The War Cloud

42

It was a white-knuckle landing onto Interstate 29. Sachs felt Air Force One touch ground only to suddenly lift again and then set down. The pilots immediately threw the thrusters into reverse to try and stop it. But the plane wasn’t slowing down and she couldn’t see outside from the seat with the five-point harness that Captain Li had strapped her into.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice shaking as her seat vibrated like an electric chair.

Captain Li put a finger to her earpiece. “There’s a new overpass across the highway that wasn’t on the maps. We had to jump it and now we’re coming up too fast on another one.”

This might be a real short landing, Sachs thought, but she knew that Marshall might launch missiles at any moment. She unbuckled her harness and stood up, her head immediately hitting an overhead bin she hadn’t noticed before. Captain Li was on her feet and right there behind her.

“What are you doing, Madame President?”

Sachs rubbed her head. “Koz can’t wait for us to stop to override Marshall’s launch authority. He’s got to do it now.”

Li didn’t try to stop her, but instead helped her move through the corridor to the battle staff compartment, where Koz and AF1 battle staffers were locked at their stations.

“Koz! We have to stop Marshall now!”

Koz was reading off his operations manual, punching in new authorization codes into the overhead consoles as the plane began to finally slow enough to make Sachs believe they were going to stop safely. “I think I’ve got it!” Koz shouted above the roar of the engines. “Get off this plane, everybody! You too, Madame President.”

She said, “I’m not leaving this plane without you, Koz.”

“Yes, you are,” he said and motioned to Captain Li and two officers, who grabbed her by the arms and began to drag her away.