Secret Service Agent Sandra Lewis-Marks carefully stepped inside the doorway of the great room of the luxurious hotel suite and looked around, checking carefully each corner of the room, a gun in her right hand. She stood motionless for a minute listening then motioned to her partner who slipped into the room past her. Although the suite was swept clean an hour ago and had been under guard since, the stakes were too high to take any chances. There had been a series of serious and credible threats on the lives she was charged to protect. The investigations into several of these threats led to arrests. Several plots were foiled only a few days before they would have been carried out. One would have placed an IED next to the route the President’s family would have been taking and the size of the bomb that was confiscated was such that it would have ‘almost certainly defeated the armor plating of the limousine.’ This is politically correct way to say that the bomb would have breached the armor with enough force to injure or kill the president’s family. The bomb was ready and stored in a garage just a mile from the site. It looked just like a piece of traffic control concrete. The plan was to remove the piece and replace it overnight. It would sit there till it was detonated. The plotters had a clear view of the bomb and the roadway from an apartment they had rented.

The mood of the country had turned sour. The president’s popularity rating had never been over fifty five percent. Now it was out of single digits only on a very good day. Bashing him had become more of a national sport than basing GWB was several years before. Even his supporters wondered if they had made a mistake.

Sandra stood where she could see the front door of the room and her partner’s back as he checked the other rooms of the suite carefully, then returned. Without comment they looked at each other and both nodded. The room was clean. Her partner whispered a code word into the radio mike clipped to his head. Sandra stepped back to the hall as the other seven agents moved toward the door with the President’s wife and two daughters. In less than five minutes her charges were safe in their room and all of the agents except Sandra were either sleeping in their rooms or outside the room providing a double layer safe perimeter around the president’s family. There were two rings of agents. To get to the family someone had to get past both rings and then defeat the protection in the room.