Текст книги "Gideon's War / Hard Target"

Автор книги: Howard Gordon

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Текущая страница: 37 (всего у книги 38 страниц)

“Why?”

“I can’t explain everything. The agent next to you is Ron Livingston. He’s a good friend. He’ll escort you out of the building.”

“I can’t just walk out of the State of the Union address. I’m a guest of Secretary Fitzgerald. What do I say to him?”

“Worry about that later. There’s an attack planned in the House chamber, and there’s no time. Gideon told me to get you out of there.”

“Gideon?”

“He’s there now. He’s trying to stop it. But you have to get out.”

She couldn’t just abandon Gideon. “He might need my help,” she said.

“Kate. Listen to me. These men who are planning the attack are fanatics. They won’t stop unless they’re successful, or dead.”

“But Gideon—” She was interrupted by a large, gruff man whom she immediately recognized as Deputy Director Dahlgren, the same man who had visited her earlier looking for Gideon. He was accompanied by two other agents, and he signaled to Livingston to give him the phone. Livingston grimaced and reluctantly took the phone from Kate’s hand and delivered it to Dahlgren.

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“Now,” said Dahlgren. “Let’s talk.”

53

WASHINGTON, DC

POTUS is arriving in sixty seconds,” said the voice in Wilmot’s ear. By now Wilmot recognized the calm, clipped tones of the communications specialist. He wasn’t the detail commander but a sort of dispatcher who relayed orders throughout the security detail.

Dale Wilmot felt more alive than he had ever felt in his life. It was all coming together. Collier had screwed the first tank into the HVAC system. He was now working on the second one.

The voice of the comm specialist said, “Agent Busbee, Agent Weiner, radio check.”

Every agent was supposed to check in every fifteen minutes with the command station. If they didn’t, Command sent a radio check. They were supposed to respond immediately. If they didn’t, it meant something was wrong.

“Agent Busbee, Agent Weiner, radio check.”

Still no answer.

“Why aren’t they responding?” Wilmot leaned closer when Agent Klotz didn’t respond. “Tell me why they’re not responding.”

“They’re in the parking garage of the Russell Building,” she said. “Sometimes radios don’t work right in these bomb-hardened concrete structures. The rebar in the concrete creates interference.”

Wilmot studied her face.

“Agents Dennis and Roberts, Level Two station check, post nine,” said the comm specialist.

“So those guys are going to check on the other two guys, right?”

“Right.”

“Level Two, what’s that mean?”

“Guns drawn, possible assault.”

“How often does that happen?”

Agent Klotz cleared her throat nervously. “Not often.”

“If there’s a problem, will that affect us here?”

“Not unless there’s a general alarm.”

Collier nodded and straightened. “Then we’re all set.”

The Command voice came out of the speaker again. “POTUS arriving Station One. Two minutes to Station Two.”

Station One, Wilmot knew, was the entrance to the Capitol. Station Two was the door of the House chamber. There were still a few minutes to go. The plan was to wait until the president had begun his speech to release the cyanide. They had considered doing it as soon as he entered. But they wanted the doors closed, and they wanted him in the center of the room where he would be harder to protect.

Until then they had to endure the political theater of the president’s addres">

Collier armed the tanks while Wilmot waited. He inserted a screwdriver into the set screws under the valve stems. He cranked hard, and the set screw moved. One, two, three turns and there was a tiny hiss within the tank. Then he pulled out a small box with a red switch on it. It was a triggering device that would override the HVAC’s normal on/off switch. It worked remotely on a shortwave frequency as long as it was within twenty-five meters of the unit. Any distance greater than that and the jamming frequency would block the signal. When the red switch was flipped, the heat would come on. Then, ten seconds later, a solenoid inside the HVAC system would vent the two cyanide tanks directly into the hot air chamber, the squirrel cage blowers would kick on, and baffles in the system would direct all the air in the system directly into the House chamber.

Within another thirty seconds, the majority of the people in the room would be dead.

“POTUS is moving. Repeat, POTUS is moving.”

