By Order of the President

by W. E. B Griffin

The pilot of the helicopter said, “Marine One lifting off,” and the Sikorsky VH-3D “Sea King” of HMX-1, the Marine Corps’ Presidential Helicopter Squadron, did just that, rising quickly and smoothly from the White House lawn and then making a smooth, climbing turn that would put it on course for Camp David.

  The president of the United States said, “I feel like Nixon fleeing from the angry crowds at the White House with a very insincere smile on my face.”

  “Mr. President,” Secretary of Homeland Security Matthew Hall began and then stopped.

  “What, Matt?”

  “I was about to say I’m sorry—and I am because of the trouble that’s developed—but what I really want to say is thank you for trusting me on this.”

  The president waved his right hand, meaning “unnecessary, ” and said, “I know you believe what you told me. And it seems pretty obvious that I can’t take a chance and ignore —however incredible it may sound—the possibility that these lunatics actually intend crashing this airplane into downtown Philadelphia and may have the means to carry it off.”

  Hall didn’t reply.

  “And we’re about to see how efficient all the technology really is, aren’t we? Just about now, Natalie is telling Powell that I want to know what’s on, or what has been on, the field in Chad, and very soon satellite sensors will be having a look.”

  “Mr. President, fully aware that I’m taking another walk on DCI Powell’s lawn, there’s something else that might be done.”

  “What?”

  “Sir, I’ve not brought any of this up to General Naylor.”

  “Naylor? Why should you have?”

  “He may have some means to find out what’s going on at Abéché, and possibly before the CIA—and whoever else the DCI enlists to help him—can.”

  “You don’t think Powell will do that anyway? Jesus, you really don’t like him, do you?”

  “That’s two questions, sir. No, I don’t really like him. And, no, I don’t think he’ll seek assistance from General Naylor until his back is against the wall and he has to. Right now what he wants to do is make the agency look good.”

  “That’s a pretty serious accusation, Matt.”

  “Yes, sir, I realize that. But my responsibility is homeland security and I’m willing to admit I need all the help I can get.”

  “Two more questions. One, what do you think Naylor could do to help? And, two, what’s really caused this trouble between you and Powell? Until yesterday, I thought the two of you got along pretty well.”

  “He lied to me,” Hall said. “He gave me his word that he would take no punitive action against Major Miller and then did just that.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He relieved him for cause—I won’t even get into that business of accusing him of making a pass at Mrs. Wilson— fully aware that when an officer is relieved for cause his career is down the toilet.”

  “He chose to believe Mrs. Wilson. I think they call that ‘loyalty downward,’ ” the president said. “And from where I sit, you are showing the same thing to Major Castillo . . . and to Major Miller, who doesn’t even belong to you.”

  “He does now, sir. General Naylor put him on temporary duty with me. And, sir, I don’t know what General Naylor can do. But he may have something—even if only an idea— and I think we should ask for whatever he has.”

  “Let me think,” the president said.

  As the president stood in the doorway to exit Marine One and get in one of the golf carts lined up to carry people to the cabins of Camp David, he turned and met Hall’s eyes.

  “It looks to me as if Major Miller is an innocent bystander caught in the line of fire. I don’t like that. What can I do to help him?”

  The question took Hall by surprise. He had never even considered the possibility that the president would offer to help Miller.

  “Sir, I think if you wrote Miller a letter of commendation for his service—unspecified, but under very difficult conditions for someone of his rank and experience—and sent it to him via the Defense Intelligence Agency—they’re the ones who want to crucify him . . .”

  “You write it and I’ll sign it,” the president interrupted him. “But call General Naylor first, and, without getting into your problems with the DCI, tell him if he has any means of finding out whether or not the airplane is, or was, in Chad, to use them.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. President.”

  [FIVE]

  The Warwick Hotel 1701 Locust Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 2030 8 June 2005

  “I really wish you’d come out to the house with me, Charley,” Major H. Richard Miller, Jr., said as the taxi stopped in front of the hotel.

