The War Cloud

48

Sachs and Captain Li were running toward the diner when the plane exploded with a thunderous KABOOM. She tried not to look back and be turned to ash, but she was worried about Koz, so she began to turn her head over her shoulder as she ran.

“No!” came a shout from behind.

Koz was flying toward her, tackling her like a shield as the force from the plane blew them off their feet and she felt herself hurl through the air over a snow bank. He intentionally landed on top of her, smothering her into the snow.

She couldn’t breathe and struggled for more than a minute until he got off.

Koz asked, “Still in one piece?”

She gasped for breath and brushed the snow off. “You trying to kill me?” she asked when a second thunderous explosion sent a chunk of the fuselage flying over their heads.

Once again Koz face-planted her into the snow.

“Stop it!” she ordered when he let her come up again for air.

“You can court-martial me lat told her as they stood up to survey the damage.

What was left of the Nightwatch plane — Air Force One — burned in smoldering ruins. Engine parts were strewn across the interstate. A broken wing stuck upright out of the frozen ground, glinting in the weak late afternoon sun.

Sachs said, “We need to contact Block at Northern Command and rescind Marshall’s launch authority.”

Koz pointed to his right, and Sachs saw it: Ethel’s Truck Stop Café. “But with Air Force One gone, Block is going to assume you’re dead. How are you going to prove your identity?”

“With this,” she said, and began to unzip her flightsuit.

She watched Koz raise an eyebrow and then smile when she flashed the presidential authenticator card he had given her.