Wilmot felt a steady thrumming that ran through his entire body, as if someone had pressed the lowest key on a very large and powerful pipe organ.

“Give it to me,” Wilmot said.

Collier handed him the switch.

54

WASHINGTON, DC

President Erik Wade climbed out of the limousine in front of the Capitol, paused briefly to examine the facade of the great building as his wife joined him, and then began to walk up the stairs. At the top of the stairs he turned, waved to the small crowd assembled in front of the building, and then walked in.

Although this was his first State of the Union address, he wasn’t nervous. He had given enough public speeches in his life to know that he was no Cicero, but he’d do fine. He had prepared thoroughly and wouldn’t stumble over any words. His team on the House Majority side would make sure the applause was loud and plentiful. There were no major legislative issues at stake.

Yet he felt annoyed and apprehensive about the public reaction to the shootings at Priest River. He had been briefed on them by Deputy Director Dahlgren of the FBI just before heading over to the Rayburn building. It was that damned Gideon Davis again, causing problems where he had no business to be. Now Wade was going to have to address the disaster during what should have been a moment of glory, his place in a long parade of great men who had preceded him. He frowned as he reached the door of the building, and he went one way while his wife went the other. She would be seated in the gallery, nested among firefighters, hero cops, Medal of Honor winners, and guys in wheelchairs.

His cabinet was waiting. He shook each one’s hand, shared a joke or an elbow squeeze or an inquiry after a wife or child. By the time he’d reached the secretary of health and human services, his wife was already ensconced in the gallery and the cabinet officials were beginning to file into the House chamber.

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He took a deep breath. It was almost showtime.

55

WASHINGTON, DC

Tillman and Gideon did a quick reconnoiter of the tunnels, which were full of steam pipes and fat electrical conduits. On any other day, it would have been an extraordinary tour of a secret American history—bricks dating back to the nineteenth century alongside heavy steel doors from the Cold War of the twentieth century next to optical fiber cables from the twenty-first. But today there was no time for reflection.

He glanced at his watch. A couple of minutes, that’s all the time they had before the president began.

They followed the tunnel around a vertical shaft and then found themselves in front of another door. This one read: Basement 2. They were on the floor with access to the HVAC system but had no way to get through the locked door. Above it was a security camera that, no doubt, transmitted their images back to a command post. Gideon hoped that in their tactical gear and caps they wouldn’t be recognizable.

“Agent Busbee, Agent Weiner, radio check,” a voice said over the earpiece Gideon had picked up from one of the agents.

“I’ve got an idea,” Gideon said.

He waved at the camera, then pointed at his microphone, and shook his head. Tillman, getting into the act, waved, too.

“Agent Busbee, we see two agents at an unauthorized location,” the voice on the radio said. “Is that you?”

Gideon kept his head down and pointed at the door, as though discussing something with Tillman. But he gave a big thumbs-up to the camera.

“Agent Busbee, is that Agent Weiner accompanying you?”

Gideon gave another thumbs-up. “Just bang on the door,” he said to Tillman. “They’ll think our radios are messed up.”

Tillman whacked on the door with the flat of his palms.

“Agents Busbee and Weiner, you are not authorized to be in your present location. Return to your post.”

Tillman continued to whack on the steel door. “They may open the door,” he said. “But when they do, there’s liable to be about ten guys with MP5s pointed right at our heads.”

“That’s what I’m counting on,” Gideon said.

Suddenly there was a scrabbling sound on the other side of the door. The door swung open, and four armed men stood around the door, P90s at low ready.

“Oh, my bad,” Tillman said. “No MP5s. They’ve all got P90s.”

After that came a chorus of “Down on the ground! Down on the ground! Down on the ground!”

Tillman and Gideon dropped slowly to one knee as a fifth man, the group leader, approached. He wore a weasly smile, his hair greased back and slick. It was Deputy Directo�einerr Dahlgren.

“Gideon Davis,” he said. “And this must be your brother, Tillman.”

They were just inside a long concrete hallway. And there, about twenty yards down the hallway, was a large red door with a name stenciled on it in black paint: HVAC ACCESS ROOM.

