Chapter 1: Clear and Present Danger
"….. I have your back! And so long as Americans have each other's backs, we're gonna win this election, and I'm going to lead you to the promised land! A promised land where women choose what to do with their bodies! A promised land where fascist insurrectionists are justly held accountable by the very rule of law they try to overturn! A land free of political corruption by unelected judges! Are you ready for that promised land, America?!"
"YEAH!" The crowd of fired-up voters roared. The face of the President of the United States broke out into an almost bashful smile, almost bemused by the sheer power of the adulation, as his supporters began to chant: "Bring it, Bing! Bring it, Bing! Bring it, Bing!..."
"Let's go win this!" President Chandler M. Bing concluded.
The crowd didn't stop applauding for twenty minutes after he had bounded off the stage towards the holding tent.
Once he was in the wings, Chandler's eyes sought out those of Mike Hannigan, his Chief of Staff. The confident grin he had sported just moments ago shifted slightly into an anxiously hopeful one, even self-conscious. "Well?"
Mike just smiled his approval. "You're getting better, sir. For someone who's professed public speaking was never his strong suit, let's just say I never would have guessed it!"
Chandler grinned tiredly. "I'm probably the first unnatural public speaker who's ever been elected President – that's for sure!"
"No, Trump beat you there," Phoebe, Chandler's White House press secretary, quipped without even looking up out of her phone. "I never would have wanted to know how a person with Tourette's handled public speaking behind the presidential seal, but sadly the Electoral College foisted that on us!"
"It also foisted on us a dude who thought 'Is our children learning?' was a grammatically correct sentence!" chimed in the classically handsome, Italian Secret Service agent standing just off of the President. "I'm old enough to remember W. failing English class, sadly!"
Mike studied the agent, amused. "I thought you SS types weren't allowed to have political opinions."
"We don't. I make political jokes, Hannigan – learn the difference!"
Chandler smirked. Joey Tribbiani was the Special Agent in Charge of his presidential protective detail and his best friend. He came from humble roots, the only boy in a large New York Italian family. A failed acting career had somehow translated into Joey accepting a post with the United States Secret Service and working his way up on nothing but a boyish smile and an uncanny instinct for shielding against danger. When Chandler had been elected the 48th President of the United States a little more than three years ago, Joey had been assigned to his detail and had proven to be a natural. Chandler had asked his bodyguard once how he had gotten so good at what he did, and Joey had said, "Being Secret Service is just like playing another part for me, Mr. President. It's all about presence as much as it is about protection. If you aren't on all the time, a protectee could die on your watch! No protectee dies on my watch!"
The foursome now peered out from the holding tent. The rapturous crowd was still applauding and was nowhere near dispersing.
"Who would have thought there'd be so many Democrats in North Carolina…?" Mike wondered aloud.
"NC's still considered swing. They went for Obama in 2008," Phoebe reminded the men.
"Pheebs, that was almost 25 years ago!"
"True, but Raleigh's had a good run of Democratic Governors," Chandler pointed out. "Mostly because the GOP has spat out nutcases from the primaries. Like… oh, who was that sad sack they ran against Josh Stein the first time, couple cycles back….?"
"Hell if I know!" Phoebe snorted. At the boys sending her bemused looks, she finally lifted her head out of her phone. "What? I remember dates, times and weird historical facts, not names!"
"Mark Robinson!" Joey bailed her out for trying. "He was like a minstrel act from the old South come to life!"
Chandler guffawed. "You want minstrel shows? Go watch The Scottsboro Boys!" Now it was his turn for his friends to give him funny looks. "Hey, it mounted a great production at Paper Mill Playhouse. It's quite underrated!"
"Mr. President, you're probably the first President I've ever met who has a knack for show tunes!" Mike smiled.
"Still behind Trump," Phoebe muttered. "His aides say they had to play 'Memory' from Cats just to calm him down from a mania."
"Aaaand, you just ruined it for me!" Chandler sighed. "The Uncultured Swine likes show tunes? See, Phoebe, this is why we can't have nice things!"
Mike peered out of the tent, hearing chanting wafting over to them on the wind. He grinned back at the President. "Looks like the people want an encore, sir…."
"That's what they didn't say about Trump in '24…." Phoebe muttered.
"Pheebs, will you get off the Convicted Felon already?..." Joey was laughing, shaking his head.
"Sure. I'll do that while you get on shepherding POTUS through a rope-line movement!" Phoebe riposted.
"But it's just going to be a bunch of single women!" Joey protested. He gestured to Chandler. "Look at him! He's like the second coming of JFK…."
"A JFK with no Jacque…." Phoebe pointed out. "48 is the first bachelor President in…"
"….. 170 years," the boys all intoned rotely, dully.
"Finally – they listen to me!" Phoebe grinned, pleased.
Joey sighed and pressed a finger to his earpiece. "Awkward is going to his harem – I repeat: Awkward is going to his harem…"
"Do you have to code it like that, Joe?" Chandler huffed.
"You never know who might be listening, sir. Speaking in code is the first and best level of encryption…."
"…. and the best stripper of dignity!" Chandler added. He still hadn't gotten over how the Secret Service had christened him with a codename like Awkward, of all things, no matter how accurate it was. Still, he gamely plunged into the rope-line of handshakes, pressing flesh and kissing babies.
