Act of Treason Read online

  Rivera smiled. “Well, I’ve got some good news for you. HQ is going to let us stand down for a few hours while the vice president’s detail babysits our boys.”

  Cash’s jaw went slack. “You’re serious.”

  “Yep. Take a few hours…go surprise the family. Just don’t miss the plane or I’ll shove one of my maxi-pads up your ass and transfer you to Fargo.”

  “So once we get to the Observatory I can take off?” he asked with a smile.

  “Not right away. You have to hang around for thirty minutes and then take the princess to her hotel. After that you’re free until five.” The princess Rivera was referring to was Alexander’s wife.

  “Why me?” Cash complained.

  “Because you’re her favorite, and she asked for you personally.”

  “Send someone else.”

  “You think this is fuckin’ democracy?” she shot back and waited to see if he would be stupid enough to disagree with her. “I didn’t think so. Take her to the hotel, put her to bed, and then go see your family.”

  “What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “What in the hell is what supposed to mean?” asked a genuinely confused Rivera.

  “Put her to bed,” he said in a falsetto. “You trying to say something’s going on?”

  Rivera frowned and said, “It’s a figure of speech, Einstein.”

  “Well, I don’t appreciate the connotation.”

  “I think you mean implication, and there is none.” Rivera straightened up and took on a decidedly more businesslike tone. “You’re in the second limo with her. I’m in the lead limo with the principals. We get to the observatory and she shakes hands for thirty minutes. Then you take her to the hotel, make sure she’s secure in her room, and then turn things over to whomever HQ sends. Do you have any questions, Special Agent Cash?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  GAZICH CROSSED THE STREET and started up the east side of Wisconsin Avenue. He had seen the itinerary. The thing was actually posted on the Internet. They were supposed to be on the move at noon, but it was likely they would be running late. Rarely were these types of things ever on time. This next part of his plan was a bit risky. Gazich could have set up a camera and done this from a safe distance, but the window for success was too small to risk it. He needed to be precise. The shaped charge in the cargo area was more than capable of defeating the protective shell of the armored limousine as long as it was detonated at the right moment. Gazich figured he had a twenty-foot window. Not all that much longer than the limo itself. If the motorcade was moving at a good clip, the timing would be difficult. That was why he had parked the minivan as close to the corner of Wisconsin and S Street as possible. The motorcade would have traveled only one block by the time it reached Wisconsin. The vehicles would then be forced to slow for the ninety-degree turn onto Wisconsin Avenue where the minivan was perfectly positioned for a broadside blast.

  If it were the president’s motorcade things would be quite a bit more difficult. In addition to the armored limousines and Suburbans, the ambulance, and a myriad of other vehicles, the presidential motorcade also contained a special vehicle that was designed to jam all signals except those used by the Secret Service. This made the remote detonation of a device impossible. Gazich had checked and discovered that the detail assigned to the candidates had no such equipment. Even so, he would still need to get close enough to make sure he could see when the limo came even with the minivan.

  Gazich passed a young couple sitting on a bench eating bagels. Two blocks ahead he could see the orange stepladder he’d strapped to the roof of the van. It had been a last-minute idea when he’d noticed that white minivans were more common than he would have thought. The color of the ladder would also make it easier for him to time the detonation. Not wanting to get too close to the van, he stopped and looked at the listings posted in the window of a real estate office.

  He felt the vibration of the Treo phone in his pocket and grabbed it.

  “Hello?”

  “Two o’clock works for me. Does it work for you?”

  “Two o’clock works.” Gazich pressed the end button, breathed a sigh of relief, and put the phone away.

  He kept meandering his way up the street, taking his time, window-shopping as he went. A few minutes later he heard the quick blast of a police siren being flicked on and then off. He looked up the street and watched as one of the DC Metro Police motorcycles eased out into traffic and blocked the northbound lane on Wisconsin Avenue. Gazich flexed his hands several times and asked himself how much closer he dared get. The motorcade would be along shortly. There was a good-sized tree of some sort a little less than a block away. It was about four feet across. Even though the full force of the blast would be directed away from him, there would still be flying debris and a concussion wave that could kill him if he didn’t get cover.

  Gazich reached the tree and pulled out the Treo phone. He fished out the small stylus and used it to tap the web browser icon on the screen. A few seconds later he was logged onto the site. He punched in the password and looked up at the motorcycle cop standing in the middle of the street. All that was left to do was hit the send button and the blast would be nearly instantaneous. The cop would be dead for certain, and quite possibly the people in the first several cars he had stopped. There were also shops and apartments directly across the street. There was a chance the limo would block the brunt of the blast, but it was unlikely. A five-hundred-pound shaped charge of Semtex was just as likely to hurl the limousine across the street and send the vehicle directly through the building.

  Gazich tried to remember the phrase the American generals used when one of their two-thousand-pound bombs missed its mark and flattened the home of one of his countrymen. The first police car reached the corner and turned toward Gazich, its lights and sirens going. Pedestrians stopped to watch the impressive sight as the motorcade moved from the side street onto Wisconsin Avenue.

