It was almost noon when David parked near a side entrance of the hospital. Deanna took time to give him a lingering, passionate kiss that promised far more when she got home. There was still love there, in spite of her infidelities. She grabbed her stethoscope and draped it around her neck before she got out of the little pickup. Like most physicians, she had gotten out of the habit of wearing the traditional, white lab coat just as the trend of informal clothing had encouraged her recent habit of wearing a camisole under her scrubs in lieu of a bra. The camisole offered no support and only token restraint. The lack of support confirmed that she was a maturing woman. However; David noticed that he wasn't the only man who was admiring the way her breasts swayed pendulously and bounced as she jogged the short distance to the door. The stirring in his groin helped him to understand why he hadn't ditched the bitch. However; after talking with Doctor Binder he was more confident that his forbearance was motivated by more than mere lust.
David drove his Tacoma back to the grocery store. He needed to buy, now! Back in the good old days, the store might have gotten two or even three semitrailer loads of groceries each day. Now it might be a week before another truck would bring in more freight. He drove past burned out buildings along the way. Last summer's rioting had made the first wave of Black Lives Matter demonstrations seem like the summer of love. The violence had not spared the suburbs.
Things were actually beginning to get better since the impeachment. The rioting that had erupted last winter to protest the midterm elections had provoked a backlash that had compelled President Harris, Speaker Pelosi, and Senator Schumer to acknowledge the will of the voters. Just to add insult to injury, the newly seated Congress had invoked an often misunderstood provision of the Constitution to elect Governor Palin to be Speaker of the House rather than one of their members. People hadn't forgotten how she had defended bystanders rather than herself from a terrorist attack. Since President Harris' nominee for Vice President had never been confirmed, Speaker Palin had been elevated to the Presidency.
The purges of the Deep State bureaucracy and the woke Pentagon had begun. Among her first Executive Orders was a new requirement that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation be required to wear uniforms and drive marked cars while being prohibited from carrying firearms. Most of the attrition had been the result of resignations rather than assassinations. The purge of the Central Intelligence Agency had been more brutal. The decimation of the self anointed, Praetorian Guard had required the deployment of United States Marines. Never again would Deep State goons be empowered to conduct covert operation against a sitting President of the United States or members of Congress. As a former Governor and Vice Presidential candidate, President Palin had endured the indignities of being gate raped by airport security for to many years. President Palin had renamed the Transportation Security Administration. The humiliation of having to wear uniforms emblazed with the acronym of the Federal Air Traffic Administration Safety Service (FATASS) had resulted in mass resignations. Flying was almost fun again.
As he pulled up to the grocery store, David noticed the work crews that were building a concrete block wall to reinforce the cyclone fencing that had been installed earlier. They were using a line pump to grout the voids in the blocks. The new wall would stop five-five-six and maybe three-oh-eight at an oblique angle as well as handgun bullets. The armed guard at the gate was actually a Black woman. Reconciliation was beginning. The guard checked David's license plate then his concealed weapon permit then a photo from the store's files on her tablet before raising the gate. Only preapproved customers were even admitted into the parking lot much less inside the store. The kinks in the supply chain for food were only beginning to be unraveled. Security had to remain the top priority.
David didn't bother with putting on a jacket to conceal his Beretta in his shoulder holster. Most people now found the sight of an armed citizen reassuring rather alarming. Last winter's riots protesting the results of the election had made the original Black Lives Matter demonstrations seem like the summer of love. The retributions against inner city neighborhoods had been even more violent.
Most of the shelves were empty, of course. Grocery stores no longer wasted their time with shallow facing to conceal their paltry inventory. David concentrated on buying fruits and vegetables, and he bought produce that was canned rather than frozen. Although President Palin was making good on her "Drill Here, Drill Now" slogan, the limited supplies of natural gas still resulted in frequent blackouts. The posters of President Palin wearing a a tee shirt with her favorite slogan, and only a tee shirt, were a best seller even though the mamma grizzly was getting gray around the muff. She was raising a lot of money for President Harris' legions of wounded veterans.
David yielded to the temptation to drive up to the site of the new, Aegis Ashore installation. Although his employer was a private corporation, his military identification got him admitted without argument. His security clearance was far beyond any clearance that anyone on site might have. The steel and reinforced concrete substructures for the phased array radars and the vertical launch cells were just beginning to take shape. The defensive installations were going up around every major city in the United States. A pair of trailer mounted, Goal Keeper point defense gun systems with their thirty-millimeter Gatling guns stood watch over the construction site. The President was unwilling to leave the nascent missile defense installations completely vulnerable while they were under construction.
There was a lot of public debate about how effective the RIM-one-sixty-one and even the much larger and more capable, Ground Based Interceptor missiles might be. People were almost panicking over the threat from the Russian and Chinese Fractional Orbit Bombardment Systems and their hypersonic missiles. David wasn't sanguine, but he knew far to much about the technology to panic. Both technologies seriously reduced the throw weight of the missiles that boosted them. A missile that might be armed with a dozen ballistic warheads could carry only a few FOBS or hypersonic weapons. People were obsessed with the idea that Hypersonic missiles flew at more than Mach five. Intercontinental Ballistic Missile warheads, which had been deployed by the thousands for more than half a century, flew at more than Mach twenty. The only difference was that a hypersonic weapon could maneuver to evade interceptor missiles. Interceptor missiles could also maneuver. More importantly, it was a contest in which maneuverability was more important than mere velocity. A hypersonic missile or maneuvering reentry vehicle that might succeed in evading an interceptor was far less likely to hit its target.
