Situation Room. Jack Mars

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СКАЧАТЬ don’t work for her anymore,” Luke said. “Remember?”

      This morning, before they had left to come on this hike, they had watched TV news footage of the dam failure in North Carolina. More than a hundred confirmed dead, hundreds more missing. An entire mountain resort had been washed away by a wall of water. Towns downstream from there were being evacuated and sandbagged as fast as possible, but there were likely to be more casualties.

      The incredible thing was a dam built in 1943 had simply malfunctioned after more than seventy years of nearly perfect operations. To Luke, that smelled like sabotage. But he couldn’t imagine who would want to target a dam in such a remote area. Who would even know it was there? If it was sabotage, then it was likely a local issue, some group of militia members, or maybe environmentalists, or maybe even a disgruntled former employee, pulling a stunt that went horribly wrong, and with tragic consequences. The state police or North Carolina Bureau of Investigation would probably have the bad guys in custody by the end of the day.

      But now the phone was ringing. So maybe there was more to it.

      “Dad, it’s okay. I don’t want you to quit your job, even if Mom does.”

      “Is that so? What if I want to quit? Don’t I get any say in the matter?”

      Gunner shook his head. “I don’t think so. I mean, a lot of people died in that flood, right? What if I was one of them? What if Mom and me both died? Wouldn’t you want someone to figure out why it happened?”

      The phone went on and on, ringing. When voice mail picked up, the phone stopped ringing for a few seconds, paused, and then started ringing again. They wanted to speak to Luke, and they weren’t going to leave a message.

      Luke, thinking of Gunner’s words, pressed the green button on the phone. “Stone.”

      “Hold for the President of the United States,” a male voice said.

      There was a moment of silence, and then her voice came on the line. She sounded harder than before, someone older. The events of the past few months would age anyone.

      “Luke?”

      “Hi, Susan.”

      “Luke, I need you to come in for a meeting.”

      “Is this about the dam failure?”

      “Yes.”

      “Susan, I’m retired, remember?”

      Her voice lowered.

      “Luke, the dam was hacked. Hundreds of people are dead, and all signs point to the Chinese. We are on the verge of World War Three.”

      Luke didn’t know how to respond to that.

      “What time will you be here?” she asked.

      And he knew it was not a question.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      6:15 p.m.

      United States Naval Observatory – Washington, DC

      Luke rode in the back of the black SUV as it pulled into the circle in front of the stately, white-gabled 1850s Queen Anne–style residence that for many years had been the Vice President’s official residence. Since the White House was destroyed two months before, this place had served as the New White House, which was fitting because the President had lived here for five years before taking on her new role.

      The two months Luke had been away, he almost never thought about this place, or the people inside. He kept the satellite phone with him at the President’s request, but for the first few weeks, he lived in dread of receiving a call. After that, he almost forgot he even had the phone.

      A young woman met him on the walkway in front of the house. She was brunette, tall, very pretty. She wore a no-nonsense black skirt and jacket. Her hair was tied back in a tight bun. She carried a tablet computer in her left hand. She offered Luke the other hand. Her grip was firm, all business.

      “Agent Stone? I’m Kathryn Lopez, Susan’s chief-of-staff.”

      Luke was a little taken aback. “Are they recruiting chiefs-of-staff right out of high school these days?”

      “Very kind of you,” she said. Her voice was perfunctory. It told him she got that all the time, and most of the time it wasn’t intended to be kind. “I’m thirty-seven years old. I’ve lived in Washington thirteen years, since right after I finished my master’s degree. I’ve worked for a Representative, two Senators, and the former Director of Health and Human Services. I’ve been around the block a couple times.”

      “Okay,” Luke said. “I’m not worried about you.”

      They moved through the front doors. Inside the doors, they were confronted by a checkpoint with three armed guards and a metal detector. Luke removed the Glock nine-millimeter from his shoulder holster and placed it on the conveyor belt. He reached down and unstrapped the small pocket pistol and the hunting knife taped to his calves and placed those on the belt as well. Finally, he took his keys from his pocket and dropped them on there with the weapons.

      “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t remember there being a security checkpoint here.”

      “There wasn’t,” Kat Lopez said. “It’s only been in for a few weeks. We’ve got more and more people coming here as Susan gets a grip on her duties, and security has formalized.”

      Luke remembered. When the attacks came, and Thomas Hayes died, Susan was suddenly elevated to the Presidency. The White House had been mostly destroyed, and everything – all arrangements, all logistics – had an ad hoc, almost desperate quality to them. Those had been crazy days. He was glad for the time off since then. It was a little amazing that Susan hadn’t had any at all.

      After the guards took Luke aside and gave him an extra pat-down and a quick skim with a metal-detecting wand, he and the chief-of-staff moved on.

      The place was bustling. The foyer was crowded with people in suits, people in military uniforms, people with their sleeves rolled up, people walking fast through the hallways, trailing gaggles of assistants. One thing was obvious right away – there were a lot more women here than before.

      “What happened to the last guy?” Luke said. “He used to be Susan’s chief-of-staff. Richard…”

      Kat Lopez nodded. “Yes, Richard Monk. Well, after the Ebola incident, both he and Susan agreed that it was a good time for him to move on. But even though he’s out of here, he landed on his feet. He’s working as chief-of-staff for the new United States Representative from Delaware, Paul Chipman.”

      Luke knew there were new Representatives and Senators coming in from thirty-nine states to replace the ones lost in the Mount Weather attack. It was a blizzard of people moving up from the minor leagues, or coming back from retirement. More than a few were the appointees of state governors with questionable ethics and long-established patronage systems. There were greasy palms all over the place.

      He smiled. “Richard went from working directly with the President to working with a freshman rep from the second smallest state in the union? And you call that landing on his feet? It sounds like he landed on his head.”

      “No comment,” Kat said, and almost smiled. It was the closest thing СКАЧАТЬ