Captive-in-Chief

by Murray Mcdonald

  Clay read the note again: America needs to look after number one, tomorrow recall all overseas forces. The world can fend for itself.

  Where the hell is Joe? he thought.

  Chapter 39

  Joe struggled the mile and a half along Pennsylvania Avenue. Not because of the crowds who had come to witness the devastation, not because of the hordes fleeing the city in panic. The street was deserted. Emergency vehicles had the street to themselves and raced by, a constant stream of unnecessary sirens and flashing lights announcing their presence seemingly to each other. Joe’s head ached, his legs wobbled, and he generally felt just about as bad as he could remember. Sandy played her part and stuck to him like glue, offering all thirty pounds of her lithe body weight in support.

  Whether he actually felt the support from her was questionable but he struggled on. His president needed him. Clay needed him. Unfortunately. nobody had let the Marines know that was the case. In sight of the White House and having travelled over 1,500 miles, he was halted in his very uncoordinated tracks. A wall of military might circled the White House. Tanks and concrete bollards, similar to the ones he had seen in Atlanta, blocked his path. Battle-hardened and assault-ready, Marines manned the barricades.

  “I need to get through!” said Joe at the checkpoint where Pennsylvania Avenue met E Street. “My president needs me!”

  “Buddy, you need the hospital is what you need!” said the Marine guard.

  Joe’s head was spinning, he had made it. He had no idea how, although he had made it, and sober. He swayed unsteadily. The gauze pad covered a good portion of his head and blood caked his clothes and Sandy. They were a pitiful sight.

  Sandy’s ability to keep Joe standing finally faltered. Joe crashed to the ground, taking her with him.

  Medic!” shouted a number of Marines in unison, seeing them go down.

  Joe felt the cold through every fiber of his body, and his body shook uncontrollably. The hunger pangs no longer helped. Uday had seen to that, providing barely enough food to keep the pain of hunger at bay. The battery packs had been replaced by cooling fans. They ensured the cold air constantly circulated the wet bare concrete that surrounded him. He had told them everything he knew, everything, he hadn’t held anything back. From day one, hour one, he had told the truth. Yet still they questioned him, still they tortured him. Toenails, fingernails all gone, just bloody stumps at the end of his hands and feet.

  He had been told your mind didn’t remember pain, it was a memory that fortunately would be long forgotten. Whoever said that hadn’t experienced real pain, the type of pain you could never forget, no matter how hard you tried. It had been four weeks since they had been ripped out for the second time. He knew the time was approaching when he’d lose them again.

  He tried to think back to the time before his capture, memories of the past came and went, the present was too imposing. His mind couldn’t cope, it needed all its energy to keep him alive, not replaying histories that served no purpose. He felt himself being dragged. His legs had stopped working some time ago, he couldn’t remember when. Hours, days, weeks, months merged into one. There was now and there was before now. That was as much as he could cope with.

  The pliers were sitting on the table, it was that time again. He winced at the thought, the little stubs of nail had barely taken root. Uday knew what he was doing, they were perfectly rooted and the pain was going to be as bad as he remembered from the last time. He fought them as they held his hand firmly. He wasn’t going to lie there and take it, let them do what they wanted without trying his best to stop them.

  A dog barking didn’t fit, there weren’t any dogs. They were Muslims, they hated dogs.

  Woof!

  Joe opened his eyes. His hand was being held over a pad of ink. He was making the tall, powerful Marine tasked with taking his fingerprints work hard for them. His buddies were teasing him as Sandy barked her disapproval at their disturbing Joe.

  “I just need to get your prints,” said the Marine, spotting Joe’s eyes opening.

  Joe pulled his arm back, away from the ink pad. The Marine held strong, pulling harder given Joe was awake. Joe fought back. The Marine was winning but only as he had twenty pounds and thirty years on Joe.

