Frank's Independence Day by M. L. Buchman

Author:M. L. Buchman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, SOAR, Night Stalkers, 160th, White House
Publisher: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.
Published: 2016-02-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Frank: Now

Frank ground his teeth as the President’s Southeast Asia trade meeting ran for an extra half hour. It was all he could do to retain his position at the end of the Woodrow Wilson Reading Room, the center of the Dag Hammarskjöld Library.

Down the left wall, a long line of built-in card catalogs filled the entire long wall. And the U.N. people were using them. He wasn’t sure the last time he’d seen a card catalog in use. Of course, this catalog was everything from the League of Nations, which predated the U.N. A lot of what existed in this catalog were still the foundations of international law. His head hurt just thinking of the automation nightmare to catch that up.

The room was twenty-plus feet wide and about eighty long. Several low bookcases against the right-hand glass wall partially blocked his view, so he kept a very careful eye on who went to those. Frank had checked the glass and the view of the central fountain. The glass was thick enough to stop low-caliber fire. A double-tap with a big sniper rifle like a Barrett would get through and a Steyr probably wouldn’t even deflect. That Steyr had designed a hand-carried rifle that could punch holes in an armored personnel carrier creeped him out.

What would it do to the “Beast” if targeted while the President was inside. It might resist it. He ran some foot-pound force comparisons in his head, Steyr vs. armor. They might be okay. The “Beast” was a tough car. But maybe not.

Deep breath. Focus.

Lesson number eight-ninety-three, worry only about what you can control. But so damn much was out of his control. Any of a half-dozen apartment buildings that he could see out the window could have a shooter on the balcony. There were a pair of Secret Service counter-snipers tasked with watching for that, but that was a whole lotta apartments to cover. And if the shooter was standing back in the shadows of an open window…

His mood had gotten way too dark.

The G-B ambassador had at least called back promptly on the hour and made it thoroughly clear, by how much he’d said without saying anything at all, that he couldn’t reach anyone in his government.

The President already had U.S. armed forces moving some heavy assets down onto the Cape Verde Islands which lay just five hundred miles offshore to the northwest. The Air Force was planning to put the assets in place after dark fell there, with hopes they could be done and gone before daybreak.

There was a Carrier Strike Group within six hundred miles of Guinea-Bissau that was already shifting position. They could halve that distance in the next eight hours which would shift possible operation scenarios. The President had made it clear that he’d be moving them anyway because of the coup, but that was his careful political side talking. The comforting hand he’d rested on Frank’s forearm told him that was definitely not the only reason he was moving so fast.

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