endured the tedium of a campaign, and the surprisingly brutal handshakes— certainly Cathy Ryan would not subject her surgeon's hands to that, Price thought suddenly. But this First Lady actually had a job. More than that, she was a physician with a Lasker Memorial Public Service Award shortly to sit on her mantel (the awards dinner had yet to he held), and if she had learned anything about Cathy Ryan, Price knew that she was dedicated to her profession, not merely to her husband. However admirable that might be, it would be a royal pain in the ass to the Service, Price was sure. Worse yet, the principal agent assigned to Mrs. Dr. Ryan was Roy Altman, a tall bruiser of a former paratrooper whom she'd not yet met. That decision had been made for Roy's size as well as his savvy. It never hurt to have one obvious bodyguard close aboard, and since the First Lady appeared to many as a soft target, one of Roy's functions was to make the casual troublemaker think twice on that basis alone. Other members of her Detail would be virtually invisible. One of Altman's other functions was to use his bulk to block bullets, something the agents trained for but didn't dwell on.
Each of the Ryan kids would have to be protected as well, in a sub-detail that routinely split into segments. Katie's had been the hardest to select—because agents had fought for the job. The boss there would be the oldest member of the team, a grandfather named Don Russell. Little Jack would get a youngish male principal who was a serious sports fan, while Sally Ryan drew a female agent just over thirty, single, and hip (Price's term rather than the agent's), wise in the ways of young men and mall-shopping. The idea was to make the family as comfortable as was possible with the necessity of being followed everywhere except the bathroom by people with loaded firearms and radios. It was, in the end, a hopeless task, of course. President Ryan had the background to accept the need for all of this. His family would learn to endure it.
'Dr. Ryan, when will you have to leave?' Price asked.
'About forty minutes. It depends on traf—'
'Not anymore,' Price corrected the First Lady. The day would be bad enough. The idea had been to use the previous day to brief the Vice President's family in on all the things that had to be done, but that plan had been shot completely to hell, along with so many other things. Alt-man was in another room, going over maps. There were three viable land routes to Baltimore: Interstate-95, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, and US Route 1, all of them packed every morning with rush-hour traffic which a Secret Service convoy would disrupt to a fare-thee-well; worse, for any potential assassin, the routes were too predictable, narrowing down as they did on nearing Baltimore. Johns Hopkins Hospital had a helicopter pad atop its pediatrics building, but nobody had yet considered the political fallout that could result from hopping the First Lady to work every day in a Marine Corps VH-60. Maybe that was a viable option now, Price decided. She left the room to confer with Altman, and suddenly the Ryan family was alone, having breakfast as though they were still a normal family.
'My God, Jack,' Cathy breathed.
'I know.' Instead of talking, they enjoyed the silence for a full minute, both of them looking down at their breakfast, poking things around with forks instead of eating.
'The kids need clothes for the funeral,' Cathy said finally.
'Tell Andrea?'
'Okay.
'Do you know when it'll be?'
'I should find out today.'
'I'll still be able to work, right?' With Price gone she could allow her concern to show.
Jack looked up. 'Yes. Look, I'm going to try my best to keep us as normal as we can, and I know how important your work is. Matter of fact, I haven't had much chance to tell you what I think of that prize you just bagged.' He smiled. 'I'm damned proud of you, babe.'
Price came back in. 'Dr. Ryan?' she said. And, of course, both heads turned. They could see it on her face. The most basic of issues hadn't been discussed yet. Did they call her Doctor Ryan, Missus Ryan, or—
'Make it easier on everyone, okay? Call me Cathy.'
Price couldn't do that, but she let it slide for the moment. 'Until we figure things out, we'll fly you there. The Marines have a helicopter on the way here.'
'Isn't that expensive?' Cathy asked.
'Yes, it is, but we have to figure out procedures and things, and for the moment this is the easiest thing to do. Also' — a very large man came into the room—'this is Roy Altman. He'll be your principal agent for a while.'
'Oh,' was all Cathy was able to say at the moment. Six feet three and 220 pounds of Roy Altman came into the room. He had thinning blond hair, pale skin, and a sheepish expression that made him seem embarrassed by his bulk. Like all Secret Service agents, his suit coat was cut a little big to help conceal his service automatic, and in his particular case hiding a machine gun would have been fairly easy. Altman came over to shake her hand, which he did with considerable delicacy.
'Ma'am, you know what my job is. I'll try to keep as much out of the way as possible.' Two more people came into the room. Altman introduced them as the rest of her Detail for the day. All of them were temporary. They all had to get along with their principal, and that wasn't all so easy to predict, even with amiable principals, as all the Ryans seemed thus far to be.
Cathy was tempted to ask if all this was really necessary, but she knew better. On the other hand, how would she shepherd this mob around the Maumenee Building? She traded a look with her husband, and reminded herself that they would not be in this unhappy predicament had she not agreed to Jack's elevation to the vice presidency, which had lasted all of—what? Five minutes? Maybe not even that long. Just then came the roar of the Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter, landing up the hill from the house and creating a mini-blizzard on what had once been the site of a small astronomical observatory. Her husband looked at his watch and realized that the Marines of VMH-1 were indeed operating off a short fuse. How long, he wondered, before the smothering attention drove them all mad?
'THIS SHOT IS live from the grounds of the Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue,' the NBC reporter said, cued by the director. 'That looks like one of the Marine helicopters. I suppose the President is going somewhere.' The camera zoomed in as the snow cloud settled down somewhat.
'An American Black Hawk, extensively modified,' the intelligence officer said. 'See there? That's a 'Black Hole' infrared suppression system to protect against ground-to-air missiles that track engine heat.'
'How effective?'
'Very, but not against laser-guided weapons,' he added. 'Nor is it useful against guns.' No sooner had the aircraft's main rotor stopped turning than a squad of Marines surrounded it. 'I need a map of the area. Wherever that camera is, a mortar would also be effective. The same is true of the White House grounds, of course.' And anybody, they knew, could use a mortar, all the more so with the new laser-guided rounds first developed by the British and soon thereafter copied by the rest of the world. In a way it was the Americans who showed the way. It was their aphorism, after all: If you can see it, you can hit it. If you can hit it, you can kill it. And everyone inside of it, whatever «it» might be.
With that thought, a plan began to form. He checked his watch, which had a stop-watch function button, placing his finger there and waiting. The TV director, six thousand miles away, had nothing better to do than keep on that long-lens camera. Presently, a large vehicle approached the helicopter, and four people got out. They walked right to the aircraft, whose crewman held the sliding door open.
'That's Mrs. Ryan,' the commentator said. 'She's a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.'
'You suppose she's flying to work?' the reporter asked.
'We'll know in a minute.'
Which was about right. The intelligence officer pushed the watch button the moment the door closed. The rotor started turning a few seconds later, building power from the two turbine engines, and then the helicopter lifted off, nose-down as they all did, gaining altitude as it headed off, probably to the north. He checked his watch to see the elapsed time from door-close to liftoff. This aircraft had a military crew, and they would take pride in doing everything the same way every time. More than enough time for a mortar round to travel three times the necessary distance, he judged.
IT WAS HER first time in a helicopter. They had Cathy sit in the jump seat behind and between the two pilots. They didn't tell her why. The Black Hawk's rugged airframe was designed to absorb fully fourteen g's in the event of a crash, and this seat was statistically the safest in the bird. The four-bladed rotor made for a smooth ride, and about the only objection she had to the experience was the cold. No one had yet designed a military aircraft
