My King The President (30 page)

“Makes sense. Cornelius Ferris seems to have all his bases covered this time around, pun intended.”

Moments later, Ferris passed by us again, walking in the opposite direction, casually pausing here and there to speak to press people before going forward. After about ten minutes more, we felt a slight lurch as the big bird got underway, and two of the crewmember stewards passed down our aisle, quietly asking us to put our seatbelts on. A few minutes later, we took off. I pushed out a long, slow breath.

“Well, Jeb, so far, so good,” Ernie said. “Next stop, Edwards. Like the lady said, might as well relax and enjoy the ride.”

“Easy for you to say,” I muttered. I was feeling another gnawing bug crawling in my belly, but try as I might, I couldn’t pinpoint anything unusual. Still, I just couldn’t shake it. Things were going along fine. Perfectly. Too perfectly.

After we leveled off, the stewards came around taking orders for drinks and food. Ernie asked for a beer, but I didn’t want anything. For the first time in my life, I felt almost airsick. I kept looking at my watch. Half an hour passed. I noticed Ernie had dozed off beside me, and I tried to close my own eyes and relax, but it was no use. Another few minutes droned by and I wasn’t feeling any better. I was almost to the point of getting up and heading for the nearest toilet when President Fordham stopped at my aisle seat, leaned over and said, “Jeb, come with me. You deserve to see this.”

I stood, grateful as hell for the interruption. “See what?”

“A rather nice little surprise.”

I followed her forward, all the way to the door leading to the flight deck. She turned to me and explained. “Captain Nichols called a few minutes ago. Apparently something else has been laid on for my education. I thought you might like to see it as well.” She knocked. “An in-flight refueling operation. Should be really interesting to watch it from up here.”

Captain Edgar Nichols, the aircraft commander, was actually a full Colonel. His First Officer, whom he immediately introduced, was Major Caswell Jamison. Both men had the rugged, self-assured good looks of most senior pilots. Seeing me standing behind the President, Captain Nichols gave me one quick frown of disapproval, then spoke to his Commander in Chief. “Ms. President, Secretary Ferris thought you might like to observe how we do this.”

“Don’t tell me we’re out of gas!” she retorted, laughing.

Both men chuckled with her. “No, ma’am,” Nichols said. “We’ve got plenty. We’re just going to take on enough for you to see how it’s done. It won’t take long once we reach the rendezvous coordinates.”

Major Jamison pointed through the windshield, up and to his right at a KC-10 tanker. “There’s the cow. She called a while ago to tell us they are even sending an F-18 out of Colorado Springs to the rendezvous point to film it all for your scrapbook, Ms. President.”

To this very day, I will never know why I thought to ask, “Where is Secretary Ferris, anyway? Wouldn’t he want to be up here, too?”

Captain Nichols half turned in his seat, his brow furrowed as he looked back at President Fordham. “Oh, he deplaned back at Offutt just before we took off. Said he had some extra things to do there, and that he’d catch up with us at Travis. Didn’t he tell you, ma’am?”

Suddenly the gnawing in my stomach came back. I was about to ask another question when somebody behind us knocked on the door. Bert Franklin identified himself and was admitted, his face red. “Ms. President, all the television networks have broken into regular programming. There’s been a school playground shooting at Miami. Really bad one from first reports. Maybe twenty kids dead. Vice President Koontz has called a news conference for four o’clock.”

That’s when my gut finally reacted—to the explosion in my brain. I unceremoniously grabbed Helene Fordham’s arms. “That’s it! We’ve got to get
down
! NOW.”

“Are you sure, Jeb?” She said, her eyes wide.

“
Has
to be. Ferris slips off the plane? School massacre? Koontz calls a press conference? It’s all falling into place. We have to—”

“What in hell are you talking about, man?” Captain Nichols growled.

I turned to him, hoping my face was showing half of what I felt. I yelled at him. “Captain, that fighter plane isn’t coming up here to take pictures. Soon as you hook up with that tanker, he’s going to shoot us down. With all that gas, and one little missile, there won’t be pieces of us big enough to
find
. The President’s life is on the line. Yours and your crew’s, too. You’ve got to get us out of here.”

President Fordham’s voice was ice. “He’s right, Colonel Nichols. Do as he says. Immediately, please. That’s an order. I’ll explain the details later, if I’m still alive. Where’s the nearest place we can land? Denver?”

I yelled again, “We can’t go there. We’d run right into him, and we sure as hell can’t go back to Offutt. I wouldn’t trust Omaha either.”

Major Jamison spoke up. “What about Sioux City? Not much traffic there, and the runways are long enough.”

Nichols nodded. “You’re right. Okay, SUX it is.” He turned further around and barked an order to Bert, “Strap the President in that jump seat, mister. Hold on to your hats, everybody. Grab hold of whatever you can. I’m taking us down. Gotta get us under radar.”

“Want me to call Sioux City, Captain?” Jamison wanted to know.

“And tip everybody off? Hell, no. I’ll tell you when.”

With that, he put the giant plane into a hard right bank, pushing the yoke forward. As Air force One changed directions and went into a steep dive, the sun flashed brilliantly inside the cockpit, then disappeared just as quickly. It seemed to take forever for the big bird to turn, yet she did, and the ground telescoped upwards toward us at an astounding rate. So much so that I found myself holding my breath in frozen fear, certain that Nichols was going to drive us straight into the brown, snow splotched earth. I gave one quick thought to Ernie and the other unsuspecting people behind us. Not knowing what was happening, they had to be experiencing mass hysteria at best and sheer terror at worst.

