The word fell from McGee’s lips like an anvil hitting a concrete floor. “Faulkner.”
For a few seconds, she didn’t know what to say. When she’d had the time to process the information, she still couldn’t bring herself to believe it. “You can’t possibly mean Vice President Davis Faulkner?”
“I mean precisely him,” he said in his rounded baritone voice.
“Holy shit. I’d heard vague rumors about a plot but nothing was confirmed.”
“It is now.”
“That’s against the law, Brandon.”
“Oh yeah,” he said, steering the Escalade neatly around the roundabout at Washington Circle. “Big time.”
Now the confusion and fear was giving way to anger. “What the goddam hell for?”
“This is difficult, but it looks like he’s trying to move against your father.”
She opened her mouth to speak but no words came.
“I know what that must sound like, but I just had to tell you, and now before things get out of control.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
McGee cruised the Escalade past the Swedish Embassy and Bangkok Joe’s, signaling to take the exit ramp down to Canal Road. Checking his mirror, he narrowed his eyes. Was that Chevy Suburban following them? He drove for another minute or two and then pulled off at the Abner Cloud House. Sweeping around in the gravel car park, he watched the Suburban cruse past them to the west. He pulled into a parking space with a view of the Potomac River, killed the engine and sighed deeply.
“I mean Faulkner’s planning to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and remove your father from office.”
In the enclosed space of the SUV, his words sounded ridiculous. “What the fuck?”
“I know what it sounds like, but my intel is good.”
“Who?”
“One of Muston’s security detail. I’ve known him since we were in the army together.”
Muston was Faulkner’s Chief of Staff. “This just gets worse… so he’s in on it too?”
McGee nodded. “Looks that way, yeah.”
Alex ran her hands over her face and into her hair. She was struggling to make sense of it all and had a million questions pulsing in her brain and giving her a migraine headache. “But why?”
“That’s the part we don’t know. We all thought Faulkner was a dog with no teeth, but now we know different. Kusumoto thinks it’s part of a wider conspiracy.”
“Kusumoto?”
“She’s my army buddy on Muston’s detail. Suzie Kusumoto. She comes from Chicago just like me. That’s why we got to be buddies in the army.”
Alex tightened her hands into iron fists and smashed one down onto her dead legs. “A wider fucking conspiracy? Jesus fucking Christ, Brandon!”
The big man shook his head in sympathy at the shock she must be feeling. “I know, Alex. I know.”
“What else do you know?”
“Not much. Suzie says she thinks Faulkner’s either working with someone else or even working for someone else.”
“The Vice President of the United States works for the American people and my goddam father, Brandon!”
“Not on this occasion.”
“And who is this mysterious third party?”
“We don’t know. Suzie’s vague because Muston is a very careful man. Some of these guys talk when their security’s in the room and some don’t. Muston’s the sort who doesn’t, so she’s only got this information through overhearing tiny fragments of conversation and observing his behavior.”
Now she rubbed her temples. She realized she’d been staring at the rain sliding down the windshield for several minutes without blinking. “This is just nuts. Does my dad know?”
“Not yet.”
She turned to him and wrinkled her face up. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Brandon, but why the fuck not?”
“Apart from you and the President, I don’t know who I can trust and I decided to talk to you about it first. Remember, your father isn’t in any mortal danger. This isn’t a threat to the life of the President. This is a political move against him.” He turned to her and twisted his lips in uncertainty. “In other words, way above my pay grade.”
“But invoking the Twenty-Fifth?” She looked puzzled. “He hasn’t done anything to merit that. No way can that son of a bitch use the Constitution to get into the Oval Office. No frigging way.”
McGee checked the mirror. A big black Cadillac CT6 pulled into the car park and crunched on the gravel as it pulled up beside them. Tinted windows. He checked his weapon in the holster but said nothing to Alex.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” he said. “Suzie thinks this is the real deal and there’s a good chance it’s going to happen soon, as in the next day or two. That’s why I came to you now.”
She felt dizzy. She had to control her breathing to stop hyperventilating. She did what she always did, forming her lips into a small oval and blowing the breath out in long controlled bursts with her eyes closed. When the dizziness had subsided, she opened her eyes again and noticed that her cheeks were flushed. She had to fight the panic.
“We have to tell my Dad right away,” she said, fighting to control her breathing. “And I need to tell Joe Hawke, too!”
CHAPTER FOUR
“Today we fight.”
Hawke scanned the faces of his team. They had fought many battles together, and many good friends had fallen on the way. The war against the Oracle and his Athanatoi cult had ground them down, stripping them of everything except their hope. Their team had been shattered, their home had been destroyed and any innocence they had left was crushed out of existence.
“And we fight hard,” he turned from the team to the enormous rock formation looming over his shoulder. The Monastery that the Oracle and the Athanatoi high command had appropriated was nestled at the very top of this place. On the center of this island in the Aegean Sea he had built his inner sanctum atop a towering column of rock nearly two thousand feet high.
“Do we fight any other way?” Scarlet dragged on the last of her cigarette and flicked the butt into the shore’s shallow waters. “I mean, Ryan fights like a girl, but it’s unwise to fuck with the rest of us, right?”
Ryan slowly extended his middle finger. “Spin baby, spin.”
“You know what, boy?”
“What?”
“Since your balls dropped I’m starting to like you.”
He blew her a kiss. “Maybe one day I can say the same of you.”
“Ouch,” Lexi said. “With an ego like yours, Cairo, that’s gotta hurt.”
Scarlet smirked. “At least since they dropped I finally have something to kick.”
“Fifteen all,” Hawke said. “Now back to business.”
Scarlet smacked a magazine into her machine pistol. “Forty-thirty actually… to me.”
Hawke gave her a weary look and shook his head. “Right, gather round. We all know what’s at stake here. At the top of this cliff is the ancient monastery which Wolff has converted into his latest headquarters. He’s using it because of the inaccessibility, but that’s not going to stop us. We go up silent and we then we go in hard.”
“Stop it, Joe,” Lexi said. “No one wants to hear about our night in Zambia together.”
Hawke opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again, speechless.
Lea said, “You can look, hun, buy you can’t touch.” She waved the engagement ring in the air and the sun caught the diamonds, making them sparkle. “He’s mine now.” She walked over to the Chinese assassin and leaned into her ear, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Mine all mine, got it?”
As she and Lexi exchanged a glance, Scarlet broke the tension. “We do this for Danny, and Magnus.”