George glanced at Lisa, who suddenly bore a more intense interest in the ocean. “And bear Lisa’s wrath? I’d rather face a Great White with chum hanging around my neck. Besides, Charlie contacted the head of operations here an hour ago.” George glanced at Jack with his brows raised. “The Coast Guard vice admiral himself…flown in from San Diego last night. Not exactly a friendly fellow, from Charlie’s description.”
“How do they want us to help?”
“We’re on standby until they localize the pinging of Air Force One’s data recorders and initiate an action plan. It seems NTSB is really only interested in our Nautilus. We’re to sit out here until our sub is called into play.”
“And what about Admiral Houston?” Jack asked. His old Navy commander had been the one to order them to service. “Isn’t he here?”
“Due to arrive tomorrow.”
“What’s taking him so long?”
“I guess it takes longer to grease the huge wheels of the U.S. military machine. He’s due at daybreak in the USS Gibraltar.” George waved his pipe forward. “All this malarkey is just preparation. Getting all the ducks in a row before the true deep-water search begins.”
“The Gibraltar,” Jack mumbled.
“You did a tour on that boat, didn’t you?”
Jack nodded. He had served aboard the ship for seven years. The Gibraltar was a Wasp-class Landing Helicopter Dockship, one of the largest ships in the Navy, only dwarfed by the supercarriers themselves. The LHD was a part of the infamous ’Gator Navy, an amphibious task force combining the combat power of the Marines with the speed and mobility of the Navy.
Robert called out from nearby, pointing. “Look.”
Off to the port, a bit of debris bobbed among the buoys. It hadn’t been there a moment ago. It must have just surfaced. Jack squinted. “Get me a pair of binoculars.”
Robert hurried away and returned with a set of Minolta glasses. Jack donned them. It took him a moment to find and focus on the piece of equipment. It was the back of an airline seat, the presidential seal bright blue against the red seat back.
A sudden swell rolled the seat over. A flash of pale flesh. An arm hanging limply. Then the sight vanished.
“Is it wreckage?” Robert asked.
Jack could not answer. He flashed to his own tumble through the air twelve years ago. The crash of the shuttle Atlantis. The sight struck too close to home.
“Jack, are you all right?” Lisa touched his shoulder.
He lowered his binoculars, pale, trembling. “We should never have come here. No good can come of it.”
4
Blame
July 25, 9:34 P.M.
Oval Office, White House, Washington, D.C.
David Spangler waited outside the Oval Office. All around him, even at this late hour, the West Wing of the White House bustled with aides, underlings, and messengers. This current turmoil was not localized just to Pennsylvania Avenue. The entire Beltway remained in high gear: countless press conferences were convened, repeated emergency meetings atop Capitol Hill took place, and an endless amount of petty backdoor bickering occurred throughout the halls.
All the pandemonium over the loss of a single man—President Bishop.
David himself had been specially flown in this morning from Turkey. He and his ops team had been called back early from a mission along the Iraq border, but he had yet to be told why.
“Coffee, sir?” An aide approached David with a tray of mugs.
He gave the tiny-breasted girl the barest shake of his head.
Seated stiffly in an upholstered chair, David continued to study the room, not moving, just picking up everything around him: the casual banter, the half jokes, the faint scent of perfume. He breathed deeply. Opportunity was in the air.
His own boss, CIA Director Nicolas Ruzickov, was in conference with the new leader of the United States, Vice President Lawrence Nafe.
Each of Bishop’s former Cabinet members was meeting in private with Nafe. Who would be axed? Who would retain their job? Rumors spread like wildfire through government halls. It was well-known that a deep political gulf separated the former President from his running mate. Nafe had been named to the ticket only as a ploy to gain the South; since then, their two offices often found themselves in conflict. Today, David suspected Nafe had been getting his ass kissed like it had never been before—but not from the CIA director. Nafe and Ruzickov had always been close friends, fellow students at Yale and fellow ideologues when it came to dealing with foreign aggression.
David had once shaken Nafe’s hand at a White House function. He’d found the man as weak and dishonest as the next politician, all fake smiles and perpetual condescending air, but in his opinion Nafe was at least better than the former occupant of the White House. President Bishop had been too much of a dove, coddling the Chinese, while Nafe was willing to take a more hard-line stance.
Nafe’s secretary typed at her computer, a dictation device hooked to one ear. As David waited for the conference to end, he caught her glancing in his direction, smiling shyly when she was caught looking. He was accustomed to this reaction from women. He was tall, his shoulders broad and muscular, his blond hair cropped to tight angles about his hard features, his skin tanned by years under the sun of many foreign lands. Prior to the aborted mission in Turkey, his last assignment had been to Lebanon, where he and his ops team had dispatched a Lebanese terrorist with the usual economy, taking out the man’s family and fire-bombing the hotel, erasing all evidence of the assassination. It had been a clean operation.
Pride for his team fired his blood. They were men he had trained from the start. Handpicked. He knew each of them would die for him. They were one of the most successful covert ops teams, with a body count numbering over a thousand.
The phone at the secretary’s desk buzzed. David’s gaze twitched in her direction. She picked up the receiver. “Yes, sir. Immediately, sir.” She put down the phone and turned to face David. “The President—” She blushed at her mistake. Nafe had not been formally sworn in yet, not without more concrete evidence of Bishop’s demise. “The Vice President requests you join Mr. Ruzickov in the Oval Office.”
David stood smoothly, a single line on his forehead marking his surprise at the invitation.
The secretary waved him toward the door, then returned to her typing. He crossed the room, unsure why he was being called into this conference. The door was opened by a Secret Service agent, whom David did not even acknowledge.