her breath as the door slid open automatically and the driver’s window rolled down at the same time.
Behind the wheel was her prom date, Robbie, who had given her the red thong for the dance. “Get in!” he shouted.
“What are you doing, Robbie?” she screamed. “You don’t have a license!”
Robbie looked panic-stricken. “Quick!”
Jennifer glanced back over her shoulder. The Marines had cleared the line of cars and were closing in fast. She opened the driver’s side door.
“Move over!” she ordered, climbing inside. “I’m driving.”
Robbie resisted. “What are you talking about?”
“Your feet barely reach the pedal,” she said. “Move! Now!”
She pushed Robbie into the passenger seat, closed her door, slipped behind the wheel and hit the accelerator.
The minivan lurched backward, knocking the front corner of a sedan and kicking up slush into the windshields of the cars behind it.
“Dang,” she said.
“Dang?!” Robbie repeated, apoplectic.
She checked the rearview mirror and saw one of the Marines aiming his M-16 at them.
“Holy shit!” Robbie shouted. “They’re going to shoot!”
Jennifer shifted into drive and they shot off.
She took the first corner too fast, and they slid across the ice, side-swiping a Jeep before gaining traction. Robbie slammed against the inside of the passenger d
“What the hell did your mom do?” Robbie cried out.
“I don’t know.” Jennifer looked up in her rearview mirror, worried that bullets would shatter the back windshield at any moment. “But I’m not gonna sit around to find out.”
She hit the accelerator again, and they sped off into the straightaway.
18
It wasn’t long before the chopper was skimming the white trees of the Hudson Valley and Sachs could see the hills of White Plains rising ahead. They must be going to the local airport. She thought of Jennifer on the run from the very people sent to help her, and worried that in her haste her daughter would have an accident or hurt herself someway.
“Where are you taking me?” she demanded.
Colonel Kyle of the Green Berets said nothing, but Special Agent Raghav of the Secret Service told her, “Nearest presidential emergency facility.”
“Emergency?” Her brushes in the past with Washington security types had taught her a general rule of thumb: the less the inflection in the monotone voice, the worse the situation. “What kind of emergency?”
“There was an explosion in Washington a few minutes ago.”
Her mind raced through the multiple-choice scenarios: a) an Oklahoma City-style bombing of the Internal Revenue Service headquarters, b) a plane crash into the White House, or c) the Capitol Building. My God, she thought, I was supposed to be there tonight for the State of the Union address.
“Tell me the worst,” she said, and closed her eyes.
“It was nuclear.”
The answer was: d) all of the above. Sachs snapped her eyes open and stared at the deadpan Secret Service agent. “How many casualties?” she heard herself ask hoarsely.
Raghav said, “Less than four thousand.”
Sachs blinked. She could feel her throat catch. “That’s how many died?”
“So far,” Raghav said matter-of-factly. “The National Weather Service hasn’t given us any updates on wind shifts. And fires are still burning. Should have been more than a million dead. But snow kept hundreds of thousands of federal workers home. And the nuke was small and exploded underground. Very clean. Minimal damage to civilians, maximum destruction to the federal government. Total decapitation.”
“Decapitation,” Sachs repeated, unsure what the jargon meant, although she had an idea. She suddenly felt very lightheaded, her heart thumping beyond control. “Terrorists?”
“Nobody’s claimed responsibility,” Raghav said. “We think it’s connected to what’s happening in the Far East.”
“Where’s the president?”
“Dead.”
Sachs took a deep breath. “And the vice president?”
“Nobody survived,” Raghav informed her. “All designated presidential successors are being taken secure facilities.”
Sachs leaned back in her seat and stared out the window. America was at war, its leadership attacked. And Jennifer, her baby, was on the run. Sachs wanted to go back for her. But the hardened faces of the agents and Green Berets told her there was no turning back now.
Sachs asked, “So how many designated successors are there?”
Raghav was evasive. “I can’t say for sure, ma’am.”
“Something like fifteen or sixteen?”
Sachs suddenly felt something cold touch her temple. The barrel of an M-16 came into view. Pointing it at her was a grim Colonel Kyle with hate-filled eyes.
“One too many,” he said.
19
Colonel Kozlowski looked around the empty conference table. The empty chairs were for the president and his staff. The Secretary of Defense. The National Security Adviser. Anybody else that survived, of which there were none.
Koz sat alone at the head of the table and stared at a wall of display screens. The displays showed that American bombers were en route to their positive control points outside the Far East, where they would circle until they received further orders from the president-designate. Other displays showed that American submarine and missile crews were also awaiting executive authorization.
The only problem was that there was no president-designate to issue the launch authorizations. For that, Koz needed Deborah Sachs, of all people.
Northern Command’s confirmation that Washington was gone — and with it Sherry — was devastating enough. Upon learning the news, in fact, Koz proceeded to spend several private minutes in the presidential bathroom throwing up the cold breakfast Sherry left for him.
Now the FEMA Central Locator confirmed that the SecDef was not at Edwards AFB in California after all but in Washington. Which meant he was dead and the presidential mantle had fallen to nearly last-in-line Deborah Sachs.
So Koz ordered a change in course, and Nightwatch was en route to its rendezvous with the president- designate at an as-yet-undamaged airfield, in this case the local airport in White Plains which had one runway barely long enough to handle an emergency 747 landing.