  “I’m sure you can eventually make your father understand what happened, but in the time between when you tell him that you were relieved because of something I asked you to do and the time he understands—thirty seconds or thirty minutes —I’d just as soon rather not be around General Miller, thank you just the same.”

  “Coward,” Miller said, chuckling, and left it there. “I’ll pick you up in the morning at half past seven,” he said. “Be standing on the sidewalk shaved and sober and full of energy because you gave your pecker the night off.”

  Castillo gave him the finger and got out of the taxi.

  His initial impression of the Warwick Hotel was that it was a nice one. Nice lobby, with a really impressive floral display—real flowers; as he walked by, he checked—on a beautiful table. To the right was the entrance to the restaurant —he could see enough of that to make the judgment it, too, looked first-rate—and a bar.

  There was a young woman sitting alone at the bar. She didn’t look like a hooker, but sometimes it was hard to tell. He decided to give the brunette and the hotel the benefit of the doubt. The Warwick didn’t look like the kind of a place where ladies of the evening were either encouraged or permitted to practice their profession. And the brunette really didn’t look like a hooker.

  He was pleased, too, with the room. It was large, high-ceilinged, with a king-sized bed, and the bathroom shelf was loaded with small bottles of high-quality shampoo and mouthwash and crisp packages of expensive soap of the type he liked to put in his toilet kit at checkout time against the inevitability that the next hotel would not much care if their guests bathed or washed out their mouths.

  Not that I need either a bath or a mouth rinse.

  What I need is a drink, maybe two—no more than two— and then something to eat, and then some sleep. Dick said to be on the sidewalk outside at half past seven.

  Jesus, the last time I went to bed was in Vienna. That— and Cobenzl and the Drei Hussaren and Pevsner and Inge— was last night?

  One drink and then something to eat and then to bed.

  But not in the restaurant. I don’t want a full meal, and I hate to eat alone at a restaurant table.

  Maybe I can get a sandwich at the bar.

  That is based solely upon my desire to have something simple to eat, not on the brunette.

  It really is, and, anyway, by the time I get back down there she’ll more than likely be gone. Nice girls—and we have decided that’s what she is—do not sit around hotels where young men with out-of-control gonads might think they’re available.

  Major Carlos G. Castillo had been in his room no more than ten minutes before he left it, got back on the elevator, and rode it down to the lobby.

  The brunette was still sitting alone at the bar.

  At that point, Major Castillo told himself, he would have headed right for the restaurant had he not also seen there were four men sitting at a table in the bar eating some kind of good-looking sandwiches on crusty bread.

  He entered the bar, taking care not to look at the brunette but taking a stool separated from hers by only one stool.

  His cellular went off as the bartender approached him.

  “Is there a local beer on draft?” Castillo asked. The waiter gave him a name he’d never heard before.

  “One o
f those, please,” Castillo said. “And a menu.”

  As the phone rang a third time, he pushed its ANSWER button. “Hello?—

  “Yes, sir?—

  “I just checked into a hotel, sir. The Warwick. I’m about to have dinner—

  “Well, that was certainly nice of the . . . him, sir. And thank you for telling me. I’ll past the word to Dick, sir—

  “He’s going to pick me up here at oh-seven-thirty, sir—

  “Thank you again, sir. Good night, sir.”

  He put the cellular back in his pocket as the bartender approached with a glass of beer and a menu.

  “What are those gentlemen eating?” Castillo asked, nodding his head slightly toward the four men sitting at the corner table.

  “Two cheesesteaks, one meatball and one sausage-and-peppers, ” the bartender said.

  “Italian sausage and peppers?” Castillo asked. The bartender nodded. “Get me one, will you please?”

  “Are you some kind of a serviceman?” the brunette asked and moved to the stool next to him.

  Wrong again, Charley, you master of analysis you.

  “What gave you an idea like that?”

