Presidential Shift by C. G. Cooper Read Free Book Online Page B

convenience store with no clerk and no security camera, and taking anything he wanted. These guys were so fucking arrogant that they led us straight to it. I can’t wait until the next one.”
    “When?”
    “I’ll have to talk to the president, but I’m thinking we hit them again in a couple days.”
    Daniel knew nothing could ever be as easy as Cal made it sound. He just hoped that it wouldn’t come back to bite them.
    +++
    “Where the fuck did that video come from?” boomed Congressman Peter Quailen. He’d been in the middle of a charity golf tournament when his aide called with the breaking news. Speeding home in his chauffeured Cadillac Escalade, Quailen watched in open-mouthed shock as the video played on his phone. It had been easy to find on YouTube and already had over three hundred thousand views in less than an hour.
    Unlike the brazen recording made by his colleague from Colorado, Quailen knew nothing about his video. He had no way of knowing that SSI had connected the dots with the help of facial recognition and the contact list in the congressman’s phone. Neil’s software had dug the rest of the way.
    Of course, the congressman remembered the cocaine-filled orgy that his old friend put together three years before. It had been a pre-celebration for a huge block of Post-Katrina aid Quailen pushed through Congress and was set to make his high school pal a very wealthy man.
    It was that very wealthy man that was now on the other end of the call.
    “I don’t know, Pete. It must’ve been one of them hookers we got.”
    “Listen and listen good you fucking jackass. Don’t say a thing to anyone. Let me find out what else they know and I’ll be in touch. Keep your phone on!”
    Quailen slammed his phone down onto the leather seat. Things were dire at the moment, but the twenty-year congressman was a veteran of more than his share of controversy. He’d risen through the ranks of Louisiana politics clawing, bribing, bullying and squashing his opponents all the way to the top.
    Congressman Peter Quailen’s eyes closed as he prepared a counterattack.
    +++
    In his posh Georgetown suite, Colorado Congressman Joel Erling was the exact opposite of his Louisiana colleague. The brash man featured in his private home video had vanished. Erling sobbed into his soiled suit coat and wriggled in his piss-soaked Armani pants.
    Like other men of power, a little more than an hour ago, Erling had felt invincible. A year into his first term in Congress, he’d put out feelers to potential private ‘donors.’ With Colorado being a haven for marijuana growers, and with legislation already moving toward legalization, the coming crop of pot CEOs were his first target.
    Through mutual friends he met Jeremiah Stevens, a kind of folk hero in the legalization movement, at a fundraiser for some children’s charity. The relationship started casually with larger and larger cash payments going to Congressman Erling as his efforts in the state legislature and in Washington escalated. Erling’s greed and hunger for power outmatched the pace of the bribes. He’d always been a bully as a teenager, aided by his size, and now had the added benefit of being a United States congressman. The last two years he’d lived like a movie star and even had Hollywood elites clamoring to spend time with him. He was the face of the legal marijuana movement, although he never touched the stuff himself. His vanity ran deep, and he refused any foreign substance that took away from his near perfect physique, honed from years in the gym.
    He palmed the silver revolver in his hand and almost laughed at the irony. It had been a ‘donor’ who’d given the Congressman the weapon after a weekend of wining and dining in Los Angeles. Grabbing the pistol in his right hand, Joel Erling lifted it to his temple.
    +++
    Cal was just unpacking his bag when Daniel walked into the hotel room dressed in a t-shirt, running shorts and running shoes. The sniper had