Chapter 16

Friday morning started out early at 0500 with a bang. A terrorist tried to drive a dump truck through the White House security gates. The Secret Service assigned to the roof put a Stinger missile into the engine after it crashed through the gate and over the tire busters and was still moving. All the alarms were ringing; agents were running everywhere.

0500 was when there was a shift change. The agents’ shift change was done in two parts an hour apart so there was always a full staff on duty watching all the monitors and guarding the President. The result was that there were more agents on the grounds.

The driver must have had experience from the battlefield or maybe was just lucky or chickened out. Seconds before the missile hit, he jumped from the truck and tried to run - only to run into a dozen agents. Fearing the truck was loaded with explosives and with the driver in hand, everyone moved quickly away. That the truck’s load was covered with a canvas only added to the fear.

My family and I were ushered into Section 12; the underground bunker that housed the terrorism task force among other agencies. It had separate fresh air inlets and a power supply that was filtered multiple times for all kinds of threats. The other White House staff were down here on other levels.

After 9-11 the White House had gone through many secret upgrades and renovations - many disguised as normal maintenance. All the windows had been replaced with reinforced bulletproof glass. The original wooden window frames had been replaced with steel. The storm shutters were made operative and also bulletproof.

There were boxes on the roof designed to look like duct work - they were actually storage for Stinger and Tomahawk missiles and machine guns. The roof had been replaced with armor plating and titanium covered in a rubber coating making it waterproof in the upgrades.

When the bed cover was pulled back, it was found that the bed of the truck was filled with twenty and forty pound propane cylinders. The wiring leading into the truck body had been burned off and whatever they were using for the trigger was destroyed, improperly set or a delayed timer.

Equipment was brought in to unload the cylinders one at a time, then they would be robot inspected before being hauled away. It was an all day job.

‘‘Eric, who has custody of the driver?’’ I asked.

‘‘The FBI and DHS are trying to interrogate him now but the lawyer is refusing to allow him to answer any questions,’’ Eric said.

‘‘What nationality is he, what language does he speak?’’ I asked.

‘‘He is from Somalia we believe, he has a heavy North African accent,’’ Eric said.

‘‘Does he have a green card or is he a citizen from some of the previous programs?’’ I asked.

‘‘Not that we can find,’’ Eric said.

‘‘Finger prints?’’ I asked.

‘‘Not in the system,’’ Eric answered.

‘‘Before you ask, facial scan is negative,’’ Eric added.

‘‘What is the information on the truck?’’ I asked.

‘‘No tags; everything in the cab was burned, no names or phone numbers on the cab or the body,’’ Eric replied.

‘‘The VIN number is deeply stamped at least four places on the frame; one on each side by the front axle and one on each side of the frame between the rear cab mount and rear axle. Depending on the year, there may be more - sometimes under the cab on the inside frame rail,’’ Marcy said.

‘‘I run into that all the time when the body up-fitters paint over the VIN number stickers or mount equipment over them. I even had to threaten some up-builders because the information and scan bar are required for warranty work and DOT roadside inspections. The cab sticker has the Maximum front and rear axle weights limits as well as Gross vehicle weight,’’ Marcy added.

‘‘Tell the lawyer that the suspect has been designated as a foreign terrorist and is being transferred to Gitmo for a tribunal investigation and trial. Bag the suspect and take him to Morton; I’ll call the Doc to do a medical. Call Frank and Ben to meet you there - or do you want me to do it? Every minute you lose before he talks allows any accomplices to get further away and destroy evidence,’’ I said.

“The Secret Service will have a team pick you up at the Capitol steps, you can use the tunnel to get to the Capitol building. When we get over there, we will call for the pickup time,’’ Agent Gardner said.

‘‘It’s too risky to land the chopper here until they get the truck empty, the Beast will pick you up over there at the Capitol steps when the Suburbans arrive,’’ said the Secret Service agent in charge. Like it or not, I was in for the convoy ride to Summers Road unless I wanted to go to Andrews by car then transfer to Marine 1.

We went back to the White House and picked out things that we would need. I would be home a half a day early. I also gave most of the staff the rest of the day off.

I didn’t get through the Congressional Hall without an impromptu news conference that I ended quickly - as soon as the Secret Service agent said the Beast was at the steps. It took almost two hours to get home, but we were home at lunch time.

With the traffic in Washington a nightmare, by the time we got home Frank, Ben, Andy, and Eric were at Fort Smith with the Doc, watching a very upset prisoner getting wired up.

The prisoner was not the only one upset, his lawyer was livid that he had lost his meal ticket on the government tab for years.

It was near supper when Ben, Eric and Frank came to the house to fill me in on the information they had gained. The prisoner was on his way to Gitmo – unconscious - in one of our C130s.

‘‘The truck had been stolen six weeks ago from a construction site in West Virginia. It had been carried - covered by canvas - on a lowboy trailer to a warehouse on the outskirts of DC where the propane cylinders had been placed in the dump body,’’ Frank Said.

‘‘The propane cylinders had been acquired from a recycling center. They were originally sold as scrap because of rust pitting or out of date certification. Some of the cylinders had been filled with gasoline, others diesel fuel, some were refilled with propane and four were filled with gun powder,’’ Eric said.

‘‘The ones with gun powder were the ones that had blasting caps in them to start the explosion,’’ Eric said.

‘‘Why didn’t it blow up then? With all that gasoline and diesel, it would have a great fireball,’’ I said.

‘‘They had it wired to the truck batteries. We think when it hit the first barricade the batteries weren’t fastened down and were ejected, shearing all the wiring. The force of the impact may have caused the driver to be too disoriented to find the trigger or else he chickened out at the last minute,’’ Eric said.

‘‘This must have been a new group without connections since they did not have any C4, RDX or ANFO - or else we have tightened up the tracking and controls enough that it is not easy to get,’’ I said.

‘‘They have got all the tanks removed and the truck will be removed tonight. The impact with the gate and the barriers shifted everything in the truck, pulling the wires and detonators from the tanks with the gunpowder. The detonators went off but ignited nothing but air,’’ Agent Gardner said. He had just received an update from the ATF agents working on the truck.