Senator Harrison HQ
Baxter Road, Nantucket
An important announcement concerning the next phase of the campaignread the invitation from Walter Fitzgerald to the ten most senior members of the Harrison staff.
Fitzgerald took the tack of a coach reviewing the starting team for a Friday-night game. They would play according to the rules—hisrules.
“At this point in the campaign,” he reminded staffers over cocktails, “we have three weeks to play ball. Both sides are scrambling for the win. What we need is one key play that will send our candidate to Pennsylvania Avenue.”
In the large living room of the borrowed house, the staffers waited expectantly to learn what that play might be.
Fitzgerald stunned them with the reveal.
“There are favors that need to be repaid,” he said. “Donors and high-ranking members of the party demand that a youngfemale fill a key role, so the Harrison campaign is launching a preemptive strike before the primary.”
He marched directly to a beaming Aimee Sullivan and shook her hand. “Everyone, please welcome the youngest National Security Adviser in the history of the United States.”
His tone left no room for debate or further discussion. The silence was deafening. But the more the staff reeled, the better Fitzgerald felt. Their turmoil perfectly set up the next and most critical piece of the exit strategy he had planned for Aimee.
“We’ll officially release word on Monday,” Fitzgerald explained. “Friends of the campaign have arranged for Aimee to take an immersion course in foreign policy at the Kennedy School in Cambridge. They will stack the deck with Harvard’s heaviest-hitting intellectuals—the greatest strategists in the world.
“You know the saying, people: It’s Christmas in July for the Harrison campaign,” Fitzgerald said.No reason why the coach shouldn’t finish with some cheerleading.
The aides lined up with their hands extended, and Aimee Sullivan graciously shook them. Coleman Harrison glided into the room. Sullivan took both the candidate’s hands in hers and squeezed.
The show of loyalty complete, the party started to fade.
What only Walt Fitzgerald knew was that the redheaded bitch would never make it to Monday. By the time she reached her apartment in Boston tomorrow night, the appointment charade would be over. The only thing left to do would be the spin required to distance the Harrison campaign from the woman soon to be revealed as a coke-addicted former staffer.
By 9:30 p.m., the house was quiet. Apart from Harrison, Fitzgerald, and Sullivan, only the Secret Service agents and asenior aide remained. The campaign manager and his aide left for the study to work on the press release, leaving Sullivan and Harrison alone for the first time in days.
Without a word, Harrison walked across the room toward the staircase. Sullivan followed him upstairs to thank him in her own unique way.
CHAPTER 37
Nantucket Memorial Airport
The men could have been any of the many itinerant workers who flocked to the island every summer. The ones who toiled the fishing boats or tended the lawns or performed any of the backbreaking manual labor needed to keep this island of the super-rich functioning.
These three men happened to be Mexican. They had arrived a year ago on visas purchased with the help of a man in Paris. Since then they had been sharing a one-bedroom apartment on the island and working as truck drivers, hauling away the trash of the wealthy.
Tonight they drove toward the airport in their big green garbage truck, then pulled off the road on a dark stretch away from any streetlights. The first man looked at his friends, checked his cell phone, then jumped out of the cab. He walked to the back of the truck and reached underneath the bags of trash to retrieve his gear. He grabbed the military-issue green duffel bag and slung it over his shoulder.
He headed down the street in the direction of a motel. The motel maids were his neighbors, and he had easily gleaned from them the intelligence that this was where Senator Harrison’s Secret Service agents stayed when he was on the island. The agents slept in shifts, four to each of two adjacent rooms.
He looked at his watch. It was 9:55 p.m. In five minutes, he would kill all the infidels.
The second man jumped out of the truck and walked across the road toward the airport, stopping by a cluster of small trees. The full summer foliage would shield him from the streetlight but still afford an unobstructed view of the control tower. A clear line of sight meant he had a clear shot at the structure, which housed the communications equipment necessary to direct incoming and outgoing aircraft. He checked his watch. It was 9:58 p.m.
The last man drove the garbage truck at a crawl, turning off the headlights as he approached the airfield’s last utility gate. The chain-link fence was secured with a heavy gauge lock that held the gate shut and denied intruders access to the runway. He reached behind his seat and pulled out a pair of bolt cutters.
His was the easiest job of all. When given the signal at the appointed time, all he had to do was drive the garbage truck onto the tarmac and park it at the intersection of both runways. So positioned, the huge garbage truck would effectively block any fixed-wing aircraft from landing on the island.
The last man was also armed with thermite grenades and a dozen lightweight antitank weapons—all of it stolen equipment that had been earmarked for destruction two years prior, before disappearing from a National Guard armory in Brownsville, Texas. Records of the subsequent investigation had been lost.
CHAPTER 38
Nantucket Harbor
