Huff's Rapture

By John Neil Hall

SUMMARY OF THE NOVEL, HUFF’S RAPTURE This story of air power and palace intrigue is set in the middle of the 21st century. Although it is classified as war/military fiction, it is also a work that delves heavily into politics, science fiction and even philosophy. Vice President Ed Huff is summoned to the White House, informed that the president is dying and told that the world is facing a dire foreign policy showdown with Russia and Iran in the middle east. Thinking he is in command, he begins to lead American forces away from a nuclear holocaust, using the country’s conventional air superiority to disarm its enemies before they can set nuclear weapons in motion. Huff, as has been prearranged for him, takes charge of the largest invasion force in history – from aboard a hypersonic plane that can speed him to a battlefield and get him out of harm’s way before an adversary can barely notice him. Ducking in and out of weightless space, Huff has to fight not only an unidentified sickness that causes him to pass out several times but to keep ahead of an intelligence cabal back in Washington pressing for a pre-arranged nuclear solution. He does surprisingly well, assembling stealth bombers and attack fighters as well as penetrating rockets that denudes enemy nuclear forces. But Huff learns all his work could not stop the forward momentum leading to world nuclear Armageddon, even after treaties between the superpowers to limit their stocks of warheads and rockets. The title “Huff’s Rapture,” heavily laden with irony, has to do with the change of direction this book begins to take midway through and the surprise ending that is in store for readers in its final chapters. “I don’t want to ruin the ending for anyone, so I won’t explain what the title means,” Hall said. “You’ll understand when you’ve read it.” The novel sprang from Hall’s extensive coverage of hearings into the treaties that eventually limited the number of Soviet and American strategic missiles. Although it capped a wasteful, expensive and needless arms race by both sides, the Russian and American nuclear arsenals remain. “I remember one of the treaties was brought up in a closed session of the Senate and they later published a record of the debate. Old Senator Russell of Georgia made a speech in which he declared if there was a nuclear war and we had to start all over again with Adam and Eve, he wanted them to be Americans. I realized then we would always be whistling past the graveyard on this subject and I needed to write a book.” Hall keeps this book riveted on the future, however. Guessing the status of technology 40 years out, particularly for aviation, is difficult even for experts in the field, but Hall takes a shot at it. Hall asks: “ If it makes no sense having the wartime vice president hurtling around the heavens in a hypersonic plane, why does it make any more sense sending him to a cave or an underground “secure location?”

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Neil Hall
• Release date: May 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452497747

John Neil Hall

John Neil Hall is a writer on politics, national security, foreign policy, major world events and people. While “Huff’s Rapture” is his first novel, he is a vastly experienced journalist. For the final four decades of the 20th century and until 2006, he was an active newsman and for most of that time wrote a widely read column. Media General News Service, along with Scripps-Howard, syndicated Hall’s column from coast to coast. He was Media General’s bureau chief in Washington, opening and expanding a major news staff for the Richmond-based organization in 1979. He also brought it national acclaim with an award winning investigative report that forced the Navy to reverse its conclusion that an enlisted man had caused the fatal USS Iowa explosion in a suicide bombing. Hall’s trip to Tehran during the 1979 hostage crisis, as crowds of more than a million were chanting Death to America, and later to Eastern Europe, as frontiers crumbled before the Berlin Wall came down, put his newspapers ahead of the international brigade of journalists. He was still globe-hopping in search of stories in the last months on the job. And he covered every national political convention and presidential campaign between 1964 and 2004. John Neil Hall was born in Philippi, W.Va., the son of public school teachers. Much of Huff’s Rapture is set in the valleys, creeks and nearby towns where Hall grew up. He is a graduate of West Virginia University and is still married to the Parkersburg, W.Va. co-ed, Susie Deem Hall. After graduation, he went to work for the then flourishing wire service UPI in Columbus, Ohio and Trenton, N.J. before moving to Washington in 1965 with UPI, and later the Hearst Newspapers and Media General. Hall became a member of the prestigious Gridiron Club and one of its most prolific lyricists for its annual musical production defaming the famous. As the club’s president in 2006, he invited a freshman senator from Illinois to speak at its Spring dinner – an engagement that has been a rung on the ladder to the presidency (to slip or vault.) Those who have vaulted on that Gridiron ladder to the White House have included Sen. John F. Kennedy and, as we would see, President Hall’s guest of honor and 2006 speaker, Sen. Barrack Obama.

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Huff’s Rapture

By

John Neil Hall

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011 John Neil Hall

All rights reserved.

