Any Means Necessary (a Luke Stone Thriller-Book #1)

Chapter Twenty Four

11:15 a.m.

Mount WeatherEmergencyOperationsCenter - Bluemont, Virginia

"Weapons?" a man said to Luke.

Twenty Secret Service men were on the pad when the helicopter came down. They operated smoothly and efficiently, separating Luke and Ed from the main group, and hustling the President and Vice President toward the gaping maw of the open tunnel. The entrance was two stories high, framed in corrugated metal.

Overhead, helicopter gun ships filled the air like dragonflies. The President's helicopter had flown out here with a ten-chopper escort.

Luke and Ed stood isolated on the tarmac, about twenty feet apart. They were fenced in by barbed wire. The Secret Service searched them roughly. Two men held Luke's arms while others reached inside his clothes. His clothes rippled with the wind from helicopter rotor blades.

"Weapons?" the man said again.

Luke was in a fog. The White House had blown up. The Oval Office, then the entire West Wing, the Colonnade, all the way to the Presidential Residence. He had expected... something. But not the thing he had witnessed. He was too tired right now to make sense of it.

It occurred to him that he hadn't reached Becca. She would be worried about him. He hoped she had gotten out to the country house. It was over on the Maryland Eastern Shore. It was quiet over there, safe. Washington, DC, and its suburbs were going to be chaos for a while.

"I need to call my wife," he said.

The Secret Service man in front of him gave Luke a sharp jab in the stomach. It startled Luke into the present moment. He looked into the man's hard eyes.

"Are you hiding any weapons?" the man said again.

"I don't know. I was searched in the Oval Office. I think they got them all."

"Who are you?"

That was an easy one. "Agent Luke Stone, FBI Special Response Team."

"Where's your identification?"

"I don't know. Ask your buddies. They took everything. Listen, I really need to make a call, and I don't have my phone."

"You can make a call after you answer our questions."

Luke glanced around. It was bright and sunny, but his exhaustion, and the events of the day, conspired to give the sky a dark cast. Above their heads, the choppers made shadows on the ground like circling vultures. Over by the entrance to the facility, the President had turned around and was walking back this way. He was easy to spot among the crowd because he was so tall.

The Secret Service man snapped his fingers in front of Luke's face. "Are you listening to me?"

Luke shook his head. "Sorry. Listen, guys. I've had a long day. Just let me call my wife, and then I'll tell you whatever I know."

The man slapped him. It was a sharp, stinging slap, meant to get his attention. It did that and more. Luke struggled to get his arms free. A second later, he was on the ground, face down against the rough surface of the black tarmac. Two men held him. To his left, they had put Ed on the ground as well.

From his worm's-eye point of view, Luke watched the President approach, walking fast, surrounded on all sides, left, right, front, and back, by Secret Service agents. He stopped ten feet away.

"Gentlemen!" he said in a commanding tone. "Let those men up. They're with me."

Luke soon stood inside the entryway to the MountWeather facility. A crowd of people, many of them military in formal blue uniforms, swirled around him. The entrance was literally a giant tunnel drilled into the granite face of the mountain. The ceiling was arched stone three stories above them. The President had disappeared.