The Gulfstream hurtled down the runway.
It was racing to catch up with the 747 that had taken off before it, and from the moment the Gulfstream lifted off the ground, Caulfield knew why his seat belt had to be as tight as possible. This wasn’t going to be a normal ascent. They weren’t going to climb gently into the night.
Sure enough, the pilot pulled back on the stick and took the G5 nearly straight up, as if it were the space shuttle. They all felt themselves snapped violently against the backs of their seats by g-forces rarely, if ever, experienced by civilians.
Seconds later, they were already racing past ten thousand feet. Then twenty thousand. Then thirty. Then forty. Only when they approached fifty thousand feet did the G5 begin to level off. Only then did an air force officer get up from his seat and bring the president a stack of briefing papers that someone at USNORTHCOM had faxed to the plane. And only then did the Secret Service agent-in-charge speak again.
The agent quickly briefed everyone on the plane on the nuclear attacks, the death of President MacPherson, and the emergency game plan they were now executing. A few years before, he explained, this military-owned Gulfstream had been retrofitted with rocketlike engines, similar to the ones on board Air Force One. The purpose, he said, was to make it possible for any plane carrying the president to get off the ground and out of range of shoulder-mounted rockets and Stinger missiles as rapidly as possible. Such tactics were rarely used in peacetime, of course, unless the president was flying in and out of a war zone. But with America at war and much of the federal government wiped out in the past hour, every precaution possible was being taken.
Caulfield’s mouth was dry. His hands were perspiring. He felt confused and disoriented. With every moment that passed, he feared for his divorced mother and his four younger brothers back in the Bronx. Were they alive? Were they safe? He had to track them down. He had to know and get word to his older brother, Derek, a staff sergeant with the Eighth Army along the DMZ in South Korea.
“I still don’t understand — why aren’t we taking Air Force One?” Caulfield asked finally. “Wouldn’t that be a whole lot more secure?”
“Usually, yes,” the agent said, “but right now we need something more.”
“What’s that?” the young aide pressed.
“The element of surprise.”
“Meaning what?” Caulfield asked.
“Given all that’s going on,” the lead agent continued, “we have to assume that someone’s trying to target Air Force One. If that’s the case, they are most likely to target that 747 in front of us. So I decided to run the 747 as a decoy and put the president on this G5. Technically, of course, any plane that carries the president is Air Force One. But on the radios, we’re letting the 747 use the AF1 call sign, not us.”
“What’s our call sign?” Caulfield asked.
“I’m afraid that’s classified,” the agent replied.
“With all due respect, sir, I’ve got the highest possible security clearance,” Caulfield explained. His clearance was a necessity in working so close to the top.
“Not that high, son,” the agent replied. “This isn’t just a war. It’s a nuclear war.”
Every muscle in Caulfield’s body tensed. Everything was different. The world had changed forever, and these guys weren’t taking chances.
“How many people know we’re on this plane instead of the Boeing?” Caulfield didn’t want to think about the horrors unfolding all around him. To the extent he could, he preferred to think only about the bubble around him, and just how secure that bubble was.
“Just us,” the agent said, “and three of the agents on the other plane. Most of the crew up ahead doesn’t even realize the president isn’t aboard. Two of my agents put a coat over the head of a fellow agent, rushed him on board the Boeing, and locked him in the president’s private quarters. As far as most of the crew knows — even the pilots, for that matter — POTUS is on their aircraft. And right now, that’s exactly how we want it.”
“Where’s the vice president’s regular security detail?” Caulfield pressed, knowing that if he didn’t ask, his boss certainly would.
“With all due respect, young man, he is not the vice president anymore,” the agent explained. “Under the Twenty-fifth Amendment, he is currently acting as the president of the United States. He’s about to be formally sworn in as such.”
A different designation meant a different detail. Caulfield was scared. He’d been rattled from the moment he and the vice president had been rushed out of Ponte Vedra on Marine One. But it was worse now. All hell was breaking loose, and he was powerless to do anything about it.
He swallowed hard and stuck out his hand. “Bobby Caulfield, sir,” he said quietly.
“Curt Coelho,” the man replied, shaking Caulfield’s trembling hand with firmness meant to inspire confidence. “Don’t worry, son. We’ll be fine.”
Caulfield wasn’t so sure.
Agent Coelho then turned to the acting president and vowed to do everything in his power to keep him safe. Oaks unbuckled his seat belt, stood, thanked Coelho, and asked him to get word back to the agents who had served on his VP detail how grateful he was for their service.
“That’s very thoughtful, Mr. President,” the agent replied. “But you’ll be able to thank them yourself soon. They’re all on Air Force One. Once we get on the ground in the Springs, I’ll figure out a way to integrate them onto my own team. They know you well and have served you faithfully for years. And to be honest, Mr. President, we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
19
Sanders was stunned.
Her hands were shaking. She closed her eyes and tried to think. She had to do something. Somebody had to do something. But what?
She picked up the phone again and tried to speed-dial colleagues at Coast Guard stations throughout the Fifth District, but all the landlines were down. She was getting busy signals, recordings, or static. She tried calling the Eleventh District, covering California. Nothing. She tried calling numbers in the Guard’s Thirteenth District, covering Seattle. Again, nothing. Had everyone been taken out? Or was it just the communications systems that had been destroyed or compromised?
She glanced at her watch. She was supposed to report to the CDO immediately. How much longer could she stall before he sent someone to arrest her? A few more minutes, she figured. She might as well make the most of them.
She tried to log on to the secure military intranet system, but a message kept popping up saying the main system was temporarily down, and she didn’t have clearance for the top secret channels. Should she try a satellite line? Whom should she call? What would she say?
Desperate, she pulled out her own private cell phone and speed-dialed her boyfriend, Tomas Ramirez, a plebe at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. She wanted to make sure he was safe, of course. But she also wanted the phone number of Tomas’s brother, Carlos, a fighter pilot based out of Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach. Carlos’s squadron was known as the “Gunslingers.” They flew F/A-18E Super Hornets, the fastest and deadliest fighter jets in the navy.
Maybe, just maybe…
The phone began to ring. That was a good sign. But it kept ringing, and Sanders started to worry.
Finally, on the fifth ring, Tomas answered, in a whisper. “Babe, it’s me — you okay?”