Oath of Office

This made her a touch sad because she had loved this car so much.

But what was a car? Nothing more than many individual parts, welded and screwed and fastened together. An abstraction, really.

She walked on high heels through the marina. Her shoes clacked on the tiled ground. She passed the swimming pool, closed at this time of night, but lit up from below by an unearthly blue light. The thatched roofs of the little picnic sun shelters rustled in the breeze. She walked down a ramp to the first dock.

From here, she could see the great boat lighting up the night out on the water, well beyond the farthest reach of a Byzantine maze of interconnected docks. The boat, a 250-foot oceangoing yacht, was far too large to bring in close to the marina. It was a floating hotel, complete with disco, pool and hot tub, workout room, and its own four-person helicopter and helipad. It was a mobile castle, fit for a modern king.

Here at the dock, a small motorboat waited for her. A man offered his hand and helped her cross from the dock to the gunwale and then down into the cockpit. She sat in the back as the man untied and pushed off, and the driver put the boat in gear.

Approaching the yacht in the speedboat was like piloting a tiny space capsule to dock with the most gigantic star destroyer in the universe. They didn’t even dock. The speedboat pulled behind the yacht, and another man helped her climb a five-rung ladder to the deck. This man was Ismail, the notorious assistant.

“Do you have the agent?” he said when she had climbed on board.

She smirked. “Hi, Aabha, how are you?” she said. “Nice to see you. I’m glad you escaped unscathed.”

He made a motion with his hand as if a wheel were turning. Let’s go, let’s go. “Hi, Aabha. Whatever you just said. Do you have the agent?”

She reached into her purse and pulled out the vial full of Ebola virus. For a split second, she had a funny urge to toss it into the ocean. She held it up for his inspection instead. He stared at it.

“That tiny container,” he said. “Incredible.”

“I gave five years of my life for this container,” Aabha said.

Ismail smiled. “Yes, but a hundred years from now, people will still sing songs of the heroic girl called Aabha.”

He held his hand out as if Aabha were going to put the vial in his palm.

“I’ll give it to him,” she said.

Ismail shrugged. “As you wish.”

She climbed a flight of green-lit stairs and entered the main cabin through a glass door. The giant cabin had a long bar against one wall, several tables along the walls, and a dance floor in the middle. Her boss used the room for entertaining. Aabha had been in this room when it was like a club in Berlin – standing room only, music pumping so loud the walls seemed to pulsate with it, lights strobing, bodies pressed together on the dance floor. Now the room was silent and empty.

She moved along a red carpeted hallway with half a dozen staterooms on either side, and then she climbed another flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs was another hall. She was deep inside the boat now, moving deeper. Most guests never came this far. She reached the end of this hall and knocked on the wide double doors she found there.

“Come in,” a man’s voice said.

She opened the left-hand door and went in. The room never ceased to amaze her. It was the master bedroom, located directly below the pilot house. Across the room from her, a curved, floor to ceiling, 180-degree window gave a view of what the boat was approaching, as well as much of what was to its right and left. Often, these views were of wide-open ocean.

On the left side of the room was a sitting area with a large sectional sofa formed into a party pit. There were also two easy chairs, a four-seat dining table, and a huge flat panel television on the wall, with a long sound bar mounted just below it. A tall, glass-faced liquor case stood near the wall in the corner.

To her right was the custom-built double-king-sized bed, complete with mirror mounted on the ceiling above it. The owner of this boat enjoyed his entertaining, and the bed could easily accommodate four people, sometimes five.

Standing in front of the bed was the owner himself. He wore a pair of white silk drawstring pants, a pair of sandals on his feet, and nothing else. He was tall and dark. He was perhaps forty years old, his hair peppered with gray, and his short beard just starting to turn white. He was very handsome, with deep brown eyes.

His body was lean, muscular, and perfectly proportioned in an inverted triangle – broad shoulders and chest tapering down to six-pack abs and a narrow waist, with well-muscled legs below. On his left pectoral was a tattoo of a giant black horse, an Arabian charger. The man owned a string of chargers, and he took them as his personal symbol. They were strong, virile, regal, as he was.

