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My team will be keeping up appearances and monitoring the mission over a radio subnet. While each of us takes a turn standing watch in the command center, the rest of the night shift will remain oblivious, manning their posts around the White House.
“Anyone want coffee?” Agent Sheridan asks. His eyes dart around the group and, as always, linger on mine. Sheridan is young, almost too young for my command team, but he’s earned this spot beside me. A few of us take him up on the offer, and he peels off toward the White House mess.
In the basement beneath the Oval Office, the Secret Service runs the White House command center. It’s a fortress within a fortress, our Batcave, our secret hideout. This is where we store our weapons, our tuxes, our radios. All communications channels in Washington, DC, pass through this room. We have taps into every law enforcement agency, including some the public has never heard of. If you’ve breathed the president’s name, we know.
There’s a brass plaque inset next to the blast proof door, above the keypad and scanner I use to badge inside.
United States Secret Service
Presidential Protection Division
Special Agent in Charge Reese Theriot
* * *
“Sir?”
The touch on my shoulder brings me back.
I’d sipped my coffee, set my guys on watch, and told the team I was taking a power nap. I can be snoring minutes after downing an espresso. Sleep is sacred to the Secret Service. It’s practically currency.
Sheridan is there, kneeling beside me in the dimly lit back room stuffed with bunk beds for agents pulling double shifts. Soft snores and the rustle of bodies play in the darkness. I check the time. It’s 1:17 a.m.
I haven’t been out long.
“What’s wrong?” I’m on my feet before the words are out of my mouth, pulling on my shoulder holster and my suit jacket.
“We lost contact with Cupcake,” Sheridan says. “They went dark.”
“What do you mean they went dark?”
We can track the president’s position to within a half inch across the surface of the planet. It’s impossible for us to lose contact with him. Besides, in terms of surveillance, Washington is one of the most blanketed cities in the world. The FAA and NSA can name the insects that fly in and out of DC airspace, that’s how controlled this postage stamp of real estate is.
What Sheridan is saying doesn’t make sense.
Sheridan’s face is cast half in shadow and bathed in red, a dull murmur of light thrown from the single low-watt bulb we keep in the bunk room.
This must be a prank. Some old-guard initiation of Sheridan. Normally I’d be in on the joke, but if they want me to sell panic to him, they’re getting their wish. My heart is pounding. My pulse is climbing. And that’s fear in his eyes.
“They went dark, sir.” His voice catches. “Cupcake dropped off our entire grid. We can’t raise them on the radio.”
“Fuck.”
The command center is chilly and dim, lit by the blue-tinted glow of dozens of surveillance monitors, camera feeds, and televisions mounted on the front wall. Usually it’s filled with the mumble of voices, the click-clack of laptop keys, and the buzz of radio chatter and static.
Now there’s a crackle in the air, like electricity sparking off ozone, and an unnatural stillness. The silence of a room full of people all holding their breath.
Flames fill the center screen on the front wall. It’s playing a live feed from CNN, an aerial shot from a news chopper circling over a section of Rock Creek Park. An inferno snakes off the road and into the woods in an all-too-familiar crash pattern.
“Sir.” The voice sounds faraway, as if I’m being shouted at underwater. “The president is missing.”
