Jack Mars - Any Means Necessary

No. That was wrong. No one could help them.

If they laid so much as a finger…

Now that he was stuck in here, he could feel the rage begin to boil inside him. The Vice President, the car chase, all of it – it had taken his mind off things. But now there was nothing to distract him.

Then, of course, there was Susan Hopkins. He had left her with Ed, and Brenna and Berg. They were capable men, especially Ed. But if Luke was still alive, he should really be there with them.

He felt like screaming.

He walked over to the bench and sat down. Within a minute, a guy had peeled himself off the bench along the far wall and ambled over to Luke. He was a big young guy, well-muscled, with a Chicago Bulls jersey on. He had a crazy tangled mass of Afro atop his head. He smiled, and one of his front teeth was gold.

He crouched down in front of Luke.

“Hey, bro, you okay?”

A quiet round of titters and chuckles went around among the men in the cell.

Luke looked at him. “The President died tonight. Bro.”

The guy nodded. “Heard about that. I guess that don’t really bother me. Never voted for the man.”

Luke shrugged. “Can I help you?”

The guy gestured with his chin. “I noticed your boots. They’re nice.”

Now Luke nodded. He looked down at his own feet and the leather boots he was wearing. “You’re right. They are nice. My wife gave them to me last Christmas.”

“What kind are they?”

“They’re Ferragamo. I think she paid about six hundred bucks for them. My wife likes to buy me nice things. She knows I’d never buy them for myself.”

“Give them to me,” the young guy said.

Luke shook his head. “I can’t do that. They have sentimental value. Anyway, I don’t think they would fit you.”

“I want them.”

Luke looked around the cell. Every set of eyes was on him. He could imagine how for someone, this might be a tense and frightening situation.

“I think you better go sit down,” he said. “I’m not in a very good mood right now.”

The kid’s eyes flashed anger. “Give me those shoes.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “You want them? Take them.”

The kid nodded and smiled. He glanced around the cell. Now there was outright laughter. The big tough thug was going to steal the white man’s shoes. He leaned in and reached for Luke’s feet.

Luke paused a beat, then kicked the kid in the mouth. It was a lightning strike. The kid’s head snapped back. Teeth went flying, maybe three of them in all. One was the gold tooth in the front. The kid fell backwards. He ended up on his knees, bent over, his hands to his mouth.

Luke sighed. He stood up, stepped up behind the kid, and punched him hard in the back of the neck, right where the spinal column attached to the bottom of the skull. The kid collapsed to the grimy floor. His eyes rolled back. In a few seconds, he was unconscious. A few seconds later, he started making an odd snoring sound.

Luke looked around the cell. He had been in a bad mood before. The young shoe robber had only made it worse. Luke would beat every man in here half to death, if that’s what they wanted from him.

“The next man who fucks with me loses all his teeth,” he said, loud enough that everyone could hear him.

They all stared back, mouths agape, then all finally looked away. Their eyes, so filled with bloodlust but moments before, were now filled with something else: fear.

5:45 a.m.

United States Naval Observatory – Washington, DC

His name was William Theodore Ryan.

He was the great-great-grandson of plantation gentry. His people, for generations, were proud Confederates and rebels. And here he was, the President of the United States of America.

He was as tired as he could ever remember. He had barely slept last night. Before first light, he had insisted they fly back to Washington from Site R. There was no sense staying underground, was there? The threat was over. And it would show the American people how courageous he was. He wasn’t going to hide in a hole in the ground while more than three hundred million people had to go on with their lives above ground, vulnerable to foreign attack.

He smiled at the thought of it.

He sat in sitting area of the upstairs office of the Vice President’s official residence. Outside the windows, weak light was entering the sky. The house itself was beautiful, a huge white Queen Anne with gables and a turret on the lovely, rolling grounds of the Naval Observatory. It dated to the mid-1800s and generations of Vice Presidents had called it home. Now it would serve as the White House until the original could be rebuilt.

On the sofa across from him sat Senator Edward Graves of Kansas. Later today, at the age of seventy-two, Ed was going to become the oldest Vice President in modern U.S. history. Ed Graves was a military expert, and had been chairman of the Congressional Armed Forces Committee since the world was young. Ed had been one of his mentors for almost twenty years now.

Between them a black speaker phone sat on the table. It squawked, as an undersecretary from the Joint Chiefs gave them a quick update on events in the Middle East. Things were tense, but seemed to be going well.

“Sir,” the voice said, “on your orders, two American F-118 fighter jets entered Iranian airspace at approximately 1:45 p.m. local time, just about half an hour ago.”

“Status?” Bill Ryan said.

“Within two minutes, they were intercepted and engaged by three Iranian jets, we believe them to be outdated Russian Mig fighters. The F-118s destroyed the Iranian jets after a brief dogfight. Radar picked up the presence of at least a dozen more Iranian fighters converging on the area, so the F-118s retreated to Turkish airspace. The Iranians turned back at the border.”

“Okay,” Ryan said. “What else?”

“Two listening stations, one in Japan and one in Alaska, have reported that as many as half a dozen Russian missile silos in eastern Siberia have switched to a state of full combat readiness in the past twenty minutes. The silos have as primary targets major metropolitan areas along the West Coast, including Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. They have acquired and locked on to their targets.”

“Jesus. Why are they doing that?”

“We’re not sure, sir. The timing seems related to the Iranian airspace incursion, but the chatter we’re picking up suggests some confusion at the Russian Central Command. We don’t believe those silos have gone rogue, but they do seem to have misunderstood their orders.”

Ryan looked at Ed. It was typical of the Russians to have their heads that far up their own asses. What were they going to do, start a nuclear war over Iran? He had to admit, though, there was something exhilarating about all this brinksmanship. He had been President less than eight hours.

Ryan addressed the voice. “Do we have missiles that target those Russian silos?”

“Yes sir, we do.”

“Then ramp those missiles up to combat readiness, and make sure the Russians know about it. They need to get their boys in line. If we show ’em our guns, maybe they’ll see we mean business over here.”

The voice on the other end hesitated. “Yes sir.”

“Anything else?”

“Not at this moment, sir.”

Ryan turned off the phone. It was very quiet in the room. He looked at Ed Graves.

“Thoughts?”

Ed’s hands rested on his knees. They were gnarled and liver-spotted hands, like old tree trunks. Ed’s face was craggy and lined. His nose was bulbous, and crisscrossed with broken blood vessels. But his eyes were like twin laser beams.

“It’s silly,” he said, “to send two planes across the border. Why are we testing them? We know what they can do, and we know what we can do. They attacked us first, right? They killed our President.”