Sachs laughed. “If nobody listened to me when I was Secretary of Education, why would they listen to me afterward? Besides, the whole silver lining is that my New York-Washington commuting days are over. I can spend more time with Jennifer.”
Nadine grimaced. "She's what, ten? Give her a year and she'll want you out of her life for good."
“Thank you, Nadine, that’s comforting,” Sachs said. "She's thirteen and needs me more than ever. Two years is a long time for a girl to live with her aunt. She hates me. If I'm going to be living in New York again, I'm going to be living with my daughter."
Nadine said, "We'll work something out. Now let’s go see the president. Maybe he’s changed his mind.”
Sachs was firm. “Look, did you book me on the shuttle to New York or not?”
Nadine flashed the email confirmation on her government-issued phone. “I’ve got you out of Reagan National in forty minutes.”
“Nadine, I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”
“You go to New York and we’re both gonna find out,” Nadine warned her. “Because if you don’t make it back tonight for the State of the Union, you’re gonna piss off the president.”
“That’s my job, remember?”
“Was your job,” Nadine huffed.
Sachs smiled. “I’ve got a better one now.”
3
1000 Hours
Hay-Adams Hotel
USAF Colonel Joseph Kozlowski shifted under the covers of the bed. A heavy cloud of despair weighed him down. He reached for Sherry, but she was gone.
Kozlowski turned onto his back and blinked his eyes open. He held up his watch and squinted. Then he slipped out of bed and plodded toward the curtains and pulled them back. The bleak January light seeped in as he looked across H Street at the White House. The snow was still coming down, burying the Rose Garden and Ellipse. He could barely make out the towering spike of the Washington Monument beyond.
Just then he could hear a hair dryer in the bathroom. He smelled coffee and saw that Sherry had room service bring up breakfast for herself. All that was left was some picked-over fruit and a pile of newspapers screaming about yet another crisis in the Far East.
He fished out a melon cube, poured himself some lukewarm coffee and scanned the headlines. It had been awhile since he’d seen an actual newspaper. Only hotels seemed to have them for guests these days, and only politicos like Sherry bothered to read them. Everything was online these days, virtual, fake. Especially the news. Nobody wanted to go on record reporting that China was like Japan in the 1930s, actively engaging in a secret war against and inside the U.S. for years. The whole world was already on its way to hell and would look nothing like it did now by the end of the century. Hell, America didn’t even look like it did a decade ago.
He was halfway through his cup when Sherry emerged from the bathroom with her blow-dried blonde hair draped over her terrycloth robe with the Hay-Adams Hotel logo on it, which she left open just enough to remind him why he never turned her down for these hotel hideaways.
Kozlowski said, "Leaving so soon?"
"Got to finish Vanderhall's reaction to the State of the Union address," she said, sliding open the closet door to reveal her Armani suit next to his uniform. The same uniform he had been wearing for eight years now, still a colonel.
"So where am I going, Sherry?"
"You're going nowhere, Koz."
Kozlowski watched her dress. "You finally figured that out?"
"The snow, silly." Sherry helped herself to his Purple Heart medal from his uniform.
"What are you doing?"
"The colors go with my jacket," she said as she pinned it beneath the lapel of her blazer.
"You ever been wounded while serving your country?" Kozlowski asked her. "That's what it means."
"I won't lose it." She put on her gold earrings and spoke to him in the mirror. "It's not like it's actually worth anything. Stolen honor is legal now."
It was no use arguing with Sherry. She was 27 and wouldn't understand, he concluded as he watched her grab her Gucci soft leather briefcase and walk out the door, off to more important things like personal advancement.
Kozlowski walked over to his blue uniform and looked at the spot where the missing medal belonged. Sherry was right. It was just clothing, bland at that, with some cheap ribbons and medals.
Cheap like his bosses. Cheap like the promises they made and the company they kept.
