She checked Nordquist on the floor. He was completely out, but the angle of his body seemed uncomfortable. The least she could do was slip a pillow under his head.
She began to search for one and then saw her purse on a counter. Her cell phone was still inside. She wondered if it would actually work, and, if it did, if anyone would answer. She desperately wanted to talk to Jennifer and her sister Dina, find out if they were OK, tell them she was fine. Which she wasn’t.
She picked up the purse, pulled out her phone and pressed the #2 key to dial Jennifer’s mobile number.
23
Jennifer turned the wheel hard, and the minivan skidded onto an unplowed country road. As she pulled at the steering wheel to adjust, her iPhone started ringing. She tightened one hand on the wheel and with the other dug into the front pocket of her jeans for her phone. But Robbie tried to stop her.
“You still have your phone?” he shrieked. “Don’t answer it! They can track us!”
But Jennifer’ s hand was already around her iPhone and pulled it out. The display showed “The Deb” and her mother’s number. She answered. “Mom, where are you?”
“Thank God you’re OK.” It was her mom’s voice, but the connection wasn’t good at all. Her phone showed five bars for reception, but her mom sounded like she was a mile underground. “Listen…Jennifer….Those men…chasing you ….”
“Don’t tell me they’re just trying to help, Mom.”
“No, Jennifer. They want…to hurt you.”
Jennifer felt a shiver up her spine and involuntarily swerved the minivan around the next corner. “What?”
“They want…”
“You’re cutting out, Mom.
Jennifer, trying to drive and talk, turned onto another road and saw a Westchester County Sheriff’s highway patrol car coming their way. She held her breath as they passed each other, then looked up in the mirror to see the patrol car make a long, sloppy U-turn in the snow.
“They found us!” she shouted into her phone.
“Jennifer!” Her mom’s voice rang out.
Robbie was screaming hysterically, “Get rid of the fucking phone!”
Jennifer lowered her window, tossed the phone into the snow and drove away as fast as she could from the flashing lights behind her.
“We’re screwed,” Robbie said. “There’s no way we’re going to outrun the cops.”
She had enough and slowed down.
“What are you doing?” Robbie shouted.
“Kicking you out of the van.”
“Shut up and drive!”
“You shut up, Robbie, and then I’ll drive.”
He finally chilled out and she looked up in her mirror in time to see the police car get rammed by a black Suburban. The Suburban pummeled the police car into an icy wall of plowed snow, then began to back up and ram it again and kill the driver. She could see two Green Berets inside the Suburban.
“Holy shit!” she screamed and hit the accelerator.
The minivan skidded forward until it got its grip on the ice, and she slowly applied more pressure to speed away. She made several sloppy turns through the maze of winding winter roads, losing sight of the Suburban behind her and praying against reason that the goons behind the wheel wouldn’t pick up her trail.
24
Three puzzled faces stared at Koz from their respective screens inside the Nightwatch conference compartment: General Block at Northern Command, General Carver at Strategic Command and General Marshall aboard the Looking Glass Airborne Command.
Carver in Omaha was the first to speak. “What the hell do you mean she’s incapacitated, Colonel?”
“Just that, sir,” Koz replied, learning forward in his seat at the end of the long, empty conference table. “She got pretty banged up when her chopper went down en route to the designated rendezvous.” Koz watched the generals closely for any reaction. “She said the Green Beret escort I sent tried to kill her.”
Block’s round face turned beet red. “Christ Almighty!” he said. “What did the Green Berets say?”
“Nothing, sir. They’re all dead.”
Koz thought he caught a tick at the corner of Block’s left eye, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Colonel, are you trying to tell us that this…woman…single-handedly took out an entire Green Beret escort in two choppers?”
It did sound unbelievable, Koz realized, the way Block put it. “She had the help of her Secret Service detail, none of whom survived.”
“How convenient,” Block muttered. “For all we know, Sachs is the one taking orders and the Chinese wanted her to be president.”
There was silence. Absolute silence. Koz stared at the screens, waiting for the first sign of an emotion to cross any one of the three faces. It was a ballsy, completely out-there accusation from Block, but something they had to chew on.
“We all know how the chain of command works in a situation like this,” Marshall explained, breaking the silence. “The National Command Authority is in charge of our nuclear forces. In peacetime, that’s usually the president and the secretary of Defense. In time of war, it’s their designated successors and us, the surviving commanders. As things now stand, the president is only one voice out of four. And in military matters, she’d obviously defer to us. But politically — constitutionally — we still need presidential authorization, and that requires a president. That president, for better or worse, is Deborah Sachs.”
More silence. Koz could sense both Carver and Block almost wishing Marshall to put up his hand for the job himself. He had earned it, Koz knew, that’s for sure. His deference to the Constitution only confirmed his leadership ability in time of war.
“Marshall’s right,” Carver concluded, his tone signaling that he was bringing the first attack conference to a close. “The last thing we need is a constitutional crisis. America can’t go into this war split. I think Sachs could work. She has to work. She will review the attack options while we move our forces into place. Then, when the time comes, Colonel Kozlowski can relay her strike authorization. If Marshall is right, she’ll play ball.”
“Play ball?” Block repeated incredulously. “How the hell do you expect her to play ball, boys, if she ain’t got none?”
Koz opened his mouth to offer his own observation when his comlink beeped. It was Captain Li. “Sir, we have an unauthorized, outbound transmission originating from the medical center,” she reported. “The officers on duty outside can’t break in. The door is jammed.”
Sachs.
Koz said, “I’ll be right there.”
25
Sachs texted her daughter from inside the infirmary of the Nightwatch plane: J, where r u? But Jennifer wasn’t responding since they had been cut off. She tried calling again, at least getting a ring this time. She waited for what seemed like an eternity when Jennifer’s voice came through. “Say what you gotta say and leave me alone, loser.”
She had reached Jennifer’s voicemail.
“Jennifer, it’s mom,” she said, trying to sound calm but forceful. “You know what’s going on with the attack. I have to know where you are and that you’re safe. We need to stay connected. Call or text me back right away.”
Knowing Jennifer, she was probably heading home to Dina’s, which would be the first place anybody after her would be waiting.
“Don’t go to Aunt Dina’s,” Sachs pleaded into the phone, then said it again quietly. “Don’t go anywhere near the house
Sachs hung up and paced back and forth in the medical center, deciding what to do next. She tried all of Dina’s numbers, getting only voicemails or service interruption messages. She had to reach somebody on the outside, someone in government or media, she decided, to let them know where she was and find out what was going on in the outside world. Someone beyond the D.C.-New York beltway. Maybe California. Rhinehart’s former press secretary, Vicki Blaze, was the news manager at NBC in Los Angeles. She might even put the call live on the air right there and then. Assuming NBC was still on the air on the West Coast.