The President Is Missing: A Novel Read online

  Three: a helicopter, painted white and bearing the name of a local television station, but in fact a KSK stealth helicopter with reduced-noise-operation capability, hovers silently over the top of that same building. Four KSK commandos, likewise dressed in tactical gear, fall from the helicopter, lowering themselves thirty feet down to the rooftop, softly landing and detaching the cords from their belts.

  And four: Suliman Cindoruk laughs to himself as he watches his team inside the penthouse suite. His four men—the remaining four members of the Sons of Jihad, besides him. Still recovering from last night’s festivities, stumbling around, half dressed and scraggly, hungover if not still intoxicated. Since they all awakened, some time midday, they have done a grand total of nothing.

  Elmurod, his stomach stretching his bright purple T-shirt, drops onto the couch and uses the remote to turn on the TV. Mahmad, wearing a stained undershirt and boxers, his hair standing on end as he sucks down a bottle of water. Hagan, the last one to awaken, in midafternoon, shirtless, wearing sweatpants, munches on grapes from the spread of food left over from last night. Levi, gangly and awkward and wearing only underwear, who assuredly lost his virginity last night, puts his head against a pillow on the couch, wearing an easy smile.

  Suli closes his eyes and feels the breeze on his face. Some people complain about the winds coming off the Spree, especially in the evening, but it’s one of the things he enjoys the most. One of the things he will miss the most.

  He checks the firearm at his side by force of habit. Something he does almost every hour of the day. Checking the magazine, making sure it is loaded.

  Loaded, that is, with a single bullet.

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  They climb the stairs with the proper tactical approach, securing each staircase with a single soldier—a scout—before the rest of the team proceeds upward. There are blind spots everywhere. Ambush opportunities on each level. Their contact at the front desk has given an all-clear on the stairwells, but he is only as competent as the cameras he monitors.

  The team 1 leader is a man named Christoph, eleven years now with the KSK. When the twelve-man team reaches the landing on the penthouse floor, he radios in to the commander. “Team 1 in red position,” he says in German.

  “Hold in red position, team 1,” calls out the commander from his location, in a vehicle down the street.

  The commander for this mission is the brigadier general himself, KSK’s leader. That’s a first as far as Christoph’s ever heard—KSK’s highest-ranking officer personally commanding a mission. But then again, this is the first time the brigadier general received a call from the chancellor himself.

  The target is Suliman Cindoruk, Chancellor Richter told the brigadier general. He must be taken alive. He must be apprehended in a condition that allows him to be immediately interrogated.

  Thus the ARWEN in Christoph’s hands, the riot-control weapon containing nonlethal plastic baton rounds, capable of unloading the entire five-round magazine in four seconds. Six of the twelve men have ARWENs to incapacitate their targets. The other six have standard MP5 submachine guns should lethal rounds prove necessary.

  “Team 2, status,” the commander calls out.

  Team 2, the four men on the roof: “Team 2 in red position.” Two of the KSK soldiers prepared to rappel from the roof onto the balcony below. Two others secure the roof in the event of an escape attempt.

  But there won’t be an escape, Christoph knows. This guy’s mine.

  This will be his bin Laden.

  Through his earpiece, the commander: “Team 3, confirm number and location of targets.”

  Team 3 is the stealth helicopter overhead, using high-powered thermal imaging to detect the number of people on the penthouse level.

  “Five targets, Commander,” comes the response. “Four inside the penthouse, congregated in the front room, and one on the balcony.”

  “Five targets, confirmed. Team 1, proceed to yellow position.”

  “Team 1, proceeding to yellow position.” Christoph turns back to his men and nods. They raise their weapons.

  Christoph slowly turns the latch on the staircase door, then gently but swiftly pulls it open with a rush of adrenaline.

  The hallway is empty, quiet.

  They proceed slowly, the twelve of them in a crouch, guns raised, measuring each step to minimize footfalls on the carpeted floor, slinking toward the single door on the right. His senses on high alert, Christoph feels the heat and energy of the men behind him, smells the lemon scent off the carpet, hears the heavy breathing behind him and the vague sound of laughter down the hallway.

  Eight meters away. Six meters. Performance adrenaline coursing through him. Heartbeat racing. But his balance steady, his confidence high—

  Click-click-click.

  His head whips to the left. The sound is subtle but distinct. A tiny square box on the wall, a thermostat—

  No, not a thermostat.

  “Shit,” he says.

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  Suliman lights a cigarette and checks his phone. Nothing new on the international front. They do seem concerned about the water problem in Los Angeles. Did the Americans fall for it? he wonders.

  Inside the penthouse, Hagan grabs a silver bowl off the table of food and vomits in it. It was probably the expensive Champagne, Suli decides. Hagan may be a brilliant code writer, but he was never much of a drink—

  A high-pitched beep comes from Suli’s phone, a tone reserved for only one thing.

  A breach. The hallway sensor.

  Instinctively his hand brushes against the pistol at his side, the one with the single bullet.

