OUR LIFELINE TO CAMPBELL buzzed in my hand.
“They’re going to shoot us down,” I said calmly.
“As well they should,” Campbell said. “But I’ve gotten clearance, and a friend has instructed them to escort you to Camp David. I’m on my way. I’m bringing whomever I wish, and I have extra security.”
“That’s fine.”
“I don’t need your approval, General.”
She hung up, and I said to McCool, “Camp David. ASAP.”
“Roger,” she said.
We landed at the Camp David helipad, and after some discussion about refueling versus shutting down, we decided we needed the mobility, so McCool repositioned to the small refueling pad, making way for Marine One.
Hobart, Van Dreeves, and I stepped off the Beast looking like the cover of The Red Badge of Courage. It would not have surprised me if we were arrested on the spot; in fact, I braced for it when four bulky Secret Service agents manhandled us up against the wall, stripping us of phones and even my boot knife. We had left the more obvious weapons in the helicopter.
The agents then put metal handcuffs on us, and I figured this was it. Campbell had led us into a trap. She was being inaugurated and didn’t need this distraction.
“Garrett,” she said as we were perp marched into the helipad terminal. No presidential cabin for us. Campbell was seated in a large conference room with four more bodyguards. She was dressed in blue jeans, a Meredith College sweatshirt, and running shoes. Hardly inauguration attire.
The brutes shoved us into chairs at the table and drew pistols before clasping their hands in front of them in fig-leaf pose. The men stood directly behind us while the other four guards were directly behind Campbell. I recognized one of the men. Carson. He was the marine that had provided the seat belt cutter when I was strapped to the gurney in the Fort Detrick chemical test facility. I wondered what device he might have to help us this time.
To Campbell’s right were General Fillmore, CIA director Owens, and Secretary of State Estes. The West Pointers.
“Madame President-Elect,” I said. My nod and weak attempt at a slight smile took a notch off her hard-assed demeanor. I had played quarters with this woman in college and still believed I had some cachet with her.
“I’ll give you thirty minutes to tell me what you need to tell me, but this is my team going forward. President Davidson was kind enough to let me borrow them in the name of a smooth transition,” she said. “We just found Secretary Tharp’s body south of here. You’re the primary suspect. Donna Tharp was killed in a coffee shop in Arlington. You’re the primary suspect. CIA safe houses in Heidelberg and Yokkaichi have been raided. Missing from those safe houses are all the stockpiles of sarin gas. Hitler never used what he developed. And Hirohito shut down his operation after slinging tons of it at the Chinese. Point is, they both had leftovers.
“You are the only person who has been to both of those places in the last week. Your fingerprints are all over General Fillmore’s farm a few miles to the north of here. We found the missing stockpiles of sarin and a bunch of dead pigs. Only one container has a broken seal, and its volume analysis shows that the only missing sarin is that which was used on the pigs. Dariush Parizad has been seen in the D.C. Metro area. That’s what I know,” she said.
Clasping her hands in front of her, she grimaced and demanded, “Now tell me what you know.”
Nodding, I said, “I understand, ma’am.”
Before I could say anything further, Owens said, “As the president-elect said, President Davidson provided us to the incoming team to ensure a smooth transition of power. It seems you’re a major threat to that, General. Out of deference to your dead wife, I presume, President-Elect Campbell has given you the slightest of openings here. Use it wisely.”
I understood now, I was totally fucked. The Praetorian Guard of Estes, Owens, and now Fillmore were there to defend their plan and themselves.
Fillmore? My classmate and friend.
Had he been blinded by the potentiality of being the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Had he openly lent his family farm to Parizad as a staging base for his attacks? Betrayed a classmate?
Even more, they were ingratiating themselves to the incoming president in hopes that they would remain in place long enough to enact their crazy plan to invade Iran, or, more likely, Melissa had given them Campbell’s secret. Typically, we worried about enemy attacks during changes of command, but here were three West Point strategists who were exploiting that seam from the inside out.
“My team and I went on the Heidelberg and Yokkaichi missions on the orders of Director Owens and General Fillmore,” I said.
