

Conqueror's Realm

By Stephan Michael Loy

Conqueror's Realm

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013 by Stephan Loy

All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States of America

Smashwords Edition License Notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people except as stipulated in your user agreement. Outside of such stipulations, if you would like to share this book, please purchase another copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for you by another person, please go to your preferred point of purchase and purchase your copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work and intellectual property of the author. We all gotta eat.

Be sure to check the notes following the conclusion of this ebook.

For

Thomas Paine

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Wayne M. Collins

Russell Means

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Huey P. Newton

Bobby Seale

Cindy Sheehan

and

Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly,

creators of the original See It Now,

whose example of journalistic excellence

has never since been equaled.

Contents:

Introduction

Book One:

Chapter One: Eller

Chapter Two: Tallman and Tallman

Chapter Three: Dearing and Yonelson

Chapter Four: Clemmons and Smith

Chapter Five: L.A. And the Nap

Chapter Six: The Evan Bayh

Chapter Seven: Manassas, Phoenix, and Points Between

Chapter Eight: Naptown Again, and The Big Apple Contemplated

Chapter Nine: The Well-Placed Source

Chapter Ten: Sources, and Sources Turned Inward

Chapter Eleven: Protected Sources, Sources Denied

Chapter Twelve: Sources Compromised, Sources Erased

Chapter Thirteen: Zealots

Chapter Fourteen: Zeal

Chapter Fifteen: Missions

Chapter Sixteen: Missionaries

Chapter Seventeen: Plans

Chapter Eighteen: Deployment

Chapter Nineteen: Recon

Chapter Twenty: First Battle

Chapter Twenty-one: To the Victor...

Book Two:

Chapter Twenty-two: Dark Vision

Chapter Twenty-three: Waking Vision

Chapter Twenty-four: The Vision Thing

Chapter Twenty-five: Corrected Vision

Chapter Twenty-six: Coyote

Chapter Twenty-seven: Turtle

Chapter Twenty-eight: Owl

Chapter Twenty-nine: Bear

Chapter Thirty: Creator

Chapter Thirty-one: Water's Child

Chapter Thirty-two: Monster Killer

Chapter Thirty-three: Changing Woman

Chapter Thirty-four: Conqueror's Realm

Afterword

More Books by Stephan Loy

Introduction:

(Back to Contents)

I read a book once, possibly one of the most influential books of my reading life. It was Advise and Consent by Allen Drury, the Pulitzer Prize winning story of how democracy works in the modern United States. I could go on for pages about the respect I have for Drury's depiction of the workings of Congress. I advise everyone to read his book if they are interested either in a dramatic map of how things get done in the national legislature or if they just want a gripping political drama. What I really want to mention here is one area where I think Drury made a mistake. Throughout this great novel of political maneuvering and chessmanship, Drury refers to the two political parties in Congress as simply the Majority Party and the Minority Party. To my mind, this is a cop-out, especially since the book was published in 1959, well into the present era of political party stabilization in America. I often wondered why Drury did not refer to the parties by name, why he felt it was necessary to avoid the designations "Republican" and "Democrat" though it was clear by context which was which in his book. Perhaps he wanted the novel to take on an immortal air, help it survive and remain relevant long after Republicans and Democrats have gone the way of the dinosaur.

Then again, maybe he avoided naming the parties because he didn't want the headache of offending anyone.

That last suspicion is what drove me to unapologetically name the Republican and Democratic parties in Conqueror's Realm. I took a good, long look at these two major institutions of American democratic life and attempted to characterize them appropriately in my book. I mention this here simply to point out that some of my readers may take offense, might have their feelings hurt, and might be tempted to brand me an opportunistic, rabble-rousing, partisan liar. That's as it may be. Regardless, I don't apologize for any of the judgments I've made in this story.

I don't apologize for the inference that the Republican party is the bastion and the tool of rich white men. I do not sugar-coat the observation that the Republicans, by history or by culture, attract the lion's share of white racists who deign to be politically active. If ever there was a party to defend the desire of white men to maintain control of the country, the GOP is it. This tendency wasn't always so obvious, but the solidification of conservatism in the GOP over the last thirty years has made racism a phantom pillar of the Republican outlook on the world.

Lest readers assume I've written an anti-Republican rant here, I also do not apologize for characterizing Democrats as mealy-mouthed, disorganized poll-readers without the backbone of a snail. The Republicans at least know what they want and set about achieving their goals. Democrats, on the other hand, are about as organized as a dropped box full of ball bearings.

Okay, now that I've scared away the lunatic fringe of both Republicans and Democrats, of both Conservatives and Liberals, let me make the deeper point of Conqueror's Realm. It's simple and deceptively obvious. People cannot be tagged. We can't call all white people racists. We can't call all black people non-racists. Not all conservatives are Republican, not all Democrats are liberal. Not all conservatives ascribe to the litany of beliefs the more militant of their numbers espouse. Not all liberals reject conservative ideals. There is a lot of gray between the blacks and whites of politics, and that gray is where our future lies, if we're smart.

Conqueror's Realm is first and foremost a political thriller. Think too hard about the premise of its plot, and the whole stack of cards flutters away in the wind. The idea that Congress could pass a lasting law that hamstrings the political rights of minorities is ridiculous on its— Oh, wait a minute, it really has been done before and it really is being done today. So much for that assertion.

Conqueror's Realm is a warning. For we enter soon into an age when no one group can control the America we all know and love. The white majority will have to give up the power it has held for five hundred years, and minorities will no longer have someone to blame if the promise of America continues to go unfulfilled. We're entering an era where we will certainly hang together or be doomed to hang alone. The day approaches when we will have no excuses, however thin and brittle, if we fail as stewards of the founding fathers' grand experiment in government. On that day, soon in our future, we will ill-afford to accuse the "other."

The "other" will be ourselves.

Book One

"No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices."

– Edward R. Murrow

Chapter One:

Eller

 (Back to Contents)

The Vertolifter Sea Stallion swooped over the rugged pre-dawn terrain like a gigantic black locust. It hugged the ground for safety, sometimes barely clearing the assorted boulders and scrub below, sometimes startling its occupants with the sound of branches scraping its belly. Since the terrain was mountainous, the flight meant constant lifts and drops coupled with the aircraft's customary hobby horse rock. It rode like a light-weight boat on a stormy sea.

"This ain't nothin'!" the crew chief shouted over the din of the aircraft's four turboshaft fanjets. He focused his attention on one in particular of his twelve charges, a young man in his twenties who looked the most likely to convulse into retching. "You should ride her when the rag heads start shootin'! When that happens, the PIC gives us not only jump and drop and rock and snap, but damn near barrel rolls, too!"

Mike Eller sat braced in a corner on the other side of the cabin, a spot chosen for its view through the cargo door view port. The crew chief knew better than to speak to him as he did the newer men. At twenty-four years old and a hundred and thirty-eight insertions, eighty-three under fire, Mike was too senior to be bothered with such nonsense. He was easily the most experienced journalist in the press pool, if war was a measure of experience. That print guy over there, if memory served, was thirty-seven and had covered the Balkans for Reuters for over fifteen years. But the man was still a hot zone novice. He still jumped at explosions, and kept close to his military bodyguards. Apparently, most of his reporting had been done from hotel rooms in Rome. Then there was Billy Charter, the front man for BBC. He went in when things were still hot, took the pictures his reporter partners would talk about later, then jumped back to safety in time for his weekly deadlines. Billy was the longest running press man in the theater of war, aside from Mike, and this was only his thirty-second insertion. Reporters didn't last long in the Balkans; it was a nasty, brutal place to earn one's living. It was just the sort of place Mike loved.

The other press men, excluding Charter, did not seem as enamored with the Balkans as Mike. They pitched in their places and collided on the cabin floor, cursing, grabbing for ever-failing hand holds, and sometimes, as with the reporter near the crew chief, they sat silently in miserable airsickness. Mike and Charter were secure, if not comfortable, in their separate niches of the aircraft, their legs braced in front of them and their shoulders wedged between stanchions. They were relaxed, calm in their trust that the other vertolifters, though unseen, flew nearby. The dark terrain through the Plexiglas view port revealed nothing, but an aid ship bigger than this one paralleled them, filled with food, blankets and other priceless freebies for the woeful civilians below. More important were the two gunships riding protection on either flank. They would keep the heat off, but even if they failed, there was no sense in worrying. The press could do nothing about it.

The view outside changed from gray, forested hillside to red tile roofs accented by an occasional street light. It was too dark and they moved too fast for details, but Mike doubted the houses were much more than rubble, the roofs no more than heaps of artillery-shattered clay shards. He stretched his legs in anticipation. Not long, now.

"One minute to touchdown!" the crew chief yelled, as if in agreement. "Please keep your seat till I give you the word! Your escort officer will meet you on the ground!"

The aircraft banked, and Mike caught a glimpse of a vehicle of some sort burning in the street. As the vertolifter righted itself, he felt the pull of deceleration, then waited for, and found, the distinct pitch of the aircraft gliding in to land. Next came the bounce of wheels on pavement, and the grating sound of the starboard cargo door, the one opposite Mike, rolling open.

"Stand up! Out the door!" the crew chief shouted. The crowd of journalists shuffled across to the exit. Mike and Charter lagged at the back of the group. They knew the vertolifter stayed with its passengers. The fanjets would soon shut down, and with them the whirlwind of debris just outside the cargo doors. Even so, a swirling cloak of dust enveloped the ship when Mike made the two-foot drop from deck to ground. The dust in conjunction with the pre-dawn darkness made it difficult to see.

A soldier in green-gray battle dress grabbed Mike by the arm. The vertolifter's settling wash had dusted the man a pale ochre. "Straight out, perpendicular to the aircraft, sir. The dust clears in about twenty feet."

Mike struck out in the indicated direction, cradling his satcam as best he could from the swirling, abrasive cloud of grit. The dust cleared as promised, unveiling a surrounding town square. It was large and ancient looking, with rough cobblestones radiating in all directions toward the charred and blasted buildings at its perimeter. Most of the buildings burned. Their flames cast an eerie, uncertain light on a scene of indiscriminate mayhem. Mike tried to keep his eyes forward, not wanting to investigate the soft heaps scattered about the pavement. The others stood just where the soldier had said, clustered around a clean, crisp officer in light field gear and parka, weaponless. Public relations man. Other soldiers moved about, all heavily armed. Some crouched or stood as security for the landing zone. Others worked at the grizzly task of checking those soft heaps in the street. A hundred feet away, likely placed for the benefit of the press, stood a gaggle of apparent prisoners. They were ragged creatures, but, if Mike's experience held true, undaunted by their American captors. It was a show, and the cameras ate it up.

"Good morning, gentlemen!" the public relations man said. He exuded the brash assurance of a victor. "I'm Captain Jeff Matheson, your escort officer for this visit. I hope your flight was bearable. We've nicknamed the Sea Stallion Bucky, the Wonder Horse."

"Nothing wonderful about a two-hour ride on the floor of that thing," someone said. Everyone broke into agreeable but mechanical laughter.

"Well, maybe we can make it up to you." Matheson grinned like a recruiting poster. "For the last nine hours, elements of the United States Peacekeeping Forces in Southern Europe have been engaged in an extensive security sweep of Bihac and surrounding areas."

Mike pressed the audio button on his satcam. He expected little more than the usual propaganda, but it never hurt to be prudent.

"About six hours ago, American peacekeepers discovered a lightly armed insurgent group here in Bihac, numbering about one hundred fifty. As you know, United Nations Resolutions 582 and 584 both prohibit the formation, maintenance, or use of agencies belligerent to the dominant governments of this region."

"Translate 'belligerent agency' as Muslim," Mike whispered to Charter, who stood beside him. The Britisher delivered a kick to Mike's ankle.

Matheson continued. "Pursuant to their mission to enforce all United Nations resolutions, American forces pacified the agency in question. The operation lasted approximately one and one half hours, and concluded four hours ago."

"You mean, you attacked them?" someone asked. It was the new guy, the one with the queasy stomach.

Matheson's eyes sought him with dispassionate machine accuracy. He stared at the reporter in silence for a moment, reading the ID tag the man wore on his coat.

Well, he just bought a ticket back to The World, Mike thought.

"Yes," Matheson said. "We engaged and destroyed the enemy." He turned to the rest of the group. "The belligerent agency's casualties were heavy. Friendly dispositions are well within acceptable limits."

So, some American troops got killed or wounded, but they'll never tell us who or how many, Mike surmised. He cleared his throat to ask a question. "Could you tell us which American forces were engaged against the belligerent agency?"

"Certainly. The agency was discovered by elements of the 502nd Mountain Rangers. Aiding in the pacification were the 3/86 Armor, 4/65 Infantry, 3/48 Mobile Artillery, and elements of the 532nd Combat Air Wing off the Evan Bayh."

The reporters stood aghast. The poor Muslim schmucks got nuked, Mike thought.

No one said anything.

"At any rate," Matheson continued, "what you see around you is the mop-up operation. You are free to interview any of the soldiers, but not the prisoners over there. They haven't been interrogated as yet. I caution you not to leave the area. The perimeter guards have instructions not to allow you out of the square or into the buildings. For your safety, I'm sure you understand. So, if you have no further questions of me...

"Okay. You're free to do your jobs, gentlemen. The vertolifter leaves in fifteen minutes."

The group scattered into the square, the electronic people fanning out for the best camera angles and shots, the print men moving straight to the soldiers, hoping for the definitive quote. They all sought the feature story angle, knowing that any news gleaned from these events would be eight to ten hours old by the time the end users got it.

Mike Eller moved toward the prisoners, but stopped a good fifty feet away. He did not feel up to handling the guards, and couldn't care less what they might say for the record. Nor did he want to attract Matheson's attention. That man, and others like him, had too much power over who filled the small war zone press pool.

He felt a nudge at his elbow. Charter stood there, his camera hanging like a brick from one hand. He, too, wanted to avoid any hassle.

"That Matheson," the Britisher said. "He's so representative of his species. I recall a few years ago, I got assigned to Lotus plc in Norfolk, that's in the UK, to cover their aerocar event. PR man prattled on and on about the superiority of the Lotus project over that of Ford and Benz. He didn't even stop when the car burst into flames and crashed twelve meters to the tarmac. On my honor, he lauded the power of the wheel rim lifter fans even while the pilot-driver stumbled about in flames, his mates trying to catch him in the halon. It was hilarious." He leaned forward to peek into Mike's eyes. "You look more solemn than usual, young friend."

Mike tossed his satcam from palm to palm. "Feel like an office drone, Billy. No point to being here. Everything's been arranged; I just do as I'm told." He nodded toward the guards surrounding the Muslim prisoners. "Those gomers are thoroughly briefed on what to tell the press, and how to say it. We'll only get propaganda from them. What's worse, most of us play along. The only one with enough guts to ask a question is the one too dumb to know the consequences."

"Yes. Well, I expect he will know the consequences within moments of his return to home station."

"Sure. He'll be on his way back to wherever, and the rest of us more experienced and circumspect pros will carry on our noble task. In other words, we'll waste our time for fear of losing this assignment by doing our goddamned jobs."

"I imagine one is in a far better position to do one's job if one is where the job needs doing, don't you think?"

"Got to do it, though. Did anybody ask the real questions? Why are we beating up on the Muslims? This is their country, not ours. Or at least it was theirs. The Serbs took it away from them, made them second-class citizens, the ones they couldn't run off. The Muslims only want back what's theirs. How come the Muslims and the Croats aren't allowed to arm themselves? The Serb government is armed. We haven't taken away their army, just restricted it to home stations. And, do they care? We're freakin' doing their fighting for them."

Charter clicked his tongue. "A uniquely American perspective. You wouldn't be so game on letting this nonsense continue if these people lived next door. It's quite a different situation for Italy, Greece, Austria, even Great Britain. We don't like people trading bullets and artillery barrages practically within earshot. Rather bad for the neighborhood."

"That doesn't change anything. I'm a reporter. I need to know what's going on. I don't like being used as a cog in an official information machine."

Charter patted Mike's shoulder. "The exuberance of youth. When you get my age, you'll be more accommodating of the way things work. After all, I'm not here to discover The Truth. I just need pretty — or, in this case, ugly — pictures for my deadline. I'll let the writers worry over truth." He gestured toward the perimeter. "Along such lines, I'm going over to that nice, burning restaurant to interview those soldiers and get some good burning building video. What about you?"

Mike looked hard at the gaggle of prisoners fifty feet away. "I think I'll offer those guards some smokes."

"Good for you! But, I had the impression you weren't a smoker."

"Your impression is correct."

The two parted company. Charter whistled as he strolled across the cobblestones to his targets. He kicked a few convenient pieces of debris like a kid on a lazy summer day. But summer was a long way off, and the debris was not aluminum cans, but the grotesque remnants of a shattered culture. Mike walked as nonchalantly as he could toward one of the prisoner guards.

"Cold night," he said by way of greeting.

The guard nodded, watching him.

"I suppose you fellas are used to it, though. You've been out in this weather for at least two months." He fished the bribery Marlboros out of a pocket in his jacket and held them out to the guard.

"Cain't," the man said. "Cain't smoke in the field. Light discipline."

"Really. I thought it wouldn't make any difference, what with the fires, and the camera lights, and all." Mike swept his gaze to encompass the burning, smoking perimeter of the square. While doing so, he sneaked a look at the kneeling prisoners. He was surprised at how young they looked, even through the masking effect of filthy faces and bad lighting.

"It's the rules," the soldier said.

Mike shrugged. "Too bad. Here, consider these a present." He stuffed the cigarette pack into a cargo pocket on the soldier's field jacket. "You can share them with your buddy over there." He nodded toward the other guard.

"Suit yourself," the man said, his suspicion only slightly diminished. "I don't reckon I'll see ya again to pay it back."

"Consider it a show of appreciation for a job well done. Support our boys in green, and all that." Mike allowed a lull in the conversation, a hint of changing gears. "So, I see by your unit patch you're in the 4/65. Was it a tough fight?"

"Not really. These guys got no weapons worth talkin' about. And they ain't organized too good. The job took a while, but that's 'cause they wouldn't hold still for a straight-up fight. We had to chase 'em down."

"Kind of a motley bunch, wouldn't you say?" Mike looked full on the prisoners for the first time. He squinted in the guttering light, trying to catch a few sets of eyes, perhaps a demonstrative stance. The eyes he caught held no fear, only the same personal insult that he recalled from past prisoner displays. These people viewed the world with hatred, frustration, and a sense of injustice. They were not the rabble-rousing anarchists described by public relations men like Matheson.

"Motley ain't the word," the guard said. "They ain't got nothin' left. They sendin' in their kids these days." He shrugged. "I wouldn't be surprised if we was all back in The World come summer. These people won't last that long."

Mike sought the eyes of a random prisoner. This one was smaller than the others, more frail, if such words had meaning when applied to starving armies. Where was the resignation in those eyes, the sense of hopelessness? Surely these people knew they were beaten, that their fighting only wasted time and lives. Why continue? Why, in the light of their futile pursuit, did their eyes hold such defiance? Of course, the same had been wondered of the Israelis in 1949 and 2015, of England during World War II, and of George Washington. And all of them were winners.

An artillery impact flashed in the hills above town. Mike started at the revelation from its sudden light. The prisoner he watched was a girl!

"Nothin' to worry about, it's ours," the guard said, misreading Mike's reaction.

"Yeah, sure." Mike's discovery rattled him. He knew the insurgents were weak, that the Americans had whittled them down to little more than ragged mobs hiding in the hills of their burned-out land. He knew they drew on their young boys for manpower, always the last gasp of a defeated people. But the appearance of this filthy, gnarled excuse for a teenaged girl drove home more than any statistic the desperation of the Muslim position. Theirs was a patriarchal society. To willingly lower their women into the crucible of combat was an unthinkable action for Muslim men. Yet, there she knelt, alongside her male comrades, bloody, ragged and shivering in the cold.

"Thanks for the talk," Mike said. "They'll be cranking up my vertol any minute, and I want to be on board before the dust starts flying."

"I comp that." The guard smiled for the first time. "Them birds is their own private tornado."

"Yeah, well, this Dorothy intends to be way up inside the twister before the first updraft flies." Mike slapped the soldier's arm, then started back to the vertolifter. All affability slipped from his face the moment his back was turned.

"Have a good trip!" the soldier yelled after him. "And thanks for the lights!"

#

Mike spoke to no one as he braced himself into the vertolifter. He remained silent as his fellow reporters filtered back to the aircraft. He said nothing when Charter, one of the last to return, settled next to him on the deck. He did not return Charter's friendly greeting, did not feel the fanjets burst to power and begin to turn. He sat immovable as sculpture as the aircraft pitched upward in departure.

For forty minutes the vertolifter leapt, dropped and wrenched over rugged terrain. It was not until they leveled off over the Adriatic Sea that Mike punched Charter in the arm and brought his mouth to the Brit's ear.

"I'm going over!" Mike yelled. The covering engine noise made his shout an effective whisper.

"What? What do you mean?"

"I mean, I'm going over! I need to know what's going on!"

"I don't understand! What do you mean, 'going over'? How do you plan to go over?"

"First time I get a chance! Next insertion, as soon as the guards turn their backs! I'll just take off! What are they gonna do, shoot me?"

Charter looked alarmed. And why shouldn't he? Reporters often talked of "going over", of escaping the control of American press relations people. It was a standard joke, nothing more. They all realized the dangers involved; everyone knew the all too predictable fates of those cutting loose from the system. Some of them were dead. The American security people were a nuisance, but they were excellent bodyguards, as well.

"This is not a good idea!" Charter yelled.

"I have to do it! I have to find the Muslims and get their side of the story! Nobody knows what's going on over here, not even us!"

"You'll get yourself killed! This is crazy!"

"You gonna tell?"

Charter stared at him, slack jawed. He should tell; any real friend would. The Balkans were dangerous for anyone, and the natives hated Americans more than they hated each other. If Charter reported his conversation with Mike, it would mean a trip home, one-way and irrevocable. But better a man should lose his job than lose his life. That was the reason of it; Mike hoped Charter wouldn't be reasonable.

The Englishman squinted at Mike. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I need your help!"

"What? First you make me complicit, now you want me implicated?"

"I need you to get a message back to the States, that's all! My satcam uplink is non-op! It was part of the press pool deal! I need to establish commo links with See It Now in New York, Indianapolis, and Los Angeles! Without commo links, I can't broadcast once I go over!" Mike stopped to swallow. The shouting hurt his throat.

"Perhaps we should discuss this back on the ship!"

"No! Too much chance of being overheard! Answer the question, Billy! You gonna tell?"

"Just give me the info, bright boy! You want to get shot by Bosnians, that's your business! Just don't mention my name from now until then!"

"I'm thinking three digitized microwave frequencies, just to be safe! Call Steve Tallman at CBS in Indianapolis! Tell him to listen on freq 1 first, noon, GMT! Tell him not to use the others until we get jammed! He and I will arrange the uplink codes!"

"A bit overblown, don't you think?"

"Satcams aren't simple, just bad ass! Now, Billy! Don't say a thing to anybody until you know I'm gone!"

"I'm not an idiot, Michael! Give me the frequencies!"

He did.

Chapter Two:

Tallman and Tallman

 (Back to Contents)

Steve sat perched at the limit of the couch cushion. Ben faced him in a straight back chair brought from the connecting dining room. The two stared at one another. Ben's lips drew down in a deep frown, his eyes haughty and firm. Steve knew his own face mirrored his uncle's. They might disagree, they might fight, but they weren't really all that different. Okay, maybe they were, at the crust. Ben was a dime store wooden Indian. He wore the cowboy hat and the snakeskin boots, and he pulled his long, age-whitened hair into a ponytail secured by a gaudy silver and turquoise clasp. Ben didn't know turquoise from gravel, but his lobbyist clients expected it from Native Americans, and he delivered. Steve, beyond the face, looked nothing like his uncle. He hated even to think how he looked. His gray suit was rumpled, the white shirt tired, the blue tie askew. And his face, if it looked as exhausted as he felt, must have given the gaunt appearance of death.

The coffee table between the men supported two highballs, a pitcher of tap water, and a bottle of cheap scotch. It was all Steve could serve after seventy-three straight hours at work. His pantry lay empty and his refrigerator smelled faintly of rot even from the living room. Busted, and for how many days? It would have to wait. His eyes burned, ants crawling behind them. His face felt slack, like overworked Playdough. He wanted – he needed – to sleep.

Ben mixed a drink heavy with the liquor. Steve's glass held only water.

"I got me quite a problem," Ben said after his first long sip. "I've got a mess you would not believe. If things go bad, a lot of people get hurt. Just the thing for my journalist nephew."

"Talking to the press now, are you? I thought you only spoke to paying customers and their marks."

Ben sent him a wry smirk. "And so I'm doing now. You'll see why when you hear me out."

Steve's face was incapable of subtle throwaway emotion. "Last time I heard you out was five years ago. There was shouting and finger pointing and I hope that isn't where you're going now because I don't have the stuff for it, really I don't."

"That was personal, young man. Family stuff. This is business."

"Okay, fine. Business." Steve shifted his weight on the couch, but did not relax a muscle. "Look, two things come to mind, Ben. One: you should really give up the country cowboy routine. You've a degree from Loyola Law, for Christ's sake."

Ben threw up his arms in mock protest. "This little injun? You speak with fork-ed tongue, boy!"

"Two: your lobbying business never had much to do with me. Why has that changed all of a sudden?"

"Now, on that point, you're wrong." Ben leaned forward in his chair, his lanky frame bringing him within inches of his nephew's eyes. Ben was an old man. His face was the brown, wrinkled leather of one too long in the sun, a face with ancient, intense concerns etched into its skin. But no sadness lived there. No weakness was coded into the spider web lines of mischief cut around those eyes, or in the deep grooves around his mouth that spoke of both confidence and laughter. This man wore his age with authority.

"I know I don't come around so much," he said, "and when I do, it's usually to bemoan your unfortunate choices in life. But, this thing here is bigger than that. It's bigger than me. Bigger than you, but you're all wrapped up in its center." He jabbed at Steve with his whiskey glass. "You can't weasel out of this one, boy. It's your Bear staring you in the face."

Steve let out a long, put upon breath and shook his head. "I know you too well," he said. "You're given to melodrama, Ben. Occupational hazard, I suppose. And I wish you'd stop it with that 'boy' business. I'm forty-three years old."

"Well, okay, that's fair. Let's excuse it as a habit grown from seventy-one years of perspective."

They sat listening to the harsh moan of the January wind. The windows rattled. After a moment, Ben spoke, no longer affecting the Arizona corn pone character for which he was known in Washington. "My name is Ben Blackcloud Tallman. I'm your father's brother. Your father, Marcus Knighthorse Tallman, was a schmuck. He abandoned his life long before he died of overwork and an aimless heart. I loved your father. The things I say, I say out of love. But, when he turned from his ancestors out of love for a woman, he didn't do his sons any favors. Your granddaddy knows that. He knew it years before your father admitted it to himself. That's why he visited Marcus more than any of his other eight children. He didn't come to see your father so much as he came to see you, to make sure you grew up knowing who you are."

Steve knew where this went. This was a well-worn stretch of road for them.

Still, Steve's eyes glazed at the thought of his grandfather. As a boy, he had always looked forward to the old man's infrequent visits. The Tallman siblings would crowd the streetward windows of the house, watching for the approach of that nominal head of their family. Granddaddy had never arrived alongside Dad in the family car, and never by taxi. He always made the journey from New Mexico by bus, then walked the five miles from the Greyhound station in Indianapolis to the Tallman household. With him came an entourage of friends, advisors, and assorted straphangers, never less than five or six at a time, and all in full Apache regalia, as if on a mission to some foreign land. Though the vestments of his office were no more than a few feathers, beads and bones over blue jeans and flannel shirt, the elder Tallman carried himself like an ambassador from a great nation, which, indeed, he was. Granddaddy was an elder on the reservation out west, the reservation Steve's father had left, and that Steve had never seen.

He was also the great spiritual mentor of Steve's life. Whereas Dad had always been absorbed in the constant concerns of making a living, almost to the exclusion of involvement with his kids, Granddaddy had attended to the hungry souls of his grandchildren. He spent a great deal more time with Steve than with the others, whether because Steve was more receptive to his teachings or more in need of them, he never said. The two of them spent many hours together walking the neighborhood, or sitting out on the front stoop, Granddaddy imparting his old world brand of Apache philosophy, Steve soaking it up like the young sponge he was. Many times in adult life, Steve found himself surprised at how those talks had shaped his view of the world, directed his thoughts and molded his decisions. He was his grandfather's son, more than he had ever been his father's.

The old man no longer traveled. He was well enough, but at 106 years old, he preferred to stay close to his ancestors, just in case. Steve had not seen Granddaddy in over fifteen years; the two had chosen opposed worlds in which to live. Steve often wondered about his destiny, if there was one. If there was a heaven for Indians and a heaven for The Other People, as Granddaddy called them, then what place awaited those who were both, and neither?

"Granddaddy never had a clue," Steve heard himself saying. Regret tinged his voice. "He wanted me to be Apache, but I'm not Apache."

Ben chuckled, a humorless, but not unkind sound. "You're Apache, all right. Your dad didn't teach it to you, and your white Catholic mamma didn't neither, but you got it in you, boy. I read people, you know. Remember, I'm a lobbyist."

Steve chose to ignore the fact that Ben got his mother's race wrong. The old man was baiting him.

Ben paused, and the frown returned to his face. "Remember all that stuff the old man told you? All that stuff about fear and faith, redemption, transfiguration from man to human, reincarnation and such? I believe it, because I see it in you. You aren't just a grown up little boy influenced by his grandfather. Your grandfather's spirit is too big for one man to hold. He shares it with you. It's part of you, flown all this way over whatever spirit conduit there is, to finish the task your grandfather took on, and that your father never started."

"Sure, Ben. Make me a good little Indian, huh?"

"Exactly. With a little help from yours truly."

Steve wanted to sleep. Ben kept him up for no apparent reason. The refrigerator needed repair. "It's late, Ben."

"It's only eight o'clock."

"We've been over all this before. Sorry, but I wasn't interested then, and I'm not interested now."

Ben took a gulp of his drink, sat it on the table, and rose like a piston from his seat. He crossed to the easy chair that held his coat, groped something out of the inside pocket, and stepped back across to Steve. He slapped a crumpled white envelope onto the table.

"Sleep on that."

"What is it? A genealogy report?"

Ben tapped the envelope. "This is the end of the world, as we know it. Your life will cease to be as it is. This nation, even this world, will cease to be as it is. Things will be better, or things will be destroyed, or both. That could all happen, or nothing at all. But, first, you'll have to read it."

Steve stared without interest at the envelope. His uncle's speech did not impress him. Melodrama was Ben's stock in trade. For all Steve knew, the envelope contained nothing more important than a bus schedule.

"You're a smart boy," Ben said after a sip of his drink. "You'll know what it means."

"Why don't you just save some trouble, and tell me what it means?"

"Some stories have to be lived, not told. You can never tell a man the meaning of a thing. That's a job for the spirit."

"Uh-huh."

Ben took a corner of the envelope between thumb and forefinger, and jiggled it. A thin square of lucite clattered out onto the table. Steve recognized it as a computer semi-hard prism, the chemical-electric kind, A bunch of living proteins electrically charged so that they carried information. Cheap stuff, for those who couldn't afford Net fees, and so carried their data in their pockets.

"So?"

Ben tapped an impatient tattoo on the plastic square.

Three letters lanced across the prism face in careless script from a fine-line felt marker: EOG.

"EOG. Equal Opportunity in Government Act?"

Ben nodded.

"So what? Look, I know you and your folks at the Native American Movement are upset about that bill, but we've discussed it before. It'll never make it to law. If it did, the Supreme Court would throw it out the second it cleared the president's pen. The thing is unconstitutional."

Ben finished his drink, then placed the glass on the table between them. "For once, I'm not interested in arguing politics, boy. I just want you to read the file."

"What's it say?"

"You've got your granddaddy's head. Figure it out."

"Where's it from?"

"Not important. Let's say we borrowed it from a reporter fella. Print man. You never heard of him."

"Borrowed?"

"Don't worry, he still has his original. We lifted a shadow of it off his desk station. The man never noticed. By the way, the security's been disabled, so you won't have to work at breaking it."

"You expect me to violate the stolen notes of a fellow journalist?"

"Why not? He stole the information in the notes. Besides, as the newspaper man, he has the greater claim to high journalistic ethics. You're just television."

"Thanks. I like you, too."

Ben stretched to work out the kinks. "I'd better head home. An old fogey like me shouldn't ought to be out so late."

"It's only just after eight. You said as much."

"I did, didn't I? Well, maybe I just want to leave you alone with your little present. Give you time to think, and listen to your ancestors."

"What makes you think I won't toss it in the trash the minute you walk out the door?"

"I already told you. This is your Bear. You have to face up to it. We aren't talking free choice here."

Steve ignored the heavy spiritual references creeping into the conversation. They were there intentionally, to draw him into debate, and into the wrong end of another high-handed moral harangue. Steve hoped, for once, to avoid the all too familiar trap.

Braced as he was against his uncle's intentions, Steve felt surprise when Ben reached for his coat and started to put it on.

"You're really leaving?"

A mischievous smile. "Don't you want me to? You have work to do. I'll just be in the way."

Steve rose to his feet. He had expected a long visit, the usual intimate badgering about his supposed religious and cultural antecedents. Such was the centerpiece of his dealings with Ben, his dearest relative. It was expected, dreaded, and now suddenly, strangely, missed.

"I'm glad you came by," he said. He lied, but something seemed called for, and nothing else came to mind.

"I'll be in town a few days," Ben said. "The Westin has a fair spread at lunch, and I got no appointments 'til Thursday. Besides, I got an expense account." He flashed another of his electric bad boy smiles. All gravity vanished. He was the down-home, tobacco-chawin', smoke-blowin' lobbyist again.

They walked out onto the front porch, a six-by-eight concrete slab with an overhead supported by a single wooden post in the corner. The yard beyond it extended two hundred feet to the road and was bordered on all sides by tall evergreen hedges ideal for privacy. Ben's rental car sat in the driveway, the dull light of the moon reflecting from the solar cells lining its top. A north wind scurried along the brown grass, chilling Steve to the core. He still wore his shirtsleeves and tie, an untenable combination for the hour and season.

"I'm too old for this," Ben said. "Got to get back west as soon as possible. Did you know they're calling for snow in these parts?"

"This is Indiana. It happens."

"Maybe, but these Indiana drivers don't know beans about handling the stuff. Hell, I live in a desert, and I can drive in snow." He turned to Steve, seeming not to notice his nephew's occasional shivers. "Where's Patty? She'll be home before the stuff comes down?"

Steve's jaw tightened. He preferred not to answer, but Ben's unwavering stare required it.

"She isn't here. She went to visit her mother."

"Visit her mother?" Ben fell silent for all of two seconds. "You didn't go and run her off, did you?"

"Come off it, Ben. She went to visit her mother. She was lonely around here. I haven't been home much."

"That girl is your link to the world, young man. She's the only thing that keeps you from becoming a worthless workaholic shit. You get her back."

"It's a free country. She's a grownup." He withered under Ben's reproachful eyes. "A mature seventeen, then. She'll be back."

"You get her back. You go to her. You apologize. You promise her anything, and deliver. You get that girl back."

"Yes, Dad."

"Well, somebody's gotta do his job, God damn it."

They fell silent again. Steve listened to the ghostly non-engine sound of traffic on the street. He recalled from his childhood the tenor rumblings of internal combustion engines, rare even then. Electric vehicles made no noise at all.

"Well, I'll never get home at this rate," Ben said. He slapped Steve on the shoulder and stepped down from the porch. "Take care, young nephew. Get some sleep."

"I intend to."

The old man loped toward the driveway and the waiting rental car. A flash of white light, and Ben was seated, door closed, engine running. It was so like him, so directed once he made up his mind. As the car rolled backwards, the driver side window came down.

"A lot of sleep," the shadowed head said. "You'll need it, and read that file!"

#

Sleep came in shallow snatches. Steve was alone. Ben was gone. Granddaddy was gone. Most important of all, Patricia was gone. But something came to him, or he to it. They converged from a great distance. He approached it indirectly, a meandering, confused trek across dusty plains, with scrub and rock underfoot. He moved with the erratic, zigzagging motion of a rabbit avoiding predators, but the thing loomed always before him. The air felt unnaturally clean and crisp. The sky darkened to a thunderhead gray. Nothing much to see. But something was there. He approached it with caution at first, then more deliberately. He approached with resolve, and also with fear.

There. It formed from the gray void, huge, black, flat as a shadow against the sky, but infinite.

The Bear.

It moved against the deep overcast, an undulating, almost featureless black with bright red flashes for eyes, chips from a mirror that reflected the soul. Its claws were sword-length razors, a bright, wet red. Steve feared seeing the red, but it came to him nonetheless. It was his red. It was his from long ago, from centuries ago, and throughout intervening time. The claws were his tomorrow.

#

Steve snapped awake. A nightmare. No big deal. He squinted at the bedside clock. Only 10:30, not two hours since he fell into bed. He rolled over and burrowed deeper into his covers, but could not find the sleep he craved. Had his body forgotten how? Steve knew the effects of exhaustion. His experience was broad at falling asleep while standing, or tripping into that false phase of hyper-alertness that sometimes precedes collapse. This was the latter. His senses railed against forced commands to relax. They reached out into the room, the rest of the house, out to the yard and the distant street, looking for stimuli. They found only the soft hum of Alfred on the table across from the bed. No passing trucks, no leaking faucets, no creaking boards fed his senses interest. The house was a tomb.

"Lights, two," he said into the dark. The lamp next to Alfred glowed, enough to reflect the features of the room.

There hung the standard of his battalion during the war, festooned with the ghosts of over 500 men, and the hopes and nightmares of the fifteen survivors. There hung the photo of himself and Walter Marks, CBS News division chief, on the day Steve put the new magazine show on the air. There hung the more personal photo, the group shot of him with his first satcam crew. Chelsea stood beside him. Though not a crew member per se, she was the first of his twelve vertolifter pilots, and one of his closest friends. They spoke the same language, Chelsea and he, scarred as they were by the same monstrous war. Finally, his eyes turned to the bedside table and its overflow of plastic pill bottles. Five different drugs for one lousy condition, yet another souvenir of war.

Alfred sprawled atop the table across the room. His monitor glowed from its grasp on the wall, its weird screen saver showing endlessly passing desert plains running below cerulean skies populated with frantically transmuting white clouds.

No wonder I'm having nightmares, Steve thought.

"Alfred."

The ready screen appeared on the monitor. A cartoon dog with floppy ears and one spotted eye ogled Steve from across the room. Its tongue hung loose and dripping from its mouth.

"Hello, Steve," the computer speakers said in a cheery buddy voice. "How are you tonight?"

"Can't complain. How are the puppies?"

"Potty trained!"

Security satisfied, Steve relaxed attention to his voice. "Alfred. Call Belinda."

"That number has been deleted from my directory," the computer said in his bubbly game show host voice. "Should I recover it from Limbo and copy it to a permanent file?"

"No. Retrieve it this once, then delete."

"Dialing. Would you like to check your mail? There are seven messages on E-mail, and four on Voice."

"No."

"Maintaining mail. Would you like—"

"Alfred. Suppress standard housekeeping procedures."

"Hello?"

The voice was new, but familiar. A window opened on the monitor's desktop, showing the digital image from the videophone link. The window showed a dark-haired, middle-aged woman with sharp features that nonetheless hinted at faded youthful beauty.

"Belinda, it's Steve."

He saw her discomfiture in the quick tightening of the lines across her brow. "Steve. Why are you calling me? Why is your video off?"

"Sorry, I'm calling through the computer. I'd like to talk to Patricia."

"Patricia isn't available just now."

"Is she home, Belinda? I really need to talk to her."

"I'll tell her you called. I'm sure she'll get back with you—"

"For pity's sake, Belinda, I didn't call you. I just want to talk to my daughter. If I'm going to get hung up on, I'd rather it was by her."

In answer, the video window went blank. Had she hung up on him? Steve threw back his covers. He swung his legs to the cold floor and pulled himself to a sitting position. By God, he'd talk to Patricia if he had to put that phone on continuous redial all goddamned night!

"Alfred! Call Belinda!"

"That number is presently in use. Do you want me to hang up and dial again?"

Steve paused, half risen from his bed. He sank back to the mattress, slumping.

Of course, he thought. She has me on hold.

"Dad?"

He looked at the screen. Patricia stared out at him, her face drawn close to the monitor. It was the same round face that had left him two weeks ago, no change at all, but marvelous. She had the same short, dark hair, the same tiny tattoo on her right cheek next to her nose (kids!), the same round, brown eyes. The high definition digital window emphasized the warm, golden glow of her skin. That look of a year-round tan was one of the perks of her mixed heritage. Boys loved it, much to Steve's chagrin.

"Hi, honey."

"Hi, Dad. Where's your video?"

"I'm calling through Alfred. You wouldn't want to see me, anyhow. Just got out of bed."

"Uh-huh." She looked into the screen though she found nothing there. "What's up, Dad?"

He shrugged. "I just wanted to talk to you, see how you were doing."

She sat back from the screen, relaxed, no cares at all. "I'm fine. What about you? What are you doing in bed at this hour?"

"Not sleeping, that's for sure."

"Working too hard again? You sound tired."

"I'm all right. I was just thinking of you. Miss you, really."

"Don't be so hang dog. I'm not gone forever." Her brow knitted and she glanced off screen. It pained him to see those lines on her face. They were so like her mother's. "It's no big deal, okay? It's just that the house was so empty."

"Yeah. I'm sorry."

She leaned forward again. Her eyes darted, searching the blank screen in front of her as if she might find some evidence of him there. "Hey, take care of yourself. Mom's in the other room. Every now and then, she gives me the evil eye. I have to go, Dad."

"I understand. I wish it didn't have to be this way."

"Things happen. I'll call you back when I'm alone. We'll really talk, okay?"

"Sure. Maybe I'll call you. Tomorrow."

"That wouldn't be such a great idea."

The conversation hung on silence. Belinda stood between them, invisible, but there.

"Well, as long as you're okay."

"I am, but you aren't. Get some sleep."

"I intend to."

"Bye, Daddy."

"Bye, honey."

The window closed.

"The call has been terminated," Alfred said with a sense of accomplishment. "I am deleting the phone number now."

Steve sat on the edge of his bed for many minutes. Why had he not said the necessary things? Why had he not said he loved her? How had he wrecked his life in so short a time? "College grads," Chelsea had told him once, years ago. "Too much brains, not enough sense." Chelsea was a smart one, and prickly.

Alfred's screen saver returned. The endlessly advancing desert plain was just too much to stomach.

"Alfred. Blank screen."

Instant compliance. Well, some things worked.

He noticed Ben's data prism on the table in front of Alfred. Had he meant to read it, or had he thrown it there for want of another place short of the threatened trashcan?

He got up and crossed stiff-legged to the table. He picked up the prism, a tiny thing about the size of a Chicklet. An unimpressive herald for the end of the world. Well, why not? Maybe it could smother his melancholy mood.

He snapped the prism into Alfred's reader, and padded back across the cold floor as the computer read the new data to its memory.

"Data from drive A received," Alfred said. "Would you like a summarization?"

"Shoot."

"Pardon?"

Steve grimaced as he dropped onto the bed. Talking to machines was sometimes a chore. "Yes, Alfred. I'd like a summarization."

"Memorex semi-hard C/E computer prism, capacity open-ended, 203.6 MB used. One file: EOG_Back.tdoc, with an associated database, both on Micrographix Office Organizer v 2.0, standard interface."

Well, Steve thought, the software was nothing grand. Ben's poor, violated print reporter was a real underachiever type.

"Alfred. Open the file EOG_Back.tdoc. Maximize the window."

The monitor screen brightened. The requested file filled its forty-six inch rectangle.

Steve groaned. He fell back onto his pillow, and pulled the covers up to his chin. A group organizer, and a big one. Ben was making this really, really hard.

Steve got comfortable under the covers. He lay on his side, all openings in the blankets tucked and plugged to keep in the warm air. "Alfred. Give me basic stats on the group organizer. Layout only."

"Seventeen interconnected personnel trees on thirty-seven layers. 638 fields from a linked database, 6,837 cross-references."

"Good God."

The numbers daunted him. Like most people raised in the information age, Steve could set up his system and add or subtract components as needed. He could use most high-end office software, some sophisticated animation software, and even a few important number crunchers. But all those programs had similar protocols, their commands and lines of code smothered under the thick insulation of a user-friendly interface. These days, software had to be attractive and effortless, tailored for users like Steve, who hated and even feared the technical secrets embedded in the programs they used. For the computer industry, it was keep it easy to keep it sold.

He thought about quitting the file. Group organizers were bad enough, but this one was a monster. It showed little apparent organization in the spider web of connecting nodes filling the screen before him, and sixteen more layers just like it waited below the surface. He considered turning it over to the eager young wareheads at work, give them the headaches. Then an approach occurred to him, one that could circumvent the usual laborious search through individual nodes and their associated layers.

"Alfred. Call up my folder Equal Opportunity in Government Act. Compare my contacts with the nodes in EOG_Back.tdoc. Any correlations?"

"Entries in EOG_Back.tdoc have a 94.886% correlation to the names listed in your database and notes."

Steve frowned. Strike one in his information hunt. His notes contained the names of almost everyone in Congress, over two dozen governors, lots of lobbyists and political gunslingers, and dozens of others with a stake in either passage or defeat of the controversial EOG legislation. What did Ben's stolen prism have that his own did not?

"How many entries without correlation?"

"Thirty-two."

Now, that was more like it. "Cycle the non-correlating node entries from EOG_Back.tdoc onto the screen, full screen, two second cycle."

He watched the enlarged rectangles flash onto the screen. Each contained a name and brief title for someone in the organizational chart. Steve knew most of the names, mainly industrialists, journalists, chairmen of political interest groups, even a few Supreme Court justices. Not much more than his own files contained. That made it strike two. There had to be more. Ben had come a long way with this information, whether from Washington or from New Mexico. But, he had said something about other appointments, which meant other reasons for being in town. Could this be some sort of silly joke, a run the journalist in circles gag? No. EOG was a serious matter with Ben. He did not joke about it. There had to be something hidden in those names.

"Alfred. How many cross-references for these nodes?"

"One hundred twenty-one."

"Cycle in the cross-references with the associated nodes."

He sank lower into his pillow; this would take a while. The display showed the same kind of rectangles overlaid with text, but many more of them. Relationships between his thirty-two new names and others in the organizer took shape almost immediately, but the shape they took was sadly predictable. Strike three.

And three was enough for one night, Steve thought. The cycling rectangles of bland text did what long hours of work had not. They lulled him toward sleep. His mind drifted away from data puzzles and toward that place inhabited by the few things he trusted in life. Patricia was there, in all her guises from loud, impatient baby, to screeching preschooler, to the wise and beautiful girl she was today. Chelsea was there. Chelsea never changed in this place, always hard-eyed and severe, but beautiful and powerful in her flame-retardant flight suit, the flight helmet cradled in the curve of her hip. And Anna. If any truly powerful fetish lived within Steve's soul, it was Anna. She was small, fragile, unassuming in appearance, made studious by the round wire-framed glasses that spent more time in her tiny polishing hands than they spent on the bridge of her nose. But Anna was a titanic spirit, one of the most profound souls he had ever met. She had done great things in her forty-four years on earth, and would do more before she left the world. Steve hoped the modern lives they lived would permit his sharing the warmth of her life.

He started awake. Something triggered alarms in the flagging attention center of his brain.

"Alfred. Freeze window."

Nothing there. Who cares about a middle-range functionary in the John Birch Society? There was something else. Had he imagined it?

"Reverse cycle. Five second cycle."

The previous node flashed onto the screen. Electronics magnate. Tie that to John Birch Society. Big deal. It's a free country, and there was nothing illegal about being ultra right. The cycle reversed one more node. Ku Klux Klan. Interesting, but this guy was well known to Steve. Further back.

He stiffened when Alfred flashed the next node. Here was a name that spelled serious news when grouped with the previous three. The man's reputation was certainly conservative, but extremist? Perhaps the correlation was incidental, based on little more than conjecture. Or maybe it was based on perfectly logical associations that only the file's author knew anything about. Best not to jump to conclusions.

Instead, he simply jumped. The next name to appear stung Steve with such force that he bolted upright in bed. No thought of coincidence or casual association occurred to him. These five names on the same correlation line could not be an accident, and these five men could not come together in polite company, even for a game of checkers. The reputations of the last two would self-destruct in the process. Ben was right. This was big. Somehow, though, Steve expected more. This discovery, great as it was, could not have wrenched him back from sleep. His embedded journalistic skepticism would have required his subconscious to catalog the information and remind him of it in the morning. Something bigger waited, something his sleep-deprived brain had seen in the peripherals of a dream, and could not ignore. He watched the screen.

Alfred flashed the next node.

Steve reached for the phone.

Chapter Three:

Dearing and Yonelson

 (Back to Contents)

They peered about the lobby with hard, calculating, the eyes, the eyes of experienced predators. Without doubt, the two men were either policemen or party storm troopers. She knew they sought her. Who else could they want?

She led too bland a life to interest policemen, so she wondered which party the men represented, and why they wanted her at the worst of all times. The Republicans might want to gloat; the Democrats would come with another vindictive lesson, "I told you so's" loose and ready. She sank deeper into her easy chair, hoping to fold it around her and so escape detection.

No such luck. The two scanned the hotel lobby like machines, inspecting each standing body and each of the mainly empty chairs. They found her, and weaved their way across the wide, cluttered expanse of floor. She came to grips with the reality of her moment, and forced that electric smile everyone found so captivating.

"Governor Dearing?" the tall one inquired. Except for basics like height and weight, these people all looked alike. Were they bred for the purpose, or manufactured? "Excuse me, ma'am. You're Governor Anna Marie Dearing, of California."

She radiated a friendliness she did not feel. "I'm afraid you've made a mistake. I haven't been a governor in over three years. Right now, I'm just Anna. And you are...?"

"My name is McDonnel, Jack McDonnel. This is Tim Peterson. We're from the National Committee, just messengers, really."

"The National Committee," she echoed, feigning curiosity. "Which National Committee, may I ask?"

McDonnel seemed taken aback. "Why, the Democratic Party, of course. May I pull up a seat?" They both pulled up seats.

"I was at the dinner tonight," McDonnel said. "Great speech. Oratory is a lost art these days, but you remind us just how well a phrase can turn."

"Why, thank-you, Jack McDonnel. You certainly know how to charm a girl. And how did you like the evening, Mr. Peterson?"

Peterson seemed a lot younger than McDonnel, perhaps in his mid-twenties. Anna knew who led and who followed. Still, she wanted Peterson to feel part of the group even in what was a two-way conversation. He seemed startled that she would ask his opinion of anything.

"I enjoyed myself fine, Governor, I mean, Miss Dearing. I've followed your career for years, ever since high school. I'm glad I got to see you in person."

"Ever since high school, eh? I'm glad you're such a fan, dear. Now, try not to remind this little old lady of her advanced age, if you don't mind."

There was an instant of silence, then Anna and McDonnel both broke into laughter at Peterson's expense.

"Don't worry, darlin'," Anna said. "You haven't made me feel like an old lady yet, though I suppose that could just be a middle-aged delusion."

McDonnel rescued his partner. "Governor, I have to say that we didn't come here to congratulate you on your speech. As I said, we're messengers. The National Committee has entrusted us to bring to you a sensitive concern."

"Does the party have any other kinds of concern? Look, Mr. McDonnel, I don't see what the party wants with me. I'm running independently of party support, I haven't bad-mouthed any Democrats, and I don't stand a chance next month in New Hampshire. Maybe the party should get sensitive with someone more notable in the field."

"Are things not going well?"

"I suppose the party has authorized you to ask that question, as well as bring up your sensitive concern? Things are just wonderful, Mr. McDonnel, but there are eleven candidates for the nomination, and conservative New Hampshire and my brand of politics do not mix well. I don't expect to be a factor until California."

"I see." McDonnel nodded his head in sympathy, and leaned forward in his chair. "We know the situation, Governor. As close as we can figure, you're nearly out of money. You don't have the funds to compete in California. Contributions continue to dry up as people lose confidence in the party's ability to take this election. On top of that, you're still paying on loans from last time around. You're going into a primary you can't win, and no way to bounce back afterward. Your campaign is over."

Anna chilled inside. The purpose of this meeting grew clear to her. She chose her response carefully, beginning with a mocking copy of McDonnel's sympathetic nod. "Uh-huh. Let me guess. You've been given the thankless job of removing an obstacle to a smooth primary. Your bosses want to narrow the field, unite the party early, concentrate on targeting the president, not each other. Then maybe the contributors will return, the war chest will grow, and we'll have a chance of recapturing the White House. Am I fairly accurate so far?"

"Yes, ma'am. The party considers the president vulnerable, what with the war in the Balkans and the terrorist problem and all that. But he isn't so vulnerable that a divided party can defeat him, or a party perceived by the public as divided."

"You want a year long campaign against the president, waged by as few candidates as possible, few enough in a campaign long enough to make the public pause, and think seriously about alternatives to the incumbency."

"Exactly."

"Uh-huh." Anna sat back further in her chair. She adapted her position of most authority, crossing her legs, entwining her fingers, and resting her elbows on the armrests. "Sounds like a solid battle plan, Mr. McDonnel. But I see one major flaw in it." She tapped her chest. "This little obstacle does not intend to quit. This little obstacle does not intend to step aside for someone else in the name of party unity." She leaned forward. "This little obstacle has sacrificed enough of herself on the altar of party unity, and is convinced that it's somebody else's damned turn, for a change."

The two party functionaries looked aghast. Anna's eyes darted between them, accusatory. Peterson spoke first.

"Now, hold on, ma'am, you have it all wrong!" People stared at them from across the lobby.

"Quiet!" McDonnel turned and faced Anna with a mixture of tight-jawed determination and extreme caution. "Governor, you don't understand as much as I figured. We aren't here to ask you out of the race. We're here to offer you the Democratic nomination for president of the United States."

Anna leaned back in her chair. Her mind raced to process McDonnel's words, to determine their truth and the meaning of their truth. She could understand a shut down, but did they ask her to once more carry the standard for her peers? Read the fine print, Anna Marie.

"Your analysis was on target," McDonnel continued. "The party wants to narrow the field, to get everyone behind a single candidate as soon as possible. You are that candidate."

"I ran for president three years ago. I lost. Why does the party want me again? Most people only get one shot at this sort of thing."

"You're the perfect candidate. Your philosophy is inclusive, and this will be the first election, according to the census, in which there is no majority influence in our country. Anglo-America has always controlled the electoral process, but white people only make up 44% of the population today. We think you could build a winning coalition of moderate and liberal whites, women, and people of color."

"I tried that last time. I still lost."

"You've also come out solidly against the use of troops in the Balkans. Public opinion was with the president when he sent in the Marines as United Nations observers. Now that our troops have expanded their mission to include combat operations, people are changing their minds."

"I'm not the only Democratic candidate to speak out against the war."

McDonnel looked off to one side. There was something he didn't want to say.

Anna fished for his real purpose. "Senator Mackie has come out against the war, and he sits on the Foreign Relations Committee. He's a very qualified candidate, a known factor to the public, a good bet. I'd never say these things to his face, and I'd never point them out to the public, considering that we're competitors, but your bosses are well aware of his qualifications. Mackie is a solid candidate. So are others in the field."

"Yes, ma'am, but they're all white males. You're the only black woman candidate we have."

She noted his stiffened demeanor, the deep frown. So, that was it. She offered him a tired sigh.

"Uh-huh," she said in her characteristic way, and stared into the lobby at nothing in particular. She sat silently for a moment.

"I'm very disappointed, Mr. McDonnel. You can tell that to your bosses." She turned back to the two men, noting their black suits, white shirts, and short haircuts, the iconic costumes of white, middle class America and its Big Brother. "Have you followed politics long, Mr. McDonnel?"

"I've been with the party for fifteen years."

"Good. Think back a few years. If you recall, the previous president was popular with the conservative middle and upper classes. His VP rode his coattails. The National Committee decided to run me against that former vice-president, but neglected to tell me that it was just a token effort. They thought the White House a lost cause in 2052, so they decided to position the party for a good run in '56. They picked a black woman candidate to symbolize the party's commitment to the working and underclasses, the traditional Democratic base, but then blew off their responsibility to that candidate. You know why, Mr. McDonnel? To save the money! Why drain the party on a longshot, when they could back a real candidate four years down the line?"

Her voice remained level the whole time, but grew tighter the more she spoke. By the time she finished, the words spat from her mouth like venom.

Anna sat back in her chair, feigning a relaxed posture. Unconsciously, she removed her glasses, and wiped them with a soft cloth taken from an inside pocket of her blazer. Once she felt more in control of her voice, she addressed the men again.

"I went alone against the entire Republican machine. So, you'll excuse me, gentlemen, if I approach your offer with a level of skepticism."

McDonnel's tone was curt. "So, you don't want the nomination? You don't want to be president?"

