Fake News Read online

  FAKE NEWS

  By G. L. Rockey

  Digital ISBN

  EPUB 978-0-2286-0184-5

  Kindle 978-0-2286-0185-2

  Amazon Print 978-0-2286-0186-9

  LSI Print 978-0-2286-0187-6

  Copyright 2018 by G. L. Rockey

  Cover art by Michelle Lee

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book. This book is a work of fiction and no created character in this book is of or about any person living or dead, except for true historical figures which are mentioned in context of their news media.

  “In Journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.”

  Ellen Goodman

  Prologue

  4:00 p.m. EST

  Sunday, May 25, 2024

  Nearing the mouth of the Potomac River, U.S. Navy Ensign, Kimberly Greene–blond hair, thick horn rimmed glasses, brown eyes, narrow nose, mocha complexion–throttled back the pulsing engines of the restored presidential yacht, Benny I. Waiting for the craft to slow, she touched the right earpiece of her horn-rimmed glasses. The tiny receiver embedded in the opaque plastic frame confirmed that a wireless microphone, concealed on the quarterdeck, transmitted audio to the recorder she had taped under her belt.

  She glanced at Benny I’s controls. Five knots. A guarded smile crossed her lips as she swung the ship’s wheel to port for a return run up river. As the craft slowly turned, she scanned the objects of her surveillance, a trio lounging around a small mahogany table on the quarterdeck—U. S. President Benjamin P. Armstrong’s Elite Inner Circle. Better known as the E.I.C., the three member team that advised the President on everything from breakfast cereal to nukes.

  Head of the trio–Leo Novak, law professor emeritus, Harvard—fidgeted like a sparrow on a low-to-the-ground bird feeder. He blew his tiny beaked nose, cleared his throat, adjusted his rimless oval glasses, ran his hand over his slicked-back yellow hair, dusted the sleeve of his blue blazer and adjusted the collar of his white polo shirt.

  Less jittery than Novak, head of Military Satellite Intelligence–General William “Mac” MacCallister, five-six, two hundred pounds, dress-blue Air Force uniform–teetered like an oversized Humpty Dumpty on the top edge of a ten-foot stone wall.

  The third team member, White House media guru Dr. Barbara Lande puffed on a thin seven-inch cigar. At twenty-eight, the slender, six-foot Bean Town redhead wore a bright green blazer that matched her eyes. Tan slacks and white deck shoes rounding out the look, she mirrored a model out of Boating Weekly.

  To the average onlooker, the six intense eyeballs of the E.I.C. might appeared to be set in three average people who savored some half-cooked bird that turned on a backyard barbecue spit. But veiled was a desire that washed the moment like a rare and exotic unseen sauce to please their White House bosses evangelical hunger to save the world.

  Lande slid her left hand through her G.I.-cut hair and observed, “It’s all perception, gentleman. Create the perception, and they’ll follow like sheep.”

  “What about the goats?” Mac muttered.

  Novak snickered.

  Ignoring them, Lande savored another puff, “How do most people know for sure that China is really there? Read about it, see it on TV, scan the Internet–nobody feels the goods anymore. It’s all virtual, the only reality is water, fire, earth, the elements, atomic numbaahs, atomic weight, how they’re put together is all in the head of homo sapiens.”

  Mac scratched his knees. “I’d say there’s a little more to reality than that.”

  Novak nodded agreement, “Lande, I think you should stick with communications, lay off the science, and most of all get rid of those nasty cigars.”

  The throaty marine motors of the yacht gurgled in the background. Lande leaned back, studied the white ash on her cigar and said, “Brain tissue stirs ideas and out of the mouths of the word-making-mammal comes meaning, and the meaning becomes deeds put down toward the reordering of history that ends one reality and begins another.”

  Novak raised an eyebrow. “And where is that from, Doctor?”

  “My dissertation.” She tossed her cigar butt overboard. A gull swooped to snatch it from the water.

