Category: Uncategorized

80

Wednesday, March 31, 2021, 3:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time

The door of the VIP cell of the D.C. Central Detention Facility slid open and a thin elderly man in a mask was led by the masked guards into the two-man cell.

The similarly masked man who already occupied the cell looked down from his upper bunk, pulled his mask up over his nose and mouth, and sat up, swinging his feet down to a hanging position, and putting down the book he was reading. His eyes betrayed no hint of recognition. The guards backed out of the cell and shut the door.

The new entrant, clad in an orange jump suit identical to the one the original occupant wore, stood against the opposite wall, as if unsure where to go next.

“I’m Bill,” he finally said.

“I know,” the other prisoner said.

“Oh,” said Bill Ruppert.

***

The day had begun very strangely, as if everything in the world Bill understood had been turned completely upside down.

At 5AM there was a pounding on the door of his suburban home, his refuge after a lifetime of service, the home he shared with his wife.

“Federal marshals. We’re here for William Ruppert.”

He came in his bathrobe to the door, and opened it. He was immediately surrounded by masked men in black riot gear.

“What is it?” Alice called down to him.

“I don’t know,” Bill answered. “But I think I have to go with these people.”

She came down the stairs.

“What in the world is going on?”

“Ma’am, we have to take your husband downtown,” one of the marshals said. “He can have a few minutes to change.”

Bill went up the stairs and into the bedroom, followed by Alice.

“What’s going on, Bill?”

“I honestly have no idea. I’m sure it’s all a mistake that will be cleared up in a few hours.”

“My god, Bill… my god.”

“Don’t worry. It’ll be fine. I’ll call you when I figure out what’s going on,” Bill said. He dressed quickly and put his wallet and phone in his sport coat. He went downstairs. His wife followed. She handed him a mask.

“Stay here,” he told her, putting the mask on. “I’ll call when I know anything.”

She stayed at the door. He walked out the door, flanked by the agents. A man was standing next to the black van with tinted windows. As Bill walked up to it, he realized with a start who it was.

“Hello, Bill,” Nick Mancuso said.

The agents opened the side door of the van.

“Wait a minute,” Nick said. “Put the fucking cuffs on him.”

The agents complied.

Mancuso, unmasked, turned to Bill.

“This is payback, Ruppert, you piece of shit. Payback for pulling me out of my house at 5AM in front of my family. You lost. We won.”

Bill got into the side panel door of the van without answering. Two agents got in on either side of him.

As the van drove off, Alice looked on from the door and saw Mancuso.

Mancuso turned to her and grinned. Then he sidled off down the street.

***

“I’m Jim,” the other prisoner said after a moment. “Hasselblad. Journalism professor.”

“Oh,” Ruppert said. “Hi.”

“I guess ‘Nice to meet you’ doesn’t really apply in this circumstance,” Jim said.

“No, I guess not,” Bill said.

“Feel free to sit down,” Jim said. “I’ll distance.” He pulled his feet back up onto the upper bunk.

Bill nodded and sat down on the bunk below Jim’s.

“I assume this is a new experience for you,” Jim said, lying back on the upper bunk. Bill remained sitting, hunched forward with his hands clasped over his knees.

“You could say that,” Bill said.

“Well, I’m told this is the VIP suite,” Jim said. “Protective custody. You were a prosecutor in D.C. once, right?”

Bill cleared his throat. “A long time ago.”

The two men let that sit for a while.

“It’s funny,” Jim said. “I really want a cigarette right now. I quit thirty years ago, but I feel like it would be appropriate to this situation.”

“I never took it up,” Bill said.

“It somehow smooths social interaction.” “Ah.”

“You never even smoked in Vietnam?”

“No. Were you there?”

“No. Too young. And I probably wouldn’t have gone anyway.”

“Why?”

“I think I would have felt that it was not the right moral choice. Did you ever think about that at the time?”

Bill thought for a moment. Am I being set up here?

As if reading his thoughts, Jim said, “If I were you I guess I would assume they’re taping everything we say. Feel free to clam up. Myself, I don’t care. I’m sort of here voluntarily.”

“Voluntarily?”

“As I see it. I think right now, the only moral place for a patriotic American to be under this regime is in jail.”

Bill almost started to speak, but then was silent.

“Anyway, I hope this experience is changing your mind about some things,” Jim said.

“What things?” Bill responded.

“About your failure to save us from the worst person in America when you had the chance,” Jim said.

Bill scoffed at this. “You think it was my personal mission to save the entire country?”

Jim rolled over and looked down, straight into Bill’s eyes. “Yes,” he said simply. “Yes, I do.”

Bill took this in in silence. Jim rolled back onto his upper bunk.

“You took an oath, what, six times?”

“Eight,” Bill answered.

“‘To preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,’” Jim quoted.

Silence from Bill.

“‘Against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’” More silence.

“You had a heck of an opportunity to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” Jim said. “A unique opportunity, I think. I wish I’d had that opportunity. No one else in the past five years in this country has had the kind of opportunity you had. No one else had the status you had. ‘Oh, Bill Ruppert. He’s universally respected. No one has a bad thing to say about Bill Ruppert. He’s a straight arrow. He’ll do the right thing.’ Well, I have to ask you, Bill.”

Jim leaned down and looked toward Bill from the end of the bunk; Bill stared straight forward.

“How do you think you did in living up to that oath you took so many times? How’s the Constitution doing? Did you preserve it? Protect it? Defend it? How about our enemies? Particularly our domestic ones?”

Bill was silent for a moment. Then he swung his feet up onto the lower bunk and lay back.

“Are you my punishment?” he finally asked.

“Maybe,” Jim said. “I guess if I thought this crew had the mental wherewithal to concoct a torture for you, it might look a lot like this. But I don’t think they do. We’re being ruled by evil people right now, but they are also fools. Maybe it was the same in Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Fascist Italy. Fascism, or conservative populism, or whatever you want to call this, isn’t exactly the thinking man’s philosophy. So I guess it’s no surprise that idiots rule us. But not all of us are equally culpable for that. I spoke out. I tried to stop it, in my ineffective liberal way. I thought free speech would save us. But then the Internet happened. HeadSpace. Tooter. All of it. They figured out they could just pump those channels full of lies, and the truth would not have a chance. They used ‘free speech’ to throw sand in the eyes of the American people, to call facts ‘fake news’ and propaganda ‘truth.’ Every time we thought the President had gone too far, we thought we had him. ‘This time he’s going down! Now he’s done something no other president has ever done! Everyone will see he’s got to go!’ But we were wrong. Every time he did something unprecedented, well, that was just another barrier broken down for him, so he could do something even more unprecedented and appalling next time.

