by Jack Mars
Susan turned back to General Loomis.
“The conservatives in Congress are organizing a vote of no confidence in your leadership,” he said. “They are gathering as we speak. As you know, they control the House and after this debacle of a day, the vote will sail through there. The only question is whether they will find the votes in the Senate.”
“General, you are active military,” Susan said. “Civilian politics doesn’t concern you. Your job is to carry out the directives of the President.”
He shrugged. “I just thought you’d want to know.”
Susan looked at Kurt. Kurt looked pained.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s true.”
“Am I always the last to know everything?” Susan almost said, but didn’t. She could picture that little statement being leaked to the media, and the resulting caption bar across the bottom of TV screens everywhere:
President: Last to Know Everything.
“Let’s see it,” she said instead.
Kurt nodded to Amy. She swiped through a couple of screens on her tablet. A second later, C-SPAN appeared on the monitor behind Kurt, and then on monitors all over the room. The camera showed the House chamber, about two-thirds full, with a crowd of people milling around near the front, and many empty seats. Nothing appeared to be happening yet.
There was a large caption across the top.
LIVE: House of Representatives Vote of No Confidence in the President
Suddenly, on the bottom of the screen, a smaller, scrolling caption appeared.
Coming up: Vice President Stephen Lief to make live statement on the crisis.
Susan turned and looked at Kat Lopez, standing behind her and to her left.
“Kat, did Eve Chandler get in touch with Stephen?”
Kat nodded. “She did. But Stephen decided he didn’t need any help from our communications team. He said he had figured out an appropriate response on his own. I don’t think Eve expected this would be the response he had in mind.”
Susan turned back to the TV screen. The people on there continued to mill around, probably waiting to hear what Stephen had to say.
Stephen Lief had been a conservative senator for eighteen years. The conservatives were all calling for war, or for Susan’s head, or both. And Stephen was angry. He felt like he had been shut out and embarrassed by the administration.
Susan turned back to Kat.
“Kat can you…”
Kat nodded and instantly was already on her way to the elevator.
“I’m on it.”
CHAPTER FORTY FIVE
7:02 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time (2:02 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)
The Skies over the Canary Islands
Atlantic Ocean
“Luke, I’ve got the strobe,” Swann said.
Only moments before, Luke had just started explaining the situation to the pilot, Mike Penza.
“Okay,” Penza was saying, practically shouting over the loud whirr of the chopper blades. “So you guys are some kind of secret agents or special ops team. And you’re looking for a missing weapon that might be here, or might not.”
That’s when the satellite phone rang.
Now, Luke pressed the phone to his ear. Next to him, Penza prattled on, his voice high and rising. Luke’s heart skipped a beat in his chest. He had come here because Trudy said this was where the weapon might be. Had he actually expected it to be here? He wasn’t sure about that.
“Where is it?” Luke said.
“It’s moving east along a coastal road, on the very northeast tip of the island of El Hierro. It just came on, and it’s moving slow. It appears to be in the back of a truck, in the middle of a caravan of about seven vehicles. There’s some low-ceiling cloud cover, so I get it and lose it, get it and lose it.”
“Populated area?” Luke said.
“No, it’s pretty dark right there. But the town of Valverde is to the south and east along the coast.”
“Okay, we’re on our way. Call me back.”
He looked at Penza. “The north coast of El Hierro. How far is it from here?”
Out the windows, everything was darkness.
Penza bobbed his head as if calculating. “Ten minutes, give or take.”
“Okay,” Luke said. “Let’s go there.”
Penza’s eyes widened. “Is the…?”
“I don’t know. Let’s go and take a look. Now, please.”
“All right,” Penza said, though the rising pitch of his voice suggested it might not be all right. He moved his stick and the chopper banked sharply to the right.
“Fast,” Luke said.
The chopper moved through dark space. Luke could feel the acceleration. Lights below them suggested boats on the water.
“What’s the story, man?” Ed said.
“Swann picked up an infrared strobe moving along the coast on the island just to the south of us. It’s in a caravan of vehicles. He thinks it might be our toy.”
Behind him, Luke heard Ed and Dunn start pulling bags out from the back. A moment later, he heard the clatter of guns—chambers opening, magazines being slid into place and driven home. A large hand reached from the back and placed a black MP5 machine gun in Luke’s lap, with a forty-round box magazine protruding from the bottom. Luke popped out the mag and checked it—fully loaded—then popped it back in again.
Three more magazines, all loaded, appeared in his lap.
“Thank you,” he said.
Penza looked at the gun in Luke’s hands. Penza’s eyes were very large now.
“It’s okay,” Luke said. “You’ve got some military experience. Use it. What we’re going to do is buzz these guys real quick, and see how we feel about them. Then, if it’s the real thing, we’ll race ahead and have you drop us about half a mile in front of them. You drop down on the road, we’re out the door in about three seconds, and you take off again. Easy. As soon as we’re gone, get yourself out of harm’s way. I’d love it if you can hang around at the far edges and pick us up after it’s over, but you don’t have to.”