"I want to be president on my own terms. I don't trust your bosses, Mr. McDonnel. They're a conniving bunch of rattlesnakes, as far as I'm concerned."

McDonnel's response was immediate. "I've worked directly for Al Bennett since '52. The man is no rattlesnake. Are you sure you aren't rationalizing your own failure as a candidate, Governor?"

Anna stiffened. "Al Bennett knows I'm a draft horse of a candidate. He also knows where to put the blame for the '52 defeat. Alone, underfunded, with no help from him, I garnered 37% of the vote. His leg is probably still out of joint from kicking himself in the ass."

Anna and the storm trooper exchanged measuring glares. Finally, McDonnel stood up, and Peterson followed his example.

"Well, I guess that's it," McDonnel said. "I'm to tell the committee you don't want the nomination?"

She put her glasses on. He wasn't such a blur through them. "I said I would take the nomination on my terms, and my terms only. If the committee would accept those terms, then I might consider a partnership."

"And what, may I ask, are those terms?"

She showed a thin smile. "For starters, my people sit on the election committee. We control assignments. We control the purse."

"You really don't want the nomination, do you?"

"We also set the platform. It'll be a real platform, one I can believe in."

"You know as well as I that the delegates to the convention set the platform. It's called democracy."

"The party is not a democracy, Mr. McDonnel. I run on my vision, not the liberal-left agenda that has kept us from the White House for over thirty years."

McDonnel nodded. "Anything else?"

Anna's calculated grin expanded to light the room. "We'll sleep on it, Mr. McDonnel. You tell Al those are my conditions. If he doesn't like them, he'll have to go hunt up a white boy."

#

They left. Anna sat an hour longer in her chair, rocking back and forth, staring into the future. Before McDonnel and Peterson, she had thought the future irrelevant. Her campaign finances had shrunk to only a few week's reserves. Her people, scattered among their rooms in the hotel, already made inquiries about jobs back home. She pictured them lying despondently on their beds, staring at their TV sets. Or maybe they huddled over pizza in small groups, wondering in monotones what had gone wrong. She owed them more than the pitiable effort already endured, a campaign dead before the first primary. If the National Committee succumbed to her blackmail, she could deliver more.

She knew she could topple the incumbent president. He resided over a nation badgered by fear, fear of crime, of falling into war, but mostly fear of each other. The demographics said everything. The Anglo birthrate continued to stagnate. The Hispanic community grew faster than any other, a third faster than black America, over twice as fast as the whites. With population trends changing so dramatically, whites lost the political hegemony they had always enjoyed. Would they surrender that power willingly, as faith in America's one man, one vote philosophy demanded? Anna imagined her nation destroying itself over race. Sad. With cooperation, it could finally live out its credo of equality.

She could make that credo live. But first she had to get the nomination. Then she had to consolidate her position to avoid an ambush by the National Committee. The days of candidates leading the party had long gone from American politics. Orwell's Big Brother had moved in, unpacked, and settled in for the long haul. His hand lay over the party pocketbook, and over a sympathetic and often gullible news media. His drones were the lackluster officeholders who looked good on TV, but knew their stance on the issues only through party memos and briefings. Since many qualified, caring people shunned politics and the overbearing machine that ran it, few of those in high office were strong enough or wise enough to stay there. They were puppeteered by the shadow functionaries: the committee chairmen, the big contributors, the bureaucrats in sensitive places, and, not least in the political machine, the chairman of the National Committee itself. Compared to that power, a president was little more than the shadow of a flea. Few successfully strove against the needs of their machine.

Even so, the Democrats were not unusual on the American political landscape. The same things were true of the Republican party. The Republicans, in fact, being more organized than their competitors, had gotten there first.

The game consumed Anna's life. She had no children and had never been married, except to the party. She knew the pressures of conformity, but she hoped that a talented, determined person could persevere against them. She wanted to try, keeping in mind the lessons learned from her last dismal attempt. She could regain the White House for the Democrats. She could help reassert their power on Capitol Hill. But she could not become another figurehead president.

She rose from her chair with a vigor much removed from the fatigue she had felt a short time before. What a difference an hour can make! She strode to the reception desk and flashed a radiant smile at the clerk. "House phone, please," she said. The clerk smiled back, infected by her buoyant mood, and a palm phone materialized from somewhere behind the counter.

"682," Anna said into the mouthpiece. She heard the computerized "thank you", then the buzzer on the other end. She could hardly wait to tell Ray the news.

"Yo!"

"Ray! Anna Marie. Got a minute?"

"Go ahead, Chief. We're just sitting around a pizza box."

Her smile broadened. "Ray, you'll never guess who I ran into."

"How about two storm troopers from downtown?"

"My, I'm impressed. Did you bring a crystal ball on the campaign trail?"

"They were up here looking for you an hour or so ago. So, are we officially shut down, or what?"

"Not exactly. Are you sitting down, Ray? You don't have a mouthful of Coke? Nothing in there you might choke on?"

"It's worse, isn't it? What could they do that's worse?"

"They offered me the nomination."

Nothing. Silence on the other end.

"Ray?"

"Sorry, Chief. I bent down to pick up my jaw. Did I hear you right?"

"They offered me the nomination. Practically begged me to take it."

She felt the intensity of his thoughts. He pored over the news, worrying it like a tenacious dog with a bone. Ray was a campaigner, like her. He wanted to shake loose the pitfalls of this new development to prevent it becoming the nasty surprise its potential allowed.

"I suppose they want to control the campaign. Could be setting you up, like last time."

"They won't get the chance. We'll see to that. I've set certain conditions for acceptance. I'd like to talk them over with the crew."

"You bet. Come on up. They'll be here before you hit the elevator."

"On my way. Save me a bite of pizza."

#

Ray Yonelson stood in the hall as Anna approached his door. He was a lanky young man of twenty-seven, his red beard and tousled red hair making him look much older. His tie hung askew and his white shirtsleeves were rolled up. His hands pushed deep into his pockets, and he rocked back and forth on his shoeless feet. He watched his boss with earnest eyes. Anna had always thought Ray a little tense. He was a hopeless workaholic and suspicious of everything, which was why he made an effective campaign manager. It also meant stiff, often perfunctory conversations; workhorse zealots made poor social partners. She loved him just the same. In the last five years, she and Ray had been through a lot together.

"The gang here?" She gave him a tight, sisterly hug.

Ray steered her through the half open doorway and down the short entrance hall of his hotel room. She liked the feel of his arm across her shoulders. Relaxed but solid, it projected the character and strength of its owner. She saw nothing untoward in his escorting her like that. The two were close in the way combat veterans were close, or policemen were close to their partners. And his nearly six and a half foot frame put her shoulder at an unconsciously convenient height for him.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States," he said as they entered the greater part of the room. It was a joke from early in the campaign that had taken on an increasingly morbid tone. The small group looked up from their pizza, but did not rise to meet her. They were too long together for that kind of formality. There was Kate Clancy, press secretary, immaculately elegant in her Hugo BOSS suit. Kate had never looked less than perfect; it was a trait Anna envied. The campaign treasurer, chief fund-raiser, and budget chief fleshed out the group; they all sat around in tired suits or skirts and tops, holding pizza slices like forgotten offerings in their hands. Then there was Parker Nguyen, Anna's campaign gunslinger, security man, problem solver and firefighter. With so little campaign at the moment, there was precious little fire to fight. He lay sprawled on the far bed, just turned away from the TV. Parker did not eat meat, or any other animal product, to include mozzarella cheese. He sat up, and made a space for Anna.

"The Last Supper," Ray said after the barrage of greetings subsided. He handed her a slice of pizza. "We wanted to get it out of petty cash, but no cash is petty anymore."

"So, what's the deal?" Parker asked. "They trying to run you off? Want me to go to Washington and break some heads?" His generally impassive Vietnamese face made it hard to tell when, or if, he was joking.

"I'll take that as a figurative expression, Parker honey. So, you didn't tell them, Ray?"

Ray shook his head. "That's your venue, Chief. I'm not one to upstage the boss."

"Come on," Kate urged. "This is like a spy movie. We've been wondering for hours who those fed types were."

"Ray says they're from downtown," the treasurer said. "From the National Committee. Is that true, governor?"

"Tell us straight," Kate warned, her face mock-serious, "or we take back the pizza."

She told them.

The surprised responses gratified her. She flashed excitement through her eyes. "Okay. Impressions? Sally."

The budget director made an expansive gesture. "Simple arithmetic. Even considering tonight's contributions, we have less than $180,000 in the bank. If the party comes through, it would mean what, $800,000,000?"

"It isn't entirely certain that the party will come through," Parker said. "They won't like the boss's conditions."

"Are the conditions real, or just smoke?" Ray needed to know how to play the situation. "You said your demands were non-negotiable. Is that for real, or did you pad the offer?"

"There might be some leeway," Anna admitted. "I don't like backing my opponent into a corner. You get better results when you leave them some face."

Parker nodded. He knew about face.

"At any rate," Anna said, "having our people on the election committee, and controlling the purse, those things are non-negotiable. I'm willing to compromise on the platform, but I'm serious about our constantly grumbling left wing. I won't give the Republicans any opportunity to label us as tax-and-spend, socialist, big government, fringe community Democrats. We walk into that trap with the regularity of a metronome, and it's about time we wised up."

"I see a more immediate concern," Kate offered. "How do we know the other candidates will step aside? Sure, some are in bad financial shape, but a few sit pretty solid, hoping to impress the party enough to collect that money when their own dries up. Who's to say they'll play the game? You didn't."

"That's not my problem." Anna shrugged. "I think we should proceed, at least for now, on the assumption that the party can control the other candidates."

Ray snorted. "If we don't do that, then we close up shop. Without the party, we're dead."

"Exactly." Anna let his statement sink in for a moment. The television mumbled forgotten in the corner, a commercial for the auto show due in town. Flying cars, it promised, as the industry had promised for years without delivering. "Okay, battle plan as follows: get a good night's sleep. In the morning, brainstorm any possible ramifications of getting the party nomination. Build contingencies for every reasonable scenario. Also, we need names for who will be on the election committee and the finance team. I don't want any of you volunteering. I want you with me. Questions? Comments?"

Heads turned to survey the group. No one spoke.

"All right," Ray said, lacing his hands behind his head. "Polish off the chow and get back to your rooms, people. We have a long day ahead. If I know this game at all, you won't sleep again 'til November."

Anna stood. Ray allowed for the expected flurry of congratulations from the group, then tugged her away by the arm.

"Walk you back to your room?" he asked.

She smiled and took his arm. He spoke as they entered the corridor.

"The downtowners will insist on professional heavy hitters to run the campaign."

"I know that, Ray. I've thought about it, and I want my own people, not a bunch of black-suiters with no stake in the outcome."

"Those guys know what they're doing. They do it for a living, for God's sake."

"Uh-huh. They'll package and arrange me until I don't recognize myself staring in a mirror. No, thanks. Besides, our people carried me this far, they have a right to the finish."

They stopped in front of her door. She fumbled in a blazer pocket for her key.

"I figured you'd say that," Ray nodded. "The others will be glad to hear it. They're a good crew. I think they can do it for you."

"But..." She keyed the lock, but made no move to enter the room.

"If they offer, you might be better off to take one of those heavy hitters as campaign manager."

"Why? Are you quitting the team?"

"We're losing, Chief, and I'm the campaign manager. Maybe you would do better with someone else."

She feigned surprise. "Oh, for pity's sake! Have I ever complained about your work?"

"Often."

"Well, yes, but I'm obsessive-compulsive. I like to complain. You're a great campaign manager, Ray. That's why I went for you the second time around."

He pushed open the door and flicked on the lights. "I just want what's best, Chief. You might have a better chance with a pro."

"Or maybe not. I'm serious. Win or lose, I want my own people around me. That includes you."

He looked up and down the hall, anywhere but in her eyes. She touched his arm.

"Ray. I like to think we're going to win. But, you never know how things turn out. If we lose, we lose. It won't be any failure of yours. You stick with me, my friend. I need you."

"It's your future."

"You bet it is. Now, enough of this morbid talk. Think a happy thought and fly away home. Tomorrow's a long day."

They exchanged good nights. Then she hugged him, and sent him down the hall.

Inside the room, the door locked behind her, she stretched beside the bed. The evening, which had begun so bleakly, could end with her best night's sleep in weeks. But one last chore remained. Informing her crew of their surprise good luck had been exhilarating, but one other person should share the news with her. She kicked off her shoes and freed herself of the conservative, proper blazer and skirt, and felt more comfortable. Then she sat on the edge of the bed and touched on the phone as she let down her hair.

"Indianapolis," she told the polite computer operator. "Stephen Tallman." She gave the robot his number.

She continued to undress to the clicks and tones from the telephone deskset. The damned suits annoyed her. Why couldn't presidents wear jeans? Hadn't Jimmy Carter worn jeans? By the time she turned back the bed covers, a familiar bubbly voice spoke into the room.

"Hello! You've reached the residence of Stephen and Patricia Tallman. Sorry, but the line is busy. Would you like to leave a message?"

"Alfred, so good to hear you! This is Anna Marie. Are you sure I can't hold for Steve?"

A pause, and Anna knew Alfred compared her voice to the graph in his security file. "I'm sorry, Anna Marie, but Steve left instructions that he was not to be disturbed. Would you like to leave a message?"

She frowned. "Oh, all right. Please, tell him that I called. I just wanted to talk, and I was half-naked and everything. Maybe I'll call him tomorrow. And, Alfred? Make sure he gets the message as soon as practical. And don't let him pull any of that 'omit housekeeping' stuff, either."

"Your message is logged in my priority dialog folder. I will deliver the message when he wakes tomorrow morning."

"Fair enough. 'Bye, Alfred. Dream music videos, or whatever you do."

The line clicked dead.

She put down the phone, disappointed. But, what had she expected? Alfred was a machine. He couldn't know how much she wanted Steve, or how happy he would be to hear from her. She decided to lobby Steve for an exception to Alfred's housekeeping protocol. She already enjoyed a preferred macro, voice print and everything, but it hadn't been much help.

She sighed and turned out the light, then rolled into the cold hotel bed. How many hotel beds had she slept in that year? In the five years previous? She couldn't say; they all seemed the same. Still, the weeks ahead held promise. Some day soon, the hotel beds would fade into her past. She wondered what would replace them. Which bed would welcome her when winter rolled around once more? Would it be one of several in the White House, which was just another hotel, but an infinitely more satisfying one? Or would she settle into the almost forgotten sheets of her bed in Sacramento, a distant fantasy too long in her past? She smiled as she closed her eyes and snuggled deeper into the covers.

Maybe she would find herself, whatever the outcome of the election, in neither place. Perhaps the end of her journey led to that third sought after nest. The bed in Indianapolis had always been warm. It had always been welcoming, too.

Chapter Four:

Clemmons and Smith

 (Back to Contents)

Jerry McFadden watched as two logging trucks, heavy with rough cut trees, flared with flames and explosions. The trucks stood bumper smashed to bumper, the lead vehicle engulfing a shattered pine with all that was left of its mangled cab. The gas tanks had blown moments earlier in a display spectacular enough to scare away the firefighting helicopters. The surrounding forest sparked and caught, turning trees to pillars of flame. It was a god awful mess, but one that spelled Emmy Award in the spring.

"Debbi, do you think they've considered the risk posed by fire? It looks terrible out there." That was Harry's voice-over, so clear from Washington that he sounded just off camera. Debbi's response from the fire scene was immediate, and equally clear.

"It's true, Harry, that they're having trouble containing the flames, but spokesmen for the Forest Preservation Union, the eco-terrorists responsible, have repeatedly vowed to do 'whatever it takes' to stop the government's policy of clear-cutting in the national parks. If that means destroying the parks themselves, then, from their perspective, it's worth the sacrifice."

"An amazing story. Where does it go from here?"

It goes, Jerry thought, from Washington, where Harry originated, and Yellowstone, where Debbi originated, up to the Comlink 1 satellite and back down to Los Angeles, where the broadcast originated. The raw footage was mixed, arranged, and decorated with superimposed titles, then it jumped back to the satellite and down to 74 million season subscribers, 8 million one-time listing subscribers, and 2 million paying impulse viewers, across three time zones. And it went out live, without even a five-second delay, and commercial-free for those subscribers who could afford the higher rate. Technology was grand, powerful, awe-inspiring and, for the line producer controlling it, scary as hell.

Debbi hadn't heard his thoughts. She explained the logging consortium's failure to protect shipments from sabotage, and surmised how the terrorists had defeated heavy security and thrown firebombs into the trucks. She worried only about the particulars of her story, and the finesse of her camerawork. Getting it all on the air didn't concern her; it was Jerry's job to fret over the technical juggling act of live TV. What if the Forest Preservation Union had been elsewhere tonight, leaving Debbi without a story? What if bad batteries, or a misaligned dish, or weather, or even sunspots had impeded transmission? See It Now averaged four or five stories a week, but it took twenty-eight crews spread throughout the world to ensure that its thirty-minute time slot was full. Only a fraction of those reporter/cameramen made the air. Of those fragile, high-strung egos that didn't, they always complained afterwards. Even now, Jerry prepared a cut to Washington for a Department of the Interior reaction to Debbi's coverage, a cut that might not go through, or that might amount to little more than a "no comment" communique delivered through a low-level gofer. Regardless, Jerry had yet another satcam reporter to deal with.

"Almost there," Malcolm Little, the transmission tech, said from his seat to Jerry's left. "I've alerted Nick in Washington. We have him cued on delta feed."

Jerry checked the program clock on the wall. "Okay, send Debbi the twenty-second countdown, and cue Harry to hand off to Nick."

"Okeydokey." Malcolm played his fingers over the computer keyboard, and drew one finger through the air to move his on-screen pointer. "Cross your fingers. Twenty...nineteen...eighteen..."

"And so," Debbi intoned, the deadline invisible in her voice, "the President's fuel emergency plan for our dry national forests has once again run into stiff opposition from the radical left. This is Deborah Robertson, See It Now, Yellowstone National Park."

"Cue anchor."

Harry's handsome, sandy-haired face appeared on the broadcast monitor. "And now, for official response to this latest attack..."

Jerry stopped listening. He turned to David Montoya on his right, the source supervisor. "Is Sam ready? We'll need him in less than five minutes. Has he found his story yet?"

"Don't think so. You know Sam. He equivocates when you ask him a question he doesn't want to answer."

"Tell him that he'll equivocate himself right out of a slot if he doesn't come up with a story ASAP."

"You got it. Who should I queue in his place?"

"That guy in Rangoon. And tell Sam that. He hates war correspondents."

Montoya grinned. He worked his pointer, stabbing the air at the icon reserved for Sam Clemmons across town. He whistled Rosalinde's aria from Die Fledermaus as he waited for Sam to pick up.

#

Even in LA, the nights get cold. Peggy Smith hunkered deeper into her cheap fleece running suit, shivering against the breeze. She glanced at Sam in his camouflage jacket and wondered why he seemed untouched by the chill. He just stood there, looking into the dark, as if surrounded by the safety of his own front porch. But this was no front porch of Peggy's experience. They stood like targets in the light of a particular street lamp on a particular sidewalk in LA's Watts District, possibly the most dangerous neighborhood in America. It was stupid to visit these streets after dark. Hell, it was stupid to visit these streets in broad daylight. Nonetheless, she stood with her mentor, Sam looking confident that he would return alive to his cozy west side apartment, not to a dumpster with a hole in his head. Peggy thought this outing an efficient way to get oneself killed. Or worse.

She looked up, shielding her eyes, to the twisting, spiraling skeletons of steel that rose like futuristic weeds above the wall behind her back. She saw three towers, jury-rigged out of pipes, bed frames, cable, apparently anything that could take a load. The mixed materials connected and intertwined upward, the crowns of their serpentine structures too high for her to see in the darkness, their bramble-like framework too complicated for her to clearly discern. And this contorted mass of steel was only the armature. It was covered in a facing of varied, well, of various kinds of junk. Glass and pottery shards, coins, tile, and colored rocks. Even uncolored rocks. And thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of seashells. Sam called it some sort of artistic landmark, a world famous one, too. That might have been true years ago, but it was just another moldering hazard area now. She heard the periodic clink of facings dropping to the pavement, and the stuff littered the sidewalk. The connecting building that had once been an arts center crouched darkly nearby, as deserted as the surrounding neighborhood. The wall encircling the monument had once been faced in the same stuff as the towers. Now it was cracked, pitted stucco covered in gang graffiti. She wondered if you could condemn a work of art. This one needed it as much as any of the deserted buildings that shared its company.

"Aren't you going to answer that?" Peggy asked. The call light on Sam's satcam flashed a periodic amber.

Sam's eyes left the surrounding neighborhood and stared at the camera sitting on the sidewalk between them. It was an ugly, anachronistic machine. In an age of hyper-miniaturization, when electronics grew ever smaller, lighter and thinner, the satcam hunched on the littered sidewalk like a dented, stainless steel shoebox. But that shoebox held a high definition video camera with night vision and thermal. It held a satellite up/downlink, a satellite phone, a GPS, and a sophisticated computer. Plus the designer, the boss of See It Now, had insisted the thing be combat-hardened. Inside that tough little box, it did the job of an ordinary news camera, its required Net assistant, and the uplink truck they both rode in. It was still ugly, but what did Peggy know? She was only an intern.

Sam stole a glance at his watch, then turned his gaze back to the streets. "Three minutes to air. If I answer it, we lose our slot."

"If you don't answer it, the boss has a panic attack."

"Not my concern," Sam said, deadpan. "I'll give it a minute."

"I really think you should answer it."

"I can't answer it. We don't have a story."

"You don't answer it, we won't have a job."

Sam looked at her, smirking. "We? You're an intern. You paid the show to be here; it wasn't the other way around."

Peggy hugged herself against the chill. "I want to make a good impression. I might want a job someday."

"Then make an impression on me." He spat. "Come on, Washington. This is your big scene. Where the hell are you?"

A chime sounded in time with the amber light.

Great, Peggy thought. As if their presence wasn't obvious enough. That chime was a watch alarm going off in church. Someone would investigate. In this part of the city, Peggy preferred to go as unnoticed as possible.

"I really think you should answer that."

Sam looked at his watch again, and groaned. He stooped to the camera, cut off the call signals, and pressed the MIC button. "Yo!"

"One minute, forty-three seconds. Are you up?"

Sam said nothing. He hung over the camera as still as the towering sculpture behind him, his head bowed. Peggy wondered when he would tell them the news, the news being that there was no news; the story was a no-show.

"We have a stand-in," the camera said. "A war update from Terry in Rangoon."

Peggy watched Sam's jaw muscles tighten. She knew his opinion of war correspondents. They lived the glory life of journalists, as their duties carried the impression of danger and implied bravery among their ranks. Sam Clemmons and any war correspondent had essentially the same job, he often told her. But the war correspondent had an army for protection, while Sam Clemmons depended on street smarts and a sunny smile. Even the police were a danger to the reporter on the street, especially if they recognized a live camera in his hands.

"Give me a minute, Montoya. The story's coming. It's just a little late, is all."

"We're on a schedule. I'll switch you out with Rangoon."

Peggy's head snapped up. What was that noise? More falling seashells?

"Don't do that. This is big time, Montoya. He'll be here. It's his best shot at saying his piece."

Peggy peered up and down the sidewalk. Her stomach sank. I should have studied accounting, she thought.

"Sorry. Reschedule. If your story isn't there, you have no story."

"The story—"

"Is here," Peggy finished for him.

Sam looked up. Three figures approached from the west, three more from the east. He stood, scooping the camera up to his cheek. "Company, Montoya. Here's the feed." He thumbed the SEND button, pointing the lens toward one group of figures.

For a moment, Montoya offered no response. Peggy knew that he and Jerry received the picture in their studio across town. Jerry mulled a decision. Was this the real thing, or three old ladies out for a stroll? Yeah, right.

"Harry's already starting your intro," a new voice, Jerry's voice, said. "We'll have him stretch it out an extra minute so you can verify your contacts' identities. Live in one minute, seventeen seconds... mark! Don't screw up, Sam. We'll all be pissed as hell."

"Understood. See you in a minute eleven." He signaled to Peggy. "Get behind me, and keep your ears and eyes open. You might learn something." He pressed one eye against the eyepiece. A 64-bit LCD screen crowded the camera's top housing, making the eyepiece unnecessary, but Sam preferred to immerse himself in the visual world of his secondary viewfinder. With his eye against that rubber bumper, he lived only through his machine, saw only what it saw. Peggy hooked a finger under his belt to remind him of her location. He kept the camera trained on the figures approaching from the west. She watched the ones to the east. She wondered which she preferred more, the approach of the expected "story", or some unexpected strangers. Strangers could be no less dangerous than the gangsters you made appointments with.

The men to the east stopped about thirty feet away. The ones to the west kept coming. One stopped less than six feet from Sam, another stepped into the street and came up alongside the two reporters, boxing them in against the stucco wall. The third continued at a languid pace across their front and onto their western side. All the men were black and surprisingly young, not really men at all. They dressed alike in a uniform of black baggy jeans, black leather jackets, black tee shirts and white Nike Airjets, the kind with the leather and foam ankle straps. They wore red, black, and green berets on what looked like shaven heads, and the nearer ones carried a small tattoo above their right eyebrows: the head of a cat. This was the bunch all right.

The boy passing before them doubled back and crossed their front again. He seemed nervous, but nonetheless in control. He trained his eyes on Sam's camera and kept them there with a haughty single-mindedness. Sam returned the attention.

"I'm Sam Clemmons of the Net and television news show See It Now. I guess I'm talking to Donald Washington, de facto chief of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Fellowship."

The young man continued to cross and re-cross their front. He reminded Peggy of a lion inspecting prospective prey. Is he hungry enough for these, or should he let them go? He managed this despite an undistinguished appearance. A shorter than average stature and probably too many donuts belied the message of the dark uniform and tat. Truthfully, only his eyes revealed anything to fear.

"So," he finally said, "your white millionaire bosses sent a good nigger boy to talk to the big, bad niggers, is that the way I read it?"

"If you do, you read it wrong." Sam's camera did not waver from the boy's face. "This is my story, my research, my idea. And my boss's color isn't relevant here."

"All the bosses are white," the boy said. "All the bosses. That's why things are the way they are. That's why my brothers sit in jail for doin' nothin' to nobody. That's why I'm a hunted man. Yeah, I'm Donald Washington. I'm the one you wanted to talk with. Now, what did you want to talk about?"

Jeez, what a drama queen. Had he watched too many exploitation films?

"First things first. I'm due on the air in eighteen seconds, and we'll have about five minutes. Can we work with that?" Peggy marveled at Sam's control. Personally, she was scared to death.

"You called me out here for five fuckin' minutes? Nigger, you waste my time."

"Five minutes is a long time on television. Do we play?"

Washington stopped pacing. He regarded Sam's camera with undisguised contempt. "What you got for me?"

"This is it, man. This is your chance to talk, unedited, to tell the world where you're coming from." The amber light started to blink.

"I got no problem with that," Washington said, "but no bullshit, you hear? We don't cut much slack to white-on-the-inside black boy traitors around here."

The call signal chimed. Everyone nearby jumped except Sam. He thumbed the MIC button. "Stand-by!

"Understood. I'm just here to understand, and help others understand. Now, we're up, and I'm going live." He thumbed the SEND button.

"This is Samuel Clemmons speaking from a secret meeting place in Los Angeles, where I and members of the Black Panther Fellowship will discuss recent events surrounding their revived movement. On screen is Donald Washington, the last remaining free leader of this newest incarnation of the leftist social advocacy group. Mr. Washington, the Los Angeles police took your primary leadership into custody eight days ago. What does that mean for your organization?"

Donald Washington looked into the camera. "The Black Panther Fellowship won't be destroyed by the taking of its leaders," he said. "This is no club, no loose association of poor black men crying about emasculation and running pop-eyed from the white man's oppression. The Black Panthers is a move-ment, a necessary evolution in the will and strength of the black people of America."

#

Across town, a critical Jerry McFadden watched the broadcast monitor. Washington looked effective, he thought, maybe even scary in the harsh light of the street lamp. Sam heightened the effect by moving slowly, continuously, in an arc around his subject, adding a drama of slowly changing shadows and a more active, textured background that matched the drama of the boy's words. Washington was only fifteen years old, which made his words even more compelling.

#

"Two years ago, I was a gang member, a Blood brother. But today I walk in Crip territory, and I fear no evil. Marcus Tandy, Crips boss, had a vision to bring Bloods and Crips together, to change gang activity to somethin' that helped, not hindered this old black neighborhood. It was time for black men to start livin' for somethin' rather than dyin' for nothin'." Peggy marveled at Washington's control. He spoke like a man used to the pulpit. A bullshit runner all his short life, she figured.

"It was Marcus Tandy who changed a time bomb of our destruction to the instrument of our salvation. Out of the gangs came this latest Black Panthers." He spoke with his hands, gesturing with the latest, coolest finger-pointing and fist pumping. Peggy analyzed him as she knew few would, and found him convincing. "We took the name because of its heritage. In the 1960's, it was a political party building Black Power in the cities. In the '90's, it was a social justice advocate that looked out for the rights and the purity of black communities. Now, the Black Panthers is a defense force and a community engine. We're taking this community, and we're making it safe where the white man's police won't make it safe. We'll make it prosper where the white business machine kept it poor and helpless. We have teachers among us, and we'll use them to teach black children in ways that raise their pride in their heritage. We work with black churches and businesses to build unity and enterprise. This is the black community taking charge of its destiny.

"But Marcus Tandy is in jail today," Washington said, and lifted his chin. "Marcus Tandy, Bobby Hicks, Jamaal Peterson and Martin Montgomery. The law took them 'cause they're strong black men with powerful ideas. The power brokers tried to stop Martin Luther King, Jr., and they tried to stop Nelson Mandela, and now they try to stop us from showing black people their destiny."

"What about the charges?" Sam interjected. "Mr. Tandy and associates were arrested for weapons violations and drug trafficking. Is there no validity to those charges?"

Washington's eyes wavered. He faltered from his pulpit-style prepared speech. "Last time I checked, possession of firearms was protected under the constitution. As for drugs, the Fellowship discourages the use of drugs in the black community. Drugs are a bad influence. No Black Panther can stay a member and use drugs; our law forbids it. Now, if the white community wants to waste itself with drugs, that's their business."

"So, the Black Panthers do not sell drugs to black people. Do you sell to those outside the black community?"

"No," Washington said after a short, but noticeable pause. "But we approve of those who do."

Christ! Peggy thought. Does he believe all this? The white man this, the white man that. It was all the poorest of clichés. She and Washington were only four or five years apart. They shared the same skin color, probably listened to the same music and read the same books, if he read. But, was her growing up in a black working class neighborhood in Bakersfield so different from his life in Watts? Why so much focused malice? Peggy believed it was more self-inflicted than the result of White Oppression. Mr. Donald Washington was just an angry black boy with a bad attitude. The big sister in her wanted to slap him upside the head to get it back on straight.

"So, you attribute police interest in your organization to simple racial prejudice? They claim to be nipping a terrorist movement in the bud. What's your response to that?"

"How long we got left?"

"Time enough. A minute, or so."

"A minute, or so." Washington looked at Sam a moment, and at Peggy. Peggy found no malice in his eyes as he acknowledged her presence for the first time, and that surprised her, considering his general disposition. Then the boy nodded, having reached some sort of decision. "Turn that camera around," he said to Sam. "Show everybody where we are. It's all right. There ain't enough time for the heat to get here. I vouched for your passage through this neighborhood. I did. I wanted you to stand in this spot, in front of that monument. See those towers? That's the Watts Towers, a sculpture, not a building. The man who built it was a genius. In the 1920's, it was so far ahead of its time that nobody understood it. Los Angeles tried to tear it down before they realized what they had. They ran the artist out of town before the sculpture was even finished."

Damn! Peggy was impressed. They had themselves a junior art historian.

"There's a parallel here. The Black Panthers is a modern Watts Towers. We got an idea for the future that ignorant people can't understand, and can't allow to exist. But the Black Panthers won't be torn down, and won't be ignored, like this sculpture was ignored for thirty years before they recognized what it was. And the Black Panthers will not go away. It won't disappear into neglect, like this sculpture got neglected over the last thirty years."

Sam panned from the tower structure to Washington's face.

"Marcus Tandy recently set an agenda for Black Panther activist work," he said. "He set the Equal Opportunity in Government Act, now up for consideration in Congress, as the biggest obstacle to minority advancement in this century. Do you concur with Mr. Tandy's view on EOG?"

"The EOG seeks to codify Black disenfranchisement. By holdin' down the amount of representation our people get in the federal government, the white power brokers stay in control and keep us poor and hungry. The white man is afraid of us. Soon, we'll outnumber him, so he tries every rotten trick to stay on top, to keep the niggers in they place. That's why Marcus Tandy sits in jail. Well, I got a message for the power brokers of this country." Washington leaned toward the camera. "If anything happens to those brothers in jail, this city will regret it. Our brothers' absence from these streets won't make us weaker, it'll forge our strength and our resolve. We, the brothers of the Black Panther Fellowship declare war on the forces of ignorance and oppression in this nation and all its cities. We declare war on the slavery that's kept our people down for five hundred years. We declare... declare..."

He looked distracted. His eyes left the camera and sought his men. The west lookout held a cell phone and quickly approached his boss. "Rollers," he said. "103rd and Wilmington. Gotta go."

Washington turned back to Sam. His eyes lost their defiant, revolutionary edge. They were cold and lifeless as marbles. "You told them where we'd be?" His tone dismissed all argument. "You set this up."

Sam still held the camera, still composed and sent his pictures live into the living rooms of America.

#

Across town, Jerry stopped the planned hand-off to Harry, who always closed the show. "Get me CBS News! We might want to go overtime on this!"

#

"Set what up?" Sam asked. "What's going on?"

"We got police cars in the 'hood, man. You led 'em here. You set up this meeting and brought in the blueshirts for a grand finale to your fuckin' TV show."

#

"I have the night chief of CBS News," Little said across town. "What the hell do I do with him?"

Jerry snatched the phone from Little's hand. He glanced up at the broadcast clock even as he formed his first words to the higher ups. One minute left of broadcast time, then they stepped on the next scheduled feed, a situation comedy about a single mother with ill-mannered kids and nosy neighbors. Boy, were those viewers in for a surprise.

#

"Now, hold on," Sam protested from behind his camera lens. "I didn't lead anybody here. I've been up front with you. I wanted to get your story. I've no mileage in putting you away."

Washington slammed into him with such force and speed that Sam dropped the satcam. It clattered to the concrete at Peggy's feet, and tripped her up as she tried to evade the attack. She landed on her backside right next to the western lookout, who gripped a gigantic pistol in the hand that so recently had held a phone. Actually, she had no idea as to the pistol's model, caliber, or specific length, but it looked plenty damned big to her.

"I ain't gettin' put away, you sonofabitch! As you can tell, I was prepared for your white black nigger bullshit! My people got me a warning! You, on the other hand, get nothin'!" Washington held Sam by his shoulders. He slammed him repeatedly into the rough stucco surface of the monument wall. "You get no mercy, you get no appeal, you get no life!"

#

"What the hell? What happened to the camera? Where's the goddamn picture?"

"We have the picture. Sam dropped the camera. It's sideways and out of focus. There! It's back up!"

The broadcast monitor showed a crazily wobbling image of littered sidewalk, then a dizzying fast pan that stopped on the sight of Washington slapping Sam against the stucco wall. Dust and bits of glass and seashell exploded behind Sam's back each time he hit the wall. Sam did not defend himself.

"I hope the cops get there quick," Montoya said. "That dude is pissed."

"Christ!" Jerry said. "Who the hell's got the camera?"

#

"Mr. Washington," Sam said, "please, don't do anything you might regret later."

Peggy held the satcam trained on the two men. She didn't know what else to do. Running was useless; with those guns, they could kill her almost thoughtlessly, and probably would. And she sure as hell wouldn't cower before these bastards. She did what she hoped Sam wanted of her, the one thing that could temper Washington's actions. After all, everything he said and did went live to anyone caring to watch.

"Don't worry, white black boy, I ain't never gonna regret this!" Washington heaved Sam to the curb and watched him strike the filthy concrete and roll into the gutter. "Waste the nigger!" he ordered nobody in particular.

The street lookout stepped forward and pointed a pistol at Sam's head.

The street exploded in blinding white light. Trash leapt up and slammed against the stucco wall, scouring everyone and everything in its path. The flying objects accompanied a driving gale and a rhythmic overpressure that could only mean the beat of helicopter rotors.

"STAY WHERE YOU ARE! THIS IS THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT! YOU IN THE STREET! STAY WHERE YOU ARE!"

Peggy panned upward toward the light source, but caught herself and angled back when she remembered Sam's warning about searchlights. She didn't want to burn out the camera's digitizers, or blind herself in the lens-focused million candlepower beam. Instead, she found Sam still lying in the gutter, but making movements to haul himself upright. His would-be executioner stood frozen over him, pistol still aimed for a kill, but eyes squinting upward toward the helicopter. Washington signaled a cutting motion with his fingers and waved one arm. His people disappeared into the surrounding streets, all but the gunman hanging over Sam. Washington stepped up to Sam, showing no concern over the hovering helicopter and its transfixing spotlight. He stooped to speak to the man he had ordered dead. Peggy couldn't believe that she, a sophomore in college, sent this scene to the nation.

"You," Washington said, stabbing Sam's chest with one finger. "I will reckon with you at another time, in another place." He stood, signaled his last remaining henchman, and the two disappeared out of the helicopter's cone of light.

#

Harry's ad-lib voiceover was incredible, capturing the flow of events in even, confident tones, stopping only when a primary on-screen figure opened his mouth to speak. Jerry looked again at the broadcast clock. They were thirty-two seconds into overtime, well within the confines of an ordinary commercial break. Amazing the things that happened in mere seconds. The network would go with them. They even sent a reschedule alarm out to the personal computers and phones of every subscriber, and they readied to sell advertising if the story continued longer than another five minutes. Jerry just hoped the finale didn't include two dead reporters.

#

The helicopter pitched in pursuit of the Panthers, Donald Washington in particular. Peggy jumped to Sam's side just as the first police cruiser rounded the corner a block away. The cruiser pointed itself like a bullet in their direction. It sped by at what must have been sixty miles per hour, whipping glass, rocks and seashells into its wake as ferociously as the helicopter had blasted them away. The car headed east, the same direction the Panthers had run. It sped off the road and out of sight, across the plaza on the sculpture's opposite side. Those cops were hungry, and eager.

"Are you okay?" Peggy yelled to Sam. Sirens surrounded them, deafening, and growing still louder. "I didn't know what to do! Are you okay?"

"Run!" Sam croaked. He grabbed her arm and pushed her west along the sidewalk.

Peggy ran, clutching the camera as she might clutch a baby. Then she remembered her training, and brought the aluminum box down to her hip, lens facing forward, so that the viewers could follow the action. She heard Sam puffing behind her. He sounded terrible, his breath ragged.

"Right! Head right!" she heard him shout.

She cut the corner of the Watts Towers property and bolted faster into the shadowed darkness of grass and trees. The helicopter spotlight blazed like God some distance behind her, providing dim, if uncertain, illumination ahead. A decrepit chain link fence sprang up along her path, marking the weedy yard of a boarded-up house.

"Over the fence! Do it!"

She vaulted the fence, almost losing the camera, and stumbled toward the black wall of the building.

"Other side!"

Sam passed her near the ramshackle porch. She followed him around the far end of the house, then collapsed against the wall with him. Her legs trembled. She fought to control her breathing. Jesus, God of Mercy! This was not the plan when she chose an internship in telecommunications!

"Sorry." Sam spat black liquid into the weeds at his feet. "Staying around there. Not a good idea."

"They were gone, Sam. The cops were coming. We could have waited for the cops!" She heard the rising tenor of her voice.

Sam held up an index finger to silence her. He took the camera from her hands. "Control, this is Sam Clemmons."

"Sam, it's Harry," the camera said, reminding them both they were still on the air. "You took us for a ride there, buddy. Are you free to talk?"

Sam pressed the narrator button on the satcam's top. All over the feed, his high-definition, 3D "talking head" avatar appeared in the upper left corner of TV and computer screens. Based on digital scans of his face, the animated image would keep pace with the words he spoke, a high-tech lip-sync. It could also speak for itself in his voice, the AI able to handle non-technical questions thoughtfully placed by Harry.

"Sorry, Harry, and I apologize to our viewers. As you saw, we had a situation."

"We saw, Sam. We're wondering who ran the camera, as we clearly saw you in the frame."

"That was my intern from UCLA, Miss Peggy Smith." He winked at Peggy as he spoke. "We'll have to hire this one when she graduates, Harry. She's born See It Now."

"I'm sure our viewers agree. What now, Sam?"

"We're headed for the car. It's about ten blocks north of here. Coming along?"

"We'll monitor your progress through a P-in-P, but I think we'll take this chance to recap events for those viewers just joining us. Take care. We'll check with you soon to see how you're doing."

"Sounds great. This is Samuel Clemmons, See It Now, Los Angeles."

He switched the camera from SEND to HOLD as he placed it gingerly at his feet. "The avatar will entertain them for a second," he said between labored breaths. "And, honey, the cops are the problem."

Peggy sagged down the wall. The cops are the problem? This guy almost gets an extra hole in his head as a friendship gift from that testosterone-crazed nutball of a Black Power militant, and he says the cops are the problem. She thought about accounting as a career option. Dad liked accounting. It was a real job.

Sam spat again into the weeds and hung over the camera, his hands on his knees. "The police hate these things. Most of them are small; they fit in the palm of your hand. Ours are more noticeable, which makes us a magnet for cops with issues."

"Then why don't we use the smaller ones?"

"The smaller ones are for wusses. The smaller ones need a satellite truck." He stood suddenly. "Okay, let's go. I'll feel better when we're back at the studio."

#

"Sam sounded awful," Malcolm Little said. "I reckon that kid fairly beat the shit out of him."

"What about that commentary on cops?" Montoya asked. "The Fraternal Order of Police will be flooding the phone lines ten minutes from now."

Jerry ran his hands through his thick mat of hair. "No worry there. The only thing broadcasting is Sam's avatar schmoozing with Harry." Even so, Jerry didn't care if the Fraternal Order of Police got their feelings hurt. He didn't care if Donald Washington became a night depository for municipally owned and distributed bullets. But those two reporters (correction: one reporter and one intern) were his responsibility. And they weren't out of trouble yet.

#

"The cops know me too well," Sam explained as they skulked along the fronts of house after house. "And we aren't friends of distinction, either, I'll tell you that. They'd love to haul me in, just to be nasty, and they'd love to keep this camera a few days, maybe take it apart and put it back together again."

"Don't you think that's a little paranoid?"

They ducked into the shadow of yet another building to avoid detection in a near pass of the helicopter. Peggy jumped at a frantic barking from within the house. Porch lights flared at the front and rear.

"Get on away from here!" a geriatric voice wailed from within. "We don't want your kind in our home!"

Sam moved on, and Peggy followed.

"Not paranoid," Sam said a moment later, "just hard fact." He held up the camera so that she saw him switch back to SEND. "Okay, this is 103rd Street ahead. There'll be patrols on it, so I don't want to spend much time there. But we have to shoot across the railroad tracks to get to the park and our car."

"How do you know your way around so well? Research?"

"I used to live here."

Peggy grabbed his arm. "You're just full of surprises, Sam. You used to live in this hole?"

"Doesn't matter much where you live, but how."

The street erupted in red and blue strobes. A white blade of spotlight stabbed out from the black recesses of a parking lot. The light impaled them against the drab backdrop of the deserted street. "Stop right there!" a voice commanded. "LAPD!"

"Run!" Sam pushed Peggy forward, and the two raced across the brightly lit stretch that was 103rd Street. Peggy felt naked crossing the five lanes of illuminated asphalt after the dark anonymity of the neighborhood behind her. Her back knotted as she waited for the cops to shout warning, waited for them to shoot. But, of course they wouldn't shoot. They were cops, for God's sake. Why on earth did she run from cops?

Because you aren't white enough not to get shot, she decided.

Two more cruisers converged at high speed from both ends of 103rd. They braked grill to grill just where the reporters crossed into the vacant lot on the north side of the street. A cop chased them on foot, not twenty feet behind. Glancing back, Peggy saw his gun drawn.

"Fence!" Sam yelled. Peggy crashed bodily into the rusted chain link and bounced back dazed. Automatically, her hand flew out and grasped the mesh for balance. It was a tall one, about eight feet. She leapt at the mesh, grabbed hold with hands and feet, and spidered her way up and over the top. She let go, landing painfully on her side. Something crashed next to her shoulder.

"Get down! Get down now!" somebody shouted.

Peggy cringed as the policeman grabbed Sam and wrestled him to the scrub. He rolled his prisoner face down in the weedy earth and forced one knee into his back. His pistol arced up from Sam's head until it pointed in Peggy's direction. His message was clear. She didn't even hear the warning: stay put, don't move, or I blow your head off.

But he couldn't blow her head off. He was a cop. Or he'd do it no matter what she did.

Peggy saw the camera beside her in the weeds.

Amazed to think it, she did the unthinkable. She snatched up the camera, rolled over and onto her feet, and ran.

#

"Holy shit!" Little shouted. "She's running! You tell me this girl's an intern?"

"She'll never make it." Montoya shook his head. "The blueshirts are crawling that park like cockroaches. And she isn't on dark-assed Graham anymore."

"She's even holding the camera right," Little continued. "You sure she's an intern?"

"She needs help," Jerry decided. He reached for the phone.

"What about Sam?" Montoya asked.

Though they hadn't seen Sam get taken, the policeman's words had come through in digital clarity, with all the grunts, thuds and ringing chain link associated with the capture. Now they heard only Peggy's heavy breathing, and occasionally her footsteps. Jerry thought that answer enough for Montoya's query.

"Heliport? Got that stand-by handy? I need it in the air now, and an ETA to Watts." He listened a moment, then relaxed in his chair. "Okay. I'll be back with you in a second."

"How long?" Montoya asked. He watched the quaking, jittery picture on the broadcast monitor, then Harry's face as Little switched feeds.

"She's already orbiting Interstate 110 and Century Boulevard."

"She just did that, without asking?"

Jerry shrugged. "She's one of Steve's people."

#

She listened as she ran.

"...the Watts Senior Citizens Center. It isn't far, just to your north. You have to get there fast. Your dustoff has an ETA of one minute. If you aren't on time, you ride home with the cops."

Great, she thought, I can get myself a criminal record. Dad will love that.

She doubted she could make the rendezvous. She was tired, beat up, and lost. "North" meant nothing in this sometimes deserted, sometimes alive, always decrepit mass of concrete, siding and weeds. The police swarmed around her. To avoid them, she had turned aside so many times in the last few seconds that all sense of direction deserted her. She hoped she would see the vertolifter approach, and be quick enough to reach it before it departed.

With that thought in mind, she fell flat on her face in the blackened back yard she traversed. A dog set up a thunderous baying from within the house, and was suddenly silenced.

What a pathetic town, she thought. The people hide in their homes like rabbits avoiding wolves, too frightened to check out disturbances on their own property. They responded to danger by turning out the lights, like the proverbial ostrich with its head in the sand.

She started to rise, but froze half to her feet at the feel of metal against her cheek.

"Yeah," the other person said. "It's loaded."

#

Chelsea Van Arsdale checked the play in her vertol controls. Some thoughtful engineer had copied the old helicopter setup, so the revolutionary machine always seemed familiar to her. She checked the chronometer in the heads up display in her helmet visor, then refocused on Jerry's radio transmission.

"We're doing this straight up, Chelsea, so they'll be too embarrassed to bring charges. We'll use a 'protecting our reporters from the wandering criminal element' angle. Be quick, because the whole thing'll be on national TV."

"Oooh, my big break."

"Yeah, well, soon as Harry breaks the scam, every cop within a two-mile radius is gonna beeline to the pickup point, so you'll have a huge audience."

"I'll wow 'em, Jerry. Sorry, but I just hit forty seconds. I'm putting this thing in the pipe and going for your girl."

"Good luck, Chelsea."

"Luck is not an issue."

She dropped power and slid into a graceful right turn, bringing the vertolifter to the minimum safe altitude for avoiding overhead wires. She pointed the aircraft east along Century Boulevard, the straightest route to her destination. She increased power and changed the angle of the fanjets to attain her maximum speed of 180 knots. That would bring her to the pick up point in just over thirty seconds.

Hopefully, her package waited to ride.

#

"You're the one with him, that reporter guy." The dark was near total. Even so, Peggy recognized him as one of Donald Washington's five bodyguards. He wore the same distinct uniform, though he had lost the fancy beret some time during the night.

"Please," she said, still frozen half way to her feet, the pistol barrel just inside her vision. "We didn't call the cops. I'm just a college student. A telecommunications intern. And I'm thinking about changing my major. All I want out of life is to find the old folks home, or whatever it is."

"The Senior Citizens Center. Somebody pickin' you up?"

"Oh, I certainly hope so."

The pistol dropped. A hand gripped her arm and hauled her to her feet. "Git, little sister."

"You're letting me go?"

He snorted. "Consider it a thank-you. You and your buddy got the cops so buzzed up, maybe they forgot about me and the brothers. Go on, through that hedge, then cross the street."

"What hedge?"

"Just go that way." He shoved her off. "And stay on campus next time, baby. You don't belong out here."

Ain't that an understatement, Peggy thought as she stumbled in the indicated direction. In a moment, a black wall of hedge formed before her eyes. She felt the prickly, scratchy touch of its branches, then used the camera to hammer her way through to the other side.

"Sorry, America. Close your eyes and ears."

Beyond the hedge stretched the wide expanse of Century Boulevard. At an angle to her, across a no man's land of railroad tracks, stood the low concrete mass of what she hoped was the Senior Citizens Center. It, like the street, blazed with light. She heard faint strands of music coming from within. Rihanna, or one of those other old soul divas. An eight-foot chain link fence surrounded the property. Peggy groaned at the barrier, then flinched as a car passed, but it was normal traffic, not the police. A street with cars, and with signs of human habitation. After the last hour, it seemed such a strange phenomenon.

But, the police were somewhere nearby, or had those on foot lost her in the maze of weedy yards, back alleys, and chain link and stockade fences? What about the cruisers? Surely they watched the street. It was an obvious main drag with its four traffic lanes, turn lane, and wide sidewalks. It made a logical border for boxing in fugitives.

She heard sirens, as if in answer to her thoughts.

Two or three blocks east, three cruisers peeled onto the street and headed her way. Another appeared from the opposite direction. She ducked from a roar and a blast of air above, then saw the great locust form of a vertolifter shoot overhead and across the street. That was her ride.

Peggy threw herself into the street, pumping her legs furiously to clear the pavement ahead of the cruisers. She bounded across the tracks, hit the sidewalk beyond and ran, her heart pounding, along the fence to the gate too far away. The cruiser from the west braked violently behind her. She heard slamming doors.

She rushed along the fence. She watched the aircraft hunker over the parking lot on the other side of the chain link. Only a few inaccessible feet away. How long would it stay? Would she enter the parking lot only to watch it drift clear of the pavement and head for home?

She glanced back at the policeman puffing behind her. The other cars squealed to the curb behind him.

Peggy cleared the fence, grabbing its end post to whip her around back toward the vertol. The aircraft hovered just ahead, between two rolls of vehicles, its cargo doors open. All its lights blazed, including the white identification flood highlighting the See It Now logo. Peggy felt the aircraft's down draft whipping her hair and clothes. She knew she would make it.

She threw herself into the waiting cargo bay as several cruisers slammed to a halt not ten feet from the vertolifter's nose. She dropped the camera and wrenched the cargo door shut, exhilarated by her escape. Cops poured from their cars, and a public address system blared warning for the aircraft to set down. The deck wrenched beneath Peggy's feet, causing her to stumble and fall to her knees. The ship rose into the night air.

The vertolifter banked gently right. Through the remaining open cargo door, Peggy saw a glittering mosaic of red and blue lights centered on the parking lot of the Watts Senior Citizens Center. It was all very far below.

"Yes!" she shouted, slapping the deck with both hands. "Absolutely, primo yes!"

"Umm, when you're done congratulating yourself," the pilot yelled, "you might reopen that door and start shooting video! You're still on the air, you know!"

Peggy flinched at her forgetfulness. She scooped up the camera and, cradling it under one arm, drew back the door she had slammed on impulse a moment before. The pilot banked obligingly, and the vertolifter dropped to a more dramatic altitude for video capture. Peggy checked that the green "on the air" diode still glowed, and pointed the camera toward the police cars below. She noticed a frantically blinking fault indicator in the viewfinder. That was no surprise. The camera casing showed multiple dents, a missing corner, and a shattered primary LCD. Dirt and grass encrusted the unit. She hoped they didn't bill her for the damage.

"How about it, Peggy?" a voice said from the camera. "Any comment on your extraction from a war zone between police and Black Panther revolutionaries?"

"Umm, not really," she answered, trying to think who owned the voice. "I'm just glad to be out of there."

"I suppose your internship will be anticlimactic after this. And so might the remainder of our audience's viewing."

It was Harry Brackett, the anchorman. "I don't know, Harry. Maybe this is just the beginning."

"I wouldn't doubt it. Well, we'll recap the night's events and return our viewers to their regular programming, updating on the situation as necessary. Thanks, Peggy. You've shown all the professionalism expected of a See It Now reporter in the field."

"Thanks, Harry." She had an inspiration. "This is Peggy Smith, See It Now, Los Angeles." She released the SEND button. "Yes!" she shouted again.

Chapter Five:

L.A. And the Nap

 (Back to Contents)

Steve sped along the interstate bypass to downtown Indianapolis. His commute from the suburban hinterlands took forty minutes, but he appreciated the time. The drive allowed him a precious chance to think and plan his day. Just such daydreaming had brought him the idea for satcam, the revolutionary camera system that had made See It Now a power in electronic news after only two years on the air. He remembered the long, lean years subsisting on fast food and coffee, he and the Beachman building the concept and the technology that would make them very rich men. No one had understood the concept back then. Thomson Electronics had underwritten the show and the manufacture of satcam, but, out of caution, had leased, not bought, the rights to the system. Now their chance was gone, and neither Steve nor his partner were at all inclined to sell.

Steve slid the big Ford Commander 4X4 onto the ramp from I-70 to Michigan Street. He turned toward the city center at the bottom, heading past dilapidated warehouse factories and decrepit old houses to the high rises and architectural monuments of the Mile Square. After so much time in New York, DC, and other major cities, the small scale of Steve's hometown often struck him as odd. Indianapolis had grown from little more than a racetrack for exotic cars to a regional business, education, and sports center, with a population of over a million people within its county boundaries. Not a true metropolis in the sense of Chicago to the north or St. Louis to the west, it still maintained a quiet country atmosphere, basically residential, low-slung, and green. Its rare urban nightspots closed their doors by one or two in the morning, and most downtown establishments packed it in by six at night. The busiest downtown spot on weekends was the public library, or possibly the zoo. However much its citizens sought to change the city's sleepy image, Indianapolis well deserved its "Naptown" alias.

And Steve loved it. The quiet, sensible tone of Indianapolis's heartland culture seemed a more humane lifestyle than the frenetic pace of New York or Chicago. Besides, the city owned Steve. His mother made her home in the city, still rooted to the weary old house on the near northside. Many of Steve's surviving siblings still called the city their home. That Apache sense of place and of the ties it built came from their father, perhaps. Ironic that such potent homeliness came from a man himself estranged from his native land and people.

Gray urban pragmatism gave way as the truck entered downtown proper. The bizarre, middle-eastern facade of the Murat Temple loomed to his left. Then came the Federal Building's ugly, top-heavy concrete mass. These guarded the true architectural expression of the city, the limestone temples of the World War Memorial, the American Legion National Headquarters, and the Scottish Rite Cathedral, all magnificent in their 19th and early 20th century grandeur. They rose above sculpted parks like temples to the forgotten gods of patriotism, prestige and faith. Their Corinthian capitals, ionic columns, and huge leaded windows impressed him more than the glass and steel towers that had long since usurped the skyline. These aging structures symbolized matters of the spirit. Their more recent counterparts celebrated that one surviving god effigy of western civilization: money.

The Thomson Electronics Building was one such altar to prosperity in business. It rose sixty-one stories above the corner of Michigan and Illinois Streets, a featureless black spear tapering to a screwdriver blade just wide enough for a rooftop helipad. Steve owned the helipad. More properly, See It Now leased it from Thomson. Two vertolifter SkyRangers crouched there, always ready for dispatch to anywhere within a six state area.

Steve parked in the Thomson Building's garage, in an inconvenient space that often reminded him of his low standing in the corporate hierarchy. Steve was a mere employee, not a prince of the company. Thomson, through its subsidiary, the Columbia Broadcasting System, owned his offices on the fifty-ninth floor and the regional broadcast center on the sixtieth, as well as the show itself, its crews, the vertolifters, and the millions of dollars in background support that made everything work. Steve only owned the heart of See It Now, the shoebox-sized camera and its satellite uplink codes. He drew occasional dark amusement from the knowledge that the show he created could fire him if it liked.

