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  “You’re equating political assassination of the duly elected leader of a democracy with a soldier dying in battle? Is that how you sleep at night?”

  “No. Listen, Florence, there are people a lot smarter than me, who know a lot more than me. They’re part of a group who have been keeping the world safe for decades—”

  “Safe? Do you believe what you’re saying? What they told you?”

  “All that’s irrelevant to this anyway. Clearly, the attack today was NorthBridge, and the people we’re talking about have been trying to stop and capture those terrorists.”

  “They’re sure doing a lousy job!”

  The final decision was made to dump the fuel and land at Joint Base Andrews on fumes. Other destinations were considered, however, the Air Force would rather recover the airplane at Andrews than at any other location. It was secure, and fully able to handle whatever disaster might occur.

  The passengers were informed of the status, and had watched as the remaining fuel had been dumped from the wings. They understood enough to realize the chances for fire and explosion had been traded for hopefully lesser risks. Much of the flight had been in silence; a communications blackout had been maintained. A list of all survivors had been relayed through the cockpit to the ground, and further relayed to family members. Traumatized staff members of the media, and various others on board, could be seen praying—for the president, for themselves, and most of all for a safe landing.

  The runway had been foamed, a practice discouraged by the FAA except in extreme emergencies, since it might reduce the aircraft’s braking ability, causing it to overshoot the runway. Fire crews and other emergency vehicles were scrambled and ready. The F-22 fighters in tow, which had escorted them across the country, gave Ace a final message of encouragement before peeling off. Although he knew there was no risk of attack, Ace felt suddenly naked without their shadow. Now it was time to get his brother safely to the ground.

  With virtually no fuel onboard, they had greatly minimized the risk of fire, but their main concern was that if Ace didn’t get it just right, the plane could flip, cartwheel, break apart, or fold. Depending on the amount of structural loss sustained during the attack, any of those events could lead to a partial disintegration. He would have to maintain air speed and control while not landing too hard or fast.

  “Bring it in straight and level,” the navigator said.

  This is like landing a hotel from a third-story window, Ace thought as he checked the crosswinds and fought unresponsive instruments. Apparently there had been more extensive damage when the tires, sensors, and hydraulics had been hit in Portland.

  “You’ve got this, big brother,” Jenna said quietly as they came down to nine hundred feet, the low fuel indicator light blinking. He had to make it on this try. There wasn’t enough fuel to take it back up.

  All the passengers were braced for a crash landing. The President had been secured, but in his delicate condition, if the plane cartwheeled, the results would be catastrophic. Colonel William, an experienced Air Force One pilot, coached Ace from the Andrews tower.

  “Keep it level,” the Colonel said calmly. “Looking good. Adjust your pitch.”

  Ace increased his descent. Instruments showed the airliner passing one hundred and forty knots indicated-air-speed.

  “Too fast, Ace,” the Colonel cautioned.

  “It’s fighting me,” Ace said, trying to bring the speed back to one hundred and forty KIAS.

  “It’s okay,” the Colonel said. “You might have lost some sensors when the hydraulics got hit. Just focus on the glide path.”

  Ace made small adjustments to pitch, trying to keep the heavy plane on target. His descent rate of seven hundred fpm was right on, but the jet was vibrating.

  “Five meters,” Jenna warned when the aircraft's belly was about sixteen feet above the runway.

  Ace initiated a flare by raising the nose three degrees. Then he pushed the thrust levers to idle. “Brace!” he shouted.

  Air Force One hit the runway with the force and sound of trees being tangled and ripped from a mountainside during an avalanche. Crew members were jerked forward, then thrown back in their seats. Inside the medical suite, the heavily secured president barely moved as Florence and the physician watched, strapped in their seats.

  The airliner slid fast down the foamed runways, spraying sparks and spinning sideways. Fire trucks, lights flashing, chased. Ace tried forcing the controls, desperate to get her straight. The grinding screech of metal against runway, combining with the vibration, made it feel as if they were inside a collapsing building, but Air Force One did not cartwheel or break apart, and the friction was slowing them down. Finally, after sliding sideways forty feet off the runway, the plane stopped, and for a brief instant there was nothing but silence. Then cheers from the cabin, laughing gasps from the cockpit, and sirens.

  The colonel’s voice came through Ace’s headset, “Couldn’t have landed her any better myself. Nice work, pilot.”

  Ace thanked the colonel, unbuckled, and headed for the medical suite to check on his brother.

  Florence hugged her uncle and gave him an update. “He’s going to make it,” she said optimistically. But Ace thought his brother looked dead, and saw his concern mirrored on the physician’s face.

  Even before the fire crews cleared the area, a medically-equipped Marine One helicopter landed as close to Air Force One as it dared. Twenty-three minutes later, the president was in the Intensive Care wing of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

  The nation came together in prayer and vigil for the young, popular president. Underlying the collective hope for Hudson’s recovery was a fear and panic spreading through the population.

  Was anyone safe? Was a full revolution from NorthBridge coming? Had it begun in Portland? Could America be headed for a war with China?

