Hellerman began accessing a new signal feed and inputting data into the signal streams, long lines of code that to Jarvis seemed to be little more than numbers and characters he did not recognize.
Jarvis looked up at the screens and saw one displaying a rhythmically shuddering close up of the grimacing face of a naked young woman lying on her back on a large bed as some criminal or other had his way with her. Wads of cash were visible in one corner of the screen on a bedside table, along with the smoldering remains of two cigarettes.
Jarvis glanced down and saw Hellerman transfixed by the same screen.
‘Stop perving and get working,’ Jarvis snapped.
Hellerman’s fingers rattled across the keyboards again but his gaze did not break from the display screen before them.
‘The signals at eight hundred eighty hertz are those emitted by all cellular phones in the United States,’ he said as he worked, apparently thinking nothing of performing three complex tasks at once. ‘We can piggy back on those that are being used around the White House and target any in the direct vicinity of the South Lawn.’
‘Won’t the electromagnetic protection around the White House prevent any signals from getting in or out?’ Jarvis asked.
Hellerman nodded.
‘Yes, but we’re looking for signals that come from within that electromagnetic boundary,’ he replied, ‘and then matching their communications with anything outside the boundary but within a short distance. If our terrorists are outside the White House and trying to control somebody inside, then we know that they’ll be using some pretty powerful transmitters to break through the electromagnetic shielding. Even the most powerful equipment won’t breach the interior of the White House, the shielding is just too strong, so if they’re going to hit the President it’s going to happen on the lawn before the state dinner.’
Jarvis watched as the screen full of data before Hellerman suddenly stopped flowing as his fingers ceased motion and the cursor came to a rest at the bottom of the screen. Hellerman finally took his eyes off the prostitute’s ecstatic features as he turned to Jarvis.
‘You ready?’ Hellerman asked.
‘Stop pulling my chain and start the program already.’
Hellerman hit the keyboard’s “Enter“ key and instantly the data streams vanished and a small spinning logo appeared as the computer began working.
Jarvis looked up expectantly at the blank screen before them in the Watch Room, and a silence descended on the other operators as they watched and waited for the program that Hellerman had created to latch onto any signals crossing the White House’s electromagnetic boundary.
‘What if we can’t break through?’ Jarvis asked.
Hellerman briefly shook his head.
‘We’ll get through all right, our signals are on a frequency left open by the White House,’ he replied. ‘What matters is whether we can ensure that we catch both the killer and the people in control of them.’
Jarvis looked up at a news feed screen running on a smaller monitor nearby and saw the President of the United States, the First Lady, and the President of the People’s Republic of China walking onto the White House lawn.
‘We’re out of time,’ he said.
‘We’re too late,’ Agent Hopkins insisted.
Lopez stared at the blank screen and felt the burden of failure begin to weigh down heavily on her shoulders as the Secret Service agents began to prepare to move out of the Horsepower bunker and up to the White House lawns.
‘Just give them a couple more minutes,’ she pleaded.
‘We don’t have a couple of minutes,’ Hopkins snapped. ‘We’re of no use to the President down here, and your friends at the DIA have failed to give us a head — start on who the assassin really is. Once the President starts mingling any advantage we might have had will be gone anyway — we need to be right by his side, right now.’
Lopez cursed as the Secret Service agents hustled out of the bunker and began rushing away to ascend into the White House and disperse onto the lawns in a flanking maneuver that would surround the President with a second layer of armed protection.
‘Come on, Hellerman,’ Lopez urged the blank screen, ‘don’t let me down.’
The monitor remained stubbornly blank as Lopez sat in frustrated silence, fighting the same urge that had taken the Secret Service; to do something tangible to defend the President instead of sitting in the bunker staring uselessly at a monitor. She was about to leap to her feet and sprint in pursuit of Hopkins and his team when the monitor flickered.
Lopez leaned forward, a pulse of excitement fluttering through her heart.
‘Come on,’ she urged the signal.
The image on the monitor brightened, and then suddenly it sharpened into focus and Lopez saw both of the Presidents and their wives standing just beyond the edge of dense ranks of dignitaries all waiting to shake the hands of two of the most powerful men on Earth.
The viewpoint of the implanted assassin was lower than the people around them, sufficiently so that Lopez was able make one positive statement.
‘You’re either a woman,’ she whispered, ‘or a real short guy.’
Lopez tried to figure out who the person was, but with the crowd around them and no sound it was impossible to figure out who they might be with enough accuracy to warn the Secret Service team. Lopez was about to make a sprint for the lawns when she saw the figure look down at her side and saw a white handbag. Slim hands reached in and produced a small vanity mirror.
‘Oh God, please yes,’ Lopez whispered.
The woman lifted the mirror to her face, eager to appear perfect for her meeting with the President, and Lopez got a shadowy glimpse of her.
Lopez’s direct line in the bunker rang, the sound startling her as she reached out and picked up the receiver.
‘Give me some good news!’
Hellerman’s voice reached down the line to her from Maryland.
‘The signal’s being piggy backed from the corner of 17th Street, less than two hundred fifty yards to the west of the White House!’
Lopez was on her feet and running without even replying as she keyed her microphone and yelled at the Secret Service agents arrayed around the south lawn.
‘The target is in the crowd, Kiera Lomas, female! Use the signal blockers on her cell, cut her off! I’ll head for the signal’s source!’
Then she had an idea. Cell phones were weak when calling but SMS messages, being smaller packets of data, often got through when calls could not.
Lopez began typing furiously as she ran.
XLIII
Kiera Lomas stood among the crowds of politicians and dignitaries from both America and China as she prepared to shake the hand of the man who had ordered the raid that had saved her life in Basra, Iraq.
She knew that the small number of journalists and television crews that had been admitted to the South Lawn would be watching her, that she had become the poster child for her country’s withdrawal from Iraq, the last — ditch effort to save her life giving the President a huge boost in popularity as he neared the end of his second term.
Despite her gratitude, however, she intended to continue on her crusade with every fibre of her being. The President’s failure to crack down effectively on gun control in the United States and his apparent inability to quash the well funded lobbying of the National Rifle Association, marked for her a tragic and regrettable collapse of common sense political activism, a golden opportunity missed by an administration that could have changed the face of American history by reducing the enormous number of deaths suffered by its citizens, both innocent and guilty, every year. That and the shocking aftermath of the previous administration’s ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan had convinced Kiera like nothing else that her crusade was just, the influence of big business in Washington its target.