  “What do you need them for?” Joe stopped fighting, and the Marine who had been straining with all his might against Joe stumbled across the room and into the bed directly opposite Joe’s, landing in a bundle, much to his colleagues’ amusement. Fortunately, it was empty and only the Marine’s pride took a bashing.

  Joe looked around, he wasn’t in a room. The walls were canvas; he was in a field hospital.

  “Where am I?”

  “Washington. You lost a lot of blood,” replied a medic interrupting the Marine’s continued attempt to obtain Joe’s fingerprints.

  “I remember that much, where exactly am I and how long have I been out?”

  “The White House grounds, you collapsed at the checkpoint and with every hospital full for a hundred miles we had no other option than to bring you in here. Obviously given the situation security is tight, and we want to know who you are.”

  “How long?”

  The medic checked the chart and the time. “Eighteen hours.”

  “We need his prints,” insisted the Marine, trying to push past the medic who held his ground.

  “Eighteen hours and you’re only taking my prints now?” asked Joe.

  “We’ve been busy and you were sedated, so it wasn’t a priority, but as you were waking up…”

  “Fair enough,” Joe held out his hand to the embarrassed Marine who still wanted his prints. “I can save you the trouble though, Joe Francis Kelly. Born West Virginia on the—”

  “Hold on, let me write this down,” interrupted the Marine, taking the rest of Joe’s details.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to take our prints also.”

  Joe had no illusion the request was optional. He held out his hand again and pressed his fingers onto the pad and paper. He also had no doubt that as soon as his details were run through the system his welcome would be short-lived. Marines had little time for fellow brothers who had dishonored the Corps.

  He felt a million times better than he had, no aches or pains, whatever they had given him was amazing.

  “Any more of those amazing painkillers you’ve given me?”

  “Plain old Tylenol,” replied the medic.

  Joe felt like…he couldn’t think how he felt. He hadn’t felt this way in, he couldn’t remember how many years. He felt sober and it felt good.

  The medic smiled. “That’s the Librium, it’s amazing. I recognize a fellow alcoholic when I see one. You were sober, although from your condition I guessed only recently. The doc prescribed these. I’ve written you a note of when to take them. Make sure you keep to the regimen and you’ll sail through the detox.”

  Joe grinned. “I feel great.”

  “You’re lying down and have been sleeping for eighteen hours straight. You’re still going to feel the effect of the blood loss and trauma on top of the withdrawal. You feel better than you have. You’re by no means great,” cautioned the medic.

  Joe reached up to his face and his scar area, his fingers expecting a large piece of gauze, though he felt only a small plaster.

  “We’ve tidied that up for you. The doc here’s a perfectionist when it comes to sewing people up. You’re lucky the cut was mainly behind your ear, you’ll barely see a scar once it’s healed.”

  “We need that bed back,” called the Marine reentering the field tent.

  Joe looked around the tent. Ten beds, only two occupied including himself. They didn’t need the beds. They had pulled up his records, the dishonorable discharge had ruled again. He sat up and realized the medic was right, his head spun. He gingerly put his feet to the floor and stood up. He swayed, nowhere near as badly as he had previously. What blood he had began to disperse itself and the dizziness passed.

  “You too, buddy!” sho
uted the Marine to the other occupant in the tent. “We’ve got a school bus crash and the hospitals can’t cope.”

  Perhaps they haven’t checked my records, thought Joe.

  The Marine approached him, his arm snapped out into a salute. “Master Sergeant Kelly!”

  They had checked his records. “At ease, Corporal, that was a long time ago.”

  “Once a Marine…”

  “Yes,” replied Joe proudly, something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

  He was expecting the usual, ‘ex-Marine’ jibe. As once a Marine, always a Marine, ex-Marine was a title earned by a dishonorable discharge and therefore not a title any Marine ever wished to earn. And one of the main reasons he never informed anyone of having served.

  “Force recon, they are hardcore, Master Sergeant.”

