Rule of Law

by Randy Singer

  “The United States is a peaceful nation,” she said brusquely. “But when one of our citizens is arrested and condemned without a trial, we will act. When the bodies of our soldiers are desecrated, we will act. And when our allies are threatened, we will act.”

  She paused, her lips pursed. It was great theater, and the press was lapping it up. “It is no secret that the Houthi government in Yemen receives material support from Tehran. I am warning both the Houthi leaders and the Supreme Leader of Iran that if Cameron Holloman is not released unharmed, we will consider his execution a hostile act of war by enemy nations.”

  She gripped the sides of the podium and looked around the room. This was vintage Amanda Hamilton, and Kilpatrick could feel the momentum beginning to swing.

  “In Yemen, we will increase our support for the legitimate coalition government, backed by the Saudis, including an increase in air strikes against the Houthis. And with regard to Iran, we will treat this hostile act as a violation of the treaty negotiated by the Obama administration, and I will personally request that our allies join us in a renewal of sanctions against a rogue country.”

  This caused a murmur and a flurry of scribbling among the reporters. They scooted forward in their chairs, waiting for a chance to ask questions.

  The president looked down and softened her voice. “Next Friday we are planning a joint memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery for the service members who died in Yemen. On this day, when so many Americans are celebrating the promise of eternal life, I would ask you to take a moment and remember the families of our fallen heroes in your prayers.”

  As soon as the president stopped speaking, before she could draw a breath, the questions started flying. She handled them all beautifully. She confirmed that Admiral Paul Towers had been relieved of his command before the Friday-night raid. She refused to provide details about why the first mission had failed—“There will be time for that after a full investigation.” She stoked the fires of resentment against Iran for supporting not just the Houthis but Hezbollah and Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

  All in all, Philip Kilpatrick could hardly keep himself from smiling. It was a somber affair, and he was not unmindful of the lives that had been lost. But deep in his bones, he loved politics most of all. And as he stood there watching this amazing spectacle, he realized that this was one of the reasons why. Fame and popularity were fickle and fleeting. The reversal of fortune that he was watching with his own eyes—no, that he had in fact orchestrated with his own hands—was devastatingly sudden.

  By day’s end, if the Houthis followed through on their threats, President Hamilton would have the political capital to renew sanctions on Iran, effectively isolating the country and further stalling its development of nuclear weapons. In the process, she would strengthen ties with Saudi Arabia and other more moderate Islamic countries. And eventually, if the pieces all fell into place the way Kilpatrick envisioned they would, President Amanda Hamilton would be in a position to actually achieve what every other president since Jimmy Carter had attempted and failed. She could broker peace talks between America’s Muslim allies and the nation of Israel. And in the process, she could unite moderate Muslims and cripple the radical networks intent on jihad.

  The press conference ended at 10:05 a.m. The Houthis waited two hours, until just before sunset in Sana’a, to respond. Their video went viral as soon as it hit the Internet. Cameron Holloman and Abdullah Fahd bin Abdulaziz were executed by hanging. The crowd cheered and began chanting in unison. It was Arabic, but in America, the words were displayed in block letters for the entire country to see:

  “Death to America! Death to Saudi Arabia!”

  21

  VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA

  For a few days, Paige thought she might not get tickets to the memorial service. Each family was allotted twenty VIP tickets, and there would be thousands of people trying to attend. Paige and her friends had planned to arrive at five in the morning to get a seat. Kristen Anderson had been trying to finagle a ticket for Paige in her own family section but found it hard to tell members of Troy’s large family that they couldn’t attend.

  All that changed when Paige received an unexpected call on her cell phone Tuesday morning. She didn’t recognize the number with the 607 area code, and she let it go to voice mail. When she checked the message, she heard the raspy, halting voice of a man who introduced himself as Bill Harris, Patrick’s grandfather, and asked Paige to call him back. She wasted no time doing so.

  “Hello.”

  “Mr. Harris, this is Paige Chambers. I am so very sorry for your loss.”

  Paige hesitated because she didn’t know what else to say. But the voice on the other end was surprisingly upbeat. “Thank you, Paige. And thank you for calling me back. You meant so much to Patrick.”

  She’d had no idea that Patrick had discussed their relationship with his grandfather.

  “You raised a remarkable grandson,” Paige said. She found herself choking up. “You should be very proud.”

  “Patrick talked about you a lot. And you probably know that he didn’t have much family left. The folks in D.C. were kind enough to give me twenty tickets to the memorial service, and I was thinking that I would like to meet you and hoping that maybe you could use one.”

  For the first time since Patrick’s death, Paige felt something other than unmitigated sorrow, and it momentarily left her speechless.

  “Of course, if you’ve already got a ticket or wanted to sit with somebody else, I can certainly understand that,” Bill Harris continued, his voice warm. “Either way, I would love a chance to get to meet you. Patrick thinks—” He stopped for a second. “Patrick thought that you basically hung the moon.”

  “I would love to attend the service with you,” Paige said. “There is nothing I would like more.”

