approaching missile. So when these guys reached the Potomac, they went for cover and headed in the only direction that they hadn’t been
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threatened from. to the northwest.” Lortch took his hands and set them on the map forming a V, the base located at the White House and the open end at the Chain Bridge.
“They created a trap and drove the helicopters into it.”
“So what happened when they got here? Did they fire a missile?”
“Supposedly the pilots thought they were in the clear. They have threat sensors that tell them when a missile is locked onto them, and I guess they make this screeching noise. Well, when they dove into the river valley, these things stopped screeching and they thought they’d avoided the threat, and then all of the sudden these red streaks; pop up in front of them and the threat sensors start screaming again.
The lead escort thought they were missiles and he broke formation.”
Lortch shook his head in frustration. “Which he’s not supposed to do.
The whole idea behind this strategy is that the escorts are supposed to protect the
President’s bird, and if need be, take the hit.” McMahon put his hands up in the air, palms out. “Hold on a minute. I’ve got a bunch of people telling me they saw a missile, and I’ve got some other people telling me that they were flares. I’m inclined to believe the second group because no one reports hearing an explosion, and my agents found several warm but burned-out flares. Now, what do your pilots tell you?
Were there missiles launched or not?”
“The other pilots don’t think so.
They say they were flares.” Perplexed, McMahon shook his head. Lortch said, “I
don’t get it either. The pilots that were flying Marine One said they were dead meat ….
They said that when the lead escort broke formation, they thought they were going to be blown out of the sky.
We’re either very lucky or these terrorists screwed up somewhere.”
McMahon stared at the horizon and rubbed his forefinger across his lips as he sifted through the new information. A short while later he announced, “We’re missing something …. Something doesn’t fit here.
Why go to all of that effort and not take a shot?” Both of them pondered McMahon’s question, and then McMahon shook the dazed look out of his eyes and said, “We’ll have time for this later. How’s the President?”
“My people tell me he’s pretty shook up. I guess the ride was rough.”
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Lortch stopped and his jaw tensed. “They also tell me that damn Stu Garret is on one of his rampages, yelling at everyone and demanding answers. This whole stupid thing was his idea from the start.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told them I didn’t think having the meeting at Camp David and moving the
President was worth the risk.” Lortch brought his hand up to his eyes and said, “I’ve had it up to here with Garret.”
“Jack, let me give you a little piece of advice. There’s only one way to deal with a jerk like Garret. You meet him head-on, and you don’t take any crap.
Half the reason why he’s the way he is, is because people let him get away with it.”
“Believe me, I’ve thought about punching his ticket more than once, but I like my job too much.” McMahon was about to add another editorial comment on the behavior of
Garret when he heard Kathy Jennings yell from below. McMahon and Lortch looked over the edge of the bridge.
Jennings craned her neck upward and held a digital phone in her outstretched hand.
“Hey, Skip, I just got off the phone with some Air Force people over at the Pentagon. I
read them the serial numbers off this thing and they say it’s one of ours. It’s an older—
model radar unit that they used to put in the nose cones of fighters like the F-4 Phantom.”
Lortch and McMahon traded glances, and McMahon yelled back down, “Did you ask them how someone would go about getting their hands on one of them?”
“Yeah, they said there’s thousands of them available on the surplus-military-hardware market.”
“I assume they keep records of what they do with all this stuff.”
“Yep, they told me they’ll start tracing it for us.”
“Great,” responded McMahon, and then he continued in a sarcastic voice, “By the way, you didn’t happen to find any unused missiles down there, did you?”
“Not yet.”
“All right, good work.”
McMahon turned back to Lortch. “Well, at least it’s a start.”
“Yeah, listen, I’ve got to get out to Camp David and brief the President on what happened. Give me a call if you
