The East Wing, Presidential Residence, The White House, Washington, DC
President Jacob Starling sat in a chair whose comfort was lost to him, perched on the edge of the leather cushion, leaning toward the television, his wife and children huddled on the couch nearby. He was watching CNN and FOX split screen, unable to believe what he was seeing. His own private briefings had been curtailed and for his own “safety” he had been confined to the residence. His only news now, beyond what was “approved” for the airwaves, was delivered through kitchen and cleaning staff who would whisper tidbits to him or surreptitiously deliver notes and communiques from other staff members still employed by General Thorne’s people, providing him with valuable information they felt he needed to know about.
“I have your lunch here, Mr. President.”
Starling looked up as Leroy Blunt entered, his dark leathery skin so deeply wrinkled Starling found him fascinating to look at. Will I look like that when I’m his age? Though advanced in years, Blunt was as spry as any man twenty years his junior and had a bubbly personality.
But today he looked scared as he set the table, simple sandwiches and potato salad the order of the day. Starling sat at the head of the table, his family joining him. Blunt leaned over, pouring a glass of water from a chilled stainless steel pitcher. “They’ve surrounded the CIA,” he whispered. “No one knows why, but they’re searching it now.” He rose. “Will there be anything more, Mr. President?”
Starling shook his head, stunned at the revelation. “No, I think we’re good, Leroy, thank you.”
“Just call me when you’re finished, Mr. President.”
The old man left the room, pushing the cart he had brought the food on, leaving the family to eat in silence as Starling contemplated what he had just heard.
The CIA? Surrounded. And being searched.
He found his blood pressure beginning to rise. There was no way the CIA could be responsible for anything currently happening in the country, and even if they had a mole, it would be up to them to seek out the breach, not the military. Whatever was going on didn’t pass the smell test.
“Are you going to eat that?” asked his wife, Melanie.
“Huh?”
She motioned toward his untouched sandwich on the plate. Despite the fresh tomatoes and lettuce, the sweet smell of the sourdough bread baked fresh daily and the seasoned chicken breast with honey mustard, it looked unreasonably unappealing.
And when he found his meals unappealing, it meant something was wrong, something was gnawing at his subconscious that needed to be dealt with.
Today there was no doubt what the something was.
General Thorne has gone too far.
He looked at the kids’ plates and they were already polished clean, his wife already halfway through her meal and she was a slow, picky eater.
How long have I been sitting here?
“Kids, you’re excused.”
Both kicked out from the table and rushed back to the television in the next room, leaving Starling and his wife alone.
“What’s wrong, Jacob?”
“They’ve surrounded CIA Headquarters and are apparently searching it.”
Melanie’s jaw dropped, her eyes opening wide in shock. “The CIA? That’s insane!”
Starling sighed in agreement. “It is. This whole thing is insane. It’s only been a couple of days and things are already out of control. These roundups are going way beyond anything we agreed to, they’ve been violating the Canadian and Mexican borders and there’s even rumors of several executions. And now the CIA? I don’t care what anybody says, even if someone inside the CIA is involved in the terrorist attacks it should be up to them to find out who it is, not the military.” He rose from his seat, his wife looking up at him. “This has gone too far.”
“Jacob, what are you going to do?”
His wife sounded nervous.
“I’m taking my job back. The question is whether or not General Thorne will give it back voluntarily, or will it require an act of Congress.”
Melanie rose, taking his hand in hers. “Be careful, Jacob. This entire situation has me scared. You should read what’s happening on the Internet. Muslims are being rounded up, beaten, killed, deported, and anybody who interferes is being arrested or worse. The rule of law is gone, Jacob. And this General Thorne is at the center of it.”
Starling wrapped his arms around his wife, resting his chin on the top of her head. “With things this bad, America needs its President. This won’t stop without me taking action.”
She hugged him harder then finally let go. “I’ll put your suit out for you. Go give the kids a hug.”
He nodded and she suddenly turned as if to hide her face from him, and he knew what she was thinking, he feeling it himself.
I’m never going to see them again.
Outside Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
Kane woke in the backseat to find Lee Fang asleep on his chest, at some point during the night he having put his arm around her in his sleep. He looked down at her and tried not to move, it the most peaceful she had looked since he had met her. Niner was driving, Dawson asleep in the passenger seat, they having liberated a vehicle after the attack on the train then renting a vehicle with one of Kane’s fake ID’s. They were now making good time across the Canadian Shield, a barren, rocky part of the vast country, and less than a day away from their reentry to Thorne’s America as Niner had taken to calling it.
Niner flashed him a grin in the rearview mirror, his eyebrows jumping up and down suggestively and Kane smiled back, shaking his head. “You’re a pig,” he whispered.
“That’s the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it, uh huh uh huh,” sang Niner, executing a few disco moves from his perch behind the wheel.
The car jerked to the left as he accidentally hit the steering wheel. Niner immediately compensated but it woke everyone. Fang stirred and suddenly jerked upright as she realized where she was, looking at Kane shyly.
