Cheating and Rivals Pt. 73-76

Jen gawked at the ex-CIA agent. "How dare you Lou," she said angrily. "You don't even know me. You don't know Mike. Maybe what we do, it helps him think. It inspires him. To be the freaking Phantom. Did you think of that?"

Lou was about to respond when he saw commotion at the front of the room. Worried looks. Urgent conversations. Around the President. "Something's happening," he said, suddenly concerned.

"What?" Jen said, turning to look where Lou was looking.

*******************

Mike stood startled as big men in dark suits jumped out of the SUVs and ran towards him. Leading the way was a balding man in a wrinkled polo shirt and khakis. "Allen, what are you doing here?" he asked, both surprised and relieved to see the older man. Allen was Chief Scientist of CATF.

"Mike we've been looking all over for you!" Allen yelled frantically. "We've got to get to CATF!"

Mike's body tensed. "Allen what has happened?" he asked.

"The Twins!" Allen said, panicked. "They've got the President's daughters! The terrorists! They've got them!"

Cheating and Rivals Part 76

The Secret Service cleared out the ballroom. The huge ballroom was empty now, except for the President and his team at a hurriedly organized command center at the front, and Jasmine's team mingling around the periphery.

"What's happening?" Jen asked Leo.

"The President's set up a war room here," Leo said gravely. "Every second counts. He doesn't want to lose time flying back to DC."

"What should we do?"

"Jasmine knows the First Lady. She's with her now."

Jen nodded slowly, thinking about what the First Lady and the President must be going through with their 2 daughters kidnapped by terrorists. She said "I should go home."

"It's up to you," Leo said. "But your husband's probably at CATF by now."

"You know who my husband is?" Jen asked. She meant his role at CATF.

"The Phantom? Yes."

"Am I the only person who didn't know his codename?" Jen lamented. She was joking, but not joking. Yes, she lied to Mike about LA and other things. But he kept a lot from her too.

"Don't worry about it," Leo said with a sympathetic smile. "They're trained to be secretive. The spooks. Not many know. I do only because I used to work at CIA."

"Oh," Jen said, looking over at Lou. How did he know?

Leo followed Jen's eyes. He said "Lou used to work for me at CIA. I recommended him to Frank."

"Leo, are we going to be able to get the girls back?" Jen asked worriedly.

"I don't know," Leo said honestly, looking resigned. "Every minute - every second counts. We need a break now. In the next hour. Otherwise, we'll never see those girls again. Alive anyway."

A little later, Ricky sidled up to Jen. "We need to talk."

"You need to leave!" Jen hissed in a low voice. "If Anna sees you ..." She was so fucked if Anna recognized Ricky and then told Mike. He'd think she planned this rendezvous. Her thighs felt moist as he continued to slowly leak from her pussy, making her feel even more wicked and shameful.

"I'm sorry about before," Ricky said regretfully. With a boyish grin, he added "I can't control myself when I'm around you."

"Anna's here Ricky!" Jen said with exasperation.

"I know. I'm a total asshole. It'll never happen again," Ricky promised. "But she's okay, right? So I learned my lesson and everything's okay."

"It never happened!" Jen said urgently. "You can never tell Mike!"

"I won't, I promise," Ricky swore.

"I'm such a fuckup," Jen lamented, cursing herself. She looked nervously at Anna. She was with Deidre. "We're over Ricky. I promised Mike."

"It's not just up to you."

"It IS just up to me!" Jen insisted.

"There's a reason you didn't tell Mike about LA," Ricky told her. "There's a reason what happened before happened. We can't resist each other Jen. It's not just the sex. We love each other."

"We are NOT having this conversation here!" Jen hissed in a low voice.

"Okay, okay, I'll be cool," Ricky said, reluctantly relenting.

**********************

Allen rapidly filled Mike in during the flight to CATF, and as they hurried through the CATF corridors to the Bunker (the Bunker was CATF's command center). Getting to the Bunker required going through a number of automated doors that opened only with voice recognition or other biometrics, like eye or finger print scan. These automated doors were monitored and controlled by CATF's sophisticated security system. The security protocols and level of biometric checks increased the closer you got to the Bunker.

Allen hurried into the Bunker but Mike paused at the doorway, taking it all in. The Bunker was packed and ablaze with activity. It was total chaos though. Mountains of information was coming in and people were scrambling to make sense of it all, trying to find leads to locate the girls.

Mike saw Maria Fernandez desperately working on software to help analyze the information. Maria led the search and rescue component of CATF. Most of the burden of finding the girls fell on her shoulders and Mike could tell she was feeling the pressure. She looked desperate and almost in tears as she frantically worked with her team to pull leads from the information. But it was like a needle in the haystack given the massive amount of information, from public and private CATV cameras throughout the Washington DC area, police and FBI reports, witnesses ...

