The President's Daughter Read online

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the authors.

  Copyright © 2021 by James Patterson and William Jefferson Clinton

  Cover design by Mario Pulice

  Cover photo-illustration by Debra Lill

  Cover copyright © 2021 by Hachette Book Group

  Hachette Book Group and Penguin Random House support the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the authors’ intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the authors’ rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10104

  littlebrown.com

  Alfred A. Knopf

  Penguin Random House

  1745 Broadway

  New York, NY 10019

  aaknopf.com

  First ebook editon: June 2021

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Alfred A. Knopf is a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

  The Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau represents a roster of speakers whose work is shaping national conversations. For more information, please visit prhspeakers.com or contact [email protected].

  ISBN 978-0-316-54073-5

  E3-20210423-DA-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part Two Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Part Three Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Part Four Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Part Five Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Chapter 129

  Chapter 130

  Chapter 131

  Chapter 132

  Epilogue Chapter 133

  Chapter 134

  Chapter 135

  Chapter 136

  Discover More

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Also by the Authors

  Robert Barnett, our lawyer and friend, convinced us to collaborate on The President Is Missing. That worked out pretty well. Then—and maybe we should’ve known better—he talked us into The President’s Daughter. We’re so glad we listened a second time to Bob.

  You did a fine job, Counselor.

  Even as he sheltered in place at home in New Hampshire, Brendan DuBois was with us throughout all the research, every outline, and more drafts than we care to count. Brendan was our rock—and occasionally the hard-ass that we needed.

  What’s coming next from James Patterson?

  Get on the list to find out about coming titles, deals, contests, appearances, and more!

  The official James Patterson newsletter.

  Part

  One

  Chapter

  1

  Two a.m. local time

  Gulf of Sidra, off the coast of Libya

  Aboard a Night Stalkers Special Operations MH-60M Black Hawk helicopter code-named Spear One, Navy chief Nick Zeppos of SEAL Team Six checks his watch. Five minutes ago, he and his crew departed from the USS Wasp amphibious assault ship outbound to their high-value target this deep dark night. If he and his crew—along with other SEAL fighters aboard a second Black Hawk helicopter, code-named Spear Two—are fortunate, they will track down and kill Asim Al-Asheed well before the sun rises.

  Zeppos spares a quick glance at his team members, packed in tightly around him in two crowded rows. In the loud, vibrating helicopter’s interior, they’re mostly silent, some sipping from plastic water bottles, others leaning over, hands tightly clasped. Up forward, the Night Stalkers pilot and copilot from the famed 1
60th Special Operations Aviation Regiment Airborne are flying at low altitude, about ten meters above the choppy water, instruments glowing green and blue. Zeppos knows that every SEAL team member inside the dimly lit helicopter is going over the upcoming mission, thinking about their training, then clearing their minds for what’s ahead:

  Killing Asim Al-Asheed.

  It’s been a long-range goal of the American intelligence agencies and military. Tonight, after four years of preparation, Zeppos hopes they will hit the jackpot.

  SEAL teams and Special Forces have gone after terrorist leaders before—notably Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and their many deputies and allies, leaders who stayed in the shadows, issuing the orders, not getting their hands soiled beyond making grainy videotapes and flowery promises of death and revenge.

  “We’re coming up on feet dry!” comes the call from the Night Stalkers crew chief, indicating that they’re about to cross over from the sea to the land of Libya, one fractured and squabbling nation, a perfect place to incubate or shelter terrorists like Al-Asheed.

  But Al-Asheed is not like other leaders of terrorist organizations.

  For the past several years, videos have appeared documenting his group’s actions, each showing Al-Asheed in the center of the bloody chaos, depending on a well-planned and well-hidden network of supporters who would only appear to assist him at the last moment and then disappear.

  Asim in a crowded shopping mall in Belgium, holding up a trigger device and calmly pressing the button, the hollow boom! echoing through the concourse, causing the camera to shake, but not enough to hide the billowing cloud of smoke, the screaming shoppers running by, blood trickling down their torn faces and fractured arms.

