White: A Novel (41 page)

He caught Trask in a knowing glance.

“She knows,” Mitchell said.

Trask just nodded and returned to his calls.

“I’M TELLING YOU,
I was
trying
to get you to arrest me! Can’t you figure that out?” Jeremy yelled. He had been trying to convince these two officers of his plan since they threw him unceremoniously into the back of their squad car.

“Nigger?” the cop with the mustache asked sarcastically. “Is there really a white man in America ignorant enough to use that word anymore?”

“I was sitting on twenty tons of high explosives with a bunch of murderous white supremacists on my tail,” Jeremy rationalized. “What was I supposed to do?”

“You could have started with ‘I need some help, officer,’” the driver said. He conjured up an Uncle Tom accent. “You’d be surprised what us colored folk can do if we puts our minds to it.”

Jeremy craned his neck, trying to look back up Independence Avenue to where the ten-wheeled bomb sat, detonator intact. He had gambled on hopes that Ellis wouldn’t want to waste the device on anything less than its intended target. If all went right, the colonel would wait until things settled down, then send another driver to pick it up.

“Look, I don’t care what you do with me,” Jeremy said. “But I’m telling you: that truck is filled with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. ANFO. The same shit Tim . . .”

“How do you know about ANFO?” the driver asked. He had dropped the accent.

“I already told you! I’m an FBI agent working undercover, and I watched those assholes mix the stuff in a Thirteenth Street body shop.”

“Want to call it in?” the man with the mustache suggested.

“What can it hurt?” Jeremy tried to reason with them. “Just tell one of your buddies to climb up and look in the drum. Anybody with a nose can tell that shit isn’t concrete.”

The cops sat in their seats trying to decide whether or not they wanted to trust the word of a flat-topped construction worker who felt no shame in dropping the
n
bomb.

“Your brother is up there,” the cop with the mustache reminded his partner.

“Adam two-ten, Adam four . . . ,” the driver spoke into his radio mike.

“Adam four,” came the response.

Jeremy fell back into his seat, relieved. A quick look into the drum would confirm his story. Police could evacuate the area before disaster struck.

But it was too late.

The flash of light caught them first—brighter than sunshine in the car’s mirror. It took a full two seconds before the shock of overpressure blew out the back window. And then came the sickening boom.

“Holy shit!” the driver yelled.

The squad car skidded right from the force of the blast. All three men felt their ears pop as if they were on a plane falling out of the sky.

“Holy shit!”

By the time the driver gained control and pulled to the side of the road, they all knew what had happened. The flood tide of terror they had seen on television and heard about in morning muster had finally washed into the nation’s capital.

“Mothafucker!” The cop with the mustache gasped. He jumped out of his car to look back up toward the famous dome. Glass was falling from broken windows, but the superstructure looked intact.

Jeremy twisted in his seat, fighting the handcuffs and the smooth vinyl for a vantage on a tragedy he only thought he had averted.

“Adam two-ten, Adam four!” the driver called into his mike. His brother was up there in that mushroom cloud of gray-white smoke. “Adam two-ten, Adam four!”

But there was no response.

Traffic screeched to a halt all around them. People jumped out of their cars, gawking at a terrifying sight. Hundreds of late-working congressional staffers, local residents, bar drunks, and reception-bound lobbyists were already flowing down Independence Avenue like a raging stream of panicked animals.

“Holy shit,” the cop said again.

Jeremy assumed he was referring to the explosion until he noticed the Chevy sedan. And the gun.

Caleb pulled up next to them and aimed a blue-steel pistol through the passenger window. He fired two shots as naturally as if asking directions. The cops fell dead.

Holy shit is right,
Jeremy thought. Before he could decide what to do, Caleb had jumped out of his car, yanked open Jeremy’s door, and pulled him into the idling Chevy.

“Thought you’d never get here,” Jeremy said.

The one-eyed albino did not look interested in conversation.

“WELCOME TO MOUNT
WEATHER
, Madam Vice President,” an Air Force colonel greeted Beechum, yelling over the prop wash of the HMX-2. Two Secret Service agents ushered her to a waiting limousine, black and armored. The younger of the agents carried her luggage: a prepacked overnight bag and her ancient leather briefcase.

