“They keep any guns up at the mine?” asked Michelle.
“Mr. Sam likes his guns. Daryl too. Shoot the wings off a bee, both of’em.”
“Wonderful,” said Sean. “Gabriel, can you drive with us to where he keeps his plane? And if it’s not there will you go with us to the mine?”
Gabriel looked at his mother as she put a protective hand on his shoulder. “Momma, I think I have to do this.”
“Why, boy? Why? This ain’t your concern.”
“Mr. Sam isn’t a bad man. You said that yourself. I’ve known him most all my life. If I can go up there and help him make things okay, then that’s what I want to do. That’s what I want to do.”
A tear trickled down Ruth Ann’s face.
“We’ll take good care of him, Ruth Ann,” said Sean. “We’ll bring him back to you. I promise.”
Ruth Ann turned her red eyes on Sean. “You better damn sure bring him back to me, mister.’Cause that boy’s all I got.”
CHAPTER 78
THE TWO CHOPPERS lifted off the ground and flew southeast. In one were the president and his wife with a company of Secret Service agents and as much equipment as they could cobble together at the last minute. The second bird carried still more agents, the two best bomb-sniffing dogs the Feds had, more equipment, and Chuck Waters, who’d been tipped off to what was happening by Larry Foster and, unknown to the First Couple, had come along for the ride. Next to him was Aaron Betack, who had joined the party too, also unknown to the First Lady. The skies were growing lighter by the minute, the low-level winds were calm, and the rising sun was rapidly burning off the morning chill.
Betack’s phone rang.
“Yeah?”
“Aaron, it’s Sean King. We need to talk.”
“I’m sort of busy.”
“I’m in Alabama.”
“What? We are too.”
“We as in who?”
Betack looked at Waters and then said into the phone, “Like I told you before, Wolfman and Lynx are on the move,” he said, referring to Dan and Jane Cox’s Secret Service code names. “What are you doing in Alabama?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say pretty much on the same trail you are. Where exactly are you headed?”
“We don’t know, Sean. I told you that before.”
“I know, but I thought that status would’ve changed by now. You’re with the president and you don’t know where you’re going?”
“Everything’s screwed up. We’re flying blind here, stomping on every rule and protocol in the Secret Service manual. Larry Foster is the detail chief and he’s about to have a coronary. But after that confrontation in the Oval Office the next thing we know we’re in Alabama taking a chopper to a set of map coordinates.”
“Aaron, that’s nuts. You could be walking right into a trap.”
“Tell me something I don’t know. You think the Service is happy about this? But he’s the president, man.”
“You’re telling me the director of the Secret Service is letting this happen? Or the president’s senior advisors? How about the vice president?”
“You know it’s all a balancing act. He’s the commander in chief and we’re his serfs. But we’ve worked our butts off behind the scenes, called in support from the FBI and the military, and we think we have a decent protection bubble set up even given the crummy circumstances.”
Waters looked over and motioned for Betack to give him the phone.
“King? This is Chuck Waters.”
“Hey, Chuck, I left you a message.”