And then headlights lit up the bike and Wells heard a car roaring toward them. The rider dropped the pistol in frustration and turned back to his bike as the Toyota, the final car in the convoy, gave chase.
Close.
Wells breathed in deep, filled his lungs with foul gasoline-soaked air, pushed himself to his feet. Already the fireball had faded, and the motorcycle engine, too. Instead, screaming filled the night. Help, a woman sobbed from the corner, her voice somehow clear through the crackling of the fire. Allah, please help! All this carnage and chaos and suffering for him, because of him.
But he was still here.
Skill, and luck, too, though Wells wasn’t feeling very lucky at the moment, feeling instead like a kind of perverse Pan, a small-g god who was a bringer of chaos instead of pleasure wherever he went. He longed to curse but instead he tucked the Glock into his jacket pocket and ran for the woman yelling under the rubble, her voice already losing strength, dulling and fading like a bad phone call. He doglegged around the wreckage of the Mercedes, the steel beams of its frame warped from the inferno, until he reached the wrecked concrete.
At his feet he found a strip of plain white plastic in the road, a piece of a shopping bag. Perfect. He bound his left pinky tight to his ring finger, pulling until the pain dried his mouth. The break was bad, just short of a compound fracture, but Wells didn’t care. Even if the agony in his hand magnified until he screamed with each piece of concrete he pulled, he needed to make himself useful as best he could. He needed to dig.
7
When the President ordered that first drone strike on Iran, he’d felt a certain grim excitement.
But since the attack on United 49, the excitement had worn off, leaving only the grimness. This morning he’d woken at 3 a.m. with a sour stomach. He’d fought the urge to call the Secret Service and demand a low-profile ride through D.C. Not to go anywhere in particular, just to remind himself that the world outside his bulletproof windows existed. That drunks still stumbled home after the bars closed.
He hadn’t understood the price he would pay for choosing this path. Nothing in the world — not the exhaustion of the primaries, not the tension of Election Day, not the elation of the Inaugural — compared to these last days for pure suffocating power. Only his predecessors in this office could truly understand. He wanted to call them, ask them how they’d borne it. But he felt somehow he’d be cheating, burdening them with a weight that wasn’t theirs. This confrontation belonged to him, no one else.
The paradox was that the pressure made him more certain of the decisions he’d made. He knew how carefully he’d considered every alternative. He’d hoped that his surprise first strike would wake the Iranian government to the risks of its overreach. In daylight, American drones and stealth fighters had smashed Iran’s air-defense system and flown straight through Tehran to target the military airport at its heart. He couldn’t have sent a clearer message. We don’t want to attack you, but if we do, you can’t possibly defend yourselves.
He had three aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. He had Marine regiments on the way to western Afghanistan and the 82nd Airborne headed for southeastern Turkey. He had said explicitly that he had no interest in regime change, that he merely wanted the Iranians to drop their nuclear program.
He hadn’t expected that Iran would give way immediately. But he had figured it would try to deter an invasion by promising to negotiate over opening its weapons plants. That move would have made sense as a way to buy time. Instead, Iran’s leaders had taken the opposite course. They’d accused him of lying and making up evidence. They had promised they would die before agreeing to a deal.
Then they had shot down a civilian jet.
Who were these people? How could he make them see?
At least he had Donna. Donna Green, his National Security Advisor, a skinny angular woman smarter than everyone else in the White House. Including him. They didn’t always agree, but he trusted her completely. They were set to meet at 4 p.m., less than two hours from now. He’d insisted on forty-five minutes alone with her before the Secretary of Defense and the general who ran Central Command updated him on war plans.
In theory, Green was coming early to brief him on the investigation into United 49. In reality, he wanted the conversation with her that he couldn’t have with anyone else outside his family, the one where he dropped the I-am-President mask enough to vent some of the pressure he felt.
First he had to endure the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate. He had tried to escape, telling his chief of staff, an old-school Boston Brahman who bore the unfortunate name of Harrison Hamilton, to reschedule. They make me feel like an old lady with too many cats. Every time I focus on one, the other three start pissing on the floor. And I see in their beady little eyes that they’re hoping I’ll die so they can gnaw on my fingertips. Besides, I met them last week.
But Hamilton had flat-out said no. Sorry, Chief. Can’t help you with this one. Half an hour will buy you goodwill you might need. If it makes you feel any better, they won’t argue. They read the polls like everyone else. Closer, in fact. They just want to be able to tell the world they heard you make the case firsthand. In the Oval Office. Pretend they’re potential donors, okay? Very attractive, very rich donors.
So he spent precisely thirty-seven minutes with his four congressional house cats, and then at 2:45 p.m. went upstairs to his bedroom to read. He’d asked his staff for the best histories of the Cuban Missile Crisis, hoping for clues. But the only conclusion he reached was that Jack Kennedy had been crazy enough to walk to the edge of nuclear war and lucky enough that the Soviets backed down. If Kennedy’s experience was any guide, the President would have to push hard before the Iranians folded.
More sleepless nights.
After an hour, he set aside the book and snuck a cigarette. Normally, his wife gave him grief for smoking in their private quarters instead of the specially ventilated corridor where he usually indulged. But she wasn’t arguing this week.
He swigged a mouthful of Scope to clear the ashy taste from his mouth, fixed his tie, walked downstairs, settled himself behind his desk. At exactly 4 p.m., a steward opened the door to the Oval Office and Green walked in. She held a red-bordered file, rarely a good sign.
“Mr. President.”
She settled herself in the simple wooden chair to the right of his desk. “Before I bring you up to speed on Mumbai, you should know that CIA is reporting a terrorist attack in Riyadh. A car bomb. The attack occurred two and a half hours ago, roughly 2230 local.”
“Related to Iran?”
“Unclear. As you know, AQ has a robust presence in the Kingdom. The attack was on the southwest edge of the city. Several dead and injured, but no one in the royal family. We should know more after the sun comes up over there.”
“Unless it’s related to Iran or otherwise significant, I don’t care. I don’t need to hear about random terrorist attacks right now.”
“Yes, sir.” The rebuke didn’t seem to ruffle Green. “Now. As to Mumbai. I have potentially good news. India’s Minister of the Interior has told the FBI that his investigators have an informant who reports the men who fired the missiles are in hiding in a slum there. The police don’t have the location locked down yet, but they believe they will within the next twenty-four hours.”