  Although NorthBridge still hadn’t claimed responsibility for the attack on Air Force One, everyone knew it was them; the phantom terrorists who had once again slipped away without a trace.

  How do they do it? They’re going to kill us all!

  As Hudson clung to life, the FBI, as the agency responsible for investigating attempts on the president’s life, was combing the Portland airport for clues and promising swift results. But people had grown increasingly more cynical after two years of such little progress against NorthBridge. The brazen attack against the most secure plane on the planet had shocked the world, especially when no culprits were immediately apprehended. Several leaders voiced publicly what many were silently thinking: President Pound, who had survived so many attacks by the terrorists, might be the only one strong enough to lead the fight against them.

  The other question suddenly and unexpectedly sweeping the US, as well as the rest of the world, was: What did the president see during the nine minutes when he was dead? The term “near death experience” or “NDE” quickly became the most requested words across all online search engines.

  However, he had to wake up first.

  The doctors were cautiously optimistic, but it remained “touch and go.” Still, speculation was wild, in churches, in universities, at the office water coolers, in bars, all over social media. Everyone wanted to know, What did he see?

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  In Los Angeles, Tarka found much the same as she did in Portland—the faint evidence that a big force had been there.

  “This warehouse was emptied in a hurry,” she told Rex. “Probably just before, or during, the attack on Air Force One.”

  “Anything there to indicate who or where?” Rex asked.

  “This was the work of a highly-trained unit. If it was NorthBridge, then they have help.”

  “Russians? Chinese?”

  “Israelis.”

  “Really?”

  “They’re good,” she said. “Best I’ve ever seen.”

  “There’s a chance the president’s going to survive.”

  “Happy to hear it, but that doesn’t r
emove the problem.”

  “Problem?”

  “There’s a strike team out there capable of hitting any target, anywhere in the world, without leaving a trace. You want to talk about terror? Wait until that sinks in.”

  “They may not leave a trail on the ground,” Rex said, “but it’s impossible to move through cyberspace without my finding their trail eventually.” He rolled twelve turquoise dice and turned back into a field of monitors rolling with data and patterns from the DarkNet.

  Fonda’s Raton Report was relentless in pressuring the government for answers. Was it NorthBridge? If so, where were they? Did they have inside help? How big was the terrorist organization? Were foreign nations sponsoring, training, funding, and/or arming, the rebels? Or was it another organization? She warned the government better have proof when they accused someone.

  The Raton Report, which had become the number one news website, was the first major media organization to refer to NorthBridge as rebels instead of terrorists.

  “The attack on President Pound and Air Force One, at an airport in a major American city, resulting in the deaths of dozens of military personnel and law enforcement, was an act of war,” Fonda announced. “These are rebels. From their first act, they declared themselves as such with their stated goal to usher in a second American Revolution. We must not live in denial any longer. It is time to respond to the enemy and realize we are at war . . . a war unlike any we have ever known.”

  Her post stirred controversy and ratcheted up panic. It also increased the debate on China. Thorne, the former presidential candidate, shock-jock, and self-proclaimed opposition leader, asked at the start of his daily radio show, “If the US really is in the middle of a civil war or a revolution, how can we simultaneously fight a war with a major world power?”

  But even more than the questions of war, callers still overwhelmingly wanted to speculate on what the president had experienced when he was dead. The topic would not subside. In fact, it grew into more of a national obsession. Experts appeared on every major talk show, the morning news programs, countless radio shows, and online forums, to discuss near-death experiences.

  As many as 200,000 Americans a year had an NDE, and an estimated five percent of the population had previously reported an NDE. Many believed that consciousness separates from the brain at “death” and glimpses the spiritual realm. Then, when the “deceased” person is resuscitated, they can often recall what was seen. The experts explained that the experiences could vary widely, but there were twelve common themes: an awareness of being dead, a sudden sense of well-being, an out-of-body experience, a sense of entering or being in a tunnel moving toward the light, encountering deceased loved ones and/or beings of light, an overwhelming feeling of unconditional love, recounting one’s life experiences, learning secrets of the universe and/or learning one’s life purpose, facing a decision on whether or not to return to life, being back inside one's body, and a renewed sense of faith.

  Melissa didn’t care about the NDE hysteria; she just wanted Hudson back. It was reported that the first lady hadn’t left her husband’s bedside since he’d arrived at Walter Reed Hospital. The military had accommodated the first family by providing rooms for Schueller and Florence as well. They, and the nation, held their breath and prayed to whatever or whomever they believed would listen.

  And then one day, more than a week after Ace had landed at Joint Base Andrews, President Pound woke up and spoke.

  Headlines blazed across papers around the world, and banners topped every news website: “The President is Conscious!” “He’s Awake!” “President Pulls Through!” “Pound Speaks!”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Hudson stared at his daughter as if she were an angel. “You brought me back,” he said, tears in his eyes. “I was dead, and you brought me back to life.”

