“Do you think the fence is electrified?” Raheem asked.
The man to his right scoffed. His lips were only a few centimeters above the water and he came close to blowing bubbles when he spoke. Basir was older than the others, with six years in the Army. He was the only one of the group, including Kazem, who had military experience. Incredibly strong, he had powerful forearms and a thick neck from hours of pahlevani, an ancient Persian sport that was a mixture of grappling, weightlifting, and dance. “Why would they bother electrifying the fence?” he said. “There is nothing here to steal except trucks and uniforms.”
“And yet here we are to steal the uniforms,” Raheem muttered. He moved his rifle aside and reached to wipe the rain out of his face, oblivious to the fact that his weapon was now submerged in muddy water.
Kazem and Basir exchanged glances. This man should go in first.
Kazem said, “Few people would want to take a uniform that would get them thrown in Evin.”
“And yet we do,” Raheem said. “So others might as well. Which is why they might have electrified the fence. Perhaps others have thought of how easy it would be to approach a storage facility of this type. Perhaps they have gun emplacements hidden along the perimeter.”
“Or perhaps they have dragons, brother.” Kazem chuckled, patience washing away with the rain. He put a night-vision monocular to his eye and played it up and down the fence line. Dozens of vehicles of all shapes and sizes, some white, most green or desert tan, were lined up in neat rows under camouflage tarpaulins rigged between metal scaffolding so as to make them less visible to passing surveillance satellites.
Raheem’s whisper became frantic, and the water around him buzzed from his trembling. “I am merely saying we should take our time. The soldiers will eventually see us.”
“And so they shall,” Kazem said. “But we must be bold, decisive in our movements. Even now, our brothers pay dearly in the basements of Evin Prison. Do not forget that.”
This brought solemn nods and whispered prayers from the sodden men.
“Very well,” Kazem said, making one final sweep with the night-vision device. “It is time—”
He paused, focusing on two sentries trudging along the inside of the fence beyond the warehouse. Their heads were bowed against the rain, the glow of a cigarette visible under each man’s hood. “It seems as though you were correct, Raheem,” Kazem said, passing the monocular to the left. “They do have enough sense to deploy sentries.”
Raheem’s vindicated smile bled from his face at Kazem’s next remark.
“Brother Raheem, you are with me. Basir, you lead the attack through the front gate. They will assume your truck has broken down in the rain and let you in. You must cut them down quickly when they check your identification, before any one of them has a chance to hit an alarm.” He turned to his left.
Raheem touched Kazem with a trembling hand. “With you?”
“Yes,” Kazem said proudly. “You had a feeling about the sentries. The honor of taking them should naturally fall to you.”
Basir and the rest of the men were already on the move by the time Raheem fished his rifle out of the muck. Kazem forced a smile and clasped his hand on the idiot’s shoulder, hoping to imbue in him a little courage, if not good sense. The AK-47 was durable to the extreme, but mud down the barrel would cause even it serious issues.
It did not matter. The fool would never have a chance to use it. Today, he would die as a martyr. Reza Kazem would make certain of that.
17
The assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division kept her face forward but shot a sideways look at Gary Montgomery. Black, shoulder-length hair bobbed as Ruth Garcia picked up her pace, coming into a straightaway around the rubberized track in the shadows of the outdoor mezzanine of the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
Challenge accepted, the Secret Service agent muttered to himself — or he would have, if he’d had the breath to mutter. His wife always told him he was built for comfort, not speed — and she was right enough. A large man like him had to dig deep in order to run neck and neck with a freaking gazelle like Ruth Garcia.
Both agents were dressed in running shorts and T-shirts, Garcia’s a dark blue raid shirt with FBI emblazoned across the back in tall yellow letters, while Montgomery’s was gray with an understated USSS five-pointed star. The shirts were avatars of personality for their respective agencies — and the agents who wore them. Where Montgomery preferred to stand in the background, Garcia was brilliant and outspoken. She spoke four languages, including the Vietnamese of her maternal grandparents, along with Tagalog, and Spanish from her father’s side. Her scrappy attitude and incredible investigative mind propelled her into rapid advancement, seeing her make special agent in charge of the Tampa Field Office before her fortieth birthday. That was followed by assistant director five years later — no small feat for the mother of two.
Montgomery had met her years before during a law enforcement pistol competition in Florida. She’d beat him by the equivalent of half a bullet hole, the ragged circle in the center of her target being a quarter-inch smaller in diameter than the ragged circle in the center of his.
Montgomery’s actual Bureau counterpart was the special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office. WFO would handle the investigation of a threat to the President in tandem with the Secret Service. The SAC of WFO was a competent guy, but Ruth Garcia was Montgomery’s longtime friend. Friendship plus competence plus access to the FBI’s vast investigative apparatus were hard to beat. Even Montgomery’s wife knew he had a professional crush on this woman. She was smart, she could shoot. And she could run, damn it. She certainly outranked him, but being the special agent in charge of PPD held tremendous sway, even across agency lines, so no one in either agency said anything when he hopped lightly over the chain of command and bypassed WFO to go straight to his friend. It didn’t pay to screw with the guy who rode the Schwinn Airdyne in the White House gym next to the President.
“Big guy’s going easy on you,” Garcia said, as if reading Montgomery’s mind. She downshifted once again to kick up her speed a notch. “You’re getting soft in this cushy assignment.”
Montgomery hunched broad shoulders, leaning forward slightly to match the new stride. He’d called her that morning, hoping to set up a meeting about what he saw as online threats to the President’s character, and the President himself. She’d suggested that they could chat during her midmorning “jog.” He should have known better. Another couple of laps of this and he’d be looking for a place to puke.
Secret Service HQ had a decent gym, better than most, but, as usual, the Feebs took things to an entirely new level. Climbing ropes, free weights, machines, heavy bags, mats for defensive tactics, and the rubberized track on which Montgomery was now surely leaving divots, took up much of the secure outdoor mezzanine level overlooking 9th Street in downtown Washington, D.C. Since the track was protected from the rain but open to the wind and outside temperatures, the workouts were bracing and more real-life than plodding along on some treadmill watching cable news.
Mercifully, Garcia ripped through only two laps before slowing to a more manageable trot.
“I’m guessing you have some theories about all this,” she said, hardly even breathing hard.
“I do,” Montgomery managed to say. “These… kind of… hit pieces… come out… all the time… But this… feels… differ… ent…”
Garcia gave him another side eye, slowing even more. “Tell me if you need to sto—”