POTUS

By David Alexander

God Bless America ... before it's too late!

David Alexander has penned the ultimate technothriller, a groundbreaking new vision that will set the trend for military action fiction for years to come. Alexander may be the first to credibly outline how, why and when a crippling blow to cyberspace could be dealt by

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Alexander Books
• Release date: Oct 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9780999549322

David Alexander

David Alexander was a founder of Lion Publishing, and for 28 years a Director of the company. He spent much time researching and taking photographs for books such as The Lion Handbook to the Bible. Helping people to understand the Bible and communicating its message was a key factor in his work. David died in 2002.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The terrible dream had visited him again ... the dusty streets ... the weird chanting from the spires that loomed above the narrow alleys between them where soldiers huddled for safety against sun-bleached adobe walls ... and then the rattle of automatic weapons ... and the explosions as the first mortar rounds came whistling in...

He’d awakened from this night terror, as he had done so often before, with his body drenched in sweat and the images of terror still lingering spectrally before his eyes.

Then, in the darkness, the arms reached for him, locked around him. He struggled to free himself, choking back the scream going wild at the back of his throat.

It’s all right, honey, his wife Liz comforted, holding him tight, her warm breasts pressed against his body.

But calm down, baby. You were yelling again. The kids must have heard.

I’m okay, it’s all right, he’d said finally, hoping his two boys had slept through it.

He began to feel his breathing grow even, and that incredible pounding in his chest -- so hard, like a demented blacksmith was hammering his chest flat on an anvil in hell -- abated and slowed to a more normal pace.

Try to get some sleep, honey. It's almost morning. You need to be on your toes tomorrow.

What’s so special about tomorrow? he asked in the dark, his wits slowly returning.

Because it’s tomorrow, and every day at your job is special, baby.

His job was president of the United States ... and now it was morning again.

Within the familiar confines of the Oval Office, he could once again feel secure and forget the horrors that surged up inside him in the deep void of sleep. Still, there were troubles for him to contend with, with the Maghreb at the top of the list.

The region in the north of Africa had become a breeding ground for terrorism on the one hand and an enticement to powerful corporate interests on the other. It had also become the realm of Medusa.

After the Afghan and Iraqi debacles and then the Indonesian opening act that had bombed so embarrassingly, the would-be bringers of freedom were banging the martial drum all over again.

Preemptive military intervention in the region would proactively crush the nascent terrorist armies that were gathering uncomfortably close to NATO’s southern tier. They were right across the narrowest part of the Med, geographically opposite some of the United States' strongest coalition partners in the European Union.

Following their recent summit in London, France and the UK were already making plans for a joint, Libya-style operation of short duration to wipe out the Medusa leadership and install pro-Western regional governments.

The White House and Congress remained uncommitted to joining or supporting the coalition, while critics in the media had already begun labeling direct US intervention as the Dien Bien Flu syndrome, referring to America's having taken on France’s problems in Vietnam in another era and conflating it with the Bush Flu of yet another time.

President Christian Spencer leafed through the pages of the National Intelligence Estimate that lay atop his desk and sipped the hot black coffee with a hint of brown sugar he drank every morning. Since taking office two years before, the morning’s NIEs had grown grimmer and more alarming.

As post-Strike Day national rebuilding had commenced and the nation had begun returning to normal, Spencer had been buoyed with expectation that staunch vigilance -- as declared by Thomas Jefferson to represent the price of freedom -- would forestall recurrence of the terrorist onslaught that had put the homeland under attack eight years before.

It hadn’t, of course. To a certain extent, vigilance had worked. Nevertheless, violence continued to breed. The nation was forced to watch helplessly as the Neo-Soviets grew bolder, a Shiite-led Iraq joined with Iran and warlordism returned to an Afghanistan now linked in all but official UN sanction with the Pashtun hordes of neighboring Pakistan. Then, in the Maghreb, arose the hypercriminal organization that called itself Medusa, preaching religion as it sowed chaos and reaped profit.

At home, the shock waves of Strike Day that had rocked the nation to its core continued to reverberate. Spencer was afraid that first September 11, then November 18, had blown unbridgeable rifts into the foundational bedrock of America. The shootings in the schools and malls -- to say nothing of the increased sniper incidents at the White House, Pentagon and other Washington government buildings -- had grown more frequent.

