Hellbent

He’d once slogged through a Louisiana heat wave for a four-day swing — twenty-seven stops from stump speeches to union rallies in humidity so high it felt like wading through a swamp. He’d flipped the state as promised, and never once had he broken a sweat. Not beneath the hot light of the campaign trail, not during the nine debates, not in the situation room contemplating an aerial bombardment to unfuck the rugged north of Iraq.

That’s what had killed Nixon. The sweating.

But Bennett was different.

He was the un-Nixon.

Before law school in his early days as a special agent for the Department of Defense, he’d learned to exert control over functions of his body he’d previously thought uncontrollable. This skill had served him well, then and now. He’d never been photographed with a sheen across his forehead or sweat stains darkening a dress shirt. He didn’t stammer or make quick, darting movements with his eyes.

Most telling, his hands never shook.

The American people required that in this day and age. A leader with a steady hand. A leader who knew how to sell image, his and theirs. They never noticed the minutiae that projected this competence, at least not consciously, but they registered it somewhere deep in their lizard brains.

That’s what you appealed to. What you targeted. What you ruled.

The lizard brains.

Instinct. Survival. Fear.

He studied his staff through the wire-frame eyeglasses he’d selected to convey authority and a certain remoteness. Right now his people were at odds over a housing bill that was threatening to blow up in the Senate and, more importantly, on CNN. For the last five minutes, he’d listened with predatory repose, but now it was time to strike.

He cleared his throat pointedly.

The debate ceased.

Before he could render his judgment, one of three heavy black phones rang on his desk. When he noted which one, he rose from the couch, crossed the rug featuring his seal in monochromatic sculpting, and picked up the receiver with his notably steady hand.

He put his back to the room, a signal, and the murmured discussion resumed behind him.

“Is it done?” he asked.

Orphan Y replied, “No.”

Bennett waited two seconds before replying. Two seconds was a long time in the life of a conversation, particularly when one half of that conversation was emanating from the Oval Office.

Bennett was out of earshot of the others, but he lowered his voice anyway. “This cannot get to NSA, CIA, or State. That’s why I assigned you my own personally vetted men. It gets out of your hands, it could get out of mine. And that is unacceptable.”

Van Sciver said, “I completely—”

Bennett took off his eyeglasses and set them on the blotter. “When I ran the DoD, we had a saying. ‘It takes wet work to do a clean job.’ I need this to be watertight. I cannot have him out there. He may not know why, but he’s the only remaining connective tissue. Someone can connect the dots, and those dots lead through X. Without him they’re just dots.” Bennett allowed another two-second pause. “Clean out the connective tissue or I’ll consider you part of it.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Bennett set the receiver down gently on the cradle that sat on the weighty Resolute desk. A quick internal inventory showed his pulse to be normal, his breathing as calm as ever.

He turned around to face his staff. “Now, where were we?”

62 Not Easy

Still cool from the shower, Evan stood before his dresser in his boxer briefs. He opened the top drawer. Identical dark Levi’s 501s on one side and on the other, tactical-discreet cargo pants. They were sharply folded, stacked so neatly they looked machine-cut. He pulled on a pair of cargo pants and snugged the Kydex high-guard holster on the waistband, relieved to be wearing a normal-size pistol again. Then he slid two backup magazines into the streamlined inner pockets. They gave no bulge.

The next drawer down housed ten unworn gray V-neck T-shirts. He put one on, tucked it behind his hip holster. In the closet he grabbed the top shoe box from a tiered tower in the corner. He changed out his Original S.W.A.T. boots regularly, ensuring that he couldn’t be tracked by microfibers or soil residue trapped in the tread. Nine Woolrich shirts hung in parallel, magnetic buttons clamped. They were straight from the shipping package, though he’d cut off the price tags and ironed out the wrinkles before hanging them. As he donned the nearest shirt and snapped the buttons shut, he thought about what he was planning to do just a few hours from now.

He was going to walk into the den of the world’s most dangerous gang.

Innumerable variables, a risk level too high to assess. That was why he needed every other facet to be locked down, predictable, second-nature. He knew each contour, thread, and operation spec of his gear. Every magazine had been painstakingly validated on a desert range, tested to ensure that it dropped from the well without the slightest hitch.