Sarah never took her eyes off her mother. At first, the eleven-year-old girl had simply clung to her mother like a baby. Now she was safe and secure, her world back in place and content to cuddle next to her grandmother. But she could hear something different in her mother’s voice. “Grams, is Mom going to be okay?” she whispered.
“She’s still a little shook,” Maura said. “But, yes, she’s fine.” She got up and walked down the hall, finding Richard Parrish.
“Richard, call the Air Force and get Matt Pontowski here as quickly as possible. He’s at Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix.”
Like most everyone in the squadron, Pontowski was glued to the TV set in the pilots’ lounge as the story of the failed assassination of the president unfolded. All of the pilots in the 309th Fighter Squadron, better known as the Wild Ducks, had heard the rumors about his friendship, or affair, with the president, depending on who was spreading the rumor, and accorded him a respectful distance. The fact that he was a brigadier general also added to his isolation.
Behind him, a group of young lieutenants learning to fly the F-16 clustered around the bar and tried on different attitudes to cover up the horror of what they were seeing. They all knew it could happen to them.
“Crispy critters,” one lieutenant said.
“Looks like they had a bad day,” another allowed.
Still another kept score. “Bad guys one, Marines zero.”
A sergeant skidded through the door. “General Pontowski, the colonel needs to see you ASAP.”
Pontowski came to his feet and they fell silent. “The bad guys killed a lot of good people today,” he told the lieutenants. “Remember that, if you ever have a chance to nail one of the bastards for real.” He walked out of the room.
The lieutenant colonel commanding the Wild Ducks was waiting for him at the scheduling desk. “Sir, we just got a call from the head shed. They want you at the Western White House pronto, like an hour ago. We got a D model laid on and an instructor pilot preflighting it right now.” The D model of the F-16 was a two-place fighter. “The flight plan’s filed direct Vandenberg.”
A sergeant ran up to them carrying Pontowski’s personal equipment. “A van’s waiting outside,” she panted. Pontowski grabbed his helmet, parachute harness, and G-suit, and ran for the van that would take him to the F-16. The instructor pilot was in the backseat of the F-16 ready for engine start when he arrived at the jet.
The straight-line distance from Luke Air Force Base to Vandenberg is 417 nautical miles and at.96 Mach, Pontowski was calling for landing clearance forty minutes after taking off. Five minutes later, he touched down and rolled clear of the runway. An H-60 Blackhawk helicopter emblazoned with UNITED STATES OF AMERICA on the fuselage had its engines running when he taxied in.
Maura was standing on the veranda when the Blackhawk touched down at the Western White House sixteen minutes later. “We need you,” was all she said, leading him inside the house. He walked into the family room where Maddy was talking to Parrish. The chief of staff excused himself and left with Maura. They were alone.
“Matt,” she said, smiling at him, speaking in a rush. “What brings you here? I’ve never seen you in a flight suit before. No wonder you turned Maura’s head when she first met you.” She paused, a haunted look in her eyes. “I guess I should have zigged when we zagged.” It was an echo of the lieutenants at the bar. Another pause. “I’m talking too much, aren’t I?”
“It’s a natural reaction. You should’ve heard me the first time.”
She was in his arms, shaking, finally letting go. They stood there in the fading twilight, his arms around her as tears streaked her face. Slowly, she regained control and her breathing slowed. “Why did I survive?”
“I’ve often asked the same question. That’s the way it is in combat. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.”
For a moment, he felt her body stiffen. Then she relaxed, still safe in his embrace. “Is that what combat’s like?” She felt him nod as he caressed her hair. “How can anyone do that to another human?”
“I don’t know. But it’s our job to stop them.”
“Mom,” Sarah said from the doorway, “are you okay?”
Maddy turned away from Pontowski and held out her arms. “I’m fine, now.”
Sarah ran into her mother’s embrace. “I saw it, Mom. I saw it all.”
“I know, darlin’, I know. It’s okay to talk about it, if you want.”
The Old Executive Office Building next to the White House lit up like a wedding cake in the night as more and more of its denizens rushed to their offices. Lacking any real purpose for being at work on a Friday night, many of them milled around the black-and-white-tiled corridors anxious to glean any information they could about the attempted assassination. But most of all, they were worried, not only for the president, but for a woman they simply called Maddy.
However, there was no lack of purpose on the third-floor offices of the National Security Council. Only the rap of hard heels echoed down the hall as the chiefs of America’s national security and intelligence agencies gathered in Mazana Kamigami Hazelton’s conference room. Two of the men were so deeply buried in Washington’s infrastructure that only the director of central intelligence knew who they were and what they did.
The last to arrive in a wheelchair was Nelson Durant, the head of Century Communications. They all knew why he was there; Century Communications had built the world’s most advanced information-gathering computer system for the United States’ intelligence community. But only Mazie and the DCI knew that its successor was online and undergoing testing.
Mazie walked in, and stood at the head of the table. “I just got off the phone to the president. She’s fine.” The room broke out in spontaneous applause. “She’s directed that we form a special committee to investigate and gather evidence. I’ve asked Mr. Durant to head the committee and he has accepted. We, and I mean all of us, are here to help him.” She gave them a meaningful look. Everyone in the room was a power and controlled a bureaucratic empire with congressional or presidential support. But not one of them was a match for Nelson Durant. Mazie concluded, saying, “We’re going to catch the bastards. Mr. Durant, it’s all yours.”
Durant leaned forward in his wheelchair. “You may be wondering why a few key players are not here. That’s because we checked out every one of you first. You’re here because you’re clean.”
“Mr. Durant,” the director of the FBI protested, “you may have overstepped your bounds.”
“Really?” Durant replied. “Are you aware that your assistant director has a mistress and a call girl, both on the FBI’s payroll?” Durant’s assistant gave each of them a bound document. “This is a list of everyone in your organization who came up dirty. What you do with the information is up to you. But do not use them in this investigation.”
There was silence as the men and women stared at the lists. “I thought,” the representative from the Department of Justice said, “that Beatrice was specifically programmed not to do this type of investigation on U.S. citizens.” Beatrice was the code name for the information-gathering computer system Durant had created.
“She can’t,” Durant said. “This was done by the system replacing Beatrice. I call her Cassandra.”