  The phrase came to him and as the first limousine reached the corner, he smiled and said…“Collateral damage.”

  THE TRUTH WAS, her people could do this in their sleep. That was how well trained they were. The candidates stepped out onto the veranda of the mansion and waited for the former Cabinet officials, intel gurus, and generals to join them for one last photo op. Rivera stayed close, but out of the picture. Her entire detail was shifting now. They were a protective bubble that floated with the candidates as they moved. There was one counter sniper team on the top floor. They’d been up there since before sunrise, scanning the windows of the houses across the street, getting the general lay of the land, noting the range of certain targets and identifying the most likely spots for a shooter to set up.

  Rivera’s head was on a swivel, her dark sunglasses concealing her dark eyes. She was like a radar sweeping the sky for an incoming raider, except her job was much more difficult. The press was penned in behind some ropes, snapping away, recording tape, and shouting questions. Rivera paid almost no attention to what they were asking. On a subliminal level she was listening to their tone as her eyes scanned everything. Never hovering on any one person for more than a second or two. Most agents did this naturally. A few had to be taught. The ones who didn’t catch on were weeded out. The job was nothing if not instinctual.

  Their concern was the nut bag. Their fear was the professional. The nut bag they could detect. They were the ones with the wild eyes, dirty fingernails, and unkempt hair. Occasionally they were women, but mostly they were men. Fidgety, nervous men who paced back and forth. They were for the most part mentally ill, which made them sympathetic, but no less lethal. The professional was an entirely different matter. The lone man who was cool enough to act completely normal right up until the moment he pulled out a gun and blew her candidate’s brains all over the sidewalk. That was why she stayed close.

  Today was no big deal. She knew all the faces in the press gallery. They were the only people close enough to do anythi
ng, and she had two agents watching them, ready to pounce at the first sign of trouble. The only other possibility was a shooter from one of the houses across the street, but the odds of them getting an accurate shot off before the counter sniper boys drilled them in the head was negligible. All she had to do was get them down the steps and into the limo and she could relax. The Naval Observatory was only a few blocks away. This was a gravy run compared to the rest of the campaign. No rope lines with hundreds of unscreened people touching the candidates. No banquet hall where she had to escort them through a kitchen with knives everywhere and temperamental chefs sulking over ruined meals. Everything today was controlled.

  Rivera saw Garret gesture to the campaign’s press secretary. The woman stepped in front of the cameras and thanked them for coming. Alexander and Ross had done this so many times they no longer needed to be given direction. Both men started down the stairs for the waiting limo. The rear passenger side door was already opened and an agent was standing next to it. Rivera fell in behind the two men and stayed close as they went down the steps. Alexander got in first, followed by Ross and then Garret. Rivera closed the door and looked to her left to check the status of Alexander’s wife. She was sliding into the backseat. Special Agent Cash turned to look at Rivera. It was impossible to tell what his eyes were doing behind his sunglasses, but from the tension in his jaw line it was apparent that he was still in a foul mood. Cash shook his head and then disappeared into the backseat. Rivera didn’t give it a second thought. Egos, feelings, and friendships needed to be put on hold for two more weeks and then they could all get drunk and tell each other off.

  Rivera climbed in the front seat, closed the heavy door, and looked at the driver. “Let’s roll, Tim.”

  The driver pulled the gearshift into drive and took his foot off the brake. The heavy limousine began to roll along the narrow cobblestone drive. Both vehicles pulled up to the open gate and they turned the emergency lights in the grilles on. The other vehicles were waiting on the street. The limousines eased into the open slots and then Rivera gave the word to pull out. Her eyes kept scanning as they moved. They were as safe as babies in this rolling tank, but habits were hard to break. The old cobblestone street was rough and they were jostled around as they accelerated. They reached Wisconsin Avenue, where traffic was stopped in both directions for five blocks. The limo slowed for the right-hand turn and then accelerated, the twelve-piston 500-hp Detroit engine roaring as they gained speed.

  Rivera was looking at the faces of the pedestrians who had stopped to watch the motorcade. All of this was very normal. They referred to it as stopping and gawking. Up ahead, barely half a block down a man caught her eye. He was partially shielded by a tree and holding something. Even though the man was wearing a red baseball hat and sunglasses, she could sense intensity in the way he was watching the motorcade. Suddenly, almost as if he was trying to hide from someone, he disappeared behind the tree. Before Rivera could give it another thought, there was a thunderous explosion, the limousine started to rise in the air, and then everything went black.

  1

  WASHINGTON, DC

  JANUARY

  I rene Kennedy looked out at the white landscape from her seventh-floor office. Three fresh inches of snow had fallen overnight. The capital had a majestic winter wonderland feel to it when it snowed. It tended to be the kind of wet, heavy snow that coated every branch, statue, and park bench. The city looked frozen in time, and in a sense it was. A lame-duck president occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and the president–elect was one week away from taking his oath of office. Traditionally, the only business that got done the week before the inauguration was the business of pardons. Lawyers, lobbyists, and big-money players lined up to ask the president to forgive someone for a crime they had committed, or been accused of committing. Politics had gotten so rough that sometimes just being a friend of the president could bring about the unwanted attention of a special prosecutor. With that attention also came a mountain of legal bills. It was quickly becoming a tradition for outgoing presidents to wave a magic wand and make these legal problems go away. Pardons could also be about bricks and mortar. A new presidential library needed to be built, and they were not cheap. With this president, however, it was mostly about setting things right.

