Transfer of Power

chapter 21
The word was passed, and the red-filter light was extinguished. The relatively cool night had turned thick and muggy under the canvas tarp. It had been decided that Rapp would go first, followed by Adams, and then Harris. Rapp felt for the slit in the tarp and pulled it to the side. Taking the main pack, Rapp wedged it through the bars, and then with the smaller packs that Dumond had given him, he turned sideways and squeezed through the bent bars. Adams and Harris followed, and the three of them walked softly through the underbrush, ducking under branches and bending limbs out of the way.

They were careful to stay off the paths that the Secret Service had laid out through the underbrush. The paths were designed to funnel fence jumpers into areas loaded with sensors, and although they didn't think the terrorists were using the perimeter security system, there was no sense in pushing their luck.

When they reached the immediate area of the vent, Lt. Commander Harris whispered into this headset, "Slick, do you have any movement on the roof?"

The reply came back instantly. "Nope. He's still looking to the west."

There was just enough light from the streetlamps for the three of them to see each other. Rapp nodded to Adams; they had both heard the same report over their headsets. Taking his signal, Adams plucked several of the fake bushes from the ground. The gushes were designed to conceal the ventilation hood during all four seasons. Adams moved the shrubs out of the way while Rapp and Harris unfolded a smaller black tarp. With the tarp in place over the top of the hood the three men crawled under it and went to work. Rapp held a small took pack while Harris aimed a red-filter flashlight for Adams. The old man of the group started by spraying lubricant along the seam in the sheet metal. Then, with a small cordless drill, he zipped out eight screws. Slowly, they began to wiggle the hood back and forth, trying their best to prevent the screeching metal on metal. The lubricant diminished most of the noise, and inside of sixty seconds they had the hood off and out of the way.

Harris set up a lightweight aluminum tripod while Rapp lowered his gear to the bottom with a climbing rope. The black tarp was thrown over the top. Harris clipped a pulley to the tripod and fed a rope through, taking one end to the fence and tying it to the winch on the front of the Suburban.

Rapp stuck a small flashlight into the open shaft and looked down at the bottom. Harris returned a second later and tied the rope around Rapp's ankles, then put on a pair of gloves. Then after grabbing the rope, he nodded to Rapp and leaned back, ready to take up the slack. Rapp gave Harris the thumbs-up, and then bending at the waist, he stuck his head in the open shaft and began to ease himself inside.

Over his headset Rapp said, "Lower me."

Lt. Commander Harris slowly began to play out the rope until all of the slack was gone, about eight more feet total. Harris then whispered into his headset telling his men back at the Suburban to let the winch out. In the shaft, Rapp started his descent and turned on his small miner's lamp that was strapped over his baseball cap.

As he neared the bottom, he whispered over his headset, "Stop." Dangling like a landed catch, Rapp turned himself so he could bend at the waist and make the ninety-degree turn into the shaft without breaking his back.

"Okay, real slow. Let me out four more feet." He started to move again, and Rapp grabbed on to the sides of the horizontal vent, pulling himself inside. A bit of static crackled through his earpiece, and he said, "Stop. That's good." Rapp pulled his legs toward him, and in a sit-up-like position, he trained the miner's lamp on his feet and untied the rope around his ankles. When he was finished, he said, "Take it back up."

The rope disappeared from sight, and Rapp flipped over onto his stomach. Wasting no time, he grabbed the long rope that he'd used to lower his gear into the shaft and untied it. Then taking a short rope that he'd brought along, he tied one end to the top of his gear and the other end to his left ankle. Rolling back onto his stomach, he trained the small light down the long narrow shaft. It looked as if it went on forever. Rapp could barely make out the turn some two hundred feet away. The shaft seemed to get tighter. Rapp grimaced. H had what he liked to refer to as a healthy phobia of being trapped in places the size of a coffin.

Reluctantly, Rapp started forward down the cramped space, his forearms doing most of the work. Into his lip mike, he whispered, "Milt, I'm moving out." With his gear in tow, Rapp plodded forward like an alligator. The reception on his radio was becoming increasingly cluttered.

