First Family

by David Baldacci

  came back from dinner and stormed into the Oval Office. She and the president went up to their private quarters, had a discussion, and the next thing you know the First Couple are taking a flight, in an unmarked jet, to an undisclosed location.”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “Someone made contact with her while she was out at dinner, obviously.”

  “But why an unmarked jet?”

  “They apparently don’t want anyone to know about this. Certainly not the public.”

  “The Service must be freaking out because they’ve had no chance to advance-team this.”

  “Exactly. They’re cobbling stuff together as best they can, but when you don’t know where you’re going?”

  “You didn’t tell him what we found out.”

  “He has his hands full, and this may pan out to be nothing. But if we find anything that connects to the president, we’ll let him know ASAP.”

  “Cut the lights and the engine!” Michelle hissed.

  The SUV went dark and quiet. “What’s up?”

  “Someone just came out of the house.” She pointed up ahead. “Let’s do the rest on foot.”

  They slipped out of the truck and crept toward the dark house.

  Michelle held up a hand. She’d obviously seen something that he hadn’t. Her night vision was beyond human, he’d found.

  “Where?” Sean whispered in Michelle’s ear.

  “There, on the front porch.”

  He stared in that direction and saw some small shape apparently sitting on the steps. Michelle hissed in his ear. “I think that might be Gabriel, the little boy the MPs interviewed. He was nearly nine then, the report said. That would put him at ten or eleven now.”

  As they waited to see if anyone else joined Gabriel, the darkness around them started to lift with increased speed. From somewhere a rooster crowed.

  “Haven’t heard that in a while,” confessed Sean.

  “We need to do something,” she said. “We’re losing our cover and he might spot the SUV.”

  “You, left, I’ll go right.”

  They split up. A minute later their creep up to the house ended with them on either side of the shape that the coming light indeed showed to be a little boy.

  A little boy who was crying. He was crying so hard, in fact, that he never even noticed Michelle step up beside him. When she touched his shoulder, though, he nearly jumped off the porch. Sean was on the other side of him, and managed to snag his arm before he had a chance to run for it.

  “Who are you?” sputtered Gabriel, looking at them both with wild, tearstained eyes.

  “Are you Gabriel?” asked Michelle, putting a hand on the boy’s other arm.

  “How do you know my name?” he said fearfully.

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” Sean said. “We’re just here looking for someone. A little girl named Willa?”

  “Are you the police?”

  “Why would you think we’re the police?” asked Michelle, her grip tightening slightly on Gabriel’s thin arm.

  Gabriel snuffled and then hunched over, studying his bare feet. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know where Willa is?”

  “I don’t know anybody named Willa.”

  “That wasn’t what we asked you,” said Sean. “We asked you if you knew where she was.”

  “No, I don’t, okay? I don’t.”

  “But you know about her?” said Michelle.

  Gabriel looked up at her, his lids droopy, his features miserable. “I didn’t do anything wrong. Neither did my ma.”

  “No one said you did. Where is your mother?” asked Michelle.

  “Sleeping.”

  “Anybody else in the house?”

  “I think Mr. Sam’s gone.”

  “Sam Quarry?” said Sean.

  “You know him?”

  “I’ve heard about him. Why do you think he’s gone?”

  “Truck’s not here,” the boy answered simply.

  “Why were you crying when we came up?”

  “Just… just because, that’s all.”

  “There must be a reason,” Michelle said gently.

  “You always have a reason why you cry?” Gabriel said defiantly.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I don’t. Just cry sometimes.”

  “So Sam’s gone, your mother’s sleeping. Anybody else inside?”

  Gabriel started to say something but then stopped.

  Sean said, “It’s really important that we know who’s here.”

  “So are you the police or what?”

  Michelle snaked out her PI creds and showed them to him. “We’re working with the FBI and the Secret Service on Willa Dutton’s kidnapping. You got a Koasati Indian around here who goes by the name Eugene?”

