Inside Threat

by Matthew Quirk

Genres: Spy Thrillers; Mystery; Thrillers

Synopsis

In this electrifying thriller from the author of Red Warning and The Night Agent, an attack on the White House sends the President and his top aides to take shelter in a top secret government facility buried deep underground—but they soon discover the threat is locked inside with them.

Assume the worst. Code Black.

The day that every secret service agent trains for has arrived. The White House has been breached; the President forced to flee to a massive doomsday bunker outside DC to defend against whatever comes next. Only the most trusted agents and officials are allowed in with him—those dedicated to keeping the government intact at all costs.

Among these is Erik Hill, who has given his life to the Secret Service. They are his purpose and his family, and his impressive record has made him a hero among them. Despite his growing disillusionment from seeing Washington corruption up close, Erik can’t ignore years of instincts honed on the job. The government is under attack, and no one is better equipped to face down the threat than he is.

The evidence leads him to a conspiracy at the highest levels of power, with the attack orchestrated by some of the very individuals now locked in with him. As the killers strike inside the bunker, it will take everything Erik Hill has to save his people, himself, and his country.

Release date: June 13, 2023

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 432

Sample

1

Friday. 7:14 p.m.

Killer. Traitor. Hero. The man strolling toward the White House would be called many names by the time this operation was over, but among his accomplices he went by the alias Marcus. It was a nod to Marcus Brutus, the Roman assassin.

With his navy suit and crew cut, he looked like any other Washington bureaucrat, one of dozens on their rounds near Pennsylvania Avenue this evening, though his expression was a little brighter than most. He strode through Lafayette Park, eyes on the portico of the White House residence with its great black hanging lantern.

A group of protesters shook signs—“Tyrant” and “Killer-in-Chief”—and shouted slogans on the brick sidewalk, facing off with a row of Secret Service agents behind a steel barricade. One demonstrator stepped onto the barrier, and the agent shoved him back. The country was a tinderbox. All it needed was a spark.

Marcus surveyed the new thirteen-foot-tall black perimeter fence and the grounds just beyond it, noting the subtle variations in the grass—signs of pressure sensors beneath—and the well-hidden laser, microwave, and infrared motion detectors. Triggering any of them would bring out the black-clad emergency response teams and Belgian Malinois attack dogs.

He slipped across Pennsylvania Avenue, turning slightly to stay just out of frame of a school group’s selfie, his eyes tracing the rooftops of the buildings surrounding the White House.

He picked out the sniper team on the eastern edge of the residence roof, a spotter and a shooter with a silenced custom Remington 700.

Glancing back to the office buildings towering to the northwest, he checked the parapet that concealed the Avenger system—a battery of eight Stinger missiles along with a computer-aimed machine gun firing six-inch-long bullets that could blow a plane out of the sky from a mile away.

As he neared the main guardhouse to the north of the West Wing, his heart drummed harder. His skin was warm despite the autumn breeze.

Marcus carried a SIG Sauer P229, two extra magazines, a SureFire flashlight, and a Benchmade folding knife. It was all he needed to bring this place down, to start a war.

He waited for a staffer to clear security and stepped up to the guardhouse window. The sentry inside, uniformed Secret Service, stared at Marcus as he pressed a blue badge to a scanner near the gate.

The guard’s eyes went down. Marcus shifted his weight onto his right foot, his hand drawing closer to the SIG on his waist.

He knew what was on that guard’s screen. Two words: Yankee White. It went beyond the normal security clearances. It was the highest access you could receive in the American government.

A green light flashed. The gate unlocked and Marcus pushed through with a smile and a nod to the officer.

He walked down Executive Avenue and passed the Marine guard standing at attention outside the West Wing’s covered entrance.

The president was in the Oval Office, working late. Marcus moved on without slowing, turning past a copse of elms, the rolling grass of the South Lawn to his side.

The clouds stacked in the sky, bruised blue and purple with sunset. He walked slowly, his eyes on the windows of the Oval, six-inch-thick bulletproof glass. Behind them, the air in the room was 

kept at a slightly higher pressure than the outside to prevent biological and chemical attacks. A small wooden block marked with the presidential seal sat on the Resolute Desk, one of a half-dozen innocent-looking items—called knockdowns—that, when tipped over, would summon the counterassault boys with their heavy artillery.

