“How is he?”
“Not as bad as he looks, I thought his throat was cut. He’s lost a lot of blood, though.”
“I’ll send the pilot in the van for his chopper. There must be someplace he can set down around here. We’ll get him down to the base hospital at Holloman as soon as possible.”
Isaacs headed quickly for the door. Outside the two agents were jogging back up the driveway.
“Missed her?” Isaacs inquired.
“No way,” one of them replied. “Damn Ferrari, or some such thing. But she didn’t head for the lab; she took off in the opposite direction. Shall we take the van after her?”
“No, we need it to help get medical attention for Runyan. Was Krone in the car?”
“Didn’t get a good look, but yeah, I thought I saw a passenger.”
“Can’t be too hard to find such a car in these parts,” Isaacs observed.
“Nah,” the agent agreed, “it’s bright red and goes two hundred miles an hour. Should be a snap from the air. It’ll be dark soon, though. That could give her an edge.”
“Let’s get on it then,” Isaacs said. “You go with the pilot to the lab. Radio from the helicopter for a search team.”
“Right,” replied the agent, heading for the van.
Inside the house, Runyan had closed his eyes. Pat Danielson looked at his face, nearly as white from shock as the plaster on the adobe walls. Slowly, she reached out and put a comforting hand on the pale forehead.
“Damn you,” she whispered. “Damn you.”
Chapter 18
From his helicopter seat, Robert Isaacs looked down on the lights of the Ellipse, the thrust of the Washington Monument, and the illuminated sheen of the White House. His exhaustion ran so deep that the sight barely stirred him. His hands stung from burns and his belly ached from the cold, greasy, hastily packed box lunch that he had grabbed from the commissary at Holloman Air Force Base and shared with Pat Danielson on the flight back to Andrews. With luck, he thought, the car would be depositing Danielson at her apartment about now. He, on the other hand, had to face the most important meeting of his career with scarcely the energy to hold his head up. There would be shock, a lot of heat, a search for scapegoats. He knew he would be a target if his collusion with the Russians were revealed.
He hoped he didn’t look as bad as he felt. The clean jacket that an aide had picked up from his home and delivered to Andrews helped, but he could see singe marks where the shirt cuffs showed. He looked at his watch as the helicopter settled onto the pad on the White House lawn. 11:37. A helluva time to decide the fate of the nation. He thought he might prefer to change places with Runyan, trussed up in a hospital bed, or the two agents who had gone chasing a Ferrari through the mountains of New Mexico. Isaacs wondered whether they had gotten anything to eat. He steeled himself as the door swung open and climbed down into the rotor’s wash. He supervised the unloading of the precious foot-locker, keeping one of the lab books to show the President and then headed for the nearest door of the White House.
Inside, a White House guard escorted him to the cabinet room. Isaacs thanked the guard, opened the door and stepped inside. Seventeen people were seated around the large table that filled the room. Isaacs nodded to the Vice-President, several cabinet officers, the Chairman of the National Security Council, and various others he knew. He recalled that the Secretary of Defense, smart enough to beat the August heat in the capital, was absent on a tour of European defense installations. Some of the faces displayed excitement at the state of emergency, others, blase and disgruntled at the lateness of the hour, glanced at him long enough to ascertain that he was not The Man and returned to desultory conversations. The President’s chair, halfway along the table, its back to the window, was still empty.
Howard Drefke rose from his seat at the far end of the table in front of the unlit fireplace. Wayne Phillips, who had been seated next to him, also stood as Isaacs walked the length of the room to join them.
“Bob. How are you?” Drefke’s voice was low in the hush of the room, but warm.
“I’m fine.” Isaacs grimaced slightly at the pain of the handshake, but offered his hand as well to Phillips. They sat down, Isaacs taking a spare chair next to Phillips. He placed the scorched lab book carefully on the table. “Sorry to call you back here so suddenly,” Isaacs said to the physicist.
“No problem at all. I’m so happy to be of service.”
“You brought the slides from Gantt?”
“Yes, they’re in the machine.”
Phillips gestured at a projector sitting on the waist high table next to Drefke in front of the fireplace. Isaacs checked the alignment of the screen at the other end of the room, next to the door through which he had entered. He confirmed that Drefke had brought the satellite photos. All seemed in place.
“I caught one of those commuter flights from La Jolla to Burbank just after you called this morning,” Phillips continued, “and Ellison was ferried over from Arizona. We had several hours in Pasadena to assemble the data and make the slides before my flight east. I’m sorry that Ellison isn’t here to help with the presentation, especially since poor Alex is hurt. His condition is not too serious, they tell me?”
“No, he lost some blood, and he’ll be in a bit of pain for awhile, but he’ll be fine. In any case, you’re the head of Jason, the man the President will want to hear from.”
The door banged open and the President barged through. Isaacs immediately perceived that the individual normally so bluff and hearty on television press conferences was thoroughly steamed. He strode to his chair and sat down so quickly that no one had a chance to stand. There was a momentary bobbing of bodies as several of the people started to rise, thought better of it, and resettled themselves. The President had a piece of paper partially crushed in his tight grip. He slammed it on the table.
“The goddamned Russians have gone berserk! This is the third hot line message from them today. This morning they wiped out the nuclear device that was our protection against their laser. All afternoon they’ve been methodically picking off pieces of space junk, showing what they can do. There are rumors in every major capital that our surveillance system is compromised and that one side or the other is on the verge of a preemptive strike.”
He poked a rigid finger at the paper.
“If we so much as blink we’ll be at war and our NATO allies are panicked to the point where any one of them could push the wrong button.”
He looked around the table. “The Russians are mad, and they are scared, and they are blaming us. I want to know what the hell is going on!”
The President paused and forcibly composed himself. He continued with a quieter but still strained tone. “They seem to think that we have developed and are testing some fantastic new kind of weapon that can be fired through the Earth.”
He turned toward the Director of Central Intelligence at his far right. “Howard, you indicated you could shed some light on this. I hope you don’t mind sharing one or two of your secrets with me before the whole world goes up in a goddamned nuclear war!”
A look of anguish passed over Drefke’s face. The sarcastic attack from his old friend pained him, and he knew the President was not going to like the story he had to tell.
“Mr. President,” his voice quavered, but then grew stronger, “the case I have to present is highly unorthodox. My associate, Mr. Isaacs, has only just this moment returned with the evidence to confirm that we are faced with a peril of unprecedented proportions. Through a bizarre set of circumstances, the Earth itself has become mortally endangered.”
“I’ve always considered nuclear holocaust dangerous,” the President said, his irritation still plainly evident.