David grabbed the top of the warm pipe and hoisted himself up, then rolled over on top of Karen. Involuntarily her arms went around his neck, her legs spreading wide enough to accommodate his lower torso. They were squeezed into the narrow space, face to face, body to body, with barely inches to spare.
“You’re crushing me,” Karen complained.
“Shut up if you want to live!”
The terrorists were moving toward them, shining their flashlights in sweeping arcs. A beam of light passed over the large pipe and illuminated the wall behind it. David pressed himself even closer to Karen as the light came to a stop directly over their heads. They could hear a terrorist grunting while he crawled closer and closer to the pipe. He seemed to be almost next to them.
Karen let out a soft wheeze.
There wasn’t enough room for David to move his hand and place it over her mouth, so he kissed her instead. His lips sealed hers and stopped the sound. He continued the kiss until the terrorist backed away and the beam of light began to fade. It took another full minute before the terrorists left and darkness returned to the crawlspace.
“Damn, that was close!” Karen whispered as David lifted himself up off her.
“We were lucky,” he whispered back, then helped her over the large pipe and onto the floor beside him. “Just plain lucky.”
“I don’t think it was luck,” she said softly. “I think you’re pretty good at this.”
“I’ve had some practice.”
“So I gathered.” Karen took several long, deep breaths, as if testing her airway, then came back to David. “And you still kiss good, too.”
“That was to shut off your wheeze.”
She pecked his cheek in the darkness and stayed close to him. “Oh, I believe it was much more than that.”
“Believe whatever you want,” David said sharply, but he had to admit to himself that it turned out to be more than just a way to stop her wheeze. Goddamn it! He had tasted her warmth and it felt—
Abruptly a ceiling panel was pushed aside and a stream of light shot up into the crawlspace.
“They’re coming back!” David said and pushed her toward the pipe. “Squeeze into that hiding place and lie on your side perfectly still.”
“What about you?”
“Just do what I tell you,” David urged in a hushed voice, now convinced that pressing against Karen in a tight space could put them in ever greater danger. As before, it would partially block off her nose and mouth and set off another attack of asthma, which could get them both killed. “Now go!”
Wriggling away from her, he moved in a northerly direction, keeping close to the pipe until he reached an even larger, intersecting pipe. I’m halfway there, David told himself, then rotated to his left. Suddenly a barrage of flashlights pierced the darkness. Aliev’s voice barked out orders in Chechen. Two other voices answered. A moment later powerful beams of light began crisscrossing the musty air of the crawlspace.
One of the terrorists opened fire at something he saw. He sprayed shots erratically at the eastern wall of the enclosure until Aliev’s grating voice stopped him. David stayed motionless and gritted his teeth against the stinging pain in his thigh. He wasn’t sure how deeply the bullet had penetrated his quadriceps muscle, but it hurt like hell to move his leg. The bright beams of light came back to his area and were now directly overhead.
David tried desperately to squeeze himself under the giant pipe, but there wasn’t enough room and part of his body remained exposed. He pushed even harder, but to no avail. An arm and a leg were still out in the open. Shit! Oh, shit! I’m a dead man! David’s brain wailed as the beams of light dipped, coming closer and closer to him.
Sixteen
The Vice President could barely contain her anger. She was yelling into the speakerphone. “Who the hell ordered that rescue attempt? Who?”
“It wasn’t a rescue attempt, ma’am,” Agent Cassidy answered from Los Angeles. “We were trying to get the blood concentrate the President needs to the doctor in the crawlspace.”
“Is the President bleeding again?” Halloway asked hurriedly.
“We can’t be sure, ma’am,” Cassidy replied. “But if he’s not bleeding now he will be very shortly, according to our blood specialist. That’s why the attempt was made.”
Halloway took a deep breath, calming herself. “Was the blood concentrate received by our man in the ceiling?”
“We don’t know, ma’am,” Cassidy said. “We’ve lost contact with the two agents we sent up.”
“Do you know where those agents are now?” Halloway asked.
There was a pause before Cassidy answered. “They’re still up there, ma’am. One of our helicopters flying above the hospital has an infrared camera that showed two figures lying motionless on the roof. They haven’t moved for over five minutes—and there was a lot of gunfire earlier.”
“Are you telling me they’re dead?”
“That’s our best assessment, ma’am.”
Shit! Halloway grumbled to herself. Now there were two more dead, and the terrorists were on an even higher state of alert. “What about our people in the crawlspace?”
“No response there, either.”
“Which indicates that Ballineau and Kellerman are probably dead too.”
“Most likely, ma’am,” Cassidy said. “But Kellerman is no loss. Our European contacts confirm that the Chechen Hospital Fund is a terrorist front and everybody who works over there knows it. And Dr. Kellerman’s contribution to the front wasn’t a one-time event. She’s written multiple checks to them over the past two years, including an electronic transfer of five thousand dollars. We’ve also learned from the scheduling secretary at University Hospital that Dr. Kellerman switched on-call dates with a colleague so she would be on-call tonight. It surely looks like she’s an integral part of the terrorist group, ma’am.”
