergeant who looked the other way when the young G-man made a small mistake.

“SAC Palumbo.”

Jack felt an immediate cold wind through the receiver.
This might not be easy
. This guy sounded hardened, in that been-a-fed-too-long way. “Joe Palumbo? It’s Jack Flanagan, Manhattan North squad.”

“Hi ya, Jack. How ya doing?”

That glimmer of familiarity gave Jack new hope that he just might be able to pull this off. “Joe, it’s been a long time. SAC, huh? Good going.”

“Nah, they just couldn’t get anyone else to head up the San Fran office, so they got down to me on the list. You’re still gumshoeing, I see.”

“Yeah, still can’t get it right after thirty-six years, so I keep trying.”

“So what can I do for the finest of New York’s finest?”

“It’s a long story, but essentially, one of the good guys here, an ex-detective, needed some help with a case he took on freelance. His wife’s dying …” Jack caught himself and, not wanting to will anything in, amended his words “… fighting a brain tumor or something. So he needed money. He took a private security job. His protectee received a threat letter. He asked me to run the letter through our lab.”

“I see, go on.”

“Anyway, the letter he gave me to do a scratch and sniff on wound up getting the bureau’s attention.”

“Hold on,” Joey said as he riffled through his in-box. “Yeah, I got a report here. A threat letter to one Miles Taggert. You’re damn right we are interested. It might be tied into the recent wave of terrorist attacks.”

“Yeah, I got all that. Look, I’ll take a lecture from the chief of detectives on misuse of police assets. Hell, I’ll even pay the lab bill. But what I need is to get my ass out of this loop and for Dennis to be kept in it directly. It’s his case, you know, and he ain’t a cop no more. So can you help me out here, Joe?”

“That’s a pickle. I got the director all over my butt on this one.”

Jack could read from the tone of the agent’s voice that he was going to do something. He added a little incentive. “You know, Joe, at the end of the day, we are all after the bad guys, not the good cops.”

“I hear you, Jack. I still got some friends in the New York bureau. I’ll see what I can do. What’s this guy’s name and number?”

As Jack filled in Joey, a tradition as old as law enforcement itself was once again celebrated. A cop tapping a favor for an old partner or boss, which in turn causes another favor to be called upon, and maybe three or four more until the task was done, or covered or even buried. Each step along the way, although not by the book, was definitely written into the margins. With each new pass-along, a new set of debt and obligations was created ensuring the continuance of an economy deeply rooted within every police organization in the world.

Janice came rushing into Bill’s office half an hour after he returned to the White House. She ran up to him and gave him a hug. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”

“Yeah, it was close.”

“Were you next to the president?”

“No, I was ten feet behind him. We had been chatting but I fell back because he started talking to a General, and I wanted to give them some room. But one of the bullets hit about a foot in front of me.”

Janice closed her eyes as she rested her head on Bill’s shoulder.

A Secret Service agent appeared at the door. “Mr. Hiccock will you come with us, please?”

Hiccock gave her one last squeeze and followed the men down the hall. They entered the Secret Service office to find the Chief of Presidential Detail waiting, along with Naomi Spence.

“Mr. Hiccock, you excused yourself from the president’s side early during the demonstration today. Can you tell us what you did in that time?”

“Yes. I called Carly Simone, the reporter. She had asked me to give her a quote on the president.”

“And did you?” Naomi asked.

“Yes, Ms. Spence. I told her about the president’s funding bill. I thought it was an important issue and I knew he had already briefed Congress. I was only giving her a couple of hours lead.”

“If anybody gives out plums to the press, Hiccock, it’s me, so I can keep the books. Otherwise every reporter would work that deal with every member of this administration,” Naomi said barely containing her rage.

“Well, that’s a good point. I’ll remember that next time.”

“Did you tell her where you were calling from?” The head of the Detail asked.

You could see the neon sign flashing “Stupid” across Bill’s forehead as he realized that even though he didn’t tell her where he was, he did. “Oh God, don’t tell me she had my call traced?”

“I am afraid so. We don’t know how yet, but we’ll find out soon.”

“So who tried to kill the president?” Hiccock, still comatose from the revelation, asked the Agent.

“Right now we have nothing solid. The gunman wasn’t an officer. His badge was a phony, and he’s got no history we can find.”

“A foreign operative?”

The Agent made a decision that Hiccock was one of the good guys. Even though he proceeded by not really imparting facts, only conjecture. “Too early to tell but a guy with a clock this clean doesn’t just pop out of the cabbage patch. Somebody spent a lot of money on brooming his past. It might have been a plan hatched and executed solely by him, but that’s not likely, unless he found a ton of cash in a brown paper bag on his doorstep one day.”

“I don’t follow that,” Naomi said.

Hiccock jumped in thinking out loud before he caught himself, “He’d have left some kind of trail making the kind of money that disappearing from society requires. Sorry.” He yielded to the head Secret Service agent.

“That’s okay; you’re right. It’s just too early to tell.”

Naomi steered the discussion to her pressing matter. “I have a press briefing in five minutes. The scanners caught all the local police radio traffic, and all the networks are already live, speculating on the attempted assassination.”

“We’re in lockdown here, Naomi. Where’s the conference?” The head agent asked.

“At State. Everybody is shifting there now. I leave in two minutes. Anything I need to know or not know?”

“Keep it calm for now. We are investigating. We have no names or any reason to believe this wasn’t just a lone nut.”

“They know he was dressed as a cop. It leaked from the hospital,” Naomi informed the agent.

“Damn” was all the man who trained to work in secret could say as the veil was lifting on that which he wanted to hold confidential forever.

“Last question, then I have to go to the press conference. Two agents were hit. How are they doing?” Naomi queried, knowing it was a question she would be asked.

