At two in the morning, Washington, D.C., time, Irwin Schwartz reached out for the urgently beeping phone from his office cot and punched the speaker button. "Yes?" Only then did he hear the powerful whuff-whuff of helicopter blades and the screaming roar of jet turbines.

It was the late night White House military staff duty officer. "Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Crockerman is being evacuated. He wishes you to join him on the helicopter."

Schwartz had duly noted the officer's reluctance to call Crockerman "President." He was now strictly "Mr. Crockerman." If you don't act the office, you don't get the title. "What sort of emergency?"

"There have been strikes on Seattle and sòme kind of action over Cleveland, Charleston, and San Francisco."

"Jesus. Russian?"

"Don't know, sir. Sir, you should get out on the lawn as soon as possible."

"Right." Schwartz did not even grab his coat.

On the White House lawn, dressed in the undershirt and pants he had worn as he slept, Schwartz ducked instinctively under the high, massive rotor blades and ran up the ladder, his bald head unprotected against the chill downdraft of spring night air. A Secret Service agent stood by until the hatch was closed, and then watched the helicopter lift away to take them all to Grissom Air Force Base in Indiana.

The staff officer and a Marine guard hugged Crocker-man's sides, the Marine carrying the "football" and the staff officer carrying a mobile data and command center— MODACC for short—hooked up to the helicopter's communications system.

There were three Secret Service agents aboard the craft, as well as Nancy Congdon, the President's personal secretary. Had Mrs. Crockerman been in the White House, she would have been evacuated as well.

"Mr. President," the staff officer began, "the Secretary of Defense is in Colorado. State is in Miami at a governors' meeting. The Vice President is in Chicago. I believe the Speaker of the House is being airlifted from his home. I have some information regarding what our satellites and other sensors have already told us." He spoke louder than he needed to over the engine noise; the cabin was well insulated.

The President and all the others aboard listened closely.

"Seattle is gone, and Charleston is a ruin—the strike appeared to be centered at twenty klicks out in the ocean there. But our satellites show no missile launches from the Soviet Union or any fish at sea. No missiles at all were detected coming from the Earth. And apparently some sort of defensive system came into play over San Francisco and Cleveland, perhaps elsewhere as well ..."