The Beginning of the End (Book 2): Toward the Brink II by Craig A. McDonough Page B

the door—his two most dependable agents—would burst into the room and pop the Chamber leader on the spot. After all, they had no idea who the meeting was with. With five inches in height, fifty pounds in weight, and at least a dozen years of youth to his advantage, the president knew that scenario wouldn’t fly. He wanted to thrash the life out of the bastard with his bare hands, a feat that would be entirely possible given his size.
    “I said no interruptions!” The president censured the Secret Service agent when he rushed into the room.
    “Sorry, sir, it’s Mr. Transky, he’s demanding to speak with you. It’s urgent!” The agent relayed the message as it came through his ear piece.
    The president looked back at Etheridge, uncertainty etched on the man’s face, then at the agent. “All right, let’s go, but this man is not to leave this room. Understood?”
    The president left the Situation Room and headed for the elevator. There wasn’t anything of value in the room for Etheridge to see, and he wouldn’t be able to access the computers.
    Hell, I don’t have the clearance for half of that stuff, the president reminded himself.
    “He’s in his office, Mr. President,” said the agent who traveled with the president. The other remained on guard outside the Situation Room as instructed.
    “What is it, Tom?” the president asked as he entered the office of his chief of staff.
    “Take a seat, sir.”
    The president had who he believed was the main source of this crisis isolated in the Situation Room, and he didn’t want to leave the snake there too long. For his adviser and friend of many years to ask him to take a seat meant it must be important. Damn important.
    “Sir, we have a lot of reports right now that sum up the state of the nation and the world.”
    “The world?” the president asked, his eyebrows raised.
    “Yes, sir. First, here are some of the latest black and white satellite images of the napalm bombardment of Idaho and surrounding areas.”
    The first image Tom handed the president was a shot of the northwestern United States with superimposed lines approximating the states’ borders. Long, disjointed strips of white over the mainly dark image stretched from the Idaho, Utah, and Nevada borders into Montana, and from Wyoming up to Canada, then over to the Pacific coastal areas of Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. The white signified the fire-wall of Stodge’s “burn ’em out” plan.
    “My God, Tom, this is an inferno. The whole Northwest is, is ringed by fire.” He added, “A ring of fucking death.”
    He looked at other images as Tom handed them to him one at a time, each image magnified more than the last.
    “How in the name of all that’s sane is this preferable to Hadlee’s plan?”
    “Well, sir, as Stodge himself explained, there’ll be no radioactive fallout to deal with.”
    “Yes, yes, I remember. So we can rebuild, but there won’t be anybody alive after this firestorm to rebuild for, dammit!”
    Tom folded his hands on his desk and hung his head. He always wore a three-piece suit and either a red or blue tie (full Windsor knot) over a white shirt, but now he had discarded the coat and tie. His sleeves were loosely rolled up to his elbow. The redness under his eyes indicated a lack of sleep. He didn’t look much like a member of the president’s inner circle at all.
    “No, Mr. President.” He looked up. “There won’t be anyone left to rebuild for, but not because of fire or nuclear weapons. This … this … disease—and only this disease—is responsible.”
    “I’m gonna’ kill that son of a fucking bitch!”
    “Sir?”
    The president told his chief of staff that Milton Etheridge was in the Situation Room and that it was he and his confederates, including Richard Holmes, who, in Etheridge’s own words, had engineered all this.
    “He admitted to it?” Tom sat upright with some surprise.
    “They have an emergency evacuation plan for all