Triggers

Darryl Hudkins walked over and stood with his arms crossed in front of his chest. “Dr. Griffin and I were careful in reviewing the security-camera recordings. There’s no way someone was in the affected sphere that we didn’t see.”

“There was an electromagnetic pulse,” Susan said.

“Well, yeah…” replied Darryl.

“Which means there could have been an interruption in the recordings, no?”

“Sure, yeah,” said Darryl. “There was. But according to the timecode, it lasted less than a minute.”

“A good runner,” Susan said, “can cover a thousand feet in a minute.” She looked at Singh’s grid of linkages on the whiteboard, then picked up a marker and drew in a twenty-first column at the far right. In the spot for the person’s name at the top of the column, she put an “X” for unknown.

Chapter 20

Seth Jerrison lay on his back. His chest ached, and it hurt to breathe, but he’d insisted the doctors keep him awake as much as possible; he couldn’t risk the Speaker or anyone else trying to move for a forced handover of power under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment—not this close to the initiation of Counterpunch.

He’d just spent half an hour on the phone with his chief of staff, who was holding things together at Mount Weather, and he’d also spoken to his science advisor, who was currently at a conference at CERN but was cutting that short to return to the States.

The phone calls had been enough to exhaust Seth, and so he stared up at the ceiling and the irritating strobing fluorescent tube there. Jesus Christ, he was leader of the free world; all he had to do was mention it to someone, and it would be fixed. He looked over at Nurse Sheila, who was ever vigilant.

He knew he was in good hands here—and not just because the hospital was named for the man who had saved more American lives than anyone else in history, even though a recent survey had shown that less than one percent of Americans knew who he was. In fact, Jerrison had to admit, he himself hadn’t—the only holder of the same office that he could name prior to becoming president was the one immortalized by the B-Sharps, Homer Simpson’s barbershop quartet: “For all the latest medical poop, call Surgeon General C. Everett Koop—koop koop a koop.”

But Luther Terry was responsible for more people knowing of the office of Surgeon General than anyone else, for he was the one who in 1964 had released the report linking smoking to cancer, and in 1965 had instigated the “Surgeon General’s Warning” on cigarette packs.

Seth had recently reviewed proposed new warnings, designed to prevent teenagers who see themselves as invincible from picking up the habit. “Smokers become slaves to Big Tobacco.” “The maker of this product intends to addict you to it.” “Smokers are pawns of heartless corporations.” And his favorite, short and sweet: “You are being used.”

The fluorescent tube continued to flicker, and—

An inside job.

Seth had taught American history for twenty years—including all about the previous presidential assassination attempts. He’d read the whole damn Warren Commission Report, as well as the myriad conspiracy theories. Earl Warren and his colleagues got it right, in his view: Oswald had acted alone, not in cahoots with the CIA. It was crazy to think a conspiracy could reach so far into the government; a lone nut was far easier—and far less scary—to contemplate. Hell, Nixon couldn’t keep Watergate a secret; Bill Clinton couldn’t keep a blowjob a secret. How could anyone keep a plan within the Secret Service to eliminate the president under wraps?

Seth didn’t know what he should do. He thought about dismissing the entire Secret Service, but there were dozens of protectees that would be affected: the First Family, Flaherty and his family, the living ex-presidents, visiting foreign dignitaries, andso on.

But, damn it all, at least he could get this fixed. “Sheila,” he said as loudly as he could—which he supposed was about half a normal speaking volume.

Sheila moved immediately to his bedside. “Yes, Mr. President?”

“That light,” he said softly, and he managed to lift his free hand a little to point at it. “Can you get it replaced?”

She looked up at it. “Of course, sir.”

Just then, the door opened, and in came Susan Dawson. “Mr. President, how are you feeling?”

His voice was still weak, he knew, but Ronald Reagan had set a high standard for banter on occasions like this, and so he tried his best. “Like someone shot me in the back, and someone else carved my chest open. Oh, and like someone blew up my house.”

Susan rewarded him with a small smile, and Seth supposed he was feeling slightly better, despite all those horrors; she was a beautiful woman, and it pleased him to have her smiling at him. Actually, he liked it better when she was wearing her Secret Service–issue sunglasses; there was something really sexy about women in dark glasses, and—

The Secret Service.