Cloudburst (3 page)

Outside, or inside—he couldn’t tell which—was mayhem. There was no glass wall where one had been, and no dull metal window frames. Only the heavy support columns, stripped of their decorative covering, were intact. The presidential limo was nosed into one directly in front of Bud, twenty feet away. Its roof seemed strangely ballooned upward and there were no doors on the passenger side, or any windshield, or any windows at all. Everywhere, though, there was glass: tiny blocks of the shattered shatter-resistant panes that had been walls. And there was smoke. Bud saw, cocking his head to the left as he came to his knees, that the chase limo—
I was supposed to ride in that car
—was burning furiously, sending a chute of black smoke along the roof of the covered drive. Only a little entered what had been the lobby, but it was enough to make the Deputy NSA cough for fresher air.

The four agents who had passed him only seconds earlier were half carrying, half dragging a hideously injured body into the lobby. Another agent was pulling the young Air Force officer carrying the ‘football’—the nondescript case that carried the codes required for the president to initiate a nuclear release—away from the front of the room. His arm was injured, and he was furiously trying to pull a small lever on the case just beneath the handle. The agent, also injured, heeded the officer’s command and pulled the lever. An audible
pop
came from the case, and then fine streams of black smoke, as the codes were destroyed.

Bud cringed visibly. The Air Force officer had just given command of the nation’s nuclear arsenal to another officer, an Air Force general, high above the plains of middle America in one of the
Looking Glass
command aircraft. It was an act authorized by only one occurrence: the death of the president.

Bud got to his feet, wanting to see if anyone was left alive, but his endeavor was cut short by an anxious pair of Secret Service agents, both of whom had carried the body in.

“Mr. DiContino, we have to get out of here.”

“Is that…?” Bud couldn’t finish the question.

“Yes, sir…dead. The chief of staff, too. And General Paley. Now let’s move!” It was not a choice, Bud knew, as the burly agent spun him around and practically carried him down the hallway by the collar. Ahead was another agent, gun drawn, clearing the way, and behind, though Bud could not see them, were the other two carrying the body of the president.

Paris

Praise Allah!

He prayed silently, thanking the Great One for bringing success to his operation, though it was only the beginning. There was much yet to be accomplished, much that could still go awry. But he had faith, as his mentor had in him, and worry would do no good. As it was, his comrades had penetrated the den of the Great Satan and exacted the first taste of revenge. The television news showed the scene over and over, obviously taken by a very lucky cameraman outside the hotel—lucky not because he got the pictures, but to be alive, as evidenced by the shrapnel-caused crack in the lens and his close proximity to the explosions. Many had been killed, some innocents, and that was expected. Many more would die before all was done.

The name he was known by was Mohammed Hadad, a combination of names he had taken from two long since departed fighters. His given name was part of his past, a life destroyed by the Americans, much in the same way his mentor’s life had been forever altered. The past was the past, not forgotten, only put aside so as not to interfere with the purpose. The purpose was all that remained to live for. Exacting a toll on the murderers of so many, a mighty toll, would avenge the spilled blood.

The TV picture faded at the touch of the remote control. Mohammed walked to the dresser near the window. The traffic sounds were audible through the glass as a dull rumble. Five or six floors higher up, where the
very
wealthy stayed, there would have been near silence. Mohammed’s room, though, four floors above the bustling Paris thoroughfare, did give a decent view of the city’s lights after dark. He was not accustomed to the luxuries, however slight in comparison to many of Paris’ hotels, but he admitted they were nice…for now.

A quick call to the desk settled his account.
The convenience of American Express.
Mohammed missed the irony of his thought.

His two bags were already packed and waiting on the fold-up luggage tray by the door. One last look in the mirror convinced him he was ready. He looked the part of any number of Egyptian businessmen, which was exactly what his passport identified him as. Mohammed missed the beard, having grown fond of its soft, furry feel when he lay down to sleep, just as his father had missed his after it was so degradingly shaved from his unflinching face by the Zionist vigilantes on the West Bank.

