The End Game (32 page)

Wednesday

4 p.m.–
Midnight

75

KING TO D1

T
hey had a bird's-eye view from the satellite images over Yorktown. One of the screens now showed strategic areas around the plant and stress points, and listed the names of the various buildings, too. There was no movement. It looked deserted.

When they told Sherlock about what Adam Pearce had discovered, she rubbed her hands together. “Well done, Adam. We'll send a team to grab Mr. Woody Reading as soon as the ink's dry on the warrant.”

Nicholas said, “I'm beginning to think of Adam as our secret weapon.”

All eyes in the conference room were watching the countdown clock draw closer to four zeroes.

With every tick of the clock, more agents filed into the room. All the agents from the CAU came in, Jimmy Maitland with them. He said to Sherlock, “Savich called, said to keep him informed. He can't get back in time.” He said aloud to the room, “No surprise, the media is going wild on the story of the president's plane. They've only been told there was a mechanical problem, and they were forced to land in Nova Scotia. The press secretary's statement assured the
president is fine and resuming his schedule as soon as he's back in D.C. However, apparently it's all over the Internet what Superman here pulled off. They won't be able to deny the truth of the attack much longer.”

Director Comey asked, “How did the media take the news about the cancellation of Yorktown?”

“Not a problem, sir,” Maitland said. “The president is being praised up and down, primarily for not backing down in the face of Iran's provocation and walking out of the peace talks, and almost as important, for proving he's not stupid for canceling Yorktown. Not in those exact words, of course. I believe the word more used was the president was prudent.”

Sherlock said, “It's nearly four o'clock.”

Mike flashed on a memory of the high school principal gathering all the students in the gym to watch the Space Shuttle
Columbia
take off. She remembered clearly the heart-pounding excitement, wondering what it was like to be inside, a real live astronaut. And then, two weeks later, watching the shuttle return to earth, and with no warning, it exploded. Dead, all dead.
Please, please,
she prayed, staring at the countdown clock.
Please.

The countdown ended.

The drone and satellite views drew closer to the facility.

Everyone was holding their breath.

Her prayer wasn't answered.

It started in the western edge, a small plume of smoke, and then every screen flashed a blinding white, with yellow edges. A ball of fire consumed the plant entirely.

It was Bayway all over, only bigger, huge in fact, which meant Spenser used a larger portion of one of his bombs. What would a whole one do? Two of them? But this time she and Nicholas weren't
running through the flames, feeling the heat burn their lungs, singe their flesh, hearing screams, knowing people were dying, already dead, and the fear, the gut-wrenching fear.

She said aloud, “But where was the bomb?”

Nicholas said, “The smoke plume came from South Four-G. We need to find out what was stored there.”

Sherlock unrolled the plans for the plant. “Here's Four-G. It's a metal depot. They keep tungsten there, among other things.”

Director Comey said, “So that's where Spenser put his bomb? In a mess of tungsten?”

“Yes, sir,” Nicholas said. “I imagine Spenser and probably Tate managed to deliver it in a shipment of metal—maybe even tungsten. It would be totally disguised. The agent undercover with COE told us the new bombs had tungsten components, and would be near on impossible to distinguish it from the rest of the metal.” And Nicholas would bet Nigel's best bottle of Scotch Spenser had done it during the blackout when everything was down, all the cameras, everything, security precautions heightened but handicapped.

Mike read his mind, more likely their brains were running on the same track. “I'm betting Spenser and Tate took down the power grid so they could have easier access to the plant.”

Nicholas said to Mike, “And some very creative coding by Woody Reading at Juno that made the blackout spread so quickly. Hard to control an overload of outages like we had.”

Sherlock said, “We'll start tracking all the tungsten shipments over the past week.”

Stunned silence continued in the conference room. The sheer enormity of the explosion, the complete destruction, it was hard to take in.

Mike said, “Matthew Spenser's final roar and no one was hurt. That's got to be a win for us.”

All the phones in the room began to ring.

•   •   •

Ten minutes after
the annihilation of Yorktown, Vice President Sloane called Mike. She said only, “Thank you both for what you did today.”

The vice president was actually thanking them, live, on Mike's own cell phone? Her heart speeded up. What an amazing feeling. “You're welcome, ma'am,” and that sounded stupid, but she couldn't think of anything else to say.

“Do you have any further word on the whereabouts of Zahir Damari?”

“I'm sorry, no, ma'am.”

“We have Homeland on the lookout for him. About half my advisers and half the CIA believe Damari will pack it up since it would be suicide for him to try and attack me now, with the entire world watching. However, I plan to be on the side of the other half who tell me he simply never gives up, not in his DNA. You can bet all my staff are on alert until he's caught. Which assessment do you agree with, Agent Caine?”

“I come down with the side that says let's take extreme care. Damari is the type of killer who has backups for his backups. Yes, he's out there, somewhere, and he's got a plan.”

“Thank you. Now, actually, I'm also calling you two to tell you the president would like to thank you himself for saving his life. He, and I, of course, would like you to join us at Camp David this evening. We're having a small dinner, cocktails prior. It will be casual, only staff, a few people from the Hill. The president was
planning on being at Camp David this weekend to, ah, recover from the peace talks. We've simply moved his schedule around to get him there a day early. Given what we know about Spenser and his group breaking into the POTUS scheduling, the prevailing wisdom says if we change our plans, there's no way Zahir Damari can surprise us.”

Mike said, “But, ma'am, I didn't think the president and vice president were allowed to be at Camp David at the same time.”