“We have two men down; both were wearing their vests and are expected to fully recover. Try not to mention the vests. Why tell the next guy where to shoot?”

“Thanks. Wish me luck,” Naomi said as she exited.

“Am I needed any longer?” Hiccock asked the head of the detail.

“We’ll talk later.”

As he left the office he could not get over the fact that he may have been an unwitting accomplice to the attempted assassination of the President of the United States.

An absurdity was in progress at Foggy Bottom. Since the White House went into “lockdown” the minute the Secret Service heard the gunshots in Alexandria and ordered the crash, the press conference was hastily moved to the facilities at the State Department. This was no easy task for myriad reasons, not the least of which was that for every reporter the networks had covering the White House there were an equal number assigned to the State Department. The displaced White House beat reporters were invading their counterparts’ turf at State, consequently wrinkling a few egos, which had to be ironed out. Oddly enough, the woman creating the most disturbance was a blonde whose limited access White House pass was being questioned at the gates of the State Department’s entrance.

“You obviously don’t recognize me. I cover the White House for MSNBC,” she protested.

“That ain’t the problem lady. I was told green and white passes only. You got yellow there and nobody said nothing to me about no yellow pass,” the Wankenhut security guard explained. “Besides, there’s a crew from MSNBC inside already!”

“There is? Well, they’ll vouch for me.”

“They’re inside already and they ain’t going to come out again till they’re leaving.” The guard was beyond being courteous at this point.

“Do you have a supervisor?” Carly asked in a tone that really meant,
Is there someone with a brain who I can speak to?

The guard keyed his radio, “Len, I got a reporter here wants to see you.” He placed his radio mic back in its belt clip and motioned with his hand to Carly. “He’s coming, ma’am. In the meantime, will you please step aside so I can help these other people?”

It took two minutes, but a guard with gold captain’s bars on his epaulets arrived at the guard’s station. “What’s the situation here?” the Captain asked, looking Carly up and down and hoping it was something to do with her.

“I’m Carly Simone from MSNBC and I need to get into that press conference right now!”

“You’re Carly Simone? Please wait right here.” He keyed his radio. “Base, this is Captain. Tell the detail I got Ms. Simone here at northwest entrance.

“Just a minute ma’am,” the older guard related.

Carly was relieved that she was finally getting the treatment consistent with a member of the 4th estate. A minute later, two men in suits appeared and asked to see Carly’s I.D. She showed them and one of them said, “Follow us, please.” As she left the area with her personal escorts, Carly shot a glance to the guard who had given her such a bad time and said, “See I told you that you were wrong!” She couldn’t figure out the strange smile she saw on the guard’s face. She would in just a moment.

Having never before been in the State Department, Carly had no way of knowing that her two male escorts were not delivering her to her rightful place in the press room. Instead, they entered the State Department security office. There she was introduced to a bald headed man who was too mean looking and too serious to ever mistake for anything but a cop.

“What’s this all about; where’s the press room?”

“Miss Simone, I am assistant agent in charge, Glenn Durban. I am placing you under arrest for violation of the National Security Act. You have the right to remain silent; anything you say can and will…”

Carly’s head started to spin. She couldn’t comprehend what was going on. “What are you doing? This must be a mistake!”

“You have the right to an attorney...,” the bald man continued on in a drone more accustomed to a common criminal than Carly Simone, ace reporter from MSNBC.

“Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?”

Stunned and shocked, Carly instinctively just nodded, her eyes frozen in space.

“Agent Grimes, you are witness to the fact the prisoner nodded in the affirmative as to the understanding of her rights.” The word “prisoner” ripped through Carly’s brain like a jagged-edged knife. She quailed as her arms were suddenly grabbed and she felt the cold hardness of handcuffs clamping down on her wrists; the burly agent behind her sliding her bracelet up so it wouldn’t interfere with the ratcheting action she heard and felt as the restraints were tightened.

She was led through the halls of the building and out onto the steps with her hands secured behind her, an agent on each arm. As additional news vans and satellite trucks were pulling up past the C Street North West entrance, the MSNBC guys caught sight of Carly being loaded into the back seat of a Secret Service black car, and watched it leave with its grill lights and rear deck array flashing. Bill, a CBS technician keyed his PL line that connected him with his network’s Washington control room.
They’re gonna love this
, he thought as he dialed, anxious to report on what he had just witnessed. Members of other news organizations were also making calls.

Naomi was handling the impromptu conference well, especially since there were already conspiracy questions abounding. For her part, she stayed on the “this is what we know at this moment” and “that’s all I can speak to” disciplines which prompted repetitive, probing questions on the same topic. Although it was an effective way for the press, as a body, to hammer away at the “talking points,” to the outside observer it made the press look bad, not the press secretary. Of course, if in the heat of repetition, Naomi changed any part of her answer even one iota, it could open a door to an onslaught of news.

“Naomi, are you saying this man acted alone?” a practicing member of the art of repetition asked.

“Gill, again, it’s just too early to know that for sure. We do know he was the only one arrested at the scene.”

She then called on a reporter from Fox news. “Harry.”

“Naomi, my producer just informed me that Carly Simone from MSNBC was just led away from this building in handcuffs. Can you comment on that report?”

“What aspect of it would you like me to comment on?”

“Is it true?”

“I don’t know. I have been in here with you.”

“Why would she be arrested?”

Naomi glanced in the direction of the Secret Service’s public information officer. He nodded, having just heard that Carly was in their custody over his earpiece. She planted her feet and spoke. “Miss Simone has been taken into custody for alleged National Security Violations.” The room erupted. As bad as the events of the last 24 hours had been for the country with the explosion and deaths on Long Island and now the attempt on the president’s life, no one in the room would have believed it was soon going to get worse.