Kaitlin Lungford arrived at the White House on July 27 for her monthly meeting with President Lucas Brooks. The meeting, though carved out in both their schedules to be held from 11:00 to 12:30 like clockwork, would probably go off the rails by 11:02.
And today will be worse than usual. Two weeks had passed since the president had appeared in Jacksonville to give a speech at the RNC, which meant it would be the first thing he'd ask her about.
Though it killed her to admit it, she'd taken her uncle's advice and watched all the speeches. If she was going to lead the Party one day, she needed to know more about its leaders. She'd cringed at hearing the president talk about how "trust is sacrosanct in today's world." Saying that it was time to "form friendships in the international community wherever they can be found, with whomever is offering a hand instead of a fist." The press, not without justification, had slammed that line as the Commander-in-Chief praising dictators, as it was well-documented that the president routinely snubbed America's allies at summits while maintaining friendly personal relations with a few strongmen abroad.
I need a good answer when he asks me what I thought of that garbage.
Nodding to the Secret Service agent who checked her badge and waved her into the West Wing, Kaitlin crossed the threshold of the hallowed building and surveyed the photos adorning the hallways. Every president rotated the dozen or so pictures on a monthly basis, usually to send some sort of message to friends and enemies. As Kaitlin waited for an aide to escort her to the Oval Office for her meeting, her Greek nose, straight as her aim when she’d been a second lieutenant in Iraq (the first time), crinkled. President Brooks had kept a photo of him vetoing the bipartisan WP legalization bill for eighteen months now. The message was clear: far from wanting to forget his public shaming of the Republican leadership in Congress, he wanted to brag about it. Minority Leader Hammond and his aides had visited the West Wing on countless occasions since then, and each time, the president had made sure the first thing they saw was one of their biggest failures.
Tactless, she thought. A lion didn’t concern itself with the opinions of sheep. Real power wasn’t obvious, wasn’t boorish.
“Madam Secretary?”
Taken from her thoughts, Kaitlin noticed that the boy receiving her hadn’t quite finished tying his Oxfords. The tail of his white shirt stuck out of the back of his pants.
“The president will see you now.”
Narrowing her eyes in judgment, she followed him to the Oval Office, deciding to have a little fun.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Nineteen, ma’am. I just started at American University.”
“And what are you studying there?”
“Politics, ma’am.”
“The world is as political as ever.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It never stops.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“For instance, you undoubtedly got this job because of some family connections. Perhaps your father is a donor to the president.”
The boy stopped in his tracks as she strode past. “Ma’am?”
She smiled as he jogged to match her brisk gait. “It’s no difference to me; I got my first big break because of my family, too.” Arriving just outside the Oval Office, she stopped and turned to him. “Just remember that you only get one pass on family connections. Well, maybe two for you, since you’re a boy.”
“…yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll take it from here, Junior.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Without looking at him again, she opened the door and left him alone.
In what Kaitlin could only assume was the result of a lack of focus, Lucas Brooks insisted on redecorating the Oval Office constantly. When she stepped inside, she found the president’s Master’s in Business Administration degree from Cornell framed and displayed prominently above a bust of the famed Roman statesman and military leader, Cincinnatus.
“You know,” Brooks said, following her glance, “some people can’t believe I actually got my MBA. But I did, I was first in class! My teachers said they’d never met anyone so brilliant.”
I’m sure. Kaitlin forced her pursed lips into a closed smile.
“Oh, come on, Kate,” he continued. “Show off those pearly whites.”
Her hands behind her back, she took comfort in the fact that he couldn’t see them ball up into fists. “Again, sir, please don’t call me Kate.”
Rising from the Resolute desk, the president leaned against it and waved her off. “And, like I’ve said, you’re too hot to be a Kaitlin.”
When he smiled, she had to stab her nails into her hands to keep her composure. “You still got that boyfriend?”
Eager to change the topic, she tried approaching the task at hand. “Sir, I know you’re busy. I’ll try to keep this brief. About the war…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Brooks said. “We’ll get to that. Take a seat! I haven’t seen you in a month.”
“It’s been a challenging time, Mr. President. We’re at war.”
“You’re telling me,” he said. “You ever been roped into taking pictures with thousands of fans in the middle of a hot July in Jacksonville? Now that’s war.”
Why is this happening to me? “…how was the convention, sir?”
The broad smile on Brooks’s face let her know she’d asked the right question. Maybe I am learning something about politics.
“Big crowd!” he exclaimed, leaning against his desk. “Lot of energy. Huge! We’re gonna win this thing in a landslide; I’m telling you. Just like before, the polls are way off.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did you think of my speech?”
Lie through your teeth, then shift to the topic at hand. She’d practiced her lines in the car with her aide.
