Vince Flynn - Transfer of Power

Breathing a little heavier, he paused for a second to listen for Adams.

Nothing, no warning from above. Pulling the numbers up from memory, he punched in the first eight and once again stopped to listen. Not more than two seconds later he punched the last number and stood back. The 9-mm Beretta went back into his right hand as the rubber gasket surrounding the door hissed. There was the metallic click of the locking stems retracting, and Rapp’s left hand shoved down on the door handle.

It was no time to be timid.

Shoving the door open three feet, Rapp led with the pistol.

The first thing his senses picked up was the sound of the drills and then a strange smell. His eyes picked up the back of the open door that led out into the hallway, and as he continued to open the steel door and step into the anteroom, the door hit something and there was the sound of metal hitting metal. The noise startled Rapp but wasn’t loud enough to be heard over the clamor of the drills. Rapp slid around the door, leading with the gun, careful to show only as much of his body as necessary.

Quickly, he jerked the pistol to the left and then the right, his eyes following. The room was empty. He approached the open door and took a quick peek down the hallway. Nothing.

Taking a longer look this time, he looked up at the vent in an attempt to see Rielly. He was relieved to see that he couldn’t.

Returning his attention to the task at hand, he turned and looked for the source of his and many others’ frustration.

There it sat, immediately to the left of the bunker door, touching the shiny polished steel The black box was no bigger than a large stereo receiver. Rapp stepped over a toolbox and around another. Dropping down to one knee, he looked at the control panel and studied the dials and digital readout The unit was manufactured by one of Westinghouse little-known subsidiaries who just happened to do a lot of work with the CIA, FBI, and Secret Service. Aziz had taken this baby from the Secret Service’s arsenal. Rapp pulled the box away from the door so he could get at the wires and antenna in back. He grabbed a small pair of wire cutters from his web vest and lowered the arm of the lip mike on his headset. Rapp snipped the wire that led to the antenna.

“Milt, can you hear me? Milt, can you hear me?” Rapp waited a couple seconds. After failing to raise Adams a second time, Rapp flipped the jammer onto its front and looked at the perforated black metal on the back. Through the cooling slats, he could see several bound groups of wire. Turning the thing off wouldn’t work. He had to disable it. The key was to make it look as if it were still on.

Rapp plunged the wire cutter in between two of the cooling slats. The pointy nose of the wire cutter bent the metal.

Rapp twisted the tool back and forth several times to get more access, and then opened the snips. As he clamped down on the first group of wires, it never occurred to him to unplug the machine first. Rapp squeezed hard, and as soon as the metal jaws of the wire cutter broke the protective insulation of the wires, sparks shot up, and Rapp was knocked back onto his butt.

With tingles shooting up his right arm and feeling as if he’d lost all of the hair on his body, Rapp mumbled, “Shit.” Shaking his right arm vigorously, he started to get back up. Over his headset he heard the voice of Milt Adams, and then someone else. A voice he didn’t recognize.

IRENE KENNEDY sat at her elevated position in the control room with a phone to her ear. On the other end of the secure line. General Campbell was explaining Lt. Commander Harris’s plan to send in a small team of demolition experts to clear the path for the strike teams. Kennedy was not excited about the plan at first, that was until Campbell explained to her that Harris and the three men he had chosen had all succeeded in accomplishing what seemed to be the most difficult aspect of the operation during a training operation with the Secret Service some eight years earlier. She still wasn’t crazy about the idea, but the fact that they had already proven they could do it went a long way.

As Kennedy listened to the general fill her in on the other aspects of the plan, her concentration was broken by a flurry of motion and voices from the two rows in front of her when she looked up, she almost dropped the phone. The monitors that were showing the pictures that Rapp had already provided were now crystal clear, and smack dab in the middle of the big board was a picture of a shiny silver door that could be nothing other than the one to the president’s bunker.

Campbell repeatedly called Kennedy’s name. After the third or fourth time it registered, and she said into the phone, “He did it.”

“Who did it?” asked a slightly irritated Campbell.

“Mitch did. We have a picture of the bunker on the board.”

Kennedy paused for a second while one of her people pointed to his own headset and spoke to her. Kennedy clutched the phone and said, “You’d better get back here right away. We have Mitch on full audio from his Motorola, not the field radio. I think he’s taken out the jammer. Hustle back. I have to let Thomas know.” Without waiting for a response from Campbell, Kennedy hung up the phone and quickly dialed the extension for her boss. At the same time she riffled through a stack of papers.

Stansfield answered on the second ring, and Kennedy could barely contain her excitement.

“Thomas, Mitchell has taken out the jammer. We have him on full audio, and we’ve picked up two more surveillance feeds.”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” Stansfield calmly replied.

Kennedy hung up the phone and put on her headset as she called out Rapp’s code name over the microphone hanging in front of her lips. She came across the document she was looking for, a list of numbers provided by Secret Service Director Tracy.

PRESIDENT HAYES LOOKED at his watch.

It was nearing five o’clock.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t wait until it’s dark?”

Jackwarch shook his head.

“I’d like to, but we don’t know how much time we have.”

All of the agents were either sitting or standing around the group of couches in the middle of the room. Warch had convinced the president that their chances for survival were better if they made the break.Valerie Jones had also agreed.

Not that it made a huge difference, but at this crucial juncture the less dissent the better. After getting Jones out of the way, Warch had brought the agents in, and they were now finalizing the plan.

Warch looked up at Pat Cowley. Cowley was hands down the best shot of the group with either a pistol or submachine gun. The former Supreme Court police officer had just finished a four-year stint with the Secret Service’s Counter Assault Team, where he had spent the majority of his time riding around in the back of the old, black, armor-plated Suburban that followed the president’s limousine wherever it went.

These were the men that carried the big hardware. If the motorcade came under attack, it was their job to, first, cover the president’s evacuation and, second, neutralize the threat if possible. Their basic doctrine was to carry enough firepower that they could enfilade the threat with a volley of bullets while the president was evacuated from the area. Warch continued going through the agents’ assignments one by one. He picked two agents to leapfrog behind the point as they moved, and assigned Ellen Morton and three other agents to stay with the president at all times. The last agent was to provide a rear guard if needed. Warch himself would stay fluid and try to lead as they moved.

After all questions were answered and the evacuation routes were decided on, warch got the troops lined up. Five of the nine agents carried MP-5 submachine guns along with their SIG-Sauer pistols. The others, including Warch, were armed with their pistols only. With weapons checked and ready, Warch turned to Ellen Morton and said, “Take the president and Valerie and put them in the bathroom When we give you the all clear, you bring them out, and we move.”