Page 58 of The Night Of
Yeah, yeah, I’d heard it all before. I nodded, gave the Pentagon police officer a two-fingered salute, and stepped on the gas. I rolled forward, passing the invisible line on the map that denoted the outer boundary of the Raven Rock Mountain Complex, also known as the underground Pentagon, DC’s emergency escape bunker.
An old friend of mine from the army had made his way to the top, climbing up to colonel after putting in an officer’s packet. He’d switched from military police to intelligence, and then to signals intelligence, and he’d burrowed into his new career like a cockroach finding a home inside your walls. He was running one of the signals collection divisions at Raven Rock. I used to give him shit for his assignment, used to call him nothing more than the NSA’s coffee strainer, doing the work of interns for the big boys down at Fort Meade.
I needed Hammer now.
Raven Rock was a city the size of the Pentagon dug deep inside the Blue Mountains of Pennsylvania. The president’s nuclear bunker was there, along with bunkers to house the select few in Washington who were designated to be whisked away under the Continuity of Operations plan. If the world ended, or nuclear bombs started dropping on the homeland, or zombies overrode DC, Raven Rock was where the remnants of the government would retreat.
There were four giant boreholes in the mountain, two on either side of the summit. Each was labeled, A through D, and they were the entry portals to the underground complex. On top of the mountain, a radio tower and satellite receiver rose like skyscrapers. The Department of Defense wanted the complex to be all secret and secure and shit, but building radio antennas fifty stories tall in the middle of the boonies and lighting them up like the Rockefeller Christmas tree wasn’t the most clandestine plan.
As promised, a Pentagon police officer was there to guide my SUV into a parking spot set off from everything else. I waited and waited, until finally, Hammer appeared from D Portal on a golf cart. He looked pale, like he’d been spending too much time underground.
“Jesus, look what the cat dragged in,” he said as he pulled up beside my car and parked. “Sean Avery. Did you make a wrong turn on your way to Camp David?”
“Actually, I came to see you, dickhead.”
“The bingo tournament was last week. You’re too late. And I already sold all my tickets to the doomsday bunker on eBay. Sorry, man.”
“I need a favor.”
His good humor vanished. The air between us sharpened, the long years of our friendship stretching like a rubber band. He eyed me, his tongue running over his teeth inside his lips. “Why aren’t you going through official channels? You know we cooperate with the Secret Service.”
Everyone cooperated with the Secret Service, or we fucked you up sideways. “Because I can’t,” I said. “Because the people I’m working with might be involved in something, and if I tip them off on what I’m up to, or the direction I’m going with my investigation, people’s lives will be at risk. One life, in particular.”
“Yours?”
“No. The president’s.”
Hammer’s head tilted to the right as he chewed over my words. I’d used to tease him about that, call him a fucking bird or a puppy dog, used to push him all the way over whenever he’d tilt his head and think. Now, I waited. I didn’t know what I was going to do if Hammer turned me down. He was my last hope.
“Thought it was suicide,” he finally said. “Thought he did it to himself.”
I shook my head.
Hammer looked away, glaring at the tree line and the mountain rising above us. His fingers tapped on the steering wheel. His knee jiggled up and down.
He sighed. “What are you looking for?”
“Phone calls. I need to know what you vacuumed up over Camp David the night of.”
Raven Rock, and Hammer in particular, was responsible for dropping an electronic net around Camp David. The net was both a security measure and a collection device, both offensive and defensive. The other delegations knew we were sucking down cell phone signals, and every single one brought their own satellite connection and VPN, tunneling their communications back to their home countries so we couldn’t eavesdrop. Or so it was harder for us to eavesdrop. The nerds at NSA were busy breaking into satellite feeds and reading the emails of every world leader by now, I figured.
I wasn’t interested in the official communications. I wanted the burners.
Hammer and his team also sucked up the unsecured cell phones: personal phones and burners, anything not on a secure satellite network.
Carl Rose and President Baker had been murdered within hours of each other. And, minutes after Baker had been killed, two suits were inside the Oval, stealing Baker’s notes. How had they found out he was dead before his medevac chopper had even landed at Bethesda? How had they known to go in?
That implied coordination, and coordination involved multiple parties, and multiple parties meant communication.
“And I need anything that originated from or was received by these three numbers.” I held out a folded piece of paper with the numbers I’d scrawled before I made the drive.
He took it and frowned. “Americans?”
I nodded.
“Avery, you know that’s not kosher.”
“Hammer, I need this. I’ve got two guys going through Baker’s things in the Oval Office within minutes of his murder, before anything hit the airwaves. Someone from Camp David had to have called their conspirators right after he was shot. Someone who knew Baker was dead and had their guys ready to rumble.”
