Transfer of Power Page 9

  Hasan yanked open the remnants of the Marilyn Monroe door. A cloud of cordite filled the air, and Bengazi and his men pulled their gas masks all the way down. The forklift lurched forward, the two men carrying the RPGs clinging to the sides, as Bengazi gunned the powerful engine. The heavy yellow machine thundered into the concrete tunnel as the agile ATVs raced down the ramp one by one, their knobby rubber tires squealing as they turned hard for the tunnel.

  The Washington Hotel

  ON THE TOP floor of the Washington Hotel, in the cluttered janitor’s closet, Salim Rusan was waiting patiently. Laid out before him on a clean white towel was a Russian-made SVD sniper rifle. The SVD fired a powerful 7.62-mmx54 rimmed cartridge and could achieve accurate kills at ranges of up to a thousand yards in the right hands. Rusan did not plan to use even a quarter of the rifle’s range. On top of the long rifle, almost fifty inches from shoulder butt to muzzle, was a PSO 1 x 4 scope. A ten-round magazine was inserted in the rifle, and a second magazine was in Rusan’s pocket. That was all the ammunition Aziz had allowed him to take. Aziz had been adamant that Rusan was to stay for no longer than two minutes and then leave the hotel. There were other things that he would be needed for later.

  The pager began its vibration, announcing that after almost a year of planning it was time for action. Rusan reached down and turned the pager off with one hand while grabbing the light nine-pound rifle with the other. He burst from the closet into the empty hallway and walked quickly for the rooftop’s patio doors. Rusan counted to himself slowly to help keep his heart rate low, a trick his Soviet trainers had taught him while he had stalked the burned-out buildings of Beirut as a teenager.

  With his sniper’s rifle clutched in one hand, he opened the door to the patio and dropped to his stomach. Quickly, he crawled the thirty feet to the edge and stuck the long black barrel through the railing. Hugging the rifle tightly against his shoulder and cheek, he looked through the scope and acquired the large South Portico of the White House. From there, Rusan followed the edge of the building to the Oval Office and prepared to fire. When he reached the door that was just outside the president’s office, he found nothing. Rusan searched the patio quickly and again found nothing. Not having time to waste, he moved on to his secondary target. The scope quickly found not one, but four Secret Service agents standing near the guard booth on the roof of the White House. Rusan picked the agent on the far left, centered the crosshairs on the man’s head, and squeezed the trigger.

  The White House

  THERE ARE VERY few things, short of a gunshot, that can get a Secret Service agent’s heart beating faster than the phrase “Harden up.” Those two little words, heard so often during training exercises, are rarely uttered while on duty at the White House. Just outside the main door to the Oval Office, the two agents standing post drew their weapons without hesitation. The shorter of the two also pulled out a set of keys and opened the door to a seemingly benign wooden credenza. A second later a third agent appeared from around the corner with a gun clutched in both hands. The agent who had opened the credenza quickly extracted three Uzi submachine guns, passing one to each of the other two agents and keeping the third for himself. The entire process took less than five seconds.

  One floor below, in Horsepower, the detail’s command post, the agent sitting at the security console rose and walked quickly across the room. He bolted the door shut and returned to his seat without speaking. Two more agents, at the far end of the room, unlocked a metal cabinet, revealing a cache of weapons. Each man took an MP-5 submachine gun. They both chambered a round and walked to the room’s other door, which led to a hidden staircase to the Oval Office.

  Upstairs Jack Warch entered the Oval Office with his suit coat open and thrown back over his right hip. His right hand was wrapped around the grip of his still holstered weapon. Warch quickly approached the president’s side, not taking his eyes off the dark-featured man standing by the fireplace.

  “Excuse me for the intrusion, Mr. President, but I need to talk to you for a second.” The president stopped in his tracks, alarmed by the forceful entrance. He looked to Warch and then his chief of staff.