He appeared fit, healthy, and well-rested, in the way of a vastly wealthy man with easy access to skilled personal trainers, the best foods, and doctors ready to administer the precise hormone treatments to defeat the aging process. He was, in a word, beautiful.

“Aabha, my lovely, lovely girl. Who will you be after tonight?”

“Omar,” she said. “I brought you a gift.”

He smiled. “I never doubted you. Not for one moment.”

He beckoned to her, and she went to him. She handed him the vial, but he placed it on the table next to the bed almost without looking at it.

“Later,” he said. “We can think about that later.”

He pulled her close to him. She moved into his strong embrace. She pressed her face to his neck and got his scent, the subtle smell of his cologne out in front, and the deeper, earthier smell of him. He was not a clean freak, this man. He wanted you to smell him. She found it exciting, his smell. She found everything about him exciting.

He turned and pressed her, face down, onto the bed. She went willingly, eagerly. In a moment, she writhed as his hands removed her clothes and roamed her body. His deep voice murmured to her, words that might normally shock her, but here, in this room, made her groan with animal pleasure.

*

When Omar awoke, he was alone.

That was good. The girl knew his preferences. While sleeping, he did not like to be disturbed by the jarring movements and noises of others. Sleep was rest. It was not a wrestling match.

The boat was moving. They had left Galveston, exactly on schedule, and were heading across the Gulf of Mexico toward Florida. Sometime tomorrow, they would anchor near Tampa, and the little vial Aabha had brought him would go ashore.

He reached over to the table and picked up the vial. Just a small vial, made of thick, hardened plastic, and blocked at the top with a bright red stopper. The contents were unremarkable. They looked like little more than a pile of dust.

Even so…

It took his breath away! To hold this power, the power of life and death. And not just the power of life and death over one person – the power to kill many, many people. The power to destroy an entire population. The power to hold nations hostage. The power of total war. The power of revenge.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply from his diaphragm, seeking calm. It had been a risk for him to come to Galveston personally, and an unnecessary one at that. But he had wanted to be there in the moment when such a weapon passed into his possession. He wanted to hold the weapon, and feel the power in his own hand.

He placed the vial back on the table, pulled on his pants, and rolled out of bed. He shrugged into a Manchester United soccer jersey and went out onto the deck. He found her there, sitting back in a lounge chair and gazing out at the night, the stars, and the vast dark water around them.

A bodyguard stood quietly near the door.

Omar gestured to the man, and the man moved to the railing.

“Aabha,” Omar said. She turned to him, and he could see how sleepy she was.

She smiled, and he smiled as well. “You’ve done a wonderful thing,” he said. “I’m very proud of you. Perhaps it’s time for you to sleep.”

She nodded. “I’m so tired.”

Omar bent down and their lips met. He kissed her deeply, savoring the taste of her, and the memory of the curves of her body, her movements, and her sounds.

“For you, my darling, rest is much deserved.”

Omar glanced at the bodyguard. He was a tall, strong man. The guard removed a plastic bag from his jacket pocket, moved in behind her, and in one deft move slipped the bag over her head and pulled it tight.

Instantly, her body became electric. She reached back, trying to scratch and pummel him. Her feet kicked her up out of the chair. She struggled, but it was impossible. The man was far too strong. His wrists and forearms were taut, rippling with veins and muscle doing their work.

Through the translucent bag, her face became a mask of terror and desperation, her eyes round saucers. Her mouth was a huge O, a full moon, gasping for air and finding none. She sucked in thin plastic instead of oxygen.

Her body tensed and became rigid. It was like she was a wood carving of a woman, her body sloping, bending slightly backwards at the middle. Gradually, she began to settle down. She weakened, subsided, and then stopped entirely. The guard allowed her to sink slowly back into her chair. He sank with her, guiding her. Now that she was dead, he treated her with tenderness.

The man took a deep breath and looked up at Omar.

“What shall I do with her?”

Omar stared out at the dark night.

It was a shame to kill such a good girl as Aabha, but she was tainted. Sometime soon, perhaps as early as tomorrow morning, the Americans would learn that the virus was missing. Soon after that, they would discover that Aabha was the last person in the laboratory, and was there when the lights went out.

