Her real father had finally entered Stephie’s room, almost banging the bottom of the door into her forehead. His white teeth had shone, and his eyes had sparkled in a grin that disappeared the instant he saw that she was crying. “It’s okay,” Stephie kept repeating. “I’m okay. You can smile again.” Her tears had dried up as his had begun to flow while he sat beside her. She remembered his tone — soft, sweet — and definitely remembered the tear that she watched form in his eye and then roll down his cheek. But the first words of his that she could recall still tore at her heart. “I shouldn’t have come,” he had said. She had instantly hugged him. When he had hugged back — holding her so lovingly — Stephie had known, for sure, that he really was her father.
Thereafter, he hadn’t come. Her mother had sworn she would ruin him if he had fought for visitation rights, Stephie learned later, so instead her father had only sent cards and letters. By the time Stephie was a teenager, she had demanded that her mother quit opening the correspondence from her father. There was never anything in the letters of any substance, but each birthday card or letter handwritten on Senate stationery had gone into Stephie’s treasure trove. The same place she had hidden each movie disk that she had clandestinely ordered on the Internet and had shipped to Sally Hampton’s address. She and Sally had watched her father’s old movies. He was gorgeous. And in the movies Bill Baker had always played the hero.
Stephie and Sally had gotten into an embarrassing fight when, despite Sally’s denials, it had become obvious that Sally had developed a crush on Stephie’s father. “He’s just playing a part!” Stephie had said with all the fake conviction she could muster. “He’s not really like that in real life.” Sally had not asked Stephie how she would know what he was like in real life, and their friendship had survived.
The only other times Stephie had seen her father was when he made surprise appearances at her championship soccer game and then on her sixteenth birthday. A huge fight had ensued in front of Stephie’s friends, and her mother had later blamed her father for ruining the party. But in truth Stephie blamed her mother for the humiliating spectacle. And she was thrilled that her father — in the middle of what would be a successful presidential campaign — had taken the time to visit Stephie on her sixteenth birthday. She meant something to him.
He had told her how beautiful she had looked even though her hair was pinned up and she had been wearing faded jeans and Conner’s dishwater-gray basketball camp T-shirt at the all-girl sleepover.
She sat strapped into her jump seat across from the expressionless Secret Service agent and looked down at her filthy camo trousers, and caked and muddy boots. She smelled of the outdoors.
The helicopter landed amid the headlights of a half-dozen black sports utility vehicles on the broad lawn of a large, private home. The vehicles’ lights were immediately extinguished. Three other helicopters were parked nearby, as were dozens of cars, trucks, armored fighting vehicles, and tanks. Stephie was ushered into the house past a lit swimming pool and three all-threat missile crews scanning the dark sky.
Bill Baker waited for her in the entry. Stephie leaned her rifle against the wall and thought about saluting, but wiped her hand on her hip and held it out for a shake instead. He wrapped both arms around her. Their hug was awkward through her body armor, grenades, and ammo pouches. Plus Stephie resisted feeling much intimacy because she had gone several days without bathing. She practically cringed when he perused her from her hair matted by her helmet to her mud-caked boots. He misunderstood her desire to maintain a distance and seemed saddened.
“I love you,” she said to correct his impression, but his spirits seemed not to rise.
They headed into a cozy study. He asked how the men were treating her.
“Oh, okay,” Stephie replied. “One boy in particular.” She couldn’t help what her mother disapprovingly called her junior-high giggle.
A broad smile spread across his face, but his eyes remained unhappy. He seemed to her melancholy and disturbed, so unlike his always self-assured public persona. His mood also didn’t match Stephie’s. Her face was streaked with day-old grease paint. Her camouflage fatigues were caked with dirt. She was the picture of a soldier, and she was suddenly filled with pride that her father had gotten to see her this way. Before… whatever.
“Stephie…” he began, but he seemed to lose the words. She waited on the edge of her seat. “Would you like a transfer to the rear?” he asked without looking her in the eye.
Instead of expressing pride, he had offered her a coward’s pass. “You don’t know me at all!” she burst out in anger. The words seemed to hit him with more force than she had intended. He forced his guilty gaze up to her and swallowed hard several times. His eyes misted.
“I guess I do now,” he practically whispered in a crest-fallen tone.
There was a loud rapping on the door. Both looked up. A military aide entered and waited for an invitation to speak. Bill finally nodded. The aide, a naval officer in khakis, proceeded to update her father about some minor naval engagement in the Pacific on which he had been briefed. It had — in the intervening hours, apparently — turned into a catastrophic rout. Ten Chinese supercarriers had pounced upon a U.S. Navy convoy heading from San Francisco to besieged troops in Hawaii. They had sunk one American carrier, and were chasing the other damaged carrier north toward Aleutian anchorage.
The naval officer’s eyes darted back and forth between Stephie and her father. He looked as if he were falling ill right before their eyes. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said as if it were all his fault. “But… China has just invaded southern California.”
Stephie turned immediately to her father. His head wobbled visibly as if the world had shifted beneath him. Goose bumps of fear rippled across Stephie’s body in complex patterns. “The landings are currently under way in force,” the downcast aide reported as quickly as he could get the words out, “both north and south of San Diego. The commander of the 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade reports that at least three divisions of amphibious assault troops — probably directly out of Japan — are coming ashore and maneuvering against the San Diego naval shipyard. Several thousand landing craft are visible. His men are engaged, but he reports, sir, that he won’t be able to hold much longer. Not very long at all.”
The aide, in khakis, went on and on, but Stephie’s father didn’t seem to be listening. A convoy on the way to supply Hawaii was being routed by ten Chinese supercarriers. One American carrier had been sunk. Another was damaged and being chased toward Aleutian anchorage.
Her father looked stunned. “Is there any…?” he began. “Can the…?” The military aide waited for a question. Stephie looked at him, joining him as if grieving over his purely personal loss. But it was more than that. China, she understood, was now on the verge of seizing one of the three arsenal ships that America had under construction. “Does the navy,” her father managed to say in a hoarse, croaking voice that drew her instant scrutiny, “report anything happening off Delaware Bay?” She had never heard of Delaware Bay. The naval officer shook his head, then realized the import of the commander-in-chief’s question — of his terrifying fear — and shook his head again more vigorously.