In Sheep's Clothing: An Action-Packed Political Thriller (Matthew Richter Thriller Series Book 1) (17 page)

Finally, after almost twenty seconds, he saw it.  Along the now-cold metal barrel of the gun, Richter saw the unmistakable signs of condensation forming then dissipating, then forming again.  It was slow and rhythmic.

He positioned the president’s body between his own and the tree.  With his free hand, he fumbled with his harness, opening the pouch on the survival kit.  Rooting through the contents, he found the military knife.  After he cut the third suspension line, the president’s body slumped into his arms.  He struggled with the unconscious man, wedging him between the tree trunk and the rock face.  Then he cut the remaining lines as a wind gust loosened the chute from the tree’s grip.  It sailed out over the side of the hill, flapping like a flag before he pulled it in with the remaining suspension line.  Fighting the wind, he wrapped the chute around the president. 

He leaned back against the rock face and sat next to the unconscious president, pulling part of the chute over his own body.  He rummaged through the survival kit again, finding a sleeping bag and a thermal blanket.  He struggled for several minutes before he was able to wrap the thermal blanket around the president and then wedge both of their bodies into the sleeping bag.  He pulled the chute around and over them, forming a makeshift tent. 

Richter put his hand on the president’s chest again, feeling it rise and fall, slowly but steadily.  He studied the president.  His face was pale.  One cheek was bruised, and his upper lip was swollen and cut as if he had been punched.  There was an ugly scrape on his chin.  He couldn’t tell if there were any broken bones or internal injuries, but that wasn’t his primary concern.  Hypothermia was the biggest risk right now. 

He put one arm around the president and pulled him tight against his body.  He sat back again and stared out through the folds of the chute at the storm.  His face was the trademark stony mask as he assessed the situation.  For a brief moment, the mask dissolved and a sudden sob escaped from his throat. 

Everyone on Air Force One was dead!
  He knew some of them, at least well enough to say hello: the Chief of Staff, the Secretary of Commerce, the National Security Advisor, the guys from Air Force security, the flight crew.  There were many others he didn’t know: the White House Counsel, the members of Congress, most of the press pool.  All dead. 

Sixteen fellow agents were gone.  Stephanie was gone!  Hands over his face, Richter sobbed.  He wept for a moment until, somewhere in his subconscious, the will to live and his sense of duty took over.  And with them came anger. 
Goddamn it!
  He had to pull himself together!  He had a job to do!  

His teeth began to chatter, and he knew it would take a minute or two before he felt any warmth.  The president seemed to be breathing regularly, and Richter knew that he had done all he could for the moment.  His mind started to clear, and he forced himself to think about their situation. 

Richter was trained in what the Secret Service called “Ten Minute Medicine.”  Every agent had learned various first aid techniques designed to keep a victim alive for ten more minutes until emergency medical help arrived.  Unfortunately, he knew that it would take far longer than ten minutes for help to reach them.  He could only count on himself and his training to keep both of them alive.  His next task was to find better shelter soon or both he and the president would die from exposure.  He had to find a way to keep the president not only warm but dry as well.  Then he had to figure out what to do.  Richter’s face once again turned into a hardened mask.

At Portland International Airport, two Pave Hawk helicopters prepared for takeoff.  The HH-60G Pave Hawk was the standard rotary-wing rescue and retrieval aircraft of the 920th Rescue Wing.  Known as Combat Search and Rescue, or CSAR, the air wing’s mission was to locate and recover downed or injured U.S. military personnel during combat operations.  The wing also supported civilian search and rescue operations in the U.S., as well as disaster relief efforts around the world.

The Pave Hawk crew consisted of five airmen, including the pilot and co-pilot, a crew chief and two pararescue jumpers, better known as PJs.  Today, both Pave Hawks carried eight additional troops.

The lead aircraft took off and hovered.  Twenty seconds later, the second aircraft took off.

“Jolly Sixteen.  Form up.”

“Roger, Jolly Twelve.  Sixteen on wing.”

Once in formation, both aircraft turned to the east and proceeded at maximum power to central Idaho.

