The President's Pilot

by Robert Gandt

She had to shake her head at the bizarreness of this situation. She was the President. In any other scenario she’d be expected to exercise executive authority. Get a situational briefing. Decide a course of action. For this brief sliver of time, she was free of all that. No decisions to make. No authority to exercise. Instead, she was being hauled over the boondocks in a vibrating rattletrap to a fate unknown.

  Since fleeing Summit, an idea had been inserting itself into her consciousness. A solution to her problems. To the country’s problems. The idea was still forming, indistinct but taking shape in his mind.

  She blurted it out. “We could disappear.”

  Brand kept his eyes straight ahead. “Where?”

  “Somewhere they won’t find us.” And then she realized what she had said. Us. Did she mean that? What did Brand think? “What I mean is, let them think I’m dead and—”

  “I know what you mean.” Brand looked at her. “You want to leave office.”

  “It’s not what I want. It’s what they want. The country, the voters, those people who’ve been trying to kill me.”

  “They weren’t elected to run the country. You were.”

  “It was my mistake to run. It was their mistake to elect me.” As she spoke, she glanced over her shoulder. She saw the expression on Jill Maitlin’s face. Jill’s ballpoint was suspended in mid-air. She was staring at Libby with an expression of pure revulsion.

  Brand said, “So you don’t want the job anymore. What do you want?”

  “To be free. Is that asking so much? To not be responsible for running a country that wants me gone.” She knew her voice sounded tremulous. Not the way a chief executive was supposed to sound. She didn’t care.

  Brand said nothing for a moment. He tweaked the engine mixtures. “How do you propose to do this?”

  “Let them declare me dead. Isn’t that better than letting them actually kill me?”

  “And then what? Leave the country? Change your appearance? You’re not exactly unrecognizable, you know.”

  “I haven’t gotten that far yet. I’m still thinking.”

  “This is insane,” snapped Jill from the back seat. She leaned forward, her face a few inches from Libby’s. “Remember who you are, for Christ’s sake. You’re the President of the United States. Stop talking like a nitwit kid running away from home.”

  Libby reddened. A scolding by Jill Maitlin cut her to the core. Jill was right, as usual. She was indulging in fantasies. With that thought Libby’s shoulders slumped. She felt a weariness settle over her.

  Brand seemed not to notice. He adjusted the range on the panel-mounted navigation display. He peered out through the windscreen. “Heads up,” he announced. “Air Force One will be landing soon.”

  <>

  “Got ‘em,” announced Keppler. He looked up from his console. “The only general aviation traffic in the air. No squawk, no transmission. Has to be them.”

  “Where are they headed?” asked Ripley.

  “Looks like Gettysburg. Washington Center is tracking them on en route radar, and the AWACS bird reports the same thing.”

  Ripley was standing behind Keppler. He scratched his head. “Why Gettysburg? What’s there?”

  “Who the hell knows? The good news is that it’s not far from Washington.”

  Or from Delaware, thought Ripley. It meant Berg’s force was close behind. It would be a matter of minutes.

  Again Ripley wondered about the F-15 that had been escorting Air Force One. Why didn’t he shoot it down after it took off again at Dover? The F-15 pilot was a light colonel named Apte. He must have gone rogue. There was an unconfirmed report that he had shot down his own flight lead after they’d intercepted Air Force One over the ocean. If it was true, then this guy Apte was headed for a lifetime stay at Leavenworth. Or worse.

  No matter. With Paulsen on the ground, the hunt was coming to its inevitable conclusion. She had run out of assets. There was no one left to save her.

  <>

  The sky looked empty. Too empty, Brand thought. They had observed no other small airplanes since they’d left Summit. Normally they’d see early morning general aviation traffic buzzing through this air space, inbound to Washington or headed north.

  And the air traffic control frequencies were silent. Brand had left the aircraft’s transpondor off so they wouldn’t present a telltale blip on air traffic control radars. He wasn’t transmitting on the VHF communications radio, just listening. The eerie silence reminded him of the air traffic lock down after 9/11. Maybe they’d closed the air space because of the Presidential emergency.