“Dahlgren!” Gideon said. “There are two men in that room who are planning to inject hydrogen cyanide into the heating system. You need to get in there right now and stop them. If I were you, I’d do it quickly because if you don’t, they’re going to kill everybody in this building.”

“You’ll need to come up with a better story if you want to save yourself from an extended stay at Leavenworth.”

“Listen to him, you shithead,” said Tillman. “You’re about to take your last breath.”

“Language,” clucked Dahlgren.

“Look,” said Gideon. “Let me open the door. You have nothing to lose. If I’m wrong, it’s just a few minutes of your time. But if I’m right, and you could have prevented the deaths of the president, vice president, and hundreds of senators and congressmen, you’ll go down in history as the man that let it happen.”

“You’re not opening any door,” said Dahlgren. But Gideon could see that his warning words had worked on Dahlgren as he signaled to two of the men. “Take them to the detention facility.” Then he withdrew his pistol from his holster. “I’ll open the goddamn door, and we’ll end this bullshit once and for all.

Wilmot and Collier heard the commotion outside the HVAC Access Room.

“What the hell is going on out there?” Collier asked as he peered through the keyhole. “There are Secret Service guys arresting other Secret Service guys.”

“Something’s wrong,” Wilmot said. “Initiate the sequence now.”

“It’ll take a minute thirty for the whole cycle.” Collier pecked at his keyboard and began typing.

“I thought you had it ready to go,” Wilmot said.

“I do. But the heat has to cycle on. First the gas, then the air handler heats up. The blowers don’t come on until the air reaches—”

“Okay. Just get it going.”

For the first time in a long while, Shanelle Klotz felt a flicker of hope. “You’re not going to make it, you know,” she said. “They’ll be here in—” She looked at the door. “Never mind, they’re already here.”

The knob on the locked door jiggled, then someone kicked at it.

“Shit,” said Wilmot.

Collier pecked away at the keys. “Just a few more seconds . . .”

Someone kicked at the door again.

Wilmot put down the small box with the red switch on it and grabbed the gun he had taken from the agentt t Athe agent. “We can’t wait any longer. You finish up in here. I’ll hold them off.”

“No, sir.” Collier stood. “Let me do it.”

“But we need you to initiate the sequence.”

“It’s done. I’ve armed it.” He retrieved the triggering device and handed it back to Wilmot. “All you have to do is flip that button.”

Wilmot regarded Collier, then handed him the gun.

Collier didn’t take it. “I’ve got something bigger in mind.”

“Thank you, son, for everything.”

Collier saluted. “I’m proud to have been your son.”

Wilmot mustered a smile he hoped disguised his contempt for Collier. It surprised him that he felt that way, especially in the face of Collier’s sacrifice.

President Erik Wade heard the sergeant at arms call out, “Madam Speaker, the President of the United States!” and he moved through the door into the House chamber.

Since Wade had been a governor before being elected president, he had only visited the House chamber a handful of times before. It was a little smaller, a little less grand than he’d remembered.

His security contingent was under instructions not to come on too strong. The room was full of people with long histories of service to the United States. At the moment this facility was probably as secure as Fort Knox. Wade wanted to press the flesh. He paused, shook hands with a California Democrat, a South Carolina Republican, a senator, a House member. Wade had a near-photographic memory and spoke to each person by name. The House member was a man he’d never met, but he managed to dredge up the congressman’s daughter’s name.

“How’s Christine’s leg, Ted?” he asked, referencing a soccer injury he’d read about in one of the many briefing books he’d absorbed since becoming president.

“Fine, Mr. President. Thank you for asking.” The lowly congressman’s face shone, surprised that the president even knew his name, much less the details of his daughter’s broken third metatarsal.

“Thank you for helping me out on this energy bill,” Wade said.

“I didn’t know I was,” the congressman said.

“Oh, I have confidence you will,” Wade said with a wink.

Then he was moving along, shaking more hands.