So long ago, Mohammed thought. He stood still and turned to the window and stared out upon the city, though the picture in his mind was that of a small wood-and-stone dwelling a scant mile from the Jordan River. The land around it was hot and arid, and the few people near the Jordan lived similarly. It was a simple life. No, he corrected himself, it
had
been a simple life.

He came back from the daydream, looking again at the mirror. A smile came to his face. His neatly trimmed black mustache and hair gave him an air of professionalism and went perfectly with the clothes chosen carefully for him, and, as always, his smile was affecting. He reached into his inside jacket pocket and removed the clear-lensed glasses, putting them on. It was a look Mohammed wasn’t really fond of, but if it worked, so much the better.

The room key was on the bureau. Nothing was left to do. His flight from Charles de Gaulle was scheduled to depart in three hours. He gathered his bags, left the room, and headed to the stairs: elevators in this hotel were unreliable, he had been told. Along the way he thought of his brothers, martyred in the attack on the Americans, and of the words of his mentor, another Arab brother:
‘The wind is rising. Soon there will come a storm.’

One

ARTICLE XXV

The White House

The president nodded to a group of White House servants as he walked past with his entourage, consisting of his COS, Chief of Staff Ellis Gonzales, and four Secret Service agents. The returned smiles from the cook and kitchen help weren’t forced, just strained. It was an effort this early after such a long night to put on a friendly face. Seventeen hours before, those at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue had been answerable to another man, one whom everyone had loved. He was a good man, a grandfather to the nation, and doubly as endearing because of his gentle Southern manner.

The new president was a West Coast native, and, more important, a political maverick who had found his way on to the Democratic ticket a year and half before by dint of his youth and fervor. He, as vice president, had provided a balance with the chief executive, a comfortable symbiosis that necessitated his being relegated to the unseen areas of government. But then that wasn’t uncommon for VPs in the latter half of the twentieth century. The position had, like it or not, become largely a training ground for likely electoral winners after a four- to eight-year grooming period. State funerals and ‘policy reinforcement’ trips to wavering third world governments were the norms of the agenda. It was all very proper, and very safe. What had happened seventeen hours before was not supposed to. It was a variable planned for only in Article Twenty-five of the United States Constitution.

Out the windows on his left he could see three helicopters. They were squat and dark, unlike the presidential chopper,
Marine One
. “The lawn looks crowded.”

Gonzales looked past his boss as they walked. “Granger came in on one of them. The others…” He shrugged.

They turned right at the end of the connecting hallway to the East Wing, heading away from the north lawn. The pace was set by the president, who found himself walking faster than he normally did and slowed, the four agents in tow adjusting their cadence and stride.

“Everybody here?”

“Yes, sir,” the COS answered without looking up from his folio. He could do that, walk without looking, the same way he had back in high school with the president. There had been many a memorable backpack trip where Ellis had been walking along some backcountry trail in the Sierras with his eyes closed restfully. He called it peace walking, the president remembered.

There was one more turn, to the left, then the entourage entered one of the three elevators to the White House’s lower level, thirty feet below the dew-covered earth. This one opened into a room where a lone Secret Service agent sat behind a wooden desk. He stood when the president exited and returned the nod given him by the nation’s new leader.

The room itself was small, barely twelve by twelve, but its purpose was hidden by the simplicity of design. It was more of a pass way than a room. Overhead and at the upper sections of each side wall were sensors meant to detect everything from metal to high-density plastic, a necessity in the age of strong, composite materials that were suited to the manufacture of weapons as easily as to aircraft structures. The agents called it the radar room, as there were several millimeter-wave radars used within to detect the exotic plastics. Before anyone entered the room, the air in the elevator was passed twice through a ‘sniffer’ element that could sense the smallest amount of explosive materials.