  For the next few minutes, they worked on arrangements. But before he hung up, Mr. Harris had another bombshell. “The families are supposed to meet with the president at the White House at nine that morning. If you’re not too busy, maybe you could join me there as well.”

  Surprising even herself, Paige smiled. If I’m not too busy! “I might be able to fit it in,” she said.

  This brought laughter from Mr. Harris. “That’s the same thing I told them. I said I’d been meaning to get with the president and give her some advice anyway, so this will work out perfect.”

  “Did you really?” Paige wasn’t sure how to take this guy.

  “Sure did. But the staffer I was talking to didn’t have much of a sense of humor. He said the president would look forward to it.”

  By the time she hung up the phone, Paige found herself almost excited about Friday morning. It seemed like Patrick’s grandfather was going to at least make things interesting.

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  As if it knew the entire world was watching, Washington, D.C., was at its best the Friday after Easter. The cherry blossoms had not yet turned white, but the rest of the city was in the fullness of its glory. Puffy clouds floated across the sky on a brisk spring breeze. The sun pushed the temperature into the sixties early in the morning. The grass on the National Mall was thick, lush, and freshly mowed. Even the monuments seemed to dance in the sunlight, reminders that this was a country built to last.

  Paige joined Bill Harris for breakfast at the Hyatt hotel and found him to be fascinating company. He was full of stories about Patrick’s childhood, and Paige couldn’t get enough. He insisted that Paige call him Bill and drop the “Mr. Harris routine.” His face was weathered and tanned, his gray hair wispy and combed over, but the man was in great health for someone in his seventies.

  Paige could see Patrick’s eyes in his grandfather’s face and the same big smile and firm jaw. Bill wore bifocals with big lenses that he must have purchased fifteen years ago, along with a baggy suit and an unfashionably broad tie, but he didn’t seem the kind to care about how he looked. He was thin, with long arms and hands that were calloused and bony and c
risscrossed with veins like spiderwebs.

  Bill asked Paige if she minded if he blessed the food, and of course she did not. He said a brief prayer that included a request for God to grant Paige comfort and peace and courage to live the kind of life that Patrick would have wanted. When he finished, Paige could feel her eyes watering.

  They took a taxi to the White House, and Bill made a friend of the cabdriver, a man with a thick Indian accent that Paige found difficult to understand. Bill had apparently been to India on some kind of trip with his church, and the two men hit it off talking about the driver’s homeland. Bill slapped the man on the shoulder when they got out of the cab and gave him a generous tip. And then Paige and Bill stood on the sidewalk for a moment, just staring at the White House, lost in their individual thoughts. “Feels like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Bill eventually said.

  They headed to the VIP entrance, where a staff member met them and took them to security clearance. Eventually they were ushered into a large waiting room in the West Wing with the rest of the families.

  For the next hour, Paige and Bill talked quietly with the family members of the other fallen men while waiting for their turn with the president. They ended up going last. They were the only representatives from Patrick’s family.

  They met with the president in the Oval Office, and Paige still had a hard time believing this was real. The president had a firm handshake; Paige knew that her own hand was cold and clammy.

  A staff member introduced them. “This is Patrick Quillen’s grandfather, who raised Patrick,” he said. “And this is Patrick’s girlfriend.”

  “Please, have a seat,” the president said. She looked larger and older in real life. And everything felt so staged, with cameras lurking all around them, capturing every move.

  “Patrick was a brave man,” the president said. “He and his teammates were some of the finest men in our nation’s military, and I want you to know how sorry I am for your loss.”

  Bill thanked the president and told her that he prayed for her every day. Then he told her that Paige was a prosecutor, just like the president had been—and from what Patrick had said, a darned good one.

  Paige felt herself blush, but the president seemed genuinely interested. She asked Paige about the kind of work she did and then launched into a few stories about her own days as a prosecutor. She told Mr. Harris that his grandson obviously had good taste in women.

  “You can call me Bill,” Patrick’s grandfather said as if he were on a first-name basis with all the great world leaders. “And I agree 100 percent.”

  Before they left, they had a few pictures taken even though Bill had earlier refused to sign a release so that the White House could publish the pictures. He said that he didn’t want his grandson’s death to be used for political purposes, and the staffers in charge of procuring the forms didn’t quite know what to say.

  But now he stood on one side of the president with Paige on the other, and he smiled for the camera. “Thank you for your family’s sacrifice,” the president said after the photographers were done. “And thank you for being part of the ceremony today.”

  “It’s an honor,” Bill said. They all shook hands, and another staff member escorted Paige and Bill out of the office and down the hall.

  Paige waited until they were on their way out of the building before asking her question. “You’re part of the ceremony today?”

  “They asked me to do the closing prayer,” Bill said. “I think my pastor wrote to somebody and suggested it. If you ask me, they probably just have a hard time finding somebody in this town that knows how to pray.”

  Paige stole a glance and saw the smirk on his face, a look she had seen often on the man’s grandson.

