His mind was leaden. The wine he’d drunk to relax himself for sleep had done the trick.
An engine — deep and heavy like that of a truck — groaned to life outside. There was another shout before the engine revved and tires squealed. Deep male voices shouted urgently to one another. A string of firecrackers went off, then another, and another, punctuated by a sharp explosion. Marshall spun his feet to the floor and groped in the plush carpet for his slippers. His wife stirred and mumbled, ‘What?’
Marshall padded over to the window and pulled the heavy curtain aside. There was a fire of some sort in the distance. From the direction of the main road. From the main guardhouse. The ‘firecrackers’ were gunfire, he realized, and they came from there also.
A sharp boom rattled the windows and rocked him back a step in surprise. Flame boiled into the sky from along the road between the gate and the President’s lodge.
‘What was that?’ his wife muttered from the bed. The door to his bedroom burst open. He turned in time to see a dark figure rushing at him — profiled in the light from the sitting room. The large man tackled Marshall in a jarring collision. The curtains were still clutched in the President’s hand, and the curtain rods fell onto the two men in a heap.
‘Tom?’ the First Lady shouted from bed.
‘Stay out of the window, sir!’ the man on top of the President said. Marshall watched as the ceiling was bathed in the flash from yet another explosion. The popping guns of a firefight were slowly being drowned out by the whine of a helicopter’s engines.
‘Let’s go!’ another Secret Service agent shouted from the door. The President was amazed to see a man appear wearing a dark suit carrying an M-16 rifle.
Marshall crawled beneath the window alongside the man who had tackled him. Marshall heard the First Lady grunt. An agent had forcibly bent her over and draped a bulletproof vest over her nightgown.
At the door, an agent helped Marshall slip his pajama-clad arms through his own body armor. Strong hands then pushed him down the darkened hallway toward the service stairs at the end.
‘Let’s go! Go! Go! Go!’ an agent was shouting as the entourage practically ran down the hall.
When the President reached the stairway door, he paused to look at the two men at the hallway’s end. Their hair was clipped short. Marines, he could tell, even though they wore only T-shirts and boxer shorts. They were setting up a machine-gun in the open hall window amid the draperies the First Lady had picked out earlier that summer. A long belt of bullets was being pulled from a metal box.
Down the stairway they ran. The President joined the First Lady just inside the door to the rear lawn. The large form of a blacked-out Marine One helicopter sat on the pad forty yards from the house. Its engines drowned out all sounds of the fighting. The stairs behind them were now crowded with Secret Service agents talking excitedly into their radios. The flash of an explosion lit up the dozen or so Marines crowded around the door just outside. One was bare-chested but wore dog tags and combat boots and carried a shotgun.
‘Hit it!’ someone yelled, and out they rushed. The Secret Service agents and Marines formed a human shield around the President and First Lady. Their weapons were raised and their gaze peeled in a phalanx of flesh that protected their charges from all directions.
‘What’s going on?’ the President shouted as they rushed across the lawn.
‘I don’t know, sir!’ the distracted agent next to him yelled over the helicopter’s noise. In seconds they were aboard, and the aircraft took off with the door still open. Pressed into a seat by helping hands, the President felt his seatbelt being fastened for him and he looked out the window. Brilliant white flares dropped from the helicopter’s belly, illuminating the now scattering group of escorts on the lawn below. Fires rose into the air from the guardhouse and in a string along the main road. Marshall caught sight of tracer rounds flying in both directions in the dark woods by the gate.
The thin treetops of the Maryland countryside scraped against the belly of the twisting, turning Marine One.
‘Hey, dad!’ Nate Clark’s teenage son appeared at the door of his study. ‘Come take a look at this on TV.’ Jeffrey Clark disappeared just as quickly as he’d appeared.
‘What about the American Express?’ Nate asked his wife as he rose.
‘Paid it,’ Lydia answered. Her legs were slung over the side of a padded leather sofa. She was gently kicking her feet while reading a catalog. ‘What do you think about this?’ Lydia asked, holding the catalog up to him just as Jeffrey shouted ‘Da-ad!’
‘Pretty,’ Nate mumbled mechanically before joining the boys in the family room. ‘Look!’ said Paul, his younger son — pointing at the announcer on television. It was CNN. ‘This Just In’ read a graphic in the background. ‘We have no independent confirmation of any of this just yet,’ the anchorwoman said. ‘If something like this were to be true, it would be absolutely unprecedented.’ She hesitated, distracted, then said, ‘I’m being told we have Elizabeth Crane on the line from the Maryland Highway Patrol. Ms Crane, can you hear me?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re on the air.’
The woman cleared her throat. ‘Well, about fifteen minutes ago, we received a call from the Presidential compound at Camp David requesting back-up units and stating that there was a “firefight” — that was the word he used — under way. Two units responded and reported that there were flames at the main guardhouse and at various places inside the compound, and that gunfire could be heard from the surrounding woods.’
‘Wait, let me get this straight,’ the anchorwoman interrupted. ‘Are you saying that there was some sort of battle at Camp David? That there was gunfire and… and a “firefight,” as you said?’
‘The units reported casualties at the gate, and the initial call to dispatch was from a Marine guard on a cellular phone. The dispatcher also reported that the sounds of gunfire could be heard over the phone.’
‘Do you know whether the President was still there at the time of the attack? My producer is telling me that President Marshall was reported there as late as this afternoon.’
‘We don’t know anything more. We’re advising all motorists who don’t have to be out to avoid the area, and we’re cordoning off all roads into and out of Camp David with road blocks.’ Nate headed for the telephone in the study. It began ringing before he got there.
‘It’s a Captain Fairs?’ Lydia said, shrugging at the unfamiliar name.
‘Hello,’ Nate said as he powered the television up.
‘General Clark?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Sir, this is Captain Fairs. I work for the Chief of Staffs office. We’re sending a man from the protective service by a few homes, and yours is on the list. And I’ve also got a message that General Dekker has requested you be in his office at zero nine hundred.’
‘All right, I’ll be there. What’s the security for, captain?’
Lydia shot him a look of concern.
‘Just a precaution, sir. We’re calling in extra security personnel here at the Pentagon. And there was some trouble at the SecDefs home — an alarm went off — but there was nobody there.’
Lydia was already up and staring at the television. Nate couldn’t hear the anchorwoman, but the pictures were from Chicago. Flashing police lights filled a city street slick with an evening rain. In the distance, several cars burned. The street was strewn with sparkling debris.