by Bob Blink
"Who?"
"The President," Karl said bluntly.
The FBI Director was angry to have Karl say it out loud. Mark was his friend after all, but he'd come to the same conclusion himself. It just distressed him to have to face the reality.
"Who stood to gain by Nancy Craig's death?" Brad Crampton said. "Who would Earl trust other than his son, and we can see that he wasn't calling his son? Who killed the son just the other day when the son inexplicably appeared to attack him?"
"The President," Karl said matter-of-factly.
"This isn't proof," the NSA Director said. "At least not iron-clad proof for a courtroom, but I'm betting with the facts presented this way, most would see the guilt."
"We have a serious problem," Director Crampton said.
"Arrest him," the Assistant Director said simply.
"You can't," Karl said. "It's not in the constitution, but it has long become generally accepted that one cannot arrest and prosecute a sitting president."
"Impeach him then!"
"Tricky," Director Maggiora replied. "For one thing, he'd still be President and in control during the impeachment. Also, you aren't certain to win. As pointed out, this isn't iron-clad proof."
"Would you want this man in charge afterwards if your attempt failed, and you were personally certain all of this had been at his direction?" Director Maggiora asked.
"Options then?" the Assistant Director asked.
"We need to talk with some constitutional scholars, but I believe the twenty-fifth amendment provides us a way to go," Director Crampton said.
"It would take the votes of the Vice President and a majority of the President's cabinet to remove him from office or to do so temporarily by finding him unfit to serve," Karl said. He'd looked into the possibility a while back. "That means Toshiko and thirteen of the twenty-four cabinet members."
"She's not going to like the fact at all, especially considering she will end up becoming President, at least until the elections say otherwise."
"Dare we even consider such a drastic course. The elections are Tuesday!"
"The Republican's won't even have a candidate," Karl reminded them.
"Once he's removed, normal legal procedures can be instituted," Director Maggiora said. "I think we need to move quickly and quietly. We need to see Toshiko right away, and talk to members of the cabinet, and perhaps to the Majority leaders of both houses."
Chapter 43
Washington, DC
Midday Sunday, 3 Nov 2024
President Mark Pilcher was extraordinarily pleased. He was almost gleeful, and was happy it was Sunday, and no one was around to sense his obvious pleasure. He doubted he could have hidden the fact that something had raised his spirits. The reports from his Secret Service team, and supported by the news he'd watched a bit earlier on the television confirmed that the last two members of Earl's little squad had been located and dealt with. From the description forwarded by his friend Brad Crampton over at the FBI, the two men had perished resisting arrest, killed in the gun battle that had ensued.
Perfect!
There would have been no chance for any interrogation of the suspects in a situation like that, and even though he was confident that Earl had been truthful about neither man knowing anything of his involvement in this whole mess, having them beyond questioning at this point made him feel far better and more confident. Now, just maybe, this miserable situation could be pushed aside, the elections could be held on Tuesday, and with a bit of luck he'd be President for another four years. It appeared everything was going to work out after all. He was pleased enough that he grabbed his third beer of the morning, the other two consumed during the course of the football game he'd been watching.
With his spirits raised and his mood more positive than it had been in a long time, he decided he should finish the speech he was planning on giving later in the evening at the Lincoln Memorial. He had held back on his campaigning while the missing men were sought, but now his team would have to agree any risk to him, which he knew had never been real, had dissipated, and he could spent the last day before the voters spoke, pushing home his agenda.
His Chief of Staff had indicated last night that the data from the various polls was coming in, and things were starting to settle down once again, with him still holding the lead over his Democratic opponent. He was expecting a further update today, when Joe brought the up-to-date data for them to look over. The President checked his watch and realized that Joe was actually a bit late, something that was unusual for the dedicated staffer.
Almost as if Joe had read his mind, there was a polite knock on the door, and Joe was escorted into the quarters, his arms clutching the perennial computer printouts without which he seemed unable to function.
"It's good!" he said beaming before he even reached the couch where the President sat waiting for him. "You've moved ahead another four points since yesterday. The deaths of those two killers has helped settle the voters."
"Let me see," the President said, reaching for the summary sheet that Joe always provided, since Mark had no interest, nor any real understanding of the reams of data Joe dropped onto the table as backup.
"Fantastic!" the President beamed. "I think we're going to win this thing again."
Joe nodded, every bit as happy as his boss.
"What's going on over at the Capital Building?" he asked as he accepted the summary sheet back from the President.
"The Capital Building?" the President asked, clearly caught off guard and confused. "I have no idea. Why?
"It seemed important, and with so many of your cabinet over there, I assumed you'd know. I figured it was somehow related to the election."
Now the President was curious.
"Tell me what you saw," he directed.
"They were in a conference room next to Toshiko's office," Joe explained. Besides the VP and most of your cabinet I saw the FBI and NSA Directors, and the majority leaders of both houses."
This was really odd, the President thought.
"Did you hear anything?"
"Only a little bit when Majority Leader Banning came out of the conference room. That's when I saw what was going on. Someone was talking about a swearing in ceremony. Man, you'd think they were planning a coup from the way they were acting."
