“Zero notice!” Strasky raised his voice. “Jesus, sir, we deserve more than a couple of minutes to get on the road.”

“That’s all security,” Penn explained. He wasn’t thrilled about springing this on members and their staffs—for heaven’s sake, as Speaker, he was brought into the loop only an hour before the others—but he understood the president’s concerns. Washington leaked information like the Titanic leaked water. For CRIMSON PHOENIX to succeed, surprise was the single-most critical component.

In the front seat, the Army colonel in the shotgun seat turned to face his VIP passengers. The Velcro patch over his pocket read: MILLER. “Mr. Speaker, we’re nearly there. Remember to leave everything in the vehicle. No electronics, no paper. Nothing enters into the bunker, sir.”

Penn leaned to his left to get a better view through the windshield. A hundred yards ahead, he could see a stone archway illuminated by the Suburban’s headlights. An enormous blast door, easily fifteen feet across, had been pulled open to reveal a tunnel, the inside of which was lit rather dimly, but which illuminated a flurry of activity as people in military uniforms swarmed around doing whatever they had been trained to do.

The Suburban pulled up short of the mouth of the tunnel. “This is it, sir,” the colonel said. “We need to leave the vehicle here, but we’ll escort you to the door.”

“And then what?”

“And then I hand you off to the people in charge,” Miller said.

“But what happens to you?” Penn asked.

Colonel Miller took a long, noisy breath and scowled. “Mr. Speaker, I have no idea if you’re cleared to hear the answer to that question, but I am one hundred percent certain that I am not cleared to share it with you.” He sold it with just the right amount of smile as he climbed out of the vehicle.

Out of habit, Penn waited a few seconds for his door to be opened for him, and when he realized that this was not his normal security team—they were military officers, not officers of the Capitol Police Force—he pulled the handle and opened it himself.

The late-summer mountain air felt crisp against his skin as he stepped away from his vehicle toward Miller. His peripheral vision caught Strasky approaching them as he asked the colonel, “What now?”

“Follow me.”

As Speaker of the House of Representatives—second in line to the presidency—Penn was used to a degree of deference from his security team, and from military officers, for that matter. No such deference existed in Miller’s demeanor. This man was 100 percent business.