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IN A WINDOWLESS room on the seventh floor of the main building at Langley, a select few had gathered to monitor the progress of Mitch Rapp and Milt Adams. The room was strikingly similar to a television network control booth. On the main wall was a bank of nineteen-inch monitors, four rows of them, running ten across. In front of the monitors, at a slightly elevated table, sat four technicians. At their disposal was the latest in video-production equipment. Behind them, and elevated still further, sat Dr. Irene Kennedy, General Campbell, and several of their assistants. The work surface at this level was cluttered with phones and computers. At the third level sat Director Stansfield, General Flood, Colonel Bill Gray, and Admiral DeVoe. The fourth, and last row, was occupied by a half dozen other high-ranking pentagon and CIA officials. Conveniently absent from the group was any representative from the FBI, something that Irene Kennedy did not like.
The four monitors in the bottom left corner were showing the networks and CNN preparing for the vice president’s national address. Ten of the monitors, just above the bottom four, showed different shots of the White House’s exterior. One was zoomed in on the terrorist sitting in the rooftop guard booth, and the others were either trained on specific doors and windows or general areas.
The remaining twenty-six monitors were pale blue with the exception of one near the middle. It glowed with a reddish hue, showing Rapp and the others at work in the strange red light.
Irene Kennedy’s hair was pulled back, and she was wearing a lightweight operator’s headset, as were all of the others in the first two rows. Kennedy nodded slowly as she listened to Marcus Dumond. After a moment she raised the arm of her headset and turned to look up at the two men sitting directly behind her. “Everything is ready. They’re waiting for authorization.”
Stansfield and Flood looked at each other briefly, Flood nodding first and Stansfield following suit. Stansfield then looked down at Kennedy and gave his okay.
The director of the CIA watched Kennedy relay the orders and wondered again if he should pick up the phone and tell FBI Director Roach what they were up to. He had in part covered himself by passing the word that they were conducting electronic surveillance, but this was much more than that. If things went bad, it could jeopardize the safety of the hostages.
21
THE WORD WAS passed, and the red-filter light was extinguished. The relatively cool night had turned thick and muggy under the canvas tarp. It had been decided that Rapp would go first, followed by Adams, and then Harris. Rapp felt for the slit in the tarp and pulled it to the side. Taking the main pack, Rapp wedged it through the bars, and then with the smaller packs that Dumond had given him, he turned sideways and squeezed through the bent bars. Adams and Harris followed, and the three of them walked softly through the underbrush, ducking under branches and bending limbs out of their way.
They were careful to stay off the paths that the Secret Service had laid out through the underbrush. The paths were designed to funnel fence jumpers into areas loaded with sensors, and although they didn’t think the terrorists were using the perimeter security system, there was no sense in pushing their luck.
When they reached the immediate area of the vent, Lt. Commander Harris whispered into his headset, “Slick, do you have any movement on the roof ?”
The reply came back instantly. “Nope. He’s still looking to the west.”
There was just enough light from the streetlamps for the three of them to see each other. Rapp nodded to Adams; they had both heard the same report over their headsets. Taking his signal, Adams plucked several of the fake bushes from the ground. The bushes were designed to conceal the ventilation hood during all four seasons. Adams moved the shrubs out of the way while Rapp and Harris unfolded a smaller black tarp. With the tarp in place over the top of the hood the three men crawled under it and went to work. Rapp held a small tool pack while Harris aimed a red-filter flashlight for Adams. The old man of the group started by spraying lubricant along the seam in the sheet metal. Then, with a small cordless drill, he zipped out eight screws. Slowly, they began to wiggle the hood back and forth, trying their best to prevent the screeching of metal on metal. The lubricant diminished most of the noise, and inside of sixty seconds they had the hood off and out of the way.
Harris set up a lightweight aluminum tripod while Rapp lowered his gear to the bottom with a climbing rope. The black tarp was thrown over the top. Harris clipped a pulley to the tripod and fed a rope through, taking one end to the fence and tying it to the winch on the front of the Suburban.
Rapp stuck a small flashlight into the open shaft and looked down at the bottom. Harris returned a second later and tied the rope around Rapp’s ankles, then put on a pair of gloves. Then after grabbing the rope, he nodded to Rapp and leaned back, ready to take up the slack. Rapp gave Harris the thumbs-up, and then bending at the waist, he stuck his head in the open shaft and began to ease himself inside.
Over his headset Rapp said, “Lower me.”
Lt. Commander Harris slowly began to play out the rope until all of the slack was gone, about eight more feet total. Harris then whispered into his headset telling his men back at the Suburban to let the winch out. In the shaft, Rapp started his descent and turned on his small miner’s lamp that was strapped over his baseball cap.
As he neared the bottom, he whispered over his headset, “Stop.” Dangling l
ike a landed catch, Rapp turned himself so he could bend at the waist and make the ninety-degree turn into the shaft without breaking his back.
“Okay, real slow. Let me out four more feet.” He started to move again, and Rapp grabbed on to the sides of the horizontal vent, pulling himself inside. A bit of static crackled through his earpiece, and he said, “Stop. That’s good.” Rapp pulled his legs toward him, and in a sit-up-like position, he trained the miner’s lamp on his feet and untied the rope around his ankles. When he was finished, he said, “Take it back up.”
The rope disappeared from sight, and Rapp flipped over onto his stomach. Wasting no time, he grabbed the long rope that he’d used to lower his gear into the shaft and untied it. Then taking a short rope that he’d brought along, he tied one end to the top of his gear and the other end to his left ankle. Rolling back onto his stomach, he trained the small light down the long narrow shaft. It looked as if it went on forever. Rapp could barely make out the turn some two hundred feet away. The shaft seemed to get tighter. Rapp grimaced. He had what he liked to refer to as a healthy phobia of being trapped in places the size of a coffin.
Reluctantly, Rapp started forward down the cramped space, his forearms doing most of the work. Into his lip mike, he whispered, “Milt, I’m moving out.” With his gear in tow, Rapp plodded forward like an alligator. The reception on his radio was becoming increasingly cluttered.
* * *
NOT LONG AFTER they had lost contact with Rapp, Milt Adams was also lost. The only thing Kennedy and the others could do was wait. Kennedy found herself thinking that this was how the NASA mission controllers must have felt during the Apollo lunar missions. When the astronauts went around the back side of the moon, they would enter a period when communication was impossible. The roomful of scientists would sit nervously at mission control and hope the spacecraft and its men would make it back around without any problems. That was the position they were in now. There was nothing they could do but wait.
Kennedy took off her headset, looked up at a row of clocks on the wall to her right, and remembered there was one thing she could do. Dead in the middle of the wall was the clock noting the local time in Washington, D.C. It was almost eleven in the evening. Several clocks to the right, Kennedy found the time she was looking for. Picking up the secure phone in front of her, she dialed a number by memory. It was an important phone number. It was just before seven in the morning in Tel Aviv, and if her counterpart wasn’t in, he would be shortly. After several clicks and whirs someone picked up on the other end.
“Fine.”
The word was not an answer to a question, but rather the last name of the man answering the phone, Colonel Ben Fine of the Israeli foreign intelligence service, Mossad. Colonel Fine was Kennedy’s direct counterpart, the man in charge of Mossad’s counterterrorism section.
“Ben, it’s Irene Kennedy.”
“Irene,” said Fine excitedly. “I’m sorry I haven’t called, but I figured you’d be busy.”
“Have you been following the crisis?” asked Kennedy in a tired voice.
“Very closely. Is there anything I can do to help?”