As a token of this, a ballistically resistant curtain, made up of plates of Kevlar interlaced by sheets of special nanofiber materials designed to halt even multiple RPG strikes, now almost completely covered the eleven-foot-six-inch-high French windows behind the desk at which he sat; a desk carved from the timbers of the British frigate Resolute and a gift to the United States from Queen Victoria.

Those high windows, which gave out on the Rose Garden at the rear of the Oval Office, had comforted Spencer. He’d enjoyed looking out through them while speaking on the phone. Now they, like so much else that had once been easy and accessible in the country, was curtained off by a security shield against the threat of sudden, unexpected attack from unknown quarters.

What was happening? What on earth was happening? With the security curtain around the White House had come the stepped-up emergency drills staged by the Secret Service. The men in dark business suits would come and spirit him away in bulletproof motorcades. Then they would drive by day and drive by night, a hundred miles south and west, and rush him down into the glorified black hole of Calcutta that had been bored deep into the Catoctin Mountain range on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border. There, safe from harm -- or so they claimed -- he could lead the nation to another post-attack recovery, after yet another Strike Day hit America.

President Christian Spencer knew a secret, though, that the rest didn’t know, and probably wouldn’t understand -- he would never willingly leave the Oval Office. He hadn’t now, when White House security staff had urged him to conduct all except ceremonial business in the EEOB or the new West Wing Annex, because even the ballistic shield behind him could not completely guarantee his safety -- and he would not quit his post when and if the terrible day ever arrived. He would never jump ship on America. He could not live with himself afterward, he was sure.

He would stay, and if necessary die here on his watch rather than run like a rat. He would not desert the nation, leaving millions to suffer and expire in some apocalyptic attack from which he well knew there might be nobody left to lead. His predecessor, President Travis Claymore, had nearly lost his life during Strike Day as the target of an assassin hidden among the ranks of the Secret Service itself. The rogue agent and foreign mercenary hadn’t succeeded, nor had those who had attacked America and the symbol of its political institution, Congress, on that terrible November day.

The president had taken office as the nation struggled to recover its balance. He had pledged to hasten that recovery, and restore the nation to a greatness which it had never known before. He had shown the nation symbols of victory, even as its attackers had shown other symbols as ruined vestiges of former glory and national pride, broken and burning beneath the black, hydra-emblazoned flags of masked Medusa terrorists.

His inauguration was marked by the conspicuous presence of the NASA Lunar Electric Rover, that stood out as a centerpiece to the more than five thousand uniformed military personnel from all service branches in ceremonial attendance.

The Rover was symbolic of Spencer's future-oriented administration. The instant that Spencer had cast eyes on the futuristic vehicle, he had recognized it as such. He had adored that machine, picturing himself as an astronaut on the moon or Mars, with the blue earth shining in the background of interplanetary space. The Rover now sat in the Catoctin Mountains, sat above the COG retreat on the government reservation. It sat above the deep tunnels and chambers that formed the presidential redoubt, visible from the air -- a kind of Olympian presidential lawn furniture.

President Spencer took a final sip of the now tepid black coffee and responded to the buzzing intercom to his left.

Arlin Crowe is here for his appointment, Mr. President, came the voice of his secretary, Edith Balsam.

As White House Chief of Staff, Crowe frequently had the first appointment of the day in order to add depth to the often sketchy material contained in the president's Morning Book -- prepared overnight by the Office of the National Security Advisor and containing intelligence digests that usually include the National Intelligence Daily, the State Department Morning Summary, and critical diplomatic cables and breaking intelligence reports. Crowe also served to fill in gaps that appeared to have been deliberately placed as red herrings by those who prepared the Book.

But Crowe also served other masters. They called themselves the Core. Spencer had received his first visit from their emissary shortly on taking office. The emissary had made threats. He had known things that could not possibly have been known, yet which were known. All other presidents had been visited by an emissary from the Core. All other presidents had buckled under the threats, and accepted the presence of the emissary on their staffs.

