Situation Room

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 to humanity she had given him so far. She led him through the crowds to a double doorway at the end of the hall. Luke already knew the place. When Susan was Vice President, the large sunlit chamber had been her conference room. In the days after she took the oath of office, it rapidly transformed into an on-the-fly Situation Room.

It had been formalized, too. Modular walls ran the length of the room, covering the old windows. Giant flat-panel video screens had been mounted at five-foot intervals. A larger oak conference table had been brought in, and on the wall behind the head of it was the Seal of the President. There were about two dozen people inside when Luke and Kat walked in, a dozen at the conference table, and more in chairs lining the walls.

The gender change was evident here as well. Luke remembered sitting in here being briefed about the missing Ebola sample two months ago. Of the thirty people in the room at that time, Susan might have been the only woman. Twenty-nine men, half of them big and burly, and one small woman.

Now maybe half the people were women.

Susan rose from the head of the table when Luke walked in. She was different, too. Harder, perhaps. Thinner than before. She had been a fashion model in her earlier life, and she had carried baby fat on her cheeks right into middle age. That was gone now, and she seemed to have developed crow’s feet around her eyes almost overnight. The bright eyes themselves seemed more focused, like laser beams. She had spent her entire life as the most beautiful woman in the room – by the time this presidency was over, that might no longer be the case.

“Agent Stone,” she said. “I’m glad you could join us.”

He smiled. “Madam President. Please. Call me Luke.”

She didn’t return the smile. “Thank you for coming.”

Standing at one of the large screens was Kurt Kimball, Susan’s National Security Advisor. Luke had met him once before. He was tall with broad shoulders. His head was perfectly bald.

Kimball offered him a handshake. If Kat Lopez’s shake was firm, Kurt Kimball’s was granite. “Luke, good to see you.”

“Kurt, likewise.”

The atmosphere was tense. These people hadn’t spent the past two months camping and sailing. Even so, Luke had flown down here from Maine at a moment’s notice, and dropped his son off with his angry, soon to be ex-wife, who saw all of this as reinforcement of the reasons she was divorcing him. You might think they’d offer him a little more warmth.

He decided to go with the flow. Hundreds of people had died this morning, and the people in this room, as least, thought it was a terrorist attack.

“Shall we get down to it?” he said.

“Please have a seat,” Kimball said.

A seat at Susan’s right flank had miraculously appeared, and Luke took it.