Faster than impeachment, Paul said. And more certain. Think abrupt change. Think 1963. Its an operation reserved for when the Presidents loyalty is no longer unquestioned. Its also for when events are too large, or too sensitive, for the man in office. Its for times that demand action.

Who decides this? Luke said.

Paul shrugged. He smiled again. The people in charge decide.

Luke stared at him.

Tell me you dont know whos really in charge, Paul said, and I will start to wonder about your mothers relationship to the milkman.

The old man stared at him. There was a wild sort of light in the mans eyes. To Luke, he looked like a carnival barker, or a conman with the traveling medicine show. The man smiled. There was no humor in it.

You saw the White House blow up today, did you not?

Luke nodded. I was there.

Of course you were. Where else would you be at a time like that? Did it look like a drone strike to you? Or did it look like something else? Think back. Perhaps it looked more like a series of detonations, bombs that were planted inside the building, maybe days or weeks ago?

In his minds eye, Luke saw the explosions again, an entire line of them, moving from the West Wing, along the Colonnade, to the Residence. A huge explosion tore the Residence to pieces, throwing a massive chunk of it high into the air. He felt the shockwave again, the one that had threatened to knock their helicopter out of the sky.

But how could someone put bombs inside the White House?

Everyone who worked there had high-level security clearance, from the maids and the maintenance men, to the dishwashers and onion peelers, to the press secretary and the Presidents chief-of-staff. Everyone was vetted. If bombs had been planted, then that meant…

An inside job. All the way inside, inside the security apparatus, inside the intelligence community, far enough inside to take a group of explosives experts, erase their pasts, give them new identities, and get them jobs at the White House. Jobs without close supervision, jobs that gave them wide latitude to roam the hallways, especially at night when no one else was around.

In Lukes mind, a whole series of assumptions began to give way. All day, he had been focused on a ragtag group of terrorists. They were minimally trained, but they were violent and they were clever. They were hiding, they were running, they were employing asymmetrical tactics, using their smallness as a weapon against a vastly superior enemy. Maybe those men even believed thats what they were doing. They may have stolen the nuclear material. They may have flown the drone, and even blown up a part of the White House. Yet, still, they were but a small cog in a machine. They were being used by something much larger, something much more sophisticated.