A Heartbeat Away Read Free Page A

from a football huddle. Chief agent Sean O’Neil was just a few feet away, barking orders into his radio.
    “Sean,” Allaire said, motioning the man closer, “we’ve got a lethal situation on our hands. A virus. Get three of your guys to the press gallery and confiscate all cell phones, pagers, and anything that might record or transmit. Use force if you have to. Tell them I’ll explain soon.”
    O’Neil hesitated, a shadow of doubt darkening his face.
    “Mr. Pres—”
    “Don’t challenge me, Sean! Move now!”
    The cries of those in flight intensified as Capitol Police and Secret Service agents moved into position and began the difficult task of herding them back inside the House Chamber. Allaire estimated that no more than twenty-five or thirty had actually made it out the doors to the vestibule. His wife and daughter remained in front of their seats, two of the few who weren’t in motion. Then he saw Rebecca cough several times. Further down the row she was in, a congressman from New Hampshire was also coughing.
    Allaire searched for the plumes of smoke nearest to his family, but by now, the mists had almost totally dissipated.
    I am responsible for this, he thought, forcing his way back to the rostrum. I should never have allowed it to happen.
    “You can’t block these exits!” a senator’s familiar voice boomed. “Let us out!”
    “They can’t do this!” a woman cried. “They can’t trap us in here like this!”
    “What the hell is going on?”
    “I won’t go back in there. I won’t!”
    Sweat, something Allaire had felt certain would not be an issue tonight, cascaded down his brow, stinging his eyes, then salting his lips.
    “Mr. President—”
    Allaire turned toward the voice, which came from the center aisle, along which, just a few minutes ago, he had made his grand entrance. The architect of the Capitol, Jordan Lamar, a portly African American man, was pushing toward him through the dense crowd.
    “Mr. President—” Lamar called out again.
    Allaire motioned for the man to hurry. Together on the rostrum they were joined by Hank Tomlinson, chief of the fifteen hundred men and women of the Capitol Police force.
    “What the devil is going on, Mr. President?” Lamar asked. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”
    “I’m not going anywhere. No one is. Now, listen. I need every person back in his original seat immediately. Make sure every door leading to the outside is sealed. No one gets in and no one gets out. I mean no one .”
    It was hard to hear over the clamor behind them in the main chamber and a story above in the gallery. Now there were also some shrieks as word spread that the ways out were being sealed.
    “Sir, I don’t understand,” Tomlinson said. “What’s happened?”
    Allaire struggled to maintain his composure—seldom a difficult task for him. Behind and above the Capitol Police chief, he could see that Rebecca and Samantha, along with some others, had instinctively sat back down.
    “I’ll tell you, Hank. I’ll tell everyone,” Allaire said. “First, though, we need order in this room, and we need it now.”
    “But how…?”
    Allaire had heard enough. Gripping Tomlinson firmly by the lapel, he pulled the man close to his body, distracting him long enough to extract the officer’s gun from his shoulder holster. Allaire had learned how to fire the semiautomatic SIG P226 as part of Operation Keepsake, a long-standing Secret Service program. As an emergency security precaution, Operation Keepsake was designed to impart Special Forces combat training to the president of the United States, or as he was commonly referred to by the agents, the POTUS. Before Tomlinson could react, Allaire raised the gun high above his head.
    Four shots, fired in rapid succession and amplified by the sound system, exploded from the black-steel barrel. The discharges echoed deafeningly inside the enclosed chamber. Plaster from the ceiling where the bullets struck dropped onto several