He was a failure as a husband. He was a failure as a father. His career was over at forty-one years of age – he had walked away from government work two years ago and hadn’t looked for anything else. He hadn’t checked his bank accounts in a while, but it was reasonable to assume that he was almost out of money. About the only thing he’d ever been any good at was surviving in harsh and unforgiving environments. And killing – he was good at that, too. Otherwise, he had been a total, abject failure.
He could die on this mountain, but the prospect of it held no terror for him.
He was blank, empty… numb.
“Gotta start thinking of a way out of here,” he said, but he was just making conversation – he could leave, or not. It would be an okay place to die, and an easy thing to do. All he had to do was… nothing. Eventually – soon – he would run out of food. Drinking snowmelt wouldn’t sustain him for long. He would become gradually weaker, until it was impossible for him to make it back down the mountain by himself. He would starve. At some point, he would drift off to sleep and never wake up.
How to decide? How to decide?
Abruptly, he shouted, unaware he was going to do it until he did.
“Give me a sign! Show me what to do!”
Just then, his phone did something it hadn’t done in a long time – it rang. The sound made him jump, and his heart skipped a beat. The ringer was on as loud as it would go. The ring tone was a rock song that his son, Gunner, had put on the phone two years before. Luke had never changed it. More than not changing it, he had kept it on purpose. He cherished that song as the last link between them.
He looked at the phone. It reminded him of a living thing, a poisonous viper – you had to be careful how you handled it. He picked it up, glanced at the number, and answered it.
“Hello?”
The sound was garbled. Naturally, the thick tent was blocking the satellite signal. He was going to have to go outside to take this call – not a cheerful thought.
“I have to call you back!” he shouted into the handset.
Even moving quickly, it took several minutes to assemble the layers of clothes he needed and get dressed. It was too cold outside to do it halfway. He unzipped the tent, crawled through the tiny foyer, and pushed out into the weather. The wind and the stinging ice hit his face at once. He’d better make this quick.
He hung a beacon lamp on the tent frame and stumbled away from the noise of the flapping material into deep snow. He carried a powerful flashlight with him, turning back every few feet to mark the location of his camp. There were no lights out here, and visibility was about twenty yards. Snow and ice swirled around him.
He pressed the button to make the call and brought the phone inside the hood of his parka. He stood like a statue, listening to the beeps as the phone shook hands with the satellite and the call tried to go through.
“Stone?” a deep male voice said.
“Yes.”
“Hold for the President of the United States.”
It was a short wait.
“Luke?” a female voice said.
“Madam President,” Luke shouted. He couldn’t help but smile when he did. “It’s been a long time.”
“Much too long,” Susan Hopkins said.
“To what do I owe this honor?”
“I’ve got trouble,” she said. “I need you to come in.”
Luke thought about that for a moment. “Uh, I’m a long way from anywhere right now. It’s going to be a little hard to – ”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Wherever you are, I’ll send a plane. Or a helicopter. Whatever you need.”
“A big friendly Saint Bernard would be good for starters,” Luke said. “With one of those little whiskey kegs around his neck.”
“Done. He’ll bring you a sandwich too, in case you’re hungry.”
Luke nearly laughed. “Hungry is one way to describe it. And when I’m done eating, I really will need that chopper.”
“Also done. Before we hang up, I’ll give you to someone who can take your coordinates and send someone out to get you. We go the extra mile around here. We believe in door-to-door service.”
Luke had to admit he felt a quick flash of relief. Just moments before he had seen no way off this mountain, no second chance at life. Now, he had one. He hadn’t known before whether he’d wanted to die or live – but now he knew for sure. He could tell by the quickening of his blood when she mentioned a way out of here. Intellectually, he still didn’t know, but viscerally, his body told him.
He wanted to live.
Despite all the hell he’d been through, somehow, he wanted to live.
“What’s going on?” Luke said.
She hesitated, and her voice shook the smallest amount. He could hear it even through the wind whipping around him. “Yesterday was Election Day.”
Luke considered that. He had been off the grid for so long, he had no idea what the date was. Somewhere far away, in another world, people still campaigned for office. The wheels of government ground on. There were policies to argue about and important decisions to be made. There was media coverage, and talking heads shouting at each other. He hadn’t thought about any of these things in some time. In fact, he had almost forgotten they existed.
A long pause passed between them.
“Luke,” Susan said. “I lost the election.”
CHAPTER THREE
8:03 a.m. Eastern Standard Time
The Oval Office
The White House, Washington DC
“That evil bastard,” someone in the room said. “He stole it, plain and simple.”
Susan Hopkins stood in the middle of the office and stared at the large flat-panel TV on the wall. She was still numb, almost in shock. Although she watched intently, she was having trouble forming clear thoughts. It was too much to process.
She was very aware of the suit she wore. It was dark blue with a white dress shirt. There was something uncomfortable about it. Once upon a time, it had fit well – in fact, had been tailored to fit her perfectly – but it was clear today that her body was changing. Now the suit hung wrong. The shoulders of the jacket were too loose, the slacks were too tight. Her bra straps pinched the flesh of her back.
Too much late-night food. Too little sleep. Too little exercise.
She sighed heavily. The job was killing her anyway.
Yesterday at this same time, just after the polls opened, she was among the first people in the United States to cast her vote. She had come out of the booth with a big smile on her face and a fist in the air – an image that had been caught by the TV cameras and photographers, and had gone viral all day long. She had ridden a wave of optimism into Election Day, and the polls yesterday morning pegged her support at more than sixty percent of likely voters – a possible landslide in the making.
Now this.
As she watched, her opponent, Jefferson Monroe, took the podium at his headquarters in Wheeling, West Virginia. Although it was eight in the morning, a crowd of campaign workers and supporters were still there. Everywhere the cameras panned in the crowd were tall, red, white, and blue, Abraham Lincoln–style hats – they had somehow become the emblem of Monroe’s campaign. That, and the aggressive signs that had become his campaign’s war cry: AMERICA IS OURS!
Ours? What did that mean? As opposed to who? Who else would it belong to?
It seemed clear: minorities, non-Christians, gay people… you name it. In particular, it was clear it meant