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“But, Robert . . .”
“But nothing, Sherman! This conversation is over!”
All that was heard from the vice president was the click of his phone hanging up. After a couple of long moments of silence, the president’s voice floated back down, asking, “Now, where were we?”
49
THE AIR FORCE MC-130 Combat Talon cruised through the skies over Washington, D.C., at ten thousand feet. Part of the 1st Special Operations Wing, the Combat Talon was a unique asset in the delivery and retrieval of Special Forces operators. Lt. Commander Harris stood in the back of the modified C-130, looking out the open ramp and down at the city. The wind whistled through the back of the cargo area, and the four engines outside rumbled in the evening air, making communication difficult. To Harris’s right, the bright orange orb of the sun was falling beneath the horizon. To his left, storm clouds were moving in. The first was a good sign—darkness was something that he welcomed—but the second was not. Wind and rain did not go well with parachuting.
The pilots were flying up and down a fifteen-mile corridor five miles east of the White House. Harris and his fellow SEALs had made every jump there was. He’d done both high-altitude, high-opening (HAHO) and high-altitude, low-opening (HALO) jumps, as well as static-line jumps from five hundred feet all the way up to thirty thousand plus. Eight years earlier, when he had participated in the exercise for the Secret Service, he and his men had conducted a HAHO jump out of the back of an Air Force C-141 StarLifter. At an altitude of twenty-five thousand feet the men leapt from the plane and popped their chutes. From almost five miles up, Harris and his team expertly guided their double-canopy parachutes over a forty-five-mile distance and set themselves down gently on the roof of the Executive Mansion. At first the Secret Service was shocked by the results. But, after they sat with the SEALs and realized the years of training and high level of skill that such a jump required, they ruled the possibility of a terrorist group successfully conducting such an operation all but impossible.
Harris and his men were about to put all of their jumping skills to use. General Campbell had briefed him minutes earlier on the newest aspect of the plan, and it was creating a mathematical nightmare for the SEAL. No longer would they be able to choose their jump time. They would now have to wait for Aziz to make his move and then quickly get the plane into position.
Repeating the jump he had done eight years earlier was not an option. Jumping from that altitude would have required that he and his men, and the crew of the unpressurized aircraft, go on oxygen an hour before takeoff. By the time his plan was approved, they had missed that window of opportunity. There wasn’t enough time, so Harris had decided they would jump from ten thousand feet and go into a free-fall glide for the White House. At one thousand feet they would pop their chutes and float down the last leg.
Commander Harris moved away from the back of the ramp to inform his men of the impending rain. Inside, the bleak cargo area glowed with the red light to help the men gain their night vision. Harris had brought along the large Mick Reavers, who was serving as the jumpmaster, and Tony Clark and Jordan Rostein—two of Six’s best shooters and demolitions experts. All four men were dressed in their black Nomex coveralls, balaclava hoods, and gloves. The fire-retardant material was a must in any operation, and even more so when dealing with explosives. Operating in a dry environment, all of the men were carrying 9-mm SIG-Sauer P226 pistols, integrally silenced MP-10s, and a bevy of extra magazines in their assault vests that fit snuggly over their Kevlar body armor. Radio checks had been completed on the ground. The four operators were using Motorola MX300 radios rigged with throat mikes and earpieces.
Harris approached his men and screamed over the wind, “That storm keeps coming in from the east, and it doesn’t look good.”
Clark shook his head at his CO. He’d known Harris for over a decade and knew the man to be just crazy enough to try to jump in the middle of a storm. Clark reached up and adjusted his goggles. While doing so, he leaned closer to Harris. Over the roar he yelled, “We ain’t jumping in the rain, Harry.”
Harris nodded, and then, turning back for the ramp, he muttered to himself, “We’ll see.”
Out the rear of the plane Harris saw the storm intensifying. Suddenly, a flash lightning lit up the sky and streaked toward the ground in two separate veins. The strike was followed by a crack that could be heard over the roar of the engines. Sheets of rain could be seen falling over the Chesapeake. The rain would continue to roll in across the Maryland countryside and envelop the capital. They had thirty minutes, tops, before the rain rendered the jump suicidal.
