The Power of We the People

by Diane Matousek Schnabel

  Ryan’s first inclination was to dismiss the allegation, but memories resurfaced. The argument over Bradley going off-script; the testy deliberation over how to raze White Rabbit; Rone’s reluctance to use the Judge Advocate General to pressure Johanna Krupp; their debate over deploying the TEradS to the psych ward.

  Was Rone acting as a trusted advisor, playing devil’s advocate?

  Or was he running an agenda?

  “And honestly, sir,” Perfidulo continued. “I wouldn’t have raised the issue, if not for the Admiral’s participation in the Liberty, Integrity, and Truth Society ... and his oh-so-convenient ability to translate that runic cipher.”

  Ryan gave a slight nod, admitting that he, too, had been bothered by that disclosure.

  What if Rone was collaborating with Gim Chong Lee against the interests of the United States?

  What if this LIT Society was a rebranded franchise of The Consortium?

  He had always had stellar instincts when it came to ferreting out traitors, but his confidence had recently suffered a calamitous blow.

  If Fitz and CJ could fool me, Ryan thought, why not Rone?

  “And then, the final clincher,” Perfidulo told him, “was when I realized that we’re not en route to Washington, D.C., as you ordered. For some reason, we’re headed west, over the Pacific Ocean.”

  What?

  Ryan jerked the window shade upward and gazed at an expanse of blue water that stretched as far as the eye could see.

  Why did Rone override my decision? And not even have the courtesy to—

  The office door swung inward, and the irate Admiral barged in with armed Secret Service agents in tow. “Lieutenant Colonel Perfidulo,” Rone bellowed, “You are under arrest ...”

  56

  District Six, Texas

  AFTER CHECKING IN ON THE slumbering children, Kyle Murphy muted the GNN newsfeed streaming on his laptop, took his wife by the hand, and led her to the threadbare sectional in their modest living room. “I got a text from Rone,” he told her.

  Maternal worry blazed in Jessie’s deep-blue eyes. Her lips rhythmically contracted, puckered, and flattened, forming words, and Kyle consulted his voice-to-text app.

  “Don’t tell me The Consortium has gone after Abby again,” she’d said, and despite his hearing loss, his imagination furnished a fearful waver in her voice.

  “She’s serving her ‘solitary confinement’ aboard Air Force One, the safest place she could be. Rone’s text was about Matthew.” Kyle huffed out a beleaguered sigh, still struggling to process the appalling event. How was he supposed to explain it?

  “CJ won’t be coming back,” he began. “The Consortium used Matthew for leverage, to coerce him into committing a crime.”

  “Can’t Ryan pardon him?” Jessie asked, her blonde eyebrows knitting with compassion. “I mean, he ... he shouldn’t be punished for protecting his son.”

  Kyle skimmed her response and said, “We didn’t give in to Consortium demands when they kidnapped Abby.”

  Her mouth turned downward, and she fixed him with a penetrating look. “Abby was a grown adult and a TEradS Sniper. Look me in the eye and tell me you would’ve reacted that way if Abby had been a toddler.”

  She was right, he knew, but that was just the inequity of fate. “I doubt there’ll be a presidential pardon,” he said, “because CJ tried to assassinate Ryan. Major Fitzgerald was killed in his stead.”

  Kyle bowed his head to conceal the conflict churning inside him. The TEradS commander had befriended him, facilitated his transition to Langden, and transferred Abby to Team Six. But Fitz had also ordered his daughter to meet with that crazy shrink, an offense he was unable to forgive.

  “CJ’s likely to be convicted of treason,” he told her, “and if Missy Love doesn’t recover from her brain injury, Matthew will become an orphan.”

  Jessie’s fingertips caressed his cheek and gently lifted his chin. “We can’t send him to some satanic orphanage, Kyle. We’ll have to adopt him.” Her lips nibbled at his with a tender, reassuring warmth that rejuvenated body and soul. Jessie was his rock, a sedative when he was high-strung, and a stimulant when he was down; and he thanked God that she was still by his side, guiding him through life’s perils.

