by Brandt Legg
Chapter Sixty-Three
Since Morningstar’s assassination, virtually all open-air campaigning had been halted; no more speeches in parks, no more county fairs, picnics, or parades. Even indoor events had been substantially curtailed, which meant that with less than three weeks remaining until Election Day, this swing state rally inside a twenty-thousand-seat basketball court would be the largest event remaining. Organizers had hyped the speech and brought in far more people than the place could handle—a capacity crowd inside, another five to ten thousand out in the parking lots.
In line for hours, the faithful had been scrutinized by Secret Service agents as they passed through TSA-like screenings. The 3D cameras had also tracked their every move since each of them had left home that morning. Facial recognition, profiling, cross-indexing, databases, even dogs standing diligently beside cops. Vonner’s private security firm had four hundred personnel on hand to supplement the federal agents, state, and local police, whose mission was to avoid losing a fourth presidential candidate.
Still, Vonner’s head of security remained nervous. “Too many people,” she argued. “NorthBridge has made it no secret they want Hudson Pound dead.”
Hudson, for his part insisted, “You can’t run. Live free or die.” The candidate had become fond of quoting New Hampshire’s official state motto, and often added the rest of the line from the state’s Revolutionary War hero, General John Stark, “Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.” Even when NorthBridge posted a video of Hudson using the quote in one of his speeches over the caption, “NorthBridge couldn’t agree more with the gentleman from Ohio – death is not the worst of evils,” he defiantly continued using it.
When many in the nation called for a halt of all campaigning, the current President gave a stirring speech about the price of freedom, and that: “We must resist all terrorists, foreign or domestic, who seek to steal our precious freedom.” Polls showed that NorthBridge’s reign of terror had stoked a rising patriotic fervor, which accounted for the rock star-like celebrity treatment which Hudson and Newsman Dan had increasingly seen on the trail.
“It’s like a war zone,” Melissa said on the phone with Hudson just before he took the stage in the stadium. “I’m in Missouri, and you’d think I was Elvis. I can’t tell if they love us because they think we’re so smart, so brave, or if they just want to see someone get shot!” she admitted.
“It’s because we’re brave. They know any moment could be our last,” Hudson said, hoping he sounded braver than he felt, thinking back on the time Fitz had said this election was always going to be remembered for assassinations, as if it was the latest entertainment to distract the masses.
“Brave, stupid, I don’t know. That’s always the question we seem to be asking ourselves,” Melissa said. “Maybe they just want to be able to say they saw us at our last speech.”
“Crazy. Sorry to disappoint them, but my last speech will be in eight years.”
“Really? You’re down nine points in the latest national poll and now you’re getting cocky?”
“The media may have given up on me, but I like being the underdog. It’s the same way my hardware stores beat the big-box home centers. Underestimating me just gives me the room to maneuver. Sneak attack—I learned it in the army.”
“Okay, soldier, I’m glad to hear you finally think you’re going to win.”
He really didn’t think he would win, but he definitely wanted it now, and not just to save Rochelle, but to save the Republic itself, perhaps even the world. It was with that sentiment, that burning commitment in his heart, that Hudson Pound took the stage.
He stood behind the clear bulletproof shield and surveyed the sea of supporters. Chants of “WE. ARE. THE. CHANGE.” repeated for more than five minutes before Hudson could get the crowd to let him speak.
He spoke for twenty minutes, with the eloquence of a Kennedy and a substance that only a former history teacher could bring. The crowd held in rapt attention, never doubting that Hudson could deliver not just victory, but deliver them from the long song of corruption that had been played in Washington for decades. Hudson Pound was their political savior.
“I know we’re down in the polls,” he said, wrapping up his speech. “I know they say I’m too much of an outsider, that I cannot tame Washington where others have failed; that my vision is naïve, my talk too plain, my support too thin. They say all kinds of things designed to discourage us. Well, are we discouraged?”
“NO!”
“Are we gonna prove them wrong?”
“YES!”
“Are we gonna win?”
“YES!”
“Are we the change?”
“WE. ARE. THE. CHANGE!”
He raised his right arm, pumping the air along with the chants. Shouting the words himself. Hudson was a rock star. Newsman Dan might be ahead in the polls, but the passion belonged to Hudson. He smiled broadly, his gaze sweeping the crowd of frenzied supporters.
Then, one face stopped him. A beautiful young woman, the only one not chanting, not even smiling. Her expression was torn in deep grief and something else. Frustration, maybe. It took a moment through her pained look to realize he knew her.
It was Linh, the leader of the Inner Movement.
What the hell is she doing here? Why does she look so upset?
Just then, the first bullet tore through him. Flesh exploded in a bloody, burning thrust. He hadn’t heard the shot. His body went reeling, twisting to the floor. Splintering shards of wood burst from the podium. More shots! A split second after he hit the stage floor, a Secret Service agent landed on top of him. Another bullet ripped into his calf.
Above the now terror-filled screams of the crowd, he heard his security team shouting commands. More shots!
How many are there?
He tried to roll over, but the weight of the man on top of him was too much. A lot of blood.
