Chapter 36

Our dark ops people discovered a small group of federal employees using the intranet to figure out where I was. Their work was quite secret. It just wasn’t secret enough. Once they were fingered, their every move, word and deed was recorded, monitored and investigated. Within two weeks it was apparent that they had an alarming number of inside eyes betraying us. Two weeks after that a large number of those people had quietly ‘resigned’ and left government service and were never heard from again.

Burger was tipped off by someone about the activities swirling around his former crime partners and began to sing like a canary, trying to save himself from the needle. His information was patently worthless and reminded us of how little his controllers regarded his participation.

Funny how that works.

The four operations on for the night I was shot went off with no real problems. One of our operators sprained a knee and had to be helped into the helicopter after the incursion. He was patched up and back to work in a matter of day.

Our quarry was totally surprised, even if other terrorists had successfully snuck in and shot me. The four partners in terrorism were forced out of business permanently. Their remains would never be identified and the world would be better for their disappearance. Our windfall was dramatic. Between weapons, ammunition and assets we hauled in billions, some, if not most of it belonging to various former Soros operations.

We gained on them in a big way but hadn’t cracked the core of the operation to assassinate Sam. As our intelligence people added all the new details into the supercomputer, several new leads appeared and were followed up with lightning speed and nearly invisible surveillance. Our forces drew the net tighter over the next year as Sam ran for re-election. In that time there were no new attempts on his life as enemies were resettled to GITMO in Cuba and others to a succession of unmarked graves filled with cattle carcass dissolving powder.

Graydon announced and campaigned like a brain damaged terrier against Sam and me. His non-stop attacks actually drew attention to Sam’s most successful endeavors. Graydon choice to ignore success and attack our positives resulted in him LOSING the nomination at their convention. By the time the delegates gathered for the seventh delegate count, the voters had moved on to two other candidates and dropped Graydon from their list with something approaching glee. His angry, never ending rants seemed to turn off far more voters than he persuaded.

Eventually they nominated a hard core, far left, Hispanic congress member from southern California and he quickly alienated most of the rest of the country by declaring that he had no interest in the things the voters wanted. His exact words were, “The lion cares not what the sheep want.” It was received with approximately the same joy as the night Hilary Clinton called fifty-two percent of Americans a basket of deplorables. Mr. Sanchez-Gomez also managed to anger farmers and cattle ranchers, big oil and small oil well operators, the entire coal industry, as well as the many manufacturers that brought jobs back to America in the late teens. With a shrinking well of supporters, Mr. Sanchez-Gomez set out on a cross country tour attacking everything from organized religion to after school sports. By the time he got to south Florida his crowd consisted mainly of the press who fawned over every word from his lips and people wanting the free hot dogs. The re-election campaign was underwhelming and resulted in a large margin of victory on the first Tuesday in November.

With the election out of the way and free from the pressures of non-stop speeches, we buckled down and went deeper into the conspiracy against Sam.

November turned into December and official Washington began to shut down for the Christmas Holidays. Our dark ops turned up the heat on our enemies, trying to force them into the open, so they’d make a mistake that exposed more of their operation and intentions.

It almost worked way too well.

I was in a limo, being driven to a Christmas party at a well-known Washington mansion when our motorcade was attacked. The Secret Service was prepared for an attack but not of the magnitude that hit us and it was quickly apparent that we were sitting ducks.

My car seemed to be taking the worst of the fire with our motorcade circling around us to offer at least some additional protection. Automatic fire riddled the street as our attackers advanced against extremely disciplined Secret Service Agents. It was touch and go for what like seemed like hours but was only a few minutes.

During a surprise lull in the shooting we were all shocked to see our enemies suddenly flying through the air as helicopters converged from all four directions and laid down a deathly stream of fifty caliber destruction. From the ground our lead cars opened up on the attackers with bazookas hastily assembled out of the cartons and shoulder fired into the shooters.

In a split second our situation changed from resignation to overwhelming victory. The attack was broken. We escaped losing only four agents, which is a tragedy but not on the order of losing everyone and our people captured a number of live terrorists. Here we were – again – victims of inside information. Someone gave all the details of our movement to the people who set this up.

Marine Two set down in the middle of the street and a full squad of Marines surrounded me as Charger and I were moved to the waiting helo. The next thing I knew we were being led up the steps of Air Force Two and hustled out of town until things were clearer.

Dark ops had a protocol for this. Everything around the attack went dark as far as electronic communications. Our people communicated using land lines hastily plugged into nearby telephone lines. Everyone else was without communication capability while our people tried to figure out what, where, who, why and how.

Surprisingly, it worked.

One of our cloned listening posts recorded a satellite call that triangulated both parties. The conversation was a report of the attack as it occurred, giving chapter and verse to the listener. The call was received in the middle of the ocean, which means it was made to a yacht belonging to someone that wanted us dead. It didn’t really work out well, because the Air Force blew the yacht into small pieces, then picked up seven survivors, including a man who owned the yacht and when our forensic auditors finished looking into his financial dealings, had transferred hundreds of millions of dollars for various entities that were part of the Soros net. I understand he had a heart attack while under interrogation and expired but since no dead body ever surfaced, so that might have been just a rumor.

Charger and I spent Christmas in the mountains of North Carolina at my place by the cave. My former teacher and short term love, Judy was much on my mind but I resisted the impulse to make contact. Tommy’s former high school was inordinately proud to have graduated a future Vice President and too many people might have wanted to talk about it if they knew I was back.

It was while we were resting in the mountains that I saw Jennifer.

Charger and I were doing some late Christmas shopping, along with my entire detail, in Gatlinburg, when I looked up the road and saw a woman crossing the street that had to be her.

She looked wonderful.

It seemed impossible to imagine but Jennifer would have been pushing thirty. She still showed the effects of her illness but with all of that, she looked magical. Her hair was full and thick, tumbling down over her shoulders and she carried herself with such grace that I couldn’t stop myself from staring.

I was thinking hard. How does the Vice President just walk up and meet a woman without causing an all-out media incident? Charger settled it forever by hopping off his leash and running up to Jennifer, tail wagging, joyously barking and looking happy all over his body.