First Family

CHAPTER 78

THE TWO CHOPPERS lifted off the ground and flew southeast. In one were the president and his wife with a company of Secret Service agents and as much equipment as they could cobble together at the last minute. The second bird carried still more agents, the two best bomb-sniffing dogs the Feds had, more equipment, and Chuck Waters, who'd been tipped off to what was happening by Larry Foster and, unknown to the First Couple, had come along for the ride. Next to him was Aaron Betack, who had joined the party too, also unknown to the First Lady. The skies were growing lighter by the minute, the low-level winds were calm, and the rising sun was rapidly burning off the morning chill.

Betack's phone rang.

"Yeah?"

"Aaron, it's Sean King. We need to talk."

"I'm sort of busy."

"I'm in Alabama."

"What? We are too."

"We as in who?"

Betack looked at Waters and then said into the phone, "Like I told you before, Wolfman and Lynx are on the move," he said, referring to Dan and Jane Cox's Secret Service code names. "What are you doing in Alabama?"

"If I had to guess, I'd say pretty much on the same trail you are. Where exactly are you headed?"

"We don't know, Sean. I told you that before."

"I know, but I thought that status would've changed by now. You're with the president and you don't know where you're going?"

"Everything's screwed up. We're flying blind here, stomping on every rule and protocol in the Secret Service manual. Larry Foster is the detail chief and he's about to have a coronary. But after that confrontation in the Oval Office the next thing we know we're in Alabama taking a chopper to a set of map coordinates."

"Aaron, that's nuts. You could be walking right into a trap."

"Tell me something I don't know. You think the Service is happy about this? But he's the president, man."

"You're telling me the director of the Secret Service is letting this happen? Or the president's senior advisors? How about the vice president?"

"You know it's all a balancing act. He's the commander in chief and we're his serfs. But we've worked our butts off behind the scenes, called in support from the FBI and the military, and we think we have a decent protection bubble set up even given the crummy circumstances."

Waters looked over and motioned for Betack to give him the phone.

"King? This is Chuck Waters."

"Hey, Chuck, I left you a message."

"What the hell are you doing?"

"If I told you, Chuck, you wouldn't believe me. Aaron filled me in on what's going on there. You guys could be heading into an ambush."

"Yeah, but what the president doesn't know is that we've got two choppers full of HRT riding ahead of us. By the time we land, and before the president steps one foot off his bird, they'll have scoped the area and set up a perimeter that not even an ant could get through. Then if we still don't like what we see, we're out of here, president or not."

"But what if they shoot you out of the sky?"

"We got that covered too. Each of the choppers is equipped with the latest air-to-air and ground-to-air countermeasures. Plus we got military birds all over the place riding shotgun over us. And a battalion of Apache gunships is moving outward grid-by-grid from the ground zero coordinates we were given, looking for any threat. And, man, you see an Apache heading your way you either surrender, shit your pants, or both."

"Okay, but we found something that you need to know about. Maybe an Achilles' heel." Sean explained about the metal cylinders.

"Where'd you find them?"

"I'll explain later. I hope you got something to counter it."

"I'll see what I can do. Where are you now?"

"Headed to an abandoned mine with a little boy named Gabriel."

"Gabriel? And why a mine?"

"Because I think there might be a little girl there."

"Willa?"

"Hoping and praying, Chuck. Let's keep in touch. And good luck."