“But then he fired the FBI Director, and everyone agreed that with you in charge, he was really going to be in trouble. You would get to the facts, and nothing would stop you. Well, we were wrong.”

“No, you weren’t. Nothing did stop me. I did exactly what I thought was the right thing, without fear or favor. I got to the facts.”

Jim was silent for a moment.

“Then,” he said slowly, “we really misjudged you.”

“What does that mean?”

“We thought you would preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. We were wrong. I guess you thought living up to your oath was the wrong thing to do.”

“What nonsense. I did exactly what the law demanded.”

“But not what your oath demanded.”

“They’re the same thing.”

Jim swiveled his legs over, dropped to the ground, backed away, and turned to Bill. “Do you really believe that?”

“Yes.”

“So, you think that as a result of your work, the Constitution of the United States has been preserved, protected and defended?”

Bill was silent for a moment. Jim continued.

“You think you would be more, or LESS, likely to be in here, under, in my opinion, at least, unconstitutional arrest, if you had said openly to the Congress, ‘Yes, it is my opinion that this President obstructed justice in the ten instances I have laid out for you, and if I were in Congress I would vote to impeach him for them, and if I were in the Senate I would vote to remove him from office?’ Or less likely?”

Bill remained silent.

“What if you had testified to Congress that you thought that the President would have been indicted for obstruction of justice if he had been in any other office than the one he occupied? Would the Constitution have been in better, or worse shape? Again, preserved? Protected? Defended? I think so.”

“Do you now.”

“I do. And maybe worst of all, after all the lies he told even before you started your investigation, after all the lies he and so many others told to obstruct your investigation, after first promising to be deposed and stringing you along, and then withdrawing the offer, and turning around and calling the whole thing a hoax, and you and your entire staff ‘Angry Democrats,’ you said nothing.”

“Rightly so.”

“Maybe that was the right thing to do before the end of the investigation,” Jim continued. “But afterwards? When every sentient being in the universe had to know that he was going to treat your refusal to call him what he was – a blatant criminal – as an exoneration? Use it as a positive thing for his re-election? Use your exoneration – “

“It wasn’t an exoneration, and I said it wasn’t, in public, to Congress.”

“Not loud enough. Not nearly loud enough for the American people to get the message. I bet you aren’t much for public opinion polls.”

“Not really.”

“No surprise there. Well, maybe that explains why you were so incapable of accurately gauging the deadly impact of your actions on the electorate.”

“Maybe so,” Bill said, combatively. “But maybe that wasn’t my job.”

“But it was your oath,” Jim said, equally aggressively.

“It was not,” Bill said. “I had a strictly defined role, under the terms of the Special Counsel statute. I was never to seek indictments against the President. The Department had ruled that possibility out decades ago. A sitting president cannot be indicted. Period. As I testified, it would be unconstitutional.”

“You testified wrongly,” Jim said. “Are you saying that every opinion the Department of Justice issues automatically is incorporated into the Constitution? Is the Torture Memo now a part of the Constitution?”

Bill looked up at Jim, exasperated. “I could have used you on some of my trials for cross-examination. And speaking of trials, I did get a lot of convictions against his whole crew.”

“And he’s pardoned every one of them, thanks to you! They are all out on the street now that he got re-elected, with the same corrupt help that elected him the first time! You know, his campaign manager used to be in this very cell? I asked. This one right here. Mancuso had that bunk you are sitting on. Now you are in here. You don’t think maybe you made some mistakes along the way?”

Bill was silent for a moment.

“We all make mistakes,” he finally said. “You haven’t?”

Jim considered this for a moment. He turned around and walked two steps to the opposite cell wall and put his palms on it. Then he turned around and faced Ruppert, who now lay, masked, on the bunk, staring at his hands, clasped over his drawn-up right knee.

“I’ve made plenty,” Jim said. “I’m a parent. You know that to be a father is to make mistakes and sow regrets every single day. I’ve been a newspaper columnist. To write a column twice a week, to have opinions pulled out of you on deadline, like some sort of reverse foie-gras goose, that, my friend, is a guarantee of future regret and self-recrimination. But I tried my best. I believe I saw things accurately at a big-picture level, and I tried to convey that accurate big picture to my readers. I failed to convince enough of my fellow Americans of the dangers I saw, dangers to them and to me, to all of us. Sure, I’ve made mistakes.”

Bill was looking into his eyes now.

“But,” Jim said, “I didn’t have your stature or your credibility. I thought I was playing it straight as a journalist and an opinion writer. That made me a partisan figure. When the time is out of joint, as Shakespeare put it, when politics is increasingly nuts, when one side has simply left the building as regards sanity, morality, truth – then playing it straight, being honest and sane and rational, is an increasingly extremist act. After the first election, no one was ever going to see me as any kind of honest broker. But you… you had the golden ticket. Even the President’s party was falling all over itself to say how credible and non-partisan you were.”

Bill said nothing.

“But you couched your findings in such a way that they could never, ever, penetrate the public consciousness. You wrote and said that these were serious allegations, and it wasn’t an exoneration, but no one read that, because you didn’t release it.”

“I couldn’t release it. Under the law, all I could do is give it to the Attorney General.”

“So you let the Attorney General ‘summarize’ the findings and whitewash them, and let them sit out there for a month, uncontested.”

“Twenty-seven days.”

“Fine. Twenty-seven days. Then the President got to crow about how there were no indictments, so therefore he was exonerated. ‘No collusion, no obstruction.’ For 27 days. And the AG said he had expected you to render an opinion on whether the President had broken the law! Sure, he was lying. He would have hated that. But imagine if you had issued that opinion. Would we be here now? And your whole staff tried to protest, but all you did was write a private note to the AG that he got to dismiss as, what, ‘peevish?’”

“‘Snitty.’”

“To summarize, then,” Jim said. “You came in as Special Counsel to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, and the net result was, the Constitution has been damaged more severely, perhaps, than at any time in our history.”

Bill was silent. He was staring down at his clasped hands again.

“I would take it easier on you,” Jim said, “but look where we are. You certainly would be less likely to be here if you had just told America the truth forthrightly. And so would I.”

“He would have denied everything. I don’t think it would have made a difference in the end.”

“But you could have made it harder for him to destroy the Constitution,” Jim said.

Bill raised his eyebrows and tilted his head left and right a couple of times in a gesture of apparent equivocation.