DEDICATION

In the 1960s and 70s, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee courageously exposed the dangers of the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race and laid the groundwork for the later bipartisan consensus to begin controlling the number and size of warheads in a series of treaties that endure to this day. This novel is dedicated not only to Senators like Bill Fulbright, George Aiken and Albert Gore Sr., but hard working staff led by Carl Marcy. Their patient work to keep the press informed on this complex subject laid a foundation for this book.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This novel would probably have not been started were it not for the gentle prodding of my youngest son, Doug. It probably would not have been finished had not my wife, Susie, showed late leg as a sharp-eyed editor, saving me from embarrassment. It probably would have been laid aside numerous times had my oldest son, Mark, not stepped in with steady help and goodwill. And it would have died of self-doubt if Susie, numerous others and especially my dear friend Pat Sloyan hadn’t given me a pat on the back. I owe Pat a bottle of something good for his advice on aviation and military matters, but he and my family shouldn’t be held responsible for anything herein that offends anyone. If anything works in this book, they deserve the credit.

CHAPTER ONE

Washington, D.C.

Third Quarter, 21st Century

Mr. Vice President, it’s George Melton at the White House. Please get dressed and pack a bag for one week. I cannot explain. I am terribly sorry to awaken you sir.

The voice came like a shot over Vice President Ed Huff’s cell phone, which vibrated in his pajama pocket. Six years of hard practice sent him flying the eighteen steps into the adjoining bathroom.

George, wozzup?

They’re on the way now, sir. It’s the chest again, sir. Very serious. I can’t tell you more. But Fred thinks this could be it.

Fred was Dr. Frederick A. Spitzer, the White House physician, who had practically moved into the residence for the past nine weeks because President Stanley Blanchard’s left ventricle was on the verge of bursting in a full scale coronary.

Oh, and the Iranians know all this, of course and they have rocketed Israel this morning. We could have a nuclear incident developing there.

Thank you, George. And a happy morning to you. Ah, I hear them coming up the drive now.

He reached for the electric razor and she was in the mirror, smiling like she always had.

What do we have, sweetie, another two-Zantag night at the Family Quarters?

Ah, Milly, I’m afraid it’s bad. I need a week’s stuff.

Milly reached for the phone while her husband jumped into the shower. She stuck her head in the shower stall.

Don’t worry. Jimmy’s moving. He’ll be absolutely delighted to help – worried to death about you. What a good guy Jimmy is. Say, did I ever tell you you’re a well developed stud?

Yeah, when all this is over, I’m going to do something for him and his family if there is nothing else I can contribute to the whole country, Ed Huff said. Oh, thanks for the compliment, Mill, just at the perfect moment for me to drop everything and ravage you.

He feinted toward her, but she had disappeared from the mirror with a promising laugh.

Huff, Mr. Plain Nose, he thought of himself fleetingly as he snipped off three disturbingly fast-growing nasal hairs and examine a chest lump before looking below to see if it really was what Milly said it was. No and Nah.

I’ve got Janet moving and you may get a cup of coffee if you’re lucky, she said from the next room. Hopefully they’ll have something for you at the White House.

For a vice president? Huff laughed. Don’t bet on it.

Downstairs, Jimmy Poole met Huff in the kitchen with a suitcase packed and ready. Jimmy’s wife, Janet –dressed and cheerful – delivered him a cup of her best drip grind. The two of them had been the Huffs’ paid staff all six years at the mansion and 12 years before that in Georgetown when he was a Senator.

I had to guess, of course, Jimmy said, pointing at the suitcase.

You usually get it amazingly right, Huff said.

I’m figuring secure location again, said Jimmy.

Could be. But who knows, I may end up in Paris or in Moscow.

No tux?

I’ll rent one.

No golf clubs?

I’ll play poker if anyone takes leave of their senses. I’m out of here.

Milly and Ed threw their arms around each other like newlyweds.

You’re breaking my back, she said, as always. At 6-1 and still 185 pounds, the former free safety had lost none of his strength. They said more than once that they loved each other as much as they did 42 years ago when they met on the campus of the University of Wisconsin.

It was the 28th of May, and Huff watched her through the drizzle on his limousine window as she stood waving on the front porch in her robe. He blew kisses winding down the driveway like a movie star, after greeting the chauffeur, Frank Marion. At the corner, Protective Service met them and they started toward the Rock Creek parkway with lights blazing and breathtaking speeds that made Huff glad Janet was no short order cook.

In minutes, the motorcade was screeching up to the east gate of the White House and the vice president was being unloaded in front of the South Portico where his luggage was stowed inside the waiting helicopter while Huff was whisked upstairs toward the family quarters. Down the hall aides pulled him at a rapid clip, left this way, right that way, and finally shoved him into a bedroom that smelled of a man who had passed the night in agony.

