Devreaux again scanned the stunned faces of her colleagues. They were all scribbling furiously and trying to make sense of this unexpected turn of events. Was the world at the brink of war or peace? How could it possibly be both?
“There is much more to this story,” Lucente noted, referring to the possibility of a peace agreement between Israel and the USE. “But these are the broad outlines that he has authorized me to share with you at this point. I can tell you that I plan to speak with Israeli prime minister Doron later today, en route to Beijing, and I am hopeful that we can begin working out a date for President Al-Hassani to travel to Jerusalem.”
51
Secret Service Agent Coelho stuck his head in the door.
“Mr. President, General Briggs needs a word.”
“Send him in,” Oaks said, having just finished an emergency videoconference with the National Governors Association and the mayors of the fifty largest American cities thus far unscathed by the nuclear attacks.
The death toll was continuing to spiral. Millions of Americans were dead. Tens of millions more were on the move, fleeing for safety to cities, towns, and villages far from the blast sites and far from the projected radioactive hot zones.
State and local officials were panicking, unequipped for such a disaster and looking to the president for guidance, and funding. Oaks had little of either. He barely had a constitutionally functioning government. He certainly had no treasury, much less the mechanisms with which to distribute financial aid. He was urging the governors and mayors to mobilize their national guards to keep law and order; to protect food, water, and fuel supplies at all costs, and begin rationing those as quickly as possible; and then to work together to pool their expertise and their resources.
“The federal government is going to war,” the president had bluntly told those patched in by satellite. “It’s your job to care for people on the home front. I trust you will do your jobs, and do them well.”
Oaks hadn’t had the heart to tell them more nuclear attacks might be coming. After all, he still hoped Bennett’s source could stop them.
The videoconference now over, Briggs entered the president’s personal office, a hastily converted conference room right off NORAD’s top secret ops center. He stood at attention and set an unmarked DVD onto the conference table.
“Is my wife here yet?” the president asked.
“She is, Mr. President,” Briggs said. “She’s not feeling well — had some heart palpitations on the plane. She’s in the infirmary right now. They’re running some tests, but they’re not worried at all, sir.”
“I want to see her,” Oaks said, starting toward the door.
“Actually, Mr. President,” Briggs continued, “there’s something I need to tell you first.”
“About Marie?”
“No, sir.”
“About my boys? Are they okay?”
“They’re fine, sir. They’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Then what, General?”
“I really don’t how to tell you this, sir.”
Oaks braced himself. “What is it, General?”
“Well, sir…”
“Just tell it to me straight, Charlie,” the president insisted.
“It’s about Jon and Erin Bennett’s convoy.”
“In Jordan?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What about it?”
“It’s been attacked, Mr. President.”
“What?” Oaks gasped. “When? By whom?”
“It happened about an hour ago. We’re not sure by whom.”
“An hour? Why wasn’t I notified?”
“I just learned about it myself, sir.”
“Where did it happen?”
“On a highway north of Amman,” Briggs said. “They were en route to the airport from the refugee camp where they had been working.”
“I thought Doron had his people watching them.”
“They’re all dead, sir.”
“All of them?”
“I’m afraid so, sir.”
The president cursed and began pacing the room. “What about Jon and Erin?”
“We’re still trying to nail down all the details, sir. It’s going to take several hours at least before we can reconstruct precisely what happened.”
“That’s not what I asked, General,” the president insisted. “I want to know if Jon and Erin Bennett are safe.”
Briggs paused and took a deep breath. “No, Mr. President, not exactly.”
“What are you saying, General?”
Briggs shook his head slowly.
“Jon Bennett?” the president asked. “Is Jon alive?”
Briggs hesitated. “I don’t know, sir.”
“What about Erin?”
“It’s too early to say, Mr. President. We’re just beginning to assess the damage. Jon Bennett is missing. That much I can tell you. There are many casualties on scene. It was a terrible car accident. Multiple vehicles. Huge pileup. One of the worst wrecks in Jordanian history. I’ve got this video uplinked from the scene from Amman Station.”
Briggs gestured to the DVD sitting in front of the president. “It’s unspeakable, sir. And, not to be too graphic, Mr. President, but it’s going to be tough to piece through. Most of the bodies are unrecognizable — crushed by other vehicles or burned beyond recognition. We’re doing DNA tests as fast as we can.”
The president stopped pacing. “And?”
“And as best as we can tell, Jon Bennett is not one of the KIAs.”
“So what’s his status?”
“We’re listing him MIA at the moment, Mr. President.”
“Missing in action?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Erin?”
Briggs hesitated again, but the president insisted.
“The initial assessment on the scene is that she was killed instantly, sir. She was strapped down in the back of the ambulance. The ambulance was pushed off a bridge by a cement truck, which then landed on the ambulance. It appears to have crushed everyone inside.”
Oaks staggered back into his seat. He loosened his collar as beads of perspiration formed across his forehead. “Wasn’t Jon in that same ambulance?”
“Yes, sir, he was. But the CIA station chief in Amman reports that there is reason to believe he may have escaped at the last second.”
“Escaped?”
“There are a few eyewitness reports that someone crawled out of the wreckage just before the cement truck hit. But there are also reports of about a half dozen men firing automatic machine guns.”
“You think it was an ambush?” the president asked.
“It certainly doesn’t seem like a normal car accident,” Briggs said. “And it’s too much of a coincidence.”
Oaks sat there, shaking his head. “I spoke to him only a few hours ago,” he said. “I ordered him back here.” He looked up at Briggs. “I thought we had people taking care of all this.”
“We had a team waiting for the Bennetts at the airfield in Amman, Mr. President,” Briggs noted. “He would have been in our protective care from that point forward.”
“What about on the way to the airport?”
“We didn’t anticipate that being a problem, sir.”
Oaks buried his face in his hands. He felt sick, and personally responsible. “So what are we talking about here, General — best guess?”
“Mr. President, my guess is that Erin’s dead. Jon’s either on the run or taken hostage by whoever contacted him.”