At 3:22 in the afternoon a frazzled, confused and upset Lydia Beckham saw the last thing she'd ever see. A Hellfire missile streaked across the sky directly toward her windshield. She didn't even have time to scream as the Cessna exploded into a million pieces.
_____
"Remember what took old Tricky Dick down?" President Parkes sat with his feet propped on the presidential desk in the Oval Office. His Chief of Staff A. J. Minter sat on the other side. Minter had been Parkes's faithful lapdog for twenty years. Those around him didn't understand why anyone would be willing to work for a boorish ingrate like Cham Parkes, but once they saw the Chief of Staff in action, it made sense. Minter's lack of self-esteem made him a perfect fit for his boss's constant nagging and criticism. The job was so far over his head that it was embarrassing, but he'd do whatever Parkes demanded, and that suited the two of them just fine.
A President's Chief of Staff was typically the backbone of operations in the White House, a leader to whom the staff looked for guidance and the gatekeeper to the President. It wasn't going to be that way during this term. The only man with backbone in the Oval Office today was the one whose shoes were scuffing the top of the most famous desk in America.
It was the afternoon of the first full day of the new President's term. He was wasting no time making changes. He barked at his subordinate, "Did you hear me? What took Nixon down?"
Minter hung his head and replied, "Uh, Watergate, I suppose." Whatever he said was going to be wrong. It always was.
"Shit, son! Do you need a history lesson? The tapes took him down. He recorded everything. Why the hell he did that, I'll never know. But we're not making the same mistake again. I want this office swept twice a day for bugs. I want to know how to circumvent the White House operators when I use the phone, and I want to find out how they archive emails so we can figure how to deal with it. They may have jumped Hillary's ass for having a private email account, but I'll guaran-damn-tee you I'll use mine whenever I want. And one more thing – that son of a bitch Homeland Security Secretary – what's his name, I never can remember – said I shouldn't use my personal cellphone anymore. Screw him! Write this down – replace that guy. Hell, I'll replace 'em all. Who's going to stop me from doing whatever I want? I'm the President of the goddamned United States!"
The Chief of Staff quietly took notes as his boss spewed venom. It would have been so much easier, he reflected to himself, if there had been the usual few months of transition between the election and the inauguration. Teams on both sides usually worked together to ensure a smooth transfer of power, especially when the new chief executive was from a different party. It was in the nation's interest to make things as easy as possible, not that Cham Parkes would have been cooperative anyway.
Regardless, this time things weren't smooth at all. One minute Harry Harrison had been President and the next minute Cham Parkes was. It was unprecedented and it threw everything off. Every appointed official and every single person working in the executive wing had been chosen by the Republican, a man whom Cham openly detested. In normal transitions the new President's Chief of Staff would have solicited recommendations for cabinet posts, offered his boss ideas for staff positions in the White House and supervised the transfer of duties. A.J. not only had no idea how to do something like that, he was powerless if he had known how. Cham Parkes didn't give a damn what Minter thought and Minter knew it. This President would make his own decisions.
Parkes's assistant buzzed him, asking if the press secretary could come in for a moment with some important news. The obviously frazzled young man told President Parkes about the grandmother whose plane had been shot down over western New York moments ago.
"It appears it was simply a mistake on her part," he continued. "Do you want to issue a statement?"
"My God, that woman was stupid," Parkes said without a tinge of feeling. "Here's my statement. Wrong damn place, wrong damn time. Write something yourself and make it be from me. Now get out. We have work to do."
Oh boy, the press secretary said to himself as he prepared a statement of regret for the woman's error that resulted in her death. People in the White House thought President Clinton's shenanigans around here were bad. At least he cared about people, unlike this jerk I work for.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Two days after the planes disappeared, Master Sergeant Jeremy Lail, a twenty-year veteran of the United States Air Force, failed to show up for work. Taking a sick day would be nothing unusual, but Lail hadn't called in at all. A high-ranking NCO, he'd never been a no-call, no-show in the fifteen years that he'd worked at Andrews Field.
Lail was the base's senior line operator. It was his job to sign off on preflight checks for government-owned aircraft. Last week the master sergeant had scribbled his signature on the checklists for both Air Force One and Air Force Two. His signature was the final part of the process before the President's plane had departed for Barbados and the Vice President's left for Honolulu, then on to Hong Kong.
Command Chief Master Sergeant Jim Perkins, the highest-ranking NCO at Andrews, not only was Jeremy's boss, he was his close friend as well. When one of Jeremy's co-workers called to say the man hadn't come to work this morning, Perkins was worried. Ordinarily he wouldn't have gotten involved chasing down absent employees, but this was different. This was his friend and this was a guy who never failed to report.
He hoped nothing was wrong, but he grew more concerned when his call to Jeremy's cellphone went to voicemail. He sent a couple of men over to Lail's house in nearby Prince George's County, Maryland. Jeremy lived out in the country near a little town called Morningside. Perkins knew the house well. He'd played poker there every other Saturday night for the past two years.
Most people who knew them wouldn't have paired the men as friends. They had only two things in common. Both were from New York City and both were high-ranking NCOs who tended to fraternize more with others of their rank than with subordinates. But there the similarities ended.
