“Lieutenant, sir. Something for you to read here, if you have a moment.”
DeWitt looked up, sensing a note of urgency and shock in the master chief’s tone and demeanor that he hadn’t seen before.
“Right, Master Chief,” DeWitt said, and reached for the sheet of paper.
He read it, his frown turning into a scowl. “The damn North Koreans knew the President was up there and are making a play for him. What a coup it would be if they could kill him. The bastards.”
“This is not to be spread around. It’s for you and Murdock and me right now. If we get orders, they will come through channels. I’ll keep the paper. Commander Murdock went to the medics for them to look at his in-and-out gunshot wound to his left arm.”
“I didn’t know he was hit.” DeWitt shook his head. “This could be a damn big problem. The North Ks must already be on the ground, and we’re just starting to get into action. We could be there in two hours if we had firm GPS coordinates.”
DeWitt stood there a moment and his shoulders sagged; then he straightened them and stood taller. “Master Chief, I’m going to get the men ready for a call. If you hear anything about our going, yell at us. We’ll probably need the time.” DeWitt began running on his way to the small office of Third Platoon.
He went to his equipment locker and checked his traveling gear. His Bull Pup was ready, the magazines loaded for both the twenty and the 5.56. He had filled his combat vest that morning. He set out his favorite floppy hat and gloves with the fingers cut out, and boots. He was ready.
In the small office he looked over the roster. Everyone was fit and ready to fight. Mahanani looked like he had been in a fight, but he was on duty. He had done the O course in good time. The CIA would tell the FBI about Third Platoon. Don Stroh would get his oar in and the CNO would have some input. All they had to do was wait for the call through channels.
His only worry was Mahanani. He had been acting just a little off center lately. Not like the happy-go-lucky island boy he usually was. Something was going on with him, but there was nothing DeWitt could do until the man wanted to talk about it.
DeWitt paced the assembly room. Jaybird spoke up, and stared at the officer walking up and down.
“Troubles, Lieutenant?” he asked.
“Huh, oh, no, just thinking how to make the training sked tougher.” He sat down in the chair and stared at the telephone. No long distance, but something should be happening. It was the President and his top advisors up there under the North Korean guns. The Secret Service would have their Ingrams, for short-range stuff. But that wouldn’t be much of a fighting force against, say, a platoon of North Ks.
When DeWitt looked into the assembly room the next time, he called the men around. De Witt looked at Mahanani’s beat-up face and frowned.
“Who did you pick a fight with?”
“A little old grandmother in a big Cadillac who was seriously confused about which one was the brake and which the gas pedal and just what right-of-way means. I took a fender bender in the Buick. Bumper got dinged, but I had a close encounter with my steering wheel. Lucky I didn’t lose any teeth. Figure I’ll heal up without any need for more than six or eight pints of O positive.”
“What does the Cadillac look like?”
“No serious damage. Mostly just hurt feelings. I said some rather unflattering things, and threatened to report her to the Coronado cops so they could yank her license.”
“Well, take it easy and medicate those cuts. You’re the corpsman around here.”
“Yes, sir.”
DeWitt told the platoon to check their traveling gear. They could get another mission at any time. He wondered if he should say anything. Before he had to decide, Murdock came striding in the room. One arm had a white bandage around it, and the other hand waved a piece of paper. “Gather round, Froggies. We’ve got a job to do, and we can leave our wet suits at home.”
15
President Milford Dunnington hunched over the polished redwood plank table in the luxuriously Western-rustic-style conference room at the ranch of his boyhood friend, and studied his top team. He could always trust his right hand and Chief of Staff, Walt Eddings. Eddings had been with him since his days as a State Senator in California. Walt was short and a little pudgy, but had a mind like a computer and a memory better than the best computer chip. The National Security Advisor, Major General Beth Arnold, was a wonder and exactly the right choice. She was still slender at fifty-one, tall, with dark hair, a perfect complexion, and a solid military mind that Dunnington needed. Vice President Grover Paulson sat in as head of the Special Presidential Social Security Task Force. The VP was tall and gaunt, looked older than his forty-six years, and was being groomed to run in two years when Dunnington’s second term expired.
Maria Alvarez, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, was on hand. She was tiny, with dark, flashing black eyes, slender, and with an iron will to fight for every child in America. She was a Mexican American and proud of it. Social Security Administrator Leonard Gilstrap was the last one around the mirrorlike table. He had come up through the House and Senate, had been governor of Maine for a while, then been tapped as the man to save Social Security. He was sixty-one, had dark hair, and wore a full beard kept trimmed to a half inch. He had been a Recon Marine and his favorite expression was “Semper fi.”
The President cleared his throat, and everyone stopped talking and looked at him.
“Looks like we’re at a point where we need an hour break to think things over. We need to get together on one concentrated plan that will work for everyone. We must come up with a solution to this Social Security problem. Be back here in an hour.”
President Dunnington watched them leave. Even though the lights had suddenly shut down yesterday morning, they had made do. The SATCOM kept working with its batteries. They heard that the electricity was out all along the coast. The right people would work out the problem. He had his own here. Two days and almost no progress. He had to have a bill to send to Congress when they went back in two more days. The President stood and looked out the large windows at a spread of gentle green timbered slopes that ran down to a ridgeline a mile away. He loved the mountains. They were magnificent, and always gave him strength, resolve, and a new sense of purpose.
He frowned as he saw movement in the sky to the west. Two dots that became quickly larger, and soon he knew they were helicopters. Strange. This had been designated a no-fly zone for the length of his stay. He looked a hundred yards from the ranch house at a parking lot usually used for cars, but now holding three Presidential Super Stallion helicopters. When the President looked back at the choppers flying toward the ranch, he saw that they were not going to just fly past, they were heading directly for the ranch house.
A moment later they were fifty yards away and three plumes of smoke came from them. “Rockets,” he said. “My God, somebody is firing RPGs at us.” As he said it two of the smoke trails ended in the parking lot striking two of the Super Stallions. Both exploded in large balls of flames as the fuel tanks erupted and detonated like two bombs. The flaming fuel immediately engulfed the third Super Stallion, and all three burned furiously in seconds.
Two Secret Service agents rushed into the big conference room, grabbed the President, and ran him out the side door and down a long sidewalk that extended to the stables and a heavily wooded area just to the side of the front pasture.
“This way, Mr. President,” Larry Sanborn said. He was the head of the Presidential Secret Service detachment. “We’ve been attacked and we think that they have troops in the choppers. We have set up a defensive perimeter here, but we have no heavy weapons. It will take them some time to find us. It’s only nine A.M. Soon we’ll move into better cover and get away from the ranch house. There is no way we can defend the house with the weapons we have. We must work our prepared emergency plan to disperse into the woods and hills.”