  Asim walking down a street in Paris, cameraman following him, as he unlimbers an automatic rifle from under a long raincoat, shooting into crowds of pedestrians, aiming especially for the women and children, until a white van picks him up and drives him safely away.

  Asim standing behind two sobbing female aid workers from the United Nations in the Sudanese desert, their legs and arms bound, as he calmly goes from one to the other, wielding a large sword and beheading both of them, their blood spattering his clothes.

  Navy chief Zeppos stretches his legs, draws them back. Twice before he’s been on raids—once into Yemen and once into Iraq—where the intel indicated a good probability that Asim was there, but good wasn’t good enough. Both raids had come up empty, with no results except for wounded SEALs, shot-up helicopters, and frustration all around.

  But Zeppos hopes that the third time will be the charm.

  There are other video recordings too gruesome to be released to the public. A woman schoolteacher in Afghanistan, chained to a rock, doused with gasoline, and set afire. A village elder in Nigeria, held tight by men from Boko Haram, as Asim goes down a line of his family members, slitting their throats.

  And Boyd Tanner…

  Zeppos spares a glance through the near porthole—he wants not to think of Boyd Tanner, whose cause of death is a closely kept secret among the Special Forces community—and sees the bright glow of light on the horizon marking the rapidly rebuilding port city and capital of Tripoli. The Chinese—in their program called the Belt and Road Initiative—have been pouring in development investments here and in other poor countries around the world.

  Publicly, the Chinese government says it’s just a way for them, as a growing world power, to share their good fortune and knowledge. Privately, Zeppos and others have received classified briefings depicting the Chinese’s real goal: securing resources, allies, and possible future military bases so China can never again be isolated and humiliated as it so often has been in its long history.

  The glow on the horizon fades away. Spear One and Spear Two are now over the rolling Libyan deserts where decades back the Germans and British desperately fought, and where their rusted-out tanks and trucks still remain in the unforgiving sands.

  Before them, the Italians were once here, and now the Chinese, Zeppos thinks.

  Big deal.

  He starts to recheck his gear.

  The crew boss comes back on the intercom.

  “Chief, we’ve got incoming traffic for you,” he says.

  Zeppos toggles his mic. “Who? JSOC?”

  “No, Nick,” the aviator says. “Definitely not JSOC.”

  Shit, he thinks. Who would dare bother him now?

  “Patch it through,” he says, and there’s a crickle-crackle of static, and a very familiar voice comes through, one he’s heard scores of times over the radio and TV.

  “Chief Zeppos?” the man’s voice says. “Matt Keating here. Sorry to bother you, I know you’re busy, you don’t need me to waste precious seconds. But I wanted to let you know that there’s nothing I’d want more than to be riding with you right now.”

  “Ah, thank you, sir!” he says, raising his voice so the president can hear him.

  Keating says, “I have full faith in you and your team that you’ll get the job done. No worries on this end. I’ve got your back. Now you squids body-bag that son of a bitch for the country, the SEALs, and especially for Boyd Tanner. Keating out.”

  “Yes, sir,” Zeppos says, part of him in awe that the man would call him personally, part of him touched by his sincere words, and yet, he hates to admit to himself, Zeppos is pissed off that he’d call right now, in the middle of an op!

  Shit, he thinks. Politics sure can screw up a man. Then he cuts the president some slack. Keating had been one of them. And he knew about Boyd Tanner.

  From SEAL Team Two.

  Only a few were supposed to know how he died, and it was not, as his grieving wife and kids were told, in a training accident.

  Captured last year after a brutal firefight in Afghanistan, wounded and barely alive. Asim Al-Asheed and his fighters had stripped Boyd Tanner of his gear, his clothes, and taken him to a courtyard, recording it all the while.

  Whereupon Asim—using a hammer and spikes—had crucified the Navy warrior on a gnarled tree. The video captured the agonizing hour that Tanner hung there before the captors grew bored and slit his throat.