  He’s always vowed to himself that he wouldn’t be taken alive, he wouldn’t be caged and interrogated, beaten and waterboarded, made to live like an animal. He prefers to go out on his own terms, cupping the pistol under his chin and pulling the trigger.

  But he always knew, for all his promises to himself, there would be a moment of truth. And he always wondered if he’d have the courage to go through with it.

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  We’re burned!” Christoph says in a harsh whisper. “Team 1 proceeding to green position.”

  “Proceed to green position, team 1.”

  All pretense of a sneak attack gone, the men rush to the door, fanning out in dual-entry position, five men on each side, two men standing back with the rammer, poised to charge.

  “The target on the balcony has entered the penthouse,” says the leader of team 3, on the helicopter with the thermal imaging.

  That’s him, Christoph knows, steeling himself.

  They blow into the door with a staggering jolt. It bursts from its hinges, the top falling forward into the apartment like a drawbridge cut from its chain.

  The soldiers closest to the door on each side flip their flashbangs into the apartment and quickly turn away from the threshold. A second later, the stun grenades detonate, producing a concussive blast of 180 decibels and a searing, blinding light.

  For five seconds, the occupants will be blind, deaf, and unbalanced.

  One, two. Christoph is first through the door as the white light evaporates, the afterbuzz of the blast still audible.

  “Don’t move! Don’t move!” he shouts in German as one of the team members shouts the same in Turkish.

  He scans the room, head on a swivel.

  Fat guy in purple shirt, half fallen off a couch, eyes squeezed shut. Not him.

  Man in undershirt and boxers, staggering backward as he clutches a bottle of water, collapsing to the floor. Negative.

  Shirtless guy, dazed, on the floor, a bowl of fruit spilled over his chest. No.

  Christoph moves to the other side of the couch, where a man wearing only underwear has fallen over the couch and lies unconscious. Not—

  And over by the sliding glass door to the balcony, the final target, lying prone on the floor: a young Asian girl wearing a bra and panties and a pained expres
sion.

  “Only five targets, team 3?” he cries.

  “Affirmative, team leader. Five targets.”

  Christoph moves past the Asian girl, already subdued by one of the soldiers. He slides the glass door open and bounds onto the balcony in a crouch, swinging his anti-riot weapon from side to side. Empty.

  “Rest of the apartment is clear,” his second in command tells him as Christoph walks back into the living room, the adrenaline draining, his shoulders slumping.

  He looks around, defeated, as the five targets are zip-tied and lifted to their feet, still dazed—if they’re conscious at all.

  Then his eyes move up to the corner of the room.

  At the camera looking down on him.

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  Guten Tag,” Suliman says, giving a small salute to the soldier who cannot see him. The soldier looks so disappointed that Suli almost feels sorry for him.

  Then he closes up his laptop as he is approached by the waiter at the outdoor tavern on the Spree, twenty kilometers away from the penthouse.

  “Will there be anything else tonight, sir?” says the waiter.

  “Just the bill,” says Suliman. He needs to get going. It’s a long boat ride.

  Chapter

  85

  Inside the black communications tent, Chancellor Richter ends his phone call. “I’m sorry, Mr. President.”

  “Gone without a trace?” I ask.

  “Yes. The other people captured in the raid say he left approximately two hours ago.”

  He was one step ahead of us, as usual.

  “I…I need to think,” I say.

  I part the flaps of the tent and walk back up to the cabin. My hopes were up, more than I cared to admit. That was our best chance. The last person who could stop the virus.

  I walk into the basement, Alex Trimble trailing me. I hear them even from the hallway, before I enter the war room.

  I stop at the door, keeping a distance. The techies are huddled over a speakerphone, no doubt talking with the rest of our threat-response team at the Pentagon.

  “I’m saying if we inverted the sequence!” Devin is saying into the phone. “You do know what inverted means, don’t you? You have a dictionary there somewhere?”

  From the speakerphone: “But WannaCry didn’t—”

  “This isn’t WannaCry, Jared! This isn’t ransomware. This is nothing like WannaCry. This is nothing like anything I’ve ever freakin’ seen.” Devin throws an empty water bottle across the room.

  “Devin, listen, all I’m saying is the back door…”

  As the speaker continues talking, Devin looks up at Casey. “He’s still talking about WannaCry. He’s making me wanna cry.”

  Casey paces back and forth. “This is a dead end,” she says.

  I turn and leave the room. They’ve already answered my question.

  “I’m going to the communications room,” I tell Alex. He follows me to the door, but I enter alone.

  I close the door behind me. Turn off the light.

  I sink to the floor and squeeze my eyes shut, though it is already dark.

  I reach into my pocket, take out my Ranger coin, and start reciting.

  “I volunteered as a Ranger, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession…”

  The utter destruction of a nation of three hundred million people. Three hundred million people, ruined and desperate and terrified, everything stolen from them—their safety, their security, their savings, their dreams—everything shattered by a few geniuses with a computer.

