Zoe was a former military police officer. After retiring, she joined the LAPD as an officer. While she couldn't be said to have risen through the ranks, she had spent years on the front lines.
Even after entering politics, she maintained her regular exercise routine and even maintained her weekly marksmanship training.
However, in front of Jack, Zoe rarely displayed her former strong-woman side. It wasn't that she was trying to protect his pride, but rather that this guy was truly absurdly strong, in every sense of the word.
When the alarm sounded, announcing the White House's intrusion, Zoe's first thought was Jack. After receiving his call, she decisively followed his advice and hid.
Then, in the final moments of the White House's fall, Kate, the magical "artificial intelligence," contacted Zoe again, guiding her to the "Lincoln Bedroom" on the second floor and informing her that Jack had arrived.
The subsequent wait was somewhat agonizing. The claustrophobic environment gradually lost one's sense of time, and Zoe had to force herself not to check the time on her phone too frequently.
Jack was getting rather impatient waiting. Apparently, the enemy had noticed that there were still some resistance members inside the White House, so they not only increased patrols but also dispatched a search party.
Although he had eliminated a three-man patrol and dumped the bodies away from the stairwell, after reaching the second floor, he was still pinned down by two men smoking in the hallway.
Jack's claim of disabling the White House's internal surveillance had been a lie. In reality, Kate had taken over after gaining access. Otherwise, even his heightened perception wouldn't have allowed him to evade nearly all the patrols with his clairvoyant tricks. But
these two lazy fellows had no choice but to smoke anywhere else, standing in the hallway outside the "Lincoln Bedroom." After waiting for nearly ten minutes, Jack, seeing the two chain-smokers chain-smoking, finally decided not to wait any longer.
"What are you two doing here?"
The sudden, deep question startled the two smokers, but the fact that the other party was speaking Korean made them hesitate as they raised their guns.
A dark figure darted out of the darkness, piercing the throat of the man in front of him with pinpoint accuracy. Before his companion could react, Jack, like an arrow, had already reached them.
The terrorist behind him, his gun barrel blocked by his companion's body, tried to duck and raise his gun again when his companion's body, slowly collapsing, slammed down on him like a train.
The combined weight and potential energy of his companion's body sent him crashing to the ground with a thud. Seizing the momentum, Jack drew his sword, tilted his head slightly to avoid the bloody path, and stabbed again with a swift thrust.
The pinned terrorist felt the air squeezed out of his lungs. Before he could even try to breathe or scream, he felt a sharp pain in his neck. The severed arteries and trachea, expelling blood and breath, took his life.
Although the second-floor hallway was carpeted, the commotion was still considerable. Jack didn't hesitate. He wiped the sticky blood from his hands and dagger on the corpse and pushed open the door to the "Lincoln Bedroom."
The room was completely empty. Jack walked over to the fireplace, which was clearly only decorative, facing the bed, and tapped twice on the wall.
Hearing a faint movement from behind the wall, he quickly whispered, "It's me, Zoe."
The wall paneling beside the fireplace slid open, revealing a dark hole. Before Jack could offer a hand, Zoe nimbly slipped out and clung to him tightly.
"Oh my God, you really did come to save me."
"Are you okay?" Jack brushed the cobwebs off the queen's head.
Although the room was dim, the only light coming from the flashing red and blue "ambient lights" of the police cars blocking the oval in the distance barely filtered through the thick curtains.
But compared to the impenetrable walls, leaving there was still a sense of light for Zoe.
"I'm fine, thank you, Jack." Zoe eagerly kissed him, though the grayness on her face made her look a bit funny.
"Come on, 'First Husband,' please allow me to get you out of here," Jack said teasingly with a smile.
Zoe couldn't help but look puzzled. "What 'First Husband?'"
After losing her cell phone signal, she was cut off from the outside world, naturally having no way of knowing the tragic situation at the Capitol, let alone the possibility that the "Designated Survivor" system, originally just a precautionary measure, would ever be put into effect.
"Let's get out of here first. I might have alerted them." Jack took Zoe's hand and left the room. Passing two bodies in the hallway, he paused again, and with a flick of his toe, he grabbed a Victor submachine gun.
Bending down, he tore off the body's body armor. Jack then retrieved two magazines filled with .45ACP bullets and handed them to Zoe, continuing to lead her downstairs.
