“Not word one.”
“Didn’t Lazarus get my order to him?”
“That was Lazarus just on the cell with me. He did give your order.”
“Before or after Fortune’s press conference?”
“Before.”
“Before?”
“Right, before.”
“So what did the motherfucker say at this press conference?”
“Fortune praised Commissioner Carbone as if she were the Ulysses S. Grant of the twenty-first century. He said that because of her effectiveness he was ordering the immediate lifting of the lock-down of Manhattan. The city, he said, is now safe enough for that.”
Carter’s moods and reactions had always been a mystery to Fitton. Carter and Fitton had known each other for the few years their careers in the Senate overlapped when they had adjoining office suites and both served on the Foreign Relations Committee. As Defense Secretary, Fitton had met with Carter at least twice a week over the last three years in the Oval Office and conference rooms in the Pentagon and elsewhere. Fitton had never once been invited to the legendary basketball games Carter held at the White House gym.
As the Bombardier leveled with the sureness of an arrow, with the flat New Jersey terrain racing on both sides of the slender craft, Andrew Carter said nothing. Whoever the pilot was had the expertise of an astronaut. The wheels of the jet made a velvet contact with the old and somewhat rutted runway of the small airport.
Even when the Bombardier stopped completely, its flawless engines subsiding into silence, no one in the cabin moved; there were no snapping sounds of seat belts clicking open and loose. This was because Andrew Carter, ordinarily as vigorous and fast at fifty-two as he had been decades earlier as a college, and briefly a professional basketball player, remained motionless. The only sound, the only movement, came two minutes after the jet halted when the pilot opened the cockpit’s sealed door. The pilot, who had close-cropped blond hair, was a woman. Andrew Carter and the other people in the luxurious cabin hadn’t known that because the door to the cockpit was closed and sealed when, less than an hour before, they had quickly scaled the stairs to the inside of the plane. The pilot and copilot, a large man in a Navy pilot’s uniform who left the cockpit only when the attractive woman was at the front of the cabin, hadn’t made any announcements during the flight.
Without unfastening his belt, the president leaned closer to Roger Fitton, asking, “Rog, how many Army and Marine soldiers do I have in the city?”
“Between fifteen and twenty thousand troops.”
“Where are they primarily?”
Fitton shrugged. “All over Manhattan.”
“Roger,” the president said, “those are not really adequate answers. In fact, they’re lousy answers.”
Roger Fitton had an almost inflexible cheeriness, a quality that enabled him to win by huge margins every election he ran in Ohio. The president had picked him as the secretary of defense because he felt he needed at least one bright face among the sour collection of men and women, including Harlan Lazarus, who ran what the press always called the president’s “national security team.” And Fitton also carried at least an aura of military service: as a young man he had enlisted in the Army Reserve, spent four months on active duty and then twelve years on almost nonexistent reserve duty, leaving with the rank of major, the reason why some soldiers in the Administration addressed him as “Major.” Andrew Carter knew it was a joke. Fitton had entered the Army because he always intended to be a politician and believed, correctly, that a claim to military service would give him some intangible edge, a credit, particularly in a state like Ohio.
“I don’t understand, Mr. President. That’s the best information I have. I can get you exact numbers and locations in two seconds.”
The president glanced at him with unveiled disdain and, after the tense beat of two or three seconds, he turned to his left. General Foster was staring straight ahead, as if at attention. “General?” Carter said.
Without hesitating, the general said, “Twelve thousand three hundred and seventy-five, sir. They’re located at every street corner in Manhattan. There are an additional two thousand nine hundred troops on Naval and Coast Guard craft on the rivers and in New York Harbor, all ready for specific deployment.”
“General, I want your reserve troops to concentrate at every bridge and tunnel leading into and out of Manhattan. Your commanders must make sure that no one, absolutely no one, leaves or enters Manhattan until I give that order.”
“Mr. President,” the grim general said, “those access points are currently under the control of the NYPD.”
“So?”
“If we deploy in the next hour, my soldiers will come face to face with those police officers. I understand that the rank and file of the NYPD are remarkably loyal to that commissioner, Ms. Capone or whatever her name is. She must already have directed her people that the mayor has announced the lifting of the lockdown. They see themselves as working for the mayor, not you.”
“General, let me say it again. United States soldiers are to be posted immediately at every entrance and exit point in Manhattan. No one leaves or enters Manhattan unless I say so.”
“What is it exactly, sir, that you want my troops to do? We soon will have armed men and women facing each other at bridges and tunnels, with directly conflicting orders. Tempers will flare. In Afghanistan I had many situations where soldiers, the Afghans and my troops, nominally allies on the same side, came into direct contact at times when they were under competing orders. And the results often were not pretty.”
“Listen, General. I am the commander in chief. My orders are that Code Apache stays rigidly in effect until I say otherwise. How you and your people implement those orders is your business.”
Carter then finally reached for the buckle of his seat belt. The unfastening sound of the click sharply resonated, followed immediately by a series of identical clicks as everyone else unfastened theirs.
Malcolm Foster stood first to give Carter access to the aisle. He saw the president put his hand on Fitton’s wrist just as Fitton was about to stand.
“By the way, General, I’m certain the major here, with his deep reservoir of military experience, can help you.”
The silver blades of the green Army helicopter already flashed like a million swords in the bright sunlight as Carter led a small entourage through a cordon of Secret Service agents on the skillet-hot tarmac of the Teterboro runway. At six four, Carter was not only the tallest person in his entourage, he was taller than the sixteen men and two women in the Secret Service detail which suddenly materialized around him.
The Army helicopter carrying President Carter was indistinguishable from the dozens of other green helicopters that were airborne at the same time over the Hudson River and the amazing spectacle of Manhattan, and, in the distance, the glittering expanse of New York Harbor. Carter could see the Statue of Liberty, as distinct as the miniature models of it displayed in the shops and kiosks of every airport in America.
Behind him in the thunderous interior of the helicopter, the president heard the clipped voice of Malcolm Foster on a cell phone, but couldn’t hear the words. Carter was certain that the homely, hard-bitten general was giving out commands to follow the president’s order. As Carter had expected, the general hadn’t spoken to the secretary of defense, who sat quietly on the hard metal bench in the helicopter’s belly. Those benches were benches made for soldiers and not for the president of the United States.
A thousand feet below the helicopter was the dazzling perfection of the grid of midtown Manhattan. It had the straight lines of crisscrossing streets and avenues and the tops of buildings that made it look like a gigantic chessboard with all the pieces in their precisely ordained places. Carter had flown over every small and large city in America, and there was no sight like this anywhere else in the country.