This isn’t all my blood!
He realized from the agent’s groans that he’d also been hit.
He took a bullet for me. He may take more. He may die. I may die!
Pandemonium ensued. Pop! Pop! Pop! Shots rang louder, like fireworks, but he didn’t know if they were “ours” or “theirs.”
How did they hit me? They aren’t magically bypassing the bulletproof shield.
Twenty thousand people were running every direction, screaming. Someone pulled him, and the pain in his arm caused him to clench his teeth. More shots!
It’s an ambush.
He heard the word NorthBridge several times as agents shouted above the panicked crowd that had now become a rolling, moving hazard—a desperate mob. Hudson was wrenched to his feet.
“Teacher is hit. Teacher is down,” he heard an agent say, using his familiar Secret Service code name. “Moving. Evac-op seventeen.”
“We’re still receiving fire,” another nearby agent said. “From above, dammit, from above!”
Above, of course! Hudson realized that was the only place the shooter could be.
“Cherries waiting,” Another agent said, appearing next to Hudson. Three men were supporting him, pulling, dragging, moving him to an exit somewhere.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Hudson said, as they got safely into the backstage corridors.
“Yes, sir,” one of the agents said. “We’re trying to keep it that way.”
Four agents, who’d been sent ahead to be sure the escape route was clear, ran toward them. “The back exits are blocked!” one of them shouted breathlessly.
“With what?”
“Flames! They’ve torched the whole area. We have to go out the front.”
“Through the crowd? Twenty thousand scared civilians?” a stunned agent asked, already turning. “Through the shooters?”
Chapter Sixty-Four
It had been only four minutes since the shooting began. To Hudson it felt like hours, but he knew from combat that flying bullets have a way of twisting time.
The agents wer
e arguing in clipped words. No way they’d make it through the crowd. People were already getting trampled. There was no protection from the shooters. Several agents were speaking into their radios.
Hudson questioned why they were supporting him and tried to put weight on his leg. A collapsing agony answered. A hand came from behind and wrapped something tight on his throbbing, blood-soaked arm. Hudson never saw who it was. The swarm around him ebbed and flowed, but even in the confusion, it seemed to be working as one giant organism.
Dozens of police and federal agents were filling the area. Hudson heard a radio report that said one shooter was dead, taken out of the rafters. “How many are there?” Hudson asked no one in particular, but he didn’t get an answer. The irony of the chaotic scene was that in their desperate mission to protect the candidate, they hardly seemed to know he was there, or rather that he was a real person as opposed to a position to be defended.
“We’ve got a path!” an agent shouted as they turned again and advanced toward the back exits.
Hudson wondered about the fire, but he didn’t have to wait long to see the flames leaping at them. “How the hell are we going through that?” he asked, looking at the wall of smoke and fire. Again, no one answered.
How awful the situation must be inside the stadium if we’re going to try to push through that inferno, he thought, trying to ignore his increasing pain and mounting weakness.
Just as the heat began to feel as if it would melt his skin, a sudden, insatiable thirst overtook him. Lightheaded, he tried to turn back away from the raging fire, but the strong arms guiding him locked and continued marching forward.
Have I been betrayed? Are they sending me to cremation?
Seconds before he passed out, thousands of gallons of water, as if streaming from cannons, flooded in around them. Well-trained agents caught him before he hit the floor, somehow resisting the powerful water shooting at them.
How come it’s not knocking them down?
Then everything went black.
When Hudson woke up, he instantly remembered everything, except how he ended up inside the ambulance. Two paramedics were working on him. They cut off his pant leg and shirt. An IV was in his arm. A Secret Service agent wearing a soaking wet suit was a couple of feet away. Sirens were wailing all around as they raced toward the closest hospital.
“What’s going on back there?” Hudson asked. “Injuries? Did everyone get out okay?”
“They’re still clearing the place,” the agent responded. “Three shooters are dead. Lots of injuries. I don’t know how many—hundreds. Four or five agents among them, but I haven’t heard any deaths yet. Seems they just wanted you, Mr. Pound. You got lucky.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Hudson said. “The US Secret Service is the only reason I’m still here. How’s the agent who jumped on me?”
“Terry Wright,” the agent said. “He’s alive. In another ambulance.”
“He took a bullet for me,” Hudson said solemnly.
“He took three.”
Almost four hours later, Hudson was wheeled out of surgery.
“It was as if the bullets were defective,” the doctor told him. “The one in your leg stopped just before the femoral artery, maybe because it passed through Agent Wright first, but the one that hit your left shoulder had the power and trajectory to continue on to your heart.”
“What happened?” Hudson asked.
The doctor shrugged. “It just didn’t. Sometimes these things are known only to God.”
Hudson, not a religious man, nodded in agreement, thanked the doctor, closed his eyes, and gave another thank you to the heavens.
One of the many agents guarding his room came in with a phone. “Sir, it’s your wife.”
“Are you really all right?” Melissa’s voice sounded as if she’d been crying.