Mark suddenly had a sinking feeling in his gut. Toshiko, who had distanced herself from everything for months, and talk of a swearing in ceremony. A coup was exactly what they were planning, or more accurately they intended to invoke the twenty-fifth amendment and remove him from office. They knew! He didn't know how he was so certain, but he was positive they'd somehow discovered his involvement in the killings. As the President, they couldn't arrest him, he'd checked into that, but they could remove him from office, and then proceed with legal challenges against him. Given the unusual mix of people Joe had described, that had to be their intent.
"Joe, this is great," the President said, his cheery feeling from earlier completely gone. "How about you get me an update after my speech tonight, and we'll go into the final day of campaigning on a positive note. I can use your results in tomorrow's speeches. Great job!"
Joe nodded, and stood to leave. He was a bit surprised, as the President usually liked to bask in the good news a bit longer, but then he might be pressed to get ready for the speech later in the day.
After Joe had left, the President sat quietly for several minutes, considering that what had always been a remote possibility was now a fact. He'd done some planning after they'd gotten Earl, a loss that had made the possibility they would get to him very real. He had a plan, but once he acted, there was no turning back. Everything depended on his getting out of the country, where he could disappear. He had millions stashed in places they would never find, so the losses he would include by leaving would be tempered somewhat.
Had Joe really seen what he thought he'd seen? It would be more than unfortunate if he threw everything away and it turned out his Chief of Staff has mi
sinterpreted something he'd seen. He got up and made a phone call.
"I'd like to speak with Toshiko," he said when a voice answered. Even on Sunday's some of the phones were answered. "She's not in? I thought she'd said she planned otherwise. Thank you."
A couple of additional calls earned him similar answers. Joe might have misunderstood what the meeting was about, but he wouldn't have mistaken the people he saw. And as President, people didn't lie about whether key personnel were on hand. Something was definitely up.
"Well, damn!" he cursed softly.
Sadly, he headed for his bedroom, pulling out a satchel from the closet, filling it with several items he'd decided he would need to bring if this ever happened. He walked over to his desk and opened the locked drawer, pocketing the 50K in emergency cash, and then pulled out the smoothly finished wooden box that held the custom Wilsons. He opened it, and took out the full-sized 1911. The shorter Commander version was still with the police who hadn't yet returned it after the CC shooting.
There were two fully loaded, eight round magazines in the case. He would like to have more, but they were with his gear down in the range, and his time driven schedule wasn't going to allow for any side stops. He slid a loaded magazine into the pistol, and chambered a round, thumbed on the safety, then switched to the second, still fully loaded magazine, pocketing the first as a spare. That only gave him one more round in the gun, but sometimes one round made the difference. The gun went cocked and locked into the holster, which he slipped onto his belt, inside his waistband. Finally, he walked into the kitchen, pulled open a junk drawer, and pulled out a large roll of duct tape.
Thinking again on the irreversibility of what he was about to do, he walked to the door of his quarters and pulled it open.
"Dan? Could you and Wally come in here a minute? I'd like to show you something."
The two somewhat bored Secret Service agents stepped into the President Quarters as Mark closed the door behind them.
"In there," he said, pointing to the comfortable study he'd grown exceptionally fond of.
Both agents headed in the direction he'd pointed and as they passed through the doorway, the President, coming up behind them, silently pulled the .45 from his holster. When they stopped and turned around expectantly he said softly, "I'll be wanting your firearms."
At first they couldn't believe it. Then Dan said, "Mr. President, you can't be serious."
"Oh, but I am. Now, you first. Take yours out and drop it on the chair and then step away. Afterwards Wally, I want you to do them same. Oh, and no noises to try and attract attention. I might have an accidental discharge under stress if you were to do that."
It took only a few minutes, and soon both agents were handcuffed, using their own cuffs, to the sturdy eyebolts the President had fixed into the support beams a while back. He'd wrapped the cuffs, their feet, and their mouths with the sturdy multi-use tape, and now gave them a final check. He'd considered applying a solid whack or two to the heads to put them out, but he wasn't sure he could do that without causing irreparable damage, and the fact they were missing was likely to be noticed long before they woke up anyway. He figured he only had fifteen or twenty minutes before his actions were discovered, the curse of being one of the most monitored people on the planet, so he needed to move quickly or all of this was for naught.
He left the study, closing the door behind him, and returned to his bedroom, pulling aside the panel in the closest that revealed the hidden staircase that led downstairs to the lower level which in turn led to the bunker, and ultimately many of the other underground facilities, but most importantly to the subway station under the White House.
Over the years there had been considerable speculation about underground chambers, hidden rooms and tunnels, and other such secret modifications to the White House. The government had purposely encouraged such speculation, fueling it with misinformation and lies. So the general public wasn't certain what was real and what was myth. Yet, in 1950 when a remodeling of the White House had become 'necessary', a great many of such secret modifications were started. Later years saw even more modifications. When Obama was President, he'd chosen to reveal some of what had been done to the area under the White House. Some, but nowhere near all.
