Operation Assassination

by Anne Fox

  “For which of you is it more stressful?” Doc Andy asked.

  “How the fuck should I know? When you’re done here, you can go see how stressed Spud is over it,” she said, her annoyance unmistakable.

  “I’m wondering if you can accomplish this mission, Hank. You had a bit of difficulty after shooting the man in Kearny.”

  She sat bolt upright and said angrily, “That was a different matter, and one that, in my mind, is resolved. That guy was intent on killing an innocent man, and had I delayed a second more, may have done just that. That is a far cry from assassinating the President of the United States. Doc Rich talks about having a kid... What do I tell my kid? ‘I assassinated the President and got away with it? The nation even called me a hero, because we were on the brink of nuclear war?’

  “Do you know about Alfred Nobel? An obituary for him was published before he died, condemning him for dealing in arms. He didn’t want that to be his legacy, so he left his fortune to create the Nobel prizes. What will my obituary say? Assassin? And you might remember that little talk you gave me regarding shooting the New Jersey perp where you said you can’t speculate on what the outcome may have been if your actions or inactions had been different. So, how am I supposed to know if what I’m being asked to do is even the right thing to do?”

  Doc Andy sat silently. How do I answer her?

  “Doc Andy, with all apologies, I really wish you’d just get the fuck out of here.” She flopped back down onto the couch. “Please. Just get the fuck out.”

  He got up, went to the kitchen, and drew a glass of water. Going back, he placed it on the coffee table by the couch. Then he walked out the door. As it closed, he heard the glass smash against the other side.

  Hank and Amigo came through the complex from the armory, having dropped off their gear from another day of practice.

  “So, what’s the verdict?” Spud asked as they grabbed coffee and sat at the team table.

  “I can make the shot,” Hank said.

  “In one shot?”

  “One shot,” Amigo confirmed.

  “That’s good, because we have our opportunity,” Edge said.

  “How?”

  “Remember how, when he was elected, the President said he wanted to vacation the way the American people vacation, by traveling to see all the sights the nation has to offer? Well, he’s kicking that off.”

  “Really,” Hank said, secretly wishing this news had not just been delivered.

  “Really,” Voice confirmed. “He’s going to Yellowstone. He says because it was the first national park, it’s the first place he wants to visit.”

  “Are they going to close down the park to visitors while he’s there?” Amigo asked.

  “He says he doesn’t want to hamper the ability of citizens to enjoy the park while he’s there. So the answer is no,” Voice added.

  “Lots of terrain to hide in, depending on where he goes,” Hank observed somberly.

  “The word is he’ll give a speech at Old Faithful,” Amigo said. “I checked on the maps and found a good spot. Hal, display topographical map, Yellowstone, Old Faithful, monitor C1.”

  The information appeared on the cafeteria monitor. Amigo pointed, saying, “Right here. It’s a bit over 1500 yards, downhill, and pretty clear of vegetation so we should be able to find a spot with a clean shot.”

  Fuck. “Yeah, looks like it should work,” Hank said. “Do we have anywhere close by where we can stage?” She quickly added, “And hopefully not built inside an old missile silo. The last fucking place I want to be trying to sleep right now is in a missile silo, even if it’s been converted into the Taj Mahal.”

  “We’ve got a ranch complex right here, near Kilgore,” Edge said. “It’s even above ground, Hank.”

  “Fine. When are we heading out?”

  “Tomorrow,” Cloud said. “The event isn’t for two weeks, so that will give us enough time to get organized, let you and Amigo reconnoiter the location for the shot, and get everything set up. And wait.”

  “Ok.” Hank got up and headed toward her quarters.

  “Aren’t you going to stay and eat dinner?” Edge asked her.

  “Not really hungry,” she said as she headed out the door of the cafeteria.

  “That’s not Hank,” Voice said.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Spud said, getting up angrily. “She’s just found out she’s only got two weeks before she has to assassinate the President. Give her a fucking break.” He walked out himself.