He spotted her before he'd even gotten to her place along the line. But when he did, Chandler couldn't take his eyes off her.
She had a heart-shaped face, thick, raven hair that tumbled down to her shoulders, and the most sparkling set of sapphire eyes Chandler had ever seen. Her smile was radiant, enthused, and she was shaking a Bing and Elihu Too in '32! campaign sign.
The dynamics of a rope line are such that the President can't stop and speak with everyone along it. But Chandler resolved that he would take a moment to speak with the young woman with the dark hair and sapphire eyes.
She was next in line, he was nearly to her, when suddenly it all went to shit.
Joey blasted into being a shout of "GUN!" just ahead of shots ringing out. Screams split the air and the people in the rope line fell every which way, the jubilant rally descending into a haze of chaos. Chandler disappeared under a dog-pile of Secret Service men and women.
"POTUS is hit! POTUS is hit!" one of the agents was bawling, even though in his woozy state, Chandler could somehow clearly tell he very much was not. There was no burning fire. No sting or flare of pain. But then again, he had never before felt what it was like to be shot, so what did he know?
No matter whether POTUS was hit or not, Joey Tribbiani wasn't taking any chances.
"Let's MOVE, nerds!" he hollered, gun drawn.
The agents pretty much picked Chandler up and carried him away, all but heave-hoing him into the back of the Beast (lingo for the presidential limousine) like he was a sack of flour. Just before the dog-pile moved, Chandler's gaze locked on the sight of bloodstains in the grass.
Bloodstains that, he noticed with horror, were stemming from the beautiful young lady whose name he had been preparing to ask for.
Chandler couldn't get his detail to quit crowding him until Air Force One was wheels up and blasting away from Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro. Joey was even worse, unsatisfied until the White House physician on board had examined every inch of the President's body and concluded there was no sign of an entry wound, never mind a bullet. Not even a fragment of a bullet.
Shaken, Chandler began pacing up and down the length of the plane, his mind in a whirl. He finally flagged down his White House doctor, then Mike Hannigan. "A woman was shot in the rope-line. Find out who she is, and where she is being treated." Joey overheard the order too, and saluted.
"Yes, Mr. President!"
"CNN's running wall-to-wall coverage!" Phoebe hollered from up near the empty press pen. Their retreat from NC had been so quick and chaotic; they'd left the traveling press corps behind – something that precisely no one was feeling guilty about. "Reports are one dead and two…." She frowned, holding up a finger as she glanced back to the flatscreen, currently running on mute. "No, wait…. one wounded."
"One is one too many, killed or wounded," Joey moaned, and he looked as though he wanted to bury his face in his hands. The humiliation he had to be feeling – a security lapse leading to an assassination attempt, on his watch…..!
Mike noticed. "Calm down…." he whispered to Joey. "POTUS is not gonna fire you…"
"Who's the one person dead?" Chandler rasped, sounding strangely panicked.
"Huh?" Phoebe blinked, thrown.
"The lady! The…. lady with the big…. blue eyes and dark hair!" Chandler spluttered, sounding strangely out of his head. "Is she the one person dead?!"
Phoebe turned back and raised the volume on the TV up a few clicks, though not nearly loud enough. She strained to listen, and could feel the President nearly breathing down her neck as he too strained to listen behind her. "They're saying it's a man who's been found dead. A woman is in the hospital. Critical condition."
Chandler was hardly assuaged by this, biting his lip. "Is she going to live?"
"Mr. President:" Phoebe sighed patiently. "I don't report the news. I just joust with it!"
As Air Force One continued to fly through the late evening clouds, Chandler beckoned Joey back to his private office on board, shutting the door behind them.
"As soon as we touch down at Andrews, I'm sending you back." The President's grave and rumbling timbre left no room for argument.
"To the land of the Tar Heels and the home of the Blue Devils?" Joey gawped, aghast.
"You don't root for either of those teams! You're a Knicks fan!" Chandler snapped at him chidingly, impatient. Joey shrugged, conceding the point. "You're going back down there, Joey. Locate that woman. Find out who she is!"
"What does it matter to you?" Joey wondered curiously.
"She's one of my citizens! And she took a bullet that was meant for me!" Chandler shouted, near tears. "I have to find her. And at least thank her for saving my life…."
"Saving your life… Mr. President, some maniac tried to take a pot shot at you, and that girl was just in the way!"
"I don't care how you want to spin it! You find that girl, Joey!" Chandler warned him, finger pointing firmly.
"But… but what about the detail?"
"I'll have Eddie cover for you at the White House until you get back," Chandler promised. Joey let out a rush of air at the knowledge that he was not about to become demoted to desk or, worse still, transferred to another detail. Still…
"Crazy Eddie? But he's a rookie!"
"Next to you, bud, every agent's a rookie!" Chandler tried to send Joey his best reassuring and affectionate smile.
Joey swallowed. "What if… what if this woman's not a native North Carolinian? For all we know, she could be an out of towner!"
"I don't care! They won't have taken her far to get her to a hospital, and certainly not out of state! Not in the condition she's apparently in!"
"How am I supposed to…?!"
"Figure it out, Joseph," Chandler snarled. "That's an order from your Commander-in-Chief."
Joey swallowed. When he heard the President call him Joseph, that meant he was to shut up and obey. "…. As you wish, Mr. President."