Code of Honor

52

It was common knowledge that any Air Force aircraft that carried the President of the United States was known as Air Force One. The convention held true through the other branches of the military as well — Marine One, Army One, Navy One, et cetera. Vice-presidential aircraft received the designation Air Force Two, and so on. In the unlikely event that POTUS flew on a commercial aircraft — it hadn’t happened since Nixon — that aircraft used the call sign Executive One. At the discretion of the White House and the U.S. Secret Service, any aircraft, military or civilian, that carried the First Lady could be designated Executive One-Foxtrot. The F designation was for family.

Tonight, wanting to stay off the radar of the hundreds of scanner folk who meticulously tracked the planes, trains, and automobiles that carried the First Family, they would use the tail number of their military aircraft.

As First Lady of the United States, Dr. Cathy Ryan could travel in any of several military aircraft flown by the Special Air Mission of the 89th Airlift Wing — her staff coordinating with the offices of VPOTUS, secretaries of state and defense, and, once in a while, congressional delegations, who utilized the same aircraft. The President customarily traveled via presidential lift on Marine One between the White House and Joint Base Andrews, just south of the Beltway. When she traveled without her husband, the First Lady usually made the trip in an armored Lincoln Town Car that was safely ensconced in a motorcade of D.C. Metropolitan Police and Secret Service vehicles.

Always hungry for anything to feed their twenty-four-hour news cycle appetite, dozens of media outlets kept their cameras aimed at the White House every moment of the day. The First Family, senior staff, and visiting dignitaries all received scrutiny, down to their clothes and type of shoes. Groundskeepers, other media folks, and especially Secret Service personnel blended in with the scenery like the proverbial postman whom no one ever saw.

Tonight, Dr. Ryan left the White House via the West Wing rather than the Residence. She wore a curly brunette wig over her blond hair, and one of Special Agent Maureen Richardson’s dark pin-striped suits. She got in the front passenger seat of the Town Car, opening the door herself — something the Secret Service never allowed her to do. The agent behind the wheel pulled away as if he was on a routine fueling mission, stopping to wave at the Uniformed Division officer at the vehicle gate. They didn’t join the follow-up Suburban and the lead sedan with Mo Richardson until they merged with the river of taillights on 15th Street.

The agent behind the wheel was of Asian ancestry. His name was Robert Leong, one of the Mandarin speakers borrowed from the VP detail for this trip. His father was a teaching physician at Johns Hopkins, where she’d done her residency, so that gave them something to talk about. He looked to Cathy like he was about fourteen, but everyone looked young to her these days.

Most of the aircraft flown by the Special Air Mission had the ubiquitous blue-and-white paint job resembling that of the VC-25A that served as Air Force One. Mo had arranged with the White House liaison officer for the 89th to have the First Lady fly in a plain white C-32, the military version of a Boeing 757–200. There were forty-five seats on board, all of them first class, allowing Mo to take a large complement of agents and gear.

An hour and a half after they left the White House, the First Lady’s plane touched down in Detroit. Airport Police escorted two Secret Service sedans onto the tarmac for a ramp pickup. They knew this was a visit from some kind of dignitary, they just had no idea who. Still wearing the wig, Dr. Ryan exited the plane with the first wave of her detail. A balding agent who bore an uncanny resemblance to a junior congressman from Florida came out in the middle of the pack and got in the backseat of the second vehicle after another agent opened his door.

The vehicles sped away to a hangar near the North Terminal, where Ryan changed into a pair of khaki slacks, a button-down oxford blouse, and a University of Michigan baseball cap before getting in the backseat of an armored Jeep Cherokee. Mo Richardson took her traditional spot in the front passenger seat, beside the Secret Service driver.

It was spitting rain, and on the chilly side, making Mo’s jaws feel tight, like she’d been smiling a lot — not uncommon for her.

“That was fun,” the First Lady said, settling into her seat.

“It was smooth,” Mo admitted.

She didn’t point out that any problems they were likely to encounter would be at the hospital, not while they were en route. It rarely did any good to make the principal more nervous than she already was.

“Will the others just meet us there?” Dr. Ryan asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Mo said. “I’d rather not point out where they’re all posted. Try not to look around when we get out of the car, but we’ll have agents all over the place, both in and outside the building. You’ll recognize some of the faces of people we have in the clinic.”

“Sounds good.” Ryan leaned forward, touching Richardson on the shoulder. She did that sometimes. “Mo, I’m glad it’s you doing this. It lets me focus on what I need to do.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Richardson said, striking the balance between gushy fan-girl and humble professional, she hoped.

If more of the self-centered bozos getting protection from the Secret Service ever realized how far a simple thank-you would go… Early in her career, Mo Richardson had started a list of all the assholes she’d protected — but lists like that became too unwieldy in Washington, D.C. It was much easier to keep track of the good ones.

Mo looked at the moving map on her phone that rested on her knee, and called out a ten-minute warning when they passed through Ypsilanti and took the exit for Geddes Road.

Twelve minutes later, the driver pulled up curbside in front of Kellogg Eye Center. Again, Dr. Ryan opened her own door. She pulled the hood of a rain jacket over her ball cap against the drizzle and hustled across a dark and deserted sidewalk next to Mo Richardson.

A pair of agents Dr. Ryan recognized from her regular detail met them at the glass doors. Both were dressed in hospital scrubs. A redheaded man with a mop — Special Agent Rory Sharp, out of the PPD Critical Assignment Team — worked on the lobby floors, earbuds in his ears, apparently ignoring the procession.

The advance agents led Mo and Dr. Ryan via elevator to the fourth floor, where they almost ran headlong into a tall, cadaverous-looking man in the long white coat of a medical school professor. He was clean shaven but had mussed silver hair that came well past his ears, making him look like he could have been teaching at Hogwarts.

Dr. Ryan was in the middle of a yawn as the elevator doors opened, but brightened at once when she saw him.

“Daniel!” she said, gathering the man in an all-enveloping bear hug.

For a moment, Mo thought the man might lift the First Lady off her feet. Instead, he held her out at arm’s length, grinning wildly. “It’s been too long, my dear,” he said in an accent that was either British, or affected upper-crust American English — like he was clenching a cigarette holder between his teeth. “How is my old study partner?”

“Things are busy,” Ryan said. Underplaying her hand.

“I’ll bet,” Dr. Dan Berryhill said. “I miss our study sessions… Remember those little mnemonic ditties we used to sing?”

He raised his bushy brows up and down in an inside joke.

Dr. Ryan gave a nervous laugh, trying to demur, but he dragged her into a rollicking duet to the tune of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

“Zenker’s diverticulum and glottic stenosis, if you don’t seek treatment soon, you will get halitosis…”

The agents in scrubs looked on, mildly amused.

Mo Richardson stifled a giggle.

A blond nurse, who wore a white ceramic lapel pin over her nametag, leaned closer to Mo and whispered, “My experience, the brightest ones are always just a little odd…” The nurse stood up straighter and addressed the group. “You guys want to follow me to the back? There are some folks here you probably want to talk to.”