by Jack Mars
The girls, being tweens, were moving into their sleeping late years. They would stay in bed until noon if Pierre and Susan let them. Heck, Susan might stay in bed too, if duty didn’t call. President of the United States was a seven-day-a-week job, with a few hours of laziness on Sunday mornings.
“I’m thinking that I’m happy,” she said. “For the first time since June sixth, I’m happy. It’s been amazing having you guys here. Just like old times. And I feel like, with everything that’s happened, I’m finally getting a handle on this President thing. I didn’t think I would be able to, but I have.”
“You’ve gotten tougher,” Pierre said. “Meaner.”
“Is it bad?” she said.
He shook his head. “No, not bad at all. You’ve matured a lot. You were still very much a girl when you were Vice President.”
Susan nodded at the truth of that. “I was pretty girly.”
“Sure,” he said. “Remember how Mademoiselle had you out jogging in bright orange yoga pants? Very sexy. But you were Vice President of the United States at the time. It seemed a little… informal, shall we say?”
“It was fun being Vice President. I really loved it.”
He nodded and laughed. “I know. I saw.”
“But then things changed.”
“Yes.”
“And we can’t go back,” she said.
He looked down at her. “Would you want to, if you could?”
She thought about it, but only for a second. “If all those people could still be alive, the ones who lost their lives at Mount Weather, I would give this job back to Thomas Hayes in a heartbeat. But failing that, no. I wouldn’t go back. I’ve got a couple more years to go before I need to decide about running for reelection. I feel like the people are starting to get behind me, and if I get another term, I think we’ll do some great, great things.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Another term?”
She laughed. “A conversation for another time.”
Just then, the bedside telephone rang. Susan reached for it, hoping it was something insignificant.
It never was.
It was her new chief-of-staff, Kat Lopez. Susan could tell her voice right away. And already, she didn’t like her tone.
“Susan?”
“Hi, Kat. You know it’s not even eight a.m. on Sunday, right? Even God rested one day a week. You’re allowed to do the same.”
Kat’s tone was serious. In general, Kat was nothing if not serious. She was a woman, she was Hispanic, and she had fought her way up the ladder from humble beginnings. She didn’t get where she was by smiling. Susan thought that was too bad. Kat was super competent. But she also had a very pretty face. It wouldn’t hurt her to smile once in a while.
“Susan, a large dam just broke in a remote area of far western North Carolina. Our analysts are saying it might be a terror attack.”
Susan felt that familiar stab of dread. It was one thing about this job that she would never get used to. It was one thing about this new life of hers that she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy.
“Casualties?” she said.
She saw the look in Pierre’s eyes. This was the job. This was the nightmare. Just a minute ago, she had breezily considered a run for another term in office.
“Yes,” Kat said.
“How many?”
“No one knows yet. Possibly hundreds.”
Susan felt the air go out of her as if she were a tire that had just been slashed.
“Susan, a group is gathering right now in the Situation Room.”
Susan nodded. “I’ll be down in fifteen minutes.”
She hung up. Pierre was staring at her.
“Is it bad?” he said.
“When isn’t it bad?”
“Okay,” he said. “Do your thing. I’ll handle the girls.”
Susan was up and moving toward the shower almost before he finished speaking.
CHAPTER THREE
10:23 a.m.
Perpendicular Trail, Southwest Harbor, Acadia National Park, Maine
“How you holding up, Monster?”
“Fine, Dad.”
Luke Stone and his son, Gunner, moved slowly up the steep, rough-hewn steps of the trail. It was a humid morning, hot and getting hotter, and Luke was mindful that Gunner was only ten years old. They took the mountain slowly, and Luke made sure they stopped for frequent rests and water breaks.
They moved higher and higher through the enormous boulder field. The massive stones were intricately laid to create a winding, almost Byzantine stairway, as if some Norse thunder god had come down from the skies and carved them with his own giant hands. Luke knew the stones had been placed by out-of-work young men plucked from East Coast cities by the Civilian Conservation Corps some eighty years before, during the depths of the Great Depression.
A little higher, and they came upon some iron rungs bolted into the stone face. They climbed the ladder, then meandered up a carved boulder switchback. Soon, the trail leveled off and they walked through some dense forest, before one final climb to the summit outlook. They climbed out onto the rocks.
Just in front of them was a steep drop-off, probably fifty stories down a sheer cliff to the large lake where they had parked. Further out, the spot offered a commanding view of the Atlantic Ocean, perhaps five miles away.
“What do you think, Monster?”
Gunner was sweaty from the heat of the day. He sat on a rock, unslung his backpack, and pulled out a water bottle. His black Dawn of the Dead T-shirt was drenched in sweat. His blond hair was matted. He took a swig from his bottle and handed it up to Luke. He was a self-assured kid.
“It’s awesome, Dad. I really like it.”
“I want to give you something,” Luke said. “I decided to wait until we climbed the mountain. I’m not sure why. I just thought it would be a fun place to do it.”
Gunner looked just slightly alarmed. He liked getting gifts, but generally speaking, he preferred ones that he had asked for.
