Read Online Final Assault by Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Free Book Online Page A

autumnal centerpiece in the middle of the long conference table gave off the scent of decaying leaves. It made Secretary of State Doug Mickelson want to sneeze. He’d been fighting allergies all day. The weather was surprisingly warm for October, and his hay fever, which was usually the worst in September, had lingered into this month. It made his head feel full, and despite the allergy medication he was on, he didn’t feel quite himself.
    He needed to be doing the best job of his life right now, and when he had gone to his allergist the day before, he had asked that the allergist make all the symptoms go away.
    I’m not God, Doug , the allergist had said. If I were, I wouldn’t be messing with your sinus cavities. I’d make those alien ships disappear.
    Everyone on the planet would make those ships disappear if they could. Mickelson tried not to concentrate on them, but he was constantly aware of them—as if they were a storm bearing down on a particularly beautiful day.
    Right now, he had most of his attention focused on the final draft of the president’s speech. He was supposed to vet it to get rid of “potential international problems.” The problems he was searching for were not with content—the world leaders had already spoken to Franklin and knew what the speech was about. They had, in fact, chosen him to give it.
    What Mickelson was looking for was offensive language. He and a battery of international experts from the various foreign desks throughout the White House were going over the speech line by line. The press secretary and a battalion of the president’s speech writers were in the room as well, all making notes.
    President Franklin himself was silting at the head of the conference table, a red pen in hand, marking on a hard copy before him. He was the only person not working off a palm-sized screen, and Mickelson actually envied him for it.
    The door to the room opened, and Grace Lopez, the president’s chief of staff, looked in. She was a short round woman with curly gray hair and a manner that made Mickelson want to snap to attention.
    “Everyone’s here,” she said. “All the networks are set up. They’ve blocked time. You promised a speech at five sharp.”
    “Nearly there, Grace,” Franklin said.
    She sighed loudly and closed the door.
    Franklin raised his head only after she left. The worry lines around his dark eyes seemed even deeper than usual. “I want this speech to be perfect and it’s not going to be, is it?”
    Mickelson opened his mouth to say that perfection no longer mattered, that the longer the president waited the more tom up the world would become, but at that moment, Franklin said, “Screw it.”
    Everyone in the room froze.
    Franklin looked at them. “We’re going to offend someone. That can’t be my concern right now. If a nation doesn’t like the way I say something, screw them. Their own leaders can try to clean up the mess.”
    He stood. Mickelson held out a hand to stop him. “Mr. President,” Mickelson said, “just let us finish going through this—”
    “Nice try, Doug,” Franklin said. “But it’s time we stop going through the political motions. If we dither too much, we won’t make our deadline. And this is one deadline that is aptly named, don’t you think?”
    Dead ... line. The pun made Mickelson shudder almost as much as the thought of dealing with any diplomatic crisis that came from the speech.
    “Right now I’m expected to speak for the world. Well, they’re going to have to like the sound of my voice. I’m tired of altering it for anyone.” And with that, Franklin grabbed the papers off the table and left the room.
    “Shit,” Patrick Aldrich, the press secretary, said. “Someone stop him.”
    “How can we stop him?” one of the speech writers asked. “He’s the leader of the free world.”
    “It’s not done,” Aldrich said.
    “I think the president thinks it is,” Mickelson said. “And if you don’t want this to