How like Tony he’d looked, but not now. She’d shot him in the back and in the head. Staring at him, she felt huge relief. Now you’re dead, you monster. She drew a deep breath and waited. If she hadn’t had her ankle gun, who knew if they would have stopped him escaping. No, surely the Secret Service would have grabbed him. Though they’d only seen their guy—their agent—not Damari. Now that he was dead, she could give him the credit for coming up with a remarkable plan.
She sucked in a deep breath and smiled up at the soldier with his gun trained on her face. Another soldier spoke to him and he pulled his gun away, holstered it. He was young, not older than she was and he was pale, adrenaline raging through him. He flicked a gaze toward Damari. “You killed him dead. Excellent shooting on the move like that.”
“Yes, thankfully, yes. It’s not Tony, it’s Zahir Damari.”
“You did good,” another soldier said, and pulled her to her feet and formally handed her back her small Glock.
Then Nicholas was there and he stood beside her and together they watched two soldiers roll Damari over and stare down at a man who looked like Tony’s double. But not in death. No, not in death. The prosthetic nose was inches off-center, knocked sideways when he’d slid down the glass. An agent pulled the wig off as he felt for a pulse. When he shook his head, Mike’s heart slowed.
An agent pulled a wrist mike from Damari’s suit jacket cuff, lifted it to his ear, and said, “It’s live. This is a frigging live comms unit. He could hear everything we did, every move we made since he managed to sneak into Camp David.”
They turned from the ruin of the man to see the medic working on the president. He already had an IV started, and was pumping in something from a syringe.
“Nicholas, you said it was poison. How can they treat if they don’t know what the poison is?”
“They can’t. I imagine they’re most likely giving him Narcan. I don’t know if it will work on whatever this poison is, but it generally reverses the effects of an opioid overdose. They have to try something.”
Mike heard the medic say, “He’s not responding to the naloxone, continue chest compressions. I’m going to push flumazenil.”
Nicholas looked on, not moving, except he took her hand. “Damari succeeded, Mike. I was a second too late.”
Mike said matter-of-factly, “If you hadn’t knocked the glasses away, he’d surely be dead already, Callan, too. They have to figure out what was he given. It worked fast, so fast, he went down almost immediately.”
Nicholas suddenly jerked her after him. “Let’s get to the kitchen, maybe Damari left something behind.”
They found nothing except more chaos, more soldiers, pulling Tony and the chef from the pantry, a medic tending them.
Callan rushed into the room, knelt at Tony’s side as they worked on him.
“Will he make it?” Mike heard the awful deadening fear in her voice. She knew too well what Damari was capable of. She wondered idly why Damari hadn’t simply killed them.
“We’re doing our best, ma’am,” the medic said, not looking up. “He’s lost a lot of blood, but he’s still with us. Chef’s gonna be okay, he’s knocked out is all. Medevac is on the way, we’ll get them to the hospital, get them patched up.” He finally looked up at the vice president’s face. “The president, ma’am, will he live?”
Callan swallowed. “I don’t know.”
She looked over at Mike and Nicholas leaning against the counter, the cut on Nicholas’s forehead still trickling blood down the side of his face and onto the collar of his shirt from his collision with the fireplace. Callan walked to them, ignored the blood and embraced them both. They felt her shaking. Then she raised her head and smiled at them.
“Now I owe you my life, too.” She grabbed a towel from the kitchen counter and wiped the blood from Nicholas’s face. “The president will pull through this. He will.” And she raised her head at the sound of the Medevac helicopter landing on the back lawn. “And Tony will live.”
Friday
8 a.m.
82
ROOK TO C2 CHECKMATE
The White House Pressroom
Chief of staff to the vice president of the United States Quinn Costello gave her boss one last hair fluff, handed her a ChapStick, waited for her to smooth it on, then, “Are you ready, Madam Vice President?”
Callan was dressed to kill in a cream suit, heels. She was ready, more than ready. She handed the ChapStick back to Quinn. “I am. Let’s do it.”
The pressroom was packed full, easy to do considering how small it was. Callan had been shocked the first time she saw it—the iconic views were angled beautifully, didn’t show the foreshortened wall in the back of the room, the angle of the seats, the slope of the eastern and western walls. Everyone was smashed in like sardines, every D.C. reporter in their seats already, the room humming, all anxiously awaiting her.
There was no announcement. Callan simply walked in and stepped in front of the lectern. There was a brief moment of shuffling, as every person facing her leaned forward slightly.
She took a breath and said without preamble, “At five o’clock this morning, coalition forces launched air strikes against Iran’s key nuclear sites Arak, Isfahan, Qom, Natanz, and Bushehr, as well as research reactors in Bonab, Ramsar, Tehran, and Parchin. Simultaneously, military sites and identified hideouts of known Hezbollah leaders in Iran, Syria, and Lebanon were struck as well.