"Sir, there's a comm request from inside the bunker." A staff officer in charge of communications trotted over to report.
No matter how healthy he was, Old Willy was, at heart, still that retired old worker. The vice presidency was a mascot of a post to begin with; nobody had ever pinned any hopes on him. Yet now, everyone still looked to him on instinct.
"Put—put it through." His answer came out with a slight stutter.
The face that appeared on the screen was an Asian man with very distinct features. As for exactly what country he was from—they still couldn't tell.
His English was fluent.
"Mr. Vice President."
"What do you want?" Seeing that no one else would speak, Old Willy had no choice but to speak.
The Asian man on the screen said, "Withdraw the Seventh Fleet. Withdraw the fifty-five thousand soldiers stationed in Korea. You have twelve hours to do both. If you dare not comply, if you dare make any move to retake the White House, then you will—"
Old Willy ignored the looks the officials were shooting him and cut in. "We can't just recall a fleet like that. It's absurd!"
The Asian man sneered. "If you don't comply, I'll execute your officials one by one—and the last will be your President! Remember my words: before dawn tomorrow, both of these must be done!"
The next second, he cut the line from his end, leaving everyone in the Pentagon staring at one another, speechless.
"We have to rescue the President." Old Willy was the first to speak.
Several of the generals were less than pleased. A mascot, piping up at a moment like this? Was that appropriate?
Neither the Army nor the Navy wanted to withdraw. The interests wrapped up in this were simply too many, too large.
"Mr. Vice President, we have to consider our allies' position. If we pull out, the Asia-Pacific will spin out of control in an instant."
"Mr. Vice President, the Korean public still needs our support. The source of the biochemical virus hasn't even been found yet. I don't imagine the President would want six months of his work overturned completely, either?"
Everyone had something to say, and out of their own interests, none agreed to withdraw. Their thinking wasn't hard to guess: there were still twelve hours to consider, so let's all take our time and work it out. And even if it did go wrong—worst case, they'd just swap in a new president! Benjamin Asher had already fallen out of their good graces anyway.
"That fellow who was just talking—who is he?" Old Willy asked.
Everyone shook their heads in unison.
The old man's eyes widened, his gaze sweeping across the faces of the intelligence chiefs.
He was simmering with frustration. It's normal enough that a retired old worker like me doesn't recognize the guy—but you people, the ones running intelligence, you don't know him either? Are you all a bunch of pigs?!
"Sir, we're running a facial comparison. It'll take a little time," the FBI Director answered, steeling himself.
Old Willy had absolutely no idea what to do, and couldn't offer a single constructive suggestion. He sat blankly in his chair, silent for a long while, before finally telling a nearby staffer to make him a cup of coffee.
Right now he missed his old buddies from the steel mill terribly. How happy they'd been, shooting the breeze together! Shoved onstage and told to rescue hostages—and not just any hostages, the President of the United States? Was this a joke? He'd never done anything like this in his life!
He studied everyone's expressions, hoping to find some hint on someone's face—anything, just a little.
And in doing so, his gaze fell on Charlie, sitting there in utter silence.
Charlie had an impressive résumé. Sixteen years as a small-town police chief, climbing step by step to the very top of the LAPD, over twenty years in law enforcement all told, with countless major cases solved.
Never mind that he'd spent those first sixteen years hunting and fishing up in the mountains, and that in the later years he'd had Bella, Natasha—and even Old One-Eye—quietly running interference and stacking the deck for him. Nobody knew that! In Old Willy's eyes right now, this senator ought to have plenty of hostage-rescue experience.
"Senator, do you have any thoughts?" the old man asked, calling on him directly.
Charlie blinked. You're kidding. You're asking me?
You want me—the man who'll be running for president as a Democrat four years from now—to say how to rescue the sitting Republican president?
That he had his eye on the presidency four years out was no secret, nor any need to keep it secret; everyone who should know, knew.
Charlie wanted nothing to do with this business. Handle it well or handle it badly, neither outcome would do him any good, so he'd been playing the invisible man. Everyone understood, and nobody had torn through that thin sheet of paper—nobody had put the question to him.
Now Old Willy's question shoved him straight to the front of the stage.
The Army deputy chief of staff and Director Jacobs of the Secret Service, who'd invited him into the room earlier, had to step in to defuse the awkwardness.
"Senator, I recall that three years ago, you escaped the White House through the tunnel together with President Sawyer? Could we use that tunnel now to get in and rescue everyone?" the Army deputy chief of staff asked.
There's a hidden tunnel down there? Old Willy hadn't known that; no one had ever mentioned it to him. He immediately looked to Charlie.
Charlie hurried to deflect. "I was in such a panic at the time that I couldn't even remember the route. That's a question for President Sawyer. And besides... besides, I heard President Sawyer say that when they rebuilt the White House afterward, that tunnel was renovated."
His words weren't entirely a dodge. In theory, a tunnel like that, once used, would surely be redesigned and re-dug elsewhere, to keep the enemy from exploiting it.
The others accepted this. Something like that could only have been redone under the previous administration; the sitting president had neither the time nor the inclination to be digging tunnels.
They hurried to phone former President Sawyer, but a former president is a free man, and he'd long since gone out to have a good time. There was no law saying a former president had to keep his phone on twenty-four hours a day awaiting a summons; he was a former head of state, after all, not a prisoner. Who knew where he'd wandered off to? Calling in the dead of night turned up no one.
Charlie claimed he couldn't remember where the tunnel was; the former president couldn't be reached. And so the meeting hit a deadlock. Nobody had any good ideas, and apart from Old Willy, nobody so much as raised the subject of withdrawing.
Everyone's attitude toward Benjamin Asher falling into enemy hands was decidedly vague.
The time ticked away, minute by minute.
During a break, Charlie discussed it with a few of his advisers, and every one of them thought there was an angle to work here. If the Democratic presidential hopeful rescued the sitting Republican president, the next election would be quite a show.
"Charlie, this works in our favor. You don't need to go yourself—better if you don't, in fact. What you should do is take command. As long as the rescue succeeds under your direction, there's a lot of room for us to work with afterward. But... Benjamin Asher has to come out alive." The adviser, afraid Charlie might pull something underhanded, made a point of adding that last line.