“Sorry.”
Kane smiled. “No problem. I was asleep until two minutes ago so never even noticed.”
Dawson stretched. “What the hell happened?”
“Our driver was channeling his inner Travolta and failed.”
“Hey, BD’s seen me on the dance floor. Tell him he’s full of it, BD.”
Dawson’s head dropped to his left shoulder as he looked at Niner sideways. “Are you kidding me? You dance as white as I do.”
Kane’s phone vibrated in his pocket as he laughed, Niner defending him with his best Tony Manero impression, his Travolta impression better than his moves. He quickly read the update from Leroux.
“Apparently they’re tearing apart CIA HQ but haven’t discovered The Bunker yet. They don’t know how long that’s going to continue. Everything is still pointing to Fort Myer being the command center and Sherrie is still alive as far as they know. They want to know our ETA.”
“We should be stateside by noon tomorrow. The rest of the guys hopefully a few hours ahead of us,” replied Dawson, looking at the GPS. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell them though. They’ve definitely got a leak.”
“Agreed.”
“Tell them we’re going radio silent. We can’t risk any leaks if this is going to work.”
Kane nodded, quickly sending a message with their new status back to Leroux. “I think it’s time to put out the call.” He handed his secure phone over to Dawson. “How much help can we expect?”
Dawson shook his head. “I don’t know, but we don’t have much time to waste. The longer this continues the tighter the lockdown will be. Right now they’re still consolidating.”
“Tomorrow night, then?”
Dawson nodded, typing away with his thumbs. “Can’t think of a better time.”
He tossed the phone back to Kane who looked at the messages that had just been posted on three different Twitter feeds by three different profiles.
2100
Myer
Bring
the rain.
The Oval Office, The White House, Washington, DC
“What can I do for you, Mr. President?”
Jacob Starling had to admit he was slightly taken aback. To see a military uniform sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office was disturbing to say the least, and he could honestly say if he had seen it before he had handed over power, he never would have done so. The image was so un-American, so against everything he had been raised to believe in, he felt like he was in North Korea or China, not the District of Columbia.
It took him a moment to recover from the shock.
“This has gone far enough, General.”
Thorne put his pen down, leaning back in his chair.
“What has gone far enough, Mr. President?”
Starling threw his hands up. “This! All of this!” He suddenly noticed a portrait of the General hanging on the wall to his right. He pointed at it. “This! This is all supposed to be temporary, but you’ve settled right in, haven’t you?”
“And this bothers you?”
“Does it bother me? Of course it bothers me! I’m the President of the United States, and this is my office, not yours!”
“I beg to differ,” replied Thorne, his voice irritatingly calm, his usual precise diction suddenly very annoying to Starling. “You ceded your authority to me, begged me to take power so that the tough decisions could be made, decisions you were unwilling to make.” He spread his arms out, encompassing everything. “And now what do we have? Peace is being restored, attacks are down, deportations of non-citizens, as per your and your predecessor’s orders are being carried out rapidly. Crime is down and the deaths of innocent Muslims is dramatically down. Our allies are supporting us and our enemies have made no moves, thanks to your nuclear decree, which they now know, with me in temporary command, will actually be carried out.”
“Temporary! That’s the key word here. Temporary.” He again pointed at the portrait. “That is not temporary, that—” He stopped, his jaw dropping as he noticed that the flag to the right, over Thorne’s left shoulder was no longer the Presidential flag, but the flag of the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—General Thorne’s symbolic flag. He pointed at it. “Are you kidding me?”
Thorne glanced over his shoulder then back at Starling. “What would you have me do? Sit in this chair and pretend to be the President?”
Starling wasn’t sure what to say, the twisted logic somehow making sense. Maybe he was overreacting, maybe he was seeing conspiracies where there were none. Everything he was watching on television matched what Thorne had just said. Crime was down. Fewer Muslims were dying at the hands of vigilantes. Those on expired visas were being deported and most importantly, terrorist attacks were down.
It was what he hadn’t said that was important. Violating the territorial integrity of our neighbors, private security forces carrying out security sweeps and the military seizing of CIA Headquarters.
That was the final straw for him.
“And what about the CIA?”
“What about the CIA?”
“You know damned well what I’m talking about.”
“The CIA has been breached, to what level I don’t know. At the request of the Director of the CIA we secured the location and are assisting in vetting all of their employees. I anticipate we will have the mole or moles within twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”
“I find it impossible to believe that Joel requested assistance.”
“Mr. Wayne stepped down immediately upon martial law being declared. I have named a new Director of the CIA, acting of course until he can be vetted by Congress after the crisis is over. I can assure you, he requested our assistance.”
Starling’s heart was slamming in his chest, palpitations almost overwhelming him as he struggled to fight through the rage and terror consuming him. If the General were telling the truth about everything, or if he were lying, he couldn’t tell.
And Starling could think of only one way to figure out which was the truth. He sucked in a deep breath and spoke the words that would forever settle his doubts, or confirm his worst fears.
