The room is silent. Everyone swivels to her.
Noa coughs again, her eyesight graying out. “When Reagan was shot in 1981, his authorization code card was missing … it was found in his clothing after they stripped him in the ER and took him to surgery …”
She closes her eyes.
More yells.
A nurse’s voice says, “I know where they are!”
Movement, voices, someone uttering a prayer.
Noa forces her eyes open, weakened hands clutching the side of her chair.
A nurse comes back with a large white plastic bag. Her boss and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff work to tear it open, piling up shoes, slacks, underwear, blouse—
“Here,” Hannah says, holding up something.
“No,” says General Wyman. “The red one is for the nuclear launch codes. We need the blue one.”
Noa spares a glance to the clock.
The black hour and minute hands are too close together.
“Here it is!” someone yells out, and Noa starts to slip.
She hears bits and pieces of what is said next.
“This is General Tucker Wyman, my authorization code is charlie lima five one …”
Another voice, and he says, “Shut the fuck up. The next voice you hear is the National Command Authority, President Hernandez, canceling the offensive cyberattack scheduled for twelve hundred hours.”
The new president starts talking into the phone handset that the general is holding. Hannah is holding the sheet of cardboard in front of her.
The woman’s voice is stronger and again, Noa just hears bits of her words.
“This is the president. Authorization delta yankee foxtrot three niner …”
Noa’s eyes flutter shut.
She’s so thirsty, so damn cold.
A bullet wound and practically a knife wound to her wrist.
Just another glamorous day in the CIA.
“That is correct,” President Hernandez says. “Cancel the attack order at once. What? You heard me. At once.”
Noa looks to the clock again.
It’s five minutes past twelve o’clock.
Too late.
Noa closes her eyes and slips into darkness.
CHAPTER 147
AIR FORCE GENERAL Yvonne Knight of the US Cybercommand is at her desk in the command’s operations center at Fort Meade, Maryland, not liking what she’s seeing and hearing. She’s the duty officer today and with the command staff out in DC or in Las Vegas or San Jose, she is it, she’s the one in charge, and that’s the problem.