When he finally reached the podium, the text of his speech clutched in his left hand, he noticed that the Secret Service agents were whispering intently into their microphones.

They looked stirred up about something. But that was their job. If it was something serious, they’d grab him and hustle him to safety. Meanwhile, he had other things to think about.

The president shook hands with his vice president and smiled broadly. Erik Wade disliked the vice president, and he was sure it was mutual. But this was politics.

He handed a copy of his speech to the vice president, then kissed the Speaker on the cheek. He not only despised the Speaker, but he also feared her a little. An onlooker gauging their smiles might have thought the two were long-lost cousins. “Good to see you, Madam Speaker. You’re looking lovely as ever.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Mr. President.”

Erik Wade laughed loudly. “As demanded by protocol, Madam Speaker, I now present you the text of my address.”

“As protocol demands, I cheerfully accept.” She then moved toward the microphone and said, “I have the high privilege and distinct honor to present the president of the United States.”

Erik Wade turned his back on the vice president and the Speaker and approached the dais.

“Thank you,” he said, holding up his hands as the room burst into applause. “Thank you. Thank you, folks. I thank you from the bottom of my heart . . .”

The president noticed it felt unusually chilly in the room. He wondered if somebody would do something about the heat. But he had no more time to think about it because, just then, a tremendous explosion rocked the room, and he felt himself falling.

56

WASHINGTON, DC

Hydrogen cyanide is an extremely volatile liquid at room temperature. It is highly flammable when mixed with air, and the smallest spark can cause an explosion.

When Dahlgren couldn’t kick open the door, he withdrew his Glock and took aim. But just as he was about to fire several shots, the door burst open and Collier flew out, arms wrapped tightly around one of the canisters. Dahlgren got off one shot before Collier smashed into him, and the two men tumbled to the ground.

Although Collier intended to ignite the tank himself, he didn’t need to. Dahlgren’s bullet struck the metal wall, perforated the tank, combusted the liquid, and caused an explosion. The concussive force killed Collier instantly, and the flames seared Dahlgren’s flesh, sending him into immediate cardiac arrest. Two other Secret Service agents, closer to Dahlgren, suffocated from the lack of oxygen, and a third agent would die later of cyanide poisoning.

Tillman was thrown against the wall while Gideon dived to the floor and just narrowly missed being hit by metal shrapnel. Fortunately, both men were far enough away from the fireball that the flames consumed nearly all the cyanide by the time it reached them. Their eyes stung and burned, and it would be weeks before Tillman could eat anything without the bitter taste of almonds in the back of his throat, but they both survived relatively unscathed.

Gideon stood and found his brother, who was on his knees and coughing into his hands. “You okay?” he asked. Tillman nodded but couldn’t speak. The dead agents lay sprawled by Collier and Dahlgren, and the wounded agent was crawling toward his comrades whom he could no longer help. Gideon knew there were two men in the Access Room, and only one of them was dead, which meant one of them—he assumed it was Wilmot—was still inside. He reached out toward Tillman and pulled his brother to his feet. Theawaaaaaaaaaa D‡n the two men picked their way through the rubble in the hall and headed for the room.

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 running down the side of her face. Tillman recognized her as Shanelle Klotz, the agent from the family photos in the house out in Virginia.

“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 beginning to calm down, but people were still trying to get out of the exits, and Secret Service agents were swarming the president.

“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 shinnied around the corner and saw the big man with his hands outstretched inside the rectangular cordon, one hand on the switch that would kill everyone in the room. Gideon’s only chance was to grab that switch out of his hands and override the HVAC system before the fans kicked in.

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.

“America!” Wilmot shouted out. “It’s your day of reckoning!” His words reverberated along the metal walls.

Then the back of his head exploded, and he slumped to the floor of the duct.

Gideon turned around just as his brother leapt past him. Tillman scampered ahead and grabbed the switch from the dead man’s hand. He flipped the button, and with a SWOOSH the gas jets shut off and all was silent.

“Nice shot, brother,” said Gideon.

“Looked like you needed a little help.”

“He was going down. I had him.”