“That’s not true,” they both said in unison.
“What I have discovered is that General Fillmore, in his pursuit to become chairman—”
“Which he will,” Campbell interrupted.
“Yes, ma’am, in his pursuit for that position he has made a deal with Estes, Owens, and the recently deceased Tharp to allow Parizad a small attack in the United States in exchange for a strategic opening to have a ground war in Iran.”
“That’s not true,” Fillmore, Owens, and Estes said in unison. At least they had rehearsed.
“If it were true,” Campbell said. “we’ve stopped it. We found the sarin at General Fillmore’s farm. He arrived shortly after the fire started and immediately alerted all the authorities. His alertness also led to your capture and your team’s. You’re in handcuffs now. The real threat has been eliminated.”
I tried to understand where she was going with the line of total bullshit, but it seemed that she was in lockstep with her coconspirators. Had Campbell made a deal with this crew of hawks? Did she really want a war with Iran?
“There are two Mack trucks with close to a hundred crop-dusting drones filled with sarin gas arriving in D.C. right now. Your inauguration is the target.”
The Secret Service men surrounding the room were getting fidgety. They knew a crock of bullshit when they heard it. The question was, which crock were they nervous about?
“That’s not possible,” Owens said.
Campbell raised her hand to silence the CIA director.
“There’s no missing sarin gas. Don’t you see, Garrett? There is no threat. Parizad has disappeared. He’s on the run, most likely already headed back to Iran.”
Nodding again, I said, “That’s entirely possible, but in my best estimate, that’s not what is happening. I saw the trucks. The drones. The sarin.”
Van Dreeves followed up. “If I may, ma’am, I’m Master Sergeant Randy Van Dreeves.”
“I know who you are, Sergeant Dreeves,” she said.
Van Dreeves looked down and then back at her. “That’s Sergeant Van Dreeves. The Van is part of my last name.”
“What in the fuck does she care for, man?” General Fillmore shouted.
Campbell snapped her head toward Fillmore. I immediately understood what she was doing.
“Fred, let Randy continue,” I said quietly. I kept my eyes locked onto Fillmore as Van Dreeves spoke, anticipating a reaction.
“The Iranians have five Akula-class submarines, which they call Warriors, each with a hundred cruise missiles patrolling the Pacific Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Atlantic Ocean. Their targets are the energy infrastructure of our country. They intend to kill thousands at your inauguration, true, but they also intend to destroy our energy infrastructure, leaving our country without its leaders through the crisis. The Iranians have found a billion barrels of new oil in their northern provinces, and in ten minutes, this attack can flip us from independent to dependent on oil from the world. In particular, Iran.”
Campbell’s expression didn’t change. However, those of the West Pointers did. Fillmore’s eyes widened. Estes looked at Owens. Owens stared hard at Van Dreeves and said, “What. The. Fuck. Are you talking about? The Iranians don’t have Akula-class submarines!”
Campbell looked at me and said, “See the problem we have here? Everything you’re telling my team is just not true. But their bravery is. Is that all?”
Their bravery is true? The West Point motto. The class Melissa warned me about. Always seek … Brave and True.
Fillmore was frozen in time, his eyes staring at the far wall.
“If there’s nothing else for me,” Campbell said, “I’d like to return. I’ve a big day ahead. Less than seven hours.” Turning to the assembled team, she said, “There are vehicles to take the rest of you back.” And then, dismissively waving her hand in our direction, she said to her security, “You know what to do with them.”
As she left, Owens said, “I’d rather fly back.”
“No, Samantha, I need some time to think,” Campbell said. “A lot has happened in the last several hours. You, Fred, and Bob can sort this out.”
Owens’s face hardened, holding back multiple biting invectives, I was sure. She didn’t yet work for Campbell and wanted to at least hang on for a bit longer.
When Campbell departed, Carson, the commando who had helped me two days ago, walked her to the door and returned when the helicopter departed. As he came back in, he retrieved his pistol, aimed it at me.
Van Dreeves muttered, “Shit.”
Owens, the queen among her peers, said, “I’m in charge now. Lock them up.”