Send Arlin right in, Spencer said, turning away from the darkness cast by the curtain above the high French windows that no longer looked out on the well-tended flower garden behind his office. He went to the entrance to the Oval Office as the door opened to admit his first official visitor of the day.

Chapter 2

The car carried Senate Majority Leader and Speaker of the House, Senator Sepitus Pete Winrod, through pitch darkness. It was a late model Ford hybrid electric that had been given to him as a gift by his New Hampshire constituents, albeit unacknowledged. Like some sure-footed electric goat, it hugged the highway that hugged the mountainside, effortlessly negotiating the road’s hairpin curves under the infallible control of its inboard guidance system.

The senator might have once marveled at the array of satellites in orbit that invisibly stretched forth a digital hand to guide him safely through the night, but that was a long time ago -- when he was younger and gave a damn. Then, he'd championed the defense acquisitions that had driven the push toward technology development initiatives that had led to the US drive toward militarization of space.

Now it was different, he was older and he didn't care anymore. Not about issues, anyway. Money, privilege, (less and less over the last two years, admittedly) even pussy, but not about those sacredly held principles that had propelled him from the obscurity of Midwestern small town machine politics to chair what was arguably the most prestigious of Congressional committees, the Senate Appropriations Committee, and then make a failed but respectable bid for the presidency.

Winrod's hand strayed to the bare thigh of his companion in the right front seat of the purring vehicle, alone in the night, accompanied by a sidelong flick of his eyes, before the hand traveled up to the crotch and stroked the lump marking the swelling beneath.

All pretense, of course. The GPS-guided vehicle was on automatic, but years of momentum dictated many things and old habits were notoriously hard to break. To wit, his soon to be house guest for the weekend, Vanessa. All woman from the waist up, but below, hung like a dark horse. For the senator, Vanessa was the best of both worlds. The bitch had a dick on her that could choke a gorilla and two firm, round breasts to bow like a Viagra-plucked violin in turn when time came to repay -- well, to coin a phrase, tit for twat.

Vanessa was part of a consignment of gifts from EACD, the multinational defense consortium, which had been lobbying furiously for funding for the X57C space plane. The Falls Church, Virginia-based company was prime contractor for a consortium that bespoke A-list global defense firms partnering to build the advanced tactical aircraft. The X57C had been a holdover from the former presidency of Travis Claymore, whose outgoing Secretary of Defense, Reyson Natash, had never faltered in supporting the ambitious project.

Not so with the incoming administration -- one not only committed to a new round of defense sequestration initiatives but also, as luck would have it, taking occupancy of the Oval Office, West Wing, EOEB and other prime political Washington real estate, in the critical closing months of preparing the Quadrennial Defense Review.

The publication of the QDR would lock in Pentagon programs for the next four years -- critical years which undoubtedly would see the nation embroiled in some of the most crucial battles against global terrorism and the Medusa uprisings in the Middle East whose stated aim was to establish the caliphate of the so-called Mahdi, as well as the Neo-Soviet Union's westward ambitions into what the Kremlin referred to as the near abroad.

The senator's hands closed around the bulge in the tight-fitting briefs and he began massaging it, his pulse quickening as the Viagra tablet he'd popped as an after-dinner mint kicked in. To hell with everything. He had done his bit for the defense consortium and was now going to claim a piece of his reward -- though had his eyes been able to penetrate the roof of the vehicle and gaze into the cold black sky overhead, he would have thought otherwise.

Tracking the car for the last several miles was a black presence in the black skies beneath the deep New Hampshire mountain dark of a new moon.

The uninhabited aerial system (UAS) was actuated by propeller blades which were precision-ground and covered by special sound-retardant materials, with cowlings specially baffled to reduce all audible noise from the UAS to a level of nano-decibels, effectively beneath the range of human hearing.

The nose assembly of the UAS carried sensors on its underside and a solid-state navigational processor within. On the centerline of its under-fuselage, positioned midway between nose capsule and wing roots, extended the barrel of a 20-millimeter machinegun which was thermally targeted and electrically driven.

