“So,” she called out, looking at her watch as they finished affixing the last load of four bombs to the mounting carriage on the starboard side of her aircraft. The late shift would be arriving in less than an hour. “I need to go over some inventory with you boys back in the storeroom…”
The storeroom, with row after row of head-high shelving units stocked with aircraft parts and fluids, was a favorite place for squadron members to hold clandestine meetings. People went in looking intense and emerged flushed and pensive. Tara had never met anyone back there herself, but knew well enough what was going on.
She threw her head in a saucy tease and began to walk toward the gray double doors beyond the tool racks. She’d let her flight suit slip, showing a thin line of pale belly skin below the hem of her T-shirt. When she glanced over her shoulder, both Arlow and Tracy followed as though they had ropes through their noses. She patted the slender fillet knife inside the thigh of her suit and gave a long quiet sigh, smiling. It was all too easy.
First she would kill these witless men. Then, very soon, she would rain down death on the very heads of those who believed they were the most powerful people on earth.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Governors Island, New York
There was a good deal of grubby work yet to be done and Nancy Hughes hadn’t yet changed into the navy-blue dress she’d wear to watch her only daughter tie the knot. She’d had her hair done that morning, but wore a pair of faded jeans that were comfortably big in the hips and a red Texas Tech Red Raiders sweatshirt. She looked up from where she stood behind the small mahogany table at the threshold of the three-story brick home known as the Admiral’s Mansion.
The weather had turned out on the chilly side but clear-perfect for a wedding-and she’d left the front door open in an attempt to air the mustiness out of the old manor house.
She situated the white taffeta guest book between two Montblanc fountain pens held upright in marble stones shaped like eggs. With all the politicians in attendance, the expensive pens were sure to “run off,” as her mother would say, before the night was over. Still, Jolene wasn’t going to get married again anytime in the near future. No detail was too minor.
Nancy had eloped to keep her daddy from killing young Bobby Hughes. That was long before anyone thought the skinny boy from across the tracks would amount to anything at all, let alone the vice president of the United States. She would never admit it out loud, but this wedding was as much about her as it was her daughter. It had to be perfect. And now security that rivaled a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly threatened to turn the whole thing into a circus.
For the last day and half Governors Island and its surrounding waters had become a spewing fountain of activity.
The two-hundred-and-ten-foot U.S. Coast Guard cutter Vigorous, bristling with a twenty-five-millimeter chain gun and fifty-caliber deck guns fore and aft, prowled the Buttermilk Channel between the island and Brooklyn, New York. The hundred-and-sixty-five-foot Algonquin class cutter Escanaba, down from Boston, lay just off Liberty Island. A half dozen orange and gray USCG fast-boats, each also armed with a fifty-caliber machine gun mounted on the foredeck, patrolled upper New York Harbor and the entrances to the East and Hudson Rivers. These vessels, along with as many NYPD patrol boats, enforced a two-thousand-foot mar-sec standoff, keeping any other boats away from Governors Island.
A virtual army of Secret Service, Department of State Diplomatic Security agents, and NYPD secured the concrete docks and dilapidated redbrick industrial buildings on the Brooklyn side. Three hundred more from the same agencies locked down Battery Park and the entire southern tip of Manhattan. The Brooklyn Battery Tunnel that ran underwater adjacent to the island, connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn, had been closed for the day. The Secret Service Uniform Division manned a series of checkpoints at the Governors Island Ferry dock, ready to double-check the guest list for those arriving by water. Each guest, no matter his or her rank or standing, would be required to pass through full-body scanners like those that caused all the brouhaha at airports. Heads of state would arrive by helicopter and would be exempt from such scrutiny, though their staff members would be scanned at the security checkpoint in the center of the island, under a large, circus-like tent set up in the wooded park beyond the helipad.
Spotters with binoculars watched from virtually every rooftop. A heavy thump of helicopters shook the bluebird-clear sky. Navy and Air Force fighters streaked overhead, rattling the floor-to-ceiling windows in the historic mansion. Nancy felt as if she was on the deck of an aircraft carrier rather than setting up the final details of her only daughter’s wedding. She’d have to call Bob and see if he couldn’t pull some vice presidential strings and quiet the sky down a few hundred decibels.
Nancy stepped out and leaned against one of the Doric pillars on the full-length front porch to rest. Jolene would arrive in four hours; guests would start showing up an hour after that. Oh, for a few minutes with her feet up before they all descended upon her. It was unladylike, but she scratched her back against the column, sure some of the flaking white paint had rubbed off on her red sweatshirt.
She caught Special Agent Doyle’s eye and gave him a grin. He stood post, ramrod straight in his dark suit, at the corner of the porch.
“Sorry, Jimmy,” she said, sliding up and down like a bear against a tree. “I really hate that you get to see me absent my good Southern manners.
“The United States Secret Service sees nothing-and everything,” he said, returning her grin. “But if it’s any consolation, Mrs. H., everyone scratches their itches.”
“For what it’s worth, Jimmy,” Nancy said, “I’m glad you’re the one assigned to this. Feels safer having you here.”
She looked up to see Amanda Deatherage standing on the brick walkway. Her mouth agape, she stared up at the sky.
“Are you all right, dear?” Nancy said. Her wedding assistant seemed to grow more agitated at each pass of the military jets.
The girl’s head snapped around as if she’d been slapped. “Yes… ma’am,” she stammered, a hint of something sullen in her eyes. Her hands trembled slightly as she wrapped blue and yellow ribbon around the black barrels of two heavy antique cannons on either side of the brick walkway.
Mrs. Hughes nodded warily, unconvinced. “Have the flowers arrived?”
Deatherage smoothed a large ribbon into a bow at the muzzle of a cannon. “They have,” she said. “I took care of them myself. I picked the best ones for the vice president and the president since he’ll be the guest of honor.”
“My daughter is the guest of honor.” Nancy Hughes glared. She was too exhausted to suffer the girl’s foolishness. Still, it wouldn’t do to make an enemy of her today. Nancy softened her tone. “You were correct to pick a good one for the president, dear.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Deatherage brightened. “I’ll take care of putting them on myself so they don’t get mixed up with the ones for the groomsmen.”
Agent Jimmy Doyle raised a brow, dark eyes flitting back and forth from Nancy to the girl.
“I want you to take care of the photographer tonight,” Nancy said, hoping to give the witless girl something to keep her mind occupied. “When President Clark comes through the receiving line, I’d like to capture that moment. Could you see to that?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” she said. “It would be my honor.” Deatherage gave her a long smile, then turned back to her duties.
What a strange girl, Nancy Hughes thought. She wouldn’t be staying on after the wedding. That was a certainty.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN