Blackout (10 page)

Great,
Riley thought as he stammered out an embarrassed thank-you. Then President Lloyd turned to hold a private discussion with Secretary Carroll.

When they were in the hallway with the Oval Office's door closed behind them, Moss put his finger in Scott's face. “You may have won this battle, but believe you me, you're going to lose the war!”

Scott took a step forward so that Moss's finger was just inches away from his nose. “That's funny. I wasn't aware we were in a war except with the people who are trying to destroy this country! But if you really do want a war,
Mr. Secretary
, then I'm more than happy to oblige!”

“You best watch the way you talk to me, Ross! I'm not your boss—I'm two levels above your boss! That means that if I decide it's time for you to go, I only need to say the word and you're gone!”

“Then say the word! Go ahead—open my weekend schedule a bit; say the word!”

“Back off, Ross,” Porter said, stepping between the two.

“And you,” Moss continued, now directing his finger at Porter's nose. “Let me assure you that your career is over! I will not have insubordination in my department, particularly in front of the president! You think I can't find anyone who can replace you? someone who knows how to follow orders? someone who . . .”

As Moss continued his rant, Porter put a hand up behind his back and motioned for the rest of them to make their way out. Riley, Scott, and Khadi didn't have to be told twice. They slowly backed themselves down the hall, turned a corner, then got out while the getting was good.

Wednesday, July 22, 10:30 a.m. EDT

Washington, D.C.

Riley gave the bellman a generous tip, even though all the kid had done was open the door to his room.
Best to make friends of the staff now, since you'll probably be staying here awhile.

Riley's suite was 1002, but he also held the key to the adjoining top-floor room. Even though he had been unable to get Skeeter on the phone—which meant that Skeet was either on a plane or dead—he had no doubt that sometime in the next few hours his friend and bodyguard would be showing up at the Quincy looking for him.
Better to risk paying for an unused room than to have Skeeter show up with no place to put him other than the other half of the suite's king-size bed.

Scott and Khadi had wanted Riley to come with them, stick his head in, and say hey to the rest of the analysts, but hard as it was to separate from Khadi after so short a time, he had declined the invitation. Too much had happened in the past day, and he desperately needed time to process.

After a stop for some clothes and food and other necessities, Scott and Khadi had dropped him off at the downtown hotel. Earlier, Scott had tried to talk Riley into staying with him, but Riley had visited Scott's place back in Denver and knew that their two differing definitions of “living conditions” would only cause them to clash. Better to keep some space.

After cranking up the air-conditioning against the humidity, Riley put his new clothes in the closet and the food in the refrigerator. Then, following a thorough search through the kitchenette for the necessary equipment, he opened a can of SpaghettiOs, dumped the contents into a pan, and slid the pan across the stove's cooktop. It had been years since he had had this childhood favorite. He knew its nutritional value was just above eating paste, but for some reason it sounded good to him tonight. As he stirred, he smiled, thinking about Khadi's grimace when he had reached for the can. He had been tempted to grab a can of the SpaghettiOs with sliced franks to mess with her even more, but in the end he was simply too tired to play around.

While his dinner cooked, he explored the rest of the suite. Trendy but comfortable. Huge television that he didn't feel like turning on. Nice bathroom with a thick robe and slippers. All in all, not a bad place to hole up for a few weeks.

He lay back on the bed and immediately missed home. This was one of the worst things about road trips—the mattresses. The expensive hotels made them too soft, and the cheaper ones made them too hard. This one wasn't bad as hotel beds went, but still, it was different from home.

The smell of tomato sauce cooking forced him to get up. After pouring the pasta into a bowl and pulling a Diet Coke out of the fridge, he sat at a table by the window and looked out at the monuments only minutes from his hotel.

Now that all the activity of settling in had ceased, it was only him, his SpaghettiOs, and his thoughts. He had to admit, he was still angry with Scott. But it wasn't so much at what Scott had done. Every step his friend had taken had been well planned out, which told him it wasn't just Scott's brainchild. Khadi, too, had probably been involved from square one but was afraid to admit it.

His anger came more from the fact that his brief moment of serenity had been taken from him. For a short time it had felt to him like everything was going to be okay. He was starting to heal from his father's murder. He was beginning to get excited about football again. He had been entertaining the hope that maybe—just maybe—everything could possibly return to a seminormal state.

Then came Scott.

