Ronald Reagan National Airport
Arlington, Virginia
M
ajor Brooke Grant hit the speed dial on her cell phone as she hustled through the crowded airport terminal. When she'd spoken to Walks Many Miles in Kenya the day before, he'd complained that he still hadn't gotten any useful information from Yaasir Sharif. Today was his fifth day and final chance. Brooke let the number ring until it hit voice mail. The hands on her watch showed it was a few minutes before eight a.m. EDT, which meant it was nearly three p.m. in Nairobi. Miles was usually finished at the Kamiti prison by now. Perhaps Sharif was finally cooperating.
Glancing up from her phone, she noticed the TSA checkpoint was backed up. At least fifty passengers were waiting in the slow-moving line. Even worse, Al Arabic Washington correspondent Ebio Kattan was one of them. Avoiding Kattan was going to be difficult. Brooke decided to check a nearby airport display for a later flight that could still get her to Minneapolis before the White House task force's afternoon meeting.
“Major Grant,” she heard a man say. “Cutting it a bit close, aren't you?”
Brooke found a smiling Representative Rudy Adeogo approaching her.
“Judging from that TSA line, both of us are,” she replied. Nodding toward Ebio Kattan, she added, “I'd rather walk than be on the same plane as that reporter, but unfortunately, there are no other flights available today that will get us to Minneapolis in time for the meeting.”
“And I really don't want you walking,” he replied. “Follow me.”
Adeogo led her around the line to where his media aide, Fatima Olol, was waiting with a TSA-uniformed employee.
“Come right this way, Congressman,” the TSA official said.
“Major Grant is traveling with me,” he explained. “She's part of our White House task force.”
“Absolutely not a problem,” the TSA official answered as he waved an electronic wand quickly around Adeogo's torso. “By law, we have to check everyone, including members of Congress, but we know your time is important so we certainly don't mind expediting the process by clearing you outside the line.” He called over a female TSA worker who checked Brooke with the wand. Finding nothing suspicious, Adeogo and Brooke continued forward to the gate.
Brooke's phone rang as they walked and she answered it, hoping it was Miles.
“I'm hearing rumors about fraternization,” a stern General Frank Grant said.
This was not a conversation Brooke wanted to have with her uncle, especially with Representative Adeogo, his press aide, and a TSA manager all within earshot.
“I'm about to board a flight,” she whispered. “But you don't have to worry. Walks Many Miles is no longer a Marine. He's resigned from the Corps, which makes your concern a nonissue.”
“Oh no, missy, we are going to have this conversation right now,” Grant answered. “And it is anything but a nonissue. If word leaks out that you're dating him, the media will go wild.”
Brooke stepped away from everyone. “No one in the media cares who I date. And you shouldn't either.”
“You're being reckless and foolish. You and Miles are celebrities thanks to Somalia. You, in particular, given you stopped a burning woman from throwing herself on the president. The media will see this as a fairy-tale romance and then they'll turn against you.”
“Turn against me? You're being paranoid.”
“Brooke, stop for a moment and consider what will happen if some enterprising reporter begins digging into your past. Your last romance didn't turn out so well, did it?”
“I didn't know Jean-Paul Dufour was married when I was dating him.”
“But he was, wasn't he? Once they start digging into your romantic life, a story about your London fling with a married French diplomat is bound to surface and it isn't going to reflect highly on you. You're on a White House task force now. You're a major in the Marine Corps. You're my niece. And now you and Sergeant Miles areâ”
“Former sergeant,” she interjected, correcting him.
“A sergeant who was under your command when you became involved. You need to end this right now. And, speaking as your uncle, I've got to ask: What do you possibly have in common with a Crow Indian who was raised on a Montana reservation? Hell, you've never even been to Montana.”
“I wasn't aware visiting a man's home state was a prerequisite to dating him. And your reference about him being an Indian is racist.”
“Don't you dare lecture me about racism.”
“I'm sorry about that comment, but you're overstepping.”
“You know what a battle buddy is, don't you?” he asked, ignoring her comment. “Don't confuse the bonds you make in the foxhole with romance. Are you prepared to give up your career and move to Montana to have this guy's kids on a reservation? Get real, Brooke!”
“Have you considered he will be the one who has to give up his career, and what makes you presume he wants to live on a reservation?” she snapped. “I have to board my flight.”
She ended the call without saying good-bye. Glancing up from her phone, she saw Kattan approaching the gate. At that moment, Adeogo rejoined her.
