The White House: A Flynn Carroll Thriller (34 page)

“Speed it up,” he said to the boy beside him.

“We can't—”

“Speed it up!”

Flynn watched the door fly open and figures go speeding out. He saw Cissy, then various officials, then Secret Service agents ahead of and behind the presidential entourage, then a flock of military brass. Then the corridor was empty. He did not see the First Lady.

He jumped up and headed for the door. On the way, he accosted Simon Forde. “You're to secure the suite right now. Nobody enters except me, nobody leaves except me. Any agent, any person whatsoever, who defies this order, you detain them. Do you understand?”

Forde's eyes were the size of plates.

Flynn shook him. “Save it! Go into shock on your own damn time.”

He spluttered, gagged. “Sir—”

“Do as you're told, and do it right!”

Flynn headed down the hall and through the Oval, where a butler was carefully dusting the dusted desk. Outside, gardeners were pruning the late roses. In the distance, the maples glowed red. Between the building and the stately trees, Marine One gleamed like a jewel, waiting to speed its precious cargo to whatever safety might be found.

Flynn burst into the working suite. “Mr. President!”

He held up a hand as Vice President Milligan came over to Flynn and said, “Netanyahu's on the horn. All hell's breaking out in Israel. Galilee is a radiation zone. There's at least a hundred thousand dead and he's under siege to blow hell out of Iran. A mob's going to tear him apart unless he burns the whole country to the ground.”

Bill's forehead was sheened with sweat. He crouched over the phone. “We'll do 'em. All of 'em,” he said.

“We're going to decapitate the Iranian government,” Milligan said calmly.

Flynn thought of Ghorbani out there on the front line, of the Special Forces operatives deep in country, of all the courage that was involved, and a feeling came into him that added pride to the determination that was the compass of his soul. If, indeed, all these people were what they seemed.

“Putin?”

“He's not going to intervene.”

“The First Lady?”

Milligan shook his head.

Flynn opened his secure phone—not because it would help, but because it was what he had—and called Cissy.

“Where's your mother?”

“Don't know.”

“Where are you?”

“In my room. Flynn, what can I do?”

“I'm gonna need you. I want you downstairs in thirty seconds.”

He recognized Colonel Whittier by the briefcase that he carried. He went to him. “Open it.”

“Sir?”

“Open it right now and run its test program.”

The colonel hesitated. He had to think about this. Where was this order coming from? Flynn's gun slipped into his hand. “I'm sorry, Colonel, I just don't have time. I won't hurt you, but you can report that you did it under duress.”

He opened the briefcase. Flynn saw the ancient equipment inside, that and the much newer, deeply secret quantum communicator—a dark, ominous eye half-concealed among the innocent switches and the old numerical coding apparatus.

The colonel ran it through its checks, getting green lights each time it completed a test. Then he pressed the red button that would run the system drill, and watched as each missile command center and each submarine signaled back and the relevant indicator light went from yellow to green. They all reported—all but one.

“Malmstrom?”

“Still alive, but not online. Aboveground had its day ruined. Downstairs is believed to be still operational.”

Flynn deliberated. Should he stay here with the football, or locate Lorna? If he remained here, nothing she could do would enable her to activate it. But as long as she wasn't located, the danger remained.

He called Diana. She answered immediately. The PEOC was equipped with cell phone relays, even on secure systems.

“Is everything under control down there?”

“The mortuary team is trying to understand why the casualties have artificial skin and strange organs. I'm pretending to be mystified.”

“I want all that material moved forthwith to the burn facility at Wright-Pat. Tell them to bag it, seal it with classified seals, and transport it at once.” Outside of the presidential bubble, the press, he knew, must be in a frenzy. If word of these strange corpses got out, there was liable to be some sort of mass psychosis, starting with the news anchors.

“Got it.”

