Red Dot: Contact. Will the gravest threat come from closer to home than we expect? (23 page)

Even more damaging, a few minutes later, news reports said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Marlon Peoples, would speak after the Vice President. Fitzgerald and Clark had hoped the General would become the charismatic leader the revolt needed. Even if he declined the position, they reasoned, he wouldn’t oppose the rebellion. After all, he shared many of their goals and was already implicated in the plot through his knowledge of it. But now he had emerged to lead military officers loyal to the government. Perhaps most devastating, he could reveal the details and the plan and the names of the participants. Coup members now faced certain severe punishment, perhaps the death penalty, and condemnation in history as traitors.

One of Clark’s aides sank into a chair, put his head in his hands, and began to cry. Fitzgerald stared blankly at the floor and muttered, “I knew we shouldn’t have told Peoples.”

“God damn it, grow a pair!” shouted General Clark. “We’ve got the best bargaining chip in the world,” he said, nodding his head toward the Roosevelt Room, where the President sat. “We’ll use him to get amnesty and get a chance to spread news about our cause.”

Clark motioned to the two aides who still supported the coup to follow him. After briskly striding into the Roosevelt Room, he turned to the three guards, hesitated a second, then said, “We’ve suffered some setbacks. You two stay here, and the rest of you get the President and follow me.”

The same colonel who had manhandled the President earlier dragged him by the arm back out of the Roosevelt Room, through the presidential secretary’s office, and into the Oval Office. When the President appeared at a window, flanked by armed conspirators, the crowd some one hundred yards away—behind barricades—screamed in shock. Many onlookers shouted insults at the plotters, who were dismayed by the emotional public opposition.

A police hostage negotiator standing by a car parked on a street about fifty yards from the Oval Office suddenly spoke on a bull horn. “We want to speak to the leader of the coup.”

Clark opened the office door to the outside and, after pulling the President to his side, said in a loud voice, “We are patriotic Americans willing to lay down our lives to protect our country. We demand amnesty and an hour of air time on national TV to present our case.”

“Are you General Wallace Clark?” the negotiator asked.

“I am Lieutenant General Wallace Clark, Commander of the Strategic Air Command.”

“Let’s end this peacefully,” the negotiator said. “I cannot guarantee amnesty or air time, but release the President and the other hostages, and no one will get hurt. You will receive a fair trial with expert legal representation.”

“No. You must meet our demands. We don’t want to hurt anyone, but we will if we have to,” Clark said, looking at the President.

For a long ten seconds or so, there was silence as the negotiator considered how to answer. Then the President, looking at the negotiators and other police near them, said loudly, “Do what you have to do.”

Instantly, two rebel officers struggled to turn Douthart around and drag him from the door. But he managed to turn back toward the door long enough to shout, “That’s what we’ve got Vice Presidents for!”

The panicked conspirators rushed out of the Oval Office, carrying the President with one officer on each side. Douthart himself was stunned he had made such reckless statements.
Well
, he thought,
maybe I instinctively figured the police aren’t going to give in to the demands, anyway. Maybe now the plotters will be more likely to give up, because they think they don’t have a bargaining chip
.

Or maybe I just snapped
.

When Clark, the plotters with him, and the President went through the secretary’s office and reached the hallway outside the Roosevelt Room, another shock awaited them: All the other hostages were gone. Fitzgerald and the other insurgent leaders had left the office next door to tell the two men guarding the hostages how hopeless their cause was. And they’d all agreed to let the hostages go. They reasoned that perhaps they could yet mitigate their sentences, or at least salvage some of their reputation.

“Have you gone mad?” spluttered Clark. “You’ll throw away everything we stand for! You, you cowards!” he yelled as he pulled a handgun
out of his holster and grabbed the President by the shoulder. “I’m not backing down!”

Until that moment, Douthart had never completely believed this insane plot would end with the rebels killing him. Now he felt like time remained the same for him, for his thoughts, but slowed to a crawl for everyone outside himself. For the first time, he looked at the plotters and saw them as distinct individuals, with families and ordinary concerns.
Donner’s son graduates from Cornell next spring
, he thought as he watched a slow-motion Fitzgerald raise his hands, palms outward.
I know he’s very proud of him
. He saw Claire, his son Ted, and his late wife looking at him happily; all three of them appeared one by one, but somehow at the same time.

Then he watched with surprising unconcern as Clark slowly raised his handgun, pointing it at one of the other plotters. A bright light rolled out of the barrel of the gun, and a muffled roar filled the air. Then some of the other plotters pointed their guns, and the roar grew louder. Then blackness.

N
OW
T
HERE
’
S A
R
EASON

T
he brief fusillade
of gunshots from the White House electrified law enforcement officers and onlookers outside. In less than a minute, SWAT team members stormed into the hallway outside the Roosevelt Room to find the President, General Clark, the Colonel, and three of the other plotters laying on the floor, which resembled a grotesque painting with a canvas of bodies, blood, rifles, and handguns. Fitzgerald and three other conspirators stood dazed, each with his hands raised above his head or clasped on top of his head. Investigators later concluded that one of the plotters threatened to shoot Clark if he didn’t release the President. The General instantly fired at him, starting a brief gunfight, in which the President was hit with a stray bullet.

