THE PRESIDENT 2 (22 page)

ELEVEN

Minutes before Gina’s ordeal, Dutch and Max left the Situation Room and made their way to the White House residence.
 
The hostages had been located and a strategy had been agreed upon.
 
They would go in tomorrow night our time, under cover of darkness, with the best Seals team the military had to offer, and get them out.
 
His SecDef and SecState gave him full assurances.
 
Dutch felt rejuvenated.
 
But he felt extremely antsy too.
 

“You look full of yourself,” his mother said as he entered the second floor residence.
 
She and Caroline were seated on the sofa.

Dutch laughed as he headed for the bar.
 
“Thank-you, Mother, for your kind words.
 
Would either of you care for anything to drink?”

“We’ve been offered drinks,” Caroline said, “but declined.”

“What about you, Max?”

“No, I’m good,” Max said as he sat in the chair flanking the sofa.
 
“How do you like the digs, Caroline?” he asked.
 
“I understand they took you on a tour.”

“They did.
 
And I love it.
 
Quite gorgeous actually.
  
And not nearly as formal as I would have thought.”

Dutch poured himself a glass of wine and then took a seat in the chair across from the sofa.
 

“What was the big meeting about?” Caroline wanted to know.
 

Dutch crossed his legs.
 
“Work and more work,” he said.
 

“Did you ever pursue your photography while you lived in France, Caro?” Max asked.

Caroline smiled.
 
They are so secretive around here, she thought.
 
“A little, early on, and then no.
 
I was too busy being a wife.”

Knocks were heard on the sitting room door.
 
Max answered it.
 
And then stepped outside of the room, closing it behind him.

“Did you ever have children?” Victoria asked her.
 
She and Dutch exchanged glances.
 

“No, I did not.
 
We, my husband actually, couldn’t have any.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Did you want any?” Dutch asked and stared at her to see if she had changed.
 
There was a time when she had jokingly promised to give him ten babies.
 
“But at least two,” he remembered she loved to say.

“Yes,” she said.
 
“Lots.
 
But at least two.”

Dutch sipped from his wine.
 

“There’s still time,” Victoria said, patting her hand.
 
“You’re still a young woman.”

Max reentered the sitting room, looking flustered to everyone, as he made his way up to the president’s chair.
 
“May I see you for a moment, sir?” he asked.

Dutch at first seemed annoyed by Max’s interruption.
 
Until he saw that flustered look on his face.
 

“Yes, of course,” he said, excused himself, and he and Max went into the small, private office within the residence, an office specifically designed for the president’s personal use.
 

“What is it?” he asked his chief of staff as soon as the door closed.

“A call just came in, sir,” Max said and seemed to wait for Dutch to ask a question.
 
Dutch, however, remained silent.
 
It couldn’t be the rescue mission they had just worked out since such a mission wouldn’t commence until five thirty pm tomorrow night our time, 3am Afghanistan’s.

“It’s your wife, sir,” Max continued, and although Dutch remained calm outwardly, Max knew him long enough to see that sudden stormy look that came into his eyes.

“What about my wife?” Dutch asked, barely able to contain himself.

“She was being escorted from the Polunsky prison when her convoy of SUVs came under attack--”

Dutch stepped back a step, his heart ramming against his chest.

“There was an attack,” Max went on.
 
“Two of the SUVs were hit.
 
It was awful, according to the initial reports we’re just getting in.
 
All of the passengers in the two vehicles that were hit were killed.”

“What about Gina?
 
Is Gina all right?”

“Yes, she’s all right.
 
She wasn’t hit.
 
They had wanted her to go to Walter Reed as a precaution, but she refused.
 
Mainly because physically she’s fine.
 
She’s flying back to Andrews now.”

 
“With Fighter Jet escort?”

“You’d better believe it, sir.
 
Ed just assured me.”

Dutch rubbed his forehead, his eyes beginning to flutter.
 
This was unbelievable.
 
Gina had been at risk?
 
Gina?
 
His
wife
?
 

“Christian and LaLa were with her,” Max said, causing Dutch to look up at him.
 
Only that calm, reassuring look he was known for was gone.
 
He looked more perplexed than self-assured.

“They okay?” Dutch asked.

