Empire (10 page)

And then there was the video clip—sold to the highest bidder?—on CBS and then picked up by everybody else (but with the CBS logo in the corner—capitalism continues!) taken from a car on the eastbound lane of Independence Avenue, where it bridged the Tidal Basin. The footage showed the terrorists on the asphalt of the westbound lanes just past the retaining wall of the Tidal Basin, and two rocket launchers.

The camera was shaking—obviously a digital snapshot camera with only a short video capacity. But there were pops of gunfire and some of the terrorists turned to fire . . . almost right at the camera. Was this tourist insane? He should be down inside his car, not vidding the whole thing.

Then a dark shape moved right in front of the camera in a blur of motion. A man in a suit. But with a weapon. And then another, only in uniform. And a voice saying, “Get down inside your car!”

Of course the camera stayed where it was.

Pop. Pop. Pop-pop-pop
. One of the terrorists went down. Another. One of the launchers was knocked out of alignment and tipped over. But the other one fired and then the video ended.

Mark pushed a button on the remote and things started rewinding.

“What are you doing?”

“Rewinding,” said Mark.

“This is all a tape?”

“It's DVR, Mom,” he said, like she was kind of dim. “We've had this for two years now. You can rewind anything if you haven't changed the channel in between.”

“But I want to hear what they're saying.”

“Mom,” said Mark. “Why do we have to listen to
them
when we can
see?
”

And then he added, softly: “I think it was Dad.”

The moment he said it, she knew he was right. Dad in a suit. And that was Captain Coleman in the uniform. Somehow they were at the Tidal Basin with rifles and they were shooting at the terrorists only they hadn't been able to get them all in time.

The video didn't prove anything. Everything moved too fast and blurred too much. But she knew it was Reuben.

“Again,” said Mark.

“No,” said Cecily. “Let me hear them talk. I have to know what they're saying.”

A lot of babble about unidentified early responders and then some idiot talking head saying that the range had been quite short and these must not be trained soldiers because those weren't hard shots. Right, thought Cecily, not hard at the firing range, but damned hard when somebody was firing back at you and you were running from cover to cover.

Then the talking heads were interrupted by a bulletin from the reporter standing just outside the White House grounds.

The President was definitely in the room where the rocket exploded, along with the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Mark pushed another button and suddenly everything jumped on the screen. “What are you doing now?”

“Going live,” said Mark. “We were a minute behind because of the replay.”

“The President is confirmed dead,” said a man inside a briefing room that she recognized immediately—it was in the Sam Rayburn Building. Why would he be in the Rayburn?

Because the White House briefing room wasn't available, of course. But . . .

There was Congressman LaMonte Nielson with his hand on the Bible. Raising his right hand. Why was he taking an oath of office?

“Apparently the Vice President was killed in a traffic incident only a few minutes before the rocket attack on the White House. I say ‘incident' because it is hard to believe that this was an accident, a mere coincidence. By the time the President died, this country had no living Vice President. So the law of presidential succession is clear. After the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, and then the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, and—but here's the new President of the United States, just sworn in. President LaMonte Nielson. Most Americans don't even know his name, but he's all we've got right now.”

His last words overlapped with Nielson's. Looking straight at the camera—Cecily remembered how hard it had been for him to learn how to do that steady gaze at the lens—he said, “Fellow citizens, our enemies have done a terrible thing today, and good people have been murdered. They clearly intended to strike a blow to our hearts, and they succeeded. But we still have—we
must
keep our heads. Our Constitution still works.

“I'm not the man anybody picked to be President. But I'll do my job, as will everyone else in government. Some emergency measures will be taken, but except as instructed by legal authorities, we urge you to go about your normal business. We do not know who did this. Do not jump to any conclusions. Do not show anger or hostility to anybody just because you think they might share the religion or the national origin or just
look
like whoever you
guess
might have done this. Let's add no tragedies to the ones we already face today.

“I join the rest of our nation in mourning for our President and
Vice President and the other great public servants whose lives were taken today in service to their country. God bless the United States of America.”

As the camera pulled back and the newspeople started judging the new President's short speech, Cecily could see that he was already surrounded, not just by the Secret Service, but by troops in full battle gear.

“Mark,” she said softly, “don't tell the other children that we think Dad might have been under fire. Not till we know something for sure.”

“Okay, Mom,” said Mark.

From his voice she knew he was no longer just shocked. He was crying.

“Stay here, please,” she said to him. “I'm going to get the other kids.”

A few minutes later they were gathered in the living room on their knees. None of the prayers she knew seemed adequate. She struggled to come up with the right words to add to the prayers the kids all knew. Ultimately, it all came down to the same thing that LaMonte Nielson—President Nielson—had said. God bless the United States of America.

And then Nick added, “And God bless Daddy and all the soldiers.”

“Amen,” said Cecily. But then she hastened to add, “But as far as we know, Daddy's all right.”

“But it's a big war now,” said Nick. “It has to be.”

Go about your normal business, LaMonte had said. But what was her normal business now?

She sat the kids down and explained about presidential succession. She told them about her time working for LaMonte Nielson. She talked about the slain President.

“You didn't even vote for him, Mommy,” said Lettie. “Mark said so.”

“Your father voted for him,” said Cecily. “And even though I didn't, he was still our President, and he did the best he knew how to
do for our country. It's a terrible thing, not just for him but for all of us, all Americans. By killing him, they were trying to hurt us all.”

But after a while, she ran out of words. The girls were too young to really understand it all well enough to stay interested. She let them go back to their room and play quietly. “Indoor rules,” she said.

