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.“Are you praying with us?” Victor asks as he turns to Gerhard.“Yes.”“Thank you so much my son, the more of us pray, the better,” Victor says, placing his palms together.“Let us close our eyes.” Victor closes his eyes as he speaks.“I will pray with you, but I will not close my eyes,” Gerhard replies matter of fact.“That is perfectly fine my son, I understand,” Victor answers, while keeping his eyes closed.He then takes a deep breath before continuing.“Now say after me.Oh heavenly Father.”Gerhard looks at the old man in front of him with his eyes closed, palms together, praying, and then looks at the Acting President who also has his eyes closed.With a sigh, he starts to pray with Victor.“Oh heavenly F-” Victor’s first punch catches him perfectly in the throat; his second punch takes Gerhard in the sternum, and the third one on the right temple.Gerhard goes down without knowing what hit him.Quickly Victor jumps forward and tackles the Acting President before he can press the emergency button, while Ernest disarms Gerhard and starts to tie him up.Ernest places one of Gerhard’s own socks in his mouth just in case he wakes up.“What is the meaning of this, who are you?” William hisses as Victor presses him to the ground, using his forearm to half choke William.“Who we are does not matter, what you have done does.” Victor replies.“I have always dreamed of coming to the White House and seeing the President,” Ernest comments behind Victor, having secured Gerhard.“And how is that going for you?” Victor replies jokingly.“Well, I am in the White House, but the President is not here, only an imposter who sold out his country.” Ernest looks angrily down at William as he replies.Ernest is a man of honor, and Phil stands for everything he hates.“I have not sold out my country, Abraham has, and the Presidents before him who allowed the country to grow weak and be bullied by terrorists.I will make this country strong again,” William replies, spitting out the words.“By becoming a terrorist yourself, is that how? Killing innocent people in the process, people who trust you?” Ernest pulls William up as he speaks, and drags him to the couch near the wall, throwing him onto it.“Collateral damage, it is unavoidable,” William sneers back.“Man, but you have gone cookoo,” Victor answers, as he takes a fountain pen from the President’s desk, then walks over to where William is.“So what’s the plan?” Ernest is getting impatient.“You must be morons if you think that I will just spill everything, you can kill me.I will not talk.” William sits upright, showing no fear.“See, that is the problem with you lot, you are so dedicated, and that is cool, but you put your energy into the wrong cause.” Victor stands in front of William as he talks, then grabs him by the hair and pushes his head down on the couch, pinning him down with his right knee before continuing.“But, we are alike.We despise those who betray us.So, I am going to give you a little gift.”“What are you doing?” William looks at the fountain pen Victor has in his hand, which he is bringing to William’s forehead.“This is a fountain pen.I am going to use it to make a tattoo on your forehead that reads TRAITOR.You will really like it.” Victor pushes the tip of the pen into William’s skin, and then wiggles it around before continuing.“Got to get the ink in deep so that you cannot get it undone easily, hold still, or you will ruin my masterwork.”The Vice President is squirming under Victor’s hold.“Stop!”Victor pulls the pen back when William yells.Looking down at the man he waits for him to speak again, the pen only inches from William’s forehead.“It will not matter what I tell you in any case.The plans are already in motion.”“You mean the twenty suicide bombers and the training camp that are all destroyed?” Ernest answers back.“No, I think he means the failed attempt on the Pope’s life and the assassins he sent who are dead as well,” Victor chips in.“No, the submarine,” William answers, his voice sounding tired.“What submarine?” Victor eases up some of the pressure on William’s chest as he speaks.“The President had a special submarine built in secret.The submarine has experimental weapons technology onboard.With it we are going to put all the other countries back into the Stone Age.Only the President can communicate with the submarine by using voice recognition and secret access codes from a top secret encrypted radio, specially built to communicate with the submarine.The system is designed so that no other party can ever track the submarine or send commands to it.I managed to get the codes, but the only way to get control over the submarine was to have the President give the commands I needed to the submarine.”“And America will be the only country with modern technology, right.So where does killing the Pope come in?” Ernest comes closer to the President, but still keeps an eye on Gerhard.“With a sudden crash of modern technology, people will start to riot and panic, naturally many will turn to a leader for guidance, and for many that will be the church.By eliminating the Pope, we can create chaos, and by blaming the death of the Pope and our attacks on selected countries, on terrorist groups, no one will blink an eye if we then drop nuclear bombs on those countries, wiping out terrorists, and those who harbor them, for good.That is why I need to be President, so I can give the order to drop nuclear bombs.”“So you use the submarine to frame countries that you think harbor terrorists, by attacking other countries and causing chaos, just so that no one blinks an eye when you nuke the countries that you do not like?” Victor has hatred in his eyes as he speaks.“Basically, yes,” William answers, looking from Ernest to Victor.“Kind of a novel idea, except for two things.One, you are killing many innocent people in those countries to kill but a few terrorists, while at the same time missing many terrorists in other countries you cannot bomb.And second, you are not changing human instinct and behavior with bombs.There will always be terrorists if your solution is killing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]