Protect and defend Read Online Free PDF

lesson to be learned from history, it was that victory went to whoever was bold enough to take it. Pitted against some of history’s more sensational power grabs, Garret felt that what he had participated in was pretty mild. After all, he would have never joined in the plot if the photos hadn’t been thrown in his face—a clear effort by the other side to play dirty. Garret knew it had been his old nemesis Cap Baker, who had sent him the pictures. Garret’s candidates, presidential nominee Josh Alexander and his running mate Mark Ross, were getting their asses handed to them by the Republicans. Money was drying up and the time left to close the gap was shrinking quickly, but they still had a chance. That was, until the photos arrived.
    There were a lot of obstacles Garret could overcome, but the wife of his candidate caught on film having sex with a Secret Service agent was not one of them. Garret showed the photos to Mark Ross, Alexander’s vice president on the ticket. Ross nearly lost his mind, but after a good thirty minutes of a profanity-strewn tirade, he composed himself. He was not prepared to quit so easily. He had fought too hard to see his lifelong ambition destroyed by some little slut. Ross had contacts from his days at the CIA and as Director of National Intelligence. He went to work on finding a way to neutralize the problem, and in less than a week had reached a deal with a very shady expatriate named Cy Green.
    Now it had been a little more than sixteen months since the attack on the motorcade that had killed Jillian Rautbort and fourteen others, including the Secret Service agent who had been sleeping with her. Garret had deluded himself into thinking that his role in the entire matter had been that of a bystander. He had neither condoned nor criticized the plans that had been set in motion. He had merely followed orders.
    Garret remembered the shock and surprise he’d felt when the bomb attack had worked. The press, the public, even law enforcement bought the entire thing. A splinter terrorist group took credit for the attack on the motorcade, and the hunt was on to track them down. The voters rallied behind Alexander and Ross and several weeks later they rode the tide of sympathy to victory. Everything was going smoothly up until the week before the inauguration. That was when Mitch Rapp, Langley’s top counterterrorism man, had somehow managed to track down the assassin who had detonated the car bomb. In just a few short days, everything they had worked so hard for began to unravel.
    Just days before the inauguration the two men who had helped them pull off their miraculous come-from-behind victory disappeared, never to be seen by anyone again. That was unnerving enough, but mild compared to the shock Garret felt when he received the news that Vice President–elect Ross had died of a heart attack the morning of the inauguration. In the Oval Office, of all places. Garret knew Ross had a history of heart problems, but he found it hard to accept the timing of his departure. He had no real evidence that Rapp was to blame, but the odds of all three conspirators dying in the same week were impossible to swallow. Garret’s gut told him the CIA was behind the entire thing, but he was hardly in a position to run to the authorities or the media. He left Washington and promised himself that he would never return. A year later, however, he was already rethinking that decision.
    He missed manipulating the media and the voters. He missed outfoxing the Republicans and watching them complain about his dirty tactics. President Alexander’s people were courting him as if it was a foregone conclusion that he would run the reelection bid that would begin in a little over a year. No man in the history of the republic had ever managed three successful campaigns. Being the first, and likely only, man to do so would be hard to refuse.
    Garret threw the sheet off himself with no regard for his wife lying beside him. He