Jack Ryan 8 - Debt of Honor (125 page)

“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 clothing 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 L
ONG
R
IFLE
T
HREE
, it's all gone, man, the dome just went down, too. Is S
WORDSMAN
okay?”

“What the hell was that?” Sam Fellows gasped from his knees. Price didn't have

time even to hear the question.

“Affirmative, affirmative, S
WORDSMAN
, S
URGEON
, 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 and relaxed just a little, at the same time trying to focus in on what they had been trained to do.

“This way!” Price said, leading with her pistol in both hands. “R
IFLE
T
HREE
, get a car the southeast corner of Longworth—and do it now!”

“Roger”

“Billy, Frank, take point!” Price commanded next. Jack hadn't thought she was the senior agent on the detail, but the two male agents weren't arguing. They sprinted ahead to the end of the corridor. Trent and Fellows just watched, waving the others on their way.

“Clear!” the one with the Uzi said at the far end of the corridor.

“Are you okay, Mr. President?”

“Wait a minute, what about—”

“J
UMPER
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.

“Wait, now wait a minute, what are you saying? The President, Helen—”

“R
IFLE
T
HREE
, 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 that there were two of the oversized vehicles. Jack was forcibly separated from his family and pushed into the first one.

“What about my family?” he demanded, now seeing the orange pyre that had been the centerpiece of America's government only four minutes earlier. “Oh, my God…”

“We'll take them to…to…”

“Take them to the Marine Barracks at Eighth and I streets. I want Marines around them now. okay?” Later, Ryan would remember that his first presidential order was something from his own past.

“Yes, sir.” Price keyed her mike. “S
URGEON
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, probably 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.

“You hardly needed me at all,” Johnson said quietly. “Congratulations, Mr. President.” To both men it seemed an odd thing to say, but Ryan took his hand anyway. “God bless you.”

Jack looked around the room. Out the windows he could see the fires on the Hill. Then he turned back to the camera, for beyond it were millions, and like it or not, they were looking back at him, and to him. Ryan took a breath, not knowing that his tie was crooked in his collar.

"Ladies and gentlemen, what happened tonight was an attempt by someone to destroy the government of the United States. They killed President Durling, and I guess they killed most of the Congress—it's too soon, I'm afraid, to be sure of much.

"But I am sure of this:
America
is much harder to destroy than people are. My dad was a cop, as you heard. He and my mom were killed in a plane crash, but there are still cops. A lot of fine people were killed only a few minutes ago, but
America
is still here. We've fought another war and won it. We've survived an attack on our economy and we'll survive this too.

"I'm afraid I'm too new at this to say it properly, but what I learned in school is that America is a dream, it's—it's the ideas we all share, it's the things we all believe in, most of all it's things we all do, and how we do them. You can't destroy things like that. Nobody can, no matter how hard they might try, because we are who and what we choose to be. We invented that idea here, and nobody can destroy that either.

“I'm not really sure what I'm going to do right now, except to make sure my wife and children are really safe first, but now I have this job. and I just promised God I that I'd do it the best way I can. For now, I ask you all for your prayers and your help. I'll talk to you again when I know a little more. You can turn the camera off now,” he concluded. When the light went off, he turned to Special Agent Price.

“Let's get to work”.