19

The next morning, Paige lay in bed for a long time, her eyes open, sorrow and loneliness pressing her into the mattress. Even after the Ambien, she had slept fitfully and woke with a twisted stomach, the sadness sweeping over her as soon as she opened her eyes. He was gone. He was never coming back.

Patrick had not been shy about his faith, and Paige tried to tell herself that he was in a better place. On one of their last dates, when Paige had expressed concerns about Patrick’s safety during his deployment, he had brushed it off. “Believe it or not, God is in control of the Mideast, too. He won’t let anything happen to me before my time. And if I die . . .” He had shrugged as if that, too, was fine by him.

“Don’t talk that way,” Paige had said.

“Paul said that to live is Christ and to die is gain. I’m just saying—that’s the way I look at it too.”

“Can we not talk about it?”

From that point on, Patrick had gone out of his way to assure Paige that he would be fine—a cruise in the Med at taxpayer expense.

As she thought about him, tears rolled out of her eyes and down her face, soaking her hair and pillow. There were so many regrets. That last night together, shutting down the talk about marriage. Why hadn’t she just said yes? She had hurt him, though he had tried not to show it.

One more day. She would give anything for just one more day.

Eventually she forced herself out of bed and made a cup of coffee. She felt heavy and sluggish, her body weighed down with grief, her chest literally hurting from so much sobbing the night before. She still couldn’t believe this had happened. And the honest truth was that she didn’t care if her own life went on or not.

She tried praying, but it seemed pointless now. She had prayed for Patrick’s safety, and then he had died. The God she had given her life to as a child—the one who had walked the earth and healed the lame and come back from the dead—felt so distant now. Yet this thin and frayed strand of faith was the only thing that gave her any hope—the thought that she would see Patrick again someday.

She checked her phone and saw a text from Kristen. Are you up? Don’t turn on the TV. They’re showing bodies. Troy’s and Q’s were destroyed by bombs.

But like the rest of America, Paige could not look away. Sitting in her pajamas on the couch, she tuned in to CNN. The anchors were discussing the botched raid, interviewing a Republican congressman who put all the blame at the feet of the president. Within minutes, they were showing grainy footage of the bodies of sixteen SEALs hanging in the bombed-out ruins of the Sana’a Central Prison yard. The Houthis had removed the men’s helmets and night goggles and left them hanging by the neck in full uniform, their bodies rotting in the desert sun.

It nearly made Paige vomit even though the news feed was careful to show the images at a distance so the viewers could not see the faces of the men.

“The president has promised an appropriate response,” the congressman was saying. “But she missed her opportunity. She called off a second response force that would have retrieved the bodies of our servicemen. Nobody who does that is fit to be commander in chief.”

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WASHINGTON, D.C.

Philip Kilpatrick was an adrenaline junkie who loved chaos, but even he had never seen anything quite like this. The White House was a flurry of activity the day after the failed raid. Like the president, Kilpatrick had slept only a few hours. Details of the raid were trickling out, though the press had still not caught wind of the cardboard cutout of President Hamilton inside the Sana’a prison cell, placed there by the Houthis to mock the Americans.

For its part, the White House had released statements and sent the president’s spokesperson out to talk with the media. It was a stalling maneuver while the president worked the phones with American allies and held high-level meetings in the Situation Room. The administration had a plan in place, but they would have to weather this day first.

The president’s critics took to the airwaves and second-guessed both her decision to send in the assault team and her decision to call off the QRF. But the criticism was mixed with a heavy dose of rhetoric about the country standing together. With the bodies of American SEALs hanging in the prison yard, the public was in no mood for politics as usual.

At 4:00 p.m., the president and Kilpatrick stepped into the Oval Office, where their two guests were waiting. Admiral Paul Towers and his young and gung ho chief of staff, Daniel Reese, had just flown in from Saudi Arabia. They both stood, snapped to attention, and saluted.

The president returned the salute, and everyone took seats in front of the fireplace.

Towers looked exhausted. He had dark circles under his eyes and a weariness on his face that seemed to go bone-deep. Kilpatrick found it ironic that the legendary Towers, known for being an iron man who survived on little or no sleep, looked more haggard than the president.

“I think you know why I called this meeting,” President Hamilton said, her legs crossed, forearms resting on the arms of her chair, her voice calm and authoritative. “After a lot of soul-searching, I have asked General Simpson and Director Marcano to remove you from command for tonight’s activities. Your behavior last night bordered on insubordination.”

“I followed your orders, Madam President,” Towers said.

“But not without questioning them first. And not without making it clear that you had lost confidence in my leadership.”

“The orders were a mistake,” Towers said bluntly. “Those bodies should be home right now. Instead, they’re being desecrated by our enemies.”

Kilpatrick saw the steel in the president’s eyes. He knew the president expected some sort of apology, but Towers was as belligerent as ever.

“I’ve heard that after I called you back for this meeting, you told some of your officers what I could do with that request. Is that true?” the president asked.

“That would appear to be accurate, Madam President.”

“Do you care to explain?”

“I think it’s self-explanatory.”

The man wasn’t going to make this easy. As Kilpatrick sat there, watching this extraordinary exchange, he knew that the strength of the country depended on men like Towers, men who would never back down, who brooked no compromise. But he also knew that the president would not tolerate it.

She let the silence hang for a moment, a stare-down of sorts between the president and one of her top commanders. “I’m asking for your resignation, Admiral Towers. You are a gunslinger, sir, and we don’t need gunslingers calling the shots for our Special Forces. I believe that your arrogance was at least partially responsible for last night’s fiasco.”

Towers started to protest but she cut him off. “Let me finish,” she insisted. “We should have sent in a much larger force. We should have at least called in the Quick Response Force as soon as we knew they had more men in those towers than we first anticipated. You think your men are invincible, Admiral, and last night it cost us.”

“Permission to speak freely,” Towers said.

“You’ve never needed my permission before, but go ahead.”

“The mission was appropriately planned,” Towers snapped. “The intelligence was seriously flawed. You should be having this conversation with Director Marcano, not me. He cost those men their lives. His agency should be held accountable. My men performed honorably and followed the mission with integrity.”

Towers’s face, tanned and wrinkled from the desert sun, was a deep shade of scarlet now. It was clear to Kilpatrick that there would be no reasoning with him—the same traits that made him such a confident commander would sink him now.

The president must have sensed it too, because she responded in a softer, more conciliatory tone. “Paul, I want to give you an honorable way out. Your service has been extraordinary. But I can’t leave you in command when you denigrate this office and publicly criticize your commander in chief. I’m asking you to submit your resignation from your current post. I’ll see to it that you’re reassigned to something befitting your record. But if you don’t resign, I’ll have no choice but to have General Simpson relieve you of your command and put you at a desk job pushing paper.”

Towers rose, and Daniel Reese hopped up with him. The admiral stood ramrod straight and looked over the president’s head as he spoke. “I will not resign, Madam President. I cannot do that to my men.”

She stood as well and let out a sigh. “Very well,” she said. “You’ll be hearing from General Simpson.”

Towers and Reese saluted, waited for the salute to be returned, then pivoted and left the room.