Dead Heat

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  before he did, often before dawn, and hated naps. "Sleep is for suckers," she'd laugh and then drag his sorry body out of bed every morning. He was starting to feel his age. She never did. He was ready for the end to come. She wanted to seize every moment and

  make it count for eternity.

  Erin couldn't balance a checkbook if her life depended on it. She had a stubborn

  streak that sometimes played out as determination but other times was downright

  nonsensical and infuriating. And every now and then Jon would see flashes of jealousy that surprised him but also reminded him how deeply she loved him and wanted him all to herself.

  How in the world would he survive without her? He couldn't begin to bear the thought, not even for a second.

  4:58 P.M. PST-LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  Air Force One touched down amid airtight security.

  On an average day, more than two hundred thousand passengers flew in and out of

  LAX, making it one of the busiest airports in the world. But not today. Secret Service

  Director Jackie Sanchez had ordered the entire airport closed for the president's arrival, grounding all flights and refusing all nonessential personnel access to the premises. The airlines were furious, as were their passengers. Even the mayor's office had called to

  complain. But Sanchez was taking no chances. Her sole responsibility was protecting this president, and she refused to be distracted from that mission.

  She ordered armored personnel carriers from the California National Guard brought in to block access to all runways and tarmacs. Heavily armed agents and bomb-sniffing dogs

  patrolled the grounds. Sharpshooters were positioned on rooftops, paired with spotters using high-powered binoculars. Apache helicopter gunships circled the airport and the motorcade route, as did three reconnaissance choppers on loan from the L.A. police department. And all this had been put in place before the latest threat intelligence from Yemen.

  Tensions were running high as the gleaming blue and white 747, surrounded by an escort

  of black SUVs filled with Secret Service counterassault teams, taxied to a maintenance

  hangar. There, the president would be able to disembark out of the view of reporters and fans and would-be assassins and step into one of two bulletproof, armor-plated Cadillacs,

  without anyone beyond the Secret Service and his own inner circle knowing which one.

  Keeping MacPherson alive had not been an easy task over the past eight years, and no

  one knew that better than Sanchez. She had rescued MacPherson from an airborne attack in Denver just after his first midterm elections and had been named the special agent-in-charge of his protective detail. After the recent fatal heart attack of Bud Norris, the longtime director of the Secret Service, MacPherson had promoted Sanchez to the top job. He trusted her

  with his life, and his family's, and she counted his trust and his friendship a great honor.

  But there were days when Sanchez wondered if the sacrifices she'd made were worth

  it. And this was definitely one of them. She had never married. She was never home. She never felt rested. She constantly lived with the fear that this day could be the president's last. Or her own.

  For the first time in her eighteen-year career, she began to seriously think about

  retiring. As the president came down the steps, she started to daydream, just for a moment.

  Maybe it was time to buy that boat after all, sail the Caribbean, and do a whole lot of

  drinking.

  Sanchez suddenly cursed herself for losing focus. Retirement was a topic for another

  time. Today she had to stay sharp.

  "I'm scrapping the motorcade, Mr. President," Sanchez said before MacPherson even greeted her. "I'm putting you on Marine One."

  MacPherson nodded. It didn't matter to him one way or the other. But White House Chief

  of Staff Bob Corsetti went ballistic.

  "Are you kidding me?" he shouted as he bounded down the steps of Air Force One and caught up with the president. "We're going with the motorcade. We agreed on that as early as this morning."

  "Things have changed, Mr. Corsetti," Sanchez explained.

  Corsetti swore. His face was turning red. "We need the TV pictures," he insisted. "We need the pomp and circumstance. Or do I have to remind you what a close race this is and how carefully I've orchestrated every moment."

  "Can't do it, sir; I'm sorry," Sanchez countered. "We've got a credible threat."

  "Circumstantial at best, from what I'm hearing," Corsetti said.

  "We can't afford to be wrong," Sanchez replied. "The route to Staples Center takes twenty-one minutes by motorcade. By air, I can have the president there in less than six.