  Florence smiled through her own tears. “Now I truly know why I became a nurse.”

  “Thank you.”

  She looked deep into his eyes. “Where did you go?”

  He said nothing.

  They stared at each other for a long time, until she realized he wasn’t going to answer. But she could tell by his eyes that he’d had an incredible experience, that he knew something he might never share. And she cried, not just from that realization, but with all the pent-up emotions that had choked her since the attack. She could finally let go.

  Hudson held her, and was reminded of when she cried in his arms after her mother died.

  Melissa gave an interview to her favorite female journalist on one of the morning shows. She had felt it was too soon, since Hudson was still in the hospital, but he’d encouraged her to do it. The outpouring of support had been incredible, and the public’s preoccupation with the nine minutes continued to be an international mania.

  The interview took place in the Blue Room. The first lady and the interviewer sat across from each other in fauteuils, open wood-frame armchairs dating back to 1812. The camera zoomed out from the windows in a sweeping view of the South Lawn, and panned back around the historic room which had served as a reception hall since President John Adams, and had been the site of the only wedding of a president and first lady in the White House, when Grover Cleveland married Frances Folsom in 1886.

  The interviewer asked good, relevant questions. Melissa appeared tired, but strong. She told of the thousands of letters they had received, hundreds from world leaders, most of whom they had never met, which felt even more special in a way not easy to explain. But the ones that touched them the most came from ordinary folks.

  Melissa said one of her favorites was from an old woman who lived in Tang Ting, a mountain village in Nepal. “She sent prayer flags. They had been hung on the ridges above her home, so that the prayers for the president would be blown with the wind and spread compassion and goodwill into the world, because people all over the planet needed President Pound to recover and make peace.” Melissa’s eyes were teary.

  “The old woman is right,” the interviewer said, compassionately touching Melissa’s hand.

  Melissa nodded, rubbing her eyes. “It’s amazing to me that someone in such a remote place—I’d never heard of it, but I looked it up, this tiny village with no roads leading to it, set in the Annapurnas, some of the highest mountains on earth—knew what had happened and cared enough to reach out to us. Beautiful . . . ”

  The interviewer asked a series of questions about the president’s condition before zeroing in on the one thing everyone wanted to know. “Has he told you about the nine minutes?”

  “It’s a very private thing, as I’m sure you can imagine,” Melissa said. “That kind of profound experience takes a long time to process within one’s self.”

  “You are no doubt aware of the fascination everyone has with just what he saw or felt during that time. Do you think he will speak of it publicly sometime in the near future?”

  Melissa shook her head. “I cannot answer for the president. However, he is grateful for all the prayers, and deeply believes they are what made the difference.”

  The interviewer tried the same question a few more times in different ways, but got no further, and finally began to wrap up.

  “Before we end,” Melissa said, “there’s one more letter I need to mention. A nine-year-old boy from Oregon wrote to apologize since—”

  “Oh, because it happened in his home state?”

  “Yes,” the first lady said. “He thought it was his fault. I just received his note today, and haven’t yet had a chance to respond, but I want to tell him right now that this was not his fault. This was bad people who did this. And we will find them.” Melissa stared, unblinking, into the camera until it was turned off.

  After three and a half weeks in the ICU, and another month recovering in the residence at the White House—several of the rooms had been converted to hospital-quality facilities with round-the-clock medical staff—Hudson was finally back on the job, running the country full-time. During the first twenty days of h
is recuperation, Vice President Brown was effectively in charge of the nation, and the two had grown closer due to the extreme circumstances.

  All of this had not gone unnoticed by the REMies. Through Gypsy, Crane had picked up a substantial increase in REMie activity around the vice president. In the early days after the attack on Air Force One, the REMies, along with everyone else, believed Hudson would die, and Brown would become President permanently. As Hudson's recovery progressed, the REMies still saw a potential problem with Brown, believing the vice president’s role in the administration would forever be more important.

  Hudson pushed the SonicBlock drive into the computer and waited for the Wizard to appear on his screen. The two old friends had only spoken briefly twice since the Air Force One attack. The Wizard could already sense the change in Hudson; an intensity in his eyes, and at the same time, a lightness in his being.

  “How are you feeling?” the Wizard asked. “You still look like two-month-old garbage.”

  “At least with me, it's only temporary,” Hudson joked.

  The Wizard laughed, then his expression changed. “Normally, the hope in life comes from knowing we’re not separate, we’re all connected, but when you died, I did too.”

  Hudson nodded silently.

  “Dawg, you saw past the void. You gotta tell me . . . ”

  “Some day.”

  “Yeah,” the Wizard whispered, looking away. He rubbed his face and turned back to the monitor. “We’ve got problems.”

  Hudson had called to get caught up on Crane’s progress with tracking REMie MADE events and financial operations through Gypsy. But with the Wizard’s words, he assumed one of his biggest worries had come to pass.

  “Did they get to Brown?” Hudson had an important private meeting with the vice president coming up, and wanted to be sure she had not been compromised by the REMies.