Zetter was, finally, with the program. Finally getting it right, but it was still so insanely wrong.
On the screen, one by one the helicopters began to fire on the crowds.
General Armistad Burroughs growled, “All pilots, you are cleared to deploy all weapons. Deploy all rockets, all missiles.”
Once more there was a lag in obeying those orders.
Once more the president had to repeat the orders.
And once more the helicopters obeyed, one by one, slowly at first, and then with the kind of wild aggression Blair knew was only born from panic and despair.
The helicopters rained fire down on the road. Rockets struck pockets of shambling dead and exploded like parodies of big-budget movie special effects. In the movies, though, people flew away from explosions, pulled by wires or digitally added as computer graphics. Here, the people burst apart in ragged pieces that lacked art or style. And though real explosions are always less dynamic than movie special effects, they were far more horrible in their understated destruction.
Automobile gas tanks exploded one after the other, lifting the tail ends of Toyotas and Fords and Coopers and Hyundais with equal indifference and efficiency. Chain guns stitched endless lines of holes along pavements, through automobile skin, and through flesh and bone. The living and the living dead crumpled under the cudgel blows of rapid-fire lead. The living died and stayed down. The dead, those with no traumatic damage to their brains or brain stems, rose again; less whole, less human-looking, but infinitely more monstrous. The living tried to hide from the dead and from the rain of fire; the dead were indifferent to it, walking or running or crawling after the fresh meat, stopping only when the spark of life was blown from their central nervous systems.
Blair and the president stood together, their eyes open and mouths slack at the hell unfolding on the screen.
Then Blair forced his mouth to speak. He turned to the Air Force general. “General Susco, where are we with the fuel-air bombs?”
“We have four MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones fitted out and on deck. We can have them in the air in—”
“ETA?” interrupted Blair. “What’s the flight time?”
Susco didn’t even pause. “Twenty-two minutes and change and that includes launch time.”
“Shit.”
“And we have four A-10 Thunderbolt II’s from the 104th Fighter Squadron at the Warfield Air National Guard Base in Maryland. Fires are lit and all they need is the word.”
Blair again touched the president. “Sir, we have to order them in now.”
The president’s entire attention was locked on the screen.
Blair wanted to punch him. He had never in his entire life wanted to beat anyone as badly or as brutally as he did this man. Before he even knew he was going to do it, he grabbed the president’s sleeve, spun him around, and backhanded him across the mouth. Blair was not a big man but there was so much rage, so much fear in every ounce of his body that the blow sent the president crashing sideways against the edge of the big table. Blood burst from torn lips.
And a split second later Blair was on the floor, his body exploding from sudden agony in his back and the after-impression of a Secret Service agent kidney-punching him. He was slammed to the carpet with a knee on his cheek and a pistol barrel screwed into his ear. Someone clicked cuffs onto his wrist, cinching them painfully tight.
“No … no!” bellowed someone, and through the pain Blair realized that it was the president’s voice. From the corner of his eye, past the knee of the Secret Service agent kneeling on his face, Blair could see an agent and General Burroughs helping the president to his feet. Blood streamed down onto the president’s chest, staining his white shirt, dripping onto his shoes. “Leave him alone, goddamn it. Let him up. I am ordering you to uncuff him and let him up. Christ, someone get me a cloth.”
The agents hauled Blair roughly to his feet and took the cuffs off, but they weren’t gentle with either task. He stood there, legs weak and trembling, his right hand beginning to swell from where his knuckles clipped the president’s cheek. The president gave him a look of savage intensity, but for the first time since the crisis began there was that old spark in POTUS’s eyes. That old fire. The fuck-you blaze that had won him the primaries and enabled him to bully his way through brutal debates and a nail-biter of an election. The fires that had allowed this man to play hardball with Iran and North Korea, to refuse to be bent over a barrel by the Chinese.
This was his president.
The president pointed a finger at General Susco. “Scramble the jets. Launch the drones. Stop this.”
The general began shouting orders into a phone.
Blair sagged with relief and fatigue.
But then the president grabbed a fistful of his necktie and pulled Blair so close they were breathing the same air. Secret Service men closed in on both sides but the president growled them back. He tightened his hold on Blair and in the coldest, most dangerous voice Blair had ever heard the president use, said, “Call Sam Imura and tell him to get me those flash drives. Now.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
“This does not look good,” said Trout. Beside him, Dez simply shook her head.