  This should have been on Kennedy’s mind, but it wasn’t. As director of the Central Intelligence Agency she should have been lobbying for a blanket pardon herself, but her mind was occupied with the here and now. This transition period between presidential administrations was always stressful, but even more so this time. The nation was without decisive and focused leadership until the new administration took over, and that left them vulnerable. To make matters worse, the word was out that the new administration was going to clean house. This was no surprise to Kennedy. She knew the minute the election results came in that she was out of a job. Actually, she knew several weeks earlier when the CIA’s Global Ops Center called to alert her of the attack on that Saturday in late October.

  The motorcade of presidential candidate Josh Alexander had been hit by a car bomb. Alexander and his running mate had narrowly escaped. Their limousine had been flipped by the blast of the bomb, but the structural integrity of the outer shell held. Alexander walked away unharmed while his running mate, Mark Ross, suffered a separated shoulder and a cut above his left eye. The second limousine did not fare as well. The front third of the vehicle collapsed under the blast and exposed Alexander’s wife and three Secret Service agents to the superheated gases of the explosion. All four people were virtually incinerated. Fifteen other individuals were also killed, and another thirty-four were wounded, seven of them critically.

  An al-Qaeda splinter group had released a statement the week before the attack that they were going to disrupt the American elections. In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, Kennedy had a pretty good idea how the American people would react to such foreign intervention in the democratic process. Two weeks later they proved her right. They turned out in record numbers on election day, and Josh Alexander and Mark Ross were swept into office by a landslide. Shortly after the election Ross began making statements to the press that he was going to do a top-down review of the CIA. That was code for cleaning house.

  Despite twenty-three years of service, Kennedy took none of this personally. It simply wasn’t worth it. The people had spoken, and in one week there would be the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another. Her chief focus for this last week would be to purge every possible piece of information that could come back and bite her, or any of her people, in the ass. Part of her unpleasant history with Ross was that he was a vindictive prick. Simply running her out of the job after two brief years as the first female director of the Agency might not be enough for him. Kennedy felt there was a real chance he would want to burn her at the stake, tie her up in investigations for the next decade. She made a mental note to ask President Hayes for that blanket pardon. After all she’d done it would not be out of line to do so.

  Kennedy took her eyes off the frozen landscape and checked her watch. They were late. It must be the snow, she thought to herself. It was a Saturday morning, and Kennedy worked most Saturday mornings. At least for another week. For all she knew, they’d take away her pass and cardkey when she showed up for work a week from Monday. That would be Ross’s style. He’d make it as painful and embarrassing as possible.

  There was an upside to all of this. At least, that was what she kept telling herself. At forty-five, she’d given twenty-three years of her life to the CIA. She had a beautiful ten-year-old son whom she didn’t get to spend enough time with. Soon he would enter that stage where he would want nothing to do with her. This premature departure from the Agency would give her a chance to spend more time with him. It was no secret in Washington that she was on her way out. She’d already received two offers from local universities to teach, three from think tanks, and another from a private security firm. That was without lifting a finger. She t
ried to stay positive. Tried to tell herself they were great options, but in the end nothing else would match the mission and the people she worked with. That was what bothered her most.

  There was a knock on the door and then it opened. Kennedy smiled when she saw it was Skip McMahon.

  “Sorry I’m late,” said the hulking six-foot-four FBI special agent. “People in this town lose their minds when it snows.”

  “It’s a good thing it’s a Saturday.”

  McMahon was holding a large briefcase. He crossed the room and kissed Kennedy on the cheek.

  “So what’s this all about? Have you finally decided to announce your intention to marry me and make me an honest man?”

  Kennedy smiled and gestured toward the sitting area. “Coffee or tea?”

  “Since when do I drink tea?”

  She poured him a cup of coffee while McMahon sat on the couch. He kept the briefcase close. Kennedy handed him the cup and sat in one of the wing chairs.

  The FBI man gestured with his hands and said, “I half expected you to have all of your stuff boxed up and ready to go.”

  Kennedy sipped her tea. “Do you know something I don’t?”

  “Funny.” McMahon looked around the wood paneled office ignoring her feigned naiveté. The walls were covered with photos of people and places. Some of the photos were self-explanatory: former CIA directors, the Twin Towers, the Berlin Wall. Others were more obscure: a baby’s hand wrapped around a father’s finger, a demolished building with a man standing in the foreground sobbing, and a group of Arab women covered in black from head to toe walking down a dusty street. McMahon had been to the office many times. A naturally inquisitive person, he had asked Kennedy about some of the photos before. Her response was always the same. She simply smiled and changed the subject. It occured to him that this might be his last chance to glean the importance of the more cryptic shots.