Free White: A Novel by Christopher Whitcomb Page A

those belts?
Jeremy laughed quietly to himself. It had never occurred to him, waiting there in that Bangkok hotel room, that the most perilous part of this mission would be flying home.
    THREE NETWORKS AND all the cable news channels preempted regular programming for the president’s address. Most of them simply integrated it into nonstop coverage of the terrorist attacks, anyway, providing an eight-minute respite for threadbare producers, anchors, reporters, experts, and bookers who hadn’t had so much as a coffee break since the first bomb exploded.
    Vice President Beechum watched the speech from her West Wing office, a relatively bland space distinguished by low ceilings and a view of the Washington Monument. Despite early resolutions to add color and a little feminine flair to the nation’s second-most-exclusive suite, she hadn’t gotten around to so much as new curtains.
    “That man scares the hell out of me,” the vice president said, leaning back into a cordovan leather chair that weighed as much as her Mercedes.
    “Brian Williams or the president?” James asked. He punched up the volume.
    “Take your pick.” She laughed. The NBC anchor sat behind the traditional desk on the network’s
Nightly News
set in New York. General Monte Derak flanked Williams to the right; two of their so-called terrorism experts on his left.
    “It’s all such a spectacle, you know?” Beechum said. “This is exactly what they want . . . the terrorists. They’d be nothing but a bunch of Third World thugs if we didn’t pump them up with round-the-clock coverage. The richest corporation in America couldn’t afford this kind of advertising.”
    “Ladies and gentlemen, the president appears to be ready to . . .” The anchor started an introduction, but the president interrupted him.
    “My fellow Americans,” Venable began. “I speak to you tonight with a heavy heart . . . but with a mind bent on justice.”
    “Well, he’s off to a good start,” James said. “Gotta give him that.”
    Beechum nodded. Speeches had always been his strong suit.
    “Less than twenty-four hours ago, spineless cowards attacked us in our heartland. They murdered innocent women and children. They brazenly took credit for these barbaric acts. They demonstrated the depravity, the evil, that some will stoop to in the name of religion.”
    The president looked troubled yet resolute. Chase had been wrong about his color; from the healthy vigor in his cheeks to the tone of his furrowed brow and the firmly knotted tie beneath his jackhammer Adam’s apple, Venable looked as telegenic as any Hollywood actor. Prime-time perfect.
    “He’s good, but I just don’t get the feeling that I can trust him,” Beechum observed. “I’m not sure what it is, but something just strikes me as wrong.”
    “The only things I trust are you and the good Lord.” James smiled, only half kidding. “But whatever bothers you has nothing to do with his looks. This guy’s hair is perfect.”
    THE WASHINGTON SNIPER felt the plane before he saw it, that disembodied roar sneaking out of the north. It grew quickly, filling the air around him like the echo of some mountain beast, raising goose bumps on the back of his neck. Or was that the cold?
    “God’s will,” he said in English. The roar grew louder; thunder rolling down the frozen Potomac.
    Every detail had been covered. The snow-draped sniper sat cross-legged behind the rooftop parapet, hidden by the night. A Barrett .50 caliber rifle rested on a matte steel bipod, tight against his shoulder. He’d just called the Indonesian up to the roof under ruse.
    “God’s will.”
    He placed his eye against the cold rubber bellows of his scope reticle.
    What do the other shooters have in their sights right now?
he wondered. But then the nose cone appeared in his crosshairs and all other matters of this world left him.
    JEREMY HAD NOTHING to read, so he sat and stared out his window as the 747 descended into the teeth of the