Three minutes later, a Hercules H/C-130 P/N aerial tanker and support aircraft took off from Portland and headed east, soon passing the Pave Hawks.  In addition to midair refueling, the H/C-130 was capable of performing tactical airdrops of pararescue specialist teams and a wide assortment of supplies to support rescue operations, including food, water bladders, first-aid bundles, zodiac watercraft, even four-wheel drive all-terrain vehicles.  The fixed-wing aircraft was also capable of providing extended visual and electronic searches over land or water. 

“Jolly Flight.  This is King Flight.  Call sign, King Eight.  Our ETA to target is one hour thirty-three minutes.”

“Roger, King Eight.  We’re right behind you.  ETA is two hours seven minutes.  Find us a way in, son.”

“Copy, Jolly Twelve.”

He could do this, Richter willed himself, but he needed to fully assess the situation first.  The president was injured and they needed to find shelter soon.  The wind had picked up considerably, and it was snowing harder now.  Visibility was terrible. 

The Secret Service and the Air Force would mobilize rescue units, but he doubted that they would be able to get teams into these mountains in this storm.  His watch, the face cracked, told him that it was 11:21 a.m. Pacific Time.  They had been flying for about an hour.  That would put them somewhere in Idaho, possibly Montana, he calculated, right in the center of the storm. 

He inventoried the contents of his survival kit and found windproof matches and a lighter; food packs and cooking gear; a folding shovel and a wire saw; chemical light sticks, candles and a small flashlight; fishing line and hooks; chemical hand warmers; a water purification kit and water storage pouch; a first aid kit; a signaling mirror; and nylon rope.  

Richter grunted. 
That’s strange.  There should also be a personal locator beacon.
  He checked the president’s survival kit and both of their harnesses but didn’t find any electronic signaling devices.

He then remembered that his cell phone had built in GPS capabilities, but when he checked his pockets, it was missing.  He realized it must have fallen out somewhere along the way.  His radio was missing too, likely ripped from his body by the gale force winds, he realized. 
Damn!

Okay
, he thought.  They had sleeping bags and blankets to keep warm.  They could use the parachute canopies as tents.  They had food, they could make a fire…if they could find wood.  They could survive, if he thought this through.

But what had happened?
he wondered.  That sure as hell looked like Cal Mosby.  And there were…what?  One…two explosions before they jumped?  He remembered descending.  And he was certain he had heard another explosion after he jumped and wondered whether they’d been shot down.  Wait.  If it was a missile, how had Mosby reacted so quickly?   Why did he bail out instead of rushing to help the president?

“Son of a bitch!” Richter yelled as it dawned on him. 
They had been sabotaged!
  Mosby had forced the pilots to descend and then somehow created an explosion to blow the door off. 
That’s it!  Mosby had parachuted off the plane!
  But he knew he couldn’t parachute from thirty-five thousand feet.  He wouldn’t survive.  Well, he was wearing an oxygen mask, but the plane was going way too fast.  He had to slow it down.  He wouldn’t be able to open the door because of the pressure differences inside and outside the plane.  He had to slow the plane down, and even then, he had to somehow open the door.  That had to be it—someway, somehow, Mosby had forced the pilots to descend and to reduce air speed. 

Damn!
  Mosby must have smuggled explosives on board.  He was knowledgeable about explosives, Richter knew, but what about parachutes?  Mosby couldn’t have acted alone, he realized.  He had to have accomplices, and it had to be someone from the Air Force.  They were the only ones who visited the lower deck while the plane was airborne.  They would be able to explain how planes worked, where to set explosives, how the pilots would react in an emergency.  They were trained in parachutes.  And Mosby was the only one able to get the explosives past all of the security checkpoints. 
Oh, shit!
  If Mosby and someone from the Air Force were involved, who else was?  How many people jumped off the plane?

There was no way of knowing who he could trust.    

Okay.  Forget that
, he told himself.  He needed to focus on survival.  The next thing he had to do was build a better shelter.  They had to get out of the wind and snow.  He’d need to either build a shelter up here or somehow get the president down to where there were trees.  Trees would provide some shelter from the wind.