  “That’s not Spud, either,” Voice said.

  On a hill above Old Faithful, Hank opened her eyes wearily, awakened by the sun. Amigo was already awake, crunching on crackers from an MRE.

  “’Mornin’, Hank.”

  “Mm.” She rubbed her eyes. “What the fuck day is it?”

  “Game day,” Amigo said.

  “There is not enough alcohol to make me really want to do this.”

  Spud’s voice sounded in their earpieces. “Team, comm check.”

  “Edge.”

  “Voice”

  “Amigo.”

  “Crow.”

  “Cloud.”

  “Spud.”

  “Hank.”

  “Comm is good,” Spud said. “Mission is go as planned. CAT is in place, advance team is in place, Marine One is en route, ETA in thirty minutes.”

  Hank leaned over and gagged.

  “You ok?” Amigo asked her.

  She spit and wiped her mouth. “The good news is that there’s nothing in my stomach to heave. The bad news is, I’m heaving anyway.” She gagged again. “There’s a big difference between what you want to do, and what you have to do. My stomach doesn’t like what I have to do any more than I do.”

  “You going to be able to make the shot?”

  “Yeah. Once I settle in on the rifle, it will all be the mission. I figure let my stomach work itself out now rather than thirty minutes from now.” She laid down with her face on her arms, the rifle already poised on its bipod, the thermal blanket covering both her and Amigo as well as all their gear, a layer of leaves, needles, and branches covering the blanket adding to the camouflage pattern it already had.

  “Do you have a rough firing solution for me?” she asked. “Might as well get the scope set now and only have to do a minor tweak when we have the target.” She was finding it easier to refer to the President as ‘the target’ rather than ‘the President.’

  “Sure. Let me get that for you.”

  Amigo consulted his ballistics tables and weather gauge and wrote the firing solution down, then plugged the same data he’d used into his tablet. “Firing solution computed, checked, and set.” He slid his tablet in front of her, and she reset her scope settings. Then she slowly and smoothly chambered a round from the rifle’s magazine. Uncovering just enough of the rifle to expose the front of the silencer mounted on the barrel and the objective of the rifle scope, she took a practice aim at a region above the lectern that had been placed at the viewing area for Old Faithful.

  “Nice day. No wind, so compared to some of our practices, this should be easy.”

  Amigo noted the unemotional tone of Hank’s voice as he continued to monitor the weather indications on his gauge.

  “Marine One is arriving,” they heard in their earpieces.

  “Steady, Hank,” Amigo said.

  She grunted in reply, her cheek already on the rifle’s cheekpiece, her eye peering through the rifle’s scope. She tracked the movement of the man as he made his way to the lectern, waving to the gathered people, and turned to face the crowd. Time began to slow, along with her breathing and her heartbeat. She watched him turn, wave, place both hands on either side of the lectern, smiling. Watched as an aide placed a binder in front of him, opening it. His speech.

  “Extraction team is in place,” they heard in their earpieces. They then began to hear the President’s speech as the sensitive earpieces of other team members, scattered in the crowd, picked it up and relayed it
to them via Hal through the satellite link.

  “My fellow Americans, what a glorious day for us to be here in Yellowstone National Park. This amazing natural wonder took its place as our first national park on March 1st, 1872 and as the world’s first national park on that same date. It has stood as one of the world’s most amazing natural wonders from well before that date to the present, and will stand as such for millenia to come.”

  Hank made fine adjustments to the rifle’s position, and watched as the tiny mildot on the scope settled on the President’s head. Glancing down, she checked the firing solution again.

  “Firing solution?” she asked.

  “Unchanged,” Amigo said.

  “These three thousand, four hundred and sixty-eight square miles encompass a diversity of geological wonders, plant and animal life, and a wildness that speaks to the heart of every freedom-loving American. Its mountains, canyons, rivers and lakes have been the inspiration for painters, photographers, and nature lovers from not only our nation, but from every corner of the Earth.” As the President said this, Old Faithful erupted behind him. “Just look at that! Isn’t it magnificent?” He turned and gazed at it as the eruption continued.

