Page 79 of Air Force One
Finally safe. Because she was with him.
God. Damn. Straight!
77
US Air Force Colonel Taz Cortez didn’t know whether to laugh or be as creeped out as all hell. It had taken only two weeks since Miranda solved the crash of Air Force One. Placed in charge of the final phase by the President, what Taz had done was both elegant and terrifying.
With Clarissa’s help, a feeling Taz would never manage to scrub off in the shower, she and General Elizabeth Gray-Nason, now Senate-confirmed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had built a spy network—one inside the Pentagon.
They’d chosen each person carefully, with the aid of an AI computer—run by Heidi, Harry, and Jeremy and buried deep within the CIA.
Their AI wasn’t some genius self-aware machine, but it had offered perfect tracking of every person’s activities and provided instant secure communication from each to the very top without revealing who they were reaching out to—all without the ability to betray any other members. The AI also scanned the complete social media, email archives (both personal and professional), and all phone and texting records captured by the NSA for each person prior to their recruitment. That’s how they’d recruited everyone so quickly and not suffered a single leak.
The problem was that they’d confirmed far more than the one crime she’d expected to discover. They had uncovered a second, far greater conspiracy as well.
Taz now stood at the door to the PLC2 Building, at the sole door that had been opened into the Pentagon’s underground auditorium outside of E-Ring, Corridor 8. She’d been a naïve eighteen when she’d first arrived here. Actually, she’d been a street savvy fifteen-year-old Mexican immigrant with a stolen identity making her three years older, but the military had never figured that out. Street-smart and Pentagon-stupid. But that was twenty-four years ago, and she thought she’d have seen it all in that time.
Apparently not.
“What’s going on, Colonel?” She was known and the people invited to this meeting kept asking the question.
Her reply was the exact same every time. “Special meeting, sir. Please swipe in.”
The first arrivals were mostly in the lower ranks of colonels like herself, lieutenant colonels, and a few majors. The turnstile beeped green as they came in. As word got out about the invite-only secret meeting, the turnstile beeped red more often. She would double-check their ID card against the list on her tablet—but that was only a courtesy—turning away those who tried to slip in uninvited. Some she knew too well and wouldn’t mind frying their asses, but this wasn’t personal. Not on the list? She turned them away.
The generals all tried to arrive at the very last second to show how important they were. Those who arrived with their typical entourage of assistants complained bitterly about which of their people were admitted and which ones were turned away—twice she had to signal to the Marine Corps guards waiting to either side of the door to settle the matter.
She managed not to smile about how they’d feel as soon as they were inside. A squad of Coasties were in there scanning and disarming each individual who entered. Their personal invitations to the meeting had said to bring no weapons, which only seemed to have encouraged them. Being scanned by Coasties was like a slap in the face as they were Department of Homeland Security, not Department of Defense. They were also one of the only two branches of the service, along with the Marines, to get a clean bill of health from Taz’s investigation.
She took care to not meet the eyes of any of her spies dragged here as part of some entourage because it would be too dangerous to refuse their commander. The turnstile took care of turning them away, saving her from doing so. She had done the final recruitment of each one personally, wanting to get a personal feel for them first—twelve of the forty-seven had failed to cross that final hurdle. She would thank the ones who did for their service later.
“What’s up, Vicki?”
Taz jolted. The Chief of the Air Force had been a good friend of the general she’d served for nineteen years. “Not for me to say, sir. Please swipe in.”
His grimace said that was poor payback for treating her decently over all these years.
“Sorry, sir.”
The turnstile turned green for him, his deputy, and three of the five assistants he’d brought. Once they were through, she double-checked her list. Gods but she was glad whoever had known that the chief was on the list hadn’t told her ahead of time.
She managed to keep her face calm as the Chief of the Navy swept by, though neither his deputy nor any of his assistants were admitted. Vice President Carl Crawford, a former Lieutenant General of the Army, followed close behind and was greenlighted through.
Five minutes after the hour, she sent the five missing names to the Marine Corps honor guards posted throughout the Pentagon for this purpose. Due to the building’s unique layout, which let a person walk from any room to any other in under seven minutes, the five stragglers were all rounded up in under ten. One felt he was too important, three too busy, and one had simply forgotten.
That’s everyone we identified, Jeremy texted to her tablet as soon as the last one had swiped his ID through the turnstile.
Unsure what to send back, a smiley, a frowny, a weeping emoji—they were all jumbled up inside her—she sent a K for okay.
Then she signaled the Marine Corps guards. They all stepped through and lined up across the exit facing inward. The Coasties guarded the other doors from the inside. She locked the entry door behind her and stood in the gap they’d left for her.
The auditorium’s stage was empty…and remained that way.
78
“Do I have to?”
Andi nodded. “Who else? You’re the one who figured it all out.”