CHAPTER TWO

Ed, come on in and and please excuse my appearance, the president growled, leaning weakly on an elbow in his bed overlooking the South Lawn and the Washington Monument in the distance.

You shouldn’t even be seeing me," Huff said, shocked at the swollen neck and head – yellow and fevered – peering at him from under the covers.

No need to worry about that now, he heard the president respond, muffling a laugh.

The vice president moved from the foot of the bed around to the side to get a better look, and saw that the chief’s normally darting eyes, though open, didn’t even follow him. The man was blind.

Ed, if this is my last order, I want to do it face to face before…

Then began an uncontrollable and violent spasm of coughing that lasted for nearly a minute. Finally, the voice in the bed gained control.

Now listen, Huff heard the president say distinctly and clearly. I am turning over to you, by authority of the Constitution and the law of succession, all powers vested in me as president of the United States. You need to get to Andrews. Goodbye Ed. May God guide you in the coming days. Mr. Greene, now please come in. The ghostlike figure in the bed coughed once and then appeared to lapse into semi-consciousness, wordless and soundless.

Ed Huff choked with emotion. I wish you Godspeed, Mr. President, he said.

Jack R.H. Greene, the president’s chief of staff, was a tall, athletic man who looked to be about 35 but was twice that age. He had been the president’s chief of staff for three years and before that had nine years experience in various levels of government service.

Greene did not waste words. Without paper, he stood before the now-comatose patient and began perfectly and unemotionally summarizing the law of succession and the awful security dilemma that would face Huff in his first hours of president.

"Because of the president’s physical condition that now appears to be irreversible, Mr. Huff, you are at this moment the acting president of the United States and commander-in-chief. You will remain so until Mr. Stanley Blanchard is certified as able to resume the duties of office for the remainder of his term, which you will complete if Mr. Blanchard is unable to do so.

"Because of an imminent crisis of the first order, the staff recommends that the normal swearing in ceremony be foregone, since it is a formality in any event and you are, in fact, as of this moment in charge and the de facto president of the United States. If you order us to arrange a ceremony, however, we will do our level best to arrange one before the onset of the crisis I am about to describe.

Have the leadership of Congress and the Chief Justice been notified? asked Huff.

They are enroute to the Secure Location, said Greene. I will notify them as soon as you are underway.

If it is all right with them to proceed without swearing me in, of course I will do my duty, said Huff. He never again heard whether the principles had given any kind of approval for his elevation to the presidency.

On the hurried walk in the steady drizzle to the helicopter pad, Greene did all the talking. He explained that the Iranians, without warning at 4 o’clock Eastern, had launched 17 of their newest intercontinental missiles towards seven U.S. cities and 10 other targets. All contained nuclear warheads but were successfully intercepted by advanced American anti-missile systems in the upper atmosphere. Russian officials, contending it was all a mistake, were directly threatening military action against the United States in alliance with Iran if there was any nuclear retaliation against the Iranians.

"There isn’t time now to go over the details, but let me introduce Lt. Gen. Bill Altman, who will be with you on the trip to Andrews. General Altman, this is the Acting President of the United States, Ed Huff.

Mr. President, said the general, snapping to attention, red-faced in his apparent surprise.

Mr. Greene, please have Terry Watson meet me at Andrews, said Huff.

Watson was Huff’s top personal aide.

Watson’s been notified, sir, said Greene over the flutter of the helicopter blades. But I’m afraid he won’t be able to get there in time. He’s available on the secure phone.

Huff fell into the presidential seat on the right of the aisle as the chopper began to rise off the lawn before the magnificent semi-circle of the south portico, wreathed in wet blossoms glistening in the rising sun. Past the Washington Monument and the tidal basin, it headed east down the Potomac River toward the Capitol – all the sites Huff loved but which now held an indefinable foreboding.

Beside him, Lt. General William O. Altman appeared to be extraordinarily calm and unshaken by the events. The protocol for response is still being put together and will be given to you, along with computer backups and graphics, when you are aboard. It basically consists of an order of defensive and offensive steps to meet the scenario you face. I am sure you are well familiar, sir.

To some degree, General, but don’t hold anything back, Huff said. It’s a short ride and tell me everything you know about this mission, what the pitfalls are that I’m likely to face, what I need.

It was close to 7 a.m., and a ring of red was visible through the rain as they headed low over the Maryland country.

I’d help you, Altman said. I should have had a briefing organized for you, sir, but they wanted everything done on the plane. They give you no choice when you wear the uniform.

I understand, General, Huff responded. "I’ve been around the block a couple of times. But when you become president and if the office is to amount to anything, you can’t operate in the dark.

"Mr. President, the people who this