  Which meant they had to land quickly. Get out of the air before their low-flying, non-transmitting puddle-jumper caught the attention of the sky watchers.

  The Gulfstream that Batchelder and Switzer had commandeered would soon be arriving at Easton. It had been Gritti’s idea, sending the conspirators off on a false trail. As soon as they realized the deception, the search would be on.

  “Is that it?” asked Libby.

  “That’s it. See the town? That’s the national park to the left. The airport’s on the other side.”

  She peered through the Plexiglas windscreen. She squinted, not seeing it at first. Then she spotted it. “It doesn’t look like much of an airport.”

  “We don’t need much of an airport. We want to land, attract no attention, get a car, get you to the station.”

  Libby nodded, but her face reflected her uncertainty. “I don’t like this, Pete. What if we get stopped? What if we can’t make it to the television station? What if they don’t let us—”

  “One step at a time. We land, get away from the airport, then we’ll worry about what happens at the station.”

  Libby closed her eyes and nodded her agreement. She looked frightened, Brand thought. She had a right to be. The danger level would ratchet off the scale as soon as they were on the ground.

  Stealing the airplane had been Brand’s idea. The destination was Libby’s. Gettysburg had a regional airport. It was far enough from Washington that it was probably not yet within the net of the conspiracy’s security forces. More important, the town had a small affiliate television station. The station director, Dom Cirilli, had been a supporter of Libby’s senatorial campaign. Libby thought Cirilli could facilitate a live feed to national television.

  Maybe. If Cirilli was there. If they could communicate with him. If the facility was still on the air. If there were no more surprises.

  Since discovering that none of their cell phones worked, Brand knew they were dealing with a sophisticated enemy. Their reach extended from the military through the homeland security apparatus to even the cellular networks. What else? Did the conspirators control the broadcast media? Network television?

  They were about to find out.

  The single runway angled from southwest to northeast. Brand skirted the south edge of the sprawling Gettysburg battlefield and lined up on a two-mile final for runway zero-six. He was slowing, extending the landing flaps, when a voice crackled over the VHF radio. “Twin-engine aircraft on approach to Gettysburg, this is Gettysburg Unicom. Identify yourself.”

  So much for sneaking into Gettysburg. Brand hesitated with his finger on the transmit button. Reply or remain silent? Tell them this was Air Force One?

  No. Stay silent.

  He lowered the landing gear.

  “Twin on final at Gettysburg, be advised that the airport is closed.”

  Closed? Why would they close the airport? Brand knew. For the same reason they hadn’t seen any other airplanes. The Feds had shut down the air space.

  The end of the runway was coming up under the nose. It occurred to Brand that landing on a closed runway was a serious violation. He almost laughed. Another violation. Morganti would love it.

  The Apache passed over a stubbled pasture. The threshold of the runway with the big number 6 came up under the nose. It was a typical small regional airport. Single paved runway, three-thousand-some feet. Fixed-base operation buildin
gs off to the left at the far end. General aviation airplanes parked on the ramp.

  After flying the Boeing 747, handling the Apache was like stepping from an eighteen-wheeler to a Volkswagen. The controls felt twitchy. Brand reminded himself not to level off sixty feet above the runway, something heavy transport pilots sometimes did in little airplanes. There was almost no wind, only a light breeze from the northeast.

  Brand eased the throttles back. The two Lycoming engines popped and sputtered. Brand kept pressure on the yoke, holding the nose off, letting the Apache’s energy dissipate, feeling for the runway. Clunk. The main wheels landed, followed by the nose wheel. Not a great landing, he thought, but not embarrassing.

  He saw the airport terminal ahead, to the left. The concrete apron held half a dozen small airplanes. In the adjoining parking lot were several parked cars. If it became necessary, Brand would expand the list of stolen machines to include an automobile.

  Then he saw them. Flashing blue lights. They were mounted atop a white sedan with some kind of official-looking markings. The sedan was leading a procession of cars onto the airport.