“You’ll pardon me for taking it personally,” Jim said. “I am pretty sure I would not be in here if people like you had actually lived up to their oaths.”

“What are you in here for, if I may ask?” Bill said.

“Get this,” Jim said. “I’m in here for threatening the President.”

“That has always been against the law,” Bill said.

“Sure,” Jim said. “Putting aside for the moment the fact that I did not, in fact, threaten the President at all, how often has that law been enforced against journalists or speakers blowing off steam? When Okomo was in office, you know how many people were arrested for that?”

“I could guess.”

“About five. Out of the literal tens of thousands who threatened him on line and elsewhere. And those five were heavily armed and had discussed serious plans to kill him. I wouldn’t know the front of a gun from the back. I just said something insulting about him at a university panel discussion back in January, and now here I am. I have to believe that if someone who had some credibility and power had stood up against this dictatorial nitwit, I would be at home in the bosom of my family right now. And so would you. Not in the bosom of my family,” Jim said. “In your bosom. Of your family. You know what I mean.”

Bill was smiling now, if painfully.

“I guess laughter is the best medicine,” Jim said, though neither of them had actually laughed. “I honestly don’t know what we do now to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Maybe it’s a lost cause now. Or maybe just being here, as I said when we began here, is the most powerful thing we can do.

“Do you think,” Jim suddenly asked, “he really finally arrested ‘The Crooked One?’ I think if he’s arrested you, he’s probably arrested her. She may right now be doing the greatest service to her country that she has ever done, just by showing the entire nation what a dictator he really is. You think she’s in jail now?”

“I don’t know,” Bill said, honestly.

“I guess if he did arrest her, that would make me a footnote to a historic occasion, if being in the same cell with you hasn’t done that already,” Jim said.

There was a sudden metallic noise of the door being unlocked. Jim climbed back onto the top bunk. The door opened again, and the Attorney General could be seen standing between two guards.

“Hello, Bill,” he said.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

81

Wednesday, March 31, 2021, 4:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Mike had gotten the call to go to the hospital from Pete’s daughter Cathy. He was surprised to hear from her; he did not know her well. He had been driving around the neighborhood doing errands, but pulled over when her call came in.

“My dad wanted me to call you, I don’t know why,” she said.

“Okay,” he had responded. “What’s happening?”

“I think this is it,” she said, stifling a sob.

“What?”

“I think he’s going,” Cathy said. “He asked me to tell you to come down and see him.”

“What happened? Oh my god.”

“It was sudden, overnight,” Cathy said. “The doctors called me this morning and said he had taken a turn. They said he suddenly started throwing off clot after clot, even while he was having internal bleeds elsewhere. They didn’t know how to stop the one without the other killing him.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Pete said, and hung up the phone.

When he got there, he realized he was too late even before anyone told him anything. He had had his temperature taken and a mask put on at reception. Cathy was in the hallway outside the ICU, crying in the arms of her mother, Sharon, who had apparently come back into town at last. Both were similarly masked as well as gloved; they wore MK medallions.

“He’s gone,” she said.

“Oh my god,” Mike said. “Oh my god.”

Cathy continued crying.

“I’m so sorry,” Mike said. “I’m so sorry.”

He felt the oddness of standing away from the mother and daughter, but he also felt a hug was the wrong thing at this moment, both health-wise, and also for these women who had not been around earlier for Pete.

“You can go in, I guess,” Cathy said. “You already had the virus, right?”

“Did he have it? Was that what…?”

“They think so. They said it sometimes comes back, and it sometimes causes clots and bleeds like that.”

Mike sat down and put his head in his hands. He had had the virus, but could not bring himself to wear his medallion in public, so he could not enter the ICU. Farewell, old friend, he thought. I guess that’s it.

“You can’t go in?” Mike’s wife Sharon asked.

“I guess not,” Mike said. “No medallion.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s so stupid,” Mike said. “I mean I visited him just a few days ago. They know I have a medallion.”

“Why didn’t you bring it?”

“I came straight here. I was in my car when you called.” And I hate that asshole Maxfield King and the President’s son-in-law, he thought to himself.

“I guess you can’t go in,” she said.

“I guess not.” He got up from the chair.

“I called you here for nothing, then,” Cathy said.

“No, no, no,” Mike said. “Thank you for calling. I wish I’d made it here sooner. Your dad’s… your dad was some kind of guy.”

“I know,” Cathy said, tears leaping to her eyes. She leaned back onto Sharon.

“If you need anything, Sharon, or Cathy, please let me know…do you need anything?”

They both shook their heads.

“Are the kids…”

“They’re with their dad,” Sharon said. “Down in Georgia.”

“Okay,” Mike said, still dazed. “Okay.”

He had been holding his outdoor gloves in his latex-gloved hand; now he looked down at them uncomprehendingly.

“Okay.”

He turned and started walking slowly down the corridor.

“He did mention you before he…before he passed,” Sharon said.

He turned around.

“He did?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s why we thought to call you. It was so strange I didn’t know whether to mention it.”

“What did he say?”

“He said something like, ‘Tell Mike I would still have voted for Mr. Kay something.”

“Mr. Kay something?”

“Yeah. Kay-Fay?”

Mike thought for a moment. “Mr. Kayfabe, maybe?”

“Yes. I think that was what he said. Who’s he?”

Mike shook his head.

“Just a joke between us,” Mike said. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

I need a drink, he said to himself.

***

And so, by about 6PM, Mike had ended up at the Bank Street Bar and Grill, drinking alone.

He waited until Janet came over and they had a little space, and he told her the news. She began crying silently, and went into the kitchen.

Mike nursed his beer, staring at his bottle in silence. He could sense that word was spreading around the bar, because the noise level had noticeably dropped off. After half an hour, the bar was divided fairly evenly between those who knew Pete, and were therefore subdued, and those who didn’t, and were their usual raucous selves.

Mike didn’t mind their raucousness. The noise acted as an anesthetic. His eyes were dry, as befit a grown American male, but they smarted a bit. Out of habit, he had ordered some food, but had barely touched it.

Janet came over to serve him as his beers slowly disappeared, but they didn’t really talk; each of them, he thought, suspected that if they did, then neither might be able to control their emotions.

The evening both dragged and flew.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

82

Wednesday, March 31, 2021, 4:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Bill Ruppert sat, masked, across from the Attorney General, who was unmasked, at a metal table in an interrogation cell. Two security men, also unmasked, stood at ease behind and on either side of the AG.