President James Harrington Kline strode past the window, then stopped and looked out. He had dark brown hair, gray near the temples, and straight-line posture—he always held himself like he was having his portrait taken.

Marcus clocked his target and kept moving, wary of the three roving patrols. He knew their patterns down to the minute.

The government had invested hundreds of millions of dollars to protect that one man. The inner sanctums of the White House were unbreachable unless you knew their secrets. Marcus did. He was an insider. His orders came from the highest levels. Operation V was about to start.

The White House was just the beginning. Marcus knew where it would all end—fifty miles from here in a facility whose existence was one of the most well-guarded secrets in government.

His eyes went to the flag, twisting slowly in the night above the residence. To rebuild a nation, you must first destroy it.

Hero. Traitor. If he survived the next twenty-four hours, the world would understand which side he was on.

He pressed his hand to his jacket, felt the weight of the gun underneath, and marched toward the West Wing.

2

Eric Hill badged into the West Wing and caught sight of a uniformed Secret Service agent on patrol. She gave him a reverent nod. Eric knew the look. It’s what he got for saving a president’s life, stopping the bullets with his own body, two in his vest and one in his shoulder. He’d never gotten used to it, never liked the way the Service paraded him around as a hero after that awful day.

He walked on and a political staffer glanced at him. Their eyes met, and the aide’s quickly broke away, his face going a shade paler. Fright. That was a more recent look he’d gotten used to. Everything had changed. Eric wasn’t carrying his service weapon. He wasn’t running the presidential detail. He was stuck behind a desk on the ground floor. Some of the people he’d sworn to protect now feared him, and they weren’t wrong to do so. He didn’t have to worry as much about the hero shit these days.

He squeezed by a construction scaffolding and looked up, eyeing the crown molding, then took the stairs down to the ground floor. After he passed the door to the Situation Room, he ducked into the low-ceilinged suite that was the Secret Service’s base of operations inside the White House.

His desk was in a cramped office in the back, out of sight by design, next to the armory cabinets. The surveillance tech monitored the security camera feeds. Eric looked over the bank of screens and watched POTUS pass from the Oval to the residence with two agents in tow.

Eric sat down to check the logs. As a patrol came off its shift and entered the suite, he took their weapons, made them safe, and locked them up. His hand lingered on the textured grip of the MP5 submachine gun. He missed its weight. He’d carried one for so long it became an extension of his body. It went in the safe, and he slammed and locked the door.

When he looked up, Benjamin Chilton was coming toward him. He was a Special Agent in Charge, known as an SAIC, or “sack.” As the senior agent on duty, he was technically tonight’s shift whip, the person who called the shots, though Chilton mostly avoided on-the-ground work. That left Eric to handle the lowlier aspects of getting the agents to their posts.

He wore a dove-gray suit, an oddly showy fashion choice even for the head of the presidential protection detail, but Chilton was always hustling to straddle the line between the agents and the politicians they protected. He’d only been in the top job for four months and still seemed a little insecure in the role.

“I like the beard,” Eric said.

Chilton’s hand went to it. “Really?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“How are you doing down here, Eric?”

“Every job matters.”

A nod like a patient teacher from Chilton. “It should be temporary, you know. So long as . . .”

“As?”

“Just keep your head down and let this blow over.”

“I’m here. I’m not out talking about it.”

“And as far as Braun goes . . .”

“Yes?”

“Play nice.”

Braun was Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Braun, a former presidential candidate. Eric had run his protection detail for a while. He was the reason Eric was behind this desk. Being busted down to administrative duty was, as Eric understood it, principally about optics. He would give up the gun for a while, but it was mostly to demonstrate to certain VIPs that something had

 been done and he’d learned his lesson. It hadn’t even been processed officially through personnel. The bosses wanted to keep the whole matter as quiet as possible.

The other agents still looked to him for guidance and Eric often ended up informally whipping the shift from this glorified closet. The Service was short-staffed and they needed all hands and his experience.

Eric looked Chilton over, noting the vein standing out on his forehead, the left hand gripping the right. Stress.

A man in shining oxfords appeared at the door of the suite. It was Braun.

“Like I said,” Chilton whispered. “Nice.”