  The Apache had slowed to a fast taxi, almost to the end of the runway. Too late to shove the throttles up and take off again. As the lead sedan with the blue lights sped onto the apron, Brand got a good look at the marking on the side: Sheriff.

  <>

  Ben Waller unsnapped the leather strap over the holstered .357. He wouldn’t draw the piece, at least not yet. He’d let the deputies cover him while he made the initial assessment. That was Waller’s method and it had served him well all these years. The young bucks liked to joke that Waller’s old Smith & Wesson was a relic from the dinosaur age. They were right, considering that most of the badasses today carried semi-automatics. Waller didn’t care. He was a dinosaur himself. Six terms as the elected sheriff of Adams County, twenty-three years before that as a patrolman or deputy in three other Pennsylvania counties. Waller and the .357 were prehistoric.

  The Homeland Security alert had come an hour ago, just as Waller had gotten to the office. It was a no-shit, pull-all-the-stops red alert. A national emergency, the President missing, and a terrorist action, possibly in a small aircraft. Hot enough to prompt Waller to call in off-duty deputies. You never knew.

  Then came the call from the regional airport tower. A suspicious airplane, not responding to instructions, inbound to Gettysburg. On his way to the airport Waller had called in three more cars from the north side of the county. He’d arrived with a force of nine plus a back up of half a dozen more who’d be there within ten minutes. All from the sheriff’s office. No outside help.

  There was going to be hell to pay no matter how this played out. According to a state judge’s ruling last year, county sheriffs were supposed to defer to the Pennsylvania State Police for such operations. And because this was a possible terrorist action, he was obliged to call in Homeland Security. The county sheriff’s job these days didn’t amount to much more than guarding schools and serving subpoenas.

  Screw the state police. And screw Homeland Security, whom Waller regarded as parasites who pissed away taxpayer dollars making old ladies take off their shoes at airports. Ben Waller was in the twilight of a long career. He was going to finish up by handling this matter the right way. His way.

  Waller’s driver was a new kid named Bradford. He had buzz-cut red hair and a tattoo on his forearm that, as best as Waller could tell, depicted a dead lizard. Bradford was perpetually scared shitless of Waller, which was the way Waller liked it. The kid kept his eyes locked straight ahead and responded to the sheriff’s orders with mechanical head nods and terse yessirs.

  Bradford wheeled the Crown Vic onto the apron, trailed by the other three patrol cars. Someone from the airport tower had had the presence of mind to open the chained gate to the ramp. The procession of patrol cars, blue lights flashing, arrived just in time to see the twin-engine airplane turning off the runway.

  Waller’s first priority was to make sure the guy didn’t take off again. He’d seen this before, back in the heavy druggie days. Claptrap planes like this one alighting on roads and turn rows in rural Pennsylvania every night to dump their stashes. When the pilots realized they were busted, they’d cob it, try to get the hell out of there. The outcome was usually ugly.

  “Cut him off,” Waller told Bradford. “When he gets headed toward the terminal, pull up to block him.” Waller barked into his shoulder-mounted mike to the other cars. “Cars one and two take either side, number three cover the tail.” They had the guy pinned. When the pilot knew he was grounded, he’d give up. Or come out shooting.

  Waller watched the airplane slow to taxi speed, then continue creeping ahead toward the terminal. It was an old bird, some kind of beat up twin-engine crate. Same kind Waller used to bust in the old days. Those guys were seldom violent, at least not when you had them cornered. Most were just trying to make some quick bucks. They’d almost always settle for a little jail time over getting shot.

  But those were druggies, not terrorists. These guys were trying to take down the President.

  The old twin was nearly to the terminal. As Bradford pulled up to block its path, the airplane’s engines abruptly shut down. The propellers clunked to a halt.

  Then nothing. No one moved.

  Waller waited. He let the other three cars take their positions around the airplane. Through the shaded Plexiglas he could see silhouettes inside the cabin. At least four occupants. Their only egress was out the right side door. If they came out shooting, he had them covered from every angle. The thought flitted across Waller’s mind that maybe he should have called in the State Police. If this thing went south, he’d be hung out to dry.