Few used the elevator to his offices, so the ride up was a quiet one. The doors opened onto a reception area lit warmly with old-fashioned incandescent lamps. The company paid more for this electricity-wasting luxury, but the uneven golden lighting put visitors at ease in a way that LEDs could not. An imposing CBS eye hung in rich wood grain opposite the elevator, accompanied by the See It Now logo in Impact italics. A low, fluid reception desk stood beneath the eye, dressed in rich cherrywood like that of the logos. A haphazard arrangement of easy chairs arrayed before the desk and partly masked the aquarium decorating one corner of the room. Bright flits of yellow neon fish caught Steve's eye from the tank. His administrative assistant fed the fish.

"Morning, Emma. Your pets hungry enough?"

Emma smiled in that radiant, wide-mouthed way that so accentuated her Asian features. "Good afternoon, Mr. Tallman."

"Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. Shame on me for being so late."

"I thought you'd take a day off, considering how much you've worked lately." She closed the aquarium lid and walked soundlessly across the carpet to her desk. The carpet wasn't soundless, Emma was. "Mr. Beacham has been asking for you. I think he's flooded your voice and e-mail, too. Here are his written notes." She handed him a pile of crumpled paper.

Steve took the papers and shuffled through them. "Well, if my biggest crisis is an overexcited Beachman, then I'm gonna have an easy time of it, you think?"

"Please talk to him, Mr. Tallman. He's driving me to the brink."

Steve grinned as he started down the hall to his office. No one disputed Emma as the real boss at See It Now. She prodded Steve about paperwork with the tenacity of a dog herding sheep. His natural aversion to office work was a disaster checked by Emma's expert badgering, for, though Steve loved the production end of his executive producer job, he was not an executive by temperament.

His office presented its usual wreck, with stacks of hard copy scattered in messy piles on and around his desk. It was a scantly furnished room with only the buried and surrounded desk, a cheap work table also burdened with mostly unread documents, and a few office chairs to fill the remaining space. The downtown skyline filled the windows that made up two of his walls. Steve hardly noticed the view as he stepped over and around boxes to reach his desk.

He scooped up an armload of papers there, enough to clear the keyboard and hand pointer for his computer. He dropped the mess to the floor, then eased into his leather swivel chair and put up his feet.

"Jarvis," he said. The computer came to life. The same devoted puppy that spoke to him at home panted at him from the forty-six-inch monitor careless tossed onto one wall.

"Hello, Mr. Tallman," said a woman's voice, more reserved than Alfred's. "How are you this afternoon?"

"Fine, thank-you. How are things in the secretarial kennel?"

"An outbreak of fleas, but otherwise grand."

"There are pills for that, you know."

"Yes, but there's a bitch down in accounting who never heard of the things."

Steve smiled. Jarvis's security routine was such a fun way to start the day. "Jarvis. Buzz Beacham's unit and let him know I'm down here."

"Buzzing. Would you like to check your mail? There are thirty-eight messages on e-mail, and eleven on Voice."

"No, thanks. Delete the mail. They can call back."

"Eight of the e-mail and seven of the Voice are from Mr. Beacham. Would you like to check these before I delete them?"

"No. I'll hear from Beacham when he walks through the door."

"Deleting mail. Would you—"

"Suppress standard secretarial procedures."

The machine clicked twice, and the hard drive light flickered. Steve rolled his eyes. It intended to disobey him.

"Sorry, but I cannot suppress item fifty-three on my task list. You have a video conference scheduled for 12:30 pm. Alfred instructed me to alert you five minutes before the meeting."

"Oh." Steve had forgotten about that – the alarm, not the meeting. "That's fine. Maintain the alarm, and thank-you."

"Maintaining 12:30 pm alarm."

Steve considered dozing until the Beachman's arrival. Rest still eluded him. Instead of spending the night in much-needed sleep, he had mailed Beachman the EOG_Back file over the secure IdeaNet, and likely ruined his sleep. Then he had set up the video conference that started in less than half an hour, and alerted the west coast jumplifter crew, sending it and its aircraft to Los Angeles International for a pick-up. Then came the little things that made all the big ones work.

"You ever plan to clean this dump?" Kenny Beacham asked from the doorway. With his uncontrolled mass of brown-blonde shoulder-length tangles, and his rumpled, holey jeans, he looked the least likely person to complain. His shirt hung open and untucked, the sleeves rolled part way up his forearms. His white tee shirt displayed a video vignette of the Statue of Liberty alternating with the Micrographix logo, men in suits with headphones to their ears, and an extra-bold sans-serif headline: THE SYSTEM (SOFTWARE) SUCKS! His appearance contrasted with Steve's sport coat, tie, and neatly trimmed beard, but both men knew how deceptive looks could be. Beacham's office was a study in cold, geometric neatness, the workspace of a supremely ordered, precision-oriented mind. Steve hated that office.

Beacham grabbed a chair and brought it to Steve's desk. He cleared a space on the floor with his shoe, then plopped himself into the chair to talk.

"I'm going home right after this meeting," he said. "I don't function well on three hours of sleep, and I don't get paid for overtime, either."

"With the money the network pays you, Beachman, you should rent a penthouse across from the park."

Kenny slumped in his chair and yawned. "I know the value of a buck, chief. Now, about that file you sent me last night. Do you know what's in that thing?"

"Enough to know you need it. I'm not tech, Beachman. I knew you could analyze the data a lot quicker than me."

"Took eight hours and a pot of coffee. That stuff's scary, man. I don't want any part of it."

"We can't ignore it if it says what I think."

"It's a glorified phone tree, man. But some of the names on that tree would do anything to keep this thing a secret, and I mean anything."

"Which is why we can't ignore it, partner."

"Partner, my ass! These guys come looking for you, I don't know you from the twentieth floor janitor!" He leaned toward Steve. "I'm serious, buddy. I want no part of this. I want to die of old age, in my sleep. And I have a family."

"So do I, Beachman."

"Well, sure, but yours is so dysfunctional it almost doesn't count."

"Thanks. I won't forget you at Christmas. Now, Kenny. This thing with the file is as big as I thought, isn't it? We can't ignore it, can we?"

"You can't ignore it. You're the journalist and the great crusader. I'm an engineer."

Steve looked hard at Kenny. More than exhaustion clouded his partner's usually energetic face. Those black-ringed eyes darted with fear.

"Okay. After you summarize that file, take sick, or take a vacation. I'll cover it."

Beacham released a sigh of relief. "Thanks, man. I owe you big."

"Give me the goods, Beachman."

He did.

#

Sam entered the conference room like a celebrated prize fighter, a smile huge on his face. Though Peggy played the wallflower, the assembled crew erupted in hoots, cat calls, and a smattering of genuine applause while Chelsea Van Arsdale hummed Hail to the Chief with a pretense at gravity. They came to him as he moved through the room, touching him, shaking his hand or squeezing his shoulder, assuring themselves that he was well. They seemed more like a family than a team, Peggy thought.

"Back so soon after vacation?" Montoya joked. "The rest of us had to work last night. You bugged out in the middle of a show."

"Ah, he always was a slacker," Little said. "I bet he even copped a meal from the blueshirts. How about it, Sam? What's for chow at the county lockup?"

Sam smiled even broader. "I think it was chicken. Hard to say, though. The lighting was bad, the gravy overpowering, and this guy in the corner kept asking for my fries."

"Well, at least he asked," Montoya said, eliciting riotous laughter.

Jerry held up his hands for attention. "Okay, gang, time for work. The boss will be on the line from Indianapolis in a few minutes. Take your seats, please."

A semicircular table crowded the room. Everyone chose seats while Jerry slapped a Mylar all-in-one onto the window staring out into Los Angeles. It hung there from static cling, a little skewed, as he took his seat centered at the table opposite the monitor. Sam sat at one hand, Montoya at the other. Chelsea scooted her chair close up beside Sam while Peggy and Malcolm Little ensconced themselves behind the main group. It was a natural arrangement, based on the understood order of authority among the parties.

Peggy sat almost directly behind Sam. She tapped his shoulder.

"I didn't like leaving you last night," she whispered. "I didn't think. I'm sorry."

Sam half turned to see her.

"You did great," he said. "You impressed me."

She grinned. Her mentor's approval made her feel better..

"Shush," Jerry said. "Call coming in."

A CBS eye glowed from the thirty-inch monitor stuck to the window.

"Jerry!" Mr. Tallman said from Indianapolis. "In your case, I guess I should say 'good morning'." He looked like the harried undead despite his attempt at levity. He also looked crooked, thanks to Jerry's casual placement of the screen.

"You got it, boss. We have 10:30 a.m., which is ungodly in L.A. But we came in, anyway. Do we get extra points for dedication?"

Tallman laughed. It seemed an odd thing to do apparently alone in his office. "Well, first off, congratulations to your crew on last night's work. You certainly get extra points for that. How about you, Sam? The police treat you okay?"

Sam waggled a hand in the air. "They asked me a few questions they knew I couldn't answer. Asked them a lot. Just harassment, though. The coffee was either terrible or good, depending on how well they thought I answered."

"They didn't do anything stupid?"

"I got a few bruises when that cop took me down, but nothing else. They were a hell of a lot nicer than that Washington kid."

"I would have kicked that little bastard's ass," Montoya said to no one in particular.

Sam nodded. "It would have been satisfying, but he was smaller than me, and he had a gun."

Tight, unfunny chuckles sounded from both ends of the phone line.

"I'm glad you're okay, old buddy," Tallman said after a moment. He sat in silence, gathering himself. No one interrupted.

"Time for business," he said. "Chelsea, last night good ol' Uncle Ben stopped by for a chat."

"Tell the old goat I said 'hi'."

"I will. I have his number on periodic redial as we speak. He left a gift, a data disk taken from a print journalist. The information on it is startling. Is your end of the line secure?"

Jerry nodded. "It is."

"The data takes the form of a phone tree centering on none other than Mr. Jonathan Taylor Mercy. You know the name."

Jerry raised his voice so that everyone present could hear. "He's director of the Americans for Civil Equality, that rightist political action committee. It's an umbrella organization for the Christian right, the business interests, and the fringe right wing militia types. Hasn't been very successful."

"Not in any up front way, but the names tied to Mercy's indicate that ACE is making progress." Tallman rattled off a half dozen names.

"Scary," Little said. "Those names connect with some heavy-duty out there organizations. Let's see, there's the American Nazi Party, the KKK, the Aryan Nation, the Waco Coalition, the American White People's Worker's Front, and I don't know what."

"A bunch of nasty types," Jerry agreed. "It sounds as if the ultra-right is starting to organize into a block."

Tallman leaned closer to the screen. "But that in itself would not attract our attention. Other names came up, too, cross-listed with the ones I just gave you. Those other names belong to such notable citizens as the director of the John Birch Society, the chairmen of the Americans for Civil Liberties Forum, the Rand Corporation, the American Manufacturer's Association, and the National Council of Churches, for pity's sake. It's fairly obvious that these people are either members of both their up front organizations and our previously mentioned ultra-right groups, or have close contacts with the leaders of those groups."

"That's serious." Sam scratched his chin. "That last bunch consists of legitimately recognized organizations. They command the money, the ears, and the hearts of millions of people."

The boss nodded. "I suspect infiltration or outright control by the radical fringe groups I mentioned, but I've suspected that for months. Now, it gets worse. All of those organizations, whether directly or obliquely, seem to funnel into Mercy's own Americans for Civil Equality bunch. The hate groups seem to be funneling money and people to Mercy, and cooperating under him within a more-or-less formal, if clandestine, structure. The more legitimate groups seem to act as sources of money and information. They may be unaware of Mercy's fringe connections. However, we've found names on tree paths unassociated with the others, but tied directly to Mercy, that are not so easily explained. The addresses given are all home addresses and home phones, implying a personal relationship with Mercy." Tallman gave them two names.

Sam flinched. "Two Supreme Court justices. What does Mercy want with Supreme Court justices? More directly, what would they want with him?"

"Careful." Tallman wagged an index finger. "There's no conclusive evidence that these justices have any idea what Mercy is up to. To them, he's likely just another right wing politico serving his country according to his ideals. On the surface, Mercy is a model citizen, and he hobnobs with the best of 'em. There's a pattern building, though. Maybe I should mention that the file from which all this information originates concerns the Equal Opportunity in Government Act." He waited for an impact.

"He wants to buy the legislation," Jerry said. "Everybody knows EOG is patently unconstitutional, but he wants to get it through Congress anyway, then defend it from attack at the Supreme Court by engineering guaranteed support."

"Another Dread Scott nightmare," Little said. "The Equal Opportunity in Government Act is nothing more than apartheid. It limits the election of ethnic candidates to public office to no more than their percentage of US population at the time of the last census. It's a legal trick to keep white people in power even after they lose majority status as a culture."

"Of course, the bill's supporters point out that it'll actually increase the numbers of minority representatives in Congress," Jerry pointed out.

Little tossed up his hands."Not as much as straight elections would. This EOG is the brainchild of people who think of this as a white man's country, and want to keep it that way. But this idea about buying the legislation still makes no sense. Supreme Court justices can't be bought, and even if they could, two lousy justices won't guarantee support of the bill should it become law, and there's always the likelihood of a presidential veto before the court can even look at the matter."

Tallman scratched his chin, which appeared to harbor a day-old beard. "Two more names on another separate arm of the tree. The first is listed by home address and number only: Mr. Andrew Jackson Southerman."

"Chairman of the Republican National Committee," Peggy whispered. She shrank from the glances turned her way.

"The last," Tallman said, "and it isn't the last, really. Understand that I'm giving you an abbreviated list. There are hundreds of names on this thing. Names augment names, names hide other names, names are obviously there to protect other names. The last and most important name on the tree is that of John Robert Chenault."

"Jesus!" Jerry exclaimed. "That's the president, Steve."

"And that's why we're interested."

#

Ben glanced back for the man in the red jacket. Yes, there he was, freezing his ass off, following across the dormant greenspace of the Convention Center Plaza. Ben had led him aimlessly around downtown since first discovering him in the restaurant at breakfast. He wanted the stupid, easily spotted little spy to suffer for tailing him, to get plenty of exercise in the frosty, needle-sharp Indiana air. He also wanted to scare the little miscreant half to death.

He looked back again, this time to broadcast that the shadow was discovered. Then he quickened his pace along the plaza's brick walk toward a bank of mailboxes off the busy traffic of Maryland Street. He grasped the prism inside his overcoat pocket, crumpling its envelope. They wanted the EOG file. They knew he had it. Did they know about Steve? When had they placed this tail? At the airport? At the hotel? Ben inclined toward the latter. This was too inept a stalker to have eluded notice for an entire night. Perhaps with a little showmanship, Ben could protect his nephew's involvement for at least a little while.

He brought the envelope into the open, ensuring his tail could see it. He fished a pen from a pocket with his free hand, then made a show of writing something on the white paper. He wrote an address, ostensibly an important one, but actually a work of fiction.

Don't overact, he warned himself. Make a convincing show.

As he stepped onto Maryland Street, he angled close to a mailbox, opened its slot, and, with a last quick look at his stalker, plunged the envelope into it. He continued down the sidewalk, hurrying for a side entrance to the neighboring Westin Hotel. Ben was excited to see the result of his drama.

He felt years younger propelling his long frame up the stairwell to the hotel's second level. He bounded for the skywalk over Maryland, hoping to get there before the situation changed on the concrete below. He stopped just short of entering the suspended glass walkway, then peeked around the corner of the hotel wall and out toward the mailbox on the busy street below.

The man in the down jacket stood there, speaking into a palm phone. From the way he shifted his footing, he was more than a little angry.

Ben knew his stunt wouldn't end surveillance, but he loved sending the enemy on worthless, resource-consuming adventures of his own design. It meant less time to spend on him, his colleagues, or his nephew. At any rate, he could make an interesting game of it.

But, conceit failed him. Trouble arrived first on foot, in the form of two more men, obvious colleagues of the man in the red jacket. They had been very near to get there so soon, maybe in the hotel itself. If so, then Ben hadn't noticed their presence, and that unnerved him. More trouble arrived with a car that pulled toward the three men huddling at the mailbox. Ben had expected a car. He had wanted to see who would come if his enemy called for help. Not that he thought he would recognize any arrivals, but he wanted to see his enemy's partners, or even superiors. Now he felt sick at the sight beneath him.

His newest enemies pulled up to the curb. In a police car.

#

"I suppose we shouldn't be surprised," Tallman said, shaking his head. "The way we choose presidents, it had to happen eventually. For years we've put forward only loyal party functionaries for the job, people who, allowing that they won the office, would do the bidding of their party machine. It's been more important to have Republican or Democratic control of the president than to have a strong leader at the country's helm."

"The system sees the national committee chairman as the real leader," Sam elaborated, "that is, whichever chairman controls the man in the White House. That was one impetus behind the Dearing campaign last time around, to elect a president with backbone enough to withstand the party machine. It might also explain why her own people trashed her."

Jerry ran fingers through his already-tousled hair. "You're saying that the president of the United States is little more than a mouthpiece for hate groups and fanatics? That isn't possible. He would have lost running against Dearing. He would have lost against a repentant ax murderer!"

"Jerry," Tallman said. "In national politics, who you are isn't nearly as important as funding. Chenault beat the pants off Anna because he outspent her by near astronomical amounts. He had the money to make his message anything he wanted, and make it stick. The problem is, nobody researches who they vote for these days; they just watch the commercials."

"And," Montoya added, "none of us really elect a president anyway. That's done by electors within the Electoral College, and these days the party bosses play electors like chess pieces."

Jerry sounded peevish. "We should consider that Chenault knows nothing of Mercy's connections to hate groups. You said yourself that Mercy's a champion hobnobber; he and Chenault may only know each other socially."

No one spoke. They looked at Jerry as if at an odd, nonsensical animal.

"Well hell!" he sputtered. "Somebody has to point up his side. I voted for the man, for Christ's sake!"

"Jerry's right," Tallman said. "Let's avoid the blinders. However unlikely, Chenault may have no idea of Mercy's connection to right wing extremist factions. Of course, stupidity isn't usually a trait of presidential types, and this organizational chart we've uncovered isn't a social register; it's more like a battle roster. Even so, the president may be unaware that Mercy and his friends are making a play for EOG. But I bet he'll find out when it's time to sign or veto the bill."

Tallman shifted in his seat. He leaned further forward and took in each face at the table across the continent. "This is the mission, folks. Jerry, you're to release Sam, three other satcameramen of your choice, and Chelsea to work exclusively on this story. Live without them; they may be gone for quite a while. Sam, you're chief researcher on this effort. You're to coordinate the investigation of the story behind this organizational chart. Find out exactly what Mercy is up to, whether or not it's legal, exactly what role his partners and their organizations are playing. Find out how far he has co-opted the president, the Republican National Committee, and those two Supreme Court justices. And find out how the whole mess is likely to affect passage of the Equal Opportunity in Government Act. Work through the world operations center here in Indianapolis. We'll set up living and office quarters. Got that?"

"The way you're talking," Sam said by way of acknowledgment, "I hope nobody assigned to this beat just happens to have a life."

"I agree. Chelsea, you're in charge of transportation. It's a big job, national in scope, possibly international if the war in Europe becomes a story issue. I've alerted Strat 1 and parked it at Los Angeles International, so grab those guys and let 'em know who's boss. You also get two vertolifters, yours and one of ours here in Nap. If you need more, if any of you need more, just call. I'll give you priority with both Jarvis and Alfred. Got it, Chelsea?"

"Got it."

"It occurs to me," Montoya said, "that this story might be dangerous. It deals with people used to getting their way, and who might be rough on their enemies. Have you thought all that through?"

"No," Tallman answered. "I won't kid you; this could become a war. The Republican National Committee we can handle. The president we can handle. But all these hate groups and paramilitary militia types, well, you know how they are."

"They operate on a more visceral level than most folks," Sam said. "All it takes to endanger yourself is to make them mad."

"Watch yourselves," Tallman said. "Along those lines, keep story research as quiet as possible. No use alerting the story before we're ready to broadcast." He paused, and sat back in his seat. His eyes darted, as if searching for any bit of information he might have forgotten. "You're my 'A' team," he said, looking from Sam to Chelsea. "We've worked together since See It Now started. I think I know your capabilities, and I know you'll come through."

"You're such a flirt," Chelsea said, smiling.

Tallman ignored her. "So. Everyone check your on-line resources for anything on Woodward and Bernstein, Nixon, and Watergate. You might check Iran-Contra and Reagan, maybe the run-up to the Iraq War. I don't want us repeating anyone else's mistakes. Jerry, I'll need your recommendations for cameramen by noon your time. Sam, Chelsea, you need to start packing and gather your gear. Chelsea, you need to get that vertol down to the airport and turn it over to Strat 1's loadmaster. You'll all fly out together no later than tomorrow. Report in here as soon as you're in town. Everybody clear?"

A chorus of murmured acknowledgment drifted through the room.

"Good. Now, I'd appreciate you folks clearing the room so I can have a few words in private with Miss Smith."

Sam turned to look at his intern. He raised an eyebrow. Peggy managed only the slightest shrug, her mouth hanging open as if she'd been slapped in the face. As everyone scraped back their chairs and filtered from the room, Sam leaned back and whispered in her ear. "Looks like you impressed more than me." He patted her shoulder and left her there alone.

#

Donald Washington's visit to the Los Angeles County lockup was a surreal experience for Marcus Tandy. The hunted man sat comfortably across the visitors' table, invisible in a conservative sport coat and tie, his fake tattoo removed. Didn't the blueshirts know anything? Didn't they look at faces?

"What are you doing here?" Tandy asked in as low a tone as possible.

Washington's lips curved ear-to-ear, the hypocritical grin of a shark. "Just checkin' on Mamma's boy. You need anything special? Toothbrush? That sort of thing?"

"I'm fine, thank-you."

"Good. Now, I ain't got all day, so I guess I better tell you all the news. Most ain't nothin', just what's up in the hood. There was a lot of shit goin' down last night. Made you wanna stay indoors with the lights turned down..."

Tandy watched his colleague and regretted ever allowing him into the Fellowship. That regret intensified as he recalled that he, the chairman, had brought Donald into contact with the inner circle as a "consultant". True, Donald had done his "consulting" well. He had beaten up the right people, and successfully policed the drug trade on his assigned streets. Then came the police raid, and ruination. Now, Tandy and the inner circle languished in jail, and Donald claimed, without much resistance, the leadership of the Fellowship. He was just a street thug, for God's sake. Apparently, as evidenced by his presence at the jailhouse, he was a stupid thug, too.

"...and she was livid!" Washington laughed. "She wants you back home now. Why, she told me just yesterday–" He glanced at the guard across the room, then leaned over the table in an attitude of exaggerated conspiracy. "Well, this is what she told me. She said–" He dropped his voice. "Don't believe everything you hear in the news. They ain't got any of us. Hell, they can't get me, even when I walk through the front door."

"You're fucking crazy. You're exposing the organization by coming here."

"Don't worry about me or the organization. We're doin' it, man. That speech on TV last night was just the start. The Black Panthers ain't to be trifled with. That fuckin' reporter last night–"

"Leave that reporter and the police alone. You go around starting wars, me and the fellas ain't never getting out of here."

"When we're done, they won't dare to keep you, cuz."

It rankled Tandy to hear this former Blood using the Crip diminutive so freely. Donald was arrogant, and his rhetoric frightening. He didn't understand the vision. He had the words down pat, but they meant nothing to him. Tandy had been much the same not so long ago, hungry for power but starved of ideals. Adulthood, however recently attained, had lessoned his thirst for chaos.

He mustered all the gravity at his command, his palms spread on the worn wood surface of the table.

"Do not touch that reporter," he said. "Do not start a war with the blueshirts. Do not jeopardize all we've worked for over the last few years. I want you to lay low and do nothing. We'll manage things from here."

Tandy held Washington's eyes. Washington stared back. All friendly pretenses disappeared from the kid's face as he registered words he could not abide. Then, with disconcerting suddenness, his face erupted into beaming happiness and he broke into hearty laughter.

"Don't you worry," he said, rising chuckling from his chair. "We'll take care of things on the outside, you worry about problems you got here. Oh, and that reminds me, Mamma told me to give you this..." He fished a few dollars out of his wallet and tossed them on the table. "You might need it for smokes, or honey buns, or" he smiled with biting humor, "extra milk in the mess hall." With that, he waved a cheery good-bye and started for the exit. As an afterthought, he also waved to the guard.

Marcus Tandy stared at the crumpled bills on the table. Were they a lightly veiled insult or the finale to Donald's fiction of the visiting relative?

"Okay," the guard said from behind him, "fun time's over. Back to reality."

Marcus shook his head as he rose from his chair. "Back to reality?" he echoed. "I never left, man, not even for a minute."

The money lay forgotten on the table.

#

"You did good out there, better than anyone could have thought." Tallman slouched in his chair, his ankles crossed on his table top. "Still, I'll have to talk to Sam. It's a bad idea taking students into dangerous stories."

"Sam takes me on all his stories," Peggy said, not too strongly, she hoped. "He says it's the only way to learn."

"True, but I doubt your school appreciates the argument. Neither would our insurance company. No, I'd better restrict you from further involvement in potentially dangerous stories, including the one we're starting on now."

They both sat in silence. Tallman seemed to consider something at length. Peggy just sat there, bothered by his edict. She wanted to learn the trade. That wasn't possible without going on satcam missions.

"How long have you been with us?" Tallman asked.

"About two weeks, sir, since the end of last semester."

"Two weeks! Two weeks, and we have you running from police and facing down gun-toting teenaged gangsters. Still, you did good. It's a shame to stunt such apparent aptitude for the job."

"Sir, if you scale back my training, I don't see how I can stay. I–"

"Don't call me that."

"Sir?"

"That. Don't call me 'sir'. I'm old enough already. I don't need twenty-year-old women reminding me of it."

"Sorry." So, what the hell should she call him?

"You're gonna leave us if I don't keep you with Sam, huh? Well, I guess there's only one way to handle this and assuage both the insurance man and my conscience. I'll have to hire you."

"Sir?"

"Talk to Jerry about the details, but I want you hired on at the world ops center, not LA."

"You're giving me a job? I'm only a sophomore in college."

Tallman licked his lips. He seemed to hold himself in. "You wanted to be a satcameraman, didn't you? Well, you're a satcameraman. Do we have to quibble over pay?"

"Why, no, but, well, I don't even have a degree."

"Is that what's bothering you? Look, if you don't like the job, you can always go back and get your degree. The same if See It Now gets canceled. Personally and professionally, I don't give a damn about your degree. Now, do you want the job, or not?"

How much money does a satcameraman earn, anyway? Enough dead presidents to start a national cemetery, that's how much. "I want the job!"

"Good." Tallman smiled. "I guess you'd better work with Sam until you know the ropes. Tell Jerry to supply one less reporter for the story. Also, if you would, tell him this conference is over. And to be more careful next time while putting up the screen. You're tilted. Welcome to the team, Peggy."

The monitor went blank. Peggy sat stunned, unable to believe her fortune. Suddenly, she lived her career's ambition. Suddenly, she no longer scrounged for lunch money, or worked part-time to pay the dorm fees. What would Dad say? To hell with accounting, that's what!

She thought about the night before, about the guns, the man in the dark, and the pursuing police. Was that the pace around See It Now? The satcam stories on TV often looked dangerous, but cameras saw their subjects through romanticized eyes. There had been nothing romantic about last night. She remembered grit and bruises, and blind, rushing fear. Whatever they offered, they didn't pay enough to perpetuate last night. Was she hasty in accepting Tallman's offer?

To hell with that, too, she thought.

She rose from her seat, then pushed open the door to the office area, ready to tell the world how it was different, more exciting, and infinitely more affordable.

Chapter Six:

The Evan Bayh

 (Back to Contents)

Mike Eller leaned against the guardrail bordering the jet engine test facility, a huge open-air compartment aft of the Evan Bayh's hangar deck. He watched white foam bleed away with the wake of the floating air base he called home. The churning water dissipated several hundred meters to stern into incongruous rivulets against the more consistent roll of the sea. Mike liked that lonely place. Few private areas existed aboard a modern supercarrier serving 7400 men and women, but this one filled his need for escape, his need to shift himself into a waking neutral state and enjoy the sensational absence of coherent thought. He ignored the single lookout crewman far down the guardrail and watched instead the gentle roll of the Mediterranean, or drowned himself in overwhelming, almost religious awe of the cobalt middle-eastern sky. He appreciated that constant, monotonous roar of water rolling away from the ship, a sound that worked its way into the muscles like a deep massage. Mike often shut his eyes, held the railing, and sought through his fingers the rhythm of water rushing against the hull. But the Evan Bayh was a huge ship; it trembled only barely against the kneading sea.

Mike flinched at a sudden, repeating beep from his waist, the palm phone all visitors wore aboard ship. He plucked it from his belt and trained his eyes on the screen.

"Yo!"

"Get up here," the officer's face said. "We have a situation, but room on the bridge for only one reporter. Guess who got picked."

"On my way, Pete." Mike clicked the phone off, replaced it on his belt, and scooped up the satcam resting at his feet. Then he turned away from the soothing roll of the sea and plunged once more into the jumbled maze of steel and noise that was the Evan Bayh below decks.

The hangar swarmed with activity. Squat trucks like over-powered golf carts towed aircraft of various sorts into tight parking spaces. Crewmen chocked wheels and secured tie down cables. The colossal starboard-aft elevator descended from the flight deck with a low-throated roar, an F-1 Seahawk perched there like a gigantic black aphid, its wings folded upwards to conserve space. Its tail hung precariously out to sea.

Mike cradled his satcam and jogged across the expansive hangar toward the enclosed companionway at the ship's waist. Everything was measured in superlatives aboard an aircraft carrier. The descending elevator could accommodate full court basketball and Mike passed an estimated two-dozen Seahawk fighters in the stadium-sized space between engine test and the ladders. He dodged running crewmen and flat trucks loaded with spare parts and munitions, the missiles and bombs moving forward to the magazine, a long way to go. The forward end of the hangar spread another five hundred feet beyond the companionway Mike entered.

After the hangar's soaring overhead, the companionway's man-height ceiling seemed almost claustrophobic. Mike tried to ignore the disconcerting change as he ascended several steep flights to the bridge. The Marine guard in the hall recognized him, solemnly checked his identity card anyway, and held the hatch to allow his entrance.

The bridge seemed a cramped space from which to control the world's largest warship. Captain Harper stood among the crew as he usually did, centered on the windscreen that ran around three sides of the compartment. The officer of the deck stood nearly at his elbow, the helm almost within arm's reach. The executive officer, Harper's fail-safe, sounding board, and chief information resource, stood farther toward the hatchway Mike stepped through, his ear absorbing constant chatter from the audio pickup his duties required. The XO monitored and filtered raw information from all over the ship, especially from flight operations one level above, engineering far below decks, and the combat information center directly under his feet. He kept the captain abreast of current circumstances, protecting him from misjudgments due to lack of intel. The captain needed that guy. On the Evan Bayh, the task of command was too big for one man.

Across the tops of floor-hogging consoles, Mike noticed the air group commander, or CAG, standing against the aft windscreen, next to the lookout. The bridge commanded a dramatic view encompassing the whole length of the flight deck below, but CAG and the lookout watched the same waves and sky that Mike had tried to enjoy minutes earlier. CAG watched with intensity, like a pointing bird dog. He did not appear to hear the radio traffic that transfixed most others in the compartment.

"Affirmative, tower," the intercom blared. "Landing gear is down, and appears to be locked. Hook is not, I say again not deployed, over."

"Roger, Arrow 2. Hook is not deployed. Does Arrow 1 realize the problem, over?"

"He knows the condition of his aircraft, tower. He signals he wants to bring her in, over."

"Roger, Arrow 2. Stand by. Tower out."

"Well!" Harper called across the room. "Ain't this a bunch of shit. Pete, tell me our options are more than I realize."

CAG dropped his binoculars just long enough to answer his boss. His seamless Japanese face could not mask his concern. "We have two choices, sir. He can ditch the aircraft or land in the barricade. He thinks he can bring it in, as far as we know. My feeling is to ditch and be rescued."

"We cannot lose that aircraft," a voice said flatly. Mike turned to see the admiral leaning against the bulkhead next to the hatch.

Few officers contradict an admiral, but CAG had one of his men on the line. "Sir, with all respect, the aircraft was hit by an anti-air missile. For all intents and purposes, it should have been blown to hell. It has severe avionics problems, it's leaking a lot of fuel, it has no arrester hook, no radio, and we aren't even sure the landing gear is really and truly locked. If that plane tries to land on deck, and anything goes wrong, we'll have a nasty, fiery mess and likely a dead pilot. I think the risk is prohibitive."

The admiral straightened. "The risk, commander, is irrelevant. That pilot's mission is what matters around here. The pilot knows it, and we know it, too. We can't lose him in the drink."

"What mission?" Mike asked as he clicked the record button on his satcam. He brought the viewfinder to his eye.

For a moment, no one spoke. Many seemed to notice his presence for the first time.

"The mission is classified," Captain Harper said. "Your purpose involves the situation now before us, not the events that got us here. Commander Harita, take our guest in charge."

"Aye, sir." CAG signaled Mike to his side. It was a tight squeeze past the close-packed crew, like moving to the back of a crowded bus.

"Tower's waiting, Captain," the XO prompted.

Harper slapped the back of his command chair. "Sometimes I hate this job. Mr. Ollis, give me twenty-five knots of wind down the deck." The officer of the deck issued appropriate orders. "XO, ready emergency crews and advise tower to bring that plane into the barricade. Land Arrow 2 first, in case we're in for a messy deck. All other aircraft are secure?"

"Aye, sir. All aircraft below deck."

"Good. Let's do it, people."

"Why don't they splash him?" Mike asked CAG over the jumble of commands and responses. A public address system blared over the bridge, the sunlit deck, and throughout the ship.

"ALERT CONDITION 3! ALL HANDS TO CONDITION 3! FLIGHT DECK, PREPARE TO RIG BARRICADE!"

Commander Pete Harita leaned toward Mike. He rubbed his eyes, tired from the binoculars. "Can't crash him because of you, Mike."

"What's my part in this?"

"You and all the press, and the politicians, and family members of the crew, and anybody else who takes an interest. The Navy loses planes rarely. When we do, everyone wants to know why. They also want to know what the plane was up to when it got into trouble. In that respect people are rarely satisfied with answers that mind security. They dig, especially you reporters. This plane's mission is classified. We don't want anyone nosing around trying to uncover details, so we try to recover the aircraft and keep everyone happy and bemused."

"How do you know I won't get nosy?"

Harita turned toward Mike, or rather toward the camera eye at his shoulder. "Because you owe me a hundred and ten at poker. You piss me off, I make you pay up."

"Blood and turnips, Pete."

"Seriously, I picked you for this. It's pointless to hide this incident from the press, but we can pick someone responsible to honcho the facts to the pool. You know the difference between the 'people's right to know' and legitimate security concerns. The captain agrees."

"Gee, thanks. I feel like a public relations man already."

"You know what I mean." Harita put the binoculars back to his eyes.

Harper fingered the palm phone he wore clipped to his breast pocket. "Tower, this is the captain," he said. "Set up that rescue vertol. Launch and have it hang a hundred meters off the starboard bow."

"Tower, aye."

Mike focused his camera through the windscreen, panning to encompass all he could of the flight deck. Here was a miniature airport over a thousand feet long and three hundred feet across at its widest point. Two runways intersected on its steel plates, one for launches and running along the ship's spine, and one set at an angle away from the bridge's island superstructure. This latter launch and recovery deck grew rapidly busy. Already, fire trucks positioned themselves bordering the runway, awaiting a job their crews hoped not to perform.

"Rescue vertol coming up on number one elevator," the XO announced. "Ready for launch in two minutes."

The admiral stepped close to the windscreen. He looked at the satcam for a moment, but without judgment. It was the admiral's way that few could discern his thoughts unless he wished it so. "They're still too far out, CAG," he said. "Those binos are useless."

"Yes, sir," Harita agreed, "but they make me feel better, sir."

The admiral released a good-natured chortle. "Don't worry," he said after a moment. "These new planes are damned near indestructable. Redundancies on top of redundancies to keep them airworthy. Then there's that pilot of yours, a thoroughly trained professional. He thinks he can bring it in, and what better authority than a pilot on his own plane? It'll be all right."

"Yes, sir."

"Arrow 2 on visual off the stern," the lookout reported.

Mike turned the camera along the ship's wake. A black speck cruised above the horizon, gradually gaining definition. A recovery team huddled on deck where they had line of sight on the aircraft, and spoke to the pilot by radio. They guided him toward a safe touchdown, supported by the Mirror Landing System behind them. The pilot, to whom the carrier deck looked about the size of a postage stamp, followed their directions while simultaneously watching the reflected lights from the billboard-sized MLS screen. When the recovery team gave him the go, and the lights lined up correctly on the computerized screen, he knew he approached in safety. He cruised too fast, in a plane too big, toward a runway too small to trust a landing to his own skill, gall, and luck. Besides, this runway moved.

"On line, good vector," the speakers said.

"Hook looks good. Add power.

"Move right. A little more right. Add power. You're in the pipe. Bring her in."

The black predatory mass of the Seahawk slammed onto deck at 125 miles per hour. The hook hanging from its underside scraped metal, then snagged the arrester cable slung across its path. Like a gigantic rubber band, the arrester cable stretched, then grabbed, stopping the plane as if it had struck a stone wall. For a moment, the scene froze, then a recovery crewman in a bright yellow jacket backed and halted the aircraft with hand signals. Two more crewmen separated plane and cable, then the first crewman ground-guided his black multi-ton charge to a safe exit of the recovery zone.

Mike noticed a vertolifter rising on elevator one beyond the retiring Seahawk. Crewmen stood poised to launch it as soon as it taxied to the runway.

"RECOVERY AND DECK CREWS, READY THE BARRICADE!" the speakers bellowed.

Twenty or so crewmen jogged onto the recovery zone. They uncovered special deck compartments aligned at right angles across the runway, and began hauling out a tightly bundled, thick rope of material. As they unrolled and arranged the bundle across the runway, Mike saw that it was, in effect, a large, loosely woven net.

"Arrow 1 visual to stern," the lookout said.

Captain Harper elbowed his way to the windscreen already crowded by the lookout, Mike, the admiral, and Harita. A black dot against the stark blue sky moved sluggishly toward them.

"He's nursing his fuel," Harita said. "Must be low as hell."

"Well, at least he won't be coming in at speed." Captain Harper nodded. "Mr. Ollis! Get that barricade up. He doesn't have the fuel for a leisurely orbit."

"Going up now, sir," the officer of the deck said.

Below, crewmen had fastened the net to thick metal posts now rising from compartments flush to the deck, one on each side of the runway. As the majority of crewmen jogged off the deck to safety, the posts reached higher, lifting the net until it formed a wall across the runway twenty feet high. The recovery deck looked like a colossal tennis court.

"STAND CLEAR ON DECK," the loudspeakers blared. "VERTOL 7, ROTATING!"

Mike hardly noticed the announcement; he concentrated astern, where an unsteady black shape approached the Evan Bayh's recovery deck. The plane looked wobbly, as if its pilot wrestled disobedient controls. Its variable sweep wings extended to their maximum for extra lift, and its landing gear was down. Other things hung from the aircraft's body, but even a novice like Mike knew they shouldn't be there. To emphasize its tenuous airworthiness, the plane trailed streamers of black smoke.

"It's on fire," Mike said.

"No." Harita shook his head. "He's losing fuel across the hot metal jackets under his engines. It's just smoke, but it could become fire if he hits the deck too hard."

"He needs more power; he's too low," Captain Harper said.

Mike waited for the recovery team's instructions, then realized with horror the loudspeakers' silence. Of course. The pilot had no radio. No one could talk to him. He coaxed his crippled plane onto the heaving, pitching deck of the aircraft carrier with only the Mirror Landing System to give him aid. Mike wanted closer, right down on deck, right at the end of the runway, or right beside the barricade. This was the kind of photogenic high drama that won Emmies back in The World.

"CLEAR THE FLIGHT DECK! EMERGENCY CREWS STAND READY!"

The pilot applied the needed thrust to increase altitude, bouncing his plane upward. Both Harita and the captain sighed with relief.

"I hope that didn't kill his fuel," Harita said.

"I hope it didn't kill his vector," Captain Harper added. "He may not have the juice for another approach."

The plane settled into a definite glide path. The pilot seemed to have things well in hand. As the aircraft slid slowly, smoothly toward the ship, the officers around Mike relaxed. Then, with consummate grace and no fanfare whatsoever, the plane dipped its nose and dived below deck level.

The bridge fell silent. Mike counted two seconds before speaking.

"Uh, he isn't there anymore..."

"Mr. Ollis! Get the stern lookout! Where the hell's that plane?" the captain shouted.

Mike pressed his back against the windscreen and turned his camera inward to the intense activity of the bridge. He was forgotten. The tower, the recovery crew and the emergency teams all stepped on each other to report the aircraft's loss. The XO tried to sort conflicting incoming messages. The officer of the deck shouted orders that demanded instant compliance.

"Bosun, get the stern lookout! Captain, recommend engines to all stop!"

"Go to all stop!"

"All engines stop!"

"Answering all stop, aye!"

It went on, Harita and the lookout the only island of calm, still watching the stern. They could do little else. They watched four crewmen run the length of the recovery deck back toward the scene of the accident.

"Stern lookout doesn't answer, sir! I'm trying the hangar!"

"Wreckage sighted to stern!" the lookout beside Harita said.

"Captain, stern lookout on line three!" Ollis called.

"Intercom!"

"Intercom, aye, sir!"

Harper waited an instant to compose himself. "This is the captain. Report."

"Sir, this is Chief Mechanic Renfield from out of the hangar deck. The stern lookout's been knocked cold. We're calling sick bay right now."

"Understood. What about the aircraft, Chief?"

"There's a Seahawk in the water about fifty meters astern. No fire, but it looks plenty smashed up. I think it hit the stern, sir. We felt it in the hangar, and there's sea water all over this deck."

"Thank-you, Chief. Take care of that man. Bridge out." Harper touched his palm phone. "Tower, this is the captain. Aircraft in the water to stern. Send in the rescue."

"Tower, aye! She's on the way!"

The bridge quieted. All they could do, they had done. Harper scanned his officers and men, taking in the windows of their faces. Everyone paid studious attention to their stations, trying not to catch anyone's eyes. Mike knew their thoughts. A plane in the drink, after all! But, who gets the blame? Mike knew the answer well enough. The crew had reacted well, but the captain had ordered the recovery. The admiral had been clear, but the responsibility belonged to the captain, to Harper. He had ordered the recovery over the objections of his CAG.

"XO," the captain called, "begin an accident investigation, and organize recovery of that aircraft."

"Aye, sir. Permission to leave the bridge, sir."

Harper nodded.

Mike wondered what else was in store. He could see the wreckage in the water now. Had the pilot survived? Was the Evan Bayh damaged? How do you recover an aircraft weighing several tons from the sea? It drifted back from the stern, or rather the ship continued to move away. Regardless of the command for all stop, aircraft carriers took over a mile to brake.

"Sir," the XO said from the hatch, "we're still at Condition 3. Recommend we stand down."

Harper nodded again.

After a moment's hesitation, the XO turned to Ollis. "Stand down from Alert Condition 3."

"Aye, sir."

The admiral touched Harper's arm. "Tough break, Tim. I guess he didn't have the fuel."

"No, sir, I guess he didn't."

"Well, hopefully we'll have the details soon enough. I'd better get down to CIC and put the task force to station keeping. Otherwise, in ten minutes you'll have two destroyers running up your hydrojets. And, Tim, you understand that this incident cannot go unanswered?"

"Yes, sir, I understand."

"Good. We can't let them get away with shit like this. You'll take care of it. I'll send you the target."

The admiral left the bridge.

The high whine of quad fanjets cut through the bridge as the rescue vertol lumbered past on its way astern. Mike followed its progress with the camera. It pulled up over the wreckage and orbited there, seeming to assess the situation, then dropped to a low hover beside the erstwhile plane. Mike zoomed in to get the divers hitting the water.

#

The pilot survived. He ran completely out of fuel at the last moment of approach. The remaining of his two jet turbines flamed out, putting the aircraft into a glide pattern. Forty-ton jet fighters don't glide well at eighty-five miles per hour, so the plane fell almost immediately into the sea. It hadn't struck the Evan Bayh's stern as first suspected. It hit the sea a few meters behind the ship, splashing water onto the engine test deck, throwing the stern lookout into a bulkhead and knocking him out. The force of the impact caused a momentary backup of water into the hydrojet ports, and it was this and the subsequent expulsion of water through the jets that crewmen had felt at the rear of the hangar deck. Two rescue divers pulled the pilot from his flooded cockpit and winched him aboard the hovering vertol. He sustained a sprained left little finger and a painfully bitten tongue, and was conscious, angry, and cursing from the time they opened his aircraft canopy until he reported to CAG aboard ship. A second vertol crew attached flotation devices to the wreckage and marked it with a beacon to await recovery by the USS Thomas Lewelen, a Navy salvage ship out of Spain. All this was made plain to Mike, who passed the information on to his colleagues in the press pool. The entire incident occurred, received its initial investigation by the XO, and went out over the press frequencies within four hours. By dinnertime, the crash of the Seahawk was old, dried out news.

Mike and Billy Charter snacked in Mike's compartment when Harita knocked on the doorjamb.

"Hey, CAG! Come on in!" Mike said. "Why the macho suit?"

Harita wore his pressure suit and harness. He held his flight helmet at his hip. "Mission tonight. Am I disturbing anything?"

"Not at all. How's your pilot? Doc give him the appropriate two aspirins?"

"He's fine." Harita entered the tiny compartment. It barely had room for a small desk, a straight back chair, and two stacked bunks. Mike and Charter slumped on the bottom bunk, so Harita pulled out and straddled the chair, resting his arms on the back. "'Evening, Mr. Charter."

"Good evening, Commander. Sorry about your day."

Harita shrugged. "Could have been worse. Where's your roommate, Mike? You and Mr. Charter switch bunkies?"

"Nah. He went looking for that other Russian guy. We had a political argument."

"We were just discussing selective cognition," Charter said after crunching a mouthful of chips. "My colleague here can identify eight kinds of military aircraft, three kinds of tanks, has memorized all manner of rank insignia and can delineate in detail the convoluted history and politics of the armpit so-called country on which we presently make our living." He took a swig from a plastic bottle of Coke. "But, do you realize he has no idea who runs his own country?" He offered the bottle to Harita, who politely turned it down.

"Billy thinks it's a big deal that I didn't know Dearing was running again for president."

"Dearing," Harita said. "I voted for her."

"I thought American military types were apolitical," Charter mused.

"Half the American electorate is apolitical." Harita smiled. "But some of us still vote."

Mike munched all three corners off the chip in his hand. "Well, Churchill here thinks it's some kind of sin that I'm not that interested in presidential politics."

"Not just presidential politics, but Camelot II, or III, depending on what source you hear." Charter munched down another handful of chips before continuing. "She's already sown up the nomination for your Democratic party, and the primaries haven't even begun. All her opponents have dropped out. Well, all but one, but he doesn't stand a chance."

"Well, I wish her luck," Harita said. "Lord knows the last administration didn't turn out the way folks hoped." He looked confused, an expression common to those contemplating the sitting president. Where had Chenault gone wrong? Had he promised too much and delivered little? Had he promised nothing and delivered in full?

"So, what brings you down here?" Mike asked, hoping to jar Harita's reveries. "Come to collect your cash? Blood and turnips, Pete. Blood and turnips."

"No, actually, I was thinking of calling us even. I wanted to thank you for the job you did on that crash story. It was very even-handed. In fact, it made us look good."

"Just doing my job, buddy."

"Yeah, right. You could have started a big mess with no trouble at all. Instead, you reported it as an unfortunate end to a routine mission."

"Why not, Pete? Would you guys have let us report it otherwise? Would anybody have told us what wasn't routine about that mission? I don't think so."

"Just the same, you could have made trouble, even if just shipboard."

"And gotten a free ticket on Ax Airlines. I prefer to keep my job." Mike noticed Charter watching them. "Don't worry, Billy. Pete and I go way back, eight months, I guess."

"So," Charter joked, but with care, "you're courting an inside source in the air group commander. Unfair, Michael, unfair."

"Once again, don't worry. Pete and I are held together by mutual paranoia. He tells me nothing out of military paranoia, and out of press paranoia, I inform on you guys like a parrot."

It took a moment to consider the joke, then they all obliged it with forced laughter.

"Well, seriously," Harita said, "I wanted to thank you. You have no idea how much the crew appreciates the coverage you give us, the pilots especially so. A lot of reporters get under the skin. They're here to find something wrong, to find a conspiracy or an atrocity behind every breath a sailor takes. You aren't like that."

"Not me. I know enough to realize that atrocities don't lie behind every breath a sailor takes. But, tell Billy the truth, Pete. The real reason you like me is that I'm such a lousy poker player."

Harita stood and replaced the chair. "Regardless, your account is clear today. That means I'll expect you at a game soon, so I can win some of it back."

"Wouldn't miss it, CAG. What time do you get back? Should I save you a seat at the late movie? Good submarine flick, and it's only a year old."

"I'll be late. You guys have a good time." He waved once with his flight helmet, and disappeared through the doorway.

"I thought you were pretty good at poker," Charter said. "You always beat me."

"Anybody can beat you, Billy. And, yes, I'd say I run a pretty good hand."

"And he's so good he beats you regularly."

"Be accurate in your statements, Mr. BBC cameraman. He beats me regularly, but he isn't that good."

Charter's face brightened.

"You're always so surprised, Billy. Consider it a business expense. Losing at poker with the flyboys gets you way in tight with the hierarchy. A real BBC reporter would know such things."

"A real BBC reporter knows enough to stay home in London. Which reminds me. You seem to be staying home longer than expected."

Mike eyed him.

"I know, I'm not supposed to speak of it. But, you said you were going over, and that was four insertions ago. Meantime, you've hoarded enough food, heat packs, and camera batteries to last a whole extra war. When did you plan to use them?"

"Soon," Mike said. "The chance hasn't been right."

Charter huffed. "I hoped you'd say never. Instead, you respond with a lie. I worry about you, Michael. This is no game you contemplate."

"I know it isn't. The fact is, I've had opportunities. I'm just scared, Billy, okay? I know what I have to do, but I'm scared to death of doing it."

"A healthy attitude. Maybe it'll keep you from harm."

They polished off the chips and Coke. The movie in the hangar wouldn't start for hours, and there wasn't much else to do. They hadn't spoken of Mike's plans since that vertol ride ten days before. They were too afraid of listening ears, always a legitimate concern aboard crowded ships. "So," Charter said, "they would've killed that pilot to hush up his mission."

"Yep."

"Your Commander Harita's present mission is directly tied to that airplane crash?"

"Yep."

"Well! If only we could pursue such interesting curiosities."

If only, Mike thought. This incident could not go unanswered, the admiral had said, unaware or not caring that he was overheard. Did that incident have anything to do with the uneasy nature of the so-called peacekeeping mission? Did it take an entire army to pacify a few starving, recalcitrant children? Did it take over a hundred fighters, bombers, and vertolifters to add redundancy to the job? Did the United States military separate the warring factions, as UN resolutions required, or did it seek to eliminate one whole side of the conflict? (What a novel way to broker the peace!) Nothing made sense. American action did not seem to match the American mission, or American claims regarding the mission. Things started to stink of another, apparently repeating, point in history, say, around 1964 in Southeast Asia.

"You're getting that look again," Charter said.

"What look?" Mike blinked, jarred back from his thoughts. "You're always seeing looks, Billy."

"Sorry, but it's hard to miss that Michael Eller, Crusader for Truth, Exposer of Evildoers look. I suspect it has something to do with the dark cloud and rumbling thunder over your head."

"You know, Billy, if you were a real reporter, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You cameramen are all about pictures. You think the right picture will hang the truth before everybody, life-sized, gilded, and in full spotlight. But, that isn't so. We've sent scores of hours of pictures back to The World. Do you honestly think we've told the truth?"

"Absolutely not," Charter answered without hesitation. He boosted himself onto his feet and began to stretch in the limited space. "However, as usual, you miss the point. Have you ever considered, just in the abstract, mind you, that the vaunted People you aspire to serve might not want to hear the truth? It's my experience that truth occupies a rather low priority in the average person's life. They're far more interested in comfort and esteem."

"I know that, and it's you that misses the point. It isn't my job to give people what they want. My job is to give them what they need."

"Well said," Charter admitted, "but overly idealistic." He took a seat in the chair recently occupied by Harita. "At the risk of shattering your faith in the machinations of the free marketplace of ideas, would you please keep something in mind?"

"I'm curious as to what."

Charter's face lost its humor. The eyes that usually held a touch of distracted mischief focused on Mike, deadpan serious. "Nothing grandiose. Nothing extraordinary. Just, when you find yourself in the spotlight before your sacred People, after having revealed to them the truth in all its astounding glory, please, for your ego's sake, don't expect them to thank you for it."

Chapter Seven:

Manassas, Phoenix, and Points Between

 (Back to Contents)

He was an ordinary man, an invisible man. He had brown hair, brown eyes, a medium build, and a statistically average height of five feet and ten inches. He wore blue jeans and a faded yellow polo shirt, nothing by Armani, or Perry Ellis, Brooks Brothers, or even Harry Levinson. His shoes came from a discount store. He wore white socks. This ordinary, invisible man loved his kids, he loved his grandkids, and he seemed law abiding enough that his neighbors loved him. He rarely disturbed them, he kept his dog leashed and his lawn mowed, and he attended church most Sundays and on Christmas and Easter. You could find his like on any block in any suburban neighborhood in America. To anyone who cared to look, the only interesting thing about Jonathan Taylor Mercy was his net worth of over 827 million dollars. It grabbed one's attention, especially since he looked so little the part.

"You're telling me you can't keep track of one doddering old man," Mercy said as he drove along the interstate toward home. "Explain yourself. Tell me how a seventy-one year old Indian cowboy manages to disappear for fifteen straight days."

"He's a slick one, Jon," the phone said from the dash. "It's pretty obvious he knows we're watching him–"

"Were watching him."

"Okay, Jon, were watching him. He hasn't returned to his offices, and he hasn't been home. He does all his business from palm phones purchased at convenience stores, and he varies his transportation enough to confuse a whole platoon of surveillance people. I'm telling you, Jon, this guy would trip up the FBI."

"You were clumsy, Decker. He's smarter than you. That trick at the mailbox is proof enough. You spent four hours getting into that mailbox. And for what? A goddamned blank prism! By the time you realized your mistake, he was hundreds, maybe thousands, of miles away. I suppose he knows what you're after?"

"Fairly obvious. But, on the good side, I don't think he's done much with the information. He may be under the table, but his offices and colleagues have had no contact with him since this thing broke. There's nothing, I mean nothing."

Mercy spat an obscenity into the car. He hated stupidity even more than he hated incompetence, and this guy showed both. "Get real, you idiot. You can't monitor every telephone data hub in this country. And you forget he's part of a network, that Native American Movement bunch. He can pass information to any of his buddies in the network, and they could be reading it right now."

"Don't think so. I have them all covered. We have wiretaps on all their phones, and data bleeds on most of their Internet access nodes. If they have the information, they aren't doing a damned thing with it."

"You're overconfident. He's already made you look like an asshole. He's probably doing the same right now, just like that guy in New York."

"Listen, Jon. Don't talk to me like that. I admit we lost him – them, but I'm not the one with the shoddy security that let them get the info in the first place."

Mercy was smart. He knew not to offend such people. As much as he despised the man with whom he spoke, he realized how much he needed him, at least until a suitable replacement came by. He took a deep breath. "Take it easy. I'm just pissed, is all. Are you sure he hasn't passed on the data?"

"As sure as I can be. The data hasn't broken cover anywhere. He might not know what he has."

"Don't count on it. Those NAM types may be peripheral, but they aren't idiots. He was in Indianapolis. What about his nephew, that TV guy?"

"Never made contact, as far as we know. No phone calls, no E-mail. That isn't unusual. He gets through Indianapolis and Chicago once or twice a month, but hasn't seen his nephew in a couple of years, as close as we can figure. They aren't that close. We picked the old guy up the morning after he got to the city, so we know he hasn't gone visiting, either."

Mercy tried to think, not an easy thing while cruising the interstate at sixty miles per hour, and on snow. Decker's surveillance was full of holes. Which ones mattered?

"That TV guy bothers me, being in such proximity to his uncle the same day the bastard got that data."

"Will you forget about him? The man's a journalist, for Christ's sake. If he had the data, he'd have it all over the airwaves by now. Besides, we have our hands full trying to get the old man."

Amateurs. Out of distrust of the government, they had pieced together this "emergency" intelligence network for survivalists, cultists, private militias, and God knew what else. Their naiveté was astonishing. "Just the same, I want somebody on that TV guy."

Decker was momentarily silent. "Okay, I'll see what I can do. I don't have contacts coming out my ears, you know."

"I'd appreciate it," you son of a bitch.

