The new standalone political thriller from former US president, Bill Clinton and James Patterson will have you on the edge of your seat. The following extract taken from the book is the tense lead-up to the kidnapping of Melanie, the daughter of Matthew Keating, a one-time Navy SEAL – and a past president.
LAKE MARIE
New Hampshire
“AN HOUR OR SO AFTER MY DAUGHTER, MEL, LEAVES, I’ve showered, had my second cup of coffee, and read the newspapers – just skimming them, really, for it’s a sad state of affairs when you eventually realise just how wrong journalists can be in covering stories. With a handsaw and a set of pruning shears, I head off to the south side of our property.
It’s a special place, even though my wife, Samantha, has spent less than a month here in all her visits. Most of the land in the area is conservation land, never to be built upon, and of the people who do live here, almost all follow the old New Hampshire tradition of never bothering their neighbours or gossiping about them to visitors or news reporters.
Out on the lake is a white Boston Whaler with two men supposedly fishing, although they are Secret Service. Last year the Union Leader newspaper did a little piece about the agents stationed aboard the boat – calling them the unluckiest fishermen in the state – but since then, they’ve been pretty much left alone.
As I’m chopping, cutting, and piling brush, I think back to two famed fellow POTUS brush cutters – Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush – and how their exertions never quite made sense to a lot of people. They thought, Hey, you’ve been at the pinnacle of fame and power, why go out and get your hands dirty?
I saw at a stubborn pine sapling that’s near an old stone wall on the property, and think, Because it helps. It keeps your mind occupied, your thoughts busy, so you don’t continually flash back to memories of your presidential term.
The long and fruitless meetings with Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle, talking with them, arguing with them, and sometimes pleading with them, at one point saying, “Damn it, we’re all Americans here – isn’t there anything we can work on to move our country forward?”
And constantly getting the same smug, superior answers. “Don’t blame us, Mr. President. Blame them.”
The late nights in the Oval Office, signing letters of condolence to the families of the best of us, men and women who had died for the idea of America, not the squabbling and revenge-minded nation we have become. And three times running across the names of men I knew and fought with, back when I was younger, fitter, and with the teams.
And other late nights as well, reviewing what was called – in typical innocuous, bureaucratic fashion – the Disposition Matrix database, prepared by the National Counterterrorism Centre, but was really known as the “kill list.” Months of work, research, surveillance, and intelligence intercepts resulting in a list of known terrorists who were a clear and present danger to the United States. And there I was, sitting by myself, and like a Roman emperor of old, I put a check mark next to those I decided were going to be killed in the next few days.
The sapling finally comes down.
Mission accomplished.
I look up and see something odd flying in the distance.
I stop, shade my eyes. Since moving here, I’ve gotten used to the different kinds of birds moving in and around Lake Marie, including the loons, whose night calls sound like someone’s being throttled, but I don’t recognize what’s flying over there now.
I watch for a few seconds, and then it disappears behind the far tree line.
And I get back to work, something suddenly bothering me, something I can’t quite figure out.
“There’s still a bit of blood spatter and brain matter on the dashboard in front of them. An empty baby’s seat is in the rear, along with a flowered cloth bag stuffed with toys and other childish things.”
BASE OF THE HUNTSMEN TRAIL
Mount Rollins, New Hampshire
“IN THE FRONT SEAT OF A BLACK CADILLAC ESCALADE, the older man rubs at his clean-shaven chin and looks at the video display from the laptop set up on top of the centre console. Sitting next to him in the passenger seat, the younger man has a rectangular control system in his hand, with two small joysticks and other switches. He is controlling a drone with a video system, and they’ve just watched the home of former president Matthew Keating disappear from view.
It pleases the older man to see the West’s famed drone technology turned against them. For years he’s done the same thing with their wireless networks and cell phones, triggering devices and creating the bombs that shattered so many bodies and sowed so much terror.
And the Internet – which promised so much when it came out to bind the world as one – ended up turning into a well-used and safe communications network for him and his warriors.
The Cadillac they’re sitting in was stolen this morning from a young couple and their infant in northern Vermont, after the two men abandoned their stolen pickup truck. There’s still a bit of blood spatter and brain matter on the dashboard in front of them. An empty baby’s seat is in the rear, along with a flowered cloth bag stuffed with toys and other childish things.
