Empire e-1 Read online

  “I still can’t see them.”

  “Sir, they’re making decent progress toward the city. I’ve never seen dolphins stay under the water in such perfect formation while making so much disturbance on the surface above them. In case you were thinking it was really big fish.”

  Reuben pulled out his cellphone.

  The bars kept going up and down, and the “Out of Service Area” message kept coming up, then going away.

  Coleman had his cellphone out. It was showing the same thing.

  “We’re getting jammed,” said Coleman. And without further warning, he dropped to the ground, fully prone. “Get down, sir!”

  Reuben understood what Coleman believed—that someone obviously knew they were there, and might start shooting at any time. “Do five pushups immediately. One-handed,” said Reuben. “Then laugh like it’s a joke.”

  Coleman did as he was told, then bounded back up to his feet, laughing. “You think they want us alive,” he said.

  “They don’t jam cellphones when they plan to kill the caller,” said Reuben.

  “You’re being set up,” said Coleman. “You’re the fall guy.”

  “They have a complete set of plans for this terrorist operation, written by me, and I’m right here at this site.”

  “Who knew you were coming here?”

  “I always come here.” Reuben started walking toward Coleman’s car. “Get your keys out,” said Reuben. “You’re driving.”

  “I’ve watched the movies. I know how this plays out. My car is going to get shot up and wrecked and fall into the river, and your car will be fine.”

  “My guess is that my car won’t start,” said Reuben.

  They kept up the casual walking until they were in the car. “Drive gently for a while,” said Reuben. “How fast were those underwater things going?”

  “Slow swimming speed,” said Coleman.

  “But this is the area where Fort McNair maintains listening devices.”

  Coleman drove around the curve of the point and started back up toward the ranger station.

  “A little faster now,” said Reuben. “If they’re following my plan, then they’ll switch on the submersibles and make a lot better speed the rest of the way up into the Tidal Basin.”

  “And we’re going to intercept them where?”

  “We’re going to the ranger station to make some calls on land lines. And to get some guns and some guys who know how to shoot.”

  “So what’s the plan?” asked Coleman. “They get out of the water, take off their scuba gear, and run across the Mall and attack the White House from the Ellipse? That area is so blocked off and guarded that they’ll be dead before they get close.”

  “They get out of the water, they set up their rocket launchers just above the retaining wall at the inside of the Tidal Basin, past the Independence Avenue bridge.”

  “Rocket launchers,” said Coleman, nodding.

  “You can’t see the White House from there—the Washington Monument is up on a hill, and the White House is invisible. So for the past couple of weeks, they’ve been practicing how many degrees to aim to the left of the monument in order to hit the White House. And they’ve got the range set to the micron. They probably know how to put one through any window in the White House that they want.”

  And they were at the ranger station.

  They parked the car illegally and ran inside, ignoring the remonstrances of the park ranger who followed them in, shouting, “Intruders!”

  Great. Here there was something approaching vigilance.

  Reuben had his ID out and was flashing it to the security guard and then to the receptionist. “I would appreciate your close attention,” he said, almost softly, though with a great deal of intensity. He didn’t want them to be afraid, he wanted them to obey. “There is a possible attack on the White House coming out of the Tidal Basin at any moment. It will be a rocket attack. We need to notify the President to get low and get out. We need troops mobilized and sent to the Independence Avenue bridge at the Tidal Basin. And we need the best rifles you can muster with all the ammo you have at hand.”

  “Tell us where to go and we’ll shoot,” said the guard.

  “We’re Special Ops,” said Coleman. “We know how to use them.”

  There was only a moment of hesitation. Then men began running. The bad news—but fully predictable—was that the receptionist said, “The lines are dead.”

  To which Reuben said, “Then somebody get in your ranger jeep and get to a building that still has a phone. The Holocaust Museum. Not the Jefferson Memorial.”

