Blowback

Just as Harvath finished his thought, he saw the sunroof of the second Suburban slide back. Seconds later the unmistakable housing of an FIM-92A Stinger Weapons System was slid through the roof, followed by a resolute-looking man who was balancing the entire thing on his shoulder. His eyes pi

Harvath had no intention of losing anyone either. “Launch your countermeasures now!” he yelled.

“What?” replied the pilot. “Why?”

“Do it!” screamed the copilot, able to see what his colleague couldn’t. “Do it now!”

The pilot launched the countermeasures. Bright flares and flaming pieces of chaff spewed in all directions, showering the motorcade with hot debris and forcing the security perso

As Harvath prepared himself for a second run, the voice of the pilot came over his headset and said, “The tower has made contact with the motorcade. They are pulling back. I repeat, they are pulling back. Bomb technicians are on their way to examine the aircraft.”

Letting go of the grips of the M60, Harvath fell back onto one of the seats and wondered where the hell he could find a beer in this country.

NINETY-THREE

DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE H EADQUARTERS

WASHINGTON, DC

Just to prove that she could play ball, Helen Carmichael had abandoned her pantsuit in favor of a gray fla

She had sent Neal Monroe personally to Russ Mercer’s office with a peace offering of sorts. Inside the confidential file, which her assistant had been instructed to deliver only to the DNC chairman himself, was but a fraction of the proof she had uncovered, thanks to Brian Turner, that President Jack Rutledge had been ru

In addition to tampering with the supposedly “free” and “democratic” elections of several foreign nations, Rutledge had also authorized the assassination of at least half a dozen foreign officials hostile to U.S. policy abroad-and that was only the tip of the iceberg. Rutledge represented all that the world saw was wrong with America, and Helen Carmichael was going to take particular pleasure in watching him burn.

He had also been helping one of his private covert operators, Scot Harvath, avoid service of the subpoena she had prepared demanding he appear before her committee. As if monkeying around with American foreign policy wasn’t enough to incense voters, the fact that Rutledge was subverting the Constitution and flagrantly breaking several federal laws was going to send the populace of the United States into an uproar.

Sitting in the back of her town car as it made its way to the Democratic National Committee Headquarters, she had tried to decide where she should start in dismantling the Rutledge administration. Of course, she’d discuss it with Russ Mercer to show she was a team player, but in reality she’d already made up her mind. The world was still enraged about the senseless beating of the Iraqi fruit merchant by a faceless American GI. That was the most logical place to begin. She’d trot Harvath out in front of the cameras and throw the book and anything else she could get at him. It would go a long way in helping to repair America ’s image abroad, and she would be hailed as the woman who broke the case and made it all happen.

Once she had broken Harvath’s back, she could leapfrog right onto Rutledge’s and enjoy the ride down as his career and his presidency crashed and burned. Any designs she had had on slowly leaking the information she’d collected were now a thing of the past. It wasn’t enough to simply weaken him and cream his ticket in the election. They needed to force Rutledge to resign, or better yet to impeach him before the election, so that the Republicans would be forced to throw another candidate in at the last minute. It didn’t matter who they came up with, the American people would be so sick of the Republicans and so distrusting of their party that the Democrats would sail right into the White House. It was so close she could taste it.

As she now sat in Russ Mercer’s outer office, Helen Carmichael paid particular attention to how he had furnished the space and what it said about the DNC and its chairman. While her own office in the Hart Senate Office Building had been decorated with mementos from Pe

She was contemplating several pieces of furniture now housed at the Smithsonian that she thought would be perfect in the vice-presidential residence at the Naval Observatory, when Russ Mercer’s secretary set down her phone and said, “The chairman will see you now, Senator.”

“Here we go, “ Carmichael said to herself as she stood and smoothed out her skirt. Walking toward the heavy mahogany door, she wondered how Mercer was going to offer her the VP slot. Hopefully, he would have the class to apologize to her first for how unsupportive he’d been. There was also the issue of his meeting with the president’s chief of staff, Chuck Anderson, and the things he’d said there, but at this point, she was willing to forgive and forget everything. All she wanted to hear were the words The party needs you on the ticket.

As she neared the door, she was suddenly self-conscious and wished she had taken a moment to use the ladies’ room to check her hair and makeup one last time. When she had received the message that Mercer wanted to meet with her and that he had a very important item to discuss, she had spent the whole evening prior trying to decide what to wear. She had also had one of her staffers, the pretty young Asian girl whose name she was always forgetting, come over that morning to help her do her hair and makeup in a way that would make her appear softer and, as the DNC chairman had put it, less of a raging bull dyke. Knocking on the heavy door, she hoped her efforts wouldn’t be lost on him.

“Good morning, Helen,” said Mercer as Carmichael proudly strode into the room with her head held high and her shoulders back. “Thank you for coming.”

She was about to return his greeting when out of the corner of her eye she spied Charles Anderson standing next to the window and stopped dead in her tracks. “What the hell is he doing here?”

“Why don’t you take a seat?” replied Mercer.

“Not until you tell me what’s going on,” she snapped.

“I warned you this whole thing was going to blow up in your face,” said the president’s chief of staff.

Carmichael ignored him. “Russ, I demand an explanation. What is Chuck Anderson doing in this office?”

“He’s here to help prep you for your press conference,” replied the DNC chairman.

Part of Carmichael wanted to believe that what she was seeing was the ultimate in strange bedfellows, that Anderson had come to help her craft a statement a