King and Maxwell

CHAPTER 78

THE STEERING WHEEL OF THE Beast was ripped out of the driver’s hands and cut a sharp turn to the left. At the same time the gas pedal hit the floor and the sixteen-thousand-pound vehicle accelerated and hit the bridge’s stone balustrade at close to its maximum speed. The stone railings were strong, but they were never designed to stop a car that heavy going that fast. The front end of the Beast burst through the stone and its front wheels cleared the pavement. The rear wheels kept spinning, retained their traction, and with another burst of power the Beast cleared the bridge entirely and was suspended in midair for a moment. Then its nose pointed downward, and that was the direction it headed. It hit the water a few seconds later. The rear end came down and the car settled on the surface of the Potomac.

The Beast could do many impressive things. Floating was not among them. It quickly sank.

“Michelle!” Sean yelled into the phone. There was no response.

He turned to Wingo. “Something is very wrong. She’s with the president and– ” His phone buzzed. It was another call coming in. It was Edgar.

“Edgar, what is going on?”

“I just texted Michelle,” he said. “She’s with the president.”

“I know that. She called me. But then something happened. I can’t get through to her.” Edgar said nothing. “Edgar, are you there?”

When Edgar next spoke, his voice was strained. “Sean, I just got a news break on my screen.”

“What is it?” Sean said, his heart pounding.

“The presidential limo just ran off the Memorial Bridge and plunged into the Potomac.”

“What? How?”

“That’s what I just texted her about.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The satellite, Sean. They hacked the satellite that the presidential limo uses for navigation and communication. It’s too complicated to explain how they did it.”

“Okay, they hacked it, so what?”

“The limo has over thirty million lines of code, Sean. The computers run everything on that vehicle. You hack the brain–”

Sean finished for him. “You control the car,” he said dully.

“Yes. Speed. Steering. Brakes. Everything.”

“Grant,” said Sean looking at Wingo. “That son of a bitch just got his revenge on a president who had absolutely nothing to do with his parents’ deaths.” He added in a shaky voice, “And Michelle is with him.”

Edgar said, “What are you going to do?”

Sean dropped the phone, punched the gas, and the car flew forward.

Wingo had turned the radio on and they listened to the just-breaking news story. It sounded grim. Rescue operations were quickly being assembled, but they would need heavy equipment to get the car off the bottom of the river. The good news was that the limo had its own oxygen supply and was completely sealed so no water could get in.

Wingo said, “The Feds will be doing everything they can. And you heard the radio. The vehicle is sealed, and they have oxygen down there.”

Sean stared straight ahead. “First, crashing through the barrier might have ‘unsealed’ the Beast. It’s a tank, but even tanks can be damaged.”

“And second?”

“The computer controls everything in the Beast, Sam. You own the computer, you own the Beast. And Alan Grant is way too smart to have missed something like that.”

As the limo hit the bottom of the river Michelle undid her shoulder harness and checked the president. He was unconscious. She checked his pulse. It was strong, though his face was pale. She cupped her hands around his neck, feeling for fractures or bulges, but found none. She next did something she could hardly believe she could even think about.

She slapped him in the face, not once but twice.

He came around on the second strike. He looked dully at her.

“What the hell just happened?” he gasped.

“Are you hurt, Mr. President? Does anything feel broken, bruised, sore?”

He gingerly moved his arms and legs. “Sore but everything feels intact,” he replied. “What happened?”

Michelle drew a short breath. “We went off the bridge. We’re in the Potomac.” She glanced out the windows and saw nothing but black. “The bottom of the Potomac, actually,” she amended.

“In the Potomac?” he said incredulously.

Michelle found the control in the console for the window partition. Miraculously it still worked. The Beast still had power, but down here that probably wouldn’t last. The motor had cut off, though, and she doubted it would restart underwater. Besides, where would they drive?

The glass slid down and she crawled through to check on the agents in the front. The air bags had deployed, she immediately noticed, which gave her hope.

The hope faded when she saw the blood and open eyes.

She checked their pulses but already knew the answer. The bags had deployed when they’d struck the railings. They had probably survived that. What they hadn’t survived was the impact with the water. There were no more air bags left to save them from that. She looked at the side windows and the steel frame around them. They were bloody. Impact had probably been there. Death had probably been immediate.

She and the president were alone at the bottom of the river.

She slid feet-first back out and returned to the rear compartment.

“How are they?” Cole asked anxiously.

Michelle shook her head. “They didn’t make it, sir.”

“Oh my God.”

Michelle looked around at the comfy leather with the thick cushions and padding. This little cocoon had saved their lives while the agents up front had taken the full brunt of the collision.

Michelle looked down at her phone. No bars, obviously.

Sometimes her service was spotty on land, much less underwater. But–

She opened the center console. There was a phone there.

