“Okay, but this level of devastation isn’t something you learn on the Discovery Channel or in a YouTube video. In every case these people knew something intimate about the means of destruction.”
“We know that,” the director said. “We utilize cutting-edge modern police procedure and we show nothing, nothing in common.”
“Except one thing.” All heads turned to Hiccock. “They’re all dead.”
There was a perceptible smirk on the director’s face as he punched the pad once more and Martha Krummel’s photograph reappeared. “Except her.”
“Are we talking suicide terrorists now?” Reynolds asked. “How do they get these people to do this?”
“Because these perpetrators all have squeaky clean backgrounds, we believe they are deep-cover moles. Agent provocateurs lying quietly until they are called on to act.”
“How could you possibly reach that conclusion?” Hiccock said agitatedly.
The director closed his eyes for a second and swallowed deeply. “Deep cover. We have recognized and prepared for the possibility for years. The Russians were constantly getting caught trying to plant moles in the United States. In fact, they even had an American town built in Russia where they would train their agents to live in our society without raising suspicions.”
“Does the Office of Homeland Security concur with your scenario?” Ray asked, prompting a confident nod from the director. “Then that’s good enough for me. Let’s go see the president immediately and inform him of your investigation’s focus. Hiccock, you can go back to your office.”
Hiccock was about to say something but held his tongue.
“Ray, I’ll get started on background so when, and if, the boss decides to share this we’ll be ready,” Spence said. She left, followed by the two men.
Hiccock just sat there stewing, an argument raging in his head.
The President’s Council on Physical Fitness would have to rewrite its bylaws if it saw what the president of the United States was doing in the White House gym. James Mitchell, a younger-looking man than his fifty-eight years, was working out on the rowing machine. A cigarette dangled from his mouth as he strained on the oars while receiving the report from Tate and Reynolds. The man’s own doctors had of course warned him about his smoking, but he had been a fighter pilot and an ace in both Vietnam and the first Gulf War. He was shot down deep in Indian Country in the former and managed to evade the enemy, in their own backyard, for a month, ultimately returning to America a true hero. A little thing like a cigarette wasn’t going to land him in Arlington National Cemetery.
James Mitchell was probably the most surprised man in America on election night. Although he had been the popular favorite early in the campaign, he was nearly ground up in the political machinery. The party bigwigs thrust their will on America and limited the field of who could become president to two — and Mitchell wasn’t one of them. The millions of dollars in each party’s war chest were bequeathed to the two prep school boys who were groomed for presidential service since they were still shitting in their diapers.
Failing to get his party’s nomination meant he was boxed out of the big money and the essential television time those dollars bought. He and Reynolds revised their goal to achieving a decent enough double-digit independent turnout in this election to possibly pave the way for another run in four years. Mitchell’s little fledgling campaign turned to grassroots town meetings and tried to make the most of the Internet, including a personal blog he hammered out every day between campaign stops. But gaining a ten to eleven percent foothold into the next election wasn’t the way it played out. Because a fourth candidate, a Democrat from way out left, siphoned off enough votes that when the counting was over, the scrappy little fighter pilot with no money became President elect of the United States.
The big three networks spent all of election night reporting that the vote was too close to call between the Democrat and Republican, with Mitchell not even breaking into his vaunted double digits. Their prognostications came back to bite them in their collective rear ends, when the actual vote tally came up in Mitchell’s favor.
A karmic retribution of sorts ensued as the whole affair sent tremors throughout the media elite who earlier cast their “big vote” pronouncing Mitchell’s campaign as “dead on arrival” in Iowa. The first shock was felt in cable where many a verbose and traditionally aligned pundit found himself now out of favor and out of work. A new political reality swept its way onto the deeply rooted, bipartisan American scene on President Mitchell’s independent coattails.
The cable news channels reengineered themselves, practically overnight, as the suits in those cable network’s executive offices unceremoniously jettisoned the established, venerated pillars of the conservative and liberal status quo. They immediately embraced anyone who ever hesitated long enough to utter, “um” when asked, “Are you a liberal or conservative?” Big salaries and signing bonuses soon followed. This newly hatched brood of “indies,” realizing that their newfound wealth and fame were directly connected to James Mitchell’s success, cut him slack, running interference on his behalf whenever some righty or lefty tried to convince the American people that being politically ambidextrous was some kind of deep character flaw.
In this volatile environment, the entrenched broadcast networks and newspapers, which had long since plastered their political leanings across their front pages in 90-point type and evening lead stories, had but one recourse — attack. They argued that, since Mitchell’s name never registered on any of their beloved exit polls, the election had to be fixed. This accusation was easy to prosecute, because in any national election millions of ballots were cast and some voter irregularity was to be expected. The networks jumped all over these even though, statistically speaking, the numbers were miniscule making the allegations insignificant enough to be practically a myth. But good myths sell papers and commercial airtime.
For the first six months of his administration, reporters investigated every ward and precinct. The news corporations dispatched them with an implied warning: “Do not come back empty-handed.” Every allegation or actual fact of irregularity was scrutinized and reported with an intensity that in and of itself screamed “scandal.” Even inconsequential screw-up’s that normally would never pass muster with a small town paper’s editor were now suddenly being served up nationally as potential “smoking guns.”
Eventually, two factors defeated the media’s onslaught. For one, the many false alarms and cries of wolf started to dilute the public’s interest. But more importantly, Mitchell’s middle-of-the-road brand of politics and quiet ability to get things done with both parties were getting noticed. Slowly, over the next eighteen months, his approval numbers crept up.
That was in the good old days of two weeks ago.
Now acts of domestic terrorism, the magnitude and frequency of which this country had never known, were challenging Mitchell’s administration midterm. The frequency and randomness of the events of the last few weeks were more heinous, more terrorizing, and more devastating to the national psyche than even the unbelievable destruction of 9/11. Mitchell was the man the entire nation now looked to as the only person who could stop the nightmare. In fact, for the majority of Americans, it was the first time many bothered to look in his direction at all.
Deep in his bones, James Mitchell knew that this kind of crisis could either make or break a presidency. The connection with the American public that any White House resident needed to govern and improve the nation was based on the way he performed in a crisis. In a warped manner of thinking, the smartest thing Ronald Reagan ever did was get shot. His political capital went through the roof when he uttered to his wife, “Honey, I guess I forgot to duck.” Legislatively he became unstoppable with that one-liner.