The Night Stalkers White House - Books 1-3

Chapter 3-1

Chapter 3

Beatrice: 1988

United States Secret Service Agent Beatrice Ann Belfour looked over at the kid sitting in her BMW’s passenger seat. She was only three years older than he was, but she couldn’t help thinking of him as a kid. A young street punk. But not just a young street punk. If he had been, he’d be locked in the back of the blue-and-white cruiser of the NYPD at this very moment.

Beatrice had only been an agent of the Secret Service for a year. And only authorized to enter the field and carry a weapon since last week. Good timing. She rubbed her palm against the steering wheel, thankful for the absorbent leopard-spotted steering wheel cover that her little niece had insisted she purchase. Beatrice’s hands were not steady, but she certainly couldn’t show that to this kid.

She should have just turned him over, but there’d been indicators that intrigued her. And a significant portion of her training had been learning to trust her instincts. Her problem, she was often told, was that her instincts were also crazy stupid, but that wasn’t any news to her.

He hadn’t flinched when she’d pulled her weapon, hadn’t even dropped the knife he thought was so carefully tucked out of sight. That showed a steadiness of nerves. He’d worked up a carjacking scam with the guys sitting on the hood and trunk acting as both spotters and deterrents. That was a scenario that she hadn’t been briefed on in training. Similar yes, but not the same. It was a good twist. He’d even trained them to run at trouble to minimize losses, which made him a team player as well as a good leader. Clearly all of this was his idea. Even the attention to detail as he dropped the wiper blade back into place, despite the distraction of the muzzle of her S&W 66 staring him between the eyes, spoke to his ability to remain focused under stress.

Even most junior agents didn’t do as well in practice scenarios and for this guy, it had been live.

“If you can make your hands work,” she’d bet they were shaking like Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles when he was needing a drink. “You can put that knife and any other hardware you’re carrying into the glove compartment. They won’t like you carrying where we’re going.”

“Only have the knife.” His voice was deep and resonant as befit someone with a chest his size. She guessed six-two, two-ten or two-hundred-and-twenty pounds, and none of it fat.

No g*n. Maybe he couldn’t afford it, which seemed unlikely in the neighborhood she’d found him in. You’d think a woman would be safe driving down a New York street six lanes wide, bright under the lights. He probably didn’t carry because he knew penalties went way up if something went wrong and he was picked up packing a firearm.

He held the knife up for her to see, his hand didn’t shake much at all, less than hers would be if she took them off the wheel. Not a switchblade, nor a spring-load, but it had a heavy blade she’d bet he could flick open one-handed. Again, legal. Not by a lot, but it would pass for a standard pocket knife under the New York criminal code. She’d bet no one else on his crew was carrying even that. He ran his team as clean and legally deniable as possible.

He popped the glove box with the back of his thumb and wiped the knife on his pants before dropping it in and knocking the little door closed with his knee. No gloves, which would have stood out on the mid-summer night, so he was limiting where he left fingerprints. She made a bet with herself that he’d use a shirttail to wipe the seatbelt buckle and the door handle as he exited the car.

This kid was careful. Which reaffirmed her first instincts.

At this time of night she made it all the way downtown in under twenty minutes and the guy didn’t say a word. Halfway there, she’d asked his name.

“Frank.”

No last name offered. He didn’t look nervy, again just being careful.

She flew down to 7 World Trade Center and whipped into the downward-spiraling ramp of the underground parking garage with a bright squeal of tires. Her parents had given her the car as a make-up present when she’d been named a field agent last week. She’d retired the very old gray Honda, probably only days before its final collapse. She’d named it Witherspoon, for what she thought Michael Caine might have called his Aston Martin in The Italian Job. She was thinking of naming her new BMW Jean Claude, after Van Damme’s kicking performance in Bloodsport. But that had only been released a few months ago and didn’t have the classic feel of the 1969 heist movie. She’d find its name eventually.

Her parents felt that a federal job was beneath their only daughter. They’d worked hard to get out of the same poor-a*s neighborhood where she’d just found Frank. That their daughter hadn’t taken her Columbia University education to become a doctor or lawyer, or at least marry one, had made them more than a little bit crazy. After a year of simultaneously completing her Secret Service training and managing to finish her degree in criminal law, they’d felt contrite and given her the Beemer. She wasn’t any less pissed at them for all the hassle they’d dished out over the last year, but she did love this car.

It practically stood on its nose when she hammered the brakes at the control booth of the restricted section of the underground parking. She lowered the window.

“Hi Beatrice,” Harry popped the button inside his booth to raise the steel gate and lower the tire punchers into the pavement surface. “Knew it was you when I heard the wheels hit the upper ramp.”

She flashed her ID at him for form’s sake. Added a grin of thanks and goosed the gas, spinning down two more layers to her assigned spot.

Beatrice kept an eye out as the kid climbed out of the car. Sure enough, Frank applied his shirttail to belt buckle and both the inside and outside door handles.