Autonomously following the senator's SUV, the drone was continuously under positive control of an operator stationed in a distant command vehicle. The vehicle was traveling some miles back on the mountain road. It was a larger SUV, a bullet-resistant tactical vehicle with a command and control station custom-built into its rear and hidden from view behind tinted, ballistically resistant window glass.

In addition to overhead surveillance imagery derived from the UAS, the operator -- visible to him on three notebook PCs -- also had orbital imagery from a dedicated satellite flown by Senoscot, which happened to be a wholly owned Czech Republic subsidiary of EACD, albeit owned through offshore middlemen and chartered in the EU, untraceable back to the US-based arms firm which was its parent corporation.

The false-aperture radar imagery was as good if not better than the latest Improved Crystal series spacelifted by USAF and dedicated to the Department of Defense, whose mushroom clusters of domed antennae outside of Fort Meade, Maryland, watched it day and night.

The triggerman waited. Everything was linked to everything else -- every symbol was also a message. Everything, including death. The strike was no exception. Tomorrow morning, retired USAF General Loudon Cairncross would be sworn in as Congressional Speaker of the House taking the place of the soon-to-be-deceased Senator Winrod.

Cairncross would make a speech mourning the tragic events which led to the untimely departure of his esteemed colleague from the scene as the story of the crash claiming Winrod's life hit the morning CNN newscasts. It would be full of plaudits veiling more sinister motives. Cairncross would come to the Capitol to bury Caesar, after all, and not to praise him.

The drone master's hand tightened on the trigger of the joystick-like hand controller. The moment arrived. The click of a thumb on a small rubber button actuated the drone attack. Moments later, a distant flash lit up unseen mountainsides beneath the dead black December moon. Instants afterward, the false thunder of death boomed and rolled as it echoed down the night winds.

And then, as with so much else in life, reflected the drone master, there was nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing worth a shit, anyway -- unless you were into instant wreckage and sudden death.

Chapter 3

The dais stood four feet above a raised platform, the dignitaries seated along its length lit dramatically by overhead spotlights nestled in recessed ceiling alcoves. Behind the seven figures, each one a representative of the L-7 nations who met here in Paris, were multiple display screens that showed close-ups of them all in extreme digital magnification.

A four-pointed blue-white star, encircled by a white halo with four rays extending from the tip of each star point, hung above the screens. The compass-like design was cupped below by an arched, six-lobed emblem that contained thirty flags, each representing a nation numbering among the organization's global membership. Above the star, in metallic silver script, raised in relief against the flat of the pattern, were the words NATO-OTAN.

In front of the dais, the two-thousand seat capacity auditorium of the hall at the Grand Palais, Paris, was nearly filled with a gathering of assembled dignitaries, journalists and the representatives of defense contractors and government defense policymaking bodies from among the thirty NATO member states, as well as from nonmembers, such as Albania, Greece and France itself, which were nonetheless closely aligned with the policies of the transatlantic alliance.

Beyond these, there were also spectators from several of the larger global defense alliances that had longstanding strategic partnerships with key NATO member nations, such as the US, UK and Germany. These included the ASEAN countries -- whose principle members Brunei and Singapore had sent delegates to Paris who sat in the first several rows -- and RIMPAC nations, represented by contingents from South Korea and the Philippines.

Zoomed to high magnification on the central display screen set behind the long dais, French Ministry of Defense Minister Arnaud Le Fevre was about to introduce the representative of the US Department of Defense, Pentagon chief Stanford Black.

The US Secretary of Defense stood as the French MOD spokesman wrapped up his introduction for his American colleague to a round of accolades from the assemblage in the auditorium.

Black's was a familiar face in the world of international defense policymakers. Having spent most of his adult life either in academic think tanks, most notably RAND, followed by three years as head of DARPA, which had been followed by a stint as CEO of defense contractor BAE US, Black had next assumed stewardship of the sprawling United States Department of Defense. He’d served under two presidents, one a Republican, another, a Democrat -- thereby putting his name on a very short list of secdefs that included Henry Stimson and Robert Gates.

Part of the round of applause for Black accrued to French MOD head Le Fevre congratulating Black on having just completed service at the Pentagon a full week longer than the two longest serving secdefs -- McNamara and Rumsfeld -- thereby making him the longest-serving defense chief in US history.

