The War Cloud (6 page)

Raghav nodded to two agents. “Grab the kid.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you goons!” Jennifer shouted as they approached her. “I’m staying with my friends.” She then shoved a prominent middle finger above the heads of the student body and made a break for the opposite exits, the two agents giving her chase.

“Jennifer!” Sachs called out.

But Raghav and the rest tightened their protective ring around her, lifting her an inch off the floor and forcibly carrying her away.

“Smoker Four,” Raghav said into his lapel. “Secure exit!”

The freezing air outside on the school green slapped Sachs in the face. A dozen Green Berets wearing distinctive 1
^st
Special Forces headgear and holding M-16s guarded the Sikorsky S-70 Black Hawks, their rotors turning impatiently, screaming to lift off. But the commanding officer, a hulking, pock-faced presence in field uniform and jump boots, halted Special Agent Raghav and Sachs’ protective detail with a broad, flat hand.

“I’m Colonel Kyle,” the officer said. “This chopper is reserved for Green Dove. We’ll take it from here.”

Raghav flashed his ID. “Wherever she goes, I go.”

“I’m not going anywhere without my daughter and until you tell me what’s going on,” she demanded, trying to veil her fear.

Colonel Kyle looked like he was about to bark an order but seemed to change his mind when he noticed the sea of faces pressed against the gymnasium glass.

“Green Dove and two agents board Black Hawk One,” he ordered. “The rest of the suits, inside Black Hawk Two.”

Before Sachs could protest, Raghav shoved her hard into the eleven-seat chopper, then climbed in after her with five Green Berets so she couldn’t get out. Kyle was the last to board. He signaled the pilot to lift off.

“This is Marine Six to base,” the pilot spoke into his radio. “Green Dove is airborne. Repeat. Green Dove is airborne. En route to DZ.”

As the Black Hawk lifted off, a furious, helpless Sachs could see students and teachers below, noses pressed to the glass wall of the asium, waving good-bye.

“I’m going to have it out with the president when I see him,” Sachs said. “If anything happens to my daughter…”

“Don’t worry,” Colonel Kyle assured her. “We’ll get her.”

J
ennifer and a thousand other students exploded out the front doors to the pandemonium in the pick-up lanes. An army of Range Rovers, Mercedes and BMWs jammed the snow-plowed street in front of the entrance. Mothers and a few fathers were screaming for their children.

Jennifer slogged across the slushy parking lot as fast as she could. But now two Green Berets in field uniforms and M-16s were gaining on her, and a line of waiting cars stood in her way.

The touch of a hard combat glove on her back prompted her to scream and leap head first across the icy hood of a Mercedes, sliding off into the snow.

She barely had time to look up before she saw a Volvo careening toward her, brakes locked, skidding on the ice. She rolled away seconds before it crashed into the Mercedes.

Getting up, she looked back to see the Marines on the other side of the cars, pointing at her. They split and came at her from both sides, stymied by the panic in the streets.

She turned to run away when a silver minivan braked to a halt in front of her, stopping her cold. Jennifer held her breath as the door slid open automatically and the driver’s window rolled down at the same time.

Behind the wheel was her prom date, Robbie, who had given her the red thong for the dance. “Get in!” he shouted.

“What are you doing, Robbie?” she screamed. “You don’t have a license!”

Robbie looked panic-stricken. “Quick!”

Jennifer glanced back over her shoulder. The Marines had cleared the line of cars and were closing in fast. She opened the driver’s side door.

“Move over!” she ordered, climbing inside. “I’m driving.”

Robbie resisted. “What are you talking about?”

“Your feet barely reach the pedal,” she said. “Move! Now!”

She pushed Robbie into the passenger seat, closed her door, slipped behind the wheel and hit the accelerator.

The minivan lurched backward, knocking the front corner of a sedan and kicking up slush into the windshields of the cars behind it.

“Dang,” she said.

“Dang?!” Robbie repeated, apoplectic.

She checked the rearview mirror and saw one of the Marines aiming his M-16 at them.