“It was great, sir. That stuff about drugs, especially. I mean, it’s why we’re fighting this war in the first place. Voters will appreciate your forthrightness and moral dedication.”
“Ha! Yes, the war. How’s it going?”
Pleased with herself that it usually took her twice this long to get him to focus, she spoke about how Karthik was operating under her leadership to secure resources in Guatemala and Belize.
Brooks nodded. “I was skeptical about that guy at first, but he’s really been good, I think. What do you think?”
I think it’s batshit crazy you strapped me with someone who’s never served in our uniform and put him in charge of a bunch of super soldiers. “He’s working out well, sir.”
“One more favor for my favorite brown dude, Aditya Shitty.”
“It’s Shetty, sir.”
“That’s what I said, right? Anyways, Aditya’s great on TV, don’t you think? Former felon making our case against legalization. Nonwhite, to boot. A ratings monster!”
It’s my lot in life to suffer fools. “Yes, sir.”
Leaving his desk, pacing around the circular room, Brooks rubbed his jawline before clapping his hands in excitement. “You should be on TV, too! You let that ponytail down, flash those pearly whites like I told you, you’d be unstoppable for the campaign.”
Is he fucking serious?
Moving to grab the phone on his desk, he continued speaking. “I could book you on FOX tonight with Artie Quiver.”
“Sir.” For the first time in her tenure, she physically restrained the president, gripping his hand before he picked up the receiver. “It would be inappropriate for a Cabinet secretary to go on FOX for partisan purposes. Especially the Defense Secretary in the middle of a war.”
After a moment, he spoke. “I like you, Kate. But don’t ever touch me like that again.”
Fuck. Kaitlin carefully withdrew her hand. Faced with a choice between being chastised by the president or being the target of enemy fire, she preferred the bullets. “Yes, sir.” As was the case with her uncle, changing the rules of their relationship at this point was the quickest way out the door.
And if I’m going to be president, if I’m going to lead this godforsaken country, I need to be in the room.
In this one instance, Kaitlin was glad Brooks couldn’t stay on any topic for more than a few minutes at a time. His anger seemed to dissipate as she changed the topic back to the war.
“Before we start, do you need to go to the bathroom?” he asked.
“No, Mr. President, I’m quite ready to begin.”
“The bathrooms here are great now! Equal opportunity and all that. I made sure a tampon dispenser was put in the women’s room.”
It took all her military training not to roll her eyes. “Great work, Mr. President.”
“I’m such a thoughtful guy; you think I’d be polling higher with women. What do you think?”
“I don’t follow the polling, sir.”
“Well, this #metoo movement and everything…I’m trying to learn.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know, Begaye’s Native American.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Those people beat their women.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, we defeated them once. We’ll defeat them again.” When Brooks let out a hearty laugh, she couldn’t avoid grimacing.
Over the next hour, she briefed him on how the press had finally discovered that Ademir Hernández, the real leader of FGRN-14, was dead.
“But the way we’ve staged the photos and leaked the Silk Road chat logs and worked our human intelligence on the ground in Central America, no one’s ever going to know Ademir was anything but DeLeón’s number two.”
“So, we’ve got our justification to keep this train going,” the president said.
A fucking train? She pushed back the wave of nausea that battled with her throat. Seriously?
Indulging the president really did seem to work, though, Kaitlin admitted. As she spoke about how they’d learned that another Guatemalan politician had been feeding information to FGRN-14 and that another pocket of WP had been discovered in the Belize Barrier Reef, the president almost looked engaged. He moved to sit on the table across from her, leaning in with his elbows on his knees as she pointed to locations on a map. But all good things ended, and his boredom resurfaced less than ten minutes later.
“You know,” he said, “if I’d known it was this easy to win, I would’ve run years ago.”
“Yes, sir.”
“These little countries don’t even fight back.”
“Well, sir,” Kaitlin said, “they need us. American security is based off international agreements for shared economic prosperity.”
“They’re practically begging us to take their WP.”
When she cringed, even the president noticed.
“Oh don’t be like that, Kate. Your crow’s feet show.”
Sixty seconds in a ring, just you and me. That’s all I ask. “Yes, sir.”
“Now that I know this works, I can’t wait to try it in Africa and Asia.”
Is this moron really going to admit that in the Oval Office? “Yes, sir.”
“We get the State Department to promise a country some aid, they’re thrilled, then my guys come in and say ‘everything’s great, the money will be released right after you let our soldiers seize any WP you have.’”
“Sir, the official line from the American government is that these sovereign nations recognize American supremacy over WP and are happy to work with us to secure it wherever terrorists have run afoul of our interests.”
Waving her off, the president stood up and started pacing. “Yes, yes, but you and I know the score.”
