“Catch your breath,” Chamberlain said. All of them were breathing heavily, as much from the terror as the job. He turned to the soldier. “How long?”
“Status?” he spoke into his microphone. A moment later: “Armored vehicle will be in place in sixty seconds, sir.”
“How in hell could this have happened?” Harold Kingman asked hotly. “A rocket attack against Washington, D.C.? How could anyone get rockets into the capital?”
“They were apparently launched from well outside the city, outside the Beltway near Knollwood,” Chamberlain said. “Mobile rocket launcher.”
“But how can they get close enough to the White House to shoot grenades and machine guns…?”
“We don’t know that yet, Harold,” Chamberlain said. The soldier reached out and touched the Up button on the elevator. “All right, follow me through the doors into the parking garage—the Suburban should be right there waiting for us.”
“Where are the PPD guys?” the President asked as the doors to the elevator slid open. “Where’s Carl? I thought he’d be escorting me.”
“He’s up above, sir,” Chamberlain said. “He’ll be right beside you all the way. He’s recommending we go to the Naval Observatory first, then fly out to Andrews and go airborne.”
The President nodded and removed his tie. “This is a damned nightmare,” he said. “I want some answers, dammit, and I want then now.” The doors to the elevator slid open…
…and they stepped into the center of an inferno. The entire parking garage was filled with smoke, and several vehicles were still on fire. Parts of the ceiling of the underground parking structure had collapsed, and bare wires and broken pipes were everywhere. “What in hell…Chamberlain, what did you do?” the President shouted. “The building was hit, and you led us right into it!”
“It was the only way I could be certain we’d be alone, Mr. President,” a voice said through the crackle and roar of the fires all around them. They turned…and saw none other than Yegor Viktorvich Zakharov standing before them, his ever-present Dragunov sniper rifle cradled in his arms.
“Welcome, all, welcome,” he said with a broad grin on his face. They turned and saw Pavel Khalimov standing behind them with an M-16 rifle at the ready. “Welcome to your worst nightmare.”
The White House South Lawn
That same time
It took only a few minutes for the uniformed Secret Service and the National Park Police to respond to the attack on the White House, but they were far outgunned. After initially responding only with small arms fire, the Secret Service finally brought agents with assault rifles into the fight, but they were still no match for the armed Humvees. While the Humvees with the Mk19 grenade launchers continued to pummel the White House, the other Humvees turned their guns on the defenders, driving them to cover.
But moments later heavier-caliber bullets started to hit their location. “From the roof of the Treasury Building!” one of the terrorists shouted. “Machine guns!” The Secret Service had finally retrieved their heavier weapons and were returning fire.
“How much longer do we have to sit here like this?” another gunman shouted.
“Just shut up and keep firing!” the first terrorist shouted. At that moment he received another radio calclass="underline" “Here they come! Watch out!” They looked to the south from the area of the Washington Monument a saw a pair of Apache attack helicopters racing in from very low altitude. The gunners on the Humvees dropped down inside their vehicles, but they knew that if the Apaches’ thirty-millimeter cannon shells hit them, they’d be toast—the Humvees’ thin armor would never protect them against a devastating Chain Gun attack. The Apaches raced in and the Chain Gun in the chin turret opened fire…
…but not on the Humvees, but on the Secret Service machine gun locations on the roof of the Treasury Building! One pass by both helicopters was enough to destroy the hastily formed Secret Service machine gun nest. After they finished that pass, the Apaches hovered over the White House and fired the Chain Gun and 2.75-inch Hydra rockets at the army and Secret Service positions on the roof.
The terrorists in the Humvees were yelling and screaming in joy. “Yibis ana v rot!” one of them yelled in Russian. “Nail those…!”
“Watch out!” someone yelled. “Off to the right! Get him!” The terrorist swung his gun right…and centered his sights on a large robot figure standing in the tree line between the South Lawn and the Treasury Building, about twenty meters away. Just as he began to squeeze the trigger to his machine gun, the muzzle of the cannon on the robot’s right shoulder flared…and the terrorist was blown completely apart by a forty-millimeter grenade fired at him from point-blank range.
“Another robot, off to the west!” But just as the warnings started coming, the Humvees one by one were pummeled by grenades. Two Humvees were destroyed within seconds.
“Splash two,” Captain Frank Falcone radioed. “Two Hummers burning!”
“Move, Falcon!” Lieutenant Jennifer McCracken radioed. She was in CID Five near the Old Executive Office Building. “Those Apaches are on you!”
“I got ’em, Jen,” Falcone said. He had been watching the Apaches approach with the help of the Goose drones orbiting over the White House. He ran several dozen meters south and fired a grenade at the first Apache, then dashed to the west. “Ready, Jen?”
“Ready,” McCracken replied. She had fired grenades at two more Humvees in front of her, then started tracking the Apaches. The lead Apache helicopter fired a volley of Hydra rockets at the spot where Falcone had been moments earlier, then wheeled hard right to line up again as he ran west. But when the Apache made its hard right turn it slowed considerably, making it a perfect target for McCracken. Two grenades hit precisely in the center of the Apache’s rotor disk, blowing it out of the sky easily. It landed in a fiery heap at the very southern edge of the South Lawn.
The second Apache helicopter had enough. It kept on flying south, getting out of the kill zone as quickly as possible. It made it as far as the Tidal Basin…when it was shot down by an AIM-120 radar-guided missile fired from an F-22 Raptor jet fighter that had launched from Andrews Air Force Base just minutes earlier.
“We need some prisoners, guys,” Ariadna Vega radioed from her command position in the Treasury Building. She had been up there for days, coordinating the task force’s defense against the expected attack on the capital.
“Roger,” Falcone responded. Instead of destroying the other two Humvees, he and McCracken in CID Five simply walked over to them before they could flee and overturned them. The survivors were quickly apprehended by the Secret Service.
“Thanks, guys,” Ari radioed. “Rendezvous with Jason at the New Executive Office Building on the double.”
“Who in hell are you? Put that gun down!” Victoria Collins demanded.
“That’s Colonel Yegor Zakharov,” the President said in a remarkably calm voice. He motioned over his shoulder. “The man behind us is certainly Captain Pavel Khalimov. The whole attack on the White House was a setup.” The President nodded as he saw the confusion on Zakharov’s face.
“I should have known,” Harold Kingman said. “How could I be so damned blind?” He turned to National Security Adviser Chamberlain. “Now let me guess: who among us would be clever yet twisted enough to engineer something like this, just to get to me?”
Robert Chamberlain smiled…and stepped over and stood beside Zakharov. “That would be me, Harold,” he said.
“What?” Collins cried. “Chamberlain…you set us up?”