Chapter 17

Benjamin got his fifty cents worth of loving from the family, and stayed with me when the rest were driven back to Reagan National, and our jet. I needed to have a touch of home, and since it made no sense to risk embarrassing Charles by suddenly having a very modern family unit, Benjamin was as good as it was going to get, anytime soon.

We went back into the residence and I picked up the phone and reset all my appointments. There was much to do and many people to do it to – uh, with.

"Hey! Who's this?" Rick stopped to pet Benjamin as he walked into my study.

"This is the amazing, wonder-dog, Benjamin. He's my best bud, so get used to him, really fast, or I'll let him bite you." Benjamin took a sniff but passed on the bite. He still had that sixth sense about who I liked, even if I was in another body, and who I didn't. Apparently Rick passed muster.

"Mr. Vice President, the research you asked for; the amount and consistency of Russian influence in American broadcasting is unusually unique. Russia Today is a daily news program that pretty much presents Pravda style disinformation, designed to sway low information voters, and disaffected voters – the ones who seem to always choose to hate America first – with little to no facts, and lots of innuendo, lies, completely fabricated incidents, and a slate of issues that always favor a particular Russian mogul who has lots to lose if fracking ever takes off like it might.

"There are many far less blatant Russian propaganda machines, plowing Putin's agenda into America, but Russia Today sets the pace, chooses the topics, and sets the agenda pretty effectively. Several - not many - but several colleges and universities cite Russia Today as the Bible on environmental issues, and conveniently ignore its dramatically anti-gay agenda, which should be surprising. The reality is that academia, like everywhere else in American society, has lots of people who ignore everything except whatever they want to hear, and demonize the rest, no matter how they have to shelve their powers of reason and logic to do so.

"Russia's leaders seem intent on recreating the old Soviet, cold war days of the nineteen sixties and seventies, while availing themselves of all the new technology while they do it. What I mean is, their approach is old school, but their methods are pretty up to date, Sir."

We batted around the research Rick and his team came up with, and I asked him to summarize it into a single sheet and circulate it to our folks, so we could discuss it in a few days. We moved on to more mundane things, but the real meat of our appointment was Russia and what might come next if we do nothing to reverse the trends.

Jason was in full excitement mode, running around, taking calls, making appointments, asking questions and giving snippy answers when the occasion required it. I was beginning to really like him, but Charles was taking him back, so I carefully kept him totally in the dark about my projects.

Some of the folks Rick brought in had worked so long in federal service that they were certain no intelligent life existed within the US government. Two stood out like halogen lights, in a parking lot full of incandescent bulbs. Yosef, an immigrant from Israel, brought a knife sharp analysts' mind to every task we gave him. His rapier wit and facility for numbers made him the go-to guy for long formulas and complicated budgets. We needed him closer, and I had him transferred to my permanent staff.

Jason liked Yosef, but hated having an immigrant so close to the action.

Roberta was the antithesis of Yossef. She brought an amazingly calm and brutally clear headed eye to each situation we examined, or considered taking against. She had the gift of uncovering the secondary agenda, buried beneath the obvious one, and presenting it before we began to discuss actions, reactions, or one of our wait-and-see methods. Her catches were quickly becoming legendary, and she, like Yosef, hated the bureaucracy of modern government, so when we proposed circumventing the machine, she was all in, all the time.

Roberta was tall, painfully thin, with no discernable figure, straight, black hair that hung limp, and coal black eyes, that could turn frosty in a heartbeat. I wondered, more than once, if she wasn't better suited to be in on the action, instead of information gathering.

Where Roberta was driven, Yosef was intense, but his wicked sense of humor often cut through the tension, and got everybody back on an even keel. Together they drilled through every level of electronic protection, mining for details about possible Russian agents - active, and sleeper – scattered around America. They and two others they hand-picked, worked out of offices I had updated for their needs, in the basement of the Residence, and met with me regularly to keep me up to date, and help us draw a clearer picture of our enemies, and their intentions.

Rick and I reviewed a lot of data, and I surreptitiously kept abreast of Jack and Winnie, and their progress, by way of embedded messages in their facebook page. Winnie had a hacker on our payroll that could build backdoors into web pages that no one could find. We used them to keep in touch.

The Judge became a regular visitor to the Residence, and we developed a careful arrangement, where he brought us the best intel his guys uncovered, and we shared thing his guys never imagined. Between us we built a credible intelligence vault that helped identify, and track over one-hundred probable sleeper agents, inside the US. Once identified, we kept them under an electronic microscope that tracked their every move.

Once we separated harmless from harmful, we shared reams of documents with the Judge outing numerous inactive foreign agents. In return the Judge delivered extensive files on targets we identified as either active, or dangerous.

Dangerous suspects were surveilled wall to wall, and some just happened to disappear right before they would have done their spy thing. The fruits of those interrogations were carefully edited before delivery to the Judge. Over the next six months our team helped permanently remove fifty-seven threats from America, and the Judge oversaw arrests and trials of some forty-five more.

The haul in terms of intel, was staggering, and we interrupted delivery of tens of millions of dollars in bribes, hush money, payments, and expenses from reaching suspected terrorists, and foreign agents. The Judge loved getting his hands on a few million dollars at a time, as his teams, using our intel, unearthed, identified, and captured Muslim, and Russian spies, would-be suicide bombers, and terrorists. Jack's guys got rich, and Winnie's team did too, but the country was the real winner as we thinned the radical Muslim herd, and cut off supply lines used by America's enemies.

That we did so without the media or alphabet agencies getting wind of our activities was the best part. We flew beneath the radar because no one would suspect the Vice President of leading a double life, heading a rogue, anti-terror team, and delivering dead on results.

Regina delivered a bouncing baby girl, Meredith Jean, on a Friday night, when I just happened to be visiting Branson, and happened by the hospital on other business. I held mother and child for hours, as we all crowded in to love on both. Meredith Jean looked exactly like my (Carl's) mother. She reminded me so much of my mother I couldn't help but shed a tear for her, even as I cried in joy for holding my new born daughter.

Beth Ann gave birth almost a week later, to Carl Fleming, Junior, on an afternoon when I was unexpectedly visiting my new home in Branson, and decided to tour the hospital, again. Carl, Junior reminded me of me, a long time ago, but I kept that to myself.

We spent lots of time together, but always on pins and needles, trying to keep it under everyone's radar. Things went along quietly for us, even though we were decimating secret enemy operations across America.

It all changed on a Tuesday afternoon.

Colleen and I were still huffing and puffing from GREAT sex in my private suite. She'd flown in to spend the week with me, and we were careful to make the BEST use of the time, when the doors flew open and my Secret Service team charged in and announced that the security perimeter had been breached, and we were basically under attack.

Colleen wrapped herself in a sheet, I handed her her clothes, and we both donned robes, so we could move to the bunker room. There was shouting and shooting outside. It sounded far away from the Residence, so we were safe, if only for the moment.

Once Colleen was safely inside the bunker, I grabbed my Glock and a belt of extra clips, picked up an automatic shotgun, along with a belt of extra shells, and followed Steve towards the kitchen entrance. Our outside guards were being supplemented with naval assets, and I could hear sirens coming from everywhere, including across the water, so lots of help was on the way. We only need hold them off for a little while.