He strode out of the room, headed out of the building and across the dusty, moonlit courtyard toward the barracks. There was something he needed to get before they left.
Black walked out of the barracks and over to the armory. He could see LaSharde and Baker were already kitted out — tactical vests, assault rifles, handguns… the works. They were stood side by side facing Santiago, who had just started speaking as Black approached.
“The chopper’s three minutes out,” explained Santiago. “It’ll fly you to our usual airfield, where a Lockheed C5 will take you directly to Prague. When you land, there’ll be a transport vehicle waiting to take you straight to the target’s location. You’ll have the full support of local law enforcement while you’re there too, and I’m watching via satellite, so—”
“Actually,” interrupted Black, “I’ve just got off the line to Langley. There’s been a slight change to the mission brief.” He shuffled slightly to his right, putting his body mere inches from Santiago’s. His left hand slowly moved behind him, and when he spoke, he addressed LaSharde and Baker. “Director Matthews himself has advised that due to the sensitive nature of the mission, Langley will be monitoring the mission via a comms link to their local Station…” He paused and turned to Santiago. “…which means we no longer need your services.”
In a flash, he brought his left hand round, which was holding a KA-BAR combat knife, and whipped his body clockwise, thrusting the seven inch blade into Santiago’s gut, just to the left of his navel. His eyes went wide; the shock counteracting the pain, which would inevitably follow shortly.
The others gasped, and Baker instinctively took a step forward, but LaSharde stopped him. Black ignored them both, placing his right hand on the back of Santiago’s head and leaning in close.
“If you were me,” he hissed angrily, “you wouldn’t have asked the same questions that got that steroid-induced freak disavowed and shot in the face! I’m following orders, Rick… it’s nothing personal.”
He withdrew the knife and let go of his head, smiling into Santiago’s bulging eyes as he watched him drop to the floor, clutching at his stomach wound. Blood pumped out, soaking his hands and the ground around him, staining it a dark crimson.
Black wiped his blade on his leg and slid it back into its sheath before turning to face the others. “That,” he said, pointing to Santiago, “is what happens when you disobey a direct order from the director of the CIA. I trust the three of us are on the same page here?”
He knew LaSharde was with him, for obvious reasons. He assumed Baker was as well, but there was no harm in proving a point.
The chopper sounded overhead, interrupting the scene. Black looked up and smiled, quickly moving to grab his gear as it made its descent. Moments later, and the three of them were airborne and bound for Prague.
WASHINGTON, DC, USA
April 20th, 2017
President Cunningham sat in the residence of the White House, sipping a large brandy in front of a log fire, reading the newspaper. He had changed out of his navy-blue suit once his working day was over, opting for a more relaxed outfit of jogging pants and a matching sweater, sporting the logo of Columbia University, where he graduated close to twenty-five years previous.
He was born into a family of active Republicans. His father, Charles Cunningham the fifth, had a seat in the House of Representatives during George W. Bush Sr.’s only term in the Oval Office. He was bred for politics from a young age, but quickly tired of the same approaches to the country’s problems, seeing the repetition as a cause of the issues, rather than an attempt at resolving them.
Cunningham knew that if any real long-lasting change was ever going to be implemented, then a radical new approach was needed. In the years that followed 9/11 he didn’t see fear where other people did. He didn’t see crisis. He saw opportunity. He saw a nation united against a common enemy. He saw an unprecedented desire to succeed.
He was determined to build on that. To recreate that feeling among the American people, but also to build on it. To make it a way of life, and not just a phase.
His first step was to look at the economy. To combat the recession, he knew the country needed a massive boost of income. International relations were delicate, to say the least, and it would’ve been a hard sell, even for him, to make significant changes to them. So he decided to look internally. He looked at what the United States had already, that could potentially be exploited on a larger scale to increase wealth.
Ahead of launching his campaign for the presidency, he commissioned a report to look at the biggest, and most lucrative, industries in the world, to see where the money was being earned, and to see if there was any way of turning an individual business into a nationwide commerce.
The two highest grossing industries in the world turned out to be the import and export of cocaine, and the sex trade. Drug cartels, for example, were earning hundreds of billions of dollars each year, illegally.
This gave Cunningham an idea. He sat down with his closest and most trusted advisors, and outlined a plan that would form the foundations of his presidential campaign. He knew it would be met with an initial outcry. He knew he would be laughed off the stage when he first talked about his plan for change. But he knew, unquestioningly, that he could win people over.
If he made cocaine a legal drug, implemented laws to regulate its production, usage and distribution, as well as fund awareness campaigns for the obvious health concerns, he could apply tax to the one point eight trillion dollar a year industry. That alone would boost the economy, and it would also put the Cartels out of business. Crime would drop, relations with South American countries would improve, and that would eventually lead to further opportunities for trade agreements between nations.
It was the same with prostitution. It’s global worth as an industry was around two hundred billion dollars per year. He could make it legal, introduce a healthcare system for the people who worked in the business, and make it a safe, legitimate, respectable environment to work in. The women would be better off, and better paid, plus he could apply tax to the consumer spending. Couple that with the cocaine money, and the income from those two sources alone would wipe out the Federal Deficit in just a few short months. That alone would guarantee him the Oval Office.
He was a natural salesman, and he believed that if he subtly disguised the how with the why, people would eventually show their support.
Theoretically, his plan was perfect. But he knew the biggest problem he faced was the level of bureaucracy that the Oval Office frequently came up against when it tried to get things done. Battles with the Senate to get bills passed could be long-winded, which would delay his plans for a new golden age of American history.
He knew that if he wanted these changes to be accepted, he needed to recreate that unification the country saw following 9/11. Where people rallied together, and the government backed any proposed changes with blind enthusiasm, simply because it was better than what they had at the time.
That would take something extraordinarily tragic; an atrocity so terrifying, it could unite the country in an instant — make people turn to someone who could promise them a brighter future, no matter what the journey to get there entailed…
Cunningham was engrossed in the many reports detailing the aftermath of the terrorist attack three days ago. The attack had simply been christened 4/17 by most international media outlets, similar to how 9/11 was, some sixteen years prior. A couple of the more creative reporters had adopted the moniker of Nuclear Monday, but that hadn’t caught on quite as well, being deemed in poor taste.