“Bloody traitor!” Halloway growled under the breath. “I take it that all this information has been double-checked.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is there any chance that Dr. Ballineau survived?”
“I don’t think so, ma’am. Before we had to pull our helicopters out, we tried repeatedly to contact Dr. Ballineau. There was no response.”
Halloway kept her expression level, but she groaned inwardly. Things were going from bad to worse. She glanced over to Alderman, who was fiddling with his pipe, lost in thought. Her gaze drifted across to Martin Toliver. He had an I told you so look on his face. The Vice President cleared her throat and came back to the speakerphone.
“Agent Cassidy, listen carefully. There are to be no further attempts to enter or invade the Pavilion without the express consent of the National Security Council. Do you understand?”
“Roger that.”
Halloway switched the speakerphone off and sank down in her seat. “For every step we take forward, we go back two.”
“This is turning into a boondoggle,” Toliver complained bitterly. “It’s one mistake after another. We couldn’t look more inept if we tried.”
“It was a worthwhile attempt,” Alderman said.
“Ha!” Toliver forced a laugh. “Two agents are dead with nothing accomplished, and you call that worthwhile?”
“A lot of men will die before this is over,” Alderman said darkly. “And most of them will die in a noble cause.”
Toliver shrugged. “I don’t take much solace from that. Those two men died for no reason.”
“They died for a good reason,” Alderman snapped. “Those men were Secret Service agents who vowed to protect and, if necessary, give their lives for the President. And that’s what they were doing.”
“We don’t know if the President was bleeding again,” Toliver argued. “He may not have needed that blood concentrate at that very moment.”
“I didn’t know that you were an expert in these medical matters,” Alderman jabbed.
Toliver’s face colored. A vein over his temple bulged. “What I’m saying is that two men gave their lives and we have nothing to show for it. It would have been better to wait until we knew the President needed the blood concentrate. Our doctor in the crawlspace could have alerted us to that. And now he’s probably dead, too. So, Mr. Director,” he said directly to Alderman, “if you wish to call the attempt noble and worthwhile, go ahead. But it’s cost three men their lives, and we no longer have the advantage of a man in the crawlspace.”
Halloway had to agree with Toliver’s grim summary of the situation. The death of two agents was bad enough, but the loss of the doctor in the crawlspace was a huge setback. Now they no longer had a way to check on the President and, more importantly, the Secret Service Special Ops team had lost a critical source of information on the movements and whereabouts of the terrorists. The chances of rescuing the President were rapidly approaching zero.
Halloway glanced up at the wall where a digital clock was ticking off the time remaining until the deadline. They had one hour and fifty-two minutes left.
The door to the Situation Room opened, and the Attorney General of the United States walked in. Benjamin Weir was a tall, lean man with sharp features and crew-cut gray hair. He was dressed in a tuxedo. A former professor of law at Yale, he was known for two things—his impressive knowledge of the Constitution, and the polka-dot bow ties he wore even with his formal attire.
“Sorry for not getting here sooner,” Weir apologized. “I was at a dinner in Philadelphia.”
Halloway motioned him to the empty chair usually occupied by Mitchell Kaye. “Ben, have you heard about the President?”
“I heard he was ill on the way over,” Weir replied. “Some sort of food poisoning, I was told.”
“Oh, it’s more than that,” Halloway said gravely. “Much more.”
For the next few minutes she carefully detailed the events that had befallen the President. She emphasized his illness and hemorrhaging, and the fact that he and his family were being held hostage by Chechen terrorists. Halloway gave the Attorney General time to assimilate the information before saying, “We are currently in the midst of putting together a rescue plan that involves the Secret Service. What we need to know from a constitutional standpoint is this: in the President’s absence, who takes command?”
Toliver quickly interjected, “You should also know, Ben, that this plan also involves the use of the military. In particular, the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, which is heading for the coast of Mexico.”
Weir rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Who gave the orders?”
“I did,” Halloway answered.
“With no real authority,” Toliver added, then hurriedly went on before anyone else could speak. “Now the regulations are straightforward on this matter. In the absence of the President, the Secretary of Defense takes command on all military actions.”
“I’m aware of that,” Weir said.
“So, it’s settled,” Toliver asserted. “I’m in command. And my first order—”
“Not so fast!” Weir interrupted. “The President is not only absent, he’s a hostage. And this places him in a state of incapacitation and unable to discharge the duties of his office.”
Toliver looked at Weir sternly. “Are you suggesting we invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment?”
Weir nodded. “The Constitution is very clear on this. If the President is incapacitated, the Vice President assumes the office. Of course, the majority of the President’s Cabinet, as well as those here, will have to sign a document attesting to the incapacitation.”All eyes stayed on Benjamin Weir, waiting for his next utterance. Everyone felt the gravity of the moment. The transfer of power was about to take place, and in all likelihood it would be permanent.
