“What’s he want?” Sirad asked. She pointed a remote control at a bank of televisions and flipped on the cable news channels.
“He won’t say. Claims it’s for your eyes only.”
Sirad tossed the remote onto her desk as the monitors erupted with FOX, MSNBC, and CNN loop footage of airliner crash sites, bombed-out buildings, and body parts in high-definition flat-screen color. The top right corner of each screen read, WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES. The upper left read TERROR ALERT: ORANGE—HIGH. A slug line across the bottom offered world opinion, White House response, the growing death toll, and stock quotes. The screen—what you could see of it behind the graphics—was split between two “experts” and the respective network’s host du jour.
“It’s a goddamned circus,” Sirad pronounced. “A whole new psychological phenomenon where the networks lure in viewers by preying on some reptilian reflex to fear. Las Vegas meets Anderson Cooper. The news according to Dr. Phil. Only in America could we replace drama with reality in entertainment and replace reality with drama in news. Absofuckinglutely amazing.”
Hamid saw no point in encouraging her. He preferred CNBC.
“What do you know about the Mind Lab?” Sirad asked, changing the subject.
“Just what I’ve been told. Never been there.”
“Ravi wants to sequester a small team there. He wants to close our cell to work in isolation until we resolve this.”
“Why?” Hamid asked. “The Mind Lab is an R & D site an hour outside the city. The seventeenth floor already has access to their mainframes and software.”
“I think he’s afraid,” Sirad said. She stared across the desk at her former lover. It had been almost a year since they’d last enjoyed each other’s flesh. For some reason, that suddenly felt like a very long time.
“Afraid of what? The Rabbit Hole is well protected; impenetrable, really.”
“Did you really love me, Hamid?” Sirad responded, changing the subject again. She didn’t want Hamid to know the truth about Quantis. Not yet.
“I love you still,” he said. He couldn’t hide the pain in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, you know,” Sirad told him. “I never dared to tell you that.”
“If you’re sorry, why have you never explained?” Hamid asked. “Why did you walk away without so much as a good-bye?” All he had ever wanted was a reason.
“It’s not as easy as an explanation.” She turned back toward the televisions. The past wasn’t something she spent much time pondering. “It wouldn’t have been enough.”
“You have never trusted anyone, have you? You’ve never felt secure that one person would give or do anything for you just because they loved you?”
“So Ravi wants me to go with him? How soon?”
“You don’t like it when something hurts, do you?” Hamid asked. “You act tough, but you don’t like pain.”
“I’m sorry about what happened between us,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Are you sorry that it happened or that it had to end?” he asked. Hamid spoke timidly, the way a lover talks when he still holds hope for something more.
“I’m sorry . . . ,” she mumbled, “that I don’t know the difference.”
DINNER CAME NONE too soon for most of the Homestead students. Colonel Ellis had always shied from being labeled a “dude ranch” and ran his schools hard, the way he had run them in Special Forces. By the time the dinner bell sounded at seven o’clock that night, most attendees wanted nothing more than a thick steak and all the fluids they could guzzle.
“You didn’t tell us you were such a prodigy,” Heidi said, setting her tray next to Jeremy’s at a trestle table made of cedar logs. Instructors ate with the students, as did the colonel and his family.
“The brochure said this was an advanced course,” Jeremy said. He shuffled a bit to his left, giving her room. “I assumed everyone could shoot.”
Ellis looked up at him from a conversation across the room, but Jeremy pretended not to notice.
“They don’t shoot like you.” Heidi smiled. “Pass the pepper, please?”
Jeremy handed her a set of plastic spice dispensers. They ate off trays, but the tables had been arranged with condiments in a family-style setting. The dining hall had open walls, and a cool evening breeze began to rearrange their napkins.
“Ooops!” she said, reaching out to grab a stack of napkins before they blew away. “Derned Texas wind never seems to hush. You spent much time out here, Jeremy Walker?”
He smiled at the way she pronounced his name. Words seemed to roll off her lower lip in little droplets, all moist and glittery.
“I’ve been to Dallas a couple times, with work,” he said. Jeremy felt the colonel’s eyes on him and concentrated on his buffalo steak and beans.
“I hope it’s the colonel you’re shying from and not my company,” she said. “I know he’s eyeing you pretty hard right about now, but that’s ’cause he’s a daddy and a military man. He doesn’t know much about a girl’s taste in men. In fact, I don’t think he ever noticed a cute butt in his whole life.”
Jeremy almost spit out his food. Heidi laughed too, banging her knee against his under the table. Her free-spirited humor felt as big as the country around them.
“You going to get me kicked out of here the first night?” Jeremy asked. Some of the other men had begun to look his way. Heidi stood out to all of them, even in a setting of stunning natural beauty.
“Naw, I want to let you get your money’s worth before I get you to do something really stupid,” she flirted. The woman’s perfume of lilac and honey blended oddly with Hoppes No. 9 gun solvent and barbecue. Dry wind whispered across the room, filling Jeremy’s nose with an intoxicating scent. “You’re not married, are you?”