  The good news was that they were up-to-date weapons that seemed clean and had plenty of ammo. Reuben and Coleman grabbed them and ran for the car. There was a ticket on the windshield. Coleman turned on the windshield wiper and after a few swipes it blew away as they drove back along Buckeye Drive and then under the 395 overpass. “Who had time to write us a ticket?” said Reuben.

  “It was probably an envelope filled with anthrax,” said Coleman. “That’s why I didn’t take it off by hand.”

  “No, don’t turn there—we’re not going to try to shoot from the Jefferson Memorial. The Independence Av bridge and the cars on it will block any kind of clean shot.” Reuben directed him up to West Basin Drive as he checked to make sure both weapons had full clips.

  “You realize this is Friday the thirteenth,” said Cole.

  “Screw you,” said Malich.

  They drove among the tourist cars until they came to Independence Avenue itself, which was completely blocked going toward the bridge, and had no traffic coming the other way.

  They stopped the car and ran for it. Not that far along the bridge—but too far, if the terrorists had already made it out of the water long enough to have traffic blocked.

  When Reuben and Coleman got onto the bridge, they saw two rocket launchers being set up simultaneously, while a guy with a protractor—a simple junior-high protractor!—was standing at a particular fence post and now was indicating where the launchers should be aiming.

  Another guy—there were only the four in wet suits, as far as Reuben could see—was standing in the westbound lanes, which passed behind the retaining wall and did not go over the bridge. He was holding a sign.

  “There’s more guys than that,” said Coleman. “Somebody cut those phone lines.”

  “I wonder what that sign says,” said Reuben.

  Whatever it said, it was enough to keep the drivers in place without much honking. And because of the blockage going that direction, traffic was stopped cold the other way, too. It would delay any military vehicles that might attempt to stop them. And delay was all they needed. With these guys, there’d be no escape plan. Though if they did happen to live long enough to get away from the Tidal Basin, they’d no doubt run to the Holocaust Museum and start killing Jews and Jewish sympathizers—which is what they would assume the Holocaust Museum would contain. Oh, yes—and schoolchildren.

  Reuben knew they wouldn’t get that far.

  He and Coleman had line of sight. They got down, and—

  And a bullet pinged into the guardrail.

  So they dropped down prone and sighted under the rail. They both fired.

  The guy with the protractor spun and dropped. A shoulder wound, probably, thought Reuben. “Were you aiming at him?” he asked.

  “No,” said Coleman. He’d been sighting on the guy with the sign.

  “Then I must have been,” said Reuben.

  One of the boneheads in the car behind them had rolled down his window. “Is this, like, a war game?”

  “This is not a drill,” said Reuben calmly. “Get down inside your car as low as you can.”

  By now the guys with the launchers were lying flat, still preparing their launch. There was no clear shot at them.

  The guy who had held the sign was firing at them. And Reuben and Coleman couldn’t get to a different position, because now the shots hitting around them were pretty steady. Th
e close ones were not coming from the guy with the sign.

  “They’re not trying,” said Reuben. “Wherever their sniper is, he could kill us anytime.”

  “Just trying to pin us down,” agreed Coleman.

  “Shoot for the launchers themselves,” said Reuben.

  “I’m left,” said Coleman.

  But by the time he said that, Reuben was already firing at the left-hand launcher. Which their bullets knocked over. And by the time they corrected to aim for the other, the rocket had launched.

  Reuben guessed that their sniper would be unable to resist watching for the explosion when the rocket hit. So he got up and ran to a different position and Coleman followed him, and there would be no last stand in the Holocaust Museum because they got all three of the remaining wet-suit guys… as they watched the column of flame and the plume of smoke rise above the grassy hill of the Washington Monument.

  “Either they hit the White House or they didn’t,” said Reuben. “We’ve got that sniper to catch.”

  “He was shooting from over to the left of the World War II Memorial,” said Coleman.

  “And you can bet he’s got a car.”

