Prologue

Wednesday, March 31, 2021, 8:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time

The chanting of the crowd increased in intensity, cued by the operatives. “Lock them up! Lock them up!!”

Through his rifle scope, Joe scanned the crowd, then moved toward the speaker, who was leaning on the podium, rocking rhythmically, and nodding his head unsmilingly.

“I think maybe it’s finally time we started doing that, don’t you think?” he said. “Now that we’ve gotten past this little temporary virus bump in the road, and I won the election, which no one thought I could, and we’ve cleaned up the streets from these Antifas, maybe it’s time to really take care of business. Which is why I today directed my Attorney General, who is a fabulous, loyal guy, I say loyal, loyalty, it’s a great quality, folks, to arrest my crooked 2016 opponent and the crooked Counsel who ran the Russia Hoax, and some other very special people who needed to be locked up. You’ll see it on the news tonight, folks.”

The crowd responded with an animal roar.

After allowing the response to dissipate, the speaker said, “About time, folks, about time. Should have been done long ago.” He had raised his right hand, index finger touching thumb-tip, his hand rising and falling with each beat.

“And there will be more people arrested,” he said loudly, over the building roar. “Have to get rid of that Deep State to get some action. It’s almost all gone now, folks, the Swamp.”

More cheering.

“I have loyal people around me for the first time. Loyalty,” the President continued. “But loyalty to America and America alone. Which means to you alone. Which means loyalty to the President – the guy you picked – alone. To me alone.”

He pivoted suddenly to his left. “So I can get us out of these stupid wars, because I have loyalty. LOYALTY. People do what I say now. I say, get ‘em out, they get ‘em out. If they don’t do it, they are gone.”

Huge cheers.

“Remember the way they moaned about the Kurds?” the President continued, waving his hands with palms down to quiet the crowd. Joe stiffened at the President’s words.

“‘Oh, the Kurds, you betrayed them! What will become of the poor Kurds?’ Listen, folks, the Kurds can take care of themselves, believe me. The Kurds were in the way.”

Joe’s rifle sight instinctively moved toward the President’s head. The crowd erupted again. Joe’s teeth clenched and unclenched.

Then Joe saw, below his scope sight, on the opposite side of the speaker, below his position, but also above the crowd, another security person, also seeming to point his rifle directly at the speaker. It was difficult to see, since he was wearing a mask, but it had to be Terry.

But Terry did not seem to be using his scope merely to scan the crowd. Or was he?

At this distance Joe could not be sure. He watched Terry’s rifle as it appeared to exactly track the President’s shifting movements and nods as he soaked in the adulation of the rally crowd.

What is he doing? Joe thought to himself.

He moved his rifle scope toward Terry, to get a better view. Then he turned his head to the left, to the rear of the arena, where the other sniper, Kyle, was set up. Kyle, similarly masked, was pointing his rifle directly at Joe.

Suddenly, dawn began to break.

Joe knew what Kyle and Terry were doing. And for whom.

Joe quickly ran through his options, as he had been trained. There were three. Each involved the violation of something he considered a sacred oath.

His rifle sight flipped back and forth between the speaker and Terry, whose rifle remained pointed the entire time directly at the President.

Action or inaction?

If action, what action?

Joe made his choice.