Eric didn’t respond, only stared past him at the former candidate. Braun wheeled toward them with his chin held five degrees too high.

“Eric.”

“Mr. Secretary.”

Chilton stood to Braun’s side, pleading with Eric with his eyes.

“Well . . .” Braun licked his lips. “I was in the building and thought I would come down and say hello, face-to-face . . . man-to-man.”

Eric held his hands out to the side: here I am.

“And I’m glad we were able to put that whole”—a glance to Chilton as Braun searched for the right word—“mix-up behind us.”

Eric could handle being stripped of his gun and made to sit down here like a kid in a corner. He could handle putting his life on the line for professional liars. But he could not stand forced complicity in their bullshit.

“There was no mix-up,” Eric said. Adrenaline surged up his spine. He loved this feeling, this hunger for the fight, for finally saying fuck it all. He had given into it the night he wrecked his career, the night he wrecked Braun, and it scared him how easily it could take hold.

A tight, desperate smile from Braun. “Now—”

“I know what I saw,” Eric said. “I know who you are. How’s the arm?”

His eyes stayed on Braun as the man appeared to try out a few responses in his mind and came up with nothing. He inched up from Eric, his eyes going down, his left hand cradling his right wrist.

“You were a good agent . . . once,” Braun said, trying to hide the fear but not doing a particularly good job.

Chilton stared at Eric. One wrong step and he would demote Eric’s ass for real, or try. Maybe this was some kind of test.

Eric moved fast, bringing his head and chest a half inch toward Braun, the slightest

feint. There was five feet between them, but the politician blanched and flinched back, nearly lost his footing. A disgusted look turned into an extremely satisfied smile, then Braun turned and walked away.

Test failed.

Chilton followed, trying to placate him, and Eric returned to his desk, his duty logs and time sheets.

A few minutes later, he looked up to find Chilton standing in the doorway to the office.

“You couldn’t let it go?” Chilton asked.

“I’m not going to lie.”

“Listen. You eat shit for another month or so, show that you can stay in line, and then we go on like nothing happened. That’s too much for you to handle?”

That fucking tone. Eric felt a rush of anger. “Tell you the truth, it may be.”

“You’re supposed to keep these people safe, and they’re terrified of you. That doesn’t work. I’m sorry, Eric, but I’m going to have to talk to the director.”

Chilton stared at him, waiting. Eric didn’t think he really wanted to go after his job. He wanted him to bow and scrape.

“Go ahead.”

“What? This is serious. Demotion. Termination.”

Eric smiled. “I’m done, Chilton.”

“What?”

“You’re right. It doesn’t work. I’ll save you the trouble and resign.”

Chilton’s eyes widened, and he started blinking quickly.

“You’re joking. You’re not far from being able to retire with the enhanced pension.”

“That’s fine.”

“You’re not going to quit. You’re Eric Hill. You are the Service. We just need you to—”

“I’ll get started on my letter,” Eric said. “Watch your email.”

“Don’t fuck with me here, Hill. There will be consequences.”

Chilton turned and left.

 

3

Back by his desk, Eric stood and watched the security cameras, breathing slowly as he let the anger subside.

Michael Hardwick stepped into the doorway. He was a big guy, thick black hair and brown eyes, a weekend rugby player and a machine of an agent, never tired, never complained. People often misjudged him based on his build, his black F-150, and his faded southern accent, but he had a razor-sharp mind. Eric had been working with him for seventeen years.

Hardwick gave him a knowing smile as he approached.

“What’s up?” Eric asked.

“You went out with the number two from the French diplomatic mission?”

Eric rolled his eyes. “This town. It’s like high school . . . yeah. She’s great.” He’d taken her to dinner at Fiola that weekend.

“Punching above your weight.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll manage to fuck it up.” He’d been distracted by everything happening with his job. He wasn’t particularly good company these days.

“Speaking of punching above your weight . . . how’s Ellie?” he asked Hardwick

“Don’t change the subject, man. Where does a guy like you meet her?”

“The embassy. It was a lecture. EU security stuff.”

Hardwick brought his head back, appraising Eric. “Do you speak French?”

“I get by.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“We all thought you’d just been holing up at home recently.”

“You don’t have anything better to talk about?”