“Thank you, Colonel,” she hollered back. The helicopter’s rotors had slowed considerably, but snow roiled in their downforce. “I’m hoping it’s a whole lot warmer inside!”

It was. And more spectacular. Minutes after disappearing into the facility’s ten-by-twenty-foot eastern portal, the vice president found herself inside an underground city that defied legitimate description. The facility’s cavernous central tunnel descended into the mountain of smooth-cut rock, branching off like an ant farm into side tunnels filled with dozens of freestanding buildings—some three stories tall.

“Amazing,” was all she could say as they drove along.

“Sure is, ma’am,” the colonel said. “We’re set up to support two hundred people for at least sixty days. We can sleep up to two thousand in shorter term. Full communications, medical, recreation, and data-assimilation facilities.”

“Where are they?” she asked. “I mean all the people.” She observed that despite signs of heavy activity, there was nary a soul to be seen.

“Locked down, ma’am. Protocol. Security plans go a lot deeper than what you’re probably used to. During movement of principals—you or the president—we halt all activities and secure quarters.”

“I’ve got to tell you, Colonel,” she said, exiting the limo and following the uniformed man into a suite of offices. “I’ve been a lot of places, but I’ve never been to a place like this.”

“It has its own charm, I suppose.” He smiled. Marines in full combat gear stood at ready gun just inside the reception-area door. “We like to think of it as our silo away from home.”

The man’s attempt at humor surprised Beechum. With all the guards and machine guns and game faces, it came as a pleasant relief.

“This is Margaret, your secretary,” the colonel said.

“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” the woman responded. She wore civilian clothing—wool pants and a Fair Isle sweater with an American flag on the collar. Beechum guessed her to be about forty.

“Pleased to meet you, too, Margaret,” Beechum answered.

“And this is your office.” The colonel opened a side door. Inside was a desk, a couch, two end tables, and a credenza. Colors were limited to blue and gray. Lots of mahogany.

“There’s a fridge in the credenza,” he noted. “Three televisions with access to the networks and cable news service. Bathroom is through that door.”

“What about HBO?” Beechum smiled. “You know, I hate to miss
The Sopranos.
”

“HBO,” the colonel agreed. “We’ve got our own TV and radio stations as well, just in case you feel inspired to come up with a series of your own.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t lined the walls with flat screens and piped-in scenes of Washington to make it feel more like the White House.”

“Good idea,” the colonel replied. “We do call this the White House, actually, but there’s no mistaking one for the other. We wouldn’t want to ruin our decorating scheme of Early Subterranean Bunker now, would we?”

Beechum chuckled.

“You’ll have secure comms to the White House from this STU-III phone,” the colonel said, lifting the receiver to demonstrate. “This second phone is a standard multiplex system like you have in your residence. It’s a shielded seven-oh-three exchange, but it is not secure. This third phone is the JCSAN/ COPAN system you’re probably familiar with at the White House. This is your voice comms link to the NMCC at the Pentagon, the AJCC backup at Raven Rock, and the president wherever he may be worldwide.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” Beechum said. She looked around the room and suddenly felt terribly tired.

“You’ll be getting a FEMA briefing on continuity of government protocols at half past the hour, and you’ll meet with the cabinet shortly after that,” he said.

“Cabinet?” she asked.

“Sorry, ma’am . . . I forgot. Yes, you’ll get details during your FEMA briefing, but you should know that the COG protocols call for the existence of redundant wartime representation at each cabinet-level position.”

“You mean backup secretaries of each department?”

“That’s right, ma’am. They are appointed by the president, though not affirmed by the Senate for security reasons. We refer to them as Mr. and Madam Secretary. They have all the same authority as their aboveground counterparts during times of transition and acute augmentation.”

Beechum didn’t care to ask about acute augmentation, but one other thing bothered her.

“What about Congress and the Supreme Court?” she asked. “Have you built redundancy into the legislative and judicial branches as well?”

“I’ll leave that to your FEMA briefers.” The colonel smiled. “It’s a bit over my pay grade.”