They would come to realize that the power failure was the result of an underground cable being deliberately cut, and the failure of the backup generators was the result of careful sabotage conducted several weeks ago. They would make a desperate search for Aabha, a no-holds-barred search, and they must never find her.

“Get some help from Abdul. He has empty buckets and some fast-drying cement in the equipment locker down by the engine room. Take her there. Weight her with a bucket of cement around her feet and calves, and drop her into the deepest part of the ocean. A thousand feet deep or more, please. The data is readily available, is it not?”

The man nodded. “Yes sir.”

“Perfect. Afterwards have all my sheets, pillows, and blankets laundered. We must be thorough and destroy all evidence. On the very unlikely chance that the Americans raid this ship, I don’t want the girl’s DNA anywhere near me.”

The man nodded. “Of course.”

“Very good,” Omar said.

He left his bodyguard with the corpse and went back into the master bedroom. It was time to take a hot bath.

CHAPTER FIVE

June 10th

11:15 a.m.

Queen Anne’s County, Maryland – Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay

“Well, maybe we should just sell the house,” Luke said.

He was talking about their old waterfront country house, twenty minutes up the road from where they were now. Luke and Becca had rented a different, much more spacious and modern house for the next two weeks. Luke liked this new house better, but they were here only because Becca wouldn’t go back to their place.

He understood her reluctance. Of course he did. Four nights ago, both Becca and Gunner had been abducted from that house. Luke hadn’t been there to protect them. They could have been killed. Anything could have happened.

He glanced out the big, bright kitchen window. Gunner was outside in jeans and a T-shirt playing some imaginary game, the way nine-year-old kids sometimes did. In a few minutes, Gunner and Luke were going to take the skiff out and go fishing.

The sight of his son gave Luke a pang of terror.

What if Gunner had been killed? What if both of them had simply disappeared, never to be found again? What if two years from now, Gunner didn’t play imaginary games anymore? It was all a jumble in Luke’s mind.

Yes, it was horrible. Yes, it should never have happened. But there were larger issues here. Luke and Ed Newsam and a small handful of people had taken down a violent coup attempt, and had reinstalled what was left of the democratically elected government of the United States. It was possible that they had saved American democracy itself.

That was nice, but Becca didn’t seem interested in larger issues right now.

She sat at the kitchen table in a blue robe, drinking her second cup of coffee. “Easy for you to say. That house has been in my family for a hundred years.”

Rebecca’s hair was long, flowing down her shoulders. Her eyes were blue, framed in thick eyelashes. To Luke, her pretty face looked thin and drawn. He felt sick about that. He felt sick about the whole thing, but he couldn’t think of something he could say that would make this better.

A tear rolled down Becca’s cheek. “My garden is over there, Luke.”

“I know.”

“I can’t work in my garden because I’m afraid. I’m afraid of my own house, a house I’ve been going to since I was born.”

Luke said nothing.

“And Mr. and Mrs. Thompson… they’re dead. You know that, don’t you? Those men killed them.” She looked at Luke sharply. Her eyes were hot and mad. Becca had a tendency to grow angry with him, sometimes over very small matters. He forgot to do the dishes, or take the garbage outside. When she did, she would get a look in her eyes similar to the one she had now. Luke thought of it as the Blame Look. And for Luke, right now the Blame Look was too much.

In his mind, he caught a brief image of their neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson. If Hollywood were to cast a kindly older couple who lived next door, the Thompsons would be it. He liked the Thompsons, and he would never have intended for their lives to end like that. But a lot of people died that day.

“Becca, I didn’t kill the Thompsons. Okay? I’m sorry they’re dead, and I’m sorry you and Gunner were taken – I will be sorry for that the rest of my life and I will do everything I can to make it up to both of you. But I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill the Thompsons. I didn’t send people to abduct you. You seem to be blurring these things in your mind, and I won’t have it.”

He paused. It was a good time to stop talking, but he didn’t stop. His words came out in a torrent.

“All I did was fight my way through a blizzard of gunfire and bombs. People were trying to kill me all day and all night. I got shot, I got blown up, I got run off the road. And I saved the President of the United States, your President, from almost certain death. That’s what I did.”

He breathed heavily, as if he had just sprinted a mile.

