Our Sacred Honor. Джек Марс

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      “Madam President, this is my son, Gunner.”

      She shook his hand and put on her friendly I’m the President, and I’m meeting some random kid face. “Gunner, very nice to meet you. How are you enjoying the party?”

      “It’s okay,” he said. He blushed bright red and did not meet her eyes. He was still a shy kid, in some ways.

      “Are your girls here?” Luke said to Ed, changing the subject.

      Ed shrugged and smiled. “Oh, they’re running around somewhere.”

      A woman appeared at the edge of their group. She was tall, blonde, and striking. She wore a red suit and high heels. Even more striking than her looks was the fact that she went straight to Luke, ignoring the President of the United States.

      She held a smartphone out to Luke like a microphone.

      “Agent Stone, I’m Tera Wright, with WFNK, DC’s number one radio news.”

      Luke almost laughed at her self-introduction. “Hi, Tera,” he said. He expected her to ask him about the reopening of the Special Response Team offices, and the mandate the SRT would have to fight terrorism at home and abroad. Nice. It was something he wouldn’t mind talking about.

      “How can I help you?”

      “Well,” Tera began, “I see the President is here at your agency’s grand opening.”

      Luke nodded. “She sure is. I think the President knows how impor – ”

      The woman cut him off. “Can you answer one question for me, please?”

      “Of course.”

      “Are the rumors true?”

      “Uh, I’m not aware of any – ”

      “Rumors have been circulating for a couple of weeks,” Tera Wright informed him.

      “Rumors about what?” Luke said. He glanced around at the group, like a drowning man hoping for a rope.

      Tera Wright raised a hand as if to say STOP. “Let’s do this a different way,” she said. “What would you say is the nature of your relationship with President Hopkins?”

      Luke looked at Susan. Susan was an old hand at this. She didn’t blush. She didn’t look guilty. She merely raised an eyebrow and stared quizzically at the back of the reporter’s head, like she had no idea what this person might be referring to.

      Luke took a breath. “Well, I would say that President Hopkins is my boss.”

      “Nothing more?” the reporter said.

      “Same as you,” Luke said. “She’s also my Commander-in-Chief.”

      He glanced at Susan again, thinking she would jump in now and steer the conversation in a new direction. But now Susan’s chief-of-staff was there, pretty Kat Lopez, in a form-fitting blue pinstriped suit. Kat was still slim, though her face was not nearly as youthful as it had been when she took this job. Three years of constant stress and herding cats would do a number on anyone.

      She was speaking low, practically whispering, directly into Susan’s ear.

      Susan’s face darkened as she listened, then she nodded. Whatever it was, it was bad.

      She looked up.

      “Gentlemen,” she said. “I hope you’ll excuse me.”

      CHAPTER FIVE

      6:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

      The Situation Room

      The White House, Washington, DC

      “Amy,” Kurt said, “please give us Lebanon and Israel. Focus on the Blue Line.”

      On the oversized screen behind him, a map appeared. A second later, it popped up on the smaller screens embedded in the walls. The map showed two territories, bisected by a thick, undulating blue line. To the left of the land area was a pale blue area, denoting the Mediterranean Sea.

      Susan knew the area well enough that she could easily skip this geography lesson. Further, she was frustrated – she had already been back at the White House for an hour. It had taken this long to pull this meeting together.

      “I’m going to race through the preliminaries, if no one minds,” Kurt said. “I imagine everyone in this room is up on current events enough to know that there was a skirmish on the border between Lebanon and Israel nearly two hours ago.

      “The Blue Line, which you see here, is the negotiated border, behind which Israel agreed to pull back her troops after the 1982 war and occupation. An unknown number of Hezbollah commandos made an incursion and attacked an Israeli patrol on the road that follows the Blue Line for much of its length. There were eight soldiers from the Israeli Defense Forces on the patrol, all of whom we know were killed, except one.”

      A formal photograph of a dark-haired young woman appeared on the screens. It looked like a photo taken for a high school yearbook, or before some kind of awards ceremony. The girl was smiling brightly. More than smiling – she was positively beaming.

      “Daria Shalit,” Kurt said. “Nineteen years old, and just beginning the second year of her compulsory two-year service in the IDF.”

      “Pretty,” someone in the room said.

      Kurt didn’t respond. A long exhale escaped from him.

      “Believe me, there is a lot of table-pounding and soul-searching in Israeli decision-making circles. Women have participated in the Israeli border patrols for the past several months. It seems clear now that this was a preplanned kidnapping with Shalit, or any young woman on the patrol, as the intended target. An assault force pursued the kidnappers across the border, but met with furious resistance within two kilometers. Another four Israelis were killed, along with an estimated twenty Hezbollah militants.”

      “Helen of Troy,” a man in military dress greens said.

      Kurt nodded. “Exactly. The effect on Israeli society has been visceral. It has been a punch to the gut, and this was probably the intent. Our intelligence suggests that Hezbollah is deliberately trying to spark a war, similar to the one that took place in 2006. Unfortunately, we suspect they are leading Israel into a trap.”

      “Hezbollah is tough,” the military man said. “They are hard to root out.”

      “Amy,” Kurt said. “Give me Hezbollah, please.”

      On the screen, an image appeared of a group of men marching with banners, fists in the air. Kurt gestured at the men with a laser pointer.

      “Hezbollah – the Party of God, or Army of God, depending on which translation you prefer – is probably the world’s largest and most militarily capable terror organization. They were created, and are trained, funded, and deployed, as a proxy of the Iranian government, with operations spanning Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

      “As СКАЧАТЬ