“Just sitting there drinking bourbon, cleaning your guns, and watching HGTV.”

Eric played along, wincing at the HGTV mention, but he knew Hardwick was busting his chops. “I usually stick to This Old House and New Yankee Workshop, but there’s only so many episodes, so . . .” He shrugged. “Though I manage to peel myself off the recliner every now and then.” He’d spent most of his twenties working as a carpenter, and he was more inclined to drink too much bourbon, diamond-stone the chisels, and get into some hand tools and Japanese joinery, though Hardwick’s larger point wasn’t all that far off the mark.

“You’re doing all right?”

“I’m good.” Eric didn’t feel like getting into a therapy session.

“Agent Leigh said you were yelling at one of the restoration guys last night?”

A laugh. “I wouldn’t say yelling. I told him to sharpen his bit. You have to have some respect for your tools. He was mauling a nice piece of red oak.”

Hardwick didn’t quite seem to believe that version. The story was funny coming from Agent Leigh—she’d been in a surly mood herself recently.

Eric brought out an MP5, double-checked that the chamber was clear, and handed it to Hardwick with two magazines.

“We’re on MP5s tonight?” Hardwick asked.

Normally the agents only carried pistols when they were working the presidential detail at the White House. The full-auto submachine guns and rifles were always stashed nearby, but out of sight.

“Chilton’s orders,” Eric said.

“The protesters have him

spooked?”

“I think so. Could be an order from the big boss too,” Eric said, meaning President Kline.

Hardwick slung the weapon. “Chilton still has you doing T and As?” Hardwick asked, shaking his head. Time and assignments were the most tedious paperwork in the service. “I’ll never get used to seeing you back there.”

“Every job matters.”

“I’d be fucking dying.”

Eric almost gave him another line, but he couldn’t stand the taste of it. “I am, brother.”

“This Braun thing?”

“It’s been building for a long time. That’s the last straw.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re thinking about quitting.” He must have heard part of the conversation. “You’d just be letting Chilton and Braun and all the other hacks win.”

“I can’t be part of the bullshit, Mike, the politics, the covering up the truth. I’m tired of it.”

“You don’t deserve to be behind that desk.”

“I do, actually.” Part of the reason he felt like he needed to get away from all this was that the anger was clouding his judgment. He had snapped that night. He went too far. He’d probably just gone too far again with Chilton and Braun. He was afraid that he couldn’t seem to get himself under control, but he kept that to himself.

“What really happened?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“What would you do?”

“Go back to New Orleans. Do some fine finish carpentry, custom woodwork, I don’t know. I’ve got enough money socked away, partial benefits. You never thought about stepping back? It’s a tough job on families.”

Hardwick raised an eyebrow. He’d been dating a great woman, a nurse practitioner with two kids from a past marriage, for two or three years. Eric always wondered why he hadn’t proposed to her yet. Hardwick was crazy about her, but they’d all seen plenty of marriages burn out from the long Service shifts, the constant time away from home, the missed holidays and anniversaries. Maybe that was it. It seemed like the job had been weighing on him too recently, though he wasn’t one to complain.

Hardwick looked at him for a long time. He had a habit of thinking deeply before he spoke and saying little. “You’d die without this job,” he said.

Eric thought back to when he was a kid, watching his dad buckle up his duty belt, slide a pen into his shirt pocket, and pin on his badge. He was a New York cop who’d fallen in love with a woman from New Orleans and ended up on the force there. Stop the bad guys. Protect the good ones. That’s all he’d ever wanted to do. That’s all he wanted now, but the lines get blurry in DC.

“You’re the heart and

soul of this place,” Hardwick said. “You brought up half these agents. We need you, Hill.”

The Service was Eric’s family and working alongside these men and women a daily honor. That only made this more difficult.

Hardwick looked at him squarely. “If you had to do it today, would you step in front of those bullets again?”

“For Kline?”

“Yes,” Hardwick said.

Eric didn’t answer.

Hardwick shook his head. “This job . . . if you’re not willing to die for them any given day . . .”

“Then what the fuck am I doing here?” Eric asked. It was a good question, and he let it hang in the air between them.

“I’ve got your back,” Hardwick said, “whatever you need. Talk to Chilton, the officers’ association, whatever. You tell me.”

