THE WHITE HOUSE
STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS-3 HOURS
With less than three hours before the State of the Union address, president Jack Rutledge had cleared the Oval Office so he could be alone and he now stared at two different folders sitting on the desk in front of him, which contained two very different versions of his State of the Union address.
One gave the Russians what they wanted-a message from a humbled American president pulling his country out of the sphere of world politics while, the other was a spit-in-the-eye and a heartyfuck you to any individual, terrorist organization, rogue state, or internationally recognized nation who thought they could blackmail the United States.
The irony that one speech lay in a red folder and the other sat in one of presidential blue-all the while separated by a white desk blotter-was not lost on Jack Rutledge.
Meanwhile, outside the Oval Office, Rutledge knew that his aides were pulling their hair out, wondering what his next move would be. Most of them, along with Congress, save for the absolute diehards, had either been evacuated to a secure location outside the metropolitan DC area, or had been sent home to be with their families while the tangled web of events played out.
All that anyone knew at this point was that President Rutledge had taped two State of the Union addresses from the Oval Office and no one was certain which one was going to air.
If the truth be told, Rutledge himself didn’t even know. His daughter, Amanda, had already been evacuated to Andrews Air Force Base and was awaiting him aboard Air Force One while he sat within the deceptive calm of what could only be described as the eye of the most deadly hurricane to ever descend upon the Oval Office.
With his personal helicopter, designated asMarine Corps One, sitting hot and ready to move just outside the West Wing, Jack Rutledge tried to put the pleadings of his staff and Secret Service detail out of his mind. Like president George Washington over two hundred years before him, he was bound and determined to deliver his State of the Union address live, not via tape while he and Congress cowered either in a plane 35,000 feet above the United States or deep inside some secret underground complex. What’s more, president Jack Rutledge was going to be damned if his stewardship of the United States of America was going to be undermined by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or whatever name the fucking red horde was calling itself these days.
Rutledge glanced at his watch and though he knew time was very tight, decided he would wait just a little bit longer. After all, the Americans had something going for them that the Russians didn’t.