She pulled it out. “This will test the manufacturer’s warranty,” she said.

The president undid his bowtie and unbuttoned his top button. “Getting a little close in here,” he said.

“I’m sure they’re assembling a rescue team as we speak, sir. Divers will be on the scene soon.”

Michelle had rowed all over the Potomac. She knew the river well. She knew it was very shallow for the most part. The mean depth of the nearby Chesapeake Bay was only twenty-one feet. The spot they were in right now wasn’t much deeper than that. But sitting in what was basically a tank with twenty-plus feet of water over them, a rescue attempt would be complicated.

She glanced at the doors. Eight inches of armor plating. They were not easy to open, even with hydraulic assistance. With tons of water pushing on them, they would be impossible to open without heavy machinery. And that would take time. And water would come in. She could see a scenario where water would fill the compartment as the door was slowly being forced open. They might drown with their rescuers barely inches away.

They might get equipment like you would see at a car junkyard with a magnetized end in an attempt to lift the car out. But would it work underwater? And would it be strong enough to lift an already super-heavy car out of twenty-plus feet of water?

The best bet might be to tie a cable to the front of the Beast and pull it to shore with equipment that remained on land.

But again, all of that would take time.

Although this was her first time riding in it, she knew that the Beast had a portable oxygen supply that would be deployed automatically in the event the air supply in the cabin was compromised. So they should have some time. Now she was grateful for the vehicle’s seal. She looked around. No water was coming in that she could see.

She looked at the phone again. She would try to contact– She drew a breath. She was startled to see it catch in her throat.

She looked at Cole. He seemed to have turned a shade paler. Now she focused on what he had said before.

Getting a little close in here.

“Sir, can you move to the rear-facing seat?”

She helped him undo his shoulder harness and aided him to the other side of the cabin. She popped the backseat down and crawled into the armored trunk. She saw the fire extinguishers and the blood supply canister. She crawled through and unhooked the trunk’s floor covering. There were the oxygen tanks. She examined them closely. They seemed to be full, but they didn’t seem to be deployed. She rapped on one of the tanks with her knuckles and then bent her ear to the pipes running into the cabin. She could hear no air flowing through them.

Most people would be panicking by now. But like pilots trying to save a plunging plane, Michelle had been especially trained for crisis situations. She was too busy trying to save the president and herself to start screaming.

There was no manual wheel on top of the oxygen cans that would allow her to open them herself. She cursed this obvious flaw in the plan. She took a shallow breath and felt herself becoming a little light-headed. It was maddening to think that ample oxygen was right here but they couldn’t get to it.

She kicked it with her foot in the hope that it might start flowing, but when she put her ear to the lines she heard nothing. How could the fail-safe have failed? It was like all engines on a plane stopping at the same time. It just didn’t happen.

Then she remembered Edgar’s text. Get out of the limo. There’s a problem with it.

Somehow, against all odds, the mighty Beast had been sabotaged.

She climbed back into the rear compartment.

The president looked at her. “The oxygen isn’t working, is it?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No.”

“Did the driver have a medical emergency?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“Then how did this happen? Were we hit by something?”

“I think the Beast was… somehow taken over by a third party.”

“Taken over? How?”

“I’m not sure.” Michelle looked back at the phone, then snatched it up and dialed the number, praying that the Beast’s world-class communications system would live up to its billing.

“Hello?” The voice sounded panicked, desperate.

“Sean, it’s me.”

“Michelle, talk to me. Give me the status.”

She did so. Two agents dead. President okay. Oxygen not working.

“Grant took control of the Beast,” Sean said. “And he ran it off the bridge.”

“Edgar sent me a text while I was talking to you that there was a problem with the limo. What’s going on up there?”

“I just got on the scene. It’s barricaded off, as you can imagine. I managed to get hold of Littlefield, and he got me through to the bridge. I’m looking down at you right now. Dive boats are on their way, but they have to come up from the Anacostia. It’ll take a little bit of time but they’re trying to get them faster. They’ve got a police boat on the surface getting a radar fix on your location. They have choppers coming in with grappling hooks too.”

“The Beast weighs eight tons.”

“I know. They’ll need military transport choppers and even then I doubt they could do it. You’ve got tons of water over you.”

“Then it’s the divers we have to wait on,” she said, the hope in her voice fading. “But if they can attach a cable to the bumper and then winch us out from the riverbank–”

“Michelle, listen to me very carefully. You don’t have time for them to get you out. You have to get yourself and the president out.”

“Great, Sean, just tell me how,” she snapped.

“It’s a long shot, but it’s the only chance you’ve got. How much air do you think you have left?”

She glanced over at the pale Cole. “If we breathe shallow, a few minutes, max.”

“Okay, here’s what you have to do.”