Luke took the device out of his pocket. It was just a small piece of black plastic, about the size of a key fob. It didn’t look like much. It could have been the clicker for an automatic garage.
“What is it?” Gunner said.
“It’s a GPS unit. That means Global Positioning System.” Luke pointed at the sky. “Up there in space, there are all these satellites…”
Gunner half-smiled. He shook his head. “I know what GPS is, Dad. Mom has one in her car. It’s a good thing, too. She would get lost going around the corner without it. Why are you giving one to me?”
“See this clip it has in the back? I want you to clip it to your backpack and carry it with you wherever you go. I have an app on my cell phone that is set to track this unit. That way, even when we’re separated, I’ll always know where you are.”
“Are you worried about me?”
Luke shook his head. “No. I’m not worried. I know you can handle yourself. It’s just that we haven’t been seeing much of each other recently, and if I can just look at my phone and see where you are, it’s almost like being there with you.”
“But I can’t see where you are,” Gunner said. “So how am I supposed to feel close?”
Luke reached into his pocket and came out with another GPS unit, this one bright blue. “See this? I’m going to put it on my key ring. When we get back to the hotel, I’ll load the app into your phone, and then you can always know where I am.”
Gunner smiled. “I like that idea, Dad. But you know we could always just text each other. Do you even text? I know that a lot of people your age don’t.”
Now Luke smiled. “Yeah. We can text. We can do both.”
For Luke, it was a bittersweet feeling to be with Gunner up here. Luke had grown up without a father, and now Gunner was doing much the same. The divorce with Becca wasn’t finalized, but that was coming. Luke hadn’t worked for the government in two months, but Becca was adamant: she was going through with it anyway.
In the meantime, Luke had Gunner two weekends a month. He did everything in his power to make sure those weekends were chock-full of fun and adventure. He also did everything he could to answer Gunner’s questions in an even-handed, yet optimistic way. Questions like this one:
“Do you think we can do something like this with Mom one day?”
Luke stared out at the sea. Questions like that made him want to jump off this cliff. “I hope so.”
Gunner perked up at the slightest hint of possibility. “When?”
“Well, you have to understand that your mom and I are having a little disagreement right now.”
“I don’t understand,” Gunner said. “You love each other, right? And you promised you were going to quit your job, right? Did you really quit?”
Luke nodded. “I did quit.”
“See, Mom doesn’t believe that.”
“I know it.”
“But if you can make her believe it, then…”
Luke had quit, all right. He had quit and gone completely off radar. Susan Hopkins had promised to leave him alone, and she had honored that promise. He had also been out of touch with his old group at the Special Response Team.
The truth was, he was enjoying his time away. He had gone back to basics. He rented a cabin in the Adirondack Mountains for two weeks and spent nearly the entire time bow hunting and fishing. He bathed by jumping off the cabin’s back dock each morning. He grew a beard.
After that, he spent ten days in the Caribbean, solo sailing through St. Vincent and the Grenadines, snorkeling with sea turtles, giant stingrays, and reef sharks, and diving a couple of shipwrecks from more than a hundred years ago.
At the end of each little trip, he would give himself a day to make it back to Washington, DC, and pick up Gunner for the next dad and son adventure. Luke had to admit, being retired agreed with him. A year from now, when he ran out of money, it wasn’t going to be all that agreeable, but for now, he couldn’t think of a bad word to say about it.
“Are you and Mom going to split up for good?”
Luke detected the slightest tremble in Gunner’s voice when he asked that question. He got it, he really did. Gunner was afraid. Luke sat down on the rocks with him.
“Gunner, I love both you and your mom very much. The situation is complicated, and we’re working through it the best we can.”
That wasn’t necessarily true. Becca was cold to Luke. She wanted a divorce. She wanted full custody of Gunner. She thought that Luke was a danger to Gunner and to her. She had practically threatened to get an order of protection against him. She was being unreasonable, and she came from a family with a lot of money. She could pay for a long and bitter custody battle, if need be.
“Do you want to be with her?”
“Yes, I do. Of course I do.” It was the first lie Luke had told Gunner in this conversation. The truth was harder to ascertain. At first, he had. But as time passed, and Becca’s position hardened, he became less sure.
“Then why don’t you just come to the house and tell her? Send her roses or something, like every day?”
It was a good question. It didn’t have a simple answer.
Inside Luke’s backpack, a telephone started ringing. It was probably Becca, wanting to talk to Gunner. Luke reached inside the pack for the satellite phone he kept with him at all times. It was the only nod toward remaining on grid that he had made. Becca could always reach him. But she wasn’t the only one. There was one other person on Earth who had access to this number.
He looked at who was calling. It was a number he didn’t recognize, from the 202 area code. Washington, DC.
His heart dropped.
It was her. The other person.
“Is it Mom?” Gunner said.
“No.”
“Is it the President?”
Luke nodded. “I think so.”
“Don’t you think you better answer it?” Gunner said.
“I don’t work for her anymore,” Luke said. “Remember?”
