"We have to!"
"Marten," the president snapped. "Can we get José on his feet?"
"I think so."
The president looked at Hap, then Demi. "Take Demi. Demi, go with Hap!" Immediately he bent to Marten, and they both helped José up then he looked to Hap.
"Go. Go out now!"
* * *
Inside the church the control room timer continued its cold countdown.
3:12
3:11
The rear door to the church flew open. Hap came out first and fast, his gold U.S. Secret Service badge pinned to his shirt collar, his right hand on the machine pistol under his shirt, his left arm around Demi half dragging, half cradling her. The president and Marten came next, José between them, his good arm thrown over Marten's shoulder, the president on his other side holding him up by his belt.
"Freeze where you are! Now!" a disembodied voice commanded in Spanish over a loudspeaker. "Halt immediately!" the same voice said in English.
The Spanish police SUVs were parked directly in front of them, blocking off the parked church vans, the electric cart, and the road out itself. Twenty heavily armed uniformed police stood in front of them. The CNP chopper had now pulled up to five hundred feet and hovered there. Immediately it was joined by Captain Diaz's helo. The second CNP helo following pulled up and held position.
"I see them," Diaz said with a wave to the other chopper pilot. A half beat and her helo dropped down to two hundred feet and held.
To his left Hap could see at least twenty Spanish Secret Service agents coming over the hill from the front of the church.
"United States Secret Service!" Hap yelled. Then repeated it.
No one moved.
"What now?" the president said quietly.
"Tell them we are the U.S. Secret Service and have a wounded man here who needs immediate medical attention," Hap said quietly.
The president took a half step forward. "We are the United States Secret Service. This man is badly hurt. He needs a doctor right away!" he barked in Spanish. "Medical help immediately!"
Beck's timer continued its inexorable march toward zero.
2:17
2:16
2:15
Captain Diaz looked over her shoulder to the U.S. Secret Service agent looking out the window directly behind her. "They say they are your people. Do you recognize anyone?"
"Looks like our SAIC, but from here and in that uniform he's wearing I'm not sure. The woman is a surprise. Don't recognize anyone else."
Diaz turned back and spoke into her headset. "CNP ground units to take charge."
In the next moment four of the armed CNP police started slowly forward, the leader motioning the Spanish Secret Service to hold their positions as he did.
"Damn it, Woody!" Hap breathed. "Where the hell are you, playing golf?"
As if in divine response a monstrous shadow suddenly blocked out the sun. Then with a thundering roar, its prop wash sending dust and debris flying and the Spanish police and the Spanish Secret Service ducking for cover, the huge twin-rotored U.S. Army Chinook helicopter came in just over the treetops, slipping in under Captain Diaz's chopper and obscuring it from sight.
"Woody!" the president cried out.
"Four minutes ago that chopper was on the ground. What the hell's going on?" Captain Diaz's pilot looked to her, his eyes wide under his helmet visor. "What do I do?"
"Captain Diaz. This is Special Agent Strait," Bill Strait's voice came over her headset. "The Chinook is cleared to land. Please stand down."
For a moment Diaz said nothing, finally she did. "Hold position," she said to her pilot, then spoke into her headset. "The Chinook is cleared to land. All units hold position."
Hap stared wide-eyed as the Chinook came in, "He's never going to set that monster down here. There's no damn room!"
Counting its churning rotor blades the Chinook was one hundred feet long nose to tail. The parking area surrounded by trees might be that give or take ten feet in either direction. If Woody was going to land without incident he was going to need skill, luck, grease, and a shoehorn to do it.
Inside the church, Beck's timer continued to click down.
1:51
1:50
1:49
The Chinook dropped lower. Now they could see Woody at the controls, looking fore and aft and to the sides, judging the trees as if he were trying to park a semitrailer in a space made for a car. Suddenly there was a loud gnashing to the rear as the tail rotor sheared branches off of a large conifer and sent them flying. Then with a heavy bump the Chinook touched down.
"Go!" Hap yelled. "Go!"
Marten and the president rushed José forward. Hap followed with Demi.
The Chinook's crew door suddenly slid open and Bill Strait and two medics stood there. Five seconds, ten. And they were at the helo and being helped inside. Another ten and the crew door slid closed. Immediately there was a deafening roar as Woody pulled back on the throttle. A split second later they were off the ground and airborne. In eight seconds they had cleared the trees. Eight more and the machine turned 180 degrees and flew off to the east.
165
This is Captain Diaz," her voice crackled through every headset. "All units stand down and return to base. Repeat, stand down and return to base."
Inside the church, the timer continued to click down.
0:31
0:30
0:29
"You can look at me later," the president said to the two doctors and the medics over the roar of the Chinook's rotors. "It's him." He turned to José. "He's been shot and badly burned. Someone look at Ms. Picard too and right away. She's burned and severely traumatized. Mr. Marten also needs to be treated for burns."
"Thank God you're safe."
The president whirled at an all-too-familiar voice.