  Pulling back from the kiss, she proffered a seductive grin and uttered something.

  His eyes slanted toward the voice-to-text translation: I’m going to take a bubble bath. You wanna pour us each a shot of Jack Daniels and join me?

  Anticipation doubled his pulse, and he responded with an enthusiastic, “Hell yeah!”

  Love making was when Kyle missed his sense of hearing most—the breathless gasps, the moans and purrs, the loving exchanges. It was like watching a movie with no soundtrack, flat and somehow less intimate.

  At least it’s still the same for her, he thought, rising from the couch and stowing his cellphone in his back pocket. Kyle padded into the kitchen, opened the cabinet above the refrigerator, and removed two small tumblers. Then, glimpsing the GNN chyron, the glasses slipped from his hand and shattered against the tiled floor.

  Air Force One shot down?

  Kyle retrieved his cellphone and glared at the nonresponsive screen.

  Why isn’t the fucking voice-to-text app functioning?

  Oh yeah, I muted it.

  He scrambled to the laptop, jabbed the volume key repeatedly with a trembling hand, and wilted onto the couch. The warmth leeched from Kyle’s body. The acidic contents of his stomach traveled up his throat, scorching and smothering, and he swallowed hard to force them down.

  “... A massive rescue effort is underway, but aviation experts are holding out little hope that the President has survived. As you can see from this cellphone footage captured at the crash site, there are no sizable sections of fuselage left intact. Air Force One appears to have been pulverized by a missile ...”

  Diving headlong into denial, Kyle gaped at the smoking crater, an eye-shaped scar in the earth remarkably devoid of wreckage.

  Where are all the seats? he thought. The jet engines? Fragments from the wings?

  Where are the passengers? The clothing? The shoes?

  “... Let’s go to GNN contributor and former naval aviator, Charles Muratori, who is at the scene. Could this have been a mechanical failure or pilot error, Charles?”

  “Unlikely,” replied the purported expert. “Air Force One is superbly maintained; its crew, rigorously trained. And the aircraft was capable of deflecting missiles. The fact that it was downed suggests, to me, that it was struck by a hypersonic missile, traveling at eight times the speed of sound.”

  Rapt with interest, the host licked his girlishly pink lips. “Are you suggesting it was shot down by a rogue nation-state?”

  “Twenty-three countries have demonstrated hypersonic expertise, to varying degrees,” Muratori explained. “It’s possible that the technology could have been sold to a terrorist group, but my intelligence sources believe this attack was orchestrated by Russia.”

  After all the trauma Kyle had endured—Abby’s alleged stoning, kidnapping, and overdose; Bradley’s feigned plane crash—he felt oddly numb as if he was watching a movie.

  This isn’t real! he told himself.

  Air Force One wasn’t shot down. Abby and Bradley are alive and well.

  Ryan is still President. The Consortium hasn’t regained control of the country.

  With shaking hands, Kyle texted Ryan, “Tell me this is fake news. Tell me you’re okay.”

  He waited, squeezing the phone tighter with each passing second, muttering, “The good Lord always provides ... The good Lord always provides ...”

  57

  40,000 Feet above the Pacific Ocean

  “RONE!” RYAN SHOUTED as Secret Service agents pounced on Perfidulo. “What are you doing?”

  “A surveillance system inside your underground office at White-Jefferson monitored the space whenever you were not present,” the Admiral stated matter-of-factly. “Python compared that foot
age to the NSA backup and discovered a discrepancy. Three minutes of video has been altered.”

  Ryan looked askance at Perfidulo. The Lieutenant Colonel was squirming and hissing like an angry viper.

  Is that the indignation of an innocent man accused of a horrendous crime? he asked himself.

  Or the ire of a criminal who’s just been caught?

  “This is the original segment, sir,” Rone said, offering his cellphone.

  Ryan watched in disbelief as Perfidulo snuck into his office, with a multifunction pen identical to CJ’s weapon, and deposited a drop of nerve toxin onto the handset of his phone.