Suddenly, civilization is about to end, America is about to be EMPed back into the Stone Age, and millions of people are about to meet grisly deaths.
Of course, technically, none of those things were directly Scott's fault. But still, being close to Scott was like having Jessica Fletcher from
Murder, She Wrote
as your best friend. Every place Jessica showed up, you knew that someone was going to die. Riley just hoped that he, or more so Khadi, would not be the one to get hit with the rock or stabbed with the letter opener or poisoned with the merlot or driven off the cliff in the convertible with the cut brake lines.

Without Scott, Riley would have remained blissfully ignorant of the threat, like all the other 300 million Americans.
But is that really what I would want? Would I rather be clueless, caught unawares, or be one of those in the know that is given an opportunity to do something about it? When it's put that way, I guess I should be thanking Scott instead of cursing him.

Riley got up and put his bowl and spoon in the sink next to his dirty pan—one of the benefits of living in a place with maid service. His body was telling him that it needed activity, and the hotel offered free guest passes to the Bally's two blocks down. But for once he ignored what he needed and instead chose what he wanted. And what he wanted was sleep—blissful, quiet, escapist sleep.

He stripped out of his filthy clothes and dropped them in the trash can.
Actually, I probably should burn those!
He showered, then slipped under the covers in his now-arctic-chilled room. A thought crossed his mind:
I'm no longer a Colorado Mustang. I'm a Washington Warrior!
A knot set in his stomach, and he felt his throat begin to constrict. The Mustangs had been Riley's team from the time he was old enough to know what a football was. He had followed the team religiously, and the day he was drafted by his favorite team was one of the best of his life.

And now that was gone.
Pfft
, just like that.

Again the emotions against Scott began to rise. But this time they were combined with something else. Sorrow mixed with fear. Well, maybe not fear, but definitely nervousness.
What will it be like when I walk into that new locker room? Will I get along with my teammates, with my coach? How quickly will I be able to pick up the new defensive scheme?

Fat chance going to sleep now,
he thought with a sigh. Getting out of bed, he dressed, grabbed some of his new workout clothes, and walked out the door to do what his body had been telling him he should have done in the first place.

Wednesday, July 22, 11:00 a.m. EDT

Washington, D.C.

When Scott and Khadi opened the door to the Room of Understanding (a term coined by analyst Evie Cline because
War Room
had sounded too violent), the five people inside quickly turned their heads. Then, seeing that Riley wasn't with the two, they just as quickly let out a collective groan.

“Oh, it's only you,” Joey Williamson complained.

“What, no hugs? No kisses? Not even a ‘Welcome home, Daddy'?” Scott said sarcastically. For once in his life, he wasn't in the mood for the banter that usually took place around the office. And seeing the “office” he was in just soured his mood more.

Back in Denver, they'd had a roomy, state-of-the-art facility. Now the team was crammed into an undersize workspace, the analysts working in back-to-back cubicles and Scott and Khadi each stuffed into a separate closet-size office with walls so thin they constantly got distracted by each other's phone conversations. What little extra room there had once been was now occupied by a laminate-topped conference table.
And they expect us to save the world from this little space? Unbelievable!

“Meeting in five minutes,” Scott said as he walked through to his office to change out of his suit. Slamming the door behind him, he yanked off his clip-on tie and threw it across the office—which wasn't a great feat, since if he stretched both arms out to the side at once, he could almost touch both walls.

Soon his suit pants were replaced with ratty-bottom jeans and his dress shoes with Birkenstocks. He flipped through the assortment of black T-shirts hanging from a pole he had strung from the ceiling and pulled one out.
Nice! Uriah Heep—Heep '74. My favorite Dickens character turned progressive rock band.
After slipping it over his head, he walked back into the main room.

“Drop what you're doing, and gather round, kids!”

“That was only three minutes,” Evie Cline whined. “You said we'd have five.”

“I lied. Let's go!”

“Apparently Pa had a bad meeting today at work,” Virgil Hernandez said.

“Can it, Virgil.” Senior analyst Tara Walsh was the one who cracked the whip around the RoU. Her stunning looks reminded Scott of Jaclyn Smith in her
Charlie's Angels
days, but her personality was at times closer to the Wicked Witch of the West. Still, if he was forced to admit it, Tara's face was the one that most often visited him as he drifted off to sleep at night.

“Yeah, what she said,” Scott commanded. “Besides, it was an excellent meeting. Couldn't have gone better.”

“Then what's got you down, Scottybear?” asked Evie, who hated to see anyone feeling low.

