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  “Not unless they shoot first,” she responded before she could stop the words as the two of them sat on Air Force One en route to Florida. Vonner had provided a house on Key Largo to act as a retreat. Hudson had made the request based on wanting to escape the DC pressure cooker, but, in reality, he needed a place where he could easily get outside and beyond the reach of the countless listening devices that saturated the White House.

  He didn’t know about the eavesdropping drones camouflaged as seagulls and large flying insects.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Bastendorff left the penthouse of the massive block-wide London building which served as his worldwide headquarters, and took the lift to the fifth floor—his favorite. While the other parts of the two hundred and forty year old structure were furnished with antiques, Persian rugs, and oil paintings from prior centuries framed in ornate gold frames, the fifth floor was all done in colored plastics.

  Legos. Bastendorff had collected a set of every type of Lego ever manufactured. Too busy to put them together himself, he employed two men full-time for the task. However, each new set was only partially constructed. The last ten pieces were always saved for Bastendorff.

  He wandered through the cavernous space, where Lego trains wove through entire Lego cities, past volcanoes, police headquarters, airports, all sorts of crazy castles and fortresses, all constructed entirely out of Legos. Above his head hung Lego spaceships and all manner of interplanetary installations.

  Bastendorff, a short, pudgy, bald man with a face that often made babies cry, turned to the two assistants trailing him and asked for an update on China. While listening, he puttered with the bricks, switched mini-figures around the elaborate displays, and contemplated his next move in the chess match he was currently engaged in with his fellow REMies. As soon as they were done with China, the aides spent the next fifteen minutes giving him the latest on President Pound.

  “Thus far, he seems to be leaning slightly toward war,” one of the men told Bastendorff.

  “That may just keep him alive,” Bastendorff said. “If he starts listening to his vice president and moves in the other direction, we can easily provoke things.”

  His aides knew he was referring to the plan to have a “Chinese” shooter assassinate the president. One of them handed him a report detailing the operation and the potential scenarios that would follow the death of an American president at the hands of a killer sanctioned by China’s Communist Party.

  Bastendorff spun the propeller on a large green and black Lego helicopter. “I hope it doesn’t come to that,” he said, handing the report back to the aide. “I’ll read it later.”

  The aides looked at each other.

  Bastendorff pressed a plastic button and a volley of a dozen Lego missiles launched through the air. “I’d much prefer to use our secret weapon against the president,” Bastendorff said, surveying the damage his toy attack had done on their target. “In the meantime, let’s intensify the war between the drug cartels in Mexico, and it might be interesting if riots break out in El Salvador and Guatemala.” He twisted the tail of a four-headed Lego dragon. “Are we making any progress on the coup in Pakistan?”

  “Some,” the aide said, scanning a tablet computer.

  “I hope so. And NorthBridge?”

  “It looks like their next target is definitely going to be a Chinese container ship just outside the Port of Los Angeles.”

  “Perfect, isn’t it?” Bastendorff’s mouth formed a crooked smile, a triangle of white spit remaining in each corner. “Let’s see how the president handles that.”

  As soon as Schueller and Hudson could get alone—they met on the White House basketball court—his son explained the meaning behind Crane’s text. Gypsy, the custom-program they’d been using to discover and track events the REMies had created, had picked up some new patterning.

  “Gypsy has something, Schueller said. “Although it’s minor, it’s a lot of minor. All the patterns and evidence taken together has Crane thinking there’s a good chance that NorthBridge might have Rochelle.”

  Hudson had only recently shared the story of that long-ago night with his son as part of his attempt to try and forgive himself. Schueller, although stunned by the revelation, had handled it well. Somehow, it made him love his father even more, knowing he had big faults of his own.

  “Damn,” the president said, staring into the distance as a cardinal landed on a southern magnolia. “We’ve got to find her.”

  “The FBI is already looking,” Schueller said, taking a three-point shot and making it.

  “They’re looking for an escaped fugitive,” the president said bitterly. “They have no idea how important she is.”

  “You can’t really tell them.”

  “No, but it doesn’t appear they can do much about NorthBridge anyway. I’ll have to find someone who can.” The president looked out across the ellipse. “Booker Lipton.”

  “Isn’t that kind of like making a deal with the devil?” Schueller asked, genuinely concerned. “He’s a REMie.”

  “My father always said, ‘know your priorities.’ Rochelle first, next NorthBridge, and then the REMies,” the president said.

  “Yeah, but, Dad, don’t you see?” Schueller asked. “Rochelle and NorthBridge are just distractions. It’s what the REMies always do, that’s why they never get caught. They keep us looking at something else.”

  “Rochelle is more than a distraction,” the president said. “She’s the reason I’m here.”

  “Thank you,” Hudson said into his phone as he walked the shore of Key Largo, trailed, as usual, by Secret Service agents. He’d called Booker utilizing the SonicBlock, which, combined with the sound of the waves and whatever precautions Booker had in place, should ensure that no one could intercept the conversation.

