White: A Novel (24 page)

Oval Office, The White House

“WHAT IN THE
name of God is going on?” the vice president demanded to know as she stormed past two uniformed marines and burst into the Oval Office.

Venable stood behind his podium, leaning forward with both hands on the front edge. He looked unsteady, his skin pale and moist, like a crackhead craving another fix.

“Seventeen kilos . . . almost forty pounds of radioactive material,” Havelock answered. He leaned against a painter’s scaffolding that hadn’t been there when she left.

“From the University of Louisville?” She’d heard that much from the Secret Service.

“Research isotopes, mainly,” Alred explained. He, Vick, and Chase stood scattered at various parts of the Oval Office as if the lack of a desk had eliminated the president’s gravity. “Cesium, iridium, mostly gamma emitters, which pose the greatest threat.”

“Explain that to me again,” Venable said. He raised his left hand in the air as if trying to conduct some sort of information symphony.

“Radiological materials fall into three primary categories,” Alred continued. “Alpha, beta, and gamma emitters. The body’s natural immune system can best handle alpha and beta particles. Gamma is a different story. My people tell me that anyone interested in building an RDD would want to . . .”

“RDD?” the president interrupted. “I told you, no acronyms!”

“Radiological dispersion device,” Havelock interjected. The others nodded as if they knew.

“A dirty nuke,” Alred clarified further. “Though we have always worried about the bad guys getting a nuclear weapon, the most likely scenario is an RDD. It is much cheaper, easier to build, and easier to transport without detection.”

“And not nearly as deadly, thank God,” Beechum said. She pulled off her coat and threw it on the couch. “We’re talking about a conventional explosive wrapped in glow powder, David. Could be just about anything from isotopes used to calibrate manufacturing equipment to medical implants to spent fuel rods from a power plant.”

“The concept is that the blast from the explosive would disperse the radioactive material into the environment,” Alred added. “If you listen to the cable news experts, they’ll tell you that the surrounding area will be irradiated and rendered useless for thousands of years. That’s not true. Most of these isotopes have brief shelf lives and will disperse to nonthreatening levels within days . . . perhaps even hours.”

Venable’s expression showed signs of relief.

“Why doesn’t the media ever mention that?” he asked.

“Fear sells,” Havelock answered. “Why let reality get in the way of ratings?”

“So, what’s the problem?” he asked. “Sounds like the initial blast is the biggest issue.”

“True from a crisis response point of view,” Beechum said. “But that’s not the most important consideration.”

The president waved his hand again. He wanted the denouement.

“Panic,” his chief of staff chimed in. The others understood crisis response; she understood politics. “You mention the word
nuclear
and people go nuts. It’s the news shows; they’ve gotten this thing blown completely out of proportion. Joe Six-pack couldn’t tell you the difference between REMs and an RC cola, but he’ll whoop up holy hell if some FOX News talking head mentions the phrase ‘dirty nuke.’”

“Terrorism is about destabilization through fear,” Beechum agreed. “We don’t call them
bombists,
we call them
terrorists.
The psychological impact of a successful detonation will completely overshadow the previous attacks. Regardless of casualties.”

Venable walked toward the West Wing door, then turned left as if he’d decided to stay after all.

“How many devices?” he asked. “If they have forty pounds, are we talking several different bombs or one big one?”

“They’ve hit multiple targets with each of the two prior attacks,” Alred reminded everyone. “We have to assume that they’ll follow the same mode of operation.”

No one said anything for a moment. Alred spoke up again.

“I want to point out, however, that making one of these things is not going to be easy. This RDD concept is a paper tiger. No one has tested this sort of bomb because it has no military application and law enforcement doesn’t want to deal with cleaning up after test explosions.”

“What’s so hard about it?” Venable scolded him. “You just told me that you wrap some nuclear waste around a stick of dynamite and set it off. How hard is that?”

“Pretty hard, actually,” Beechum said. She had seen this briefing before her committee after the 9/ 11 disasters. “The amount of explosive has to be very carefully calculated. Too much and the radioactive material will be diffused to the point where it is not even threatening. Too little and you end up with a small area of contamination that hazmat teams can quickly contain. And like Mr. Alred said, there’s no real data out there; the assholes behind this may have bitten off more than they can chew.”