This morning, before they had left to come on this hike, they had watched TV news footage of the dam failure in North Carolina. More than a hundred confirmed dead, hundreds more missing. An entire mountain resort had been washed away by a wall of water. Towns downstream from there were being evacuated and sandbagged as fast as possible, but there were likely to be more casualties.
The incredible thing was a dam built in 1943 had simply malfunctioned after more than seventy years of nearly perfect operations. To Luke, that smelled like sabotage. But he couldn’t imagine who would want to target a dam in such a remote area. Who would even know it was there? If it was sabotage, then it was likely a local issue, some group of militia members, or maybe environmentalists, or maybe even a disgruntled former employee, pulling a stunt that went horribly wrong, and with tragic consequences. The state police or North Carolina Bureau of Investigation would probably have the bad guys in custody by the end of the day.
But now the phone was ringing. So maybe there was more to it.
“Dad, it’s okay. I don’t want you to quit your job, even if Mom does.”
“Is that so? What if I want to quit? Don’t I get any say in the matter?”
Gunner shook his head. “I don’t think so. I mean, a lot of people died in that flood, right? What if I was one of them? What if Mom and me both died? Wouldn’t you want someone to figure out why it happened?”
The phone went on and on, ringing. When voice mail picked up, the phone stopped ringing for a few seconds, paused, and then started ringing again. They wanted to speak to Luke, and they weren’t going to leave a message.
Luke, thinking of Gunner’s words, pressed the green button on the phone. “Stone.”
“Hold for the President of the United States,” a male voice said.
There was a moment of silence, and then her voice came on the line. She sounded harder than before, someone older. The events of the past few months would age anyone.
“Luke?”
“Hi, Susan.”
“Luke, I need you to come in for a meeting.”
“Is this about the dam failure?”
“Yes.”
“Susan, I’m retired, remember?”
Her voice lowered.
“Luke, the dam was hacked. Hundreds of people are dead, and all signs point to the Chinese. We are on the verge of World War Three.”
Luke didn’t know how to respond to that.
“What time will you be here?” she asked.
And he knew it was not a question.
CHAPTER FOUR
6:15 p.m.
United States Naval Observatory – Washington, DC
Luke rode in the back of the black SUV as it pulled into the circle in front of the stately, white-gabled 1850s Queen Anne–style residence that for many years had been the Vice President’s official residence. Since the White House was destroyed two months before, this place had served as the New White House, which was fitting because the President had lived here for five years before taking on her new role.
The two months Luke had been away, he almost never thought about this place, or the people inside. He kept the satellite phone with him at the President’s request, but for the first few weeks, he lived in dread of receiving a call. After that, he almost forgot he even had the phone.
A young woman met him on the walkway in front of the house. She was brunette, tall, very pretty. She wore a no-nonsense black skirt and jacket. Her hair was tied back in a tight bun. She carried a tablet computer in her left hand. She offered Luke the other hand. Her grip was firm, all business.
“Agent Stone? I’m Kathryn Lopez, Susan’s chief-of-staff.”
Luke was a little taken aback. “Are they recruiting chiefs-of-staff right out of high school these days?”
“Very kind of you,” she said. Her voice was perfunctory. It told him she got that all the time, and most of the time it wasn’t intended to be kind. “I’m thirty-seven years old. I’ve lived in Washington thirteen years, since
right after I finished my master’s degree. I’ve worked for a Representative, two Senators, and the former Director of Health and Human Services. I’ve been around the block a couple times.”
“Okay,” Luke said. “I’m not worried about you.”
They moved through the front doors. Inside the doors, they were confronted by a checkpoint with three armed guards and a metal detector. Luke removed the Glock nine-millimeter from his shoulder holster and placed it on the conveyor belt. He reached down and unstrapped the small pocket pistol and the hunting knife taped to his calves and placed those on the belt as well. Finally, he took his keys from his pocket and dropped them on there with the weapons.
“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t remember there being a security checkpoint here.”
“There wasn’t,” Kat Lopez said. “It’s only been in for a few weeks. We’ve got more and more people coming here as Susan gets a grip on her duties, and security has formalized.”
Luke remembered. When the attacks came, and Thomas Hayes died, Susan was suddenly elevated to the Presidency. The White House had been mostly destroyed, and everything—all arrangements, all logistics—had an ad hoc, almost desperate quality to them. Those had been crazy days. He was glad for the time off since then. It was a little amazing that Susan hadn’t had any at all.
After the guards took Luke aside and gave him an extra pat-down and a quick skim with a metal-detecting wand, he and the chief-of-staff moved on.
The place was bustling. The foyer was crowded with people in suits, people in military uniforms, people with their sleeves rolled up, people walking fast through the hallways, trailing gaggles of assistants. One thing was obvious right away—there were a lot more women here than before.
“What happened to the last guy?” Luke said. “He used to be Susan’s chief-of-staff. Richard…”
Kat Lopez nodded. “Yes, Richard Monk. Well, after the Ebola incident, both he and Susan agreed that it was a good time for him to move on. But even though he’s out of here, he landed on his feet. He’s working as chief-of-staff for the new United States Representative from Delaware, Paul Chipman.”