Now underground on the first level, the President listened for any indication someone else might be nearby, but finding the expected silence, he headed off toward the subway station. He made it to the entrance undetected, and quickly swiped the access card that he always carried that granted him access to all manner of places within the White House complex. He entered, closed the door behind him, and continued down a second set of steps to the mini-station below. Since his was an authorized entrance, no alarms would be triggered even though this space was seldom used.
Moments later he stood on the platform below. There wasn't a subway, of course. It had actually been considered at one time, and there were Internet posts describing what didn't exist. It would have been foolishly expensive, but worse the security implications of an extended series of tunnels under the White House would have been a nightmare. What did exist were a couple of tunnels with foot-trails that led off to places close to the public transportation system. There, very cleverly designed doors could be accessed to allow escape from the White House complex in time of peril. Mark had been carefully briefed of this early in his Presidency.
He set off walking down the footpath heading northeast. He picked up his pace. He had to cover almost four blocks before he'd reach the end of this tunnel and the exit door.
Finally, he spotted it. The exit was designed to be concealed from the other side, with no means of opening. From this side the controls were straight-forward enough, but required the special access card that was coded for authorization. That wasn't his problem. His card had the highest level of authorization, but these doors, regardless of the authorization were alarmed, and security would be alerted that someone had breached the crossover the moment he unlocked and opened the doors. Agents would be headed this way immediately, giving him a very short time to get into the subway station and board one of the public trains, and disappear.
Out there in public he was going to be noticed. He'd put on old clothes, and was wearing a bulky jacket that not only hid his gun, but also changed his shape a bit. He reached into the satchel, pulling out the old baseball cap, which he pulled down over his eyes. He also grabbed the old eye patch he'd been forced to wear for a couple of weeks and slipped it over his left eye. That was the best he could do. Hopefully the station wouldn't be very busy and he could stay away from the crowds.
He crossed his fingers, and slid the magnetic card through the electronic reader. He half expected alarms and sirens, but if that was happened it would be back at security. He was on the clock now, and couldn't delay. He turned the locking wheel and pulled the door open.
A bullet whined off the rim of the door not two inches from where his hand still gripped it. Quickly he stepped behind the steel door for protection, while pulling out his pistol and staring down the semi-lit pathway. He just made out the figure scrambling toward him, moving between available cover as he closed the distance. Another pair of shots slammed into the opposite side of the door that still protected him.
"You bastard! You killed CC on purpose, didn't you?"
Dan! He recognized the voice. How did the get agent loose and get here so quickly. Someone must have found them much sooner than he expected, and Dan figured out where he'd gone.
He could see the agent more clearly now, and was aware he had an arm outstretched and was preparing to shoot again. Mark raised his own gun, ignoring the sights in this dim light, and triggered the Crimson Trace laser built into the grips. The bright green dot speared a pillar next to the agent, and Mark quickly adjusted the pointing of the pistol to bring the dot onto the agent. He fired as soon as he had the laser centered on the target. The first shot looked good, but with the laser still illuminating a part of the wounded agent, he fired again, twice, making
sure the man was mortally wounded.
The little man in the back of his mind warned him that the clock was ticking. He stuffed the weapon out of sight in the holster, then turned and grabbing his bag, jumped through the opening that led to the public areas. He wasted a moment to pull the door closed in case whoever followed lacked the proper authorizations, heard it latch, and turned and hurried down toward the subway platform. Only three passengers were waiting in the underground station, all of them looking his direction, but they were far enough away that he was nothing more than a shady image. He could hear a train approaching, and they lost interest in whatever had happened in his vicinity, and prepared to board. They got on toward the front of the train, and he jumped through a rear door, just as it was closing. The train pulled away, and Mark had seen no one else appear out of the gloom where the access door was. Now if he could just get off, and out of the system, they'd have a devil of a time finding him.
Ten stressful minutes later the subway train pulled to a stop at his exit by the University of Maryland. He stepped out, and hurried away from the other passengers. No one had paid him any attention, and the crowd quickly thinned as most headed toward the university while he was headed away toward the residential areas.
It took him several wrong turns to get his bearings since he'd never come this way by subway before. The one time he'd come here before, he'd been driven. Then, there it was. He was a little bit surprised he'd recognize it so easily.
Cindy's house was closed and looked as empty as it was. He'd been told that her home and other possessions were being held until the will was properly probated, which wasn't expected to be complete until early next year. That made it the one place he knew about in DC where he could hope to hide out for a night or two while he made special, very expensive, arrangements to get out of the city, and the country, undetected.
The block was quiet, with none of the neighbors or their children outside, which allowed him to approach and slip into the back yard unseen. He didn't have a key for the place, but knew from talking to Cindy that the doors and windows weren't alarmed. He located the back door, and carefully, and as quietly as he could, broke through the glass using the barrel of his gun. He knocked aside more of the glass until he could reach through and unlatch the lock, then carefully opened the door and stepped inside. He listened carefully, and hearing no sign of occupancy, stepped deeper into the gloom pulling to door closed behind him. He would be hungry, unless there were can goods. Anything else would have spoiled, but he doubted that anyone would figure out where he had gone before he moved on.