The Secretary of Defense
When news first got to the President that his Secretary of Defense has been abducted by some unknown gunmen, the first thing the President had asked of was the briefcase.
“Did he have the briefcase with him” the President asked and later collapsed on his chair after they confirmed to him that the Secretary of Defense had the briefcase with him.
The President, along with everyone in the room knew what was in the briefcase. Nuclear launch codes that if activated could bring the country down to its kneels. The secretary had been on his way to the presidential residence when he had mysteriously vanished. The news given to the President was that the Secretary had gone into the elevator with two of his personal bodyguards but never got out. By the time the elevator opened, it was found empty.
The President had decided to wait, maybe the kidnappers would call to demand some ransom or anything in exchange for the Secretary and the suitcase but after about an hour of waiting, it became obvious that no one was going to call.
“Of course they weren’t going to call, they’re only interested in the launch codes and not some stupid cash” the President yelled out at the rest of the people in the room where presidential meetings were usually held.
Among the people in the room were the Directors of both the FBI and the CIA. The President was sending everyone and everything out there to retrieve those codes. He knew that if words got out that they no longer had control over their nuclear weapons, an attack would be imminent, so he had sent almost every law enforcement agent out there to locate the Secretary.
But as time went by, the President’s hope on retrieving the Secretary and the codes became slimmer and slimmer until a man walked into the President’s office. He claimed to be the Secretary’s driver and had only been allowed into the President’s office because of what he claimed was with him.
“You have the codes?” The President asked in disbelieve as the man opened the briefcase he had came in with and true to his words, the codes were there, in the briefcase.
“How?” Was all the President wanted to know.
“Well sir, the Secretary had handed me the codes early this morning, he had given it to me because of a moment like this. He also asked me to go into hiding if anything was to happen to him sir and that was why it took a while before I could get it here.” The driver explained.
“So what you’re saying is that the Secretary had given you the codes while he had an empty briefcase with him?”
“Well the briefcase with the Secretary isn’t entirely empty sir”
The President immediately raised his head and looked at the driver. “What do you mean by that?”
“The briefcase the Secretary had with him has a tracker in it sir” the man said and watched as the President immediately picked up the phone in his office and made a phone call. About thirty seconds later, two men walked into the office. The driver didn’t need an explanation to tell him who they were, he knew that in few minutes, that the tracker would be located and he had been right.
It had taken the men about twenty seconds to locate the tracker and had taken the cops ten minutes to capture the kidnappers and release the Secretary of Defense.
Later that night, the President had gone live on air. The people wanted to know why the police was all over the place so he had to give them something but one thing was for sure, there was no way he was telling them the truth.