Mercy pressed the disconnect button on his steering wheel, then backed off the accelerator to slide his big Roadmaster sedan into the exit lane for State Road 234 South. In ten or fifteen minutes he would pull up to his house outside Manassas. He could not relax when he got there; such trivialities were out of the question so long as Tallman, not to mention that other bastard in New York, remained a problem.

The traffic out of Washington crawled, a normal circumstance for evening rush hour and poor weather. Fiberglass econo-boxes crowded Mercy's big luxury car, many carrying Japanese or German nameplates, and this in the country that had perfected the long-lasting rechargeable battery and the high reception solar cell. Those cars were energy eaters. They had no aerodynamics to speak of; their squared-off forms wobbled on the slippery road, and falling snow burst off their flat fronts in explosive puffs. They consumed more than their share of battery power fighting their way through the resisting wind stream. Why didn't people buy the better, though somewhat more expensive, American cars? Did saving a buck mean that much? Never mind that Mercy made money every time an American car left its assembly line. Ford and General Motors both used his company's Vector Absorber solar technology. But Honda and Toyota had wanted his licenses, and Mercy had refused their offers. He preferred choking to death over supporting the Japs, and it irked him that so many of his fellow Americans could not muster the same level of national pride. Mercy's loyalty to his country far over-shadowed any temptation for extra cash. He always put America first.

And so, he fought for EOG, to protect America for those who really deserved her gifts, and to keep opportunists and other bad influences at bay. The Japanese bought up everything in America worth keeping American. Didn't they have culture, business, or brains enough of their own? And then there was the idea of a man working hard to improve his life, only to lose his reward to lazy malcontents on the dole. Those freeloading niggers, and spicks, and poor white trash threatened the country even more than foreign interests. Much of Mercy's assets lay frozen in Irish tax shelters to protect it from the liberal vampires of the welfare state. But not all working men had the wherewithal to pursue such protection. Did anyone live who remembered America before welfare? These days, people spent their lives moaning about what the government owed them, as if a place to live and food to eat were some kind of goddamned right. Some begged across generations, watching television when they weren't panhandling to the taxpayer, and making babies to carry on the eternal beg-athon. They sucked the working man of his livelihood, making it almost pointless to actually earn a living. Had any goddamned nigger anywhere ever done anything for himself? Everything those people owned, their jobs, their education, even their heroes and holidays, were gifts from overly sympathetic Americans. Well, America had given enough. The others could start getting dirt under their fingernails and calluses on their hands, or maybe go on home.

It was that average working American that EOG defended. All that daytime sex at taxpayers expense had paid off for the niggers. Population statistics said so. Now, the decent people who had built America stood to lose it all to the least deserving inheritors. America belonged, rightfully, to those who sacrificed the most in her cause, not to the lazy and self-centered. It was wrong to dismiss hard work and loyalty in favor of the bland arithmetic of head counting. And that, after all, was the point of EOG.

51-23-21-5. Sure, the language of the bill characterized it as an insurance policy for minority rights, and to a certain extent it was just exactly that. Currently, blacks held less than 2% of congressional seats. Under EOG, black representation could never fall below 23% of available seats in the House, an improvement in representation few could argue with. Though the bill did not set the percentages of actual black congressmen, it set up a machine that would periodically rewrite congressional boundaries to ensure blacks controlled 23% of the districts. It did the same for Hispanics, who presently controlled even fewer seats in Congress, and whose representation would increase to 21%. All other minorities split the remaining 5% of districts. The last census controlled everything, so no one could accuse anyone of political hocus-pocus. 51-23-21-5, straight down the line.

Of course, the bill's sponsors avoided the fact that black representation could never go above 23%. Though a provision allowed modification of the numbers as population statistics warranted, it would never be invoked once the initial formula took effect. Consequently, EOG protected the natural political order by giving permanent control of the House of Representatives to its founders.

Mercy leaned on the brakes, but let up when his tires slipped and horns sounded behind him. Damn, there went his turn! He'd been daydreaming too much. Now, this limited access road had him for five more miles before he could double back through the lousy, snow-choked postal roads of Virginia to his home. He determined to get control of the wool gathering. Brooding over the state of the union accomplished nothing. You had to do something about it.

Mercy was nothing if not a doer. He had run for state office, but lost. And that radio talk show had been a moderate success until the network shut him down, claiming he was too strident in his conservatism. They had a lot of listeners (translated black listeners) in DC, and didn't want to offend them. It was the same old story, liberals schmoozing to the malcontents again! But Mercy discovered his true calling after the death of his radio career. He bought those stations trying to silence him, and adjusted their editorial policies. Then, though he could not compete personally as a candidate for office, he excelled at getting his own people there, or buying those politicians already available. Mercy owned key people throughout the state and federal governments, even the sitting president. Some thought it bad form to own politicians. They thought it better to write their checks to candidates, cast their individual votes, and live with the consequences. What a bunch of morons! Politicians had been in the back pockets of citizens since day one of the republic. It was the influential man's way of voting, perfectly in line with a democracy based on the rights of property owners. And, what was Mercy, if not another property owner?

It took him thirty extra minutes, but he finally pulled into the snow-covered driveway of his six-bedroom Tudor, an extravagant concession to his now departed wife. Wealthy though he was, Mercy did not require or wish the standard badges of success. He preferred a simpler dwelling. But, it was her house, after all. The ghost of her presence permeated the walls and all the possessions enclosed by them. He could sooner take his life than discard that property and the memories rooted throughout it. He missed her; he lived a cold and sterile life without her. This once warm home was no longer a home at all, more like a second or third base of operations.

The house stood frozen in death as he entered through the kitchen and dropped his tablet on the dinette table. The only sounds were his footsteps, the dull clatter as he emptied his pockets onto the table, and the clink of glass as he fixed a drink of unsweetened orange juice. He downed the orange juice in one long draught, and poured another.

"Computer!" he bellowed into the quiet.

A primly female voice drifted down from the upstairs study, his wife's former sewing room. Mercy had gone to great expense to overwrite the stupidly happy voice that normally came with home units today; they drove him crazy. "Good evening, Mr. Mercy. How may I help you?"

"Security code seven-oh-four-alpha-eight-niner-two. Messages?"

"There are no messages on voice. You have two on E-mail. Mr. Barton from Marketing wants to know how to handle announcement of the Vector Absorber Model Four. Research and Development says the Model Four will not be fielded for at least–"

"You flash Barton that I don't pay him to talk to Research. He is to announce the product just as I delineated, and forget the availability date. If we don't get the jump on Matsubushi, our customers might look at their new stuff instead of ours. Next message."

"Mr. Eagleton from the Department of State replies that he has delivered your message. Your party will call you at or about 9:30 tonight."

Mercy nodded, satisfied. If that Tallman fellow really made trouble, certain people needed to know, and take action to protect themselves.

He stood there holding his glass, unsure of his next move. Actually, he knew what needed doing, but not who deserved the job. He needed someone to harass and disorient his enemies, a ferret to distract or even destroy certain competitors in case Decker never found that Indian or retrieved that stolen data. Who should he choose? He needed an effective group or individual, but circumspect and easily controlled. To keep the choices above zero, he omitted trust as a criterion. Few of his candidates were stable true believers motivated by simple patriotism. Most were delusional fanatics with axes to grind, or misanthropic criminals like Decker. Mercy saw no conflict in shopping for psychopaths to protect his vision of ordered home and hearth.

"Computer!" he yelled. "Display my data bases for nationally active action groups and" he hated to say it "enforcers."

Enforcer. Such a nefarious sound, but the only appropriate word for his needs. It took more cynicism than Mercy could muster to call them commandos, the label they preferred. Commandos, in Mercy's experience, were icy-eyed predators slaved to a deadly, but essential, purpose. The "action groups" and "enforcers" of Mercy's present experience seemed slaved, or perhaps enslaved, to little more than their own paranoia. They got together on weekends, moaned about their unfulfilled lives, lamented the alleged rise of jackbooted government in America, and shot up emptied beer bottles for fun and "readiness training". Still, they were organized, not just common thugs. They were also dangerous, if handled improperly.

Mercy sighed. The things he did to protect his country's future. Of course, if the politicians, the judges, and the goddamned liberal media really did their jobs, such tactics would not be necessary. Then he could work, prosper, and pay his taxes like every other American. Like it or not, Jonathan Taylor Mercy stood at the bulwark between what had been and what could come. For the sake of everything he knew, he obliged himself to fight, and persevere.

#

Philip Mackie and Anna Marie Dearing met for the first time in an office at the NBC affiliate in Phoenix. While preparing to host a discussion with the two candidates, the television station had, at Anna's request, provided the space for them to get acquainted. After chilled, but proper introductions, the two politicians dismissed their staffs and readied for combat. Anna lowered herself into an overstuffed chair and began to polish her glasses, while Mackie strolled to the huge wall of a window to look down at the demonstrators on the sidewalk. Indians, mostly, the protesters pleaded for the candidates' attention.

"Stop EOG now!"

"Equal rights are worth a fight!"

"The CAVALRY set our census!"

Mackie leaned against the windowsill, his lanky form hunched, his wrinkled face lined deeper by a frown. His white hair would be out of place for the interview, pinned as it was between his forehead and the window.

"I wonder," he mused, "how two national politicians of the same party, of similar beliefs and of similar ambition, could go so long without ever having met."

"I was in California. You were in DC and New York. Busy lives, busy times, and long distances."

"And now we finally meet, but as enemies." He turned to face her, sadness and worry in his eyes. "I don't like this any more than you, Governor Dearing, but I'm strong in the polls. That makes me a more logical choice to lead this party to the presidency. How do you explain your getting the nomination over three or four more successful candidates?"

"First of all," she said, concentrating on her glasses, "none of us are strong in the polls. In polls measuring the appeal of only Democratic candidates, you garner an approval rating in the high twenties. But when they measure against the sitting president, you hardly break 15%." She looked up at him with calculated concern. "The party knows we're lousy prospects, and any thought to the contrary is fantasy. Our prospects would be worse after a long, bruising primary fight. The party needs a candidate we can all get behind, with flare enough to represent a real alternative to Chenault. I'm a proven commodity, so they chose me." The words tasted of copper.

"This is unconscionable. It hearkens back to the bad old days of over a hundred years ago, when party bosses colluded to choose candidates over the will of the people. It isn't democracy."

"Where have you been, senator? It's been this way for decades. The primaries are just a formality. All they do is run off candidates already chosen by the party chairman."

"I don't like it."

"Neither do I."

Mackie pulled a chair close to Anna and sat down. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, and jutted his jaw into a hard look of defiance. "So, Governor, you plan to go through with this chicanery. And I notice my fellow prospective nominees have all dropped out, no doubt in deference to your superior charm and voter appeal." He said it with undisguised cynicism. "Well, I won't resign. I still have a chance at this. In fact, I'm going on to win both New Hampshire and Iowa, just to see how much I can shake Al Bennett's resolve in this matter."

"That would be ill advised," Anna said. "Please realize that the primaries are over. I am the nominee, with the full resources of the Democratic Party behind me. I don't want to, but I'll use those resources to win any way I can, at whatever cost to you."

"Threats? You sound like a Republican."

"Not threats. Call it fair warning. I'd rather have you with me on this, senator. I'm prepared to bargain to that end."

"If I win in New Hampshire and Iowa, Al Bennett will snatch those resources from you so fast you'll get whiplash."

She replaced her glasses. It was time yo educate the uninformed. She reached for the purse lying next to her chair, and pulled from it a cheap electronic tablet. She held it out to him. "If you've done your homework, and I know you always do, you'll recognize the names on this roster." She kept her voice flat, devoid of emotion.

Mackie took the tablet and scanned its dull LCD screen. "These are special committee assignments for the presidential campaign, at the National Committee level. What's the big deal? They always man these positions in order to make a campaign—" He stopped. "The chief people are all yours, especially where finances are concerned."

"That's right. It'll take considerable work for Al or anybody else to drop me as the party's nominee. With things as they are, I can weather a bump or two like New Hampshire and Iowa. They're only the first contests, after all, not the most important. But, please understand that I don't intend to lose any race."

Mackie sat quietly, staring at the tablet. Anna knew what he thought. Had Al gone crazy? Had he really surrendered his only real power, that of the pocket book, for her sake? But that meant the committee had courted her, not the other way around, a circumstance that threatened the logical assumption that she had maneuvered her way into the nomination after realizing she couldn't win up front.

"We don't have long," Anna said, looking at her watch. "Imagine. We go on the air in a few hours to discuss things that don't really matter anymore."

"They called me a few days ago," Mackie said. "They wanted me to agree to a new list of questions that recognized recent changes in the race."

"Did you go along?"

He did not look at her. "I was angry enough, but no. I don't believe in fighting with my colleagues on national TV. How about you?"

"They called me, too. I told them no."

Mackie tossed the tablet onto the floor beside her purse. He looked at her, but his eyes held a less combative expression, perhaps resignation. "I'm sixty-six years old," he said. "This is my last shot. I can't wait eight years for another chance. You understand that, don't you?"

Anna nodded. "Yes, I understand. I hope you understand that it makes no difference at all. If I have to run against you, I won't go easy. I don't want to lose these first two races."

Mackie shook his head. "Well, you'll have to oil your artillery, then. I'm not stepping aside. Would you step aside if they asked it of you?"

Anna recalled her meeting with McDonnel and Peterson. "No, senator, I don't believe I would."

Mackie rose from his chair. "Well, I'd say something insipid like 'may the best man win', but there's only one man here, so I guess that'd be rude." He walked back to the window. The demonstrators still chanted their pleas. "Whatever the outcome, I hope there are no hard feelings. I hope we can meet again in the future, and tell war stories and drink iced tea together, perhaps out on the White House lawn."

"There is an alternative to opposition."

"Please, I'm rapt with attention."

"I'd like you to run with me, as vice-president."

Mackie turned back to her. After a moment, his eyes returned to the glass. He chuckled, but without spirit.

"First threats, now bribes. No self-respecting megalomaniac like me would want to be vice-president. I'm close enough to death already."

"Under my administration, vice-president will be more than funerals and gavel banging at the Senate. It'll be half of a governing partnership."

"Isn't that a cliché by now? Sorry, not interested."

Anna considered pushing the idea further, but his tone prompted otherwise. She didn't want to insult him, on top of everything else.

"Then, I guess you're right. We are opposed. I'm sorry."

"You shouldn't be, Governor. We're not the kind of people to knuckle under at a word. I imagine the outcome of this meeting was clear from the beginning. Nonetheless, I'm glad we met. At least I can respect you while I go about kicking your ass."

She forced a smile. What else could she do? The TV guys wouldn't want them for another hour or so.

"You're such a gentleman," she said. "You make a girl feel right at home."

"I suppose you couldn't call me Phil? 'My Unworthy Opponent' seems so dry."

"I'll call you Phil if you call me Anna."

"That would be wonderful, Anna. But, not in public. In public, you'll call me 'that loony old man', and I'll call you a girl."

They both laughed, knowing that the opponent only one of them could meet would do far worse than that.

#

The park was nearly empty. Who sat outside, in Indiana, in January? Still, Chelsea counted two figures huddled on the benches there. One looked homeless: ragged, slumped, and accompanied by two bulging fibercell bags overflowing with God knew what. He sat on the long, curved, concrete bench behind Benjamin Harrison, mindless of the bronze president whose arthritic, bird-bombed hand reached poignantly toward the federal courthouse across the street. Chelsea thought the visionary Harrison far less stirring than the freezing indigent in his shadow. The latter spoke more of her country than any sentimental sculpture of a forgotten, second string president. Harrison saw only the great struggles ahead for his country, struggles which, as a one-term executive, he would not lead to the finish. The homeless man saw the approach of cold, dark night, with no reprieve from its chilling attack.

The other park visitor sat almost a block away on the opposite end of the grounds, past the several intervening trees, the dead flower gardens, and the dry, calcified fountain with its eternally playful water sprites. He sat back on a bench, his legs stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles, his hands rammed deep into the pockets of his overcoat. At a glance, he seemed to study the facade of the Indianapolis Athletic Club across the street from his bench, but there was no life in his pose, no interest. Steve Tallman wasn't in that park. His mind roamed far away.

He did not notice her cross the street, or approach along the sidewalk, and she stood at the end of his bench for several seconds without drawing his attention. His eyes darted introspectively, as if he analyzed some problem within. She waited, but the freezing weather cut through her flight suit and down jacket, making her tremble. She had never cared for the midwestern climate. She preferred the sun in LA.

"Hey, coma boy. Are you there? Earth to Steve!"

He flinched, and turned toward her. "Oh. Hi, Chelsea. What are you doing out here?"

"I was worried about you. Is there room for company?"

He nodded toward the bench. She sat down beside him.

"You're shivering," he said.

"Do I look like an Arctic explorer? This time of day in LA, I'd be finishing my tan in the back yard. Cuddle?"

She scooted against his side. He draped an arm around her shoulders and casually hugged her close.

"Better?" he asked.

"You're about as warm as a snowman, but you'll do. So, tell me what's bothering you, or do I use all my female wiles to drag it out of you?"

"What makes you think something's bothering me?"

"So, that's the way it's gonna be? Anna will be pissed."

"I say again, what makes you think–"

"Fifteen years, that's what. You always shoot off by yourself when something's eating you. And you always seem to look for the most inhospitable place imaginable." She shivered again. "This place sure fits the bill."

"It's a beautiful place in the warm season. Not so much now, but quiet. I'm thinking about dropping this EOG thing."

"Wouldn't bother me. I could get back to Cali. Why the change of heart?"

"No change of heart. More like a change of circumstance. This thing seemed so promising at first. Now, two weeks into the story, we have zilch. I have six satcams tied up in this thing, six satcams that could be used elsewhere. Sam and that Smith kid are stuck out in Montana somewhere on what looks like a wild goose chase with some survivalist group or personal militia, or whatever. All that work, and all we have is travel log."

"A little more than travel log, I think."

"Well, sure, we can use some of this stuff, but only as supporting documentation. It's all circumstantial, small-time. A story built on conjecture."

Chelsea looked up into his hard-lined, tired face. His eyes showed red from within dark circles of slack skin. She knew his habitual response to thorny problems. He hadn't slept a single decent night since taking on the story. During the war, he had gone for weeks with irregular sleep, looking in the end like some terrible copper-skinned wraith. But that was a younger Steve Tallman, and lack of sleep had been the least abuse his body could expect. She wondered how he handled such punishment after fifteen additional years of mileage.

"Maybe you should talk to Ben. He got this whole thing started, after all."

"That's another problem." Steve's jaw muscles tightened before he spoke again. "I've tried to reach Ben since the day this all started. That day of the video conference? I auto-redialed his number for eight straight hours. He never picked up. I left messages at the desk. He never returned them. I found out a few days ago that he hadn't been to his room in at least a week, maybe longer, and that they had to clear out his stuff to make way for another reservation. The hotel called his credit company to terminate the charges, or he'd still be paying for that room today. I don't know where he is, and that worries me."

Chelsea sat up. She twisted to get a good look into his eyes. "Have you told anyone about this?"

His sheepish grin answered her even before he spoke. "I would've told you, if anybody."

"Ben's missing? Have you called any of his offices?"

"They can't find him, either. I even called some of his contacts in DC."

"Call the police, Steve. He might be in trouble."

"Oh, he's in trouble, all right. I know my uncle enough to have figured that one out. But he hasn't been kidnapped, killed, or any such thing. Some of his contacts and even some of his targets in DC have heard from him over the last two weeks. E-mail, voice mail, and even a few actual phone calls, and all definitely from him. He still conducts normal business, he just does it on the move, and without leaving forwarding addresses. I think he's running from somebody."

"From the people you're after?"

"I imagine, but from me, too. I mean, this EOG thing is such a big deal with him, and yet he hasn't returned any of my calls, or answered any of my messages. He talks to his other contacts, but not to me. It's as if I don't exist. I'd almost think he had some personal motive for stiffing me like this, but it's all too weird, even for Ben."

"More reason to call the police."

"And tell them what? My uncle, who has a history of flying in and out of my life like some migratory bird, is missing? Though I haven't a shred of proof, I think he might be running from crazed neo-nazis and/or right wing paranoid superpatriots? Although he fears for his life, he's keeping up regular communications, including budget disbursements to his office workers in DC and Phoenix, and he continues to lobby congressmen and pay the utilities at both his residences, also in DC and Phoenix? I don't think so."

"Oh, for pity's sake! Are you worried about him, or not?" She jumped to her feet, kicked the sidewalk and tucked her hands under her armpits to hold in some warmth. She blew cold steam in his direction. "You do this all the time. You try to depersonalize— You turn everything into some kind of story, and spend so much energy fitting together the plot points that you don't even notice that the story is your life."

She looked away, frustrated. The homeless man still sat in the shadow of Harrison. Of course. Where else could he go? "Your uncle's missing, Steve. Forget the authorship of it. Why not get pissed, or panicked, like any normal person?"

She huffed steam into the park.

"Why don't I get angry?" he echoed. "You already know the reason." He reached for the chain around his neck and pulled the pill dispenser that hung from it, the one he carried everywhere, into view from within his coat. He jiggled it like a maraca, then enveloped it in one hand to silence the dry clatter of its contents. He rose and stood beside her. "We'd better get inside. You'll catch something nasty."

He started up the sidewalk toward the building, two blocks away. She joined him.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I forgot."

"It's okay. You don't have the everyday reminders. You don't have the drugs, you don't have the stress regimen, and you don't have a bar code tattooed on your arm. So, what really got you worried? And none of that psychic nonsense about fifteen years of friendship."

"Emma's been monitoring your mail."

He issued one loud bark of laughter. "That Emma. I thought I hired her as an administrative assistant, not a secret policeman."

"She's exactly the assistant you need. She thinks when you don't. For instance, why haven't you returned Anna's calls? Does this story have you so thoroughly overworked that you don't have time for the important people in your life?"

"Anna and I have adopted phone tag as a kind of hobby, an admittedly pathetic one, but there it is."

"Yes, there it is. I noticed how quickly you delivered that excuse. Have you been mulling it for long?"

"Since when is this your business, Van Arsdale?"

"Oh, please! And what about Patricia? Have you spoken to her in the last two weeks? Have you told her about Ben? Steve, this is the same nonsense that got you in trouble with Belinda. I warned you about it then, and I'm warning you now."

"Okay, Mom. Any more concerns?"

"Yeah. You look like shit. When was the last time you slept?"

He failed to answer. They walked in silence a few moments.

"Steve? Do I have to sound like the doctors? Do you want to fall to this sidewalk in a convulsive fit you might not overcome? You can't do this stuff anymore. You have to look out for your health."

"I don't want to sleep," he said. "I'm having those damned dreams again."

"What, the bear dreams?" This worried Chelsea. Steve's Apache side bothered her. She didn't understand it. It was as foreign and convoluted as eastern mysticism.

"Yes, the Bear dreams. Sort of. Only now they have more structure. The Bear doesn't just show up from time to time. The dreams are about the Bear."

"I always thought you should see a shrink about those things. Recurring dreams are supposed to be symptoms of deep obsessive-compulsive problems, maybe something to do with the war."

He looked at her again, this time puzzled. After a moment, he forced a grin. "No, chief. The only war baggage I carry around is right here," and he slapped the vial through his coat.

They turned the corner. The Thomson Building loomed before them on the other side of the road.

"Ben appreciates the dreams," Steve continued. "Granddaddy taught that dreams like mine don't mean you're crazy; they're hints of approaching destiny."

"Your mom told me once that Granddaddy was about 10% genuine shaman and 90% full of shit."

He laughed again. "The women in my life! Always ganging up on me, making sure I take care of myself. You recall Mom hoped I would marry you?"

"You recall I told her I wouldn't marry you on a money bet?"

"Actually, I never knew about that one..."

"Oh? Never mind."

#

Tommy Jacketer watched as they rose from the park bench, first her, then the man. He watched as they set off north on the sidewalk, as they crossed the empty street at the light. He did not move until they disappeared around the corner of the Athletic Club. Then he reached into his ragged jacket and took out the cell phone.

"He's headed back," he said after a moment. "Now, am I done? I'm freezing my ass off."

"Verify that he's really headed back to the building. You can't see it from there, can you?"

"For Christ's sake, what's the point? Of course he's going back to the building. That's where his goddamned car is. He can't get home without his goddamned car."

"Look, Tommy, I don't like this any more than you, but that's how somebody called it. Now, get on his tail. We need to know exactly what he's up to."

"I can guess that. He left here with a woman. If you need it, I think he has a girlfriend."

"What I need is you on his tail. And don't follow too close. That's what screwed you the first time."

And got me on this shit-kickin' lousy detail, Tommy thought. He clicked off the phone, returned it to his jacket, and stood. He wondered a moment what to do with the fibercell bags on the bench, the ones he had filled from a dumpster outside the Star-News Building across the street. Ah, to hell with it. With a little pretense, Old Ben Harrison could look on them as fat, shiny acolytes hoping to hear his life's story.

Tommy hurried down the sidewalk to a yellow Ford Mustang parked at one of the meters along the curb. He touched the ignition, checked the charge, and executed a tight U-turn that headed him the wrong way down a one-way street. He turned left at the intersection, correcting that transgression, and continued along the road past the bench where his subjects had sat, past the corner where they had crossed, and on to Michigan Street, a block farther on. To hell with this secret agent crap, he thought. To hell with these nasty clothes and freezing to death while pretending to be a bum, just to watch a goddamned celebrity meet some airy bitch with retro taste in clothes. He would pull around front of the Thomson Building, park at one of the meters across from the garage exit (they were free at that time of day), and wait in comfort for his subject to reappear. He could even listen to his favorite radio station, or one of the cards from the console. If not for the money, he probably would have taken his toys and gone home long ago. Forget the defend-America-get-the-traitors line they had fed him. When you're out of work and barely keeping it together, money spoke louder than patriotism.

He turned west on Michigan Street and started looking for a meter. The radio jabbered with digital crispness. A sale was on at Macy's.

#

State Road 44 sang a continuous whine of rubber, unnoticed by Ben. He preferred more comfortable surroundings, the luxury chain hotels with four-star restaurants, or at least his big adobe in Phoenix. This mom-and-pop motel just outside Cuba, New Mexico was clean and respectable, but its furniture spoke of wear and the closest thing to room service was the fast food strip down the road. Well, it was worth the discomfort to play out the game just a little longer.

He walked slowly, tiredly along the sidewalk toward the ice machine, marveling at his management of the circumstances. He knew they searched for him. His contacts in DC and next door in Arizona informed him of all inquiries concerning his whereabouts, and had even found the bugs on their phone lines. Luckily, his hunters showed more tenacity than professionalism, for a person could do only so much to conceal his location in this surveillance society. Ben had run through all his tricks at least twice. Now he noticed a drop-off in interest, as if they concentrated on containing rather than finding him. That was fine, for Ben had no desire to meet his predators. Of course, that might mean a broadening of the hunt to include other logical targets, so he carefully failed to return his nephew's calls. Ben expected swift and brutal retaliation once they knew where to strike, and Steve, unaware of his danger, was painfully vulnerable. The thought caused Ben to reach into his jacket pocket, to stroke the hard-edged comfort that rested there with businesslike patience.

Here he crouched in a motel outside Cuba, a day's drive from the home reservation, only a few minutes out of Jacarilla Apache Reservation where he had met a friend who would contact Steve and warn him of the danger. Ben dared not enter his own lands; even the Jacarilla was a dangerous gamble. Both reservations, perhaps all Apache lands, undoubtedly fell under the enemy's eye.

Anyway, he was done here, and would leave the state by morning. He would drop off the car in Albuquerque (it was rented from Santa Fe), then buy his way onto the first domestic flight that steered clear of Arizona, Indiana, and Washington, DC.

Ben yawned. How long could he keep it up? Age slowed him, and his other work suffered. EOG wasn't the only matter targeted by NAM, just the biggest. There was the gaming rights conflict between the Bureau of Land Management and the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona, and the Miami Indians' petition for recognition by the federal government, among others. He hoped Steve would get his butt in gear and put that computer data on the air. That would expose EOG as the racist plot it was, and kill it in the House.

The ice machine looked nearly as old as Ben, but it worked, and was full. He jammed the little plastic bucket from his room into the hopper and lifted out a heaping pile of glistening cubes. Back in the room, he would mix them with the liquid contents of what he jokingly called his medicine bag, and relax himself into sleep. Captain Morgan's rum made a good sedative.

"Mr. Tallman." Someone grabbed his shoulder.

He jumped, dropping some of the ice. He turned to find a tall, stocky man in jeans, tee shirt and a nylon windbreaker standing a few feet away, and Ben hadn't heard his approach. The man wore glasses, thick ones.

"Are you Ben Tallman?" he asked in a voice that already knew the answer.

"You gave me quite a scare, young man," Ben said, recovering. "Didn't your folks teach you about sneaking up on people?"

"Mr. Tallman, we don't have the time. You've led a lot of people on quite a chase. My friends have business with you."

Others stood behind the man, three of them. Two dressed similarly to their spokesman with the glasses, and one wore a cheap blue business suit. This last was balding and a little overweight, though his friends looked more like bodybuilders off some California muscle beach. Excepting the overweight guy in the suit, who pushed fifty if a day, Ben guessed the others to be in their twenties. They stood in a semi-circle around him, caging him in against the ice machine and the motel wall.

"The data prism, Mr. Tallman," the man with the glasses said. "Where is it?"

"Excuse me? I think you earnest young men have the wrong fella. Why don't you check your address before somebody embarrasses himself."

"I told you," hissed the guy in the suit. "And you said just ask him. Let's take this son of a bitch to somewhere more private to talk."

"Quiet, Mr. Schooley," the man with the glasses said.

"Wha—? You aren't supposed to use names!"

Christ, Ben thought. I wish they'd kill me. Such ineptitude is painful to watch.

"Quiet!" the man with the glasses snapped. He frowned at Ben. "My folks taught me how to behave with people, Mr. Tallman, but that only goes so far. All I want, all my people want, is that data prism. You give it to us, and we'll have a little talk, and that's the end of it. No hard feelings."

"Well, you certainly look law abiding..." Ben tried to hide the acid in his voice. "Tell you what. I'll see if I have any stray data prisms, then mail 'em to you no postage due. How about that? Can you leave your names and addresses at the desk?"

"Jesus! How much of this you gonna put up with?" Mr. Schooley sweated through his cheap suit like bologna out in the sun.

"He's right," one of the other men said. "This place is awfully public."

"Hear that, Mr. Tallman?" the man with the glasses said. "It would be easier if you cooperated."

"Fuck cooperation," Schooley said. "Just grab the son of a bitch!"

"Hey, what's goin' on out there?" somebody called from one of the rooms.

The man with the glasses shook his head. "Go get the car," he said to Schooley. Then he nodded to his muscular friends. "Okay, let's take him."

The man with the glasses clamped a hand onto Ben's arm. Ben heaved the bucket of ice. The frozen missiles scattered his assailants and gave him a chance to run. The plastic bucket shot through the air, smacking Schooley square in the face.

"That tears it!" Schooley said, staggering backward. He recovered, moved to intercept, and slammed his fist hard into Ben's face. Ben felt white pain, saw spots, and crumpled to the sidewalk like a bag of rocks.

"Now, get him while I get the car," Schooley said. "Son of a bitch shined my eye, I bet." He stomped toward a sedan pulled diagonally across three parking spaces.

Ben tried to lift himself, but Schooley's punch had dazed him. He was too old to get in a fight, he thought. This was ridiculous.

He felt hands gripping his shoulders and hauling him up. He tried to get his legs under him, but they moved without bones, and with the barest coordination.

"Hey! Leave the old man alone!" A motel patron stood in his doorway a few feet from Ben's attackers, holding a hair dryer in one hand.

The man with the glasses threw the newcomer a scowl. "This doesn't concern you, mister."

"Leave him alone. We're calling the police right now."

Nice move, Ben thought. They're only at least ten minutes away. He tried again to control his legs. He moved them more skillfully now, but to no advantage. The man with the glasses held him by the scruff of his neck. The other thugs held his arms.

"I'm telling you, let him go!" the patron ordered. Another guest appeared at a doorway. The place came alive with lighted windows.

The man with the glasses reached under his jacket and snatched out a long-barreled revolver. He pointed it right at the hair dryer man. "Go home. Now."

Ben grabbed for the plastic box in his pocket, upsetting everyone's balance. Suddenly, he was free. His hand flew from under his jacket straight into the chest of the man with the glasses. The man yelped once, stiffened, and jumped off the sidewalk. The gun roared, shattering a section of wall just above the heads of the two men grappling for Ben's arms.

"Holy shit! That almost got me!"

"He's got a shock box!"

A car lurched to the curb. The man with the glasses crumpled to the ground, his pistol clattering into the dark. The resident with the hair dryer stepped over the body and swung his plastic weapon at the first convenient head. He missed, and whacked the man's shoulder instead. Down the walk, the office door flew open. Someone ran toward them, something long in his hands.

"Fuck this!" Schooley shouted from the car. "Let's get out of here!"

Someone shoved the hair dryer man hard in the chest. The good Samaritan stumbled, then fell on top of Ben. The two musclemen grabbed their leader, whose glasses were no longer evident, and dragged him into the car. Seconds later, the vehicle disappeared into the distance on State Road 44.

"Hey, you all right?" the hotel patron asked, helping Ben to his feet. "Those guys try to mug you, or what?"

"Yeah," Ben murmured, "I guess." He felt his face. A little blood there.

"Maybe you better come in for a minute, old guy."

"No, thanks. It's all over now." Ben gathered his composure, though with difficulty. The gunshots had unnerved him.

The office clerk arrived, toting a shotgun. A number of other guests crowded around, checking that Ben was okay. He assured them he was, even tried to laugh off the incident. Finally, he sidestepped the focus, as everyone related their exciting eye witness reports to the crowd. Still, someone noticed Ben's intent search of the ground, and asked what he was doing.

"Looking for my stuff," he said with convincing pathos. "I dropped my glasses, and my shock box. Can't see 'em anywhere."

Someone organized a search. They found the items and placed them in Ben's hands. He offered his thanks and excused himself. All the excitement had rattled his nerves, he said. Yes, he would be around when the police arrived.

But he packed when he got to his room. The first things into his lone suitcase were the glasses and the long-barreled revolver he had taken from the sidewalk. The shock box, by then fully recharged, went back to his jacket.

Ben's rental car pulled onto the highway seconds before the police arrived. He did not close out his bill. It was paid in advance, anyway, under a false name.

#

Jonathan Taylor Mercy sipped his tomato soup dinner in the old sewing room turned study, mesmerized by a digital replay of the evening news. He watched the same story for the third time, amazed by his good fortune. If what he thought panned out, it meant an almost poetic irony to come.

"Computer, freeze frame," Mercy said. His perfect enforcer shone from the screen. Motive and ego made the man a weapon, but gullibility made him pliable. Best, not even the most imaginative tracker could trace him to Mercy's network. This man and his organization were the perfect tools to set right the mistakes of the last few weeks.

"Reverse image frame-by-frame, half second intervals. Again. Again. Again. Give me hard copy."

He listened to the laser printer hum in the corner as it printed the image from Mercy's computer screen. He did not know the face that glowered from that screen. He recognized instead the hatred that spread from the associated voice, a hatred targeting the electronic press, especially the crews of See It Now, the show produced by Tallman's nephew. Here was Mercy's weapon, already in place, ready for use. It just needed the means, and the direction. Mercy would channel the printer image to a convincing proxy, along with money and appropriate lies, and so supply that means and direction.

The face on the screen, the face rolling off the printer, was that of Donald Washington.

Chapter Eight:

Naptown Again,

and The Big Apple Contemplated

 (Back to Contents)

Having grown up in Burma under the vicious, random oppressions of dictatorship, Emma had learned to detect disguised secret policemen. As a child she had known neighbors to disappear, their belongings languishing unattended in their homes until word got around and the community came to pick through the leavings. She recalled helping her father and brothers "shop" in the home of a vanished neighbor. She remembered it as a solemn activity, governed by silence. No one mentioned the missing as they picked through the abandoned remains of a house once full of lives. No one spoke at all. They sifted the deserted treasures as if executing the estate of one deceased, as indeed was probably the case. No one saw the activity as theft.

She remembered the street corner in Mandalay, when she was twelve. Her father held her hand as they waited for the bus. One moment an old man stood next to her, then people leapt from a suddenly stopped car. They grabbed the old man, threw him into the car, and sped off around the corner. He was gone. Everyone on the sidewalk, her father included, froze for a moment, bewildered, then returned to their waiting as if nothing had happened. To them, the old man had never been.

From these and incidents like them, Emma learned the virtue of circumspection. She feared looking at the wrong things, doing the wrong things, knowing the wrong people, and being discovered. She knew not only to watch those around her, including neighbors and friends, but to make herself, in the end, unwatchable.

Emma's lovely dark face presented a deadpan expression to the world, a wall revealing nothing of her thoughts or feelings. Her impassive mask had accompanied her on her family's sudden run into Laos all those years ago. It preceded her into Vietnam, and then to the United States. It served as armor in this still strange land, where policemen interacted openly with the people, and deserved the people's respect. The mask so defined her that it stayed with her even in privacy. It fell away only, and rarely, when she moved amid those few Americans she had learned to trust, with difficulty.

Her wary mind noticed the yellow Mustang when she left for home one evening, but she dismissed it as just another car on the curb. It was still there the next morning, and again near noon when she glanced from Steve's window down to the street to gauge the lunchtime traffic. She felt uneasy. What fool sat at a meter all day and night across the street from a parking garage?

Then the message arrived for Steve, a same-day delivery letter from a man no one knew, who lived on an Indian reservation in New Mexico. Steve called his staff together, including Emma, and read them the letter, a warning from his Uncle Ben that people might be watching them, potentially violent members of the hate groups they investigated. Steve advised everyone to warn their people and take appropriate care, and asked Emma to transmit the same warning, without explanation, to all See It Now regional centers, and to the satcam crews in the field.

Emma broke for lunch upon completing that task. She did not eat at her desk by the elevators, as was usual. She grabbed some carrot sticks from her bag and took a walk along the street outside. She pointedly crossed in front of the yellow Mustang. A man slumped in the driver's seat, eating a hamburger while watching the building.

Emma continued onto and down the sidewalk, trying not to glance behind her. She set herself a new errand, one made imperative by her discovery of the man in the car. Her heels clicked along the walk. She sliced through heavily wrapped office workers puffing frozen vapor through their scarves and mufflers. They made decisions on restaurants, or gossipped, or discussed which indoor atriums were the warmest and most hospitable for brown bagging. Emma marveled at how safe and relaxed these people felt in their land, with the secret police, or worse, operating unseen among them. She knew herself, and that she never again would be food for those beasts. She walked with stoked purpose toward her errand.

#

The package arrived during lunch, addressed to Kenny Beacham.

"It scared the hell out of me," Kenny said. "I hope it was misdirected."

Steve checked the handwritten address. "It's from Ben."

"Tell your goddamned uncle to forget he ever heard my name. If this is a practical joke, it's way short on humor." Beacham's t-shirt flashed red-to-black. A white-line animation of an ICBM climbed skyward from his waist toward his neck, slow motion and detailed with smoke and flames.

Steve extracted the box's contents from a mess of wadded paper and laid each item on the worktable. The table had plenty of room. Emma had been cleaning.

"A pair of glasses. An envelope addressed to me." He held it up to the light of the window. "Looks like a short note. Are these what scared you?" He put down the envelope and reached again into the box. "Well, I'll be damned..." He lifted the pistol high into the light and turned it over in his hand.

"If I had any say, you would be damned," Kenny said, "and your whole family with you."

Steve checked the pistol, working the safety and the cylinder to ensure it wasn't loaded. Satisfied, he put down the gun and continued searching the box. There was nothing more to find.

He tore open the envelope and extracted its one scrap of motel stationary. He read silently for a moment.

"I'll need your help on this, Beachman."

Kenny eyed him. "IQ's have dropped significantly around here. What part of 'no damned way' don't you understand, good buddy?"

"Ben got grabbed by thugs the other night. Says they worked for Mercy, or one of his partners. They wanted the EOG disk. These glasses," he held them up, "came off one of the thugs. Ben also supplies the name of an assailant, and the license number of their car. Then there's this." He held up the gun. "It came off the guy with the glasses. Ben thinks these might be of help."

"Well, hell. You ought to have him on your staff. He gets mugged in two minutes and gets more info than all your fancy reporters could raise in two weeks."

"What can we do with this stuff, Kenny?"

Beacham scratched his chin. The missile on his shirt cleared the stitching around his collar; the animation looped to the beginning again. "Well, you can trace the car if you go through the BMV files of every state, one at a time, or if you can break into the national police net. Of course, the car might be stolen, in which case you waste your time. You might also trace the pistol registration, if the pistol is registered. I'm not sure about the glasses. If the prescription is odd enough, if the lenses are bar coded for safe return, if the optometrist is online, you might trace the owner, but it's a long shot. That's all info-ops stuff, only a short stretch of it, at that. You have guys on a string who do that stuff. You don't need me for it."

"I do need you, Beachman. I can't ask just anybody. We have to keep this thing strictly low profile, and you know how wareheads brag. In the process of tracing Ben's thugs, we have to ensure we aren't traced ourselves."

Kenny nodded toward the gun that Steve had picked up again. "This thing's turning just as ugly as I told you it would. I have to say again, I don't want any part of it. As your friend, I say you should give it up, too."

"Come on, Beachman, you know that can't happen. And it isn't as if I'm asking you to strap on a cannon and save the world."

"You mean like you're strapping on your shining armor to do the same thing?"

"The truth is important, Beachman. Without it, you couldn't count on that nice, cushy engineering job where you set your own hours and work your own agenda."

"That's a stretch, don't you think?"

"Ask Emma. She'll explain it to you."

They stood, staring at each other. Steve's eyes burned from exhaustion. He held the pistol hanging at his side. Kenny shifted from foot to foot.

"I need you to do this, Beachman. I can't do it. I'm no good at info-tech. Hell, you can even use my workstation. If anybody follows up, they'll think I'm the culprit."

"You're too good, Tallman. I understand how you got soldiers to volunteer for suicide missions back in the war. You're a rock. You got the walk. People just want to trust you, just so they don't feel guilty anymore.

"But I'm not one of your little army minions. I can think. So, what is it? If I don't help you, it's the bloody end of the United States of America. If I do help you, I either get wasted by gangsters, or I get you wasted by gangsters because I was a wiener. Where in this deal am I supposed to win?"

Steve dropped his eyes to the floor for a second. He wanted to hide disappointment with his friend, but his body, barely standing, didn't care what he wanted. He plopped the gun into the box. "You're right, Kenny. There's no winning hand in this game. Forget it. I'll get one of our consultants on the job. I'm sure we can find one who'll keep his mouth shut."

"Well, yeah. Just pay him enough."

"That'll probably work."

"Okay, well, I'm getting back to work. You wanted to know how the cops got hold of Sam's location that night in Watts. I'm working on that now."

"That's great, Kenny. You do that."

#

Kenny left the office as quickly as possible. The superhero complex manifested in the See It Now journalism staff did not extend to him. He was just a research man, after all, who saw his escape from Steve's latest request as a victory of common sense over masochism. Steve lived for the crusader stuff, but Kenny only wanted a comfortable income and a quiet household. His association with Steve had more than fulfilled the first aspiration, and he had no wish to put the second in jeopardy.

He passed through the common offices, where an army of drones did the real, tedious grunt work that held See It Now together. They were fact checkers, researchers, accountants, schedulers, data entry and legal people. No heroes there. They did their jobs and went home at night. When they ran into problems, they yelled for assistance. Steve could learn from his low-pay cubicle army. He needed to think with their pragmatic clarity. He needed help, yes, but not the dramatic all-balls-to-keyboards nonsense he saw in old movies. Somewhere out in that big, open country, someone had done his work for him. Ben Tallman's NAM buddies knew who that person was, so why hadn't Steve contacted the author of EOG_Back.tdoc? Did he hold the print media in such disregard that he would not consult the story's original researcher? Was it bad journalistic form to confer with a guy about information stolen from his notes? Did anyone at See It Now even know the original source's identity? Maybe Ben Tallman had disappeared before disclosing that information. Was he too busy evading his hunters to impart that bit of data?

Later, in his office, Kenny munched a sandwich brought up from the cafeteria, and tasted hardly a bite of it. He slouched at his desk, blond locks falling to block his face like some bedraggled mop. He stared at the photo kept in ready view on the desktop, the one of his wife Cindy and little Aaron. Steve would never ask the lunatic favors he sometimes did if he had ever met the two souls that mattered most in Kenny's life. Sure, police files were easy to penetrate, but the penalties for doing so were severe. Far safer to concentrate on the unknown author of EOG_Back.tdoc, and secure his cooperation in bringing that story to light.

Come to think of it, oblique ways existed for getting information out of difficult to access sources. NAM had stolen their data off a trickle port exploitation on the man's home station. They would have deleted the hot data once transferred to prism, but the NAM workstation to do the job might still maintain a time log of the transaction. If he could locate the correct workstation and worm his way into its system log, he could possibly locate not only the date and time of the data theft, but who did the job. It wasn't dramatic in Steve's operatic way, but he could call the guy who stole the file and ask him who the author was. Much safer, NAM being virtually in league with See It Now, than hunting up restricted information on a hostile police net.

Kenny laughed. So, Steve had gotten him to work, after all, and on something vital to the investigation. Had he done so on purpose? Probably not. Steve wasn't the devious type; he was uncomfortably straightforward in his requests. That was his great power, the thing that made it hard to turn him down.

Well, if he intended to do it, he had better start soon. The NAM people were devious, and very competent. Entering their net would challenge even an old warehead like Kenny. He forgot about other business, about the improvements he pushed for the next generation of satcams, almost ready, and about the puzzle of Sam's traceable camera. He concentrated on the spy work of entering, undetected, a well-guarded security system.

In doing so, he found not only the answer to his immediate question, the authorship of EOG_Back.tdoc, but he solved other mysteries, as well.

#

"I want to buy a gun," Emma said quietly, matter-of-factly, as if ordering a pack of chewing gum. She stood before the counter at Sack's Downtown Guns, prim, neat, and angelic in her calm disinterest. She was so much the antithesis of the stereotypical gun buyer that the salesman suppressed inappropriate amusement rising on his face.

"Of course, little lady." He beamed. "Now, is that a pistol, rifle, shotgun—"

"Pistol, please."

"And is it a sporting weapon, or for home defense?" He knew exactly what she wanted. Every fine, delicate secretary type wanted the same. She wanted it compact and light enough to fit (illegally, by the way) into her purse. A confidence builder.

"For defense," she said in the same quiet tone. She looked small standing before the glass counter, not even glancing at the collection of pistols under her nose. The salesman could not picture this petit, round-faced Asian lady on the firing range downstairs. He considered steering her toward mace, or a nice shock box. A real weapon seemed too much for her. But, he was in business to stay in business, not to sidetrack customers from their intents. A gun she wanted, a gun she would get.

"Here's a model just your size," he said, unlocking the counter back and removing a small automatic. "It's a .22 caliber Beretta Model L7. It's lightweight, very compact, and a real confidence builder, I'll tell you that. Carries nine rounds of ammo, more than enough to scare away that sound at the back porch."

She took the little pistol, rotating it first one way, then the other in her hand. No expression crossed her face.

"This is too small," she decided. "I need one with more stomping power."

The salesman chuckled, not unkindly. "You mean stopping power."

"Yes, stopping power."

He retrieved the little Beretta and replaced it in the cabinet even as he withdrew another, slightly larger weapon. "This here's the Smith & Wesson Model 80 Lady Smith. It's a .38 special, means the bullet's bigger. Takes only five rounds, but the muzzle velocity is greater, and it maintains a light, compact frame for ease of transport and handling—"

"What's that?" Emma interrupted, tapping her finger on the glass above a large, rough-edged automatic with an oddly long hand grip, like that of a battery operated power drill.

"Oh, you don't want that. It's too big."

"It isn't a good gun?"

"It's a great gun, if you're hunting buffalo. But it's too big for you. I doubt you could comfortably reach the trigger, it weighs a ton, and it'll knock you— well, it's somewhat difficult to control."

"Let me see it."

"Okay." The salesman pressed his lips together, trying not to broadcast disapproval. "I really think you'd be happier with the Smith. This thing wasn't designed for the average owner. It requires more maintenance, it's big, and it's heavy. It's more of a police weapon."

He placed the pistol on the countertop, sure she would change her mind once she tried to lift it.

"The Colt Silver Eagle, pulse action .45 caliber automatic in the 40-watt range. Needs batteries to run at full power, but the muzzle velocity coupled with the big bullet can blow a hole the size of a bowling ball through any door you choose."

Emma grasped the oversized handgrip and lifted the weapon. It was heavy for her; the salesman noticed her forearm tighten from the weight. She moved the weapon side-to-side, straining to overcome its momentum at the end of each swing. Her fingers wrapped the handgrip easily, and she reached the trigger without effort.

"How many bullets?"

"Twelve rounds. You also need a separately sold battery, maybe two, and the charger stand. The pistol works without battery power, but the response time gets sluggish, the muzzle velocity falls off sharply, and it becomes prone to jams. The battery also adds 12% to the weight. You know, we have a few 9mm pistols here that are a lot easier to use, and the weight—"

"I'll take this one."

The salesman looked at her a moment, then shrugged. "Okay, but I warn you, that's a big, nasty weapon. Not a whole lot of men would take on a pistol like that. It has the kick of a whole team of mules, snaps hard to the left, and it'll wear out your arm on the range."

"Do you take VISA?"

"We take anything legal. Would you like a nice lock box with that? Trigger guards are free with purchase."

"Yes. And a shoulder holster."

Now, this was too much. "Lady, you carry that in a shoulder holster, you'll walk with a very pronounced stagger, like Igor off those Frankenstein movies."

"A good shoulder holster, please."

"Okay. Our sales policy is no returns on merchandise fired off the premises, though a reputable used firearms buyer might take it off your hands for forty or fifty cents on the dollar."

"I won't be returning it." She handed him her VISA. "Your sign says you have a firing range. May I test the gun, please?"

"You bet. Would you like to do that before the purchase?"

"No. I'm buying the gun. I just want to get used to it, if I can."

"Your call." The salesman formulated his pitch for when she changed her mind. The first blast from that cannon would more than take care of that.

They completed the usual transaction rituals.

"All right, that'll be seven working days for the cool-down period, then you can pick it up. That'll be about..." He checked his wall calendar.

"I want to take it with me."

"Of course you do, but you have to wait seven working days."

"What is this seven days for?"

"Like I said, cooling-off period. They don't want angry girlfriends buying stuff like this to give their significant others what-for."

"I'm no girlfriend. I need the gun now."

The salesman spread his palms in a gesture of helplessness. "Lady, sorry. It's the law. You can wait a lousy week. What are you expecting, a war?"

"No," she said, collecting her receipts, "a police action."

#

He was at it again. She could tell by the clothes scattered everywhere, the overflowing garbage cans, the fast food refuse littering the kitchen, living room, and Alfred's table. The refrigerator stank. From the looks of things, it hadn't run in quite a while. The first thing Patricia Tallman did after her initial inspection of the house was call someone to fix the fridge. Then she extracted her meager load of luggage from the little Sunracer's trunk and dropped it in her room, not bothering to unpack. She flopped onto the bed and frowned at the ceiling, wondering why she had bothered to come home at all. Her father was engrossed in some new crusade. Only a miracle would find him home for longer than it took to shower, shave and empty a bag from McDonald's. For all she knew, he already did those things downtown.

So she lay on her bed in an empty house, just as Mom had predicted. But it was better than listening to Mom's ceaseless carping over Dad, though only by degrees.

She noticed her tablet propped against her bags, and stretched to snatch it up. After finding the neighborhood microwave node, she had the little slate online. Mom had let her miss two weeks of class, but Dad, if he ever noticed, would not be happy. It was too late for the classes, they were done and gone, but she could knock out all the assignments stacked up and be back on track in no time. But first she had some admin work to do.

The school frowned on unauthorized vacations. Letters to that effect probably sat in the mailbox, even on Dad's e-mail. But Patricia was good with that sort of thing. It only took her minutes to bypass the school's crappy security and make herself the student she thought she ought to be.

She finished adjusting her student record, then logged onto the assignments index. Her listing was long, but she delved in immediately, starting with the difficult stuff. Better to get it out of the way, then coast into the math and information sciences. She banged away at the onscreen keyboard. The more it clicked, she grinned, the more she learned, as if learning were based on volume exposure. Patricia dismissed drill and repetition as nuisance work. She remembered most things after one exposure. It was a talent she squandered, along with her intuitive understanding of software structures.

She called up her onboard clock. The lateness surprised her, and Dad wasn't home yet. She would eat alone, as usual. Then she realized, irritated, that the fridge repairman hadn't come. Well, who the hell cared? It wasn't her job to fix refrigerators. At seventeen, she should be at a movie, or the mall, or a club, or something. Other kids had such blessings, why not her?

Well, he wouldn't slip out on her that easy. She was through with long nights in their tomb of a house. If her two-week vacation hadn't emphasized that point, then Dad needed further education. She clicked off her tablet. Enough student work. Now she became the teacher. He would feed her supper, personally and without excuses.

But first, she needed the right outfit.

#

Their hidden benefactor lived in New York. His name was Louis Hoy, and he ran a small Chinese language newsletter in Queens. Steve thanked Kenny for his unexpected discovery, then countered the gesture with an expansive, unstoppable yawn. Kenny might have laughed if not for the frightful shroud of fatigue Steve wore in the darkened office. His slack face and red, black-bordered eyes seemed even more ghastly in the sick gray glow from Jarvis's monitor, the only source of light in the room.

"I guess I should make you an investigative reporter," Steve said. He smacked his lips to work out the yawn.

"No, thanks. I've no interest in getting shot at. Or jailed, for that matter."

"Then I guess you'd better stick to engineering, Beachman."

"Which brings up my next point." Kenny leaned across Steve's desk. "That problem with Sam's satcam?" Steve stared blankly back at him. "The LA thing, Steve. You know, the cops showed up as a third party to the Black Panthers interview?"

"Oh, yeah. Sorry, I've had a lot on my mind lately."

"Unless you get some decent sleep, that mind will turn to oatmeal. Anyway, you wanted to know if the camera had malfunctioned in some way that left it vulnerable to tracking. The short answer is no, but the camera was tracked."

"I thought we made the satcam signals untraceable, digital bursts on a narrow beam and constantly changing frequencies, all that stuff."

"All as it should be. Here's the long answer. Don't worry, it isn't too long. You'll have plenty of time to catch a nap before supper.

"So, I bought time on the Cray X computer at MIT. We had that NAM net to interrogate, and the Cray can do it faster than our dinky little boxes. Now, we have this satcam prototype in the vault. It's a full-fledged uninterruptible research station. It can access sat links like our present satcams, but also radio or TV retransmission towers. I've been wanting to test it out, so I linked to MIT through it, using both satellite and earth-based systems."

"I thought you said this was short."

"Stop whining. So, I hooked the camera up to the MIT customer queue and compromised NAM to no end. Everything went from my computer into the camera, then simultaneously to earth orbit and back as well as from TV tower to TV tower to MIT. Forty minutes later, I had my data."

"Congratulations," Steve said dryly. Kenny ignored the tone.

"Now, here's the fun part. Because the camera is new, I monitored the data exchanges more closely than usual, which is to say I did so at all. The ground-linked stuff worked great, but I found an unaccountable delay in the signal hand-off between the satellite and the ground downlink station. I think the satellite is interrogating our camera signal before sending it back to Earth. If that's so, and the signal analysis is going back to a third party, then that third party could easily lift from our signal a vector that fairly pinpoints the sending camera's location."

"Locates by how much?"

"To within ten meters."

Steve's tired face hadn't been a cheery sight in the first place. Now it took on a cast of morbidity. Kenny thought he looked much older than his forty-three years. "So, somebody has bugged the Comlink 1 satellite in order to trace our transmissions. We're talking about the federal government here."

"Well, I doubt the LA police department can launch space planes or do satellite retrieval and modification. If they do, I'll be very cooperative next time I get a ticket there."

"Is our government that paranoid? Do you think they sent up astronauts just to get us?"

"Comlink 1 comes due for orbital maintenance about once every eight months. They probably put the monitoring hardware on during one of those maintenance missions. And, yes, this government is that paranoid. Those people need total control."

"Well, we'll have to figure some way around it. For most stories, we won't care, but some, like that Panthers meeting, demand secrecy."

"Umm, you're missing something, buddy."

Steve squinted across the desk at him. "Yes?"

"We have to assume a government that can track our transmissions can also jam them. The signals are digital, and Uncle Sam's right in there with the codes. He just directs our signal somewhere other than the down transmitter, and See It Now is off the air, man."

Steve rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. "That's bad news," he said. Then he did something strange. Pulling up his shirt's left sleeve, he stared at his forearm, just stared at it. Why would he find his arm so fascinating?

Kenny waited.

"I'm charging you and your genius lab rats to come up with countermeasures. We can't afford a blackout, Beachman."

The overhead lights flared, stinging both men's eyes. The dark and its attendant shadows rushed away through the suddenly opaque windows.

"Geez!" Kenny yelled. "Who around here has stock in the light company?"