The four-member SEAL team that had been standing beside us moved forward and yanked us up from our chairs so that we were standing.
“Take them out back and do your thing as far as I care,” Owens said. “We’ve done far worse at our black sites.”
There was nothing the CIA wouldn’t stain, even Camp David.
Owens turned to Fillmore and said, “We launch at noon. It will be nightfall in Iran by then. I want planes, missiles, and the Eighty-Second fucking Airborne in Tehran by daybreak tomorrow.”
Carson grabbed my handcuffs and said, “Sorry, sir,” as he slid something heavy into my pocket.
“No problem,” I said.
The bracelet released at the same time that Carson and the other SEALs moved into the center of the room with pistols drawn, aimed at Estes, Owens, and Fillmore.
“Hands where I can see them!” they shouted.
“I’m doing no such thing. Now lock them up,” she demanded.
“Now,” Carson said.
“How dare you?!” Owens said.
I reached into my pocket and retrieved the Glock that Carson had placed there. I aimed it at Owens from maybe fifteen feet away and said, “Never bring a purse to a knife fight. Lock them up, team.”
In unison, the SEALs snapped the handcuffs on the protesting West Pointers. Admiral Tom Rountree stepped into the room and said, “We don’t have much time.”
I took a second and walked up to my classmate Fred Fillmore, whose shoulders were shrunken inward. His face was wet with tears. His mouth was contorted downward in a sob. I lifted his chin with the pistol barrel.
“Look at me, Fred.”
He opened his eyes. They were bloodshot and moist.
“I trusted you, classmate. You deal behind my back with these assholes for what? The chairman job? All you had to do was ask me to make a call, buddy. Instead, you stab me in the back. Melissa’s dead, and Brad is a hostage to the guy you’ve been talking to at your farm the last few days. Thanks, buddy fucker.”
I flicked the pistol barrel up, which snapped his head back, causing him to stumble into a burly SEAL, who latched onto him. Estes and Owens gasped at the mention of Brad’s name.
“Steadfast and Loyal, assholes,” I said as the SEALs marched him and the others outside. The bond between West Point classmates was typically unbreakable, and I was offended that Fillmore had not only broken that pledge of friendship and loyalty but worked against me and my family.
It had become clear to me that Melissa’s deathbed note—Always seek. Be Brave. Be True—was her way of warning me about Estes, Tharp, and Owens. I had been gone when it dawned upon her that they were conspiring against her and she couldn’t trust any form of communication to warn me other than her cryptic letter. Nor would she have wanted to endanger Brad or Reagan by telling them. Melissa—brave, true, steadfast, and loyal to the very end.
We followed them out, jumped in a large golf cart, and buzzed to the presidential cabin, where Campbell awaited. In the cabin was a small command post obviously set up by Admiral Rountree.
Two large-screen televisions were piping feed from drones somewhere above Washington, D.C., as they made cloverleaf patterns in small circles starting from the Mall and working outward. It could take forever to find the two trucks using this method, but it was better than nothing.
President-Elect Campbell was standing in front of the fireplace, arms crossed. A Revolutionary War musket hung on the mantel with a powder horn on one side and a drum on the other. A tattered Betsy Ross flag was framed above the musket. Except, as it turns out, this was not the president-elect.
“Directly before coming out here, President Davidson agreed to have me sworn in in private. I’m the president and have control. When Tom here showed him the intelligence, he understood that there needed to be continuity of power throughout the day.”
I nodded. It was a good move, and Davidson was probably more than happy to relinquish control so he could blame Campbell if everything went south.
“You guys can use this as your command center. The chopper is coming back around to get me, but I wanted to tell you two things, Garrett. I had nothing to do with Melissa’s death. My God, I’m horrified at the thought of what that brute Parizad did to her and what those assholes put her through! Interrogation. Torture. Drugs. My God.” She pointed in the direction of the helipad. Near tears, she said, “Melissa was my best friend. There’s nothing—I mean nothing—I wouldn’t have done for her.”
“Thank you,” I said. I didn’t believe her.
