The white delivery van, approaching at high speed from the west, blows the red light at Seventeenth Street, only to slam to a stop at dead center of the intersection. Bishop leaps out of the vehicle and, shielded from view of the patrol car across the intersection, fires a long and steady burst into the air, empty brass shells flying in a graceful arc to the pavement. Without muzzle suppressor, the weapon’s report echoes across the urban canyon, an unmistakable racketing of automatic gunfire. Traffic screeches to a stop in every direction. A young woman who has just exited the post office having delivered a package for her boss at Office of the US Trade Representative screams horror movie–style. The US Park Police officers in their patrol car on Pennsylvania Avenue jump-start their response after a brief delay from shock with the driver hitting the ignition while his partner is calling on the radio for backup.
Bishop walks to the front of the delivery van. About eleven seconds have transpired since the initial outburst of gunfire, and four seconds since ceasing. He lowers the machine gun and takes aim on the patrol car, slightly more than two hundred feet distant, and pulls the trigger. High-velocity, armor-piercing, copper-alloy-jacketed lead-core Fiocchi rounds obliterate the patrol car’s grill and shred its front tires. Both cops drop below the dash, with the one officer shouting his panicked report into the radio. After approximately twenty-two seconds outside the delivery van, Bishop backtracks and reenters the vehicle. Martin takes his foot off the brake and stands on the accelerator, rear wheels smoking as the vehicle fishtails out of the intersection, heading south on Seventeenth Street. For three blocks around, pedestrians lie prone on the ground or cower in doorways. Traffic is stopped, haphazardly, as if in a post-apocalyptic tableau.
* * *
EVERYONE PRESENT IN the Oval Office, including Hayley, freezes at the sound of the close-in gunfire. There is a moment of silence and utter stillness, then both doors burst open and Secret Service agents flood into the room. In their rush, the protective detail shoves Hayley roughly aside, as well as Kyle Rodgers and Karen Rey, converging on the president who has half risen out of his chair. James Odom and Seretti are held down in their seats on the couch by agents as four other Secret Service men take both Landers and Monroe by the arms and hustle them toward the door leading to the president’s private study. Within ten seconds of the agents barging into the Oval Office, Monroe and his vice president have been whisked away to only the Secret Service knows where.
Kyle Rodgers picks himself off the floor, where he had been pushed. For a moment, everyone in the room remains in place, unsure of what to do next or what had just happened. More Secret Service agents appear in the doorway leading into the Outer Oval Office.
“Shelter in Place order is in effect. Everyone out! Now!”
Despite the emergency, Al Seretti is his usual combative self. A scrappy shortstop on the University of Oklahoma baseball team and an occasional abuser of steroids, his temper is hair-trigger. “If we’re sheltering in place, aren’t we supposed to stay in place?!”
“Oval is restricted, sir,” the Secret Service agent responds with dry sarcasm and little patience. He moves deeper into the room to ensure that all present have evacuated. Standing near the northwest door leading into the Outer Oval Office, Hayley turns to retrieve Scott’s tablet from the side table across the room. Her way is blocked by the six-foot-four Secret Service agent.
“Out! Let’s go!” he shouts into Hayley’s face. He leaves no room for discussion, pushing Hayley toward the door.
After Hayley, Karen Rey, and Kyle Rodgers have been ushered out of the room, the agents focus on the remaining occupants. A rattled Albert Seretti goes meekly enough, but James Odom brusquely shakes off an agent’s guiding hand. “That would be unnecessary,” he tells the agent with a lacerating tone. Odom steps around the temporarily immobilized Secret Service agent and retrieves Scott’s computer from the side table. Only then does the CIA deputy director allow himself to be shown to the door.
* * *
THE WHITE DELIVERY van hurtles south on Seventeenth Street, weaving through stopped traffic and blowing through intersections as police sirens wail in the distance. Both operators inside the van keep their masks on as Bishop stows the machine gun in one of the duffel bags. Martin steers the van right, onto New York Avenue, getting snarled in stopped traffic there briefly, before regaining speed again as New York transitions to E Street. By the time the van turns right on Twentieth Street, both Martin and Bishop have removed their face masks, though each keep hospital gloves on their hands. Midway between F and E Streets, Martin pulls over to the curb, parking behind a familiar black SUV.
Their location is another quiet block, chosen for the fact there are absolutely no CCTV surveillance cameras for two blocks in every direction. Martin and Bishop exit the van and walk up to either side of the SUV, which they enter. The SUV immediately lunges away from the curb and continues north on Twentieth Street. A moment later, smoke begins to pour out of the open windows of the delivery van. Within ninety seconds, the entire vehicle is engulfed in flames. It will take more than seven minutes for a DCFD fire engine to arrive on scene and extinguish the vehicle fire, leaving only a charred hulk of its chassis.
In the weeks that follow, Metro and Park Police departments will investigate the mysterious and violent incident at the intersection of Seventeenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. The perpetrators will never be identified, much less charged. Motivation for the shooting, which left no injuries, is assumed by FBI and MPD investigators to be a diversion for another crime, perhaps a robbery, which failed for one reason or another to take place.
* * *
HAYLEY FOLLOWS MORE than two dozen other staffers and White House personnel into the Cabinet Room. Most are quietly checking their devices for news or email, or both. No one is particularly alarmed. Working in Washington, DC, one becomes accustomed to bizarre incidents and deranged actions. As seat of the federal government, the city is destined to draw lunatics from every corner of the country. Whether angry about their farm’s foreclosure or mother’s untreatable cancer, citizens with a loose grip on their sanity are inclined to take out their frustrations and rages on the edifices and public servants that populate the nation’s capital. Though live gunfire in any circumstance is disquieting, it is assumed by most people crowded into the august Cabinet Room that the situation is being handled.
Wedged between the habitually sweaty assistant to the president for economic policy and the twenty-three-year-old former editor of the Harvard Lampoon whose main responsibility is crafting one-liners for the annual correspondents’ dinner, Hayley frets about Scott’s tablet. Fretting isn’t a typical mental activity of the intern’s, who prefers action to anxiety. But the device is a massive reservoir of potential evidence, and she cannot help worrying about its status.
Hayley plots how she will recover the device from the Oval Office, anticipating interference from the Secret Service or Karen Rey. Eliciting the aid of the president’s personal secretary is probably the best course of action. Madison Smith has been with Monroe since the president retired from the military. In her late fifties, Madison is also from the South. Recognizing the benefits of such an ally within the hothouse atmosphere of the West Wing, Hayley has done nothing to discourage the older woman’s offer of casual friendship. She has no doubt Madison will facilitate recovery of the wayward tablet from the Oval Office.