  Novak gave a little sigh, “Let me recap what President Armstrong and I discussed this past week at Camp David.” He cleared his throat. “As you know, with the latest unconscionable act in France the President believes that the time is ripe for a conclusive solution to international bickering, economic chaos and insane hit skip terrorism. He has no doubt in his heart that in the annals of this planet he is divinely appointed to conceive a new world order that will move human evolution forward with freedom and democracy for all the earth’s people.”

  Mac offered a snappy nod of approval.

  Lande rolled her eyes.

  Novak continued, “The President also desperately wants to make the streets of America safe again for the average freedom-loving Joe and Jane Doe. In tackling the knucklehead global bad boy syndrome at its root, he intends to forge a new world peace under American protections and freedoms at home and abroad.” He looked at Mac. “He wants to utilize our cyber attack superiority, the military’s satellite pre-emptive missile technology, while we’re still on top.”

  Lande said, “I always liked up top best.”

  Mac whispered, “Jesus Christ.”

  Novak folded his arms. “So, Doctor Lande, why don’t you expand on this plan you have to accomplish the President’s mission?”

  Lande stood. “As I was saying, gentlemen, it’s all perception”

  Ensign Greene pressed the temple of her horn-rimmed glasses to her ear–static, intermittent reception as Lande continued, “...they’ll...sheep...”

  Hope for the best, she thought and made a small course correction, then settled back for the return trip to the Washington Naval Yard.

  Chapter One

  4:30 p.m. EST

  Sunday, May 25, 2024

  Pompano Marina

  Homestead, Florida

  With gusts of wind building to thirty knots, Biscayne Bay a churning bowl of four-foot white caps, his Sunday routine jilted by Mother Nature, fate, whatever, Zackary Stearn called it quits and set his heading ten miles south of Miami, for his home port, Pompano Marina.

  His fiftieth birthday a month ago, despite nearly forty years of on-again, off-again smoking, Zackary still maintained the undergraduate weight he carried as a middleweight boxer at Notre Dame. His nose, flattened by many left hooks, rested a quarter-inch off-center. His full head of short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair enhanced a brown boater’s tan that resembled the glow of natural leaf tobacco. Muscle solid, stomach flat, shoulders squared, neck void of sagging flesh, his slate-gray eyes projected his prior life’s authority.

  Pompano Marina in sight, he glided into his rented mooring, tied up, threw out two extra side bumpers and decided to get some back-burner work done before going to dinner.

  Sitting in the galley of his RV and home, a forty-foot refurbished Chris Craft he had dubbed Veracity, he nursed a Glenlivet on the rocks and looked over yellow-pad draft editorial notes:

  In the beginning, the story goes, there was darkness upon the face of the deep. From there the tale gets complicated. One supposition suggests there was some sort of Big Bang in the darkness—the Big Bang must have been really big because it was the beginning from which there evolved many mysterious things; one being (which may or may not have been before the big bang) Time. Another wondrous
thing that followed the Big Bang was Planet Earth which separated itself from a plethora of other things and placed itself in an ordered course around another mind-blowing object—the sun.

  He looked up and mused to himself: It’s not that there is nobody out there beyond the Milky Way…that’s easy. Well, kind of easy. The really scary stuff begins if there is somebody out there and what you are going to say to the out-there somebody. Probably best to say nothing, just get on your face and shut up.

  He went back to his notes:

  After many evened revolutions around the sun, there came upon Planet Earth living things—one of which evolved into word-making mammals (one male and one female) who multiplied and subdued the earth. Then came capitalism, then came journalism, then came television news, then came the current President of the U. S. of A.–Benny P. Armstrong.

  Which bring us to the glut of news and the cannibalism of information on the Internet–blogs, social media. In short, the whoring of so called news, coupled with the shrinking number of newspapers in the U. S. of A, presents a problem––manipulation of the news to achieve a desired end.

