“What do they want?”
“They want you to order a carrier battle group to steam through the Sea of Japan immediately — this week, tomorrow, if you can,” Trainor replied. “They want more Patriot missile batteries. They want you, or Secretary Kirkpatrick, to make a strong public statement in the next twenty-four hours reaffirming the U.S.’s commitment to a free and secure Pacific Rim. And during your summit with Al-Hassani next week — if there is still a summit, if the Kurds haven’t just blown up that summiT — they want you to press the Iraqi leader to get oil prices under $100 a barrel as quickly as possible, even if that means putting pressure on Israel to slow down on the Temple. They say their economies simply can’t survive for long the way we’re going, and they’re looking for you to bail them out.”
MacPherson took a deep breath. He wasn’t going to miss this job. He really had no idea who was going to replace him — California governor Paul Jackson, the Republican whom he had recently and enthusiastically endorsed, or Illinois senator Elena Martinez, who seemed to hate his guts and loved to say essentially as much as often as she had the chance. The race couldn’t be tighter. Both desperately wanted the job and were pulling no punches to get it. But on days like this he wondered if Jackson and Martinez really had any idea what they were getting themselves into.
A new terror threat in Los Angeles. The rapidly rising China threat in the Pacific. Rumors of another war brewing in the Middle East. A possible nuclear showdown on the Korean peninsula. A global economic recession teetering on the brink of an outright depression. A world still trying to recover from the Day of Devastation. The Jews rebuilding their Temple. The Arabs rebuilding Babylon. And an American people deeply divided over how to handle all of it. MacPherson found himself glad he was constitutionally barred from running again. He had done his job. He was proud of what he had accomplished. But now he was exhausted and ready to hand over the baton.
“Look, I need to go,” he said, standing up and preparing to head to the convention floor. “Let’s reconvene at 9 p.m., my time. I’ll be back on Air Force One by then. We’ll do a videoconference. I want a briefing from each of you, including specific recommendations for handling Al-Hassani and the North Koreans. And, Bill, you still there?”
“Yes, sir,” Vice President Oaks said. “How can I help?”
“When are you speaking here?” MacPherson asked.
“Wednesday night, Mr. President.”
“Doing the network morning shows on Thursday, as well?”
“Yes, sir, and some radio, too.”
“Fine,” MacPherson said, “then make plans to meet me at Camp David Thursday night. We should have some more solid intel on all this by then. We can watch Governor Jackson’s speech together and review the polls. And we can talk about Al-Hassani’s upcoming visit and where Salvador Lucente fits into this whole picture. I don’t have a good feeling about where this is headed, and I’d like your input.”
“Absolutely, Mr. President,” the VP agreed. “I’ll see you then.”
MacPherson thanked everyone, signed off the call, stood slowly, moved to the door, and then paused. He tried to shake off the gloom of the call, but it wasn’t going to be easy. Twenty thousand delegates on the floor above screamed, “Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!”
They had no idea what even the next four weeks held. Neither did MacPherson, and it chilled him to his core.
9
The desert sun wouldn’t rise for another hour.
Yet somehow it remained unseasonably hot. The air was unusually thick with humidity. Storm clouds were rolling in, and Bennett could hear thunder rumbling in the distance. He could feel his shirt drenched in sweat. He could smell his fear, rising by the minute. He half assumed the nurse or guard could hear his heart, pounding relentlessly in his chest. One thing was for sure: he couldn’t take much more of this.
In less than four hours he was supposed to be back at his post, unloading newly arrived U.N. trucks filled with food supplies and then helping to make, serve, and clean up after breakfast for five thousand desperate souls. Would he have any answers by then? He had to. But what if they were not the answers he wanted?
Bennett walked over to the head nurse on duty.
“Sorry to bother you again,” he said as politely as he could. “I’m just wondering if you could check with the doctor and see how much longer it’s going to be?”
He could see a bit of empathy in her eyes this time, but the answer was the same.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Bennett. I really am. But there’s nothing I can do right now.”
Bennett gritted his teeth and turned away.
The president was about to take the stage.
Jackie Sanchez paced the Secret Service command center, desperately hoping she and her team hadn’t missed a thing. All the data suggested a hit was coming. But how? From where? And from whom?
As far as she could tell, they had every angle covered. She was confident that the only firearms in the convention center were those held by her special agents and counterassault teams and by the local police providing crowd control — all of whose credentials, fingerprints, and retinal scans had been double- and triple-checked just hours before. And her bomb squads had scanned every inch of the premises and found nothing.
More than one hundred electronic air-quality monitors had been strategically positioned throughout the building and on the grounds, continuously checking for any whiff of a dangerous radiological, biological, or chemical substance. Plainclothes agents with handheld monitors were roaming the crowds and the corridors. Thus far, nothing troublesome had been detected, but the Energy Department’s elite Nuclear Emergency Support Team was on hand just in case, and members of the army’s NBC fast-reaction team — specialists in handling nuclear, biological, and chemical attacks — were on standby, as were all local emergency first responders.
No food was being served on the premises, and the president wasn’t going to be eating anything anyway. His bottled water had been specially flown in on Air Force One, tested by Secret Service technicians in Washington and again on-site. The president was not staying overnight, but a backup hotel twenty miles away had been fully secured, just in case. The president’s blood type had been stocked at three local hospitals. All air traffic over the Los Angeles area had been shut down until a full hour after Air Force One lifted off later that evening, and F-16s fully armed with Sidewinder air-to-air missiles not only were flying combat air patrols over the city but would be escorting the president all the way back to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.
Sanchez now carefully examined the images on each of the three dozen video monitors in front of her, showing live feeds from surveillance cameras trained on every key checkpoint in and around Staples Center and the surrounding parking lots, as well as from reconnaissance helicopters circling overhead. She reviewed the latest flash traffic reports from USSS headquarters in Washington and the latest threat condition intel from the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security.
Suddenly the convention stage manager reported in over his Nextel two-way phone. “Sixty seconds, ma’am.”
Bennett had been tempted.
He could still picture Erin and himself dining by candlelight back on January 14 in La Regence, the five-star restaurant in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Their host was E.U. foreign minister Salvador Lucente. They had already left their posts with the CIA and White House, respectively. Now Lucente was offering them both a chance to work for him when he moved over to the U.N. They would not be junior players. They would be senior advisors to the secretary-general, helping hammer out a treaty of historic proportions. It would not, Lucente insisted, simply be an accord between the Israelis and Palestinians — that was almost finished already — but a full and comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and Iraq.