Read Online White: A Novel by Christopher Whitcomb - Free Book Online

another door that opened out onto the massive building’s snow-covered roof.
    Within minutes, he had found himself a lee on the roof’s northwest corner. He knelt down behind the waist-high parapet.
    RRRRRRRRRRRR . . .
    An unsettling rumble grew on the northern horizon and filled the air around him with a hoarse, deafening noise. The passenger looked up and out toward Washington DC, which lay out there someplace in the waning storm. Within seconds, he saw it. Due north, looking like they might fly directly into him, came two enormous headlights, then the distinctive nose cone of a 747-400.
    Air France flight 176 from Charles de Gaulle International seemed to hang in the air as it approached, traveling more than 150 knots but almost stationary relative to his position in the flight path. It looked as though it might fall out of the sky with the snow.
    The Merry Maid showed no expression as the plane roared just to the right of him, off the building’s eastern shoulder. He watched until the red and green warning lights disappeared; then he reached down and unzipped the case.
    He pulled out three heavy steel rifle components: a gas-operated receiver group, a black polymer stock assembly, and a massive fluted barrel tipped with a quatro-ported muzzle break. Even to an experienced shooter, the Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle was a formidable sight to behold. With a maximum effective range of 1,800 meters, a ten-round magazine, and bullets the size of pinecones, this semiautomatic doomsday device was the only low-signature, hand-portable weapon capable of penetrating the windscreen glass of a 747 airliner. Topped with a decent scope, it could accomplish irrevocable harm.
    Now all I’ve got to do is keep from freezing to death,
the passenger thought. He checked his watch and hunkered down behind the rifle. Snow descended quietly around him, covering the rooftop and the sniper with more of its anonymous coating of white.
    “HAVE YOU TIMED this out?” the president asked. He led the way down a broad corridor that seemed to sag with the gravity of his presence.
    “The computer clocks it at eight minutes,” Andrea Chase answered. She read as she walked, trying desperately to keep up with the president’s exaggerated stride and the “Blue Thing”—a twice-daily summary of incoming cable traffic and key reporting. Chase still hadn’t read a second package distilled from highlights of the CIA’s Presidential Daily Briefing, the State Department’s INR summary, and White House Press Office media clippings.
    “This speech is full yet succinct; firm yet compassionate,” Chase said. “That’s just what we want to project to the American public right now.”
    The former CEO of a New Haven insurance company, Chase had never handled anything more intense than hurricanes and hailstorms, but that didn’t stop her from rising to the challenge. A number cruncher by trade, she felt more than capable of making the transition from insurance claims to body counts.
    “Good.” Venable nodded. “We need to reassure people without getting too dramatic. Don’t want to overstate our downside.”
    “Best if you stick to the script, Mr. President,” Chase suggested. David Ray Venable was a brilliant executive, but his mouth sometimes found it hard to contain a stream of consciousness that flowed like the Niagara. “Get in and out quickly.”
    “Spineless cowards,” he growled, practicing the high points of his speech. “Unrelenting commitment to justice . . . will not stand . . . track them down wherever they hide . . . national resolve . . . individual integrity . . . renewed vigilance . . .”
    The president practiced his hand movements as he walked. He had worked as a speech coach during the early days of his political career and considered the public demonstration of emotion one of his greatest strengths.
    “You tell whoever is operating that teleprompter that I pause a lot for effect, understand? Long pauses sometimes. They