  “I have the target.”

  “Send it.”

  She began to move her finger slowly from the rifle’s receiver to the trigger, placing it lightly there, starting a steady squeeze.

  Her little voices started to chatter. What a wonderful speech. It is, isn’t it? Shouldn’t he be falling off the rails right about now?

  She kept the mildot on his head as the President turned back to the lectern. “Its rivers and lakes, mountains and meadows, geysers and hot springs, bison and elk capture the diversity of nature that is to be found here.”

  She paused, her finger on the trigger, her little voices chattering. It’s a wonderful speech. No rants, no raving. Why not? It always happens when he’s in public. Where is President Insane?

  “Hank, did you lose the target?” she heard Spud ask in her earpiece.

  “I have the target.”

  “Send it, Hank.”

  Something’s wrong here, her little voices countered. Something is very wrong here.

  “No.”

  “Hank, if you have the target, send it.”

  “No. Something’s not right.”

  “Send it,” Amigo implored from next to her.

  “Send it,” Spud said in her ear.

  “No.” She dropped the magazine from the Sako and carefully unchambered the round she had chambered earlier, then slid back slightly from the rifle.

  “Team, she’s refusing to take the shot,” Amigo said. “She’s unloaded the rifle.”

  “Amigo, can you make the shot?” Spud asked.

  “No. It has to be Hank. It’s her rifle, it’s optimized for her. The ammo is optimized for her. She’s more accurate than I am, and she’s practiced it. It has to be Hank.”

  “Hank, finish the mission,” Spud said. “Load and make ready, then take the shot.”

  “No. It’s not right. Not right. Something is wrong. Listen to him.”

  “Load, make ready, take the shot, Hank.”

  “No!”

  Through her earpiece, Hank heard the claps of the gathered people. Looking through the rifle scope, she watched as the President moved away from the lectern, walked waving and shaking the hands of people at the rope line, then re-entered the presidential helicopter.

  “We just lost our opportunity. The whole mission is a bust. Hank, do you have any idea what you’ve just done?” Spud asked her.

  I think I may have averted a disaster, Hank thought. But she said nothing.

  The team members unloaded their gear and walked with it into the ranch house near Kilgore. Each team member’s face held a stern expression, punctuated by lips welded shut. Once the door was closed behind them, they turned on Hank.

  “What the hell, Hank! What were you thinking?” Spud asked. “Do you know what you’ve done? Didn’t you see the military attaché standing by the President with the football? Do you really want a madman that close to that?”

  “Where was the madman today, Spud? Where was he?” She paced the floor. “That was a perfectly lucid speech. Ordinarily, when he’s speaking in public, he starts sliding into a hole well before the speech ends. Why is it when he’s in DC, surrounded by Congressmen, he slips on the diving board and face plants, but out here he makes a beautiful, coherent, uplifting speech about Yellowstone?” She pointed her finger at him angrily. “You had to have noticed that!”

  “We agreed, Hank,” Amigo said, trying not to sound angry but missing the mark by a bit. “We all agreed he needed to be taken out for the good of the country. If you had misgivings, you should have voiced them well before this mission got underway.”

  “I didn’t have misgivings until I listened to him giving the speech,” Hank said. “Am I the only one who noticed he didn’t derail?”

  “It doesn’t make any difference,” Amigo said. “Our job was to take him out.”

  “You didn’t have the option of a unilateral decision to abort the mission, Hank,” Edge added.

  “For fuck’s sake! Will you all listen to yourselves? We are talking about assassinating the President of the United States. We aren’t talking about your ordinary, run-of-the-mill law enforcement action, nor even an ordinary unit action. We were asked to do something treasonous, and you’re all acting like it’s perfectly ok! Something isn’t right here. We owe it to the President and to the country to make sure what we’re doing is the right thing to do!”