  Their pursuit of him ended quickly. Now the choppers were coming in and military vehicles were jouncing over the lawns and here was Reuben in civilian clothes carrying a rifle and so he had to stop for a conversation. It wasn’t long—Coleman’s uniform helped—and soon there were soldiers and choppers in pursuit of the sniper. But what kind of pursuit was it when nobody knew what he looked like, what he was driving, or where he might be going next?

  “Did any of those clowns from the ranger station get a message to you, or did you just come when somebody reported shooting?” said Reuben.

  “The choppers went up,” said the lieutenant, “when the cellphones started jamming.”

  “And you didn’t send them to the Tidal Basin?” asked Reuben.

  “Why would we do that?” asked the lieutenant.

  Which meant that indeed, no one knew about the plans that Reuben had drawn up. Except, of course, the terrorists who had followed them.

  There was nothing useful to do now except get to the top of the hill and see where the rocket had landed.

  It had taken out half the south facade of the West Wing.

  “Where was the President?” asked Reuben. He was talking to himself, but by now the lieutenant, who had climbed the hill with them, was talking over a military wavelength.

  “At least twenty,” the lieutenant repeated. “Including the President, SecDef, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.”

  How strange. For the death of a village wise man, Reuben had been able to keen and wail in grief. For the death of a President he respected and admired, he didn’t have a tear or even a word. Maybe because he knew the old man in that village, and he didn’t know the President, not personally.

  Or maybe because Reuben hadn’t drawn up the plans that killed the old man in the village.

  Not that Reuben didn’t feel anything. He felt so much that he was almost gasping. But it wasn’t grief. It was resolve. Gnawing at him. He would do something. There must be something he could do.

  The lieutenant turned to them with a face like death. “They got the Vice President, too.”

  “He was in the same meeting?” said Reuben, incredulous. “They’re never supposed to be in the same place.”

  “His car was broadsided by a dump truck and pushed into a wall. He was crushed.”

  “Let me guess,” said Coleman. “The Secret Service killed the truck driver.”

  “The truck driver blew himself up.”

  Reuben turned to Coleman. “They’ve got a source inside the White House,” he said. “How else would they know what room the President would be in?”

  Coleman touched his elbow and Reuben allowed him to lead them away from the lieutenant. “At least you know it wasn’t timed solely to coincide with your being at Hain’s Point,” said Coleman. “That was just a bonus for them.”

  “The question is, do I go public about the plans I submitted, so the FBI can start trying to trace the leak?”

  “Love those headlines: ‘Presidential Assassination Planned in Pentagon,’ ” said Coleman.

  “Or do I sit tight and let the Pentagon quietly set me up as the scapegoat?”

  “Either way, your career is over,” said Coleman. “Sir.”

  “You sure lucked out with this assignment,” said Reuben.

  “Hell of a first day on the job, sir,” said Coleman.

  Then it was time to stop pretending this wasn’t tearing them up.

  “We’ve been under fire together,” said Reuben. “My friends call me Rube.” He knew that Coleman probably wouldn’t be able to bring himself to use the nickname. Not with a superior officer.

  “My friends call me Cole.”

  The lieutenant coughed. “Sirs, I’m being asked to bring you in for debriefing. I believe those are your bullets in the bodies down there, right?”

  “Well, technically not our bullets,” said Reuben. “They were borrowed weapons.” He was still in the black humor of combat.

  So was Cole. “We did aim the weapons from which they were fired, and we did pull the triggers.”

  “Are they all dead?” asked Reuben. “We were under pressure and moving, and I’m afraid we probably shot to kill.”

  “They were strung with grenades,” said the lieutenant. “They weren’t going to be taken alive.”

  “Lucky thing we didn’t hit any of the grenades,” said Cole, “or there’d be no body left to identify.”

  There was the unmistakable sound of several grenades going off in series down by the Tidal Pool.

  “Bastards!” shouted the lieutenant.Then he ran down the hill toward the chaos of mangled bodies and screaming survivors.