  After returning the SonicBlock and phone to his pocket, Hudson enjoyed the setting sun and soothing taste of salt air on his lips. He hoped Booker could use his vast resources and secret networks to discover what had happened to Rochelle, and to find out if NorthBridge really had her.

  Several seagulls had landed nearby, and Hudson tossed them some bits of pretzels he’d mostly finished. Oddly, the birds ignored the offerings.

  He’d considered that it might have been Booker behind Rochelle’s disappearance or death, but the Wizard had argued that this was unlikely. With the new information from Crane, Hudson knew that even if Schueller was right, and this was a deal with the devil, time was running out.

  Hudson, still standing with his feet in the surf, thought about something strange Booker had said when Hudson pressed for quick action on locating Rochelle.

  “Time’s a funny thing.”

  Hudson turned around when he heard his daughter’s voice calling to him above the sound of the surf. He hugged her and then turned to the man next to her.

  “Look who I found,” Florence said as he looked into her smiling face.

  Even behind the man’s dark glasses, Hudson could recognize Secret Service Agent Trent Bond, whom they’d nicknamed “007.” He’d been on duty when Hudson, still on the campaign trail, had been attacked in Colorado. Florence had kept him alive until the EMTs arrived. He’d barely made it. They’d been close ever since.

  “Hey, 007, good to see you back at work,” Hudson greeted, dry sand sticking to his wet feet as he walked up the beach. “I’d heard a rumor that you’d be here.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” Bond said. “I’m happy to return to your detail. And very happy you’re no longer a candidate.”

  “Yes, me too. Although, I have to admit that some days I wish I hadn’t won.”

  “Tough job,” Bond said, nodding knowingly.

  “Oh, Dad,” Florence said. “You know you love it.”

  Hudson smiled at his daughter.

  “Mr. President,” Bond began, his expression turning serious, “if I may have a minute?”

  “Of course.”

  “Usually it’s a Secret Service agent who save
s the president or members of the first family,” Bond said, looking from Hudson to Florence. “But in this case, you two saved my life.”

  Florence smiled, but her eyes filled with tears at the memory of that brutal day in Colorado.

  “You would have done the same,” Hudson said. “I just wish we could have saved you all.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Bond said, taking off his sunglasses. “The thing is, though, I’m not so sure.”

  Hudson stood silent, waiting for the rest, already guessing at Bond’s next words.

  “The Secret Service,” Bond said, looking over his shoulder, “has been infiltrated.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Florence looked at 007, the man she’d kept alive with her bare hands drenched in his blood. “What does that mean? ‘The Secret Service has been infiltrated?’” she asked quietly.

  “There are people within the government who operate under different rules,” Bond explained. “A government inside the government. A ‘deep state’, if you will.”

  Neither Hudson nor Florence were surprised, as they already knew the REMies had a hold on the US government. Hudson had first-hand knowledge that Booker had at least one Secret Service agent on his payroll, but the grave expression on Bond’s face along with his nervousness told them this was beyond all that.

  “They decide things,” Bond continued.

  “Who?” Hudson asked.

  “I don’t know,” Bond replied. “I report to my superior, and he probably doesn’t know. There are layers upon layers in order to insulate everyone, but I can tell you that the Service doesn’t just protect the president. We monitor him. We watch, listen, and report everything.”

  “Why?” Florence asked, even more quietly than before. “How do they make you do this?”

  “It’s how the Service is structured.”

  “When did it start?” Hudson asked.

  “This isn’t new. I’ve heard from some of the old-timers that it’s been like this for more than half a century, at least.” Bond looked off at the other agents standing at various points up and down the beach. “I’m sorry to have betrayed you, Mr. President.”

  Florence turned away and stared out over the ocean.

  “Is it all the agents?” Hudson asked.

  “I don’t know. It could be, but it may only be some. I can give you a list of all the agents I know about.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. President, I’m afraid there’s something else,” Bond said, looking down at the sand. “A few select agents have a classified assignment known as ‘the critical move’.”

  “And what the hell is ‘the critical move’?”

  “Those agents have been trained in how to stand down in order to make their actions undetectable when they get the order.”

  Hudson looked at Bond, flabbergasted. “To stand down so that someone can assassinate the president?”

  “Yes.”

  Florence gasped and turned back to Bond.

  “And you were one of those agents? Trained in ‘the critical move’?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Florence slapped Bond across the face.

  He could have easily blocked her assault, but he took it, only stepping back slightly to lessen the impact. “I’m sorry,” Bond said to her. “I can help you now.”

  “We don’t want your help,” she hissed.

  The other agents, flinched and watched tensely, but 007 waved them off.

  “Calm down,” Hudson told Florence. “We have an audience.”

  “How dare you?” Florence said to Bond in a terse whisper.

  “You get me that list of agents,” Hudson said.

  “I’ll prepare it immediately, and then, Mr. President, I’ll tender my resignation.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort. You owe me your life, now I expect you to earn it!”