  “We’re sworn to defend the Constitution, not the President,” Cloud said. “He’s put us at the brink of nuclear war, over what? Please tell me what. And please tell me what’s more important: the survival of the President, or the survival of the two-thirds of the population that potentially would die if he goes bonkers and decides to not just rattle a nuclear sword, but wield it.”

  “I want more information. We need more information,” Hank said. “We can’t just draw the conclusion that the President must die.”

  “What more do you need?” Spud asked. “You’ve been watching the news right along with the rest of us.”

  “I’d like to talk with some people who are close to him and can give us an objective assessment of what they’re seeing.”

  “Like who?” Edge asked.

  “Like our Secret Service gunny,” Hank said. “Spud can tell you: there’s always an agent nearby. They’re in the best position to tell us what kind of behavior he exhibits. Twenty-four, seven, there’s an agent near the President. I want to ask them what they’re seeing.”

  Doc Andy had been sitting, listening to the argument. “Hank, are you sure that your reluctance to complete the mission isn’t because of your experience in Kearny?”

  “You know, Doc Andy? Having you along on this mission is a great idea because it’s probably the most stressful mission this team has ever had to accomplish. But let me tell you in no uncertain terms,” Hank said, skewering him with her eyes, “what happened today has not one damn fucking thing to do with Kearny. Alright?” She walked over and leaned into his face, and practically spitting, said, “You are the one who said he didn’t appear psychotic. You are the one who said he looked drugged to you. Maybe what we need to find out is if that’s the case, and if so, if he’s taking drugs himself or if someone else is drugging him.”

  She turned to the rest of the team. “Yes, our oath is to the Constitution, not the President. But we’d better make damned sure that what we’re doing defends the Constitution, and that we aren’t acting as puppets for another cause. Damned fucking sure.”

  “Voice, is there any way we can get a message to our Secret Service gunny while the President is still visiting Yellowstone?” Spud asked.

  “Pretty sure we can,” Voice said. “I’ll get on it. What do you want it to say?”

  “‘Unit requests meeting Kilgore complex ASAP. We believe POTUS in danger.’”

 
; “Got a guy just drove up, coming to the door,” Cloud said, watching a security camera feed on his tablet.

  Spud took a look over Cloud’s shoulder. “That’s our gunny,” he said. “I’ll go let him in.”

  Spud arrived back in the dining room of the Kilgore complex with his charge in tow.

  “So, this is the unit,” the man said.

  “Thanks for agreeing to meet with us so quickly,” Spud said.

  “You get our attention when you say ‘the President is in danger,’” the agent replied. “In what way do you believe he’s in danger?”

  Doc Andy spoke up. “We’re noticing, as I’m sure you are noticing, that his behavior is sometimes erratic. We’re wondering if there’s a possibility that he is either taking some sort of drug, or is being exposed to one by someone else.”

  “We’ve had the same concern,” the agent said. “We’ve been investigating the possibility. As you know, everything the President eats or drinks is overseen by chefs who have been vetted, and we see nothing there. The White House doctors say he’s... uncooperative and won’t agree to give a blood sample when he’s acting... unusual.”

  “You’ve known about this possibility?” Hank asked, incredulous. “You’ve known?”

  “We’ve known, and feel fairly certain that somehow he’s being drugged. But in spite of all the investigative effort we’ve engaged in so far, we haven’t been able to tell who or how it’s happening.”

  “You motherfuckers!” Hank exploded. She jumped up and made for the man, only being stopped by Edge and Amigo grabbing her. “Why didn’t you fucking tell us?”

  “This was an internal investigation,” the agent said. “We didn’t see any reason to involve the unit.”

  “Let me tell you the reason,” Voice began. “We were approached by some members of Congress who are concerned about the current nuclear predicament. I was at the meeting as the unit’s representative. They requested, for the good of the country and to avert nuclear war, that we assassinate the President.”