by Jack Mars
He dialed Lawrence’s number.
The phone rang once, two times, three…”
“Yes?” a voice said. It was Lawrence. He sounded tired, maybe a little irritated. But he was still awake, just like David had asked.
“Do you know who this is?” David said.
“Of course. I was waiting for your call.”
David nodded. “I would like you to meet me at the Lincoln Memorial.”
“Meet you at the…” There was a pause as Lawrence Keller digested the idea of meeting the president of the United States at such a very public place.
“When would you like me to meet you there?”
David Barrett smiled. “Now.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
12:33 a.m. Alaska Daylight Time (4:33 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time)
The Skies Above the Bering Strait
Between Cape Dezhnev (Russia) and Cape Prince of Wales (Alaska)
“Almighty, Almighty, do you read me?”
The American F-18 Super Hornet screamed north across the sky, flying air patrol at the western edge of American airspace, just east of the International Date Line. To its right was Alaska and the good ol’ USA. To its left was Siberia and Mother Russia.
Inside the cone of the fighter jet, the sky was wide open. It was dark out here tonight. The plane was traveling just under nine hundred miles per hour.
Captain Walter “Wildman” Caples glanced at his radar.
He was fitted with a helmet, a flight suit, a g-suit, and on top of that a parachute harness and a survival vest. The gear was bulky as hell, but he’d been at this so long it felt like a hug from the loving arms of God.
He was thirty-nine years old, married with three beautiful young daughters, and his wild man days were long past him. But people still called him Wildman and he did not mind. They had to call him something, didn’t they? And “Walter” didn’t seem to fit.
There was a lot of energy out here. That’s how Wildman thought of it: energy. He hadn’t seen it like this since his early days, back during the last years of the Cold War. The Russians were the wild men tonight.
He’d been catching visuals of MiG-29 fighter formations for hours, something he rarely did. Flight paths were usually announced and shared ahead of time, to limit the chance of surprise interactions. That was off the table. Now it was anything goes.
Wildman knew. He knew. Something had happened, some classified mission gone awry. The Russians had their blood up. It wasn’t good. But to his mind, cooler heads would prevail. They always had before.
Now, up ahead and to his west, three MiG fighters had just crossed out of Russian airspace. His radar told him they were on an intercept course with him. If they wanted to do that, they were going to cross into American airspace.
He hoped they knew what they were doing. His plane was better than theirs. And he’d been at this a long time.
He radioed air control again.
“Almighty, this is Ninety-Nine, do you read?”
“Copy, Nine Nine.”
“I’ve got three bogeys leaving Russian airspace and crossing International Date Line. Attack formation, and they appear to be on intercept heading.”
“Distance?” the air controller said.
“I’m at thirty thousand feet,” Wildman said. “Bearing fifteen degrees. Bogeys at twenty miles and closing. Bearing one forty-five. Looks like they want to give me a haircut.”
“Nine Nine, hold your heading.”
“Roger,” Wildman said.
Wildman had been around the block a few times. He’d flown patrols everywhere on planet earth. The Persian Gulf. The South China Sea. The Barents Sea. The Arctic. When he was a kid, he’d done his time right along the edge of the Iron Curtain in Europe. Later, he did bombing runs over Iraq, and then Serbia. Cat and mouse didn’t bother him. Chicken didn’t bother him. Mock attacks by Syrians or Iranians didn’t even get his pulse rate up. People played these games all the time.
But these guys were Russians. They were mad. And they were coming hard.
“Let’s not start World War Three out here, boys,” he said under his breath.
The Russian fighter jets had adjusted their headings slightly. They were coming directly toward him.
“Almighty, this is Ninety-Nine. Those bogeys have me on their noses, twelve miles out.” He waited a moment and watched the approaching airplanes. They were going very fast, headed on a near collision course. “I’m at altitude, still thirty thousand, ten miles out now. Uh… nine miles.”
“Hold your heading, Nine Nine.”
“Eight miles, Almighty. Coming hard.”
“Wildman, that’s your airspace. Hold your heading.”
“Roger that.”
A moment passed. Wildman realized he was holding his breath and pushed the air out, forcing himself to breathe normally.
“Status, Nine Nine?”
“Six miles and closing,” Wildman said. “This is going to be tight.”
He paused.
“Four miles. Jesus. These guys have a bug up their ass tonight.”
“Hold that heading, Wildman. That’s our sky.”
“I heard you the first time.”
He glanced at the radar. The lead MiG was banking away to the south. But the other two were still on an intercept heading. What were they doing? Wildman didn’t like that.
“Status?”
“Lead bogey has dropped off. New bearing to the south The other two have me right on their noses. Coming hard. Two miles.”
Wildman took a deep breath. This was really going to happen.
“One mile. Here they come.”
Wildman glanced to his left. Force of habit—it was black out there. A dark shadow, a blur, came almost too fast to see.
His heart pounded in his chest.
“Sons of bitches!”
The Russian fighter roared past, way too close. The shriek of its jet engines was loud in Wildman’s cockpit. An instant later, the turbulence hit him and his plane shuddered. And an instant after that, the second jet passed.