National Security Adviser Dr. James Marshall was coming toward him from the Chinook's flight deck. "I tried to stay out of the way here," he said with utmost sincerity. "You've been through some ordeal."
0:05
0:04
0:03
"Why are you here?" the president asked Marshall point blank, his eyes little more than angry slits, his voice cold as death. "Why the hell aren't you with the others?"
From somewhere below and behind them came a dull heavy boom that sounded like a massive explosion.
"What was that?" Marten turned to look out the Chinook's window. In the next instant the shock wave hit. The Chinook was thrown sideways then dropped like a stone. Woody touched the controls. The rotor speed increased and the aircraft shook in response, then rose up quickly as he regained control.
The president moved to the window next to Marten. Hap came in too, so did Bill Strait. In the distance they could see flame and smoke billowing from the hilltop where the church had been.
"Woody, swing around!" the president yelled.
"Yes, sir."
The Chinook came around hard and flew back toward the billowing fiery inferno where the church had been. In that instant the rest of Foxx's destruction deployed. It was like nothing any of them had ever seen before. The maintenance buildings blew straight up, disintegrating into a million pieces. Then they saw a line of dust run the length of the vineyard as if some great underground snake had shivered. The line continued across a low expanse of foothills and then up into the mountain range where they had been the night before, racing in the direction of the monastery at Montserrat. Now and again giant puffs of flame erupted from cracks and chimneys in the rock.
"Foxx," Marten said and looked at the president. "He blew up the church, the maintenance buildings, the entire monorail tunnel, everything. The monks may even have still been inside."
"The nozzles in the monorail tunnel," the president said. "He planned it all far ahead of time. No one will find a thing. Not a trace of what he did. Nothing at all." Suddenly the president pulled away from the window to look at Marshall. "Is the monastery going up too?"
"I don't
know what you're talking about."
"You don't?"
"No, sir."
"It won't get to the monastery," Marten said quietly. "It's what he blew earlier. There's nothing left there. It'll stop at the end of the monorail."
The president looked to Hap, "Have the CNP alert the monastery. At least they'll have some kind of warning if it does go."
"Yes, sir."
The president's eyes shifted to Woody. "Major, are we fully fueled?"
"Yes, sir."
"Our range is what, one thousand two hundred nautical miles?"
"A little more, sir."
"Then take us out of Spanish airspace, Major, and clear airspace to Germany."
"Sir. I have orders to fly you to an airstrip outside Barcelona. Chief of staff has a CIA jet waiting."
Marten and Hap exchanged glances. Then Hap reached into his groundskeeper's shirt and slid out the machine pistol.
"Major, I've canceled that mission," the president said calmly. "I asked for airspace cleared to Germany; please do so. I'll tell you where exactly when we get closer."
"He can't do that, Mr. President," Marshall came toward him. "It's for your safety. It's all been planned out."
"Mr. National Security Adviser, I think you'll understand when I say the plans have changed. Very soon you and the vice president and every other one of my 'friends' will be taken into custody and charged with high treason. I'd suggest you go over there and sit down. Hap will be glad to escort you." The president stared at Marshall for a long moment. Finally he turned away and looked back to Woody.
"Major, change course now. That is a direct order from the commander-in-chief."
Woody looked at Marshall as if trying to decide what to do.
"Major," Marshall said firmly, "you have your orders. The president has been under a terrible strain. He has no idea at all what he is saying. It's our job to protect him. Hap's too. Along with Bill Strait. It's why we're all here."
Woody stared and then turned back to the controls.
"It's no good, Jim, you're done," the president said. "The Covenant is done."
"Covenant?" Marshall stared at him unbelieving.
"We know, Jim, and who was there. We saw it in operation. Hap, Mr. Marten, myself, even José. All of us."
"You're not well, Mr. President. I have no idea what you're talking about." Suddenly he looked to Woody.
"You have your orders, Major. Stay the course. Stay the course."
The president and Marten looked toward the flight deck. Hap started toward it, machine pistol out.
It was all the time Marshall needed. In two steps he had crossed the aircraft's midsection. A second later he had the crew door open. There was a thundering roar and a terrible blast of air.
"Grab him!" the president yelled.
It was too late. They were at two thousand feet. The doorway was empty. Marshall was gone.
MONDAY
APRIL 10
166
• SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE, GERMANY, 3:15 A.M.
Marten rolled over in a half sleep, edging over gently to avoid putting pressure on the bandages covering the burns on his left arm and neck. He had his own room in the officers' quarters just down the hall from where Hap Daniels and Bill Strait slept in an adjoining room to the president's.
They'd come to the U.S. air base at Spangdahlem unannounced. Normally they would have landed under presidential colors at Ramstein Air Base, but not this time, not under these circumstances. The base commanding officer and several of his general staff knew, but that was all. The doctors accompanying them on the Chinook had cleared the president and sent him to rest, an unrecognized, unnamed VIP under heavy guard.
José, Demi, Marten, and Hap had been taken to the base hospital. As far as Marten knew, José and Demi were still there and would remain there for at least several more days. José's family had been notified, and Miguel and José's father were en route from Barcelona and would arrive soon.