  “That’s a DeepFake!” his chief of staff shrieked as Secret Service dragged him from the room. “He’s lying, sir! The LIT Society is framing me!”

  Ryan returned the phone and massaged his temples, unsure who to believe.

  If videos can be faked, how am I supposed to determine truth from lie? And patriot from traitor?

  “Mr. President, an expert can certify that this is raw, unedited footage.” Rone’s thumbs were frolicking across the LCD screen of his phone. “And this is a transcribed text conversation between Hellhound and Perfidulo, decrypted using Gim Chong Lee’s code.”

  Perfidulo: Poison Pen cleared hot?

  Hellhound: Negative. Patsy ETA 2/9.

  Perfidulo: Understood.

  Ryan’s mind was reeling.

  Was CJ telling the truth? Was he just a patsy?

  And how did Perfidulo pass his background check?

  The fucking FBI strikes again!

  “Admiral,” Ryan demanded. “Why are we flying over the Pacific when I explicitly ordered a return to Washington, D.C.?”

  The vertical creases between Rone’s eyes deepened, and his square jaw went slack. “Sir,” he said respectfully, “Please turn on the news.”

  Ryan depressed the power button on the remote and gaped at the coverage.

  “... And now, we’re going live to a press conference on Capitol Hill, where Johanna Krupp is addressing the nation.”

  Clutching a golden, featherweight Pomeranian, she approached the tangle of microphones and a prideful smirk squirted out before Krupp could muster a funereal demeanor. “Today, the very foundations of our democracy have been shaken; and our hearts, broken,” she began. “Like you, I was shocked and saddened to learn that President Ryan Andrews has been assassinated ...”

  Ryan blurted, “What the fuck?” and Rone shushed him.

  “... In a premeditated and malicious attack on our sovereignty, Air Force One was shot down, south of Charleston, West Virginia, by a Russian-made 3M22 Zircon hypersonic cruise missile. Due to the protracted vice-presidential vacancy, and in accordance with the constitutional line of succession, I, as current speaker of the House, will take the oath of office, and my first official act will be to hold accountable, with the full force and might of the United States military, the perpetrators of this act of war.”

  “Krupp’s blaming the Russians?” Ryan asked rhetorically. “The same Russians that supposedly wanted me elected? That makes no sense. She’s contradicting her own asinine narrative.”

  Rone nodded, his attention still fused to his electronic addiction. “The Consortium had to use hypersonic missiles to thwart Air Force One’s defensive capabilities, which limited their options. China was too chaotic and disorganized since the meteor strikes. Iran and North Korea were neutered after the pulse. And our so-called allies were unwilling to bear the blame. They needed a first-world scapegoat and Russia fit the bill.”

  Ryan expelled a frustrated sigh.

  Our intelligence agencies will falsify satellite photos and signals intercepts, he thought. And the media will hype the propaganda until the public accepts the fairy tale; just like Iraqi weapons-of-mass-destruction.

  “This is the go-to move in The Consortium’s playbook,” the Admiral told him, “because in times of crisis, the public reacts emotionally, not logically. Krupp’s strategy is to gin up outrage to justify military action and keep Americans focused on the ensuing war rather than unanswered questions regarding the assassination.”

  Ryan scowled at the media coverage. Despite sober declarations urging the nation to come together under the wisdom and leadership of Johanna Krupp, GNN’s expert panel was noticeably giddy. The pundits opined on the historic significance of the first woman to hold presidential office and deemed this a new era of peace and prosperity.

  Peace? Ryan thought. Weren’t they paying attention? The bitch just promised to declare war on Russia!

  “We have to alert President Punansk and—”

  “Already done, sir.”

  “And the American people,” Ryan continued, his tone indicating his displeasure over being interrupted.