Wildman screamed a bad word at them. He was a Christian, and it was not his habit to use foul language. But he hated those guys. He’d never had much use for Russians, and this just confirmed he was right all along.
Wildman let out a long breath. He felt his heart thumping steadily, thumping hard, but already almost like normal.
“Status, Nine Nine?”
“Still here, but I think those Russian boys are over America right now.”
“We have a formation ninety miles out, en route to your location. Hold your heading, Wildman. The cavalry is on its way.”
He glanced at his radar. The two Russians were behind him, to his southeast, making a deep run into American airspace. It was plain stupid, what they were doing. This area was sparsely populated, sure, but they were playing a dangerous game. At these speeds, that American fighter formation would be here in five minutes.
On his radar, he noticed the first bogey, the one that had peeled off, now approaching from the southwest. It was on an intercept heading again, this time from behind him.
“Ah hell,” he said.
“Nine Nine?”
“The first one’s back. He broke formation before, but he’s got me on his nose again. He is to my southwest, very close, three miles, heading forty-five degrees.”
“Steady, Nine Nine.”
As he watched the radar, he saw something he would never have believed. Suddenly, the MiG-29 fired a missile.
“Almighty, he’s firing!”
Wildman’s heart skipped a beat in his chest. His hands moved automatically with no input from his conscious mind. His plane banked hard left and gained altitude. He over-steered and put himself nearly upside down. He rolled, still banking hard.
The missile flew by within a hundred meters. It zipped past and exploded in the air less than a mile away. The shockwave hit him and his plane shuddered again.
“Ninety-Nine? Ninety-Nine?”
“Status?”
“Still here.”
“Ninety-Nine, you are cleared to engage.”
“Roger, Almighty.”
Wildman knew his rules of engagement meant he could fire back when fired upon. It wasn’t on his to-do list when he woke up today, but it was always a possibility. He banked the plane around to his left and back. He fell in behind the MiG, which was still running north. The other two MiGs were back on his radar, coming hard from the southeast.
“It’s a party now,” Wildman said. He felt eerily calm. “Bogeys have me on their nose from the southeast. Where’s that cavalry?”
Wildman controlled his breathing and maintained his posture. These guys were trying to intimidate him, but he was operational, and he was free to engage. They had fired first. He was the good guy.
“Sixty miles,” said the voice. Still pretty far away.
“I can take him anytime,” he said.
“Take him,” Almighty said.
“Bogeys on my tail.”
“Shoot him, Nine Nine. Shoot him down.”
Wildman locked on with a Sidewinder missile. “Fox Two,” he said, using the brevity code for the Sidewinder. “Fox Two, Almighty. You better get that cavalry here. My ass is hanging in the wind.”
“Roger.”
Wildman launched the missile. “Fox Two away.”
The missile shrieked across the sky between Wildman and the MiG, closing the distance in a few seconds. The MiG attempted evasive action, but it did no good. Wildman pulled up hard as the missile hit home. He saw a flash of white light, and the MiG spinning out of control.
“Nine Nine, status?”
Wildman glanced back and below. The Russian plane spiraled away and down into the darkness.
“Fox Two kill.”
“Roger, Nine Nine,” Almighty said. “Confirmed MiG-29 kill. Nice shooting.”
“Thanks, but I still got problems.”
“Hang in there, Nine Nine. Our boys are coming.”
Wildman glanced at his readout again. They were right on his tail. If they attacked now, he was in deep trouble.
“Don’t do it,” he said.
He watched as both planes launched missiles simultaneously. It was the worst possible outcome. Dodging one would send him into the path of the other. He hesitated, costing himself a crucial second. Two seconds. Three. He realized, too late, that the thing to do was a steep, near-vertical dive.
For an instant, he saw an image of his three girls, in pretty summer dresses and Easter bonnets.
He stared at the image. It was as if he could reach out and…
“Status, Nine Nine?”
“Uh… I’m fired upon. Again.”
“Take evasive action.”
He saw a flash of light, blinding in its intensity. An instant later, there was another.
“I’m hit,” he said, but he no longer felt much urgency.
“Abort! Abort!”
The plane was spinning. The night sky zoomed past in a kaleidoscopic frenzy. The forces were so powerful, so sickening, that he could barely keep his eyes open. Walter. His name was Walter. Suddenly, he could see why they named him that.
He was dizzy. He reached for the red lever that accessed the EJECT button. He pulled it, but nothing happened.
He could not speak.
“Wildman?” the radio said.
The plane was spinning, spinning, down into the black. There were lights above his head, the lights of a settlement somewhere far below. He was upside down.
He closed his eyes and saw his girls again. They smiled and waved. The youngest was missing her two front teeth.
“Wildman! Do you read?” someone said, but the voice meant nothing to him now.
“Wildman?”
He spun in darkness.
“Wildman?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
4:50 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time
The Lincoln Memorial
Washington, DC
The man had gone insane. That much was clear.