“You want to Mirandize me, Paul?”

“There’s no need for that,” the Attorney General answered.

“There isn’t? Then what exactly am I doing here?”

“I have to apologize for that. Apparently, an overzealous law enforcement officer overstepped his boundaries. We’ll have you out of here before you know it. Just some paperwork to be filled out and we’ll have you on your way.”

Bill sat with his arms folded and stared at the AG.

“Is this what you signed up for, Paul?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Is this what you signed up for? To oversee the rise of a dictatorship? And for this… this man?”

“Now that’s not fair, Bill. We go back a long way.”

“We do. Which makes this so much worse.”

The AG shook his head slowly. “I thought you would understand. The big picture. The threats we face.”

“What threats? I understand the threat of this lawless, ignorant creature being President and getting rid of anyone in government who knows how to do his or her job. I understand the threat of elections being perverted by nations that have only the worst of intentions for us. I understand the threat of a president who is willing to force the entire United States federal government to become just an arm of his perpetual re-election campaign. Each of these threats is a reason why this man should not be president, and everything he has done must be completely repudiated and reversed. And I’m just scratching the surface with these. Now what,” Bill said, leaning across the table, “can you possibly put on the other side of the scales that could come close to outweighing the threats I’ve identified here?”

“If you feel so strongly about this, then why didn’t you tell the world that he had broken the law? We all expected you to,” the AG said in an oily voice, leaning back and clasping his hands together. “You were the one person in the world that could have stopped all these allegedly terrible things from happening. But you didn’t.”

“I didn’t. Because I trusted in you. And in the Department. And in the Congress. And in the Republicans in the Senate. And, god help me, in this administration. To draw the obvious conclusions. To do the right thing.”

“But you weren’t willing to do the right thing, as you describe it, yourself. You didn’t think it was your job. Well, I can say to you that I trusted you to tell me what the right thing was. If the President broke the law, I expected you to tell me that he had. You did not. I relied on your judgment. Was I wrong?”

Bill was silent.

“But you asked me what was on the other side of the scales. I’ll tell you what’s in that side. Our sacred religious liberty is in that side. Our European Christian culture. Our system of free enterprise. And our freedom from an overreaching federal government.”

Bill scoffed. “You have the gall to say that to me? Your prisoner? A prisoner of that very same overreaching federal government?”

“As I said, that was a mistake. A mistake that will be rectified shortly.”

“But not until the President announces my arrest at his rally, right?”

This time it was the AG’s turn to be silent.

“It’s true, isn’t it? This was a publicity stunt for your boss’ political campaign for an unconstitutional third term.”

“You say ‘unconstitutional.’ But you know that could change. Republicans in the Senate could pass an amendment to the Constitution that would make that quite constitutional. We have four years to work on that.”

Bill shook his head. “What happened to your ethics, Paul? How can you justify this lawless behavior?”

“Laws come from God Almighty, Bill. God is the source of all legitimacy.”

“You talk like some medieval jesuitical philosopher.”

“Well, the Dominicans actually educated me.”

“Well, even Jesuits don’t make the arguments you make.”

“Well, the Jesuits have lost their way. They have been corrupted by the same Marxist humanism and secularism that are destroying our culture. We need clarity in this country, Bill. We need lines. We need rules. We need respect for authority. We need walls.”

“We need to shoot children and families at the border?”

“That too was an unfortunate mistake.”

“So many unfortunate mistakes, Paul. Your luck is really bad lately,” Bill said heatedly. “Let me ask you this, Paul. Your boss is a libertine, an ignoramus. He abuses the powers of his office for his own benefit. In fact, he runs the entire United States government as if it is his own property and plaything. You serve this wildly undependable leader. How can this be a rational or moral course?”

“You remember the play ‘A Man for All Seasons?’”

“Yes. Are you seriously comparing yourself to Thomas More?”

“I’m saying that even Thomas More made some accommodations to Henry VIII.”

“He stood against him in the end.”

“Well, the end is not here yet.”

“So you pretend that some fine day you will have had enough, and you will publicly break with the President, refuse to take his oath of loyalty. Well, everyone knows that you came in after a series of other men refused to promise unthinking loyalty to this President, and you for a year and more enthusiastically used the machinery of this sacred Department to pursue and harry anyone who had the temerity to place his or her oath to the Constitution above this President’s crude personal interest. You’ll pardon me, but from my position, you look far more like Torquemada to me. Or maybe Thomas More’s captor, Thomas Cromwell, who had no scruples about using torture and lies and coercion to advance his own standing in Henry’s corrupt court. And Cromwell of course ended up executing More,” Bill said.

“How dramatic. I can assure you, Bill, that you will be released unharmed and allowed to go home with an apology. No one here is sharpening an axe.”

“I’d like to talk to my attorney now.”

“Yes, of course, Bill. Though there are no charges pending. Did someone give you the idea that you were under arrest? That was a mistake. But there may be a problem with bringing your lawyer in. We actually had reached out to your attorney, after speaking with your wife and getting his name from her – it’s Jack, from your former firm, right? – Well, when we called him, he denied that he was your personal attorney. He said there was some mistake, that he was merely your former law partner.”

Bill stared at him intently. He decided not to give Paul the satisfaction of a reaction. At length he spoke.

“Well, if you are not charging me, I at least ask you to have the decency to let me leave this facility from a private exit, away from the cameras and reporters.”

“What cameras and reporters? We have no interest in publicizing this. This was an unfortunate error, nothing more.”

“An overzealous law enforcement officer,” Bill said. “Sure.”

The AG rose from his chair. The two guards stood to attention in response.

“So long, my friend,” the AG said. “I hope you have an uneventful journey home, and a peaceful retirement.”

Bill did not respond.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

83

Wednesday, March 31, 2021, 6:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Joe and Terry had just finished walking around the rally venue, looking underneath the seats on the arena floor for anything suspicious. Kyle was doing the same thing for the higher-up seats. Half the arena had been closed off, both for security reasons and to make the crowd look bigger than it actually was for television.

Joe’s phone buzzed. He took it out and looked at it.

“It’s some relatives of mine who wanted to come to the rally. You okay here? I told them I’d bring them in, show them around a little.”

“They’re fans of the President?”

“Yes, I believe they are.”

“Yeah, go ahead,” Terry said. “I have to go talk to Max anyway.”

“Okay. I’ll see you guys in a few. Hey,” Joe said. “Do you think I can get a quick picture with the President and them? I think they would go crazy for that.”

“I don’t know. I’ll ask,” Terry said, and turned back toward the stage area.

