Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [124]
“All right, folks,” Tony said, stepping over to the TV screen. “If Jack’s intelligence is correct, we’re looking at a possible terrorist assault on the museum at twenty-one hundred hours.” He looked at Max and Karras and winked. “That’s nine o’clock for the civilians in the crowd.”
Max raised an eyebrow. “Thanks for clearing that up.”
“Happy to oblige,” Tony said, then turned to the rest of them. “We have to assume they’re not going to call off the operation. Jack’s escape leaves them potentially exposed. They have nothing to lose by finishing what they’ve started, though I guarantee the thin black line is going to be even more vigilant now.”
“Thin black line?” Max asked.
“An enemy police action, blended into the shadows by using homegrown operatives,” Tony explained. “The question is how they’re going to pull this off. With the President’s appearance there, security will be locked so tight the chances of bringing in some kind of explosive device are remote, if not impossible.”
“What about the X factor?” Jack asked. “Harold Wickham.”
“Do you think he’ll show?” Tony asked. “I mean, if they’re going to blow the place up—”
“He may put in a token appearance and leave,” Jack said. “But he has clout. He’ll have full access.”
“What about the Secret Service?” Max said.
“They got to MI6, didn’t they?” Jack said. “Who knows how far this reaches.”
“Inside man or not,” Mike Abernathy said, “anyone who enters that place will have to go through a security scanner, a pat down, and a dog sniff, so a simple walk-on isn’t likely.”
“Right,” Tony said. His voice and his expression flattened. “That’s the problem. Me and Mike and Jonah here spent the morning trying to come up with potential alternative scenarios that might make the impossible possible, but we came up blank. Especially with Haddad as a wild card.”
“So we’re wasting our time,” Karras said.
“No,” Jack told him. “This function is the target, even if it’s not ground zero. They made no bones about letting me and Sara know that.”
“Then how the hell are they gonna hit it?” Max asked.
“That’s where Doc here comes in,” Tony said. He gestured to Doc, who was sprawled on Jack’s sofa, picking at his teeth with the corner of a matchbook. “He was downstairs grabbing a nap when the discussion started, but once he decided to get his ass outta the sack he already knew the answer to your question. Which is why I always have to remind myself he’s older than God.”
“You kiddin’ me?” Doc said. “Who do you think raised the Almighty?”
“So what’s the answer?” Jack asked impatiently.
Doc stopped picking his teeth, dropped the matchbook into his shirt pocket, and got to his feet.
“I started thinking about that little headquarters they appropriated in the bay,” he said. “Wickham told you they picked it because it was isolated.”
“Yeah. So?” Jack said.
“Plenty of places in the city are isolated, secure, convenient,” he said. “That thing’s a pain in the ass to get to, and there’s always the chance a Coast Guard patrol will stop you, especially with the President coming to town—”
“Cold son of a bitch, too,” Goldman observed.
“No,” Doc went on. “There had to be another reason they picked it.”
“What reason?” Max asked.
Doc replied, “Location, location, location.” He waited a moment to let that sink in. “I called a buddy at the National Reconnaissance Office. They’ve got a MATS—Maritime Anomalous Traffic Satellite—that flags divergence from normal patterns in the nation’s major waterways. Sort of like NORAD for shipping. All that stuff we’re supposedly not doing to protect our ports? We are.”
“Draw your enemy out by pretending not to be watching,” Jack said.
“Exactly,” Doc told him. “I had him look at the images from that region. He said there’s been very limited nighttime activity along the mainland coast near the island. The infrared images did not raise any alarms at the NRO because it failed to fit any standard danger profiles: it wasn’t adjacent to a populated center, only small vessels came and went, and it stopped.”
“Someone knew what they could get away with,” Jack