A Time for Patriots

pilot to do functions and tasks equal to a large armored fighting vehicle. “Check.”

“Two,” Charlie Turlock, piloting the second CID, responded. She looked up at the gaping hole in the building where the King Air had entered. “My God.”

“Radiation levels are lower than reported,” Richter said. “Our time on station should be about an hour. Let’s go.”

They approached the rear entrance to the building, and Jason kicked the reinforced door open. The security area was still intact, but he could see that the floors above had collapsed and the hallway beyond security was impassable. “Can’t go this way,” he radioed.

“From the outside, then?” Turlock suggested.

“You want to climb the outside just to show off,” Richter said.

“Damn right,” Turlock said. “Follow me.” On the outside of the building, she examined the best route up to the hole. Looping one pack on her back by its carrying straps, she merely reached up and, floor by floor like a ladder, climbed up the outside of the shattered building, punching her armored hands and feet through cracked walls and windows. On the ninth floor, which was the lower edge of the hole, she smashed through the walls and windows as easily as brushing away cobwebs and climbed inside.

“Looks like the plane punched almost all the way through the building, then collapsed a bunch of floors down below,” Turlock radioed. “Radiation levels are much higher up here — I might only have another thirty minutes.”

“Roger, then we can switch.”

“Roger,” Turlock said. She started scanning the devastation around her. The right wingtip of the King Air had sliced an entire hallway wall open, and at a desk in one of the offices, Turlock found a young woman, half burned, still sitting at a reception desk. “One casualty found. I’ll set up the sling.” She withdrew a large sling, cable, and pulleys from her bag, rigged the pulley up on a support beam, looped the cable through the pulley, recovered the body of the young woman, put her in the sling, and lowered her to Richter on the ground. He carried the body over to the rescuers in hazmat suits outside the cordon while Turlock pulled the sling back up.

She found no one else as she carefully made her way down the ripped-apart hallway, then down one collapsed floor to where the burned hulk of the King Air rested. “I’m at the plane,” she radioed. “Radiation levels are very high here. I’m going to take a peek inside, and then I’ll probably have to get out.”

“Roger,” Richter said. He was watching a video feed from Turlock’s CID unit. “Be careful — that floor looks very unstable.”

“Yes, Dad,” Turlock responded. She was able to climb up the left side of the fuselage. The entry door was partially unhinged, most of the glass throughout the entire plane had shattered, and the cabin of the plane was charred and melted — but, surprisingly, the cockpit appeared to be in better condition. “Hey, we may have lucked out — I think the pilot is still in here, and mostly intact! I might be able to get him out… or pieces of him, at least. Stand by — I’m going to open the door.” Turlock grasped the air-stair hatch in her armored hands and pulled. The door broke free… and then the entire fuselage rolled left and fell about three feet. Turlock was able to twist away, narrowly missing being trapped between the fuselage and the crushed concrete floor.

“You okay, Charlie?” Richter asked.

“Yeah, but the entry door is blocked now,” Turlock replied. She checked forward. “Okay, I’m going to try one more thing, and then I’ll have to get out.” She moved forward and stood over the pilot’s windshield. The remains of the pilot were barely recognizable as human — the body was badly burned and half smashed against the control wheel and instrument panel. “The pilot is one crispy critter, but I think he was wearing a fireproof flight suit, because most of the torso is intact. Let’s see if I can yank him out.” Turlock first used her powerful armored fingers like the Jaws of Life to cut the control wheel free, then reached through the windshield, grasped the pilot’s seat and as much of what was strapped onto it as she could, and pulled…

… and as she did, the fuselage and the smashed building roared like an angry lion and the floors gave way. The plane dropped straight down two floors, then slid forward twenty feet, crashed through the front of the federal building, and fell the remaining six floors to the street.

“Charlie!” Richter shouted. He used every erg of energy in his CID unit to dash around to the front of the building. The plane was underneath a mass of rubble. Richter began furiously digging through the debris, appearing as if he were wading through waist-deep water, throwing chunks of concrete and steel in every direction until he reached the plane. The fuselage was upside down — he couldn’t see Turlock, and her video feed was dark.

Like a scrap-cutting machine gone berserk, Richter began plunging his superhydraulic hands and arms through the underside of the nose section of the King Air, ripping pieces of steel and aluminum away in large sheets and chunks. In seconds he had torn through the entire left side of the plane and, like a wrecking crane, ripped away the entire nose section. He finally found Turlock’s CID unit underneath what was left of the cockpit and instrument panel. “Jesus, Charlie, can you hear me? Charlie…? ”

“I’m… I’m okay,” Turlock responded several tense moments later. “Wow, what a ride!” She raised herself up to a sitting position and threw the pilot’s seat and pieces of the instrument panel away. Richter pulled more debris from her legs and tried to help her up, but she stopped him. “Wait… oh, yuk !”

“What the hell is it, Charlie?” he asked.

“It’s the pilot.”

“The pilot?” Richter looked around. “I don’t see anyone.”

Turlock motioned to the thick mass of charred debris covering the entire front of her CID unit. “ This is the evidence we were looking for,” she said. She pulled a piece of fireproof flight suit off her armored chest. “Looks like they’re going to have to swab me for his DNA.”

Four

I don’t think change is stressful. I think failure is stressful.

— Bob Stearns

The White House, Washington, D.C.

Later that day

The president of the United States, Kenneth Phoenix, strode into the press briefing room, followed by the vice president, Ann Page, and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Justin Fuller. The reporters assembled in the room shot to their feet, wearing surprised expressions — they had not been told that the president himself would be attending the daily press briefing.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” Phoenix began. “Please take your seats.” The president was just forty-nine years old, tall and ruggedly handsome, but the past year had taken a toll on him, and he looked much older. Ken Phoenix’s career — as a former Marine Corps attorney, U.S. attorney general, and vice president of the United States — had, to say the least, been a series of challenges. He was always able to overcome them, but the journey had never been easy for him and his family. His face told everyone that the hard journey was still under way.

“I know that you had been briefed that Vice President Page and I were at secret undisclosed locations until the full examination of the attack in Reno was concluded,” Phoenix began, “but that was not the case. Our responses had to be immediate, and although we have very good emergency facilities all across the country, Vice President Page and I, who as you know serves as both my chief of staff and my national security adviser and press officer, decided to stay in Washington.

“Let me give you the latest information that I was just given by FBI director Fuller. Based on his investigations and the fact that there haven’t been any more attacks, the FBI is recommending to the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Northern Command, which is in charge of the defense of the continental United States, and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which is in charge of the air defense of the United States and Canada, that the airspace around the United States be reopened, with strict limitations. All aircraft will be