“Well, yessir, I do of course remember. There’s a morning service at St. John’s, sir. And an evening one. I’ll make sure it’s open in the next half hour.”
She left the office and returned to her desk. A longtime White House staffer, she knew precisely the right buttons to press. And she hit the line to the usher and requested that someone contact St. John’s Episcopal Church and ensure that it was empty, open and ready to receive the President of the United States, as it had received every President since James Madison.
The next call, to the Secret Service, was more serious, because the prospect of the President walking anywhere in public is apt to hit them like an ice storm in Tahiti. A lot of people need to be alerted, since the White House grounds are swept at all times by infrared, electronic eye, audio and pressure sensors. Video cameras on the roof and all over the grounds record every movement. There is actually a full SWAT team positioned on the White House roof, machine guns drawn, every time the President enters or leaves. And that assumes he’s traveling in a bulletproof car.
The mere prospect of the President, in the company of the secretary to the National Security Adviser, walking to church was cause for a major operation. To a Secret Service agent, the 300 yards from the north corner of the West Wing to St. John’s represented something close to the Pope crossing a minefield. In fact, the President would be crossing a quiet private road, closed to all traffic and patrolled at all times by squadrons of police.
But when Kathy O’Brien announced that the President was walking to church, about 140 people went into full alert, as would be expected in a gigantic fiefdom that costs upward of a billion dollars a year to run. Guards were detailed to surround and accompany him every yard of the way, from the front door of the Earthly God to the open door of the Greater God.
They set off together at a quarter to five, walking through the corridors of the West Wing and then stepping out into the hot, sunlit 18-acre gardens, where there awaited more armed men than there were on the evacuation beach at Xiachuan.
Surrounded now by the protectors of the President, they strolled up through the lawns and across the private road into Jackson Place on the west side of Lafayette Square. And from there it was just a few yards more to the pale yellow-painted Georgian church with its six tall white columns and three-tiered tower.
The door to the empty St. John’s was wide open, ready to welcome the President of the United States on a private visit. When they arrived, he ordered everyone to remain outside, while he and Kathy walked in and closed the main door behind them.
And there in the cool half-light of the 190-year-old church, “the Church of the Presidents,” John Clarke humbled himself before his God, kneeling quietly next to Kathy O’Brien in the front row of the left-hand pews and silently expressing his ineradicable gratitude for the safe delivery of his only son, Linus.
His prayer was, he said, not just thanks, but a formal recognition that his “still, small voice” had been heard above the tumult of a world of sins. It was, he believed, an affirmation of his faith, the faith with which he had been brought up by his Baptist family in faraway Oklahoma.
He remained kneeling for perhaps 10 minutes, and then he turned to Kathy O’Brien and asked if she was ready to accompany him back to the White House.
They both stood and walked back down the dark red carpet of the left aisle. At the door, before he opened it, John Clarke said quietly, “I am not the President of anything in here, am I?”
“No, sir. No you’re not. But I am sure you are welcome, because God gets many more requests for help than He ever does expressions of thanks. And it was St. John himself who wrote the words of Our Lord, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
And there was a smile on the face of the Chief Executive as he walked back to the White House with a clear conscience.
As the senior officer in the evacuation, Captain Judd Crocker elected not to leave the island with the second flotilla, but rather to wait for the final boat and travel in the cold light of dawn with Lieutenant Commander Hunter and Ray Schaeffer.
And there were already orange fingers of light out over the water as the eastern sun fought its way above the horizon. They could not yet see the five Zodiacs making their way across the bay, but they could hear a distant growl of outboard engines, moving very fast over the flat calm water.
Three minutes later the SEAL drivers came charging into the beach, a new note of urgency obvious in their attitudes as they cut the motors and hauled up the engines, while the SEALs in the shallows grabbed the painters and hung on to the boats. There was no need even to spin them around away from the waves now, because the ocean was like a pond.
The lead driver came in yelling, “OKAY, SIR, LET’S GO…all equipment in the second boat plus three…seven in each of the others…we’re outta here.”
The light was having a nerve-wracking effect on everyone. Surely the Chinese could not now be unaware, somehow, that a diabolical attack had occurred on their heavily manned jail, even if the SEALs had wrecked every possible communications system. No one expected a counterattack by night, but this was different. The cloak of darkness was gone, and everyone on the beach felt very vulnerable as the light grew stronger.
The very least the Chinese Navy must do would be to send a couple of helicopters in to find out why they could not contact the jail anymore. If those choppers arrived in the next five minutes they would surely open fire on the fleeing Americans.
“COME ON, YOU GUYS…LET’s GO! GO! GO!”
The lead driver, veteran Petty Officer Zack Redmond, was growing more jumpy by the minute. And he was not alone. Olaf Davidson was in the water, manhandling the machine guns into the boats. Buster and Rattlesnake were up to their waists, shoving men up and over into the boats.
When it was Rick’s turn he stood next to them and bent his left leg at the knee, and the two SEALs grabbed his tree-trunk shin and lifted. The world’s largest jockey thus vaulted over the gunwales like Bill Shoemaker at Santa Anita.
It was a minute after 0600 when the last boat was pushed the few yards out deep enough to lower the engines. The beaches were completely deserted now, and as the five motors roared into life, all of the SEALs found themselves looking back at the tiny Chinese island on which they had fought with such superhuman courage.
The black smoke over the jail had gone, and the place looked peaceful again, an idyllic tropical beach, with water turning more turquoise blue every minute. Nonetheless, they were all ecstatic to get away from it. Only Judd Crocker looked sad as he stared at the jungle and wondered where the body of Lieutenant Commander Rothstein had been buried, and if anyone would ever know his final resting place.
The Zodiacs hurtled out into the bay, and now for the first time, the SEALs could look at the seaway between the two islands. Opposite, on the shores of Shangchuan Dao, the coastline was long and flat, with low mountains rising in the background. Xiachuan looked altogether more rugged. But the best news was the total lack of activity. Here on this bright Monday morning, there was still no sign of even a junk, far less a warship. And the U.S. Navy drivers opened the throttles and sped across the calm sea, making their course change after three miles, and then making a beeline sou’sou’west, straight toward the waiting submarine Greenville, in which most of them had arrived.