“Next?” the older man asks.
“We find the girl,” he says. “It shouldn’t take long.”
“Do it,” the older man says, watching with quiet envy and fascination as the younger man manipulates the controls of the complex machine while the drone’s camera-made images appear on the computer screen.
“There. There she is.”
From a bird’s-eye view, he thinks, staring at the screen. A red sedan moves along the narrow paved roads.
He says, “And you are sure that the Americans, that they are not tracking you?”
“Impossible,” the younger man next to him says in confidence. “There are thousands of such drones at play across this country right now. The officials who control the airspace, they have rules about where drones can go, and how high and low they can go, but most people ignore the rules.”
“But their Secret Service…”
“Once President Matthew Keating left office, his daughter was no longer due the Secret Service protection. It’s the law, if you can believe it. Under special circumstances, it can be requested, but no, not with her. The daughter wants to be on her own, going to school, without armed guards near her.”
He murmurs, “A brave girl, then.”
“And foolish,” comes the reply.
And a stupid father, he thinks, to let his daughter roam at will like this, with no guards, no security.
The camera in the air follows the vehicle with no difficulty, and the older man shakes his head, again looking around him at the rich land and forests. Such an impossibly plentiful and gifted country, but why in Allah’s name do they persist in meddling and interfering and being colonialists around the world?
A flash of anger sears through him.
If only they would stay home, how many innocents would still be alive?
“There,” his companion says. “As I earlier learned… they are stopping here. At the beginning of the trail called Sherman’s Path.”
The vehicle on screen pulls into a dirt lot still visible from the air. Again, the older man is stunned at how easy it was to find the girl’s schedule by looking at websites and bulletin boards from her college, from something called the Dartmouth Outing Club. Less than an hour’s work and research has brought him here, looking down at her, like some blessed, all-seeing spirit.
He stares at the screen once more. Other vehicles are parked in the lot, and the girl and the boy get out. Both retrieve knapsacks from the rear of the vehicle. There’s an embrace, a kiss, and then they walk away from the vehicles and disappear into the woods.
“Satisfied?” his companion asks.
For years, he thinks in satisfaction, the West has used these drones to rain down hellfire upon his friends, his fighters, and, yes, his family and other families. Fat and comfortable men (and women!) sipping their sugary drinks in comfortable chairs in safety, killing from thousands of kilometres away, seeing the silent explosions but not once hearing them, or hearing the shrieking and crying of the wounded and dying, and then driving home without a care in the world.
Now, it’s his turn.
His turn to look from the sky.
Like a falcon on the hunt, he thinks.
Patiently and quietly waiting to strike.
“For the first time in a long time she’s frightened.”
SHERMAN’S PATH
Mount Rollins, New Hampshire
“IT’S A CLEAR, COOL, AND GORGEOUS DAY ON SHERMAN’S PATH, and Mel Keating is enjoying this climb up to Mount Rollins, where she and her boyfriend, Nick Kenyon, will spend the night with other members of the Dartmouth Outing Club at a small hut the club owns near the summit.
She stops for a moment on a granite outcropping and puts her thumbs through her knapsack’s straps.
Nick emerges from the trail and surrounding scrub brush, smiling, face a bit sweaty, bright blue knapsack on his back, and he takes her extended hand as he reaches her.
“Damn nice view, Mel,” he says.
She kisses him. “I’ve got a better view ahead.”
“Where?”
“Just you wait.”
She lets go of his hand and gazes at the rolling peaks of the White Mountains and the deep green of the forests, and notices the way some of the trees look a darker shade of green from the overhead clouds gently scudding by. Out beyond the trees are the Connecticut River and the mountains of Vermont.
Mel takes a deep, cleansing breath.
Just her and Nick and nobody else.
She lowers her glasses, and everything instantly turns to muddled shapes of green and blue. Nothing to see, nothing to spot. She remembers the boring times at state dinners back at the White House, when she’d be sitting with Mom and Dad, and she’d lower her glasses so all she could see were colored blobs. That made the time pass, when she really didn’t want to be there, didn’t really want to see all those well-dressed men and women pretending to like Dad and be his friend so they could get something in return.
Mel slides the glasses back up, and everything comes into view.
That’s what she likes.
Being ignored and seeing only what she wants to see.
