Tom Clancy's op-center_ acts of war - Tom Clancy [135]
"I've heard nothing," said the guard.
Mahmoud looked toward the palace. It had been over five minutes since the explosion. If the President had been hurt, his personal physician would have been sent for. He would have been here by now. Something was wrong.
Waving his pistol for his men to follow, Mahmoud jogged quickly toward the palace entrance.
* * *
FORTY-SIX
Tuesday, 7:07 a.m.,
Washington, D.C.
Martha Mackall awoke with a start as her pager beeped. She looked at the number. It was Curt Hardaway.
Martha had spent the night at Op-Center, napping in the spartan employee lounge. It had taken her until three a.m. to fall asleep. Martha admitted it herself: When something annoyed her, she was like a dog with a bone. And having to turn Op-Center over to Paul Hood's evening counterpart, Curt Hardaway, annoyed her. Events overseas were just too delicate to leave to his ham-fisted ways. When he'd come on duty, Martha had gone so far as to consult Lowell Coffey's deputy assistant, Aideen Marley, about who had decision-making authority if something happened during the night. Whenever Paul Hood remained at his desk after his shift was over, he still outranked the night crew. But according to the charter, an acting director did not. Until 7:30 a.m., Op-Center belonged to Hardaway.
Martha hoped that nothing had happened. Hardaway was a cousin and protégé of CIA Director Larry Rachlin, and his appointment had been a necessary expedience. In order to keep Op-Center free of CIA influence, the President had wanted an outsider to run it. However, to appease the intelligence community, he was pressured to put in a veteran as Hood's backup. Though the Oklahoma-born Hardaway was an affable man with the intelligence skills necessary for the job, Martha found him to be uninspired and uninspiring. He also had a talent for speaking before thinking things through. Fortunately for Op-Center, the powerful Hood-Rodgers-Herbert triumvirate set very rigid policies during the day, and Hardaway had never been able to muck things up too badly.
Martha picked up the phone on the end table beside the couch. She called Hardaway. He picked up immediately.
"You'd better get on over," he said. "This mess is going to bleed into your shift."
"I'm coming," she said, and hung up. Hardaway was as tactful as ever.
The employee lounge was located near the Tank, a windowless conference room which sat within an electronic web. There wasn't a spy device on Earth that could hear what was discussed inside it. Turning left from the lounge and walking down the curving wall would have brought her past the Tank to the offices of Bob Herbert, Mike Rodgers, and Paul Hood in turn. Martha turned right. Walking briskly, she passed her own office, followed by the office of FBI and Interpol liaison Darrell McCaskey, Matt Stoll's computer area--"the orchestration pit," he called it--and the legal and environmental sections where Lowell Coffey and Phil Katzen worked. The psychological and medical divisions came next, followed by the radio room, the small Striker office for Brett August, and Ann Farris's two-person press department.
As hurried along, Bob Herbert came wheeling up behind her. "Did Curt tell you what's been going on?"
"No," she said. "Only that there's a mess and it's going to hemorrhage all over my desk."
"A little raw but true," Herbert said. "All hell's broken out in Damascus. I got a call from Warner. They had a suicide bomber at the Azem Palace. He killed the President's double."
"That cobbler?"
Herbert nodded.
"Then the President probably isn't even in Damascus," Martha said. "What about Ambassador Haveles?"
"He was at the palace," Herbert said. "He's shaken but unhurt. Now the palace is under siege. Unfortunately, Warner is still in the room where the bomb went off and can't tell us much. I switched him over to Curt. We're keeping that line open."
"And Paul" Martha asked.
"He left the room to look for the DSA guys who came with them."
"He should've