“Shouldn’t we call the police?” Penza said.
For a split second, Luke thought about the local island police crossing paths with heavily armed Islamic militants. Those militants would be seasoned fighters with combat experience, and prepared to sacrifice themselves to carry out a terrorist atrocity that might kill millions of innocent people.
“Nah,” he said. “Probably not.”
The dark, rocky coastline of the island was ahead and to their right. Penza was swinging left along the edge of it.
The phone rang. Luke picked it up.
“I see you guys,” Swann said.
“Where’s the strobe?”
“Ahead and to your right, still moving along the road, still going slow a couple of miles up. You’re gaining on them quickly. I’ve dropped altitude and I’m getting a better look now. Exactly seven vehicles. The strobe is a truck or a lorry of some kind—open air. The rest look like jeeps or Range Rovers. A couple of open-air vehicles, a few closed-top ones.”
“Weapons?”
“Nothing mounted on the vehicles. No heavy weaponry. They look like civilian rides. Hide in plain sight kind of thing.”
“Fighters?” Luke said.
“I don’t know. With that many vehicles, you have to assume there are some.”
The chopper buzzed the coast, four stories up. Ahead, to their right, there were the red taillights of a line of cars on a dark road.
“Oh my God,” Penza said. “I see them. Is that them?”
“Be cool,” Ed’s deep voice said from the back seat.
“Luke, you’ve got a problem,” Swann said.
“What’s the problem?”
“Uh, those vehicles are stopping. The last two are stopping. They’ve stopped. The others have picked up speed. They’re taking off.”
Luke scanned the dark roadway to his right.
“Okay, I’ve got men in the road, Luke. They’re running. Watch it, they�
�ve got guns out. They must know you’re there. MANPADS! Shoulder-fired missiles. Incoming, Luke, watch it!”
“Swann, can you—”
Suddenly, a sizzling projectile zipped by, passing just in front of the chopper’s windshield.
“Evasive action!” Luke said. “Move it! Fly this thing!”
He looked at Penza.
Penza stared at him. “Evasive…”
Another missile came screaming out of the night. It was headed directly for Luke’s window. The chopper flew out just ahead of it. The missile zipped by just behind them, but there was a loud CLUNK from the rear of the chopper as it passed.
“Those things don’t have guidance systems,” Ed said.
“Thank God for that,” Dunn said. “Otherwise we’d already be dead.”
Now something was really clunking.
Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk…
Suddenly, the helicopter lurched hard to the right. It was facing the coastline but moving sideways.
“That’s the tail rotor,” Penza said. “It must have been hit. I’m losing my steering.”
“Incoming!” Swann shouted.
Another missile appeared, coming straight at the windshield.
Penza screamed. He wrenched the stick and the chopper lurched hard to the left. The missile whizzed past Luke’s right.
The chopper was banking now, banking hard to the left. The ocean was outside the pilot side window, the sky outside the passenger side. The chopper evened out, but then went into a lazy, counterclockwise spin. From the shoreline, Luke heard the crackle of machine gun fire. He could see the muzzle flashes from here.
“Swann, I have to call you back,” he said. He slipped the phone into the pocket of his cargo pants. He patted the Dragon Skin armor on his legs and his chest.
Around and around, the spin picking up speed.
He looked at Penza. “You have to ditch this thing,” he said.
Penza’s brain seemed to have shut off.
A burst of gunfire hit the tail of the chopper. Thunk—thunk—thunk—thunk—thunk! Bullets ripped up metal.
They were closer to land now, much closer. Too close.
“Kill the engine!” Luke said. “Put us in the water!”
Penza’s mouth hung open. He nodded crazily. An idea the man could cling to—put the helicopter in the water.
Three seconds later, the chopper dropped out of the sky.
It fell like a brick. SMACK. The impact was hard, the jolt going up Luke’s spine and through his body. The helicopter rolled over onto its face, the rotors still spinning as they hit the water. Luke pressed his hand against the control panel with one hand. The gun fell off his lap and onto the floor. He reached for his seatbelt buckle.
He heard another burst of gunfire strafe the chopper somewhere.
Then they went under, and everything went dark.
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
8:16 pm West Africa Time (2:16 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)
Nigerien Air Base 201
Agadez, Niger
“Did that just happen?” Trudy said.
Swann stared into his glowing green screen, manipulating a joystick with his right hand, tapping several buttons on his keyboard.
“Yeah, it happened.”
Trudy had seen the chopper hit the water. She didn’t want to think about what had happened inside the chopper when that happened. She didn’t want to think about what was going on inside the chopper as it sank beneath the ocean. She steeled her mind against it. She focused on the present moment instead.
“What are you going to do?” she said.
“I’m coming back around. I’m not sure what I’m going to do.”
“Why didn’t you bomb them?” she said.