  It's really not negotiable, Mr. Corsetti."

  The chief of staff stepped in front of the president and got in Sanchez's face. "Look, I fully appreciate you've got a job to do," he began, "but so do I. Getting my party elected again.

  Two months ago, Governor Jackson was nine points up. Now Senator Martinez has closed

  the gap to less than three points. I need the president out there. I need him looking presidential. I need him sucking up all the oxygen in the political universe. I need wall-to-wall television coverage. And I need it now."

  Sanchez stared back into Corsetti's eyes, then turned to MacPherson and said, "Mr.

  President, I'm not basing my decisions on polls. The Legion wants you dead, pure and

  simple. They want American power and prestige neutralized. We have every reason to

  believe they will stop at nothing to accomplish their objectives. And honestly, sir, if I were trying to take you out, I'd strike today, with a billion people watching. Even if you survive, the country panics. The markets are rattled. Oil prices spike again. The global economy shudders. And with all due respect, sir, what if you don't survive?"

  The hangar was silent for a moment, save for the jet engines of the Boeing winding

  down and the Lockheed Martin VH-71 revving up. But Corsetti wasn't taking the bait.

  "You do your job, Director, and we'll be fine. But if you don't let me do mine, Elena Martinez is going to be the next president of the United States. You want that? She's going to cut and run from the Middle East. She's going to let the U.N. seize control of U.S. foreign policy. She doesn't have the foggiest idea how to stop China from terrorizing Taiwan. She has no idea how to stare down the North Koreans. And her approach to the Israelis? Don't even get me started."

  "Mr. Corsetti, none of those are my concerns, and you know it," Sanchez replied. "I've done everything I can to make this motorcade route safe. But given the latest intel, I can't in good conscience put the president on the 105 and the 110 for the next twenty-one minutes in broad daylight with a credible threat of an imminent terrorist attack when I could have him in a secure holding room under Staples Center in precisely seven minutes. Now with all

  due respect, it's time to get the president onto Marine One. That's final. Let's move."

  Sanchez could see Corsetti trying to muster another argument, but they both knew it was pointless. Not a single voter really cared how the president got to the GOP convention site. A billion people wouldn't be watching the motorcade or the helicopter flight. They wouldn't be tuning in until the president's speech began at precisely 6:07 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, or 9:07 p.m. Eastern—a little more than one hour from now.

  "That's fine, Jackie," MacPherson interceded. "Do what you need to do."

  Corsetti shook his head and took an incoming call on his cell phone.

  "Thank you, Mr. President," Sanchez said, then spoke into her wrist-mounted

  microphone: "We're a go. I repeat, we're a go. Gambit's moving."

  3:06 A.M.-A REFUGEE CAMP IN NORTHERN JORDAN

  Bennett scanned the emergency room.

  It was empty. He took a seat in the waiting room, closed his eyes, and felt a gnawing,

  wrenching p
ain rising from deep inside his stomach. Grief was clawing its way to the

  surface, and with it the terrible realization that in the next few minutes or hours—short of a miracle—he might be utterly and completely alone.

  His father was dead. His mother lived half a world away. He had no brothers or sisters.

  His mentor had been gunned down on the road to Jerusalem eight months before. Most of

  his closest friends and colleagues had been killed over the past few years, often in front of him. And Erin was teetering on the brink of eternity, a heartbeat away from joining them and leaving him behind.

  Was this it? Was this his destiny—to be all by himself in the universe, until the Lord

  came to take him home? He knew the Scriptures. He knew Jesus said He would never leave

  him nor forsake him. But at this moment, life seemed terribly cruel.

  Bennett tried to push such thoughts away, but they refused to leave. They clung to him, haunted him.

  He'd never remarry. There wasn't time. The Rapture, he was certain, was imminent.