  There was a moment of uncertainty. As Warch eyed the president’s visitor, he couldn’t quite discern the intent of the well-dressed man he was staring down. Then he saw it, something in the other man’s eyes. Gripping his gun tighter, he pulled it up a half an inch out of the smooth leather holster. The president was saying something, but Warch wasn’t listening. He was waiting for one more sign that this man standing in the Oval Office was not who he said he was.

  Back downstairs in Horsepower, the young agent sitting at the security-console looked intently at the array of surveillance monitors before him. His eyes searched for anything that could be even remotely construed as a threat. Midway through his sweep, his focus was broken by the beeping of his computer. The agent’s eyes snapped from the monitors to his computer screen to find four capitalized words flashing. Grabbing the arm of his headset the agent blurted out the words, “HORSEPOWER TO DETAIL! WE HAVE A SECURITY BREACH IN THE TREASURY TUNNEL! I REPEAT, WE HAVE A SECURITY BREACH IN THE TREASURY TUNNEL!”

  Up in the Oval Office the stream of words blared into Warch’s right ear like Klaxons. His gun was out of his holster and aimed at the president’s guest in a split second. His left hand snapped to his lips, and he barked into his hand mike, “WARCH TO DETAIL. HARDEN UP ON WOODY IMMEDIATELY!”

  Three of the four doors to the Oval Office burst open instantly, and four agents rushed to surround the president, their weapons drawn and ready. As the wall of agents closed around the commander-in-chief, the next sign of danger came blaring over their earpieces. “AGENTS DOWN! AGENTS DOWN! HERCULES IS UNDER FIRE!”

  With his SIG-Sauer aimed at Aziz’s forehead, Warch screamed, “EVAC, EVAC!”

  Ellen Morton was standing directly behind the president when the evacuation order was given, and in a tribute to her training, she didn’t waste a second. Morton reached up and grabbed President Hayes by the back of his shirt collar and yanked him to the left. Two more agents rushed through the main door with their guns drawn and joined the scrum that was moving toward the president’s private study. Morton kicked a chair out of the group’s way as they moved in unison. The president’s chief of staff was caught up in the wave of bodies and was rushed out of the room with them. Jack Warch stood his ground and covered the evacuation, his eyes still locked in a stare with Aziz.

  The Treasury Tunnel

  THE HEAVY FORKLIFT screamed down the smooth concrete tunnel, gaining speed as it went. The two men riding on the sides wrapped their inside arms around the cage and aimed their armor-piercing shells at the door in their path. Both men sighted in on the hinges and fired. There was a loud swooshing noise marked by a white trail of smoke as the warheads raced forward in unison and then slammed into the steel door.

  The ensuing explosion was deafening as debris, smoke, and fire erupted back down the throat of the narrow passageway. Bengazi closed his eyes and kept the accelerator to the floor. The forklift maintained its speed, passing through the bright showering debris and then into total darkness. There was a moment of silence, and then a foundation-cracking collision as the forklift thudded into the steel door, knocking it off its twisted hinges and lurching to a stop inside the basement of the White House.

  The collision had jolted Bengazi forward, knocking his foot from the gas pedal and sending his two men flying from the vehicle. His ears were ringing from the explosion, and he couldn’t see past the cage of the forklift due to the thick smoke and dust. By the time he had righted himself in the seat, his two men were back at his side and climbing back onto the vehicle. Bengazi pressed the gas pedal to the floor, the engine roared, and the forklift lurched forward.

  The heavy machine continued through the thick smoke, finding its way down the main hallway of the White House’s first basement. Without warning, the butted front end of the forklift slammed into what Bengazi knew to be the first
set of double doors. The center bar and two doors peeled away from the frame as if they were tin. On the other side of the double doors, there was no smoke. Bengazi’s men immediately opened up with their AK-74s on full automatic as three uniformed Secret Service officers, rushing to head off the security breach in the Treasury tunnel, were caught in the open. The bullets cut them to the ground instantly, and what little life may have been left in them was squeezed away as the forklift rolled over them.

