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Authors: Joel C. Rosenberg
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Erin McCoy had no husband, and she didnât want to die.
Not here. Not yet.
FIVE
MacPhersonâs head was pounding.
He hung up the phone and shut his eyes. In a few minutes, Jackie Sanchez of the United States Secret Service would be knocking on his door. Sheâd move him into the next room where heâd be patched through to the National Security Council via a secure satellite video teleconferencing system. But there were too many questions to answer. Could they mount a rescue operation? Should they ask the Israelis to? Could all this really be the work of one man? Why, then, the gun battle? And were these attacks isolated to the Palestinian territories? Or were they likely to see new terrorist attacks unleashed throughout Israel, and/or against American interests all over the globe?
Â
The motorcade was ready.
Now all they needed was the vice president. Special Agent in Charge Steve Sinclairâhead of the VPâs protective detailâwas edgy. His orders had been clear. Get Checkmate to the Situation Room quickly and without incident. Most of the principals were already on their way to the White House. The NSC meeting was scheduled to begin in less than ten minutes. Given that the VP was supposed to chair the meeting in the presidentâs absence, it wouldnât do to be late. Not tonight.
Â
MacPherson simply couldnât believe it.
He and Secretary of State Tucker Paine had hardly been kindred spirits. But theyâd known one another for more than a decade, and theyâd become useful to each other.
MacPherson couldnât really remember exactly how theyâd met, but he was pretty sure it had been in Denver. A middle-class kid, MacPherson had grown up in Lakewood, Colorado, graduated from Harvard, then joined the navy, went to Top Gun school and headed to Vietnam. When heâd come back to the States, MacPherson moved to Manhattan, made a fortune with Fidelity, then moved back to Denver where he was making quite a name for himselfâand an even more impressive fortuneâas founder and CEO of Global Strategix, Inc., and the Joshua Fund, two of the premier institutions in the financial services industry.
Somewhere along the line, heâd met Paine, an old-money gazillionaire whose family seemed to own half of Colorado and wanted to run for the stateâs open U.S. Senate seat. Paine wasnât the sharpest knife in the drawer. He was a bit too moderate for MacPhersonâs likingâgood on taxes and growth, bad on education and the life issue, horrible on defense and national security issues. But if Hollywood was going to make a movie about a crusty old patrician senator with a penchant for French wine and a good pipe after dinner, Tucker Paine was direct from central casting.
GOP control of the Senate hung in the balance at the time and it wasnât a tough call. MacPherson was nothing if not a loyal Republican, and even then heâd had his own political ambitions. He was planning a run for governor and his chief political advisorâBob Corsetti, now the White House chief of staffâmade the case succinctly: to blow through the primaries and win the nomination in a landslide, MacPherson needed to find a way to unite the stateâs conservative and moderate factions. It wouldnât be easy.
As a proâflat tax, prolife, former navy fighter pilot, MacPherson could count on strong support from the conservative political base in and around Colorado Springs in the south, Fort Collins in the north, and the more rural congressional districts in the mountains and on the plains near Kansas. But Denver itself, MacPhersonâs hometown, would be tougher. Republicans there tended to be wealthier and more moderate, and though his Wall Street successes had helped him build inroads among the country club crowd, Corsetti concluded that if MacPherson strongly backed Tucker Paine, it certainly couldnât hurt. And it
Erin McCoy had no husband, and she didnât want to die.
Not here. Not yet.
FIVE
MacPhersonâs head was pounding.
He hung up the phone and shut his eyes. In a few minutes, Jackie Sanchez of the United States Secret Service would be knocking on his door. Sheâd move him into the next room where heâd be patched through to the National Security Council via a secure satellite video teleconferencing system. But there were too many questions to answer. Could they mount a rescue operation? Should they ask the Israelis to? Could all this really be the work of one man? Why, then, the gun battle? And were these attacks isolated to the Palestinian territories? Or were they likely to see new terrorist attacks unleashed throughout Israel, and/or against American interests all over the globe?
Â
The motorcade was ready.
Now all they needed was the vice president. Special Agent in Charge Steve Sinclairâhead of the VPâs protective detailâwas edgy. His orders had been clear. Get Checkmate to the Situation Room quickly and without incident. Most of the principals were already on their way to the White House. The NSC meeting was scheduled to begin in less than ten minutes. Given that the VP was supposed to chair the meeting in the presidentâs absence, it wouldnât do to be late. Not tonight.
Â
MacPherson simply couldnât believe it.
He and Secretary of State Tucker Paine had hardly been kindred spirits. But theyâd known one another for more than a decade, and theyâd become useful to each other.
MacPherson couldnât really remember exactly how theyâd met, but he was pretty sure it had been in Denver. A middle-class kid, MacPherson had grown up in Lakewood, Colorado, graduated from Harvard, then joined the navy, went to Top Gun school and headed to Vietnam. When heâd come back to the States, MacPherson moved to Manhattan, made a fortune with Fidelity, then moved back to Denver where he was making quite a name for himselfâand an even more impressive fortuneâas founder and CEO of Global Strategix, Inc., and the Joshua Fund, two of the premier institutions in the financial services industry.
Somewhere along the line, heâd met Paine, an old-money gazillionaire whose family seemed to own half of Colorado and wanted to run for the stateâs open U.S. Senate seat. Paine wasnât the sharpest knife in the drawer. He was a bit too moderate for MacPhersonâs likingâgood on taxes and growth, bad on education and the life issue, horrible on defense and national security issues. But if Hollywood was going to make a movie about a crusty old patrician senator with a penchant for French wine and a good pipe after dinner, Tucker Paine was direct from central casting.
GOP control of the Senate hung in the balance at the time and it wasnât a tough call. MacPherson was nothing if not a loyal Republican, and even then heâd had his own political ambitions. He was planning a run for governor and his chief political advisorâBob Corsetti, now the White House chief of staffâmade the case succinctly: to blow through the primaries and win the nomination in a landslide, MacPherson needed to find a way to unite the stateâs conservative and moderate factions. It wouldnât be easy.
As a proâflat tax, prolife, former navy fighter pilot, MacPherson could count on strong support from the conservative political base in and around Colorado Springs in the south, Fort Collins in the north, and the more rural congressional districts in the mountains and on the plains near Kansas. But Denver itself, MacPhersonâs hometown, would be tougher. Republicans there tended to be wealthier and more moderate, and though his Wall Street successes had helped him build inroads among the country club crowd, Corsetti concluded that if MacPherson strongly backed Tucker Paine, it certainly couldnât hurt. And it
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