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In Lucas's judgment, the U.S. military found the wreckage of the first transport plane twelve hours later. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

The crash site was indeed in the Canary Basin, and it was not a transport plane. Through the analysis of the wreckage of the salvaged transport plane, the US military has preliminarily concluded that at least three transport planes have fallen in this sea area. Although the U.S. military quickly found out the numbers of the three transport planes, it was impossible to determine when they broke away from the transport planes.

More importantly, the US military did not find the remains of the passengers of the transport plane, not even any personal belongings.

Judging from the distribution of the wreckage of the transport plane, it can only be concluded that the transport plane fell to the surface of the sea at a very fast speed without anyone controlling it.

Apparently, all the attackers on the transport plane parachuted out.

For more than 10 hours, the U.S. military continued to expand the search area, but did not find the wreckage of other transport planes in the Cape Verdean basin, as Lucas expected.

Although the search continues, everyone knows that there is little point anymore.

The other six transport planes had already crashed or made a forced landing somewhere, but no one knew where.

After receiving the first search report submitted by the CIA, Norris did not delay any longer and held a press conference in person, officially announcing that in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the US military, he would take responsibility for all the mistakes in this incident, and submit the relevant report to Congress in due course.

Although Norris did not announce his resignation because he did not have the right to resign on the grounds of responsibility, no one doubted that Norris would have to resign in some other way to save the federal axe. If Norris does not resign, Republicans in Congress, and even some members of the Bentok Party, will use impeachment to get Norris out of the White House. For the federal axe of the Beneki Party, which has only a few months left in office, the consequences of the president's impeachment would be unimaginable.

Norris took the initiative to hand over power to the vice president, which became the wisest choice.

Taking the initiative to take responsibility is not the same as letting go of the responsibility in hand.

Before leaving the White House, Norris was still the president of the United States, and he still had to fulfill his duties as president and lead the United States through the storm after the attack.

Thankfully, not everything has to be left to Norris.

Civilian identification was well underway, and after the troops left Manhattan, the National Guard took over. After the Federal Axe provided temporary accommodation, food, and other necessary facilities and necessities for life, the 700,000 civilians who had to undergo identity screening did not complain because of the restrictions on their personal freedom, but understood the arrangements of the Axe very well and cooperated with the work of the Axe.

It would take months to screen 700,000 people, even if all the FBI panic testers were arranged and thousands of DNA experts were mobilized.

In all the aftermath work, the most troublesome thing is not the identification of people, but the cleaning of the rubble, and the search and rescue of those buried in the rubble.

When it comes to search and rescue operations, the White House is most at odds with Congress.

According to Congressional mandate, the president must return the wartime powers granted by Congress after the events are over and restore order to the country. Norris is not opposed to the return of power, but on the question of when the matter is officially over, it is completely different from Congress's understanding.

In his view, the search and rescue operation was to save the people, so the incident did not end until the search and rescue operation was over.

While there is some truth to Norris's argument, the search and rescue operation will last for tens of days, if not months, and Congress is unlikely to keep the president in full control of the country.

In order to prevent abuse of power by the President, a special committee of Congress immediately after the military operation was concluded proposed that the regular army on combat duty should be returned to the barracks and that the aftermath of the operation, including search and rescue operations, should be handed over to the National Guard, as well as police officers drawn from various states.

That morning, two members of the congressional select committee went to the White House and made the request to Norris.

Unfortunately, Norris rejected the request from Congress, citing a lack of manpower.

Norris's actions forced members of Congress to consider that the frustrated president would insist on using the privileges granted by Congress to do something unexpected, such as claiming that a certain country planned and organized the attack, thereby dragging the United States into a war.

There is no doubt that no one can prevent the United States from getting involved in the next war.

Anyone with a bit of a brain knows that whether it is Norris or anyone else who lives in the White House, after such a serious attack, will take the initiative to find an opponent and start a war in order to vent the anger of the people and clear the responsibility for the federal political axe.

The question is who will start the war.

Norris has only a few months left in his term, and if he loses the upcoming election, the winning Republican candidate will be in the White House in January. It is not impossible to win a war in a few months, but it is certainly impossible to end a war in a few months.

Can Norris win the election?

