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W ASHINGTON , D.C.

T here were only three more days of business before both houses of Congress broke for the Fourth of July holiday and members returned home.

Despite his staff having planned constituent events for him in St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, Columbia, and Cape Girardeau, Senator Blackwood had no intention of returning to Missouri. There was going to be a full-scale governmental crisis before his flight ever took off.

In the meantime, he had to proceed as if everything was normal. One of the items that needed his attention was the NATO Summit—in particular, the European Sky Shield program. It was one of President Mitchell’s chief initiatives.

Similar to Israel’s Iron Dome, the idea was to provide Europe with a security umbrella that could fend off incoming missile and drone attacks. And though these attacks could come from any state or nonstate actor, it was widely accepted that Sky Shield was intended to defend against Russian attacks.

Mitchell had thrown his support behind Sky Shield as a way to lessen NATO’s reliance on the United States and bring more American troops home from Europe.

While that position resonated with many voters, there were also those in Mitchell’s base who didn’t like that the program would use American missiles and American technology.

Russia not only hated Sky Shield, but had also run an aggressive public relations campaign claiming that the Sky Shield was actually an offensive weapons system masquerading as being defensive.

There had been a ton of saber-rattling coming out of the Kremlin and it had only increased as the D.C. summit had gotten closer. Moscow was now publicly stating that Sky Shield, if fully adopted by NATO, would bring the world to the threshold of nuclear war.

The isolationist wing of Mitchell’s base seemed to hate Sky Shield as much, if not more, than the Russians.

They wanted the United States fully out of NATO and didn’t want any further American weaponry or technology being shared with the Europeans.

Unbowed by what had happened in front of the Vice President’s Residence, they had a massive “Don’t Poke the Bear” protest planned for the opening day of the summit.

Thousands of people had already RSVP’d online and were headed to D.C.

It was going to be a security nightmare for D.C. Police and the Secret Service.

The protest, however, wasn’t Blackwood’s main concern.

Two Missouri technology companies, who also happened to be substantial political donors of his, had interests in seeing Sky Shield move forward.

Their CEOs had asked the senator to introduce them to some of the European delegations at the cocktail party being held at the White House tomorrow night.

Even though these companies would have big splashy booths in the exhibition hall next to where the summit was being held and would likely end up chatting with the very same delegates, they wanted any “pregame” leg up they could get over their competition.

Blackwood couldn’t give a damn about Sky Shield or the Europeans, but he needed to keep up the appearance that he cared about the President’s initiatives. He also wanted to keep money flowing from his donors.

For those reasons, he had asked his staff to prepare a briefing book for him, which he was now studying.

He was only on the second page when the encrypted messaging app on his personal phone pinged with a text.

Taking out his phone, he read the message. Vice President Chris Cates’s chief of staff was letting him know that everything was set. At the appointed time, the VP would be exactly where he needed to be and prepared to say exactly what he needed to say.

Senator Blackwood smiled and, after returning the phone to his jacket pocket, tore the executive summary out of the binder in front of him and threw the rest of the Sky Shield briefing book into the garbage. If he had to, he could wing it.

In reality, he knew that after today, Sky Shield was the last thing anyone was going to be talking about.