The Next President Read Online Free PDF

events and uses that claim to provoke violence against innocent persons is a fraud and is no friend of mine or of this campaign. Furthermore, be assured that when I am your president you may trust in me to use all my resources to oppose anyone who would foment racial violence under any pretext.”
    “Reading that statement was the easy part,” Jenny said.
    “I left Alita to field all the reporters’ questions.”
    “Somebody talking about me?”
    The press secretary entered the room, sat on the arm of the sofa next to Baxter Brown, and casually draped an arm over his shoulder. Alita was a small, well-turned-out woman, but she had three older brothers who were boxers, and they’d all given her lessons. She was not shy.
    “Guy from the New York Post had a tidbit for me,” she said.
    “What’s that?” Del asked.
    “He heard Pee Vee was thinking about approaching the party chairman, wanting to know if you get plugged, does he automatically get the nomination?”
    Congressman Peter Van Fossen of New York was Del’s running mate, the vice presidential nominee. He’d been chosen strictly to appeal to voters in the Northeast. He wasn’t shy, either.
    Pee Vee the VP,” Del said, shaking his head with a bemused grin.
    “I’m going to send that guy to a lot of funerals overseas.” He looked around.
    “Doesn’t anybody have any good news for me?”
    Jim Greenberg said in a neutral tone, “Your poll numbers are up ten points since the attempt. Even in the South.”
    “Probably just a twenty-four-hour sympathy bounce,” Jenny suggested.
    A deep laugh rumbled from Baxter Brown.
    “Yeah, but if not, watch for the president to have someone take a shot at him.”
    While the others laughed. Jenny said in a tone of mock disapproval,
    “Baxter, the president has issued a statement deploring the attempt on Del’s life, and he promises no effort will be spared to apprehend the shooter.”
    “While privately regretting that I dodged the bullet,” Del Rawley said with a sardonic grin. Then he sighed and asked, “So, madam campaign manager, do we stick to our original plan?”
    Jenny nodded.
    “Despite Jim’s new numbers, the president’s got the South locked up. You own the Midwest, and we leave Pee Vee at home to protect the Northeast. We make some courtesy calls in the Rocky Mountain states. Then we slug it out for fifteen rounds in California. That’s where this race is going to be decided.”
    On a wooded ridge in the Great Smoky Mountains, straddling the state line between North Carolina and Tennessee, Beau “Dixie” Wynne sat next to a small, carefully built campfire. He’d finished his dinner of freeze-dried beef with dehydrated cinnamon-covered apple slices for desert. Now he was enjoying his daily cup of coffee laced with Irish whiskey as he listened to the radio.
    Every news show he could pull in was going on about the assassination attempt in Chicago. But they all kept repeating the same three facts: The candidate had just come onstage, he hadn’t even started to speak, and bending over to accept a flower from a little girl had saved his life. Beyond that, nobody knew anything that amounted to a hill of beans.
    Dixie had been up to Chicago once for a football game at that mausoleum next to the lake where the Bears played. He’d walked through Grant Park that weekend and could picture the scene where the shooting had happened.
    He remembered all the tall buildings to the north and northeast of that band shell. Had to be ten thousand windows looking down on it; no way the Secret Service could cover them all.
    He tried to imagine the one he’d have picked to do the job. Dixie was a career sniper—for the last twenty-four years with the Gainesville PD SWAT team, for five years before that with a secret army unit he’d never told anybody about.
    Dixie thought the way he’d have done it would’ve been to find an office that was closed for the holiday, one that was right on the far edge of possibility so