The first thing Claire had done after getting out of the White House was text her parents that she was all right and to let Sammie know. She and the other released hostages were being debriefed by the FBI, about how many plotters were there and where were they located, when the shots rang out. In the ensuing melee, Claire rushed back to the White House, knocking people out of her way. A cordon of police blocked her for a while. But when the SWAT team signaled that the plotters were disarmed, Claire was able to use her White House ID to get inside.

Propelled by raw emotion, she had no idea what she would do, but knew she had to get to Douthart.

Vice President Duggard had just begun to address Congress and a national TV audience when an aide approached her side and, with a look of despair, handed her a written message about gunfire erupting at the White House. With the news scrolling across television screens around the country, Duggard grimly announced the shooting as people in the chamber gasped and cried out. Duggard also announced that all hostages had fled unharmed, except for the President, who was still in the White House. The Vice President then tried to calm and reassure viewers in America and around the world, with the uncertain fate of the President now added to the shock of the attempted overthrow of the US government.

After an excruciating ten minutes, the aide appeared again with another message. The hall went completely silent; many tried to read the aide’s expression to see if the news was good or bad, but he wore the same look of despair as before. Duggard looked at the message for a few seconds, then turned back to the reporters.

“President Douthart has been wounded,” she said slowly, in a clear voice. “He…” The Vice President looked down at the message and quickly fixed her eyes on the TV camera again. “He’s being rushed to the hospital in critical condition. He—this brave and good man—was shot once in the chest on his right side.”

For an instant, Duggard felt she might faint from relief that the President was still alive—at least for now. She tightly grasped both sides of the lectern, leaned toward the microphones in front of her, and said, “Please excuse me for a few minutes, ladies and gentlemen. I am going to consult with my staff to get the latest news. Speaker Katzer, would you take the floor in the meantime?”

As soon as the Vice President reached a reception room outside the hall, she sat heavily on a chair and took some deep breaths. Staffers gathered around her, asking if she needed anything and offering her a cup of water.

“Please give me some room,” Duggard said, reaching out to take the cup of water.

As the aides stepped back, Secretary of State Whiteton came to stand beside the Vice President. “The coup failed,” he said with a firm voice, although
he looked at the shaken Vice President with concern. “We’ve located everyone who was in the coup, and arrested most of them.”

“What’s the latest on the President?”

“He’s at the hospital now,” Whiteton said, his deep, diplomat’s voice trailing off slightly. “There’s nothing more on his condition. The wound is life-threatening.”

“Oh dear,” the Vice President said softly. “What about the aliens?”

“The aliens?” Whiteton said, looking briefly confused. “Oh, the ETs.” The approach of extraterrestrials was the ostensible cause of the coup attempt, but in the ensuing drama and fear, the Secretary of State hadn’t given them a moment’s thought. “I must admit I don’t know of the latest developments. I’ll contact Dr. Montague to find out.”

“She’s going to be terribly upset,” Duggard said as she rose slowly from her chair.

“Are you all right?” a worried Whiteton asked.

“Not really,” she said, “but I’m going to go out and tell the people what I know.” Duggard walked slowly but steadily out to replace the Speaker of the House, Democratic Representative Edgar Katzer, at the lectern. The Speaker had assured the worldwide audience that the government was solidly united behind President Douthart and the rest of the leadership. He cited votes of 211 to 0 in the House and 46 to 0 in the Senate on a hastily arranged resolution condemning the coup. He didn’t mention that the votes were unofficial because neither legislative body could muster a quorum on such short notice. He also didn’t reveal that a handful of representatives and senators were prepared to vote against the resolution until Katzer agreed to add the phrase, “although loyal Americans may legitimately oppose some of the President’s policies regarding the extraterrestrials.”

When Whiteton turned to go find a secluded place where he could call Claire to get updated on the ETs, he almost knocked over the diminutive General Peoples. The General, who was waiting to speak after the Vice President, was anxious to make sure Whiteton had read section three of the folder that contained details of the coup.

“I still have the original with me, but no I have not,” the Secretary said apologetically.

Peoples replied, “I urge you to read it before you do anything else.”

Whiteton looked at the general inquiringly. Peoples pulled him aside and said hurriedly, “Plotters launched an attack on D9.”

After a few seconds in stunned silence, Whiteton rushed to sit in a nearby chair and pulled the folder from his clutch bag. His eyes grew big as he read that rebels in the military had fired a rocket with a nuclear warhead on a course to meet D9 when it began orbiting Earth, to destroy it. The weapon—Earth Protection1, or EP1—was a cutting-edge, militarized version of a NASA project designed to protect Earth from incoming asteroids or comets. The Defense Department had improved the accuracy and added stealth technology to mask the launch and approach of the weapon.

“This is a disaster,” Whiteton muttered softly as he slumped in his chair. Fear of the ETs gripped many on Earth, but there had been no solid reason to conclude D9 might use its superior technology against Earth. Then he said softly, “Now there’s a reason.”

With government staffers, security officers, and news crews scurrying noisily up and down the hall nearby, Whiteton stared vacantly at a patch of floor in front of him as he thought about what action to take. The Vice President was the highest authority now. According to the Constitution, Duggard would immediately become Acting President, after transmitting a document signed by her and a majority of the Cabinet to the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, certifying that the President was incapacitated. The Secretary of State would have to inform her about the attack on D9, and advise her to … to do what?