Jeremy shook his head. The word no just wouldn’t escape his lips.
“Girlfriend?”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were hitting on me.” Jeremy flirted back. The steak tasted good. His skin glowed from a day in the open air. He felt happy for the first time in a long while.
“Nothing gets by you now, does it, Romeo?” She forked a bite of beans between beautiful lips. Jeremy fought the urge to stare.
“The colonel raised no timid children,” she said after swallowing. “I figure I’ve got one week to work my magic on you, and we’re nearly through with the first day already. If you’re gonna stick to that timid ‘aw shucks, Miss Daisy’ routine, it’s gonna go hard on you.”
Jeremy laughed a slow, easy release. The past few weeks had wound him into a spring-tight ball of confusion, apprehension, and fear. Between the situation at home and the mission ahead, he felt trapped in one of those dreams where you try to run and just can’t lift your feet.
“Is this the part where I stand up, pistol-whip all those guys staring at you, and throw you on the back of my horse so we can ride off into the sunset?” he joked. Jeremy Walker was single, right? He had a cover to maintain.
Heidi checked her watch.
“Well, the sun’s almost set, and I don’t ride on the back of nobody’s horse,” she said, completely deadpan. “But I got a couple hours before bedtime. If you know even half as much about women as you do about shooting, I’d say you ought to pull out that hog leg of yours and commence to whipping.”
XII
Friday, 18 February
01:00 GMT
Vice President’s Ceremonial Office, Eisenhower Executive Office Building
“DAMMIT, ELIZABETH,DO you know what you are saying? You’re talking about treason.”
The vice president sat with her hands folded solemnly in front of her. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the national security advisor, the president’s chief of staff, and the attorney general sat in a small cluster around a massive conference table in an office typically reserved for photo ops.
“I do know what I’m saying,” she calmly replied to the attorney general, Andrew Hellier. “And it is nothing of the sort. I’m
merely pointing out that the president of the United States is demonstrating behavior that may become a liability to the national security of this country should we face another terrorist attack. As proctors of constitutionally prescribed rules of government, we have a sworn duty to consider all contingencies.”
“Including mutiny?” Havelock asked. “I’ll have none of it.”
“I don’t feel comfortable talking about this,” Andrea Chase agreed.
“I do,” the only uniformed member of the reluctant cabal announced. The chairman of the joint chiefs was a marine corps four-star named Oshinski who had never shied from conflict. “In fact, I want to remind everyone that the man playing hymns in the Oval Office right now has full authority to unleash the most powerful military forces in the history of the world. At present, he is about thirty feet from the football, and dammit, from what I’ve seen, that strikes this old soldier as troublesome.”
The president’s chief of staff would have none of it.
“He’s tired, for Chrisakes,” she said. “Are we really talking about invoking some arcane provision of the Constitution and altering the chain of command because David Venable needs a goddamned nap?”
“Three nights with no sleep at all,” Beechum argued. “He doesn’t remember what you tell him from one moment to the next.”
“Would you allow him to go on television in this state, Andrea?” General Oshinski asked. “Would you want the American people—or the people of the world for that matter—to see him like this?”
The air stilled as various sets of eyes drifted around the magnificent William McPherson-designed room. Originally built for the Navy Department, the space had been renovated in the 1960s and now served as a dramatic backdrop for important meetings and press conferences. Ornamental stenciling and maritime scenes covered the walls. Mahogany, white birch, and cherry formed a testament to American woodworking underfoot. Grand fireplaces carved of Belgian black marble with gilded overmantels and green marble hearths stood at the north and south walls.
“This is not an easy conversation we’re having here,” Beechum argued. “I am well aware of that. But who the hell said it was supposed to be? We have been entrusted with the care of two hundred and eighty million citizens, and we’re being attacked by enemies we can’t even identify. I’m not playing Alexander Haig. I’m trying to do what history expects of us.”
No one reacted at first. Beechum caught the eye of a Christopher Columbus bust that had been commandeered from a Spanish cruiser after the Battle of Santiago in 1898. The decorative bronze figure stared back at her with the same posed intransigence she saw in Havelock and Chase.
“What about the White House physician?” Oshinski asked after a long moment. “Perhaps he could prescribe a sedative—something to give David the rest he needs.”
“Good idea,” Havelock said. “David got caught off-guard by all of this. He’s only had this job for three frigging weeks. Who can blame him for trying to keep up with everything?”
“This isn’t about blame; it’s about responsibility,” Beechum pointed out. “I think the general has an excellent idea.”
“What does the Constitution say about that?” the general asked. The finger on the trigger always struck him as a crucial consideration. “We have to remember that any sedative will render him ineffectual as commander in chief. Do you inherit the wind, so to speak, Elizabeth?”
Attorney General Hellier turned to the vice president, who pulled a copy of the Constitution from her case. She had studied it well but wanted text to read for effect.
“Twenty-fifth Amendment, section four: ‘Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.’”
She looked around the room.
“We’ve got to put this in writing?” Havelock asked.