“OK. Now listen up. We've lost Lorna. Fortunately, the football's safe, so that's not an immediate problem. But I need to locate her and get her off the chessboard. I want you to come up here and keep eyes on the football at all times. I've left orders that nobody enters or leaves the suite. I'm going to take Cissy with me. She knows Lorna's haunts.”

“I'm in motion. What are you going to do with Lorna?”

“Get a suite ready at Walter Reed. I want the best neurosurgical team we can find standing by.”

“You're going to try to save that bitch?”

“I'm gonna try to save a man's wife.”

“Are you being cynical or foolish?”

“Both.” He closed the secure phone and returned to the Residence. Cissy was sitting on the foot of the Grand Staircase, surrounded by excited tourists, who were listening to her tell tales of life in the White House. It was a superb performance—warm, cheerful and engaging—but nobody in the media was going to be even close to caring, not with the epochal news that must be breaking out there about now.

“Let's go,” he said to Cissy. “Sorry, folks, show's over.”

As he hurried her toward the private entrance, he could hear people speculating that he was a plumber.

Sort of.

“I need an ordinary car from the motor pool. Ordinary but fast. What have you got?”

“I haven't the faintest idea.”

“Another question—where would your mother go if she was running for her life? If she thought the entire world had turned against her? Where would she go?”

“Home. She'd go back to Midland. We own the cops, not to mention the entire city, us and the Doxys.”

“Too far. She doesn't have time.”

“Then maybe Ginny's place.”

The Chief Usher had appeared discreetly, and was standing nearby.

“What's the fastest car down there?” Flynn asked him.

“Miss Greene, may I call Agent Skinner?”

“No,” Flynn said.

“I'm sorry?”

“Bring the car up. Do it now.”

“Sir, I don't believe—”

“I don't care what you believe! Do it!”

“Please, Martin, we're on a special mission for Daddy. It's urgent.”

He gave a weak smile. “Are you sure, miss, because if your mother—”

“Martin, my mother is drunk and on drugs. She's at a friend's house raising hell.”

“But I thought she was here. I didn't see her leave.”

“They didn't see Mamie Eisenhower, either! She used to hide in the bushes. God knows how Momma did it, but you know the drunk's skill at evasion—you've worked here for years. Under Clinton and W, for God's sake. How many times did you lose track of them?”

He called for the car, and in a few moments one of the garage attendants brought up a BMW M5. If he had to give chase or escape, this car was going to be effective.

Flynn got behind the wheel and they took off. As they drove, Cissy input Ginny's street address. “What'll you do when you find her, Flynn? Please don't hurt her, I couldn't bear that.”

“I won't hurt her.”

“No, just kill her.”

He did not reply. As they drove, he watched and waited. They were half a mile from the White House when they reached a good location—an active street overhung by large trees. “Pull over.”

“Pull over? Really?”

“Right now please.”

She pulled up to the curb. He got out. Ginny's condo was now half a block away.

“Flynn?”

“Get back in the traffic stream. Keep going, then get out and go into the condo.”

“Flynn, tell me what you're doing.”

He couldn't tell her that he was headed back to the White House. Aeon's surveillance abilities made that too great a risk. He laid a finger against his lips, and she nodded.

He was gratified to see her do as he had asked and disappear down the street. He had noted well that Lorna had never exited the PEOC. This meant that she was under it, in the same tunnel system that he and Diana had used. She had retreated to safety among Aeon's biorobots.

Aeon would be desperate now, so Lorna wouldn't be wasting time trying to convince Bill to executed a preemptive launch. She would be seeking to gain control over the football herself.

Walking at this pace, he was going to need roughly ten minutes to get back. He was aware that the world could easily come to an end during that time. But he dared not take a cab or any other form of transportation. Worse, if he was going to avoid detection by Aeon when he got there, he was going to have to carry out a maneuver so dangerous that it might get him killed before the mission was over.