Swann shook his head. “I couldn’t bomb them, Trudy! There wasn’t enough time. It takes a minute to target, and not for nothing, there was an atomic bomb there a minute ago that I really didn’t want to hit.”
Trudy looked at the screen. The strobe was out of the picture.
“Where is it now?”
Swann zoomed out the focus. The strobe was moving away to the north, going fast now. “Ah, jeez,” he said. “That thing is on, they’re powering it up, and it’s getting away. Dammit!”
On the screen, the focus had returned to the jeeps that had stopped. Several glowing figures were away from the trucks along the edge of the road. Tiny muzzle flashes from their guns lit up in green, as they fired toward the water. A larger flash went off, up into the air and out over the water.
“What’s that?” Trudy said.
“It’s a flare. They’re lighting up the water to see if anybody made it out of that helicopter crash. They’re looking for a target to hit.”
“Well, it’s safe to drop bombs on them now, isn’t it? The other thing is gone.”
Swann glanced up at her.
“Yeah. It’s okay to do it now.”
“Well?” Trudy said. “What are you waiting for?”
CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN
2:17 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
The Situation Room
The White House, Washington, DC
They might as well watch the catastrophe unfold in real time.
Susan was past the point of embarrassment. She was past the point where she felt she needed to watch Stephen Lief in private, with only her closest and friendliest advisors in the administration, away from any other prying eyes and ears.
She could assume that Frank Loomis spoke for his masters at the Pentagon, and what they really wanted was war. Failing that, they wanted to demonstrate American strength and American will by showing America ready to sacrifice the lives of their friends to protect themselves. It was insane. Unless they were withholding information from her, they didn’t know—and couldn’t know—if the tectonic device even worked.
On the screen, Stephen Lief appeared at a podium in a media room crowded with reporters. He had ditched the windbreaker from earlier today in favor of a suit jacket. Other than that, he was still the same—a tall, somewhat pear-shaped, well-dressed, late middle-aged man with a soft, owlish face. He looked like he had never lifted something heavy in his entire life. It was amazing that this was Stone’s pick for Vice President—the two men couldn’t be more different.
The very fact of Stephen Lief demonstrated the wide, flexible range of Stone’s thinking. That Lief was probably about to jab a spear through Susan’s heart didn’t really change that. A caption appeared below him.
C-SPAN Live: Vice President Stephen Lief from the Texas State House, Austin
“Okay, Stephen,” Susan said. “Let us have it.”
On the screen, Lief stepped to the microphone.
“Good afternoon,” he said. “Thank you for coming. I’m going to keep my remarks brief. Afterwards, I will answer your questions as best I can, but keep in mind that we are in a rapidly developing situation, some information is classified, and there is information I simply don’t have access to. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not in Washington at the moment. I’m down here in Texas with y’all.”
A ripple of soft laughter went through the media room.
Susan almost smiled.
“As you know, we’ve got something of a crisis on our hands. We may be under attack, and the terrible thing about it is we don’t even know if we are or not. If we are under attack, we don’t know for sure the extent of it, or what form it might take. People have begun to panic, and a type of hysteria seems to be taking hold. My esteemed former colleagues in Congress are even going so far as to hold a vote of no confidence in the President of the United States. Why? Because she’s not doing enough to protect us.”
Lief stopped and shook his head.
“So much for the loyal opposition, I suppose.”
Another ripple of laughter passed through the reporters.
Lief paused, and let the pause roll on a moment longer than expected. “Listen, I served in the Senate for eighteen years, and some of the people driving this process, a
nd this vote, are my good friends, and long-time allies of mine across many political battles. I see eye-to-eye with these folks much of the time. They are my people.”
He shook his head again. He raised his index finger and pointed it. It was a gentle gesture, not the stabbing, jabbing gesture so many politicians seemed to favor.
“But I cannot, and will not, stand idly by as they make a terrible mistake, not if I can do something to stop it. Yes, a vote of no confidence is a non-binding resolution. It’s stage drama, and nothing will seem to change as a result of it.
“But one thing will change, and it’s important. We will grow apart a little more. The people who love this President, and the ones who don’t, will distrust each other a little more. We will feel weaker, and we will become weaker as a people. Our enemies will perceive us as weaker, and they will be right to do so.
“The great Abraham Lincoln reminded us—and here he was quoting the Gospels—that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Ask yourself: are you going to be a divider, or are you going to be a uniter? I crossed party lines to join this administration. I did it—despite vast ideological differences—because I’m one of the ones who loves and trusts this President. I also love this country. I want to stand together, united with every American, even when we disagree.
“If there’s an attack, together we will withstand it. If there’s a battle, together we will win it. We’ve proven this again and again. What is this lack of confidence? Where does it come from?
“I’m not in Congress anymore, so I don’t get a vote. But if I did, I know what my vote would be. Hell yes, I have confidence in the President. Have you forgotten? She’s guided this ship through some very dangerous straits, and not even that long ago. I urge every member of Congress to stand with me, and stand with America. If you have to vote today, vote YES. Vote hell yes!