Everything he grew up believing—serving his country in the armed forces, the presidency, even the United States itself—no longer seemed mythic, but diminished after the pandemic. There were no rules anymore. The current occupant of the White House was yet another empty suit, and he wondered if America was even capable of producing a leader worth following into battle anymore.
He unbuckled the holster sitting on the closet shelf and removed his sidearm, a .38 standard-issue automatic pistol. He felt its weight in his hand.
Almost ten years of his life had passed in two overseas wars, he realized. Just like that. What could I have been by now? A general like Brad Marshall? Certainly a father if Mary hadn't left him. They could have had three or four kids by now. He could be skiing or having snowball fights in Colorado instead of sitting here, feeling old, used-up, worthless.
He pointed the gun to his head and put his finger on the trigger.
4
1144 Hours
The White House
U.S. President Peter Rhinehart paced beneath George Washington on the wall of the Oval Office. He had fifteen minutes before his final meeting with Deborah Sachs, and he still needed to work on his delivery of his State of the Union address.
"And let us not live in the past," he recited, stressing the word "past" like it was bad. "But look forward to the future."
Meaning his own political future, he thought, when the ivory desk phone rang. The LED display flashed: Chairman, JCS. Line Secure. Top Secret. It was General Robert Sherman, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calling from the Pentagon.
Annoyed, Rhinehart picked up. "What is it, Bob?"
"Mr. President, we have a situation."
Rhinehart’s morning intelligence briefing had spelled out a number of situations, so he could only guess.
“The SS-20?”
“Yes, sir.”
"I'm about to address the American people, dammit, and our friend General Marshall is breathing down my neck in the polls," the president huffed. "I don't have time for any false--"
"Mr. President, NEST teams have confirmed there is a stolen Soviet SS-20 nuclear warhead somewhere in Washington. Now the Russians say they have evidence that the Chinese planted it, and that it is set to detonate in five minutes."
“Five minutes?” Rhinehart frowned. "What do the Chinese have to say?"
"The Chinese say that if anybody's planted a nuke in Washington, it's the Russians or Islamic State proxies."
"Goddammit," groaned Rhinehart. "Every major elected official in America has got to be in Washington. How imminent is the threat?"
As if on cue, a military aide burst through the door carrying a black briefcase —the "football" containing nuclear authorization codes. Rhinehart stared at the attaché, speechless.
“I’ll brief you after you’re secure in the bunker,” Sherman pleaded with him on the phone. "Mr. President, we have no time."
Rhinehart hung up and hurried out of the Oval Office. He brushed past the White House military operator at the switchboard, the football and military aide close behind.
"The vice president just arrived," the operator reported.
"Tell her she's leaving," Rhinehart replied. "Get my chopper to airlift him to Andrews."
"Yes, Mr. President."
"Call Jack and Stan and have them meet me downstairs," the president continued. "Alert conference."
"Situation Room?"
"No. The bunker."
The military operator hit a button on his communications console, sounding a
n alarm.
5
1145 Hours
The Westchester School
Bedford, New York
The Westchester School in Bedford, New York, was a public charter school, one of America's finest. Sachs sent Jennifer here because she didn't want to compromise herself as a champion of public education by enrolling her daughter in a private school. But at the time she couldn't find an acceptable public school in Washington. So Aunt Dina and the Westchester Middle School seemed to be the answer, even if Jennifer called all public schools, local or charter, “government schools.” Only now, Sachs wondered if she had sacrificed her relationship with her daughter on the altar of her idealism.
The verdict was waiting for her inside. A sullen Jennifer, arms folded across her chest, sat in the office of Principal Mel Boyle. The school clock said 11:44, a few minutes faster than her own watch, so Sachs was running nine minutes late. Eight minutes of hell from the look on Jennifer’s face.
“So why aren’t you in Washington, putting other children first?” Jennifer asked without looking up.
“Shhh,” Sachs replied with a smile. “Mom’s playing hooky.”
Principal Melanie Boyle, a Barbie blonde in slacks and heels, walked in. “Nice to see you again, Madame Secretary.”
“Principal Boyle,” Sachs said.
