Page 19 (1/2)

“Phillips, I don’t give a f.u.c.k if the gate is built right on top of a compound full of orphans and nuns. I’m taking it out.”

“Charlie, come on. You’re talking about two-thousand-pound bombs on U. S. soil. We have to get approval from Murray on this.”

“No we don’t,” Ogden said. “I have authority from the president to make any necessary battlefield decisions up to Option Number Four. That one has to come from the big man himself. Other than that, it’s my call.”

“But that order was from President Hutchins. Gutierrez probably doesn’t even know about it.”

“I have my orders,” Ogden said. “We have to strike immediately, and with force. Nice work uncovering this location, Dew. All I can say is thank G.o.d we’ve got Dawsey. He’s the only thing keeping us in this game. Ogden out.”

Charlie broke the connection.

Dew put the handset back in its cradle.

Thank G.o.d we’ve got Dawsey. Imagine that. The kid was twelve doughnuts shy of a baker’s dozen, and he was their ace in the hole. What would ol’ Charlie have thought if he knew that Dew had almost shot Dawsey in the mouth with the .45? Sorry, Charlie, our ace in the hole has a hole in his head.

Dew rubbed his face with both hands, then picked up the handset again. The explosion caused by the Strike Eagles’ bomb run would be huge, probably even register on seismographs. Covering up such a thing would require spin, obfuscation and lies. And for something like that, there was no one in the world better than Murray Longworth.

YOU DROPPED A BOMB ON ME

The Situation Room buzzed with conversation. Images of the Marinesco gate lit up most of the flat-panel monitors.

To Murray there was something inherently defeating about that image. Via satellite, drone and surveillance planes, they had watched Ogden’s men attack the gate in South Bloomingville. They had watched it catch fire, watched it burn and crumble, and yet here was a second gate that looked almost exactly the same.

Other monitors showed digital maps of Michigan; a green circle in the Upper Peninsula marking the gate, F-15 icons marking the position of Ogden’s Strike Eagles. Those planes were just edging over Lake Michigan—they had already covered half the distance from South Bloomingville to Marinesco.

One large monitor showed nothing but a countdown: fifteen minutes, twenty-three seconds and counting. When that hit zero, the Strike Eagles would drop their payloads . . . unless the president called off the attack.

Gutierrez had given up on trying to look presidential. Small beads of sweat dotted his forehead. Despite appearances, though, he hadn’t given in to the stress. He asked intelligent questions, he demanded intelligent answers and he had the Joint Chiefs jumping at his commands.

“G.o.ddamit, gentlemen,” Gutierrez said. “You cannot tell me we have no other forces that can reach Marinesco and attack that gate in the next fifteen minutes.”

“That’s exactly what we’re telling you,” said General Hamilton Barnes. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, delivery of most military-related bad news fell to him, although Monty Cooper, the marines’ top man, wasn’t afraid to enter into the conversation uninvited.

“Mister President, sir,” Cooper said. “We are in the middle of fighting two wars and a police action on foreign soil. Even if our troops were not badly depleted because of that, there is no way we could put a company-size element into play in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in less than an hour. The fastest-responding unit is the Division Ready Force, from the Eighty-second Airborne. First-response elements of the DRF can be anywhere in the world in eighteen hours, anywhere in the United States in probably seven, and you have no idea how fast that is in military terms. With all due respect, sir, we can’t just wave a f.u.c.king magic wand and make troops appear.”