Every muscle in his body strained to break out of the crowd and use all of his swiftness to get to the White House in two minutes rather than ten. Instead, he strolled, gazing here at a pretty woman, there at a store display, stopping to look in the window of an inviting bookstore, then to seemingly chat with some people at an outdoor café. Actually, he was only asking directions he didn't need. From above, though, he would blend into the crowd, and that was what mattered.

It took what seemed like an hour, but he actually reached the White House perimeter in eight minutes. And now came the difficult part. The
DEFCON
5 alert had been announced, then rescinded. As yet, the public and the press knew little of the story. They'd been told that the alert had been triggered accidentally. Later, they would be told that it had been a nuclear accident at Malmstrom involving an experimental weapon.

At this point, he could get past the guards without a problem, but that would give him away immediately. He looked up at the perimeter fence.

Since the Obama years, when numerous people had tried to scale it, some succeeding, it had been raised eighteen inches. There was no razor wire, although that had been discussed, but no average man could hope to vault it.

However, he thought he might manage it. There were horizontal bars that stiffened the verticals about two feet above the base of the fence and two feet below the spiked tips of the verticals. If he could get a grip on the top horizontal bar, he could make it over with about a quarter of an inch to spare.

He ran toward it, accelerating as he crossed Pennsylvania Avenue. Leaping up, he grasped the bar and swung his legs high over his head. For a moment, he teetered. On the sidewalk below, he saw two plainclothes officers in the process of pulling their guns. He started to fall back, right into their arms. The faster of the two was now raising his weapon. Flynn knew their orders; they had been widely publicized. One of Bill Greene's first acts as president had been to announce that, from now on, intruders breaching the White House perimeter would be shot dead.

As his body continued to angle back, he realized that he hadn't put quite enough strength into the leap. Grunting deeply from the strain, he shifted his weight as far as he could. Slowly, he felt himself crumbling. A shot whined past him.

Now his fall was uncontrollable, but it was also into the grounds, not back onto the sidewalk. An instant later he hit the ground, rolled to dissipate the energy of it, then leaped to his feet and started running for the entrance.

Four White House police uniforms were converging on him. At the entrance, he knew, there were two Secret Service suits with automatic pistols. In addition, the door was locked and reinforced. Even if he survived, entry was going to be a challenge.

Aeon would also know all this, which was why, he hoped, they would fail to identify him as who he was, and therefore would not realize that he was back in the White House.

He was a deft runner, and he was able to dodge the bullets effectively.

When he climbed the steps to the portico, the shooting behind him stopped. He was now the property of the two agents between him and the door. They had already drawn their weapons and were preparing to fire.

But they did not fire, because by this time he was known to the Secret Service. Well known. In fact, one of these men was Jim Allendale, who had been involved in the Doxy investigation and had been guarding the presidential suite when Flynn had been watching over the First Family.

“Hey, Jim,” he said.

“Flynn, what in hell—”

“Just listen. You both need to fire your weapons right now. I'll go down, then you haul me in.”

“I don't understand.”

“Jim, you don't need to. Just do it.”

The two agents opened up simultaneously, and Flynn dropped. A moment later they dragged him in.

He got up and headed for the West Wing.

“Mr. Carroll!”

Both agents trotted after him. “Sir, it's on lockdown. We can't let you—”

Lockdown meant only one thing—there was trouble again. And he was very much afraid that he knew what it was. As he ran down the central corridor and exited toward the West Wing, the two agents dropped back.

He crossed toward the entrance. The two agents on the door watched him uneasily. “What's going on?”

“We can't let you in.”

“Please answer my question.”

“There's a lockdown,” one of them said. “That's all we've been told.”

As Flynn pushed past them, he took both of their guns. It would be a moment before they realized that they'd been disarmed, but he expected to need the firepower. Voices along the corridor told him that the president and his entourage were in the Situation Room. But that wasn't what concerned him. He was focused on just one thing, which was the location of the football and who was near it. Of course, the Situation Room has a fixed nuclear command post, but the fact that the president was there wouldn't mean that the football was inoperative.