He crumpled the empty bag of Cheetos and tossed it over his shoulder before peering outside the window. He glanced at his watch. The crowd was gathering nicely, and pretty soon the car would be here.
Then it was Showtime in the Big Easy.
Speaker Todd Tobin loved supporting his team more than just about anything else in this world, and today was no exception. The Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio was humming with excitement as his team, the Cincinnati Bengals, were preparing to kick the pants off the Seattle Seahawks. Days like this were a rare treat for Speaker Tobin, who spent most of his time in Washington glad-handing and smooth-talking people he barely knew and cared for even less.
Today was a break — hotdogs, fried onions, French’s mustard, sunshine and last but not least, a great game ahead of him. He could barely contain his excitement.
Laura looked at him and rolled her eyes.
He smiled. “What?”
His wife said nothing and passed him a paper towel.
“Mustard?”
She nodded.
He knew what she was thinking — why can’t he eat something less messy, at least in public? He knew she loved him all the same, and he loved her too — not least because she always seemed to have a paper towel handy when he needed one.
He leaned forward, close to her, and whispered so the security detail in the seats directly behind them couldn’t hear what he was going to say. Five short words later he saw the smile spread on his wife’s face. It worked every time…
“Woah!” he said, pointing at the field. “He’s going to make him pay for that — they’re down 24 — 7!”
Laura rolled her eyes again and smiled. Looking like she cared about football was part of the job. For her husband it was easy because he loved it, but on her part it was all fake, and that made it hard work. Sometimes she felt like her smile was about to fall off.
Tobin moaned as the Seahawks moved deep into Bengals territory thanks to a classic piece of misdirection play. “That is not a fair catch… come on!”
“That’s what I was going to say,” his wife said with a smirk.
He ignored her, watching with interest as the scrimmage played out and the quarterback spiked the ball after the snap.
“What does that mean?” Laura almost sounded interested.
Tobin turned to his wife and smiled at her lack of knowledge. “Technically it’s an incomplete pass, so it means the clock is stopped and the down is exhausted.” He turned back to the game so fast he missed the second eye-roll.
“Gee, thanks for that, honey,” she said. “It’s so much clearer now. It all makes sense.”
Then she stopped talking and stared at her husband, her brow furrowed in bewilderment.
A small red light was meandering its way from her husband’s sleeve to his chest. It continued on its path up his neck and over his face where it stopped on his forehead, just beneath the peak of his trusty old Bengals baseball cap.
“Honey, what the hell is…”
She never finished her sentence. Half a second later her husband was propelled violently backwards over the back of his seat and into the lap of the Secret Service agent behind, a bullet hole drilled into the center of his head.
Only then did she hear the familiar sound of the rifle shot, a second behind the bullet.
Laura Tobin screamed as a Secret Service agent pushed her hard to the ground, covering her with his body and calling in the attack over his earpiece. The other agents responded in seconds, drawing their weapons and scanning the stadium. Whoever it was, the delay between hitting Speaker Tobin and the sound of the shot meant they were a good distance away.
The crowd roared with approval, mistaking the terror attack for some kind of publicity stunt, but seconds later total anarchy came to the stadium as reality dawned on thousands of football fans and a rush for the exits ensued.
America really was under attack.
CHAPTER FOUR
President Charles Grant waved cheerily at the crowds lining the route of the motorcade as it swept along the boulevard and pulled up outside the university. Today he was going to deliver a speech at the Xavier University of Louisiana to pledge more federal funds to the city in the on-going plan to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.
He glanced at his watch and saw the motorcade was already running six minutes late. Outside he saw those who thought his administration wasn’t doing enough to help. They were lining up outside the university entrance with their placards and chanting slogans. It was all part of his job, he thought.
Grant stepped out of the car and waved once again as his Secret Service detail ushered him up along the entrance walkway. As he went, thousands of camera shutters clicked in his face from the press pack, and then he was inside. The president of the university greeted him and shook his hand. Moments later they were moving toward the main hall — the Secret Service were anxious to get the President’s schedule back on time.
Grant got to the podium and did what he did best — charm people. He threw out a couple of well-timed jokes to relax the audience and flashed them his world-famous smile before launching into his speech. It wasn’t his grandest speech — that was next month in Florida when he planned to deliver what was already being called the greatest speech of his career. Florida was the third worst state in the country for gun murders, and Grant wanted to bring it under control. He knew he had opposition — in both the House and the Senate not to mention the NRA. Even the Constitution was against him, but a spate of recent shootings had pushed many people over to his side of the argument.
But today’s speech was important for the people of New Orleans, and that’s what mattered to him right now.
As the room settled down, he leaned closer to the microphone and began to read off the autocue. Like most presidents, all his speeches were written for him by professional speech-writers and projected on a screen which he then read. His previous career as an actor helped him not only to deliver the jokes on time but to read the speeches and make it look like he was dreaming the stuff up as he went along. Today was no exception, and he weaved his way into the speech with his usual exceptional ease and professional acumen.
At the end of the speech, he was whisked from the room in a hail of applause and walked back out along the path toward the Beast. Earlier in the day, Scott Anderson, his Chief-of-Staff had joked that the enormous seven-ton Presidential limo was probably one of the safest places in Louisiana. Grant had smiled, but not laughed. He had been lucky so far, but previous presidents had not only been attacked while in office — four had been assassinated, and the President’s safety was no laughing matter.
He moved steadily toward the limo, once again recalling Anderson’s words about its safety, and reassured by their veracity however they had been delivered. The Beast was actually one of twelve identical limos in constant rotation. The ones not in use were secured in the basement garage of the Secret Service HQ back in DC.
Grant made one final wave as Dirk Partridge, his senior USSS agent swung open the rear door of the Caddy. The senior secret service agent fired a string of words into his radio palm mic and glanced at his watch. Grant was scheduled to tour the rest of the city as well as make a special visit to the levee system before flying back to the capital before dusk. Time was short.