“No! Shut only the left engine down!” Mantooth shouted to the cockpit. He turned to Lake angrily: “Sir, you stay put. I’ll see what they want.”
“This is my problem, Mantooth.”
“No, it’s my problem,” Mantooth said. “You hired me to protect you, sir. I’m a practicing attorney here in New York State as well as former military. We cooperate, but you don’t have to expose yourself to danger or get your rights violated. Now, stay out—”
“You’re a good man, Mantooth,” Lake said, “and your people are first-rate, but this shit started long before you came on board.”
“Sir, you may have gotten yourself in deep shit, but now your problems are my problems,” Mantooth said. “If you have to surrender to the police, we’ll do it in a controlled, orderly manner.”
“I need the government’s cooperation… their protection… to stay alive,” Lake said. “I have to give them whatever they want.”
“Why do you need government protection, sir?”
“It’s too complicated,” Lake said. “I… I’ve got to go out there.”
“I said, stay put, and that’s an order,” Mantooth said. He nodded to Diane, the stewardess, who had produced a 10- millimeter automatic pistol from nowhere and was guarding the emergency exits, making sure no one came in from behind them. “I’m your attorney in New York State, representing you. You don’t have to say a word. Understand me?” Lake nodded — for the first time in a long time, he felt as if things were truly under control. Mantooth deployed the airstairs and stepped outside.
A huge, boxy-looking aircraft with two huge helicopter rotors mounted on the tips of short fat wings — certainly not a standard little helicopter — hovered just a few hundred yards in front of the Gulfstream, shining a large searchlight right at them. It slowly began to descend onto the runway as a yellow-and-blue New York State Police cruiser with lights flashing sped onto the runway, turning around in front of the Gulfstream and parking about twenty yards in front of the jet’s nose. A lone trooper got out of the carr right hand on the butt of his service weapon, partially shielding himself with his car door. On the car’s PA speaker, he asked, “How many others in the aircraft?”
“Five,” Mantooth shouted back.
“Any armed?”
“One, a private security employee.”
“Have him, Harold Lake, and Ted Fell step out, hands in sight.” Mantooth turned and motioned toward the entry door — but instead of anyone stepping outside, the airstairs retracted and the hatch closed tight. “I said I want Lake and Fell out here — right now!” the trooper shouted.
But Mantooth wasn’t watching the trooper — he was watching the approaching aircraft. He recognized it as a V- 22 Osprey, used by the Border Security Force for stopping drug smugglers a few years earlier. A door opened on the right side and several armed men got out… and at that same moment, both rear passenger doors on the State Police car burst open, two men rolled out carrying submachine guns, aimed their guns at the V-22, and opened fire.
Mantooth pounded on the side of the Gulfstream and shouted, “Get out of here, now!” He drew his sidearm, but it was too late — he saw the red glint of a laser aiming beam flash across his eyes, and then the whole world turned black.
The Gulfstream’s right engine roared almost to full power, and the nose did a tight pirouette to the right, the left wingtip barely edging over the roof of the sedan. Gregory Townsend, dressed as a New York State trooper, calmly reached into the front seat of the car, withdrew a LAWS (Light Antitank Weapon System) rocket, raised its sights, waited until the Gulfstream was about seventy yards away, aimed, and fired. The Gulfstream III bizjet exploded in a huge fireball, singeing the man’s hair and eyebrows with the heat. Townsend dropped the spent fiberglass launcher tube, ignored the heat, the destruction, and his two dead comrades behind him, calmly stepped into the sedan, and raced away. He was picked up by a waiting helicopter on the other side of the airport and was gone minutes later with no possible pursuit.
The White House
That Same Time
The bedside phone was programmed with a gentle wakeup cycle: the ring started out soft and barely audible, and gradually rose in intensity, depending on the urgency of the call as determined by the White House operator. On all but a national defense-level emergency call, the President usually needed three or four good rings to wake up — but not the First Lady. At the first gentle buzz of the phone she was quickly and silently out of bed, her lean, agile body barely flexing the super-king-size mattress. By the second ring, without turning on a light, she had her Armani robe and slippers on and was all the way around to the President’s side of the bed. By the third Ting she had touched the ACKNOWLEDGE button on the phone and lightly touched her husband’s shoulder: “I’ll be outside,” she said simply, giving him a peck on the cheek as he struggled to shake out the cobwebs.
The First Lady walked briskly across the bedroom, opened one of the double doors, and stepped out into the outer apartment, leaving the door partially open. Theodore, the President’s valet, was just showing a steward inside, carrying a tray with a pot of strong black Kona and walnut- covered pastries for the President, a pot of Earl Grey tea and cold cucumber slices for the First Lady, and a small stack of messages for the President’s immediate attention. A Secret Service agent stood by the door, hands folded in front of his body, casually scanning the outer apartment and occasionally talking into the microphone mounted inside his left sleeve, reporting to Inside Security that everything was secure. “Good morning, ma’am,” Theodore greeted her pleasantly.
“Good morning,” the First Lady said distractedly. She immediately snatched the messages off the tray, sat down on the sofa, and began to read as the tray was placed on the table before her and her tea was poured. Theodore had been the White House valet for two Administrations now, and it was damned unusual to be greeted by the First Lady when these early-morning crisis calls came in. Most First Ladies stayed in the inner apartment and waited for the hubbub to die down in the outer apartment and their own personal staff to arrive and brief them — not this First Lady. She always got up ahead of her husband, never bothered to dress before coming out, always helped herself to the messages from the Communication Center, and rarely waited for her husband to come out before making notes or phone calls or even going out to the Yellow Oval Room, the main living room in the center of the second floor, to talk to the Chief of Staff or whoever else might be out there waiting for a reply.
“Anyone outside yet, Theodore?” the First Lady asked.
“No, ma’am,” the valet replied.
The First Lady picked up the phone beside the sofa. She heard the standard “Yes, Mr. President” from the operator, silently suffered the gender gaffe, and said, “Location of the Chief of Staff and the Deputy Attorney General.”
“One moment, ma’am… the Chief of Staff is en route, ETA five minutes. The Deputy Attorney General is also en route, ETA fifteen minutes.”
“Ask the FBI Director, the Attorney General, and the Communications Director to report to the White House immediately,” the First Lady said and hung up. The word “ask” was, of course, superfluous — it was an order, not a request. Besides, the First Lady thought angrily, if the President had to be awakened, the damned staff had better be wide awake and in their seats by the time he was up. “You can go in and see to the President, Theodore,” the First Lady said without looking up from her reading.