“Doctor Boyle,” the principal corrected her. “Everybody’s gathering in the gymnasium. We so appreciate your visit, although I wish it were under better circumstances.”
Sachs didn’t know if Boyle meant her impending job execution or if she was referring to Jennifer. “Is there a problem?”
Boyle slid a file across her desk. Sachs could see the big fat “F” circled in red. “This is Jennifer’s U.S. Constitution final,” Boyle explained. “Not only could she not name all of the current members of the president’s Cabinet, she couldn’t even name one. Not even the Secretary of Education.”
Boyle raised a perfectly waxed eyebrow.
Sachs studied the exam for a minute and then put it down.
“Well, I’d probably miss that one, too, if the answer wasn’t me,” she said. “But you know all the rest, Jennifer. What’s going on?”
“Globalization,” Jennifer said with all seriousness. “The U.S. Constitution is obsolete. To quote Socrates, I’m not a New Yorker or an American, but a citizen of the world.”
If Principal Boyle wasn’t just as serious as Jennifer, Sachs would have burst out laughing. But she kept a straight face and addressed her daughter. “Maybe, darling. But most of the world’s democracies have constitutions based on ours. And unless you want to live in a police state, and condemn the rest of humanity to the same fate, you’d better learn which way is up.”
“What planet are you from, Mom?” Jennifer made a dramatic, sweeping gesture with her hand, the back of which still bore an admission stamp from some event. “Look around you. Have you seen this government school? This IS a police state. My Bill of Rights didn’t keep the government from sucking in your tax dollars, nor Ms. Boyle from opening my private locker and going through my diary, or kicking me out of the school dance last Friday.”
“School dance?” Sachs repeated, looking at Jennifer and Boyle. “You never told me about a dance. Did you go with—”
“She was wearing thong underwear,” Boyle declared, cutting her off. “Highly visible underwear, I might add.”
Sachs stared at her 13-year-old daughter, trying to process this ambush of zingers from Boyle. “You were wearing a thong?”
“Well, duh.” Jennifer was non-apologetic. “Everybody at the dance could see my thong after Ms. Vice Squad here lifted up my skirt.”
Sachs stared at Boyle. “You looked under my daughter’s skirt?”
"Whatever," said Jennifer. "Can we get going already?"
“We should move along,” Boyle helpfully agreed, clearly looking to delay the inevitable, ugly parent-teacher conference with Sachs. “Everybody’s in the gymnasium.”
Sachs looked at both of them, not sure whom she was more furious at. “Fine,” she said. “Let’s not keep them waiting. I’ll deal with you later, ladies. Both of you.”
6
1147 Hours
The White House
President Rhinehart and his military attaché hurried down a long sub-basement corridor beneath the East Wing. At the end of the corridor stood a Marine guarding a steel door. Rhinehart slid a security card through an electronic key slot next to the door. The red light turned off. A green light flashed on. There was a beep and a loud click. The vault opened.
Inside the bunker, the White House chief of staff, national security adviser and assorted military aides were arguing around the conference table. They rose in unison when the president entered and looked around.
Rhinehart said, "Where's Bald Eagle?”
"The Central Locator said all eighteen designated presidential successors were due in town for the speech," said Stan Black, his Chief of Staff. "So I sent the Secretary of Defense to a base inspection in California."
As he spoke, the Marine stepped inside and closed the vault door behind him with a definitive thud, sealing them all inside.
"Lucky for him," Rhinehart mumbled.
Jack Natori, his National Security Adviser, said, "We've got the Pentagon on speaker, Mr. President."
Rhinehart said, "What the hell is going on, Bob?”
General Sherman’s voice boomed on speaker. “NEST teams picked up trace uranium in the Metro railyards where a security guard was found dead this morning by D.C. police,” Sherman said. “It matches the SS-20 core profile. We think the SS-20 or, more likely, its warhead, came into Baltimore on a freighter and then was offloaded to the train to D.C.”
“Where is it now?”
