simultaneously seizing the lapels of another agent’s suit jacket. He pulled the man to within inches of his face, making certain his orders would be heard over the escalating din.
“Call and get the exits out of the chamber secured right now! Lock them down!”
“But sir, we need to evacuate.”
“Listen to me! Nobody is to leave this building. Absolutely nobody! Get everyone who leaves the chamber back inside right now. It is life and death. Do you understand?”
“But—”
“I said, do you understand?!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I want guards posted at every exit. Shut down the elevators to the gallery level, and block those doors as well. Have guns drawn if need be and use them if you have to. Nobody gets out. No exceptions.”
“But sir…”
“Dammit, do it now or go sit down!”
The president’s face was flushed. He could feel the arteries pulsating in his neck. The agents guarding him peeled away, as if from a football huddle. Chief agent Sean O’Neil was just a few feet away, barking orders into his radio.
“Sean,” Allaire said, motioning the man closer, “we’ve got a lethal situation on our hands. A virus. Get three of your guys to the press gallery and confiscate all cell phones, pagers, and anything that might record or transmit. Use force if you have to. Tell them I’ll explain soon.”
O’Neil hesitated, a shadow of doubt darkening his face.
“Mr. Pres—”
“Don’t challenge me, Sean! Move now!”
The cries of those in flight intensified as Capitol Police and Secret Service agents moved into position and began the difficult task of herding them back inside the House Chamber. Allaire estimated that no more than twenty-five or thirty had actually made it out the doors to the vestibule. His wife and daughter remained in front of their seats, two of the few who weren’t in motion. Then he saw Rebecca cough several times. Further down the row she was in, a congressman from New Hampshire was also coughing.
Allaire searched for the plumes of smoke nearest to his family, but by now, the mists had almost totally dissipated.
“You can’t block these exits!” a senator’s familiar voice boomed. “Let us out!”
“They can’t do this!” a woman cried. “They can’t trap us in here like this!”
“What the hell is going on?”
“I won’t go back in there. I won’t!”
Sweat, something Allaire had felt certain would not be an issue tonight, cascaded down his brow, stinging his eyes, then salting his lips.
“Mr. President—”
Allaire turned toward the voice, which came from the center aisle, along which, just a few minutes ago, he had made his grand entrance. The architect of the Capitol, Jordan Lamar, a portly African American man, was pushing toward him through the dense crowd.
“Mr. President—” Lamar called out again.
Allaire motioned for the man to hurry. Together on the rostrum they were joined by Hank Tomlinson, chief of the fifteen hundred men and women of the Capitol Police force.
“What the devil is going on, Mr. President?” Lamar asked. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”
“I’m not going anywhere. No one is. Now, listen. I need every person back in his original seat immediately. Make sure every door leading to the outside is sealed. No one gets in and no one gets out. I mean
It was hard to hear over the clamor behind them in the main chamber and a story above in the gallery. Now there were also some shrieks as word spread that the ways out were being sealed.
“Sir, I don’t understand,” Tomlinson said. “What’s happened?”
Allaire struggled to maintain his composure—seldom a difficult task for him. Behind and above the Capitol Police chief, he could see that Rebecca and Samantha, along with some others, had instinctively sat back down.
“I’ll tell you, Hank. I’ll tell everyone,” Allaire said. “First, though, we need order in this room, and we need it now.”
“But how…?”
Allaire had heard enough. Gripping Tomlinson firmly by the lapel, he pulled the man close to his body, distracting him long enough to extract the officer’s gun from his shoulder holster. Allaire had learned how to fire the semiautomatic SIG P226 as part of Operation Keepsake, a long-standing Secret Service program. As an emergency security precaution, Operation Keepsake was designed to impart Special Forces combat training to the president of the United States, or as he was commonly referred to by the agents, the POTUS. Before Tomlinson could react, Allaire raised the gun high above his head.
Four shots, fired in rapid succession and amplified by the sound system, exploded from the black-steel barrel. The discharges echoed deafeningly inside the enclosed chamber. Plaster from the ceiling where the bullets struck dropped onto several startled attendees. Silence quickly followed. Allaire wasted no time taking advantage of the change. He grabbed the microphone, turning up the volume until he heard feedback.
“This is the president of the United States. Please return to your original seats—precisely your original seats. I am commanding the military, the Secret Service, and the Capitol Police to see to it that there are no further attempts to leave this building. All exits have been secured. Right now, I need each and every one of you to sit down at your original seat immediately. You must be seated exactly where you were prior to the disturbance. This is a direct order from your president. As soon as you are back in your seats and have quieted down, I will explain what is going on.”
At first, only a few dozen seemed to be responding. Then Allaire dispatched two more shots, and within half a minute, nearly all the seats were filled. The few who refused to comply with the demand were roughly deposited in their places by the nearest soldier or policeman.
Allaire’s eyes swept across the rows of dignitaries, many of them among the best and the brightest his country had to offer, many of them his friends, all of them now in grave danger. Rebecca and Sam were together in the seats his staff had earlier reserved for them. For a moment, Allaire held his wife’s desperate gaze. Then he mouthed the words
As the president panned the faces in the crowd, a single thought would not let go. Never had he seen so much fear.
And yet, the seven hundred had no idea just how afraid they really should be.
CHAPTER 3
Allaire stood with his hands pressed firmly on the lectern, trying to construct what he was going to say and how he was going to say it. His eyes, nearly unblinking, gazed forward. His mouth was dry. He had always loved being a physician, but after fifteen years as a practicing doc, he felt as if he wanted to do more, and turned to politics. How many times over the years before he left medicine had he sat with patients and given them the horrible news that barring a miracle, they were going to die from their illness? He used to feel that, because his sensitivity and empathy were genuine, he was reasonably effective at it.