Miguel—Marten smiled as he lay there in the dark. What he'd fallen into as a simple limousine driver. And what a great man and dear friend he had become in so short a time. The boys too, all of them—Amado, Hector, and especially José, the youngster who'd been frightened to death to go farther down in the chimney toward the monorail tunnel because he thought he would be descending straight into hell. Little had he known of the hell he would volunteer to be part of very soon afterward. And what hell Hector and Amado and Miguel had been put through by the Spanish police and U.S. Secret Service, all of it to buy the president time.
The president had pretty much left Marten alone as the Chinook traversed Europe, crossing the Pyrenees into French airspace and then flying north across France to pass over Luxembourg before entering German airspace near Trier and touching down at Spangdahlem very soon afterward. Understandably he had pressing business. First, and most important, the president had spoken personally to the chancellor of Germany and the president of France and then held a three-way conference call with them both. All had agreed that the long-planned NATO meeting set for one o'clock in the afternoon today should go on as scheduled, but, for security reasons, the venue should be changed. What a mighty scrambling of foreign offices it had been, the twenty-six member countries unanimously approving the move from Warsaw to a special site chosen by the president, one that under the circumstances seemed highly appropriate: the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in southern Poland. It was there he would give a brief speech explaining, among other things, his abrupt disappearance from Madrid the week before and the sudden change of location from Warsaw to Auschwitz.
Second, the president informed White House Press Secretary Dick Greene, already on the press plane to Warsaw, of the change of venue to Auschwitz, adding that a major cabinet-level shake-up was imminent and that there was to be a total press blackout on anything pertaining to it.
Then, earlier informed by Bill Strait of Jake Lowe's "accidental" death and the vision of Dr. Jim Marshall's shocking suicide plunge from the Chinook still raw in their minds, and remembering too the poison capsule embedded in Merriman Foxx's teeth, the president had Hap call Roley Sandoval, special Secret Service agent in charge of the vice-presidential detail, and tell him without explanation to quietly assign extra agents to the vice president and to his entourage to prevent any attempt at "self-harm."
Immediately afterward he placed calls to Vice President Hamilton Rogers, Secretary of State David Chaplin, Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chester Keaton, and Presidential Chief of Staff Tom Curran. The conversations had been terse and exceedingly brief. In them he demanded that each man present his resignation to the speaker of the house by fax within the hour. Failing that, he would be fired immediately. Further, he demanded they present themselves at the U.S. embassy in London no later than noon tomorrow to be taken into custody and charged with high treason against the government and people of the United States. Last, he called the director of the FBI in Washington to inform him of what had happened and direct him to take United States Congresswoman Jane Dee Baker, who was traveling with the vice president in Europe, and expatriate U.S. citizen Evan Byrd, residing in Madrid, quietly into custody and charge them with the same crime, urging precaution against suicide.
After that he had walked the length of the Chinook to confer with the doctors on the condition of both José and Demi, then spent a few moments with them both and come back to share a cup of coffee with Hap and Marten before moving off to a bunk, a medical litter really, to sleep. As he left he touched briefly on the speech he would give at Auschwitz. What he would say, what it would entail, he hadn't yet decided but it was something he hoped would be as fitting to what had happened and to what they had uncovered, as the hallowed ground on which he had chosen to deliver it. He had retired to his room to work on the speech almost immediately after their arrival at Spangdahlem.
Marten rolled over again. In the distance he could hear the roar and rumble of fighter jets taking o
ff, which he gathered was an on-going situation that one got used to. Spangdahlem was the home of the 52nd Fighter Wing, which oversaw twenty-four-hour deployments of U.S. fighter aircraft around the world.
Demi.
She had come to him little more than an hour into their flight in the Chinook. The doctors had treated her burns and mildly sedated her, then put her in a hospital gown and suggested she sleep. Instead she had asked to sit with him and the doctors had let her. For a long time she had simply stared off at nothing. Her crying had stopped but her eyes were still filled with tears. Tears, he felt, that were no longer born out of fear and horror but rather out of sheer relief, maybe even disbelief, that it was over.
Why she had wanted to sit with him he didn't know, nor did she say. His sense was that she wanted to talk to him but didn't quite know what to say or how to put it, or that maybe at this point the physical effort itself was too great. Finally she turned and her eyes locked on his.
"It was my mother, not my sister. She disappeared from the streets of Paris when I was eight years old and my father died very soon afterward," she said in a voice barely above a whisper. "I have been trying to find out what happened to her ever since. Now I know I loved her very much and I know . . . she . . . loved . . . me . . ." The tears welled up and ran down her cheeks. He started to say something but she stopped him. "Are you alright?"
"Yes."
She tried to smile. "I'm very sorry for what I did to you. To you and to the president."
He put a hand to her face and gently wiped the tears away. "It's alright," he whispered, "it's alright. We're okay now. We're all okay."
At that moment she reached up and took his hand in hers and held it. Still holding it she leaned back, and he saw exhaustion overtake her. A moment later she closed her eyes and went to sleep.