Transfer of Power

IN 1948 PRESIDENT Harry Truman had grown concerned over the structural integrity of the 148-year-old White House. Engineers were brought in to investigate, and they found that the mansion was in danger of collapsing. The less than-sound renovation of 1902 and the enlargement of the third story in 1927 had weakened the structure severely. It was recommended that the president and his wife vacate the house immediately, and they moved across the street to Blair House to allow a massive four-year renovation to ensue. The first step was the meticulous disassembly of everything within the White House. All of the furniture, artwork, and fixtures were removed, and with painstaking effort, the floors, ceilings, and walls were dismantled section by section. The mansion became an empty shell while construction crews moved in to excavate two new levels beneath the original basement.

After the third and second basements had been completed, a modern steel framework was erected to support the mansion’s aging walls.

The new third basement that had been added in the renovation was designed to house the new boiler room and was only about a quarter the size of the floors above it. Over the last several decades, much of the massive boiler had been replaced by the newer, more efficient systems designed to protect the building from chemical and biological attacks.

As Rapp and Adams stood at the boiler room’s door, Adams pointed out the most recent change to the White House.

“Straight down the hall and to the left is the president’s bunker. As you turn the corner, you go down a hall that’s about fifty feet long, and then there’s a reinforced steel door. Once you’re through that door, you’re in the room just outside the bunker.”

Rapp nodded.

“We’re going up the stairs to the left… away from the bunker…correct?”

“Correct.”

“All right. Let’s take one last look at this thing, and then we’ll move out.” Adams manipulated the lens until Rapp was satisfied that the door had not been booby-trapped, and the cable was withdrawn. With his gun ready, Rapp slowly opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.

They moved to the left and into the concrete stairwell, then ascended one flight to the second basement. Adams stuck the tiny lens under the next metal door and found nothing. With Rapp and his MP-10 in the lead, they continued to the first basement landing and stopped. Adams checked under this door as well, and Rapp became increasingly suspicious that they had come this far and found nothing. He thought that Aziz would have set up some type of an early warning system.

Whispering in Rapp’s ear, Adams said, “No booby traps.”

Rapp looked at the screen while Adams moved the tiny lens back and forth, and asked, “What about the hallway?”

After moving the snake around a little, Adams gave Rapp a clear shot of the hall.

“Midway down, right-hand side. That’s our door.”

“Good,” Rapp whispered back.

“Secure that thing, and when I give you the signal, open the door and follow me. Stay on my right and one step back no matter what happens.”

Adams closed the screen against his chest, zipped it up, and then coiled the snake into a loose loop and strapped it to his hip. Rapp gripped his MP-10 tightly in both hands, the collapsible stock wedged between his cheek and shoulder. With the thick black silencer leveled at the closed door, Rapp nodded.

Adams jerked the door open, and Rapp took one step forward, sweeping the gun from left to right. He walked quickly forward, and Adams followed closely behind. The metal fire door closed automatically behind them.

Both men walked softly, making almost no noise. Rapp spun several times, nervously checking their six, looking for any sign of a motion sensor or trip wire. A third of the way down the hall, Adams stopped at another gray metal door, extracted his S-key, and opened the door to reveal a hidden elevator.

Rapp swore under his breath while they waited for the elevator to arrive, exposed in the middle of the hallway. When the doors finally opened, Adams silently shooed Rapp into the tiny compartment and pressed the proper button. The elevator was big enough to handle four people at the most.

As the elevator started to move, Rapp handed his gun to Adams, and with both hands, he took his headset from around his neck and secured it over his baseball cap. Static crackled loudly from his earpiece, but as they rose it lessened. The elevator ascended quickly and noiselessly. By the time they reached the second floor, the static was greatly decreased, and Rapp had his weapon back in his hands.

When the elevator stopped, Adams gave Rapp an uneasy look. Rapp nodded and said, “Don’t worry.” And with a grin to help ease the tension, he added, “I’ll go first. “Then pulling his lip mike down, he whispered, “Iron Man to command. Over.”

Rapp waited several seconds for a reply and then repeated his words.

After the third check, he thought he heard something, but it was too broken up to discern. They would have to move to the stash room and set up a more powerful secure field radio.

Rapp looked up at the small light above his head. It would have to be extinguished before they opened the door. After popping the frosted glass cover off the fixture, he reached up and gave the hot bulb several quick turns with his bare hand.

The bulb flickered and then went dark. Rapp then pulled a circular red plastic filter from one of his pockets and attached it to the flashlight that was affixed to the barrel of his submachine gun When he turned on the flashlight, a faint red light illuminated the floor of the elevator.

