Transfer of Power

THEY STEPPED INTO the small elevator without talking.

Adams shut the door and pressed the button. Rapp stood rigidly against the wall, his head slowly thumping backward into the wood paneling. He was more pissed than he ought to be, he thought. This was a childish romantic crush, a fleeting hope for something he hadn’t felt in so long.

It was stupid.

With all of the shit that was going on around him, with all of the high stakes, it was a complete waste of time and energy to allow himself to be distracted for even a second by something so utterly juvenile.

Somewhere in Rapp’s brain a red stamp crashed down on Anna Rielly’s file, and she was banished to a part of his memory that was rarely accessed. It was as simple as that. Compartmentalize and move on.

With her out of his mind, Rapp looked at Adams. Adams looked back with a prying expression.

“What?” asked Rapp a touch too defensively.

Adams kept his basset-hound eyes locked on Rapp until his new partner repeated his question. Then Milt licked his upper lip once and said, “Don’t you think you were a little hard on her?”

Moving away from the wall, Rapp began to fidget in frustration.

“She’s a non issue Milt. We have more important things to worry about.”

“Are you gonna let me in on the secret?”

“Yep, and it’s a doozy.” Rapp took the MP-10 and cradled it across his chest as the small elevator reached the first basement. “It appears Aziz brought along some guy who specializes in breaking into vaults.” Rapp stopped, to see if Adams could connect the dots.

It didn’t take long. The expression on Adams’s smooth face went from an inquisitive frown to one of surprise.

“That’s not good.”

“Nope.” Rapp shook his head.

“Our job is to find out if Hayes is as safe as we thought.”

Thinking several steps ahead, Adams plucked the folded blueprints from his vest. The series of sheets were like an unruly road map. Adams opened the documents and shuffled the right one to the top. Shooing Rapp out of the way, he held it up against the wall and said, “This is where it’s located.”

Rapp looked at the layout of the third basement.

“Only one way in?”

“Well, not really. Hold that side for me.”

Rapp grabbed one side of the blueprint while Adams held the other with his hand.

“There’s another way down to the third basement.” Adams touched a spot on the blueprint.

“This is the anteroom to the vault. This little rectangle area here. It doesn’t make a lot of sense from a strict design and engineering standpoint, but it’s one of those things you need to implement into a design when you’re trying to add things to a two hundred-plus-year-old building.”

Adams touched another spot on the blueprint.

“This is the boiler room, where we came in, and this is the hall that I told you led to the bunker.” Adams traced his skinny black finger down the hall, took the left-hand turn, and tapped it on a door.

“This is one of two ways into the anteroom. It’s a three-inch thick steel door. Over here on this wall of the anteroom is the second door.

This is probably the one the president used to enter the bunker.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Rapp.

“Because this door leads up a short staircase to a tunnel that runs all the way under the West Wing to where there’s a much longer set of stairs that lead all the way up to a hidden door just off of the Oval Office.”

Adams pulled another sheet from the back and showed Rapp the location of the tunnel and where it went.

“This tunnel used to be the bunker until this new one was completed just this last year. As this tunnel comes over from the West Wing, it stops here. At that point you can either go down this little flight, which empties you into the anteroom, or you can go up a flight of stairs that leads to one of those doors that don’t exist.”

Rapp liked where this was headed.

“Where is this fictitious door located?”

Adams changed pages again and tapped a spot.

“Right here. Just down the hall from where we are right now, in the china storage room.”

“That’s perfect.”

“Not quite.” Adams shook his head.

“These doors that lead to the anteroom are hermetically sealed with rubber gaskets. If we go down through the tunnel, we wouldn’t be able to hear or see anything in the anteroom unless we open the door to it, and I doubt you want to do that.”

“No.” Rapp thought about the options for a second.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. That means they would have had to get through one of these outer doors first to get to the bunker door.”

“Yep, and this is the door they would have gone through.”

Adams changed back to the drawing that showed the layout of the third basement.

“This way they only go through one door.

If they tried to come in through the tunnel door, that’s assuming they could find it to begin with, they would have had to go through an extra door.”

“That makes sense.” Rapp looked at the drawing.

“So we have to go down the stairs we used when we came in and hope that a guard isn’t posted like he was last night.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Okay.” Rapp took his hand off the blueprints.

“Put those things away, and let’s get ready to move out. You know the routine.”

After he was done putting the blueprints back in order, Adams folded them up and stuffed them inside his black vest.

Then, unzipping and turning on the monitor, he pressed the button to open the elevator door. Rapp stood over his shoulder while Adams stuck the tip of the snake under the outer metal door leading to the first basement. The tiny lens gave them a slightly warped view of the hallway looking up from the stark concrete floor. Adams maneuvered the lens all the way to the right and then back to the left.

“Looks good,” proclaimed Rapp as he stepped back and readied his gun.

Adams pulled the snake back with his right hand and coiled it against his hip.

Rapp took the doorknob in his right hand, pulled, and scooted quickly into the hallway. He brought his MP-10 up and swept to the right and left. Adams was just two steps behind, having had to pause for just a second to shut the outer door to the elevator. In less than three seconds Rapp was at the door that led to the two lower floors. A twist of the metal knob with his gloved right hand and he was through the door, his thick black silencer moving everywhere his eyes went.

Whether he had one hand on the weapon or two, it made no difference. At this close distances, one-handed, he could hit a head-size target with about ninety-five percent accuracy on the first shot. With both hands on the efficient and compact Heckler & Koch, it was a guaranteed one hundred percent. After checking the stairwell above, Rapp began his controlled descent, keeping his body pressed against the wall, always looking down and checking each new stair as it came into view. Adams followed quietly, several steps behind. Rapp was gaining confidence in him.

When they hit the landing in between the second and third basements, Rapp stopped. The tiny surveillance unit he had placed next to the door was barely discernible. If he hadn’t known it was there, he doubted he would have seen it. Stopping for even five seconds, out in the open like this, seemed like an eternity, but Rapp was trying to get a feel as to whether someone was on the other side of the door.

He went down the last four steps and stopped, his eyes fixed on the half-inch sliver of light that framed the base of the metal fire door.

For another long five seconds, Rapp crouched and stared. Still nothing.

Rapp waved Adams down. The older man descended the last flight cautiously, holding on to the monitor as if it were the head of a baby.

Stepping back and holding his submachine gun ready, Rapp directed Adams to slide the tip of the snake under the door.

As Adams moved the device to the left, a pair of boots came into view.

They were walking toward the door. Rapp reached out and pulled Adams’s hand back, keeping his gun trained on the door. After waiting several seconds for the boots to pass, Adams and Rapp retreated in silence.