Shadow Command

“You can’t kill me!” Gardner cried. “I am the President of the United States!”

The figure slammed an armored fist right beside the President’s head, then two inches down through the resawn maple floor and concrete foundation in the bedroom suite. Gardner screamed again and tried to scurry away, but the figure grasped him by the throat, putting his helmeted face right up to the President’s. “I can kill you easily, Mr. President,” the figure said. “We stopped the Navy SEALs, we stopped the Secret Service, and we stopped the Russian air force — we can certainly stop you. But we’re not going to kill you.”

“What do you want then?”

“Amnesty,” the figure said. “Full and complete freedom from prosecution or investigation for everyone involved in actions against the United States or its allies from Dreamland, Battle Mountain, Batman, Tehran, and Constanta. Full retirements and honorable discharges for everyone who doesn’t want to serve under you as their commander-in-chief.”

“What else?”

“That’s all,” the other figure said. “But to ensure that you’ll do as we say, the Tin Men and CID units will disappear. If you cross us, or if anything happens to any of us, we’ll come back and finish the job.”

“You can’t stop us,” the first Tin Man said. “We’ll find you no matter where you try to hide. You won’t be able to track or detect us, because we can manipulate your sensors, computer networks, and communications any way we choose. We’ll monitor all your conversations, your e-mails, your movements. If you betray us, we’ll find you, and you’ll simply disappear. Do you understand, Mr. President?” He looked at the two women in the room. “That goes for you two as well. We don’t exist — but we’ll be watching you. All of you.”

EPILOGUE

He that falls by himself never cries.

— TURKISH PROVERB

LAKE MOJAVE, NEVADA

SEVERAL WEEKS LATER

The young boy cast a fishing line into Lake Mojave from his spot at the tip of a rocky point beside the long, wide boat-launching ramp. Lake Mojave was not really a lake, just a wide spot of the Colorado River south of Las Vegas. It was a popular winter venue for seasonal residents, but they could begin to feel the onset of summer heat even now in early spring, and you could sense the stirring in the place that people were itching to leave. Not far behind the boy was his father, in shorts, sunglasses, nylon running sandals, and Tommy Bahama embroidered shirt, typing on a laptop computer in the shade of a covered picnic area. Behind him in the RV park, the “snowbirds” were packing up their campground and preparing to take their trailers, campers, and RVs to gentler climes. Soon only the most die-hard desert-lovers would stay to brave southern Nevada’s brutally hot summer.

Amidst the bustle of the campground the man heard the sound of a heavier-than-normal car. Without turning or appearing to notice, he escaped out of his current program and called up another. With a push of a key, a remote wireless network camera on a telephone pole activated and began automatically tracking the newcomer. The camera zeroed in on the vehicle’s license plate, and in a few seconds it had captured the letters and numbers and identified the vehicle’s owner. At the same instant, a wireless RFID sensor co-located with the camera read a coded identification beacon broadcast from the vehicle, confirming its identity.

The vehicle, a dark H3 Hummer with tinted windows all the way around except for the windshield, parked in the white gravel parking lot between the marina restaurant and the launching ramp, and three men alighted. All wore jeans, sunglasses, and boots. One man in a safari-style tan vest stayed by the vehicle and started scanning the area. The second man wore an untucked white business shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled up, while the third also wore an open safari-style tan vest.

The man at the picnic table received a tiny beepbeepbeep in his Bluetooth wireless headset, telling him that a tiny millimeter-wave sensor set up in the park had detected that one of the men was carrying a large metallic object — and it wasn’t a tackle box, either. The second man in the vest stopped about a dozen paces from the picnic area beside the ramp to the boat-launching ramp next to a garbage can and began scanning the area like the first. The third man walked up to the man at the picnic table. “Hot enough out here for you?” he asked.

“This is nothing,” the man at the picnic table said. He set his laptop down, got to his feet, turned to the newcomer, and removed his sunglasses. “They say it’ll get above a hundred by May and stay above a hundred and ten for all of June, July, and August.”

“Swell,” the newcomer said. “Cuts down on visitors, eh?” He looked past the man and to the boy fishing beside the boat ramp. “Cripes, can’t believe how tall Bradley’s getting.”

“He’ll be taller than the old man any day now.”

“No doubt.” The newcomer extended a hand. “How the hell are you, Patrick?”

“Just fine, Mr. President,” Patrick McLanahan said. “You?”

“Fine. Bored. No, bored out of my skull,” former President of the United States Kevin Martindale replied. He looked around. “Kind of a bleak place you got here, Muck. It’s not San Diego. It’s not even Vegas.”

“The desert grows on you, especially if you come here in late winter and experience the gradual change in the temperature,” Patrick said.

“You planning on staying?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Patrick said. “I bought a homesite and a hangar at the airpark in Searchlight. Don’t know if I’m ready to build yet. The place is growing. I’m homeschooling Bradley now, but the schools here are getting better, they say, as more and more folks move to the area.”

“And Jon Masters is just a little ways up Highway 95.”

“Yeah, and he bugs me just about every day to come work for him, but I’m not sure,” Patrick admitted.

“That hotshot astronaut Hunter Noble signed up with him. I heard he’s a vice president already. But I’m sure they’ll make a place for you if you want it.”

“Been there, done that.”

“There’s another thing that we’ve both done before, Patrick,” Martindale said.

“I figured you’d be showing up sooner or later about that.”

“You have the Tin Men and the CIDs, don’t you?”

“The what?”

“You’re a horrible liar,” Martindale said with a laugh.

“Is there any use trying to lie? I’m sure your intelligence network is good…”

“As good as the one you’ve reportedly built? I doubt it. I doubt it very much,” the former President said. “Listen, my friend, you’re still needed. The country needs you. I need you. Besides, the stuff you have stashed away is government property. You can’t keep it.” Patrick gave him a direct glance — just a fleeting one, but the meaning was loud and clear. “Okay, you probably can keep it, but you shouldn’t just squirrel it away. You can do an awful lot of good with it.” Patrick said nothing. Martindale took off his sunglasses and wiped them with a shirttail. “Heard the latest about Persia?”

“About the new president being assassinated?”

“When that hits the news the entire Middle East will go bonkers again, and Mohtaz will re-emerge from whatever rock he crawled under when the Russians left and claim the presidency again. The people want Queen Azar to take control of the government until new elections can be held, but she insists the prime minister, Noshahr, take charge.”

“She’s right.”

“Noshahr’s a bureaucrat, a bean counter. He can’t run the country. Azar or Buzhazi should take charge under emergency authority until elections are held.”

“He’ll be fine, sir. If he’s not, Azar will go to Parliament and recommend someone else. Buzhazi flat out won’t do it.”