Rob struggled frantically for his gun, and Lauren saw that he was fighting an arm so broken it was almost snake-like. His lips twisted, his face went ashen, but he used it anyway, getting to the weapon, dragging it out of the holster.
“Your left hand,” she screamed. “Rob, your
He raised it past his body so she could see the useless hunk of meat that dripped there. She saw his chest heaving, saw a froth of bile appear between his lips, but saw him still struggling, still trying to raise that pistol.
WHEN MIKE SAW ROB APPEAR at the edge of the clearing where this thing was coming to climax, he pulled the TR back quickly. Rob was familiar with the TR and he just might spot it despite all the optical camouflage. As he maneuvered the craft, a soft female voice began a countdown. “Alert. Destruct in thirty seconds. Alert. Destruct in twenty-nine seconds…”
Mike hammered at the controls, increased the velocity of the plasma, the speed of the fans, and brought the lift level inching back up. “Countdown ends.” For a moment, he sat absolutely still, hardly breathing, but the countdown did not resume.
He activated the secure communications system. It didn’t matter much if the Air Force found him now. They were going to be too late, and he needed to let Charles know the situation. “This is TR-A1, I am going to burp coordinates.”
“Negative that.”
“Charles! Can you reach me?”
“Three hours.”
“I’ve got progressive damage. This thing is going in sooner than that.”
“Do you have the kid?”
“Just about.”
“Mike, the president’s arresting the Trust. Until further notice, consider yourself a fugitive.”
What in hell had happened? The president couldn’t arrest the Trust, could he? Mike wasn’t sure, but he was sure that he had a battle to fight, so he forced the issue out of his mind and instead concentrated on working the TR closer to the boy. He took out his pistol.
CHARLES GUNN, STILL OVER WASHINGTON, did not like that “just about.” To him, that meant that the child was not secure, and if that was true, he might never be secure. Charles must not end up in the situation that had destroyed
He had hesitated to do what he now knew he must. He’d hidden the TR by hanging in a wooded draw in Rock Creek Park. He rose up to the level of Glover Bridge and headed down Embassy Row. He cleared his vision. It was as if the plane around him had disappeared, except for the three control panels and his immediate seating area. He moved low over the buildings, stopping above the Prince Mansion. Just a few voices. Very well, the president was in the White House.
As he aimed the TR down Massachusetts Avenue, he opened a small cover under his right hand, revealing a black button. He adjusted his altitude, then activated listening devices. Much clearer voices filled the small area, a press officer on the telephone, two Secret Service agents chatting about their house cats, the First Lady discussing colors with her dressmaker.
Finally, he heard the president’s voice in the Oval Office talking to somebody through an interpreter.
He pressed the button. He held it down.
THE WHITE HOUSE KITCHEN WAS organized pandemonium. Last night had been the Thai prime minister. Tonight, it was the sultan of Qatar, the second state dinner in a row. The pastry chef was the first to notice something awry: a meringue was shaking wildly. Then he realized that he was shaking, too.
In the press room above, Press Secretary Roger Armes said, “We appear to be—” as ceiling tiles began to come down. Then the lights went out, immediately replaced by emergency lighting. Voices rose, shouts and screams, and some of them terrible screams.
In the Vermeil Room, the portraits of all seven first ladies fell at once. A moment later, the ceiling followed. In the Oval Office, the president, his chief of staff, and two, then three, then four Secret Service agents were thrown with ferocious energy to the floor along with the elaborately robed sultan and his translator. The Resolute Desk, made from the timbers of the
From thirty feet away, Charles watched the carnage, directing pulse after pulse toward the building. The private apartments on the roof shuddered and caved in, then the whole West Wing sank away into a cloud of dust.
Charles traveled over the mess, heading for the Mall. He moved just inches above the Reflecting Pool, aiming toward the Washington Monument.
High above, the long snout of the scalar weapon now glowed bright red. Every time Charles pressed the button in the TR down below, the red fluttered brilliant white, and a ball of light shot toward the Earth.
Tourists screamed and ran across the Mall as the worst earthquake to strike the area since the Mississippi embayment in 1811 rumbled and rattled. The Washington Monument swayed, its sheer marble facing dancing with cracks. Inside, more tourists scrambled down the stairs.
The monument came down almost gracefully, sinking into its own base as it disintegrated. Marble is a soft stone, and does not stand up well under stress.
Charles circled the collapsing monument, then moved toward the Capitol. Far overhead, the scalar weapon’s servos emitted flashes as it made fine adjustments.
Congress was in session when the balconies swayed like hammocks and crashed down into the house chamber. Fortunately for all except the observers, few representatives were actually in attendance.
The Senate was not so lucky. A ceremony honoring a retiring senator was under way, and three-quarters of the senators were present when the chandeliers began to fall, exploding into the chamber with horrendous loss of life.
The quake, finally finding a fault line, spread through the area. The tunnel to the Senate Office Building caved in. Then the Anacostia Bridge fell. Everywhere, people strove to keep their feet, tried desperately to avoid falling monuments and falling ceilings.
Charles continued his mad ballet, paying special attention now to the Pentagon. Inside, people held onto their desks or clung to doors and walls, but the tough old structure would not come down.
Finally, Charles took his finger off the button. At monitoring stations around the world, the pens of seismographs returned to normal. But the record was clear: an earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale had struck Washington, D.C. Strangely, the epicenter was located very close to the surface, rather than the three to ten miles beneath it that was normal. Stranger still, no fault line was known that could account for the highly localized event, which had been centered, for all practical purposes, on the White House. And yet it appeared to be entirely natural.
Henry Vorona, who had been in a car on the Anacostia Bridge when it collapsed, drowned with the two men who had arrested him. He died furious at Charles and at life, but also relieved, because he knew that the Trust would now certainly survive.
The president died, too, crushed beneath the desk he had so proudly accepted as his own, never dreaming that he would come to his end behind it—or rather, under it.
Charles grabbed altitude and headed off west-northwest as a flight of F-16s scrambled from Andrews screamed past him, their engine noise practically blowing out his ears.
“Mike, are you still up?”
“Just about on the deck.”
“What’s the status of the kid?”
“Unknown.”
“Goddamn you.”