“Shall I have the document prepared?” Weir asked.
Without hesitation, Halloway said, “Have it drawn up.”
Weir got to his feet and bowed formally to the next President of the United States. “You’ll excuse me, ma’am.”
Halloway waited for Weir to leave, then turned to the members of the council. “We don’t sign the document. Not yet.”
“Why not?” Toliver asked. “Why not get it over with?”
“Because we’d have to inform the country and the rest of the world,” Halloway replied at once. “As Arthur explained to us earlier, news that the President is a hostage would cause panic and unfounded rumors, and a crash on the markets, and a dozen other things we don’t need. And some of our enemies would take this to be a fine opportunity to stir up trouble and cause a crisis or two. They would consider our guard down, and they just might be right. So for now, the document will remain unsigned.”
Smart, Alderman thought, very smart. Why bother with a document and its disadvantages when she was already in command? And now Toliver had been pushed aside, although he would remain an irritant. But no matter. He would always be outvoted. The Joint Chiefs would happily vote against the man who tried to downsize the military services, using his bureaucrats as hatchet men. Alderman’s eyes went to the clock on the wall. They were down to an hour and forty-six minutes. He cleared his throat and said, “Madam Vice President, the time you gave the Special Ops team to devise a plan is almost up.”
“Get them on the line,” Halloway directed.
Alderman signaled an aide. A moment later, Special Agent Geary’s voice came over the speakerphone. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Have you got a plan for us?” Halloway asked.
“Almost,” Geary reported. “We now know what materials were used in the construction of the walls and floor of the Pavilion. And we’ve pinpointed the location of the President and his family.”
“How accurate can you be?”
“Very, ma’am,” Geary told her. “We used infrared imaging on their assigned rooms.”
“How could you distinguish between the President and the terrorist guarding him?”
“The President was lying down, ma’am.”
Halloway nodded at the explanation. “You’ve got ten minutes to get those plans to us.”
“Roger that.”
“And be very careful if you devise a plan using the roof of the hospital,” Halloway counseled. “The terrorists will be watching the area now.”
“We’re aware of that, ma’am,” Geary said.
Halloway drummed her fingers on the tabletop and thought further about the roof. “Do we know how they were able to discover our men up there?”
“A news helicopter entered the no-fly zone we had set up,” Geary answered. “They inadvertently transmitted a picture of our men on the roof. The news people misinterpreted the images and reported that the men on the roof were probably Secret Service agents who were setting up some sort of special communications device. The terrorists no doubt saw it on TV as well, but unfortunately didn’t misinterpret what our agents were really doing.”
“I see,” Halloway said through her teeth. Goddamn it! Three dead men because of a fucking news helicopter that served no purpose except to put the hostages in even greater jeopardy. She waited a moment for her anger to pass, then asked, “What steps are being taken to ensure this doesn’t happen again?”
“We’ve informed all television stations that any aircraft that enters the no-fly zone will be shot out of the sky.”
“Do you have the firepower to do that?”
“Yes, ma’am. We now have two Apache helicopters securing the perimeter.”
“Get back to me in ten minutes with those plans.”
“Roger that.”
Halloway leaned back and gathered her thoughts, trying not to feel overwhelmed. It wasn’t only the power of the office she had assumed that weighed so heavily on her.
It was the responsibility of trying to save the life of a President she adored and the world needed. He was such an exceptional leader, who always seemed to make time for those around him. Particularly for her. She had been the senior senator from Ohio when he chose her to be his running mate. And all along the way he included her in his major decisions, showing her the ins and outs of the office, and grooming her to become the first female President of the United States. And she wanted the position so badly, but not this way. Not by signing some document.
“Madam Vice President,” a communications officer cried out, “you’ve got an urgent call from the President of Mexico.”
Halloway jerked her head around and stared at the row of wall clocks. It was midnight California time, 2 a.m. in Mexico City! “He knows! He knows about the Secret Service plane, and what the people on it did.”
Alderman nodded and asked the officer, “Did they specifically request the Vice President?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He knows,” Alderman agreed. “And he knows the President is ill, so he assumes you must be in command.”
Halloway again strummed her fingers on the conference table, concentrating, and tried to think through the problem. “I’ve got to buy us some time.”
“He won’t give you much,” Alderman cautioned.
“I don’t need much,” Halloway said and turned to the communications officer. “Tell him we’ll return his call.”
“Should I give him a time, ma’am?” the officer asked.
“No. Just tell him ASAP,” Halloway replied and quickly came back to Alderman. “Do we have satellites that will show us real-time pictures of all Mexican Air Force facilities?”
“I’m certain we do.”
“Get them up on the video screen,” Halloway ordered, then looked over to the Navy Chief of Staff. “Does the Reagan have to do anything special to launch its aircraft?”
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