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Some twenty feet away Bengazi shook his head at him and tried to wave him back. Aziz ignored him and continued to approach the duct. Finally, when he was directly under the structure, he heard the noise. It sounded like a rat moving behind the walls of an old building. Something was definitely in the duct.
Aziz looked behind him and took several steps back, putting himself in direct line with the length of the duct. Then, raising his MP-5, he sighted in on part of the duct that protruded from the wall. With the wooden butt of the rifle squeezed tightly between his right shoulder and cheek, he depressed the trigger and unleashed a volley of automatic fire, the heavy rounds slicing through the thin metal with ease.
Nine rounds were fired in total, the noise from the shots careening off the concrete floors and walls, leaving the ears of Aziz and Bengazi ringing. The smell of spent rounds filled the air, and a cluster of shell casings rolled aimlessly about the floor near Aziz’s feet.
Aziz did not move. He stood his ground with his rifle still pointed at the duct, his eyes fixed on the straight line of bullet holes he had just laced into the thin metal. At first there was nothing, no movement and no noise other than the ringing of the shots that had been fired, and then, out of one of the holes, something dark beaded into a droplet and after an eternity it broke free. Both Aziz and Bengazi watched it fall to the ground. The drop hit the gray concrete floor and splashed into a spidered crimson pattern. Without hesitation, both Aziz and Bengazi stepped back and opened up on the duct with a relentless hail of bullets.
28
THE APARTMENT WAS nice. It had been decorated by his mother. She had insisted on flying to D.C. to help her son get settled in. Now that Dallas was an important figure in Washington, he’d have to entertain. Mrs. King had loaded up her son with the best that Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and Restoration Hardware could provide. The two-bedroom apartment in Adams-Morgan cost him nineteen hundred dollars a month, but it was worth it. It was only a couple of blocks away from some of Washington’s best nightspots, there were plenty of women around, and it was close to work.
Dallas King sat at the breakfast bar in the kitchen with a cup of coffee in one hand and the remote control to his TV in the other. He was waiting for the seven A.M. top-of-the-hour CNN news update. Dallas took a sip of coffee and looked down the hall to his bedroom. Through the cracked door he glimpsed the lean leg of his lovely little Asian hostess, Kim. She had been everything he had hoped and then some. After King finished his meeting with Sheila Dunn, he had moved to the bar for one more glass of wine. Someone must have explained to the hostess who he was because she began asking him questions about the crisis. King worked it for everything it was worth, stressing his role as Vice President Baxter’s closest adviser, complaining about the pressure, and finally telling her how much he wanted to be with her. By the time one A.M. rolled around, he had her punched out and on the way to his apartment.
As he sipped his coffee, CNN came back from a commercial break. King turned up the volume and listened to the anchor start off with the lead story of the morning. Footage of a candlelight vigil that had taken place the night before flashed across the screen. The anchor announced that an estimated fifty thousand people had taken part in the silent march from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol. Next came more footage of massive crowds pressing against police barricades in an effort to glimpse the White House. This relatively calm footage was replaced by images of protestors burning American flags in Gaza, the West Bank, Baghdad, and Damascus.
King shook his head and muttered, “If they keep that shit up, we’ll have no choice but to storm the place.”
The anchor and the correspondent talked for almost a minute about the official reactions of governments around the Middle East and then broke away for a live briefing being delivered by Director Roach of the FBI.
Roach stood in front of a Justice Department podium and started out reading from prepared text. The director gestured to an easel on his left, saying, “This is the photo we released yesterday of Mohammed Battikhi—the man we believe to have fired shots from the roof of the Washington Hotel during the opening moments of the attack on the White House. We now know his real name to be Salim Rusan. He is at large and considered to be extremely dangerous. Right now we are offering a onemillion-dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest of Rusan and a second individual.” One of Roach’s aides removed the first photo and replaced it with a second of a man wearing a green uniform. His hair was slicked back, and he had a gold chain with a cross hanging from his open collar.
“This man worked for the White Knight Linen Service Company,” Roach continued, “and went by the name of Vinney Vitelli. His real name is Abu Hasan. We are not sure if he is at large, but we are very interested in talking to anyone who has dealt with him in the last year.”
Roach continued to talk, giving a number to call, but King wasn’t listening. His eyes were open wide in disbelief. It couldn’t be. King stood, almost dropping his coffee cup. Tugging at the collar of his white bathrobe, he raced for the TV. “Oh, my God, it’s him!”
NO ONE IN the bunker had slept for more than a half hour at a time, and some of the agents had not slept at all. The noise of steel assaulting steel grew louder as morning approached. President Hayes remained confident that the FBI would come. He’d been through the briefings, he had listened to the experts state that the best time to attack was right before dawn. It was when people were most sluggish and hence easiest to surprise.
It started to brighten, this time of the year, around five-thirty, and the sun was up by a quarter past six. Each of the eleven felt a fevered anticipation as morning drew near, but as the hours passed by, there was collective letdown, followed by depression, as the nerve-racking sound of the door being breached gnawed at their ears. Each individual, including the president, asked himself or herself the same question over and over again. Can we hold out for another day?
Valerie Jones was coming back from the small bathroom, where she had finally, after two days, decided to remove the makeup from her face. Considering the situation, she felt that any hang-ups about her wrinkles and the dark
circles under her eyes were foolish.
Jones had spent all night thinking about the president’s rebuke the day before. She had worked far too hard to get where she was, and she wouldn’t allow anyone to pin the blame on her for admitting a terrorist into the Oval Office. In Jones’s mind the truth was never that simple. There were always eight sides to every story.
There was no way she was going to roll over now and watch her career-go up in flames. Jones had been concentrating on angles all night. Who could influence Hayes to help put the story in the proper light? Whom could she use to focus Hayes’s anger on? The first question was easy to answer. Jones knew enough senators and big donators. She could get them to whisper in the president’s ear or, if needed, lean on him. The way she would spin it would be to hold up Russ Piper and the DNC as sacrificial lambs. All Jones did was put him and his guest down in the appointment book. That menial task was hardly worth ending someone’s career over.
As far as getting her boss to focus his anger on something or someone else, Jones was working on that. She proceeded back to the couches and sat next to him. If she could get him thinking in another direction, she just might hold on to her job and her career.
President Hayes didn’t bother to look up when his chief of staff sat. Jones studied him for a second and then asked, “Why wouldn’t they have come?”
Hayes shook his head. “I don’t know. They must have a good reason.”
“Like what? Isn’t it our policy not to negotiate with terrorists?”
Hayes glanced over at her. “We don’t always stick to policy.”
“Well, who’s making the decisions?”
The president looked at her with his tired eyes. “As I told you yesterday,-if they’re following the Constitution, which I’m sure they are, the powers of the presidency will have been transferred to Vice President Baxter.”
Jones rolled her eyes. “That isn’t good news.”
The president did nothing at first and then nodded slowly in agreement.
“Why wouldn’t he send in the FBI?”
“I don’t know, Valerie.” Hayes sounded very impatient. The tension and lack of sleep were working on his nerves.
