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Inside the House chamber, when the blast occurred, Secret Service agents threw themselves against the doors.
Sealing the chamber was SOP, the smart play when there was a possible attack on POTUS. But it was also the worst thing anyone could do. Because the threat was not outside the chamber, but inside. Meanwhile, panicked people tried to rip the doors open. Senators grabbed congressmen, men grabbed women, women crawled over men, the strong pushed the weak, the weak trampled the unlucky. At every door, hundreds of people were smashed together, grunting, screaming, shouting—a serene, organized, and civil pageant reduced in seconds to a chaos of animals scrabbling for survival.
Kate had remained outside the chamber under guard after being questioned by Dahlgren. Now, in the chaos, all she could think about was finding Gideon. She hadn’t given Dahlgren any information, not that she had any that would compromise Gideon. The explosion, she assumed, had something to do with the terrorists Gideon was chasing. It sounded as if it had come from a basement level. Kate shook free of her guard and sprinted for the stairs.
57
WASHINGTON, DC
Gideon kicked open the unlocked door of the Access Room with the heel of his shoe. It burst open. He and Tillman rushed in, looking for targets.
But there were none.
On the floor lay two people, a man and a woman, both wearing the bland dark suits of Secret Service agents.
“Dead,” Gideon said, checking the pulse of the man.
The other agent was sprawled out, a small trickle of blood ru
“Is she dead, too?” Gideon asked.
As if in answer to his question, the agent groaned.
“No,” Tillman said, his voice scratchy and raw.
“Where the hell did he go?” Gideon said. “There’s no one here.”
Shanelle Klotz sat up and put a hand to her head. “I know you,” she said unsteadily.
“Gideon Davis,” said Gideon.
“The FBI is looking for you.”
Gideon didn’t respond, all too aware of Dahlgren’s trumped-up charges. “The guy who was here? Where did he go?”
It was only then he heard the WHUMMPPHH sound inside the big HVAC unit of the gas jets cycling on. Shanelle pointed silently across the room, and Gideon saw she was indicating an access panel or trapdoor built into the face of the unit. Gideon realized Wilmot must have crawled into the ducts, where he was controlling the HVAC remotely by shortwave.
“Stay right there!”
Gideon whirled. The agent wad GGGGGGGGGG T‡s pointing a thin little auto pistol right at his head, the sort of pistol that people carried as backup. She must have hidden it on her body somewhere but been unable to get to it before now.
“Listen,” said Gideon, “he’s already turned on the gas. We have maybe sixty seconds before the cyanide kicks in.”
“Cyanide?”
“He’s going to atomize it and release it into the entire chamber.”
“Oh my God.” She pointed to the tank tied in to the condensation lines. “There’s enough in there to kill everybody in the chamber.”
“We have to move,” said Gideon. “You have to trust me.”
“They have my kids.”
Gideon shook his head. “Your kids are fine. Tillman saved them.”
The agent stared at them, eyes wide, not sure what to think.
“It’s a long story,” Gideon said. “But now we’ve got to go.”
Shanelle Klotz continued to point the pistol at Gideon’s face for several more seconds. Finally she lowered it.
“Go,” she said.
58
WASHINGTON, DC
Gideon began the climb up the dark shaft. In the distance he could hear shouts of alarm and caution.
The ducts thrummed with the vibration of the gas jets warming up. He knew that as soon as the air reached the proper temperature, the fans would kick in, blowing hot air laced with cyanide through the metal conduits and into the chamber. He and Tillman would be its first victims. Their only chance was to find Wilmot before that happened and shut down the system.
Gideon moved up the shaft as fast as he could. Tillman followed. The ducts were about three feet wide and four feet tall with indents for their toes every ten inches. They climbed like hunchbacks. After about fifteen feet, several lines branched off horizontally. Gideon tried to make out the footfalls of someone else in front of them, but the sound of screaming and of the HVAC system made it impossible. It crossed his mind for the briefest of moments that if he simply did nothing for the next fifteen or twenty seconds, he could close the chapter of a humiliating part of his life in a spectacular way. Given how President Wade had treated Tillman and him, it would be a righteous if perverse form of justice.
But it was only a brief thought. Gideon knew that what was about to happen was madness. This lunatic Wilmot was trying to pull down a temple that had stood for more than two hundred years. True, it was flawed, but there was never going to be a perfect human institution. At least not until people became perfect. But America’s was still the best system of government in the brief history of man.
He felt Tillman beside him. “You go this way,” he whispered. “I’ll go that way.” Gideon agreed.
Tillman crawled into the duct. Then he pausedhissssssssss d‡ and turned. “You see the bastard, don’t hesitate even for a second,” he whispered. “Just kill him.”
Then he turned back and began to crawl.
59
WASHINGTON, DC
Dale Wilmot almost had to laugh. The security team had directed everyone to stay inside the chamber, which was exactly as he expected, and exactly the wrong thing to do.
Down on the floor of the House, the panicked herd was begi
“Stay calm!” he heard. “Stay calm! You’re safe inside!”
But they weren’t, and only Wilmot knew it. Now that the moment had finally arrived, he couldn’t help but want to prolong it. He felt as though his entire soul was cracking open, spreading out, becoming one with some great historical force. Had Lincoln felt this way at Gettysburg? Had the signers felt that way when they scrawled their names on the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution?
A vision of his son’s face—not his ruined face, but the beautiful face he’d taken with him to Afghanistan—hovered briefly in his mind. Everything he had done, he had done for Evan, and someday, he was certain, his son would understand its importance. It was a great thing, a monumental thing, and history would judge him accordingly.
With the switch clenched in one hand, he raised his arms in triumph. In the darkness, the metal glinted like the flash of a silver bullet in the onrushing night.
60
WASHINGTON, DC
Gideon shi
He settled his front sight on the big man’s right hip and fired. There was no way to draw a bead on his head. He was just going to have to shoot him to pieces.
Dale Wilmot bellowed when the first shot hit him in the leg. Then he pushed forward with his good leg, his big hand still wrapped around the remote switch.
Gideon shot him again, this time in the lower back.
Wilmot grunted but didn’t stop pushing forward. He still had the switch in his hand. If Gideon couldn’t stop him, or get to the switch in the next thirty seconds, it would be too late for everyone.
He fired again.
Wilmot seemed unfazed by the terrible punishment he was taking. He crawled into the darkness, a shadowy figure in the gloom of the ventilation system. The shouting in the House chamber below had changed in intensity as the crowd heard the shooting and realized something was happening below tsheeeeeeeeee t‡hem.