Emma stood in the doorway. "It's evening, gentlemen. None of us here are moles. Mr. Tallman, you have a visitor."

"My paternal grandma was a cave fish," Kenny muttered.

"Hi, Dad!" Patricia Tallman stuck her head through the doorway. Her face beamed, with that broad, toothy smile derived from her mother. Then her apparent joy collapsed. "Dad! What have you done to yourself?"

Kenny, from experience, wanted to be somewhere else.

#

Steve tried to smile, but his face resisted the effort. He rose to his feet. "Patricia, you're home."

Both women entered the office, Patricia heading for her father, Emma toward the window beyond Steve's desk. Patricia collided with Steve and staggered him while wrapping him in a viselike hug.

"Dad, I missed you. I was disappointed when you weren't home, so I thought I'd hunt you up here."

"I missed you, too, sweetheart. Can you let a fella breathe?"

"The girl knows you like a map," Kenny said. "She knew exactly where you'd be at any particular time of day."

Patricia darted her eyes at Kenny, and frowned. "Uncle Kenny, shame on you for letting him go without sleep like this. You're one of his best friends. Don't you care about his health?"

"Now, hold on, Patty! I'm the man's partner, not his keep–"

"Forget it, Beachman. She's pulling your chain." Steve tilted his daughter's face up to kiss her forehead. She was beautiful, by far the best thing he had ever done. "If I had known you were coming, I would have been at home," he said.

Kenny made choking sounds.

"He's right," Patricia smiled up at Steve. "You're a liar."

"Well, I would have wanted to be there."

"Sit down, Dad. You look about to fall down, anyway. I had plans of bamboozling you into dinner, but I guess I'd better concentrate on getting you home, instead." She boosted herself onto the edge of Steve's desk. "So, have you been taking your medicine? Tell the truth. You know I'll count the pills later."

"I've been taking my medicine," Steve said from his seat. He tried to concentrate on her, but his mind nudged insistently toward business matters. He would go to New York. He would find Louis Hoy and collaborate on the story. How did Patricia's arrival complicate those plans?

"He's still there," Emma said from the window.

"Pardon?" Steve asked.

"The man in the yellow car is still there," she clarified. "It's been twenty-four hours, or more."

"You'd think they'd give the poor schmuck some relief," Kenny said. "All night and all day in a car. It must be getting rank in there."

"Don't worry about him," Steve said. "As long as he's there, we know who to watch."

"Would anyone like to clue me in?" Patricia said with mock annoyance. "You sound like a black-and-white detective show."

Steve focused again on his daughter. She perched on the edge of his desk, her back straight and her ankles crossed, her toes wiggling in open-toed pumps. She wore a short but respectable fleece dress that clung in all the right places, but not so much that a father might complain. The white material accented her golden skin, and the neckline lay very open, exposing much of her shoulders and collar bone, but (again for Steve's benefit) not the mounds of her breasts. Steve knew she dressed to bemuse and manipulate him, but he didn't mind. He was happy to see her. Anything she wanted was hers, within reason.

"Well?" she continued. "Is this one of those 'too rough for little girls' things?"

"It's nothing," Steve said, forcing his heavy, leathery face into the semblance of a smile. "Some fellow citizens disagree with the coverage we're giving them, and they're becoming a nuisance. Happens all the time."

Emma coughed, and looked at Steve. "Don't lie to her. These people are dangerous, and they will target her as surely as they target you."

Steve glared at his admin assistant. Delicate, blank, and wise. He saved his daughter from the truth; Emma sought to save her with it.

"It has to do with a story we're doing," he said, contrite. He told Patricia the truth, glossing over the particulars of the EOG but including the mysterious data prism, the assault on Ben Tallman, the box mailed to Kenny, the bug on their communications satellite, and the discovery of Louis Hoy. He finished with a warning that they might be watched at any time by hostile people, and the need to take precautions for personal safety.

"Cool!" Patricia squealed, her eyes bright and large. "This is a detective show! And Uncle Ben a secret agent! Can I join?"

"Patricia," Steve sputtered, exasperated, "this isn't a game. Your Uncle Ben's on the run. We have to be very careful."

"She's part of it," Emma said, back to looking out the window. "By now they know she's here. They'll make plans to use her if they want to get to you."

"Emma, please, you're scaring the womenfolk."

"What makes you think she's scaring me, Dad?"

"Because she's scaring me, that's why."

"Well, I think it's primo cool," Patricia announced. "It isn't every girl whose dad is a superhero out to save the world from nefarious villains."

Steve groaned. "We aren't saving the world. We're getting a story, just like always, and letting the appropriate authorities save or lose the world, as the case may be. We're journalists here, not the Justice League of America."

"The who?" Patricia asked.

"Comic book heroes," Steve said, "Superman, Wonder Woman? Forget it. It's a little before your time. The point is, we're here to find the truth, tell the truth, and let things take care of themselves when all the facts are out. That's what journalists do."

"Not what I do," Kenny said. "I'm an engineer. I want everyone to remember that when it comes time to hand out the suicide missions."

"Okay, that's enough," Steve rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. "Now, please escort my daughter down to the cafeteria and get her, and the rest of us, something to eat. I'd like to make plans with my rather opinionated administrative assistant here."

"Any time, if it's your treat," Kenny said, rising from his chair. He held out his arm to Patricia. "Would the heartbreaking beauty accompany this old geezer? It would reaffirm his masculine prowess to other tomcats that might be around."

"Don't you wish," Patricia laughed as she hopped down from the desk. In a moment their voices echoed down the hall.

Emma stood at the doorway, her hands behind her back, her face blank. She displayed such an exotic amalgam of strength, innocence, delicacy, and purpose. She was a porcelain schoolgirl, but her blank face inspired caution, even a little fear. The admixture of opposites that composed her existence also made her unreadable. Instinct had led Steve to hire her two years before, and instinct led him to trust her still.

"If you don't care for my advice–" she began.

"Don't even start, Emma. I'm amazed I have you, and I insist you keep advising as long as you feel competent to do so." Steve rubbed his face. It wasn't doing any good. "I need two things: a listing of all our freelance computer whizzes, and Chelsea Van Arsdale."

"Which would you like first?"

"Chelsea."

#

"New York?" she asked between mouthfuls. Chelsea sat alone in her room at the Downtown Hilton, dawdling over a meal brought up by room service. She sat before the television, bored and hoping for distraction.

"That's right," Steve said over the phone. "I've research to do there."

"I bet. But you realize you have reporters in New York to do that work for you."

"I don't think so. Not this time. Who's the pilot tonight?"

"Are you kidding? I wouldn't miss this for cake. When do we leave?"

"Well, I figure if we left as soon as possible, we might be able to get something accomplished tonight..."

She hesitated not at his request, but because it meant another night awake for her walking zombie of a friend. "Sure," she lied, "we can do that. It depends on aircraft readiness, of course, and air traffic density out east. How about twenty minutes? Is that too early a departure time?"

"Not at all. I'll see you here."

Here. Still at work. When had he last left that building? She clicked off the phone, then dialed the helipad's number.

"Tower, Thomson Electronics."

"Jimmy! It's Chelsea. Say, what's the status of 01? I need her for a trip to New York, ASAP."

"Afraid not, chief. Radio's out for adjustments. You can have 02 or your own bird, if you like."

"Unsat. I need 01's nice, cushy seats and stereo system. Can you switch out the radio in 16, put it in 01?"

"If you like, but why? Flying a VIP tonight?"

"No, I just want my passenger to be as relaxed as possible. What's the flight time from here to LGA?"

"To La Guardia? About three and a half hours. Of course, you'll have to stop in Columbus and DC, so it depends on your layover time."

"No layovers. Strap on an extension tank and fill her up to the eyeballs. And get me a through flight plan, the longest one you can figure."

"Detroit would stretch it to five hours, but without layovers you'll need a copilot."

"That's fine. Who's on call?"

"Perry."

"That's fine, too. Okay, to recap: switch out the radios between 16 and 01. Get a reserve tank on 01. A flight plan through to LGA via Detroit, and Perry brought in to copilot. Got that?"

"Got it."

"Can we have a 'go' in twenty minutes?"

"Twenty minutes?"

"Good boy, Jimmy. I'll see you soon." She hung up before he could speak.

#

Lieutenant Jefferson Frost, LAPD, grunted disapproval of the man, or boy, approaching him. Frost sat high on the steps to the Griffith Observatory, comfortable as a tourist. He felt no fear of Donald Washington, in full Panthers regalia, nor of his backup of six Panthers brethren, who fanned out around the meeting place in case of a trap. Frost did not fear these wayward punks; as a black man himself, he felt only embarrassment.

Washington stopped four steps below Frost, their eyes at the same level.

"Evening, little brother," Frost said with a smile that effectively laughed in Washington's face. "Kill any cops lately?"

"You called, Mr. Blueshirt. What you want?" Washington affected his most ferocious bad dude facial contortions. Frost sighed, unimpressed.

The policeman reached for the paper-wrapped shoebox behind him. He threw it into Washington's surprised grasp with force enough to explode a less securely bound container. "Your lucky day, little boy. Ten thousand dollars from a secret admirer of your talents. Don't open it here, stupid. You want to flash ten thousand bucks to half the city? An acquaintance of mine needs your help. You interested?"

"What the hell you think I am? I ain't no criminal."

"Oh, I forget. You're a revolutionary. This is the deal. My acquaintance has trouble with a group of people. You'd be interested, seeing as it's the same bunch you been threatening and badmouthing for the last two weeks or better. Since you seem to have a beef with this bunch, my acquaintance thought you wouldn't mind harassing them for pay."

"I ain't no dog to do nobody's dirty work."

"Look, son, I ain't interested in what you ain't. Your friend Clemmons is part of the bunch you'd be working over. This is your chance to get even with the folks who set you up, in case you're too dumb to notice, and it won't cost you one lousy dollar of drug profits. What do you say? I got a stake in this, too, you know. See, the job's out east, and I'd love to see you go."

Washington seemed fresh out of threatening commentary.

"Look," Frost said, "maybe I went too fast. This here's a truce. I'm not here to take you in, and I'm not here to cap you off, though either would give me great pleasure. I'm just delivering a message. That shoebox is a gratuity, a gift for your patience in hearing this proposal. My acquaintance wants you to gather up a personal army to deal with See It Now and its buddies. You remember See It Now?"

"I do."

"Good. If you take the job, there's a phone number on..." He extracted a folded sheet of paper from his blazer pocket and held it out like a prize. "...on this sheet of paper. You call the number and say, well, anything, it doesn't matter. Next day you get ten thousand more, just as a good faith gesture. Each time my acquaintance calls, you help him out, and get paid appropriately. It's easy as pissing off a suburban mall manager. Well, for you, anyway."

Washington stared back, his lip curled in utter disdain.

"So, what's the deal, little guy? You gonna allow a perfect stranger to bankroll your revenge schemes, or you gonna be a complete jerk-off?"

"I'll let you know," Washington sneered, and reached for the slip of paper.

Frost jerked it back out of reach. "Not so fast, pard. There's a payment-in-kind attached. What, you didn't think anything in this life was free, did you?"

Washington's eyes took on a dead, marble-like sheen. The sneer left his face, replaced by a more threatening blank expression. "You ain't nothin', man. Don't press your luck."

Frost feigned surprise. "You threatening me, son? With what, the full wrath of your junior boy scout dropouts? I'm laughing so hard it hurts."

"Finish talkin'."

"You got somebody I want. I got something you want. Give me the dipshit that shot that cop two weeks ago, and I give you this valuable sheet of paper."

Washington's mouth opened, but Frost cut him off. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Who do I think you are, blah, blah. Remember, Donny, old pal, your little minions are thirty, forty feet away. They can't hear a word we're saying. Give me the name. Nobody will ever know."

Washington stood before the sitting policeman. Neither man moved or spoke for several seconds while passersby dodged around them up and down the steps. They were some grittily realistic public sculpture, an expression of conflict between two generations and two opposing cultures of Black Americans.

Finally, Washington reached slowly for the paper and took it in hand. Frost did not let go.

"Wilma Jackson," Washington whispered.

"Uh-uh," Frost shook his head, teasingly pulling the paper toward him. "The only girl that night was named Peggy Smith. You can do better than that."

"He lives with his mamma. He ain't got no phone of his own."

"First name."

"Terry."

Frost smiled. "See, you backstabbing son of a bitch, that wasn't so hard, now was it?" He released the paper. "Now, get out of here, before I catch a case of public servitude and blast your ass to Pismo." He stood up, straightened his blazer, and dusted off his pants. "By the way, Donny, when you're picking your punks to go east, don't count on Mr. Terry Jackson. He'll be jailed, dead, or hospitalized, you can count on it. And I better not find you jivin' me, 'cause I know where you are, and I won't be long coming for you."

"Any time, blueshirt."

"Oh, for fuck's sake. Stop taking your lines from TV, kid. It's pitiful."

#

The elevator opened onto Patricia's very loud, very angry voice. Chelsea wondered if she should immediately press the down button, but stepped into Emma's domain after a long intake of breath. The desk was unoccupied and the area darkened for after hours. The fish tank cast watery reflections over the walls and ceiling. Oh, well. Chelsea balanced her flight helmet against one hip and walked with feigned nonchalance toward Steve's office. She whistled an aimless tune to announce herself.

"I can't believe this!" Patricia shouted. "I'm not back a day and you leave the city! What is it, Dad? I know you have avoidance issues, but I thought that was about old people crap, not your own daughter!"

"It's a mission," Steve answered in a much softer tone."We— What? Old?"

"You and all your army baggage, and you and mom! Ugh! Little pitchers and big ears, okay? I grew up with you, remember?"

"We aren't going to New York to shop."

Chelsea's heart sank at that tone, which she understood so well and despised so much. Steve had set himself a quest, and his overdeveloped sense of priority had rendered all other considerations subservient to his eternal masters, Duty and Journalistic Truth. Funny, but she knew in him no particular devotion to the concept of Journalistic Truth. But it was the thing all "good" newsmen chased without relief, a savagely guarded external truth substituting for a shortage of personal ones. Steve, the bastard, didn't cling to personal truths. The last time he did so, a million people died.

Now, he lived by rules. It was safer, depending on which ones he followed. Unfortunately, along with The People's Right To Know and The Free Marketplace Of Ideas, Steve lived by the cliché The Needs Of The Many Outweigh The Needs Of The Few, so his family and friends had no chance at all against his monolithic ideals. He looked silly from Chelsea's point of view, and pathetic.

"What are you going to do while I meet with this man? Sit on his couch?"

"Well, maybe. Or read a book, or pick my nose, what difference does it make to you? I won't be in your way. I'd just like to spend a little time with my father, even if he doesn't know I'm there!"

Steve stood with his arms tightly crossed, Patricia pacing in front of him like some ferocious urban animal. Emma stood to the side, impassive as usual. Kenny Beacham was there, too, eating some sort of sandwich at Steve's worktable, trying hard to ignore the conflict. Chelsea hated everything in the scene. Well, except Patricia's dress.

"Honey, it's not that I'm trying to avoid you. I had no idea you'd even be home, if you recall. It's just that this is my job, and I need room to do it. And you have your own business, too. What about school? You could miss school if we're held over a day."

"School? Dad, I go to school by microwave. Aren't there networks in New York?"

"Still, I can't do my job while looking after you."

"You must take her with you," Emma said. "She'll be safer with you, and she has the right–"

"This is none of your business, Emma."

"Yes, it is," Patricia countered. "She's right. You leave me here, you leave me to the bad guys."

"Oh, for pity's sake!" Steve glared at the ceiling in frustration.

Chelsea knocked on the doorjamb. "Evening!" she bubbled. "Chelsea's Air Taxi and Family Counseling Service!"

"Not now, chief." Steve regarded Patricia sternly. She stood before him arms crossed, eyes hooded, unapproachable. "You aren't listening, young lady–"

"I'm not listening?"

"Who'll take care of you? Who'll mind you while I go after Hoy? This isn't Naptown, honey, it's New York City."

"Oh, Dad, please! I'm not a child!"

"You're seventeen years old! That's a child in my book! I'm not leaving my seventeen-year-old girl to her own devices in the middle of the night in New York City. So, who'll take care of you?"

"I will," Chelsea said.

"You always use those excuses!" Patricia shouted back at her father. "I spend more time alone than you'd imagine. All those trips you take, all those late nights, is anybody with me then?"

"That's different. That's home."

"Home, he says! That empty house out in the middle of nowhere! Might as well be on the moon!"

"Excuse me..." Chelsea tried to break in.

"Can't you wait one lousy minute?" Steve snapped at her.

She tossed up her hands defensively, unsurprised. She was a regular referee of the Tallman family's arguments. They were already back to it and, worse, repeating themselves. She whistled quietly as she looked around for a distracter, something to cut short the fighting. On the worktable near Beacham sat a bank of computer and software manuals between neat bookends. "Excuse me," she said to Kenny, and took up the thickest book, 824 pages she learned by thumbing to the back. She took it firmly in both hands and leaned toward Kenny. "Move your drink," she said.

Kenny stopped munching his sandwich. He looked into her serious face, then picked up his drink and another nearby.

Chelsea reached high, then slammed the book to the table with a deafening crash.

Emma flinched. The two Tallmans looked at Chelsea with mixed shock and embarrassment.

"Time to go," she said in a tone that brooked no argument. "I will watch Patricia. Got that, Patricia? You get to go, but I'm your babysitter. Don't argue, Steve. You know you won't win."

They eyed her a moment, then Steve's shoulders sagged.

"I give up," he said. "What do you think, Kenny? Still excited about the adventure of fatherhood?"

"I think," Kenny said, taking a sip of his drink, "that I'm still a little hungry. You gonna eat those chips?"

"Traitor."

"No. Survivor."

"So," Chelsea continued, "we'll delay departure a bit. Steve, you have your usual ensemble in the closet, I presume, and I brought my duffel, but Patricia's another matter. You brought a coat, Patty? Good. Then all you need is a change of clothes."

"Another good reason to belay this nonsense—" Steve began.

"Pay him no mind," Chelsea said, pulling Patricia across the room. "He'll complain at least a few more times. It's a Y-chromosome thing, I think."

Steve apparently thought better of arguing; doing so would have proven her point.

The two women huddled close, ignoring everyone else.

"Thanks, Aunt Chelsea." Patricia grinned. "I really appreciate this."

"Don't. Emma's right. You have a right to spend time with this dope, though lord only knows why you'd want to."

"You've known him for years, Aunt Chelsea. What's your excuse?"

"Masochist, I guess. Now, what are you these days, a size six, eight?"

"Six."

"That's close enough. Go downstairs to the drug store and get the basic stuff: soap, toothbrush, that sort of thing. I'll loan you one of my flight suits if you need it. It'll hang on you like a tent, but they never look flattering, even when they fit."

"Okay. This is so shiny."

"You bet. And your ass'll be shiny if you misbehave on my watch. Now, go on. We leave ASAP."

#

"Sorry I snapped at you," Steve told Emma. He leaned against his desk, hands in his pockets, watching the conspirators across the office. When Chelsea approached the windows with Patricia, Emma had come away to Steve. No commentary, no expression on her face. She was an enigma, as always.

"I might have overextended," she offered. "I thought it my duty to suggest alternatives."

"And you thought right. But, don't you think you push the bounds of melodrama with these guys? Do you think they're that vicious?"

"I don't underestimate such people. Fear and ignorance drives them, which makes them unpredictable."

"Go with me. I need your advice, and you speak Chinese. What if I find this Hoy guy and he doesn't speak a word of English?"

"He'll speak English. He lives in Queens, not Chinatown. Besides, I speak Burmese, not Chinese. It's very different."

"Oh, well. You know how to reach me if anything comes up. I'll take my cell phone, not the palm." The office emptied out. Kenny dumped dinner garbage into a trashcan beside the desk. "Going with me, Kenny? I'd rather have company in a vertol compartment with those two domineering mother hens."

"I have other plans, buddy. Trimming my toenails, or some such. Give my regards to the Hoy boy, though. If you find him, that is."

"I don't like the way you said that, Beachman. Why shouldn't we find him?"

Beacham licked three of his fingers before responding. "It occurs to me that this Hoy is hot stuff right now. So, if you want him for the info he's carrying, don't the other guys want him more?"

Steve frowned at his own stupidity. "Yes," he said. "I suppose they do."

Chapter Nine:

The Well-Placed Source

 (Back to Contents)

Black night engulfed the vertol windscreen, revealing nothing of the hills and valleys passing below in the Pennsylvania landscape.

"That is not a flying car," Chelsea insisted. "Flying cars are a dumb idea and that's a dumb idea among dumb ideas."

"It's a Ford," Patricia said. You drive it on the street, but can fly it, too."

"It has a wingspan of thirty-seven feet."

"Well, it needs wings to fly, doesn't it?"

"It takes an hour to attach the wings and the tail section, and it has to be done at a shop, as in a hangar. At an air park."

"Okay, okay, but there are other concept cars out there. Don't you like the idea? I mean, you're a pilot, Aunt Chelsea."

"Patty, that's futurism bullshit. You've driven a car on the public roads. Those bozos you contend with at unmarked intersections, you really want them up in the friggin' air? Come the day, I'll hide under a table in an underground bunker."

And so the hours passed. Patricia sat first beside her father in the back, then moved to a perch on the console between the two pilots. She faced backward into the cabin at the fitfully dozing form of her dad, whose safety harness held him to his seat. Chelsea lounged cross-armed in her pilot's station after surrendering the aircraft to Perry. She stretched her legs and otherwise enjoyed her ninety-minute respite from the vertol controls. Perry flew on instruments, a more intense undertaking than the intuitive lark of a daytime visual flight. Occasionally, he stole a glance at the girl in the short white dress, disguising it as an instrument panel survey. Chelsea considered calling him on it, but she knew Perry. This was the boss's daughter; he would go no further than admiring the scenery.

"So, why didn't you guys get married?"

Patricia's question came in the awkward quiet between conversations. Chelsea studied her with a trace of suspicion. "I'm not into marriage," she said.

"No, seriously. You've been part of our lives since I was little. You come on all the holidays, you sometimes spend the weekend at the house." She leaned toward Chelsea, and whispered. "You helped me through, you know, that first time of the month?"

"Gee, wasn't that a privilege. Can we go back to flying cars?"

"I always imagined you two would get married. I used to call you 'mommy'."

"Absolutely, and that's one reason I started spending more time away. No offense, Patty. You're a doll and I love you dearly, but I'm not exactly the mother type. I'm not exactly the happy housewife type, either." She smiled. "Not that the subject ever came up."

She turned in her seat to better face Patricia. "Your dad and I have a special relationship. It isn't your standard male-female thing. Over fifteen years he's always been there for me. I like to think the reverse is true. But he's never made a pass at me. I'd swear he doesn't know I'm a woman."

"I'm confused. This is a good thing?"

"It's sure as hell different. He sees me on a different level than you might expect. Maybe it's a war thing." She stretched, catlike, and yawned. "I remember entering his command track. That's, uh, an armored personnel carrier with more room and a whole bunch of radios? Anyway, he looked terrible, like he hadn't slept in years. But his eyes had this uncompromising, appraising look, and he held me like that for a minute or two while I reported in. Then, poof! the look vanished, and from that moment he trusted me with anything and anybody. I don't think he ever saw me, not my face or body. He saw deeper. He saw who I was and had been since birth. He knew all about me, my feelings, my thoughts, my capabilities. Sound too weird for you?"

Patricia leaned against her knees, watching her father doze. "He says he can tell at a glance if he'll like somebody. No system or anything. He can just tell. And he says if he likes someone, he'll do anything for them, and they'll deserve it. He says he's hardly ever wrong, and he uses you as an example. You and Uncle Kenny."

"Uh-huh, but how does that explain your mother?" Chelsea made the point gently.

Patricia snorted. "I don't get it. Mom hates him. I mean, she'd throw anti-coagulant on a wound, if he had one. Three weeks I stayed with her, and it was one nasty comment after another. I mean, why did she marry him in the first place, if she hated him so much?"

"I don't know," Chelsea said. "Some things just fall apart. And it wasn't entirely her fault. I saw it coming. I warned your father on many occasions. He just couldn't listen."

"He never says a word against her," Patricia said. "Lord knows he ought to."

"He still cares for her, though it's all long since stale. But, she got in the way of his sense of duty, first to the military, then to his journalism. She didn't like her place in the great scheme."

Patricia watched her father, so defenseless in his complete, windowless tomb of sleep. He slouched in his chair, his head dropped forward onto his chest. It had taken almost two hours, but Chelsea had lulled him to sleep with plush upholstery, soft stereo music, and a purposeful, steady rocking of the aircraft. He flinched occasionally, or mumbled something unintelligible that didn't sound like English. He was trapped in the sleep and dreams he had avoided for so many days.

"He's having those nightmares again, the ones with the Bear."

Chelsea frowned at him, and nodded. For a moment, she felt shame at having put him to sleep. She knew the nightmares were bad, but she also knew the consequences of over-exhaustion, consequences that could put him in a hospital, or worse. She had to protect him, since he didn't protect himself. But, he feared those dreams so much...

"Uncle Ben says they're visions. He thinks the Bear is Dad's spirit guide, sort of a guardian angel. He says the Bear is a very powerful spirit. It might have some great purpose for Dad to fulfill, and that's what the dreams are about."

"And you believe all that?" Chelsea asked. The sophisticated-looking girl in the trendy dress didn't seem the pagan mysticism type.

"I don't know." Patricia screwed up her face from indecision. "All I know is that he takes me to Mass every Sunday, and it's boring as hell."

#

The big Jeep Kiowa lumbered along the uneven road, its headlights reflecting off the smothering white of the land. The road lay invisible beneath six inches of fresh snow that still fell, drifting into the headlight beams like glitter. Tom Merritt leaned forward in the driver's seat, hugging the steering wheel without concern. Peggy Smith watched from the back seat, wondering at the old man's composure, so unsuited to the circumstances. How did Merritt guide his wheels over the blinding white carpet? How did he keep the Jeep from ditches, snowdrifts, and holes? Peggy expected disaster with every bump. She was all too aware that the truck's heater, pumping at full capacity, could not entirely dispel the outside cold.

She leaned toward Sam in the front passenger seat. She tried to catch his eyes, but he stared woodenly through the windshield. "Something's out there," she said. "Figures on both sides of us, just outside the headlights."

"Cattle, I reckon," Merritt said.

Peggy sat back. Once again she looked like an idiot. That they had left the main house over an hour ago, that they hadn't seen another human since, spooked her. This ranch at the edge of oblivion, over a hundred and fifty miles from the nearest outpost of civilization, was too pioneer for her tastes. Anything could happen in that wilderness, and probably did. No wonder the weirdo extremists flocked to the northwestern states. There was no one to notice their extreme behavior. And a stranger now took her to meet such fanatics. What a life, that of the satcameraman.

"Should be around here somewhere," Merritt said. He wiped his nose with the sleeve of his parka. "Now, this fella. I don't much care about his politics, but he's a damned good cowboy, so I won't stand for no harassment."

"We aren't here to harass anybody," Sam said, shaking his head. "Just want to talk."

"That'll do," the old man said. "These folks ain't gave us no trouble. Local boys, mostly. Spend their weekends kind of funny, though. Here he is."

A pickup truck coalesced out of the snow mist. Two men sat atop its cab, their feet dangling into the bed. They hunched like medieval gargoyles, their hats shielding their eyes, hands rammed deep into coat pockets. Hulking cattle surrounded the truck, circling it or standing indifferently, most munching on bales of hay thrown out onto the snow. Merritt stopped the Jeep and threw open his door. Sam and Peggy followed suit, cameras in hand.

"Jimmy!" Merritt shouted. "Shoo them critters! I got people here!"

"Yessir, Mr. Merritt," one of the men called. He boosted himself to the truck bed and bent down for a long section of PVC pipe lying amid the straw. He slapped the pipe against the truck fenders, shouting at the animals as he did so. "Git, you dirty dumbasses! Go on, move off!" The cattle scattered with much raucous lowing and bellowing.

Merritt escorted his company to the truck's open tailgate. Peggy silently cursed the snow. She sank to mid-calf, and the stuff naturally found its way inside the cuffs of her jeans and into her inadequate boots. Her feet stung from cold. The man with the pipe looked less uncomfortable in his heavy muffler and down parka, a woolen cap beneath his cowboy hat. The cuffs of his jeans were stuffed into the tops of his combat boots, and sturdy insulated work gloves protected his hands. He dropped the pipe onto the truck bed and lowered himself to the ground. His partner, a gaunt, withered-looking black man dressed much the same, stooped at the edge of the truck bed, curious.

"Jimmy Belew," Merritt said, "this here's Mr. Sam Clemmons and Miss Peggy Smith. They're the people I told you about this morning."

"Uh-huh," Belew said, shaking Sam's hand. "Miss." He tipped his hat to Peggy.

Belew turned to his boss. "We holed up at the marker, Mr. Merritt, but we got more feed to put out."

"Don't worry none," Merritt said, touching the younger man's shoulder. "You got business with these folks. Me and Johnson here'll take the truck on down the line and work the critters. You catch up in the Jeep when you're done. Come on, Johnson. Ride up front." Merritt nodded to everyone, then plodded off through the snow toward the driver's side door of the pickup. Johnson jumped over the side of the bed and made his way toward the passenger door.

"Like your boss said," Sam began as he, Peggy and Belew moved away from the truck, "we're reporters from the TV show See It Now. You've heard of it, I imagine?"

"Don't watch much TV," Belew said. "Ain't much on worth watchin'."

"Yeah, well, we're doing a story on local private militias, looking for any unusual background on the subject. Mr. Merritt said you could help."

Belew reached the Jeep ahead of the stumbling, city-bred reporters.

"Don't care to talk about my friends and neighbors," he said when they caught up, "but Mr. Merritt says you're okay, and somethin's gotta be said, sooner or later."

The three loaded into the Jeep just as the pickup started moving away. Belew talked the whole time, his tone unhurried, matter-of-fact.

"Until about five months ago, I belonged to the local group. Ain't nothin' formal like the National Guard, just some guys gettin' together to talk and shoot, and sometimes trap. Ain't even got a name. You can't be too careful, y'know. Gotta build survival skills. A nuke might not hit these parts, but that don't mean nothing if everything else is gone. So, the boys hunt and trap and keep up the NRA dues so's them lousy statehouse boys don't take away our guns."

"You're defending the group, Mr. Belew. So, what made you quit?"

He sat in the driver's seat, staring through the windshield at the dancing snow. "It all changed," he said. "About six or seven months ago, this fella come from out east and started talkin' up shit around the county. He's some big shot head of a militia network, or somethin'. I didn't rightly understand it all."

"That's all right," Sam coaxed. "We just want your thoughts."

Belew regarded Sam narrowly. "You won't do nothin', you know, underhanded, will you? These people around here are my friends. I don't want them hurt. Or mad, neither."

"Don't worry," Sam said. "We can't get a story unless people talk to us, and people won't talk to us if we go around stabbing them in the back."

"Yeah, Mr. Merritt said you were fair. I guess he watches your show." The windshield steamed from their combined breath. Belew turned the key left in the ignition and fiddled with the vents. Peggy silently thanked God for heaters.

"Well," Belew continued, "about six months ago this fella come from out east, name of Leon Decker. He convinced the boys to join this regional network of his, militias and survival groups and the like. They'd help each other out, he said, you know, when the time came. And they'd lobby the state house to fight against laws we don't like. Well, some of the boys quit; it sounded too good, y'know? But most of us ate up this Decker fella's line. Don't get me wrong. It wasn't no con job to get our membership dues and fly south. He organized us. Made old Bob Darnell commander. We met the other militia leaders, even planned maneuvers against each other, paint ball stuff, but serious. We even got us a name: the Montana Rural Auxiliary. The MRA." He announced the initials with feigned sobriety, emphasizing each letter.

"Nice name," Sam said, but it sounded to Peggy like a throwaway. "So, did you quit in protest of the new, more formal organization?"

"No, sir. It was still the same bunch of boys. Except when Decker came around. He gave lots of speeches, usually over beer and bar nuts, or he came out to see you on the range. He spent a lot of time over in Sand Springs, and Jordan, and Flat Willow. Brought in a lot of new members with those speeches. That's when I got out. I didn't like them newbies, and I didn't like them speeches."

"What was wrong with the speeches?" Sam asked.

"Well, that's why I couldn't talk around Johnson. He's black, you know."

"Yes, I noticed."

"Well, 'course you would. You're black, too. But I didn't like what Decker said about black folks. Them meetings sounded more like KKK rallies, and not too many people objected. And it wasn't just nig— I mean, black people. It was Jews, and Catholics, and Japs. I tell you, he carried on somethin' terrible about Japs. And Chinese." He paused. He rubbed his gloved hands on the steering wheel and stared hard at the dashboard's charge indicator. "I can't abide that kind of talk. Folks got to get along. Anyhow, that's why I left."

Unnoticed in the back seat, Peggy had to respect Belew's candid sense of honor. Sure, he was a racist, but he recognized his fault. "So, what's the Auxiliary up to?" she asked. "Since you left, I mean."

Sam looked at her, then back at Belew.

"Don't rightly know," Belew said. He put the Jeep in gear, and coaxed it forward on the deepening snow. "We'd best find Mr. Merritt. Can't have the boss doin' all my work."

"We'd like something current on the group's activities," Sam insisted. "Six months is a long time, and they were just getting organized when you left."

"Sorry, but I ain't had much to do with them lately. I still put down a few beers with some of the originals, the fellas I used to hang out with, but a lot of these guys is from out of town. I just don't know much, is all."

"I have to tell you, Mr. Belew, we've run into this Decker guy before, or his name, anyway. We think he's no good. He's leading your friends into a sticky crowd, real ugly types."

"What, the Mafia, or somethin'?"

"Not really. You mentioned the KKK? Let's just say there are groups in this country a hell of a lot worse than them."

The Jeep trundled along its invisible road, and Peggy's fear of being marooned in the snow resurged with strength. Only the pickup's tracks hinted at safe passage, and those filled fast with new snow. Another treacherous white table piled up before them, negotiable only by the experienced and the bravely intuitive. Occasionally, they passed animals huddled in the road around bales of straw. Belew left his track more than once to swerve bumpily around unflappable bovine cliques that stared into the Jeep's headlights, bored. They answered its horn with their own baritone bellows.

"Durn cattle," he cursed, "dumb as my hat. Sorry, Miss. Didn't mean to speak poorly."

Peggy, mesmerized by the animals, barely heard his needless apology. She followed the hulking beasts with her eyes as the Jeep crept on its way. These cattle were no milk cows from the edge of suburbia. These were beef cattle. They were gigantic.

Belew's eyes darted from the road to Sam, then back to the road. He seemed to make a decision. "I been thinkin'. I can check around some to see what's goin' on. But I won't check too deep. I didn't like those folks from the beginning, and what you said ain't made me feel any better."

"That's okay," Sam said. "We'll keep your part in this as quiet as possible."

Peggy noticed that wasn't much of a promise.

"Things been goin' on, folks goin' on trips way out east and south, folks who ain't never even been to Billings, if you know what I mean. I'll ask around, and let you know what turns up. How's that?"

"Great idea, Mr. Belew. You can reach Miss Smith and me through Mr. Merritt, or would you rather have our number at the motel?"

"Mr. Merritt's okay. And here he is."

Red tail lights glowed ahead like demonic eyes. Belew reached below the dashboard for the radio handset, and brought it to his face.

"Hello there, truck. Hold up, we're behind you."

Both vehicles stopped. "I reckon you ought to wait here," Belew said. "I'll just switch with Mr. Merritt. No sense in everybody gettin' froze." He threw open the door. A rush of cold air and swirling snow hit Peggy in the face.

"When will we hear from you?" Sam asked. "We can't stay long. Other appointments."

Belew shrugged as he stood in the snow. "Don't know. I'll try to be quick." He nodded to Sam, then tipped his hat to Peggy. "See y'all later." With that, he trudged toward the lead truck.

"So, what do you think?" Peggy asked. "Does it go anywhere?"

"I doubt it," Sam answered, his tone subdued. "The only difference between this and anything else we have is that this guy is volunteering info."

"Do you think he's on the level? They might have gotten word around by now. This could all be a setup."

Sam turned in his seat to face her. "You've only been a reporter for two weeks. You shouldn't be so cynical just yet."

"Well? Do you think he's telling the truth?"

"I think so. The guy strikes me as a little too dumb and a little too nice to push a load of garbage as convoluted as all that. I think he's on the level, and I think he'll try to find out more, all to protect his silly cowboy friends. I don't, however, think he'll find anything."

"Mr. Tallman said they were watching us. This could be their way of doing it."

"Too involved. The bad guys haven't struck me as particularly bright so far. Now, clam up. Here comes the boss-man."

Merritt climbed into the driver's seat and wrenched the door shut. "Whew!" he breathed. "I haven't worked like that in years. I oughtta give those boys a raise. Well, did you get what you wanted?" He began backing the Jeep into a two-point turn.

"We got some information," Sam said. "If you run across anything else, please give us another call."

"That I'll do," the old man said. "Just glad to be of help."

He pointed the Jeep back along its tracks. They rode in silence for a while, each watching the falling snow.

"Mind if I pose a question?" Merritt asked without turning to Sam.

"Me? Depends on the question."

"I watch your show a lot. I'm impressed. Would you be that same fella got beat up on the air a few weeks back?"

"Yes, sir, that's me."

"Well, I'll be damned. I thought it was you. Now, why'd you go messin' around with a bad character like that? You could tell from lookin' that he was crazy."

"Well, unfortunately, we don't get much choice of who we meet on the air. It was news, so that's where I went."

"Well, I'll tell you." Merritt squinted ahead to choose his route. The tracks were gone. "That character scared the spit outta me, and I was safe in my living room. I'm glad to say that we ain't got such problems around these parts. Around here, folks look after one another."

"Yes, sir. I bet they do."

The Jeep pushed on, searching for home in the white Montana wilderness.

#

"I don't give a damn what you think, I run the show, and I've made my decision!" Mr. Andrew Jackson Southerman despised back seat politicians. They always knew best, what worked, what was necessary. They grew ideas like weeds, but carried no risk if their plans should fail. Now this goddamned peckerwood Virginian told him how to run an election, for Christ's sake, and he wasn't even registered to vote!

"I don't question your authority," Mercy said from the videophone. Southerman heard civility straining in his voice. Good. The more he choked, the more he knew who was boss. "But we shouldn't lose this opportunity."

"Aww, horse shit. You don't know as much about politics as you think. No amount of cloak and dagger will put us inside the Dearing camp. This isn't about spy and counterspy, it's about chess. You ever play chess, Jon?"

"Don't be condescending, AJ."

"Who's condescending? It's chess, you paranoid bastard. I don't need spies to know what Al Bennett's up to, I just need to see what he does."

And that's how the big boys work, you dumbass. He turned his eyes from the video screen of his limo to his passenger side window. He watched the town slide by along the beltway. All those roofs, whether of pitched shingles or flat concrete, made it hard to believe that this was the great capitol of a great nation. It all looked so commonplace, not a Lincoln or Jefferson Memorial in sight.

Mercy rattled on. "You're taking an unnecessary risk, I tell you. You have this opportunity for timely inside information. To deprive yourself of information is to deprive yourself of a weapon."

"Or a land mine up the ass! You want me to give Dearing major candidate protection so you can hook one of your moles into her campaign. Well, what happens when she discovers her Secret Service protection is effectively spying for the president? You think she'll talk to him about it? Hell, no! She'll talk to CNN, that's who! Does the name Richard Nixon mean anything to you?"

"AJ, I'm no idiot. What makes you think she'll ever find out?"

"Because she's no idiot, either."

Mercy glared into the telephone. Southerman once more contemplated the roadside.

"It's a mistake," Mercy grumbled, resigning the argument.

"Look, we can always reverse this, if necessary. Right now, it's more important to classify Dearing 'small fry and unimportant'. If it comes out that she doesn't rate Secret Service protection, it'll puncture her campaign's tires. She won't look quite as presidential."

"Neither will Chenault if someone makes an attempt on her."

Southerman sneered into the monitor. "What's this? You're worried about her health?" He laughed.

#

Mercy was not the defeated minion Southerman supposed. He wanted those Secret Service agents. He wanted them as informants, and as a fail-safe against a nigger bitch gaining the White House. Sure of his ready power, he hung up and dialed a new number. He shook his head at Southerman's arrogance. The chairman of the Republican National Committee rode in limousines and barked commands at public figures, but his was an impotent charade, and he didn't know it. Now, he would learn an important lesson about his place in the world, and Mercy would be his teacher.

#

"...and I brought a suitcase full of cash. We could get into Yardbirds, or maybe even the Village Vanguard, if you'd lie about your age. The best jazz, girl. You've never heard anything like it." Chelsea spoke in an animated, breathless voice. The prospect of cruising the New York nightclubs excited her.

"Could we go to Birdland, Aunt Chelsea? I hear it has all the big names."

"Patty, you sound like a tourist. If you want to survive the next few hours, modify your attitude. You see, it's midnight, I'm a poor little white girl, even if you aren't, and Birdland's much too close to Harlem. How about it, Steve? Should I take your little treasure into the Upper West Side?"

Steve slouched on the far side of the taxi's passenger bench, staring out the window at the passing parade of worn-out working-class homes. His fingers drummed on the casing of the tablet in his lap. His whole manner telegraphed closed-door introspection.

"Yoo-hoo," Chelsea crooned, "Intrepid Spaceman Steve..."

Patricia put her hands over his incessantly drumming fingers.

"What?" Steve asked, startled back to reality.

"Having another nap?" Chelsea grinned five pounds of sugar.

"Just thinking. By the way, remind me to thank you for the other nap."

"I doubt that'll be necessary," Chelsea said, cranking up the sweetness of her smile. "That's the third time you've reminded me to remind you on that point."

"I had hoped to get here at a more civilized hour."

"Honey, this is New York. Is any hour civilized? Besides, you needed the sleep. You still need it."

"And now we aren't likely to find this Hoy guy, and God only knows what we'll do about lodging."

"We'll go right on to the Plaza Hotel, where I've arranged for a CBS visitor's suite, boys in one room and girls in the other. Aren't you glad I'm here to take care of you?"

Steve went back to surveying the neighborhood.

"Don't let him fool you," Chelsea stage-whispered to Patricia. "He likes being coddled."

Patricia turned from Chelsea to her father. "Dad, Aunt Chelsea's just worried about you. She isn't the only one, either."

Steve looked down at his hand on the tablet, still covered by his daughter's fingers. He pulled his hand from beneath hers and gently squeezed her wrist. "You're both full of crap."

"Tell me about the city, Dad. It isn't what I expected. I thought New York was, you know, tall."

"This is Queens, honey, not Manhattan. Queens is primarily single family residential."

"It looks like Indy, with smaller yards." Disappointment added weight to her voice.

"We flew in at Rockefeller Center. Didn't you notice all the buildings around you then?"

"Yeah," and her tone took on a plaintive whine, "but they're gone now."

"Don't worry. If I know Chelsea, you'll be back among skyscrapers before too long."

"And you'll max out your dad's credit card, too," Chelsea added.

"Okay, buddy," the taxi driver interrupted, "here's your address, but you ain't gonna like it."

Steve's face hardened to stone as their destination grew obvious. Then the taxi stopped, and he threw open the door and stepped into the street. Enough light reached from street lamps down the block to illuminate a jolting image of destruction. Fire had charred an entire lot and had tasted the houses on either side, as well. The wreckage lay in a blackened heap in what had once been a cellar, only a few twisted supports still standing.

Patricia and Chelsea joined Steve, one on either side.

"Hoy's house," Steve said.

"And, of course this is only a coincidence," Chelsea muttered.

"Shiny!" Patricia bubbled. "And the plot thickens!"

"And so does my cash box," the driver warned.

"What happened here?" Steve asked him.

"Gee, I dunno," the man shouted from behind his steering wheel. "Maybe they had a fire? How should I know? I'm from Flatbush."

"Kenny was right." Steve spoke to no one in particular. "Well, maybe the neighbors know what happened."

Chelsea snatched his arm as he moved toward the nearest house. "Like I said earlier, but in another context entirely: this is New York. Unless you like getting shot at, I recommend you come back tomorrow."

She watched him consider it, prepared to use force if he went the wrong way.

"You're right. We'll investigate this in the morning." With that, he turned back to the taxi.

Chelsea watched Steve drop into the car, then turned to Patricia. "Well," she said, "I guess the clubs had better wait. We need to get your daddy to the hotel and tuck him in."

"I suppose you're right." Patricia frowned. "Otherwise, he'll be on the phone or out to CBS the rest of the night. Really, Aunt Chelsea, I ought to get paid for this."

"Don't worry." Chelsea chortled as they climbed back into the taxi. "With all the cash we'll blow in Midtown tomorrow, you'll think you were."

#

Afraid since the fire, neighbors watched the taxi from a dozen windows. They did not notice the man from far down the street, who hid in his car and spoke on a palm phone, reporting the taxi, its number, and a description of its occupants. Knowing a new car would take up his post, the man pulled out moments after the taxi and followed in its track.

Chapter Ten:

Sources, and Sources Turned Inward

 (Back to Contents)

"SAM to starboard! SAM! SAM! SAM!"

Mike immediately pulled up his knees, clamped his satcam between his legs and chest, and braced his arms against the port bulkhead. He imagined the corkscrewing trail of white vapor hurtling toward their aircraft, a surface-to-air missile riding its tip.

The vertolifter wrenched. Mike clenched his teeth. His muscles strained to hold him in place against rapidly shifting g-forces.

A crewman manned the machine gun across the cabin, throwing projectiles and expletives toward the ground.

The crew chief stumbled toward the gun port next to Mike, looking like a badly played marionette as he plunged across a pitching floor that deftly eluded his feet.

Something roared close overhead, a gunship or cargo vertol, Mike couldn't say.

"Clear!" the crew chief screamed. "It hit the mountain behind us!"

"I got a piece of the gunner!" the other crewman shouted. Then he stiffened, and Mike saw his hands tighten on the gun control handles. "Tracers incoming starboard!" he yelled.

Again the deep, staccato cough of gunfire, this time from both sides of the ship. "More tracers port!" the crew chief yelled. "Get out of my way!" He kicked at a reporter thrown against his leg by an unexpected heave of the deck.

The vertol jerked rhythmically, rapidly, then sparks flashed as metal ricocheted throughout the enclosed space. Someone screamed.

A reporter shot to his feet like a jack-in-the-box, clutching his face. He stumbled, trampling those nearby. Mike watched him, ready to kick him away. "Get him on the deck!" the crew chief ordered. Hands reached for the gyrating man, but shifting g-forces thwarted any effort to grab him. Finally, the man sailed across the cabin as if shot from a catapult, and smacked hard into the starboard bulkhead. He landed on his colleagues like a big sack of potatoes.

"SAM! SAM! SAM! Port and aft! The sky's full of 'em!"

Mike's stomach twisted as the vertol executed a fast 180-degree turn, then dove for the ground. Weapons fire still rose to meet it, but the pilot chose bullets over high-explosive warheads. More metal drummed against the deck and bulkheads, some punching through to rebound about the cabin. The bulkhead insulation next to Mike's head exploded from impact with some unseen projectile. Right behind his back, bullets thudded into the ship like hammer blows, but thankfully did not penetrate.

"Gunship hit!" the crew chief yelled. "Just aft and to port! Look out, she's sliding this way!"

Mike leaned against sudden acceleration. A massive explosion roared through his ears, then the vertol jerked as if hit by a truck. A shotgun blast of reporters flew forward across the deck, landing in a tangled, squirming pile. Red flared through the portholes along Mike's bulkhead as the ship's port side was engulfed by flames. The crew chief dodged and cursed as his gun port erupted like the open door to a foundry, but he did not release his grip on the machine gun control handles. Someone grabbed Mike's leg and tried to pull toward him. Mike almost kicked loose, then saw who it was.

Billy Charter struggled up Mike's body against the aircraft's wild pitches. Then a hard bank to port tossed him like a doll against the bulkhead. Mike snatched at the BBC man's coat to keep him from sliding somewhere else along the decking. Charter mouthed something through bloodied lips as he grabbed onto a projection to secure himself. Mike couldn't hear him over the engine and weapons noises.

"Fire in number four!" the crew chief reported between concentrated bursts from his machine gun. A moment later Mike noticed a distinct lessening of engine noise as the port aft turbojet shut down. "She's still burning!" the crew chief yelled. "You'll have to drop her!" Almost immediately, the ship shuddered from an outward blast of explosive bolts, and quickly rose from the loss of over nine hundred pounds of steel. Mike heard the luckless engine crash into the mountainside only yards away. For the first time, he noticed the gunfire had ceased.

The crew reported back to their pilot according to an established after operations protocol. Mike relaxed. The engagement was over. Charter still clutched his handhold at the bulkhead.

"It's over!" Mike yelled, and was startled by the loudness of his voice. The release of one engine had dramatically decreased the noise level. "It's over," he said, quieting his tone. "Whenever they do that crew report, you know we've flown through the gauntlet."

"Well." Charter turned and pressed his back to the bulkhead. He straightened his jacket and ran his fingers through his hair. "If you'll forgive me. I need few minutes to calm myself."

Mike nodded, and turned to the crew. The two huddled aft in the cabin, away from their passengers. They spoke over their intercom with the pilot.

"Something's wrong," Mike said.

Charter looked at him, wide-eyed. Mike wondered if he was all right. "Something wrong?" the Englishman repeated. "I hadn't noticed."

The crew chief stood and approached the reporters. "It's like this," he told the group, "we've lost one engine and we're leaking fuel and oil. The pilots are picking up fault lights from the power transfer works; they think we're overheating. But, hey! We're better off than some people. Two vertols got scragged back there."

"I feel so lucky," Charter said, and laughed. A few others joined in, a desolate sound that chilled the cabin.

"We still got problems," the crew chief continued. "We might have to ditch in the sea and get picked up by a rescue vertol." The nervous laughter stalled. Everyone stared at him. Mike was as scared as anybody; he flinched at the sound of jets overhead.

"They're ours," the crew chief said as his gunner hauled over a trunk-sized equipment case. "In here," he continued as his assistant opened the case, "are life jackets with locator beacons. Put one on, and be ready to exit the aircraft on command. Seaman Conners and me'll make sure you're properly harnessed. Don't worry," he added, grinning, "even in the dead of winter, the Mediterranean is plenty warm."

"What about him?" Mike asked, nodding toward the reporter shot during the melee. He lay unconscious in the middle of the deck.

The crew chief shrugged, uninterested. "Keep his feet elevated, so he don't go into shock. The wound is mainly cosmetic, but Conners can get you the first aid kit so's you can bandage him up. Pick two of you to watch over him if we go into the drink, since he can't take care of himself."

"Aren't we taking him to the hospital ship?" another reporter asked. "I mean, before going on to the carrier?"

"Mister, you haven't been listening. We aren't likely to make the carrier ourselves. That's almost two hours. If we do make it, the Evan Bayh has more than enough doctors to see to his needs. Sure, he got hit. Tough break. I'm not crying over it." With that, the crew chief nodded curtly to the bunch, then stepped through and over them to reach the wall separating cargo bay and flight platform. He leaned through the hatchway into the pilots' company, his broad body effectively closing the door on his passengers.

"Well," Charter said, releasing his grip on the bulkhead. "This could have gone better."

"Don't be a sissy," Mike teased, hoping to lighten a serious situation. "You call that a fire fight? They hardly scratched you."

"No, no scratches, just a bloody busted lip, multiple contusions, and some thoroughly frayed wits, is all. I suppose I have to drown next. I can't do this, Michael. I'm a married man."

Seaman Conners shoved two orange life jackets at them. "Just put them around your necks and tie them off around your chests," he said. "I'll demonstrate the beacon in a minute."

The reporters donned their life jackets, and cinched them. They endured the obligatory demonstrations, glad for any distraction. Then there was nothing to do but wait, and imagine the fate that approached them. Mike found the waiting worse than any conceivable end. His mind wandered unbidden down terrible, dark alleyways of possibility. He knew the difficulties of spotting a bobbing head in choppy waters. And if the beacons didn't work, or their batteries died before rescue vertols arrived? What about sharks?

He watched the crew chief, who stood at the cockpit hatchway like a grim, stone funerary monument, his eyes darting between his pilots, their controls, and the horizon beyond the vertol's windscreen. Mike couldn't see outside, but neither could he ignore those eyes, or the hard set of the man's face. He determined to watch the crew chief for the surest news of their predicament. No one, including the pilots, knew their ship like the man who maintained it.

They jerked and sputtered their way home, flying level at great risk of hostile fire. Probably to conserve fuel, Mike thought. After a while, the crew chief relaxed by the slightest amount, a droop of his shoulders and a softening of his jaw. He turned back into the cargo area. "We're over water," he said. "Nobody to shoot at us now."

If they had just crossed the coast, the Evan Bayh steamed almost two hours out, but no one suggested an alternate destination. The nearest friendly airfield beckoned five hundred miles to their north, well beyond their fuel range and blocked from access by the airspace of unsympathetic countries. Only the United States enforced the four-year-old United Nations resolutions against the Serbian Confederation, resolutions which effectively enslaved the Bosnian Muslim minority to its apartheid society. The Italians, the Greeks, the Austrians, and all the lesser surrounding powers routinely refused their airfields and staging areas to American forces involved in the mission. Italy, Albania, and Greece all guarded their national waters against the Evan Bayh's isolated task force. They disdained the American role in this age-old conflict, but on what did they base their judgment? Information out of Serbia was highly orchestrated. Not even the on-site journalists knew what really went on within those borders.

But the reporters cared nothing for international politics. Their universe had shrunk to the dimensions of their aircraft and the distance from it to the water. They aged more rapidly when they felt the aircraft drop, and looked at each other's pathetic sheepish grins when it climbed again away from the waves. Eventually, though, the crew chief yelled magical words above the uneven complaints of the engines, first that the carrier was sighted, then that they made their final approach.

Mike looked about the cabin. Nothing had changed in hours, except that the wounded reporter now sat up, the unbandaged parts of his face oozing blood down his life jacket. Seaman Conners stood poised by the starboard cargo door, his hand on the latch handle.

"Thirty seconds!" the crew chief bellowed as he crossed from the cockpit hatchway to the starboard cargo door. "Stay sharp; we're landing on an active deck! Remember, follow me out the door! Stay close to me! If you screw up and survive the roasting jet exhaust, I will certainly have your hide! Am I understood?"

A murmur of assent.

"Say it for real!"

"We understand!" the group bellowed.

Almost immediately, the vertol bumped something solid, bounced, then sagged to a solid rest. Conners threw open the cargo door. Bright morning sunlight blasted the cabin, and terrific noise, like the screams of angry banshee. Two dungareed navy men jumped into the cabin before anyone could exit, carrying a collapsed stretcher. They scuffled their way to the wounded reporter, and took him in charge. The crew chief dropped to the Evan Bayh's flight deck. The reporters followed in close order, Mike, as usual, bringing up the rear.

The vertol crouched abeam of the ship and just behind the island superstructure. A squat yellow fire truck stood alongside. Sailors in flame retardant suits crawled like energetic monkeys over the ship's top mounted service cowling and around to the struts of the now missing port aft fan jet. Two Hurricane bombers waited behind the island, barely thirty feet from Mike. Their wing pods and bellies bristled with ordinance. Their tail fins heralded the yellow and black emblem of VAQ-83, Pete Harita's squadron. Far opposite the island, the number one and two catapults prepared to launch another two bombers. Huge hydraulic blast shields stood up from the deck, just behind the planes, deflecting the searing heat from each aircrafts' dual jet turbines. The bombers fired afterburners, straining at the holdback bolts clamped to their landing gear. Waves of heat obscured the aircraft in front of the blast shields, as did the rising steam escaping from the catapult safety valves. Deck crew in yellow vests ran hunched over from beneath the black planes while their catapult officer held the monsters in check with hand signals and radio.

"ATTENTION ON DECK! CAT 1, LAUNCHING!"

The crew chief dropped to his knees, and Mike did the same. The other reporters copied, though the scurrying deck crew seemed not to pause in their activities.

A rush of thunder, and the far Hurricane shot from the flight deck.

"CAT 2, LAUNCHING!"

The second Hurricane snapped forward behind the force of its catapult and its own blazing afterburners. Mike felt the hot blast of the plane's engines from fifty yards away. He cradled his satcam against the heat. The Hurricane shot out over the end of the runway, dipped momentarily below the line of the deck, then rose into the air. The bombers waiting mere feet away from Mike's group moved forward to the catapults under direction from their ground guides. More black planes took up the vacated holding spaces. Others rose into view on the huge elevators from the hangar deck.

Mike stood with the others and jogged toward the island. He took in the frenetic, seemingly disorganized activity around him, a rare sight for the non-military. What was it all about? The Hurricanes carried carpet bombs, big ones, so they went after areas on the ground, not point targets. Were they firebombing the mountainsides from which the SAMs and rifle fire had attacked and killed two of their four vertols? But, that was hours ago, and jets had already serviced that area. Mike recalled their passage overhead while his vertol limped back to safety. Another run on the same area was pointless.