Vice President Tyler Rumson was in a meeting with the House Whip when Agent Timmons, barged into his office. 

“Sir, we need to leave right now!”

“I’m in a meeting!”  Rumson snapped. 

Ignoring Rumson’s protest, Timmons pulled him to his feet and over to the door.  Outside, five more agents were waiting.

Rumson suppressed a smile as the agents formed a ring with himself and Timmons in the middle.  He felt Timmons’ vice-like grip on his elbow as the agents, shouting, rushed him down the hall.  His mind was flying.  Finally! 

In his excitement, he didn’t hear Timmons. 

“Wolf is secure.”

Maria Kendall was in her office, in the East Wing of the White House, discussing national education objectives and policy with her Chief of Staff and the Secretary of Education.  Abruptly, her office door opened and the head of her Secret Service detail, Paula Tiller, and two other agents interrupted the meeting.

“Ma’am, may I speak with you privately?”

Maria excused herself, and Agent Tiller steered her into the hallway. 

“Ma’am, the president was aboard Air Force One today, flying back from Seattle.  Approximately twenty minutes ago, we lost contact with his plane.”

Maria’s face went pale; she stared at the agent. “What exactly does that mean?”

“We don’t know what it means yet.  We have multiple ways of maintaining contact with the president and Air Force One at all times.  We’ve tried them all, but we are unable to make any contact.”

Maria slumped against the wall and Tiller grabbed her arms to keep her from falling.

“Ma’am, until we find out exactly what’s going on, I think it’s best if you come with me.”

“Wait…what about Angela and Michelle?”

Tiller led her down the hall.  “We’re picking them up right now.  They should be here in forty-five minutes.”

Both Angela and Michelle Kendall attended the Brookfield Academy, a private, all-girls school in Arlington, Virginia.  Angela was daydreaming while her teacher, Mr. Hatfield, droned on about inorganic compounds.  Suddenly there were shouts, and two Secret Service agents burst into the classroom and darted through the maze of desks to her seat.  Another agent stepped into the room, his gun drawn but pointed at the floor.  Angela didn’t notice the gasps and startled cries of her classmates.  She only saw the look on Agent Barbara Sullivan’s face; the hard eyes, the tight muscles stretched across her clenched jaw.  Suddenly, Agent Sullivan was pulling her up from her seat. 

“Angela, we need to leave right now,” Sullivan commanded as she steered Angela towards the door.  As they hurried down the hall, Sullivan lifted her cuff to her mouth. 

“Foxtrot is secure.  We’re heading for the East entrance.”

At that same moment, Michelle was running down the soccer field.  Unlike most girls in her class who hated P.E. because it made them sweat, messed up their hair, and ruined their makeup, Michelle loved it.  She dribbled the ball around two defenders, who made halfhearted attempts to stop her, and with a quick glance at the goalie, she picked her shot.  The ball sailed past the goalie into the upper left-hand corner of the net.  While a few of her teammates cheered, Michelle jogged back to center field.

Behind her, several girls screamed.  Michelle turned and saw three Secret Service agents running across the field, their suit coats flapping, two of them holding guns.

The initial shockwave from the final explosion tore a sixteen-inch hole in the right side of the fuselage.  While that hole, and the damage caused to the plane from the two prior explosions, was enough to doom the aircraft, what sealed its fate was the secondary shockwave that followed the last blast.  The fuselage reflected a portion of the bomb’s initial energy back towards the site of the explosion.  When that reflected energy met with the waves still pulsing from the original blast, the result was a more powerful and faster traveling wave of energy, called a Mach stem wave.  This traveled at supersonic speeds in several directions at once, bouncing off the fuselage and racing through open cavities and ductwork, warping and twisting metal along the way.  The Mach stem wave tore a large hole through the ceiling of the cargo hold into the passenger compartment and continued up through the top of the fuselage into the rushing air outside.  Much closer to the detonation site, another Mach stem wave tore a hole through the left-hand side of the plane directly across from the cargo bin where McKay had placed the bomb. 

This was followed by a wave of high-pressure gas that instantaneously over-pressurized the cavities of the plane and peeled back the fuselage skin as it sought equilibrium with the significantly lower-pressure environment outside.  The expanding energy and gas waves buckled the airframe and broke it in half. 

