by Noah Mann
“Ready for anything, ma’am,” Carter answered her, a cocky nervousness clear in both his words, and his delivery.
“You’ve done fine so far,” Schiavo told the young man. “Rely on your training.”
They were wise words. Ones that had been given from countless commanders to their troops in conflicts with names never to be forgotten—Normandy, Khe Sanh, Gettysburg, Inchon, Fallujah. I suspected, though, that Lorenzen hadn’t imagined a battle of Columbus when he’d put Carter Laws through a rigorous and accelerated training regimen.
“Five minutes.”
The callout of our time to touchdown again came from one of the two men in the cockpit as the fire directed against us trailed off and the craft they piloted leveled out, gaining altitude to clear the rising buildings nearer the city center. Five minutes until some answer to what this was all about. Some justification for what we’ve been through.
Whether any of that mattered, I suspected, depended on just one thing—what the President of the United States had to say to Captain Angela Schiavo.
Part Three
The President
Nineteen
“Welcome to Columbus,” MacDowell said, confirming our destination as the Blackhawk banked sharply to the left, crossing over a river below.
“Scioto River,” Genesee said through the headset. “If my high school geography is correct.”
“It is,” MacDowell confirmed.
Glancing left as we turned, I could see the trailing Blackhawk still following us, its side doors open now, the feet of shooters dangling. The soldiers aboard were ready for action. Or more action, to be accurate.
“We expecting more of a fight?” I asked.
“Hopefully not,” MacDowell said. “We’ve got the northern approach to the city clear.”
“Then why didn’t we take that route all the way in?” Schiavo challenged the man.
MacDowell looked to her, not smiling, not registering any reaction at all. Just offering stony silence.
“On the ground in one,” the pilot reported over the intercom.
As soon as his words ended, the Blackhawk leveled out and nosed down, threading itself between two buildings and following a road for a few blocks before slowing and making a severely sharp right. Glancing ahead as I held on to the straps which secured me to the seat, I could see past the left gunner a circular stone projection rising from an older building.
“The Ohio Statehouse,” MacDowell said, noticing my attention.
“Hang on,” the left gunner said. “You’re bailing fast when we touch down.”
The helicopter slowed quickly, its nose rising as it glided over a pair of irregular patches of dirt in front of the statehouse.
“I want everybody out in five seconds,” the pilot instructed. “We’re down in three...two...one...GO!”
The Blackhawk’s right side gunner threw that door open, his gloved hand stabbing toward the exit as MacDowell removed his headset and hopped out first. Schiavo and Genesee helped Martin down and away from the bird, Carter and me following, weapons at the ready.
“Across the street!” MacDowell shouted as we jogged away from the Blackhawk, his destination appearing to be the base of a tall building on the corner. “Hurry.”
We’d barely cleared the Blackhawk when it lifted off, joining the bird that had trailed it but hadn’t landed, circling instead, providing cover. But from what?
“They’re heading north,” Carter said, noting the Blackhawks’ choice of route away from the capital.
That was an oddity. If MacDowell was being truthful, and parts north were free of fire, then using that route for transports without passengers made little sense. Or little sense to us.
“Just stay focused,” I told the young private, and he looked away from the departing choppers.
Just ahead of us, Martin was keeping up well, waving off any further assistance as we reached the street. Across it, where glass doors and windows had once enclosed the tall building, there were only openings to a dark interior. But not dark enough that we could not see a dozen soldiers in full battle dress waiting, most on one knee, their weapons trained at the world outside. And at us.
“Just keep your weapons down,” MacDowell cautioned.
We did just that, even when, halfway across the street, a shot rang out, and chips of the hard road surface erupted from a bullet striking just short of us.
“Sniper!”
The warning was shouted from inside the building, just before a pair of troopers emerged and scanned the buildings to the east through optics mounted atop their rifles. As we quickly crossed the sidewalk, each of the soldiers who’d exposed themselves to cover us opened up, squeezing off individual shots, the report of the dozen or so rounds echoing sharp behind us.
“Hold up,” a bearded soldier instructed after we were all safely inside the building, in what had once been the lobby of some commercial tower, stripped now to its bare essentials of floor, walls, and ceiling. “All weapons on safe. You’ll surrender them on the second floor.”
Schiavo looked to Martin, and then to me, before eyeing the soldier again.
“And you are?” she asked.
“Captain Michael Robertson, head of the president’s protective detail.”
“You’re not Secret Service,” Martin said.
The captain shifted his attention to the man who’d challenged him.
“There is no Secret Service,” Robertson said. “Not anymore.”
“Just listen to him,” MacDowell urged us. “This isn’t some violation of your rights. They’re protecting the president, all right?”
There was little to gain by resisting any request or order now that we were here. Schiavo had already played that hand with MacDowell as we waited to board Air Force One. Now, though, in apparent proximity to the man who’d summoned her, playing along was the order of the day.
“All right,” Schiavo said.