Mike was able to monitor Maria's work on the big screens above her team's computer terminals. He saw she was trying to adapt the software he wrote to find Willy to help sift through the data. Mike shook his head, immediately knowing it wouldn't work. With Willy, Mike figured out Willy liked beer and Taco Bell; he'd been able to focus on Willy's location using that information, which he thought of as a "tell." But Maria didn't have any tells for the terrorists. So, trying to use his Willy software wasn't going to work.

Mike saw Abraham and Brent on the other side of the room in a fierce debate. Many of the other Young Turks and Brain Trust were there too. Mike looked at the big screens above their heads. What the fuck? They were working on the Q program! Mike shook his head in disgust. Sure, a quantum computer would be real handy right now. But they'd been working on the Q program for months (years for Abraham and others of the Brain Trust) and there was no way they were going to solve the X factor problem in the next couple hours. And Allen had made it clear. They needed a solid lead to the girls' location in the next one or two hours, or the chance of finding them were dim.

Mike shook his head as he scanned the room. It was bedlam. People wasting time on dead ends. And they were scattered and uncoordinated, working as individuals instead of a team. No one had even bothered to pick up the yellow tennis ball.

To Mike though, the solution was obvious. Scientists and computer science geeks were always looking for the "elegant" solution. That's what Maria, Brent and Abraham were doing. But there was no time for that. Sometimes you had to brute force it. Sometimes you just had to take a hammer and fucking pound that square peg through the round hole.

But Mike couldn't write the code himself. While the solution was obvious it was going to take a lot of work, and it had to be done immediately. There were dozens of skilled programmers in the room. They were all working on different things: Maria on the Willy code, Abraham and Brent on the Q computer, clusters of people working on other ideas. Mike needed to corral everyone in and get them working as a team. On his idea.

Mike knew what he had to do. He needed to take control. He needed to lead these people. But the prospect was daunting. It was the PTSD. He suddenly felt distressed and scared, and had the urge to run away. Behind him someone shouted and Mike cringed, as if scared he was being attacked. His head clouded up and he found it hard to concentrate. Then came the anxiety. The overwhelming anxiety that was so debilitating Mike wasn't sure if he could keep breathing or take a single step forward, much less take control and lead all these people.

But then Mike thought of the 2 girls. They were running out of time. They needed to find them now.

Mike clenched his eyes shut. He gathered himself. Mind over matter. He willed the demons away. He forced himself to take that step forward. And then the next step. And the next.

People turned to look at Mike as he walked into the room. The room went silent.

With everyone looking, Mike picked up the yellow tennis ball.

Everyone looked scared. Desperate. Mike needed them at their best. And people weren't at their best when scared.

So Mike gave them a cocky grin. It felt unfamiliar on his face but he faked it. Forcing levity into his voice, he said "I've done stuff a lot harder than this. Got me thrown into jail. Place called CATF. You might've heard about that."

People chuckled and laughed. The tension in the room eased down a notch.

"We're going to solve this problem with binary trees," Mike told them. "We're going to run the data through recursive if-then statements. We'll filter the data down to get our focus, the tells. We'll use the tells to find the girls."

"You want to use conventional code?" Maria said skeptically. "Mike the data set is huge. This is the ultimate Big Data problem. We need a Big Data solution."

Mike shook his head. "No, we don't," he said. "Not if we have infinite computing power."

"How do we get that?" someone said.

"We've already got it. The combined computer power of the US government," Mike told them. "We drop the firewalls, link them together, suspend all other programs, run the computers in parallel." Mike looked at Colonel Banks and JJ who were standing across the room. "Can you get authorization? We need it now."

Colonel Banks was looking at the yellow ball in Mike's hand. "I think we can manage that Mike," he said with a satisfied grin. He gave JJ an "I told you so" look. JJ nodded grudgingly.

Alan Bigebers (Mr. Big) stood in the shadows, away from everyone else. He looked curiously at Mike but didn't say anything.

Mike turned back to the team. He forced that cocky smile again and said "Okay, this is what we're going to do ..."

*********************

"This is a Constitution crisis," Leo whispered to Jen as they both worriedly looked at the President and his team across the room. "The President cannot do his job with a gun to his daughters' heads."

Jen understood immediately. "He'll do whatever ISIS wants," she whispered back.

"Exactly," Leo said glumly.

"So what do we do?"

"Well," Leo said thoughtfully. "There's the 25th amendment ..."

*****************

"The 25th amendment won't solve anything," JJ hissed to Colonel Banks. "The VP has lived with those girls for 8 years. They're his kids too. Transferring power to him won't solve the problem. We have to implement the Independence protocol."

"That protocol's theoretical," Banks said gravely.