  The White House

  WARCH STEPPED BACKWARD to cover the president’s retreat. With his gun still leveled on the man across the room, he listened to the frantic radio traffic coming over his earpiece and tried to decide where to take the president. A decision had to be made, either evacuate him from the compound via the south ground’s limo or stash him in his new bunker. Right as Warch reached the doorway to the study, the building was rocked by an explosion.

  Aziz had been waiting for the explosion and sprang. Taking a quick step to the side, he grabbed Chairman Piper around the throat with one arm and drew his knife with the other. Aziz stuck the tip of the knife into Piper’s throat, breaking the skin and drawing blood. Careful to keep his head shielded behind Piper’s, Aziz yelled, “Order your men to stop with the evacuation, or I will kill him!”

  The request fell on deaf ears. Warch’s primary, immediate, and only concern was the president. Nothing else mattered, especially not the political operative who had brought this snake into the White House. Warch took one final step backward into the study and closed the door to the Oval Office.

  Seconds earlier Special Agent Morton had pressed a hidden button in the short hallway. There was a hydraulic hiss, and an entire section of the wall lurched inward, revealing a hidden staircase. Morton started down the steep stairs first, followed by two agents who had the president sandwiched in between them. Valerie Jones, caught up in the human freight train, was grabbed by one of the last two agents and thrust forward.

  Warch was now at the top of the stairs yelling, “BUNKER! TAKE HIM TO THE BUNKER!” Warch then stepped into the hidden passageway and sealed the wall behind him. As he started down the stairs, he raised his hand mike to his mouth and said, “Horsepower, from Warch. We are moving Woody to the bunker! I repeat, we are moving Woody to the bunker!”

  The group clambered down to the first landing. Waiting for them at the bottom were two Secret Service agents who had just come out the side door of Horsepower. They had already opened the heavy steel door to the tunnel that ran underneath the Rose Garden and over to the mansion. One of them took the lead and started down the next flight of stairs, while the other one waited to cover from the rear.

  The caravan, now totaling eleven people, continued into the tunnel. The wide passageway was covered with an ugly brown carpeting. The group raced ahead at a full speed, the agents almost carrying the president. When they reached the far end, they had two choices. They could proceed either up a set of stairs and into the first basement of the mansion or down a short set of stairs on the right. The lead agent hustled down the steps on his right. He came to an abrupt halt at a riveted steel door and punched an access code into the control panel. As soon as he heard the metallic release of the lock, he threw his shoulder into the door and burst into a large anteroom. The first two agents into the room fanned out to the left, and with their guns leveled, they covered a second door to the twenty-by-ten-foot anteroom. As soon as the last agent had cleared the tunnel, the door to it was closed and locked.

  Jack Warch pushed his way through the group, grabbing the president firmly by the upper arm. The two large agents who had been glued to Hayes on the way down the stairs and through the passageway moved forward, staying with their charge.

  A dazed President Hayes looked to Warch and asked, “What in the hell is going on?”

  Warch decided not to answer the obvious and proceeded forward. At the opposite end of the anteroom, Warch approached a large, smooth vault door. The special agent in charge of the presidential detail flipped open the cover to the control panel and punched in a nine-digit code. There was a brief moment of silence and then a hissing noise as the rubber airtight seal on the door contracted. Next, the locking stems retracted and an electric motor began to whine as the two-foot-thick solid steel door swung open, revealing the president’s newly completed bunker.

  The White House Mess

  ANNA RIELLY WAS standing near the center of the White House mess holding a paper cup of black coffee and listening to Stone Alexander explain why the room was called a mess instead of a dining room. Apparently it had something to do with the U.S. Navy. She was only half listening to Alexander as he rambled on. Two men in dark suits, sitting at a nearby table had caught her eye. They had a police-officer look about them that was common to most of her father’s friends and more than one of her brothers. Almost simultaneously, the two men brought their hands up to their ears and held them there. Rielly guessed from the gesture that they must be Secret Service. She was about to turn her attention back to her tour guide when the two agents abruptly stood and raced across the room with their weapons drawn.