* * *
We followed MacDowell and Captain Robertson up a flight of stairs to a makeshift command post, two dozen more troopers filling the space, most settled into old hotel couches as they cleaned their weapons and prepared their gear.
“Patrol heading out,” MacDowell said, explaining the activity.
“That sniper who missed on your way in isn’t alone,” Robertson said, flashing a grim look at the bureaucrat who’d accompanied us. “They’re probing us hard.”
“It won’t be long, captain,” MacDowell told the officer, offering some vague reassurance.
Too vague for Schiavo.
“What won’t be long?” she pressed MacDowell.
He didn’t answer, holding still more back from the woman who’d been summoned here, and from those of us who’d accompanied her.
“You can put your weapons over here,” MacDowell said, pointing to a large conference table where Robertson had stopped.
“There’s food right through that door,” the captain said, pointing to a space some trooper with a sense of humor had labeled ‘Chow?’ with a crudely made sign. “You all can eat while Captain Schiavo heads upstairs.”
Schiavo was first to shed her weapons and gear, placing them on the table before laying a determined look on both MacDowell and Robertson.
“I’m not going anywhere alone,” she said.
“Captain...”
MacDowell’s exasperation was mild, but openly expressed now.
“We brought your friends with you,” the suited bureaucrat said. “We did that. But you are here to see the President of the United States. You. Not your entourage.”
Schiavo shook her head at the man’s resistance.
“Not everyone,” she told him. “Just Mr. Fletcher.”
Gazes angled toward me, while mine naturally shifted to Schiavo. She’d given no indication that this was a move she was making, but I wasn’t taken completely by surprise. From the point that Genesee and I had joined her on this journey, she’d made it clear that, though this was ultimately about her, we
were all stakeholders in not just the outcome, but also in the process. This insistence she’d just voiced was only a continuation of that.
“Captain,” MacDowell repeated, though the wind was clearly leaving his sails.
Schiavo seized the initiative and nodded past the man, toward a pair of armed troopers standing guard at the base of an open staircase leading to a landing barely visible in the din above.
“Is that the way?” she asked and suggested at the same time. “We should get moving.”
MacDowell drew a breath and gave in, nodding.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Schiavo gave the others in our group a quick look, then focused on me.
“You ready, Fletch?”
I was and I wasn’t. But that in no way meant that I wasn’t going to see this through. Whatever came of it.
Twenty
MacDowell stopped us at a door down a wide hallway on the second floor, two more troopers stationed outside this space.
“Wait here for a moment,” he instructed, then opened the door and stepped through, closing it quickly.
“Do you have even the foggiest idea where this might be going?” I asked Schiavo in a quiet voice, the troopers a few yards away ignoring our conversation in a practiced manner.
“None,” she said, quieting for a moment before a bare, sly smile spread briefly upon her lips. “Maybe he just wants to tell me my enlistment is up and shake my hand.”
I could have laughed, mostly because expressions of humor were not natural to Captain Angela Schiavo. That she was letting something like that out now spoke either to her nervousness, or to the confidence she was feeling after steering the interaction away from MacDowell’s desired protocol.
“Again, Fletch, thank you. It seems like every step of the way, no matter what we’re facing, you’re there. For me. For all of us.”
“I can say the same about you,” I reminded her.
“I’m in a uniform,” she said. “You’re not.”
“From the day the blight hit, we’ve all had a bit of soldier in us. We’re all fighting for something, for someone. To survive.”
She seemed to consider that for a moment, then nodded, accepting my premise just as the door opened and stayed that way, MacDowell stepping out and standing just clear of it.
“The president will see you now,” he said.
If any moment was worthy of some hesitation, this was it. But Schiavo didn’t. She strode straight for the door. I moved quickly to catch up, and a few seconds later we were inside, the door closing behind, MacDowell and the troopers remaining in the hallway.
* * *
It was a medium size meeting room on a floor that seemed designated for such things, no guest rooms on the level. Mostly it was empty, just a large conference table pushed against one wall with a half dozen chairs arranged in a semi-circle near the far end of the space. Then there was the man walking toward us, smiling.
“Thank you for coming,” he said as he reached us.
Schiavo hesitated only briefly at the sight of the man, the young man, the crisp blue suit he wore acting to amplify the appearance that this was some stage play where children performed as adults. Then, as expected, she saluted the man who was, apparently, her Commander in Chief.
“Sir.”
He returned the salute, then extended his hand. Schiavo shook it, then I did, the man giving us each an approving once over.
“You’ve come a long way,” the president said. “Been through a lot.”
Schiavo could have confirmed what he’d obviously been briefed on, but she didn’t. She offered not a tip of the head, nor a word of agreement. Instead she considered the man for a moment, some wariness creeping into her demeanor.
“I don’t recognize you,” she said.
“I wouldn’t either,” the president said. “The line of succession was obliterated by the chaos after the blight, and then in a series of Unified Government attacks. Eventually, the buck stopped with me. Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals. My name is Kenneth Stone.”
