Benjamin Asher's choice of running mate left political observers and analysts from both parties utterly gobsmacked. He'd picked Old Willie—an eighty-eight-year-old African-American man.
Old Willie happened to be an acquaintance of Bella's. Back when she'd sued Stark Industries on behalf of Old Willie, Old Joe, and the rest of them over their unpaid pensions, all three elderly men had received compensation along with a wave of public sympathy.
That should have been the end of the story. Old Willie had been in terrible health even then, and the fact that he'd survived four more years was already a miracle.
But a greater miracle followed. His hospital nurse claimed she'd witnessed a dazzling golden light flood the room, a figure emerging from its radiance, and moments later Old Willie—whose breathing had been on the verge of stopping—simply sat up in bed.
A divine miracle. Devout believers flocked to visit the old man, and Old Willie himself declared he had seen an angel. A genuine, honest-to-God angel.
By selecting this man—who had zero political experience, had never held public office, and had no Senate credentials whatsoever—as his running mate, Benjamin Asher won a massive surge of support from the devout and the religious establishment. Someone had already coined the rallying cry: "God bless America."
In other words, if Benjamin Asher moved into the White House, Old Willie would automatically take up residence at Number One Observatory Circle as Vice President.
Bella had assumed the presidential election had nothing to do with her. She'd planned to sit back, eat popcorn, and enjoy the show. Then the unexpected happened.
Watching his opponent throw out the rulebook, President Sawyer was forced to go populist himself. He couldn't exactly grab some random old man off the street, so after considerable deliberation, his team settled on Bella's father—Charlie Swan—as his running mate.
Charlie was forty-eight, had over twenty years in law enforcement, and currently sat on the LAPD Board of Commissioners. He was a relatively down-to-earth figure with respectable social standing, fitting the Democratic Party's brand. After thinking it through, Charlie accepted President Sawyer's invitation, joined the Democratic ticket, and began preparing for the campaign.
A running mate was window dressing at best. What mattered was the candidate at the top of the ticket. If the candidate wasn't up to it, the running mate was irrelevant.
"You can quit your Vice Presidential daydream right now and get back to work," Samantha said, dumping a bucket of cold water on her husband's head.
"President Sawyer's chances really aren't great." Bella agreed that the incumbent's reelection odds were bleak. The polling deficit was too wide. Her father jumping into the fray would earn him some face time with the public, but the actual impact would be negligible.
Charlie's record was solid. During the San Francisco rescue operation, plenty of Bella's own achievements had been credited to him, but that was ancient history. People had short memories, and San Francisco didn't speak for all of America.
Meanwhile, the opposition only had to shout "God bless America!" and the crowds howled with excitement. Once Old Willie—the man supposedly "blessed by angels"—joined the Republican ticket, a woman named Paula White began publicly declaring on multiple occasions that "God has already chosen Benjamin Asher to win."
The US, the UK, and India all ran on an elite-education model. Japan, Germany, and certain other countries that shall not be named practiced universal education instead.
The elite-education model left America's general public genuinely susceptible to manipulation. If your voice was loud enough and your slogans thunderous enough, people would vote for you.
Bella had zero confidence in Charlie and President Sawyer's ticket. She offered no help, but she didn't create obstacles either.
Charlie's role as the President's running mate created some ripples for Bella. Old One-Eye called, telling her to keep Natasha out of the public eye for the time being. He then tried—with all the subtlety of a brick through a window—to find out where his elite agent had gone. Bella hemmed and hawed and refused to give a straight answer, promising only that Natasha wouldn't appear in public.
Bella considered Charlie irrelevant to the election. Samantha agreed her husband wasn't cut out for this. Wasn't fishing and hunting more his speed?
The Republican challengers were a war hero and a saint. Their personal integrity was bulletproof, their life stories simple and clean. The Democrats had no angle of attack. Publicly question a war hero's service? Publicly declare God doesn't exist? Nobody dared.
The incumbents, on the other hand, were sitting ducks. Any administration in power long enough would accumulate vulnerabilities, and the Cobra attack on Paris had spawned a fresh batch of headaches for President Sawyer. Even Charlie was drowning in cases.
Do your job poorly and the opposition calls you incompetent. Do it too well and they say you're perfectly suited to being a cop—for the people, for the nation, for blah blah blah, you should just keep being a cop. Heads they win, tails you lose.
Charlie worked overtime every single day. Even when he made it home, he brought mountains of case files with him.
At his level, run-of-the-mill cases no longer required his attention. But lately an avalanche of major cases had materialized out of nowhere, each demanding multi-department joint investigations. As one of the LAPD's highest-ranking officials, he was stretched impossibly thin.
Samantha was busy caring for her husband. Natasha was, in her mother's words, "God knows where!" So Bella had been staying home lately, helping look after little Kitty.
One night, yawning as she stumbled out for a bathroom break, Bella found her father slumped over his desk, fast asleep.
The stack of case files beside him was nearly waist-high. She flipped through them casually and found that none involved less than thirty million dollars in damages, none had fewer than twenty casualties. Every last one was a major case.
"Old man, you're really making trouble for me here. I suppose I'll do you a favor, just this once."
Over the following days, Charlie noticed his officers' efficiency skyrocket several times over. The entire department seemed blessed by Lady Luck herself—a cop stepping out to buy a pack of cigarettes would bump into nine suspects, eight of them fugitives on the most-wanted list, and the ninth carrying evidence linking them to an open major case.
The Republican opposition adapted accordingly, escalating the cases funneled to the LAPD. Each one was thornier than the last.
Charlie slammed a stack of files on the table and unloaded on his family.
"That shit-eating excuse for a mayor wants me to liaise with Mexico! With what? What am I supposed to liaise with?!"
Bella leafed through the files, frowning.
The LAPD was after a major drug lord called Braga who operated along the West Coast–Mexico corridor, with Los Angeles as his primary base.
What Braga looked like, how tall he was, how heavy, whether Braga was even male or female—they had nothing. No agency had any concrete intelligence. All they had was a name, and whether it was a real name or a code name, nobody knew.
The only lead: Braga liked to recruit street racers to move his money and product.