Vince Flynn - Act of Treason

Rivera was as tough as they came, but even she was exhausted. It had been a hellish campaign. Each day brought a new city, and with each city came an entirely forgettable hotel room, bland hotel food, and a cramped hotel fitness center. Every morning she received a wake-up call from one of her fellow agents that, in addition to telling her what time it was, also reminded her where she was and where she was headed. Sometimes there were as many as four states in a day. The events were one after another from sunup to midnight, and she and her people had to be sharp every step of the way.

These presidential elections were a logistical nightmare. As hard as they were on the politicians and their staffers, though, they were worse on the sentinels who were tasked with protecting them. Rivera was the special agent in charge, or SAC, of presidential candidate Josh Alexander’s Secret Service detail. She’d been with the Secret Service for thirteen years. During that time she’d worked in the Los Angeles, Miami, and New York field offices. She’d also done two presidential details and had risen through the ranks quicker than any other agent in her class. Along the way she’d had one brief marriage, and a thankfully quick divorce to go along with it. That was almost ten years ago. It had been a pretty easy decision for Rivera. Her husband was a federal prosecutor working out of the Manhattan District. They’d met on an organized crime task force, and he’d swept her off her feet. Looking back on it now, she should have known marrying an attorney was a mistake. Four months into the marriage she stopped by her husband’s office one day to surprise him and busted him instead. Right there in the middle of the afternoon he was screwing a female NYPD detective on his couch. Rivera knocked him out cold and filed for divorce that very afternoon.

Maria Rivera was second-generation American, but she spoke Spanish fluently thanks to her grandmother, who still prayed every day for her marriage to be resurrected. Grandma Rivera had been crushed when she parted ways with the Harvard hotshot attorney. He was a good Catholic boy and quite the charmer. Rivera didn’t have the heart to tell grandma that the Ivy League attorney was a whore.

Free of her matrimonial bonds, Rivera took every tough assignment the Service threw at her. She’d worked major counterfeit and credit card fraud cases for years and in-between managed to do stints on presidential details. A year ago she’d been promoted to assistant special agent in charge of President Hayes’s detail, or ASAC. When Alexander took the lead after New Hampshire, her bosses called her into headquarters and told her to pack her bags. They put her in charge of Alexander’s detail and told her not to screw up. That she was on the short list to run the next presidential detail.

To run a presidential detail was every agent’s dream. It was also a position within the Service where the glass ceiling was still intact. If Rivera could keep it together she had a legitimate shot at being the first female agent to run a presidential detail. She had thought of little else for the last nine months. The pace of the campaign had been tolerable for most of that time. Early on Alexander didn’t have to work too hard. He was ahead in the polls. He was a fresh face and the new political darling of the moment. He had ridden that wave all the way to the Democratic Party’s convention in August where he walked away with a landslide of the delegates and a new running mate.

Then everything went to hell. Rivera had been expecting the pace to pick up as they hit the home stretch for the November election, but the demands of the campaign had surprised even her. Alexander’s opponents launched a blistering ad campaign that made hay out of the young governor’s penchant for embellishing stories and sometimes simply making things up. His youth and relative inexperience were brought into doubt, as well as his integrity. By the time Labor Day rolled around, a five-point lead in the polls had evaporated.

The answer from the Alexander camp was to fire their campaign manager and redouble their efforts. The first two weeks of September were spent on trains and the second two on buses. They crisscrossed the country, hitting every state that was deemed winnable. Events were scheduled, canceled, and then rescheduled. Advance teams were left stranded in cities as the campaign changed directions on an almost hourly basis. It was an absolute logistical disaster, but through it all Rivera had stayed at the helm and rolled with the schizophrenic scheduling of the campaign. Now, with just two weeks to go, she could finally see light at the end of the tunnel.

“Rivera,” a voice whispered urgently.

Maria Rivera backed out of the doorway and came face to face with Stuart Garret. Like most people in law enforcement, Rivera was a quick study when it came to people. When she was assigned to protect someone she was careful to not let her personal feelings or opinions affect her work. Josh Alexander, for instance, was a pretty nice guy. Well-mannered, sometimes aloof, but for the most part appreciative and respectful of the job she and her people performed. Mark Ross, on the other hand, was arrogant and condescending. Rivera didn’t like the man, but she kept it to herself. Garret, however, pushed her professional demeanor to the limits. He was quite possibly the biggest asshole she had ever met.

She was now face to face with the abrasive Californian who was running the show.

“Yes, Stu.”

“We’re fifteen minutes behind schedule.”

Rivera nodded. The campaign was behind schedule, not the Secret Service. Rivera and her people were not conductors on a train. They were not in charge of keeping people on time. They were in charge of keeping the candidates and their families alive.

“As soon as they’re done in there,” Garret continued, “I want everybody in the cars. I’m going to need some one-on-one time with Josh and Mark, so put Jillian in the second limo. She’s going to the vice president’s only for the receiving line, and then she wants to go back to her hotel for somefucking spa treatment or something.”

“Fine,” Rivera answered, ignoring Garret’s foul mouth.

Rivera had spent the last nine months of her life with the presidential candidate and his wife, and she still hadn’t had more than a two-sentence conversation with Jillian. She was very reserved, very attractive, and very aloof. It had been Garret’s idea to bring her along today. “Eye candy,” was what he called her. Her likability number was higher than her husband’s and his running mate’s combined. Jillian was currently in the second floor salon meeting with a group of Muslim women and discussing their role in combating Islamic extremism.

“She wants that big agent of yours to go with her,” Garret snarled.

“Special Agent Cash?”

“I don’t know hisfucking name. He’s the big guy.”

A lot of Rivera’s agents were big guys. She thought she knew which one he was referring to, though, so she said, “I’ll take care of it.”

“Good. Be ready to roll in five minutes.” Garret turned and rushed off down the long hallway.

Rivera watched him leave. On more than one occasion she’d visualized delivering a roundhouse kick to the man’s head. The scuttlebutt among the campaign staffers was that, win or lose, Garret wasn’t sticking around. He’d been chief of staff for a brief period under a previous administration and openly complained that it was the worst six months of his life. He was a hired gun who had accepted a rumored seven-figure fee to come in and bail out the campaign. Rivera had heard him say on more than one occasion that anyone willing to work for a government salary was a chump. This, of course, further endeared him to the agents who were assigned to protect his candidates.