  “Yes, sir . . . No, sir . . . Thank you, sir . . . Oh-seven-thirty, sir,” the brunette said.

  “I’m a Texan; we talk that way.”

  “You sounded as if whoever you were speaking to was a general or something.”

  “Actually, he’s a member of the president’s cabinet and he was calling to tell me the president just did something very nice for a friend of mine who was in a little trouble.”

  She chuckled, almost laughed.

  Nice smile.

  “What do you do, actually?”

  I’ll be damned. She really doesn’t look like a hooker.

  “Actually, I work for a company called Rig Service, Incorporated, of Corpus Christi, and what we do is service rigs.”

  “What’s a ‘rig’?”

  “An enormous oil well drilling platform, sitting in the Gulf of Mexico.”

  “And how do you service them?”

  “My end of it is the catering,” Castillo said. “You know, the food. And also the laundry. ‘Personal needs,’ they call it.”

  “May I ask you something?”

  Am I looking for a little action? Am I married? Am I a fag?

  “Why not?”

  “Could you keep talking to me for a little while?”

  “Sure. I’d be happy to.”

  “I have a little problem,” the brunette said.

  My sainted, crippled mother desperately needs brain surgery. I don’t have the money and I’m willing to do anything —anything—to come up with it.

  “My boyfriend was supposed to meet me here a half hour, no, forty-five minutes ago,” the brunette said.

  “And he’s stood you up, you think?”

  “No,” she said, firmly. “He’ll be here. And I’m not trying to get you to buy me a drink or anything like that. But I’ve been sitting here alone and—you see those men at the table?”

  Castillo nodded.

  “They keep looking at me. Like I’m a . . . hooker.”

  “Well, you certainly don’t look like a hooker to me.”

  “Thank you. Well, will you?”

  “Will I what?”

  “What Frankie does, all the time, is forget to charge his cell phone,” the brunette said. “So the battery goes dead and he can’t call me. He’s somewhere on I-95 right now, I know—he’s driving up from Washington, D.C., and it’s hard to find a pay phone anywhere anymore, much less on the interstate . . .”

  “I would be happy to talk with you until Frankie either gets his batteries charged or shows up, whichever comes first, and would be even happier if you would permit me to buy you a beverage of your choice.”

  “I couldn’t let you do that,” the brunette ordered. “But let me treat you!”

  She waved at the bartender.

  “Give this gentleman another beer,” she said. “My treat.”

  “Sir?” the bartender said.

  Jesus, he thinks she’s a hooker, too.

  Goddammit, I don’t think she is.

  “We’ll have another round, but put it on my tab.”

  “No, I insist,” the brunette said, firmly.

  Charley looked at the bartender, who shrugged.

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  Fifteen minutes later, as Castillo was finishing his Italian sausage-and-peppers sandwich, a large young man wearing a zippered jacket and a look of gross annoyance marched into the bar and up to them.

  Once Betty explained to Frankie what had happened and how nice Mr. Castle here had been to her while she was waiting for him without a telephone call, much—but by no means all—of the look of annoyance left his face.

  Betty and Frankie left. Betty said maybe they’d bump into each other sometime, which did not seem to please Frankie very much.

  But when Charley asked for the bill, the barman said, “The broad’s boyfriend took care of it.”

  Charley tipped the bartender anyway and went to his room, and, after leaving a call for quarter to seven, got in bed and went to sleep wondering what it would be like to really work in the catering end of Rig Service, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Castillo Petroleum, Inc., and maybe meet a nice girl—and Betty was a nice girl—by accident in a bar somewhere and seeing what would develop.

  X

  [ONE]

  Office of the Commanding General United States Central Command MacDill Air Force Base Tampa, Florida 2105 8 June 2005

  When General Albert McFadden, USAF, CentCom’s deputy commander, appeared in General Naylor’s office in response to Naylor’s “Right now, please” summons, Lieutenant General George H. Potter, USA, CentCom J-5, was already there.