  “No, but there is one. His name’s Fred.”

  “Is he in the house?”

  “No, he lives in an old trailer on the property, just over that way,” he said, pointing to the west.

  “So who else is inside?”

  “Tippi was, but she’s not there now.”

  “Who’s Tippi?”

  “Mr. Sam’s daughter. He brought her home from the nursing home not too long ago.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She got sick a long time ago. Hooked her up to machines to breathe and all. Was in the nursing home for years. Mr. Sam and me would go and read to her. Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice. You read it?”

  Michelle said, “Why’d he bring her home?”

  “Don’t know. He just did.”

  “But now she’s not here?”

  “She’s not in her bedroom. I checked.”

  “Was that why you were crying? Because you thought something had happened to her?”

  Gabriel looked up at Michelle. “Ma’am, Mr. Sam is a good man. He took me and my ma in when we didn’t have nowhere else to go. He helps people, lots of people. He wouldn’t do nothing to Miss Tippi. He’s done everything for her.”

  “But you were still crying. There must be a reason why.”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “Because we want to help,” she said.

  “That’s what you say, but I don’t know if that’s what you really mean.”

  “You’re a smart young man,” said Sean.

  “Mr. Sam said don’t trust nobody till they give you a good reason why you should.”

  “What you doing here?” snapped a voice.

  They turned to see Ruth Ann standing there in her old bathrobe. They didn’t focus on the robe, though. Their attention was occupied by the single-barrel shotgun she was pointing at them.

  CHAPTER 76

  THEY HAD SETTLED on a Boeing 757 that the secretary of state used to fly before she’d been upgraded to a wide-body 767–300. The plane had been kept at Andrews Air Force Base along with the rest of the presidential fleet. All government markings had been previously removed and it was now primarily used to shuttle agents, aides, and the press, as well as necessary equipment.

  The secretary of state had a private office and bedroom on the plane and that configuration had not changed. It was in the office where the president and Mrs. Cox were sitting when they went wheels up from Andrews a few hours after Jane Cox had burst into the Oval Office and planted a golf ball in Thomas Jefferson’s left eye socket. The rest of the plane housed a hastily assembled skeleton crew of Secret Service agents who were more bewildered than anything else by what was happening.

  The president sat looking at his wife, who was hunched in her seat staring at the floor. When they reached their cruising altitude, the president undid his seat belt and looked around the quarters.

  “Nice office. Not as big as mine on AF-One, but nice.”

  “I’m sorry, Dan. I’m sorry you didn’t get to ride in your usual big toy.” Her arms were folded across her chest and she was looking at him with alternating expressions of fear and hopelessness.

  “It that what you think al
l this is? Toys?”

  “I actually don’t know what I think right now. No, actually I do. I think we’ve finally reached rock bottom.”

  He took off his shoes, rubbed his feet, and paced around the cabin.

  “I don’t even really remember it.”

  “I’m sure you don’t. But I do.”

  “I’ve changed.”

  “Okay.”

  “I have, Jane. And you damn well know it.”

  “Okay, you’ve changed. That does not help the present situation.”

  He sighed and sat down next to her, massaging her shoulders. “I know it doesn’t. I know this has been hell for you.”

  She slowly looked at him. “He took Willa because of this.”

  “So you told me. No, so you screamed at me.”

  “You said you couldn’t compromise the office of the president in order to get her back.”

  “That’s right, Jane. I can’t. Even if this mess weren’t my responsibility I couldn’t.”

  “Our responsibility.”

  “Jane—”

  She took his hand in hers. “Ours, she said softly.”

  “I don’t know why you ever stayed with me, really.”

  “I love you. Sometimes I don’t know why, but I do. I attached my star to yours, Dan. We shot to the sky together.”

  “And we may fall back to earth just as fast.”

  “We may.”

  “This election is mine to lose. Haven’t had one of those in this country in a while.” She said nothing. He glanced at her. “Do you think he’ll keep his word? If we do what he asked?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know the man. All I know is that he sounded like someone who had it all figured out. Not just us, but what he wants.”