The security had to be unobtrusive, and effective, since the door opposite the elevator led to the situation room, the working nerve center of the White House during times of crisis.

One of the agents opened the door, pulling it outward then stepping aside.

“Good morning, Mr. President.” The chorus from the standing men was new to the president. He had rated only a very courteous “Yes, sir” in his previous capacity. This would take some getting used to.

“Morning.” The president moved to his seat at the peak of the half-oval wooden table.

The situation room, as designed, was a functional area for working, much more so than the Cabinet room almost directly above. Mostly that was because of the reduced number of people that were required to be in attendance. That group was usually made up of the National Security Council and, rarely, a few aides. Through a door to the right of three projection screens there were two other working spaces for added personnel, the National Security Planning Groups, deputies and appointed analysts who could be called upon for information and clarification if needed. There was one group working presently, just five people. Assassination was a crisis, though more bodies could do little to aid the situation. As it was, the NSPG was linked directly to the State Department, CIA, DOD, and, quite routinely, to the four major news networks. If they needed something, it was theirs.

Four coffee tureens were arranged within reach of the seven participants, and pitchers of ice water were also present, though, not surprisingly, they were full. The coffee was half gone.

Bud DiContino was there, two seats from the president. The circumstances might have prevented him from attending as acting national security adviser, but the death of the only other deputy NSA two days previously in a boating accident on the Chesapeake left little in the way of alternatives.

The president had immediately noticed the acting NSA upon entering. “Bud, glad you could be with us. I hear you’re a bit bruised up.”

“A bit, sir,” he answered, forcing a slight smile. “And I’m glad to be here.”

Secretary of State James Coventry, sitting between Bud and the president, put a hand on the acting NSA’s shoulder. “From what I saw you were damn lucky. Damn lucky.”

Being in the
inner
circle was new to Bud. Deputies, though close to the power center, were never closer than the second ring of chairs in any official meeting. They would sit behind their principal, sometimes two or three of them, and wait until cued to pass forward some needed bit of paper. It was usually a brief of some sort or, if it was a congressional committee hearing, some piece of documentation or evidence. Necessary bullshit, mostly, Bud believed. Politics. It was the nature of the beast.

“They tell me I started down just before the explosions, but I don’t remember that. I think adrenaline wipes out short-term memory. There was enough of it in my veins right then to make an elephant stupid.”

Coventry flexed his jaw muscles as the scene rolled again through his mind. The whole front of the hotel and lobby had been demolished and Bud hadn’t even been cut. Just some bruises.

The president straightened himself against the back of his gray leather chair. He felt tired, and wondered how he looked. If it was like the others in the room, probably like shit. Fifteen of his last seventeen hours had been sleepless and filled with a somber swearing-in ceremony in the Oval Office, an emergency Cabinet meeting as the clock tolled midnight, and several other official meetings with the chairman of this committee and the majority leader of that house. It was a blur, literally, and that couldn’t continue, for him or his Cabinet and close aides. They were human, after all.

“All right, let’s get going.” He slid a stack of his schedule for the day to both sides of the table. “Today’s busy, as you can see, but I want to make something clear,” he said, his tone bringing eyes up from the paper, “I want each of you to schedule some sack time. You all have deputies …” The president caught his mistake as his look passed over Bud. “… or others who can hold down the fort for a while.” He’d make sure that his acting NSA got some assistance. “Understood?”

A staggered recital of ‘Yes, sirs’ acknowledged the request. Or was it a directive? A presidential directive to sleep? Coventry mused.

“Ellis, do you want to start?”

“Certainly, Mr. President,” the chief of staff said. His black hair, however well he might have combed it, never seemed quite right. It had always looked just a little unkempt, even back in their younger days. “I talked to Jeff at Protocol about an hour ago. He says the funeral arrangements should be completed by this evening. It’s tentatively set for Thursday at Mrs. Bitteredge’s request. She wants to wait until the family can all get here.”