Wine Country by Jeff Bailey

Wine Country

By Jeff Bailey

Chapter One

On a cool, October evening, Army veteran Roger Fowlken stood on the sidewalk on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of The White House. He was within a step or two of the iconic, black wrought iron fence that surrounded the First Residence. He wore desert-style combat boots, unlaced and untied. The heels of his boots hung over the edge of the gutter. His back was to the street. He was watching and learning the comings and goings of the locals, the tourists, the police, and the White House security staff. He had been standing on this exact spot every day for the last three weeks. All the regulars at this iconic White House viewing site had noticed Roger and dismissed his presence. The tourists gave him a wide berth, in part, because he looked like a homeless burnout and in part, because he smelled like one. He was invisible. Roger wanted that exact response. He wanted to be disgusting, unsettling, and invisible. Roger wasn’t armed, but no one would have been surprised if he pulled a gun and started shooting at his demons.

Roger seemed to be lost in his own fantasy world. He alternated his time between muttering incoherently and looking off into the distance as though to hear the voices better. The total presentation was a well-practiced act. Harmless, human husks like Roger were a fixture in D.C. Most of the locals and tourists just ignored them and gave them a little wider measure of personal space.

Roger wasn’t a burnout. He was as sane and coherent as anyone was. His act allowed him to scan the scene before him, waiting for an opening. It was close to six thirty in the evening, dusk in The District. The natural light was waning. The White House security lights hadn’t come on, yet. It was a Thursday. Fewer than the average numbers of tourists were on the Mall.

Hold on one second, Roger thought to himself. To Roger’s right, the White House grounds canine unit was out of position. They were too far to the right, facing away, and moving away. This left a gap in the canine coverage right in front of Roger. Down the sidewalk to Roger’s right, the D.C. police officer assigned to sidewalk patrol was engaged in a conversation with a tourist. In D.C., PR is everything.

Roger pantomimed several movements until he could look to his left. One of the guards at the Northeast Gate was in the guard shack, on the phone and looking down at his desk. The other guard bent to look into the open driver’s window of a car that waited for clearance to enter the White House grounds. The gate guard at the car had no clear view of Roger’s position. Roger thought that the car’s passengers might be agents of the Secret Service. He could see the backs of the heads of the occupants of the vehicle. They were all looking at the gate guard.

In a flash, Roger dropped the “crazy burnout” act and looked at the guard positioned at the Northeast corner of the White House. He didn’t have a clear view of the guard in the failing light. But, he did recognize the back of the agent’s head. The Agent faced away. It took Roger a moment to register that the agent also seemed to be talking on his cell phone. His earpiece was out. He wouldn’t hear a verbal radio alert.

GO! Roger bolted forward. In two long steps, he reached the perimeter fence. He planted one foot on the raised concrete curb a few inches from the fence and thrusted himself upward. With the agility of an acrobat, he grabbed the top rail of the fence between the protective spikes and pushed himself even higher. He needed go over the fence without catching his sleeves or his pants cuffs. His jump had to be clean.

Most of the tourists missed Roger’s sudden run for the fence. Those who did see Roger jump the fence were too stunned to react or call out. One pointed out the scene to his companion in a voice that was not loud enough to raise an alarm. Three or four people keyed their video camera apps and started recording the event. The people back home will be impressed with this video. The D.C. cop still hadn’t noticed Roger. Roger didn’t care about him. He was now out of the picture. Roger was on the White House grounds. The cop was outside the fence. The guards at the Northeast gate hadn’t noticed Roger’s incursion, either. They were too far off to one side of Roger now, and couldn’t have caught him if they wanted to.

Roger landed running. He sprinted with startling speed toward the White House’s North Portico. He was in excellent shape. No alarm sounded. The agent at the Northeast guard station was still on the phone. The canine unit still hadn’t reappeared from around the building to Roger’s right. Roger stole a glance over his shoulder. Several people were now videoing the event -- perfect. Roger ran harder.

As the evening light faded around Roger, two secret service agents in business suits came running around the East corner of the White House to Roger’s left, intent on intercepting him. A motion detector or an agent monitoring a video monitor must have alerted them. The guard that was on a personal call at the Northeast corner duty station joined the other two agents as he tried to reinsert his earpiece. All of the agents had drawn their service weapons and were shouting for Roger to stop and or to get down on the ground. The agents followed procedure and refrained from shooting what appeared to be a harmless, unarmed, homeless man in full view of a dozen civilian video cameras.

The agents would have intercepted Roger if he had continued to run toward the East staircase to the North Portico. Roger veered a few degrees to his right and continued to run a hard as he could toward the West staircase. He knew he could make the West stairs. The canine unit came around the West corner of the building, but the dog was too far away to catch Roger.

The agents approaching Roger from the East set a course to intercept Roger before he made the staircase. They miscalculated. Roger was in better shape and running faster than they had estimated. His disheveled appearance was deceiving. Roger reached the stairs several steps ahead of his pursuers.

As Roger mounted the stairs, a uniformed member of the White House’s interior security staff emerged from a small side door at the Western edge of the porch. He also had his weapon drawn. For an instant, the two exchanged a glance. The new arrival, also, refrained from shooting Roger. The uniformed guard and the three Secret Service agents all assumed that they had Roger trapped between them. Roger’s remaining escape route was through the front door of the White House, and that door was, by procedure, locked. The Secret Service unlocked the North entrance of the White House only when the President wanted to make a dramatic entrance at an outdoor ceremony. The Secret Service didn’t believe that anyone could reach that door before they could intercept him or her.

Roger was two steps from the door and the nearest agent was ten. Roger didn’t slow down. He took the last two steps and grabbed the ornate latch. With a little grunt of exertion, he opened the front door of the White House, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. His pursuers reached the door an instant later. Several civilian videos of the incident would later show that the agents were unable to open the door.

After Roger closed the front door, he started to turn around to continue his invasion of the President’s home. Before he could complete a quarter of his turn, he froze. He was standing face to face with a female, uniformed security officer. Her weapon was in her holster. Her arms were at her side. Roger stood up straight and mirrored her stance.

One breath later, Roger smiled. Neither spoke. At length, the female guard smiled back, took an exaggerated, prolonged deep breath, let it out, and allowed her alerted stance drain out her body. She didn’t move, except to turn her head toward Roger as he sauntered passed her and into the interior of the White House.

       For the most part, Wine Country is set in the Columbia Basin in Washington State. One of the nations largest nuclear industrial parks and a national laboratory are located in the town of Richland, in the middle of the Columbia Basin. The region is also one of the fastest growing wine centers in the world. The two local industries begged to be combined into a thriller. My granddaughter was my inspiration for Abby. She is a medical technician attending a local university to obtain her nursing credentials.

My name is Jeff Bailey. I write nuclear thrillers for a reason, I’ve worked in nuclear related industries, from nuclear weapons to nuclear research, for fifty years. Deer Hawk Publications released my first book, The Defect in June of 2016. In The Defect, I tell the story of a terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant and why the government covered it up. The Defect is based on true events. Deer Hawk Publications is scheduled to release I’m a Marine in May of 2017. I’m a Marine is about a female aviation firefighter in the U.S. Marines who witnesses the murder of two M.P.s. She decides that it is her duty to stop them. Keep in mind that I write nuclear thrillers. The Chilcoat Project, to be released in spring of 2018, is about the theft of nuclear weapons secrets from a national laboratory. The Chilcoat Project is also based on true events. My current project, Wine Country, is based on the true story of the Radioactive Boy Scout, but with a more sinister twist.