Joe walked out to the entrance. Mary and Jeff and Jane were all there. When they caught sight of him wearing his olive-green uniform with the word SECURITY stenciled in yellow on the front and back of a similarly olive-green Kevlar vest, Mary and Jeff broke out into grins and waved. Jane seemed more subdued, Joe thought.

“How are you guys?” Joe said, walking up to the arena security guard and telling him, “They’re with me.”

“Wow, look at you,” Mary said.

“Still looking pretty military,” Jeff said.

“Well, once you find your color, it’s hard to leave behind,” Joe said, grinning.

“So, you’re doing security for this event?” Mary said.

“Yeah,” Joe said. “My boss does the security for the President now. I used to do other things for him, but he asked me to be part of that detail. So, I said yes.”

“Well, that must be exciting,” Mary said.

“Ah, it’s okay,” Joe said. “Mostly it’s traveling around and scouting out the bowels of big buildings and looking at every other thing other than what everyone else seems interested in, so it’s a little strange from that standpoint, I guess.”

“Do you get to talk to the President?” Jeff asked.

‘Well, I’ve met him once or twice,” Joe said. “Never really got to talk to him in depth. Mostly walking with him when he has to move from place to place.

“What’s he like?” Jeff said.

“Well, you’ve seen him,” Joe said. “He’s pretty much like you see on TV.”

“Wow, what I wouldn’t give to get to work for him,” Jeff said.

“Well, I guess it is an honor to work for the President of the United States,” Joe said.

“But especially this one,” Jeff insisted.

“Well, he’s the only one I’ve worked for,” Joe said. “At least directly. I guess everyone in the military worked for the guy before him back when he was president, but I never traveled with him on Air Force One.”

Jeff made a scoffing sound. “I would never want to work for that guy. He practically destroyed America. Thank god we got it back before he finished the job.”

Joe simply continued smiling.

Mary finally broke in and said, “Where do we sit?”

Joe said, “Oh, yeah, Come on, follow me. You’re in the VIP section. Here are your lanyards and passes. And there are masks. Made special for the occasion. Red white and blue, with the President’s family logo.” He handed out the items to each of them. “People usually don’t wear them at the rallies if they have a medallion. They’re mostly just a souvenir. But since the President has had the virus, more people do wear them.”

He walked them up to the front of the arena, then gestured for them to go up the stairs and onto the stage.

“We’re right up here?” Mary said, almost bubbling.

“You are going to be right behind the President,” Joe said. “But don’t worry, there will be monitors so you can see his face.”

“Wow,” Jeff said. “Wow. I can’t believe this. Thanks, man.”

“No problem,” Joe said. “Unfortunately, now you’ll have to wait about 90 minutes till he gets here.”

“No problem,” Jeff said.

“Nearest restrooms are behind this grandstand,” Joe said. “I would be sure to be in your places, though, about 30 minutes before air time, lanyards on. Say 7:30. Gives you about an hour.”

“Okay,” Mary said, happily. “Wow, thanks so much for this.”

“My pleasure,” Joe said. “I will try to come see you one more time before the thing starts. But I may not be able to, once things get going. My attention may have to be elsewhere. And I am sure I’ll have to bail out as soon as POTUS – the President – leaves. But let’s stay in touch from now on, okay?”

“You bet,” Jeff said.

“Great to see you, Jane,” Joe said. “I’ll be in touch about your trip.”

“Great,” Jane said, breaking into a broad smile. “Can I do it in April?”

“I don’t see why not,” Joe answered. “Bookings are still light on the airlines and in the hotels. Should be a snap getting reservations, even late.”

Jane looked to Joe as though she was both happy and relieved.

“Okay, I’m off. Enjoy,” Joe said. He left them marveling over their seats. The least I could possibly do for them, he thought as he made his way toward the designated security command post.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

84

Wednesday, March 31, 2021, 8:00 PM Central Daylight Time

Jane followed her parents and Joe from their seats toward a door in the back that was heavily guarded by men with rifles. Joe nodded to each of the security men and displayed their passes as he ushered them through the door.

Joe had not said anything about the purpose of this unexpected detour, but her father already seemed almost giddy as they continued past a waiter and turned down a cinderblock hallway.

“If this is what I think it is…” Jeff said.

Joe simply smiled and stopped at a door on which was taped a piece of paper with the letters “XO” printed on it, which had two more armed and masked security men on either side of it.

Joe nodded to the others and knocked twice. The door opened, and Joe turned to usher his cousins in.

“There better be a full arena out there this time, or your ass will be on a bus back to Texas or wherever you are from,” a familiar voice yelled.

A masked female aide, eyes heavily made up, as if for a TV appearance, hurried up to them.

“This might not be the best time,” she said.

“God damn it,” the President yelled. “I want bodies up to the rafters, you hear me?” He hung up on whoever he had been talking to and turned toward Joe and his family.

“Who’s this?” he asked imperiously. “Just minutes before I go on?”

“Sir,” Joe said, “I apologize, but my cousins here are huge fans.”

“Who are you?” the President said.

“I work for Max. My name’s Joe Durcan, Mr. President. Terry told me he was going to talk to you about this. I’ve worked security for you for the last couple of months. These are my cousins, and they are big fans of yours…”

The President bared his teeth and narrowed his eyes.

“Who let you in here?”

“Sir?”

“Who let you in here?” He turned to his female aide. “Who are these people? Why aren’t they wearing masks?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” she said.

“Sir, I assure you…” Joe said. At that moment, Jeff stepped forward, but kept a discreet distance.

“Mr. President, it is the honor of my life to meet you.”

The President looked at Jeff, his face softening a bit.

“Okay,” the President said.

“I have supported you from the beginning, and so has my wife Mary here.”

“That’s great, that’s great,” the President said.

“Mr. President, under Okomo we had no hope and too much change, but you gave us hope again.”

“I’m starting to like this guy,” the President said. “But put a mask on around me.”

Joe flipped the mask he had around his neck on. Jeff and Mary began fumbling with their “souvenir” masks.

“Now gel up,” the President said. “Get some gel over here,” he said to the aide, who had already had a mask on.

Jane, looking with a bit of disbelief at her parents, had begun the process of “masking up.” The aide squirted gel on her hands last; Jane rubbed her hands together.

“All right, that’s more like it,” the President said.

“Sir,” Jeff said, “as I said, we had no hope under Okomo. Your campaign gave me hope, and I have recovered from opioid addiction and jail and returned to my family.”