  “I’ve already summoned the camera crew for an emergency address via the Presidential Alert System.” The Admiral paused to check his watch. “In five minutes, you can assuage the grief of the nation, hoist Johanna Krupp by her own petard, and drive the final nail into the coffin of the fake news media. Just speak from the heart, Mr. President ... Minus the f-bombs.”

  Ryan eyed Rone, suddenly feeling like a puppet, the Commander in Chief in name only, and it fertilized the seeds of distrust that Perfidulo had sewn.

  This is why psychological warfare is so dangerous, Ryan thought. He’d never felt so off-balance and uneasy. “Let me get this straight,” he said, slumping against his chair. “You unearthed their plot and revised our flight plan, sending us west instead of east.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then why did The Consortium launch the hypersonic missile?”

  A self-satisfied smile tipped the corners of Rone’s mouth. “I deployed a 747 drone, flying under Air Force One’s call-sign and accompanied by fighter jets that only appeared on radar. The decoy was shot down in the remote mountains of West Virginia, fifty miles from the staged site the media are showing.”

  “Change of venue to prevent people from realizing that it wasn’t a 3M22 Zircon hypersonic cruise missile?” Ryan asked.

  “Exactly.”

  That could’ve sealed the nation’s fate, he thought, dooming Americans to tyranny.

  Willing away the sickening sensation that was blooming in his gut, Ryan said, “As soon as the fake news hoax has been exposed, I’d like to return to Washington, D.C.—ASAP.”

  “But, sir, in three hours, we’ll be landing at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Brookham. I’ve scheduled a tentative meeting for 1100 hours tomorrow morning.”

  “With whom?” Ryan pressed.

  “I’ll brief you once the final arrangements have been agreed upon.”

  “No, Admiral. You will brief me NOW!”

  58

  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  HELLHOUND WINCED. HIS eyes locked on Al-Waleed Amad, who was extracting a long curved sword from a lighted display cabinet.

  “This ... is an executioner’s sword,” the prince said, hovering over him, “and although the West ceased the practice of beheadings long ago, it is the reason the ‘sword of justice’ remains a symbol of judicial power.” Amad brushed a thumb over the blade’s edge, assessing its sharpness. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t decapitate you and use your skull for a squat toilet.”

  Hellhound’s thumb and index finger were desperately probing his breast pocket for his “insurance policy,” when his cellphone chimed like a macabre death knell, trumpeting a presidential alert.

  “My fellow Americans,” Ryan Andrews began, “as you can see, reports of my assassination are FAKE NEWS.” The President’s arrogant smile gradually faded to reflect the seriousness of the situation. “I unequivocally support the rights of a free press, and have personally fought and bled to protect those rights. But I find it disturbing that major news outlets would run such a consequential story without verification.

  “I find it even more disturbing that the speaker of the House, Johanna Krupp, rushed to be sworn in as President without adequate confirmation of my death. And it is downright t
errifying that she would make rash judgments regarding Russia, vowing retaliation for an assassination that never happened. Let that sink in ...”

  Amad erupted in a fit of rage. He swung the ancient sword like a baseball bat, beheading lamps and slashing the stuffing from pretentious furniture.

  Hellhound dove face-first onto the garish area rug to avoid the reckless sweep of the blade and to conceal his elation over Krupp’s failure.

  The old bitch just saved my life, he thought as ceramic shards rained down.

  Exhausted and out of breath, the prince threw himself onto an antique settee that was hemorrhaging horse hair and hay. “I can’t believe this,” he ranted. “Krupp’s carelessness has irreparably discredited our media assets! Americans will no longer blindly accept our propaganda. And her failure has laid bare our intentions!”

  “All is not lost, sir—”

  “Silence! If I want your input, I’ll prompt you to perform like the trained monkey you are!”

  Gritting his teeth to suffocate a caustic rebuke, Hellhound returned to a kneeling position.

  Amad’s desperate; he needs a credible explanation for the Pindar, Hellhound thought, referring to the mysterious and reclusive figure at the apex of The Consortium pyramid. Amad’s in the same precarious predicament that I am: deflect blame or be exterminated like an insect.