Black was doubly welcomed at the gathering as a champion of increased strategic cooperation between US and EU defense establishments. This included his strong support for US research and development grants to European defense firms, such as the French MOD, which had just received a sizable aid package from Washington due largely to Black's successful lobbying efforts in Congress and at the White House.

First, I want to thank you for having invited me to address this gathering today as the representative of the United States' mission to NATO, Black began, speaking without notes.

"And thank you very much, Mr. Defense Minister. I appreciate that kind introduction. Excellencies, distinguished guests, I’m also particularly pleased to see a lot of young people in this audience, and I really appreciate your interest in the challenges that face us as we try to design what happens with our defense posture in the twenty-first century.

This is my first visit to this continent since I took on my new position, but in many ways, any trip to Europe is for me a homecoming. I am a son of Europe – the child of immigrants who came to the United States from Germany. I bear witness to the extraordinary benefits of prosperity and security that stem from our transatlantic partnership.

Black paused, but before he could utter another word a figure in the first rows stood up and extended his arm to point an accusing finger at the dais.

You bear witness to NOTHING, Secretary Black -- except continued defense funding of worthless development programs designed to support a multibillion dollar global arms industry and endless, imperialist war!

Black recognized the speaker from the audience. Many others did too. His name was Hunter Grissom. His disruptive antics were well known in defense circles.

Please sit down, Mr. Grissom, Black pressed, leaning toward the microphone. You’re interrupting my speech. If you have comments you'd care to make, you can raise your hand later, like everyone else here. But in any case -- here Black paused briefly for effect --we already know what most of them are because we've heard them all before from you.

A ripple of laughter and a buzz of hastily traded remarks came from the assemblage. Grissom's fame as a gadfly of the global military-industrial complex had preceded him. They called him Doctor Weapon, sometimes General Pandemonium. And this, only to his face. Behind Grissom's back, he was called far worse by far too many.

Grissom didn't mind the nickname they’d stuck him with. In fact he'd taken a liking to the handle. All the same, he had no intention of meekly sitting back down again, chastened for his impudence by Black.

Instead, Grissom turned, scanning the gathering, glowering at the business-suited attendees arrayed in gently curving ranks behind him. Two years of bearding the global defense sector lion in its own den had trained him in spotting threats, as he’d once done on the battlefield as a US Marine general.

He saw them now -- two beefy security guards moving toward him cautiously. NATO meetings were not often heckled. In the cloistered defense community, where the closed ranks of old-boy camaraderie was the rule, such outbursts were seldom witnessed. Security was hesitant, as would be expected in an auditorium wall-to-wall with weapons experts, but the French rent-a-cops would eventually act to physically eject him, Grissom knew. He estimated an effective action window of no more than three minutes.

I know many of you, he shouted again, this time at the audience surrounding him -- antagonistic, watchful.

We've worked together -- fought together. You know that we, as a global culture, are potentially being driven to extinction by the sheer force of rampant military research and development and its technological byproducts that do not win wars, but prolong them artificially -- that extend the kill chain into infinity...

Mr. Grissom, General Grissom, please sit DOWN...

Grissom now saw the two security guards suddenly spring into motion. Perhaps triggered by a tilt of the speaker’s head or a gesture of his upraised hand. Whatever had activated them, the two were now gathering steam.

Thirty seconds.

The kill chain's links must be broken. The continuing automation of military systems must cease and our key military asset, the human soldier, must be put back into the operations loop before it becomes too late to stop --

Time’s up.

The two cops had converged on Grissom to left and right. The one at Grissom’s right side decided the issue -- he lofted a taser gun from his belt holster. A blue arc crisscrossed the electrodes of the shock-delivering weapon upraised in his large, bony fist, as he held it up menacingly. Grissom was not about to be tased in front of newsmedia cameras and go down before the five-pointed NATO star, to become an object of derision, the subject of viral You Tube replays and Photoshopped memes. Grissom would fight.

Grissom reached out -- just a flick -- and the hand holding the blue-sparking weapon was immediately turned against its wielder. The guard grunted as the flesh beneath the jaw line smudged black with burns, and he jerked spasmodically as his eyes rolled up in his slab-shaped Gascon face.

