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47
As Tory held the unconscious President, alarms and sirens went off in cacophony. Feet thundered in the halls on all sides. The doorway filled with bodies and brandished steel as men and women fell over each other to reach the President. Tory thought she was about to die in a hail of bullets from all the weapons aimed at her head. Then someone screamed: “Two men! Two men! She’s not one of them.”
“She shot them.” “She killed them.”
“Clear the deck! Clear the deck!” a hoarser voice bellowed, and a Secret Service agent holding an Uzi muscled his way in.
He in turn gave way as Navy paramedics pushed in with a stretcher.
For Tory, the next few minutes with their shouts and shoves blended in a kind of wet, warm hell. The President’s body was removed from her embrace. She raised her hands to her eyes and cried. Hands on her shoulders squeezed and comforted, and as she recovered, she realized it was Devereaux on one side and Mattoon on the other.
“He’s alive but barely!” a paramedic yelled hoarsely.
“We have a pulse! We have a pulse!” a female nurse yelled.
“Open the airway,” the hoarse voice boomed. “It’s crushed. I’m cutting now. Cutting!”
“Chopper!” someone else screamed, “Chopper!” as Tory heard the deep throb of a powerful helicopter on the roof.
“Tape, use tape!” the nurse yelled. “Pressure! Stop the bleeding. I’m going to intubate. Oxygen! Over here!”
“Move! Move! Move!” a man waving an Uzi hollered to other men with Uzis. “Cover! Cover! Cover!”
Tory sniffled and rose in the ungainly crush of bodies. The many people crowded into the Oval Office moved as one, causing some of them to stagger against each other and crash against chairs and tables but they quickly lifted the President, now strapped in and taped up and tubed in and cut open, hand over hand to several Navy air crew in white bubble helmets and olive-drab flight suits waiting just outside the door.
Tory told Devereaux: “General Norcross is behind all this.”
Devereaux nodded grimly. “Norcross. He was the final, core layer of the conspiracy. He found out about the plot to take over CON2. He let Montclair and Mason and the others think he’d back them, then he switched sides at the right moment. He had this planned with split second timing. Think of it—as the coup is put down, more uncertainty and terror as the President is murdered by unknown assassins. Coming to rescue us from all that chaos is Billy Norcross, America’s Napoleon. Think how close he got!” He chewed on his cigar for a second or two, said “harrumph” to clear his throat. “Your grandpa’ll be proud of you. God knows I am.” He started toward the door. “Come on, we have to find General Norcross.”
Devereaux pushed through the crowd of dazed, jabbering men and women and strode down the corridor. Tory followed. Devereaux said: “Now I see why Jankowsky’s Task Force was bombed. Norcross was using them to try and learn if anyone was on his trail, and when the Task Force and Tabitha Summers got too close, Norcross’s people terminated them. It was Norcross’s people who killed Shoob, not Montclair’s bunch.” Devereaux stuck the cigar in his mouth and, with his fist, pounded on Norcross’s office door. “God dammit, Norcross, open up!” He turned to two open-mouthed agents and said: “Bust this door down. Now!” When they stared at him, he bellowed: “Right now, boys.” A phone kept ringing inside.
It took the two big men several lunges, and still they had to shoot off the door handle, before they got inside. General Billy Norcross was not in his office. A side entrance stood ajar. As they entered the office, Tory heard ANN on a radio:
ALLISON MIRANDA: We seem to have lost contact with the White House. Minutes ago, we were speaking with General Billy Norcross, who told us that he has taken charge of the White House. A moment ago, as the news was unofficially spreading that an assassination had been averted and the President is alive, I repeat, the President is alive though his condition is not exactly clear at this moment, our line to General Norcross’s office went dead.
From outside, the White House seems to be in pure chaos. An unknown body on a stretcher has been lifted onto the rooftop helipad by a frantic cluster of man, and the standby air-evac chopper is just now lifting off, apparently toward Bethesda Naval Hospital. Secret Service agents have begun sending people outside the building under armed guard. We have absolutely no idea what is going on. Hello? Hello? General Norcross?
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