The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

two streams of water going into it from fire trucks on the scene.
    “He was in there,” Paige said. “He was on TV, live, and then it just went to black. About a minute later they started reporting on it.”
    The story resolved over the next two hours. Details came in, sketchy and then solid. The three networks must’ve had nearly identical sources—with each new piece of information, their chyrons updated almost in unison.
    Twenty minutes into the coverage the secretary of state confirmed that President Garner had been killed. Vice President Stuart Holt, in Los Angeles for an environmental summit, was already in the air on his way back to Washington. He would be sworn in aboard the plane.
    Travis found it hard to see Garner’s death in its proper light—its global and historical significance. Garner had been a friend, and now he was gone. That was the only way Travis could feel it, for the moment.
    He tried to stay focused on the coverage. The details of the blast had already begun to crystallize. There were dozens of witnesses who’d seen a contrail in the air at the time of the explosion, though it was unclear, at first, whether it’d belonged to an aircraft or a missile.
    Then, five minutes after the official announcement about President Garner, all three networks cut away from the White House to a new feed—still an aerial shot, but at a different location. A residential street somewhere. A cul-de-sac full of more emergency vehicles, mostly police cruisers but also an ambulance and a single fire truck. The house at the end of the cul-de-sac was heavily damaged in some way that was hard to make sense of. Most of its roof had been blown off, and the debris lay scattered around it, but the walls and even most of the windows appeared intact. Nothing was burning.
    Around him in the conference room, Travis saw sudden looks exchanged. He glanced at Paige and saw her focusing hard on the televised images. The house. The missing roof.
    A man to Travis’s left said, “Archer.”
    A few others nodded, Paige among them. After a moment she seemed to feel Travis’s stare, and turned to him.
    “Archer is an old Air Force program,” she said. “Goes back to the fifties. Defensive missiles concealed in civilian areas. Supposed to be a last line against a nuclear strike.”
    Travis watched the implication spread across the room. President Garner had just been killed by someone in his own military.
    It took less than an hour for rumors of the Archer program to filter into the broadcast coverage. Travis wasn’t surprised. Secret as the program was, it had to require hundreds of people to operate it. Maybe thousands. Impossible to keep them all quiet in the aftermath of something like this.
    By two in the morning there was official confirmation that Archer existed, and that it had been used against the White House. CNN got an Air Force general on the phone who addressed those two points and then spent the next five minutes saying nothing at all in a dozen different ways. No word of a suspect. No word of a motive.
    The helicopter footage remained the backdrop throughout, mostly covering the White House but occasionally returning to the cratered home on the cul-de-sac.
    Travis had an idea that no further news was coming tonight, though the investigation had probably made serious headway already. No doubt there was an official suspect, dead or in custody. Those working the case probably knew most of what they would ever know. But they would be very careful parceling out that information to the public. The process would take weeks, not hours.
    By 3 A.M. the crowd in the conference room on level B12 had begun to thin. Paige looked at Travis and communicated her thoughts without a spoken word.
    Five minutes later they were in their residence on B16, under the covers, holding each other close in the dark. Travis could think of nothing to say. He thought about Garner. Knew Paige was thinking about him too. Only platitudes came to Travis’s mind. Garner had lived a long and dignified life. He would be remembered forever. His death had almost certainly come without pain. Maybe without awareness, even—the blast had probably killed him before he could see or hear it.
    All of it true.
    None of it helpful.
    He kissed Paige’s forehead. Pulled her closer. Felt her body relax as sleep came on. Felt himself begin fading too.
    Paige’s phone rang on the nightstand. She rolled, picked it up, squinted at the display. Travis saw by