  Oblivious to what had just transpired not more than twenty feet away, Stone Alexander continued with his oral dissertation on the West Wing. Being new to the job, Rielly wasn’t sure if what she had just witnessed was normal, but common sense told her that law enforcement officers didn’t draw their weapons unless there was a good reason. Rielly looked around the room and concluded from the some of the faces she saw that she wasn’t the only one who had noticed the brandishing of firearms.

  Rielly set her coffee down and looked at Alexander. “I think there’s something going on.”

  Alexander looked down at her and smiled. “Don’t worry; I have that effect on a lot of women. You’ll get used to it.” It was apparent from the full-fledged grin on Alexander’s face that he found himself quite amusing.

  Rielly shook her head. “Jesus, do you ever give it a rest? I’m talking about those two guys who just ran out of here with their guns—”

  An explosion rumbled from somewhere in the building and stopped the young reporter in midsentence. The noise was so startling, and out of place, that Stone Alexander flinched and spilled half of his coffee down the front of his shirt. The next brief moment seemed like an eternity. Everyone in the White House mess froze with the same wide-eyed look, and then the silence was shattered by loud cracks of gunfire.

  The Executive Mansion

  MUAMMAR BENGAZI slammed on the brakes, and the forklift came to a skidding halt in the first basement of the Executive Mansion. He could hear the higher pitch of the ATVs’ engines not far behind. Bengazi swiftly jumped to the ground and ran through a door to his left. Bounding up the stairs two at a time, he kept his AK-74 aimed upward as he climbed. The two men who had fired the RPGs followed close behind. When they reached the first landing, the door above them opened and two uniformed Secret Service officers rushed into the stairwell with their pistols drawn. Bengazi unleashed a quick burst of bullets, striking both men in the chest and sending them backward. The fallen officers blocked the door from closing, and as Bengazi reached the last step, he rolled a smoke grenade and then a fragmentation grenade into the hallway.

  The double explosion was followed by a chorus of screams and falling debris. Bengazi and his men burst from the stairwell through the thickening gray smoke and began firing their weapons in all three directions. With their gas masks secured, they moved unhindered by the smoke toward the South Portico. Bengazi grabbed another grenade from his vest and yanked the pin. Fifty feet ahead, directly down the hall, was the Palm Room—the same room the president walked through every morning on his way to the Oval Office. Bengazi threw the grenade forward and ducked into an alcove on his right, while his men took shelter in a doorway on the left. There was a clinking noise as the grenade hit the tile floor and then a glass-shattering explosion as it detonated. Bengazi rushed forward again; every second was precious. As he reached the Palm Room, he turned the corner and a
lmost tripped over a bloody Secret Service officer, who lay dying on the floor, his body eviscerated by shards of glass. Bengazi looked through the shattered windowpanes out onto the South Lawn and saw four black-clad men running toward him, their machine guns searching for a target.

  They belonged to the Secret Service Uniformed Division’s Emergency Response Team or ERT, and they had been expected. Bengazi raised his weapon to take aim at the lead man, but before he had a chance to dispose of him, the officer was struck by a high-velocity round that separated a large chunk of his head from the rest of his body. Within seconds the other three Secret Service officers were all lying on the ground, either dead or dying.

  Bengazi was happy to see that Salim Rusan was doing his job. From his spot on the roof of the Washington Hotel, Rusan was to cover Bengazi and the others as they broke out into the open for the West Wing.

  Bengazi yelled over his shoulder, “RPG!”

  While he searched the South Lawn for more targets, one of his men stepped to his side with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher steadied on his shoulder and dropped to one knee. The man sighted in on the double doors at the other end of the Colonnade. The clicking of the trigger was followed by a low swooshing noise and another deafening explosion. Bengazi broke into a full sprint along the Colonnade, his AK-74 aimed at the burned and smoking entrance to the West Wing.