* * *

Not long after they had lost contact with Rapp, Milt Adams was also lost. The only thing Kennedy and the others could do was wait. Kennedy found herself thinking that this was how the NASA mission controllers must have felt during the Apollo lunar missions. When the astronauts went around the back side of the moon, they would enter a period when communication was impossible. The roomful of scientists would sit nervously at mission control and hope the spacecraft and its men would make it back around without any problems. That was the position they were in now. There was nothing they could do but wait.

Kennedy took off her headset, looked up at a row of clocks on the wall to her right, and remembered there was one thing she could do. Dead in the middle of the wall was the clock noting the local time in Washington, D.C. It was almost eleven in the evening. Several clocks to the right, Kennedy found the time she was looking for. Picking up the secure phone in front of her, she dialed a number by memory. It was an important phone number. It was just before seven in the morning in Tel Aviv, and if her counterpart wasn't in, he would be shortly. After several clicks and whirs someone picked up on the other end.

"Fine."

The word was not an answer to a question, but rather the last name of the man answering the phone, Colonel Ben Fine of the Israeli foreign intelligence service, Mossad. Colonel Fine was Kennedy's direct counterpart, the man in charge of Mossad's counterterrorism section.

"Ben, it's Irene Kennedy."

"Irene," said Fine excitedly. "I'm sorry I haven't called, but I figured you'd be busy."

"Have you been following the crisis?" asked Kennedy in a tired voice.

"Very closely. Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, there is." Kennedy looked down at the sheet of paper in front of her. "I'd like to look at a list of names for me."

"How many?"

"Ten. We have good intel on seven of them, but the last three we've come up blank on." Kennedy again looked at the list of names that had bee provided by Dr. Hornig."

"You can count on me putting all of my resources into it. Send me the list, and I will personally make sure it gets taken care of immediately."

"Thank you, Ben. I appreciate it."

There was a pause, and then colonel said, "I have a questing for you, as long as I've got you on the line. There have been several reports, all unconfirmed of course, that a certain high-ranking member of Hezbollah is missing." The Israeli colonel stopped talking for a moment and then added, "You wouldn't know anything about this, would you?"

Kennedy lifted her eyes and looked up at the bank of television sets. "I might have some insight into the subject."

Fine didn't reply right away. Instead his silence conveyed an implicit tit-for-tat request. "I assume when the time is right, you will enlighten me."

"I had planned on it," answered Kennedy honestly.

"Good," stated a satisfied Fine. "Do you need anything else from me?"

Kennedy thought about it for a moment and said, "No, not that I can think of, but anything you can do with the names would be greatly appreciated."

"I will get started right away, and do not hesitate to call if you need anything else."

"I won't. Thank you, Ben." After setting the phone back in its cradle, Kennedy placed the list of names in a file folder and walked to the end of her row. Looking up toward the back of the room, she waved the file and caught the attention of one of her people. A man in his early thirties came down the stairs, and Kennedy handed him the file. "Fax this to Colonel Fine immediately." The man nodded dutifully and started back up the stairs, headed for the secure fax machine.

* * *

White noise hissed through the earpiece. I have to be near the end, Rapp thought to himself. The tunnel seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. Rapp was sweating profusely, and his heart rate was much faster than it should have been. Irritated by the noise of his radio, he reached up and took the headset off, letting it fall around his neck. He knew Milt Adams wasn't far behind, because he had heard him sneezing. It must have been the thin layer of dust that lined the metal walls of the duct. There wasn't a lot of it, but Rapp himself had fought back the impulse several times.

Rapp paused for a second and took in a deep breath. He lowered his sweaty head onto his arm and told himself to relax. He was expending far more energy than necessary due to his slightly panicked state. Rapp lay still for almost a minute as he got his breathing under control. His watch told him that he had been in the shaft for almost fifteen minutes. Longer than he had expected. It couldn't be that much farther. After making the left turn that would take him parallel to the southern end of the mansion's foundation, he had turned the miner's light off. Rapp thought it was doubtful that anyone would be in the third basement   Aziz did not have enough men to patrol every area of the White House   but it was not worth the gamble of having the light spill through a crack or a seam in the ductwork.