  “We were, Corporal, we were,” Joe replied wistfully. His Marine career had been everything to him and something he tried hard to forget, the pain of its loss as raw twenty years later as it had ever been.

  “Sandy,” he called and walked out of the tent. The tent had been erected on the Ellipse within the Marines’ cordon just outside the White House grounds proper.

  Joe looked north to the White House, four hundred yards away, home to President Clay Caldwell, a friend who needed Joe’s help and the man who had robbed him of his Marine career. Whatever had shown in his records had resulted in nothing but deference to Joe. Something had changed. Years earlier that same record had resulted in more than a few fights and being refused help on numerous occasions.

  “We ready?” He looked down at Sandy, who wagged her tail eagerly. He looked at himself. The Marines had outfitted him in a Marine t-shirt and a pair of utility trousers, replacing his blood drenched and ruined garish Hawaiian shirt. It felt good having the Marine badge over his heart.

  “Let’s go help a friend!”

  Chapter 40

  Clay replaced the handset. It was the twentieth call he had taken that morning. The twentieth world leader voicing their disappointment, disapproval, or outrage at the mosque attacks in Saudi Arabia. The attacks had coincided with evening prayer, an error, he was assured. He couldn’t help think his captors had planned it for exactly that time. Even their staunchest allies were struggling to offer even the slightest hint of support for the US reaction to the attack on the US Capitol. Thousands of Muslims had been killed while they prayed. The fact that each of the mosques was run by a radical preacher seemed to matter little. The pictures of women and children mourning their dead husbands and fathers in Saudi Arabia had replaced the smoldering ruins of the US Capitol on international news channels.

  The American people were outraged. Outraged at the seeming support for the radical Muslims who had destroyed their Capitol. President Clay Caldwell’s approval ratings, even after the worst terrorist attack in the US since 9/11, rose even higher.

  Clay pulled the note back out of his pocket: America needs to look after number one. Tomorrow, recall all overseas forces. The world can fend for itself.

  What had looked like the impossible twenty-four hours earlier, looked like a perfectly reasonable response only one day later. If the world didn’t agree with how the US looked after itself and reacted to an attack, let the world fend for itself. He had no doubt the people would be behind him. His problem was the impact the pull-out would have around the world. It was the elected officials trying to maintain their electoral advantage that had made the calls to him, not the man on the street who would feel the repercussions.

  He had wrestled with it all day and night. He would easily have the people’s support. The country was in mourning, they had funerals to plan and before that, bodies still to be recovered. The news had not improved overnight. Survivors from the Capitol were the exception, the destruction was complete. The building was a total loss and the chambers inside totally collapsed. The bomb had been confirmed as being the stolen Russian FOAB, once again proving to Clay that planning had been underway for months, perhaps years. His captors were acting out a well coordinated and detailed plan, the purpose of which Clay was failing miserably to understand. Whoever they were, they had to have had support right across and through government, military, and law enforcement. This wasn’t a small scale lucky plan, this was a mainstream global conspiracy, in which, by his complicity, he was fully involved, no matter how he sugar-coated it. Yes, his daughter, one nobody knew about, was being held to keep him quiet and subservient. However, there was a limit, and the world without America would be a world at war. North and South Korea, the Chinese in the South China Seas, Russia in Europe, Israel in the Middle East. One life, even his whole family’s life, could not be placed above those of millions around the world.

  He had been unaware that the attack was planned on the Capitol. Had he known and been able to stop it, he would have done so in a heartbeat. Not that he believed for a second he could have, it would have happened with or without his complicity.

  “Mr. President,” Ramona interrupted his thoughts. “The chief justice is about to arrive.”

  “Thank you,” he replied absently.

  Though his two military chiefs had arrived the previous day as requested, both were shadows of themselves. They, like him, had lost many, many friends and colleagues in the bombing. It hadn’t been a day for announcements, certainly not on the scale that his captors wanted. It had given him time to think, mourn those he had lost, and gain a perspective and resolve that had changed his mind.