“I asked the flight attendant to seat us together,” he said. “I had them put you in a window seat next to me and added that we'd be working and would like our privacy. They've offered to let us board now, ahead of the others. I didn't think you'd want Ebio Kattan sticking a microphone under your nose.”
“I don't think she'd dare. Our last encounter wasn't pretty.”
“She's a reporter, she would dare,” Adeogo said. “Unfortunately, neither of us can afford to show our true feelings at times. You must deal with Ebio Kattan and I must deal with Omar Nader at the OIN, who is also on our task force.”
She was surprised by his candor. “I assumed the two of you were friends. I mean, you're both Muslims.”
“Tell me, Major Grant, are you friends with every Protestant you meet?”
The gate attendant opened the door to the Jetway.
“I will tell you an Arab saying,” Adeogo said as they walked down it toward the aircraft. “âBeware the levelheaded person if they are angry,' which means that you and I are much more dangerous when we finally become angry than those who are constantly ranting.”
“My uncle calls that âkeeping your powder dry.'”
Once inside the jet, she slipped into a window seat, buckled her seat belt, and began reading a briefing report about Somali Americans born in Minneapolis who'd traveled to Africa to join Al-Shabaab and ISIS. Adeogo sat in the aisle seat.
When general boarding began, Ebio Kattan ducked through the door and immediately stopped to speak to them. “Congressman Adeogo, what a pleasure to see you and Major Grant, how fortunate for me that we are all on the same flight.”
A flight attendant behind her said, “The congressman has work to do and we've got a plane to board. Please move to your seat.”
“I'm hoping you'll have a minute to talk when we land,” Kattan said to Adeogo, ignoring the attendant.
“I'll be speaking at a press conference inside the terminal as soon as we disembark,” he replied.
“Yes, but I was hoping to catch you immediately outside the gate before everyone else. Maybe Major Grant will say a few words too.”
“Miss, you need to move along,” the attendant said. “People are waiting.”
Brooke raised her hand and waved at Kattan dismissively.
After takeoff, Adeogo whispered, “I thought you controlled your temper very well with Ms. Kattan. I don't want to intrude, but I noticed you were having an intense telephone conversation before we boarded. I hope everything is fine now.”
“Family matter,” she said.
She returned to her reading, but had trouble concentrating.
Was it possible that she was making another mistake in falling for Walks Many Miles? Was her uncle correct in calling their romance a foxhole connection? She'd fallen deeply in love with Jean-Paul Dufour, and that had turned into a disaster. Where was her love affair with Miles headed?
General Grant's office
The Pentagon
Arlington, Virginia
G
eneral Frank Grant felt equally distracted after his telephone conversation with his niece. But he didn't have time to ponder his thoughts. As soon as he'd put down his phone, his National Security Council liaison, Lieutenant Colonel Gabe DeMoss, entered his office.
“You asked to see me, sir,” DeMoss said.
“Is there anything new from the SAD team that was dispatched to Nairobi?”
“Nothing that I've been told,” DeMoss answered. “Sir, I noticed on your schedule this morning that you're meeting Director Grainger. He would be the first to hear from the SAD team.” DeMoss glanced at his watch. “You need to be leaving now or you'll be late.”
“I want you to accompany me to Langley,” Grant said.
“Sir, I have a meeting scheduled.”
“Cancel it,” Grant snapped. “I've learned a bit more about that burner phone used in the assassination attempt on the president and I want you there when I brief Grainger.”
Within minutes, the two men were traveling north on Highway 110, a two-and-a-half-mile freeway built in the early 1940s, in part to connect the Pentagon with the federal district. On some maps the road was identified as the Jefferson Davis Highway, but that name had fallen out of favor as part of a public campaign aimed at erasing everything from official landmarks that commemorated the Confederacy, especially the name of a secessionist president. The Potomac River was on their right and Arlington National Cemetery on their left.
About a quarter mile ahead of the general's government-provided Cadillac, a Ford F-150 truck turned on the same highway. The truck had been rented from a local home improvement store and had been fitted with a flatbed that could be raised and lowered. Large trucks and tour buses were banned from using Highway 110 after the 9/11 attacks because of the highway's proximity to the Pentagon, but pickup trucks like the F-150 were allowed. When it reached an interchange where Highways 110 and 50 connect with Interstate 66, the truck's driver pulled a lever that raised the vehicle's cargo bed. Cardboard boxes filled with thousands of roofing nails and stacks of two-by-four-inch pine boards slid onto the freeway. The two cars directly behind the truck slammed on their brakes, causing a chain reaction. Four cars rear-ended the vehicles in front of them.