“Where?” the president asked. He was walking in circles now. Beads of sweat glistened on his pasty forehead. He had undone his tie and taken off his coat, exposing a wrinkled shirt that stuck to his skin.

“We have to assume high-profile targets,” Vick spoke up for the first time. He tried not to notice that the president had shaved poorly. Patches of heavy black whiskers stood out on his sinking cheeks.

“New York, Los Angeles . . . here inside the Beltway.”

“That’s what they want us to think!” Venable stopped his pacing as if transfixed by the ghost of some president past. “They know we know about the theft. They know that we’re pulling out every stop trying to prevent another attack. We know that they know that we know, but we don’t know what we don’t know and that’s . . .”

Venable started to drown in his own stream of consciousness. He sat down at his Gothic-looking harmonium and played with the keys, pressing them one at a time with his index finger. Beechum shook her head, praying to herself that he wouldn’t turn it on.

“We need to be more creative in our thinking,” Beechum opined.

“Right,” Venable agreed. “We need to look back to the heartland, where they struck in the first place. That’s where they’ll hit us next . . . Kansas City, New Orleans . . .”

“Mr. President,” his chief of staff tried to interrupt him.

“Chattanooga, Ojai, Portland . . . don’t you see? They just want us to think . . .”

“David!” Andrea Chase called out. She fully knew the peril in letting him ramble. “We have to assume that you’re the next target. Which means you have to consider evacuation options.”

David Ray Venable, the forty-fourth president of the United States, nodded ever so slightly, as if her words were no more significant than the steward announcing dinner. He looked distant, sad that things had all turned out so badly.

“Yes, of course. Well, see to it, then.”

He turned square to the harmonium’s keys, fiddled with a half dozen stops, and flipped the On switch. The organ’s ancient electric bellows began to whir.

“Thank you. That will be all.”

Beechum thought for a moment about whisking them out and staying for a chat with the leader of the free world. But then she changed her mind.

Better to deal with the cabinet members in private,
she thought to herself.
Something has to be done about the president before the next crisis strikes.

Beechum followed the equally conflicted chief of staff out into the reception area.

“A word, please?” Beechum asked.

The president’s closest advisors turned to listen. Behind them rose the competently played melody of “All Creatures of Our God and King.” Then David Ray Venable began to sing.

“READY ON THE
right, ready on the left, all ready on the firing line!”

Jeremy turned to face his target, an FBI-style Q silhouette he had lined up on literally hundreds of times before. The cardboard approximation of a human head and torso faced ninety degrees to him, offering just the blade edge.

Clank!

The mechanical range sprang to life, “fronting” the target.

Smooth is fast.

Jeremy drew his handgun, the web of his right hand pressing firmly down into the backstrap, wrapping his fingers around the soft rubber grips. His right index finger fell gently against the well-oiled frame.

Balance the grip sixty-forty to the outside palm.

His hands came together six inches in front of his sternum. They folded atop each other, the thumbs aligned and pointed toward the threat.

Concentrate on the front sight, squeeze the trigger—don’t jerk it.

He saw the tritium dot on the front ramp, big as a tractor trailer bearing down on him. The muzzle lowered flat as he pushed the heavy steel weapon forward, his elbows slightly bent, weight forward on the balls of his feet, knees shoulder-width apart, shoulders slightly hunched, both eyes open.

Make each shot perfect, then let it go. You can’t get it back. Don’t bother looking.

He watched the business end of his barrel bob up and settle back down. He saw smoke spitting out the end, the front sight gleaming in the crisp blue air. He felt the shock of recoil and caught the elegant flight of the spent shell casings drifting off to the right as he poured round after round into the target. Jeremy watched it all play out in slow motion, as if directed by the Wachowski brothers. All he needed was Neo and Agent Smith to drop in and the moment would be complete.

Follow through with a cleanup sight picture. Three shots . . . four.

Jeremy held the weapon on target an extra two count, then lowered it just below line of sight and pulled it back toward his chest into what handgunners referred to as “ready gun.” Everything flashed back before him, like the video HRT used to show operators where they made mistakes.