  Ramona left his office. She too was a shadow of her former self. The brash no nonsense, don’t mess with me attitude was gone. He hadn’t noticed until then. Something had happened, he hadn’t even thought to ask how she was, merely accepted she was there whenever he needed him.

  “Ramona?”

  She entered quietly, something was very wrong.

  “Everything okay?”

  The tears erupted the second he asked. Floods of tears and big hearty sobs. Clay led her to the sofas and sat her down, placing an arm around her heaving shoulders.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She brushed her tears away, “I’m sorry, Mr. President, with everything else going on and with everything else you have to deal with...”

  “You’re as important as anyone to me.”

  “The fact you even take the time for me, Mr. President…”

  “You’re my rock, you and Val. Without you two by my side, I’d be nothing.”

  The tears flowed again. “So tragic, so many people we know…”

  He pulled her close, gave her a hug, and they sat in silence. Ramona was the hardest person he knew. Her exterior seemed impenetrable but he knew it protected one of the biggest and softest hearts he had ever met. She had been with him night and day the last few days and never once had the chance to let off steam.

  At the sound of footsteps outside, Ramona jumped to her feet.

  “Use my private study, Ramona. Let it out, freshen up, and take some time.”

  “I can’t, Mr. President.”

  “Well you can’t be seen like this, I’m sorry but you have a reputation to uphold for both of us. Who’s going to jump or be frightened of this Ramona?” he asked.

  She nodded, throwing him the million dollar smile he hadn’t seen for days.

  He directed her towards his private study, opening the main office door. Two Secret Service agents and the small and aging chief justice stood waiting. In his early eighties, the man easily looked his age but his eyes sparkled with a brightness of a twenty-year-old. His body wasn’t coping well with age yet his mind was as brilliant as it had ever been.

  “Mr. Chief Justice,” welcomed Clay.

  “Mr. President,” he replied, taking the president’s hand weakly and entering the Oval Office.

  The first few minutes were spent discussing those that had been lost. Fond memories shared of good friends taken long before their time. A tragic day that would go down in the annals of American history.

  After the pleasantries, the chief justice asked, �
��You wanted to see me, Mr. President?”

  Clay desperately wanted to tell him what was happening but images of his beautiful daughter Clara kept filling his mind.

  “Where do we go from here? I’m being urged to enact Directive 51—”

  “Not necessary. We have a Congress and a Senate. Granted, their numbers are significantly diminished, however, they can still function. As long as a quorum is present, that is, if a majority of the House is in session, any legislation can still be voted and passed. Even one member in theory could vote and pass a bill, although they are open to challenge if a quorum is not present. We simply redo the math, as a quorum is a majority of either House. And the majority is a half plus one of the total number of senators or representatives, less vacancies. We have nineteen senators and forty-eight representatives. A quorum would be ten in the Senate and twenty-five in Congress.”

  “I assumed we were without a legislature. What about the Senate, the governors can just replace…”

  “We’ve been discussing that very subject in great depth. We, the justices, don’t believe the replacement of eighty-one senators at one time was ever foreseen and therefore their replacement never mandated within the Constitution. We wish to change that; flooding the Senate with unelected cronies at a time like this will do nothing other than harm our democracy. Congress is a different matter, it’s covered and elections do need to be held to replace House members.”

  “I don’t even know how the politics of the survivors stacks up.”

  “The same as they did before, marginally Republican in both,” confirmed the chief justice. “We’ve spent every waking moment analyzing this, Mr. President. It’s one of the reasons we believe elections should be mandatory for Senate replacements. We need to maintain the will of the people.”

  “Okay, you’ve convinced me,” said Clay, delighted that the legislature would still be able to hold him to account.

  “I’ll get the AG in here and we’ll get things in motion before the governors start selling seats in the Senate,” he joked, though neither thought it was in the least humorous or unlikely.