The Threat

John Wilkes Booth, Leon Czolgosz, Lee Harvey Oswald. All loners, misfits with a grudge. That was how they’d paint Dan Lenson.…

Turbine whining, transmission making tortured noises, the huge machine dropped like a meteor, the slanted ground rushing up so fast it seemed impossible they could ever stop.

* * *

No more than a minute could have passed since he’d told McKoy they had a problem. Each of those seconds had been filled with so much terror and noise it had seemed ten times longer than its objective existence. Just now, the fingers of one hand digging into the seat fabric so hard he felt his nails breaking, he was helping the agent stuff things back into the satchel with the other. His hand shook as he very cautiously slid the radio and battery inside. McKoy held out the red book. Dan shouted, “You keep that. I’ll get off with everything else.”

“Oh no. I’ll take it.”

“Who’s staying with the president?”

“She is.” McKoy jerked his head, and Dan saw Leigh crouched and braced, pistol pointed, between him and the De Baris. She looked ready to use it.

Out the window he glimpsed cars and box buildings, the storefronts of a megamall. They flared out over a traffic-crowded highway, barely missing a web of power lines. He saw the pilot’s intent: to set them down in a sprawling lot ahead.

Unfortunately it was packed with vehicles. Glancing up, he saw the colonel speaking fast into his throat mike. The copilot was stabbing his finger earthward with great emphasis.

The elevator dropped again. Asphalt rushed up with sickening velocity. The roofs of individual SUVs and minivans took shape out of the glitter. Dan didn’t know where they were. Somewhere in northern Virginia, but from the huge logos on the great brick fronts, Goodyear, Applebee’s, Barnes & Noble, Circuit City, they could be anywhere from Maine to California.

* * *

They touched down a hundred yards from Sears on a ring road. He was braced for a hard landing, but at the last minute the colonel flared again and they settled with hardly a bump. A station wagon skidded to a halt, tires smoking. A woman dragged two children back by their collars. Faces stared openmouthed up through windshields. A crewman dropped the door and sunlight flooded in.

McKoy whipped around. Before Dan could react, he’d snatched the satchel from his hands. “Stay here,” he bawled. His feet hammered down the ladder.

Dan followed without hesitation, even as the engines wound up again and the wheels lifted. He leaped off the rising steps, ignoring the woman’s shout behind him. Stay here? Right. He’d brought the thing aboard. He’d be the prime suspect. Was McKoy in on this? What if he disappeared with the case?

He fell ten or twelve feet and hit the asphalt so hard it slammed the breath out of him. He sprawled forward, feeling, though not yet accompanied by any pain, the rough pavement plane the skin off his outstretched palms, hearing the seams rip in his uniform.

If there really was a bomb in that satchel, a lot of things that had happened lately might not have been what he’d thought they were. His transfer to the East Wing — the previous Navy aide’s accident in the parking garage—

He ground his teeth, trying to get his feet under him. Maybe even what he’d thought, or been led to think, about Blair and De Bari.

Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to set this up. If the PES disappeared — and how easy that would be, in this chaotic swirl of cars and shoppers — they might never find out who’d rigged it. Who’d tried to kill the president, and everyone else aboard.

McKoy had his ID folder out, his badge. Flourishing it, he was screaming at what was becoming quite the little gathering of suburban rubberneckers, pushing shopping carts and baby strollers. It wasn’t every day Marine One touched down at the mall. Everyone within a quarter mile was headed their way.

The satchel sat on the asphalt not far from a branch bank. Customers stared from the ATM line. Behind Dan the turbine-howl grew again to an earsplitting roar. He looked up to see the huge machine passing over them, a few hundred feet up, blowing down hot smoke and rotor-wash.

Dan hesitated, looking at McKoy. Then at the satchel. It looked lonely, sitting deserted between the painted lines of an empty parking space.

Swallowing the bitter metal-taste of fear, he took a step toward it.

McKoy hollered over his shoulder at him, cheeks distorted with rage. The engines were howling overhead, so Dan couldn’t make out the words. He figured the Secret Service agent was telling him to back off. Leave it alone.

He took another step, feeling the wind tearing at his uniform as the helicopter made another low pass. The rotor-wash whipped up paper cups, fast-food wrappers, discarded receipts.

Turning his back on the wind, forcing his reluctant legs into motion, he lurched the last few yards and sank to his knees.

* * *