“I appreciate it, but I’m set.”

Hardwick gave him a thumbs-up. “Where do you need me?”

“Northern colonnade.”

He dipped his head, lowered the gun to the end of its sling, and set out.

 

4

Amber Cody adjusted her shirt and belt in the bathroom mirror until everything lined up perfectly.

Her hand slipped into her jacket pocket and came out with a presidential protection detail pin. Her fingers trembled as she fastened it to the lapel over her heart and looked at herself—her dark curls straightened and pulled into a tight bun.

She reached into her other pocket and came out with a small enameled disc—another presidential detail lapel pin from fifteen years before, her father’s, the enamel cracked and metal pitted. The new pins had RFID chips embedded so they could be used for secure access, but her dad’s was solid brass. She ran her thumb over it. They had cleaned it up before they gave it to her mother, but Cody would always remember it stained red on the day her father died.

Her chest tightened. She closed her eyes, shutting down any outward trace of feelings—not today, not a chance—and felt a shudder go through her. Relief and fear and God knows what else. She’d been trying to get to this place for fifteen years, for most of her life, and now it was up to her to prove she belonged in the most exalted—and dangerous—job in the Service.

She rolled her shoulders back, filled her chest, and straightened her suit. “Give ’em hell, Bear,” she said to her reflection, turned, and strode out.

 

Eric stepped into the doorway of his office and saw Amber Cody in the bullpen talking with Chilton and the night shift agents—Laura Leigh, Samuel Brimley, and Liam Walsh—all of them drinking coffees from Swing’s. Chilton and Walsh were laughing, and Cody was playing along with it, watching them carefully.

Eric felt a surge of emotion. He remembered her as a twelve-year-old sitting in front of her dad’s grave while the head of the Service passed her mother a folded flag. But he put that thought out of his head and paid attention to the person standing before him now: five foot six, lean but strong, a meticulously put-together special agent.

His fingers went to his shoulder, the knot of scar from the bullet that made it past his Kevlar vest on the day an assassin came for the president. It was the same day that Amber Cody’s father died. Joe Cody was on that detail, standing by the front of the presidential limousine when the ambush started. He engaged the shooter, took a bullet through the neck, and passed away before he reached the hospital.

Eric had been close with Joe Cody and kept in touch with the family after his death. Cody’s widow moved out to be with her family in eastern California, a town called Mesa Springs that was surrounded by tribal lands. She was of Paiute and Shoshone descent on her mother’s side.

He watched now as Chilton left and Cody and the others kept jawing. She tossed two paperboard coffee carriers into the trash. She was facing partly away from Eric, but he could still see the forced, eager smile, a slight forward lean toward the senior agents, almost a bow of deference. All pretty standard for a rookie on the detail.

“You should know Agent Cody had the highest range scores of any candidate for the past two years,” Brimley said. He’d also known Cody’s dad.

Agent Walsh ran his hand through his red hair, stepped closer to Cody, and took a sip of his coffee.

“Targets don’t shoot

back,” he said in that whisper voice of his. “It’s a different fucking story when you’re on the wrong end of the gun.”

He glanced around, met eyes with Leigh, and grinned.

Eric’s impulse was to walk over and shove him back a foot or two, but he checked it. She was an agent now, not his dead friend’s daughter, and he would treat her like anyone else on the detail. He’d met up with her when she first moved to town, and she made it clear she didn’t want any special treatment, wouldn’t stand for it.

“Let’s give Agent Cody a chance,” Brimley said. “I remember when you showed up after training with your suit pockets still sewn shut.”

Walsh’s jaw tightened, and he stared at the veteran officer. “And now I outrank you.”

Brimley chuckled. Walsh was cocky and a bit of a mouth, but also one of the strongest agents on the detail. A good-looking guy, he still had a chip on his shoulder, maybe from barely clearing five foot seven.

“I’m just fucking around, Cody,” Walsh said. “We do it to everybody. Welcome to the Show.” Secret Service slang for the president’s detail.

He punched Brimley playfully in the ribs. The other agent jabbed back, lightning quick with an old boxer’s strength.

Walsh took a step and held his hand out to Cody. As she shook it, she finally noticed Eric. A hint of a smile, then she seemed to catch herself and put on a neutral, professional look.

