Oath of Office

The drone went up for the third time at five minutes after six o’clock, just in time to watch a brunette woman exit the back side of the apartment building across the street from Senator Chadwick’s residence and get into a forest-green Ford Taurus. That would not have been abnormal at all, but for the fact that the woman got in the car and did not drive away. Two minutes later, a white male in his twenties came out of the same building but walked to a different sedan. He and the woman pulled away at the same time, heading in the same direction.

Parker had taken his drone up another hundred feet and watched the two vehicles drive out of the neighborhood. They jumped on I-66 heading east. The departure would simply have been logged by the command post, but a third male, this one shorter, darker, and older — one of the agents called him “shifty”—came out the back door of the same apartment building and drove away using the same route.

Chadwick left her residence just before six-thirty with her assistant Corey Fite behind the wheel of her Beemer. Seven U.S. Secret Service vehicles trailed, loose enough not to be seen, close enough not to lose one of the most ubiquitous types of vehicle inside the Beltway. She’d stopped and picked someone up at the Clarendon Metro Station Kiss and Ride lot, and then continued on Clarendon Boulevard, generally paralleling the route taken by the three people who’d left shortly before her.

Parker uploaded pertinent sections of the video with the clearest images of each person and sent it to everyone on the detail. The angles weren’t ideal, but they were good enough that the “shifty” guy was identified sitting on a bench inside the Crystal City Underground almost as soon as the team arrived on scene.

Montgomery and the others hadn’t known where Chadwick was going before she arrived at the steakhouse, so it took them a few minutes to get set up. One agent followed the senator and her male companion inside. This agent, a female who’d be able to check on the women’s restroom without being questioned, quietly displayed credentials identifying her as Secret Service Special Agent Madeline Soong, and told the maître d’ that she needed to conduct an advance for a visiting dignitary. Protective details were common in and around Washington, so the maître d’ gave her the run of the place. The lighting inside the restaurant was dim and Special Agent Soong, dressed in a smart navy-blue suit with an open-collar button-down, blended in with management. Chadwick was self-absorbed enough that she paid no attention to the intense Asian woman checking for would-be threats not twenty feet away.

Shifty’s presence on the bench just outside Morton’s was enough for Montgomery to put shooters on top of the nearest apartment buildings to the north and south across Crystal Drive. He wanted coverage of the drop-off and pickup point with two long guns as well as two sets of eyes. Parker’s drone would have come in handy here, but the proximity to Reagan Airport made that problematic.

Agents on the ground identified the younger man and the woman from Chadwick’s neighborhood before the snipers made it to the rooftops. They were given designators that corresponded to the order in which they’d come out of the apartment. All senses humming now, Montgomery couldn’t help but wonder if there was some unidentified Delta out there to go with his Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie.

Soong’s voice came across the radio. “CAROUSEL is imminent departure. They’re paying the bill now.”

“Okay, boys and girls,” Special Agent Ayers said. “On your toes.”

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Montgomery clutched the steering wheel with both hands, leaning forward, fighting the urge to get involved.

Chadwick’s BMW X5 pulled up just before she walked out.

“Movement, Bravo,” an agent said.

Another piped in. “Charlie’s up, walking toward the street.”

Then: “Gun Bravo! Gun Bravo!”

In front of the restaurant, Delray Witherspoon, a six-foot-three rawboned special agent who’d played tight end for Mizzou before joining the Service, bounced Bravo’s head off a concrete pillar before he could bring up the pistol. Bravo collapsed on the sidewalk.

Special Agent Soong moved to her right, body-checking subject Charlie at the moment he tried to come through the glass doors, knocking him back into the arms of the two agents who’d sprinted up behind him.

Chadwick and her date got into the Beemer and drove away, seemingly none the wiser that she’d narrowly avoided execution.

“Subject Alpha, running east,” one of the rooftop shooters said, calm, sniperlike. His voice held the unique buzz of someone whose face was pressed against a rifle chassis. “She’s on the paved trail, heading down toward the airport.”