Mark and Nick, though, stayed with the television, watching CNN. Cecily knew the footage at the Tidal Basin would come back on. She knew that at some point, someone would tell the names of the men who were firing at the terrorists. But she couldn't very well forbid them to watch history unfold. And she couldn't stay and watch with them, because J.P. needed her attention.

And because she might break down and cry from sheer frustration and fear if she didn't keep herself busy. So with J.P. playing on the kitchen floor, she fumbled around the cupboards looking for something to prepare for dinner that might keep her busy for a few hours.

The first call came from DeeNee Breen. “As far as we know,” she said, “Major Malich was not injured in any way. Nor was Captain Coleman. But it's confirmed that they were the ones who fired at the terrorists and disabled one of the launchers. At the moment their location is unknown but I can't imagine they won't make their way here as quickly as possible to be debriefed. Or somewhere.”

Cecily thanked her and then went in to tell Mark and Nick that yes, it
was
their father and his new assistant who were in the video, firing at the terrorists.

“So . . . Dad's, like . . . a hero,” said Nick softly.

“Honey,” said Cecily, “your dad's a hero about forty times over. But yes, he did all he could. But I also know he's very sad right now that he wasn't able to stop both rockets from firing.”

“They thought the bodies were booby-trapped,” said Mark. “Of the terrorists. But it was just the rocket in the launcher they didn't fire at the White House. Somebody touched it and it launched into the ground and blew up and killed a bunch of guys.”

“But not your father,” said Cecily. “Or DeeNee would have known. They would know if he was hurt and she would have told me. So he's okay.”

Mark looked relieved. But Nick—she could never guess what
he
was feeling. Privately, Reuben called him Stone-face, because he just took things in. She had worried when he was four that he might be autistic or suffer from Asperger's. But no, not at all, he was just a quiet kid who kept things to himself. Like now. Did he believe his dad was safe? Or did he not care? Or was he a seething mass of fear and none of it showed? The mystery child.

But she wasn't going to try to get through to him right now. What would “success” consist of? Nick erupting in tears? Oh, he'd thank her for an achievement like that! “Yes, Oprah, my mother was never happy unless she could get me to cry.” Child-rearing today was so complicated. You always had to think of what they'd say on television later.

DeeNee called again to find out if she knew anything about Reuben's whereabouts. And then she started getting calls from friends who wondered if it could possibly have been Rube in those videos from the Tidal Basin. “I don't know,” she said. “It looked like a blur to
me
. No, I don't know where he is, but he could be anywhere, you know how his job is.” Of course they
didn't
know how his job was, but what could they say, anyway?

And then came the call from Reuben.

She said hello, not recognizing the number on caller ID, expecting it to be another curious friend.

She knew Reuben's voice at once. “You go ahead and visit Aunt Margaret without me,” he said. “I'll get up there as soon as I can.”

“Reuben, what—”

But he talked right over her. “I love you, Cessy.” And then the connection was gone.

He had warned her back when this most recent assignment began that there was a strong chance their phones would be tapped all the time. By both sides. So they had longstanding telephone discipline—play along with whatever the other one is pretending.

The game was this: Apparently they were planning a trip to Aunt Margaret's in West Windsor, New Jersey. Though Reuben's tone was cheerful, the cryptic nature of his instructions told her a great
deal: He wanted her and the kids out of town. And it wasn't just because the press would hound them as soon as his identity was known—he would have explained that openly over the telephone. Something was seriously wrong.

And her job, now, was to trust Reuben.

She went into the living room and knelt down in front of the two boys. She beckoned them to get their faces close to hers, so she didn't have to talk loudly to be heard above the noise of the television.

“That was Dad,” she said. “He's fine. But he asked us to do something. We're getting in the van and we're driving to Aunt Margaret's. I need you two older boys to pretend that we've been planning this trip for a long time, and the only thing different is that Dad will be coming along later. If the girls don't play along, don't argue with them. I'll help them pack and you guys pack your own stuff. Three days' worth of clothes, plus Sunday clothes, plus swimming trunks, plus a couple of books and maybe DVDs and the PSP and the Gameboy Nintendo thing—the DS.”

They looked at her gravely and Mark nodded. Nick didn't nod, but when Mark got up, so did Nick, and they padded out of the room together.

It was packing for J.P. that took the longest, but it was as if they had rehearsed for such a move for years, it went that smoothly. They were backing out of the driveway only half an hour later.

They went out Route 7 and crossed the Potomac above Leesburg. The bridge was packed and it took almost two hours to get past the bottleneck—hardly a surprise, since all the Washington bridges were closed and this was the first bridge open to the public. After that it was still slow going, so it wasn't until after dark before they pulled into Margaret's driveway. Aunt Margaret had the front door open before they were out of the minivan.

“Your soldier boy called,” she said. “He's being debriefed and everything's fine.”

But she and Aunt Margaret both knew that nothing was fine. The President was dead, Reuben had shot some of the assassins, and he had sent his family out of town in a rush and without explanation.

In some ways it was worse than when he had been in Special Ops. At least in the field, Americans were all on his side. He had support. But for all she knew, he was in serious trouble and couldn't count on anybody.

Except her. He had assigned her to take care of their children. As long as he knew his kids were safe, then he could face anything else with courage. Her own dreads and worries had to be set aside. She had a job to do, and she was going to do it well.

The great irony of war is this: While war is the ultimate expression of mistrust, it cannot be waged without absolute trust. A soldier trusts his comrades to stand beside him and his commander to lead him wisely, so that he will not be led to meaningless death. And the commander trusts his subordinates and soldiers to act with wisdom and courage in order to compensate for his own ignorance, stupidity, incompetence, and fear, which all commanders possess in ample measure.