Oath of Office

Gorev had the trigger job. His youthful face didn’t look it, but deep down, he was much more ruthless than Pugin, and Bobkova needed ruthless. Gorev would loiter on Crystal Drive, outside the security camera’s field of view, as if waiting for a ride. Bobkova, who could see the front door, would let him know when Chadwick made her exit. At this point, he would walk up and shoot her in the face. Pugin would exit the mall then, acting the good witness and yelling at some imagined assailant up on a rooftop. It took the human mind a few seconds to process surprises, especially violent ones. Most bystanders would follow Pugin’s gesture to the vacant rooftop, struggling to make sense of the situation; some of them would have clearly even seen Gorev pull the trigger. Some would stand with pocketed hands while they stared in shock at the broken skull and brain matter that were nothing at all like they appear on television. Overwhelmed senses would be unable to process the input of gore, and blood, and gunpowder. Oh, some Good Samaritan might try and tackle Gorev, but he was strong and quick. Pugin would move in as well, as if to grab the attacker, all the while clumsily blocking anyone else.

This was a good plan. With any luck, it would all be over soon.

Bobkova sat up a little straighter on her park bench, willing her leg not to bounce with nervous energy. Arlington was crawling with police and federal agents. Dozens of them were sure to emerge from the woodwork like termites at the sound of a shot. She wanted to be gone before anyone knew she’d been here.

* * *

“CAROUSEL is still stationary,” Special Agent Soong said from inside Morton’s. Several less flattering code names for Chadwick had been suggested, but Montgomery reminded the team that these things had a way of coming to light and stuck with CAROUSEL.

“Alpha is stationary,” said the Secret Service agent on top of the Crystal Place apartments. She lay belly-down behind her Remington 700 rifle, peering through the reticle of a Nightforce scope, cheek against the adjustable comb of the Accuracy International chassis.

“Stay on her, Christie,” Montgomery heard Ayers say.

Special agents Miller and Woodruff responded next.

“Bravo still stationary.”

“Charlie still stationary.”

Alone in his maroon Dodge Durango two hundred meters away, Montgomery nodded to himself. He’d liked to have thought the team would have snapped to these threats simply because of their appearance, but he knew the real reason was a friendship that went back to his first days in the Service.

The baby agent who’d sat next to him at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center during basic criminal investigator school — CI, they called it — had been convinced even in the early nineties that technical measures were the future of law enforcement. Josh Parker had carried around folders crammed full of data on what was then extremely new technology regarding cell phones, digital cameras, and the emerging Internet. He was always eager to share his ideas with anyone willing to listen. Montgomery, who even then looked like a ham-fisted Mickey Spillane character with a clothing allowance and better haircut, had a tendency to depend more on shoe leather than on binary code. But he’d sensed this agent-trainee was onto something. He and Parker became good friends throughout the weeks of CI and then the more specialized Secret Service training course in Beltsville. Special Agent Parker had eventually gone on to head the Secret Service’s Protective Intelligence Division, working behind the frosted windows on the uppermost floor of Secret Service HQ.

Parker’s drone had provided the first lead.

Strictly speaking, the fifteen-mile circle around Reagan Airport was a No Drone Zone. There’d already been an incident where a small commercial UAV had crashed onto the White House lawn. Few things beyond actual gunfire got the Secret Service quite as animated as remotely piloted aircraft flying up to the window of the President’s house. The Service conducted numerous tests, working on methods to stop intrusive aircraft, and coincidentally, how they might employ such aircraft themselves in furtherance of their mission.

Josh Parker headed the research.

He’d launched his newest drone from a park two blocks away from Chadwick’s apartment, simply to get some up-to-date aerial video of the neighborhood, possible surveillance vehicles, anything out of the ordinary. He’d suggested launching the drone every hour to look for patterns — and changes in those patterns.