The President Is Missing(45)

Sometimes, as she hunted for bread or rice or firewood, Bach was fast enough to get away from the soldiers. Sometimes she wasn’t.

“We have two extra tickets,” comes a man’s voice through her earbud.

Two tickets—two men wounded.

“Can you bring them home?” she asks.

“We do not have time,” he says. Their medical conditions are urgent, he means.

“It will be fine at home,” she says. “Meet you at home.”

They should already know that the only option is the extraction point. They are panicking, losing focus. It was probably the arrival of the Secret Service that did it. Or maybe the blackout, which she must admit was an impressive tactical maneuver. She was ready, of course, to switch her scope to night-vision mode, but it clearly affected the ground teams.

She removes her earbud and stuffs it into the right-hand pocket of her trench coat.

She reaches into the left-hand pocket and places a different earbud into her ear.

“The game is not over,” she says. “They went north.”





Chapter

32



It was…your people,” Augie says, his chest heaving, his eyes so puffy and red from crying that he looks like a different person. He looks like a boy, which is exactly what he is.

“My people didn’t shoot your friend, Augie,” I say, trying to convey compassion but also, more than anything, calm and reason. “Whoever shot her was shooting at us, too. My people are the reason we’re safe and sound in this SUV.”

It does nothing to stop his tears. I don’t know his specific relationship with Nina, but it’s clear that his distress is more than just fear. Whoever she was, he cared deeply for her.

I’m sorry for his loss, but I don’t have time to be sorry. I have to keep my eye on the prize. I have three hundred million people to protect. So my only question is how I can use his emotions to my advantage.

Because this could go south on me quickly. If I believe what Nina told me in the Oval Office, she and Augie held different pieces of information, different parts of the puzzle. And now she is dead. If I lose Augie now, too—if he clams up on me—I have nothing.

The driver, Agent Davis, is quiet as he focuses on the road in the treacherous weather. The front-seat passenger, Agent Ontiveros, pulls the radio from the dashboard and speaks softly into it. Jacobson, next to me in the rear compartment, has a finger up to his earpiece, listening intently as he receives updates from Alex Trimble in the other car.

“Mr. President,” says Jacobson. “We’ve impounded the van she was driving. So she and the van are both cleared of the scene. All that’s left is a chopped-up sidewalk and a DC Metro squad car shot to hell. And a bunch of pissed-off cops,” he adds.

I lean over to Jacobson, so only he can hear me. “Keep the woman’s body and the van under guard. Do we know how to hold a corpse?”

He nods briskly. “We’ll figure it out, sir.”

“This stays with Secret Service.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Now give me the key to Augie’s handcuffs.”

Jacobson draws back. “Sir?”

I don’t repeat myself. A president doesn’t have to. I just meet his eyes.

Jacobson was Special Forces, just as I was a long time ago, but that’s where our similarities end. His intensity is not born of discipline or devotion to duty so much as it is a way of life. He doesn’t seem to know another way. He’s the type who falls out of bed in the morning and bangs out a hundred push-ups and stomach crunches. He is a soldier looking for a war, a hero in search of a moment of heroism.

He hands me the key. “Mr. President, I suggest you let me do it.”

“No.”

I show Augie the key, as I might extend a cautionary hand to a wounded animal to signal my approach. We have now shared a traumatic experience, but Augie is still a mystery to me. All I know is that he once was part of the Sons of Jihad and now is not. I don’t know why. I don’t know what he wants out of this. I just know that he isn’t here for nothing. Nobody does anything for nothing.

I move across the rear chamber of the SUV to his side, the smell of wet clothes and sweat and body odor. I lean around and fit the key into the handcuffs.

“Augie,” I say into his ear, “I know you cared about her.”

“I loved her.”

“Okay. I know what it’s like to lose someone you love. When I lost my wife, I had to go on without missing a beat. That’s what we have to do right now, you and me. There will be lots of time to grieve, but not now. You came to me for a reason. I don’t know what that reason is, but it must have been important if you went to all this trouble and took this much risk. You trusted me before. Trust me now.”

“I trusted you, and now she is dead,” he whispers.

“And if you don’t help me now, who are you helping? The people who just killed her,” I say.

The sound of his accelerated breathing is audible as I pull back from him, returning to my seat, the handcuffs dangling from my finger.

Jacobson pulls out my shoulder restraint for me. I take it the rest of the way and fasten the seat belt. These guys really are full-service.

Augie rubs his wrists and looks at me with something other than hatred. Curiosity. Wonder. He knows what I’m saying makes sense. He knows how close he and I came to dying, that I could have him locked up, interrogated, even killed—but instead I’ve done his bidding from the start.