After several more minutes of confined crawling, Rapp reached the end. He was drenched in sweat, almost all of it from nervous energy. Gently, he let his head fall down on his arm, and he listened to make sure no one was in the boiler room. For the next two minutes that was all he did. Outside the shaft he could hear the heating, ventilation, and cooling system going through the labors of regulating the climate within the old house, but other than that, the only thing he heard was the approaching Milt Adams and his not-so-quiet sneezing.

Rapp decided it was better to open the access panel before Adams and his involuntary reports arrived. He turned on his miner's lamp and ran his hand over the smooth surface of the duct until he felt a groove. Zeroing in with the light, he spotted what he was looking for. Just as Milt had said, there was an access panel right before the duct connected to the filtration system. A not-so-small wave of relief washed over him. The thought of it not being there, and having to crawl all the way back, had occurred to him several times. Before twisting the metal catches up, Rapp drew his silenced Beretta and turned off the miner's light. With the gun in his left hand, he felt for the catches with his right and turned the first one from its horizontal position to vertical. Adams had explained that the panel was attached with hinges on the bottom and two catches at the top.

After twisting the second catch, he slowly allowed the panel to swing downward and looked out into the dimly lit boiler room of the White House. The ventilation duct was hung from the ceiling and ran halfway across the room, where it connected to the hulking HVAC unit that occupied the majority of the room.

Poking only his head out, Rapp methodically searched the room for any signs of motion sensors or trip wires. After making sure it was safe, he pulled back into the duct and rolled over onto his back. He untied the rope around his ankle and noticed Adams crawling toward him roughly forty feet away. Neither man spoke. Rapp had been extremely clear about that aspect of the operation. There was to be no talking unless absolutely needed.

Rapp fed the loose end of the rope out of the opening, leaving several feet dangling toward the ground and the other end tied to his gear. Quickly, he scooted forward to the end of the duct, pushed himself out of the vent, and hung from his fingers, his feet dangling a little more than a foot from the ground. Gently, he let himself drop to the ground, immediately grabbed the rope, and pulled the rest of his gear down. With the pack on the ground, Rapp retrieved his silenced MP-10 submachine gun and turned on the small flashlight affixed to the underside of the barrel.

If Aziz had planted any security devices, Rapp saw no sign of them. Several moments later Milt Adams poked his sweaty, bald head out of the vent and stifled a sneeze with both hands. Rapp looked up in irritation. He set his MP-10 down and held his hands out for Adams. Adams squirmed his way out of the opening. Rapp grabbed him under the armpits and helped him down with ease.

As soon as Adam's feet hit the ground, he grabbed a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his dripping nose. Rapp grabbed his submachine gun and whispered, "What's wrong?"

Adams blew his nose as quietly as possible and said, "All that dust in there . . . it makes my allergies act up."

Rapp frowned. "Are you going to be all right?"

"Yeah." Adams finished wiping his nose. "I'll be fine."

Getting to work, Rapp opened the top of his backpack and retrieved a micro video monitor with a directional fiber-optic cable attached to the end. They would use this to see around corners and under doors. the black-and-white monitor, which was six inches across by five inches high, was zipped into a black nylon harness. Rapp helped Adams strap it firmly between his chest and stomach allowing the semirigid fiber-optic cable to hang at Adams's side.

Rapp took the barrel of his silencer and stuck it under the access panel. Standing on his toes, he closed the metal panel, and with the tip of the silencer he pushed up one of the latches and secured it.

As Rapp looked toward the door, he whispered, "Any questions?"

"Nope."

"All right. Let's move out." Rapp walked quietly across the concrete floor to the doorway with his silenced weapon up and ready. Adams followed a step behind, and when they reached the door, he stuck the tip of the cable under the door to check to see what was on the other side. Rapp looked over his shoulder while Adams maneuvered the tip of the cable from side to side with a small dial.