  “I wonder how much we’re paying to heat this place,” Bill Harris mused.

  22

  Arlington House, a Greek revival mansion, was the former home of Robert E. Lee and towered over Arlington National Cemetery and its inspiring garden of white stones. In front of the house was the elliptical Memorial Amphitheater, constructed of stark white marble with low marble benches that would seat four thousand and leave room for another thousand people to stand. The amphitheater was bordered by enormous colonnades inscribed with the names of forty-four major battles from the American Revolutionary War through the Spanish-American War. The main stage of the amphitheater, constructed in the shadow of Arlington House, was an enormous three-level structure, recessed into a richly carved marble dome. A quote from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address could be seen just below the peak of the roof: “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”

  The stage had been prepared for the president to address a nation still in mourning, though the seven days since the failed mission had allowed time for some of the tears to morph into clenched jaws of defiance and revenge. The Houthi rebels were now under relentless air attacks from the combined forces of the United States and Saudi Arabia, and the president’s team was strong-arming allies to join in reimposing sanctions against Iran.

  The flag-draped coffins of the twenty Americans killed in Yemen lined the front of the stage, and three enormous American flags provided the backdrop to the podium where the president would speak. Paige sat with a number of people she did not know, all friends of the Quillen family from Delhi, New York. Bill Harris sat in one of the few dozen seats on the elevated stage.

  The whole scene created a lump in Paige’s throat, a mixture of emotions that were hard to unravel. There was the suffocating sadness brought about by the finality of this ceremony and the growing acceptance that she would never see Patrick again. But there was also a measure of pride in what he stood for and the courage he had shown. This was America at its patriotic best. Patrick and his friends had died to set other men free. Wasn’t that why he had joined the SEALs in the first place?

  The president’s speech was equal to the occasion. She captured the right tone, and after meeting her that morning, Paige felt a certain affinity with her. For the most part, Paige managed to hold it together, except when the president spent a few minutes describing the essence of each of the fallen men.

  “Patrick Quillen was raised by a grandfather who also served this country in the Korean War. Mr. William Harris, who will give our closing benediction, taught Patrick that there was no greater honor than serving our country, and his grandson distinguished himself as the very best of the very best.

  “Patrick was a man of tremendous character and faith. His commanders tell me that on the battlefield Patrick always carried a small Bible with his life’s philosophy written just inside the front cover. It was a quote from a missionary named William Borden, a young man who left America and the wealth of his father’s large company to serve on the mission field. He died at the age of twenty-five, and when Borden’s Bible was given to his mother, she found he had penned three phrases inside the front cover—‘No retreat. No reserves. No regrets.’ These were the same phrases Patrick had written in his Bible, and like his hero, Patrick lived it out.”

  The president moved quickly to the next man, but Paige reflected on the words. She dabbed at her eyes and sniffed back some tears. Family members of the other SEALs were moved as the president shared kind words about their loved ones, including Beef Anderson, whom she called the best prankster in the unit, a “happy warrior,” and a loving father and husband. Paige stole a glance at Kristen, seated about fifteen chairs over, clutching the hands of her little boys. Her bottom lip was trembling as tears streamed down her face, but her head was held high.

  When the speech was over, Bill Harris walked slowly to the podium, pulled a copy of his prayer out of his suit coat pocket, and asked the crowd to bow their heads. He thanked God for his country. He prayed for the president and the country’s leaders. He thanked God for the privilege of raising Patrick. For a moment his voice quivered, and Paige wasn’t sure if he would be able to finish. But then he cleared his throat and asked for God to help his country use its power for justice
and not revenge, that its people would not meet evil with evil but overcome evil with good.

  He ended by saying, “And without any disrespect to the other religions gathered here today, including the followers of Islam, I ask these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.” There were a few muttered amens from the crowd as Bill took his seat.

  With her emotions already running high, the pageantry and symbolism of the rest of the ceremony nearly tore Paige apart. The crowd stood in reverent silence as the twenty flag-draped caskets were loaded onto separate caissons, each pulled by six beautiful white horses. A lone soldier walked in front, and the family members of each SEAL fell in behind. Paige rejoined Patrick’s grandfather as they walked side by side behind Patrick’s coffin.

  They walked nearly a mile down the tree-lined road with thousands of people standing on each side. It was a national show of respect that made Paige realize, perhaps for the first time, just how important these events were for her country. The spectators included people of every race, age, and social standing. They all stood quietly, tears visible on some of the faces. There were servicemen and -women standing at attention, their uniforms gleaming in the sun. There were kids on the shoulders of their dads and men with hats over their hearts and older men and women who had probably served their time in the military saluting as Paige walked by. She felt honored and unworthy all at the same time.

  They reached the grave sites, and the caskets were carefully lifted into place at a row of twenty open graves. There were a few chairs facing each grave, and Paige took a seat next to Bill Harris in the front row at Patrick’s grave. Everything was done with military precision. A flyover started the interment service. A chaplain stood in front of each casket and said a brief prayer. A cannon salute was fired in the distance.