“Holy shit!” Robbie shouted. “They’re going to shoot!”

Jennifer shifted into drive and they shot off.

She took the first corner too fast, and they slid across the ice, side-swiping a Jeep before gaining traction. Robbie slammed against the inside of the passenger d

“What the hell did your mom do?” Robbie cried out.

“I don’t know.” Jennifer looked up in her rearview mirror, worried that bullets would shatter the back windshield at any moment. “But I’m not gonna sit around to find out.”

She hit the accelerator again, and they sped off into the straightaway.

I
t wasn’t long before the chopper was skimming the white trees of the Hudson Valley and Sachs could see the hills of White Plains rising ahead. They must be going to the local airport. She thought of Jennifer on the run from the very people sent to help her, and worried that in her haste her daughter would have an accident or hurt herself someway.

“Where are you taking me?” she demanded.

Colonel Kyle of the Green Berets said nothing, but Special Agent Raghav of the Secret Service told her, “Nearest presidential emergency facility.”

“Emergency?” Her brushes in the past with Washington security types had taught her a general rule of thumb: the less the inflection in the monotone voice, the worse the situation. “What kind of emergency?”

“There was an explosion in Washington a few minutes ago.”

Her mind raced through the multiple-choice scenarios: a) an Oklahoma City-style bombing of the Internal Revenue Service headquarters, b) a plane crash into the White House, or c) the Capitol Building. My God, she thought, I was supposed to be there tonight for the State of the Union address.

“Tell me the worst,” she said, and closed her eyes.

“It was nuclear.”

The answer was: d) all of the above. Sachs snapped her eyes open and stared at the deadpan Secret Service agent. “How many casualties?” she heard herself ask hoarsely.

Raghav said, “Less than four thousand.”

Sachs blinked. She could feel her throat catch. “That’s how many died?”

“So far,” Raghav said matter-of-factly. “The National Weather Service hasn’t given us any updates on wind shifts. And fires are still burning. Should have been more than a million dead. But snow kept hundreds of thousands of federal workers home. And the nuke was small and exploded underground. Very clean. Minimal damage to civilians, maximum destruction to the federal government. Total decapitation.”

“Decapitation,” Sachs repeated, unsure what the jargon meant, although she had an idea. She suddenly felt very lightheaded, her heart thumping beyond control. “Terrorists?”

“Nobody’s claimed responsibility,” Raghav said. “We think it’s connected to what’s happening in the Far East.”

“Where’s the president?”

“Dead.”

Sachs took a deep breath. “And the vice president?”

“Nobody survived,” Raghav informed her. “All designated presidential successors are being taken secure facilities.”

Sachs leaned back in her seat and stared out the window. America was at war, its leadership attacked. And Jennifer, her baby, was on the run. Sachs wanted to go back for her. But the hardened faces of the agents and Green Berets told her there was no turning back now.

Sachs asked, “So how many designated successors are there?”

Raghav was evasive. “I can’t say for sure, ma’am.”

“Something like fifteen or sixteen?”

Sachs suddenly felt something cold touch her temple. The barrel of an M-16 came into view. Pointing it at her was a grim Colonel Kyle with hate-filled eyes.

“One too many,” he said.

C
olonel Kozlowski looked around the empty conference table. The empty chairs were for the president and his staff. The Secretary of Defense. The National Security Adviser. Anybody else that survived, of which there were none.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Koz sat alone at the head of the table and stared at a wall of display screens. The displays showed that American bombers were en route to their positive control points outside the Far East, where they would circle until they received further orders from the president-designate. Other displays showed that American submarine and missile crews were also awaiting executive authorization.

The only problem was that there was no president-designate to issue the launch authorizations. For that, Koz needed Deborah Sachs, of all people.

Northern Command’s confirmation that Washington was gone—and with it Sherry—was devastating enough. Upon learning the news, in fact, Koz proceeded to spend several private minutes in the presidential bathroom throwing up the cold breakfast Sherry left for him.

Now the FEMA Central Locator confirmed that the SecDef was not at Edwards AFB in California after all but in Washington. Which meant he was dead and the presidential mantle had fallen to nearly last-in-line Deborah Sachs.