Callan laughed. “Well, what the public doesn't know won't hurt them. Tony Scarlatti, you remember him, my head of security? He felt it would be smart to keep me on a different schedule, too. Since it's not protocol, we think it will be the safest place for me to be. Secret Service will pick you up—some of Tony's guys—and we'll chopper you in. Trust me, you don't want to spend the afternoon hours driving up there, not in our traffic. This is much more efficient. You're at the Hoover Building?”

“Yes, ma'am. Thank you so much for the invitation and the transportation.”

“The car will be there in thirty minutes. And Agent Caine? Thank you again. What you and Agent Drummond managed to do today, it will not go unrewarded.”

Could she mean a tax break? No, probably not.

Nicholas was watching her, an eyebrow raised. Mike slipped her cell into the back pocket of her jeans. “Well, that was the vice president.”

“Yes, I gathered. Why are you grinning like a loon?”

“I was just thinking about my taxes. Hey, you want to go to a party?”

76

BISHOP TO B3 CHECK

Catoctin Mountains

O
ver the past twenty-four hours, Zahir learned that Secret Service agents gossiped like hens. They spoke freely of myriad operational movements, schedules, and the people involved. Unwittingly they gave him an excellent understanding of everything going on in Washington. And he heard talk about himself. These guys evidently weren't afraid of him, but it seemed everybody else was. He smiled.
Just wait, boys, just you wait.

He learned that Matthew Spenser had been shot to death trying to kill Vanessa Graves. Andy Tate was dead, probably killed by Matthew, Ian McGuire was dead, and Vanessa was still alive. He had to admire her surviving not only a gunshot to the chest, but falling off that building. Except she was a CIA undercover agent and that rather pissed him off. Maybe as soon as he was done here, he'd head south to the hospital and get rid of her.

And the president's plane hadn't gone down in the Atlantic when
Matthew had pressed the trigger. They wouldn't shut up about a Brit FBI agent who'd managed computer magic, and saved the plane.

A failure, but when it came down to it, Zahir wasn't all that disappointed.

Sorry, Matthew, you did try.

He had Plan B ready to put in motion. The only question he'd had, the only worry, was answered only minutes before. Both of them would be here.
Both of them.

He had to move up the schedule based on the flurry of activity he'd heard, but he couldn't be more pleased.

Zahir locked the bathroom door, an unnecessary security measure, but he hadn't reached this ripe old age being stupid, and reached into the bag.

After nearly an hour of painstaking detail and concentration, he was done. He smiled at the face in the mirror. He looked again at the photograph, and nodded. Perfection.

He was ready.

He sat on the couch in the small cabin, and waited for the party to begin.

77

KING TO C1

Andrews Air Force Base
Outside Washington, D.C.

T
he Sea King, only known as
Marine One
or
Marine Two
if the president or vice president was aboard, was a luxury liner compared to the Little Bird that had flown them down to Washington, D.C. Once strapped in, Mike ran her hand over the soft leather, pulled back the blue drapers to look outside. “I could get used to this.”

“You enjoy being treated like the queen—whisked around from car to chopper, do you?”

“Better a chopper than a Gulfstream. I'll never fly easy in one of those again.”

Nicholas remembered all too well the gut-wrenching fear. “I'm with you.”

The chopper's liftoff was smooth, and a moment later they were heading northwest toward Camp David.

Mike watched Nicholas pull an orange file out of his laptop case. “What is that? And who was that man who gave it to you?”

“That was George Hempton from the British embassy. I'm very glad he caught us before we left the Hoover Building. My father sent it to me, said it was urgent. Let's see what it has to say.” He pulled out a sheaf of papers and read aloud:

Nicholas,

Be very careful hunting Zahir Damari. He's extremely intelligent, skilled with guns and knives, primarily, and has the disguise skills of a master Hollywood makeup technician, which you probably already know. But he's better than you think, so be alert. Attached are a series of potential photographs. You'll at least get a sense for his build, his movements.

This is a copy, burn this when you're through.

Come home soon. We miss you.

It was signed simply,
HD
.

Nicholas moved to sit beside Mike. He opened the dossier, and the two of them began to read.

Damari was a chameleon. He managed to elude capture mostly because no one knew what he really looked like. The photographs included in the file showed a tall man, estimated height between one ninety and one ninety-three centimeters, which fit with what Nicholas knew about the Bayonne shootings. The man was about Nicholas's height. There was a photo of him from twenty years earlier, a shot of a young man in green soldier's garb, holding a worn Kalashnikov rifle.

Mike lightly touched her fingers to the photo. “Isn't that strange? He's young and he should look innocent, but he doesn't.”

“I doubt he looks anything remotely like this now, except maybe for the eyes.”

They read the various physical descriptions. Mike pulled out the photo of him that Vanessa had taken, and the photo of the man who'd met Woody Reading at the diner in Baltimore. They all looked like different men. “I knew he must be good,” Mike said, “but your dad's right. This is incredible.”

His kill list stretched for pages. Damari had been involved or solely responsible for several major assassinations, and many more minor ones. He was charged with unseating governments in Chile and Uganda through pinpoint strikes against certain players, taking out a DA in Argentina, a member of the Saudi royal family who'd gotten too full of himself. Page after page, a long, storied career for an assassin. And these were only the confirmed kills. Who knew how many others there were, off the radar?

Mike elbowed him, showed him a text on her phone. It was from Gray.

Border patrol stopped man fitting Damari's last known description in Texas. Will let you know more when we have it, not that it matters all that much now that we already know he's here, in our backyard. Have fun partying w/ big dogs. Bring us presidential M&Ms.

Nicholas stared out the window at the lush green landscape below, at the sprawling towns, wanting to feel excited, but he didn't. There was something that wasn't right and he didn't know what it was. It was driving him nuts.