He regretted everything. That was the truth. It hurt him to think that the work he did had ever caused her pain, it hurt more than she would ever know. He had left the job last year for that very reason, but then he had been called back for one night – one night that turned into a night, a day, and another impossibly long night. A night during which he thought he had lost his family forever.

Becca no longer trusted him. He could see that much. His presence frightened her. He was the cause of what had happened. He was reckless, he was fanatical, and he was going to get her, and their only son, killed.

Tears streamed silently down her face. A long minute passed.

“Does it even matter?” she said.

“Does what matter?”

“Does it matter who the President is? If Gunner and I were dead, would you really care who was President?”

“But you’re alive,” he said. “You’re not dead. You’re alive and well. There’s a big difference.”

“Okay,” she said. “We’re alive.” It was agreement that wasn’t agreement.

“I want to tell you something,” Luke said. “I’m retiring. I’m not going to do it anymore. I might have to take a few meetings in the coming days, but I’m not going on any more assignments. I did my part. Now it’s over.”

She shook her head, but just slightly. It was as if she didn’t even have the energy to move. “You’ve said that before.”

“Yes. But this time I mean it.”

*

“You want to always keep the boat on an even keel.”

“Okay,” Gunner said.

He and his dad loaded the boat with gear. Gunner wore jeans, a T-shirt, and a big floppy fishing hat to keep the sun off his face. He also had a pair of Oakley sunglasses his dad had given him because they looked cool. His dad wore the same exact pair.

The T-shirt was okay – it was from 28 Days Later, which was a pretty awesome zombie movie with English people in it. The problem with the shirt was it didn’t have any actual zombies on it. It was just a red biohazard symbol against a black background. He guessed that made sense. The zombies in the movie weren’t really the undead. They were people who got infected with a virus.

“Slide that cooler athwartships,” his dad said.

His dad had all these crazy words he used whenever they went fishing. It made Gunner laugh sometimes. “Athwartships!” he shouted. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

His dad motioned with his hand to show the placement he wanted; across the middle, sideways, not near the back rail where Gunner had originally stowed it. Gunner slid the big blue cooler into place.

They stood, facing one another. His dad gave him a funny look from behind his sunglasses. “How are you doing, son?”

Gunner hesitated. He knew they were worried about him. He had heard them whispering his name in the night. But he was okay. He really was. He had been afraid, and he was still a little bit afraid now. He had even cried a lot, which was okay. You were supposed to cry sometimes. You weren’t supposed to hold it in.

“Gunner?”

Well, he might as well talk about it.

“Dad, you kill people sometimes, don’t you?”

His dad nodded. “Sometimes I do, yeah. It’s part of my job. But I only kill bad guys.”

“How can you tell the difference?”

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell. And sometimes it’s easy. Bad guys will hurt people who are weaker than them, or innocent people who are just minding their own business. My job is to stop them from doing that.”

“Like the men who killed the President?”

His dad nodded.

“Did you kill them?”

“I killed some of them, yes.”

“And the men who took Mom and me? You killed them, too, didn’t you?”

“I did, yeah.”

“I’m glad you did that, Dad.”

“I am too, monster. They were the exact kind of men who are good to kill.”

“Are you the best killer in the world?”

His dad shook his head and smiled. “I don’t know, buddy. I don’t think they keep tabs on who the best killers are. It’s not really like a sport. There’s no world champion of killing. In any case, I’m retiring from the whole thing. I want to spend more time with you and Mom.”

Gunner thought about it. He had seen a news show about his dad on TV the day before. It was really just a short segment, but it was his dad’s picture and name, and video of his dad when he was younger and in the Army. Luke Stone, Delta Force operator. Luke Stone, FBI Special Response Team. Luke Stone and his team had saved the United States government.

“I’m proud of you, Dad. Even if you never got to be world champion.”

His dad laughed. He gestured toward the dock. “Okay, are we ready?”

Gunner nodded.

“We’ll head way out, drop anchor, see if we can find a few stripers feeding on the dropping tide.”

Gunner nodded. They pulled away from the dock and moved slowly through the No Wake zone. He braced himself as the boat picked up speed.