After an eternity of less than a minute, we leveled off, only two hundred feet above the ground! Nichols pushed the quad throttles forward as far as they would go. Our speed was tremendous, and staring through the windshield, it was as though I was watching a special effects movie—in fast forward. I looked first at Major Jamison, who was already talking softly to the crew on headsets, then to Captain Nichols, who was chewing his gum in slow motion. Didn’t appear to be in the least nervous. Like he practiced doing this every day!

At last he spoke—to Jamison. “ETA Sioux City?”

“Thirteen minutes, Captain.”

Nichols merely nodded. I glanced backwards at President Fordham. Her eyes were closed, her mouth drawn in a thin line. I could see moisture on her upper lip. I looked over at the First Officer who gave me a grin and a thumbs-up. His neatly trimmed mustache reminded me of the captain who had driven us back from the museum to the plane. The one who’d told us their guys had given the President’s private plane a wash job and a—
Holy shit
! Offutt maintenance crews had been all over her, inside and out. Plenty of time to—
plant a fucking bomb?
Maybe that fighter wasn’t sent to shoot us down. Maybe it was supposed to take pictures after all. Maybe it was to film a terrible accident
while the President’s plane was refueling
. I opened my mouth to say something more, but quickly changed my mind. This wasn’t the moment. Nichols was busy busting the President’s aircraft over farms, barns, and housetops as if it was a tiny barnstorming biplane, except at nearly five hundred miles per hour. There would be time enough to tell him, I hoped, when we landed.
If
we landed.

Chapter 30

“
Wait!”
Nichols shouted. It was the first time he had raised his voice. “We have to lighten her up. Dump fuel first,
then
call. Forget the Minneapolis ARTCC. Bypass them. We don’t want the whole universe listening in. Use the tower frequency. 118.7.”

“Roger that,” Jamison answered, reaching forward to levers which he pulled, then to a knob which he turned a few clicks. “Sioux City tower, Sioux City tower, this is Air Force One. We have an emergency.”

A metallic, clear voice answered instantly. “Acknowledged, Air Force One. What is the nature of your emergency and what is your position?”

I seized my chance, screaming, “We’ve got a
bomb
on board, Captain. I’m sure of it.”

Nichols turned. Stared at me hard, his jaw clenching. He shot a rapid glance to the President, who nodded affirmation, and then he stared at Jamison. “Tell them.”

Jamison wasted no time. “We are eight-zero miles northwest of you, Sioux City, altitude one-five-oh. That’s one-five-oh
feet
, Sioux City, and we may have a bomb aboard. Fear imminent internal explosion. Request emergency landing in ten minutes.”

“Roger, Air Force One. Turn right and come around to heading three-zero-seven, runway three-one.”

“Negative, Sioux City. No time to turn. Divert any local traffic now. We’ve got only one shot and we’re coming in hot as hell. What’s the weather?”

“Clear. Visibility unlimited. Wind northwest, sixteen knots. Use runway one-three. No traffic expected. Do you request emergency equipment?”

“Everything you’ve got.”

“Roger that, Air force One. We’ll be ready. Good luck.”

The two pilots exchanged quick glances. Major Jamison didn’t need to be told what to do next. He flipped yet another switch. “Attention, please, all on board. This is First Officer Jamison speaking. We have a small problem and Captain Nichols is bringing us into Sioux City, Iowa for an emergency landing. Please follow the instructions of our crew. They are well trained for just such an eventuality. Stay calm, everybody. Everything is under control. We will be landing in approximately seven minutes. After landing, you will use emergency exits as per instructions. Sorry for the bumpy ride. Thank you.”

Strangely enough, I wasn’t yet worried! The cool, professional competence and demeanor of the two magnificent officers was such that I managed a reassuring glance at President Fordham and gave her hand a squeeze. “We’re gonna make it in fine. Just fine.” She responded by closing her eyes. Her lips were moving in what I knew was a quiet prayer.

Nichols reached for the throttles. Began pulling back. At first, I couldn’t feel any reduction in our speed, nor did I know which of the hundreds of instruments to watch. Seconds later, he pulled the knobs further back still. “Flaps.”

“Roger, full flaps. Twelve miles, Captain.”

When the flaps took hold, the backward centrifugal force nearly pitched me over the console between the two pilots. I grabbed the backs of their seats and held on with all my strength, my teeth rattling. I watched Captain Nichols gently pull the throttles back a little further.

Suddenly there it was. It looked like a stretch of desert highway, shimmering in the mid-afternoon sun. We were, just as Jamison had told Tower Control, coming in hot as hell. But there was plenty of runway, wasn’t there? It seemed to narrow into infinity ahead.

“Two thousand feet, Captain.”

Nichols’ response was barely audible. He pushed the yoke forward ever so slightly with his left hand, working the throttles with his right one. “Okay, we’re going in.”

I watched the scraped, gray runway easing up to meet us, its middle lines flashing by like tracer bullets. Closer. Closer. Then I heard the short squeal of the rear wheels hitting solid asphalt. The moment the nose wheels touched, Nichols reversed the engines’ thrust. Their roar was deafening.

That was the last of the talk. Nothing else needed saying. The three of us watched the horizon zooming toward us. The ride felt like we were in a loaded pickup truck with no shocks on a washboard farm road. Had we slowed down at all? The horizon kept coming. And coming. I looked out the side window. Saw distant parked planes, a few low buildings. White fields. But, yes, we were definitely slowing down!

The reversed engines screamed their loudest. I didn’t need anybody to tell me the brakes were melting. Worse, I could now see the end of the runway, coming at us like hell. At the end of it was snow. Blessed, glistening white snow. I had no idea how deep it might be. I was aware how fast we were slowing down, but I didn’t think it was going to be enough.