“General Thorne, it is time that power be handed back to civilian authority. I request that you immediately step aside so I may resume my Presidency, and recall Congress.”
General Thorne nodded, leaning forward and pressing the intercom button. The door opened behind Starling and two men in paramilitary uniforms, clearly part of the private security that he had been hearing about, entered. Thorne rounded his desk and stood in front of Starling.
“Mr. President. I am placing you under arrest on suspicion of sedition.” He motioned to the guards. “Take him away, quietly.”
Starling was immediately bookended by the two guards. “Come with us, sir.”
Starling ignored them, his ears pounding with the reality of the situation. “It was you all along! You did this to our country, all so you could seize power!” Thorne looked down at him, his imposing frame leaning in slightly causing Starling to take an involuntary step back. He steeled himself, stepping forward and glaring at Thorne. “You’re destroying your own country, and you call yourself a patriot?!”
“I am a patriot!” It was the first time Starling could recall hearing Thorne raise his voice. “Our country was in crisis long before you asked me to take over. Years of Presidents and Congressmen more concerned with getting reelected than doing what was right for our country. Too many politicians concerned with what the special interest groups might say rather than what the silent majority weren’t saying. Too many people like you at the beck and call of the money that put you in office. One billion dollars to run for President! One billion! You aren’t here for the people, you’re here for the corporations and special interests. If you truly claim to represent the people, then bring in the damned campaign finance reform that the silent majority have been wanting for years. Corporations shouldn’t be funding campaigns, individuals should be. And they shouldn’t be allowed to donate millions. Cap it like England and Canada do. Then we’ll see more honest politicians, not concerned with what their corporate masters are demanding, not concerned with what a special interest group with good funding is demanding. Christ, half the anti-pipeline lobbies in this country are funded by Middle Eastern oil! You’ve got a billionaire fighting pipelines because his railroad carries eighty percent of the oil those pipelines would carry instead, yet you listen to him despite the clear conflict of interest!
“No, you and your ilk sold out this country to the almighty dollar and self-interest long ago. We the people have taken it back. The Union will be restored, by the people and for the people, and when we’re done, we’ll once again be the country that my grandfather fought and died for in World War Two. Free and brave, a beacon once again for the world to aspire to, not some failed economy fighting other people’s wars half-heartedly. We’ll hammer our enemies into the ground, decisively and once only. We won’t stop on the way to Baghdad like we did in Gulf War One. We won’t only put barely a hundred thousand troops in a country like Iraq then wonder why we couldn’t secure it. We won’t try to nation build in countries like Afghanistan, backwaters where the people aren’t culturally evolved enough to know what it means let alone want it.
“If this were the America of fifty years ago we would have pounded Afghanistan back into the stone age then left, telling them that if they ever let another group like al-Qaeda or the Taliban do anything beyond their borders, we’d bomb them again. And if this were the America of fifty years ago, we’d have placed several thousand observers into Eastern Ukraine and dared the Russians to kill just one of them.
“We’ve become pussies. Not our men and women in uniform, but our leadership. Our military is willing to fight, is capable of fighting, but are so often hamstringed by ridiculous rules of engagement they literally have to take a bullet sometimes before they can even fire back.
“That time is over, Mr. President. We will purge our country of the Islamic threat, restore law and order, gain our e
nergy independence, and engage our enemies with the full might of our armed forces. When our enemies once again tremble at our might, when our economy is restored, our corrupt institutions cleaned up, I will happily return power to the Speaker of the House. Until that time, things will remain as they are.”
Starling stood stunned, not sure what to say. His worst fears had just been confirmed—a madman was at the helm of the most powerful arsenal in the world, and by the sounds of what he had just heard, there would be no reasoning with him.
“How long have you been planning this?”
Thorne returned to his desk, sitting down. “When the previous administration began firing generals for telling them the number of troops required to pacify Iraq was higher than they wanted to hear. We lost a lot of good men and women over there because of politicians who have no clue what war is. No soldier who has seen combat wants war. They would all gladly lay down their arms tomorrow if they could be assured their country and way of life would be safe. But that’s not the world we live in. War is hell and war is bloody and innocent people die. That’s why we try to avoid it unless it’s absolutely necessary. But if you commit to war, then you have to commit fully. You can’t do it half-assed. More of our people die then, which is inexcusable, intolerable. If we had sent in two-hundred-fifty thousand troops like Shinseki said, hundreds if not thousands of our fallen would be alive today.” He pointed at Starling. “You ask how long I’ve been planning this? Since the day people like you betrayed this country so you could be reelected.” He waved Starling away. “Take him, I’m done talking.”
Starling was gripped by both arms and marched unceremoniously toward the door. He wrenched an arm free, spinning back toward the General.
“You said you’d give power back to the Speaker of the House. Why him and not me?”
Thorne looked up from the paper he was reading.
Death to America (A Special Agent Dylan Kane Thriller, Book #4) Page 21