He looked to the island, up to the bridge. On one of the exterior balconies, or wings, he saw the captain in what looked like a heated argument with the admiral, though naturally Mike heard nothing beyond the whine and roar of jet engines. What went on up there? Did they argue over the present mission?

The crew chief hauled open a heavy sea door at the base of the island. He urged each reporter through, then followed after Mike. Closing the door shut off much of the screaming noise from the flight deck.

They stood in a companionway leading below decks, about half of them crammed on the ladder itself and the rest crowding the sea door's landing. "Good morning, gentlemen!" an officer yelled from part way down the companionway. He modeled exuberance. He also blocked access to the decks below, bottling up the reporters between himself the sea door. PR man, Mike decided.

"I'm Lieutenant Maher, and I'm very glad to see you survived your little adventure. The chief will leave us now to see to his aircraft, but I'd like you to follow me for debriefing. Please stay close. Things are pretty hectic with the ship on alert." He turned down the companionway, expecting them to follow.

Mike knew the 'debriefing' well: a factually true account of unprovoked attack by insurgent agencies, proportionate military response, and so forth. Captain Harper did not tolerate outright lies to the press. Anything his people said was trustworthy, as far as it went, but what they omitted was usually more interesting. Mike wanted the interesting stuff. When the group descended past the next landing and its inevitable door, he stepped aside, counted to ten, and pushed through the hatch to the hangar deck.

The lack of activity struck him. Most of the Evan Bayh's one hundred aircraft aviation wing remained tied to the deck as usual, with only ordinary maintenance activity in progress. VAQ-83, however, lined up at the elevators, what few of its aircraft remained below decks. Flat trucks with tow bars bullied the planes into position while other vehicles stacked with bombs skittered about under their wings.

Mike jogged, his satcam under one arm, along the hangar's edge back toward a gaggle of vehicles and planes at the starboard aft elevators. He risked much by his presence there. The captain, or at least his people, wanted reporters as far away from flight operations as possible. But Pete ruled this squadron. If Mike found Harita, he was safe. Pete would cover for him, as he had on minor occasions in the past. If Mike missed Harita at the planes, he could find him in the squadron ready room high up by the hangar's thirty-foot overhead. Barring that, Mike was in trouble.

Two planes waited at the near elevator, a flat slab of steel deck the size of a basketball court. It descended slowly from above. Two more aircraft waited at the elevator farther astern. Harita stood in the middle distance in his flyer's gear, his flight helmet in one hand, his parachute and survival vest bloating his torso. He gestured with his helmet toward the near elevator while in animated conversation with a khaki-clad deck officer. He froze in mid-gesture as he caught Mike's approach. His face clouded.

"Hey, CAG!" Mike yelled over the combined hangar and deck noise. "What's up, donut run to Italy?"

"What in hell are you doing here?" Harita asked. He waved the deck officer away.

"Visiting, man. So, is this about the missile attack that almost got me roasted?"

The elevator groaned to a halt beside them. Crewmen attacked it with practiced smoothness, pushing a Hurricane backwards onto the black platform. Pete's bomber.

"You know the rules, Mike. You'll get your information in the conference room."

"Come on, CAG. These are your birds topside. I thought I'd interview the dynamic commander of the intrepid bomber squadron. So, why a second bombing raid? Was your target smaller than the broad side of a barn?"

Harita stared at him, deadpan.

"What took so long, Pete? And what do you plan to hit? Surely, you don't think a pack of missile gunners will sit down on the hillside and await their just desserts?"

"I don't care what SAM humpers do in their spare time, Mike."

"Then you aren't going after them? You have another target?" What other target? The Muslims owned no field fortifications or headquarters compounds.

"Sorry, buddy, your answers come from the press liaison people. But, I guess you won't get any today." He stared beyond Mike's shoulder. Mike turned to see Marines headed toward him.

"Uh-oh," he said, turning back to Harita, "looks like I'm in trouble."

"You know what happens to reporters who won't play the game. Why'd you do it, Mike? I pegged you for smarter than this."

"Me, too, Pete. But I couldn't stand another dry press release, not with my favorite poker buddy involved. How about it, Pete? Cover for me?"

"Mr. Eller!" The Marines stopped ten feet away. There were three of them, in the loose-fitting camouflage of ship's security. They carried heavy pulse rifles across their chests.Mike turned to them, smiling. "What's up, boys? Admiral need my advice?"

A corporal stepped forward. "Sir, Mister Maher directed you to the conference room for debriefing. You're in a restricted area, sir."

"Whoa, buddy, I think your facts are skewed. Maher didn't want us hurt or in the way. I'm not in the way."

"Sir, you're in a restricted area. I've been directed to escort you to the executive officer immediately."

"Why? Have I broken some obscure rule? I'm just interviewing the CAG. Tell 'em, Pete." Harita did not affirm his lie. "Pete?"

The deck officer jogged over to the odd, confrontational group. "Commander," he said, ignoring the others, "if you're going up with the aircraft, you'll have to move ASAP. The elevator is ready." A klaxon sounded to emphasize his warning.

Harita stepped between Mike and the Marines. A faint air of humor showed on his face, but also regret. "Sorry, Mike, can't help you this time. But, don't be angry. Believe me, you don't want any part of this mess." He saluted Mike as crisply as he would a superior officer, then turned away and stepped onto the elevator.

"I have to take the camera, sir," the corporal said.

"Nobody touches my camera."

"Sir, it's my job." A hint of pleading entered the corporal's voice.

Mike sighed, and handed over the satcam.

"If you'll come with us, sir..."

Mike looked back as they herded him toward the island. The elevator ground upward, carrying its load of one fully armed bomber, two ordinance inspectors checking their installed loads, a crew chief making last checks of the cockpit, and a pilot. The pilot cradled his helmet under one arm, and stood relaxed against the brilliant blue of the Mediterranean sky. He watched Mike. He raised his free arm to wave. Mike waved back. For the first time, Mike saw Harita as more than just a source. He was a friend, in the best and most subtle ways.

And now, this new-found friend sent him back to The World.

#

Preflight had taken only a few minutes. Pete Harita traded places with his crew chief, donned his flight helmet, and conducted his final cockpit checks. The computer diagnosis came up "go", so he looked for the ground guide standing forward of his aircraft. The seaman stood stiffly at his post, light gloves glowing red, holding off on the usual signal for ignition. Ordinance men still skittered beneath the bomber's wings; it would not do to roast them. Haritia thought of Mike, who undoubtedly headed landside by nightfall, and felt a sting of guilt. After all those breaks and covers over the past eight months, why had he drawn this particular line? Mike was trustworthy. Mike was responsible. But could any reporter be brought into the ungodly truth that haunted the Evan Bayh? Harita hated his part in her dishonor. To continue in the full spotlight of world knowledge was impossible. Harita held honor above all things. Now, he feared the worst possible disgrace. He feared being labeled a war criminal.

The ground guide signaled. Harita touched his two ignition buttons, then tapped the plane forward under power from its jets. He concentrated on the launch ritual, pushing all extraneous thought into the back compartments of his mind. Guilt and angst had their appointments with time, but later.

#

"Are you stupid, Mr. Eller, or just a piece of shit?" The question boomed off the companionway's metal walls like an explosion. Mike and the XO stood on the landing just below CIC, where no doors led to island compartments. The XO's face glowered inches from Mike's, and he looked genuinely angry. Three Marines stood nearby like immovable statuary, seemingly oblivious to anything not meant for them.

"I don't believe this shit," the XO continued. "Eight months you've been on this cruise, Mr. Eller. You're supposed to set the example around here. You should know better. You think the security arrangements on this ship are there just to piss you off? You ever hear of national security? You know better; I know you do. But you still do a dumbshit thing like this. What sorry-ass explanation could you possibly have for your irresponsible behavior? Well, don't you know how to answer a question? They only teach you to ask them?"

"Sorry, I thought it was a rhetorical ques—"

"You think this is rhetoric? Boy, you got a surprise coming. Unless you have one fantastic explanation, you're out of here, Mr. Eller. I'm warming up your transport right this second. Well?"

Mike opened his mouth, but the XO's barely controlled rage silenced his prepared lie, and he dared not tell the truth. He wasn't even sure he knew the truth. It had been a dumbshit thing to do.

"Just as I thought," the XO crowed. "The great TV news reporter is at a loss for words. You have violated the security agreement between this ship and the international press pool, and will be shipped out to Germany at the soonest convenient time. In the interim, you are restricted to quarters. You will eat in quarters, your food delivered to you, if you're here long enough to get a meal. You will receive escort three times daily to the head. Marine, take him to his bunk and report my instructions to your commander."

"Aye, sir!"

"Now, get this sack of shit out of my sight."

#

The XO turned away, the first time he had broken eye contact since the lambaste began. He tramped up the companionway toward the bridge, listening to the scuffing sounds of the reporter being led below decks. The anger drained from the XO's face. He hadn't really been upset, but the pretense was necessary. He had to fry these bastards as hard as he did the crew, or shipboard justice was meaningless.

He passed CIC and continued climbing. At the next level he approached not the bridge, but a second door down a narrow passageway. He knocked twice on the jamb, waited for muffled permission to enter, then opened the door and stepped over the threshold into the captain's sea cabin.

The compartment was barely a closet, just over six feet wide, the measure of the bunk spanning the far wall. A small writing desk crowded the door, accompanied by a straight back chair. Aside from the memorabilia dressing the walls, and the pipes running across the overhead, there was little else in the room to look at. Of course, the sea cabin wasn't the captain's primary quarters, just a small oasis of privacy for when he couldn't leave the bridge.

Harper sprawled along the bunk, his face drooped in a tired scowl illuminated by the single light bulb at the overhead. He looked questioningly at his executive officer.

"Excuse me, sir, but you asked me to report. I've brought discipline on the reporter, Eller. The transfer plane will soon launch from Spain to pick him up. A few hours, no more."

"Belay that transport," Harper said. "I want any information he might have gathered stale as bagel chips by the time he gets home."

"Aye, sir. I'll pass that along."

"First results are back on the raid, Tony. It isn't good."

"Didn't hit the target, sir?"

"Oh, they hit the target, all right." Harper handed his XO a small piece of paper.

The XO squinted at the hurriedly scrawled message. When he grasped its meaning, he drew back, repulsed. He might have been holding the hand of a corpse.

"Yeah, I know," Harper said.

"Jesus, sir."

"Yeah, I know."

The XO stood stunned. The captain stared at the wall with defeated, harried eyes.

"How are you going to handle this, sir?" the XO asked.

"God dammit, man, who's selling them those missiles? And who trained the sons of bitches to shoot them? They suckered us in, were waiting for us. Where did they get those damned missiles?"

"Apparently, they have quite a few of them, sir. We'll have to compensate for that in the future."

"And have you noticed anything else? It's us they're fighting now, not the Serb government. They've figured out who their real enemy is."

"Yes, sir." The captain stated only the obvious. With the government troops buttoned up in their garrisons, the American peacekeeping mission did all the fighting. The XO knew how his captain despised that role, but the orders were specific, and there was the admiral to consider.

"Tony, this is unacceptable. You know Pete threatened his pilots the last couple of times in order to make them fly? What'll we say to them now? A bunch of college grads, Tony. They won't settle for political bullshit."

"What do you plan to do, sir?" All this grousing about the mission made the XO nervous. The captain never complained of his orders, but lately his grumbles hid just beneath the surface. "Sir, VAQ-83 is due within minutes. We'll have to tell the crew something before they're struck by the obvious. What do you want me to tell them, sir?"

Harper climbed from his bunk. He rose purposefully, in stages, like an arthritic old man. "I'll say what needs saying," he muttered, waving his officer from the cabin. He followed through the narrow doorway. "But first, I'll take a walk. You have the bridge, Tony. If those pilots come in before I'm on the air, get them straight into debriefing so they can't flap their gums too much."

"Aye, sir."

Harper squeezed past the XO and on down the companionway. At the landing, he headed not up to the wings as the XO expected, but down into the ship.

#

Mike lay on his bunk awash in mixed feelings of relief and shame. He felt relief because he'd soon be back in The World. Shame clung to him because his stupid id brain had engineered that trip. He hadn't thought when he broke restriction on the hangar deck, but, in retrospect, he had done it to get caught. If he got caught, he couldn't go over. If he didn't go over, he couldn't get killed. The math was simple, and it made him a coward. Now, he stoked a kindling delusion, an empty plan to reacquire his satcam codes and find an overland route into Bosnia. In so doing, he would regain both his professional focus and his self-respect. None of it would happen, of course, but he needed the illusion to nurse his self-esteem.

He heard sounds in the corridor but did not rise from his bunk even when the door swung open and he recognized his visitor.

"Never mind me," Captain Harper said. "I just came to say hello." He closed the door behind him and reached for the chair. He straddled it backwards and leaned over the metal back. "Are they treating you all right, Mr. Eller?"

"Can't complain," Mike said to the upper bunk, "of course, I haven't had my first supervised restroom break. I'll let you know after that."

"A sense of humor in adversity. That'll serve you well."

"Yes, sir. I'm sure it will."

"You were unforgivably stupid, Mr. Eller. Did you really think Pete would bail you out?"

"The idea had occurred to me. Look, Captain, if you don't mind, your XO's already chewed me out."

"I know. I told him to. I'm not here to chew you out, Mr. Eller."

"Then, why are you here?"

"You'll find that out when I'm ready." Harper's face held that granite etch that reminded even civilians that he was, after all, the captain.

Mike swallowed an acerbic comeback. He had more than enough trouble already.

"When they organized this press pool," Harper said in a wistful voice, as if remembering happier times, "they gave the commanders approval power over all prospective participants. It was kind of funny, really. None of us knew any of you guys from Adam, so we basically approved whatever names were sent us. Except in your case, that is. I remember See It Now wasn't even on the approved source list; just something vague like 'American television news agency'. I fought to get See It Now in the pool, something my peers could not understand. They did the whole thing under political duress; they preferred no press at all. And here I was, fighting for the presence of a particular press agency."

"Why?" Mike asked. It seemed the expected question.

"Because your boss and I go way back, Mr. Eller." Harper extended his left arm, palm turned up. A tattoo decorated his forearm, a series of closely packed parallel lines of various thicknesses, a digital bar code. "Ever see one of those?"

"Only on Corn Flakes." Mike couldn't help himself.

"The comparison is closer than you think. Let's call it a unit designation, from a unit long since disbanded."

"You served with Tallman in the war? You've made a mistake, Captain. He was in the Army, on tanks."

Harper shrugged. "Call it an interagency unit. Anyway, I knew I could trust Steve Tallman, if I had to have reporters on board." He lapsed into silence, his eyes glazing with reflection. Mike knew better than to bother him.

"Then all this started," the captain said. "Not the peacekeeping duty. That was bad enough, working a half war/half peace mission ill-suited to this carrier's purpose. This is a ship of war, Mr. Eller, not a ship of compromise."

And this was a very unusual officer, Mike thought. Navy captains never complained to reporters, or to anyone else, for that matter. Theirs were stellar careers; they were the next generation of admirals. It took long, plodding years to reach such heights, but only seconds of broadcast time to fall to the obscure depths. Harper committed professional suicide by speaking so to a TV reporter. Why?

"People have no idea," Harper said, shaking his head. "At first the mission objectives were clear. The civil war had to be arrested, kept from spreading further into Europe. God knows this continent has suffered enough. The UN decided to separate and isolate the combatants, and force them to negotiate. Our job was to execute raids on any belligerent military agencies, to discourage them from continuing hostilities. It was easy; bombing raids mainly, plus surveillance and the occasional interception. The Serbs got tired of it fast, and decided to play ball. They didn't really care as long as the rebels kept quiet. The Muslims, though, they never gave up, and that's what changed things."

Mike waited for the rest. When he realized nothing came, he settled back into his bunk. To hell with these military types, he thought. They never gave him a thing, and his luck was unlikely to change.

"We thought you might put things straight," Harper said. "Not you journalists, but you personally."

"Sorry to disappoint you."

"Yes, I am disappointed. You see, I'm bound by duty to certain rules of behavior. You are, too, but not to the same rules. When Pete told me you wanted to slip the leash, I said 'Good! God be with him!' That was two or three weeks ago. What happened?" Harper grinned at the shock on Mike's face.

"What makes you think—"

"Come on, Mr. Eller. No dummies here. Aboard ship, the best way to spread information is to try keeping it secret."

Mike sat up slowly on his bunk. His plans had been known since inception? Big deal, he decided. It didn't matter, anyway. "So, why didn't you grab me earlier?" he asked.

"It comes back to trust," the captain answered. "You've proven yourself a responsible reporter, choosing to report what your public needs to know rather than the juicy, exciting, or dangerous tidbit. And you've kept a responsible mind to the needs of national security. The story you did on that Hurricane crash stands as an example. I felt that the military effort had nothing to fear if you went native. You might go after the politicians, but you wouldn't endanger our servicemen."

"Captain, you guys snatch press credentials at the least little sneeze. I can't buy that you'd let me get away–"

"Let you get away, Mr. Eller. We needed you. I knew you'd find out the secret here, and help us out of a bad situation by informing the public with that satellite camera of yours. I assume you can reverse the broadcast limitations imposed by press pool rules?"

"Yes, sir, I can."

"Then you can do what duty prevents of me. This is one time I appreciate a trustworthy, responsible press."

"Hold it. I don't follow. You speak of your duty to keep some unnamed story silent, but you sit here encouraging a journalist to go after that story. Your career is at stake here. If your boss the admiral knew you were here, you'd be sitting right beside me on that transport to Germany."

"What's at stake here is my belief that two men with opposing priorities might still function at parallel purposes. I love my country and am sworn to defend it, but I do not wish to be known as a war criminal."

"War criminal? What in hell are you talking about, Captain? Where's Pete? You said he was in on this, too? I want to speak to him."

"Can't." Harper's face lost much of its granite purpose. "Pete was shot down over the Serbian Confederation just a few minutes ago."

Mike sat up. "Pete? Pete's dead?"

"We don't know. He ejected, but no one saw him land. His wasn't the only plane lost. We sent out ten bombers. Only six are returning. They ran into massed missile fire on the return leg from their target. The Muslims knew we were coming. They used the attack on your vertol as bait, and waited for us. Of those four pilots, only Pete ejected."

A pall fell over the tiny cabin, an oppressive silence broken only by the distant metallic screech of aircraft striking the recovery deck.

"They're home," Harper said, and stood. "Your transport is on hold. I want any classified information you have to be good and stale before you get back to the States. Consequently, you will not be allowed to communicate off this ship for a period of two days. Until then, and until you are transported to the mainland, you may continue your duties as pool reporter, and surrender your story information, not counting anything you found today, to your peers. Can I trust you on this, Mr. Eller?"

"Does that mean I can move about the ship?"

"And go on insertion missions, yes."

And go on insertion missions. Suddenly, the captain's visit showed a clear purpose.

"Can I trust you not to divulge anything learned in the hangar bay today?"

"Yes, sir, you can."

Harper nodded. He pulled open the cabin door. "Marine, the package." The guard outside handed him an object the size of a shoebox. Harper held it out to Mike. Mike took the satcam without rising from the bunk. "You are relieved," Harper told the Marine. "Inform your duty officer that the watch on Mr. Eller is canceled, my order. I'll make it official later."

"Aye, sir!" the Marine said, and tramped off down the corridor.

"There you go," Harper said. "No supervised head breaks. I'll organize a memorial service for our lost aviators. You and Pete were good friends. You're invited to attend."

"Thank-you, sir. I'd like that."

Harper nodded, then left Mike alone with his thoughts.

So, he was going over after all. Mike climbed onto his knees beside the bunk, not bothering to close the cabin door. He hauled his overseas bag from beneath the bed, and emptied its contents of spare batteries, blank high-density prisms, and food packs onto the floor. He stuffed the objects into his parka pockets and into the mission bag he carried on insertions. If he went over, he wanted supplies. Harper would soon give him reason to use them.

Mike had only to wait, and not change his mind.

Chapter Eleven:

Protected Sources, Sources Denied

 (Back to Contents)

Steve paced the lush Berber carpet of his suite's community room, trying to keep his voice down as he badgered his east coast team chief. He controlled his voice to control his stress, but also to avoid disturbing Patricia. She was feet away behind the closed door of the room she shared with Chelsea. Supposedly, she studied on the Schoolnet, the price he forced upon her, in advance, for the privilege of raiding the stores and sights once Chelsea returned from her own fit of shopping.

"But he's vanished," the team chief complained, as she had the previous three days. "The police can't find him, either. I suspect Mr. Hoy is both protected and pursued by some very powerful people."

"Which people?" Steve asked, pacing before his tablet on the coffee table. "What is this, the Mafia?"

"Close. I'm talking about the tongs. The Chinese gangs. They run the Chinese community, in and out of Chinatown. They may as well be the Mafia."

Steve paused to squint at the tablet's screen. His team chief looked serious. If anything, the lines crossing her brow showed something more worrisome than professional concern. "Are you afraid of these guys?"

Her eyes widened a notch and she squirmed. "I'm not afraid of anything, so long as I stay out of its way."

Steve ran his hands through his graying hair. He stared about the room with its leather couches, teak tables, and its three huge windows looking out over a snow-shrouded Central Park. Of course he could complain. He could dress her down for lacking the nerve to do her job, but he was just a visitor; she had to live in her city.

The doorbell rang. Steve looked up, but Patricia breezed out of her room and made for the door, grinning at him. She was ready to bolt with Chelsea. Steve shook his head and reestablished his attention on the tablet. "Tongs? I thought that was youth gang crap. They make people disappear?"

"The tongs are only part of it, boss. They're the foot soldiers for an involved Chinese underworld. If they have Hoy, he's invisible."

"Dad?" Patricia stood at the end of the entryway from the hall, looking distressed. "It's three men. The police." Steve saw nervous skepticism on her face, and a movement of gray suits behind her.

"I have to go," Steve said to the tablet. "We have company." After curt farewells, he broke the connection.

"Bring them in, Patricia." He wished she hadn't let them past the door. She needed to be more careful than that.

Three men entered the room behind Patricia. They wore almost identical gray suits, neat and stylish, along with expensive looking wool greatcoats. Steve doubted cops could afford such clothes. All three were Chinese. Two seemed awfully young, though Steve found it hard to place those seamless Asian faces. The third, however, was much older, perhaps in his sixties. His younger companions deferred to him as they entered, and stood in the background as he approached Steve. The old man smiled through stretched, thin lips.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Tallman," he said with a thick accent. "It is an honor to meet such a commanding historical presence." He put out his hand.

Steve shook the man's hand once, then released it. "And who might you be?"

"Very good." The old man laughed. "You have adopted well to New York's habitual attitude of suspicion. And I thought you foolish for letting me so easily into your home."

"My daughter is somewhat more trusting than I am. And your name, sir?"

"My apologies. I am Peter Wo Chu. My associates' names are of no consequence."

"I bet. Why did you pass yourselves off as cops?"

"My apologies again for that charade. You might not have seen us otherwise, and your hotel might not have let us up here to meet you. That would have been unfortunate."

"Daddy?"

Steve turned to Patricia. She still stood at the entryway, her eyes large. She twisted her fingers.

"It's all right, honey. I'll take care of it. Why don't you go to your room?" Steve wondered where Chelsea was, or the copilot, Perry. He wanted reinforcements.

Wo Chu watched Patricia move to the bedroom and smiled as she locked its door behind her. "Children are such treasures," he said. "I have ten, and twenty-three grandchildren!"

"You're the guys who kidnapped Louis Hoy."

Wo Chu's eyebrows rose a tick, but his face remained otherwise impassive. "Kidnapped? Not at all. Louis Hoy is a guest of my employer. It is on his behalf that I come to you."

"Hoy sent you to me?"

"Not really. We noticed your interest in Mr. Hoy's former residence. I come to take you to my employer's people, that they might discover what you want of Mr. Hoy."

"Somehow that sounds like a poor idea. Who are your employers?"

"You will discover that when you arrive at our offices." A stern tone had crept into the old man's voice. "It would be best if you came with us willingly, Mr. Tallman. It would be profitable, too. We wish to discover you, and you wish to discover us. What better arrangement could there be?"

"Maybe we could 'discover' each other in a neutral, public place?"

Wo Chu laughed an unwholesome, predatory sound.

He stopped at a clattering from the suite's entryway. One of his men reached under his suit jacket and turned to face the door. The other faced the entry as well, positioning himself between it and Wo Chu. They did not relax when Chelsea entered the community room burdened with shopping bags from Saks and Bloomingdales. She smiled when she entered, looking at once lovely in a calf length black dress and boots, and silly in the heavy parka that covered it like a tent. Her smile vanished at the sight of all those serious faces.

"Maybe I should have gone to Trump's, too?" she volunteered sheepishly.

"My associate," Steve said with a small measure of relief. "Chelsea Van Arsdale."

Wo Chu beamed. "I am deeply honored. I recall your heroic acts during the war, Mr. Tallman. I had no idea I would meet your beautiful number two, as well." He bowed to Chelsea. She looked flabbergasted.

"Mr. Peter Wo Chu," Steve said. "He's here about Louis Hoy."

"Okaaay..." Chelsea eyeballed Steve.

"Patricia's in your room," Steve continued. "She'd probably like some company."

"Okay." Chelsea moved toward the bedroom door. "I'll just take these packages in and see what Patty thinks, if that's okay with you."

He nodded. He felt a little better with Chelsea there. The more people around, the less likelihood Wo Chu would try anything.

Patricia opened the door before Chelsea needed to knock.

"Handsome woman." The old man sighed. "The body is old, but the spirit remembers. Anyway, where were we? Yes, we were preparing to leave."

"We were doing no such thing. I don't trust you, Mr. Wo Chu. Tailors aside, I see you gentlemen as no more than common criminals."

"A fiction, Mr. Tallman. We are businessmen. Please, come along. My employer wishes to ask a few harmless questions. He might even be willing to answer some."

Steve knew he'd go with them eventually. What choice did he have? He had to think of the girls. But he hadn't lived to middle age by taking unnecessary risks. These men could wish to murder him, or beat him up for showing interest in their affairs. His options were few, and none of them good.

"I came with a suggestion, then an offer, Mr. Tallman." Wo Chu's face was etched with sobriety. "Now I must insist. My employer does not accept empty-handedness when one is sent to retrieve something for him."

"Your employer can learn disappointment."

"I assure you, he does not take disappointment well."

"If he can give me information on Louis Hoy, I'll meet with him. I'll even answer his questions. But not on his terms. A neutral place: the lobby of this hotel, or outside on the plaza."

Wo Chu shook his head, mild distress showing in his eyes. "I am afraid he does not take demands well, either. You make the mistake of supposing yourself on equal footing with my employer. You are not."

"Understand my position," Steve said. "You come into this hotel room with guns, posing as someone you aren't. No way can I trust you under such circumstances."

"Granted. But, I have apologized for that transgression. Now, understand my position. I am charged with bringing you to my employer. Though I personally admire you, having followed your exploits years ago in the newspapers and on the television, I will accomplish my task, even if you must be carried from this room in a senseless heap. Now, do you understand?"

They watched each other, Wo Chu's face passive, as if he stared out the window on a bus trip. Steve tried to control his breathing, knowing his weakness under stress.

"I'll have to get my stuff," he said finally. He bent down to shut off his tablet.

"You are a wise man," Wo Chu said, and Steve heard real admiration in the tone. "Many would have taken the unwise path of pride, and lost. You have no idea how much you have won."

"I need to get my coat."

Wo Chu gestured openly, and smiled that honest but predatory smile. Steve took up his tablet and walked to the bedroom he shared with Perry, followed by one of the old man's thugs. The man said nothing as Steve got his overcoat from the closet, but positioned himself to watch his charge's every move. When they returned to the sitting room, the other henchman lounged expansively on one couch.

"My associate will remain behind to watch the ladies," Wo Chu said. "We would not want them coming to harm."

"That won't be necessary," Steve said, alarmed. "They can take care of themselves."

"Oh, I insist. It is the least we can do to quell any fears you might have for their safety."

"I need to speak to Chelsea before we go."

"That will not be necessary. We will return within hours."

"I'll talk to Chelsea before we leave." He put the computer down on the coffee table.

One of the men took a step toward Steve, but halted at a word from Wo Chu. "It is unwise of me to insist too much." The old man bowed a tick. "You may speak with your friend."

"Alone," Steve qualified, looking from one thug to the other.

"Of course," Wo Chu agreed, "and please do not press the issue further, Mr. Tallman. My patience, too, has limits."

Steve crossed to the girls' door under the hostile gaze of Wo Chu's henchmen. "Open up, Chelsea," he whispered to the wood. The door cracked and he slipped through the opening.

Chelsea turned the lock as soon as Steve cleared the jamb. "Who are those guys?" she asked.

"Chinese organized crime." Steve took in their faces. Chelsea looked concerned, but not rattled. She had faced worse than gangsters in her life. Patricia sat tense and wide-eyed on her bed, her legs curled under her.

"I'm sorry, Daddy," she said, her eyes brimming wet.

Steve went to his daughter. He sat on the bed and hugged her close. "It's okay, honey. In fact, this may be the break we need." He tried to sound confident. "Next time, though, don't let them in without checking with me."

Her forced smile was a panicked mask.

"I have to go," Steve said to Chelsea. "They're leaving one of those enforcers behind, presumably as insurance that I cooperate. Think you'll be okay?"

"You'll find out, because we're coming with you."

"I don't think they'll stand for it."

"They'll have to. We aren't staying here with John Dillinger, that's for sure." She went to the bureau, kicking off her boots on the way. She took a pair of jeans from a drawer and pulled them on under her dress.

"I'd rather have you with me," Steve said, trying to control the rising tone of his voice, "but it might be safer here. You can probably handle one guy, and God only knows who or how many they're taking me to."

"Which puts you in the shithouse," Chelsea said. Unmindful of his presence, she pulled the dress over her head and dropped it to the floor. She snatched a faded baseball jersey from the bureau drawer, and pulled it on. "Safety in numbers, Tallman. There isn't much truth in it, but it sure makes me feel better." Fully dressed except for shoes, she went to Patricia and Steve, putting her face just inches from the girl's scared eyes. "Get your shoes, young lady. You asked for a detective show. Well, here it is."

"You should stay here and take care of her," Steve insisted, though he, too, preferred they stay together.

"Don't leave me, Daddy," Patricia said in a frightened whisper, and held him tightly.

And that settled it.

Wo Chu laughed heartily, genuinely, when the door opened and the three of them came out in coats. "No explanations needed," he said, though his men looked more hostile than ever, even insulted. "Of course your ladies are welcome on our trip. Come, let's go."

They left the room in a tight group, Wo Chu's men in front and behind, the old man holding Steve's elbow, outwardly like an elder seeking support. Chelsea followed close behind, one arm linked around Patricia's elbow.

As they left the elevator and crossed the hotel lobby, the lead thug took a palm phone from his overcoat. He spoke into it in rapid Chinese.

"He calls ahead for our ride," Wo Chu said. "Cabs are so difficult to get in Manhattan." He seemed to find that funny, and laughed his frightening laugh.

A Lincoln limousine waited outside, the curbside doors thrown open.

"Evening, Mr. Tallman," the doorman said. "Going out?"

"Yes, going out," Steve answered, checking a momentary impulse to cry for help. "Business."

"Be careful. More snow coming in."

"We will." Steve felt an additional pressure on his elbow. He climbed into the car. Wo Chu slid in beside him. One of the thugs herded Chelsea and Patricia into the rear-facing seat and climbed in after them. The other took shotgun. A word from Wo Chu set the car in motion.

The driver is Chinese, Steve thought. These guys were thoroughly insulated.

Wo Chu kept up his animated chit-chat, most of which Steve ignored. It was as if the old man went out with friends. He spoke in that tone Steve had learned to hate after the war, that awe of celebrity and heroism that had driven him to an anonymous profession behind the camera. Wo Chu truly admired him. Steve hoped to use that admiration if given the opportunity.

#

Chelsea watched their route, a task made difficult by her intentional position between Patricia and their unwanted seatmate. Nonetheless, she followed their track down 5th Avenue past the distinctive landmarks of Saint Patrick's Cathedral and the Empire State Building, then onto Broadway. The snow slowed traffic to a bored, mesmerizing crawl. Everyone sagged in their seats. Even Wo Chu succumbed to the narcotic effect of stop-and-go traffic, and ceased his aimless, idle monologue. Patricia alone showed anxiety. She stared out the window at nothing, and flinched at every movement.

"We're going into Chinatown," Chelsea said when they passed the Museum of Contemporary Art. Immediately, her hoodlum seatmate gave her a painful squeeze on the knee.

"Hey! Watch it, buddy! You wanna eat that knee?"

Wo Chu spoke without looking at her. "I advise caution, Miss Van Arsdale. True, I supervise these men, but they have their ideas as to the place of women in business situations, and the youth are so impulsive, you know."

"You certainly can turn a threat, Mr. Wo Chu." The thug reached again for her knee. Chelsea eyed him, her jaw jutting. After further reflection, the henchman offered an evil grin and withdrew his hand to his lap.

"I apologize if you see it so," Wo Chu said, this time catching her eye. "I have no tact if my guests feel threatened. Perhaps a story would make the time pass. Please, tell us of the time you were shot down, and almost captured."

This guy is nuts, Chelsea thought. "No, thanks."

"But, yes. It would be an education for the youngsters."

She stared at him.

"Maybe later," he decided, and adjusted a sudden tightness of his tie.

They left Broadway for a worn neighborhood of 20th century brick buildings and narrow streets. The streets were heavily decorated with multicolored streamers and banners emblazoned with Chinese script. Fake electric candles shone from some windows, and a few children played on the snow-choked sidewalks, setting off firecrackers and cherry bombs. Chelsea saw no more landmarks, just a few street signs with familiar names like Canal and Mott. In no time, she lost her bearings.

"Ah! We arrive," Wo Chu announced.

The car emptied its passengers onto the snowy sidewalk before a well-aged structure of brick with stone trim. A neon sign in both English and Chinese script identified the building as the First International Commerce Bank (New York). A festive array of banners and streamers hung against the facade. A loudspeaker blared traditional-sounding eastern music.

"Chinese New Year," Wo Chu explained. "I am afraid the snow keeps our people indoors tonight. This is unusually foul weather for New York." He reasserted his grip on Steve's elbow. "Help this old man along the walk, Mr. Tallman. I worry about ice. These bones have grown brittle."

They entered the building, on its surface an ordinary bank. The tall, wooden counter for teller cages, the free-standing customer counter for writing checks and deposit slips, and the partitioned area normally inhabited by loan officers and administrative personnel, all deserted until the morning. Wo Chu led the party across the echoing wood floor to a door behind the teller counter. He opened the door and stood aside. "You will excuse me. I must report your arrival to my employer."

Steve entered the room. Chelsea followed, pulling Patricia along. The door clicked shut behind them. Chelsea did not hear it lock.

They stood in a conference room with one large rectangular table and ten chairs. A coffee urn grumbled in one corner, with china cups and stainless steel spoons laid out.

"Well," Steve said, "I don't suppose they'd bring us all this way to poison us." He laid his computer on the table, then stepped to the coffee urn and poured a cup. He held it out as an offering. "Chelsea? Patricia?"

"It's a bank, Steve," Chelsea said. "A bunch of underworld types holed up in a bank?"

"That isn't so unbelievable," Steve said. "The tongs aren't just criminal organizations, they're the underground governing force of Chinatown. That hasn't changed much in two hundred years." He took Patricia's hand and guided her onto a chair at the table. He put the cup of coffee before her. "Drink up, honey. It'll warm you, relax you. We need you with us, though I don't think there's much to worry about."

Chelsea bit her lip to keep from contradicting him.

Patricia took the hot cup in the cradle of her hands. Steve took the seat beside her. He looked tired, heavy, and old. Chelsea wondered about his stress level.

"Well, it could be worse," she said as she paced the length of the conference room. "It could have been somebody's basement, or a warehouse down at the waterfront. Isn't that what it is in the comic books?"

"Yeah," Steve said. "Favorite hero/villain hang-out."

"Anyway, I'd feel even better if I knew where we were. It's Chinatown, but I got turned around."

"Pell Street," Patricia whispered.

"Excuse me?" Chelsea cocked an eyebrow at Patricia.

"Pell Street and Mott, just east of it. A little farther east is the Bowery, and a big Pagoda-looking place."

"'A big pagoda-looking place.' Honey, how do you know that? Sorry, but you looked brain dead in the car."

Patricia's grin quivered. "I was. But I remember things I see."

Chelsea stopped pacing. "Well, aren't you a treasure. I bet school's a breeze."

"Daddy threatens me with death if I ever get less than a 'B' average. Right, Dad? Dad?"

Steve sat at her side, his head lolling. Asleep? She gently raised his head by the chin. His eyes were open. Drool fell from his lips.

"Oh, Jesus! Aunt Chelsea, I need you!"

Patricia sprang to her feet. She wrestled Steve until he sprawled backwards in his chair, his face staring at the ceiling. She pressed the fingertips of one hand against his neck while the other hand forced his eyelids wide apart. Chelsea, from Steve's other side, hovered a hand over his open mouth and quickly, roughly checked the color of his fingernails. They both knew the drill all too well.

"Pupils aren't dilated. Can't tell if they're reactive," Patricia said.

"He's still breathing, still oxygenated. Heart?"

"Fast. Looks like a Type B seizure. That's the yellow injector."

Chelsea threw open Steve's coat and ferreted roughly through its inside pockets. "Where does he keep it? I thought he kept it here."

"Try the outside pockets."

"I am. It isn't here. Where in hell–?"

They double-checked every pocket in his coat, then his pants.

"It isn't here," Patricia admitted.

"It's got to be here. If it isn't, he's dead."

Patricia fumbled through her own coat pockets. Determination replaced the frightened look that had dominated her face. "Damn you, Dad," she said. "Why do you make it so hard?"

She pulled a plastic case like a toothbrush holder out of her coat. Her shaking hands untwisted the top and poured out its contents, a red and white cylinder with rounded ends, about the size and shape of a very thick ballpoint pen. She took the cylinder in a stabbing grip, pulled Steve's chair a few more inches from the table so that she could reach his whole lower body, and knelt beside him.

"Hold his shoulders," she said. "Hold him tight."

"Hold him? What for? He's limp as wet cereal."

Patricia raised the cylinder, then slammed its end against Steve's right leg. Chelsea heard a click as the spring-loaded syringe engaged.

"The doctor gave me this, just in case," Patricia said, getting to her feet. "It's more a booster for the Type A dose, but more generalized. There'll be a shock to his system. Then he'll be sick for hours, but he deserves it."

"And you've done this before?" Chelsea asked. "You know exactly what you're doing."

"No. This is the first time. Aunt Chelsea, the syringe is two years old. I'm not even sure it works."

Steve bolted upright and screamed with the agony of sudden physical torture. His body convulsed. Chelsea, behind him, stared stupidly at her empty hands, which had held him an instant before. Patricia threw herself against her father and hugged him as best she could against the chair. Chelsea recovered, threw one arm around his neck and one down his chest, and pulled him with a grunt against the chair back. "Get his legs!" she yelled. "His legs! He's kicking all over the place! Oh, Christ Almighty, Steve, stop!"

The conference room door crashed open. The young Chinese in its frame stood statuelike, pistol raised in a two-handed grip, shocked at the sight before him.

"Help out or get out!" Chelsea shouted, but Steve's bucking already subsided. The initial few screams sank to rattling gasps, and further toward the low, pitiful moans of an assault victim. Chelsea felt assaulted herself. She had taken some good cracks from Steve's flailing arms, and she knew Patricia had suffered more than one nasty kick. Steve's limbs now hung limp, and his torso moved from deep, labored breathing rather than the spasms of moments before. Chelsea relaxed her hold on him, but her face remained next to his, cheek pressed to sweat-smeared cheek. She stroked his chest through his soaking shirt. "Get it together, honey. You've done this before."

Patricia hugged her father tightly.

The guard stared as if they were insane.

Steve's lips moved, and emitted a thin croak.

"You don't have to talk," Chelsea soothed. "Just rest. We'll handle things."

Steve lifted his head away from hers. He licked his lips. Sweat dripped from the end of his nose.

"I feel terrible," he managed to whisper.

Patricia put her lips almost to his. "You didn't bring your medicine. I had to improvise. Are you all right?"

He hoisted one trembling arm and patted her feebly on the cheek. He turned his bloodshot eyes to Chelsea, and back to his daughter. "Thanks," he said.

"Is there a problem?" Wo Chu stood just outside the room, partly blocked by the wide-eyed guard, who quickly moved to clear him a path. Others pressed behind the old man, four or five perhaps. It was dark beyond the door, so Chelsea discerned only shadows. "Is there some difficulty, Miss Van Arsdale?" Wo Chu asked more directly. He seemed more put out than concerned.

"No," Chelsea answered. "Why do you ask?"

Wo Chu frowned as he stepped through the doorway. Four punks filed in behind him, all dressed in expensive suits, all young. Only Wo Chu's original guards seemed out of their teens.

Another man entered, overweight, also well-dressed, but not much younger than Wo Chu. This man carried himself with an easy authority and a skulking danger that identified him as the mysterious, often mentioned "employer". He took a seat at the far end of the conference table from Steve. Wo Chu, the guards, and a striking Chinese woman who followed in the employer's wake all remained standing. The guards stationed themselves in various corners of the room. The Chinese woman, in a perfectly tailored business suit, cradled a leather-bound tablet at her hip. Wo Chu approached Chelsea.

"It is important," he said, "that we treat this meeting with the utmost seriousness. I hope you understand that." He turned away and walked to a spot beside his boss. The other man spoke rapidly in Chinese, looking at Steve. The woman typed one-handed on the tablet.

Wo Chu straightened. "Mr. Tallman, Miss Van Arsdale, Miss Tallman, I give you my employer," he announced. "He is dai low, official liaison between the public and the An Leung Merchants Association. He is also what you might call chief of security in this part of Chinatown."

"We're so pleased to meet you," Chelsea said acidly.

Wo Chu sent her a warning glare. "My employer apologizes for what he calls his 'shameful lack of intellect', as he does not speak English. He has asked me to act as translator. His first concern is for Mr. Tallman. Does he require medical attention? My employer is willing to summon a physician."

"Why don't you just leave him alone?" Patricia cried, rising to face the old man. "It's all this that made him sick!"

Wo Chu spoke softly in Chinese, as he would for each exchange. The dai low spoke with authority directly to Steve.

"My employer says that he regrets being even an indirect cause of your condition, Mr. Tallman. It saddens him to witness such infirmity in a great man. However, business demands that you speak with him, if you are able."

"I'm okay," Steve said, but he didn't look it. His eyes flamed, and he smelled rancid with sweat. He reached shakily with both hands to grasp the table, and pulled himself by degrees to an upright position. Chelsea and Patricia stood behind him, Chelsea's steadying hands on his shoulders.

"My employer offers you accommodations until you feel better."

"Let's get it over with, Wo Chu. I have things to do."

Chelsea warmed with pride.

The dai low spoke quickly.

"Why are you in New York?" Wo Chu repeated in English.

"I'm looking for Louis Hoy."

"Why do you seek Mr. Hoy?"

"He researched a story about the EOG, the Equal Opportunity in Government Act. I want to work with him on exposing the story." Steve licked his lips. That must have been too long a speech.

The dai low snapped orders to one of the thugs, Chelsea's seatmate from the van. He bowed, and left the room. Wo Chu's employer turned back to Steve.

"My employer sends his man to get you a glass of water. Now, how did you discover Mr. Hoy's research?"

"Someone gave it to me."

"Who gave it to you, and how did they come by the research?"

"The Native American Movement. They stole it."

The dai low smiled for the first time as Wo Chu translated.

"You are an honorable man. You do not lie to improve your status. And who in the Native American Movement delivered you this research? Was it your uncle, Ben Blackcloud Tallman?"

Steve stared from red eyes. "How do you know about Ben? Is he behind this?"

The guard returned. He placed a tall glass of water before Steve, who hesitantly, unsteadily took a sip. During that time, the dai low directed a long stream of Chinese from his side of the table.

"My employer hopes the water is satisfying. Ben Blackcloud Tallman has worked with us on other matters. His concern over EOG fostered An Leung interest in Louis Hoy's activities. But, no, your uncle is not involved in our present deliberations. Another question, if you will allow: what is your purpose for seeking Mr. Hoy's research? How will you use the information?"

"I plan to do a story on it. On See It Now."

"Do you plan to attack the racists who back this EOG monstrosity? Do you plan to expose the evil nature of this bill?"

"I don't propagandize," Steve whispered.

Chelsea leaned forward to look at him. He sounded off. Did another attack approach?

"We apologize. My employer did not hear your response."

Steve closed his eyes tightly. He tried to breath deeply to settle himself. Chelsea cringed.

"Mr. Tallman?"

Steve reached for the water glass. A hand intercepted his wrist. It belonged to the guard who had brought him the glass in the first place. The man said something harshly, impossible to misunderstand. Answer the question!

Chelsea grabbed the guard's hand away from Steve's wrist. She forced it upwards, punching him in the face with his own fist. Before that insult registered, she wrenched his arm, kicked the man's feet out from under him, and deftly extracted his pistol from its shoulder holster as he fell to the floor. He hit with a jarring crunch. She still held his arm. She straightened it, put her booted foot against his armpit, and pulled hard. He screamed. She dropped his arm, knelt beside him, and pushed the pistol's muzzle against one wide eye.

"You have terrible manners," she said.

"Watch yourself, Chief," she heard Steve warn in a weak whisper. She looked up and around. Three pistols pointed at her from different parts of the room. Wo Chu stood openly dismayed behind his impassive boss. Patricia stood frozen behind her father, her eyes squeezed shut in dread expectation. Steve leaned to the far side of his chair, the side away from Chelsea, and threw up.

Chelsea stood slowly, releasing her victim. She placed the pistol on the table next to Steve.

The dai low sighed, then said something to his guards. They holstered their weapons.

Once more the dai low spoke, and the remaining three guards hustled around to Chelsea's side of the table. One snatched up the weapon. Two others grabbed their moaning comrade by the lapels of his jacket and dragged him from the room. The last guard left after them, closing the door behind him.

"That one's insolence has brought shame upon this house," Wo Chu translated. "His punishment will be severe."

Patricia, realizing at last that they would not be killed, released a wheezing blast of pent-up breath. She helped her father right himself.

The dai low rose from his seat, beckoned Wo Chu, and walked around to Steve's place at the table. His gait was unhurried, a man in control. The woman followed close behind. The dai low pulled out a chair and offered it to Patricia. She took it on the power of his nonverbal command. The man looked at Chelsea, said something in a smooth, playful tone, and laughed.

"My employer offers a joke, Miss Van Arsdale. He says 'Please, have a seat, but over there, please.'"

She pulled out a chair and sat down close to Steve.

The dai low sat on Steve's other side, careful to avoid the puddle of vomit congealing on the polished wood floor. He spoke in a low, respectful voice.

Wo Chu translated with equal feeling. "My employer apologizes for all that has happened this evening. He has lost face this night, and wishes to regain what he has lost by making your suffering worthwhile in some small way. But first, he must have an answer. Do you plan to expose the evil nature of the Equal Opportunity in Government Act?"

The dai low took a handkerchief from his inside jacket pocket and handed it to Steve.

Steve accepted the offer with a nod of thanks, and wiped foul matter from his lips. He took a sip from the water glass. "I'm a journalist," he said. "I'll report the facts, whatever they are. I won't take sides." He took another sip of water. "It isn't my place to tell people what to think. I only give them the tools with which to think for themselves."

The dai low grunted, then spoke again.

"An honest answer," Wo Chu repeated, "though it falls short of what we had hoped. Based on your cooperation, you will see your Mr. Louis Hoy. Now, do you have any questions for us?"

Steve seemed too foggy to ask a cogent question. He maneuvered more upright in his chair, moving like an old man. He licked his lips and closed and opened his eyes. Chelsea thought she should cut short the interview and opened her mouth to do so as he spoke.

"What is your relationship with Louis Hoy?"

The dai low spoke immediately, and at length.

"My employer explains that Mr. Hoy became of interest when he began to speak out against EOG and the Republican Party. This, though many An Leung members, if they espouse any American political beliefs, consider themselves Republicans. When Mr. Hoy received threat mail and phone calls, we offered him protection. He thought such favor would limit his editorial freedom, and turned us down. We watched him anyway, and were there the night they torched his house. We got Mr. Hoy out alive, and one of our soldiers killed an arsonist, but all of Mr. Hoy's files, excepting those on his mobile unit, were lost in the blaze. Since that time, he has been under An Leung protection, and has continued his research from a safehouse here in Chinatown. We now believe EOG is a grievous threat to Chinese-American freedoms, but we have no way of combating it effectively. When we spotted you four days ago at Mr. Hoy's house, we hoped you might help us. My employer asks forgiveness, but it seems you have no interest in helping anyone, Mr. Tallman."

"You sound like my uncle," Steve said, forcing a weak smile.

"My employer hopes to see your uncle again. Perhaps they could plot together. EOG affects your people as much as ours, Mr. Tallman."

"I'm a journalist," Steve said more forcefully. "If I do some good, so be it. But I don't serve my uncle's transient truths. I give the people the facts. With those facts, they can think for themselves."

The dai low frowned as he tried to ingest Wo Chu's translation. Then he stood.

"We will return you to your hotel, or to a hospital, if you prefer. We will contact you later to arrange your meeting with Mr. Hoy. Please stay at your present address. My employer regrets that you and he cannot agree philosophically on this matter. His allies are few." The dai low turned to leave. The door opened magically for him, held by one of his soldiers. Wo Chu bent toward Steve. "I, too, am disappointed, Mr. Tallman. But I do not feel the same frustration as my employer. I believe there is more within you than facts and fourth estate dogma. You have killed hundreds of thousands in the name of good against evil. Once this evil grows more visible flesh, you will seize your destiny again."

Steve just stared at him.

Wo Chu bowed, first to Steve, then to Chelsea and Patricia in turn. Then he, too, left the room.

The three sat numbed in their seats. Chelsea felt drained of her initial euphoria at bringing down a larger, armed opponent. She also felt shame, knowing that her thoughtless action had put them all in further jeopardy. Patricia seemed stunned. Steve looked like a kicked dog. He might have welcomed a bullet from the dai low's acolytes. He turned his red, watering eyes from one woman to the other, registering their expressions.

"Well," he said in a halfhearted stab at humor, "that went well."

#

Snug and warm in a McDonald's restaurant, Sam sipped his coffee and watched Peggy shiver over her satcam outside. LA had buzzed her just as she anticipated her hot cherry popover, and had urged her into the whipping Montana wind to receive her requested datastream. Sam watched her through the ice-frosted windows, and grinned. Spanking new reporter with a spanking new satcam. He hadn't told her that the camera received just as well indoors as out; the satellite link did not require line-of-sight. You're a bad man, Sam thought of himself. That was one California girl really earning her pay.

He turned away from the window. That quiet cowboy, Jimmy Belew, had come through just as Mr. Merritt said. Sam ran a finger over a page in his reporter's notebook, the notes on Jim and Susan Johnson, convinced by Belew to speak on the record. Until the Johnsons, no one had submitted to an on-camera interview. The couple's courage, temerity, and anger presented the first real break in Sam's investigation. Their son Elbert lay buried in the local cemetery after having been shot full of holes while visiting New York City. Elbert died an arsonist, to his parents' mortification. He had torched a home in Queens, and had unluckily run into gang members protecting their turf, or so the police assumed. Now his parents lived stricken that he had come to such an end, and were angry at those who had led him there. They had given Sam choice items of Elbert's effects, their contribution, along with the interview, to ending the cancer of the Montana Rural Auxiliary.

Sam examined the articles entrusted to his care. The photo of Elbert and five militia buddies most intrigued him, because the Johnsons had identified one of those buddies as the heretofore faceless Leon Decker, Mercy's Rottweiler to the rank and file. Peggy had beamed the photo to Los Angeles for a data search, and now froze her buns off while she retrieved the results of that search.

A very bad man, Sam told himself.

If luck permitted, the photo might provide an identity for this man who fanned a growing fear among these rural people. "We can't get nothing from the police," Jim Johnson had said. "Most of them are in the militia." Sam stared at Decker's image. Odd that such an ordinary looking man could foster such corruption. That white, thin, thirty-something face with the receding hairline camouflaged a monster.

Sam put aside the photo and smoothed a crumpled slip of paper, about the size of a post-it note, that displayed Decker's name and a handwritten encryption code for the World Wide Net. A seemingly random series of twenty-one letters, numbers and punctuation marks, this scrap of paper was the key to Decker's hate mongering network, the invitation to a home page, most likely, where his people got their instructions. But only those with the encryption code and a password could log on, and Elbert had taken the password into the grave. Unfortunate, but Steve had people who lived to surmount such barriers. This otherwise worthless series of characters might yet yield its promised treasure.

His satcam chimed.

"Yo. Clemmons."

"This here's Tom Merritt. I think you better get out here, pronto."

"Is there a problem, Mr. Merritt?"

"I said pronto."

"Yes, sir. Where exactly is 'here'?"

The connection hummed over Merritt's silence. "I'll pick you up at– where the hell are you, anyway?"

"Brockway."

"Then I'll pick you up just east of Jordan, on State Road 200. That's about an hour and a half from where you are. Get there quick."

"Yes, sir. On our way."

Sam clicked off. He cursed, then stuffed the remainder of his dinner into his mouth while simultaneously gathering up Peggy's.

"Let's roll, rookie!" he said once outdoors. "Got a call to check."

"It'll be a minute," Peggy said. "It's transfering now."

Sam climbed behind the wheel and keyed the Suburban's engine. The batteries read low; he hoped the solar cells outpaced the drain. He waited for Peggy to finish her chore, to unlink her phone and safe-mode her camera. He willed the heater to move warm air.

Peggy slammed the rear doors and tramped around to the passenger side. "Ready," she said as she climbed into the front seat. She shook herself from the cold. "This Decker guy has a record, Sam, real nasty one, too."

"My attention is all yours." Sam pulled onto SR 200 and turned west. The packed snow made for a passable driving surface, but he still couldn't exceed forty miles per hour. He handed Peggy the half finished meal, and her coffee.

"Why, thank-you," she beamed. "You aren't as bad as everyone says you are."

"Oh, by the way, you don't have to be outside to send and receive with the camera. Line of sight on the satellite isn't required if the signal is above nominal."

She looked at him. "You could have said that earlier."

"I'm an old man. I forget. So, you found out..."

She placed the coffee gingerly in her dash cup holder, and put the sandwich and cherry popover in her lap. She held her phone close to her face, catching its blue glow. "Leon Anthony Decker, the Third. The Third, isn't that a kick? Anyway, Leon has a record the size of War and Peace, complete with assaults, resisting arrests, petty theft, grand theft, suspicion of drug dealing, suspicion of trafficking in stolen goods, suspicion of rape. Numerous weapons violations, and a bunch of these entries are flagged as hate crimes. Leon is a known member of the Illinois Nazi Party and suspected of being a member of the Aryan Nation. He's on intimate terms with the Chicago, East St. Louis, and Champaign-Urbana Police Departments, as well as with the Illinois State Police."

"Professional scum bag," Sam said.

"There's more. Mr. Decker is the proud holder of a dishonorable discharge from the United States Army. Seems he deserted his unit while on occupation duty after the war, and went on an extended unauthorized shopping spree."

"Looting?"

"Looting. And other stuff. The army thought about hanging him, which is still legal during wartime under military law, but his uncle got him off. Would you like to know who uncle is?"

Her grin scared him. "Okay, I'll bite. Is it J. Edgar Hoover, or God?"

"You won't forget after I tell you? Being old and all."

"Peggy..."

"Leon Decker's uncle, on his mother's side, is, or was, Federal Appellate Judge Robert W. Forsythe."

Sam whistled. "Who is now an associate justice on the United States Supreme Court."

She nodded. "Now we know how Mercy got hold of a justice."

Sam looked at her, satisfied. "Good job, rookie." He reached into an outside pocket of his parka and pulled out a Snickers candy bar. "Here," he said with great gravity, "you've earned it."

She took the candy bar with mock glee, and set it aside for a later snack. They drowned in snacks, including a big bag of homemade cookies from Susan Johnson. While Peggy nibbled the remains of her dinner, the heat kicked in. Minutes later, they felt comfortable enough to open their parkas and the first few layers of insulating clothing. The Suburban sped west at a relentless forty miles per hour. Sam felt unsafe at any greater speed.

"So, what's the call?" Peggy asked after a while.

"Merritt. Don't know what about. He just said ASAP."

Peggy fiddled with the radio. There wasn't much on of real interest. The safe, conservative broadcasters of rural America were pretty lame by southern Cal standards.

"You know," she mused, "we could take that justice away from Mercy in a heartbeat."

"Oh, how so?"

"Make his relationship with his criminal nephew public. If the information is the key to blackmail, it would remove any sting from the threat."

"Sure, but it might also get the man impeached. Fixing military court-martials and aiding and abetting lowlifes could come under the category of high crimes and misdemeanors."

"So? Why should we worry if a crooked justice gets impeached?"

"It's messy, and wouldn't change much. Remember, Mercy owns the guy who would appoint Forsythe's replacement."

