“Are you able to see the President?”
She filmed again for a moment, then brought the phone back to her mouth. The sounds of sirens, shouting and screaming, and the low-flying helicopters meant she had to yell. “The limousine is on fire. There are two bodies in the back of the limousine that I can see. At least one in the front.”
“Let’s be very careful. Are you certain the President was in that limousine?”
Jill didn’t understand the question. Where else would the President be but in the limo?
She answered authoritatively. “I saw Ryan and Ambassador Styles get into this vehicle. I believe I am filming their bodies right now, Don.”
The anchor in Atlanta cautioned the audience that there had been no confirmation, and reports from the scene were apt to change quickly.
But it didn’t matter. Within three minutes and twelve seconds of the IED’s detonation on the corner of Vidal Alcocer and José J. Herrera, a reporter on live national television proclaimed that the President had been assassinated.
General Ri Tae-jin wanted CNN to show video, but instead he saw an American man with black skin sitting at a desk and talking. He then heard the breathless voice of a woman shouting English above the sounds of sirens, and he listened to his translator’s rendition of the woman’s words. He nodded, over and over, as the unconfirmed report came that the attack had been successful.
Within seconds the video came, but it was from a helicopter. The translator said that it was from Mexican television and was being fed into CNN. There was a huge cloud of smoke over a sunny street. In the distant haze the massive sprawling city lay out across the bottom of a valley. The camera zoomed to show the burning wreckage of several vehicles, some more cars and SUVs tossed about haphazardly, and rushing first responders moving in every direction.
Ri was satisfied. There was a massive zone of destruction. He’d been military intelligence, not infantry, but he had done his share of battle damage assessments, and he noted the zone was much larger than that from the impact of a round of field artillery.
No one in the middle of that would survive.
Ri felt certain the assassination had been carried out, but there was one more critical component to Operation Fire Axe that he would need confirmation of, so even though it was well after three in the morning, he knew neither he nor his translator would be leaving his office for some time to come.
The American Secret Service liaison at the airport had told the Mexican Federal Police official in charge that the vehicle carrying the President would come through the north VIP gate in five minutes, and if anyone at the gate tried to stop it, the men in the vehicle would open fire.
The Mexican authorities at the airport had the good sense to stay out of the way, but as it happened, Lead Special Agent Dale Herbers drove in the middle of a motorcade of fourteen vehicles, some containing other members of the Secret Service but most driven by Mexican police, who were fully involved in the evacuation of the American President. Together they all raced through the gate with sirens and lights blaring, and they all screeched to a halt at the aircraft. Though most of the U.S. security force was still on its way back from the ambush site, there were still more than twenty-five armed Secret Service men around the plane, and every last one of them had a hand-gun or a long gun in their hand and their heads on swivels as they checked the area for threats.
Linklater, Herbers, and the two CAT agents helped the President out of the back of the vehicle. Two Air Force chief master sergeants who served as stewards on the aircraft were waiting with a stretcher, but the President walked on his own power to the stairs. He moved hunched over slightly, his right arm hanging and the expression on his face pained, but he was strong enough to make it all the way up to the cabin door of the 747 with only minimal help from the stewards at his side. Ryan was trailed up the stairs by a phalanx of men with assault rifles on their shoulders, all of whom walked backward and trained their holographic weapon sights on the distant terminal or the fields around the airport.
Once inside the plane, Ryan reached out to the wall to hold himself up, and his knees gave way.
Dr. Maura Handwerker was waiting at the entrance and she caught him. She had already moved many items out of the small but well-equipped medical office right next to the hatch and into the President’s suite in the nose of the aircraft just a dozen feet away. Here there was more room for SWORDSMAN to lie down, and more room for Handwerker to do everything she needed to do short of X-rays, which, if necessary, could be done in the medical office.
Ryan was carried gingerly into his suite, and then laid on his back on the bed. His face was ashen from the pain and the mild shock, and blood was smeared from scratches on his forehead. Immediately Handwerker and her nurse for the trip, an Air Force critical-care nurse, began cutting off his suit with fabric shears.
Arnie Van Damm wasn’t along for the trip. Instead, his assistant chief of staff, a fresh-faced thirty-three-year-old named David Detmer, stood far back out of the way of the medical professionals. Still, he was in earshot, so when Ryan started shouting out his name, Detmer leaned his head into the suite.
“I’m here, sir!”
“Secure phone!”
“The Vice President has been told. He’s on his way back to Washington from California.”
Ryan shook his head, causing him a fresh jolt of pain. “I need Arnie. Then Cathy.”
Dr. Handwerker glared at Detmer, because she couldn’t glare at the President. She did say, “Mr. President, I need you to lie right here for now and relax. You have a broken collarbone, and likely a broken wrist. We’ll want to give you an MRI to see if you have a concussion, but that can wait till we’re back in D.C. For now we will go under the assumption that you do have a concussion, so we’ll want you to stay flat on your back.
“We’ll immobilize your arm, and this will help with the shoulder pain.”
“Okay, but I need to make some calls.”
“Sir, first I need to debride your wounds and clean them up. I need to better immobilize—”
Arguing with the doctor had the effect of clearing Ryan’s head a little. “Doctor, I won’t stop you from doing your job, but you have to let me do mine. Right now President Volodin in Russia, as well as a few other crazies, need to know I am still on the damn job!”
Handwerker took cold compresses from a chest she’d rolled into the room before the President arrived. She wrapped them around his left wrist. Without looking up she said, “Someone hold the phone for him, he can’t use either of his hands right now.”
A headset was attached to the secure cabin phone, and Detmer connected with Arnie Van Damm. He struggled to make his way around the Air Force nurse and put the headset on Ryan’s head.
Jack coughed, then said, “Arnie?”
“Jesus, Jack, how are you?”
Ryan winced with the ice-cold compresses on his injured left wrist. “Andrea’s hurt. Mitch Delaney’s dead. Ambassador Styles, too. That kid that just joined the detail… Philip something.”
“I’m sorry. How are—”
“Philip Weingarten. Couldn’t have been thirty years old. I saw him facedown in the street.”
“How are you?”
Jack answered distractedly. “I’ll be fine. What have you done?”
“Your National Security Council is convening in the PEOC. The Vice President is on his way back from California.”