  “The Secret Service is very upset at all this.”

  Jane looked like she wanted to laugh. “I’m very upset too. And regardless of how this turns out, they’ll still have a job. I can’t say the same about you.”

  “About us ,” he reminded her.

  “You know, a little self-control, that’s all it would’ve taken.”

  “It was like a disease. You know it was. In all honesty I have to say I’m stunned actually that nothing has ever come up before now.”

  “Stunned? Really? When I was behind you all the time picking up the pieces? And you’re stunned?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “What other way could you possibly have meant it?”

  “Now is not the time to be divided, Jane. We have to stand together on this. If we’re going to survive.”

  “I guess we’ll have all of our golden years in which to fight.”

  “If that’s what you want,” he said coldly.

  “What I want is not to be on this plane going to where we’re going.”

  “How did he sound on the phone?”

  “Determined. Full of anger and hatred. Can you blame him?”

  “You think he was being straight? I mean, it seems like such a small thing to do in return for, you know…”

  “Would you rather he killed Willa?” she said darkly.

  “That wasn’t my point! Don’t put words in my mouth.”

  A knock at the door interrupted this bickering.

  It was Larry Foster, the protection detail chief. “Sir, the flight crew has our ETA into Huntsville in about one hour and thirty minutes. It’s fortunate that they just opened a new runway that’ll support an aircraft in this class.”

  “Fine, right.”

  “And then we are to go on to another location.”

  “You were given the coordinates.”

  “Yes sir. We have them.”

  “Well, is there a problem?”

  “Sir, can I speak frankly?”

  Cox glanced at his wife and then turned back to Foster. “Go ahead,” he said tersely.

  “This whole thing is a problem. We have no idea where we’re going, or what we’ll be confronted with. I’m understaffed on this and don’t have even one-quarter of our regular support and equipment. My strong recommendation is that we turn around and head back to D.C.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Sir, I’m very strongly recommending that we don’t go through with this.”

  “I’m the president. I just wanted to go for an unscheduled trip. It’s not that big of a deal.”

  Foster cleared his throat. His clenched hands evidenced the anger that he was feeling but trying hard not to show. “The other issue is we don’t have a motorcade, sir. And the destination in question is about eighty miles southeast of the airport in Huntsville.”

  “We have to get there”—Cox checked his watch—“in exactly four hours and seven minutes.”

  “I had a C-130 fly ahead of us with two choppers on it. It’ll take a little bit of time to get the choppers out and be ready to go.”

  “You have the timetable. And we cannot miss that deadline.”

  “Sir, if you could just fill me in on what’s going on? I know the director has spoken with you and he supports my position, but—”

  Cox pointed a finger at him. “The director serves at my pleasure. I can replace him tomorrow. And I will if I get any more flack from him. I want you to just do what you’re told. I am the commander in chief. If you won’t do it, then I’ll get the damn Army to take over. They won’t question my authority.”

  Foster stood very straight. “Mr. President, by federal law we provide your principal protection.” He glanced at Jane. “Both your protection. What is going on right now is completely unprecedented and potentially very dangerous. We’ve had no opportunity to check out where we’re going. No recon, no threat assessment, no—”

  “Look, Larry,” Cox said in a calmer tone. “I know this is all screwed up. I don’t want to be doing this either.” He motioned in the direction of his wife. “She doesn’t want to be here either. But here we are.”

  “Does this have to do with your niece?” Larry was asking this of Jane Cox. “If so, I think at the very least the FBI should be informed of what we’re doing.”

  “We can’t do that.”

  “But—”

  Cox put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “I trust you to protect us, Larry. You’ll have time to check things out, as much time as I can give you. I’m not foolhardy. I’m not going to walk into something that will get me killed, much less my wife. It’ll be okay.”

  Foster said slowly, “All right, sir, but if things look out of whack,