Jim Perkins had come out of a broken home in Harlem, attending New York University on a scholarship and graduating first in his class. He never knew his father, and although his mother loved Jim and his sister more than life itself, things had always been tough for them. He'd fought hard for everything he ever accomplished, he'd been married and divorced twice, and now Perkins was the top non-commissioned officer at what once had been called Andrews Air Force Base. He was in charge of nearly six thousand men and was a capable, efficient soldier who was on top of his game.
Jeremy Lail had grown up in vastly different circumstances. He was the son of a wealthy Wall Street investment banker. From his birth Jeremy's father told everyone his only child was someday going to be a high-powered lawyer. Jeremy went to the best preparatory schools and enrolled at Princeton, his father's alma mater, where he skipped class so often that he flunked out after one semester. Now his enraged father told friends Jeremy had been a loser his entire life, and he threatened to disown him. Jeremy's mother intervened and he enrolled at Nassau Community College. When that didn't work either, Jeremy's dad declared him an embarrassment to the family and said he never wanted to see him again. While his wife cried, the man tossed Jeremy's belongings out a second-story window onto the lawn, leaving a broken, tearful young man to gather his things in front of shocked neighbors, who watched it all.
Jeremy kept in touch with his mother, who secretly sent him money to get by. He moved to Virginia and enrolled at a vocational-technical school, finally finding something that excited him: aircraft maintenance technology.
He got a degree, joined the Air Force and worked at one base after another, rising in rank until he became a master sergeant and a senior line operator at Andrews four years ago. Although his mother told him how proud she was of his accomplishments, all his father would say was that he should have been an officer instead of an NCO. But that would have taken initiative, his dad said loudly and spitefully in the background more than once as Jeremy and his mother tal
ked by phone. Jeremy got the message loud and clear.
He and his up-the-line boss Jim Perkins had met over drinks one night at the NCO Club and soon became friends. When the Saturday card game started, Jim became one of the regulars at Jeremy's house for beer, pizza and low-stakes poker. There were a few others who were faithful attendees, some of whom also worked at the base.
The men Jim Perkins had sent to Jeremy's house this morning reported in. No one answered the door and the carport was empty. The back door was unlocked, so Perkins told them to go inside. Within minutes he learned his friend wasn't there.
This is crazy. It can't be the way it looks. Given the situation, he knew what he had to do. Two aircraft from this facility had gone missing the day before yesterday, carrying the leaders of the free world. The National Transportation Safety Board had been camped out at the base ever since. For the hundredth time, he looked at the two sheets lying on his desk. The preflight checklists for Air Force One and Two bore the same scribble at the bottom – the signature of Master Sergeant Jeremy Lail, a man who was now unaccounted for. As bad as it looked, Jim was beginning to have tinges of fear. This could be monumental. He called his boss, the commandant of Andrews Field, who in turn called the Secretary of Defense. An hour later President Parkes had been briefed and federal agents were combing Lail's house.
The FBI issued an all-points bulletin, calling him a person of interest in the disappearance of the planes. His picture and description headlined the nightly news worldwide. As soon as the media learned what Master Sergeant Lail's job had been at Andrews, there was intense speculation about his potential involvement in the crisis. This man could be a key part of whatever had happened, and the networks began digging into his past to find out who Jeremy Lail really was.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Fourth Day
Friday, April 3
"How about a brandy, Lou?"
Senator Louis Breaux, Democrat of Louisiana, sat across the desk from the President. Breaux glanced at his watch out of habit. It was 10:30 a.m. Cham saw him and raised his eyebrows.
"Too early for you, son?"
Lou laughed heartily. "It's never too early, Mr. President. It's five o'clock somewhere, as some intelligent man once said!"
Although the hidden bar was barely twenty feet from Parkes's desk, there was no way he'd fetch the drinks himself. There were people for that now. This new position of power brought with it a heady sense of entitlement, and no one was going to enjoy it more than he was. Cham pressed a button. A door across the room opened and a steward emerged from the pantry adjoining the Oval Office.
"How may I help you, sir?"
"Get Senator Breaux and me a couple of brandies," Parkes ordered.
"Right away, Mr. President." Isn't it a little early? the steward thought to himself as he retrieved two Baccarat snifters and carried them and a bottle to the desk.
As the man finished pouring in both snifters, Cham said, "We're going to get to know each other really well, boy, and here's your first lesson. You need to learn something about me. I'm a two-fisted drinker. You didn't pour enough brandy in those glasses for a girl to drink. Fill the damn things up halfway and be quick about it. I'm getting thirsty waiting for you!"
Senator Breaux laughed heartily as the President pulled out a seven-inch Churchill, clipped the end and lit it, exhaling satisfying puffs that drifted in gray clouds to the ceiling of the most famous office in the world.
"They let you smoke in here?" Beaux quipped.
"By God, who's going to stop me? With a four-trillion-dollar budget, I guess we can afford to clean the drapes now and then."