The President’s eyes narrowed again.

“So,” Jeff barreled on, “I was hoping that you might find it in your heart to pardon me for my crimes and restore my voting rights, so I can keep voting for you in the future.”

The President stared at Jeff in disbelief. Mary, Joe, and Jane looked at Jeff with wide eyes, open mouths invisible behind their masks.

There was a beat, then the President said to Joe, “You’re my security? And you’re bringing drug addict criminals in here?”

“Sir…”

“Don’t ‘Sir’ me. What are you, some kind of baby?”

“He’s a Delta Force commander,” Jeff said, inadvertently promoting Joe by several ranks.

“Then he should know what to do,” the President said, his fury rising.

He addressed the female aide again. “Anne, get these fucking people out of here. They could be spies for all I know.”

“Yes, sir.” The aide looked pleadingly at Joe.

“Okay, Mr. President,” Joe said. “We’re going. Good luck out there.”

“It’s ‘Break a leg,’ you idiot,” the President said. “Anne, I don’t want people who don’t know show business around me.”

“Yes, sir,” the aide said, grabbing Joe by the arm and pushing him toward the door.

It was Jeff’s turn to stare open-mouthed. Joe shepherded him and Mary and Jane toward the door.

As they exited, Jane could hear the President say, “I don’t have time for some fat drug addict and his fat wife and his…his skinny pale daughter, right before I’m supposed to go on stage. This is ridiculous.”

As the door closed, Joe whispered to his cousins, “I’m so sorry. I was told it would be okay.”

Jeff waved him off. “Don’t worry, Joe. Thanks, anyway.”

Mary said to Jeff, “What was that about a pardon?”

Jeff said, “A guy like me, meeting a guy like him, I can’t pass up a chance like that.”

Mary and Jane both looked at Jeff as if he were crazy. Jeff did not notice.

“Anyway,” Jeff said slowly, looking down toward the ground as they walked back toward their seats, “I don’t blame him. He’s got liberals out to get him all the time. He has to be suspicious or he wouldn’t survive. I just wish he could relax and enjoy his success. But they won’t let him.”

But Jane’s attention had been taken by someone else they were passing in the hallway, going in the opposite direction.

It was Jake, with that Ban guy. She had seen his eyes fall on her, uncomprehending for a second. Then he had realized who she was, and he gave a wild look of terror and accelerated away from her.

Jane whipped her head around and could not restrain a snorting laugh. Jake was practically sprinting down the hallway away from her.

“What’s so funny?” her mother asked.

“Everything,” Jane said, and turned her gaze back forward, giggling.

She suddenly remembered a quote from a movie she had seen. “History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind – with a bucket.”

My history surely has been, she thought, laughing again. First her father, then Danny, then Jake, then the President, and now even Joe. Good, solid, quiet Joe.

Well, maybe Joe would still come through for her with those tickets. But if not, Jane decided, she would find a way. She still liked Joe. She loved her father. She missed her brother.

But as her laughter subsided, she made herself a promise.

She would never put her fate or her happiness in the hands of a man, ever again.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

85

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

86

Wednesday, March 31, 2021, 9:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Bill Ruppert collected his cell phone, wallet, jacket, keys, and briefcase from the property window on his way out. He wearily slung the jacket over his shoulder and called his wife.

“My god, Bill,” she said. “What’s going on? Where can I pick you up? I’m out front.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said. “I just want to get home.”

“Where do you want me to pick you up?”

“Can you come around the back of the Lockup? I’ve been assured I can leave privately if you do.”

“Of course,” she said. “See you in a minute.”

After getting directions to the private rear exit, he opened a door that led into a dark hallway. He walked wearily down the hall toward the double doorway marked EXIT. As he approached the door, a large guard stepped into his path.

“I’m just leaving,” Bill said wearily.

“Wait here,” the guard said.

After a minute, Bill said, “I’ve been released. I was never even under arrest. I’ve been here four hours since I was told I was not under arrest. What’s the holdup?”

The guard seemed to be listening to an earpiece.

“One minute? Okay,” he said to whoever was talking to him.

“Excuse me,” Bill said, exasperated now. “I have every right to leave.” He made a move to go around the guard.

The guard moved into his path.

“Just one minute, sir,” the guard said.

A few seconds later, the door behind him opened, and there were footsteps in the dark hallway behind them. Another guard approached, holding another person by the shoulder. Lights behind them made it difficult for Bill to see who it was, but it appeared to be a woman.

“Can I go now?” Bill said.

“One more minute,” the guard said. Bill noticed for the first time that these guards did not have District of Columbia insignia on their uniforms. What is going on here? he thought.

Just at that moment three other people, all men, were brought through a different, side door, into the darkened hallway. Nods were exchanged between the guards.

“Ready?” the guard in front of Bill said.

The other guards appeared to nod. Bill let one of the other guards and the first prisoner – was she a prisoner, or another person like him? – pass him. The guard still blocked his view of the woman – that it was a woman was now clear – who seemed to be wearing a scarf over her head. Whoever it was moved toward the door ahead of Bill, and both guards stepped to the side.

Bill hesitated for a moment, then followed the second prisoner to the large metal door. The three other detainees were being led forward behind them.

A conservative gentleman to the last, he came forward to open the door for the female prisoner. He pushed on the horizontal latch of the door. She turned toward him, and he recognized the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee just as the world seemed to explode. A dozen flashes seemed to go off in his face. He instinctively closed his eyes and turned backward, looking into the hallway.

When his eyesight recovered a bit, he looked back and saw the former President, Okomo, alongside the 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate and his son. A phalanx of at least two dozen reporters quickly surrounded him in a semi-circle, just as if they had been arranged by someone to greet him.

“Why were you arrested?”

“Is it true that you all conspired to create the Russia hoax?”

“When is the trial?”

“How long were you five plotting against the President? Since 2016, or was it even earlier?”

“Have you retained counsel?”

“How do you answer the accusations?”

“Will you now release the missing emails?”

“Were all the staff of the Special Counsel in on the entire Hoax? How did you five communicate while the Hoax was ongoing?”

Bill squinted and shaded his eyes with his hand and turned toward the people beside him in incomprehension; they met his gaze with equal incomprehension.

Signs blaring WOLF NEWS surrounded them; but he also saw reporters from the New York Record and the Washington Tribune. The light was blinding, and Ruppert instinctively pulled his jacket over his head and held it in front of his eyes.