"Oh. I really should study my Constitution more carefully."

"It comes in handy."

#

Tom Merritt's Kiowa sat right where he promised. The thin winter daylight had faded from the deserted highway, so the old man's emergency flashers shone like beacons in the high contrast landscape. Merritt slid from the cab and walked toward the Suburban before it managed a full stop. Sam rolled down his window as the rancher passed out of the headlights and approached the driver's position.

"Follow me close," he said without preamble. "It's about thirty minutes from here, and the track is a tricky one."

"Yes, sir. Can you tell us anything?"

"I reckon not." He turned back to his truck.

"Mysterious," Peggy said.

"Becoming a pain in the ass. We're down to a quarter charge, and juice stations aren't exactly frequent eyesores around here."

They followed the Kiowa. It turned off the main road after only a short distance, rolling onto what looked like open range. Peggy groaned with dismay. Her fear of getting stuck in the frozen wasteland resurged with vehemence. Nonetheless, she didn't complain.

Sam dropped the Suburban exactly into Merritt's tracks. They followed him for many minutes, driving mostly in straight lines broken at seemingly random intervals by sharp ninety-degree turns. They apparently traveled some invisible farm trail that Merritt knew either from memory or instinct. Peggy, finding nothing by which to maintain her bearings but an almost unbroken plain of whipping snow, soon felt completely lost. The few trees that entered their headlights fled just as quickly, worthless, nondescript excuses for landmarks. As night draped itself over the land, the world shrank to a few meters of illuminated snow in every direction.

"Cookie?" Peggy offered to soothe her anxiety. Saying anything was a distraction. She held out the bag to her mentor.

Sam took a few without turning his gaze from the truck ahead. "We shouldn't eat these just yet," he said. "We'll need them for survival rations when we can't find our way home."

After a few more minutes, Peggy piped up again. "Think we should get somebody to crack that encryption code for the net? See It Now has wareheads on retainer, doesn't it?"

"Sure, and I intend to send it on. But wareheads have big egos, and bigger mouths. Steve won't use them until he absolutely has to."

"You've known him a long time, haven't you?"

"Not really. Three, four years. We've been through a lot, though."

"I don't know what to think of him. He seems so ... intense?"

Sam bit a cookie. "Not intense. Guarded. Something to do with the war, I guess."

It took a moment to realize that the Kiowa had stopped. Sam pulled the Suburban to within a few feet of its bumper. He did not cut the engine. Peggy knew it cost more in juice to start the truck than to let it idle. Besides, the heater would keep the interior warm.

Merritt stood at the hood of his truck. He held a big lantern flashlight in one gloved hand, unlit. He waited unmoving until the reporters trudged up before him. "This way," he said, and plodded into the dark.

Sam and Peggy followed, fighting not only the calf-deep snow, but the cameras and mission bags swinging from their shoulders. The wind blew ferociously, snatching at their equipment, numbing exposed skin, and penetrating their many layers of clothes. This made it hard to keep up with Merritt, and the dark nature of the cloudy night only added to their struggle.

Merritt finally stopped. He stood in the middle of no place in particular. It could have been a wide field. For that matter, it could have been a narrow glade, or even the middle of a road. The limited visibility made it impossible to say. The vague shadow of a truck skulked just beyond the old man's shoulder, and the ground was dark at his feet. As they came closer, both reporters saw that the dark spot was a definite lump. Had Merritt brought them out in that mess over the carcass of a calf? Peggy certainly hoped so.

But it wasn't a calf.

"Who is it?" Sam asked in a dispassionate tone that surprised Peggy. They could see the human shape, but snow partly covered the body and it was too dark for details.

"It ain't no pretty sight," Merritt said. He sounded angry. He took a large cloth from a parka pocket and bent down to dust snow from the body, especially around the face. Then he stood, pointed the flashlight, and thumbed its switch.

Peggy flinched, then stepped away in horror.

The body was male, and almost as white in death as the snow, except for the livid redness at its neck and upper chest. It glistened with ice particles, as if glazed like a bagel. It no longer looked human. Even so, Peggy recognized the corpse. It was Jimmy Belew, their cowboy informant.

"No accident," Sam said.

"Hell, no, it weren't no accident! They strangled him with barbed wire!"

Sam unslung his camera and pressed the record button. "Peggy, haul out one of those halogens. I want real light on this subject, not the digital enhancement stuff."

Peggy unslung her mission bag, the one with the portable lights and other accessories.

"You think the militia did this?" Sam asked Merritt.

"Well, who else? It ain't been a week since he talked to you people. This ain't no robbery, or jealous husband. Barbed wire, for Christ's sake! You see what they did to his mouth?" Merritt directed the flashlight, and pointed.

Jimmy Belew's mouth was sewn shut.

"Oh, God!" Peggy dropped the mission bag. Its contents clattered onto the snow. She doubled up, feeling her gorge rise.

"Don't you do that!"Merritt bellowed. "Don't you go throwing up in this place. I gotta call the police on this. They'll know you was here."

"Truck," Sam commanded. Peggy staggered toward the Suburban.

"I'm trying to protect you," Merritt called after her. "I got to tell the police, but a bunch of them are in on it. I know they are. They're probably after you people already. Don't have to make things worse by showin' you were here."

Peggy staggered back toward the truck. She lurched against the hood and breathed hard through her nose. She felt flushed, and sweat beaded on her brow.

She heard Sam fishing among the spilled objects from her bag. "They killed him — and did those things to him — as a message," he said. "Maybe they wanted us to find him."

"The message ain't for you, young man. It's for everybody around here that might know anything. You ain't gettin' much more help in these parts, I'll tell you that."

Peggy clawed open a back passenger door of the Suburban and leaned in to find an empty bag or box, anything at all. She vomited on the seat.

Lights flared behind her. Sam recorded the grizzly scene. Holding both camera and light had to prove bothersome, the wobbling character of the light making a gruesome tableau even more dreadful.

Peggy felt ashamed for not being there to help.

"You putting this on TV?" Merritt asked.

"That's the intention."

"Well, put that camera over here when you're done. I got a piece to say."

Peggy stepped back from the truck. She turned her face into the rushing wind, wanting it to sting her shock away. She saw the grizzly apparition of Jimmy Belew, even with her eyes closed. She tried to summon the living man, but the white monstrosity with the metal prongs protruding from its neck eclipsed the politely rugged cowboy as if he had never been.

"My name is Tom Merritt. I knew this boy lyin' here in the snow. He was a decent fella who never did nobody no harm. Always tried to do what's right. They killed him because he believed in the law and doin' a right turn for good people. And I tell you right now, he didn't die for nothin'. To those who did this thing, I serve notice. All my time, all my power in this community, all the wealth of my ranch, goes to finding justice for this boy. You'd better beg the devil for protection, because when I find out who you are, you'll think fire done come down from heaven to punish you for your deeds.

"That's all I got to say, son. You make sure they hear it."

Sam shut down the lights and camera. He bent to pick equipment off the ground. "You be careful, Mr. Merritt. These people are full of hate. They wouldn't think twice about killing you for comments like that."

"I been through a lot in my sixty-two years. I can handle a few low-class stray dogs. You make sure you show that piece."

"Yes, sir."

Peggy returned. She stood a good distance from the body.

"I'm sorry, young lady," Merritt called to her, "but you had to see this. Your life might depend on it."

"I'm sorry I left," she said, more to Sam than to Merritt.

"Watch it, rookie. You could make that line a habit." He delivered the comment lightly; she hoped he smiled in the dark.

The three of them trudged back to the trucks.

"The wind will cover your tracks in no time," Merritt said. "In fact, it's probably already covered the ones you made in. I'll lead you back to the main road, then I'll wait a while before calling the sheriff. With a little luck, they'll never know anybody but me was here, until you show me on TV, that is."

"What will they do to you?" Peggy asked. "Won't they kill you, too?"

"They can't kill everybody. For the moment, I'll play dumb, act like it was hoodlums, or rustlers. I reckon they'll figure the message is more than enough."

"We'll have to report this direct to Indianapolis," Sam said. "We knew these guys were dangerous, but this... this changes everything."

Merritt stood beside the Suburban while the two climbed aboard. "Son, you don't need no phone calls to decide what to do. That boy was killed for talkin' to you. I'd say they know what you're up to. I'd say it wouldn't take an ounce of push to send these characters after you. If I were in your shoes, I'd get out of town. Out of the state. Tonight."

"Yeah, but we may not have that option," Sam said, shaking his head. "We can't run from every threat that comes down the road. If we were runners, these people would win every time. I don't see you running, Mr. Merritt."

Merritt nodded at him. "Well said. Still, you two be careful. Trust nobody. You got to understand, what happened to Jimmy Belew, the people who done it was his friends. They did that to their friend. You, you're their enemy."

#

They headed toward the motel.

"I couldn't have done that," she said after a while. "You were so aloof back there, like that body was just some animal, some road kill. How could you do that?"

"Been there," he said.

"I couldn't have done that." She shook her head.

He nodded, and frowned. "Someday, you will."

They did not speak the rest of the trip. No one ate any cookies.

Chapter Twelve:

Sources Compromised, Sources Erased

 (Back to Contents)

"Access denied."

Steve slumped backward into the cushions of the hotel couch, a bucket between his knees, Patricia supporting him on one side. Chelsea stopped pacing the floor in front of the coffee table. Perry sat in a nearby easy chair, his eyes darting back and forth between his boss and his pilot-in-command.

Chelsea stared dumbly at the little tablet with the friendly dog on its screen. "What does that mean, 'access denied'? It's you, Steve. How could it lock you out?"

"It doesn't recognize my voice," Steve said.

Chelsea could relate to that. She hardly recognized it, either; his voice sounded like grinding gravel. "Okay, so it doesn't recognize you. Access through the keyboard. Patty'll type for you."

"Can't." Steve licked his lips. "I voice locked it before we left with Wo Chu, to keep the hard drive out of his hands."

"So unlock the voice lock. Why is this so hard?"

He answered with a feeble wave of one hand.

"Voice lock is a kind of hyper-security software," Patricia explained. "It's used by people with extremely sensitive documents on their hard drives. Once it's turned on, it can only be canceled by the owner's voice."

Chelsea threw up her hands. "Well, that's just wonderful!" They needed Kato's medical help document, which harbored directions on post-treatment of Type B seizures involving emergency use of the red syringe. Steve vomited enough, and violently enough, that he scared them all a little. "What does that mean, Steve? Do I crank up the vertol and fly you all the way to Walter Reed Army Hospital? That's in DC!"

"Can't. The dai low said to stay here."

"To hell with the dai low!" Chelsea resumed her pacing.

Patricia patted her father's beading forehead. "You don't have a backup of the file? On Alfred? On the net?"

"No."

"Sloppy. What am I going to do with you?"

"Okay, Steve," Chelsea said. "Take a drink of water, swish it around, breathe deeply, and try again."

He sipped water from the glass Patricia held for him, then spat it into the bucket.

"Take your time," Chelsea said. "Concentrate."

"Kato."

"Access denied," the computer said happily. "This is a secured unit. Any further attempt by unauthorized operators to access this unit will result in destruction of the hard drive, memory cache, and primary battery."

"Dammit!" Chelsea beat the air with her fists. "Perry, ready the vertol."

"No," Steve said, then threw up in the bucket. Not much poured out of him, but the heaves wracked him anyway.

Chelsea dismissed his command. "Sorry, but we can't just let you sit around and shrivel."

"The dai low–"

"–can kiss my lily white ass! And so can your lousy story!"

Patricia eased Steve back against the couch, then slid from his side and into her room. Chelsea noted her exit, but was in much too high a temper to care.

"This story is important," Steve whispered. "I'll be all right. This has happened before."

"Not with a hypo full of who knows what in your system. It wasn't your regular medicine. For all we know, it could kill you!"

"They wouldn't give me lethal drugs as medicine."

"Are you kidding? They're the ones who fucked you up in the first place!"

Patricia returned with her tablet, its transfer cable trailing. She sat down beside Steve, switched on her unit, and pressed the open end of her cable into Kato's jack.

"I thought of that," Steve told her. "You can't target mode the unit; Kato will notice and destroy the hard drive."

"Shut up, Dad."

Steve lowered the bucket to the floor, its contents sloshing as his hands trembled, and rolled over onto his side on the couch.

"We stay here," he said. "We wait for the dai low."

Chelsea turned to her copilot. "Perry, get on down to La Guardia and check out the vertol. File a flight plan for Walter Reed, pick up at Rockefeller Center."

"But, he just said–"

"To hell with him! I'm the one who signs your evaluations!"

"But, he's the boss..."

"Stay where you are, Perry." Steve's voice was weak, but the words held force.

Chelsea's eyes narrowed. "Uh-uh, mister. You've no right. I run the vertol crews. That was our deal."

"Remember who you work for, Van Arsdale."

"I do remember," she bellowed. "And I know who I don't work for, too! I don't work for being shot at, or threats of being shot at, or for getting kidnapped. I don't work for your God damned stories, and I don't risk my life for any God damned misbegotten story. When I risk my life, it's for people, real live, ill-mannered, smelly, bad breath people. You understand that, Tallman? I don't give a damn about your stupid journalist's principles. Right now, your stupid journalist's principles are pissing me off. You are really, really pissing me off, Tallman!"

"I'm in," Patricia said, distracting them.

"In what?" Steve asked.

She couldn't be in the medical document. Kato would have screamed bloody hell.

"I'm in the system software, looking for your voice lock program."

Everyone stared at her in dumbfounded silence.

"How in the world did you do that?" Steve finally asked.

"I made Kato mistake my notebook signals for ordinary feedback from ambient static charges. From a lamp or our own bodies. He never saw me coming." Her eyes gleamed as her fingers played over the touch-sensitive screen of her unit.

Steve stared at her hard. "Where did you get software to do that?"

"Personal stuff, Dad. I've got your voice lock."

"It'll do you no good," Steve warned. "Kato monitors his software. You'll shut him down for sure."

"Uh-uh. Kato's a moron, like every other machine. I'm installing a virus to make his system think my secondary hard drive is his hard drive. It'll take a second to load, another few to spread. There."

Patricia's tablet beeped frantically.

"Kato's released a destructive virus toward my secondary hard drive. It'll be a while before it hits me, though. I'm routing the path through the hotel's wireless, onto the net, and through half a dozen dense servers spread over the world."

"What the hell—" Chelsea understood nothing of what she heard.

"It'll take a minute for him to chew through all that fiber optic, all those nodes, all those servers. Especially through AT&T; their network is so slow. Now I go for your voice lock. I take a print of your voice security subroutine stored in Kato's recognition file, I break it apart, and insert the pieces before and after the appropriate lines of code, and in the right order..."

Chelsea and Perry gathered behind her, watching over her shoulder. A second alarm sounded. "What's that?" Chelsea asked.

"My secondary drive. Kato's faster than I thought."

"Told you," Steve said. He leaned away, interest depleted. "You're caught."

"I can still kick it."

"It'll seize up and go blank any second," Steve said.

"Let's be a bit more constructive, Dad."

Chelsea and Perry watched with undisguised wonder as her fingers darted and information mushroomed on her monitor. A dialog box intruded into the center of her screen:

SYSTEM FAILURE IMMINENT.

PLEASE RELEASE ANTI-VIRUS.

Patricia uttered a whispered curse. Her pinky finger snapped to the dialog box and swiped it off the screen. She ignored its advice, and continued her maneuvers through Kato's voice security program, stealing only an instant to wipe her hands against her jeans.

A blue window full of nothing intruded into her work. She flicked it away.

"What was that?" Chelsea asked, pointing. It hadn't seemed good.

"That was the death of my secondary drive. Kato's in my primary now. But I'm good. His priority is to destroy stored documents first, applications second, and system software last. I'm ahead of this."

No, she wasn't, Chelsea knew. Patricia was only human; Kato was faster than her. He could sweep through her petty efforts at any instant. "Is this going to work?"

"No," Steve said. "If Kato eats her drive before she finishes working, he'll complete the loop through the transfer cable and devour himself, as well.

Patricia pressed the enter key of her on-screen keyboard and froze in expectation.

Her computer suddenly stopped beeping. The screen went blank. She snatched the transfer cable from Kato's jack.

"What?" Chelsea asked. "What's going on? Are you done?"

"I don't know." Patricia watched Kato's panting dog. It disappeared.

"Dammit!" Perry slapped the back of the couch.

But then the screen flashed. Kato's desktop of software icons stared out from the monitor.

"I don't believe this," Perry said, grinning stupidly.

"Outstanding!" Chelsea said. She hugged Patricia from behind.

After a moment, Patricia turned, smiling toward her father. "Well, Dad?" she coaxed.

He still watched her with red, worn eyes. "I have to ask, did you do to those net servers what you did to your tablet?"

"Nah. They were just routers. They won't even know I was there."

Steve worked his way to a sitting position. "One day, you'll tell me where you learned all that stuff." He nonetheless nodded his approval. "You did good. Shouldn't you check for viruses?"

"Oh, yeah." She put her dead tablet aside, took Kato, and ran his anti-virus utility. "System's clean. Name and directory of file?"

"Medical Help, under Personal."

She opened the appropriate icons and windows. The Medical Help document unfolded before her.

"Liquid carbohydrates," Perry read over Patricia's shoulder. "It says liquid carbohydrates and rest, no medical review necessary."

Chelsea eyeballed Steve. "You nearly die of a seizure, and no medical review is necessary? What's that mean, Tallman?"

"What's a liquid carbohydrate?" asked Perry.

Chelsea thought for a moment. "Beer?"

"Or maybe Gatorade," Patricia suggested.

"Beer?" Perry looked skeptical. "Let's go to the quack doctor who prescribes me beer for seizures!"

"What is this, Steve?" Chelsea asked. "Is this some kind of joke?"

Steve stared back with the same blank, red eyes. "I prefer Guinness," he said. "Extra stout."

#

The door flew open. Tommy Jacketer fell from his yellow Mustang onto the pavement, startled.

Decker stood over him, his hand on the door panel, looking angry as hell. An overweight man in a cheap coat and brown suit stood next to him. Two local boys stood in the background, nervously glancing up and down Michigan Street. They stood on no lonely country road. Traffic ran light at that time of night, but anybody could wander by at any moment, either from the east, or from the parking garage right across the street. Besides, the surrounding buildings presented hundreds of watching windows. Had the boss gone off the edge?

"He's in New York, you dipshit! Get up! Get up off the fucking street and explain why you didn't notice your target leaving the building. It's been four fucking days. Did you think he died up there?"

Tommy struggled to rise. Decker grabbed him by the lapels of his coat, then heaved him against the side of the car.

"Hey, watch it!" Tommy cried. "Ain't no need for that!"

"Watch your step, numbnuts. You've pissed me off for the last time. Tallman's in New York. Explain, please."

"I don't know. He ain't left the building. I been here the whole time. Maybe he flew out on one of those vertols of his."

"Dammit, your job was to keep track of him. Why didn't you report any vertol traffic?"

Tommy straightened his coat. "Downtown buzzes with vertols, man. How can I tell one from the other?"

Decker pounded him once more against the car. "By looking, you stupid sonofabitch! By looking out your window rather than stuffing your face with cheeseburgers!" He threw up his hands in disgust. "Jesus! You see, Schooley?" he said to the overweight man while still focused on the object of his rage, "You can't throw a rock in this state without hitting a dipshit!"

Tommy worked his way erect again, mustering a veneer of dignity. "Well, if you ask me, this whole surveillance was a wash from the beginning. What am I, Sam Spade? How do I watch every exit of a skyscraper, twenty-four hours a day for four straight days? I'm only one guy, you know."

The hometown boys looked at each other and then at their compatriot. They thought that a stupid thing to say, considering the boss's mood.

Decker stared with increased malice. "You think you've been treated unfairly? You fuck up that surveillance of the old man, get my ass chewed by my boss, and you think you deserve more consideration? I'll show you what you deserve..."

Decker grabbed him again and threw him so he slid along the front of the car and onto the street. Then he kicked him in the rear. The hometown boys backed away, glancing up and down the street. The overweight man stayed close to Decker, but out of his direct line of sight.

Tommy struggled back to his feet. "Hey! You can't do that to me! I'll sue!"

"Shut your trap, asshole!" Decker kicked him again, and again. "Get moving! Up on the sidewalk! Move!" Decker herded him along the pavement and onto the sidewalk, hurling vicious kicks against his backside. In this manner, they continued down the sidewalk and into an alley between office buildings. The two straphangers followed at a discreet distance. Schooley followed close to Decker, like a trained dog. The Mustang stood abandoned against the curb, its driver's door still hanging open.

Once they were well within the alley, Decker dragged Tommy upright. "I've taken about enough because of you," he said. "Why shouldn't I cut you loose right now? Give me one reason, that's all I ask." He threw the man against the nearest concrete wall. "Well? Speak up, dammit!"

"To hell with it," Tommy said. "I don't like working for you, anyhow. To hell with the money. No amount of money is worth this kind of treatment."

Decker breathed hard. "So, that's it, huh? I straighten you out, a worthless son of a bitch who can't keep a job as a garbage man, give you guidance and training, which you obviously don't use, and you just don't want to play anymore? Well, that's typical. That's just rich." Decker examined Tommy for a moment. His stare was withering, that of a person viewing an especially despicable form of insect. "Then again, maybe this is all a big joke on your part. Maybe you're working for this Tallman guy, collecting your pay at both ends."

"That's a load of shit, and you know it!"

"Get out of here," Decker said. "I don't want anything to do with you. Get out of here, and don't show your face around me or this organization again."

This surprised Tommy, who had expected a much stiffer punishment, something involving broken bones. Now, he escaped with little more than a tongue-lashing. He considered shutting his mouth and thanking his guardian angel for small favors, but that would have been chicken-shit. There was business to take care of.

"When do I get my money?" he asked.

Decker froze in astonishment. "What? What did you say? What did this dipshit say, Schooley?"

The overweight man cleared his throat. "He said he wants some money."

"I been with this Tallman guy for almost a whole week, and nothing to show for it," Tommy complained. "My time ain't chicken feed. I deserve my pay."

"How could you be with Tallman when you're here and he's in New York? Are you out of your mind? You deserve both your legs broken, that's what you deserve!" Decker grabbed him yet again and threw him toward the head of the alley. "Now, get the hell out of here!"

Tommy staggered for his footing, fell to his knees anyway, and rose again with painful slowness. He looked toward Decker, ready to give him a good cussing out, but decided to hell with it. He turned back in silence toward Michigan Street.

"That's the kind of incompetence you showed in Arizona," Decker said to Schooley. He fought to speak more softly, to come down from the height of his anger. "I can't tolerate that kind of incompetence, any incompetence at all. Don't fail me again."

"Yes, sir," Schooley said.

"And you guys," Decker said to the hometown boys, "you pay attention. I don't want any shit out of you, either. Our mission is too important to get gummed up by idiots."

"Yes, sir."

"Hey, dipshit!"

The dismissed and humiliated Tommy Jacketer turned around just short of the street. "Yeah, what the hell you want?"

"Change of heart," Decker yelled, reaching under his coat. "I got your severance pay." His hand reemerged clutching a long pistol. The weapon spat twice, almost without sound. Tommy jerked and grabbed at his chest.

What? What had he just done?

He brought his hands away from his torso. They glistened with blood. Then he fell backward onto the pavement. The crack of his skull against asphalt filled his head with white light.

"That's how I handle dipshits," Decker said from very far away.

The others stared gape-mouthed.

Decker holstered his weapon. "Don't you boys forget that," he said. "Now, come on. We got business." He walked out of the alley, stepping around Tommy as he would a pile of trash.

Tommy didn't notice what any of the others did. Tommy was no longer there.

#

Don't worry about the God damned journalist, he had said. And now, the God damned journalist sniffed around New York after another damned news bastard, and his obnoxious little minions nosed about in the west, trying to unravel what they saw as the big EOG conspiracy.

Mercy sat cross-armed in his porch rocking chair, feeling the wet Virginia cold that chilled bones even as it melted the delicate southern snow. He wanted the cold to excite his thinking and so help him maneuver this tricky predicament. Only days earlier, Ben Tallman and Louis Hoy were the primary threats to EOG, just an old, liberal lawyer and an obscure newsletter publisher. Now he found that See It Now had been deeply involved for some time, and without Mercy's knowledge. See It Now, the most highly rated, most influential news show on TV, cell or Net. What a disaster! Now that Mercy knew of their presence in New York and Montana, reports of clandestine record checks and interviews trickled in from all over the country. What did they know? Not much, judging by their silence. Still, these were not nuisance individuals, but a powerful force in mass communication. Mercy saw before him the exposure and obliteration of long laid plans, and perhaps his personal destruction, as well.

Reduce your visibility, he told himself. Shut down operations and cover up their existence. Wait until next year, or the year after. But Mercy boiled at the thought of succumbing to pressure from the liberal-minded press. You don't run from biting flies; you swat them. And these flies certainly needed swatting if EOG was to survive. So Mercy sought to silence this new threat, while his people vigorously doctored his weaknesses, sanitizing any untrustworthy links to the grassroots organizations that supported him. One traitorous informant was already erased, and men watched Louis Hoy's benefactors to learn his whereabouts. Hoy would be exterminated the moment he showed his face. Mercy wished he could do the same to Stephen Tallman, but that would attract more attention than it squelched.

Then there was Dearing, but Mercy would control her within days, either through her own security crew or through her death. Either way, her ascension to the White House was prevented, and Mercy tightened control over the Republican party by cowing their national chairman. These were risky machinations, but chessmanship meant nothing if the press scattered the game with unwelcome disclosures.

Mercy decided to face this new threat directly. Soon, he would go to New York, to See It Now. Perhaps he and Ben Tallman's half-breed nephew could come to agreeable terms. The man wanted something, most people did, and Mercy had wealth enough to provide that need.

Of course, Tallman might not be buyable, a possibility that demanded dangerous contingencies. If he went after Mercy on the air, he could expect timely retribution. People competed for the honor of maiming that man's organization, if the need arose. That vicious, driven Black Panther bastard already prepared his audition mission. Simultaneously, Decker gathered his team to eliminate Louis Hoy and the Chinese who guarded him. Decker knew the stakes. This was his last chance to demonstrate his worth after failing to contain the data leak that had started this damnable downhill slide. Whichever group demonstrated the greatest success in their respective tasks would take its place as Mercy's chief enforcement contractor. The other was out of a job, so to speak, and possibly a target of their competitor. Mercy left no allowances for the flapping of grumbling gums.

He shivered in a sudden wet breeze that set the porch wind chimes singing and evoked an arthritic creak from the other nearby rocking chair. His eyes turned to that empty chair, once more stilled after the wind's impotent nudge, and his chest constricted with the same old lonely pain. He wished she were with him; he needed someone to comfort him in his crisis. Of course, he would have kept it all secret, for she would not have approved, and one of them worrying over his safety and reputation was quite enough. In a way, Mercy appreciated the provisions of a pragmatic God. He might not have embarked on his EOG crusade if his wife still lived. Again, she would not have approved, so naive had she been to political necessities. She might have prevented the formation of Americans for Civil Equality, or at least wielded her influence to moderate its membership. In a way, Mercy craved that influence, wished that she had saved him from this destiny. And so, a wise God had taken her from him, to make a clear path for His mortal tool. Mercy was not terribly religious, but it helped to believe in some great purpose to her absence from his life.

He shivered once more in the cold, and wondered who would miss Louis Hoy, and Anna Marie Dearing. He wondered who would mourn the passing of the two Tallman men. But those were pointless musings, without practical benefit. People stood in Mercy's path. They were obstacles. Like stones and brambles, he would clear them away.

#

Anna had gone to bed early to rest up for a hectic speaking schedule, but she instead lay awake like an intent dog. The New Hampshire primary waited just days away, the major test that would decide her campaign's mood for the nine long months until election day. Would she win against Phil Mackie, a prospect given little credibility by the national press, or would she put herself in the awkward position of explaining for months how she lost to him and still claimed the title of presumptive nominee? Her campaign was up to steam, so no excuses presented themselves. If anything, she worried less about getting things going than about slowing things down. She had disallowed two of Ray's damnable attack ads just a day ago, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars. Ray still fumed over that one. He burned to win in New Hampshire, so much so that she had wondered aloud if he might be losing perspective. And hadn't that sparked a tizzy during their regular morning meeting!

"I don't want to win at any cost," she had said. "That was for Phil's consumption; I didn't really mean it."

"Well, you'd better start meaning it," Ray countered. "Have you seen the ads he's leveling at you? And he's had a two-week head start."

"Ripping apart Phil Mackie is not the point of this run," she insisted, almost desperately. Her staff was rutted in that one disturbing focus. "We need to get my own profile before the electorate. They need to vote for me, not against Phil."

"The ads are out there. You look like frigging Mother Theresa. But we won't win with niceties. People don't remember them. Do you really want to lose this primary? Do you really want to lose in Iowa, too?"

No, she did not. But those losses seemed more and more inevitable.

In the dark of her Concord hotel room, days from probable twin disasters, she wanted reassurance from a trusted source.

She trusted Ray, but they saw this matter differently.

She wanted to hear from Steve. Wanted to, but couldn't.

Alfred insisted his master was unavailable, and had done so for days. What about her phone messages, the protected ones that Steve could not dump without hearing? Did they sit in Alfred's hard drive, neglected, unlikely ever to be heard? Did Steve willfully ignore her messages? She knew he sometimes got caught up in work. He was always difficult to reach. But she needed him now; this was no casual social whim. Did she even have priority with Alfred anymore?

That last thought frightened her. Anna was no fool, though she often pretended a stability between her and Steve that she did not think existed. Now she felt a familiar fear, a tension so often at the back of her neck. If she had no priority with Alfred, then Steve didn't want to hear from her. All her messages were erased, random electrons expelled from Alfred's innards along with the unwelcome pitches of telemarketers. It had been three weeks since her first call. He couldn't find a phone in that time? She sought to eject that fear, but it didn't want to go.

If her worries were the imaged slights of a tired, worried brain, then why had he gone to New York with Chelsea Van Arsdale, as Emma informed her? Why was Chelsea with him at all? Sure, they were long-term friends, but didn't she live in LA, for pity's sake? How much effort had gone into bringing those two together from different ends of the country?

Anna mentally shook herself, ashamed at the course of her thoughts. But who could blame her? She and Steve made do with a relationship maintained almost exclusively on the phone, and they had lost even that in recent weeks. She hadn't laid eyes on him in months, and he wasn't one to chase after an absent lover. Were they lovers, in any accurate sense? Did a few distant couplings make a relationship? And now he had gone to New York, with Chelsea right there. Chelsea and Steve had known each other for years. Steve's mother wanted them married. And Chelsea was, well, so tall.

Anna knew how petty that sounded. She rolled over and pounded her pillow, telling herself it needed fluffing.

She had no reason to suspect anything of Steve and Chelsea's heretofore platonic bond, and few people considered five-eight or five-nine, whatever Chelsea was, as tall. But few people skirted rostrums as if they were tombstones, determined to avoid standing on a box just to see over the top. Few people had to smile charmingly while spewing nonsense about big things in small packages, a smaller pigeon for Congressional target practice, or enjoyment of automatic political defilade. Few people had to arrange photo ops at the steps of courthouses, and maneuver a few steps above the press to get the optimum camera angle. She was just the right size, Steve had once said, to never have problems finding a dance partner. He had also made the unfortunate blunder, prompting an immediate backlash he likely would never forget, of comparing her to a Barbie doll. A Barbie doll! He meant it as a joke, an analogy, intentionally not even accurate, but a stupid comparison, just the same. He had compared her stature to that of a twelve-inch plastic toy, a brainless social throwback of one at that, and she didn't even get the fantasy breasts and waistline to console her.

It amazed her sometimes, the things that fell from a man's mouth.

She thought about Chelsea some more, tall, lithe Chelsea, with all that beautiful black hair. Perfectly fit Chelsea. Anna bet she never worried about her weight. Surely, she never found unsettling bulges in unpopular places. And she didn't wear glasses. Anna would have loved to just be saddled with contact lenses, but her astigmatism was too much for contact prescriptions or laser surgery. It was just one more thing on the Knock Anna Marie List, just one more reason for Steve to notice the bird in his hand, and forget the one in New Hampshire.

She rolled over, pounding the pillow again.

Stupid thoughts! You're being a paranoid idiot!

She knew Steve loved her; she knew he was hers. She made the claim with the ferocious bravado of one unsure of the truth she espoused, throwing the assertion mainly at herself. This very moment, she convinced herself, Steve hunched in the light of some computer screen, or supervised some TV control room, or lay exhausted over some problem that held his attention. He would come back to her. He always had.

And Chelsea didn't want him anyway.

Anna calculated the time for a side trip to New York, and promised herself she would go there if he stayed long enough. But first she had the primary, and the busy schedule of speeches and photo ops around it. Steve wasn't the only one who got caught up in work. She hoped to go to him off the emotional rise of an unexpected victory, so that he could see the power that truly defined her height. Not even Chelsea's tall, athletic beauty could shine more brilliantly than the next president of the United States. But she would go regardless, whether to bask in his awe or find consolation in his arms. She would go after the primary.

In just a few days.

#

Steve heard her come in sometime around midnight. He lay on his stomach in bed, his face at the edge of the mattress where he could quickly get to the bucket. The bedroom was dark, but the common room blazed when she hit the switch at the head of the entryway. He saw her pass by the door.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "What are you doing out here?"

Perry's voice answered. "Ahh, the boss is congested, or something. Sounds really screwed up, and really, really loud."

"Yeah, well, it'll be that way for a few days, according to the medical stuff. Get back to sleep. I'll kill the light."

The suite went dark once more. She must have clicked a switch somewhere in the common room. Steve closed his eyes and tried once more to settle himself to sleep, but his eyes burned, and his clogged nasal passages made comfort impossible. He considered downing the half-finished beer on the nightstand, his fourth that night, but the thought of anything in his stomach, particularly warm beer, intensified his ongoing nausea. He heard a sound, and opened his eyes to a shadow crossing the floor to his bed.

Chelsea sat down at his waist. She crossed her legs, an indistinct shadow in jeans and a cable knit cowlneck sweater, bulky and alluring at once. She ran the fingers of one hand through his sweat-matted hair, and laid her palm across his exposed cheek and temple.

"How you feeling, champ?"

"Ready for dancing," he croaked.

"Well, you sound and feel like shit."

Neither said anything for a long moment. As his eyes readjusted to the dark, Steve saw that she held a bottle of her own loosely in her other hand.

"I thought I was the one with the beer prescription."

"You'll have to speak up. I couldn't hear."

"Drinking?"

She absently flourished the bottle. "Pepsi. As the pilot-in-command, I don't drink much else until this job is over."

"I'm sorry."

"Excuse me? Where did that come from?"

"I'm sorry I dragged you into this. I'm sorry about what I did."

She patted his cheek. "It's not what you did that bothers me, Steve. It's what you didn't do. You have to take better care of yourself."

"I will. I promise. I'm still sorry."

"Well, don't tell me your life's story. You should sleep."

"Forgive me?"

"I'd rather stay pissed. Maybe I'll forgive you tomorrow."

They lapsed once more into silence. Chelsea's hand drifted to the back of his neck. She softly stroked his sweat-drenched head. Steve knew what she must be thinking. How could a man in his condition be ordered to beer and rest? It was preposterous. But she had learned years ago not to question the on-line medical document. Going to hospitals only caused more trouble, none of which had to do with medicine.

"Is Patricia still up?" Steve asked.

"I don't know. I just got in. What do you want to see Patricia about? It's past midnight."

Steve licked his lips. He wished for a sip of the half-gone beer. She must have guessed his need, for she reached for the bottle and placed its mouth against his lips. He sipped, trying not to smell the foul liquid. A little dribbled onto the sheets and settled beneath his chin, but he was beyond concern for such trivial discomforts. He rolled the liquid around his dry palette, and wet his lips.

"I have a job for her."

"A job?"

"Warehead stuff. I need some files cracked. I bet she can do it."

"Oh? That's rich. You expose her to gangsters, and practically drive her crazy with fear because you sent yourself into a seizure and neglected to carry your medicine. Now you want to get her even more involved in this mess."

"Can't trust anybody else. Low risk, anyhow."

Chelsea snorted. "Well, buddy, you can put your daughter at 'low risk' tomorrow. It can wait that long."

She took a long swig of her Pepsi, then sat unmoving except for the fingers in Steve's hair. Steve closed his eyes again. Her stroking fingers did more to soothe him than any efforts of his own. He thought he might even get to sleep if she stayed with him a while longer.

"Having trouble sleeping?" she asked, as if psychic.

"Dry mouth. Nausea. Every muscle aches."

"Would you like me to dab your neck and face? A cool, wet cloth might feel good."

"No. I'd just sweat some more."

She rose from the bed, much to his disappointment, and took two steps to the nightstand. There she knelt and took up the palm phone. She was so close that every so often her sweater brushed lightly against Steve's forehead. If not for his stuffy nose, he might have smelled her. Chelsea always smelled good.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Nothing dramatic. Setting up a little music, is all. It'll help you relax." She pressed buttons in the glow of the tiny screen, no doubt following computerized instructions.

"You look beautiful."

"Why, thanks," she said with genuine surprise. "Are you trying to get back on my good side, or do you get randy under the influence of pain, nausea, and alcohol?"

"No. You're just beautiful." He reconsidered his inadequate words, then tried again. "You're a very powerful woman."

"And you sound more like your Uncle Ben every day. Spare me the Indian mysticism, Steve. I was never very comfortable with it. There."

She clicked off the phone. The soft, barely audible threads of a ballad drifted into Steve's hearing from somewhere behind the headboard. It took him a moment, considering the unrecognized vocalist and the keyboard led instrumentals, but he found he knew that song.

"Our song," he said, trying to smile at the cliché.

She once more patted his cheek. "Loosen up," she whispered. "Get some sleep. I want you back with us as soon as possible."

She kissed him on the same cheek, rose to her feet, and left the room.

Steve watched her go, and listened to the whispering tones coming from his headboard. Chelsea's choice of music warmed him. It was not the song's original version, or its first or even second interpretation, but this more recent rendition maintained much of the original's flavor. Since the advent of digital sound, performances no longer disappeared as they had in the last century. As long as hard drives and servers existed, the great music also survived, to be enjoyed by succeeding generations. Steve and Chelsea had claimed an earlier version of this song for themselves. They had first discovered it during one of Steve's stays at Walter Reed, over ten years ago. That was after the war, but before the ultimate but impending death of Steve's marriage. It was a time when the prospects for war heroes and heroines were vague at best, as their country tried to settle its past and look once again toward its future. Steve remembered the hopes and pledges he had shared with his remarkable and faithful friend, their tenacious struggles to stay together over the years, to live as one in a world that discouraged fidelity.

They had shared fortune and misfortune equally, from Steve's medical problems and his disintegrating life with Belinda to his dizzying climb toward power and wealth in television news. He had returned Chelsea's faithfulness by insisting on her as his first vertol pilot for See It Now, and by making her pilot-commander of all the show's subsequent vertol crews. As she had seen him through the dissolution of his marriage, the associated custody battle over Patricia, and the loss of his physical independence, he saw her through the nightmares that followed her from the war and that still, though infrequently, molested her mind. And he had nursed her through one disastrous romantic entanglement after the other, until her decision that men just weren't worth the trouble. Theirs was a uniquely perfect match of personality and need. They truly felt and believed that line from their song, that "I will not be afraid, so long as you stand by me."

#

Later that night, when even the great unstoppable city around them quieted to its closest facsimile of sleep, Steve wrenched from his half doze, half pain limbo to find someone in his room. He had been coughing steadily for hours, and had achieved one violent retch into his bucket. Now he saw Chelsea's familiar shadow stoop beside him and take away the bucket. She returned with a clean container that smelled of perfumed soap. She must have dropped in a bath bar as a deodorizer. In her terry cloth bathrobe, kneeling as she did, she looked like an acolyte making a sacrificial offering as she placed the bucket in its original spot. She said nothing. He offered no greeting.

When she rose, he thought she would return to her room, but she surprised him by walking around to the other side of the bed, pulling back the covers, and sliding in beside him. She spooned close to him, draping one arm loosely over his torso and burying her face in his neck. He felt the lushness of her robe against his back, and one smooth calf against his leg. She felt him flinch in confusion, and shushed him. She patted his chest, and snuggled even closer against his body.

"Sleep," she whispered, like a breath of wind.

That night, Steve claimed his best rest in months.

Chapter Thirteen:

Zealots

 (Back to Contents)

The office building across the boulevard collapsed in a thunderous rain of masonry, glass, and steel. The gaggle of reporters flinched as one animal. They laughed off their reaction through stretched, grinning masks of denial. Just another overly weakened building; no problem. Then the street hemorrhaged, asphalt and snow erupting into the air first down the block in one direction, then the other.

"Mortar fire!" the PR man yelled. "Corporal, get 'em out of here!"

The Marine slapped one reporter's shoulder at random. "Come on!" he shouted, then sped down the street in the direction they had come, keeping close to the burned-out buildings. The group followed, stopping and starting like marionettes, afraid to move on the exploding street, afraid to stay too long in one spot, sure that spot would kill them. A second Marine herded them from the rear.

Mike heard the staccato cracking of small arms fire from somewhere ahead, and almost fell over the man in front of him as the group slammed to a halt.

"This isn't just harassment, is it?" he said to the Marine behind him. "We're under attack."

"I reckon so," the man said. He scanned the rooftops and windows across the street, the muzzle of his pulse rifle roving along with his eyes.

A big Magnum tank screamed past Mike toward the front of the group, throwing up a white wake of snow. The machine rocked to a stop as its long cannon snapped to a purposeful azimuth, like a cat alerting on prey.

"Fire in the hole!" the Marine screamed over Mike's head, more from instinct than knowledge. Mike cringed like everyone else. He guarded the satcam with his body.

The tank's cannon roared once, then again, spewing flame and gases after its high explosive bullets. Overpressure slammed the reporters, whipping their clothes, slapping their eardrums, and cutting their faces with flying ice crystals. A corner shop front convulsed into the street, spraying glass, wood, and stone for hundreds of feet in every direction. A mannequin's mangled arm fell with a muffled thud to the snow-covered pavement beside Mike. Then the group rose in order from front to rear, and jogged beyond the protection of their gray and green armored behemoth.

They turned the corner where the shop had been. It was now a black cave at the corner of its building. Marines swarmed the intersection, crouching in doorways and behind piles of rubble. Another tank advanced slowly up the boulevard, hunting for prey. Its turret-mounted machine guns spoke, reaching toward out-of-sight targets. The gaggle of newsmen stopped once more.

"Are we cut off?" Mike asked the trailing Marine. "Can we get back to the ship?"

"What's the deal?" the Marine asked into the radiophone transmitter pinned to his shoulder harness. He ignored Mike. "We can't just sit here. We have to get these people off the street." He listened a moment through his headset pickup, then looked toward the strip of sky running between the rooftops. Mike followed his gaze.

Two vertols shot by overhead, one the lethal black spear of a gunship, the other a more familiar insect form.

"Our ride," Mike said, but the Marine listened once more to his headset.

"Wilco," he said to the voice only he could hear, presumably that of his counterpart up front. He looked at Mike, then also noticed the others just beyond. "Pay attention!" he shouted. "Watch your front!"

The group moved again, each reporter skittering at a crouch after the man in front of him. They turned into an alley after only a hundred feet or so, and moved more rapidly within its narrower confines. Mike felt relief as he left the open kill zone of the street.

Ash blackened the alley, coating the strewn remnants of disrupted lives. This had been a retail area before succumbing to the disease of war. Mike climbed over the remains of kitchen appliances, scorched easy chairs and ottomans, tricycles, and whole moldering racks of clothes. He tramped upon unsold bunches of magazines, smashed bottles of liquor and perfume, their sickening mixed stench just starting to dissipate, and mounds of torn and smashed children's toys. Some of the mess had lain there for months, some for scant minutes.

The alleyway shook suddenly from yet another high explosive impact, this one striking a roof far above. Mike looked up in time to see a shower of tarpaper, brick and masonry hurtling toward him. He leapt to one side, smacked hard into an unforgiving brick wall, and cringed.

The debris crashed behind him. Something hard bounced off his calf. He choked and coughed on the rancid asphalt and ash taste of rising dust. Then he realized his luck, that he still lived, hardly touched. He turned from the wall and waved the settling dust cloud away from his eyes, stepping back into the limited visibility of the alley. Immediately, he tripped. He threw out both hands to break his fall, and landed on something soft: the rear guard Marine.

"Are you all right?" someone asked. The Swedish reporter stumbled out of the falling cloud of dust.

"Yeah, but not him." Mike cleared brick and stone from the Marine's body. "Help me turn him over."

They heaved the Marine onto his back. Mike checked his neck for a pulse.

"Still alive," he said. "His pack must have protected him." Mike twisted the Marine's communications headset off the man's head. He placed it against his own ear.

"–in, Bravo. What the hell's going on back there? Do I need to come get you?"

Mike keyed the radiophone transmitter on the Marine's shoulder harness, and spoke. "Probably so," he said. "Your buddy's banged up. We'll have to carry him out."

A short stretch of dead air, then: "Who the hell is this? What's your call sign?"

The dust settled. Like a pulled curtain, it revealed a rift in the wall across the alley. "I don't have a call sign. I'm not military. I'm the last pool reporter in line. Look, don't worry about your partner. We'll get him to you." Without waiting for a reply, Mike took the pickup from his ear and stuffed it into a cargo pocket on the Marine's field jacket. He wrestled the unconscious soldier into an upright position.

"Come on," he said to the Swedish reporter. "A little help here."

The two pulled the Marine up, then shifted his weight to the Swede's shoulders. "Got him?"

"I think so..." The Swede turned at an approaching clatter from up the alley. Another reporter joined them. The new arrival said something in Russian.

"Hold on," Mike said to the Swede. "Things are gonna shift." He pulled the quick release pins on the Marine's harness. The backpack thudded to the ground.

"That is much better," the Swede said. One uniformed arm hung across his shoulders, the man at the end of it an unsteady, sagging weight. The Russian stepped forward to help.

"You fellas carry him forward," Mike said. "I'll gather his stuff. And Boris..." He looked hard at the Russian. Boris wasn't his real name, but they had taken to cutesy nicknames for one another in their two months as roommates. "Tell Billy he can stop fretting. Waiting time's over."

"Eh?" The Russian queried in his native language. "I don't understand."

"Don't worry. Billy will. Now, get out of here. You're holding up the parade."

Mike stooped over the backpack as his two associates turned up the alley, carrying the Marine between them. They stumbled over heaps of rubble, cursed in their respective languages, and otherwise made a racket. But any noise of theirs was overwhelmed by the machine gun and cannon sounds blasting in from the streets.

Mike rummaged through the pack, isolating the spare pulse rifle batteries and ammo magazines into a neat pile on the pavement. He did the same with personal items like underwear and paperback books. He left winter clothing items and food rations in the pack, as well as useful things like the flashlight and spare "D" cell batteries, the big pocket knife, and chemical heat packs for warming hands on cold Serbian nights. He looked up to where the reporters had gone, but saw no one beyond the mounds of commercial refuse choking the alleyway. He was alone.

He turned toward the hole in the wall a few yards in front of him. He watched it while transferring the food stores hidden in his parka and mission bags to the Marine backpack. He shivered not only from the cold, but at the almost supernatural aspect of his situation. He was spared the inconvenience of his Marine bodyguard, with the additional luxury of a split in the wall before him. A Navy captain wasn't the only one wanting him gone over.

He hefted the backpack, his own bags, and the satcam, then climbed the pile of rubble to the building's ragged breach, squinting to see within. A familiar fear welled within him. At this spot, he made his irrevocable decision. This spot, half in snow and ash, half in darkness, controlled the future of his life. He could retreat and rejoin his comrades, or he could go over into a blackness more threatening than that of the blasted-out department store before him. His decision, if he thought about it, was obvious, so he refused thought. With a sharp intake of breath, he tumbled over into the building.

#

"I don't understand," Senator Mackie said in a clipped, almost angry voice. "We had your word. We had your assurance of cooperation. I don't understand why you'd do this to us, even to your own people."

Congressman Da'Shawn Foster tried not to squirm under the needling heat of Mackie's disappointment. His practiced composure meant little to the clever, judgmental senator from New York. Mackie, too, was a career politician, not fooled by false facades. Foster sat at his desk, clasped his brown fingers in front of him on the blotter, and leaned toward Mackie with a calculated touch of forbearance.

"I'm sorry if this causes any difficulty," he said in his slow Louisiana drawl, "but, Phil, this is politics. The terrain has changed over the last three months. Some of us aren't entirely sure that EOG is a bad thing."

Mackie wanted to spit. He rose from his chair and paced Foster's office, instead. "Not a bad thing, eh? The terrain has changed? I haven't noticed a single change in EOG, Senator. It still enslaves your people to minority representation. It still violates the very foundation of trust on which this nation was built. It's a monstrosity. You and your caucus said you would stand with the opposition. A matter, you said, of principle." The last word was spoken as a poisoned barb.

Foster refused to bristle. "And, at the time, that was a true position. But the EOG was a new concept; we hadn't yet looked it over. After detailed research, some of us see it more as an opportunity than an obstacle."

"Jesus, Da'Shawn! EOG is marginalization. It's apartheid. You of all people–"

"Maybe you're a little naive where the Congressional Black Caucus is concerned." Foster's words held an edge that stopped Mackie's pacing. "The Caucus is made up of many individuals," the Louisiana representative continued. "They all have their agendas, and their agendas do not always agree. Don't make the mistake of thinking all black congressmen think alike."

"I try not to," Mackie said, "but I can't see where any other frame of mind is possible where EOG is concerned. How can any black congressman support a bill that codifies minority status for his people?"

"Well," and Foster casually scratched his jaw with a long, manicured fingernail, "to start with, not all black congressmen have black constituencies. Some of my compatriots serve predominantly white districts, or predominantly white states. If they style their leadership according to the sensibilities of their white supporters, then who are we to protest?"

"That isn't leadership, that's covering one's ass. That's protecting one's job. We have to work toward higher goals than that."

Foster did not contest Mackie's words. "Then again, you'd be surprised, I imagine horrified, at how many black voters in black districts want the EOG passed. Sure, it codifies our minority status, but it also increases our representation. Many black people see this bill as a significant step forward for our people. For the first time, black people will have discernible power in the House of Representatives. We could act as a block to control legislation as we never could before."

"The only thing keeping you from controlling legislation is a decided lack of backbone." Mackie regretted the comment as he voiced it. His friend recoiled, and took a moment to form his reaction.

"My convictions have not changed a whit, Senator. I still oppose EOG, and will do so no matter what the political consequences. But I understand the motives of others, and cannot fault their decisions. It's democracy, Senator."

"Okay, stop it with the 'Senator' crap. I was out of line. I'm sorry." Mackie retook his seat before Foster's desk. "It's just that your caucus was an important block to the bill. Now, a good portion of your membership has switched sides, and how do I find out? On the Today show, of all things. You could've called me."

"Granted. Except that I found out at the same time and in the same manner as you."

They sat in silence a minute.

"This frightens me," Mackie said finally, sounding very much his advanced age.

"Not as much as it does me. I'm afraid for this country, and for all its people. This EOG bill diminishes everyone who touches it, white and brown alike, and yet it's treated like just any other bill on the schedule. There are representatives and senators selling their votes on this to the highest bidder. They're selling to whichever side promises them the biggest pork chop. And from their points of view, why shouldn't they? The bill will never pass, or the president will veto it, or the Supreme Court will strike it down. Why not play games with EOG? The profit is big, and the risk very small."

"Except that, in all the horse trading, we lose track of who's voting for and who's voting against. The actual outcome could be quite a nasty surprise."

Foster looked narrowly at his friend. "Phil, I'm surprised you'd say such a thing."

"You don't think EOG could accidentally pass?"

"It's happened often enough with other bills, but not because anyone lost track of votes. You're out on the campaign trail. I'm here every day, but it's still hard to see where anyone really stands on the EOG issue. Congressmen look scrupulously after themselves. They read the polls and they watch the pundits. If EOG passes, it will do so not because no one noticed, but because no one really cared."

Mackie grimaced. "This is the goddamned United States Congress you're talking about. I know these people. They will not put the liberties of this nation at risk for the sake of personal gain."

Foster looked away. He took a pencil from a container at the corner of his desktop. He seemed to examine it, to marvel at its sharpened point, then put it back where he got it. "Phil, you're a true believer. You're a public servant. But, most of these people, they're just ordinary folks. To them, the Congress of the United States isn't a mission, it's their job." His eyes fell to the desk blotter. "They don't mean any harm," he said. "They just want to keep their jobs."

#

Back in his office, Philip Mackie brooded. He slouched behind his desk, staring at the TV. To any casual observer peeking through the half open doorway, he reviewed the morning news on CNN. But the images from the screen barely registered on the senator. He dwelled on his meeting with Foster, and on his not quite chance encounter the night before. An ancient Chinese man, Mr. Wo Fu or Wo Chu or some such, a constituent from New York City, had cornered Mackie outside a Concord restaurant, and had handed him, in the Chinese man's words, "vital information concerning the EOG tragedy." Mackie had read the material out of habit, a time honed practice of reviewing any matter brought to him by voters. The documents disturbed him. If they were true, they warned to what frightening lengths the ultimate backers of EOG would force their agenda.

The TV image cut short his thoughts. That Black Panther guy, Marcus Tandy, addressed reporters on the courthouse steps in Los Angeles. He was on his way to face charges of drug possession and weapons trafficking.

"This nation can't chain its people with legal chicanery, or bully them through willing surrogates without spiraling into depression. The legal authorities of this nation brand me a revolutionary and use that label to condemn me, and condemn my brothers. They've forgotten that this is a nation of revolutionaries, founded by revolutionaries, a nation that dies when it loses its revolutionary spirit. My people aren't a danger to America; we embody America. And, as the embodiment of America's revolutionary heart, we will not be cowed."

We need some of that in the CBC, Mackie thought. He rose from his seat and crossed the office to the fire safe in one corner. After a moment's concentration on the combination, he extracted a rumpled oversized envelope from among his private papers: Mr. Wo Chu's nocturnal gift. These papers, released to the press, guaranteed EOG's destruction. But many of his colleagues would fall into the resultant vortex of scandal and recrimination, along with two justices of the court, and a number of conservative activist groups guilty only by association.

He went to the lumpy leather couch across from his office door. He sat, the envelope in his lap.

And what if the information turned out to be false? Then, after only God knew how many months or years of congressional investigation, Mackie's career would die with all the others. Was that the ultimate purpose of this gift? Was Mr. Wo Whatever less the concerned citizen than he seemed? In any event, that final outcome lay far in the future, if at all, preceded by much national shock, acrimony and accusation. Perhaps even race riots? Yes, another American racial schism seemed possible. Mackie decided to put his people to work on the papers; they needed careful evaluation. Meanwhile, he would assign cautious truth to their accusations, and conduct himself accordingly. He could confound and circumvent his enemies with the weapon held in his hands, but it was a dangerous instrument. It required delicate handling.

"Donna!"

His secretary appeared in the doorway. "Yes, Senator?"

Mackie rose from his crouch, the big envelope held in both hands. "Call the staff together. I'm going to need a press conference."

#

"This isn't why we joined."

Doubt shone evident in their eyes despite the uniform hardness of their jaws. They stood as statuary in their black flight jackets and tan duty uniforms, and listened to the professional sorrow of the chaplain at the rostrum.

"These men were our finest, examples to us all. They died in the performance of their duties."

"We don't want to die as they did. We don't want to die for that, to fight for that."

No bodies. No flag-draped coffins or mummifying linens. Just words. The Mediterranean rolled beneath the elevator platform on which they all stood. Three Marines with pulse rifles. Three simultaneous salutes.

"Aim. Fire. Aim. Fire. Aim Fire."

Mike stood among them, self-conscious in his white shirt and khaki pants. He owned nothing suitable for the occasion. He was the only reporter present. Why did he care? It was all a dream, anyway.

Later they cornered him in the companionway just outside his quarters. Three of them stood there, faces grim, bodies fidgeting from the lack of privacy.

"You're straight," they said. "You can get us out of this. We don't want any more Schoolhouse runs."

"What's Schoolhouse?" Mike asked. "Does this have to do with Pete?"

"We're aviators, not war criminals. We want out of Schoolhouse."

They never told him more than that; they were interrupted. Now, Mike crossed a flight deck deserted except for the press vertol and a single Seahawk readying at catapult one, relief to some aircraft of the Evan Bayh's ceaseless patrols. This was the big insertion, Mike thought. His pockets and bags hung heavy with extras. He went to seek answers. He went to seek redemption from his fears. What was the Muslim side of this fight? What was Schoolhouse? Why did career naval officers risk their futures to end this series of missions?

He jumped aboard the vertol behind Billy Charter. The Seahawk roared down the runway and off into the blue of sky or sea, Mike never knew which.

#

He jerked awake.

The sound of the jet diminished. It had seeped into his dream.

