Two Years Ago
Chaos. Absolute chaos.
Tom Friedmann was being led across the deck of the aircraft carrier by a young man who looked as if he’d stepped straight out of high school into a standard-issue secret-services dark suit. Between his shoulders Tom could see the discreet bulge of a radio battery, and curled over the top of his ear the skin-coloured wire descending from an earpiece fed into the crisp white collar of his shirt.
‘This way, Mr Friedmann.’
It was getting dark now, the Atlantic sky a cold, deep grey-blue that almost mirrored the freezing ocean below it. The carrier’s football-pitch-sized deck was almost completely filled with civilians sitting in rows like POWs, each issued with an orange waterproof spray jacket and a plastic bottle of water. Thousands of them – men, women, children – trembling in the cold. He recalled images of Syrian refugees in life jackets spilling from rickety boats on to Greek pebbled beaches.
And now it’s our turn.
At the far end of the deck, a large floodlit space was being kept clear for the constant traffic of helicopters coming in to land, disgorging yet more people on to the carrier’s deck, refuelling and taking off again.
The young secret-services agent led Tom towards an open door at the base of the carrier’s tall, office-block-sized island. Tom craned his neck up to look at the bridge and air-traffic control at the top. Through the windows up there he could see the busy comings and goings of navy personnel and the faint glow of screens and displays inside.
‘Mind the step and mind your head, sir.’
The passageway beyond was crammed with a seething mixture of navy personnel and government civilians. Everyone seemed to be clasping a clipboard to their chest as they squeezed past each other, or the flapping sheets of freshly printed and hurriedly stapled printer paper.
He could guess what they were: hastily authored and printed-off procedure documents. Tom knew the CDC and FEMA had a thick dossier of emergency procedures to follow in the event of a wide spectrum of emergency situations. Today’s crisis, however, wasn’t in either of their playbooks. He was pretty certain of that. He looked around at the harried faces; everyone appeared to be doing their best to pretend there was some semblance of order here. That someone, somewhere, knew what the plan of action was.
The young man kept looking back over his shoulder to make sure Tom was keeping up with him.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Tom.
‘I’m trying to find Trent’s PA, sir. Let her know we managed to pick you up from Battery Park.’
‘Make way there!’ Just ahead of them, navy personnel backed up against the bulkheads. The civilians, less used to the cramped confines of navy life, were slower in following their lead.
Tom’s chaperone put an arm across Tom’s chest and pressed him into a rack of internal-post pigeonholes. The papers poking out rustled and crumpled against his back.
Down the passageway he saw some faces he recognized approaching, one behind the other, playing follow the leader; a Supreme Court justice, a couple of Republican congressmen. Then he saw uniforms: army, navy, air force, all silver buzzcuts, razor-burned jowls and stern expressions. They swept past Tom, and a young navy officer gestured for them to turn left into the open doorway of a meeting room.
‘This way, please, gentlemen.’
Still more followed in their wake. He noticed several uniforms from the Royal Navy, the Canadian Navy. The familiar face of one of the White House’s regular press liaison officers and the news anchorwoman from CNN. He couldn’t recall her name right now, but all it would take would be someone saying out loud, ‘Tonight’s six o’clock news brought to you by . . .’ and he’d have it.
Then, right at the back, one more familiar face.
Tom waited until he was right beside him. ‘Dougie!’ He reached out and tapped the Secretary for Commerce on the arm.
Douglas Trent turned angrily, a man with far too much on his mind and in no mood to be door-stopped by some civil-servant underling. His scowl instantly vanished when he recognized his old friend.
‘Tom! Thank Christ you made it!’
Tom nodded. ‘Thanks for getting me out. It was a real close-run thing.’
‘A promise is a promise, amigo. No man left behind. Right?’
‘Mr Secretary?’ It was an underling door-stopping him this time. ‘The others are waiting in the briefing room to start the—’
‘Just gimme a second!’ Trent snapped.
‘Doug, what the hell’s going on?’
Trent shook his head. ‘We don’t have anything like a chain of command. It’s a goddamn mess. That’s what we’ve got going on. We need to get our shit together and we need to do it quickly.’
‘Right.’ Tom nodded. ‘Right . . . then better let you get on. I’ll—’
‘Sure.’ Douglas Trent turned to go, then stopped. ‘No, wait. You can come in with me.’
‘What?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s going to be a free-for-all in there. I need someone in my corner. I need a quick-thinker. Fresh eyes.’
‘Jesus, Dougie . . . I’m not a bureaucrat or a—’
‘We got far too many of those in there already. Right now what I need is a wingman.’