The President Is Missing

总统失踪是美国前总统的政治惊悚小说

The disappearance of the U.S. President, Jonathan Lincoln Duncan, a former Army Ranger and a Gulf War veteran,[5] comes as a cybercrime attack jeopardizing Secret Service protection. The book begins with the president rehearsing his appearance before Congress over impending impeachment proceedings. It has been discovered that the president made a phone call to Suliman Cindoruk, a cyber terrorist from Turkey. It has also been discovered that the president ordered an attack against some Ukrainian operatives in Algeria, which attack foils attempts by the operatives to capture Suliman. An American soldier is killed in the attack. The President must answer for this.

The President's daughter, while in Paris, receives a message with the code "Dark Ages" from a young woman from Eastern Europe named Nina. She tells her father about the strange person and the message, and she is requested to come back home immediately. The code "Dark Ages" is known only to eight people in the United States. It is a code name for a cyber security operation that America is running after its systems were hacked. The president is boggled as to who may have leaked this information.

The President invites Nina to the White House. He is determined to know the source of the leak. Nina tells the president that she only has half of the information the president needs. In order for the president to get the full story, he must meet her partner who will give him the remaining pieces of the puzzle. Nina asks the president to meet her partner (Augie) in a stadium where a baseball game is scheduled to take place later that week on a Friday. The president arrives at the stadium, incognito, and without the Secret Service's protection and meets Augie. Unknown to him, Suliman Cindoruk, running a cell called Sons of Jihad, had contracted mercenaries to assassinate Nina and Augie.

As Augie and the president leave the stadium, the assassin aims her gun at Nina, who is waiting for the president and Augie. The president, sensing danger, takes into practice what he learned as a Ranger. He takes over Augie's gun and manages to shoot two members of the ground team assisting the assassin's plans. The assassin rains bullets on the van that the president ducks to avoid being shot and in no time, the Secret Service arrives and saves the president from the assassin's aim. It emerges that the Secret Service ignored the president's demands and followed him clandestinely after getting a glimpse of the location of the president's meeting from an envelope that Nina carried to the White House.

The president is swiftly whisked to safety in an armored car and the convoy heads to Virginia. The assassination team gets wind of the direction they are headed to and plants another ground team on a bridge linking DC to Virginia. An attack ensues and the president is saved by the heroic acts of the vehicle's driver, Davis, who takes the hit and dies as a result. The president is whisked into another car and drives off with Augie leaving the Secret Service team behind. He arrives at the Blue House (the code name for his Chief of Staff's residence) where he takes stock of the events of the evening. The White House is put under lockdown and the president must take control of the nation remotely in order to prevent an impending cyber attack on America. The questions that the president must answer are who sent the assassins, how to prevent the attack and how to find the White House insider who leaked the code "Dark Ages" to Nina and Augie.