By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

The pilot nodded.

“Six-Zero-One, turn off at the first available taxiway,” Hunter ground control ordered the smaller jet. “Be advised there is a 747 on the parallel. Turn left on the parallel. Hold at the threshold.”

“Roger,” the pilot replied. “Thank you for advising about taxiway traffic. I might have not seen that airplane.”

“You’re welcome, Six-Zero-One,” the ground traffic controller replied with a chuckle in his voice.

“And by the way, Hunter,” the pilot said, “I think that’s a VC-25A, not a 747.”

“Thank you so much, Six-Zero-One,” the controller replied. “Duly noted.”

“Hunter, Air Force Two-Nine-Triple-Zero, I have that cute little airplane in sight and will endeavor not to run over it.”

“Two-Nine-Triple-Zero,” the pilot of the Citation said. “It’s not nice to make fun of little airplanes, especially ones flown by birdmen in their dotage.”

“Who is that?” the copilot of the Citation asked. “Jerry?”

“It sounds like him,” the pilot said.

Both the pilot and the copilot of the Citation knew Air Force VC-25A tail number 29000 well. Both had more than a thousand hours at the controls of it, or its identical twin, tail number 28000. Flying the specially configured Boeings —whose call sign changed to Air Force One whenever the president of the United States was on board—had been their last assignment before their retirement.

Twenty-nine, both believed, was now being flown—or, actually, both strongly suspected, just taxied to the end of the runway for a precautionary engine run-up—by Colonel Jerome T. McCandlish, USAF, whom they had, after exhaustive tests and examinations, signed off on two years before as qualified to fly the commander in chief.

The proof—in addition to the sound of his voice— seemed to be that he had recognized the tail number on the Citation and felt sure he knew who was flying it.

Citation tail number NC-3055 was the aircraft provided for the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, although there was nothing to suggest this in its appearance. It was intended to look like—and did look like—most other Citations. And with the exception of some very special avionics not available on the civilian market it was essentially just like every other Citation X in the air.

“Miss it, Jack?” the pilot inquired as 29000 fell behind them.

“Sure,” the copilot said. “Don’t you?”

“The question is, ‘Would I go back tomorrow?,’ ” the pilot said, “and the answer is, ‘No, I don’t think so.’ This is just about as much fun, and it’s a hell of a lot less . . .”

“Responsibility?”

"I was going to say that, but . . . work. It’s a lot less work.”

"I agree.”

When the time had come for them to be replaced as pilots -in-command of the presidential aircraft—six months apart—they had been offered, within reason, any assignment appropriate to full colonels and command pilots. There were problems with the word “appropriate.” They were led to understand that although colonels command groups, it would not really be appropriate for them to be given command of, for example, one of the groups in the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command.

That would be a great flying job, but the cold facts were that they had spent very little time at the controls of various C-130 aircraft, such as the Spectre and Spooky gunships best known for their fierce cannons, and actually knew very little about what Special Operations really did.

The same was true of taking command of a fighter wing or a bomber wing. Although both had once been fighter pilots and bomber pilots, that had been early on in their careers, decades ago, and now they were almost in their fifties.

What was appropriate, it seemed, was command of one of the Flying Training Wings in the Nineteenth Air Force. They had training experience, and knowing that they were being taught how to fly by pilots who had flown the commander in chief in Air Force One would certainly inspire fledgling birdmen.

So would becoming a professor at the Air Force Academy be appropriate and for the same reasons. It would also be appropriate for them to become air attachés at a major American embassy somewhere; they certainly had plenty of experience being around senior officials, foreign and domestic. But that would not be a flying assignment and they both wanted to continue flying.

Their other option was to retire and get a civilian flying job. The problem there was the strong airline pilots’ unions, which made absolutely sure every newly hired airline pilot started at the bottom of the seniority list. No matter how much time one had at the controls of a 747/VC-25A, those airline pilot positions went only to pilots who had worked their way up the seniority ladder.

In favor of retirement, however, was that the Air Force retirement pay wasn’t bad, and they would get it in addition to what they would make sitting in the copilot’s seat of a twin-engine turboprop of Itsy-Bitsy Airlines, and both had just about decided that’s what it would be when the rag-heads flew skyjacked 767s into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania ground.

The Department of Homeland Security had come out of that, and, with that, the secretary of Homeland Security. Even before Congress had passed the necessary legislation—there had been no doubt that it was going to happen—certain steps were taken, among them providing the secretary designate with suitable air transportation.

He didn’t need a VC-25A, of course, or even another of the airliner-sized transports in the Air Force inventory. What he needed was a small, fast airplane to carry him on a moment ’s notice wherever he had to go.

The Citation X, which was capable of carrying eight passengers 3,300 miles—San Francisco, for example, to Washington —in fewer than four hours, was just what was needed. There is always a financial cushion in the budget of the Secret Service to take care of unexpected expenses, and this was used to rent the Citation from Cessna.