  Any moment, he and millions of believers like him would disappear from the earth, in the blink of an eye, to be with Christ for eternity, and then the end would come. But what if the Lord in His sovereignty chose to kick the prophetic can down the road a couple of months or even years? What if the Rapture was years away, or decades, or longer? Bennett knew he would never find someone else like Erin. How could he? It had taken them long enough to find each other, and now he wanted to be together for eternity.

  "Till death do us part" wasn't enough for Jonathan Meyers Bennett. He wanted Erin Christina McCoy forever. They were no longer two separate people leading two separate

  lives. They were no longer simply best friends, walking the road of life side by side.

  Somehow in the last few months, he and Erin had fused together into one body, one soul, one spirit. It was a mystery. It was magic. It might sound corny to some, but it was true.

  And in that moment, Bennett knew that if Erin died tonight, he would not be long for this world. He simply could not survive without her. He wasn't being melodramatic. He

  couldn't explain it. He couldn't prove it. He just knew it.

  Some people could endure the death of a spouse and go on to lead normal, healthy lives.

  He just wasn't one of them. Erin was, quite simply, the oxygen that sustained him, and he could already feel himself beginning to suffocate.

  "Sir . . . hello . . . can you hear me?"

  The voice startled him. Bennett opened his eyes and was surprised by the sight of a

  hospital administrator of some sort staring down at him. She was a large, severe-looking

  woman with gray hair pulled back in a bun and dark, joyless eyes fixed on the clipboard in her hands, not on him.

  "I must ask you questions," she said without emotion, without compassion, in a heavy Italian accent.

  "My wife," Bennett replied. "I want to see my wife."

  "Later," the woman said. "Now I ask questions."

  It was late. Bennett was exhausted. He was worried. He had no desire to answer a bunch

  of ridiculous questions for some U.N. bureaucracy or compassionless insurance company that would never pay out the trillions already claimed by the region's survivors, much less by new victims of the Day of Devastation. Millions had died from the earthquake, the pestilence, the hailstorms, and the firestorms that came just as Ezekiel had foretold more than 2,500 years before. Nearly a year later, pandemics such as the avian flu and Ebola were still claiming the lives of hundreds every day, thousands every month.

  Was Erin about to be next? As careful as they had both been, had she somehow

  contracted one of those deadly diseases?

  Ebola-Zaire was the one he worried about most. Tens of thousands of birds from Africa

  had come to Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan after the War of Gog and Magog. As the Bible

  predicted, they had feasted on the bodies of those slain during the judgment. They had

  brought the dreaded avian flu, to be sure. But that was not all. Bennett knew from searching various Web sites that Ebola-Zaire had the highest mortality rate of any Ebola strain,

  killing as many as nine in ten of its victims. There had been more outbreaks of the Ebola-Zaire strain than any other Ebola virus, and once you had it, that was it. You were finished.

  The Wikipedia article Bennett had read had been particularly disturbing. The first

  Ebola-Zaire case was recorded in 1976, in Yambuku, a town in northern Zaire. The

  man's name was Mabalo Lokela. He was a forty-four-year-old schoolteacher whose

  high fever had initially been diagnosed and treated as malaria. A week later, his symptoms had included uncontrolled vomiting, bloody diarrhea, headache, dizziness, and labored

  breathing. Soon after, he had begun bleeding from his nose and mouth.

  Fourteen days later, Mabalo Lokela was dead.

  Bennett had seen firsthand the carnage wrought by Ebola-Zaire. So had Erin. Dozens

  had died these slow, cruel deaths in this camp alone. In southern Lebanon and in parts of Damascus, the virus was taking the lives of untold thousands. Neither Jon nor Erin was

  directly involved in any care or treatment for such victims. Rather, they served on a team that cooked and distributed the meals the refugees were given each day—at eight o'clock every morning, at one in the afternoon, and at six in the evening.

  They had been briefed by the medical staff on the risks they were taking. They knew

  what to look for and what to avoid. They had taken every precaution. They had been given every possible vaccine. They wore plastic gloves and surgical masks and ate only the food flown in from Europe every week for them and the rest of the camp staff.