“‘Scottybear'?” Khadi said, giving Scott a curious look. Scott just shrugged in response.

“I know what it is,” Hernandez answered. “He's got the Riley Covington blues!”

“Hernandez, just leave it alone,” Scott said angrily.

Gooey, the fifth and most recent addition to the analyst crew, cleared his throat and began playing a blues riff on an air guitar.

Dom dom dare dare, doe doe doe doe doe dom dom dare dare

Wellll, I kidnapped my best friend while-a he was a-clamming.

Dom dom dare dare, doe doe doe doe doe dom dom dare dare

Yeeaah, said I kidnapped my best friend while-a he was a-clamming.

Dom dom dare dare, doe doe doe doe doe dom dom dare daarre

Dom
—Thought he'd be glad,

Doe doe doe dom
—Turned out he was mad.

I guess I just gots me them, uh, Ri-ley Co-ving-ton blues.

Evie, Hernandez, and Williamson all put down the cell phones they had been waving and burst into applause. Soon Khadi joined in. Scott, who desperately wanted to unleash a biting comeback to Gooey, instead found himself laughing. Tara, who was giving him an exasperated, can't-you-control-your-children look, only made him laugh harder.

“Okay,” Scott said when he finally caught his breath, “so today what I learned is that I have the absolute power to totally destroy my best friend's life, but for some reason I can't seem to find a way to make him like it.”

“Have you tried drugging him or possibly beating him into submission?” Gooey suggested.

Scott looked thoughtful. “Props on the ideas, Goo, but unfortunately Khadi keeps the key to the pharmaceutical cabinet and Riley could probably kick my butt from here to next week. But way to think out of the box.” The rest of the team congratulated their fellow analyst.

Once they were all seated around the table, Scott began his debrief of the meeting with the president. Other than the team's occasional comparison of Secretary Moss with various bodily parts, Scott was able to get through it without interruption—a sign that this group of social misfits fully understood the gravity of the threat facing the nation.

“So your job is to find those weapons,” Scott concluded.

A rare silence surrounded the table, until Williamson spoke up. “Bypassing any tired needle-in-haystack clichés, do you have any suggestions as to how we might accomplish said task?”

“Well, gee, Joey, for some reason I thought that was your job.”

“I know, boss,” Williamson said, sounding unusually flustered. “But where in the world do we begin? I mean, this is like a global
Where's Waldo?
”

Scott sat back for a moment to think, then said, “First off, I think your
Where's Waldo?
simile comes dangerously close to qualifying as a needle-in-haystack cliché. Second, I would start by checking shipping manifests. The weapons could have been taken out of the DPRK by boat, but with the way the world is watching that country, I'm guessing they were trucked to another port. Khadi, who else could have a vested interest in this little scheme working?”

“Well, it could have shipped from China or continued south to Southeast Asia. Or maybe northwest to Russia—no doubt they'd like a shot at finally being the number one dog on the block. Possibly it could have gone west to the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan, maybe even to Iran and the Middle East. I don't think there's any need to go into their feelings toward us. From there you've got Egypt and North Africa—all of whom would probably be dancing in the streets if America crashed.”

“So, Khadi, let me get this right. Basically you've narrowed our search to the Eastern Hemisphere,” an exasperated Hernandez said.

“Look at it this way: I just ruled out half the world in one fell swoop. Not bad for a day's work,” Khadi answered with a smile.

Despite the daunting task that had just been laid out for them, the analysts had to nod their heads in appreciation of Khadi's mighty display of analytical prowess.

“Listen, gang, I realize what I'm asking you to do is a near-impossible task,” Scott said. “But you guys understand what's at stake. I've got every confidence in you. Tara, you divvy up continents and then keep the kids on task. If you reach a roadblock, come talk to Khadi or me.”

Everyone stood with Scott as he rose to go, but then dropped into their chairs when he sat down again. “You know, in this past year, the intel you guys have come up with has saved thousands of lives. Now I'm asking you to save millions.”

“No pressure,” Evie said with a grin.

Scott smiled grimly. “Actually, I hope you feel more pressure than you've ever felt in your life, because finding these EMPs is probably the most important thing you'll ever do. It's even more important than breaking into the top five of the
WarCraft III
global ladder.”

“Seriously? Wow,” Gooey answered.

“Wow is right.” Again Scott stood. “Now get out there and find me two EMPs. And if your computer screen should happen to go blank, you'll know you were just a little too late.”