With that, Beechum’s one-man transition committee disappeared, leaving the vice president to consider her options. Despite the novelty in this underground wonderland, Site Seven was a crypt that shut her off from the rest of the world and a mission only she could accomplish.

All right, Elizabeth,
she told herself, trying to adjust to the flat fluorescent light.
You’re buried beneath a quarter mile of solid rock while the president plans nuclear war against a threat he doesn’t even understand. You think you’re so smart. How are you going to get out of this?

There was no time for an answer. Before she even sat down, the colonel stormed back in with news of yet another disaster. From what he said, the cozy little bomb shelter was about to get crowded.

WASHINGTON, DC GETS
its raw drinking water from the Potomac River, filters it for harmful chemicals, bacteria, and trace elements, then treats it with additives such as chlorine, fluoride, and potassium permanganate before pumping it to consumers. It is a carefully monitored and scientifically controlled system that supplies the District’s homes, offices, and federal buildings with almost 300 million gallons each day.

Colonel Ellis had become intimately aware of this process during his stint at the Pentagon. While working at DARPA, he had seen counterterrorism projections of aqueduct vulnerability. Though chemical and biological contamination seemed a distant possibility because of filtration and flow distribution checkpoints, experts feared one contaminate above all else: radiation. Anyone with the proper knowledge of plant operations could introduce dangerous isotopes post filtration, they decided. The impact of such closed-system contamination could be catastrophic.

Satch didn’t care much about flocculation, clear-well dynamics, or pH controls as Ollie drove down MacArthur Boulevard toward the Dalecarlia Water Treatment Plant. All he cared about was meeting his contact—another Cell Six member—and getting the two remaining black boxes of “glow powder” inside without exposing himself.

“Whoa, whoa,” his partner told him, pointing toward a security gate up ahead. A single rent-a-cop stood guard—female, fifty pounds overweight, and bored. “That’s it.”

Satch adjusted his tie and sat straight in his seat.

“Evening, officer,” he said, rolling his window down and mustering his most officious smile.

She craned her neck to look inside the unmarked white van.

“Who you with, darlin’?” she asked.

“Corps,” Satch responded. He held out an expertly forged ID card that read Army Corps of Engineers.

“Don’t have any coffee in there do you, honey?” she asked. “Colder than a hooker’s heart out here.”

Satch shook his head.

“Shoulda thought of it on the way up,” he apologized. “I’ll get some inside and catch you on the way out.”

“Cream and three sugars.” She nodded, waving them in. “And tell that cute little partner of yours to smile once and a while. His face ain’t gonna crack.”

Satch could hear the woman laughing as he drove toward the water treatment plant.

“She’s right, you know,” Satch said. “A little humor once in a while wouldn’t kill you.”

CAROLINE WALLER FELT
naked and alone lying on the concrete floor in the dark, empty cellar. Christopher had stopped crying now. Patrick was asleep on her stomach. Maddy sat off to the side somewhere, distant in many ways.

“Are you all right, sweetheart?” Caroline asked her daughter.

“Dad’s going to come and save us,” the little girl said.

“Honey . . .”—Caroline tried to sound optimistic, but there was no point in lying—“your daddy loves you very much. Remember that, OK? He’s a very brave man, and he loves you with all his heart.”

Maddy said nothing for a while, then, “I’m not a little girl anymore, Mom. I don’t believe in Santa. I don’t even believe in unicorns or Batman or the Easter Bunny. But I know Dad is coming for us. He wouldn’t let these bad men hurt us.”

Caroline fought an overwhelming urge to cry. Innocence had fled them.

“You can tell Patrick and Chris that when they wake up,” Maddy droned. “I know he’s coming.”

The overhead lights flashed on, but it was the sound of footsteps on open stairs that stilled them.

“You don’t believe her, do you?” a man asked. Colonel Ellis descended into the cellar and walked toward the huddle of bodies.

“What kind of animal would do this to children?” Caroline asked. She aimed to make a poor hostage.

“Come now, Mrs. Waller,” he said. “Do you ask your husband questions like this when he comes home from all those secret missions of his? You must wonder, though, don’t you? In the back of your mind? You know he’s a killer, too, but you don’t want to think about it . . . to admit that good men do bad things.”