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There was the familiar click and whang of the remote-controlled trap machine, and then two clays were aloft in front of him. The little terra-cotta Frisbees bobbed a little in the cold air as they sailed for the tree line of leafless poplars and maples and white oaks, as if trying to get away.
As if.
Buckland tracked textbook smooth from the waist, and then, two quick shotgun blasts later, another two clay pigeons were subtracted from the world.
“You’re on fire, Dad!” Terrence said as he gave his father a high five.
“It was some pretty sweet shooting, wasn’t it, son?” Buckland said, glancing over at the First Lady, who sat smiling by the fire pit. “One might even say it was done with perfect execution. Which only makes sense, my being the head of the executive branch and all.” He winked at his son.
Terrence groaned along with his mother. The three of them were at Camp David, the famous presidential retreat in rural Maryland, standing beside the snow-filled tennis court where they’d set up a trapshooting rig.
Some presidents jogged or golfed to blow off steam; Buckland liked to shoot things. The family actually had a regulation skeet course built at their personal vacation place in Pennsylvania.
“Très classy,” his wife said after Buckland picked up the tall boy can of Heineken at his feet and took a pull and burped. “If only the press could see you now. Where’s the paparazzi when you need them?”
“Now, now. No more stalling, scaredy-cat. I do believe it’s your turn,” Buckland said.
The blasts of the First Lady dusting her two clays were still ringing in the air when the black Chevy Suburban pulled up behind their security detail back on the road.
“Were you expecting them?” she said.
“I’m sure it’s nothing, honey. I got this,” President Buckland said as he started walking over to Secret Service head John Levitin, standing by the SUV’s back door.
“Don’t waste your breath,” President Buckland said as he sat in the backseat. “You drove all the way up here for nothing.”
“Mr. President, please be reasonable. We can’t go back to New York. Not now. It’s just not safe. We haven’t tracked down the shooter, who, by all evidence, is a world-class sniper. These guys are wizards, sir. The amount of exposure they need is almost nothing. You need to back down.”
“No, it’s Russia that has to back down,” President Buckland said. “This situation we’re facing, John, it’s bigger than all of us. We have to show unity right now, not fear. Besides, even if it all goes to shit—and it won’t, since you guys are the best—there are worse things than me being dead. Far worse. Like Russia taking over Western Europe.”
“I strongly, strongly advise you not to go back to New York right now.”
“I hear what you’re saying. I’m listening. I really am,” the president said as he watched his wife kill a couple more clays and share a high five with their son.
“But I’m going to New York,” the president said as he opened the door.
Chapter 23
The beat-up white work van pulled into the empty parking lot of the Kohl’s in the Caesar’s Bay shopping center in the South Brooklyn neighborhood of Bath Beach at 3:47 in the morning.
Immediately, it rolled to the lot’s waterside guardrail beside the closed shopping center and stopped and stood idling. Beyond the guardrail, far off on the dark-gray water, were the yellow running lights of a ship. A large ship that had just sailed in off the New York–New Jersey bight into Lower Bay.
In the van’s passenger seat, Matthew Leroux lifted the three-thousand-dollar FLIR Scout II thermal camera from his lap and thumbed the zoom. After some more pans and zooms in the black-and-white display of the infrared camera, he finally read MV Vestervig off the ship’s starboard side.
“Is it her?” asked Leroux’s wife, Sophie.
“It’s her,” Matthew said.
The container ship MV Vestervig flew under the Panamanian flag and was owned by a Japanese shipping concern. It was a hefty Panamax-class vessel that had a capacity of forty-five hundred containers and was now heading inbound for the Port Newark–Elizabeth marine terminal, he knew. Having done nothing but go over the job for the last three weeks, he knew all about it.
“Isn’t it ahead of schedule?”
Matthew checked his Rolex.
“A little,” he said.
“How long do you figure?” she asked.
Leroux put down the camera and looked out at the tiny lights on the water. He scanned up the bay to the right and bit his lip. Containers averaged about twenty-five knots, he knew. Plus you had to time this right. Couldn’t be too early. Not a lot of wiggle room in this one.