  “They booby-trapped themselves,” said Reuben, sick at heart. “Apparently killing the President wasn’t enough.”

  “You didn’t plan all of this,” said Cole. “You couldn’t have planned for a White House insider.”

  “But I did,” said Reuben. “I said they either had to have a devastatingly powerful weapon, or reliable intelligence—not only about whether the President was in residence, but also exactly where he was inside the building.”

  “Yes, but putting that in the plan doesn’t give them the resources,” said Cole. “They can’t just magically say, Alakazam, and they’ve got a White House source.”

  But there was a guy in the White House who knew all about Reuben and his projects. “I thought I was on two different assignments,” said Reuben. “One from my day job at the Pentagon, one from my White House guy.”

  “Shit,” said Cole. “They were working you from both ends.”

  Wreckage

  If you wait to take action until you are certain of the enemy’s position, strength, and intentions, you will never act. Yet to act without knowledge is to plunge forward into a trap (if your enemy is aggressive) or waste your strength on meaningless maneuvers (if your enemy chooses to avoid you).

  “While the lieutenant is busy, I have an errand to run,” said Major Malich. “You can come with me or not.”

  “Do I get to know where?” asked Cole. And because he thought that made him sound like a little kid on a car trip, he added, “I promise not to ask if we’re there yet.” Then he winced. This wasn’t the time for attempts at ingratiating humor. He wished he knew Major Malich better. They’d just been in a firefight together, but Cole still had to worry about what impression he was making.

  Malich turned away from him. “They’re going to want to debrief me. That will tie me up for about a week, and by that time, whoever’s trying to screw me will have me fully screwed. So I need to climb the screw and find out who’s driving it. Before I get locked in a room somewhere.”

  Cole got it. “So let’s go.”

  Cole dropped his borrowed weapon and Malich did likewise. They began jogging up the hill. When they neared the crest, they broke into a full run, t
hough with Malich in a suit and Cole in uniform, they weren’t in the right clothes for running—especially the shoes.

  Military and emergency vehicles crowded all the available streets around the White House, and survivors were gathering and being triaged and treated on the south lawn. But to get there, there was the little matter of a huge crowd of stunned tourists being held at bay by a cordon of soldiers, none of whom would have either the authority or the inclination to decide to let a couple of midlevel officers come prancing through.

  Near the bottom of the hill, Malich veered left to angle toward Constitution Avenue, heading away from the mess just south of the White House grounds. Cole caught up with him and as they ran side by side, Malich explained. “If we go around by way of New York Avenue and State Place, we can try to get in at the southwest gate.”

  As it was, they had to flash ID and do a little bullying even to get to the southwest gate, and when they got there the MPs on duty weren’t inclined to converse.

  “Get the hell away from here, sirs,” they were told politely.

  Major Malich took a step back and saluted. Confused, the MP saluted back.

  “Soldier,” said Malich, “you’re doing your job. But my job is counterterrorism, and somewhere in that wreckage is the man to whom my information about the terrorists who did this must be reported. If he’s dead, I need to know that so I can take this information elsewhere. If he’s alive, then he needs to have it and he needs it now. And I can’t tell you that information, soldier, because I would then be court-martialed, which would be the end of a glorious career.” Then he smiled.

  “Yeah, well what about my career if I get my ass kicked for letting you in after I was told nobody gets in?”

  “But they didn’t mean it,” said Cole. “You know if one of the Joint Chiefs showed up he’d tell you to let him through the damn gate and you’d do it.”

  The MP sighed. “I have a feeling this was only the first of many urgent stories I’m going to be told today.” But he let them through.

  Which was when the real chaos began. The policy to admit no one was a good one, Cole saw at once. There were quite a few injuries, and even more weeping and hysteria and catatonia and pacing and panicky conversations and people just standing there clutching briefcases or stacks of file folders, and nobody seemed to be in charge.