Oath of Office

“Are you very good?” A professor of engineering, she spoke bluntly, unaware of any possible consequences for the words that escaped her lips.

“I suppose,” Kazem said.

“I want you to think of this,” she said. “Imagine one of your friends fires an average mortar over your head. This round travels at, say, sixteen hundred meters — or approximately one mile — per second. You are tasked with shooting this projectile out of the air with your Kalashnikov, which shoots a projectile that travels at approximately seven hundred meters per second. The mortar is a larger target, but traveling over twice as fast. You’d want the best bullet possible, would you not?”

“That is exactly what I would want,” Kazem said.

“Then please,” the woman said, “be careful with the missiles. The analogy I posed is not far off from what you propose we do.”

42

Special Agent in Charge Gary Montgomery sent two agents from Presidential Protection in separate cars to park down the street from Senator Michelle Chadwick’s apartment as soon as he’d gotten off the phone with President Ryan. Once the trigger was pulled to get things moving, he called his bosses. It took less than ten minutes to be conferenced in with Director Howe and his right hand, Deputy Director Kenna Mendez, and a Service lawyer. There always had to be a lawyer.

There was the usual worry about protecting the good name of the Secret Service. The way the lawyer saw it, this operation could go three ways: nothing happened, in which case all was rosy; Secret Service personnel saved Senator Chadwick from an assassination, and all was rosy; or something got bungled, Chadwick died, and the Service looked inept — or, even worse, responsible. Director Howe and DD Mendez had almost fifty years of experience between them. Both had cut their teeth as post-standers, criminal investigators, protective agents, supervisors, and eventually SAICs of large field offices. They knew the vagaries that an agent in the field had to deal with. The fact that this was a covert detail — Chadwick had not asked for protection, and should not even know she was being protected — added an extra level of difficulty. Without knowledge of her schedule they would lose the ability to conduct advance surveys of locations before arrival. Everything would be a seat-of-the-pants move. Doing this right — and the Secret Service prided itself in providing flawless protection — was next to impossible.

The lawyer pointed out that while there was nothing illegal about Secret Service agents following the senator unannounced as long as they did not spy on her, they were under no statutory obligation to do so. The operation would probably violate policy on several points, and possibly some federal rules in regard to overtime pay, but he would have to research it. Montgomery groaned at that. Given enough time to look, government lawyers could find a way to make anything against the rules.

In the end, Montgomery reminded the director that there was a fourth scenario. The Service could refuse the request, Chadwick would be murdered, and the trust and confidence of POTUS would be lost.

Director Howe said that the phone call was only a way to get everyone on the same page, and there’d never been any question that they would do what the President asked, so long as it was not illegal, immoral, or unethical. Hiding in the shadows to safeguard a hateful woman from potential assassination was uncomfortable, but it was none of those things.

The call ended with the lawyer urging Howe to reconsider — a perfectly safe option, since his words would be forgotten if all went well or he would be vindicated if things went sour. Montgomery found his own position more precarious. No one said it out loud, but if this operation went bad, he’d be the one to take the blame. Even President Ryan couldn’t protect him if he was fighting for his own job.

Where virtually everyone else in law enforcement was trained to seek cover during a gun battle, men and women of the United States Secret Service trained to make themselves the larger target, to stand up and fight while others in the team hustled their protectee away from danger. Shitty position or not, Gary Montgomery knew nothing else. The President had asked him personally to stand up and fight, and that was all there was to it.

Several members of the administration, including the chief of staff, were afforded Secret Service protection. These details were relatively small, just a handful of agents, and stealing even one could jeopardize coverage. Montgomery raided his own team first, as well as drawing from VPOTUS, the secretary of the treasury, the Washington Field Office, and USSS Headquarters. In the end he had a small group of five female and seven male agents. Most of them looked young enough to be Montgomery’s children but came with glowing recommendations from their superiors.