Excerpt of Running with the President by August Martin Jr.

Just as he goes back to tending the lawn, a dark-blue four-door sedan speeds by and pulls up behind the red truck. He notices a tall, nicely dressed middle-aged man in a blazer getting out of the sedan. The new visitor looks less like the guys who usually show up and more like someone who actually could be part of the neighborhood. As the man begins walking toward the front door, the two men who arrived earlier step outside to meet him. Even from a couple of houses away, the neighbor can see they are having a heated conversation, so he turns off his lawn mower and pretends to futz with its controls. He overhears bits and pieces of their conversation, including the name “Rockefeller” more than once. When he lifts his head to look at them, they finally notice his presence. He gives the guys a casual wave, but they do not return the gesture and quickly head back toward the house. They pause by the door while the guy in the flannel walks over to lock the gate behind the sedan and then returns to the house.

The three men enter the single-story home. To their right is the kitchen area, with a group of guys sitting at the table, shooting’ the shit. The new arrivals nod to the guys, then head to the left, where six men and two women sit at desks that line the living room wall. They wear headsets as they type on their keyboards and stare at the oversized monitors in front of them. Along the other wall is a huge screen with a map of the United 

States, featuring colored dots spanning coast to coast. Some of them are blinking. 

A door flies open as an older man exits the basement to greet the tall gentleman from the sedan.  

“Hello, Gruff,” says the man from the sedan.

“Good to see you, Rockefeller,” Gruff replies as he runs his hand nervously over his unkept graying beard. 

Rockefeller follows Gruff back to the basement door, where he enters not just a code, but also a palm print. He then undergoes an eye scan, and the door, constructed from three-inch-thick reinforced titanium steel, finally opens with a buzz. At the bottom of the stairs, the basement, which has been soundproofed, contains a cell phone jammer so that no one can make outgoing or take incoming calls unless they’re using a satellite phone. There’s no chance of this place ever getting hacked. The team has nicknamed the basement the War Room. Two men are monitoring a large map of the world, similar to the one upstairs. A red triangle frames the area surrounding the capital city of a Midwestern state. Gruff calls over one of the men and tells him to update Rockefeller.

“Yes, sir,” says the skinny young man wearing jeans. He then turns to Rockefeller. “So far, we are on schedule. The team upstairs has infiltrated the top ten social media sites with thousands of fake profiles that have continuously spread our messages over the last two weeks. Additionally, we are getting a lot of traffic with the videos we created. They seem to work especially well, as it’s hard to tell the real footage from the footage we created. We have over five hundred new members joining each day and paying their membership fees, and we have thousands of members, all over the country, reposting our messages on a daily basis. The country seems to enjoy getting worked up; it’s easier than one would imagine.” 

Rockefeller nods and asks, “What about the weaponry? How well are we stocked?” 

A short, stocky man in his early fifties stands up from his chair in the corner of the room and walks over to them. He clears his throat and, with a voice rough from years of smoking, replies, “Sir, most of the weaponry is located off-site in a large warehouse about ten minutes from here. It has around-the-clock security. Together with what we have here, we are armed to the hilt. Weapon donations have exceeded our expectations, and we are about three weeks ahead of schedule. There is also enough manpower signed up to cause a ruckus no one will ever forget.” 

The men spend another five minutes answering their leader’s questions until he seems satisfied. Rockefeller then spends another ten minutes in private with each of these senior members. Each of them is in charge of a specific part of the plan. All information is on a “need to know” basis, just in case any of them are captured and questioned by the authorities. No one but Rockefeller knows the entire plan. Everyone else only knows the part he or she has been given to play. As their mantra goes, “It’s all for the greater good.”

As Rockefeller gets up to leave, he takes a last look around. He’s feeling especially proud today, having accomplished so much in just ten months. Rockefeller and Gruff make their way upstairs. 

At the front door, Rockefeller says, “I will be in touch, Gruff. And thank you for the new satellite phone.” He tucks the phone into the breast pocket of his new Tom Ford blazer. On the way back to his sedan, he smiles to himself with pleasure at what he will soon be accomplishing: stopping Dumont’s plan to dismantle the America he loves.