It was all over before he knew it, of course. Shooting combat courses required an empty mind. But whatever he had learned in NOTS stuck with him much deeper than conscious thought.

“Damn, son, you look like you’ve done this before!”

Jeremy tuned back in to his surroundings. The man standing next to him sounded impressed. The colonel stood somewhere behind them, but Jeremy didn’t bother looking to see his reaction.

“You trying to show me up, or what?”

Jeremy had fired four shots from the draw in less than three seconds, yet the cumulative imprint of his bullets amounted to a single ragged hole.

“Practice,” Jeremy said, turning to a wiry Hispanic with a man-sized dip of Skoal protruding from his lower lip. The wintergreen smell carried well in the dry desert air. “That’s what it’s all about, right?”

“Yeah, I guess,” the man said. He spoke with no discernible accent. “How come I practice all the time and my target looks like shit?”

Jeremy didn’t argue. There were no fake compliments on a firearms range.

“Line’s cold!” one of the instructors called out. They had been shooting for about forty-five minutes in a sun Jeremy hadn’t fully anticipated. Like the colonel had said, it looked friendly but could wear a man out.

The “line,” as they called it, amounted to a flat gravel lot facing ten-foot-high earthen berms. A string of pneumatically operated target stands ran twenty yards from left to right. On command, students could turn, run, roll, or crawl their way toward the targets and engage them from up to fifty yards away.

Three instructors stood behind the students as they ran the drills. The colonel hung back, quietly assessing this plenary session.

Nine shooters had signed up for the high-intensity tactical, or HIT, course—all men. As far as Jeremy could tell from their gear, he was the only civilian.

“Juan Emmanuel Javier Subealdea,” the man with the bad target said. “Everybody calls me Shotgun cause I’m a breacher. Or maybe because of my shooting, huh?” He stopped loading his magazines long enough for a quick shake. “Do I know you? You look real familiar to me.”

Great,
Jeremy thought.

“Doubt it,” he said. “Not unless you like Shakespeare. I work for a traveling company out of Washington.” He followed the rest of the students as they walked down to pull their targets. Shotgun followed him back to the bleachers.

“You sure I don’t know you?” the man asked. He spit a sinew of Skoal juice at a passing scorpion. “I worked dope for years. Got a real good eye for faces.”

“Sorry,” Jeremy said. He walked over to a case of .45 ammo and filled his pockets for the next round of shooting drills.

“Oh, shit, now I . . . ,” the man started to say.

Jeremy felt a shiver.

“Look, I’m real sorry, dude,” Shotgun said after looking around to make sure no one was listening. “I hope I didn’t scare you, but like I said, I don’t forget a face.”

Jeremy didn’t know how this man recognized him but guessed that he was about to find out.

“You must be here UC, right?” he asked.

“UC?” Jeremy looked puzzled. “What’s that mean?”

Shotgun smiled knowingly.

“I won’t say nothing. I was back at Quantico a couple months ago at the National Academy. One of our instructors was a former HRT guy. He gave us a tour of the building. I saw your picture up on the wall. That was some amazing shit you pulled down in Puerto Rico. They gave you the attorney general’s Medal of Valor.”

The two men walked quietly for a while.

“I’m sorry to bring it up,” Shotgun said. “I just got a lot of respect for you is all. I just wanted to tell you.”

Jeremy felt a knot rise up from his gut and stick in the back of his throat. This was a Group II undercover assignment with no backup. It was an operation with distinct national security implications—a mission he knew carried life-or-death consequences. He hadn’t been here three hours and he’d already been compromised.

“Really, man,” Shotgun assured Jeremy. “This ends here. No shit.”

Jeremy pulled out his handgun and loaded a fresh magazine. If the slide slamming shut offered punctuation, he didn’t mean it.

“My name’s Walker,” he said. “Like I told you, I’m just a fan of the Bard.”

“MOMMY, DOES DADDY
still love us?” Christopher asked. The little boy lay curled up in his mother’s lap on the couch in their family room. A lime-green fiberglass cast ran from the knuckles of his left hand halfway up to his shoulder.