by Rawlin Cash
“No special waiver for our friends in Riyadh?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Come on, Fitz.”
“Of course not. I swear it, Fawn.”
“You wouldn’t tell me the truth if we had sold it.”
“We’d never sell that. It’s still under development. Our own military doesn’t even have it.”
“We’ve sold the Saudis dozens of technologies that we didn’t deploy.”
“We didn’t deploy those because of cost, but we could have. That’s the difference. There’s no way the Saudis would have the scientists to complete the smart bullet development on their own.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Of course I’m sure,” Fitz said.
“Really?”
“What are you getting at, Fawn?”
“What do you think I’m getting at, Fitz?”
“Please tell me,” he said. He was very agitated.
“Fitz. You admit someone has the smart bullet tech, right? I mean, we just lost two presidents and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to it. We recovered the bullets from their bodies.”
“Right.”
“So someone has it.”
“Yes. Clearly.”
“And we have no idea who it is.”
“Right.”
“But it appears to be based on our own tech. Just more advanced.”
“I see what you’re saying, Fawn.”
“Tell me this. If someone could beat us to this tech, who would it be?”
“The Europeans,” Fitz said.
“Come on, Fitz.”
“Russia.”
“Not in a million years.”
“The Chinese.”
“The Chinese maybe. Or the Saudis. They’re pretty much the only two credible suspects.”
“Yes,” Fitz said.
“Definitely not the Iranians.”
“They couldn’t find a sofa in their living room,” Fitz admitted.
“And nothing points to China.”
“Right.”
Fawn shrugged. “So we need to shift gears.”
Fitz sighed.
“You’re coming back inside with me,” she said. “I need you.”
He nodded. They hurried down the long, concrete corridor that led into the heart of the bunker and Fawn dialed Hunter’s number as they walked. There was no cell reception, they were deep into solid rock, but special boosters meant she could maintain the connection as she got deeper into the tunnel.
“The Saudi ambassador is dead,” she said when Hunter picked up.
“Shot through the window.”
“A smart bullet?”
“I’d be willing to bet it was. There was a drone outside.”
“This is so bad,” Fawn said. “They can shoot anyone they can get eyes on.”
“It’s not so bad,” Hunter said. “Ever since the first gun was fired, you could kill anyone you could see.”
“This is different.”
“It’s not so different,” he said.
She sighed. “Maybe you’re right.”
“So are we switching our attention to the Saudis?” Hunter said.
“I just spoke to Fitz about that. He’s on board. We’re going to see the president and Hale now.”
“So we sold them the tech?”
“According to Fitz, we sold them the RQ-170 tech. He says there was an absolute blanket ban on the sale of the smart bullet tech, or any tech that we ourselves couldn’t implement if we wanted to.”
“I know that’s not true,” Hunter said. “I’ve seen Saudi tech in action. They have dozens of systems we pulled the plug on before we got them figured out. We’ve sold them so many secrets they’re literally pulling ahead on their own at this point.”
“Agreed. It’s got to be the Saudis. What did the ambassador tell you before he was killed?”
“He pretty much confirmed it.”
“What did he say?”
“He said the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee personally signed off on the sale of the smart bullet tech.”
“Really?” She gave a look to Fitz.
“What?” Fitz said.
“You liar.”
“What?” he insisted.
“You said we’d never sell the smart bullet tech.”
“We wouldn’t. I was with the president when he blocked it.”
“Hunter is saying the senate committee allowed it.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It’s not impossible,” Hunter said. Fawn put him on speaker. “We have the dead bodies to prove someone got their hands on it.”
“The senate committee?” Fitz said again.
Suddenly, Fawn got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“The senate,” she said and began running.
Fitz ran to keep up. He wasn’t built for it but he did his best. “What is it?” he gasped.
“Meredith. The Merry Widow. She signed off on it.”
She saw the flash of realization cross Fitz’s face. Meredith signed off on the sale and she was one of the few people still with the president. If there was any chance she was working with the Saudis, it didn’t bear thinking about.
“Hunter, I’m hanging up,” she said.
She was in an all out sprint. She dialed Hale’s number as she ran but he didn’t pick up. The final blast door was still a hundred yards ahead. She rose her hands in the air as she approached.
“Fawn Aspen,” she yelled at the guards.
They were alarmed.
“I’ve got to get in,” she yelled.
The security check at the door would take minutes. Minutes she didn’t have. They’d want her to check her fire arm, go through a metal detector, get an x-ray. Everything beyond this point was completely secure, completely sterile. Even the secret service agents were unarmed.
The guards lifted their guns. “Slow down, ma’am,” the lead guard said. He was built like a linebacker.
“Fawn Aspen. CIA. I’ve got to get in there urgently. There’s an assassin with the president.”
She already knew it was hopeless. There were time-locks on the doors. They’d take two minutes to open, even if the guards were inclined to let a crazed CIA agent in immediately.