And just like that, as far as the outside world was concerned, Bill Ruppert, Lieutenant, USMC, law-and-order prosecutor, G-Man, and Special Counsel, became Bill Ruppert, just another shame-faced perp holding a jacket over his head.

Paul, he thought, you son of a bitch.

He could deny it no longer. Now he had to admit that he really was exactly the political naïf and patsy much of the “liberal-biased press” had made him out to be for the past two years.

He could barely restrain himself from laughing as he fought his way through them, away from his equally unsuspecting “alleged co- conspirators,” out toward the car containing his horrified wife, the car that would take him to the humiliating denouement of an illustrious career in service to the public.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

87

Wednesday, March 31, 2021, 10:30 PM Central Daylight Time

Joe was trying to stop the flow of blood from his arm when he saw that Max was running toward them, a pistol in his hand. Joe, woozy, trained his rifle at Max and said loudly, “Drop it.”

For one second, Max looked as though he was about to raise his weapon to fire it. But then he dropped it on the stage. Joe crawled forward and grabbed it, then crawled backward to the President.

Pandemonium had broken out in the audience. The Secret Service agents, banished to the outskirts of the arena by King, had reached the President in an impressively short time, and now surrounded him and Joe. Joe finally dropped his and Terry’s weapons and was leaning against the rostrum.

“The Vice President and the Speaker of the House,” Joe said to one of the Secret Service agents. “This looks like a conspiracy. Like Booth and Lincoln. You’ve got to warn them.”

“Do you have any other weapons on you?” the agent asked him.

“No,” Joe said, and slid down to the floor, suddenly feeling both the wound in his upper arm and what felt like a broken ankle from his ride down the ladder. Then he sat up again.

“Kyle and Terry,” he said. “The sniper in the back of the arena and the other guy over there. You’ve got to get them. Kyle shot me. Terry there was going to take out the President. Kyle was supposed to take me out, then Terry could take out the President and blame it on me. Max saw that the plot would be exposed, so he was trying to get me first. He’s fourth in line to the presidency. He needed to take out the President, the Vice, and the Speaker. You’ve got to get Kyle, and protect the other two, if they are still alive.”

“Terry was going to shoot me?” the President said, blankly.

“For Max,” Joe said. “Max wanted to take over, then pin the whole thing on me.”

Joe’s head began to swim. The Secret Service agent was yelling into his mouthpiece.

“Seal the doors,” the agent said. “Announce to the crowd that they should get as low as possible and no one is to leave. And I need a medic up here.”

“Is someone else shot?” Joe said.

“It’s for you,” the Secret Service agent said. “You’re bleeding out from your arm.”

“Oh,” said Joe, and passed out.

“This guy saved my life,” the President said. “From Terry? The guy I pardoned? And Max? My Secretary of State?”

“I don’t know. It looks that way, maybe,” the Secret Service agent said. “We can sort it all out later.”

He turned to another agent who had just arrived. “Where’s the secure room for POTUS?”

“It’s behind the stage here,” the other agent said, and ran off to clear a path.

A shock of pain from his shoulder and leg suddenly woke Joe back up.

“Terry and Kyle,” he blurted.

“Terry’s here,” the agent said. “We’re looking for Kyle.”

Joe fell back and the room began to swim again. A medic arrived and began to cut his sleeve off to apply a tourniquet.

“You saved my life. I’m gonna give you the Medal of Freedom,” the President said.

Joe turned toward him, a quizzical look on his face.

“The same thing you gave Max and Terry?” he said.

The President looked confused.

“Colored ribbons,” Joe said.

He tried to raise his head to look for his family again, but had to lie back again.

He suddenly thought of Vaneida.

Vaneida – I had something I had to tell her.

Then he lost consciousness in earnest.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

88

Wednesday, March 31, 2021, 11:30 PM Central Daylight Time

Mike sat stunned in his usual seat at the Bank Street Bar and Grill. He had been drinking silently, steadily, and slowly since early evening, trying to wrap his mind around the loss of Pete earlier in the day.

One of the regulars had walked up to him around seven o’clock and put his arm around his shoulder. Mike looked at him, expecting condolences.

“Listen, Mike,” Big Al had said. “A couple of us have been talking it over, and we think that maybe you need to find somewhere else to drink.”

“What?” Mike said, uncomprehendingly.

“We tolerated you mouthing off about the President for all these years because of Pete. Pete liked you, I don’t know why. So we accepted you being here. But now that Pete’s gone, we think you should probably go.”

Mike simply stared at him.

“You can stay for tonight,” Al said. “But I think it’s best for everyone if you shove off after that.” With that, Al took his hand off Mike’s shoulder and moved back down the bar to his friends, Jimmy and Chuck.

Mike simply looked at the place on his shoulder where Al’s hand had been. At the time he had thought, Perfect end to a perfect day.

***

By 10:30 or so, Mike was thinking about getting a cab. He didn’t care if they towed his car. He was not going to finish this particular day with a DUI. Knowing he would not be driving, he decided to order one last beer. He raised it, glassy-eyed, in the air toward the troika of Al, Jimmy, and Chuck, his exile committee.

“To Pete,” Mike said.

The three sons of bitches raised their bottles back to him.

Without Pete, he thought, there was not much to keep him here anyway. Maybe drinking less beer would not be the worst thing in the world. He suddenly realized he would miss Janet, and that realization was about to make tears appear in his eyes for the first time that night, when someone gave a long, low whistle, pointing to the big screen on which Wolf News had a breaking story.

“Holy shit,” Chuck said.

“They tried to assassinate the President,” Al said. “At the rally.”

The three of them turned toward Mike, with menacing looks, but he was staring at the screen, with his mouth open.

Ian Flannelly was on the air. They turned the volume up.

“…Sketchy reports at this time, but it appears that there was an attempt made on the life of the President at his rally tonight. We have a correspondent on the scene at the moment. Greg, can you hear me?”

“Yes, Ian, I can hear you.”

“What appears to have happened?”

“The word, Ian, is that an attempt on the President’s life was foiled by his security team and the Secret Service. The President is said to be unharmed. He has been whisked away by the Secret Service to an undisclosed location.”

“What exactly happened, and who was behind this attempt?”

“It is not known for certain, but off the record, a Secret Service agent has told me that someone dressed as one of his personal security detail, or perhaps several of them, were involved in this plot. One person was shot, a member of the security detail, the man who apparently foiled this attempt, the hero, as it seems, according to my source. His name was, is, Joseph Durcan. He has been evacuated to a hospital nearby by the on-site emergency medical staff that accompanies the President everywhere. At least one more shooter, apparently, is at large, and is said to be armed and very dangerous. The Secret Service has also taken into custody two other suspects in connection with this, what appears to be this expansive plot, to assassinate not only the President, but also the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, and, one must assume, the Secretary of State, the three people in line to assume the office of the Presidency in case of the death of the President.”