Not to mention Republicans, even many of the Mingzhu Party believe that Norris's performance in handling the crisis has cost him the upcoming election. Although the Cruto Party has not yet officially put out a candidate, and the incumbent president is traditionally the nominee, the battle on Manhattan Island is not over, and the main members of the Cruso Party are considering whether they should find someone to replace Norris.

For a president who is about to leave the White House, starting a war is tantamount to throwing responsibility to his successor.

This is obviously an immoral act, but as long as Norris still lives in the White House and still holds the privileges granted by Congress, he is the president of the United States and has the power to declare war on a country. All he needed was a piece of information that was not so valuable to "prove" that a certain country had planned and organized the attack.

Using the power of the president, Norris was able to obtain "evidence" from the intelligence agencies very easily.

In the shoes of the members of Congress, either Norris will hand over his privileges or accept a war that is not so above board. Even if this is a war that is sure to break out, in the eyes of the vast majority of members of Congress, it should not be started by a president who has made many mistakes in a row and has little ability to deal with crises, but by a leader who is more capable of leading and can help the United States through the storm.

It can be said that if Norris had not announced full responsibility that morning, hinting that he would voluntarily leave the White House after the crisis has passed, I am afraid that Congress would have defected en masse and expelled him from the White House.

It's just that Norris still has to make concessions to Congress on whether to use the regular army in search and rescue efforts.

In the afternoon of the same day, Norris announced that the regular troops involved in combat operations would be withdrawn to the barracks in an orderly manner, and the National Guard would gradually undertake the aftermath of the search and rescue work.

By this time, Norris had received the casualty and missing persons assessment report submitted jointly by the FBI and the NSA.

On the first day of clean-up work, the US military found nearly 10,000 corpses, of which more than 1,200 were the remains of US officers and soldiers, including officers and men of the special forces who had been assaulted before, as well as regular officers and soldiers who had died in regular battles. The rest were all civilians killed in the bombing and fighting, as well as many women and children.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

According to FBI and NSA estimates, about 20,000 bodies will be recovered after the clean-up is completed, and most of them are civilians.

The number of missing persons is even more staggering than the number of civilians killed.

According to the statistics of the FBI, 250,000 people have been confirmed missing. Although some of these missing people certainly survived and left Manhattan Island, only to be included in the list of missing persons without contact with their loved ones for the time being, the real missing people are definitely not missing, and many of them were killed in the bombing, and some were even burned to ashes.

According to NSA estimates, the final number of killed and missing people will exceed 50,000.

In fact, this estimate is very conservative. According to the projections of some civil society organizations, at least 100,000 people have been killed or missing, and the vast majority of the missing have already been killed.

Whether it is 50,000 or 100,000, it means that the United States has suffered the heaviest external blow since the founding of the country.

In addition to the casualties, the economic and property losses suffered by the United States are equally appalling.

Prior to the statement, Norris had access to a report provided by the Federal Reserve Bank. In the bombing campaign against the highly toxic solution, at most 1,300 tons of gold were burned, and about 40% of it was recovered by refining, which means that only more than 800 tons of gold were lost.

The problem is that almost twelve thousand tons of gold are deposited in the Federal Reserve Bank.

That is, more than 10,000 tons of gold are still missing.

In order to find out the whereabouts of the gold, a professional chemical unit of the US military ventured into the underground vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank that afternoon. As a result, as detected by the probe, the collapsed underground vault was already empty, and there was not even a single gold brick left.

There is no doubt that the attackers ransacked the Federal Reserve Bank and stole the gold inside.

The question is, where exactly does all this gold go?

The pursuit of gold has become a top priority for various federal law enforcement agencies in the United States.

It's just that the biggest loss, not more than 10,000 tons of gold. According to the international market price, more than 10,000 tons of gold is only 500 billion US dollars. Even after the looting of the Federal Reserve Bank, the international gold price will rise sharply, and may even increase several times, to trillions of dollars.

Compared to the complete destruction of Manhattan, this economic loss is really nothing.

At dinner, Norris got the economic and property damage assessment report, and the numbers on it suppressed the last bit of his appetite.

In fact, you don't need to look at the assessment report submitted by Sternberg, you only need to go to Manhattan and know that the damage suffered by the United States is difficult to describe in a single number.

(To be continued)