The steward pulled the pantry door shut behind him. In his thirty years here, he'd served several Presidents. Each one had been different. Some were outgoing and friendly, others occasionally condescending, and still others moody and dark. But none of them had been a total asshole. Not until now.
What the hell is this country in for? He shuddered at the thought.
The two old friends clicked glasses across the President's desk and sipped slowly. After a moment Parkes asked, "How'd you like to be Vice President?"
Senator Breaux popped his head up in surprise. He and Cham Parkes had been friends for thirty years as they rose in seniority in Congress. They'd brokered a lot of deals together. Some had been widely publicized and politically popular back home in their neighboring states of Texas and Louisiana. Others were done secretly, benefitting not only important donors but the men themselves. They shared big secrets, and neither could afford to hurt the other.
Louisiana was a place where politics played out in back rooms with a handshake or a nod and a wink. Many politicians from the Pelican State had gone to prison for their dirty deeds. Others should have been jailed – most of those got away with nothing more than a misdemeanor ethics violation. Louis Breaux had cleverly managed to keep his dirty laundry hidden. He was one of Cham's best friends, a man whom the Speaker always enjoyed drinking and dining with. Now the senator from Louisiana was being offered the second-highest job in the land.
"I'd consider that an honor, sir," the senator replied in his slow, syrupy Southern drawl. "My, my, Cham. Look where you are today. Sitting over there behind the desk of the President of the United States. How can I turn you down? Just think of the things we can do together!"
President Parkes walked around his desk, stuck out his hand, raised his glass and said, "To prosperity, to good friends and to a more perfect union, one with you and me in charge!"
They clinked glasses, shook hands and Breaux responded, "Damn right. Let's figure out . . ." He paused. "Do you sweep your office for bugs?"
"Who are you talking to here, Louis? Do you sweep your office for bugs? Hell yes, you do. And that's the first thing I ordered A.J. to do here. I might have been born at night, but it wasn't last night!"
The senator bellowed with laughter. "All right then. What I was going to say was, you know that four-trillion-dollar budget that's going to help clean your drapes? Let's figure out how to get some of that working for us personally."
"My thoughts exactly, Lou. My thoughts exactly."
CHAPTER NINE
The person who knew Jeremy Lail best was Joe Kaya, the owner of a chain of auto salvage yards in the suburbs around DC. After Jeremy's boss notified his commandant that Lail was missing, Jim called Joe next.
Perkins and Joe Kaya knew each other well because they both played in the poker games at Jeremy's house. They often sat next to each other and engaged in typical male banter about football, women and life in general. Jim had learned a lot about Joe's background from those conversations. Joe was a first-generation American, born in Baltimore to Iraqi immigrants, and he spoke both English and Arabic. His father had started a salvage business and became well-off thanks to his customer base of emigrants from Europe and Asia. These new Americans stuck together, trusting and preferring to deal with others like themselves.
Joe was an intelligent boy and had been salutatorian of his high school class. The first in his family to attend college, Joe was admitted to Georgetown University on a full scholarship. The institution was an unusual but perfect fit. Although being a Catholic wasn't a requirement for matriculation, Joe converted and attended Mass far more regularly than many of his friends who'd been raised in the faith.
Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service trained students to become diplomats and work in embassies and international business settings. Joe majored in international relations and graduated with honors. His degree, coupled with his fluency in Arabic, caught the attention of State Department recruiters. Joe accepted a position at the embassy in Baghdad and spent two years in his parents' home city.
When Joe's father died suddenly of a heart attack, he returned home for the funeral and decided to stay. Leaving behind a promising career in international affairs, Joe took over the family salvage yard. Fifteen years later there were half a dozen offshoots spread across the suburbs, and Joe, a confirmed bachelor, was comfortab
ly wealthy.
He and Jeremy Lail had met because of the latter's interest in restoring old cars. Jeremy had shown up at Joe's yard one Saturday looking for a particular part for a 1955 Chevy. The clerk pointed out the same model, this one beautifully restored, on a rack in the bay. "It's the boss's car," Jeremy was told, and when Joe heard him gushing with admiration over the condition of the automobile, he stepped out of his office to meet him. That conversation led to a few beers occasionally and then an invitation to the poker game. Over time they became best friends.
When Jim called Joe's cellphone, the first words he heard from Joe were lighthearted and jovial. "Ready to get your ass whipped at poker Saturday night?"
There was no friendly response. In a somber voice Jim said that Jeremy was missing. He hadn't reported for work today and he wasn't at home. Neither was his car.
"This is so unlike him," he told Joe. "Did he mention anything to you about going somewhere?"
"Damn, this sounds bad. He didn't say a word to me. What in hell could have happened? Do you think he's in trouble? Could he have been kidnapped? It feels weird to say this, but something's wrong, don't you think? This isn't like Jeremy."
"I'm going to tell you something that has to stay between us until it becomes public. Two days ago Jeremy signed off on the preflight checklists for Air Force One and Air Force Two. His signature gave them official authorization to fly. That's the part that has me worried."
"Holy shit! What are you saying? Are you thinking Jeremy was involved with the disappearances? Could somebody have planted bombs and forced him to sign off on it?"
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