“Fuck,” she said as she approached them.
She dialed Hale’s number again. He picked up.
“Hale,” she gasped.
“Fawn, what is it?”
“Meredith signed off on the sale of the smart bullets.”
“What?”
“Meredith did it, without the president’s consent.”
“What?”
“To the Saudis. She did it. Jackson opposed it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Hale, where is she?”
“She’s with the president right now,” Hale said. “I’ve got to get there.” Then he stopped.
The line went dead.
The rumble of an explosion passed through the reinforced floor of the bunker. Fawn looked at the guards. They looked at her.
“We’ve got to get in there,” she said.
Forty-Two
Fawn and the guards stared at the blast door as the time lock ran down. Two minutes felt like an eternity. Everything about the bunker had been designed to protect those on the inside. If a threat was already locked in, getting in took a lot longer than it should have.
When the door finally slid open, Fawn had to shield her eyes and mouth from the smoke.
The guards were coughing.
She drew her sidearm and flashlight and stepped into the bunker.
Aides and officials were wandering around in a daze. Some of them had cuts and bruises. She noticed one woman with blood coming out of her ears. The explosion had compounded in the enclosed bunker, sending a wave of high pressure through the entire facility.
“Where’s the president?” Fawn shouted at everyone coming the other way.
They were too dazed to answer. The
guards were helping them out of the smoke filled tunnel.
Fawn made her way deeper into the compound, past the bulk of the survivors, and into the central command area where she knew the president should have been. The explosion had taken place right there, right at the center, right at the spot where the the nation’s highest ranking military officials were all clustered.
It was a blow to the heart. Everyone with authority was there. The army chiefs, the intelligence directors, everyone. Site-R was supposed to be so secure it could withstand a direct nuclear attack.
And it had been attacked from within.
When Fawn found Hale, her heart leapt to her throat.
“Hale,” she gasped.
She got down on her hands and knees and checked his pulse.
There was nothing.
“Hale,” she cried.
For the first time, she realized that she literally could not bear to lose him. She relied on him. And not just as a boss. Hale was her entire life. He was the one constant. He couldn’t be dead.
She leaned over him and began administering CPR. She counted, she pressed down on his chest, she put her mouth on his and blew air into his lungs.
“Hale,” she gasped. “Hale.”
She was crying. She was panicking. All the training, all the control she was supposed to maintain over herself in times of crisis, it all melted to nothing. None of it meant anything without Hale.
She couldn’t do this without him.
And then he coughed.
“Hale,” she gasped.
He was alive.
He was injured, concussed for certain, but alive.
“Jennifer,” he gasped.
“I don’t see her,” Fawn said.
There were other people lying on the ground. Some were injured. Some were dead.
“You’ve got to find her,” Hale said.
Fawn stood and shone the flashlight frantically in every direction. She ran from body to body checking the faces. When she found Jennifer, she cried out.
“Hale,” she cried.
She crouched down. Her pulse was pounding so hard she couldn’t check Jennifer’s.
“Jennifer,” she cried.
She began administering CPR as she had with Hale, but nothing happened. She was still doing it when Hale got to her.
“That’s enough,” he said.
“No,” she gasped.
“She’s gone, Fawn.”
“No,” Fawn cried again.
She kept thumping on Jennifer’s chest until Hale pulled her away, forcing her to stop.
Fawn hadn’t been close to Jennifer, but she was crying. Tears streamed down her face and wouldn’t stop. She buried her face in Hale’s shirt and screamed.
“It’s okay,” Hale said.
“No,” she screamed.
She wasn’t screaming for Jennifer. She wasn’t screaming for what had happened to Hale. She was screaming because she’d known, she could have stopped this, but she was too late.
She stood up and went through to the next room. It was the command center.
Someone was standing with their back to Fawn, a woman, looking at the screens. Even before she could make her out, Fawn knew it was Meredith.
The Merry Widow.
The screens were damaged but they still managed to show the military installations and troop positions of every single American unit on their cracked screens. It was all there. The masterplan of the entire machine.
Meredith spoke without turning. “Fawn Aspen,” she said.
She turned. Her face was curiously calm. She was different than she’d ever looked before. She wasn’t disheveled like the other survivors. There was no blood on her face, no soot. Not a hair out of place.
“Meredith,” Fawn said.
Fawn realized she still had her gun in her hand. Meredith looked at it.
Fawn rose it slowly.
This was it. The moment it all stopped. Meredith could see it in Fawn’s eyes. She was going to kill her.
Fawn put her finger on the trigger.
Meredith showed no reaction.
She was going to do it, she was going to pull the trigger, but just then, the room filled with secret service agents.
“Meredith Brooks?” one of the agents said, shining his flashlight around the room.
Fawn dropped her weapon.
The secret service agent flashed the light from Fawn to Meredith and back.