“What's going on?” DeMoss asked Bill Lepinski, the general's driver, when their sedan came to a full stop.
“Looks like a major tie-up in both lanes,” Lepinski replied. Because they were a dozen cars back from the blockage, they couldn't see the spilled debris. Lepinski opened the driver's door. “I'll go see what the holdup is.”
From the rooftop of a high-rise apartment building less than a half mile away, the assassin known as Akbar watched Lepinski step from the Cadillac and thread his way through the stalled vehicles.
Akbar had been waiting patiently for this moment since before first light. He had selected this shooting spot weeks earlier after studying Google satellite images and inspecting each site. He had selected this apartment building at the northwest corner of the highway interchange because it was tall enough for him to clearly observe a section of Highway 110 for more than a mile. Although he couldn't know exactly where the general's car would be forced to stop, he knew General Grant would be in a kill zone as long as the Cadillac was within a half mile of the highway interchange. His Dragunov sniper's rifle, the most readily available to terrorists, was most effective at 875 yards.
Akbar was lying prone on the building's white-painted roof wearing a snow-colored camouflage poncho to conceal him from any aircraft passing close to the building. Reagan National Airport was south of the Pentagon and pilots often followed a landing course that followed the Potomac River near where he was hiding.
Snipers always had to compensate for distance and wind, but Akbar also had needed to consider how his bullet would react when it hit the Cadillac's glass. He'd scoured the Internet until he'd found the bidding criteria that the federal government had posted when it notified the public that it intended to buy dozens of lightly armored sedans for use by government officials. The specifications had called for an inch of bullet-resistant glass in all executive-level cars. That inch was not nearly as thick as the glass in the two presidential limousinesâa reduction intended to help reduce the weight and costs of the cars. Akbar felt confident that the 168-gram, solid copper, 7.62x54 mm NATO round that he had chambered would punch through the window. But he wasn't certain if the path of the slug would be altered by the glass, causing it to swerve and miss its target.
As he peered through the Dragunov's scope, he watched Lepinski returning to the Cadillac, having learned the reason for the backup. As the driver neared the car, Gabe DeMoss stepped from the right side of the sedan. DeMoss momentarily glanced upward at the high-rise where Akbar was hiding while surveying the scene. He walked toward Lepinski, who gestured toward the cause of the roadblock. What happened next caused Akbar to begin praising Allah.
Having been briefed by Lepinski, DeMoss walked down the left side of the Cadillac and opened the rear passenger door behind its driver's seat. He opened the door because the one-inch-thick bullet-resistant windows in the car doors could neither be raised nor lowered, and he wanted to tell General Grant about the cargo spill that was causing their delay.
In that moment, Akbar had a shot.
He aimed the round between the gap that had been created by DeMoss when he opened the rear passenger door. From his perch, Akbar could see a sliver of General Grant sitting in the backseat. The assassin no longer had to worry about his bullet being deflected when it struck the vehicle's glass.
Marksmen often brag about head shots, but Akbar aimed at “center mass”âGrant's uniformed chest with its brightly colored award ribbons. His crosshairs were centered on the general's heart as he squeezed the Dragunov's trigger.
Akbar had correctly calculated the wind and distance. But he'd misgauged the bullet's spin, which influenced the round just enough for it to nick the edge of the Cadillac's reinforced doorframe, slightly altering the shot's trajectory. Rather than striking the general's heart, it struck Grant on the left side of his face, shattering his jaw. His head recoiled from the impact before his body flew forward.
Lieutenant Colonel DeMoss dropped to the pavement the moment he realized a sniper was shooting at them. But Akbar was already running across the rooftop, shedding his white poncho as he dashed down the building's stairway. His wife, Aludra, was waiting behind the wheel of a rental car at the building's ground exit, with its engine running.
She exited from the parking lot onto Highway 50 and drove west. Akbar had a second shooting to execute.
A medevac helicopter airlifted General Grant across the Potomac River to the George Washington University Hospital trauma center. Lieutenant Colonel DeMoss flew with him. As soon as they landed, DeMoss reached for his phone to telephone Brooke Grant. When she didn't answer her cell phone, he checked his watch and realized that she was still onboard a commercial jet flying to Minneapolis.