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Her eyes wanted to shift away from mine, but she was too well trained. “Dead,” she said. “We lost seventeen of twenty-two agents on this detail. This thing it . . . it’s worse than we thought.”
“No shit. Where’s POTUS?”
“I’m here,” said a voice.
I turned to see the president standing in the doorway to a suite halfway down the hall. He was in shirtsleeves and there wasn’t a drop of blood on him. His hair was even combed. He had one agent and four cops with him, all of them with guns drawn and barrels pointing to the floor in front of them. Only one was so scared that his gun barrel was pointing at the top of his own foot. The president looked me up and down as we walked toward each other. “Captain Ledger. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Over the years I’ve worked with a lot of commanders in chief. Some I respected, some I was indifferent to, and a few were worthless cocksuckers. This guy was pretty good, from what I’d heard from friends on the inside of the White House power circles. A moderate who tried to work with people on both sides of the aisle. Fifty-something, slim, black haired and gray eyes. But there was something too slick and polished about him. He looked like a movie version of a president rather than the real thing. He was one of those people that other people usually liked at once. Charisma and a good plastic surgeon. My immediate take on him was “manipulative self-absorbed asshole.”
He didn’t offer his hand and instead stood there, giving me the kind of measuring look that was supposed to make me think he was assessing everything about me and making reliable deductions. Good luck with that. I don’t look like a psychopath, but my shrink tells me otherwise. I have a smile that crinkles the skin around my eyes, I have good teeth and a deep-water tan. I could just as easily have come from Central Casting. I know for sure he didn’t know my backstory because it’s been comprehensively erased from all databanks. A side-benefit of working for Rogue Team International. We are, for
all intents and purposes, ghosts. We get the backgrounds we need for a mission. All the president could really know was when he asked for the right guy.
Thing is, I am that guy. And I wish to fuck I’d been in-country when Lucifer slipped the leash. Maybe I’d have figured something out. I usually do. I know that sounds arrogant as fuck, but it is what it is. There’s a reason I get sent into places like this. Top and Bunny, too.
“Where do we stand?” I asked. Maybe I should have added “sir,” but I wasn’t in the mood.
“My motorcade was hit on the way here,” said the president. “They swarmed us. We lost . . . nearly everyone. The press corps, my aides . . . gone. I need to get out of here. I need to get somewhere safe. Air Force One is at Gillespie Field in El Cajon.”
“I thought we were supposed to take you to the Blue Estate on the National Guard base.”
“Plans change. I need to get to my plane. They tell me you can get me there.”
He said “I” and “me.” Not “us.”
I searched his eyes, looking for remorse, looking for some trace of compassion for the people who’d died to get him through the swarm and up to this room. Not seeing all that much of it.
“Had to be a hundred of those things,” he said.
“They’re people,” I said, mostly to be a dick.
“They were people. They’re not anymore,” he said, which was fair enough, but I did not give him even so much as a grunt of agreement.
Murphy, who stood next to me, said, “We came here because it was a pre-selected rally point. But there were more of the, um, infected in the streets. The motorcade was swarmed. That’s when we lost the AIC and a lot of the others. Had some marines in plainclothes, too, but the crowd . . . well . . . ”
I nodded. “How many made it up here?”
“Counting Mary here,” said the president, “and Murphy over there, I have five Secret Service left in my detail. And two of my aides.”
“That’s it?” I was appalled. The president motorcade is made up of twenty-five to thirty vehicles. Lots of security, as well as members of the press, and key aides. There’s often a hazardous materials team riding point with local police behind them and more cops in follow cars at the tail end. It’s a lot of people in a lot of vehicles. And the president’s car is armored. Traffic is blocked ahead and on cross streets. “Sir, what about your family? Were they with you?”
The president shook his head. “I sent them to a secure location in Virginia.” He paused, then added. “We haven’t had a status report yet.”
I listened for some real heart, some pain, some depth of feeling in his tone, but there was not enough of it there. It surprised me. The news reports always showed him with his pretty wife and three kids. They were always smiling, always clinging close to one another. Which meant what, when measured against his reaction now? Was he so good at playing the controlled politician that his hurt didn’t show? Or was he one of those sociopathic types for whom everyone else—even family—were a little unreal, like window dressing?
Or was I being too hard on him? After all, he’d just seen a lot of friends die, along with the people sworn to protect him. If San Diego was any indication of what was really happening across America, then there could be hundreds of thousands of people dead. Maybe a million. Was the calm, indifferent façade just that—a front erected over his very human fears? Pretending detachment so that he stayed detached? The more human part of me wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Okay,” I said, “we’ll get you out.”
The president took my elbow and guided me a few yards down the hall, away from his guards.
“Your orders are to get me out, Captain,” he said quietly.
“That’s what I—”
“Me,” he repeated, leaning on the word. “If you have enough transport to get everyone else out, that’s fine. But I need to know that you understand the key element of your mission here.”
He still held onto my elbow.