“Stone,” I said.
The president nodded and grinned.
“Appropriate for Land and Minerals,” he said, the brief flourish of joy fading after a few seconds. “Maybe for all this, too. We can hope.”
Schiavo, though, didn’t say anything. She made no comment. Just regarded the man with continued and obvious skepticism.
“I understand this is a bit much for you to process,” the president said. “Maybe even difficult to accept. Two others came before me. Both are dead. The simple truth is, I’m what’s left, and I’m doing what I think is right. Part of that includes bringing you here.”
Finally, Schiavo’s concern seemed to ebb. Her posture, still straight and respectful in the presence of the nation’s leader, became less rigid. She was not facing an enemy, nor an unknown, she realized, but a man trying to do what we all were, only on a grander scale.
“The eruption of Mt. Hood has obviously complicated things,” the president said. “We may be seeing some effects from the ash cloud here in a day, maybe two.”
“Do you have the ability to track its progress?” Schiavo asked. “Any satellite imagery?”
“We do still have some of that capability,” the president confirmed. “But it’s limited, as well as sporadic.”
“What about the west coast?” I asked. “Has there been any information on the ash cloud out our way?”
The president nodded.
“It began clearing two days ago when the wind shifted onshore.”
I actually let out a breath right then, one that felt as though I’d been holding it since leaving my wife and my daughter.
“That’s wonderful news,” I said, knowing how much easier that would make life for all those we’d left behind in Bandon.
The president, though, didn’t register the same relief that I did.
“I didn’t bring you here to discuss weather or natural disasters,” the president said, looking to Schiavo.
“Why did you bring me here?” she pressed him.
The president hesitated for just a moment, shifting his attention to me in his own expression of concern. Schiavo, though, almost instantaneously quelled any resistance the man might be feeling now because of my presence.
“Sir, without Mr. Fletcher, we’d all be dead. He and two others were the ones who discovered the process to defeat the blight.”
“I know that,” the president said.
“There is no issue of trust where he is concerned,” Schiavo assured the man.
“I’m certain there isn’t. But this is...different. Very different.”
“How so?” she asked.
I remained silent and watched as the president looked away from me and fixed fully on Schiavo. He slipped a hand into the inside pocket of his suit coat.
“You want to know why I brought you here,” the president prompted, and Schiavo nodded. “I brought you here for this.”
Twenty One
The president held out the small object he’d retrieved from his pocket. It was a card, no larger than one which might come from a collection of Queens and Aces and Twos. It was thicker, though, and seemed more of a sleeve, with another, thinner, card sandwiched within.
“You’ll need this,” the president said. “Colonel Schiavo.”
Colonel...
Until a moment before she’d been Captain Angela Schiavo. But, with a word from the Commander in Chief, she’d apparently vaulted past the ranks of major and lieutenant colonel to what she was now.
“Colonel?”
The president nodded.
“The few generals we have left would skewer me if I handed this responsibility off to a captain.”
Schiavo absorbed what had just happened, her gaze fixed on the card still in the president’s outstretched hand.
“Responsibility, sir?”
“Your responsibility,” the president said, nodding toward the card. “Many consider it a bu
rden. The greatest burden a leader possesses.”
The woman I’d come to respect immensely as a leader, and as a friend, looked to me, as if to seek some reassurance that this was all real. I managed something that approximated a smile, enough, it seemed, to encourage her to take what the president was offering her.
“Guard that with your life,” the president said, his gaze shifting to me. “With all your lives.”
Schiavo studied the small sleeve, sliding the contents out for inspection, a series of letters and numbers printed in bold upon it, and beneath it a number with a single decimal place, which looked like a radio frequency to me as I glimpsed the contents.
“That is the master code, Colonel Schiavo,” the president said.
“Sir?”
“With that you can authorize the launch of any strategic weapon that remains in our arsenal,” the president told her. “I have one, and now you do, as well.”
“The football,” I said, recalling the man we’d met on our journey to and from Cheyenne.
“Not exactly,” the president corrected. “The football is more of a communication device that allows encryption and transmission of launch orders contained within. This is more than that.”
I couldn’t recall Colonel Ben Michaels saying anything about a master code, and one in his position, the human equivalent of the football, would have known of such a thing. At least he should have.
But there were secrets to be kept from everyone, I imagined. Even from the man standing before us, who was giving to Schiavo the ability to destroy what remained of the world.
“Reaching any unit with strategic weapons and using the call sign Viper Diamond Nine will give you immediate access to their launch officer,” the president explained. “Giving them a target and that code will initiate a strategic strike against that target, destroying it.”
Schiavo eyed the code for a moment before slipping it back into the sleeve and sliding it into her shirt pocket. She then fixed a hard look on the Commander in Chief. Her Commander in Chief.
“One of our surviving missile subs has been tasked with staying on station in the Pacific,” the president said. “Their orders are to monitor the frequency on that card at three a.m. and three p.m. every day for any transmission from you.”