  Too late. This was his show. Maybe his last show.

  “Out of the vehicles, keep them covered,” Waller said into his mike. He saw doors opening on the patrol cars, deputies taking position, weapons in view. Until this moment Waller had been comfortable with the firepower they’d brought. Besides pistols, they had two tactical shotguns. Barnwell, the senior deputy crouched behind the car at the Piper’s tail, was hauling the LWRC M6A3 submachine gun. One of four SMGs the department’s budget allowed. Now Waller wished they had more.

  “They’re coming out,” said Bradford. The handle on the right-side passenger door was moving. The door cracked open, then swung outward. Waller tensed. If a firestorm was going to light off, it would be now.

  A leg emerged from the doorway. Then another. The legs were encased in blue slacks. They belonged to a slender, auburn-haired woman. She was stepping out onto the wing walk. She was wearing sunglasses and a jumpsuit with some kind of logo embroidered on the breast. For a long moment the woman stood on the wing of the Piper gazing around at the blue flashing lights. The officers stayed crouched behind the Crown Vics, weapons drawn.

  Waller squinted at the woman. She didn’t look like a terrorist. She looked familiar. Damned familiar.

  As the woman stepped toward the rear of the wing, a man appeared in the doorway. The pilot, Waller figured. He didn’t look like a terrorist either. He was wearing a blue jacket with markings, some kind of military outfit. Waller told himself not to relax. Terrorists were clever. This could be the set up before someone blew them all to smithereens.

  The two people in the back seat of the Piper hadn’t moved yet. The woman stepped onto the tarmac, and the man followed. The two stood behind the Piper’s wing, looking around at the dispersed patrol cars.

  Waller opened his door and stepped out, keeping the vehicle between him and the airplane. His right hand hovered over the still-holstered .357 mag. “Hold it right there,” he called. “I’m Sheriff Ben Waller.”

  The woman exchanged glances with the man beside her, who gave her a nod. She removed her sunglasses and looked directly at Waller. In that instant Waller knew why the woman looked familiar.

  “Good morning, Sheriff,” she said. “I’m Libby Paulsen and I need your help.”

  Chapter 24

 
; Only in rare moments had Sheriff Ben Waller been speechless. This was one of those moments. Waller stared at the woman while his brain tried to process what he was seeing. The President of the United States. She needs my help.

  In a daze, Waller took the woman’s outstretched hand, held it a moment while she turned the full force of her smile on him. “Uhhh, Ma’am, on behalf of the Adams County Sheriff’s Department, it’s my honor to welcome you to Gettysburg.”

  “It’s my great pleasure to meet you, Sheriff.” The President introduced her traveling companions—an Air Force officer who, as he guessed, was her pilot. A lanky woman who was some sort of advisor appeared from the cabin, followed by a serious-faced young man named Kreier who was her sole Secret Service and who was carrying an automatic weapon. Waller listened attentively while President Paulsen told him that someone had tried—and almost succeeded—in destroying Air Force One. That they had barely escaped a trap awaiting them in Delaware. That she was in extreme danger from some still undetermined conspiracy.

  Ben Waller felt as if he were dreaming.

  “May I ask, ma’am, why you decided to come to Gettysburg?”

  “I need to get to the television affiliate station here.

  “KGYB?” asked Waller. “Channel 32. Do you know someone over there?”

  “Dom Cirilli,” said the President. “We’re old friends.”

  Waller nodded. “I know Cirilli.”

  “Sounds as if you don’t like him.”

  Waller rubbed his goatee. “He’s into politics.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Only when he supports my opponent in the county election. Like he’s done the past four times.”

  She smiled. “Let me take care of Mr. Cirilli. He may be ready to change to change his affiliation.”

  Waller smiled back. “You made the right decision coming here, Madame President. I’m gonna get you to that station. You have my word that no one will get close enough to threaten you.”

  Waller saw her shoulders relax. Libby Paulsen closed her eyes for a moment. She murmured again, “Thank you.”