So Koz ordered a change in course, and Nightwatch was en route to its rendezvous with the president-designate at an as-yet-undamaged airfield, in this case the local airport in White Plains which had one runway barely long enough to handle an emergency 747 landing.

President Sachs
. It just didn’t sound right. “Madame President” would be the protocol. Unless she preferred Ms. President. Koz cringed at the thought.

Whatever his private opinions of the woman, Koz knew he had sworn an oath to protect and defend the United States Constitution, and right now that meant Deborah Sachs.

The red phone next to his seat rang. He picked up. It was Captain Li. “We’re cleared for approach,” she said.

“Fine.”

“And we’ve got footage from ground zero.”

“I’ll be right there.”

He hung up and left the emptyom and walked into the battle staff compartment where fifteen of his officers huddled around their monitors.

A traffic chopper from a local Baltimore TV station was offering the world its first look at what had really happened in Washington, D.C.

Koz took a deep breath and looked over his crew. All eyes were glued to their monitors as the chopper was fast approaching a ridge of black trees.

“This is Chopper Dave,” the traffic reporter pilot radioed from the cockpit. “Approaching ground zero.”

Koz shook his head. Unless Chopper Dave’s blades were shielded for radiation like Nightwatch, the traffic reporter was filing the last story of his life.

Chopper Dave was soaring over the ridge when suddenly there was…

Nothing.

A flat wasteland rolling on beneath gray skies.

Koz felt a pain in his stomach, like a knife had gone clean through, in and out.

“Oh, God.”

He thought of Sherry and realized she deserved that Purple Heart after all. At the moment of impact she was probably sitting in her chair in Senator Vanderhall’s office in the Hart Building, scripting some stupid sound bites for the self-important ass to parrot in reaction to the president’s State of the Union address. Little did any of them know that a new president was going to have to address the fact that the state of the Union was shit.

The monitors in the battle staff compartment displayed what Chopper Dave saw: devastation beyond recognition. Heaps of rubble, once buildings, lay scattered across the parched earth. A dark, snakelike fork was all that was left of the Potomac River. Radioactive fallout had already settled along its banks. Sporadic fires and black smoke completed a portrait straight out of Dante’s
Inferno
.

“I’m circling the capitol.” Chopper Dave’s voice crackled over the intercom. Koz wasn’t sure if it was the traffic reporter’s voice or the reception breaking up. “No survivors in the impact area. Repeat. No survivors.”

The battle staffers were watching the images, offering guesses as to the landmarks. “That stump is the Washington monument!” gasped one, pointing. “There!”

Koz wasn’t sure. But the location looked right. His trance was broken when Captain Li came into the compartment to apologize for the bumpy landing.

“I didn’t even know we touched down,” Koz said.

The Nightwatch plane taxied to a stop along the runway. Hydraulic steps unfurled from the belly of the plane, and Koz climbed down to the tarmac where federal agents and vehicles were waiting.

“Where’s the president-designate?” Koz demanded.

The special agent in charge, clearly a greenhorn from the bench, threw up his hands. “God knows, Colonel. Our boys called in to say she was picked up by two Black Hawks fifteen minutes ago.”

“Should have been here by now,” said Koz as he searched the dark skies in vain. He felt like some schmuck waiting for his blind date, fearing she was standing him up.

Captain Li, who had been standing at attention beside Koz, tugged his elbow. “Sir,” she whispered. “We’re vulnerable on the ground. I suggest we take off and continue to circle, or we’re going to look like those images we just saw on TV after the next strike.”

She was right, Koz realized, although he didn’t want to leave. Finally, he said, “Tell De Carlo to keep the engines hot and prepare for take-off.”

“Yes, sir,” Li said.

“Tell him we’ll circle for ten minutes,” Koz said. “Then we follow the predesignated flight path out of the United States and proceed to the territory of an unattacked ally in the Southern Hemisphere.”

“We’re going south?”

Koz nodded. “Fallout free.”