Gunner scanned the horizon ahead of them. He was the spotter, and he had to keep his eyes sharp and his head on a swivel, as his dad liked to say. They had been out together fishing three times earlier in the spring, but they hadn’t caught anything. When you went fishing and you didn’t catch anything, Dad called that being “on the snide.” Right now, they were on the snide big time.

In a few moments, Gunner spotted some splashes in the middle distance off the starboard quarter. Some white terns were diving, dropping like bombs into the water.

“Hey, look!”

His dad nodded and smiled.

“Stripers?”

Dad shook his head. “Bluefish.” Then he said, “Hold on.”

He gunned the engine and soon they were skimming, skittering, still picking up speed, as the boat got up on plane with Gunner nearly thrown backwards. A minute later, they eased up to the thrashing whitewater, the boat came off plane, and they settled back into the swells.

Gunner grabbed the two long fishing rods with the single hooks. He handed one to his dad and then cast his line without waiting. Almost instantly, he felt a tug, a heavy pull. A wild liveliness came into the rod now, vibrating with life. Some unseen force nearly yanked the rod out of his hands. The line snapped and went slack. The bluefish had broken him off. He turned to tell his dad, but the old man was hooked up now too, his rod bent double.

Gunner grabbed a net and got ready. The bluefish – silver and blue and green and white and very, very angry, was hoisted from the water and into the cockpit.

“Nice fish.”

“A slump breaker!”

The bluefish flopped on deck, caught in the green mesh of the hand net.

“Will we keep him?”

“No. He gets us off the snide, but we’re here for stripers. Blues are exciting, but striped bass are bigger and they’re better on the grill, too.”

They released the fish – Gunner watched as his dad seized the still-jerking, snapping bluefish, and removed the hook, his fingers just inches from those hungry teeth. His dad dropped the fish over the side, where with a quick tail whip, it headed for the deep.

No sooner had the fish disappeared than his dad’s phone started to ring. His dad smiled and looked at the phone. Then he put it aside. It buzzed and buzzed. After a while, it stopped. Ten seconds passed before it started ringing again.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Gunner said.

His dad shook his head. “No. In fact, I’m going to turn my phone off.”

Gunner felt a surge of fear in his stomach. “Dad, you have to answer it. What if it’s an emergency? What if the bad guys are taking over again?”

His dad stared at Gunner for a long second. The phone stopped buzzing. Then it started again. He answered it.

“Stone,” he said.

He paused and his face darkened. “Hi, Richard. Yes, Susan’s chief-of-staff. Sure. I’ve heard of you. Well, listen. You know I’m taking some time off, right? I haven’t even decided if I’m still on the Special Response Team, or whatever it’s called now. Yes, I understand, but there’s always something urgent. No one ever calls me at home and tells me it isn’t urgent. Okay… okay. If the President is serious that she wants a meeting, then she can call me personally. She knows where to reach me. Okay? Thanks.”

When his dad hung up, Gunner watched him. He didn’t look like he was having as much fun as just a minute ago. Gunner knew that if the President called, his dad would quickly pack his bags and go somewhere. Another mission, maybe more bad guys to kill. And he would leave Gunner and his mom home alone again.

“Dad, is the President going to call you?”

His dad ruffled Gunner’s hair. “Monster, I sure hope not. Now what do you say? Let’s go get some stripers.”

*

Hours later, the President still hadn’t called.

Luke and Gunner had caught three nice stripers, and Luke showed Gunner how to gut, clean, and filet them. It was old ground, but repetition was how you learned. Becca even got into the act, bringing a bottle of wine out to the patio and setting a cheese and cracker plate on the outdoor table.

Luke was just firing up the grill when the phone rang.

He looked at his family. They had frozen on the first ring. He and Becca made eye contact. He couldn’t read what was in her eyes anymore. Whatever it was, it was not supportive approval. He answered the phone.

A deep voice, a man: “Agent Stone?”

“Yes.”

“Please hold for the President of the United States.”

He stood numb, listening to blank air.

The phone clicked and she came on. “Luke?”

“Susan.”

His mind flashed back to an image of her, leading the entire country, and much of the world, in singing “God Bless America.” It was an amazing moment, but that’s all it was, a moment. And it was the kind of thing politicians were good at. It was practically a parlor trick.