Eileen Reed - Ground Zero Part 33

"Yes," he said shortly. There was a long moment of silence.

"Let's see," Cherepovitch said slowly. "You want to send American bombers over Russian soil and bomb Russian women and children in order to kill a terrorist. Is this correct?"

"We have some background on Muallah that suggests he might launch," the Major said stubbornly. He refused to look Kalashnikov in the eye. "Wherever that bomb might hit would kill far more women and children than are in silo number six."

"Thank you, no," Cherepovitch said coldly. Kalashnikov wanted to cheer. "My country declines. We have a ground a.s.sault team that can be there in twelve hours. We will take our missile base back and rescue our comrades, Major Paxton. Please express our regrets to your government, and our thanks at your offer."

Cherepovitch turned to Kalashnikov and gave him a solemn wink. Kalashnikov barely suppressed a grin. G.o.d, that felt good.

Now their a.s.sault team had to succeed, that was all. Kalashnikov said another silent prayer as Major Paxton, shoulders slumped, went to his secure phone.

The Pentagon.

"They said no?"

"They said no," General Knox said to the Secretary of Defense.

"What is your a.s.sessment?"

"Mr. Secretary, the Russians are the Three Stooges of the military world," Knox said rudely. "They'll probably kill each other and launch the missile themselves."

The Secretary licked his lips nervously. Was this man serious?

"And?"

"I suggest we get the President in the air and as many members of Congress out of town as quickly as possible." Knox knew he'd convinced the Secretary when the man paled to a nice tone of paper white.

"Oh my G.o.d," he said.

"We have one card up our sleeve," Knox said. "If this madman does happen to launch."

"The Missile Defense program?" the Secretary whispered.

"That's correct, sir," Knox said. He'd argued for years against spending on those d.a.m.n foolish s.p.a.ce toys. Now here he was offering the program like a life preserver to a drowning man. He hated the words coming out of his mouth. "After we get the President out of danger, I suggest we get Admiral Kane to fire up this system and see if all the billions we spent pays off."

"First things first," the Secretary said, still pale. Knox kept a contemptuous smile from curling his lip. The Secretary would be on Air Force One with the President. The coward. The Secretary picked up the phone.

"Operation Scramble," he said.

Colorado Springs.

Lucy Giometti, who left Washington, D.C., a day after Major Alan Stillwell finally left Alabama, beat him into Colorado Springs by a margin of better than four hours. Her commercial flight landed at the Colorado Springs airport and taxied to the entrance in the late afternoon.

Colorado Springs still managed to retain the flavor of a small-town airport. The business out of the huge Denver International Airport, sixty miles north, consumed most of the air traffic in the area. So Lucy found herself in a small, nearly empty terminal building framing a breathtaking view of a single towering mountain.

"What's that mountain called?" she asked the rental-car attendant.

"Pikes Peak," the girl said with a bored expression. Lucy nodded and set down her bag. Her legs ached from the flight and her stomach felt awful. She hadn't thrown up, but it had been a near thing as they'd b.u.mped their way down the Front Range. She turned again to regard the amazing bulk of Pikes Peak. There were thunderstorms rising lazily in the afternoon heat, building up along the shoulders of the Peak. Lucy thought she could look at the view forever and never grow tired of it.

The FBI office was fairly close to the airport. The directions Fred Nguyen had given Lucy were simple, and she found his office without any trouble. The air was hot but fresh and dry, and she stretched luxuriously outside her car before entering the office building.

"Fred?" she asked. There couldn't be a doubt. The Asian man who was sitting at the front desk in the empty office could only be Fred Nguyen. He had a phone to his ear and his feet were up on the desk. He was wearing the FBI suit, but the thick black hair was cut so that it stood up wildly all over his head. A grin split his face when he saw Lucy in the doorway.

"Gotta go, hon," he said, and hung up the phone. "You must be Lucy."

"I'm Lucy, and I'm hungry," she said, and grinned back at him.

"Hey, you're pregnant," he said, standing up from the desk and walking around to shake her hand.

"Not really," she said soberly. "It's all part of the disguise." He looked at her closely for a second, then threw his head back and laughed.

"You kill me," he said. "Hey, how about genuine Vietnamese food? I asked Kim if she'd do us up a real meal and she said sure. That okay with you?"

