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Wednesday, March 31, 2021, 8:30 PM Central Daylight Time
“Ladies and gentlemen… the President of the United States!”
The crowd at the basketball arena, almost entirely maskless, and carefully hemmed in to make it appear far larger than it actually was, screamed its approval as the President made his way slowly toward the lectern.
Operatives pre-deployed in the throng began a chant: “EIGHT MORE YEARS! EIGHT MORE YEARS!” The President’s eyes narrowed and a broad, close-mouthed smile creased his face. He waved both hands at the crowd, nodding almost from the waist, pivoting from side to side, as if to say, “I accept your deserved adoration.”
Slowly the cheers died down enough for the President to speak.
“It’s great to be back here this great state, where I’ve now won twice.” His mouth widened and grimaced as he lengthened this last word.
“TWO MORE TIMES! TWO MORE TIMES! TWO MORE TIMES!”
“And I’ve come here,” he continued, “To say thank you to the Real Americans who re-elected me for this, my first real term.”
The crowd exploded at this.
“EIGHT MORE YEARS! EIGHT MORE YEARS!”
The President stepped back from the podium and nodded, looking from one side of the arena to another.
“They said it couldn’t be done, the experts. The experts,” he repeated. “The experts, oh, how smart the experts were. They said this time I was out of it, this time your votes wouldn’t count, oh, this time Your Favorite President was doomed.”
The crowd laughed at this and cheered.
“No, I was gonna lose this time, you were not going to come out for me, oh, no, you didn’t believe in me anymore.”
The crowd booed lustily.
“Oh those experts,” the President continued. “Oh those experts. Sooo… expert, those experts. They said, ‘Oh, he has the virus, he’ll die, but also he’s faking, he’s faking the virus, it’s all a fake, he’ll lose.’ But they forgot who they were dealing with.”
The crowd erupted in cheers.
“They were dealing with a genius,” the President continued. “They were dealing with the guy who had won already when they said it was impossible. With the biggest Electoral College victory that anyone had ever seen. No virus was going to stop me. Experts.”
Cheers.
“Now the experts want me to go to war with Russia.” Loud booing.
“Oh, the Baltic States, they are our FRIENDS,” the President said. “Our FRIENDS. Tell me, folks, were they there when we invaded Omaha Beach? I don’t think so, I don’t think so.”
More boos, some hisses.
“No, folks, you know what their presidents said about your favorite president here,” he continued. “Do you think I should go and rescue them?”
“NOOOOO!!!” came the thunderous response.
“No, I don’t think that would be the, what’s the word, ‘intelligent’ thing to do, folks. Wouldn’t be very intelligent.”
Cheers again.
“Especially now, when we have this guy in Korea acting up again,” he said. “The guy before him sent me nice letters, beautiful letters, but now the new guy’s acting up again, and like I told them, if they did, they would see fire and fury. Fire and fury, folks. Fire and fury.”
Huge cheers.
“So he’d better look out, am I right, folks?”
A crescendo of cheering.
“But at least I’m still here,” the President continued. “I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere, folks.”
Cheering.
“They said it couldn’t happen, me getting elected. Then they said I couldn’t get re-elected.” He turned and stroked his chin. “I wonder what will happen to all those experts in four years if I get re-elected again?”
A huge volley of cheers.
***
In the wings beside the stage, now holding a sniper rifle, Joe shook his head at this. He knew that the 2016 election had been one of the closer Electoral College victories in history. But let it go. He knew it didn’t matter. Reality TV, he thought.
Max King walked up to him.
“He’s amazing, huh?”
Joe cocked his head in an equivocal manner and widened his eyes.
“Definitely.”
“This is what he lives for,” King said, staring out at the podium. “This is the juice for him. The connection to the real people.”
Joe scanned the crowd. He saw, of course, a huge number of tee shirts emblazoned with the President’s and Vice President’s names. He saw several “Better Russian Than Democrat” tee shirts; a number of home-detailed white tee shirts on hefty women saying “GRAB THIS, MR. PRESIDENT!” with arrows pointing down toward their swimsuit areas; he saw several shirts advocating the hanging of journalists; one that said “KILL THE LÜGENPRESSE,” and many more with fetuses, crosses, Jesus, and other religious themes. A plurality of the shirts, jackets and hats featured guns, which ironically were absolutely prohibited at thePresident’s rallies. As they are at national meetings of the National Gun Organization, Joe thought.
