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“Excuse me, Officers,” he asked. “Can you tell me where I can get a bite to eat?”
One of the officers eyed him with a frown while the other paused for a moment and then pointed down the street. “If you head down E Street here, you’ll run into a deli and a couple fast-food joints.”
Rusan smiled and said thank you as he passed the two men. Then turning, he asked, “Will I have any problem getting back to my ambulance?”
“No, we’ll be here for a while.”
Rusan turned on his toes. He ducked under the blue sawhorse at the far end of the intersection; he was immediately pleased with the volume of people. After pressing his way through the crowd, he found that it ran about ten people deep and then loosened up. A large concrete trash can, overflowing with trash, sat behind the crowd. There must have been a McDonald’s nearby because eight or so their bags stuffed with cups and spent french-fry containers littered the immediate area around the receptacle. All the better, since the bomb would do more damage lying on the sidewalk than in the garbage can.
He pulled one of the cans of diet Coke from his fanny pack and bent over. Taking one of the spent McDonald’s bags, he wedged the can in with the rest of the refuse and set the whole package back on the ground. He positioned the bag so the majority of the blast would be directed toward the crowd.
Rusan stood and started down the sidewalk again. He would come back the same way and make sure the bag was still there. Up ahead on his right, he could make out the ugly brown surface of the Hoover Building. He wouldn’t go that far, although it was very tempting. There were too many cameras and too many professionals with a trained eye. Rusan would play it safe for now. There was no need to risk exposure.
46
THE CONFERENCE ROOM at the Counterterrorism Center at Langley was bustling with action. The room was actually a room within a room. Built several feet off the floor and surrounded on four sides by glass, it was enveloped in an electromagnetic field that made eavesdropping impossible. Irene Kennedy stood at the front of the room with General Campbell as the meeting attendees filed in.
Director Roach and Special Agent Skip McMahon of the FBI entered the room with Thomas Stansfield holding on to each man’s elbow. The elderly director of the Central Intelligence Agency led them to where Kennedy was standing.
Stansfield released his grip on the men and said, “Irene, I was just fillingin Brian and Skip on Iron Man.” After hanging up with the president, Stansfield had sealed off the control room. No one was to breathe a word that they had reestablished contact with the president. Stansfield, Flood, Campbell, and Kennedy were the only people outside the control room that knew. The men from the FBI would be informed of this piece of information by the president himself.
Kennedy was half ready to have Skip McMahon chew her head off, until Stansfield said, “I was telling Skip and Brian that you had wanted to let them in on what we were doing with Iron Man. I take full responsibility for this, gentlemen, and I have good reasons for doing so.”
“Such as?” asked an edgy Skip McMahon.
Stansfield p
layed his old man status for all it was worth. Reaching out, he patted McMahon’s large forearm and said, “That’s why I like you, Skip. Always vigilant, always pressing for the whole story.”
“That’s right. So let’s hear it.”
“I’m afraid that will have to happen during a later conversation. Right now I have something I think you will be far more interested in. Now, if you will please take your seats, we need to get started.” Stansfield gestured to two chairs near Kennedy, and McMahon and Roach sat. Stansfield turned to Kennedy and said, “Let’s get started.” The director walked to the far end of the table and sat next to General Flood.
The attendees at the meeting were chosen on a need-to-know basis. The secretaries of state and defense were bypassed, as were several other high-ranking officials. Stansfield, Flood, and the president had agreed that, for now, only a select few would be told that contact had been made with the president and that his life was in danger. Those selected, other than those already mentioned, were the commanders of HRT, Delta Force, and SEAL Team Six.
One of Kennedy’s people closed the airtight door to the conference room, and Kennedy pressed a switch that lowered dark blinds over the glass walls. Standing at the front of the room next to General Campbell, Kennedy started off by saying, “Gentlemen, what General Campbell and I are about to tell you doesn’t leave this room. You don’t tell the people on your teams, you don’t tell your bosses, you don’t tell your wives.”
General Campbell stepped forward. “I can promise all of you”—Campbell eyeballed the three commanders of the elite counterterrorist strike teams—“if I find out you breathed a word of this information to anyone, I will make sure your career is ended.” Campbell waited to get a nod from each of the three commanders.
Behind Kennedy and Campbell were five TVs. Four twenty-fiveinchers and one thirty-six-incher. Kennedy dimmed the overhead lights, and then with a remote control she turned on the TVs. Dead center, on the thirty-six-inch TV, was the live feed of the bunker door.
“As all of you know, the president was evacuated to his bunker in the initial minutes of the assault. Shortly thereafter, we lost the ability to communicate with him due to the fact that Aziz was using a state-of-the-art mobile jamming unit that he conveniently borrowed from the Secret Service’s arsenal. Yesterday evening we were able to sneak two individuals into the White House. One is a civilian with intimate knowledge of the White House, and the second is a counterterrorism specialist who for our purposes we will refer to as Iron Man. The images that you see on the screens behind me are provided from surveillance units they have in place in the White House.”
Kennedy turned around and pointed at the middle screen. “For those of you who haven’t figured it out, this is a shot of the door that leads to the president’s bunker. This slovenly man that you see moving about is Mustafa Yassin, an Iraqi who specializes in breaking into vaults. These three objects you see attached to the door are drills. We have no idea how far along they are in this process, but we are not going to wait around for them to succeed.” Kennedy pressed a button on the remote, and a white screen lowered from the ceiling. On it was an overhead view of the White House compound. Turning to General Campbell, she signaled for him to take over.
Campbell pointed to the West Wing and said, “The bulk of the hostages are being held in the White House mess on the ground floor. Intelligence from the FBI and the NSA leads us to believe that there is a second, smaller group of hostages being held in the Roosevelt Room on the main floor. Iron Man thinks this second group of hostages consists of any Secret Service or military personnel that are still alive. Dr. Kennedy and I agree.”
Sid Slater, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, raised his hand. The general looked at him and said, “Sid?”
“Do we have any video on the hostages?”
“I’m afraid not. At least not at this point. We don’t have a lot of time, which brings me to my next point. H-hour is set for twenty-thirty.”
“Whoa,” proclaimed Director Roach of the FBI. “The order’s been given to go in?”
“That’s affirmative,” said General Flood from the other end of the room.
Roach looked at his watch. It was several minutes past five in the evening. “Baxter gave you the go-ahead?” asked the skeptical head of the FBI.