  He turned to his computer, accessed Google, keyed in DAILY NEWSPAPERS, clicked search and read the first hit:

  Dailies, newspapers, circulation - Spurred by the Internet’s ever-expanding presence combined with mega-media international corporate takeovers, bloated staffs, albatross plants and soaring newsprint costs, many daily newspapers have gone the way of T. Rex. Adding to their demise is the economics that forced them to share a shrinking piece of advertising dollars with television, radio, Internet, and cable news operations.

  A few giant newspapers still survive in print form: The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald. In some larger communities, small, cost-efficient weekly gazettes have become reliable niches for what is called in some circles ‘the meat of local news.’ One of the more popular is The Boca of Miami, Florida, a weekly which is run by a former Jesuit Priest, Zackary Stearn.

  Zack said, “Hear, hear,” printed the page then read articles he had clipped as source material for a future editorial.

  Wall Street Journal

  New York—Blue Chip industrial stocks soar to record numbers amid rumors of President Armstrong’s global military posturing.

  New York Times

  Over 5,000 people lost their lives when a powerful explosive device toppled the Eifel Tower. An Internet message from the terrorist group UR2 claimed responsibility. French officials, saying violence only begets more violence, remain committed to peaceful solutions. Citing the United States supplying Israel with nuclear weapons coupled with other policies in support of the Jewish State, a government spokesperson blames the United States for the world’s chaos.

  The Washington Post

  Washington, D.C.—Vermont’s pugnacious in-your-face Senator Nancy Beno is making a strong November run at incumbent Benjamin P. Armstrong for the Presidency. Beno, the World Socialism candidate, pledges to open a dialog with Islamic States and, while guaranteeing Israel’s security, calls for the dismantling of Israel’s nuclear weapons.

  The Boca

  Miami—Johnny-come-lately politician President Benjamin Armstrong has reacquired the historic presidential yacht, U.S.S. Sequoia. In re-naming the storied vessel Benny I, the former ABC sit-com star and converted television evangelist said, “It’s time America got back to her bedrock Christian roots.” Some say Benny should get back to his South Carolina roots too, and for good.

  Zack sipped his Glenlivet and smiled. Partial to his own writing, he liked the last article best. The others, every time he read them, conjured wonder about words, reality and fiction.

  His cell phone began to ring. Checking caller ID, he saw it was Mary O’Brien, thought about answering, decided not to and, the phone still ringing, left for a cold Bohemia beer and his favorite torrid Mexican food at The Bimini Road Café.

  Chapter Two

  Two weeks later

  5:30 p.m. EST

  Sunday, June 15, 2024

  The White House

  In his book-lined West Wing office, Leo Novak—in blue Polo shirt, tan Dockers slacks and black Gucci loafers—stood beside a twenty-five-inch floor-stand globe of the Earth. Sipping a cocktail, turning the orb slowly, he continued a conversation with Dr. Barbara Lande. “…as Machiavelli posited in The Prince: to accomplish certain goals the end justifies the means, requires it, and the higher good is ultimately served.” He sipped, “Our quest, Babs, is essential for the elevation of the human species on Planet Earth.”

  Lande, in red blazer, white silk slacks and red pumps, lounging in a maroon wingback chair, rolled her eyes, held up her cocktail, “The sweet vermouth helps, don’t you think?”

  She referred to her special brew of Long Island Iced Tea they both drank from blue White House goblets.

  Ignoring her remark, Novak, engrossed in his lofty thoughts, said with some distaste, “Beno, all those people, the unwashed, they don’t get it, never will.”

  Taking a cigar from her jacket pocket, Lande said, “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Yes.”

  She lit up anyway.

  Novak paused then continued his thought, “Freedom is not absolute and equality is not true of everyone.”

  “I can attest to thatbeen in the Patriots’ locker room many times.”

  Novak looked down his nose. “You do understand the magnitudethe implicationsour place in the chronicle of world history, don’t you?”