“Not so easy to talk about now, is it?” the attorney general reminded everyone. “This is action in extremis we’re discussing. I know of no precedent.”
“This will pale in comparison with what might happen if we don’t,” Beechum said. “No one in this room has more to lose politically than I do; we might as well get that out in the open. This discussion alone could give me the shortest tenure of any vice president in history—you all know that. And yet I accept that risk because I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and try to explain to the American people that we let a growingly psychotic man play church music because no one wanted to hurt his feelings.”
“It will leak out,” Chase said.
“We have to assume so,” Beechum said. “Unless . . .”
“Unless we don’t tell Congress.” Andrea Chase beat her to the punch. “I mean all presidents sleep, right? Who is going to know whether or not he had a little pharmaceutical help?”
“I’m not sure I want to hear this,” the attorney general said. “We’re talking about drugging the president of the United States! As top law enforcement official, I have to warn you that this is very . . .”
“The Constitution mandates that if we go to Congress with a no-confidence vote, the president will have to argue in writing that he deserves to get his job back,” Beechum noted. “Do any of you want to explain that to the president when he wakes up?”
Uneasy smiles rippled around the table for the first time.
“I think we owe it to David,” the chairman of the joint chiefs said. “I mean, we gave him coffee to keep him up. Why can’t we get the White House doc to slip him a little something to help him sleep? He’ll wake up tomorrow night a new man, and no one will be the wiser.”
“We’re talking twenty-four hours,” Chase reminded them. “What about the radioactive materials that were just stolen? We’ve already faced two attacks, and . . .”
“And the alternative?” Oshinski asked. “Do we wait until somebody actually uses them? I don’t want to think about what that man might do after another sleepless night.”
Beechum stood. The woman had never shied from tough calls.
“I think we have no choice here,” the vice president announced. “The president’s current mental state poses a clear and present threat to the security of this country. Unless you all take action to stop me, I plan to speak with Dr. Hernandez immediately.”
No one objected.
“General, you make sure we’re covered at the Pentagon,” she continued. “Andrea, you handle inquiries from the staff. We run tomorrow’s press gaggle as scheduled, but we cancel the two-o’clock briefing due to security concerns . . . leak a story that we’ve got something positive cooking. Hellier, we need you to talk with your counsel—discreetly—to make sure we don’t have any legal problems here. I’ll take the political heat, but I’ve already had one brush with jail, and I didn’t like it.”
There were no objections.
“Twenty-four hours,” Oshinski said. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”
“It’s one day,” Havelock chirped. Beechum’s resolve had buoyed his optimism. “How much could go wrong in that?”
JIMMY BREEDLOVE SAT at a desktop computer terminal in the middle of a perfectly round 15,000-square-foot bunker. A 160-foot-long, 12-foot-high video mosaic map board circled him, flashing information across 230,076 Lucite tiles. From where he sat in the California Independent System Operator, or Cal-ISO, Folsom Control Center, he could monitor every electron moving through the United States western power grid.
“Hey, Bo, we got a load indicator caution in Santa Barbara,” he called out to one of his fellow operators. It was a routine alert, a sampling of more than four thousand locations every four seconds. Nothing to consider troubling.
“Must be Oprah Winfrey firing up the cotton candy mac
hine,” Bo called out. A couple other staffers started to laugh.
“Nah, People magazine says she’s on a diet again. Must be the treadmill sucking wind!”
Breedlove laughed along with them. He truly enjoyed his job as a staff engineer at the Folsom Control Center. He considered himself an integral part of a power grid that delivered 200 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year to more than 30 million Californians.
Working here at Cal-ISO’s supersecret control center placed him on the forefront of America’s infrastructure protection system. Like the guards, management, and other engineers, Breedlove had received training from state and federal crisis planners. In fact, the FBI had scheduled a scenario-based readiness exercise for the following week. He hoped the recent terror attacks would push it back a month so he could take that vacation his boss had just canceled.
“Hey, Bo, what position are you playing tonight?” Breedlove asked. They had a softball game after work, and the wife had given him the night to go out with the boys. It would be great to catch a couple brews down at Mulligan’s.
“Second base,” Bo answered. “Hey, anybody heard from San Onofre?”
The San Diego county nuclear power plant had scheduled to power down its reactor for routing maintenance later that night. The plant manager was supposed to call in with particulars.
“I hear the waves are breaking to the right on bitchin’ three-foot swells with an offshore wind.” Breedlove laughed. “They say it’s the kind.”
Bo and Breedlove—both Orange County natives—had grown up surfing the shoreline between Richard Nixon’s old home in San Clemente and the controversial San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. The beach break there was known among locals as Trestles.
“You’re a wiseass,” Bo called back. He checked his monitors again and allowed himself a moment to reminisce about the old days. Southern California had been a very different place in the sixties, before the traffic and congestion got so ridiculous. The move to Folsom—a beautiful city of fifty-two thousand located halfway between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe—had given his kids the kind of youth he looked back on with such fondness.
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