The look on most of the faces combined worshipful openness to whatever the President happened to be saying with something approaching pure bloodlust against their political enemies. Joe had seen a few surly mobs during his time in the Middle East, and the level of manic anger of this one rivaled that of any he had ever seen over there. Fortunately, Joe thought, there don’t seem to be any opponents on which to focus here, or those opponents would be in some serious danger. I’m glad Vaneida isn’t here.
Max had been whispering on his headset; now he turned to Joe.
“Tell you what,” he said, in a strangely casual way. “Why don’t you go up to the catwalk and set up up there.”
“You want a full sniper setup up there?” Joe asked, a bit incredulously.
“This is the President,” Max said. “If not for him, then who for?”
“Okay,” Joe said. “The other guys know I’m going to be up there?”
“Yeah,” Max said. “You’re good. Go up to the extreme left end of the catwalk as you face out from the stage. That should give you a good view of the whole place.”
“Okay,” Joe said. “Where are the other guys set up?”
“One on the opposite side. Terry. One in the back of the arena. Kyle.”
“Okay,” Joe said.
He walked behind the backdrop of the stage. The President was silhouetted on a curtain. That would be a clean shot, he thought. He meant nothing by it; these were the thoughts that constantly occurred to any sniper.
He reached the far side of backstage and began to climb up to the catwalk.
“These people think they are better than you! They think they are better than me!”
The crowd seethed and hissed.
“And I went to the best school in the world, many people say. They say elite, it’s an elite school. I did very well. But I love the poorly educated!”
The crowd cheered loudly as Joe reached the catwalk and moved to his setup spot.
“I love the poorly educated. They say I don’t do well with the college-educated. I don’t care!”
Cheers.
“They look down on you. But I will always put you first. You will never be forgotten!”
The arena erupted.
“You will never be forgotten. So many smart elite experts and people told me, ‘Mr. President, you can’t leave the Middle East. YOU CAN’T DO IT!” he shouted. “The world will end! YOU CAN’T DO IT!”
Back to booing.
“But I did it. Because it’s gotta be, Always. America. First. America First, folks. Always. You know who is Never, America, First? The Democrats and the Fake News. So un-American.”
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 he 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. Then he remembered the SEAL’s words to him.
He claimed he was just doing recon through his scope, but that’s not what it looked like. He was locked on to every movement of the bogey, rifle moving in perfect sync with it. Psychopath.
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’s mind began racing. Then an unexpectedly loud noise from the lectern distracted him.
It was a sudden wail from the President, which caused Joe’s scope to go back to him.
“Oh, the KURDS! The poor KURDS! I BETRAYED them!” The crowd responded with derisive laughter and cheers.
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. He got on his radio and flipped to the Secret Service band.
“Mayday. Mayday. This is Durcan. We have a shooter aimed at POTUS. Get him out of there.”
Joe felt a stinging sensation in his upper left arm as he swung over the side of the catwalk onto a ladder and slid down the ladder uprights, like a fireman. He landed awkwardly, then limped toward the dais, through the crowd. The President was still speaking.
He looked forward to see Terry’s finger still on the trigger.
“Oh, THE KURDS!” the President yelled. Loud laughter and cheers.
“Sir, get down on this side of the lectern,” Joe yelled as he approached the President at speed.
Joe reached the President, grabbed him, pulled him down, and got on top of him. “Stay down, sir,” he said, trying as best he could to keep the lectern as a shield between them and both Terry and Kyle.
He pulled his radio out again and called the Secret Service. “Mayday, Mayday,” he said. “We have shooters in the building.”
Two Secret Service agents were already on him when the President asked him in terror, “Is this my blood? Did they shoot me?”
Joe looked down and for the first time noticed the hole in his shoulder that was pumping blood. He checked the President but found no wounds.
“No, sir,” Joe said. “I think that’s me.”
His eyes, scanning the venue, happened to turn toward the grandstand behind the stage. He saw his cousin and her husband and daughter staring at him, open-mouthed, as he remained above the President. He thought he saw tears in Jane’s eyes. He shrugged slightly and shot her a rueful smile before he was distracted once more.
“Hey, let me get my phone out,” the President said. “What’s your name?”
“Joe,” Joe said, his head beginning to swim. “Joe Durcan.”
“Great stuff. What ratings this will get.”
The President pulled his phone out.
–<() America needs to know I am safe! Heroe security man Joe Durkin stepped up! Now we will find the Angry Democrats behind this Evil Plot!
© 2020 Nolan O’Brian