The President Is Missing: A Novel Read online

  “Get us an exit!” Jacobson shouts. The first order of business—find a route of escape for the president and extract him.

  “Augie,” I whisper. He is slung against his seat belt, conscious and unharmed but dazed, trying to gather his bearings, trying to catch his breath.

  The thought flickers through my head: you could almost see the White House from this bridge, facing this direction. A score of agents, a SWAT team, only six blocks away yet as useless as if they were on the other side of the planet.

  Agent Davis cursing as he struggles to change gears, as the windshield clears enough to see in front of us, southbound. Gunfire erupting not only from the pedestrian path but also from our backup car, Alex Trimble and his team firing at our attackers.

  How do we get out? We’re trapped. We have to make a run for it—

  “Go! Go! Go!” Jacobson yells in that practiced cadence, as he remains restrained by his seat belt but holds his automatic weapon at the ready.

  Davis finally gets the car in reverse using the dashboard radar, and after the tires grip the slick pavement we hurtle backward, the firefight in front of us shrinking from view and then disappearing altogether as another vehicle comes into our lane, bigger than our Suburbans.

  A truck, bearing down on us at twice our speed.

  We race and slide backward, Davis trying to pick up speed as best he can but no match for the truck closing the distance quickly from the front. I steel myself for the impact as the grille of the truck is the only thing visible through the windshield.

  Davis, his hands at nine and three on the wheel, whips his right hand over to nine, his left to three, and spins the car into an evasive J-turn. I plow into Jacobson as the rear fishtails to the right again, the car now profiled in the path of the oncoming truck, turned sideways in the lane at the moment of impact.

  The concussive whump of the impact knocks the breath from me, sends stars dancing before my eyes and a shock wave through my body. The grille of the truck caves in the front passenger side, flinging Ontiveros into the driver, Davis, like a floppy doll, the back end of the SUV twisting right at a sixty-degree angle while the front end stays locked to the grille of the truck in a crunch of whining armor. Hot wet air invades the rear compartment as the SUV desperately tries to hold itself together in one piece.

  Jacobson somehow manages to roll the window down, firing his MP5 submachine gun up at the cab of the truck as hot wind and rain pummel us. The vehicles, joined together, come to a halt. Jacobson fires relentlessly as the backup car approaches, Alex and his team already shooting at the truck from their SUV’s side windows.

  Get Augie out.

  “Augie,” I say, releasing my seat belt.

  “Don’t move, Mr. President!” Jacobson yells as the hood of our SUV bursts into a ball of orange flame.

  Augie, his face white with terror, unhooks his seat belt. I open the left passenger door, pulling Augie by the wrist. “Stay low!” I shout as we run along the back of the SUV, shielding us from the cab of the truck, then run toward Alex’s car in the thrashing rain, removing any angle the shooters in the truck’s cab would have on us—if they survive Jacobson’s merciless assault.

  “Mr. President, get in the car!” Alex shouts from the middle of the bridge as we approach. By now, he and the two other agents have left the second SUV and are pounding the truck with machine-gun fire.

  Augie and I race to the second vehicle. Behind that SUV, a pileup of cars on the bridge, turned in all directions.

  “Get in the back!” I shout at him, rain smacking my face. I take the driver’s seat. I put the car in gear and floor the accelerator.

  The rear of the vehicle is damaged, but the car’s still operable, still enough to get us out of here. I don’t like leaving my men behind. It goes against everything I learned in the service. But I have no weapon, so I’m no help. And I am protecting the most important asset—Augie.

  The inevitable second explosion comes as we cross the bridge into Virginia, with more questions than ever before and not a single answer.

  But until we’re dead, we’re alive.

  Chapter

  35

  My hands tremble as I grip the steering wheel, my heart races as I peer through a windshield pockmarked with bullets, splattered by rain, wipers flailing furiously back and forth.

  Sweat dripping down my face, a fire blazing in my chest, wishing I could adjust the temperature but afraid to take my eyes off the road, afraid to stop the SUV or even slow down, checking the rearview mirror only for signs of another vehicle following me. There is damage to the rear of this SUV, the sound of metal scraping on a tire, a slight hitch as we drive. I can’t drive it much longer.

  “Augie,” I say. “Augie!” Surprised at the rage, the frustration in my voice.

  My mysterious companion sits up in the backseat but doesn’t speak. He looks utterly shell-shocked, overwhelmed, staring off into the distance, his mouth open slightly in a small O, wincing at every bolt of lightning or bump on the road.

  “People are dying, Augie. Whatever you know, you better damn well tell me, and tell me now!”

  But I don’t even know if I can trust him yet. Since I met him, with his cryptic references to Armageddon at the ballpark, we’ve spent every moment just trying to stay alive. I don’t know if he’s friend or foe, hero or operative.