“God knows. Probably in some van cruising the streets as we try to get a lock on its location.”
Rhinehart took a breath. This was real. “What else are we doing about it, Bob?"
"Everything, including preparing for a detonation,” Sherman said. “Army and Air Force choppers at the Pentagon heliport are airlifting 44 selected personnel. The civilians will go to Mount Weather to establish a new government. The military officers are heading to Raven Rock to conduct the war."
"That'll take thirty minutes," Rhinehart said. "I thought we only had five."
Natori checked his watch. "Four minutes now."
Rhinehart said, "The vice president is taking my chopper to Andrews right now."
Natori shook his head. "He'll barely get off the ground before we disappear in a mushroom cloud."
The military attaché then placed the football on the table, dialed the combination and removed a binder — Federal Emergency Plan D.
Rhinehart stared at it for a long, hard moment. He forgot what the D actually stood for, but it always made him think of “Doomsday.” He had reached this point in emergency drills only twice before as president. As seriously as he had taken the drills, neither experience had prepared him for what he was feeling now.
The State of the Union is shit, he thought. It wasn’t him anymore, nor his administration, nor the coming election, nor even his wife and children. It was about America and her survival—her military, government and economy. Her future was in peril right now, and if this was his last act as president, he would do anything necessary to secure the fate of the free world.
"Guess we should call FEMA and go through the presidential succession bullshit," he finally said. "Which button am I supposed to push?"
A fresh-faced Army colonel showed him on a console. "This one, Mr. President."
7
1148 Hours
The Westchester School
Sachs could hear the noise of the gymnasium from a distance as she walked with Jennifer down the long, dim hallway. It did feel like a prison, dammit. Jennifer quickened her pace so that Sachs had to catch up with her. Boyle fell a few, safe steps behind.
“You gonna kick Doctor Boyle’s ass?”
“Later,” Sachs sai
d. “But it’s your ass that started all this.”
Jennifer seemed even more sullen. “So that’s why you came?”
“Of course not,” Sachs said. "You think I’d miss a chance to—”
“Give a speech?”
“See my daughter.”
Jennifer said nothing. Their footsteps echoed loudly down the empty corridor. Judge Jennifer had found her mother guilty and would condemn her for her sins for the rest of her life.
Sachs tried again. "So how's Aunt Dina treating you?"
"She took off for the Bahamas with her French racing boyfriend,” Jennifer said. “I’m alone at the house with old Carla her housekeeper.”
“What?” Sachs said, feeling she was arriving just in time to save her daughter.
"Dad was much cooler,” Jennifer said. “You sure she's his sister?"
Sachs said, "Well, you won't have to stay with her much longer."
"I heard. You're getting canned. Hope that doesn't mean I have to put up with The Wuss."
The Wuss was Raleigh Westcott, a man Sachs briefly dated after her husband and Jennifer’s father Richard died in a plane crash a few years ago. Sachs looked at her daughter. "You know they don't make them like your Daddy."
“Well, I’m not waiting for Superman anymore,” Jennifer said. "Why can't you hook up with someone like Brad Marshall?"
Brad Marshall? Sachs thought. Where did that come from? Sachs knew Marshall, like most Americans did, from TV. The general's six-foot-four-inch frame, short blond hair, blue eyes and telegenic face generated trust and fan mail. His cool, reassuring voice instilled confidence. He was the legend from Operation Desert Storm, the one-man army who personally destroyed four of Saddam Hussein's palaces in a renegade attempt to assassinate the Iraqi leader. The Napoleon who returned years later to lead the “Surge” in the Iraq War, and then blamed successive, feckless administrations for allowing Iraq to fall to pieces and the Islamic State to rise like a phoenix from the ashes. These days the popular general was calling out America’s leaders for selling out to China, which was true. But he also insisted without evidence that Covid-19, which claimed the life of his wife, was not a naturally occurring virus but a weapon originated in a Wuhan lab. A strong but sympathetic figure, Marshall was the only man on earth the President of the United States feared to face in the coming elections.
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