The naked edge

10

As a police car hurried Cavanaugh and Jamie through the busy night, he noted increasing signs of the trouble that was coming. More law-enforcement officers on the streets. More barricades. In several parks, large groups of demonstrators were gathered, some of them sprawled on sleeping bags, others gesturing in animated discussions. Distant sirens wailed.

Jamie looked at her watch. "Almost one o'clock. Not much time."

They reached the Delta Queen Hotel, one of several on Canal Street. The district's proximity to the convention center made it a logical place for many of the delegates to stay, although Cavanaugh hated the idea of so many influential people being grouped so close to each other.

He and Jamie showed their ID to guards and ran past barricades into the ornate hotel's lobby. Next to the check-in desk, the concierge directed them to a banquet room on the hotel's second floor. They ran up a staircase and along a thickly carpeted corridor to where they showed their ID to more guards and entered the brightly lit command post for Global Protective Services.

Tables filled the huge room. Computers and monitors seemed everywhere, phones ringing, printers whirring, dozens of agents working to keep up with the massive influx of information. Outside the hotel, more sirens wailed.

For several weeks prior to the conference, GPS advance teams had traveled to New Orleans and studied the security layout of this and other hotels where clients were staying. They assessed possible routes to the conference as well as to various tourist spots that the delegates would insist on visiting. The agents took photographs. They made diagrams of streets and the room patterns of floors and suites. They created time charts of how long it took to get from one building to another. They did background checks on limousine services and arranged for armored cars to be available. They hired guards to make certain the limos weren't tampered with and that the guards inspected each vehicle on a regular schedule. They arranged for medical personnel to be on call and made detailed notes about how to reach the nearest hospitals. These and numerous other preparations were the hidden part of the protective world, each security measure made to look effortless when in fact everything was the result of intense planning.

Amid the organized commotion, a tall woman looked up from a printout she studied. A former Marine who was also a former member of the Defense Intelligence Agency, she wore dark slacks and a dark blouse that could be made to look formal or casual, depending on the type of client she needed to blend with. Her red hair was cut short. Her strong features had only faint makeup and were tight with fatigue. Looking as if she welcomed the distraction, she approached Cavanaugh and Jamie.

"I hear you're the new boss."

"Just my bad luck," Cavanaugh said. "Jamie, this is Dawn Finch, the best advance agent we have."

"Flattery, flattery."

"Dawn, this is my wife, Jamie."

"Word came my way about that, also. You're full of surprises."

"Let's hope tomorrow doesn't bring surprises."

"Here's how it lays out." Dawn led them to various charts mounted on a wall.

Cavanaugh studied them. "I don't like the pattern of the choke points." He referred to the potential attack sites common to every route that the attendees would need to use.

"Yeah, the convention center's in a centralized area. The Warehouse/Arts district, Canal Street, the French Quarter. Everything's within a few blocks. No matter how we try to vary the routes, everybody has to pass through the bottlenecks here and here. Bombs and snipers are the big worry, of course. We tag-teamed with the police and the government agencies to reinforce security at those points, keep the protestors back, occupy roofs, watch for movement at windows, that sort of thing."

"How many agents?"

"Eight thousand and more on the way."

For a moment, Cavanaugh thought he hadn't heard correctly. "Eight thousand?"

"To hit that many people, you need a dispersive weapon, a dirty bomb, something like that," Dawn continued. "Homeland Security has radiation and pathogen detectors all over the waterfront. Any vehicle that enters the downtown area is being scanned."

"Give me a list of the most influential delegates."

"What do you have in mind?"

"To make sure tomorrow doesn't happen."