"You don't understand. I tell you, this presidency is not worth saving."

"Let me reason with him," Griswold cut in, brandishing his pistol. "I promise he'll come to understand."

"No, you creep!" a woman's voice cried out from the side of the hall. "I promise you'll come to understand."

From the corridor to the portcullis, Alison stepped into the room, her pistol leveled at Griswold from, perhaps, twenty-five feet away.

"Alison!" Gabe cried out.

"Set the gun down, Griswold. Set it on the floor and kick it away. Hard!"

Griswold seemed to be weighing his options; then, slowly, he did as Alison demanded.

"As you wish, ma'am," he muttered. "My, my, my, my, my."

"You should never have left me my radio, Griz. I caught up with you when you left all the others and flew back from Camp David to the White House. Seemed fishy then, seems fishy now."

"Those naughty girls," Griswold said, smiling in a most unsettling way. "They know perfectly well that insubordination will not be tolerated. I think a spanking is in order. Now, if you will be so kind, Agent Cromartie, it is my turn to demand that you put down your gun."

He lifted up his left hand to display a transmitter.

"What do you expect to do with that?" Alison asked.

"Expect to do? Well, for starters, I expect to push these buttons here and release the chemicals that my trusty inhaler deposited along your brain stem and other areas in your cute little noggin. Enough chemicals, I would say, to blow your mind—literally and figuratively. Many times more than what we've been giving to the prez."

"Drop the transmitter, Griswold or I swear, I'll put a bullet between your eyes."

"From there? In the heat of battle? With a dainty little, what have you got? A Glock? A Glock Twenty-six maybe? You must be kidding. At this range, with your hand shaking like a leaf, and death staring you in the face in the form of me, you'd be lucky to hit the wall behind me. Now, I'm going to count to three. Put your gun on the floor or I push these buttons—all of 'em at once. One . . . two . . . three!"

Griswold depressed the buttons on the transmitter. His narrow eyes widened. They widened even more when Alison held up the Baggie containing the president's inhaler.

"Guess what this is," she said. "You never should have let that pickpocket at your garage in Fredericksburg get away. He made the switch, you pig. The Alupent you almost killed me with was nothing more than that—Alupent. I'm glad you pushed those buttons, though. That makes this self-defense."

"You fucking bi—"

Griswold, reaching for a pistol in his belt, got no further.