  “I had just bought another bucket of balls,” McFadden announced. “What’s up, Allan?”

  General McFadden was wearing a lemon yellow golf shirt and powder blue slacks. General Potter was wearing a translucent Filipino-style shirt-jacket over white shorts. General Naylor was wearing khaki slacks and a gray USMA sweatshirt. Only Command Sergeant Major Wesley Suggins was in uniform.

  “Close the door, please, Wes,” General Naylor ordered. “No interruptions.”

  “Yes, sir,” Suggins said.

  “I just had a telephone call from the secretary of Homeland Security,” Naylor announced. “In the middle of the call, the president came on the line, primarily, I think, to make it clear that Hall was acting at the president’s orders.”

  Naylor let that sink in for a couple of seconds and then went on.

  “There is some reason to believe that the missing 727 is, or was, at a remote airfield in Chad. A place called Abéché.”

  He pointed to a map laid on the conference table. McFadden and Potter got out of their chairs and examined the map.

  “They could make it from there to Mecca easily,” General McFadden said.

  “Secretary Hall has information suggesting that the airplane was taken by a Somalian terrorist group calling itself the Holy Legion of Muhammad and that it is their intention to crash the plane into the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia,” Naylor said.

  “Jesus Christ!” General McFadden said. “Where did he get that?”

  General Potter rolled his eyes but said nothing.

  “The credibility of Secretary Hall’s intel depends in large measure on whether or not the 727 is, or was, at Abéché. In other words, if it is there, or was there, the rest of the scenario—that it was seized by the Holy Legion of Muhammad and that they intend to crash it in Philadelphia —becomes more credible . . .”

  “The Liberty Bell? In Philadelphia? Why the hell would they want to do that?” General McFadden asked, incredulously.

  “. . . And if it is not at Abéché, or was not at Abéché,” Naylor went on, a suggestion of impatience in his tone, “then the scenario is probably unlikely. But in the absence of any other intel regarding the missing airplane, the secretary —and
/or the president—has obviously decided to go with what he has. CentCom has been ordered to find out as quickly as possible . . .”

  “What’s the CIA got to say about this?” General McFadden interrupted.

  “Let me finish, please, General,” Naylor said, icily.

  “Sorry, sir,” McFadden said, not sounding very apologetic.

  “But to get that question out of the way,” Naylor said, “while I am sure the CIA is already working on this problem —satellites and human intel, if they have anyone in the region—we have been ordered to find out as quickly as possible —without sharing our intentions with the CIA— whether or not the missing 727 is, or has been, at Abéché or not.”

  “The CIA’s not in the loop?” General Potter asked.

  “The CIA is not in the loop,” Naylor confirmed. “Suggestions? ”

  “Off the top of my head,” General McFadden said, “I don’t know where the nearest Air Commando Pave Low1is. But I can find out in a couple of minutes. We could send one in under the radar—I don’t imagine there’s much of that in Chad.”

  Goddammit, Naylor thought, there you go again. Doesn’t the Air Force teach its officers to let—make—the junior officer speak first, so he says what he thinks, rather than what he thinks his seniors want, or don’t want, to hear?

  “That would probably take longer than the time we have,” Naylor said. “I think the president wants an answer as soon as he can get it. We’re talking about hours.”

  “Delta, sir,” General Potter said. “Maybe . . . probably . . . Gray Fox.”

  Delta Force was Special Forces’ elite unit. It was famous; there had even been movies—almost hilariously inaccurate —about it. There had been no movies about Gray Fox, which was an elite unit within Delta, because very few people had even heard rumors about it.

  That’s the answer I knew I was going to get. And knew I wouldn’t like.

  “Let’s see what General McNab has to say, what he can contribute,” Naylor said. “Get him on the horn, please, Wes.”

  “Yes, sir,” Command Sergeant Major Suggins said and went into the “phone booth.”

  Fifteen seconds later, Suggins called from the phone booth: “Sir, General McNab will be on the line momentarily. ”