“This is incredible, Greg. Is there any statement by the President? Will he be appearing tonight?”

“That is unclear… wait, I am getting word that the President will be speaking to the press pool right now, from his undisclosed location.”

The screen switched to a makeshift briefing dais in what looked like a hotel or arena basement. The President walked up to the microphone and grabbed the rostrum with both hands. He appeared pale and in some pain. Cameras flashed and shutters rattled like soft gunfire.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I just wanted to come out here on the air to reassure America and the world that I am fine. This plot to kill me has failed. Unfortunately, we had one person shot in this attempt, and I hope he will be fine, he’s a tough hombre. The leftist violent forces that have wanted to end this administration, that wanted to kill your President, have failed. I will remain. In the next few days we will get to the bottom of this sinister plan to murder me. That is all.”

“Mr. President,” a reporter shouted at him. “Is it true that you were saved by the actions of a Joseph Durcan?”

“That’s what it looks like, yes.”

“Mr. President, an eyewitness says that Mr. Durcan said that Mr. Sweeney and Mr. King were part of this plot.”

“Who was that? That’s wrong,” the President said. “This was a leftist plot, probably with Democrat backing. They can’t stand that I won again. I’m just happy that this great patriot, Joe Durcan, he’s an Army Ranger and Delta Force Ranger, I believe, was there to protect me and others – and others – from this evil leftist plot. I pray that Mr. Durcan makes it. He lost a lot of blood, I’ll tell you, a lot of blood, you can see some of it’s on me, but I’m sure our medical team will patch him up and he will be back on his feet soon. That’s all for right now.” The President turned away from the microphone and walked behind a makeshift curtain.

“Well there you have it,” Greg, the Wolf News correspondent, said.

“Well that was something,” Ian Flannelly said. “Our President standing tall after an attempt on his life. Amazing stuff.”

Mike was sitting there, staring at the screen. The three men down the bar had risen up and were approaching him. He thought, I should get into some sort of defensive posture here.

But a second later, the three were pounding him on the back and shouting congratulations at him.

“That’s your son!” Al said.

“Your kid saved the President!” Chuck said.

Jimmy grabbed his shoulders as if about to give him a hug, then simply shook him. “Your kid is a hero!”

Mike was speechless.

“Are you going to go see him?” Al said.

Mike thought, I feel suddenly sober, but I’m in no shape to drive all night to see him – where do they have him, anyway?

He put his head on the bar.

Janet came up to him. “Do you need a ride home?” she asked.

“I think I do,” Mike said.

“I’ll close up and take you,” she said.

“Thanks,” Mike said.

“I can’t believe Cliffy’s son saved our President,” Chuck said.

Mike just stared at him.

“All right,” Janet said to the whole bar. “We’re closing. I need to get this guy home. All of youse, pay up and head for the exits.”

The bar patrons, who had dwindled to a handful aside from Mike and the three amigos, shuffled to their feet and reached for their wallets. Mike did the same.

“Yours is on me, honey,” Janet said. “Let’s go. Pedro,” she yelled toward the kitchen. “You lock up, right?”

Pedro appeared in the doorway and nodded.

Janet helped Mike to his feet and they went out the door.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian

89

Thursday, April 1, 2021, 8AM Eastern Daylight Time

Joe woke up in the ICU. He looked across to see Maxfield King sitting in a chair next to his bed, staring at him. It took him a moment to figure out where he was and who was with him.

When he did, he tried to jump out of the bed. His arm and leg immediately objected strenuously.

“Whoa, pardner, whoa,” Max said. “You’re connected to a lot of tubes. You ain’t going anywhere.”

Joe sank back into bed. The mere effort to move had made his head swim. He concentrated hard simply to stave off the darkness at the edges of his visual field.

“That was some stunt you pulled,” Max said. “You’re a big hero now.” Joe did not answer.

“And that was some crazy story you told the Secret Service,” he said. “I can only attribute it to loss of blood.”

Joe stared at him. He felt around for a call button.

“You looking for this?” Max said. He held the call button in his hand. Joe sank back again.

“Now I thought about keeping you on the payroll,” Max said, getting up from his chair. “I thought, here’s a guy who’s America’s new hero. He saved the President. That’s got to look good for my organization.”

Max now stood over him, looking into his eyes.

“But then I thought, no, this guy has some bad ideas. He might try to tell those bad ideas to the wrong person. He might fill the President’s head with some crazy ideas about Max King. And if I allow him to do that, well, who loses? Me, sure. But even more, America.”

Joe stared back into Max’s eyes. He finally spoke.

“Even if you get rid of me, the Secret Service is going to find out what happened,” he said. “Kyle or Terry will tell the truth. Or one of the other mopes you sent to kill the Speaker and the VP.”

“The Speaker and the VP are fine,” Max said. “No one touched them.”

“So you called them off in time?” Joe said.

“I didn’t have to call off anything. You imagined this whole thing. I knew you weren’t all there when I hired you. I knew you were damaged. I thought I would give you a chance. And look at how you repaid me. You had a chance to get in on the ground floor of something great. But you had to betray me. Twice. Once to those terrorists, and once again last night.”

“‘Terrorists’ my ass. They’re about as dangerous as the Girl Scouts. And betray you?” Joe said. “I’m the one who got shot. I saw Kyle’s rifle pointing straight at me. You set me up. You were going to pin the whole goddamned thing on me. How the hell did you even make it in here? Why aren’t you in jail?”

Max laughed.

“When I said I wanted to go see my employee, he told me ‘Sure.’ The old man loves me.”

“The old man you tried to kill?”

“You’re imagining things. You’ve lost a lot of blood. I think you need some sleep.”

Joe saw Max pulling the plug on his monitor and swiftly plugging in something else in its place. He tried to resist, but Max was too fast and too strong. Too unwounded.

“You pick a side,” Max said as he shoved the pillow over Joe’s mouth and nose and leaned in hard, “and you stick with it.” Joe’s face grew red, then purple, and then faded to pale. Three minutes later, Max stood back up.

“You should have picked a side,” Max whispered, replacing the pillow and plugging the monitor back in. It immediately began beeping loudly.

Max walked to the door and yelled to the nurses’ station, “I think we need a doctor here.”

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian