Taken

CHAPTER ONE-1

CHAPTER ONE

S

ecret Service Agent Marsha Jefferson looked out the back door of the rental house she shared with three other female agents. Cloudy, but there was no rain in the forecast. A chilly wind was blowing from the northwest, but that was expected in Wyoming. She decided she would wear a heavy jacket today.

The coffee was almost finished. She didn’t wait for the drip coffee pot to stop gurgling. She quickly poured a cup of coffee and grabbed a bran muffin and ate it while standing at the kitchen counter. She savored the coffee, sipping slowly on it as it cooled down.

Marsha glanced at her watch. It was almost seven and time for the others to get up. There were never more than three ladies here at the rental house at any given time. One female agent was always at the MacDonald ranch for the First Lady if she needed anything.

Sandra Clark came in rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and yawning.

“Morning,” said Marsha.

“You’re up early,” said Clark.

“Got to go to the Command Center to finish those reports,” said Marsha.

“Better you than me.”

“I knocked off around ten. Shouldn’t take but a couple of hours.”

“You leaving now?”

“Yeah, everybody is working today.”

“That’s a Saturday for you.”

“Well, they are going in two different directions. He’s buying cows and she’s getting her hair done. When I get to the ranch I am going to let Riley come back and get some sleep.”

Riley Madison was the fourth agent.

Clark glanced at the schedule board hanging on the side of the fridge.

“You going to the Cowboy Action Shooting this afternoon?”

Marsha shook her head ‘No.’

“Starts at twelve. I’ll never make it in time. Those reports have to be faxed today.”

“You might can make the bar-b-que. It’s not until three,” said Clark.

“I would like to go. As a matter of fact, someone from the Secret Service should be there every month. They really help us out.”

“Tell me about it. If it wasn’t for the Kerney County Posse we would have lost the whole family,” said Clark.

“And six to eight of us, maybe ten.”

“I don’t have to be there until one o’clock. We should be back at the ranch around five,” said Clark.

“Sounds about right.”

“We’ll let Jennifer sleep late.”

Marsha finished her coffee before answering. “She will probably go for her jog around eight.”

“I might run with her, get the old circulation going,” said Clark.

“Don’t be late,” said Marsha.

“Don’t worry, I won’t. You may want to ask Mrs. Beverly if she plans on working out with us Tuesday afternoon.”

“Don’t have to. She has it on her schedule,” said Marsha.

“I wonder if any of the other First Ladies ever took Judo classes with the Secret Service Agents?”

“I doubt it. Headquarters would probably frown on it.”

“Yeah, we are supposed to protect them, not t*****e them,” said Clark.

“She’s not just any First Lady, though. She’s hangs right in there.”

At the door Marsha said over her shoulder “Don’t be late.”

Twenty miles away Lewis C. MacDonald, former President of the United States, was drinking a cup of coffee and reading the local paper. The Kerney County Bugle. It was a weekly edition and Lewis like it because it had very little politics, only local.

There was a tap on the back door. Lewis opened the door for the Secret Service Agent.

“Mr. President, we are ready if you are.”

“Give me just a minute.”

“Yes, Sir,” said the agent.

“You want a cup?” asked Lewis.”

“No, thank you, Sir.”

“Who won last night?”

“Kerney County by five.”

“Did you get to go?”

“No Sir, Agent Jefferson told me they won.”

“She loves basketball, doesn’t she?”

“Yes Sir, she played college ball at Auburn.”

The agent went back outside. Lewis grabbed his coat and baseball cap from the coat rack by the back door and went into the living room.

“Beverly.”

“You leaving?”

“Yeah,” as he walked over to his wife and kissed her on the cheek.

“Love you,” said Lewis.

“Love you, too.”

“I should be back before you, you want me to cook supper?”

“That would be great,” said Beverly.

“You getting you hair cut?”

“Just a trim.”

“I can cut it for you,” said Lewis.

“Lewis, you cannot cut my hair.”

“If I can get the Secret Service to hold you down, I can.”

Beverly laughed.

“Love you,” said Lewis, again.

“Love you, too.”

Lewis finished his coffee and headed out the door. Beverly had a few hours to kill so she decided to bake two dozen chocolate chip cookies to mail to Monica in Florida. Beverly smiled when she thought about Monica, her four-year-old granddaughter. She quietly said a prayer for Sheila, her daughter in law, seven months pregnant. So far there were no complications.

At two o’clock Beverly was ready to go. When the three-car convoy pulled into the driveway Beverly went outside. She noticed Marsha Jefferson’s black SUV parked next to the barn where the Command Center was located. She walked that way and when she got to the barn door she called out to Marsha. Marsha stepped outside.

“You sure are putting in a lot of hours.”

“Yes Ma’am, maybe another hour and I will be finished.”

“Don’t forget church tomorrow.” Marsha leaned up against her black SUV. She was one-inch shy of six feet and Beverly was one-inch shy of five six with her shoes on. Marsha didn’t want to be looking down on the former First Lady. Marsha didn’t know if Beverly realized that she tried to be eye to eye with her. Beverly was the only person on the face of the earth that Marsha would do that for. Marsha had a deep respect for and would stop a bullet for her. She had proven that four years ago when an Iranian agent had tried to kill her. Marsha still had the scars and wore them like a badge of honor.

“I won’t. I am looking forward to the Easter Cantata.”

“Me, too. I love Easter. It’s my favorite time of the year. Almost all of the flowers are blooming. Winter is over and the pastures are turning green.

“It’s such a beautiful time for everyone to remember that Jesus was crucified to pay the price for our sins. Everything is new in the spring. Aren’t you glad you dedicated your life to Jesus?” asked Beverly.

“Yes Ma’am, and I thank God every day for that saving grace.”

“Gotta go,” said Beverly.

As a security measure the Secret Service took a different route every time the MacDonald’s took a trip into Kerney. The normal twenty-minute trip could take thirty or forty minutes. When Lewis resigned as President almost four years ago Beverly thought they would just resume a normal life. That was not to be. Two years ago, if Beverly needed to visit the beauty salon only one car was used with three agents. Beverly thought that was ridiculous. Who would want to harm them. Lewis wasn’t in office anymore and wasn’t involved in any politics at all. He just wanted to be left alone and live a normal life.

Then an Iranian terror group had infiltrated the United States and tried to kill her entire family. They had come close, too close. Six of the terrorists were killed a mile from the ranch. One Iranian wearing a suicide vest had made it to one hundred yards from the vehicle the MacDonald’s were in. A twenty-six-year-old woman was captured that was wearing the suicide vest. They were lucky that night. Actually, it was Christmas morning, just after midnight.

After that a security assessment was conducted of the ranch and the MacDonald’s themselves. That assessment took six months. Changes were made six months after that.

Now there was a Secret Service office in Kerney. A twelve- agent unit was stationed there. The security for the family stayed as it was, sixteen agents plus Marsha Jefferson. Beverly didn’t even know who the agents in town were. She knew all of them at the ranch and was on a first name basis with those agents. All of them had eaten dinner or supper with the MacDonald’s at one time or another.

What Beverly had once thought as a waste of money changed after she found out the Iranians intended to behead her entire family and put it on social media. It scared her to death. There was no way she could put a price on the safety of her family. It gave her a sense of security knowing her family was safe.

Secret Service Agent Jennifer Monroe was riding shotgun, both literally and figuratively. She was in the front seat next to the window. The seat young people, especially teenagers, called the shotgun seat. It was a reference to the days of stagecoaches and Wells Fargo guards who carried shotguns. The man next to the driver. She wondered if kids who put dubs on riding shotgun even knew where the phrase came from, probably not. Yes, she was in the seat next to the driver and she had a shotgun. She had a very special shotgun and she knew how to use it. There probably weren’t a hundred like it in the world. Some people might call it a street sweeper. Twelve shot, twelve gauge, automatic with a twelve-inch barrel. It had a selector switch on the frame. A three-position switch: safe, semi, or full auto. For now, it was on safe. She was also in the middle vehicle. ‘The vehicle.’ It was called ‘The vehicle’ by the Secret Service because that was the vehicle the protected was in. Beverly was seated in the back seat of an armored SUV. The two agents in the car with her never chatted to each other and only spoke when spoken to. The two agents had to be alert at all times, it was their job and her life depended on it.

The three-car convoy approached Kerney from the north on Casper Street. Casper Street had no sidewalk on the east side of the street. There was no room to park. The street was against the building. The convoy came to a stop and then proceeded through the intersection one vehicle at a time not allowing room for another vehicle to get between the black SUV’s.

The convoy would go around the square and approach the beauty salon from the east on Main Street. The beauty salon, ‘Courtney on the Square,’ was the last shop on the right butting up to Casper Street. The sidewalk on Main Street was elevated almost two feet with a twenty-foot handicap ramp adjacent to the sidewalk. No parking spaces were near the ramp. Ten feet from the end of the ramp was a handicap parking space.

As the convoy approached the beauty salon Jennifer Monroe noticed no one was out and about on the square. Almost every store had closed at one o’clock. The town looked deserted. She knew Courtney on the Square also closed at one and would reopen when the former First Lady arrived. It was best if there were no other customers in the salon. The owner had a one-bedroom apartment in the back of the shop. Jennifer also knew she was thirty years old, divorced and had an infant son, nine months old. Courtney had been vetted by the Secret Service three years ago. In those three years Beverly had visited the salon twelve times.

The lead SUV pulled into the first diagonal parking spot next to the handicap parking space, seventy five feet away. ‘The vehicle,’ the middle SUV that Beverly was in didn’t pull into the adjacent slot. It pulled in and straddled the next two slots. The third SUV pulled into the fourth parking slot. The Secret Service wanted plenty of room if they needed to make a quick exit. ‘The vehicle’ left its engine running.

From the backseat Beverly said, “Now we wait.”

“Yes Ma’am, it will only take a few minutes.”

Beverly saw Secret Service Agent Sandra Clark and Patrick Simpson get out of the lead vehicle and look around. Clark spoke into a microphone attached to her wrist. Then Tommy Wilcox got out of the third SUV, the trail car. The three agents started moving towards Courtney’s, one hundred feet away. One agent was watching the stores on the right. One agent was looking over his shoulder to see what was behind them. One agent was looking straight ahead.