Eric stepped closer to the bullpen. “Special Agent Cody,” he said. “We’re glad to have you at the White House.” He kept his voice even. The last time he’d called someone that it was her father in the back of an ambulance.

“Thank you, Agent Hill.”

“Let’s get you set up with an MP5,” Eric said, and she followed him to the gun safe. “What was Chilton talking about? His Brioni?”

“It is a beautiful suit.”

He’d seen Chilton feeling the material on her navy jacket, which was fine, but basic, as an agent’s should be, though the presidential protection folks had a reputation as peacocks. Seventeen years in the Service had trained him to absorb every detail in a glance—clothing, grooming, expression, body language—reading people, often hundreds in a row along a rope line, constantly scouring the environment for threats.

Cody’s mom was in a nursing home, and she was the only one in the family with any money. He imagined that didn’t leave a lot left over for the Italian wools, custom tailoring, and gold cuff links that Chilton and some of the other senior agents went in for.

“Was he ribbing you about your clothes?”

“No,” she said, stiffening. “It’s fine.”

Eric thought about the coffees. He knew he should let it go. She didn’t need a lecture and he didn’t want her second-guessing herself, but the words came out of his mouth anyway.

“You brought coffees

for the shift?”

She moved her weight from her left foot to her right. She could tell something was off.

“Yes. Sorry, I gave yours to Chilton. I didn’t think he’d be down here. Agent Leigh had said it would be a good thing to do to start things out.”

“I don’t care about that,” Eric said. The coffees were a small thing, but they bothered him tonight, something about the culture of back-scratching, of expecting perks, of taking advantage.

“You don’t have to get them coffee. And you don’t have to take their shit.”

She narrowed her eyes and looked at him warily—a mix of what is your problem, dude? and a genuine concern that she’d misstepped.

“Sorry,” she said, more to placate him than anything else. “First day and I’m glad to meet the team. Did I do something wrong here, Hill?”

“No.” He held his right fist in his left hand. He didn’t want her apologizing or trying to please him as her boss. That was the point. “Don’t be, I . . .”

She wiped her hands down the legs of her pants.

“I’ve got some other stuff going on,” Eric said, cursing himself. It had been happening more and more ever since the Braun thing—snapping at people, letting the bullshit get to him. He squeezed the fist. “Don’t worry about it. But you don’t always have to go along with whatever they say.”

She looked at his desk, and his hip, where his service pistol should have been. She could see how that approach had worked out for Eric.

He wanted to explain, to warn her not to go along with whatever Washington asked of her, blind to the fact that the men and women in these high offices got there as often through vice as virtue. She put the Service and the Presidential Protective Division on a pedestal. She was a good person, so eager and hopeful it could easily shade into innocence. She didn’t stand a fucking chance in this town.

But that was his protective instincts at work after all that had happened to her and her family. It was about Eric’s own failings, his own bitter regrets. He managed this time to hold his tongue. It wasn’t his place to tell her the full truth about the Service and its protectees, to tarnish what she believed in. She didn’t need an unprompted rant and a patronizing old white guy projecting his shit onto her.

He was so bad at this kind of thing, never finding the right words, always pushing people away and putting them on edge, especially recently.

He didn’t know what to say, so he handed her the MP5. She was still on guard and seemed a little nervous as she took it. Some stage fright was normal when agents first arrived to the Show from a field office. Eric had been no exception. It was like coming from a farm team to the majors.

She took it, checked the magazine—the MP5 was notorious for misfeeding when it had thirty-one rounds in the mag—loaded it, then slapped the cocking handle back, charging the weapon, all while pointing it down into the bullet trap beside the cabinet. Her left hand shook slightly at the beginning, then she grew more certain, forgetting herself in the familiar motions. The gun gave her comfort, the straightforwardness of steel and spring.

He looked over the security cameras, and thought of her wiping the sweat off her palms, her trembling hand.

“You’re on the East Wing, B3.” New arrivals didn’t go on the front lines until they’d shown what they were capable of.

She glanced to the video feeds. “Third basement?” A trace of disappointment in her voice.

“You know how to find it?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. She brought the MP5 to the end of its sling, waited for a moment to see if any further orders were coming, then turned on her heel and headed for her post.