“Sir, I’m sorry. You can’t park here,” said the guard, toning his voice down. “It’s for doctors and nurses.”
“I outrank them,” Zen barked, rolling toward the door.
“Now listen,” blustered the guard. “I don’t care if you are handicapped. That’s not where you park.”
Black had to run to catch up to his boss. Zen reached into his pocket as he caught up with him and grabbed his keys.
“Move the van so Barney Fife over there doesn’t have a heart attack. I’d hate for Pete to lose another constituent.”
The electric doors opened and Zen glided inside the emergency room. One thing about hospitals—they were generally easy to get in and out of if you were in a wheelchair.
That was about the only nice thing Zen could ever say about them.
“I’m Senator Stockard,” he announced to the nurse at the desk. “You have my daughter here for X rays.”
The word “senator” jarred the nurse, and for a second she wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth. Before she could say anything, a doctor came out from the office area.
“Senator Stockard, I’m glad you could get here so quickly,” he said as he walked over. “I’m Mike Watson. Dr. Bozzone called me and asked if I’d come down and check out your daughter personally.”
“Who called Billy?”
“Might’ve been your wife, Senator.”
“She’s always a step ahead of me. Where’s Teri?”
Dr. Watson—his name had been a source of jokes since med school—led Zen back through the halls to the X-ray department. Teri was sitting on an examining table, waiting as one of the techs readied the machine. A member of her school staff was sitting in the corner, a magazine on her lap.
“Daddy, what are you doing here?”
“Hey, angel. I was looking for someone to play golf with. The doctors mentioned you were here, so I postponed the game.”
“You don’t play golf.” Teri gave him a mock frown, then leaned down from the table to give him a kiss. “Where’s Mom?”
“With the President.”
Teri frowned. She had expected her mother, not her father. She loved them both, but it was her mother who always showed up at times like this.
Plus, she had said she would.
Zen read the disappointment in her face. “Mom’s working hard,” he told her. “She had something very important today.”
“I know.”
He decided it was better to change the subject. “What, are you bucking for a chair like mine?”
“Oh get out.” She hopped down from the table and began dancing around. “See? I’m fine.”
“Probably, but let’s let the X ray determine that,” said Dr. Watson.
THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL MET IN A SECURE CONFERENCE room well below ground level in the White House “basement,” but the room was bathed in what to the naked eye seemed like perfect daylight. The environmental controls kept the room precisely at 68 degrees, a fact that occasionally irked the President, who preferred a slightly cooler temperature, but allowed it to remain there out of deference to her aides and cabinet members’ comfort.
A rectangular table sat at the center of the large room. A video screen tilted upward in front of each of the thirty-six places; the screens were tied into a conferencing system as well as the secure intelligence intranet. Each seat was equipped with a bank of secure communication lines, allowing text and e-mail as well as scrambled voice and video.
Best of all, the coffee and tea were world-class.
Breanna took her seat near the center of the far side, next to Reid and two spots from the Secretary of Defense, Charles Lovel.
Lovel nodded as she sat. He had started out as an enthusiastic supporter of the program, but lately had been rethinking its direction because of budget pressures. A relatively small part of the Pentagon’s so-called “black budget,” it still represented hundreds of millions of dollars, with the potential to consume much more. Lovel had bought the “multiplier effect” that Whiplash allowed—the idea that the program would pay for itself by encouraging more research and development, implementing high-tech tools faster and cheaper, and saving on manpower costs down the line. But the program was still so new that cutting it would not raise much of an outcry—far less, say, than lopping something like a destroyer out of the budget.
Lovel would have been the first to admit that counting angry heads was a terrible way to set government policy. But he called himself a “big picture” guy, and in the big picture he saw, some terrible decisions had to be made to support the overall agenda.
Breanna sat down and took a small memory card from her pocket. When she slipped it into the slot in the table before her, a keyboard appeared on the screen. She touch-typed her encryption code, enabling access to the files of her presentation, along with additional background and documentation.
She was worried about her daughter. She knew Zen could handle whatever came up—he was always taking care of them somehow. But still, she felt she should be there, reassuring Teri that everything was fine.
The attendant brought Breanna a cup of coffee. As she started to stir it, everyone in the room rose. The President had arrived.
“All right, let’s get to work,” said Christine Mary Todd. A tall woman, she moved with quick strides, shoulders back and head high. In a man, her quick gait might have been considered brisk, her physical style assertive. As a woman, they gave visual ammunition to critics who found her abrupt and distant.
“Ms. Stockard, Mr. Reid. Very good of you two to come on such short notice,” she said as she sat. The President did not attend every National Security meeting, but had planned on coming to this one for other reasons. News of the nuclear network made her attendance even more critical today. “Who’s going first?”
That was the President’s style—plunge right into the situation without too much fuss. Breanna glanced around, waiting for everyone to settle into their seats before beginning.
“Some months ago, we initiated a joint program between the CIA and Defense that allows us to test and implement new technologies on an advanced basis,” she said. Her voice was stiff, as was her prose. “The program is still in its very early stages, literally only a few weeks old, but we already have important results to share with you. Alarming results. Some of you have received some information already, so I will be brief.”
Breanna looked down at her presentation. She’d lost her place, but decided she didn’t need to read the words. She knew what she wanted to say.
“My associate, Mr. Reid, represents the CIA. We work together. I’m going to very briefly talk about some of our technology and the unit involved, just to give you background on our capabilities. And then Jonathon—Mr. Reid—is going to talk about what we’ve found.”
Breanna described MY-PID in simplistic terms, saying that it was a networked computer system that could be used by operatives in the field. Her description was intentionally bland; the few people in the room with a need to know the specifics already knew them. She then mentioned the Whiplash team, again in very general terms, noting that its full complement had not even been recruited yet.
She made a point of mentioning that Danny Freah was heading the team. His name was familiar to most if not all of the people in the room, adding credibility to the program.
Reid sat quietly, waiting for his turn to speak. Even now, he hadn’t decided what he would recommend as the next step. His boss, mentor, and friend, CIA Director Herman Edmund, had made it clear that he wanted the entire project under CIA direction. Reid had been swayed, at least to some extent, by Breanna’s arguments in the car.
“Excuse me,” said Secretary of State Alistair Newhaven. “Is Whiplash intended as a strike team, or as an espionage unit?”
“A little of both,” said Reid. He turned to Breanna, realizing he’d cut her off. “Sorry.”