"That sounds great," Lucy said.

"Let's head right to my house, okay?" Nguyen said. He escorted her out and locked the office behind him.

"Everyone's gone?"

"Hot line's in Denver," Nguyen said with a grin. "This here is the backwater. Gone fishin', gone skiin', we take any excuse to take off. That's why I like this place." His smile was warm and without cynicism, but Lucy knew the real story. Nguyen just didn't have the look of an FBI agent. He wasn't white and he wasn't tall, and so he was a.s.signed to Colorado Springs, not Washington, D.C. Nguyen caught her look and offered a small, cynical shrug.

"Heck, it could have been the Navajo Reservation," he said. "Or up in Rapid City. Colorado Springs has a knock-your-socks-off symphony."

"A symphony," Lucy murmured. Here she was, safely out of Washington. At least Ted was safe in Florida. If anything happened, that is. Lucy looked toward the west again and realized uneasily that NORAD was in those mountains. Wouldn't that be a good joke, if Jefferson sent her to ground zero?

"Almost heaven," Nguyen said. "You'll be in heaven when you taste my wife's cooking. Now, that's paradise."

As they went to their cars, an afternoon thundershower started booming off Pikes Peak, sending gray sheets of rain drifting through the dry afternoon air.

Garden of the G.o.ds, Colorado Springs.

Joe Tanner had an idea. An Idea. Perhaps the thunderstorms inspired him. He'd read once that thunderstorms created an electromagnetic field that caused people to do better on tests. The thundershower hadn't caught him on his run through the Garden of the G.o.ds, but only because he'd sprinted the last half mile to his car. He was a native and knew the weather patterns, so he'd timed his run to end before five o'clock, when the first of the showers should be striking down from the Peak. They hit just as planned, and now he sat in his car, panting, as the first big drops splattered against his windshield. Thunder boomed, and he smelled the glorious wet sage smell of Colorado rain.

"Ahh, beautiful," he said to himself, and leaned back in the seat. He was happy. To wake up with Eileen Reed was something he was going to like getting used to, he decided. Fixing coffee was a whole new experience. And that shower they'd had together! He shivered with sudden goose b.u.mps. The rain fell harder and a few hailstones bounced off the windshield. Joe kept the window open so he could smell the rain and the sage, even though a hailstone or two bounced into the car. He remembered Sully, and the memory didn't hurt. Remembering Sully made him think that Art would be so happy for him that he'd found someone-and his thoughts dissolved in confusion and grief. Art was dead and he'd never know now. He watched the hard rain bouncing off the hood of the car. Art had been trying to prove to Eileen that he hadn't killed Terry. Art hated the thought that he was a suspect. He'd told Joe on that last afternoon that he was going to try and figure out a way to prove who'd done it. Or at least, prove that he hadn't. There really wasn't any way for him to do that, unless...

That was when he realized what Arthur Bailey had been doing.

Joe sat straight up in the car seat. His eyes stared at nothing. The sweat that beaded his face from his run dripped, unnoticed, from his nose and chin.

"That's what he was doing!" he said aloud to himself. "Why didn't I think of that? I'm so stupid. I'm so stupid!"

He pulled his seat upright, fumbled for the keys, and started his car. He pulled into the roadway with a scattering of wet gravel, and headed down the road.

Washington, D.C.

"Ouch, G.o.ddammit, you're hurting me!" Richard yelped as the Secret Service agent carried him over his shoulder like so much baggage. Richard was not small, but the agent ran down the hallway at a near sprint. When Richard was dumped into the helicopter he rubbed his arms and glared at the agent, who was panting and red-faced.

"Sorry, sir," the agent said, obviously not meaning it.

Richard was preparing to go into what he fondly considered a high fury, but then he saw the wildly waving legs of his younger brother being carried upside down by a very determined-looking Secret Service agent. Richard was instantly diverted.

"That's funny." He laughed. "I can't wait to see Dad..." His voice trailed off as the enormous bulk of his father came shooting out the White House door right after his brother. The President was upright, but his feet weren't touching the ground. His agents were carrying him, actually carrying him. Richard wondered if he was imagining this. No, his father's feet really were off the ground. The President of the United States had been enormous before he was elected. Now he was of legendary proportions. The two agents who were carrying him looked very distressed and were trying to hide it. Their grip made the President, at a distance, keep his dignity. But his tiny feet paddled inches above the ground as he traveled faster than a normal man could run. Richard covered his mouth to stifle a giggle.