“The second thing is, I’m driving on with the real inauguration, even if it’s only for show. It’s an important message we send around the world. The bit about the sarin was true. There’s no evidence that anything is missing.”
“Ma’am, you can’t be serious.”
“A million people, Garrett. Maybe two million. First woman president. First big event post-COVID-19. This is too huge. You ever have a million people come to support you? We’ve doubled the numbers of law enforcement and radars. We’ve got some special drone-catching bullshit. I’m comfortable we’ve done everything we can.”
“I advise against this,” I said.
“Save that for when you’re chairman, which I’m offering you, by the way. Fillmore’s been up my ass for months.”
“I respectfully decline. I could never work for a president who so blatantly ignores my advice,” I said.
“Then solve the problem,” she said. “I’ve handed you the equivalent of John Wilkes Booth and his coconspirators the night before they killed Lincoln. Figure the rest out. I don’t want anyone to know how terrible my judgment was on this gang of criminals that President Davidson had working for him.”
“Parizad has Brad,” I muttered.
She stepped back and placed her hand on her chest. “Your Brad?”
I nodded.
Her hand covered her mouth, but then something glinted in her eyes. She firmed up and pointed at me.
“Save him and save this country, Garrett, goddamn it.”
“I need to focus on finding him,” I said.
“Do both,” she said. “It’s the same mission.”
“Well, there is no need to double down on terrible judgment, is there, to let people die out of your own stubbornness? We’ve still got time to put out the warnings and do the event inside.”
“And send a million plus packing? Deny the world the opportunity to see me being sworn in? It’s a hugely important symbol, Garrett. You of all people should know that.”
“You’re risking your own life and that of the entire leadership of the country,” I said. “And that of my son!”
“Don’t you dare leverage Brad against me. I risk my life every day I step outside. Crazy assholes that don’t want a bitch president. Inauguration Day will be no different. You have full authority to leverage NORTHCOM, SOCOM, all the COMs to do whatever you need. Stop these attacks, if they are real. I’m not changing anything. You find Brad, you stop this thing.”
I said nothing.
“And after that, do what you want with those traitors. You know the penalty for treason. Sometimes a brass verdict is best.”
I said nothing again, though I was pretty sure the president had just recommended killing two members of her cabinet and a general.
With that, she departed.
I didn’t waste any time arguing with her. I figured I could always make a last-minute appeal, though the crowd would already be unwieldy if it weren’t already. Certainly, there was a tipping point where it wouldn’t be possible to clear everyone out of the target area.
“Tom, get the CNO on the line,” I said. Within a minute, he had the chief of naval operations, Admiral Skip Bunch, on speakerphone.
“Skipper, here’s General Sinclair,” Rountree said.
“Admiral, we’ve got five Iranian submarines patrolling off California, Texas, and New York. They have cruise missiles with intent to strike energy facilities like oil refineries.”
“Thought you were in jail,” Bunch said.
“Not yet. We are at D-Day, and H hour is noon eastern. Inauguration. Get your sub hunters in the sky and do what you can.”
“You don’t give me orders, Sinclair.”
“Skip, do what he says. President Campbell just gave him full authority.”
“I’ll do it for you, Tom, not for some wanted felon.”
“Awesome,” I said. “Once you unhitch your ass from your ego, get me someone who can talk to your commanders going after the Iranian subs.”
“Fuck you, cowboy,” he said.
I took that as a compliment and replied, “Teamwork makes the dream work,” and hung up. “You might need to patch some things up with him, Tom,” I said.
“You think?”
I turned to Van Dreeves and Hobart, neither of whom were used to standing around. As it was, they both were stripping and rebuilding the pistols Carson and the other members of the SEAL team had given them.
“We need McCool ready to launch on the trucks when we find them. We go as a team.”
“Roger. On it,” Hobart said, picking up his phone.
Turning to Rountree, I said, “Now we search.”
“Kind of hard to sit around with our thumbs up our asses,” Rountree said.
“Want to join me with the Three Stooges?”
“Love to.”
