While they were still deliberating, Old Willy simply couldn't stand to keep frittering time here—he was dead tired! So he used his authority as acting president outright and authorized Charlie to go to the front and direct the rescue operation.
Bring them back or don't—that's your business now. Even the state funeral can wait till tomorrow. This old man is going home to sleep!
Charlie didn't need to charge into the fray; at his age he couldn't have anyway. What was needed now was for him to direct the whole rescue—and given his twenty-plus years in law enforcement, he was the best choice available.
The bickering earlier had all been because no one wanted to shoulder the responsibility, terrified of getting the President killed on their watch.
He rushed without pause to the White House grounds and took command of Washington, D.C.'s rapid-response force.
"Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes, I need you to lead your men into the tunnel from the Lincoln Memorial. The entrance is behind and to the side of the statue. Your first target for rescue is the President, then the Secretary of Defense, then the Army Chief of Staff—"
Charlie rattled on, and Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes listened closely. The mission was extremely dangerous—the enemy's weapons were superb and their numbers many—but the payoff was enormous too. If they could bring the President out, most of the credit would go to Charlie, and Rhodes would still keep a decent share of his own. Credit on that scale was enough to bump a small lieutenant colonel up a rank.
"Yes, sir! I'll move out immediately!" Rhodes saluted Charlie, then led his men, loaded down with weapons and gear, to the Lincoln Memorial.
They searched for a bit and quickly found the tunnel entrance.
Directing from the rear, Charlie—and the generals back at the Pentagon—watched them enter the tunnel, and each let out a breath.
The prepared against the unprepared was almost always a sure thing. That was how the attackers had taken the White House guard, and now that the situation was reversed, it worked just the same!
"Senator, I've just gotten word—Mike Banning is currently inside the White House," the Secret Service director cut in abruptly.
"Hmm? Can this man be trusted? Where is he?"
"He's in the Oval Office."
Charlie compared the White House floor plan with the tunnel route. "Once my soldiers reach the bunker there'll be a fierce fight; there won't be time to take the President and the Secretary of Defense back up to rescue anyone on the upper floors. Have this Agent Banning prioritize rescuing President Asher's son. I'll send people to support him from outside."
The Secret Service director saw no problem with the arrangement. "Understood, sir. I'll tell Agent Banning."
From the Lincoln Memorial tunnel to the White House bunker, the passage ran about 1.5 kilometers (roughly a mile). While James Rhodes and his men crept carefully toward the exit, Mike Banning—an old friend from Benjamin Asher's days in the service and a former Secret Service agent—was putting on a one-man-army show.
After rescuing Benjamin Asher's son, he hadn't withdrawn as ordered. Instead, armed with just a pistol, he cut his way in and out through a crowd of attackers wielding automatic rifles, again and again.
His aim was precise and his style fearless. Knowing the White House layout inside out, he wove through the twists and turns, popping out to fire from places the enemy never expected.
To help draw the enemy's attention away from James Rhodes in the tunnel, he single-handedly traded fire with more than ten attackers, fighting with astonishing ferocity.
In an empty room some distance away, Bella was facing off against a middle-aged white man and two masked attackers.
After returning to her body, she'd slipped into the White House to scout the enemy—and gotten quite a surprise. A real one, at that: she'd found the trace of a demon here.
The whole affair, filed under "no big deal" in her mind, had abruptly leveled up from a White House hostage crisis into a demonic conspiracy.
"Dr. Harmon. Psychology's such a fine profession. So how did you end up making friends with terrorists?" she asked the bearded, middle-aged white man standing in the center.
Harmon—the psychologist who'd once sold the Swan family their house in Los Angeles—sized her up with an appraising look, and only after a long moment did he speak. His voice was strange, high and thin, like a boy in the middle of puberty.
"Does my dear father know you? Who are you? What a busybody. I'll cut your throat!" Behind the man who'd once been Dr. Harmon, a young figure surfaced—a tall, blond man.
The two masked attackers beside him dropped to their knees at once, like worshippers in a church, murmuring some scripture under their breath. One of them traced an inverted pentagram over his chest.
"The Antichrist? And these two beside you..." Bella's face was full of disgust. "Traitors to your own kind!"
One of the attackers shot back immediately, "We are followers of the Church of Satan!"
Then she pulled off her mask, revealing the face of a middle-aged woman.
"Hahahaha—" Bella couldn't help but laugh out loud. She really should summon 006 over to see this—these two humans in front of her were exactly the kind of demon-worshippers who go around shouting "666."
They worshipped demons with a mad devotion, said grace before every meal—except the object of their prayers had become Lucifer the devil, and the closing word had gone from "amen" to "nema."
The Church of Satan could genuinely lay claim to a long and storied history. At the start it really was just a little organization, and entirely because Christianity meddled in too much—they policed even the positions a married couple used in bed, insisting on the proper missionary style; try a new position and you'd be burned at the stake. Who could stand that?
The truth always comes out. The moment someone got caught trying a new position with somebody else, they'd pin the blame on Satan—that is, Lucifer, in Hebrew—claiming they'd been tempted: Lucifer made us do it!
The blame kept piling higher, more and more people came flocking to sign up of their own accord, and this demon-worshipping outfit grew, in its own bizarre way, all the way down to the present day.
Bella didn't want to laugh—she felt she ought to respect the other side's faith—but for a second there she just couldn't help it.
"Blasphemy! I'll see you dead!" the heavyset woman shrieked at Bella, while her companion secretly slit their own wrist, preparing a blood sacrifice.
"A Black Mass?" Bella was startled. Painting a magic circle in blood right in front of your enemy? That's about zero combat experience—what were you doing this whole time? She had little regard for their blood sacrifice, but there was no reason to wait around for them to finish the ritual; if they summoned some high-ranking demon it'd be a real nuisance.
A flash of green light passed between Bella's fingers, and the masked attacker was reduced to drifting ash by Disintegrate. Another flash of green, and the heavyset woman too was blasted apart into molecules.
The existence of these lunatics explained why the Korean attackers had assaulted the White House: their goal was to end the world, and stoking a war between the great human powers was, without question, the fastest way to do it.
"You dare kill my servants! I'll see you dead!" The Antichrist, controlling Dr. Harmon's body, wore a ferocious expression. Flames coiled around both his hands; he threw his arms forward, shoving the searing fire ahead of him.