  “…my country expects me to move further, faster and fight harder than any other soldier…

  “…I will shoulder more than my share of the task, whatever it may be, 100 percent and then some…”

  Hundreds of test computers, used and useless. Our best experts utterly clueless about how to stop the virus. A virus that could hit at any minute, the one man capable of stopping the virus toying with us, watching from a remote location as German special forces invaded his penthouse.

  “…I shall defeat them on the field of battle…

  “Surrender is not a Ranger word.”

  Maybe not, but if the virus takes hold, I will have no choice but to impose the most authoritarian of measures just to keep people from killing one another for food, clean water, and shelter.

  If that happens, we will be unrecognizable. We will no longer be the United States of America as anyone has ever known it or conceived of it. To say nothing of the fact that with all the troubles on the streets of America, there’s a real chance we’ll find ourselves in a war with the likelihood of nuclear exchanges greater than at any time since Kennedy and Khrushchev.

  I need to talk to somebody besides myself. I grab my phone and dial my go-to guy. After three rings, Danny Akers picks up.

  “Mr. President,” he says.

  Just hearing his voice lifts my spirits.

  “I don’t know what to do, Danny. I feel like I’ve walked right into an ambush. I’m out of rabbits and hats to pull them out of. They might beat us this time. I don’t have the answer.”

  “You will, though. You always do, always have.”

  “But this is different.”

  “Remember when you deployed with Bravo Company to Desert Storm? What happened? Even though you hadn’t even been to Ranger School yet, they made you a corporal so you could be team leader after Donlin got wounded in Basra. Probably the fastest rise to team leader in Bravo Company history.”

  “That was different, too.”

  “You didn’t get promoted for no reason, Jon. Especially over all the other people who’d been to the academy. Why?”

  “I don’t know. But that was—”

  “Shit, I even heard about it stateside. It got around. The lieutenant said that when Donlin went down and you were under enemy fire, you stepped up. He called you ‘a born leader who kept his head and found a way.’ He was right. Jonathan Lincoln Duncan—and I’m not saying this because I love you—there is no one I’d rather have in charge right now.”

  Whether he’s right or not, and whether I believe it or not, I am in charge. Time to quit whining and suck it up.

  “Thanks, Danny.” I push myself to my feet. “You’re full of shit, but thanks.”

  “Keep your head and find a way, Mr. President,” he says.

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  I punch out the phone call and flip on the overhead light. Before I can open the door, I get another call. It’s Carolyn.

  “Mr. President, I have Liz on the line.”

  “Mr. President, we conducted the polygraph on the vice president,” says Liz. “The results were inconclusive.”

  “Meaning what?” I ask.

  “Meaning ‘no opinion on deception,’ sir.”

  “So what do we make of that?”

  “Well, sir, candidly, it was the most likely outcome. We threw together questions quickly when we would normally draft them with great care. And the stress level she’s under, whether innocent or guilty, is tremendous.”

  I passed a lie-detector test once. The Iraqis gave me one. They asked me all kinds of questions about troop movements and locations of assets. I lied to them six ways to Sunday, but I passed. Because I was taught countermeasures. It was part of my training. There are ways to beat the box.

  “Do we give her points for volunteering for a polygraph?” I ask.

  “No, we don’t,” says Carolyn. “If she fails the test, she blames it on stress and she asks that very question—why would I volunteer for a polygraph if I knew I’d fail it?”

  “And besides,” Liz Greenfield adds, “she had to know that sooner or later we’d come around to polygraphing her and everyone else. So she was volunteering for something she knew she’d have to do eventually anyway.”

  They’re right. Kathy would be tactical enough to have thought this through.

  Jesus, we can’t catch a break.

  “Carolyn,” I say, “it’s time to make the ph
one calls.”

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  87

  Mr. Chief Justice, I wish I could tell you more,” I say into the phone. “All I can say right now is that it’s important that the members of the Court are secure, and it’s critical that I keep an open communications channel with you.”

  “I understand, Mr. President,” says the chief justice of the United States. “We are all secure. And we are all praying for you and our country.”

  The phone call with the Senate majority leader goes much the same way as he and his leadership team are moved to underground bunkers.

  Lester Rhodes, instinctively suspicious of me after I lay out as much as I can for him, says, “Mr. President, what kind of a threat are we looking at?”

  “I can’t give you that right now, Lester. I just need you and your leadership team secured. As soon as I can tell you, I will.”

  I hang up before he can ask me what this means for next week’s select committee hearing, which assuredly was on his mind. He probably thinks I’m trying to throw up some diversion to distract the country from what he’s trying to do to me. A guy like Lester, it’s the first place his mind would travel. Here we are, treating this like a DEFCON 1 scenario, including taking action to secure the continuity of our government, and he’s still treating it like cheap politics.

  Inside the communications room, I click on the laptop and summon Carolyn Brock.

  “Mr. President,” she says, “they’re all secure in the operations center.”

  “Brendan Mohan?” I say, referring to my national security adviser.