Out There

"It’s all starting to come apart." President Prescott’s mind was racing as his helicopter settled to earth in front of the giant hangar at Andrews Air Force Base.

Malcolm Prescott was 46th President of the United States. At the time, he was 55 years of age, and was currently in his second year as President. He had been Vice-President for five years and ascended to the presidency when President Robert Grinsley died of a heart attack shortly after starting his second term.

The past 20 months hadn’t been easy. Turmoil in the Middle East had started to heat up again. The War against Terrorism had been off and on ever since 2001. But every time that The Coalition Forces located and destroyed one terrorist cell, a new one would spring up somewhere else six months later. It was like fighting the war against weeds in a garden.

Tensions between Israel and it’s Islamic neighbors been "on again...off again" for the past 20 years. The spate of suicide bombers that Israel had suffered at the start of the 21^st Century, had slowed to a trickle by the construction of the Palestine Wall, a wall of brick and stone, fifteen feet tall and ten feet thick. It stretched over 200 miles, from the Jordanian border near Afula on the north down through the heart of Jerusalem and down past Bethlehem and Hebron and ending at the Dead Sea just north of Masada. It was only exceeded in scope and length by the Great Wall of China.

The wall separated the area known as the West Bank from the rest of Israel. A similar wall was erected around the area known as the Gaza Strip. Transportation between Gaza and the West Bank was restricted to twice daily bus runs in both directions along a highway that was closely guarded by Israeli tanks and machine guns.

On the Islamic side of each wall there was a row of concertina barbed wire, stretching the entire length of the wall. The distance between the wall and the wire varied, but was never less than 20 feet. The area between the wall and the wire was heavily dotted with land mines.

The Israelis had moved all of their citizens outside of the areas known as The West Bank and the Gaza Strip. For the most part, their Arab neighbors were restricted to those two areas.

Even though the Israelis had achieved a state of virtual isolationism, they still allowed for commerce with their Islamic neighbors. It was just that access into Israel was through narrow, heavily fortified checkpoints.

However, in spite of all of their cautions occasionally a young zealot would sneak by, eager to embrace the glory of martyrdom, as long as he could take as many of the hated Zionists as possible with him.

All that the Israelis wanted was the right to exist. But many of their Arab enemies felt that allowing just one Jew to live was too high a price to pay for peace. Muslim children were taught from a very tender young age to hate and that glorious martyrdom awaited them in their quest to completely destroy the Israeli nation.

However, things were starting to get even worse. Recently, intelligence learned that some of the Islamic nations had achieved the construction of nuclear weapons. The whole world trembled at what might happen next.

Surprise raids by American and Coalition forces against Iraq and other suspected places had stopped the construction of some weapons of mass destruction. But there was always the question: "Did they get them all?"

But the Middle East was not the only problem. Hot spots were beginning to heat up all around the world. The friction between Pakistan and India had once more reached the boiling point, in the area of Kashmir, as Pakistani rebels began to make more and more forays across the border.

The Peoples Republic of China was once again heating up its plans for the reunification of Taiwan. American forces in that area as well as around the world were on full alert.

And the United States was not the only country to have reasons for concern. Russia was still bothered from time to time with rebel forces hiding in Chechnya. And now tension between Russian troops and Muslim rebels were beginning to heat up along the borders of both Azerbijan and Kazakstan.

And on the domestic front, things were not much better. The nation’s economy and the Stock Market was just beginning to recover from a decade-long recession, caused by the collapse of several major corporations at the start of the 21^st Century.

Thousands of people lost their jobs, many saw their life savings vanish and others lost their retirement, while corporate executives used creative bookkeeping, stock manipulation and just plain fraud and theft to siphon off billions of dollars.

A few of the guilty were indicted and stood trial but for the most part they had vanished to parts of South or Central America or to Offshore Islands. The Justice Department was still searching for many of the culprits and for the lost money.

And if all of that wasn’t enough, wildfires raged across the West. The Western United States had suffered a three-year drought and now the west was burning. Thousands of men were on the fire lines in several Western States; Montana, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and California. At least some of the fires were discovered to have been deliberately set by domestic terrorists. Hope of containment was still far off.

Prescott also did not enjoy a majority in Congress. The Senate was evenly divided and the Vice President was forced to settle many deadlocks. And he was still four votes short in the House in order to make any progress without having to make major concessions.

All this and more. And then today the shit really hit the fan...