2:30 AM
The thick carpeting in the White House muffled the footsteps of the Secret Service Agents. They stopped and waited outside the family quarters.
Inside the President’s bedroom, a phone buzzed. The President was not a heavy sleeper. He turned on a small light and reached over to pick up the phone.
“Yes,” he said.
“Mr. President, you are needed in the situation room immediately,” the voice on the other end said.
“What is going on?” the President asked.
“Sir, the chairman of the joint chiefs asked me to wake you and request your presence immediately. He said it was urgent.”
The President said he would come and hung up the phone. The First Lady, always a sound sleeper, had not stirred. The President went to his closet, threw on some clothes, and then left the Family Quarters in the White House, escorted by his Secret Service detail.
Five minutes later he was in the Situation Room, beneath the White House. Most of the civilian aides were home asleep, though he suspected a few were being summoned in even as he sat in his chair.
The chairman of the joint chiefs, a grizzled Marine combat veteran looked at the President. “Sir, there have been some developments that we have just been made aware of.
We have confirmed three old soviet backpack nukes that Iran bought and smuggled into this country. They are in place now.”
“Do we know where they are?” the President asked.
“No Sir.”
“What do we know?”
“We just captured one of their operatives. We believe he is the handler for the three teams,” the General continued. “The teams were sent here with orders to wait for a coded message and when they received that coded message, they were to detonate their nukes. If they heard nothing by next Wednesday, they were to on their own, detonate those nukes.”
“Do we know how to find those teams?” the President asked as he leaned forward on the conference table.
“We do not but we believe the man who we captured today can tell us that.”
“Will he?”
“Mr. President, he is a fanatic. We found some documents we were able to translate when we captured him which give us a picture. He wants us to know this is coming but also to know that we cannot stop it.”
The President took his hands and rubbed his head for a moment. “Is there anything we can do?”
“Yes sir. My staff believes that enhanced interrogation would break this man and he would give up the information.”
“Before the bombs go off today?”
The tall old Marine shook his head. “No sir. We need to buy time. We need a couple of days.”
“How do we do that?” the President asked.
“The teams are waiting for a coded message from the terrorist we know as Mohammed the American. As you know he converted to Islam, became radicalized and is now in Yemen with Al-Qaeda and has been coordinating a lot of their attacks against Americans.” The Marine General paused for a moment. “We know where he is. We have a Predator Drone on station with Hell Fire missiles. Give the word and he will be dead in five minutes.”
“What if he has prerecorded the message?” the President asked.
“According to our information, he has not.”
“But he is an American citizen,” the President said.
“Yes sir, he is.”
“What else is there?”
“The Iranians sponsored this attack. We believe they may have a fail safe plan to order the nukes detonated.”
“How do we stop this?” The President again asked.
The Marine General brought a photo up on the large screen. “This is an annex of the Iranian intelligence agency,” he said, pointing to a building. “This is where they have launched this operation from and this is where they will have any backup to order the nukes to be exploded. If we hit it and destroy it, we believe the Iranians will not be able to order the nukes to be exploded.”
The President looked around the room for a moment, then back to the Marine.
“Let me see if I have this straight. You want me to authorize enhanced interrogation techniques on a prisoner we have in American custody. You want me to authorize the killing of an American citizen, granted he is working with Al-Qaeda and you want me to bomb a building in Iran?”
“Yes Sir. It is the only way to stop them from nuking America.”
The story is fiction but the scenario could be all too real. At 2:30 in the morning, when the President is summoned to the situation room, the question is, who do you want making those decisions?
Do you want Mitt Romney? Do you want Ron Paul, or do you want Newt Gingrich making those decisions?
We all have an opinion on how each of them would react to this kind of situation.
The question is, at 2:30 in the morning, who do you want in the situation room making that decision?
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