Whatever opportunity was here for Lawrence Keller, it was looking less and less like it was as chief of staff for President David Barrett.
The two men stood about twenty feet apart on the polished stone floor inside the Greek temple of the memorial. Lawrence had a brief flashback of running on that floor in bare socks as a child, then sliding along it. It was slippery.
Nearby, the marble likeness of the greatest president in American history loomed above them. Between the statue itself, and the platform it sat upon, the entire work stood nearly three stories high. Abraham Lincoln was bathed in an eerie white light, like a saint, or a god. He sat in his chair, a colossus, both in sheer physical size and in the space he occupied in the history books and the minds of the generations that had followed him.
Above his head was his epitaph:
IN THIS TEMPLE
AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE
FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION
THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
IS ENSHRINED FOREVER
Lincoln gazed down upon his distant successor. A century and a half separated these two presidents, but the gulf was even wider than that. Lincoln could not be impressed by what he was seeing.
“Thank you for coming,” David Barrett said. He was wearing a pair of jeans, sneakers, and a dark cotton V-neck T-shirt. He seemed to have some sort of jacket wrapped around the lower part of his left arm.
“David, I came because I’m your friend. I’m concerned about you. You must know this is terribly ill-advised.”
Lawrence Keller was speaking as much for posterity as he was speaking to the president of the United States. Sewn inside the lining of his jacket was a tiny but very powerful digital listening device. All of this was being recorded to a computer chip.
Lawrence looked around again. What he was witnessing seemed impossible. He had never heard of anything remotely similar happening, certainly not in the modern era. How could it be?
“Are you really here without a security detail?”
David smiled. “I gave them the slip. It’s easier than you might imagine.”
Keller shook his head. “I think that’s hardly the point, David. They’re there for a reason. It’s not a good idea to give them the slip. We found that out in a very painful way when Elizabeth did something similar to this. It wasn’t that long ago.”
“She might have been on to something,” David said.
Keller raised his hands as if he was about to surrender. “Okay, David. I’m not going to argue with you about it. But I’m going to ask you one last time. Where is your Secret Service detail?”
“This isn’t what I came here to talk about,” David said.
“David, I will talk about anything you like. Just please answer my question first.”
David took a deep breath. He rolled his eyes. Keller imagined he was watching this strange presidency coming to its end.
“I’m tired, Lawrence. Don’t you understand that? I brought you out here tonight because I’m sick and tired. I need an out, a cover story. I need some time off. I need to go home and be with my family for a while.”
Keller shook his head. “David, please just answer me. Where is your Secret Service detail? This is a very important question.”
David Barrett, the president of the United States, began to cry.
“I can’t take it anymore, Lawrence. I hate this job.”
He closed his eyes and stood there before his former chief of staff, weeping like a small child. His broad shoulders shook with the force of his sobs.
“I can’t take it.”
A strange urge came to Keller then. It was the urge to go to this giant man-child and comfort him. He stifled it. People had been coddling David Barrett for far too long. That’s how the country had come to this pass.
An overly privileged man, a man who had never graduated to adulthood, had wandered into the most important job in the land, and it was a job th
at he was manifestly unprepared to do. Now he was breaking down.
“David, where is your security detail?”
Barrett shook his head like a teenager learning he was grounded for a minor offense. “They’re back at the White House, okay? I told you already. They’re not here. I crossed the grounds, climbed the fence, and came here alone. As far as I know, no one is even aware that I’m gone. All right, Lawrence?”
Keller nodded. That was all he needed from David. It didn’t matter what else David had come here to talk about. He wanted to go home. He wanted to quit. It didn’t matter what David wanted. It was all going to be worked out, by adults, and probably without his input.
Four men materialized from the deep shadow recesses behind Abraham Lincoln’s chair. They wore dark suits and earpieces. You could almost mistake them for Secret Service agents.
Although they didn’t run, they moved with astonishing quickness. They didn’t say a word and barely made a sound. They carried out their task with blank-faced, impassive professionalism.
Within a few seconds, they had surrounded David Barrett. They were all as tall as he was, but younger and broader and stronger.
“Lawren…” was all David managed to say.
One man stood behind him and covered his mouth with a big hand. Two others grabbed and held his arms on either side. David’s eyes when wide as he attempted to struggle against them. It was no use.
The fourth man stood in front of David and ripped his shirt away, from the V-neck down. An instant later, he had a Taser device in his hand.
“Mmmmmm!” David Barrett said. “MMMMMMM!”
The Taser made a low humming noise as it powered up. Suddenly, the twin probes flew out and caught David on his bare chest just below the neck. Fifty thousand volts of electricity coursed into David’s body. His nervous system overwhelmed, the president of the United States jittered and jived, his teeth clicking together. His eyes rolled back in his head. Drool formed at the corners of his mouth.
He went limp in the arms of the men holding him. They lowered him gently to the ground. Now four big men hovered over him. The man who had just Tasered him kneeled next to him.
“Mr. President?”
David Barrett ’s eyelids fluttered, and his eyes opened. After a moment, they focused on the man again. When David spoke, his voice was a rasp.
