92

16 HOURS BEFORE AIR FORCE ONE LANDS IN ISRAEL

The sun was setting over Ben Gurion International Airport.

Kailea brought Marcus another cup of coffee; then they left the main terminal and headed to the hangar. It would be their final walk-through of the welcome ceremony before heading back to Jerusalem for the night. And they still had no leads on Haqqani or al-Qassab.

It had been another exhausting and infuriating day. They’d met with every agent and officer in charge of each sector, asking them if anything seemed out of place and if there was anything they needed. Everyone seemed confident they’d done all they could, but Kailea could see that Marcus’s stomach was churning, and she certainly understood why. The president of the United States would be in the air in less than five hours, and the advance team was still no closer to ensuring his safety.

The folks from the White House advance team were still on-site, running through their checklists and making last-minute adjustments. The team from the White House Press Office was doing the same. It all certainly looked impressive. The stage had been built. The podium with the presidential seal had been set in place. A beautiful red carpet had been laid out, and someone was running a vacuum over it one more time. Enormous American, Israeli, and Saudi flags had been ironed and hung from wires attached to crossbeams in the roof. A row of flags on stands lined the back of the stage. Risers for the press corps had been erected, as had a section just for the IDF band and honor guard. Technicians were double-checking the lights and sound system. Around back of the hangar, row upon row of TV satellite trucks were parked and waiting. Each had been thoroughly checked by the Secret Service, DSS, and Shin Bet and then sealed off with eighteen-foot-high chain-link fences topped by razor wire and guarded by an elite Israeli police unit.

Meanwhile, K-9 units were working up and down the rows of white, wooden folding chairs set for a thousand VIP guests, sniffing for any trace of explosives. At the insistence of Roseboro —and over the vehement objections of the White House and Prime Minister’s Office —the first row of seats had been set back a full thirty feet from the stage in the hopes of minimizing if not completely eliminating the damage that could be done to the principals onstage if a bomber were to detonate in the crowd.

Kailea was impressed that Roseboro had also won another victory: no phones of any kind would be allowed into the hangar. Advisors to the principals had been informed they would have to leave their phones in their cars. Guests had been emailed they should leave their phones in their cars or at home. Reporters had likewise been emailed that there would be lockers where they could leave their phones before entering the hangar.

Roseboro had even tried bringing in portable jammers to block all electronic signals coming in or going out of the hangar. Unfortunately, the systems had been so powerful they had interfered not only with the public-address system but with the radios the security officials were using. Thus, much to Roseboro’s frustration, the jammers had, in the last few hours, been removed from the premises and from all the sites POTUS would be visiting.

As they continued their stroll around the grounds, Kailea noticed the teams of sharpshooters with night vision goggles stationed in every corner of every roof of the terminal and maintenance facilities. She could see hundreds of heavily armed Israeli troops in full combat gear posted around the perimeter fence and Humvees mounted with .50-caliber machine guns driving the service roads on patrol. She could hear helicopters overhead and pictured their pilots and crews using night vision goggles and thermal imaging to scan for threats.

What she could not hear was the sound of jet engines. For the first time in Israel’s history, all commercial air traffic had been grounded for the two days of the summit and the full day prior. Flights would resume taking off and landing at 6 p.m. on Thursday, but not a moment before.

Convinced there was nothing more they could do, Kailea radioed back to the DSS command post at the embassy that they were heading “home.” On the drive, Kailea tried to get Marcus’s thoughts off logistics. She asked him how his cracked rib was healing. She asked him about his time with his mom in Colorado. She asked him if he’d found time to read any of his Dostoyevsky novel. But he didn’t bite.

Marcus was all business. He wanted her to triple-check that extra supplies of POTUS’s blood type —and the king’s and Secretary Whitney’s —had been delivered to all five of the hospitals that were standing by in case of trouble. She assured him that it had been taken care of, but he made her call Roseboro again just to be sure. Then he insisted she call the officer in charge of the motor pool and make sure tow trucks and plenty of spare tires had been pre-positioned along the motorcade routes just in case. Again she assured him she’d already done it, but that wasn’t good enough for him. So she made the call again. Same answer. Same annoyed tone. But she dutifully conveyed it all to him and chose not to challenge him.

Technically, of course, Kailea outranked him. She had, after all, been in law enforcement all of her professional life. He’d been on the DSS team for, what, a couple of months? Yet Marcus Ryker was a legend among security professionals in Washington. He’d won the highest awards for courage under fire that could be bestowed upon a special agent of the United States Secret Service. And then there were the rumors of what he’d done in Russia, North Korea, and the East China Sea.

Kailea still wasn’t sure she believed the stories were true. Not all of them, anyway. Surely some of them, at least, had to have been embellished. But even if only a few were true, she knew she’d been partnered with the most interesting —and certainly the most dedicated —man she had ever met. Marcus was quiet. And there was a sadness to him. But how could there not be? she asked herself as they drove in silence up the Judean hills. After spending a lifetime protecting his country, he’d lost the two great loves of his life. Was it any wonder he was so determined not to lose any more?