Adams pressed a button, and the elevator doors opened to reveal a wall.

There was no crack to wedge the snake under, so they would have to chance it and go forward without looking.

Slowly, Adams ran his hand along the wall until he found what he was looking for. As Adams pressed the catch, the wall popped outward several inches, revealing the tile floor of the president’s bathroom. The lights were off, and the room was dark, with the exception of the faint red light coming from under the barrel of Rapp’s gun.

Rapp checked the way and slid through the narrow entrance, taking three cautious steps toward the bedroom. Milt followed close behind. The door was open. Rapp checked for trip wires and then looked into the actual bedroom. The door that led to the hallway was slightly open, and a sliver of light spilled into the dark room from the hallway. Before entering the bedroom, Rapp looked back over his shoulder and whispered, “Close that.”

Placing both hands on the wall, Adams pushed it back into place. The wall shut with a slight click, and all traces of the hidden elevator disappeared.

Rapp stepped cautiously into the room. He moved across the president’s bedroom to the door that led to the Truman Balcony, the semicircular porch that overlooked the South Lawn When Rapp reached the door, he froze in his tracks. He had missed it on the first sweep, but caught the slightest glimpse of it on the second. A thin clear wire ran across the base of the door about twelve inches off the ground. Rapp’s right hand snapped up next to his head in a tight closed fist.

Milt Adams, a combat veteran, knew the hand signal all too well and froze in his tracks.

At first, only Rapp’s eyes moved, and then his head swiveled from side to side. Adams was good enough to not say anything. It was apparent from Rapp’s body language that he had found something. What Rapp had found was a filament trip wire, and he knew it was attached to something that petrified him. Rapp hated bombs. One of the qualities that had made him so successful during his almost decade of service with the CIA was knowing his own limitations. He didn’t have the patience or the skill to deal with explosives, so he tended to avoid them like the plague. The problem with bombs was there were a hundred different ways to set them off, and a dozen of them could happen before you ever got within a foot of the actual device. There could be a pressure pad under the carpet, a magnetic plate, infrared beams, microwave beams, motion sensors, tremble or mercury switches-the list went on and on. And with Rafique Aziz involved, Rapp had no doubt these devices would be really hairy. One thing was certain, however: the trip wire was attached to something, and Rapp had to find out exactly what it was.

The door leading to the balcony was bordered on both sides with drapes.

Rapp stepped carefully to his right and looked behind a chair situated between the door and a window to the right. Sticking the black silencer of his gun behind the curtain, he pointed it down and found nothing on this side of the door, but on the left side, he could discern the rectangular shape of a box. The trip wire was tied to a switch on the side of the bomb and a nail on the other side of the door. Rapp crossed over to the other side of the door and examined the box from a closer angle. It appeared that the trip wire was the only exterior trigger device.

Rapp wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, and then reluctantly, he drew back the curtain. The box was simple, about eight inches high and six wide. In the upper right corner was a small red digital readout and a green light that blinked every three seconds. Gingerly, he let the drape fall back into its natural hanging position and took a step back. If the box was loaded with Semtex, the Czechoslovakian version of C-4 plastique, there was probably enough to blow the entire wall halfway across the South Lawn.

Milt Adams leaned over and whispered, “What did you find?”

“A bomb. “Rapp wiped some more sweat from his face.

“If we set one of these things off, they’ll be picking us up with a vacuum cleaner. Milt. Let’s leave this alone and get ourselves set up.”

Adams led the way across the bedroom to a large walk-in closet. Rapp followed him in and left the door open, as they had found it. On the left was a substantial closet organizer. The smaller compartments near the bottom were filled with pairs of shoes, but as the organizer rose, the cubicles grew larger and were occupied by shirts and sweaters. Near the far corner Adams stopped and reached up along the edge. After feeling around for a second, he found what he was looking for and pressed the obscured button. The organizer popped outward several inches at one end, and then Adams swung it open three more feet.

They entered the hidden room and pulled the organizer shut behind them.

Adams turned on the wall light and slid a heavy steel bolt across the doorway. The small room, referred to as the “stash room” by the Secret Service, was eight feet long by six feet wide, and the ceiling was almost ten feet high. The walls were lined with bulletproof Kevlar and a fire-retardant cloth on both the exterior and interior walls. The room also contained four biohazard suits complete with oxygen tanks and gas masks.

These were packed in storage lockers that were bolted to the walls above their heads, along with some weapons and a first aid kit. The room was built in response to a small plane crashing into the South Portico in the fall of 1994.