He allowed himself a brief smile and then returned his thoughts to the stunned Jim Hacker, placing a conciliatory hand on the chief of staff’s shoulder, “Jim,” Barrett smiled in spite of himself, “don’t look so distraught. Look at it this way. The man who just saved humanity has offered you the opportunity to approach the president with a comprehensive list of action items for his new task force, and a strong recommendation for its leader. Something tells me you can find a way to make that work for you?”

Jim looked at him. He had just been chastised by a White House science advisor and now he was being offered political advice by an air force colonel. But he wasn’t foolish enough to miss the fact that said advice was sound. He had no intention of being the man that stood in the way of the people who had just orchestrated the destruction of the single greatest threat humanity had ever faced. Nor had he gotten where he was by allowing pride to get in the way of taking credit for someone else’s good ideas. And so the White House chief of staff looked at Colonel Barrett Milton with surprisingly genuine deference and asked politely how he could be of assistance.

Across the room, Neal came to rest at the admiral’s shoulder and looked at him. The senior man looked discomforted, like he had just heard that he had a terminal disease and the incongruity of the expression on a man such as the admiral made Neal uneasy. Neal’s first thought was that something had gone wrong with the attack on the satellites, and that somehow one of them had survived. But no. This was not a face of despair, it was a face of regret. The admiral had done something wrong and it was clear that whatever the consequences were they were shaking the man very deeply indeed.

Only a truly significant loss of life could perturb a man with the admiral’s extensive combat experience. But what could the admiral have done that would have cost people their lives?

It came to Neal in a moment and he shook his head. Both he and Ayala had worried that they would not be able to control Tim Hamilton once he was on the team, and they had been right. Looking at the senior officer, Neal knew that the man had gone after Lana Wilson, his rage at her having come into his home, and her use of his son as a pawn in her scheme, it had all been too much for him to overlook. And by the looks of things, whatever he had done had gone horribly wrong.

“Admiral, what did she do?” Neal said quietly.