The passengers, already in a panic, had no way of comprehending what was happening.  Their bodies were violently assaulted by the Mach stem wave and expanding gasses and the shrapnel that once again filled the cabin.  Almost instantly, the top of the plane peeled back and tornado-force winds rushed through the passenger compartment. 

This all occurred in mere fractions of a second and, two and a half seconds later, the plane began to break apart.  The forward portion of the doomed aircraft, which contained the still intact wings, began a flat spin, the wings still providing lift.  The rear portion began to plummet.  As the plane continued to break into pieces, passengers and their belongings were sucked out into the freezing air.

The first portion of the wreckage, including a seat with Senator Pete Dykstra strapped in, landed five miles east of the mountainside where President Kendall and Agent Richter had landed. 

Jack checked the GPS unit and then studied the side of the mountain.   

“They landed there,” Jack said pointing to the steep slope they faced, “about two hundred, maybe three hundred feet up.  I think that explosion we heard was on the other side.”

“Well, if that’s the spot, we should be able to find their tracks in the snow.”

Jack shook his head.  “Their tracks are probably gone by now.  Besides, we don’t have the right gear.  How are we going to get up there?”

The slope of the hill in front and to the right steepened dramatically to almost thirty-five degrees.  Despite the slope, the side of the hill was covered in snow, with an occasional rock formation poking through.  There was no way to tell how deep it was or what dangers lay hidden beneath.  Even with proper gear, an ascent would be difficult. 

“Did you bring your binoculars?” Derek asked.

“Yeah.  In the lower right-hand pocket.” 

Jack turned again as Derek searched for the field glasses. 

A minute later, Derek lowered the binoculars.

“I don’t see any sign of them.”

“Let me try.”

Jack adjusted the focus and scanned the side of the hill.  Beginning at the spot where he estimated the parachutes had landed, he slowly panned up the hill and then back down to eye level directly in front of their position.  Seeing nothing, he continued downhill.  Still nothing.  He brought the binoculars back up to eye level.  He was about to give up when he caught a flash of color.  His heart began beating faster.  He held the binoculars steady, waiting, until he saw it again.

National Transportation Safety Board Member Brenda Hughes flipped open her binder to check her schedule as she walked down the hallway in the NTSB headquarters building in Washington, DC. 

“Director Hughes!”

She turned to see a young staff member running down the hall.  The staffer was out of breath.

“Ma’am!” he gasped.  “There’s been a plane crash.”

Shoot
, Hughes thought. 
There goes the weekend
.  She sighed.

“Give me the summary.”

The aide finally caught his breath.  “This one is big, ma’am!”  He paused again, trying to find the right words.

“Well?”

“It’s Air Force One!”

Richter was peering out between the folds in the parachute when he sensed movement.  He reached for his gun as two figures appeared out of the swirling snow.  Did Mosby have accomplices? 

Walking across the side of the incline, they appeared to be hikers.  Both wore large backpacks.  Richter watched as they carefully picked their route; occasionally stopping to make sure the ground was safe.  They were headed directly for him.  When the two men were about thirty yards away, one of them called out. 

“Hello.”

Richter stuck one hand through the opening of his makeshift tent and gave a half-hearted wave.

“Are you hurt?”

“Yes,” Richter yelled back.  “My friend is.”   

Like many police officers, Richter had developed an intuitive sense, a gut feeling, about people and situations.  When something didn’t feel right, he found it was best to trust his instincts.  He could see that they weren’t carrying any visible weapons and they weren’t trying to be clandestine.  They were careful in their approach, clearly concerned about their own safety.  They were young, in their early twenties, he guessed.  He hoped his instincts and his sixth sense weren’t failing him.  He slid his gun back below the parachute harness but kept it ready.

The two men stepped onto the narrow ledge.  The taller one pointed over his shoulder.  “Jack’s a doctor.  And a Boy Scout.”  He grinned.  “He’ll know what to do.”

