“We lost Davis and Ontiveros, sir.”
I slam my fist against the wheel. The vehicle swerves, and I quickly adjust, instantly reminding me that I can’t let go of my obligations for even one second.
If I do, then my men just gave their lives in vain.
“I’m sorry, Alex,” I say into the radio. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yes sir,” he says, all business. “Mr. President, it’s a shitstorm here right now. Fire trucks. DC Metro and Arlington PD. Everyone’s trying to figure out what the hell happened and who’s in charge.”
Right. Of course. An explosion on a bridge between Washington and Virginia, a jurisdictional nightmare. Mass confusion.
“Make it clear that you’re in charge,” I tell him. “Just say ‘federal investigation’ for now. Help is on the way.”
“Yes, sir. Sir, stay on the highway. We’ll track you on GPS and have vehicles surrounding you soon. Stay in that vehicle, sir. It’s the safest place you can be until we can get you back to the White House.”
“I’m not going back to the White House, Alex. And I don’t want a convoy. One vehicle. One.”
“Sir, whatever this is, or was, the circumstances have changed. They have intelligence and technology and manpower and weapons. They knew where you’d be.”
“We don’t know that,” I say. “They could’ve set up multiple ambush points. They were probably ready for us if we went to the White House, too, or if we headed south from the stadium. Hell, they were probably hoping we’d cross the bridge over the Potomac.”
“We don’t know, Mr. President, that’s the point—”
“One vehicle, Alex. That’s a direct order.”
I click off and find my phone on the passenger seat. I find the number on my phone for FBI Liz and dial it.
“Hello, Mr. President,” says the acting FBI director, Elizabeth Greenfield. “You’re aware of the bridge explosion?”
“Liz, how long have you been acting director?”
“Ten days, sir.”
“Well, Madam Director,” I say, “it’s time to take off the training wheels.”
Chapter
36
Next house down, sir.” Jacobson’s voice squawks through my dashboard, as if I didn’t already recognize the house.
I pull the Suburban up to the curb, relieved that I made it this far. These Secret Service vehicles are battleships, but I wasn’t sure how long I could drive with the rear-end damage.
Jacobson’s vehicle pulls up behind me. He caught up to me on the highway and used GPS to guide me here. I’ve been to the house many times but never paid much attention to the various roads that got me here.
I put the car in Park and kill the ignition. When I do so, I feel the tidal-wave rush, as I knew I would—the shakes, the post-adrenaline, post-traumatic physical reaction. Until this moment, I had to keep control to get Augie and myself out of harm’s way. My work is far from over—more complicated than ever, in fact—but I allow myself this brief respite, taking a few deep breaths, trying to get past the life-or-death crises, trying to empty out all the panic and anger bottled up inside me.
“You have to keep it together,” I whisper to myself, trembling. “If you don’t, nobody else will, either.” I treat it like any other decision, like it’s something I can completely control, willing myself to stop shaking.
Jacobson jogs over and opens my car door. I don’t need help getting out of the vehicle, but he helps me anyway. Some cuts and dirt on his face aside, he looks generally intact.
Standing, I feel momentary wooziness, unsure of my legs. Dr. Lane would not be happy with me right now.
“You okay?” I ask Jacobson.
“Am I okay? I’m fine. How are you, sir?”
“Fine. You saved my life,” I say to him.
“Davis saved your life, sir.”
That’s also true. The evasive-driving maneuver, the J-turn that spun our vehicle perpendicular to the oncoming truck, was Davis’s way of taking the brunt of the impact so I wouldn’t, in the rear. It was a brilliant bit of driving by a well-trained agent. And Jacobson was no slouch, either, firing on the cab of the truck before the two intertwined vehicles had even stopped. Augie and I couldn’t have escaped without that cover.
Secret Service agents never get the credit they deserve for what they do every day to keep me safe, to trade their own lives for mine, to do what no sane person would ever willingly do—step in front of a bullet, not away from it. Every now and then, an agent does something stupid on the taxpayer’s dime, and that’s all anybody remembers. The ninety-nine times out of a hundred they perform their jobs perfectly never get mentioned.
“Davis had a wife and little boy, didn’t he?” I ask. Had I known the Secret Service was going to track me tonight, I would have done what I always do when I visit one of the hot spots around the world, one of the places where the Service is most insecure about my safety—Pakistan or Bangladesh or Afghanistan: I would have insisted that nobody with young children accompany me.
“Comes with the job,” says Jacobson.
Tell that to his wife and son. “And Ontiveros?”
“Sir,” he says, shaking his head curtly.
He’s right. It will matter down the road. I will make sure that we don’t forget Davis’s family and whatever family Ontiveros left behind. That is my personal vow. But I can’t deal with it right now, not tonight.
Mourn your losses later, after the fight’s over, Sergeant Melton used to say. When you’re in the fight, fight.
Augie gets out of the Suburban on shaky legs, too, planting his foot in a puddle on the road. It’s stopped raining, leaving an earthy, fresh smell in its wake on this sleepy, dark residential street, as if Mother Nature is telling us, You made it to the other side, a fresh start. I hope that’s true, but it doesn’t feel that way.
Augie looks at me like a lost puppy, in a foreign place with no partner anymore, nothing to call his own except his smartphone.
The house before us is a stucco-and-brick Victorian with a manicured lawn, a driveway leading up to a two-car garage, and a lamp that lights the walkway to the front porch—the only light that appears to be on past ten o’clock in the evening. The stucco is painted a soft blue, the origin of the nickname the Blue House.
Augie and Jacobson follow me up the driveway.
The door opens before we reach it. Carolyn Brock’s husband was expecting us.
Chapter
37
Greg Morton, Carolyn Brock’s husband, is wearing an oxford-cloth shirt and blue jeans with sandals on his feet, waving us in.
“Sorry to come here, Morty,” I say.
“Not at all, not at all.”
Morty and Carolyn celebrated fifteen years of marriage this year—though given her role as chief of staff to the president, the celebration, as I recall, was just a long weekend on Martha’s Vineyard. Morty, age fifty-two, retired after a lucrative career as a trial lawyer that ended with a heart attack in a Cuyahoga County courtroom as he stood before a jury. His second child, James, was less than a year old at the time. He wanted to see his children grow up, and he couldn’t spend all the money he’d already made, so he hung up the boxing gloves. These days, he makes documentary short films and stays home with the two kids.
He looks us over, me and my ragtag crew. I had forgotten that I’d gone to such lengths to disguise my appearance—the beard nobody’s ever seen, my casual, rain-soaked clothes, my hair still dripping rainwater into my face. Then there’s Augie, already shaggy before the rain did its work on him. At least Jacobson looks the part of the Secret Service agent.
“It sounds like you have quite a story to tell,” says Morty in the baritone voice that swayed many a juror over the years. “But I’ll never hear a word of it.”