"It was designed for exactly this situation," JJ told him. "The Big 4 is unanimous. We go with Independence."

"I'm a member of Big 4," Banks reminded him.

"Then what say you Ethan?" JJ said challengingly. "We can't allow the President and VP's decisions controlled by ISIS. You know that's unacceptable. We must implement Independence."

"What's Independence?" Mike asked as he entered the room.

"I thought that door was locked," JJ said frowning at Mike.

Mike shrugged. "What's Independence?" he asked again.

"Where are we Mike?" Colonel Banks asked, avoiding his question.

"We should have something soon," Mike said. "We have the tells. Now we're running the Willy code. So what's Independence?"

"You're not cleared for that," JJ scoffed dismissively.

Mike sensed this was important. Pressing, he said, "You said we can't allow the President's decisions controlled by ISIS. So we have to implement Independence. What is it?"

"Okay Mike, you want to be brought in?" JJ angrily said. "Protocol Independence is a contingency plan. We try to save the girls. But if that's not possible, we make sure they can't be used as hostages against us."

Mike's eyes grew wide. "You murder the girls?" he said shocked and horrified.

JJ glared derisively at him. "What? You think we're playing games here? Grow up Mike. Freedom has a price. Are you really that naïve to believe this doesn't happen?"

***************

"You can't do this," Mike said as he rushed after Colonel Banks. "Independence isn't freedom. It's evil."

"I need to get ready Mike," Banks said, entering his quarters. Mike followed him in. He watched as Colonel Banks weaponed up.

"You're leading the mission?" Mike asked.

"It's what I do," Banks said with a shrug.

"You can't do this Colonel!" Mike said. "You can't kill those girls! That's murder! It's evil!"

"I do MY job to protect our country!" Colonel Banks yelled defensively. "Now you do YOUR job! Find out where those girls are!"

"Take me with you!" Mike said.

"On the mission?" Banks said with an incredulous laugh. "Mike do you own a gun? Have you ever fired a gun?"

"Let me try to save them!"

Banks stared at Mike. What was this frail, college professor type going to do? Get in the way of a bat? In the way of a runaway truck?

Banks looked down, glaring at his feet. Mike's show of courage shamed him. The purity of his ideals shamed him. Once Banks had been idealistic, like Mike. But that was a long time ago. Looking troubled and frowning, he said "The world's dangerous Mike. Sometimes we have to do things ..."

"This isn't right Colonel. It's evil!" Mike pressed. "The means don't always justify the ends."

Another frown passed Bank's face. But the decision had been made. Shaking his head, he took his gun and pressed it into Mike's hands. He said "Take this. If you're going to stay in this business, you should learn how to use it." Giving Mike a fierce grin, he added "You know you're doing the right thing when they're shooting at you."

There was a knock at the door. It opened and Mitch looked in. "The team's in the briefing room," he told Banks. Mitch looked as troubled as Banks. He looked at Mike. "Phantom," he said with a nod of his head.

Mike nodded back. Then the men were gone. Mike stood there for long moments, holding the gun but feeling powerless.

*************

Mike was back in the bunker, feeling disoriented. What was he doing here? Locating the girls, just so the government could kill them? Who were the good guys and bad guys? Where was the line?

Mike looked at one of the big screens on the wall. It was a live feed from Jasmine's rally. He saw the President and First Lady, looking worried. Did they know what was about to happen? Did they know about the Independence protocol? Or was that something government lifers like JJ and Banks kept to themselves?

Mike watched as Jen and Anna came into view on the big screen. He was surprised they were still there. But then, probably Jasmine was supporting the President, so of course then Jen would stay to support Jasmine.

Then Mike saw something else and his whole world turned upside down. Behind Jen, in the distance. He saw Ricky.

Mike staggered into a chair, barely able to think. Jen was with Ricky. She lied again. Again! And Anna was there. She was with Ricky with Anna there. Jen wanted to be with Ricky so much, loved him so much, she was with him, even with Anna there.

Suddenly Mike felt like his marriage was over. Maybe not suddenly. Maybe it'd been building. Maybe it was inevitable.

There was only so much a man could take. Yes, he had cuckold fantasies. But even he had limits. How could he stay with Jen after this? After all the lies? All the betrayals? All the countless lies?

But the thought of life without Jen made him numb inside. That wasn't life. It was death.

And then there were JJ and Banks, and Independence. That was another betrayal. Not against just Mike but the whole country. Against the idea of America. It made Mike feel even more dead inside.

Mike wanted to be alone. He wanted to go away, far away, and not be bothered by anyone. Fuck JJ and the government. Fuck everyone. Fuck Jen too. He didn't care anymore.

So Mike pulled his iPhone from his pocket. He placed it on the table. He whispered "Siri - upload and execute."