We took the golf cart to the helipad and saw that the SEAL team had the West Pointers in the stress position, sweating them. They were cuffed and holding their hands out in front of themselves.
“Perpendicular!” Carson shouted. He might have thought he was back in BUD/S, but I didn’t care after their betrayal. Estes was looking particularly weak. They were all probably anxious judging by the furrowed brows, profuse sweating, and yelps. Fillmore was openly sobbing.
“Lighten up, Fred. At least you made four-star general,” I said. “Carson, I need to talk to these people individually. I’ll be across the hall. Drag them in one at a time.”
I entered a pilot briefing room about half the size of the conference room. The Secret Service and pilots most likely commiserated here as they planned their presidential flight missions.
Carson rapped his fist on the door and dragged Fillmore in, dumping him on the floor. Fillmore looked up at me and said, “Garrett, please. I didn’t know.”
“Take his cuffs off,” I directed Carson. He understood I wasn’t going to fight a bound man.
With his hands free, Fillmore pushed up from the ground and tried to open the door, but Carson was standing on the opposite side holding the door shut.
“Turn around,” I said.
As he slowly rotated toward me, his face was a torturous combination of downturned mouth, wide eyes, and trembling lips. He held his hands up in front of him as if I were going to shoot him.
“Who knew about Melissa?” I asked. “This is not a game. You answer me truthfully, you live. You lie, you end up like Tharp. Parizad is doing his thing, so all we have to discuss is Melissa.”
“Please. Please. I didn’t mean to. Didn’t want to.”
“But you did. That’s what matters. Sometimes we want things in this life so bad we do things we don’t mean or want, but we do them and then we have to pay the consequences. Be held accountable. So tell me.”
And he did. Every bit of the story. I stood there stoically receiving the information, visualizing my beautiful, strong wife being abused, all because Donna Tharp had confided to her friend out of distress, had told her the plan as she had heard it.
But Donna hadn’t known everything.
When he was done, I told Fillmore, “Come closer.”
I was standing in the middle of the room. He shuffled his feet like he had just aged twenty years, which maybe he had.
“Defend yourself,” I said.
He threw his hands up in his face like a boxer on the defensive. My mind boiled with rage after listening to Fillmore tell me everything he knew about Melissa’s death. I clenched my fists, gritted my teeth, and reared back to punch Fillmore into oblivion.
But it didn’t feel right. I dropped my fist and pushed him back.
“You’re not worth my energy, Fillmore. Get the fuck out of here.”
Carson brought Estes and Owens in separately. Their stories aligned nearly perfectly with what Fillmore had said. The bottom line was that they actually did want to start a ground war in Iran and believed that they needed a provocation. The conspiracy theorists about 9/11 being an inside job had propagated the myth that the United States was looking for an entrée into Iraq, but this one wasn’t a myth.
Combat wasn’t a theory. The bodies stacked up, and eventually people grew tired of listening to the daily drumbeat of death, tuning out the conflict as they proceeded to go about their daily business.
While nothing was ever proven with respect to that war, here was documented evidence that four or five people who wanted to see how war might play out in Iran had almost made—even still might make—it happen. I pictured Owens, Fillmore, and Estes sitting like the observers of the First Bull Run battle in the Civil War, under their parasols on a high bluff while watching American troops die in house-to-house fighting. No rose petals here or ever.
I left the SEAL team in charge of the West Pointers and whatever fate might lie ahead for them. Collectively, they understood they were doomed, which was good enough for me. For their role in what happened to Melissa, I should have beat them each to a pulp, but I felt her voice inside me telling me forgiveness was the better path. I trusted her more than I trusted my own instincts at the moment. I was a barbarian without her comforting love and support. My skills as a commander and a warrior were considerable, and there would have been no stopping me had I pummeled Fillmore. But I was a warrior, not a murderer. I had come close enough to that line with Tharp, who it turned out deserved what he’d gotten in return.
Campbell was right about one thing. If I found Brad, I found Parizad.
When I got back to the cabin, it was 5:00 a.m. We still had nothing. At 7:47 in the morning, Hobart said, “Jackpot.”