Neutron Force. Don Pendleton

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      CHAPTER ONE

      Washington, D.C.

      Impatiently, Hal Brognola honked the horn of his car, and the armored entrance to the underground parking lot for the Old Executive Building rumbled aside.

      As big Fed eased the vehicle inside, two Secret Service agents carrying M-16 assault rifles stepped out of a small brick kiosk. Two more stayed inside, one of them touching his throat as he subvocalized into a throat mike.

      Flashing his federal identification, Brognola waited while one man checked its authenticity on a handheld device and the other walked around the car, looking underneath with a steel mirror at the end of a pole.

      Brognola knew all of the men by name, but this close to the White House, the Secret Service wasn’t taking any chance with anybody. He had already passed through a barrage of EM scanners and chemical sniffers checking the driver and vehicle for explosives, biological agents or other illicit materials. This was an understandable precaution.

      Maintaining the classic “rock face” of the U.S. Secret Service, the agent looked at Brognola without expression, then waved him by.

      Driving past a line of cars, Brognola angled onto a steep ramp and proceed to a sublevel, and then another, until reaching the bottom. He paused to let a security camera get a good view of his face, then went to a far corner and parked near a construction zone, the area marked off with bright yellow cones. Bags of cement were stacked high on wooden pallets and a small portable cement mixer chugged away, blast dust puffing from the rusty exhaust. A canvas tent covered the work area, and several large men stood around adding sand to the mixer or inspecting blueprints spread across a table made of a sheet of plywood placed across two sawhorses. They wore bright orange safety vests marked with the letters DPW: Department of Public Works.

      Getting out of the car, the big Fed walked over to the workers, his hands held deliberately away from his sides. Even this far away, he could see the small bulges in the clothing of the workers. They were carrying guns at the waist, small of the back and ankle. The men were heavily armed and seemed even less friendly than the Secret Service agents at the front entrance.

      “How is the work coming on the foundation?” Brognola said, stopping a few yards back. “Seems like you’ve been here for an ice age.”

      “This is dangerous work,” one of the men replied, looking up from the blueprint. “If we go too fast, people could die.”

      “Fast as lighting?”

      “Slower than a glacier.”

      Sign and countersign given, Brognola used only fingertips to spread open his jacket and display the holstered weapon at his side, a snub-nosed S&W .38 Police Special.

      The workers stayed where they were and did nothing. But their sharp eyes never left him for a second.

      “We’ve been expecting you, Mr. Brognola,” a worker said, pushing aside the flap of the canvas tent. “This way, please.” The man was wearing a bright yellow hard hat, marking him as the foreman.

      Proceeding inside, the big Fed followed the man around a large stack of crates blocking a direct view of the interior. More canvas covered the wall. The foreman agent pushed the material aside to reveal the burnished steel doors of a modern elevator.

      Going to the wall plate, Brognola pressed his palm against the warm metal and kept it there until there was an answering beep that his five fingerprints had been accepted. With a soft sigh, the door parted and he stepped inside. There were no buttons.

      As the foreman entered, the doors closed, cutting off the thumping of the cement mixer. A moment later the cage began to descend.

      Slowly building speed, the elevator moved swiftly along the shaft until finally slowing to a complete stop. The doors opened on a wide brick-lined tunnel. Standing behind a low concrete carrier was a squad of U.S. Marines in full combat gear, M-16/M-203 assault rifles held ready in their hands. The 40 mm grenade launcher slung under the 5.56 mm assault rifle was a daunting sight to anybody, even if they were wearing body armor.

      While the foreman and a Marine exchanged passwords, Brognola looked the tunnel over. Folding steel gates had been pushed back, allowing access, but this tunnel could be closed off at a dozen points. It had to be one of the private government tunnels rumored to honeycomb Washington.

      Satisfied, the foreman went back into the elevator and a lieutenant waved at Brognola to follow him down the tunnel.

      At an intersection, they took a side tunnel, then zigzagged twice more before reaching a plain steel door with a dozen Secret Service agents standing outside holding Atchisson autoshotguns.

      Without a word, the big Fed showed his ID again and submitted to a pat-down. His S&W revolver was taken, then returned. Because of his position as the head of the Sensitive Operations Group, Brognola had the unique distinction of being one of the few people in the world who could be armed in the presence of the President.

      “Bird Dog is here, sir,” a Secret Service agent said into his throat mike. There was a pause, then the man nodded. “Confirm.”

      “Go right in, sir,” another agent said, tapping a code into a small keypad in the wall. There came the soft hiss of hydraulics and the metal portal ponderously swung aside, revealing that it was two feet thick.

      Stepping through alone, Brognola heard the door close behind him as the lights came on overhead. Not surprisingly, he found himself in a kill box—an enclosed space with both doors closed. Just another layer of protection for the President. Lull the enemy into thinking that they were successfully getting past the security, then let them walk directly into the kill box and start firing through the hidden gunports. Nice and simple. And extremely deadly. A tense moment passed in silence, then Brognola relaxed slightly as the second door opened with a soft hydraulic hiss.

      Stepping out of the box, he suffered a moment of disorientation as he appeared to be walking into the Oval Office at the White House: curtain-draped bay windows, massive hardwood desk flanked by American flags, the great seal of the presidency woven into the carpeting, twin couches set parallel to the fireplace filled with a crackling blaze. A Franklin clock ticked away on the mantle, and he could hear typing from a nonexistent secretary. The curtains were open, and he could dimly see the Washington Monument masked by the Potomac River mist. Obviously this was one of the many duplicate offices designed during the cold war so that the President could address the nation on television from a hidden position of safety.

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