Nick reaches between the knapsack and rubs her neck.
“What are you looking at?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, that doesn’t sound good.”
Mel laughs. “Silly man, it’s the best! No staff, no news reporters, no cameras, no television correspondents, no Secret Service agents standing like dark-suited statues in the corner. Nobody! Just you and me.”
“Sounds lonely,” Nick says.
She slaps his butt. “Don’t you get it? There’s nobody keeping an eye on me, and I’m loving every second of it.
Come along, let’s get moving.”
Some minutes later, Nick is sitting at the edge of a small mountainside pool, ringed with boulders and saplings and shrubs, letting his feet soak, enjoying the sun on his back, thinking of how damn lucky he is.
He had been shy at first when meeting Mel last semester in an African history seminar—everyone on the Dartmouth campus knew who she was, so that was no secret—and he had no interest in trying to even talk to her until Mel started getting crap thrown at her one day in class. She had said something about the importance of microloans in Africa, and a few loudmouths started hammering her about being ignorant of the real world, being privileged, and not having an authentic life.
When the loudmouths took a moment to catch their respective breaths, Nick surprised himself by saying, “I grew up in a third-floor apartment in Southie. My Dad was a lineman for Eversource, my Mom worked cleaning other people’s homes and clipped coupons to go grocery shopping, and man, I’d trade that authentic life for privilege any day of the week.”
A bunch of the students laughed. Mel caught his eye with a smile and he asked her after class to get a coffee or something at Lou’s Bakery, and that’s how it started.
Him, a scholarship student, dating the daughter of President Matt Keating.
What a world.
What a life.
Sitting on a moss-colored boulder, Mel nudges him and says, “How’s your feet?”
“Feeling cold and fine.”
“Then let’s do the whole thing,” she says, standing up, tugging off her gray Dartmouth sweatshirt. “Feel like a swim?”
He smiles. “Mel . . . someone could see us!”
She smiles right back, wearing just a tan sports bra under the sweatshirt, as she starts lowering her shorts. “Here? In the middle of a national forest? Lighten up, sweetie.
Nobody’s around for miles.”
After she strips, Mel yelps out as she jumps into the pool, keeping her head and glasses above water. The water is cold and sharp. Poor Nick takes his time, wading in, shifting his weight as he tries to keep his footing on the slippery rocks, and he yowls like a hurt puppy when the cold mountain water reaches just below his waist.
The pond is small, and Mel reaches the other side with three strong strokes, and she swims back, the cold water now bracing, making her heart race, everything tingling.
She tilts her head back, looking up past the tall pines and seeing the bright, bare blue patch of sky. Nothing. Nobody watching her, following her, recording her.
Bliss.
Another yelp from Nick, and she turns her head to him.
Nick had wanted to go Navy ROTC, but a bad set of lungs prevented him from doing so, and even though she knows Dad wishes he’d get a haircut, his Southie background and interest in the Navy scored Nick in the plus side of the boyfriend column with Dad.
Nick lowers himself farther into the water, until it reaches his strong shoulders. “Did you see the sign-up list for the overnight at the cabin?” he asks. “Sorry to say, Cam Carlucci is coming.”
“I know,” she says, treading water, leaning back, letting her hair soak, looking up at the sharp blue and empty sky.
“You know he’s going to want you to—”
Mel looks back at Nick. “Yeah. He and his buds want to go to the Seabrook nuclear plant this Labor Day weekend, occupy it, and shut it down.”
Poor Nick’s lips seem to be turning blue. “They sure want you there.”
In a mocking tone, Mel imitates Cam and says, “‘Oh, Mel, you can make such an impact if you get arrested.
Think of the headlines. Think of your influence.’ To hell with him. They don’t want me there as me. They want a puppet they can prop up to get coverage.”
Nick laughs. “You going to tell him that tonight?”
“Nah,” she says. “He’s not worth it. I’ll tell him I have plans for Labor Day weekend instead.”
Her boyfriend looks puzzled. “You do?”
She swims to him and gives him a kiss, hands on his shoulders. “Dopey boy, yes, with you.”
His hands move through the water to her waist, and she’s enjoying the touch—just as she hears voices and looks up.
For the first time in a long time she’s frightened.”
Extracted from The President’s Daughter, out now.
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by Bill Clinton & James Patterson
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