“They’re okay too,” Max said.

“Prepare Marine One,” Dutch ordered.
 
“I’m going to meet her plane.”

“Until they can determine the source of the attack, sir, the Secret Service asks that you remain in the White House.”

“Prepare Marine One,” Dutch said again. “I’m going to meet her plane.”

Max knew it was a futile fight anyway.
 
“Yes, sir,” he said, and left.

Dutch stood there, unable to get a grip on anything, especially his fast-surfacing anxiety and guilt.
 
And when he moved to walk, he stumbled into a shelf of books.
 

He stayed where he stumbled, leaned against those books, his hands now covering his face in anguish.
 
And all he could think about was Gina, and the awfulness of her ordeal, and the fact that, but for her being married to him, she would have never been in any such danger.
 

“Dear Lord,” he said aloud.
 
“What have I done?”

***

Although he spoke to her by phone during his entire helicopter ride over to Andrews Air Force Base, and she had reassured him that she was completely untouched, he still felt an anguish that ripped at his soul.
 
When he walked toward the plane, with Max and Dempsey just behind him, and saw her appear and begin to dismount, he ran.
 

He ran across the field, ran up the steps of the plane taking two at a time, ran like the athlete he used to be.
 
Gina ran too, and at mid-step, when they met, they embraced.

His heart pounded as he held her, as his eyes closed tightly in thankful prayer to God for returning her safely to him.
 
Then he looked at her.
 
Looked anxiously at her.

“Are you truly all right?” he asked her with all earnestness, his green eyes unable to stop scanning every inch of her.

“I’m truly all right,” she said.
 
And she was, except for the terror that sparkled like an unshed tear in her bright brown eyes.

***

When Marine One landed on the helipad within the South Lawn of the White House, Victoria and Caroline, who had to find out about this incredible ordeal from cable news accounts, who didn’t even know that Dutch had left the White House to go and meet his wife’s plane, stood at the entrance on the South Portico.
 

“I told you she was a camera hog,” Victoria was telling an upset Caroline.
 
“Your return back into the president’s life, which would have been the big news, and what does she do?
 
Manage to get herself attacked, that’s what.
 
It’s all so very distasteful.”

“That’s her, isn’t it?” Caroline asked as Dutch and Gina stepped out of the helicopter, flanked by military officials, and began walking across the South Lawn.
 
Dutch had his arm tightly wrapped around his wife’s waist, and Gina had her head on her husband’s shoulder.
 
Physically she was unscathed.
 
But emotionally she was beaten.

“That’s her,” Victoria said after looking and seeing the twosome herself.
 
“That’s who you are competing against, if you can believe it.”

And Victoria, for once, Caroline thought, was right.
 
This
was her competition?
 
Some tall, dark-skinned chick with far too many curves?
 
What in the world could Dutch have seen in
her
?
 
Caroline had studied her pictures, every one she could find on the internet, and had researched every interview she had given on television.
 
But she still couldn’t see the allure.
 
But maybe, she had also thought, the woman would be better looking in person.
 

But looking at her now, as they made their way toward the porch of the South Portico, Caroline knew she had thought wrong.
 
This woman had just been through a lot, no doubt about that, but that couldn’t change the fact that she wasn’t especially beautiful.
 
That she was, from Caroline’s vantage point, downright plain.

 
She smooth down her long, black hair, straightened her skintight dress, and waited for the introduction.
 
She’d treat the lady with respect.
 
She’d smile and put on a good show.
 
But all the while she was going to be sizing up the competition, finding the weak spots, and then pouncing.
 

But that grand introduction she had been expecting never happened.
 
Dutch, with his wife tightly against his side, entered the opened doors where Caroline and his mother stood, and didn’t so much as acknowledge their presence with a nod of the head.
 
He still had Gina wrapped in his arms, her head still remained on his shoulder with her eyes tightly shut, and they walked right past them.
 

Victoria immediately took umbrage as she could not believe the level of disrespect.
 
Neither could Caroline, especially when you consider the woman in his arms.
 

“Can you believe that?” Caroline said, her attempt at civility gone.
 
“He walked right by us as if we weren’t even here!
 
And that wife of his smelled of sweat.
 
Sweat!
 
And he pampers
her
?”