  Only one thing is for sure—he’s important. He’s a threat to someone. None of this would be happening otherwise. The more they try to stop us, the more his significance grows.

  “Augie!” I shout. “Damn it, kid, snap out of it! Don’t go into shock on me. We don’t have time for shock right—”

  My phone buzzes in my pocket. I reach for it with my right hand, struggling to free it from my pocket before it goes to voice mail.

  “Mr. President, you’re okay,” says Carolyn Brock, the relief evident in her voice. “Was that you on the 14th Street Bridge?”

  Not surprising she’d already know. It wouldn’t take but a minute for something like that to reach the White House, less than a mile away. There would be immediate concerns about terrorism, a strike on the capital.

  “Lock down the White House, Carrie,” I say as I follow the road, the overhead lights a blur of color against the wet windshield. “Just as a—”

  “It’s already locked down, sir.”

  “And secure—”

  “The vice president is already secured in the operations center, sir.”

  I take a breath. God, do I need a port in the storm like Carolyn right now, anticipating my moves and even improving on them.

  I explain to her, in as few words as possible, trying not to ramble, struggling to remain calm, that yes, what happened on the bridge, what happened at Nationals Park, involved me.

  “Are you with Secret Service right now, sir?”

  “No. Just me and Augie.”

  “His name is Augie? And the girl—”

  “The girl is dead.”

  “Dead? What happened?”

  “At the baseball stadium. Someone shot her. Augie and I got away. Listen, I have to get off the road, Carrie. I’m headed to the Blue House. I’m sorry, but I don’t have a choice.”

  “Of course, sir, of course.”

  “And I need Greenfield on the phone right now.”

  “You have her on your phone, sir, unless you want me to patch you through.”

  Right, that’s right. Carolyn put Liz Greenfield’s number into this phone.

  “Got it. Talk soon,” I say.

  “Mr. President! Are you there?” The words, Alex’s voice, squawk through the dashboard. I drop my phone on the passenger seat and pull the radio from the dash, press the button with my right thumb to speak.

  “Alex, I’m fine. I’m just driving on the highway. Talk to me.” I release my thumb.

  “They’re neutralized, sir. Four dead on the pedestrian path. The truck blew. No idea how many casualties inside the truck, but definitely no survivors.”

  “A truc
k bomb?”

  “No, sir. They weren’t suicide bombers. If they were, none of us would still be alive. We penetrated the gas tank and caused a gasoline fire. No other explosives on board. No civilian casualties.”

  That tells us something, at least. They weren’t true believers, not radicals. This wasn’t ISIS or Al Qaeda or any of their cancerous branches. They were mercenaries for hire.

  I take a breath and ask the question I’ve dreaded. “What about our people, Alex?” A silent prayer as I wait for the answer.

  “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.”

  We step inside. Halfway down the winding staircase that ends in the foyer, the two kids sit and stare at us through the balusters—six-year-old James, in Batman pajamas, hair standing on end, and ten-year-old Jennifer, her mother’s face staring back at me. I’m nothing new to them at this point, but I don’t usually look like something the cat dragged in from the garbage.

  “If I had any ability to control the minions,” says Morty, “they’d be in bed right now.”

  “You have a red beard,” says Jennifer, wrinkling her nose. “You don’t look like a president.”

  “Grant had a beard. Coolidge had red hair.”

  “Who?” asks James.

  “They were presidents, genius,” his sister tells him with a swat in his direction. “Like, a really long time ago. Like, when Mom and Dad were little.”

  “Whoa—how old do you think I am?” says Morty.

  “You’re fifty-two,” says Jennifer. “But we’re aging you prematurely.”

  “You got that right.” Morty turns to me. “Carrie said the basement office, Mr. President. Is that what you want?”

  “That’s great.”

  “You know the way. I’ll get you some towels. And my kids are going to bed, aren’t you, children?”

  “Awwww…”

  “Enough with the sound effects. Bed!”

  Carolyn had the basement finished as an elaborate office, complete with secure lines of telecommunication, allowing her to work in the late evenings from home.

  Jacobson goes first, taking the stairs down and clearing the area before giving me a thumbs-up.

  Augie and I head down. The basement is neat and well-appointed, as one would expect in Carolyn’s home. There is a large open playroom furnished with beanbag chairs as well as a desk and chair and couch; there is also a TV mounted on the wall, a wine cellar, a movie room with a projection screen and deep, lush seats, a full bathroom in the hallway, a bedroom, and Carolyn’s office in the back. Her office contains a horseshoe-shaped desk topped with multiple computers, a large corkboard on the wall, several file cabinets, and a large flat-screen TV.