“That’s what they tell me,” Hudson replied. “I guess NorthBridge must think I might stage a comeback and beat Newsman Dan after all, because they’re sure going to a lot of trouble in trying to kill me.”
“Do you want to quit?”
“Never.”
“You’re a brave man, Hudson Pound.”
“Or stupid. I guess we’ll find out which in a few weeks.”
Both said “I love you” at the same time.
Florence and Schueller arrived at the hospital within an hour of each other. They were sitting and talking quietly by Hudson’s bedside, waiting for him to wake, when two of their aunts and an uncle walked in. Hudson’s brother, Ace, and his sisters Jenna, and Trixie. The three of them were devastated by the assassination attempt. They asked Florence and Schueller in hushed tones for the latest prognosis.
A little while later, just as a nurse came in to tell them there were too many visitors in the room, Melissa finally made it. As the patient’s wife, she took charge and promised the nurse they would be respectful. A few more chairs were squeezed in, and they kept the conversations to a whisper. Melissa had heard from Fitz, Vonner, and about fifty friends and campaign staffers. Schueller and Florence had similar experiences, and they’d all been contacted by countless reporters. Trixie said the hardware stores had been inundated with flowers and well-wishers starting right after the news broke, and she’d just gotten a text from an assistant manager that said people from all over the country had been calling into the stores with prayers and offers of support.
Hudson opened his eyes and surveyed the “crowd” in his hospital room. “If you’re all here, I must be dying,” he said, a little alarmed.
“No, honey,” Melissa said, taking his hand. “But let’s make sure this is as close as you ever get.”
Hudson looked past her to the flowers the Wizard had sent and recalled the message, a nurse had read him: Dawg, you gotta live to win, gotta win to fix things.
He thought of Rochelle. She had been his mission, but now it was more. NorthBridge might bring the country to civil war. He had to stop them. There was so much to fix.
He had to live.
Chapter Sixty-Five
NorthBridge posted a letter on its website signed by AKA Hancock claiming responsibility for the basketball stadium assassination attempt, which had injured three hundred and forty-eight people, but miraculously resulted in no deaths. In spite of an initial big jump in Hudson’s poll numbers after the attack, by the day before the election, he’d slipped back. Newsman Dan Neuman would head into election day still ahead by six points.
Between security concerns and the slowly healing gunshot wounds to his arm and leg, Hudson was not able to maintain the same constant campaigning that his opponent could. A conservative pundit on cable news asked why NorthBridge had never tried to assassinate Newsman Dan. Instead of looking for an answer to the question, the pundit was fired, shamed, and visited by the Secret Service for allegedly suggesting that the terrorist organization should attack the Democratic nominee for President.
In those final weeks, Vonner’s control of certain aspects of the media didn’t seem enough. Newsman Dan was everywhere. The media bias toward the liberal Democrat who had once been one of their own could not be stronger. Going into the last debate held in Wisconsin, just five days before election day, Fitz seemed worried.
“There may be a question we didn’t prep for tonight,” Fitz said while nursing an extra-large Coke.
“What do you mean?” Hudson asked, remembering the odd feeling he’d had at the last debate when it seemed they’d prepped him for every question, even though they weren’t supposed to know them in advance. “Did we get the questions?”
“Apparently not all of them,” Fitz said, closing the door to the adjoining suite, which was filled with staffers.
“What the hell?”
“Look, Hudson, it’s routine. The other side gets most of them, too. No one wants a president who can’t answer a question.” He paused to suck down his sugar and caffeine. “What’s the capital of Uzbekistan?”
“Tashkent.”
“Bless you.”
<
br /> “What?”
“All I’m saying is most people wouldn’t know that Taznet is the capital of Uzbekistan.”
“Tashkent.”
“See?”
“But I do.”
“Yeah, you’re smarter than the average bear on all that history and geography garbage. Point is, what if the moderator asks you something that you can’t answer? I’ll tell you what happens. You look like an idiot, you give all those undecided voters a reason to vote for Newsman Dan, and boom, you lose the election just because you didn’t know where Shazmat is.”
“Tash-kent.”
“Right.”
Hudson nodded. It was yet another compromise, another lie he told himself, that the people would never know. But it would be okay, because if given the chance to be president, it wouldn’t matter how he got there. He’d be a good president.
He walked slowly out on stage, a cane in one hand, his arm in a sling. Newsman Dan made a point of coming over and asked if he needed any help.
“Are you strong enough? We can wait a few more days, if you need more bed rest,” Newsman Dan said. The debate had already been pushed back because of Hudson’s recovery, and Hudson knew Dan was milking the situation to make himself look gracious and strong while Hudson seemed weak.
“No thanks, Governor. That’s just what NorthBridge would want.” Hudson never missed a chance to call Newsman Dan “Governor” since the two were campaigning as political outsiders, and yet Dan could not actually still claim that title.
The debate was uneventful for a while, but Fitz had been right; there was a surprise question, at least to Hudson.
“What would you do if you discover, as some evidence suggests, that NorthBridge is not a homegrown terror group as they claim, but are, in fact, sponsored by a foreign state? Would you take military action against that country, regardless of which country it is?”