“I’m scared, Dad,” Ali said.
“We’re going to be okay. No one wants a war like that,” I repeated. “You just have to have faith in—”
“But when we can leave, can we?”
I turned to Bree. “Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea for Nana Mama and the kids to go see my dad in Florida until things settle down.”
“What?” Jannie said. “No, Dad. My spring season’s coming up.”
“How would we get there?” my grandmother asked. “No planes. No trains.”
“We’ll cross these bridges when we—”
My phone buzzed. Ned Mahoney.
“You rested?” he said.
“Barely. You see what’s going on?”
“Yes, which is why they want us back at Andrews ASAP.”
Chapter 75
The rain had stopped at last, temperatures were rising, and the clouds were breaking up when a Gulfstream jet landed at Joint Base Andrews at 2:15 p.m. on Saturday, February 6.
As the jet taxied toward me and the hangar, I kept looking over my shoulder, back inside, to see hundreds of people trying to do their jobs as best they could. But the strain and worry showed.
Ever since President Larkin’s act of brinkmanship, the media had been going crazy, declaring the country on the verge of all-out war with two superpowers and a rogue regime. Protests were breaking out. People were panicking, and there were reports of widespread food shortages, violence, and looting. We were hearing of clogged highways as people fled the country’s larger cities.
But the threat of the entire Eastern Seaboard being leveled as mushroom clouds rose above it was what hung over everyone at Andrews, including me.
All morning I had tried to stay focused on what I could do: review all the new evidence coming in and look for something that would help us get a break. But then up on the screens, there would be some update on the secretary of defense’s status or a piece on CNN about the proper use of gas masks, and I’d be thrown into a loop of what-if questions that destroyed my concentration.
I could see the same happening to many others working the investigation. On the whole, it felt like we were making little if any progress.
Despite hours of searching, dredging, and diving near the confluence of Rock Creek and the Potomac River, there’d been no sign of the guy in the dry suit that the Virginia National Guardsmen had shot at in the early-morning hours.
Had “the Frogman,” as the media was calling him, been the president’s assassin? Why else would someone be in Rock Creek when the city was in total lockdown, the air temperature was in the thirties, and the water temperature was in the forties at best? Plus, he hadn’t been all that far from where Bree had had him almost cornered inside GW University Hospital.
In my gut, the Frogman was the blond minister who killed the president, shot the defense secretary, killed the pathologist, and skinned a corpse. And we’d lost him.
Mahoney tried to convince me that the cold river water could have sunk the corpse, that the body would surface downriver sooner or later. But I wasn’t so sure.
As the Gulfstream rolled to a stop and was surrounded by armed airmen, an alarm started whooping long and slow somewhere in the distance.
Time seemed to stand still.
Many of the airmen had taken their eyes off the jet and were searching the sky. You could see the fear in their faces. I could feel it in mine.
Was there a missile coming?
The alarms were sounding, but would that make a difference? I tried not to think about my family, but it was impossible not to.
I had an image of all of us at Sunday dinner, kidding one another, laughing, and debating the chances of Damon’s team surging enough to make the NCAA championships in March.
But in the next moment, as the Gulfstream’s hatch opened and the ramp unfolded, I was imagining a nuclear blast, fire, and devastating scorching gusts of wind that would leave everything in my life in smoke and ruin.
Had President Larkin made the right decision as a show of power? Or had he provoked our rivals and enemies to take unthinkable actions?
I kept wondering if Larkin was too rash to be leader of the free world. I kept asking myself if he would ever have come remotely close to occupying the Oval Office if President Hobbs, the Speaker of the House, and three members of Hobbs’s cabinet had not been shot down in cold blood.
Agents in SWAT gear exited the Gulfstream, leading a grizzled-looking, sunburned man in denim and handcuffs. Morris Franks, the father of the treasury secretary’s killer, was in his sixties with gray hair and an untamed silver beard. Despite the show of force all around him, Franks didn’t seem frightened as they led him past me. He didn’t seem angry either.
Indeed, when our eyes met for the first time, his affect was so flat, I thought I was looking at a man who had no real emotional center, a man who was dead inside.
Mahoney tapped me on the shoulder. “Let’s go, Alex. The director wants us to interrogate him.”
As I turned to follow him, I felt my phone buzz, alerting me to a text.
I didn’t recognize the phone number, but I understood the text.
Dr. Cross, please, I need to talk to you. It’s Nina Davis.
I texted her back immediately, telling her that I was part of the investigation into the assassinations and unavailable for the moment.
After hitting Send, I hurried after Ned.
Chapter 76
After attending a short briefing with the FBI agents who’d raided Morris Franks’s compound in Arizona and reviewing the list of initial evidence gathered there, Mahoney and I entered a makeshift interrogation room off the main hangar floor.
His handcuffs had been removed, but the professed anarchist was in a restraint belt and ankle irons. Chains ran from both to a steel desk freshly bolted into the concrete floor. Franks was drinking a Dr Pepper and smoking a filterless cigarette.
In my pocket, my phone buzzed.
I pulled it out, saw it was Nina Davis again.
This is important! An emergency!
Can’t. Sorry. Emergencies here as well, I messaged back. I sighed, pushed aside the guilt I felt putting a client off, and forced myself to stay focused on Franks.
“You good, Mr. Franks?” I said after Mahoney introduced us.
Franks took a drag on his cigarette and then a swig of his Dr Pepper, blew out cigarette smoke, burped, and said, “Been better. Been worse. I could use something to eat. Oh, and a Miranda warning if you don’t want the ACLU crawling up your shorts. And an attorney ASAP.”
Mahoney said, “Haven’t you heard, Mr. Franks? Martial law’s been declared. Things like Miranda warnings, habeas corpus, and the right to an attorney have been suspended along with all other rules of a free civilization.”
Franks blinked and looked at me.
I nodded to him, said, “Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“The tyranny and government oppression you’ve always predicted — they’re happening, and you know what? You’re one of the first victims.”
I saw a slight tic in the corner of his mouth, but that was all he gave me.
“What’s this about?” Franks demanded. “No one will tell me a damned thing.”
Mahoney slid a picture across the table to him. “That’s Abigail Bowman, the U.S. treasury secretary, lying dead in the rain there.”
He studied her, shrugged. “Yeah? So what’s that got to do with me?”
“Your son, Martin, killed her. Shot her down in cold blood.”