  Once back at the White House, Hudson resumed his hectic schedule, but was now armed with 007’s list of rogue Secret Service agents; men and women loyal to someone other than the president, someone running the country from the deep state, hidden, unelected, and secret. He would keep some of them around in order to feed false information to the mystery man leading the shadow government, and he kept Agent Bond close by, assigned to his personal detail.

  The president briefed Dranick on the Secret Service situation and directed him to investigate if NorthBridge might somehow be fueling the Chinese crisis. Dranick made his views clear—he saw no diplomatic solutions with China.

  “I don’t believe we can avoid this war,” the Green Beret colonel said.

  “Unless there’s a NorthBridge connection,” Hudson said.

  “Maybe finding NorthBridge isn’t where we should be putting our resources,” Dranick said. “Perhaps the real question we ought to be asking is why we can’t find them. How can they hide this well? Who’s helping them?”

  An aide interrupted and informed the president that NorthBridge had just struck again. Hudson hurried to the situation room, where his national security team was mostly assembled, others entering just behind him.

  “Mr. President,” David Covington said, “they hit the UDC.”

  “The NSA’s Utah Data Center,” Fitz added, knowing Hudson would have no idea what UDC was.

  “Casualties?” the president asked.

  “Too soon to tell,” a woman answered. “It’s a large facility, a million square feet, but it’s a server farm, so it isn’t as heavily staffed as other comparably-sized government facilities. Still, the size of the blast—”

  “There will be loss of life,” a general interrupted. “Perhaps dozens. Injuries could be in the hundreds.”

  “How was the attack carried out?” the president asked.

  “As you might imagine,” Covington began, “UDC has an extensive security system. It includes an elaborate antiterrorism protection program, state-of-the-art everything, anti-aircraft defense, barrier fencing designed to stop a fifteen-thousand-pound vehicle traveling fifty miles per hour, cameras across all levels of the Three-D system, a biometric identification system, vehicle inspection station—it’s a fortress.”

  “No need to get defensive,” the president said with a quick smile, but there was no humor in his eyes.

  “I’m just saying we were prepared for any eventuality,” Covington said tensely.

  “Apparently not,” the president responded. A sharp silence followed.

  The NSA Director broke in to answer the president’s original question. “They flew two large, unmanned aircraft into our facility.”

  “So much for the anti-aircraft defense,” the president said, eyeing Covington. “Drones did that much damage?” The president pointed to live images filling giant screens in front of them. The two main buildings were engulfed in flames, all but obliterated.

  Covington, looking on while clearly seething, popped a cinnamon Necco wafer in his mouth.

  “Only one way to bring that kind of destruction with two drones,” a general said, motioning to a simulation on another monitor. “Gruell-Seventy-five.”

  There was a brief but noticeable pause in the room. Even Hudson knew that Gruell-75, the top-secret military grade explosive, had been used in a prior NorthBridge attack on the Kansas City Federal Reserve building. A patented and classified manufacturing technique, combined with tactically engineered components, resulted in a lightweight and pliable material which packed eighty-seven times more force than any prior forms of compound-explosives. Since the KC Federal Reserve bombing investigation, and many stories on Fonda’s Raton Report, it had become common knowledge that the extremely expensive and powerful explosive was made by only one company: SkyNok.

  That corporation, a stealthy defense contractor based in Nevada, had a murky ownership trail which, allegedly, ended with Booker Lipton.

  Chapter Fifteen

  In the weeks that followed the NorthBridge attack on UDC, the new FBI Director, who now kept Dranick in the loop, reported privately to the president that the Bur
eau was making progress. They were still trying to ascertain if the former director hadn’t wanted to break the NorthBridge case for some reason, or if he was meeting some internal resistance. One thing was clear; he had not been utilizing DIRT, a secret unit within the Bureau. The incorruptible agents who formed the Director’s Internal Recon Team were one of the best kept secrets in Washington, a city built on secrets.

  DIRT and the new Director gave the president hope. Hudson had personally chosen the woman who now headed the FBI. It had been a tough confirmation fight, but the public’s frustration and fear at NorthBridge’s ability to operate and attack with impunity had bled over into their representatives. The FBI’s first female director was confirmed by a single vote margin. Still, Hudson knew the REMies could “get to anyone,” so he regrettably remained cautious with her, the same way he had to be with nearly everyone.

  Dranick felt differently. He’d dug deeply into her background and believed the director to be solid and untouchable. “Her tenure as the Director of the US Marshals Service, combined with a high profile, leaves no doubt that she is above reproach,” he’d said. However, Hudson knew power could corrupt, and the FBI was very powerful. Even so, she got off to a fast start, and impressed him during one of their first official meetings.

  “Expect NorthBridge arrests this week,” the director said.

  “Incredible,” the president replied. “So they don’t possess super powers?”

  “They are mortals,” she empathetically pronounced.

  “What about the SkyNok and Gruell-Seventy-five connection?”

  “Booker Lipton appears safe for the moment, but two attacks using a substance only legally allowed to be sold to the US military? Sooner or later, we’ll trace it.”