  But anything was possible in such an environment, and as he remembered those grim

  warnings from their first day in the camp, Bennett's fears began to grow again and a flood of emotions forced its way to the surface.

  "Name?" the administrator demanded. "I need full name."

  7

  5:11 P.M. PST-MARINE ONE, EN ROUTE TO THE GOP CONVENTION

  On approach to Staples Center, Corsetti's phone rang.

  He checked the caller ID on his secure satellite phone and found it was Secretary

  James from the Department of Homeland Security. His stomach tightened. "Hello?"

  "Bob, it's Lee. I know you're extremely busy but Ken Costello and I need a minute,"

  James said from his penthouse suite at the Hilton Boston, where he was staying the night.

  The national security advisor was patched in from the White House.

  "Of course, Mr. Secretary," Corsetti replied. "What is it?"

  "Ken, you start," James said.

  "Sure," Costello said. "Look, Bob, I just got off the phone with the Canadian prime minister. His intelligence services have informed him that three so-called security

  officers at the Chinese embassy in Ottawa have been missing for a week."

  "And?" Corsetti asked, checking his watch.

  "And our border patrol just picked up one of them trying to cross from Niagara Falls into Buffalo. During his interrogation, he said his colleagues left for Los Angeles several days ago. They were supposedly coming in on a flight from Montreal to Seattle, using fake passports. He claims he doesn't know if they got in or not and says they weren't supposed to have any contact until they were 'in place."

  "In place?" Corsetti repeated. "What does that mean?"

  "That's just it; we don't know, Bob," Secretary James interjected. "Nor does the Canadian PM. But given what's going on, Ken and I just called Jackie Sanchez, and then Scott Harris at the Bureau and Danny Tracker over at Langley. They all thought you and the president would want to know. And there's something else, as well."

  "What's that?" Corsetti asked.

  "We're not entirely sure what to make of it," the secretary explained, "but our embassy in Ca
racas says Radio Nacional de Venezuela has been running a series of talk shows for the last several days discussing the topic 'Preparing for a world without MacPherson.' Our political officers had initially written it off as election year hyperventilating. But today they reviewed the full transcripts. The talk was pretty violent, and one guest—a former Venezuelan interior minister under Chivez—suggested that those who hated the United States should just be

  patient. Quote: 'You'll be hearing good news out of Washington and Los Angeles soon enough.' Might be nothing. But given the rest of the chatter coming in, I thought I should pass it on."

  Marine One was now on the ground, the Secret Service detail was in place, and

  President MacPherson—code-named "Gambit"—was already out the door.

  Corsetti grabbed his suit jacket and briefcase and stepped off the chopper.

  "Gentlemen, I'm afraid I've got to go," he shouted over the roar of the rotors. "But I

  appreciate this, and I'll pass it along to the president when he's got a moment. Tell your teams the president is incredibly grateful for their service. Especially tonight. He's got every confidence in you all. Let's not let him down."

  Corsetti hung up the phone and clipped it back on his belt. Then he put on his security badge and stepped into a side door of the convention center. But as hard has he tried, he couldn't shake the feeling that maybe Sanchez was right. Maybe he should be worried.

  Maybe this was the real thing.

  * * *

  "Age?"

  "Forty-four," he said, then corrected himself. "No, forty-five."

  "And your wife?"

  Bennett had to hold his hands together to keep them from shaking. "Thirty-six."

  "Nationality?"

  "American."

  "Both of you?"

  "Yes."

  Bennett thought he saw the woman roll her eyes, and it made him angry. It wasn't the

  first time he'd seen it happen. Despite the fact that the U.S. was pouring billions upon billions of dollars into the U.N. humanitarian relief effort—into these refugee camps in particular—and into the overall recovery and reconstruction effort, it was clear that anti-American sentiment was on the rise. It wasn't just here in this refugee camp. It was happening throughout the region. You could see it in the new graffiti on the walls and sides of buses.