“Gatling guns in one of the lower buildings would do it.”

“Do they?” Danny looked at Nuri.

“I don’t see anything in those buildings,” said Nuri. “But we only have infrared at the moment.”

“We’re better off going on the ground,” said Danny, considering. “If they have this much technology, they’ll trust it. Once we’re past the magnetic wall, the rest will be easy. We’ll just pick a path around the sensors.”

“That’s like Moses saying once we cross the Red Sea, we’ll be free from the Egyptians,” said Nuri.

“You know what, Colonel?” Flash held up his control unit. He had zoomed in on a small section of the property. “Can I see this grid on the big screen?”

“Go ahead.”

Flash hunkered down with Nuri, coordinating the grid numbers.

“You look at these plants?” Flash asked after they zoomed the image. “You know what they are?”

“No.”

“It’s cannabis. Pot. They have about two acres worth of marijuana growing down that hillside.”

“Two acres?”

“Shit yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Have a look.”

Danny wasn’t an expert in plant morphology, but MY-PID was. Flash was right.

“Two acres worth of weed,” said Flash. “You sure we ain’t bustin’ a drug operation?”

32

White House

Covert operations were among the most top secret of all government undertakings, but that didn’t meant they didn’t have their own bureaucratic infrastructure and procedures. On the contrary: the bureaucracy and its pathways were in some ways even more elaborate for “black” operations than those involving the rest of the government.

Legal opinions—many more than the average person would believe—as well as myriad logistical decisions and arrangements had to be formulated, reviewed, rejected (more often than not), reformulated, and finally decided upon.

These were all subject to the “serendipitous conundrums,” as Jonathon Reid put it: chance, accidents, and, last and very often least, official policy, which acted like grit in the wheels of the churning system. Even when the chain of command was set up in a streamlined way to purposely get quick decisions and emphasize flexibility, it could take days, if not weeks, to get the outlines of an operation approved.

There were surprisingly few ways to short-circuit the process. The one surefire way, however, was to go directly to the President herself.

Which was what Reid did, arranging to stop by the White House residence to play cards after dinner.

Not with the President—Mrs. Todd abhorred gambling, whether it was cards or horse racing or even the state lottery, something which hadn’t won her many friends when she proposed it be abolished while running for the state legislature at the start of her career. She’d lost that election; it was the last time she ever mentioned the lottery, on or off the record.

Her stance on gambling was 180 degrees different than her husband’s. Mr. Todd—no friends called him the First Husband, even as a joke—held poker games at the residence twice a week. Reid was a semiregular, and had been since well before the venue change that came with the President’s election.

More than just the venue had changed. There was now a butler available to keep the drinks filled.

The cigarette smoke was still horrendous. Mr. Todd was an unreformed hacker.

The President visited the session generally at 10:00 P.M., ostensibly on her way to bed, but most often on her way to do more work in her private office upstairs. She was a night owl, and in fact rarely got more than four hours of sleep.

“My God, Mr. Todd,” she said, coming into the family dining room where the games were held. “So much smoke!”

Everyone, except her husband, stood.

“Next week we do cigars, Mrs. Todd,” he answered.

It was a routine of theirs: she always complained about the smoke; he always threatened more. She walked around to the head of the table and gave him a peck on the cheek.

“Good cards?” he said.

“Four queens,” she said dryly. “Should I be jealous?”

Her husband smiled. No one was ever sure if she was reading the cards accurately or if they were teasing each other. But the prudent thing to do was drop out, and they all did.

“Mister Rockfert,” she said, noticing Sam Rockfert. “We haven’t seen you here in quite a while.”

“No, I know, Mary. Been a while.”

She went over to Rockfert. He was an old friend—a plumber who had befriended the Todds even before the lotto election, when Mr. Todd was working as a Senate staff assistant. He was the only person besides her husband who would use her first name—including her brother-in-law James, who was sitting on her husband’s right.

“How’s Margaret?” the President asked.

“Her knee has been giving her fits. Or I should say, giving me fits.” Rockfert laughed. “Other than that, she’s fine. Grandkids came up last week.”

“You have to arrange to bring them around. We’d love to see them.”

She was sincere, though her schedule meant that it was unlikely she’d be able to spend more than two or three minutes with them, even if such a meeting could be arranged.

“Mr. Reid, I hope you are not betting your pension money,” said the President, seeming to spot him for the first time.

“It wouldn’t be much to lose,” said Reid.

“It’s the money he got from selling guns to the Contras that he doesn’t want to lose,” quipped James. “You notice he doesn’t bet that.”

The President looked over and scowled at him. Her husband laughed.

“Ignore them, Mr. Reid,” said the President. “They’re just jealous of your good fortune. I wonder—could you spare me a moment? I have a few questions, now that you’re here.”

“Of course. The way my luck has been going, I’m glad to take a break.”

Reid got up and followed the President down the hall to the study.

“You have something new for me?” asked the President, sitting down in a chair next to her desk. It was a reproduction of a piece of furniture that James Madison was said to have brought into the White House. The original was in a Smithsonian storeroom.

“We think we’ve found a complex the Wolves use,” said Reid. “In Moldova.”

“Interesting.”

“We’d like to send Whiplash in to find out. But that may involve bloodshed.”

“In Moldova.”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. If they are there, striking them now—before the conference—would preempt the possibility of their attack. The conference could go off without a hitch.”

“How good is the evidence?”

Reid laid it out.

“Sketchy,” said the President.

“At this stage, things often are.”

“Yes.”

The President leaned back in the chair. She stared at the wall behind him, her eyes facing a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt, one of her favorite predecessors.

“Can we pull this off without being detected?” she asked. “In and out, no complications? No witnesses?”

Reid had given the question considerable thought. An American raid in any foreign country would create a major incident, even if it went off without a hitch. He believed that Whiplash could get into the compound and complete its mission, but there was no way to guarantee it could be done without attracting attention, especially if the Wolves chose to resist. And everything indicated they would.

“I can’t guarantee that nothing would come out,” said Reid. “There is always some possibility of failure.”