“I just want it on record that I made the kill shot. I’m totally the guy who saved the day.”

“One more shot, he was down.”

“I’m just saying. I made the shot. The president thanks you, but I made the shot. Story of my life.”

“I didn’t have the angle.”

“Yeah, whatever. I’m just saying.”

They burst out laughing as they climbed back toward the hatch on the heating unit.

“I also want to put it on record that you’re never going to make it as a college professor,” Tillman said.

“Why do you say that?” Gideon said.

“I saw your face. You love this shit. You love it way too much.”

Gideon sighed. Tillman could barely make out his teeth gleaming in the dim light, a broad smile breaking out on his face. “Yeah, you may be right.”

They were still laughing as twenty armed men threw them to the floor and cuffed them. It took Kate, with the help of Shanelle Klotz, a good thirty minutes to get them free. But Gideon didn’t mind; he was happy to sit peacefully with his brother by his side while someone else did the negotiating.

61

PRIEST RIVER, IDAHO

Nancy Clement sat on Hank Adams’s couch and watched the television as President Erik Wade climbed back onto the podium and said, “My fellow Americans, we have all been witness today to an extraordinary event, an attempt to destroy the legally authorized and popularly mandated government of the United States of America. That attempt failed. Even if every soul in this room had died, it would still have failed. For all its flaws, our republic can’t be destroyed by killing a handful of people. It’s too strong, too resilient, too masterfully designed. We—all of us in this room—are simply instruments of the popular will. As much importance as we like to ascribe ourselves, the truth is, we’re all replaceable.”

The president scanned the crowd. Although it had thinned markedly, there were still hundreds of legislators who remained, ready to hear the entirety of Erik Wade’s speech.

“That said,” the president continued, “the Constitution mandates that I address this body with a report on the state of the union. And I have no intention of letting these would-be terrorists deflect me from fulfilling my duty.”

This brought on a round of applause that threatened to go on for five minutes.

Hank Adams looked at Nancy and said, “Can I offer you a drink?”

Nancy looked up at Hank and smiled. She realized that there was something about him that she found intensely attractive. A little geeky, maybe. But then, she was a geek herself, wasn’t she?

Erik Wade took a long deep breath and said, “So . . . before I was interrupted, I was making a point about American energy independence . . .”

“You know what?” Nancy said, putting her injured leg up on the couch. “Maybe you could turn that off while you’re at it. I think I’ve had enough State of the Union for a lifetime.”

EPILOGUE

WASHINGTON, DC

Gideon Davis and his wife, Kate Murphy Davis, stood in the Oval Office and watched while President Erik Wade pinned the Presidential Medal of Freedom—America’s highest civilian honor—on the chest of Tillman Davis. Beside them were Nancy Clement and her boyfriend, Hank Adams, and Evan Wilmot and his nurse, Margie Clete. The six of them were beaming.

President Wade walked back to his desk and said, “Usually I just sign these things and hand the pen to the guy who’s getting the award and then I get them the hell out of my office as quick as I can. But today I have two documents to sign. I’m not going to read all this verbiage for the Medal of Freedom. You know what you did, Mr. Davis. But I do want to read this other thing.”

He picked up a piece of heavy bond paper and read:

“Whereas Tillman Davis was convicted of several offenses related to the so-called Obelisk Incident, which occurred during his employment as a contractor for the Central Intelligence Agency;

“Whereas Tillman Davis was stripped of his rank and benefits as a serviceman in the United States military;

“Whereas Tillman Davis has given long and distinguished service to the United States of America;

“Whereas Tillman Davis has recently performed a unique act of courage and fortitude on behalf of the people of the United States;

“Therefore I pardon Tillman Davis of all Federal convictions and furthermore, by Executive Order, do restore to him his rank of Master Sergeant, United States Army (Retired) and to his pension and privileges thereto.”

Erik Wade signed the paper, then walked to Tillman and shook his hand a second time. “You’re a good soldier, Sergeant Davis,” he said. “I’m sorry. I only hope this does a little to make up for what this government took from you.”