The White House had another underground level, but it wasn't the underground bunker where the "PEOC" was located. The latter was located deeper underground to protect against nuclear attacks.
The main rooms on the basement level of the White House included a lounge for housekeepers and attendants, Secret Service offices, a laundry room, and a bowling alley.
Jack's target was the laundry room, where a tunnel dating back to the 1920s led to the Treasury Building.
Although the tunnel had long been sealed, it could be reopened with a simple ventilation.
Just as the Kremlin had secret passages, the White House seemed to be no exception. However, with technological advancements and the gradual shift of the Cold War confrontation between major powers from a Cold War to a war of words, these insufficiently deep tunnels had long been abandoned.
Now, it seemed that the supposedly nuclear-proof underground bunker had actually backfired. Even Jack was helpless, as he could not blast the door open with explosives.
Of course, he didn't really want to rescue the president. If he did, the power he would have wielded would be unimaginable.
Granted, the president's entire leadership team, including the Secretary of State who had been shot in the head, had perished in the Capitol, with the exception of one Secretary of Defense. But replacing them wouldn't be difficult.
Congress, after all, serves as a check on the president's federal power. But aside from Senator Zoe, and perhaps a few absent or late arrivals, most have perished alongside the Cabinet on Capitol Hill.
In other words, until the states elect new legislators, the president's power is practically infinite.
A more ambitious individual could even pin the blame on any hostile faction, declare a national emergency, and indefinitely delay the reconstruction of Congress, thereby gaining "unlimited power" that even President Franklin Roosevelt couldn't dream of during World War II.
If that individual hadn't also been held hostage and imprisoned in the "PEOC," Jack would have suspected he was colluding with the equally deranged South Korean president.
Of course, Jack's suspicions were only a passing suspicion. After all, the Capitol Hill incident was likely an accident. No one could have predicted it so accurately. The AC-130 shot down by the air-to-air missile had simply crashed head-on into it—a ridiculously accurate prediction.
After moving two heavy clothes dryers, Jack knocked gently against a wall for a long time before finding the sealed, rusty iron door.
Fortunately, Jack's previous "guerrilla warfare" had worked. Faced with the repeated deaths of their teammates, the militants occupying the White House seemed somewhat uneasy and began to gather together for a comprehensive search.
However, they had clearly over-relyed on the internal surveillance. Kate didn't simply cut off the signal. Instead, she simply overwrote the previous minute's footage when Jack passed by certain cameras.
After Jack passed, the cameras returned to their normal live feed to prevent detection, thus achieving a degree of physical "invisibility."
A special operations team from the FBI's own special forces unit, the HRT (Hostage Rescue Team), appeared in the hallway. After a brief exchange of commands, the two sides were successfully connected.
Zoe clearly had a lot to say to Jack before leaving, but she held back. Although whether she should be called "First Lady" or "First Gentleman" was still under discussion, she had to maintain her image in front of outsiders.
Finally, all the words came together in one simple sentence: "Be careful, Jack."
Jack, who had been asking the HRT team for water and an energy bar, turned and gave her a confident smile.
"Target sent!" Inside the Pentagon's underground command center, a communications officer excitedly removed his headset and gave a thumbs-up to everyone through the glass.
"I don't understand. Why not just launch an attack through that tunnel and rescue the president? Aren't Master Sergeant Jason Hayes and his Navy SEALs already on the scene?"
a CIA official asked, puzzled.
"We lack both intelligence and time. No special forces unit has ever been trained to attack the White House. You should at least give them time to memorize the building's structural diagrams.
Furthermore, the CIA hasn't provided any valuable intelligence yet. We don't even know the true identity of our adversary,"
Dana Moger retorted bluntly. "Our only certainty is that they're stalling for time, but what's their purpose?
Even if we recapture the White House, how will you respond if they're holding hostages and refusing to emerge from the PEOC?"
The CIA officer deflated, rubbing his forehead and lamenting. "The military has scrambled and seized control of the entire Han government, including their intelligence bureau, but no one can explain what happened. They're even accusing us of making it up."
Dana Moger rolled her eyes speechlessly, thinking that if she hadn't witnessed it with her own eyes, she would have dismissed the previous scene as a fantasy.
"Communication request from the PEOC," the communications officer's report instantly reassured everyone present.
(End of this chapter)