24 Hours: A Kirk McGarvey Novella by David Hagberg

Author:David Hagberg [Hagberg, David]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780765390073
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2016-07-19T04:00:00+00:00

Hour 16

McGarvey got to the White House a minute after four and was taken directly to the Oval Office where the president, along with Joe Canterbury and Joyce Trammell, were waiting with Bernstein.

The four of them seemed grim.

The president picked up the phone. “No disturbances,” he said, and he leaned back against his desk. It almost seemed to McGarvey that Young’s hair had turned a shade whiter in the past twelve hours or so.

They took seats facing the president, who spoke first.

“Alan tells me that you may have come up with something this afternoon. Well, so have we.”

“Sir?” McGarvey said.

The president took a piece of paper from his desk and handed it across. “This is a copy of a note that showed up on my desk here. I discovered it a half hour ago mixed in with a stack of pending congressional bills. The bureau has the original.”

MIDNIGHT OR YOUR DAUGHTER DIES IN A SPECTACULAR PUBLIC DISPLAY.

“No one has any idea what that means,” Young said.

“It could be a break for us,” McGarvey said, looking up.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Bernstein demanded, but the president motioned him to hold off.

“She’s going to be put on display somewhere here in the city. Possibly even within sight of the White House. And the media will be invited.”

“Christ, they don’t mean to cut her head off,” Trammell said.

“Could be as simple as that.”

“The bastards can’t seriously believe they’ll get away with it.”

“Could be they don’t want to get away with it. They could be willing to die as martyrs. It’d be a great recruiting tool. The president of the United States is so afraid to take on ISIS that he’s willing to sacrifice his daughter.”

“Enough,” Trammell said, but the president waved her off too.

“But it won’t be that simple, will it?” he said.

“No,” McGarvey said. “A beheading would be spectacular, but they’ve gone through a lot of serious trouble so far, snatching your daughter from her Secret Service detail.”

“Something my daughter helped them with.”

“It means they had an inside source of her movements. They knew that she would show up on campus, and they waited until she did.”

Bernstein said nothing. This business was extremely personal for him. For the entire Secret Service.

“And getting letters delivered to you right here under everyone’s noses,” McGarvey said. “I assume you found nothing on the surveillance monitors.”

“Lots of comings and goings,” Young said. “This is a very busy place just about every day. If we could pin down when the thing was brought in, it would help. As it is, more than two dozen people came and went since ten this morning.”

“You said that this could be a break for us,” Joe Canterbury said. He was a tall, lean man, his tie loose, his reading glasses perched on the end of his narrow nose.

“If the media will be there, so will we,” McGarvey said. “If it comes to that.”

No one caught the if except for the president. “What do you mean?”

“Two encrypted calls were made through the same cell tower in the neighborhood.

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