  “You trying to convince me or yourself?”

  Resigned, Novak sat behind his spindle-legged Renaissance desk. “The President simply loved your idea.”

  “How could he not? It’s genius, if I do say so myself.”

  Ignoring her, or not hearing her, Novak leaned back. “So, how is this going to work?”

  Hearing the door open, Novak and Lande watched as MacCallister, flushed and disheveled, entered. He wore weekend khaki fatigues.

  “Where you been, Mac?” Novak said.

  “Tied up.”

  “Who was she?” Lande said with a smile.

  MacCallister ignored her as he sat on a ten-foot white tufted sofa that faced Novak’s desk.

  Novak held up his White House goblet. “Have some Long Island Tea?” He indicated a shiny chrome tumbler sitting in the center of a narrow coffee table in front of the sofa.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Mac leaned forward and poured a goblet of the potent mixture. He took a drink and frowned.

  Novak said, “That’s the sweet vermouth.” He looked at Lande. “To Doctor Lande’s liking.”

  “Figures,” Mac said.

  Lande saluted with her goblet. “Saludo.”

  Novak said, “We were just chatting, Mac. Ah, did you see this morning’s Post?”

  “I didn’t get to it yet.”

  “Ha,” Lande said.

  Novak continued, “Shows Beno ahead of the President by fifteen percentage points.” He shook his head. “The attention span of the American people is truly amazing.”

  Lande crossed her legs and puffed on her cigar. “You’d think Beno was servicing those network TV news jerks. Can’t believe those weenies. Every week the same lick-it-up crapola—Senator Beno offers new plan to reduce taxes; Senator Beno asks for cap on business profits; Senator Beno demands list of the President Armstrong’s corporate supporters; Senator Beno promises negotiation with terrorists” She formed a zero with her index finger and thumb. “Facking losers.”

  Mac took a long drink, set his glass down, gripped his knees with his hands and mocked Beno’s campaign slogan. “I’m tired of trickle-down economics. I want to percolate it up.” He stared at Novak through narrowed, tank-slit eyes. “I could arrange an accident for that bitch in a second.”

  Novak shook his head down to the neat peak of his chin like a dog shedding water. “No, no, no.” He sat up and leaned over his desk. “Any action of that character would give the media boobs a field day. Many problems
, many problems—remember the sixties with all those asinine assassinations, dippy songs. Besides, if Beno were removed there’d be ten nincompoops standing in line to take her place. It is not Beno; it is the insanity of her position, that left-wing socialist position that must be purged from all thinking.” He took a drink of Tea, propped his feet up and said, “No, no, no accidents.”

  Novak studied the ceiling for a moment then said to Mac, “Suppose you didn’t see the Times, either?”

  “I heard about it on the radio. Those French wee-wees are smoking something, always have been.”

  Novak replied, “After they lose their national phallic symbol, five thousand little Pierres, and they’re blaming everything on us and Israel.”

  Mac frowned. “And Beno wants to negotiate with those laundry-head terroristsdoesn’t that jungle bunny get it?”

  Lande dragged on her cigar and blew smoke from the side of her funnel-shaped mouth. “You have such a way with words, Bill.”

  The general frowned at being called Bill by this female version of Peter O’Toole. He squared his peaked crew cut head toward Lande, said, “Lande, I got satellite pictures of you squatting your bare ass in the reflecting pool, so don’t get too damn uppity.”

  “Which time?” Lande said.

  “Smart ass.” MacCallister twisted his thick bulldog neck. “One of these day’s somebody’s gonna lick that smart ass of yours.”

  “Ya mean ‘kick,’ don’t ya, Bill?” Lande smiled.

  Mac started to stand. “I’ll just show you what I mean”

  “Sit down!” Novak blinked; memories of shallowness that had brought down dynasties flashed through his mind. He glared at Mac. “What were you going to do, spank her?”