To her disgust, he acted like he was letting her in on a secret. As if she hadn’t been directly involved in creating the secret in the first place. In a desperate attempt to get him to shut up, she tried leveling with him about the politics. “And if the Democrats discover the truth?”
Walking to the Resolute Desk before turning to face her, he sat on it and looked her dead in the eyes for the first time during their meeting. “The voters love me, not Begaye, and certainly not that brown shit, Nagaraj.”
Her uncle had explained to her that the president had many reasons for keeping the war going besides stealing WP. Technically, the justification given to the governments of Guatemala and Belize for U.S. militarized attempts to capture recently discovered veins of WP was that these veins of WP would’ve remained hidden if not for the FBI’s continued efforts to recover information from the cyber-criminal Spartacus’s Silk Road. After completing the process of placing the real identities of the Silk Road’s users against their user names and chat logs, the Pentagon, FBI, DEA, and White House had all agreed: with the Silk Road gone, the terrorists who sold and hid their WP stashes all across the online network were now using protected UNESCO landmarks to facilitate their deals. There were enough unexplored forests and waters to make hiding the drug easy.
It wouldn’t matter why UNESCO sites were used, Kaitlin admitted. Brooks was already looking for an excuse to rip up some old land. No doubt he'll find a way for it to be sold to some affiliates of his. More room for his real estate empire.
Her uncle would get rich off defense stocks, the president would leave office with a whole bunch of new land, and how many Americans would die in the process?
Everything I do to ensure we have a president in office who actually gives a damn is worth it.
From the beginning, she’d been sidelined in this war. It was time to reassert herself. Brooks had announced his “WP Force” without consulting her. Less than a week after vetoing the legalization bill, he’d announced he needed funding from Congress for a new branch of the military, saying that shutting down the Silk Road had only been the first step in ending illegal WP use once and for all. He’d challenged the Democratic leader of the Senate, Manish Nagaraj, announcing to the world that to be against the WP Force was to invite super-powered terrorists to attack America, as Dr. Clark had suggested. Nagaraj hadn’t been able to call his bluff, and as a result, Kaitlin’s budget had gone up seven percent. The fact that Officer Jackson was Black had helped; that guy’s face had been everywhere in the initial months of the White House’s PR blitz. He certainly hadn’t minded doing the rounds on cable news, either. The last time Kaitlin had spoken to her brother, Chad had mentioned that Jackson was running in the Democratic primary for New York County District Attorney.
Fat chance, she thought.
What people without power didn’t know was that it was almost impossible to translate it across enemy lines. The power bestowed upon some cop for being close to the president didn’t mean shit in a Democratic primary. Brooks had promised Jackson some resources, sure, but it would backfire when Democrats questioned why Jackson would align himself with their sworn enemy. Once again, Brooks would look like a fool.
“So have we actually seized any WP?” Their conversation had moved to a couch. Brooks leaned in and Kaitlin had to struggle not to gag.
How much of a breach of etiquette would it be to offer him a mint? “Not yet, sir.”
“What’s all the delay about, Kate! We go in and seize it like we seized the oil in Iraq. You remember that?”
When I close my eyes every night, I still hear the screams of my men. Yes…I still remember that. Do you? “Mr. President, it isn’t as simple as seizing the WP and selling it back to these governments.”
“But if it was, just think about it, Kate! We sell it back to them, and use the profits to make America great. Re-election guaranteed!”
How did my brother ever vote for this schmuck? “There are geopolitical concerns, sir. Once we sell the WP back to these governments, who’s to say it doesn’t end up back in the hands of terrorists?”
“That’s why I wanted to start this endeavor with more than a handful of soldiers in Central America,” Brooks said. “You nixed my original plan: dozens and dozens of men in regions like the Hindu Kush and the DMZ. We kill these bastards and then charge the countries for keeping our super troops there to ensure safety.”
Does he think running a war is like playing Call of Duty? She bit her tongue. “Mr. President, we still don’t know how WP works. What if continued exposure drives our soldiers mad and they join these terrorist networks? What if the effects of PTSD render them incapacitated? More research is needed. This is a good test group while that occurs. Our soldiers are close to American territory for easier monitoring, and the dangers posed by FGRN-14 are relatively minor compared to Afghanistan and North Korea.”
“Well, okay,” Brooks said. With his brow furrowed in a semblance of deep thought, his face resembled that of a talking chimpanzee. “You run the war and I’ll manage the politics.”
“…yes, sir.”
As Kaitlin got up to leave, Brooks shifted topics yet again.
“You should think about the TV stuff, Kate. Just think about what you could do for the woman vote. I was losing Indians before Aditya got on FOX, and now look at me. They think I’m a god! Well, one of their gods, at least.”
I literally want to die. “Again, sir, it’s not a good idea to have a Cabinet official on TV.”
Before the president could say anything else, she left him behind.