  A couple of guys down the length of the Black Hawk are laughing. Zeppos leans over, sees one of his crew—Kowalski—holding up what looks like a wooden spear with a metal tip.

  Zeppos calls out, “What the hell is that thing for?”

  Kowalski laughs and flourishes the spear. “Asim Al-Asheed,” he yells out. “Once we ID his remains, we should take his head off, put it on this pike, and bring it back to the Oval Office! Don’t you think the president will love that?”

  More laughter, and Zeppos settles back into the uncomfortable seat, grinning.

  Yeah.

  It’s a good night for him and his fellow warriors to avenge the deaths of so many innocents, and to finally come face-to-face with Asim Al-Asheed, give him a few seconds to recognize who’s before him, and then put two taps in his chest and one in his forehead.

  This darkened Black Hawk helicopter and its shadowy companion speed into the night.

  Chapter

  2

  Two fifteen a.m. local time

  Embassy of the People’s Republic of China, Tripoli

  It’s damn well late at night—or early in the morning—in the ground-floor reception room for the Chinese Embassy on Menstir Street and Gargaresh Road, and Jiang Lijun, who’s listed on the embassy guest list as a vice president for the China State Construction Engineering Corporation, is stifling a yawn.

  This supposed party was to have ended more than an hour ago, but the special guests from this blasted country still won’t leave. The political leaders, the tribesmen, and the military officers—gaudy in their uniforms, stripes, and medals, like little boys playing dress-up—are still smoking, drinking, and talking to their patient hosts in various corners of the room.

  Jiang sees that the local representatives from the Great Wall Drilling Company, CNPC Services & Engineering, China National Petroleum Cor
poration, and so many others are valiantly standing in for zhōng guó—the Middle Country—by smiling, laughing at the stupid attempts at humor, and otherwise entertaining their peasant guests.

  And what barbarians! Even after the lights were dimmed, the near-empty food platters were taken away, and the liquor and bottles of beer—Carlsberg, Heineken, Tsingtao—were removed, these peasants didn’t get the message that it was time to wander back to their flea-infested hovels. No, they stayed and gossiped, and some even pulled flasks of liquor from their coat pockets, even here, in this supposedly Muslim country. When he was an exchange student at UCLA, in California, and then at Columbia, in New York, a young Jiang thought he would never encounter a more childish, reckless, and ignorant group of uncouth people, but these Libyans make the Americans seem like honorary Han.

  He takes out a pack of Zhonghua cigarettes and lights one. He’s standing by himself near two large potted plants, seeing who is talking to whom, which members of the embassy staff look drunk or impatient, and observing the groupings of Libyan guests. A very fragile cease-fire and reconciliation government arose last year, but Jiang still wants to see which tribe members stay away from their alleged fellow countrymen, perhaps setting the stage for a future breakup or civil war.

  Good information to have ahead of time.

  A slim, bespectacled embassy worker wearing an ill-fitting black suit comes in from the far side of the banquet room. He scans the crowd as he hurries across the polished floor. Ling—that’s the boy’s name. Jiang takes one last puff of the cigarette, stubs it out in the dirt of the nearest potted plant, and waits.

  The worker comes to him, bows slightly, and says, “My apologies, sir. Your presence is requested in the basement. Room twelve.”

  Jiang nods, starts walking across the room, whereupon a heavyset bearded man, swaying drunk and wearing typical tribal garb of billowing white blouse and black slacks, abruptly steps in front of him.

  “Mr. Jiang!” he calls out in accented English, grasping Jiang’s shoulders, and Jiang keeps a wide smile frozen on his face, trying not to choke from breathing in the alcoholic fumes coming from this dirty peasant. “Are you leaving? Are you?”

  Jiang pats the man’s worn hands, gently tugs them off his shoulders. “I’m sorry, my friend, but you know how it is,” he replies, also in English, the lingua franca of diplomacy in so many parts of the world. “Duty calls.”