was totally destroyed, but he was a mere thousand meters away from the
white building. The aircraft dipped and yawed slightly to the left. Sato com-
pensated for it without a thought, adjusting trim and nosing down for the
south side of the American house of government. They would all be there.
The President, the parliamentarians, all of them. He selected his point of
impact just as finely as any routine landing, and his last thought was that if
they could kill his family and disgrace his country, then they would pay a
very special price for that. His last voluntary act was to select the point of
impact, two thirds of the way up the stone steps. That would be just about
perfect, he knew . . .
Nearly three hundred Ions of aircraft and fuel struck the east face of the
building at a speed of three hundred knots. The aircraft disintegrated on im-
pact. No less fragile than a bird, its speed and mass had already fragmented
the columns outside the walls. Next came the building itself. As soon as the
wings broke up, the engines, the only really solid objects on the aircraft, shot
forward, one of them actually smashing into and beyond the House Cham-
ber. The Capitol has no structural steel within its stone walls, having been
built in an age when stone piled on stone was deemed the most long-lasting
form of construction. The entire east face of the building’s southern half was
smashed to gravel, which shot westward-but the real damage took a second
or two more, barely time for the roof to start falling down on the nine hun-
dred people in the chamber: one hundred tons of jet fuel erupted from shred-
ded fuel tanks, vaporizing from the passage through the stone blocks. A
second later it ignited from some spark or other, and an immense fireball
engulfed everything inside and outside of the building. The volcanic flames
reached out, seeking air and corridors that held it, forcing a pressure WHVC
throughout the building, even into the basement.
The initial impact was enough to drop them all to their knees, and now the
Secret Service agents were on the edge of real panic. Ryan’s first instinctive
move was to grab his youngest daughter, then to push the rest of the family
to the floor and cover them with his body. He was barely down when some-
thing made him look back, north up the tunnel. The noise came from there,
and a second later there was an advancing orange wall of flame. There was
not even time to speak. He pushed his wife’s head down, and then two more
bodies fell on top to cover them. There wasn’t time for anything else but to
look back at the advancing flames-
-over their heads, the fireball had already exhausted the supply of oxy-
gen. The mushrooming cloud leaped upwards, creating its own ministorm
and sucking air and gas out of the building whose occupants it had already
killed-
-it stopped, not a hundred feet away, then pulled away as rapidly as it
had advanced, and there was an instant hurricane in the tunnel, going the
other way. A door was wrenched off its hinges, sliding toward them but
missing. His little Katie screamed with terror and pain at all the weight on
her. Cathy’s eyes were wide, looking at her husband.
“Let’s go!” Andrea Price screamed before anyone else, and with that, the
agents lifted every member of the family, carrying-dragging them back to
the Longworth Building, leaving the two House members to catch up on
their own. That required less than a minute, and then Special Agent Price
was the first again:
“Mr. President, are you okay?”
“What the hell…” Ryan looked around, moving to his kids. Their cloth-
ing was disheveled but they seemed otherwise intact. “Cathy?”
“I’m okay, Jack.” She checked the children next, as she had once done
for him in London. “They’re okay, Jack. You?” There was a thundering
crash that made the ground shake, and again Katie Ryan screamed.
“Price to Walker,” the female agent said into her microphone. “Price to
Walker-anybody, check in now!”
“Price, this is Low; RIFLE THREE, it’s all gone, man, the dome just went
down, too. Is SWORDSMAN okay?”
“What the hell was that?” Sam Fellows gasped from his knees. Price
didn’t have time even to hear the question.
“Affirmative, affirmative, SWORDSMAN, SURGEON, and-shit, we don’t
have names for them yet. The kids are-everybody’s okay here.” Even she
knew that was an exaggeration. Air was still racing past them into the tunnel
to feed the flames in the Capitol building.
The agents were recovering their composure somewhat now. Their guns
were still out, and had so much as a janitor appeared in the corridor right
then, his life might have been forfeit, but one by one they breathed deeply
ami irlmcd just a little, at the same time trying to locus in on what they had
hern limnol to do.
” 11m way!” Price said, leading with her pistol in both hands. “Rm.i-
‘! HRI i, jjcl n uir to the southeast corner of Longworth-and do it now!”
“Roger”
“Billy, l-nink, lake point!” Price commanded next. Jack hadn’t thought
she was the senior agent on the detail, but the two male agents weren’t argu-
ing. They sprinted uhcud to the end of the corridor. Trent and Fellows just
watched, waving the others on their way.
“Clear!” the one with the U/,i said at the far end of the corridor.
“Are you okay, Mr. President?”
“Wait a minute, what about-”
“JUMPER is dead,” Price said simply. The other agents had heard the
same radio chatter and had formed a very tight ring around their principal.
Ryan had not and was still disoriented and trying to catch up.
“We have a Suburban outside!” Frank called. “Let’s go!”
“Okay, sir. the drill is to get you the hell away from here. Please follow
me,” Andrea Price said, lowering her weapon just a little.
“Wail, now wail a minute, what are you saying? The President, Helen-”
“Rn 11: THRU•:. this is Price. Anybody get out?”
“No chance, Price. No chance,” the sniper replied.
“Mr. President, we have to get you to a place of safety. Follow me,
please.”
It turned out thai there were two of the oversized vehicles. Jack was forci-
bly separated from his family and pushed into the first one.
“What about my family?” he demanded, now seeing the orange pyre that
had been Ihc centerpiece of America’s government only four minutes ear-
lier. “Oh, my (iixl …”
“We’ll take them lo to ”
“Take them lo the Marine Barracks at Eighth and I streets. I want Marines
around them now. okay?” Later, Ryan would remember that his first presi-
dential order was something from his own past.
“Yes, sir.” Price keyed her mike. “SURGEON and kids go to Eighth and I.
Tell the Marines they’re coming!”
His vehicle just headed down New Jersey Avenue, away from the Hill,
Ryan saw, and for all their sophisticated training the Secret Service people
were mainly trying to clear the area.
“Come around north,” Jack told them.
“Sir, the White House-”
“A place with TVs, and right now. I think we need a judge, too.” That
idea didn’t come from reason or analysis, Jack realized. It just came.
The Chevy Suburban headed well west before turning north and looping
back toward Union Station. The streets were alive now with police and fire
vehicles. Air Force helicopters from Andrews were circling overhead, prob-
ably to keep news choppers away. Ryan got out of the car under his own
power and walked within his protective ring to the entrance of the building
where CNN operated. It was just the closest. More agents were arriving now,
enough that Ryan actually felt safe, knowing how foolish that feeling was.
He was taken upstairs to a holding room until another agent arrived with
someone else a few minutes later.
“This is Judge Peter Johnson, D.C. Federal Court,” an agent told Jack.
“Is this what I think?” the judge asked.
“I’m afraid so, sir. I’m not a lawyer. Is this legal?” the President asked.
Again it was Agent Price: “President Coolidge was sworn by his father, a
county justice of the peace. It’s legal,” she assured both men.
A camera came close. Ryan put his hand on the Bible, and the judge went
from memory.
“I-state your name, please.”
‘ ‘I, John Patrick Ryan-”
“Do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President
of the United States.”
“Do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President
of the United States . . . and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect,
and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.” Jack
completed the oath from memory. It was little different, really, from the one
he had sworn as a Marine officer, and it meant the same thing.