Meredith kept her gaze locked on Fawn.
“I’m Meredith Brooks,” she said.
“Madam President, we have to get you out of here,” the agent said.
Forty-Three
Hunter was already in the air when his flight was redirected.
“Sir,” the pilot said over the comms, “the president is returning to the capital.”
“The president?”
“Meredith Brooks.”
“She’s been sworn in?”
“I just got a bulletin,” the pilot said.
Hunter looked at his phone. It was already in the media. “President Jennifer Blackmore killed in explosion. Senate President Meredith Brooks sworn in.”
“She was sworn in fast,” Hunter said to the pilot.
The pilot nodded.
The chopper turned around and headed back to the capital. When it landed, Hunter waited at the base for Fawn and Hale to land. They weren’t flying on the president’s chopper but were part of the same convoy. They’d all be landing together.
He called Fawn but she told him they couldn’t talk on the phone.
He knew things were bad. Things had gotten royally fucked up. Another dead president. Another failure to protect.
And this time it looked like the assassins were getting somewhere. If their plan had been to put Meredith on the throne, they’d achieved their goal. Meredith had approved the tech sale. The tech had been used to kill everyone above her in the line of succession. Now she could approve whatever they wanted.
Hunter didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, but from what he could see, the Saudis might have pulled off the impossible. They might have achieved what the Russians had failed to do for decades. They’d put their own puppet in the White House.
Hunter found a seat in the terminal and closed his eyes. The place was a hive of activity but Hunter had no trouble falling asleep. He didn’t wake until the president’s imminent arrival led to a flurry of activity on the ground.
He looked out the window at the helipads. He counted over twenty military drones in the sky above them. They formed a veritable swarm. They had to be carefully coordinated so as not to collide with each other or the incoming choppers, and were tasked with spotting and destroying any foreign drone that tried to get within a mile’s radius of the terminal.
It was a sight Hunter knew would become commonplace. Now that the smart bullet tech was out there, the sky over any potential target would have to be kept absolutely clear at all times.
When the president’s chopper landed, a team of twelve secret service agents rushed out from the terminal to meet her. They erected what looked like square-shaped umbrellas. They were actually more similar to the collapsible reflectors that photographers used. They were shiny, and together, they formed a reflective ceiling over the president as she rushed from the chopper to the terminal building.
Hunter was impressed with the speed at which the government had adapted to the new threat. He knew that was Hale’s doing.
The president was rushed into the terminal and, together with her entourage, passed Hunter not thirty feet from where he stood.
Hunter wondered what was coming.
Would he have to kill this woman?
Would she be his president?
Would Hale come to some sort of accommodation with her?
“Back up,” a security officer said to Hunter and the other people in the terminal, all government officials with top-level security clearances, as the entourage passed them.
At the front of the terminal, instead of th
e usual convoy of limousines, there were four ungainly, undignified looking 18-wheel tractor-trailers. They were to be the method of ground transportation for the president for the foreseeable future.
While the trailers looked like normal 18-wheelers, they were in fact Safeguard Transporters, specially designed and manufactured by Sandia National Laboratories to provide for the transportation of armed nuclear weapons on US roads. Fitz had hastily requisitioned them from the National Nuclear Security Administration and had them driven up from Aiken, South Carolina. The vehicles were built on the frame of the largest commercially available tractor trailer in the country. They were officially designated Technologically Advanced Vehicles and were equipped with a number of classified security mechanisms and hidden weapons systems that could defend against the most aggressive of attack. Those automated systems meant that even if the vehicle’s human crew was killed or disabled, hijackers would still face an array of independently engaged weapons systems.
They were well-suited to their role of conveying weapons, but raised certain challenges when being used for the transportation of a president, not all of which had been properly addressed in the short time since they’d been reassigned.
The trailers were the standard width and height of commercial shipping containers but their alloy casing was over twelve inches thick. There were three identifiable ventilation panels on the roof, one for air intake, one for purging the interior, and a third for filling the trailer with a poisonous gas in the case of an attack. This function had supposedly been disabled hours earlier and the gas removed but Hunter wasn’t confident a trailer with a system like that could ever truly be deemed safe as a human transport. In normal oppression, the gas could be activated by any vehicle in the convoy, as well as by a remote security team. If there was any potential for activating it now, it was a critical threat.
Hunter also knew that in normal operation the vehicle was equipped with an inclinometer, so that if the trailer was knocked over or became off-level by more than a certain degree, the entire inside would be immediately filled with an expanding and fast-hardening foam. If this function had not been fully disabled, it could potentially suffocate all passengers.
To protect nuclear convoys, the vehicles did not display any identifiers or unique livery, and were purpose-built to look like civilian tractor-trailers in appearance. The convoy was also being escorted by two dozen black Chevrolet Suburbans, each containing a heavily armed tactical unit.