Chapter 36

Tuesday, 6 February 2001

On Monday night, after his shift painting the underground parking garage beneath the US Capital, Tommy Sussex crawled into a hidden space under the floor of his truck. It was cramped and uncomfortable, but Mistress Angel had promised him a night of sexual pleasures. And I gave it to him. By stimulating his brain in just the right way, I turned him on to unimaginable orgasms. They flowed into every REM cycle of his sleep and then ran on in his memories in between times. The ‘in between’ sexual thoughts seemed as real to Tommy as if I was physically there. Straight sex. Kinky sex. Things that were physically impossible.

I tweaked his sleepy-time synapses and he slept through the day. More than any ‘too much Viagra’ event, poor Tommy was hard and sexually ready to go, long after his semen output turned into a dribble that would have frustrated a normal male. Tommy was, however, no longer normal. He slept quietly, and dribbled into his pants over and over and over.

I reached the Secret Service Agents by expanding Tommy’s ‘contact’ zone when the Agents came close to examine his truck at several intervals through the day of February 6. They found a mostly empty truck with some buckets of white paint. With a little help, the Agents never thought to check under the truck, nor did they report the truck’s existence, nor to have it towed away, as was their normal procedure.

At 9:00 p.m., Bush entered the House of Representatives, where the joint address was to take place. There were a full Cabinet of Secretaries, all the newly elected members of Congress were there. Eight members of the Supreme Court were there.

Also, at 9:00 p.m., Tommy Sussex roused himself from his almost 24 hours of sexual excess. He was tired and stiff and hungry. He pushed the release in his hidden compartment, and re-entered the storage area of the truck. He went and got himself a beer and a sandwich from the cooler he had there.

At 9:05 p.m. he pried off the lid of his paint bucket as he’d practiced many, many times. Taking a commercial taser from his coveralls, he put the live ends of the taser into the paint. He took a swig of his beer, and pushed a button on the taser.

The taser went ZAAAP. Almost immediately the bucket went boom. Then the other barrels of near-paint went BOOM. Then the accumulated paint on the supports and walls and pillars went KABOOOOMMM.

And the building that housed the halls of Congress collapsed with a roar that was heard across the city.

...

Well, that went fairly well, considering I’d had some six hundred people – give or take a few score – killed.

I mean, I knew what was going to happen. I’d lived through it before, remember. 9/11. The subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And always remembered the reason I was here, in this past. My ‘mission’, as explained by Red, was to prevent humanity from dying out. So in that context, I had no qualms about killing off the entire top echelon of the United States government. I hope the Great Spirit can take a joke.

I was watching on TV, the ‘designated survivor’ of the Cabinet. I was in the Executive Office Building, doing some paperwork. Rock and Bear were dozing in lounge chairs in the office.

The only thing was, I was only thirty-five, a token Indian rich girl in a Republican administration, and completely unschooled in how a government works. Now I had to create one from scratch. The only person who remained was Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She, by pure luck, was in the hospital getting a pre-cancerous lump in her liver zapped by radiation. And she was in her seventies.

The Secret Service clamped a cordon around me, trapped as I was in the Executive Office Building. “Gentlemen, who’s in charge of this squad?” I asked one of them and almost immediately, a man showed himself.

“Special Agent Rob MacKenzie, Ma’am,” he said. “I’m in charge of your security.”

“Given what we’ve all seen on the TV...” I gestured to the pile of smoking rubble that was the Capitol. “ ... and given that we have no idea who’s alive and who’s dead, somebody has to be in charge, and that apparently, is me. I want to get the highest person you can find at FBI, and the CIA, and the head of your Service to meet with me, asap. Second, I want to talk to whoever is in charge at the Pentagon and the National Security Council, also. Get somebody to guard Mrs. Justice Ginsburg, at whatever hospital she’s at.

“Get me someplace safe, but it’s got to have TV cameras, for at least a couple of hours. Find Jim Hawthorne, my press secretary, and the White House press secretary. And find me a federal judge.”

He was taken aback at my string of orders. “Come on, MacKenzie! Get moving. Until somebody higher in the food chain appears, I’m the Acting President. I know the Constitution, even if you don’t.”

The five Secret Service agents had a quick conference and hustled me to the basement of the EOB. Rock and Bear were included, if somewhat confused. Five minutes later we were there. This was a conference office. Not secure, but it was hidden away enough to provide some security. One of them was hooking up a video screen to a laptop.

I looked at him. “OK. Considering what happened to the Capitol, I understand nobody wants to go to the White House, but Jesus! A fucking laptop? Is it even secure?”

“Ma’am. VPN connection is probably the best we can do right now.” He hit some keys, made a connection. Faces started to appear.

“David Rollins, FBI,” said a bland ivy-league face. Him I recognized from the first cabinet meeting. It seems the head of the FBI didn’t attend the putative State of the Union.

Three more faces. “Susan Pocci, CIA.” I hadn’t met her. “Carl Westinghouse, Deputy NSC.” “Robert James, Secret Service.”

“I am Alexis White Owl, Secretary of the Interior. As of now, I’m Acting President, until we can find somebody alive who outranks me.” There was some abortive statement from Westinghouse. “Somebody has to be in charge, and the Constitution says that’s me, at the moment.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Rollins.

“I hope I don’t have to tell the FBI what it needs to do right now. You’ll have the cooperation of the CIA, yes?” Pocci nodded. “Go ... do it. Get me real data, as soon as you can. James, the Service may have lost a lot of Agents tonight, and protectees. You’re in a supporting role for now at the Capitol. Do what you can to help. On other issues, you have your normal duties, plus Mrs. Justice Ginsburg. Right?” He acknowledged. They clicked off. “Westinghouse, your boss was in the Capitol?”

“Yes.”

“All right, we’ve got the Pentagon on next.” The tech who worked the laptop hit some buttons. Five guys and a woman appeared on the screen. None was in uniform, but in casual ‘at home’ clothes. “Do you all know each other?” I asked.

The woman answered. “Yes. If I may, who are you?”

“I am Alexis White Owl, Secretary of the Interior. I was the ‘left out’ cabinet officer. So, that makes me Acting President, until someone more senior shows up. You all know Mr. Westinghouse of the NSC, and William Baxter at DOD. I want us at Defcon 3, purely as a defensive measure, until we know more. Get yourselves security from your services, five minutes ago. Any questions?”

The man with the crew cut – although that described almost all of them – said, “Qualnik, Army. Ma’am what should we do if somebody starts something?”

“General Qualnik. I hope your planning covers that in detail, and you are merely a bit fuzzy right now. We are at Defcon 3. React accordingly. I don’t have time or the knowledge to cover every detail.”

“Uh ... yes, Ma’am. Sorry about that. We have our orders.”