When his dad hung up, Gunner watched him. He didn’t look like he was having as much fun as just a minute ago. Gunner knew that if the President called, his dad would quickly pack his bags and go somewhere. Another mission, maybe more bad guys to kill. And he would leave Gunner and his mom home alone again.
“Dad, is the President going to call you?”
His dad ruffled Gunner’s hair. “Monster, I sure hope not. Now what do you say? Let’s go get some stripers.”
*
Hours later, the President still hadn’t called.
Luke and Gunner had caught three nice stripers, and Luke showed Gunner how to gut, clean, and filet them. It was old ground, but repetition was how you learned. Becca even got into the act, bringing a bottle of wine out to the patio and setting a cheese and cracker plate on the outdoor table.
Luke was just firing up the grill when the phone rang.
He looked at his family. They had frozen on the first ring. He and Becca made eye contact. He couldn’t read what was in her eyes anymore. Whatever it was, it was not supportive approval. He answered the phone.
A deep voice, a man: “Agent Stone?”
“Yes.”
“Please hold for the President of the United States.”
He stood numb, listening to blank air.
The phone clicked and she came on. “Luke?”
“Susan.”
His mind flashed back to an image of her, leading the entire country, and much of the world, in singing “God Bless America.” It was an amazing moment, but that’s all it was, a moment. And it was the kind of thing politicians were good at. It was practically a parlor trick.
“Luke, we’ve got a crisis on our hands.”
“Susan, we always have a crisis on our hands.”
“Right now, I am up to my ass in alligators.”
Nice. He hadn’t heard that one in a while.
“We’re going to have a meeting. Here at the house. I need you there.”
“When is the meeting?”
She didn’t hesitate. “In an hour.”
“Susan, with traffic, I’m two hours away. That’s on a good day. Right now, half the roads are still closed.”
“You won’t be sitting in traffic. There’s a helicopter on the way to you now. It’ll be there in fourteen minutes.”
Luke looked at his family again. Becca had poured herself a glass of wine and sat faced away from him, staring toward the late afternoon sun sinking toward the water. Gunner stared down at the fish on the grill.
“Okay,” Luke said into the phone.
CHAPTER SIX
6:45 p.m.
United States Naval Observatory – Washington, DC
“Agent Stone, I’m Richard Monk, the President’s chief-of-staff. We talked on the phone today.”
Luke had come off the Naval Observatory helipad five minutes before. He shook hands with a tall, fit-looking guy, maybe late-thirties, probably right around Luke’s age. The man wore a blue dress shirt with sleeves rolled up his forearms. His tie hung askew. His upper body was scientifically muscular, like in an ad for Men’s Health. He worked hard and he played hard – that’s what Richard Monk’s look told anyone who would listen.
They walked the marble hallway of the New White House toward wide double doors down at the end. “We’ve adapted our old conference room into a situation room,” Monk said. “It’s a work in progress, but we’re going to get there.”
“You’re lucky to be alive, aren’t you?” Luke said.
The mask of confidence on the man’s face faltered, only for a second. He nodded. “The Vice… Well, she was the Vice President at the time. The President and I and a bunch of staff were on a West Coast swing when President Hayes summoned her back East. It was very sudden. I stayed behind in Seattle with a few people to tie up some loose ends. When Mount Weather happened…”
He shook his head. “It’s too horrible. But yes, that could have been me, too.”
Luke nodded. Workers were still pulling bodies out of Mount Weather days after the disaster. Three hundred so far, and counting. Among them were the former Secretary of State, the former Secretary of Education, the former Secretary of the Interior, the head of NASA, and dozens of United States Representatives and Senators.
The firefighters had only put out the central underground fire yesterday.
“What is the crisis that Susan called me out here for?” Luke said.
Monk gestured toward the end of the hall. “Uh, President Hopkins is there in the conference room, along with some key staff. I think I’m going to let them tell you what’s going on.”
They passed through the double doors and into the room. More than a dozen people were already seated at a large oval table. Susan Hopkins, President of the United States, sat at the far side of the room from the door. She was small, almost unassuming, surrounded by large men. Two Secret Service agents stood on either side of her. Three more stood in various corners of the room.
A nervous-looking man stood at the head of the table. He was tall, balding, a little paunchy, wearing glasses and an ill-fitting suit. Luke sized him up in about two seconds. This was not his normal venue, and he believed himself to be in deep trouble. He looked like a man who was currently being grilled from all sides.
Susan stood. “Everyone, before we begin, I want to introduce you to Agent Luke Stone, formerly of the FBI Special Response Team. He saved my life a few days ago, and he was instrumental in saving the Republic as we know it. That is not an exaggeration. I’m not sure I’ve ever before met an operative as skilled, as knowledgeable, and as fearless in the face of adversity. It’s a credit to our nation, our Armed Forces, and our intelligence community that we identify and train men and women like Agent Stone.”
Now everyone stood and applauded. To Luke’s ears, the applause sounded stilted and formal. These people had to applaud. The President wanted them to. He raised a hand, trying to make it stop. The situation was absurd.
“Hi,” he said when the clapping ended. “Sorry I’m late.”
Luke sat in an empty chair. The man standing in the front stared directly at him. Now Luke couldn’t tell what was in the man’s eyes. Hope? Maybe. He looked like a desperate quarterback about to launch a Hail Mary pass in Luke’s direction.
“Luke,” Susan said. “This is Dr. Wesley Drinan, Director of the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch. He is briefing us on a possible security breach at the Biosafety Level 4 lab there.”
“Ah,” Luke said. “All right.”
“Agent Stone, are you familiar with Biosafety Level 4 laboratories?”
“Uh, Luke is fine. I’m familiar with the term. Maybe you can bring me all the way up to speed, however.”
Drinan nodded. “Of course. I’ll give you the thirty-second elevator pitch. BSL-4 labs are the highest level of security when dealing with biological agents. BSL-4 is the level required for work with dangerous and exotic viruses and bacteria that pose a high risk of laboratory infections, as well as those which cause severe to fatal disease in humans. These are diseases for which vaccines or other treatments aren’t currently available. In general, I’m talking about Ebola, Marburg, and some of the emerging hemorrhagic viruses that we’re just discovering in deep jungle regions of Africa and South America. Sometimes we also handle newly mutated influenza viruses until we understand their transmission mechanisms, infection rates, mortality rates, and so on.”
“Okay,” Luke said. “I get it. And something was stolen?”
“We don’t know. Something is missing. But we don’t know what happened to it.”
Luke didn’t speak. He simply nodded at the man to keep him talking.
“We had a power failure two nights ago. That in itself is rare. Rarer still is that our backup generators didn’t immediately kick on. The design of the facility is that in the event of an outage, there should be a seamless shift from main power to backup power. It didn’t happen. Instead, the facility went to emergency reserves, which is a low-power state that only keeps essential systems running.”