Oblivions Doorstep

Chapter 20

Heavy rotors pumped the air over the DC area as helicopters escorted MARINE ONE the President's Chopper out of the city. They flew in tight formation. Two giant Osprey attack helicopters flanked the green Sea King Presidential helicopters. A lookalike helicopter flew alongside to act as a decoy in the event of an attack. The one carrying the President could deploy heat flares to ward off incoming missiles. The giant Boeing V-22 Ospreys were tilt-rotor behemoths. They could effectively operate as a helicopter or airplane. Both carried 360 degree 'belly guns' capable of firing three thousand rounds a minute, providing a protective bubble around the Presidential escort.

Inside the helicopter sat President Hartwell and Admiral Hawthorne. The President looked out over the city through the small window next to him. Sorrow and worry etched his face.. He remembered the first time he laid eyes on the city from this vantage point. Marine one had circled around the Washington monument, then over the capitol building. How exhilarating it was! He remembered the sensation of power that had surged through him. It was a momentary vanity thing; he knew that, but he cherished the memory, anyway. Now an equally dreadful feeling washed over him, one of abandonment to his office, the capital city and the nation. He felt like he was running away, a coward in the face of uncertainty. The position he held required him to remain safe, to act as head of state and run the country in case the worst happened. But this didn't feel right to him. The glory of the Presidency had faded. Now he was just like anybody else and simply running for his life. He was grateful though that his wife was not here to see this and his grown children were far away from here or any other prime target area.

Hartwell shouldered up and pulled about him with a fine inner strength. A quiet belief in his purpose and his own qualities. He tried to convince himself that he and the country would see this through whatever was going to happen. There was the hope that the decisions he'd have to make would be the right ones and the military would stand true.

Hartwell averted his gaze to the Admiral. He observed the officer shaking his knee, not out of fear but from nervous tension. They were both out of their element and only treading water. Just barely keeping their heads above water as they faced the unknown. Behind the President was the young female Ensign Rollins. Handcuffed to her wrist was a large leather satchel beside the seat. She did not appear worried and sat there in firm military fashion. Hartwell knew what was in the leather case every president did. He encountered it as soon as he assumed office. There was no grace period or honeymoon to this awful reality of his job. Right after the inauguration, the outgoing president led him down the steps of the Capitol and presented him with his authenticator card for the Nuclear Weapons codes. The very first perk of the Presidency was being able to destroy the world. He had tried to put it out of his mind during his first dance at the Inaugural Ball. But every time he spun around on the dance floor, he glimpsed the duty officer of the day holding that damned brown leather satchel. He had made it a point then and there never to get chummy with any of those officers assigned to carry that thing. He wanted to pretend they didn't exist until it was time that he couldn't do that anymore. But this time it was hard. All the others before this girl were strangers. That was the way it had to be. To eliminate the personal and focus on hard reality without sentimentality. But Molly had been a neighbor back in Saint Mary's and had played with his daughter. In fact, she was like one of his own children. Their families had been close and helped when his wife had fallen ill and eventually died. He made it his personal mission to see her rise in the ranks. And when he heard of her graduation from Annapolis, he had been so proud of her. He regretted giving into her wish to be assigned as his aide. The unlikely had happened and her name had come up next in the line of rotation to carry the football. It made him sick and he could kick himself for it. But there was some comfort that a small part of home and family was with him at this grave hour. He turned and smiled at Molly, but she had to remain focused and he knew that.

The noise inside the small cabin deafened them, making conversation useless, so they stayed quiet. There was nothing he could do right now but endure the ride, however agonizing it was to their final destination at Mount Weather, which is a five hundred acre, high-security federal government facility. It sits along the Loudoun-Clarke County border in Virginia and serves as the backup site for the national emergency operations center run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Few Americans, indeed, few Congressional reps, were aware of the existence of Mount Weather, a mysterious underground military base carved deep inside a mountain near the sleepy rural town of Bluemont, Virginia, just 46 miles from Washington, DC. Mount Weather, also known as the Western Virginia Office of Controlled Conflict Operations. It lays buried not just in hard granite, but in secrecy as well. Completed in 1958, the underground bunker includes a hospital, crematorium, dining and recreation areas, sleeping quarters, reservoirs of drinking and cooling water, an emergency power plant, and a radio and television studio which is part of the Emergency Broadcasting System. A series of side-tunnels accommodate twenty office buildings, some of which are three stories tall, an on-site ninety thousand gallons a day sewage treatment plant and two two hundred and fifty thousand gallon above-ground storage tanks intended to support a population of 200 for up to 30 days. Although the facility could accommodate several thousand people, with sleeping cots for 2,000, only the President, the Cabinet, and the Supreme Court have their own quarters. It has its own leaders, its own police and fire departments and even its own laws. No one has ever toured the underground complex, not even the President until now. Hartwell had heard of it in movies before he assumed office. He received an overview of it once, and that was in passing. But the possibility of its existence had always been blurry and questionable to him.

The further they got away from the city, the less comfortable Hartwell felt he saw it in Molly's eyes as well. Her veneer as the stoic soldier was fading fast.

The radio intercom blinked and beeped. The Admiral put his headset on. His face went and frail and bordered on the look of someone who was about to throw up.

"Well, try a dead reckoning line of sight or something," said the Admiral. He removed the headset and addressed Hartwell in the most serious tone.

"Sir, we have lost GPS tracking, and all of our coordinates have gone haywire."

"So, what does that mean?"

"Sir, Mount Weather is a secure location. We use ground-mapping Doppler to locate it since regular aerial radar cannot pass over it."

"Can't you use a fucking map?!" screamed Hartwell. The Admiral looked embarrassed at being called down. "Sir, we have lost radio communications with the ground as well. We can't even communicate with the other choppers. If we keep flying around at this height, we are going to run into somebody. The radar is gone. Flying is great, but with no radio or radar, it's a death trap. We need to set down soon."

Molly intervened. "Mr. President, if I may, the Russians and terrorists have long known about the Mount Weather facility, its precise location and its mission. The Kremlin and other groups probably have it on their targeting maps. Hell, the Russians even attempted to buy real estate right next door, as a country estate for their embassy folks, but that deal was dead-ended by the State Department."

"So what are you saying, Molly?"

"Go somewhere that would be more secure, a place they don't know about and would not expect to find you."

"Where?" said Hartwell

"Home. We can follow the coastline." Hartwell then glanced over to the Admiral.

"Sir, this thing is escalating into who knows what. We need to get you somewhere safe and anywhere, but in the air is preferable. Kings' Bay Naval center is only a few miles from your home. It seems like a reasonable plan."

"Then go ahead, Admiral, take us there."

The Admiral got back on the headset. "Take us down to the deck, fly nap of the earth till we make it to the coast and fly south to Kings Bay. We should be able to spot it visually."

The Pilot acknowledged with a squawk on the box. He and the co-pilot used hand signals and a morse code beeper light out the window to direct the other choppers. The whole formation flew down to tree level.