The second guard tried a wrestling-style takedown, to be followed no doubt with the cuffs whipped out to secure the intruder’s wrists behind his back. Grissom knew the moves -- they were the staples of cop school unarmed combat training. For an instant he pictured a gymnasium floor full of eager beaver trainees in gym shorts and white tees eagerly doing practice takedowns, Guard Number Two sweating in the first row of cop tyros as he sank a knee into the small of a brother trainee's back.

Guard Number Two’s power play met with the same result as Guard One’s -- down prone, face kissing carpet, his own cuffs on his own wrists, his fat, Frog rent-a-cop ass dry-humping the smelly gray industrial nylon covering the hard floor beneath it. Grissom estimated twenty seconds to subdue both guards.

Fuck, I’m slipping, he thought. He’d expected to deal with them in no more than fourteen seconds, max.

Still, the speed and effectiveness of his actions had cowed the audience. Then, as newsmedia cameras swiveled toward Grissom atop quickly turning shoulders, he was already breaking for the exit where two more guards had meekly stepped aside to permit his departure -- after all, that’s what was wanted; to eject him, so why not let him just go?

As Doctor Weapon exited the auditorium of the Grand Palais, two news reporters held a colloquy as they watched him leave.

See those two beefy rent-a-cops? He could have killed them both with his pinky.

Bullshit.

No. They don’t call him Doctor Weapon for nothing. I fought with him in Iraq and Indonesia. I've seen him kill a Taliban with a roll of toilet paper -- literally, this fucking guy can kill with toilet paper.

Come on. Really? No shit? Toilet paper. Wow.

Yeah. I've seen it with these.

He pointed a v-gesture at his eyes.

Yeah, but how exactly do you kill with toilet paper?

Well, it’s like this ... and he took his colleague aside and whispered into her ear.

By this point the audience inside the meeting chamber had quieted down somewhat. US Defense Secretary Stanford Black once again enjoyed the complete attention of the NATO summit's audience.

Hopefully we can now discuss military cooperation rather than watch the latest remake of the ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ music video.

Laughter rippled, then applause crackled. The audience’s pulse rate was returning to normal, and Black synched back into his prepared speech as the business-suited men and women again listened attentively.

Yeah, they were actually shooting another Bruce Lee remake, folks, Black added to more of the same response as before from the audience.

But, seriously, during my years in government, I have also seen the NATO Alliance transform to meet the threats of the 21st century, moving from an alliance that was built around safeguarding our collective territorial defense of Europe to one built on safeguarding our shared interests around the world. I served as White House Chief of Staff in the Claymore administration when NATO first launched its large-scale combat operations in the Philippines in response of course to the Nexus-backed Jihad of Death attacks on Manila. And more recently, I’ve seen NATO making an extraordinary difference in Syria, Tajikistan, and elsewhere throughout the world.

Black paused and sipped from a glass of lemon water beside him ... there was scattered applause as he went on. Back to total-seriousness mode again, the speaker was pleased to note, as he set the glass back down.

Today our most pressing concern is that of fielding robust military forces in the face of significant budgetary constraints. These include those affecting the US defense department, which have mandated sequestration and forced furloughs, and will continue into the foreseeable future. I want to talk to you today about the key programs that will overcome these difficulties. Rest assured, we are aggressively exploiting the considerable warfighting benefits offered by autonomous systems of all kinds.

Black paused again. Another brief glance at his address notes printed on an index card and he launched again into his speech.

We've all heard about automation of that critical combat system known as the 'kill chain.' Relying on multiple combat systems -- really a 'system of systems,' -- productive maintenance of the kill chain has automation and network-centric operation of all systems as its core principle. During my stay here I am gratified to see that government and private sector defense programs in the European Union -- as those in the United States -- are tightly focused on enabling critical kill chain systems with digital and other networked resources to make them perform more reliably and effectively.

Black wrapped up his speech, then took some questions from reporters. All except for one.

Like Doctor Weapon, Jessica Keeling had been a thorn in the side of secdef Black throughout the years of the secdef's long tenure at the Pentagon. Her face