“Why?”
“It’s his position that no living terrorist sub driver has ever had a sub in Long Island Sound. There is no way anyone but one of our own could have maneuvered that sub through those waters the way he did.”
“We’ve been building a case that argues some of the crew members might have cooperated with the hijackers,” Sarah reminded them.
Bruce lowered his voice. “But no one aboard besides McCann had that kind of know-how.”
“If it wasn’t McCann, then it had to be a foreigner working with the crew still on board.”
“The ranking officer was Lieutenant Paul Cavallaro, and Whiting is certain he could not have handled the sub like that.” Dunn shook his head. “Whiting also believes that the probability that the crew was working with the hijackers adds to the argument that those behind it are home grown. It’s almost an impossibility that any sailor in the submarine service would sell his soul to any foreign terrorist. According to Whiting, it’s completely absurd to think that nine members of the same crew would.”
“That puts a new twist on things.” Meisner sat on the corner of the conference table, crossing his arms as he contemplated everything he’d been told. “From now on, you’ll keep all your findings between us. Access to anything you learn is hereby restricted to me and the half dozen people going up the ladder from me to the President. This includes whatever you discover on Hartford. Is that clear?”
“What if there are survivors?” Bruce asked.
The admiral considered that. “Including information about them. No one is to know. Not even their families. An extra night won’t kill anyone. There’s no telling what they might have seen. And if someone expected them to be dead, they might just come after them to finish the job.”
Sarah thought of Darius’s parents and Amy Russell’s children and how much difference a night would make. But she kept it to herself. There was no point in arguing when they didn’t even know if any of them had survived the two explosions.
“What’s next on your agenda?” Meisner asked them.
Bruce looked at Sarah. “We need to fly to Connecticut. If there are any survivors, we need to be there for the debriefing. Otherwise, we should be there for the recovery of Hartford.”
“Are you okay with that, Lieutenant?” Meisner asked Sarah.
Once again, Bruce Dunn had known exactly what she’d been looking for.
“Absolutely,” she said.
Chapter 53
John Penn pushed his son’s wheelchair along the paved path toward the lawns that overlooked the Cliff Walk and Atlantic Ocean. Three secret service agents trailed them.
“Nice to have the rain finally stop, don’t you think?” he asked Owen.
The young man gave him a thumbs up response.
“Tell me if you get cold.”
The nineteen-year-old tapped the arm of his wheelchair. John knew that meant, ‘Okay.’
Owen’s speech was still indistinct. He wasn’t able to pronounce certain vowels, and words tended to run into one another. He hadn’t regained the complete use of his vocal cords after the accident and the tracheotomy, but he could talk. Yet he only chose to exercise that ability with his family.
They were at the end of the campaign, and John now realized how much he missed his privacy. He regretted the discomfort he caused his son, his wife, and his daughter by putting them in the public eye, twenty-four seven.
Owen, though, was the one he felt sorry for most. Anna and Aileen were outspoken and could hand out two jabs for every one that came their way, but Owen had fewer resources to defend himself. He’d been limited to the bed and this wheelchair since he was sixteen. Two weeks after his birthday, he’d been a passenger in a car driven by one of his friends. Speeding, poor road conditions, lack of experience. They could have blamed it on a dozen things. The end result was that the driver had been killed instantly, and Aileen and John had to wait months before knowing if their child was going to make it through.
And Owen had made it. But the extent of his progress continued to be a big unknown. He had the use of both hands, although he lacked many motor skills. He could eat and drink and breathe without any apparatus. John was certain that Owen’s mind was sharper than the rest of the Penn family combined.
As a family, they had come to peace with Owen’s condition. He was alive and that was the most important thing to all of them.
John had been too caught up in the whirlwind of the campaign and how far ahead he was in the polls to take the time to reassess the pros and cons of what he was doing to his family. Today had been an eye-opener. He wasn’t sure anymore which would be the worse fate, losing this election or winning it.
Owen made a motion with his hand, and John looked to their right.
Anthony McCarthy was coming their way, and from the look on the man’s face and the length of his strides, John decided his campaign manager must be pissed off. The senator shook his head. He could only imagine what this was about.
McCarthy joined them where the two paths merged some twenty yards ahead. McCarthy and Owen exchanged a handshake.
“I’ve arranged a news conference for six o’clock. You should be inside, Senator, preparing.”
“I don’t have to prepare anything, because there isn’t going to be a news conference.”
“I knew it,” McCarthy said with a heavy sigh. “John, don’t do this to me.”
The senator was getting to know this routine. Temper followed by the laying on of guilt. The second tactic always worked better on him than the first.
He didn’t even look at his manager. “We agreed about this yesterday, Anthony. No. In fact, I think it was last week. No more campaigning. I’m spending the evening with my family. That’s all there is to it.”
“A week ago, even yesterday, you were light years ahead of Hawkins in the polls. Right now, with what’s happened, it’s suddenly a dead heat. He’s had ample opportunities to be in front of television screens today, tooting his own horn.”
“He’s been doing his job as the president,” Penn corrected.
“He’s been taking credit for it, too. Now it’s time for you to go out there and remind the American people that the end results wouldn’t have been any different if you were the one in office. The armed forces were the ones who got the job done. No personal glory belongs to Hawkins.”
Penn moved Owen’s chair next to a bench so that his son was facing them. “I would never stand at a podium and tell the American people a blatant lie. And that would be a lie. The end result would have been different if I were the one calling the shots.”
McCarthy brought a hand to his forehead. “You would never admit that you were planning to meet the hijackers’ demands.”
“I wouldn’t say that because it isn’t true,” Penn said, bristling. “What I wouldn’t have done was to go in front of everyone and say that the crisis was over when those hijackers are still running free somewhere. This thing is far from over, but Hawkins is using the retaking of the submarine to swing votes. The problem is that he has jumped the gun. How can he know that the hijacking wasn’t the first step in a multi-pronged attack strategy? That a runaway oil tanker in the Midwest won’t barrel into a government building. Or that some kind of missile isn’t being aimed this minute at the Golden Gate Bridge. Or any of a dozen other possible disasters. He can’t know, and he’s irresponsible for telling Americans that they are safe.”
“These are the concerns he’ll bring up on Wednesday, the day after the election,” McCarthy reminded him. “Right now, there’s only one thing on Hawkins’s mind and that is winning votes.”