“What are you doing out here?”  Richter kept the makeshift tent closed except for the small hole for his head.  He wanted to be sure before he let some supposed Boy Scout and his friend touch the president.

“We were backpacking.  Been out here two days.”  The taller of the two shrugged.  “We forgot to check the forecast and got caught in this storm.” 

The one named Jack gave him a dirty look. 

“
We
didn’t forget anything, Derek! 
You
forgot!” 

Jack maneuvered around Derek on the narrow ledge.  Again trusting his instincts, Richter opened his parachute and let Jack in.  Jack knelt in front of the president.  “I’m not a doctor yet, I’m still in med school.  But I’ll see what I can do.”

Jack took off his glove, checked for a pulse and breathing, then examined the president’s head. 

He glanced at Richter.  “He’s alive.  How long has he been out?”

“About forty minutes.  I think he may have banged his head.”

Jack examined the president’s head.  “It was a good idea to get him into the bag and to get the blanket around him.  But he won’t survive too much longer up here.  We need to get him into a shelter, out of this wind.  You too,” Jack said, nodding to Richter, and then frowning.  “You look like you hit your head as well.  How do you feel?  Can you walk?”

Richter frowned.  “I’m okay.  I can walk.”

“You guys were on the plane, right?” 

Richter hesitated.  “Yeah.  We were on the plane.” 

Pat Monahan closed his binder.  Today’s Boston Task Force raid, the fifth so far, had gone smoothly.  So far, other than cuts and bruises, assault team and Mexican civilian injuries had been almost non-existent.  But Monahan worried it was just a matter of time before the cartels adapted to the new tactics.  Then casualties would start to mount.

As he stepped out of the video conference room on the ground floor of the White House—today’s meeting had been moved at the request of the National Security Staff—there was a commotion as a large group of Secret Service agents, Cabinet members, and senior White House personnel headed his way.  One look at their faces told him something was wrong.

“Pat, you should join us,” one agent said as he steered Monahan toward the Situation Room.

“We’ll have to improvise a stretcher and carry him down.”  Jack yelled over the wind. 

Derek nodded. 

Jack fingered the parachute material.  “This should work.  We should be able to carry this guy…” he paused and turned to Richter.  “Hey, what’s his name?”  

Richter hid his surprise.  These guys had no idea who they were.  “His name is Dave, and I’m Matt.”

“Okay, Matt, let’s get you out of that bag.”  

Richter climbed out and zipped the bag up around the president, pulling and cinching the mummy hood up around his head, leaving only his face exposed.  They wrapped the president in the parachute.

“I can’t believe you jumped out of that plane!” Derek said.  “What happened?” 

“Mechanical issues.  Let’s get Dave to shelter first then I’ll tell you all about it.”

They each grabbed a handful of parachute, cautiously made their way off the ledge, and began to trudge down the hill.

“Ladies and gentlemen.”  The White House Communications Director said.  “I have a brief statement.” 

The director’s face was pale.  The room went silent.

“Today at approximately 11:14 a.m. Pacific Coast Time….that is about one hour and fifteen minutes ago….all contact with Air Force One was lost as the plane was returning to Washington from Seattle.  Information that we have right now indicates that the plane crashed into the mountains in a remote area of Idaho.  Rescue teams are en route but have not yet reached the crash site.  At this time, we have no word on the extent of the damage or whether there are any survivors.  That is all that I have at the moment.” 

Pandemonium broke out, and reporters began shouting questions. 

“Please.  Please.  One question at a time.”

“Was the president on the plane?”

“Yes.  The president was on the plane.”

“Are you saying the president is dead?” 

“No.  Let me repeat that.  No.  I am not saying the president is dead.  At this point, we have no information on his condition.  As I mentioned earlier, rescue teams have been dispatched but have not yet reached the crash site.”

“What happened?  Is this the result of a terrorist attack?”

“At this point, we do not know what happened.  All we know at the moment is that contact was lost and that Air Force One has apparently crashed.  Air Force fighter planes were immediately scrambled and have confirmed the location of the crash site, but….again….this occurred in a remote section of Idaho.  There is a severe winter storm in the area.  Reaching the wreckage site will be a challenge.”

The room erupted again.