"Ha, Steve," he said as his brother was shoved in next to him. "You sure looked stupid, upside down like that."

"Shut up," Steve panted. "What about Mom?" he asked his agent.

"She's already in the air," the agent said. The First Lady was on a fund-raising trip and wasn't due back from Florida until the end of the week.

The President was hustled in the door, and Richard made as though to sneak over and sit with him. The agent who'd carried him out briskly reached over and fastened his seat belt.

"This is going to be a very rough ride," he said softly and not unkindly. "You'll be able to sit with him on the plane."

The helicopter leaped into the sky with a very nasty jerk, and the engines revved up into a scream. This was not the usual helicopter ride from the White House.

Suddenly the whole picture fell into place for Richard.

"Oh my G.o.d," he said, horrified. "Is it aliens?"

His father was panting too much to talk. Steve, who was a worm, sneered at him. Steve was brilliant. Richard had lived his whole life with a little brother who could think rings around him. And Steve wasn't a wormy-looking geek, either. He was tall and straight and had wavy brown hair and snapping blue eyes. He looked like a little superhero. Richard, who shared Steve's height and hair and eyes but who was built like Dad, held out hope he would keep from getting quite as fat as his father. In the meantime, algebra and his brother were the banes of his life.

"Look in the sky, bat-brain," Steve said nastily. "Do you see alien s.p.a.ceships?"

"No, I don't, Wormy," he snapped back. "But if I were President, I'd get out before they hovered over the White House."

His agent, Carlton, grinned at him affectionately.

"So let me in on the joke," Dad said, having finally regained his breath.

"Yes, Mr. President," the head of Secret Service said. He was very tall and very grave and, to Richard, looked like he was about a million years old. "There is a potential nuclear threat against the United States..."

Richard stopped listening. He reached out blindly, and Steve took his hand. They sat huddled together as the Secret Service agent spoke of monstrous terrors in his low and soothing voice. The helicopter screamed through the skies over Washington, D.C., headed for the airport and Air Force One.

32.

Colorado Springs Investigations Bureau.

Eileen cursed and hung up the phone.

"What's up?" Rosen said. He was tilted back in his chair and had a wet washcloth pressed to his forehead. Rosen didn't believe in drugs of any kind and so used the washcloth method to get rid of a headache. He informed Eileen it worked much better than the aspirin she was going to swallow.

"Uh-huh," Eileen said, and swallowed the aspirin.

Now she let her head rest against her arm and cursed again.

"Let me guess," Rosen said from behind the washcloth. "Guzman still isn't home."

"No, he's not. It's six o'clock," Eileen said in frustration. "Where is he?"

"Could be anywhere," Rosen said.

"I've got a date tonight," Eileen said reluctantly. "I've got possibilities of developing a life here."

"With Joe Tanner?" Rosen said. His face was hidden behind the cloth, but his voice was rea.s.suringly bland.

"Yeah," Eileen said, unsurprised. Dave Rosen was no dummy. She rested a hip against the desk. "We're going to be working together from now on, it looks like. I don't think I should start out by lying to you." She felt the heat rise in her face. This was difficult for her. She didn't have any brothers, although she had had Owen Sutter, her fellow high-school boarder, when she was a child. A new partner always presented some challenges.

"That's a good idea," Rosen said. "Not lying, I mean." He took the washcloth from his forehead and looked over at her. "I don't think dating Joe Tanner is a real swell idea right now. I know all the signs point to Major Blaine, but he's still contaminated by all of this. I hope you don't lose your perspective on that."

Eileen took a deep, angry breath, then blew it out again. She shrugged at Rosen, then grinned at him.

"I guess that's what you're around for," she said. "Right?"

Rosen looked at her for a moment, then leaned back in his chair and put the washcloth back over his face.

"Right," he said. "I wouldn't want to work with anyone else. You know Guzman might be at his house. He might have turned the phone off."

"Hey, good idea," Eileen said. She was a little disconcerted by the compliment. "Good idea. I think I'll drive out there. Let me call Joe first, though."