RAPP AND ADAMS were ready to go. They were at the door going over the final checklist. If things went sour, HRT was twenty seconds away from breaching the building and Delta Force could be on-site to secure the president in under two minutes. Now was the time to take risks and roll the dice.
Before telling him to punch in the code, Rapp asked Adams, “Are you good to go, Milt?”
Adams pulled off his baseball cap, and with a handkerchief, he wiped a layer of sweat from his bald, black head. Then with a nod, he said, “I’m ready.”
Rapp did one last quick check of his equipment, and said, “Iron Man to control. We’re going in. Over.” Rapp then nodded to Adams, who punched in the code.
At the first sound of air escaping from the gasket-sealed door, Adams stepped back, allowing Rapp to move forward and take the lead. Rapp didn’t know what to expect on the othe
r side. The door could be boobytrapped; Aziz could have a guard posted on the other side—there was no way of knowing. Rapp had to guess. With a limited amount of resources, Rapp thought, Aziz wouldn’t be able to afford to place a guard outside the door. And that was assuming he had found it.
The bigger concern was a bomb. Rapp pushed Adams against the wall closest to the door’s hinges and placed his hand on the handle. After pausing for a moment, he turned his head away, pushed down on the handle, and pulled the door in two inches.
Hiding behind the heavy steel door, to protect him from the possible blast, Rapp listened for the telltale sound of a trip wire pulling a pin. He counted to three, then five, for good measure. With his left hand clutching his MP-10, he reached back with his right, and Adams handed him the snake. Rapp nosed the tiny fiber-optic camera around the corner. He scanned to the left, to the right, and then up. The shadowy images were being broadcast back to Langley.
Over his headset he heard the voice of General Campbell, “Everything looks good, Iron Man.”
Rapp peeked around the door to get a better look. To his left was a set of steep concrete stairs. Rapp had half expected the passageway to be dark. Instead, the hidden staircase that led up to the Oval Office was dimly lit with only two bulbs. Straight ahead a sliver of light shone from underneath a door that led to Horsepower—the Secret Service’s presidential detail command post. That was where the alarm systems and surveillance cameras were monitored. All video surveillance of both the grounds and the interior of the West Wing, Executive Mansion, and East Wing were monitored by the new Joint Operations Command, across the street in the EOB. Horsepower was concerned primarily with the president and watched only the areas of the compound where the president was. The uniformed division was responsible for everything else. In Rapp’s Secret Service briefing they had explained that in the moments after the raid, the interior cameras around the White House began to go off-line one by one. The obvious reason was Aziz did not want the Secret Service to be able to watch what he was doing. Rapp’s responsibility was to discover how much of the system was still on-line, and if any Tangos were monitoring it.
Stepping completely from behind the door, Rapp carefully edged forward into the small landing area just outside of Horsepower. Adams followed close behind, then slid the tiny lens under the door and began working it from one side of the room to the other.
Rapp watched over his shoulder. A couple of old metal desks came into view, and then they spotted something. Rapp gestured for Adams to bring it back. There, all the way across the room, were the shoulders and head of a man.
“Mark one Tango,” said General Campbell over Rapp’s headset. “That’s the control panel. Can you get us a better look at what he’s watching?”
Adams zoomed the camera in on the man sitting behind the door. In front of the terrorist were a dozen small black-and-white monitors mounted in a metal rack. The bottom middle two were obscured by the man’s head, but the ten other monitors all appeared to be showing images of the exterior of the White House.
Rapp turned away from the door and, in as soft a voice as possible, asked, “You’re recording this, right?”
“That’s affirmative,” replied Campbell.
“Good. We’re going to plant a monitor here and move on.” Rapp fished one of the micro video-and-audio surveillance transmitters out of his pocket and turned it on. Then, setting it on the floor, he edged the unit’s thin fiber-optic camera under door as far as it would go. Turning away from the door again, he whispered, “Are you receiving the new signal?”
