He was trying, and there had been good news.
The Taliban was dead, and Afghanistan was quiet.
Iraq, too, was largely pacified — finally — and, despite all the hardships, had a democratically elected government as well. Saddam Hussein’s regime was dead and buried. The vast majority of U.S. and coalition troops were finally out of Iraq. And the new government, while still working to firmly establish its legitimacy, was — for now, at least — peaceful, only lightly armed, and friendly to American interests.
What’s more, Yasser Arafat was dead. A moderate, democratically elected Palestinian prime minister was in power. An interim Israeli- Palestinian peace agreement — MacPherson’s baby — was bearing fruit, and a final status agreement could very possibly be completed by the end of the summer. In fact, if the Russians would sign off on the deal, a signing ceremony at the White House could occur as soon as the fall.
Now all that was at risk.
MacPherson and his chief of staff stepped to the side of the room. “Tell me you’re seeing something I’m not, Bob,” MacPherson said, praying for a miracle.
Bob Corsetti was the man who had persuaded him to enter politics almost fifteen years before. It was Corsetti who had gotten him elected — and reelected — governor of Colorado. It was Corsetti who had managed his presidential campaign and served as his only White House chief of staff. MacPherson relied on Corsetti to see around corners and compensate for his blind spots. They were almost brothers at this point, and though MacPherson had paid him well, he knew Corsetti, ten years his junior, would have done it all for free.
“I’m afraid I’m not, Mr. President. It’s clearly an aggressive profile. Everything’s been done by the book. But you don’t have a choice. You need to take this guy out fast.”
The president said nothing. He turned to look again at the radar track. The Russian jet was now just thirty-five miles out and coming in red-hot. Corsetti was right. He was out of options and out of time.
“God forgive me,” MacPherson said.
The president finally gave the order to Defense Secretary Trainor.
On the monitor, MacPherson saw Trainor pick up a phone and say into it, “It’s a go. Repeat, mission is a go.”
“That’s affirmative,” came the response from Panama City on another monitor.
All eyes turned to the live video feed coming in from the lead F-16.
“Devil One-One,” said the two-star in Panama City. “POTUS declares the target is hostile. You are cleared to engage.”
“CONR Command, do I understand you right?… Target is hostile?… You want me to engage? You want me to fire on an unarmed civilian jetliner?”
MacPherson could hear the tremor in the flight leader’s voice.
He shot a hard look to his national security advisor. It was the president’s job — not a pilot’s — to wrestle through the moral justification of a call like this. The commander in chief had just issued an order. Why wasn’t it being obeyed?
The Aeroflot jet was now twenty-five miles out.
Marsha Kirkpatrick picked up the open line to NORAD just as another voice came over the intercom.
“Devil One-One, this is General Briggs at NORAD. Son, you are ordered to take this Russian jet down. Repeat, take the target down.”
For a moment, there was nothing but silence.
“I can’t, sir.”
It was the voice of the lead pilot.
“I’m sorry, sir…. I… I just can’t do it…. It’s not right.”
MacPherson saw Kirkpatrick gasp and instinctively cover her mouth with her hands. Chuck Murray was ashen.
“General Briggs,” MacPherson said, grabbing the phone from Kirkpatrick, “this is the president of the United States. The capital of the country is under attack. I am ordering you to take that plane down now.”
“Yes, sir. I’m on it, sir.”
Aeroflot 6617 was now only fourteen miles out and picking up speed.
“Devil One-One, this is General Briggs at NORAD. Peel off immediately. Devil One-Two, do you have a shot? I repeat, do you have a shot?”
Silence.
“Devil One-Two, do you have a shot?”
“Roger that, General.”
“Then take it, son — before ten thousand people die.”
“Roger that, sir.”
All eyes in the PEOC were glued to the video feed coming in from the second F-16. The fighter jet maneuvered into position behind the Russian jumbo.
MacPherson glanced at the TV monitors. Every network now had its own images of the Russian jet screaming down the Potomac River and two F-16s in hot pursuit.
They were chilling, mesmerizing pictures, and MacPherson had no doubt they had the power to set the world on fire.
“Sir, I have radar lock…. I have tone….”
The planes were now just eight miles from the White House.
“Fox two!”
An AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missile suddenly exploded from the right side of the F-16. The missile streaked through the morning sky. It sliced into the Russian plane’s fuselage, and then, in a fraction of a second, Aeroflot 6617 erupted in a massive fireball that would alter the course of human events forever.
2
Jon Bennett told himself he had no reason to be anxious.
He had cut hundreds of deals over the years, and he was ready for this one. He’d thought through every angle and considered every scenario. He was ready for every possible objection. A front-page profile in the New York Times had once described him as “one of the youngest and most successful deal makers on Wall Street.”
So why was he chewing antacids like candy?
True, Bennett was no longer on Wall Street. Now a senior White House advisor, he was the chief architect of the administration’s “Oil-for-Peace” initiative and was on the verge of wrapping up a treaty that would forever change the destiny of every Muslim, Jew, and Christian in the Middle East.
Nor was he so young. At almost forty-four, Bennett realized that life on the political bullet train was beginning to take its toll. His short, dark hair was going gray at the temples. His grayish green eyes needed glasses when he read or worked on the computer. At six feet tall and 190 pounds, he was still in good shape, in part because of his obsession with running three to four miles every morning. But he still suffered from severe, chronic pain in both of his shoulders that no amount of medication seemed sufficient to extinguish — ever-present souvenirs of a terrorist attack that had nearly cost him his life.
Such, he concluded, were the fringe benefits of “serving at the pleasure of the president” in the new age of terror.
Bennett stared out over the city of his youth from the outdoor café on the tenth floor of the Ararat Park Hyatt, one of Moscow’s most expensive and prestigious luxury hotels. From here he could see the redbrick towers and pale yellow administration buildings of the Kremlin, the four onion-domed Russian Orthodox churches within the Kremlin compound, and the massive State Historical Museum guarding Red Square.
Looking due west, he could see the imposing gray granite of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, and almost directly below him was the famed Bolshoi Theatre, now dark and closed for the night.
In the distance a storm was brewing. But it was summer, and even at this late hour, Moscow was very much alive. Traffic was heavy. There was music in the air. Stylish young couples strolled down the main thoroughfare, laughing and holding hands under the streetlamps, making out and heading for the ubiquitous, all-night casinos that now dominated this city that was once the mecca of Marxism.