Mike sat alert, scanning the dark around him for movement. He wanted assurance that only the jet had awakened him. The department store stood in weird high contrast, with jagged hulks of blackened, blasted and crushed appliances dressed in both deep shadow and an accumulating coat of cottony snow. The snow glowed an eerie, radiant blue-white. It fluttered like blue glitter down from a rift in the roof. Little light illuminated the cloudy night, so the black places were very black, intensified by soot and ash. Mike watched those black places closely.

No movement, he thought, so no company.

Earlier had come Marines, just after Mike had wedged himself into his concealed, if uncomfortable hole between two smashed washing machines. The marines barely entered the building, and uttered only the most tentative whispers of his name as they searched for him. They worried that others might hear their calls besides the reporter they sought, and they were not sufficiently motivated to meet those unspecified others. Now the building stood silent under its muffling blanket of snow, as did the surrounding neighborhood. Mike was alone.

He stood and dusted the snow from his clothes. He fingered the light on his watch and found himself surprised by the time. He had slept over five hours. The Marines gone, he now had freedom to roam the streets. Not that the prospect cheered him. Of course, this was his mess. He had asked for it. He had whined and whined until an overtaxed God had relented in frustration. Now, he wallowed in both luck and trouble. With the troops elsewhere, he could locate and interview the Muslim fighters, people whose first inclination on meeting him would be something more definitive, and less pleasant, than shipping him to Italy.

He picked his way through the eerie blue and black rubbish, flinching at every scrape and falling fragment of building. It took him several minutes to find his way to the great gape of the blown out storefront, but he dropped down no holes, and set off no avalanche of precariously balanced wreckage. Once at the building's open front wall, he stood there, staring out at the pristine blue-white river of the street, afraid to go any further.

Idiot, he thought. You wanted this.

Mike hoisted the backpack higher onto one shoulder, and adjusted the shoulder straps of his mission bags. The camera, secured to its strap, hung from his right hand. He held it close to his side, more for comfort than for any practical reason. Then he stepped over the shattered remnants of the store's foundation wall, and into the city street.

Nothing. Not the expected sniper's bullet, or hail of machine gun fire. He really was alone.

He tramped off through the snow. He knew nothing of Muslim or American positions, so any direction was as good as another. He'd meet someone, or he wouldn't.

He marveled at the extreme quiet around him. At first he thought it peaceful, but the empty, buried street and its buildings with their blank, deglazed windows taught him the difference between peace and quiet. If this was peace, it was the peace of a cemetery macabre even to Death.

He tramped on, hugging himself against the cold. No wind blew, but his breath froze into crystals against his face. After a while, he stopped to root through his backpack. He drew out a few of the chemical heat packs. He kneaded them until the liquids inside mixed and began to radiate warmth. He shoved the packs and his gloved hands deep into his parka pockets, and trooped on.

After a few hours, he stopped to rest. He kicked snow from a spot by some nondescript building, and collapsed with his back to the wall. He fished a fibercell packet from within his stash of rations, opened it and began sucking out the contents, unconcerned with the identity of his meal. He glanced at his watch. Several hours remained until his first scheduled attempt to contact See It Now. Had Billy contacted Steve, or would blank air answer any attempts to communicate?

Mike looked back along his path. He saw no difference between the street there and the distance ahead. The black-eyed buildings, occasional piles of rubble, and the smooth, blue river of snow repeated with depressing symmetry. Except for his tracks. They alone marred the perfect flatness of the river. They stood out as the ultimate subject of some morbid surrealist painting, glaring with their obvious statement of a man crossing space in a dead world. Mike realized with dawning dread that anyone, anyone at all, could find and follow those tracks. As long as the ground remained blanketed in snow, and the wind remained still, his back was vulnerable to the curious.

He rose and continued on, plodding, throwing up sprays of glitter with each urgent step. He felt a compulsion to escape the evidence of his tracks, but they followed him remorselessly. He imagined noises behind, the muffled thud of booted feet, the metallic clink of joggled combat gear. Often he jerked around, expecting intent Marines or ragged Muslim child-warriors glaring hard at a western enemy. He saw nothing. Each time, the empty city stared back at him, unconcerned.

He forced himself to calm down, to slow his pace. No good adding exhaustion to his worries. He refused to check over his shoulder, and focused instead on the roof lines ahead, the blank windows, and the powder-covered pavement at his feet. He moved his eyes from one to another with mechanical regularity, subduing his fears beneath a balm of routine. He had almost restrained his anxieties when he noticed what awaited him a hundred feet up the street.

Mike's pace faltered. In the next intersection, several lumps, their garish darkness discernible against the snow, scarred the blue-white river's glassy flatness. Mike knew what they were, even though the snow sought to cover their grisly truth. He dropped the backpack and took his satcam in a comfortable grip. He pressed the REC button.

"The bodies look laid out for collection," he said for the microphone while filming the gruesome scene. "I count fourteen, fifteen, sixteen bodies, all dressed in ragged civilian clothing, some without shoes or coats. They're arranged in two straight rows of eight right in the middle of the intersection. There are no weapons apparent, no field gear of any kind."

The bodies lay partly covered by snow. How long since their arrangement and desertion? Two hours max? Was this how the peacekeepers dealt with "collateral damage," as they called it? Did they lay out the bodies for later pick-up and disposal, or did they put them out for collection by those grieving the dead? The pool reporters often debated the casualty logistics of this war. The peacekeepers had killed thousands over the last year or so, never explaining what happened after that. Mike decided that no American would process the bodies. Too many children lay among the dead. The authorities wanted nothing better than for the corpses to quietly disappear in the night.

"There are no fires, no evidence of shell casings or spent ammo containers. No blood. Of course, that could all be covered with snow by now, but I don't think so. From how badly the snow is disturbed, I think whatever happened here happened recently, too recently for the snow to hide." An inspiration struck him. "I believe these bodies were brought here from somewhere else, from wherever the fire fight occurred. This is a drop point for KIA, probably known and checked regularly by both sides."

Mike reached into his parka and extracted a wadded handkerchief. He stooped, the camera still filming, and dusted the snow from a body's face. What he found confused him. He wiped the rest of the body and played the camera over the revealed figure.

"This is odd..." He paused the camera, then uncovered four more bodies in succession. He looked from one to the next, curious.

"This is strange," he said into the mic as he once more pressed the REC button. "These people aren't from around here. They're country people, by their dress. Goat or sheep herders. I could understand a mix of country and urban types, but this is suspicious. Also, they're old people, or young girls. I haven't checked them all, but I'm willing to bet there isn't a fighting age male among them."

Of course, this was a small country, Mike thought. People got around. Besides, the conflict may have caused such disruption that country folk streamed for the cities. But sixteen dead from similar backgrounds, found in the same place? His reporter's natural suspicion sounded strident alarms. Mike spent the next several minutes dusting the snow from the rest of the bodies.

Thought so. No boys, no men. And none dead from gunshot wounds. All exhibited the most hideous lacerations, as well as overpressure traumas common from explosions. What went on here? It wasn't ethnic cleansing. The Serbs were restricted to garrison.

He cast about the intersection for more information, moving in an ever widening spiral out toward the street corners. Nothing. He sat down against a lamppost on one curb and stared at the double row of corpses. Snow began to trickle from the sky.

Old people and young girls. Whose fault was this? Surely not Americans? Had the Marines found these bodies and brought them to this place to be collected by relatives and friends? Was this the result of an accident, the collapse of a building weakened by war? Or, just as possibly, were these people not so innocent as one might first assume? Had they been fair targets in some way Mike could not imagine? Was anyone in this country truly a bystander, a noncombatant?

He saw the figures too late. They came from several directions, silent as the snow. Their gray clothing blended well with the unlit buildings they hugged. They flooded the intersection before Mike thought what to do. Three braked only a few feet from him, startled by the life in this body propped against a lamppost. Mike started to stand, but a boot in the face cut short the movement and sent him onto his back in the gutter.

#

"I'm always giving you bad news," Walter Marks said past the cigarette between his lips. "You'd think I could dream up at least a smidgen of happy talk with which to greet my favorite cash cow. Have a seat, Steve. You look like shit."

Steve nodded. "I hear that often these days." He moved to the chair by Marks' desk, leaning heavily on the cheap cane Patricia had gotten him at the hotel's pharmacy.

"Flu?" the CBS news chief asked as he dropped into his own chair.

"Worse," Steve said, "but not contagious. When did it happen, Walter?"

"About ten hours ago. We've known for the last three, but I wanted clarification on whether Eller was gone over or killed. The Marines couldn't find a body, and two reporters saw him alive, so we have to assume he's gone native. What's the deal, Steve? You working on something I don't know about?"

The question made Steve laugh. It felt good to laugh without wrenching one's throat. "As a matter of fact, yes, but nothing to do with this. Believe me, Walter, I had no idea."

"I know Eller," Marks said. He flicked charred tobacco into his prize ash tray, a metal "No Smoking" sign bent up at the edges. "He must have dug up something nasty, or he wouldn't have compromised the network like this. The feds are steamed, Steve. Can you get hold of him?"

Steve waggled a hand. "I don't see how. Part of our deal with the press pool was to disable Eller's satellite codes. We'll have to wait until he sends out something on prism."

"Can't you just reactivate his codes?"

Marks had never really understood all the See It Now mumbo-jumbo. He just knew it worked. "It isn't that simple. After eight months, his access codes have changed several times over. It's a computer controlled security thing, to keep people from jamming our transmissions. He'd have to contact us on the cellular net to start a new series of access codes."

"So? Get on the horn. Call him up, or at least listen for him."

"Do you have any idea how many hundreds of thousands of cell channels there are? He'll have to contact us. There's no other way."

Marks interlaced his fingers on the desk. He sat slump-shouldered. "Okay, so we wait. End of discussion. Now, what's this big secret project you intimated?"

Steve told him. He told him about Ben's visit, about EOG_Back.tdoc, about Wo Chu and the An Leung Merchant's Association, and about the gun, the glasses, and the license plate. He finished with Sam and Peggy's discovery of Leon Decker's identity, and the murder of a cowboy on the range in Montana. For his part, Marks seemed not in the least stunned. He sat a moment in silence, calculating and smoking.

"If you don't corroborate your sources with backups to backups, this could be trouble for the network."

"We're being very careful."

"You damned well better be. The president of the United States and two Supreme Court justices, all in bed with the KKK and acolytes of Hitler? We'll be so rattled by lawsuits, we won't even be able to spell first amendment, let alone invoke it."

"I might be working soon with Louis Hoy. That'll give us his sources as well as our own. And I've got Patricia working on that stuff Ben sent me."

"Patricia? Don't you think this thing a little dangerous to be dragging in your daughter?"

"A friend convinced me that she was safer with me than at home. Besides, the work she's doing is strictly low profile, low risk. That is, she will be doing it, as soon as she gets a new tablet." He leaned forward pointedly. "By the way, the news division is paying for that tablet."

"I don't even want to know. Any idea of a time frame for broadcast?" The phone rang. Marks tapped the intercom button and shushed the image of his secretary with a finger to his lips.

"No idea," Steve said. "Things are moving now. A few weeks ago I almost trashed the project, but I think a story is finally starting to gel. I'll know more when I talk to Hoy."

"Fair enough. What is it, Eunice? You know I'm in a meeting..."

"Yes, sir, sorry," the secretary said over the phone. "But, it's a visitor, sir. He won't be turned away."

"Then sit him down and I'll get to him in turn. Is that so hard?"

"He isn't here for you, sir. He wants to see Mr. Tallman."

Marks raised one eyebrow. "Interesting, seeing how Mr. Tallman doesn't have offices here at Rockefeller Center. Who is this guy, by the way?"

"That's the thing, sir. He claims, well, I haven't checked this, but–"

"Any time, Eunice..."

"He claims to be Jonathan Taylor Mercy, sir."

#

Mercy stood centered in the office, casually dressed in an off-the-rack sport coat over a polo shirt and cotton duck pants. He looked like a used car salesman, or a retiree out for dinner at Arby's. The only thing that distinguished Mercy was his undisguised disdain for everything around him, his contempt for the trappings of his enemy. The office furniture, the decorative wall hangings, even the potted plants bore his scorn, for they belonged to the enemy. He regarded his surroundings with the cold aspect of a conqueror planning the disposition of spoils, an expression that nonetheless melted into cordiality as Steve dragged himself through the door.

"Stephen Tallman?" Mercy said with a polite, but businesslike inflection. "I'm Jon Mercy. You don't know me. I run the Americans for Civil Equality..."

"Yes." Steve nodded. "I know you, Mr. Mercy. I do my homework."

"Yes, of course you do." Mercy offered his hand, but Steve made no move to take it. His right hand held the cane and maintained his fragile balance, and he didn't want to shake with the man, anyway.

"You'll forgive me; I'm not well." Steve sought a chair by the desk. He lowered himself into its security.

Mercy remained standing. "I'm sorry to hear that. I hope it doesn't present a problem, or wear you out too much, but I need to speak with you, Steve. I'm sorry. May I call you Steve?"

Steve cringed at the life coach approach. "What do you want of me, Mr. Mercy? I'm afraid I won't be joining your crusade. My sentiments lie elsewhere."

"No, you misunderstand. I don't huckster my organization. We have more members than we can easily handle, and more wanting to join every day. No, I'm here on another matter."

Steve showed him a blank stare.

Mercy moved to lean against the desk. "I've heard you're doing a television story on my organization, Steve. If you don't mind, I'd like to know what it's all about."

"Excuse me? I think you must be mistaken..."

Mercy dismissed Steve's response. "No, no, no. That won't do. I'm not your run of the mill solicitor of information. I have friends in convenient places who tell me about camera crews all over the country asking questions about ACE, and about me. Now, c'mon. If you are doing a story on me, don't you think I have a right to know? I mean, considering your 'sentiments lie elsewhere'?"

Steve looked agreeable. "Sounds about right." He coughed. "Let's see, I really don't want to hurt your feelings, but I don't think we're doing anything on you. We've the KKK in the southwest, private militias in the north and west, and eco-terrorists in the Rockies. You have anything to do with those guys, Mr. Mercy?" The question hung in the air like bait.

Mercy's face darkened. "Steve, let me tell you who I do deal with. I deal with several organizations of the conservative right. These are caring, patriotic people. Patriotic, Steve. I know it sounds old-fashioned in this day and age, but the people I represent really care about the future of their country. They're God-fearing, honest, and good. They don't deserve to get beat up by a left-leaning, vicious, irresponsible press. Are you picking me out as a pet project, Steve? Are you on some kind of liberal head hunting mission, or what?"

Steve leaned forward against his cane. "Or what, I suppose. I'm not that 'left-leaning, vicious, irresponsible press' dog you conservatives like to kick around. I'm a journalist. Most of us journalists take great pride in our objectivity. We look at the news, and we tell it to others. What they make of it is their own business. I'm objective about the news. I don't hunt heads."

"Interesting speech, Steve. Sorry I can't swallow it, but I've too often been on the receiving end."

"And, like most people, you're blind to all but your own interests. You think I'm after you and your pristine white conservative friends? I've got the left-leaning, vicious Black Panther Fellowship yelling the same thing. They've threatened to kill me. How about you?"

"You ever hear of EOG, Steve?"

"Pardon?" The change of subject was dizzying.

"EOG. Equal Opportunity–"

"I know what it is. I know you're a major backer. What's your point?"

"What is your perspective on EOG, Steve?"

"My perspectives aren't at issue here. That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"Come on. You aren't as apathetic as you let on. You're a journalist because you're concerned. Considering your background, I suspect you think EOG a great threat to your people, and to you personally. You would probably do anything to ensure it does not become law. Of course you would. I would too, if in your position. But, the truth is that EOG can do nothing but help your people. It can only strengthen your representation in Congress, and therefore give you more of a voice in the seat of power in this country. If EOG had been around in the nineteenth century, there'd likely be a whole lot more of your people around today."

"Mr. Mercy, is this going somewhere? I'm a busy man, and I'm working at half speed, as I told you earlier. My time and energy are precious commodities right now."

"I just think you should sit back and think. Think about what you're doing, and all the possible negative ramifications of your actions. Think about actually supporting me on this matter. You could do your people a great service, though it might take them a while to realize it. And I'd make it worth your while, too."

"You propose to pay me to support EOG?"

"I propose a limited partnership. Two men out to proclaim the truth. Your company doesn't have to know. We could make this a consultantship on your part. Naturally, your experience and contacts in the media are a plus."

Steve stared at him. He had assumed much about the context of their meeting, but he had not expected this. "Mr. Mercy, I already have a job. It's the only one I want. And, please, you wanted my perspective on EOG, so let me give it to you." He rose slowly from his seat. "You see, I really and truly have no perspective on the subject at all. I don't care one way or the other. EOG is politics. I'm not a politician. I hardly even get out to vote." He tapped his cane with each statement. "Yes, I know it's amazing, but EOG does not arrest my life. I don't talk about it around the old clichéd water cooler, and I don't dream about it at night. Believe me, I would love to trade my dreams for something so mundane. Everybody else seems to nurse some opinion on the importance of EOG, but I simply, really, do not think about the God damned thing. That's my perspective on EOG, Mr. Mercy. Are we done here?"

The two men faced each other like challenging boys. Mercy's face emptied of all cordiality. He studied Steve, his eyes dead as marbles. In that moment, Steve saw Mercy clearly, and he preferred the deceitful mask to the bigot's face beneath.

"You people think you have all the answers," Mercy rumbled. "Well, you don't. You can't have answers unless you first have questions, or ideas. You people spend your time and energy trashing the truth, destroying other men's ideas, all because, as you just so clearly said, you have no truths of your own. You're vacant of beliefs, and jealous of those blessed with convictions." He moved from the desk. He did not pause in his comments as he donned his coat and scarf. "Understand something about EOG, Mr. Tallman. EOG is the skin of a great belief, of a great belief system. EOG can be destroyed, but the beliefs underpinning it cannot. And understand this, too. Those of us who support EOG will not sit back and mewl in protest as it is attacked. We will defend it with every weapon within our grasp. We will defend it desperately, brutally, if necessary."

"That all sounds very threatening."

Mercy took his hat from a chair. "No, not threatening. It's all in the mode of promises, and warnings. I don't want to be unclear. That wouldn't be at all fair. If you try to derail EOG, you will be destroyed."

Steve leaned more heavily on his cane. "You haven't lived my life, Mr. Mercy. You have no idea how often I've heard those words, or words to that effect."

"You aren't listening, my friend. I won't only destroy you, but your company, your friends, your colleagues, everything and everyone you hold dear. If I come after you, if you force me to come after you, there won't be anything left when I'm done."

Steve had no retort. How could he respond to so complete a threat? "I suppose you know your way out?"

"I can find it." Mercy swaggered out the door.

Steve stood alone in the office a minute, contemplating the gist of the meeting. Good news and bad news commingled in the last several minutes like ingredients to a soup. Mercy knew about See It Now. Secrecy no longer protected Steve's reporters. But, the meeting just concluded meant desperation, that the EOG/ACE puzzle hovered close to resolution. Mercy's desperation made his threats very real; he was much more dangerous than earlier believed. This man or his surrogates had already committed arson and murder. Of what else were they capable?

Steve looked up to see Walter Marks standing in the doorway.

"How'd it go?" the news director asked. "Still tickin'?"

"The game has gone to a whole new level. I just got threatened by the bad guy."

"Nice to know he cares," Marks said, nodding in approval.

#

Mike hit the pavement in an explosion of powdery white. Almost immediately, someone grabbed him by the neck. They dragged him into the intersection and onto his knees, commanding with the butt end of a rifle that he remain so. Mike thought it wise to cooperate. Spatters of blood marred the snow below his face.

Twenty or thirty figures spread in a rough perimeter around the intersection. Two others held weapons leveled at Mike, who knelt between the two rows of bodies. More men searched Mike's backpack and mission bags, passing out winter clothes as if they were gifts. They erupted in excitement at the cache of heat packs, holding them in the air like trophies. Muslim fighters. They wore layered clothing in shades of brown and gray, perfect camouflage for the city and for the snowy terrain beyond. One man stood among his peers in an American camouflage field jacket. Its embroidered nametags read CAPRON and U. S. ARMY. This one planted himself on one knee in front of his prisoner, grabbing Mike's chin to ensure his attention. He held Mike's wallet and press ID in one hand. He said something sharp that Mike did not understand. When no response presented itself, he spoke again, with different words and inflections. He obviously spoke several languages.

"Explain your presence," he said finally in Russian. Seeing Mike's flinch of recognition, he continued. "Be quick. We haven't much patience."

"I'm a reporter–" Mike said in English. He spat blood onto the snow. "I'm a reporter," he repeated, this time in Russian, "with the United Nations press pool for southern Europe. We–"

His cheek stung from a vicious slap. "I know who you are, Mr. Eller," the man said. "I hold your identification. I didn't ask who you are, but why you are here."

"I left the press pool," Mike said levelly. "I wanted to find out the truth."

"The truth," the man repeated, amazed. "You wanted to discover the truth. You risk your life for this truth."

"Yeah, I guess so."

"I see." The man nodded. "The truth is, Mr. Eller, that your search for the truth is a very stupid idea. This is a war zone. The truth here is that your American brothers hunt and kill my people, that they like to do it, they do it well, and you western journalists help them do it, help them with your lies. The truth is that you are on the wrong side of the truth, and will very soon be dead."

Mike looked down at the red-spattered snow. "I had to do it, anyway."

The man stared at Mike as if at an idiot, then turned and spoke to his nearer companions. They laughed. He turned back to Mike. "They find your statement as funny as I do. Now, what should we do with you?"

Mike looked into the man's eyes for the first time. He held the man's gaze, though courage lay crumbled within him. "I came out here to find the truth, to find your side of the story. I'm your chance to have your say, to tell the world what's happening here."

"Interesting idea. And, how do you expect to tell this story? Did you bring along a radio station? A television station?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes."

Mike's captor laughed, and explained his guffaws to his comrades. What were they speaking, Mike wondered? It didn't sound much like the Serbo-Croat dialects he had often heard but never understood.

One of his guards yelled toward the perimeter. Someone jogged to the lamppost, the site of Mike's capture. He picked up the satcam, which still lay in the snow where it had fallen from its owner's grasp, and brought it to Mike's interrogator. The man in the American field jacket examined the camera with amusement.

"Such a small television station," he said. "And where do all the people go?"

"It's a satcam, a receiver-transmitter of digital satellite signals. I don't need a big sending station. I can beam stories to the United States, direct via the satellite Comlink 1."

The man looked at Mike with new interest. "I see. I know something of electronics. Why have I not heard of this 'satcam' technology?"

"New stuff. Look, are you going to kill me, or not? If you aren't, I'd like to do your story. Either way, I need to know."

The man laughed again. "You're so impatient for an answer you might not like. But, to continue your discovery of the truth, I haven't yet decided what will happen to you. Kill you or tell you my life's story? Perhaps I'll do both." He pitched the wallet and ID over his shoulder. "But, for now, there is work to do. We came here for a task, and it's time we moved to complete it. I leave you alive at least long enough to witness this task, an introduction to your quest for truth."

He stood, clapped once, and pointed to the ground beside Mike. The reporter flinched as someone thudded to the snow beside him, as if thrown there. The newcomer landed face downwards with hands tied behind him. He was dressed in camouflage pants, t-shirt, and combat boots. He wore no coat or outer shirt. A word from the man in the field jacket, and grasping hands forced this new prisoner onto his knees next to Mike. He shivered. His bloodied body showed numerous serious scrapes and bruises.

The man in the American field jacket stepped a few feet away and lifted his arms for attention, a huge pulse pistol gripped in one hand. He spoke, first in Serbo-Croat, then in Russian, then in something distinctly Arabic. He made a halting speech, nonstop in three languages in turn. Mike understood only the Russian, but that was enough.

"We are here!" the man said. "Tonight, we have a lesson taught, and turned back on the teacher. They call these places schoolhouses, but we, tonight, turn the purpose of the schoolhouse in on itself."

The surrounding assembly cheered, a distinctly eastern whistling sound. Schoolhouse, Mike thought. What in hell is Schoolhouse? The aviators aboard the Evan Bayh hadn't had the chance to tell him.

The man in the field jacket pointed to his bound prisoner. "This man is a criminal. He has helped to commit crimes against our people, against humanity. He comes into this country as if to claim it and dictates terms that favor dictators. It's the same story, over and over. Are we Christian? Are many of us white? Do you know what they call us outside their polite diplomatic circles? Rag heads! Camel jockeys! They can't see the truth in front of their eyes. How many of you have ever seen a camel?"

Some laughter. Cat calls. A few vehemently negative responses.

"So, here we are again. In the twentieth century they let us bleed while the Serbs destroyed us with their ethnic cleansing. Why did they allow it? In the '20's, they let the Serbs violate the peace accords and impose total subjugation. Why? In the '40's, they allowed the Serbs to strip us of citizenship, to seize our property, to deny us employment. Why? And now, they no longer ignore the Serbs. They do their work for them. Why?"

The intersection erupted in guttural screaming. Mike remembered scenes like this from other countries, from other wars. They never led to anything good.

"I see you don't need an answer. The answer is obvious. We are...unlike them." The words hung in the frozen air. The bound prisoner convulsed with shivers. "We are unlike them."

The man in the American field jacket stepped closer to the man beside Mike. "You did this," he said, gesturing around at the slowly whitening bodies. "Not you personally. We understand that. You're just a triggerman who shoots what they tell him to shoot. But you helped to do this by wearing that uniform. Now you must atone." He pointed at the prisoner. Mike saw him concentrate, then shout in English. "Guilty or innocent?"

The prisoner spoke in so low a tone that only Mike could have heard him. "Capron, Arthur C., Sergeant, United States Army, 367-42—."

Capron. Why wasn't Mike surprised?

"Speak!" The inquisitor shouted in English. "Guilty or innocent?"

"Capron, Arthur C., Sergeant, United States Army, 367-42-...-42..." The prisoner degenerated into uncontrollable teeth chattering.

The man in the field jacket threw up his arms in disgust. "He won't answer!" he yelled, reverting to his litany of triple languages. "He won't answer, because any answer will convict him." He looked at the freezing man. "But his refusal to cooperate needn't halt the lesson. We know him to be guilty, and he certainly doesn't deny it. All we need now..." He yanked back the charging handle of his pistol. "...is to carry out sentence." He pointed the pistol at Capron's head.

"No!" Mike shouted, trying to rise.

Someone kicked him hard in the back, causing him to sprawl face first in the snow. A heavy boot landed against his shoulder blades, and pushed him into the pavement. Someone shouted at him in Arabic.

"It's murder!" Mike insisted, though he found it hard to breathe. "You can't–" He cursed himself. He was shouting in English. "You can't just shoot somebody like that," he continued in Russian. "He's a prisoner!" He felt hard metal against his head. He heard the metallic crank of a pulse rifle's charging handle.

The man in the field jacket said something calming in Arabic. He knelt beside Mike and bent far over to see his eyes. "The boot in your back," he said, "I told him not to shoot. The spray of gore might dirty my clothes. Now, Mr. International Western Press, why shouldn't I shoot him? Everyone expects it. They're all looking forward to it. We don't have television here. We have to settle for more earthy entertainment."

"It's murder..."

"So? Do you think he'd be the first man I've murdered? This is a combat zone. It's full of murderers. At least I don't get paid for it." He signaled to his companions, and rose to his feet.

Hands grabbed Mike at the armpits and dragged him after his inquisitor, who now stooped beside one of the sixteen bodies on the pavement. They dropped Mike onto the remains. He flinched away from the white, frozen face of the corpse. He tried to wriggle off, but hands held him in place.

The man in the field jacket dusted snow from the dead face. A girl, no more than ten or twelve years old. Except for the whiteness of her skin and the dried blood at her temple, she looked serenely asleep.

"Do you know her?" the man asked. His eyes hovered inches from Mike's, wide and burning. "Answer. Do you know her?"

"No," Mike whispered. "How would I know her?"

"I don't know her, either. No one here knows her. I guarantee you that no one in this entire city knows her." His voice rose with each clipped statement. Anger sluiced through his eyes in building torrents. "We don't know her. Still, we grieve for her. She is one of ours. She trusted us to protect her!"

He snapped suddenly upright and returned to his other prisoner, who still shivered on his knees, his teeth chattering. Mike endured being lifted, dragged, and thrown onto his original spot beside the luckless Capron.

"This man, and others like him, make us unworthy of that trust. You call us murderers, Mr. Eller? We kill soldiers. Who do you think killed that girl over there?"

"It makes no difference," Mike said as he struggled to a sitting position. "No matter what they've done, you can't just kill people. He's a prisoner. His judgment should go to the courts."

"The courts?" The man's eyes widened, incredulous. "Which courts, would you say? His courts? The Serb courts? You don't understand. The courts have colluded to create this situation. The courts have failed. We prefer the schoolhouse." He pointed the pistol at Capron's head. The soldier was in no condition to notice.

"You called him a war criminal," Mike said. "Expose him as such. There are authorities to handle war criminals. I can help you do it. The Geneva Convention–"

"Geneva?" the man in the field jacket smirked. "Never been there."

The pistol spat thunder and flame. Greasy red and pink matter showered Mike as if from a garden hose sprayer. Mike screamed pitiful denial. He threw himself away from the explosion, tried to escape in a clumsy, backward crab crawl until he ran up against the legs of more corpses. He could not control his screaming. It flooded from him in a raucous fit of panic and shock. He cried and screamed for the dead Capron, for the dead Muslim civilians, but mostly he cried for himself.

The man in Capron's field jacket stared at the panicked reporter. "Get a grip on yourself," he said, irritated. "It's only a war."

Mike stared back at him wide-eyed, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He tried to control his fear, but animal grunts nonetheless wormed their way between his clenched teeth.

His captors ignored him, confident that shock would keep him in his place. A few huddled with the Russian speaker, exchanging thoughts in a language Mike did not understand. After a moment, they separated. One man shouted orders to the perimeter. Another, along with Capron's killer, stepped over to Mike.

"Don't be overly afraid," the man in the field jacket said. "We won't kill you today. Maybe tomorrow."

Three men wrestled Mike to his feet, then pushed him up the street, away from the grisly intersection. Others flanked them on both sides. The entire assemblage broke into a slow jog.

#

Snow continued to fall on the intersection. The bodies arranged so neatly in their double row turned to white lumps. The headless heap of Capron, Arthur C. lay hidden as if under a tasteful bed sheet. The frozen offal of his violent death grew invisible beneath its pristine cover. Mike's wallet, discarded and forgotten, began to bulge with absorbed moisture. Finally, the people arrived, dark figures huddled inside ragged, mismatched layers of clothing dark and stiff with grime. Some dusted the laid out bodies, occasionally taking one lovingly, sorrowfully in their arms, carrying it later into the darkness. Others came only for clothing. No one touched the American dead in the intersection's center.

Chapter Fourteen:

Zeal

 (Back to Contents)

"...and so, due primarily to EOG's prevalence on the congressional schedule, and to personal reasons, I regretfully withdraw my candidacy for president of the United States."

"That was Senator Philip Mackie, Democrat of New York, ten minutes ago on the Capitol steps. He bows out of the presidential campaign as its undisputed front runner, leaving the field wide open to his only serious opponent, former California governor Anna Marie Dearing."

"That's our baby," Washington said. "Come on, take a look."

"Ironically, Dearing may still lose the New Hampshire primary, as, this close to the vote, it is too late to remove Senator Mackie's name from the ballot."

"I don't see nothin'. I thought you said—"

"Just watch, Goddammit."

"Governor Dearing had this response to Mackie's announcement."

Anna's face appeared in close-up on the television screen, her staff crowding behind her. The camera lights reflected off her glasses.

"I regret hearing of the senator's withdrawal. He had great plans for how he might serve his country as president. But he still serves where he can have the most immediate impact, on the floor of the Senate. Phil Mackie is, without doubt, one of the most honorable, decent men I know. We can all feel safer with him on the Hill."

"She's a fine one," Washington's companion said, and waggled his tongue by way of obscenity. "We gonna kill her, or not?" He inserted and released his pistol's magazine, repeating the process over and over with apparent fascination. He asked his question in total nonchalance. There was no indication of concern.

"I ain't decided," Washington lied, turning down the television volume.

"A hundred thousand bonus, if we do."

Washington flopped into a chair next to the television. He watched the kid reclining on the bed. He didn't trust that one, who thought only of money, and what he must do to get it. Whose given name was Calvin, but who referred to himself as 45 Cal, and only in the third person. That one had no conscience, no concern but his own needs. He would think nothing of taking not only his share of the payment, but Washington's, as well. Ten thousand apiece to disrupt Dearing's day, one hundred thousand if they killed her in the process. A lot of money for a thirteen-year-old. The first twenty thousand payment already waited in a deposit box in LA. Washington knew his life's worth if he paid his companion too soon. The money had tempted him, too, but it stayed where it was until the two of them parted company.

"You keep playin' with that gun, you gonna shoot yourself."

"45 Cal knows guns," the henchman said. "Thinks we should waste her. Just another whitey with tits and a tan."

"You don't know nothin'. She's a symbol of black power, just like Marcus. If they put her in office, which they won't since she ain't no good house nigger, it'll be like havin' Huey P. Newton in the White House."

His partner turned to appraise him. "You always talkin' shit. Who's Huey Newton?"

"Never mind." Washington sank into his chair. His spirit sank as low. Why did he hang with such morons, who knew nothing of history? But then, the answer sat plainly on the hotel bed. No hard-core brothers, none of Marcus Tandy's Panthers, would touch this job. To a man, they held Dearing in too high a regard to toy with her for money. They were as unimaginative as they were idealistic. Washington had scoured the dregs to find a partner willing enough, dumb enough, and vicious enough to go along.

"45 Cal wanna kill her," the kid on the bed said. "A hundred thou buys some shit."

#

The street outside streamed with celebrants in heavy coats, mittens, and red and orange accents. Steve remembered something from his long-past military travels, about colors of particular good luck during the Chinese New Year. Perhaps that explained the simple arrangements of apples and oranges on each table of the small restaurant in which he sat. Steve hoped the luck in that place was plentiful and good, and that some of it transferred to him.

"Try the Ji Fan, Mr. Tallman. It is very delicate, very subtle in taste. I think you will like it."

Steve eyed Wo Chu with a mixture of curiosity and disbelief. This criminal, an enforcer for nothing less than a boss of organized crime, pretended to be any ordinary office worker out for lunch. He ignored the small army of bodyguards securing the sidewalk and street outside and who made up most of the restaurant's clientele. They were his servants, beneath notice. But Steve could not help but notice that all of those servants carried guns.

"Just a beer," Steve said to the waiter.

"Chinese beer or American? I can recommend several flavorful brands."

"Surprise me," Steve said, wishing the young man would find someone else to pester. The waiter bowed, then scurried away.

"Forgive him," Wo Chu said. "He will work perhaps too hard to please you, since it is the New Year, and you are the dai low's important guest."

"I'm either that or the president himself. Tell me, Mr. Wo Chu, aren't the guns and muscle a bit ostentatious for a secret meeting?"

"Security is all important, my friend. After all, the most secure meeting is that which discourages attack, don't you agree? Besides, it is not the meeting that is secret, but what is done in it." His smile showed huge on his wrinkled face.

"If so, then you haven't much to keep secret just now. Our boy is ten minutes late."

"Is he? Or perhaps his guards merely check the surroundings before bringing their man around. They will be cautious. Their futures with the dai low depend on Mr. Hoy's safety." Wo Chu pointed into the street. "Look there, the young man with the cast on his arm. Is he familiar? Ms. Van Arsdale would know him."

"The kid with the poor manners."

"Yes, quite contrite now, I assure you. The dai low hires intelligent security people. He cannot control their upbringing, but they quickly learn circumspection. Today that young man acts as a watcher for Mr. Hoy's guard force. He checks the streets, no easy task with all the revelers about. He checks even these men who seem to be security. He leaves nothing to chance. Even common criminals, as you call us, can appreciate the Chinese tradition demanding perfection at the New Year. Mr. Hoy will be here as soon as it is safe, I assure you."

"I don't like the idea of that kid in the pack. He might hold a grudge."

"Old grudges are now left behind. He would willingly die to protect you and Mr. Hoy. If not, then he would answer to me, or to the dai low. Ah, here they come."

Steve glanced through the window from his table centered in the tiny Chinese restaurant. In so doing, he almost missed the approach of Louis Hoy from the kitchen doorway. Wo Chu nudged his elbow to guide his sight in the correct direction.

An old man, thin and heavily wrinkled, bounced into the dining area with all the energy of his three youthful escorts, but with none of their grim, businesslike demeanor. He wore a cheap wool suit and stood a head shorter than his smallest escort. An old laptop computer hung heavily from one hand. The other hand snatched at Steve's and pumped it vigorously before anyone made introductions.

"Mr. Stephen Tallman, the great television news producer," the newcomer beamed. "I'm so happy to meet you. I watch your show whenever I can afford the charges, which is admittedly not often. It's nice to know that broadcast journalism isn't always empty-headed and dull. Gung Hay Fat Choy, Mr. Tallman. Happy New Year!"

"This is Mr. Louis Hoy," Wo Chu interrupted. "Obviously, you two will get along nicely. I will wait in the car."

Wo Chu stood. The entire room stood with him, even Steve, caught up in the deference shown the dai low's representative. Wo Chu bowed to Steve, then nodded his head to Hoy before retiring toward the exit. Everyone along his path, including bodyguards, bowed deeply as he left.

"He is a king," Louis Hoy said under his breath, taking a seat. He lowered his laptop onto the table, next to Steve's lighter, thinner tablet.

Steve focused on the newcomer across the table, the man at the root of his present mission. Louis Hoy had an easy, comfortable manner, very different from the calculating, predatory Wo Chu. Ben Tallman came to mind, though this man lacked Ben's physical stature. He projected a playful, somewhat mischievous spirit layered with confidence and experience, like some Chinese leprechaun. Steve found he liked him.

"They're all thugs," Hoy said, winking, "but the nicest sort of thugs. So, you're the clever one who stole my story right off my home station, eh? I was pissed when they told me about it, but I'm honored to have gained the interest of such a high profile pickpocket."

"Actually, someone gave me your notes. I'm not clever enough to engineer a theft like that. I apologize, nonetheless. If not for the importance of the data contained in that file, I would never have touched it."

The waiter reappeared with Steve's beer. He seemed unnerved that he now had two important guests to serve. "I'll have what he's having," Hoy said, and sent the man on his way.

"Celebrity." Hoy grinned. "Well, it's fortuitous that you aren't a complete stickler for form. If you had thrown that data in the trash can, as ethics insisted, then EOG_back would no longer exist, and I'd have a dead story."

"You've no copy?"

"I'm not a rich journalist, Mr. Tallman. My notebook is old, with a small hard drive. I sent that document to my home station because it crowded the portable. I pinched pennies to pay the Net transfer charge. Then my home station, and all my prisms, went up in the fire."

Steve fished a computer prism out of his inside coat pocket. He slid it across the table to Hoy. The old man's face glowed.

"My EOG?"

"That, and more. Mr. Hoy, we know who set that fire."

"Really? I bet, with your resources, you know a great number of things that I could only guess at."

"We've made some headway over the last week or so, but we've nothing to root the story. We need your help."

"The great Stephen Tallman and CBS News need my help? With my story? I'm just a lowly newsletter publisher. I can't even afford decent security on my documents." He winked again.

The waiter returned with another beer. "Is your drink okay, sir? Can I freshen it?"

"No, everything's fine." Steve hadn't touched the glass.

The waiter left. Steve began again. "You don't have to poke me with sticks, Mr. Hoy. We can get this story out together. How about an exchange of information, then see where that gets us?"

Hoy waved that offer away. "For all I care, you can have the story, as long as I get to work on it. Try to understand. I hold no competitive malice here. My whole operation went up in that fire. I don't have the money, the energy, or the inclination to start over. As far as I'm concerned, excepting this one story, I'm retired from the news business. Too stressful." He took a sip of his beer. "And lately too dangerous." He looked through the window, but his eyes seemed to focus beyond the sidewalk's crowded bodies. "When this one's over, I pack up for home, maybe visit my daughter, maybe even stay with her. It's a long journey, Mr. Tallman, and I don't mean Brooklyn."

"China?"

"No, Cincinnati. You go first. You already have a sizable portion of my research."

Steve told him everything, from that first visit of Ben's, to all the discoveries since. Much of it seemed new to Hoy, an impression confirmed in the old man's subsequent questions.

"So, this Decker guy organizes the hate groups and militias into one cohesive army? I didn't foresee that. In fact, I assumed Mercy neglected his extremist friends in order to pass EOG."

"I think he plans to use them as muscle. He's already threatened me, burned you out, attacked my uncle, and killed at least one guy up in Montana."

"But you can't tie this Decker directly to Mercy, and you can't tie Mercy directly to the president?"

"No. If there is a direct connection, it eludes us."

"I can supply that connection."

Steve froze. Perhaps he hadn't heard right. "You say you can tie the president to a man who uses hate groups to intimidate and murder political opponents? And you can tie them together in context?"

"You bet. It's easier to cultivate sources close to the target when you aren't carrying around those rather obvious cameras you guys favor. Want to know how I did it?"

"Please, tell."

He did.

#

"There he is," Patricia whispered. She clenched Chelsea's elbow with almost painful force.

"Where? I don't see who–"

"The man in the brown parka, over in printer paper."

Chelsea scanned the sales floor without enthusiasm. Patricia had been seeing threatening figures ever since their visit to Chinatown. Sure, this was New York, where threatening figures abounded, but Patricia's concern bordered on the paranoid. There stood the brown-coated customer amid the shelved reams of paper, watching the two women ascend the escalator. He was middle-aged and brown-skinned, with black-gray hair partially hidden beneath a woolen skull cap. Chelsea felt a sudden, silly flash of recognition, sure she looked into Steve's eyes, but that heavy-set, thick-featured aspect differed from Steve's thinner, more fluid build.

"Okay, I see him," she said. "Big deal."

"He's been watching me ever since we got here," Patricia whispered. "For all I know, he followed us here."

"Pay attention," Chelsea said. She turned toward the man, caught his eye, then threw him a kiss. He grinned, and waved. "See? He's just a lecherous old sight-seeing goat, that's all."

The escalator carried them out of the man's sight, almost to the next floor. "I don't buy that," Patricia insisted. "He's watching us too closely. Actually, he's watching me."

"So, you're younger and juicier. Don't rub it in."

"I know what I saw," Patricia grumbled. They stepped off the escalator into the mobile computers department. "He wasn't hesitant; he didn't try to hide his attention. He watched me like, like some cat watching a bird."

"Oi," Chelsea muttered. The things she did for this family. Maybe she should have married Steve; she acted as wife and mother, anyway. Here she stood with his rattled daughter, in a computer store, of all places. Chelsea hated computers. Computers were the hypnotic toys of the 21st century. Would anyone but a mother get dragged into this store? "Okay, but so what? There's no crime in looking. Maybe he's a mugger, maybe a pervert, maybe one of Chinatown's goons. Who cares? Unless he tries something, he's just another rude New Yorker."

"He isn't Chinese..."

"Patty, honey, could we concentrate on our purpose here? And you're blocking the escalator. Let the nice people up, dear."

Patricia stepped aside from the escalator platform, excusing herself to the two bent old ladies just reaching the top.

"Over there." Chelsea pointed, and guided her charge toward the nearest display of machines.

"You think I'm crazy." Patricia shook her head at the computer display. "Not Lenovo. Nobody buys that stuff anymore."

"You know what I think? I think you should relax." Chelsea gestured to take in the store. "Here's your chance to buy a brand new warehead's dream, with somebody else paying for it. Concentrate, Patty. Shoot the works."

"You think I could get Voice?"

That's better, Chelsea thought. Not forgotten, but placed in perspective. "You want Voice? Just go up to the clerk and ask for his most expensive. That's what I'd do."

Patricia ignored the clerk. She probably knew more than he did. She browsed the shelves, playing her fingers across the screens of several display models. She launched into an endless monologue on product features and capabilities, all of which bored Chelsea almost to tears. Chelsea knew the difference between RAM and ROM, and bytes and zettabytes, but knowing such things and caring about them were two different things. When it came to computer stuff, Chelsea had the attention span of a two-year-old.

"There he is again," Patricia said.

The brown parka man rose on the escalator, scanning the floor with wide, calculated sweeps of his thick head. His gaze swept over them without recognition as he stepped off the platform and into the Micrographics kiosk.

"I told you he's following me," Patricia said, her tone acidic.

"Well, gee, Patty, that's obvious. Two customers shopping in the same store, see each other more than once, one must be following the other. Better watch those two old ladies. If we see them again, we could have a vicious midtown gang on our hands." But Chelsea was no longer sure.

"I think we should go. I don't feel safe here."

"You're in a crowded department store, in one of the most crowded parts of the city. It doesn't get any safer, girl. Besides, I didn't suffer through this whole tortuous experience to walk out without a computer. Now, buy, young lady, or it'll be me you have to worry about, not your phantom spy guy."

Patricia shopped, but Chelsea caught her several times scanning the floor. She saw the barely concealed anxiety in the girl's eyes when she lost sight of the imagined predator. Worse, her anxiety was catching. Chelsea noticed, or thought she noticed, a distinct lack of shopping fervor on the man's part. He showed no interest in the products he examined. Once she caught him looking their way, and edged several feet from Patricia to see what he would do. His eyes followed her for a moment, but refocused on Patricia. His interest lay with youth, it seemed. Chelsea considered confronting him, always a poor plan in New York. If a pervert, he would shrivel up and run, eliminating the problem. But her mind itched more and more with the thought that he offered danger.

She followed Patricia through the shopping ritual, joking about her charge's paranoia and her power to attract weird men. But the jokes felt flat as the left her lips; they carried a hint of tension. The man in the brown parka purposefully, boldly, stalked them.

All three of them knew it.

#

"The GOP Committee chairman is a paranoid son of a gun." Hoy powered up his laptop. "He has people on staff whose sole purpose is to keep potential enemies and problem children under surveillance. He tapes all his phone conversations, even saves the video logs. Makes Nixon look like a trusting dolt. He also keeps a tap on the president's personal line, and he gets soft copies of the president's more official phone conversations." He inserted the prism Steve had given him and called his EOG document to the screen. "It'll be a moment," he said, grinning. "This document really slows my system."

"I don't suppose these people are impressed by the illegality of phone taps," Steve said. "I mean, with murder and arson under their belts, a little electronic espionage seems a bit tame."

"The Republicans aren't directly involved, most likely. In the murders, I mean." Hoy scooted his chair closer to Steve's, and swiveled the laptop in place. "See here," he said, pointing to the monitor, "the Montana Rural Auxiliary is connected to Mercy through Decker, the Aryan Nation, and the Southern Montana KKK. Southerman may have no idea what those groups are up to, or even that they exist. He does, however, know the law, so he's keeping his wiretaps a deep secret. The fact is, many of his Republican officeholders appreciate at least the results of the monitoring, even if they don't know for sure it's going on. Southerman can sometimes tell them how to think long before they themselves consider giving him a call. They must find that a rather unsettling talent. Frankly, I doubt the president would complain even if he knew Southerman listened in. Remember who the boss is here. The majority leader of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, the president, they're nothing. Southerman is the government these days, and he'll stay the government until the Democrats take over."

"Or until Mercy erases him."

"That's the one point on which Mr. Southerman might be over-extended. He sees himself as superior to Mercy; he sees Mercy as just another lobbyist, but bigger and more persistent than most. He sees Mercy as a useful tool, but one he doesn't trust a whit. For all these reasons, he secures access to Jonathan Taylor Mercy's cellular records."

Steve whistled. "Very dangerous, like teasing a rattlesnake in your bed."

"Even more so. You see, Mercy talks to the president, to control him. Southerman records those conversations, and maintains a record of Mercy's calls."

Steve sat up a little straighter. "Wait a minute. Did you just say you have a phone trail that links Mercy's activities with extremists and Mercy's dealings with the president, and the connections are clear?"

"The connections, I'm told, are clear."

"You're told. What do you mean by that?"

"My source is a man named Carlton Westerly, one of the dark little moles in Southerman's internal surveillance team, let's call it his 'Big Brother Is Listening' project. He says he can get me prisms of conversations that would turn hot sauce cold. I haven't heard these prisms, however."

"Do you trust this source?"

"As much as I'd trust anybody who betrays his own people. I guess he's disillusioned. He thought he was part of a movement, the great golden resurgence of the Republican party. Then he discovered the politics."

"Are you paying him?"

"No, Mr. Westerly is strictly volunteer."

"Could he be a plant?"

"Now, come on. What earthly reason would the Republican party have to disinform a low circulation, homemade Chinese newsletter? That's too petty, even for them."

Steve thought a moment. He scarcely believed what lay before him. He tried to find the hidden minefield that waited to kill them all. None presented itself.

"We need those prisms," he said. "We need those prisms, and possibly the informant, and we need them on the air. This is it, Mr. Hoy. With your group organizer document, our connecting research, and those prisms, we could blow this EOG conspiracy clear to Pluto. We have a few angles to back up, but this story is nearly done."

"You're probably right, but the prisms aren't that easy to come by. My source says the original computer logs are multi-encrypted, then destroyed the moment they're transferred to prism. The prisms themselves are barium tagged. They can't leave their vault without a lot of security nonsense, or they set off some sort of hellacious alarm. On top of that, they're stored in Southerman's main offices at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington."

"Can't get them."

Hoy shook his head. "Can't get them, no way that I can see."

"Can your source get them?"

Hoy shrugged. "Well, of course. He makes the things in the first place. But he can only put them in the vault; he can't take them out. Why do you ask?"

Steve showed a wicked smile. He felt relaxed and confident for the first time in days. "A perk of those rather obvious cameras us TV guys favor. If we can't take the prisms to the broadcast, then we'll broadcast them live from the vault."

Hoy looked at Steve with new respect. "My. I guess you broadcast journalists aren't as stupid as they say you are."

Steve's smile broadened. "We have our moments."

#

Parker Nguyen climbed from the taxi to the sidewalk in front of the New Concord Court House. The cold snatched at his face, the stiff wind racing with feral tenacity for every minuscule opening of his winter defenses. The legs of his pants flapped like flags. What miserable weather.

He paid the driver, then turned his attention to the edifice before him. The courthouse was a modern glass and steel structure fronted by a long ascent of curved concrete, fifty-seven steps in all, each over fifty feet wide. Kate Clancy wanted this location for its symbolism: a new generation issuing in a fresh approach to truth, justice, and the American way, and all that. Parker's two uniformed contacts huddled half way up the wide expanse of steps. There was Menendez, of the New Hampshire State Police, and his local counterpart, Sergeant Eberhard. They wouldn't like the gist of this meeting. Neither would the TV cameramen staking out territory in a wide, rough, open-ended rectangle around the officers. Well, they'd all adjust. A new game began, with new, more demanding rules.

Parker mounted the steps, waving broadly to the two policemen. They nodded recognition, but did not offer the hands stowed in their warm jacket pockets. They watched him, awaiting his verdict on their very professional (but, as Parker knew, entirely inadequate) arrangements. This early, an unscheduled meeting could be nothing but bad news.

"Sorry," Parker said. "We'll have to tune things up a little."

"Excuse me?" Menendez changed his footing, blowing steam. The wind on the courthouse steps cut across his face and through the fabric of his cold weather uniform, so he showed no mood for quibbling. "Mr. Nguyen, we know what we're doing here. We'll get your boss to the photo op on time. She may or may not have her best side showing, but we'll get her here."

"I know you will." Parker nodded. "I'm not worried about that, just about her getting here in the most efficient manner possible."

"For instance?" Sergeant Eberhard asked.

"Well, it isn't the same game as last week's, or even yesterday's," Parker explained in that flat voice and with that smooth, expressionless face that disguised his feelings so well. "With Mackie out of the race, Dearing is the only Democratic candidate left. Consequently, our security concerns just got more intense. The crowd today will be bigger than anticipated. Your security force is almost invisible, just four cops to hold back the crowd, and one alongside the candidate, for personal protection. We need more."

"Mr. Nguyen," Menendez said, "you guys have always railed against too visible a security team. You wanted her to be 'close to the people', not 'isolated behind a wall of bar bouncers', I believe that's what you said. Has your philosophy changed so much that you want the security arrangements reversed?"

"We aren't changing the philosophy, just the technique. I don't want a phalanx of cops in riot gear. I don't even want four cops surrounding her all the way from the car to the doors. I do want more men on the crowd. We assume no risk to the candidate, but we have to acknowledge that any threat that exists will likely come from the crowd."

"We've always made that assumption," Eberhard said. "We've always insisted that there be officers on the candidate, as a personal guard. But you guys don't want that. You don't want her caged in. You can't have it both ways."

Parker thought a moment. The last thing he wanted was to alienate the police. They had done a great job over the last several of Anna's visits, but under different circumstances. Security had to change.

"I think we can have it both ways," he insisted. "Remember who you're protecting here. Dearing isn't your standard six-foot, broad-beamed male office seeker. She's four feet eleven inches tall. Beyond the first or second row of spectators, nobody will be able to see her; there'll be no head above the crowd. If anybody wanted to get to her, they would have to muscle their way into those first few rows. Let's put more officers on the crowd, six on each side, and the standard one officer at her shoulder."

"You can afford these extra officers?" Eberhard referred to the few on-duty policemen allowed him. Any extras came from men off their regular shifts.

Parker shrugged. "These days, we can afford anything you offer us."

Menendez wiped his nose on his gloved hand. "It'll be tricky getting those extra bodies, but we usually have off-duty guys ready to make an extra buck."

"What you can't get, we can fill in by double-posting our ProtecServe hires."

"We can handle it," Eberhard said. "We don't like for-hire security. It'll be close, though. The job is three hours out."

"If we can, we should post men in the crowd, as well. Plain clothes. Kind of an early warning system, I think." Parker waited with the same blank expression. He knew he pushed their resources more than was reasonable. Everything had been set, and had taken hours to arrange. Now, they started over, with less time and more requirements.

"That's going a little far," Menendez said. "You start making changes that extensive, this close to the job, and we'll have confusion and the weaknesses that go with it."

"Better to work with our present resources," Eberhard agreed, "and a minimal change of plan. Better to have fewer people, who know the drill, than a bunch of come-lately's half-assed prepared."

"I realize that," Parker said, "but I think the extra men are necessary. We won't be asking much of them, just to watch for suspicious characters in the crowd."

"What about the Treasury people?" Menendez asked. "Don't you folks have Secret Service protection?"

"The president considers Secret Service protection unnecessary. How about those extra men?"

The two officers looked at each other. Protection unnecessary? Sounded like politics.

"Can't guarantee those crowd sitters at this late notice," Eberhard said, turning back to Parker. "Maybe that would be a good job for your civilian hires. You'd get your extra men, but keep the mercenaries out of our way."

Parker had been pushing that way from the start. "We could do that. So, you guys are getting eight extra men to beef up the crowd perimeter, and we'll field our ProtecServe people among the spectators. It's important to pack the crowd close, to ensure that nobody far in the back can get a good line on the candidate."

"No sweat," Eberhard assured him. "This is what we'll do..."

They stood on the Concord courthouse steps in the biting wind, brainstorming and then finalizing their plans for three hours later. None of them really expected trouble. They lived in a country in which congressmen and governors walked the streets as freely as any citizen. But they weren't idiots, either. They knew what lurked for the unprepared and complacent. None of them wanted Anna Marie Dearing to be another Gabby Giffords.

Or Bobby Kennedy.

#

"Yo! Clemmons here."

"Sam! It's Debbi Robertson, in Colorado. I have a bomb to drop."

Sam sat up in bed and signaled to Peggy for writing utensils. Peggy put down her pizza slice and crossed the motel room to the bureau, reducing the volume on the television as she passed it. HBO would have to wait, she thought. One thing the job had taught her: things happened when you tried to relax.

"Glad to hear from you, Debbi," Sam said. "Is it snowing there like it is here?"

"A little bit," his counterpart said from the other end of the camera signal. "Not much more than six or eight inches. You recall my story before you snatched me for this drag-ass militia thing? The eco-terrorist story?"

"Uh, yeah. The guys in conflict with the logging industry?"

"That's the one. The Forest Preservation Union has been fire bombing logging trucks and camps out here, trying to break the federal fuel emergency plan. Well, I had an unexpected visit just after my last zero meeting with skinheads today..."

"Debbi," Sam said, "you'll have to give it up for a while. We aren't doing eco-terrorists."

"We are now. I had a visit from a local FPU section chief. She heard about me through her skinhead cross-overs, I guess. They've got kind of a terrorism labor exchange agreement, if you get what I mean."

"Can't say that I do," Sam admitted. He accepted the note pad and pen from Peggy, who subsequently took her pizza and sat back in her chair beneath the room's one window.

"These guys switch over," Debbi said, "belong to more than one radical group..."

"Eco-terrorists and skinheads?"

"Hey, don't look at me. These guys don't know politics from Cheetos. They just like to scare people. Anyway, I get this visit from the FPU section leader. She's heard I'm asking questions about local militias, and the Americans for Civil Equality. She says she wants to go on the air to help destroy the ACE because of their connections with conservative groups that support the fuel emergency thing. She can do it, Sam. She can really spark a blaze under Jonathan Taylor Mercy and his entire crew. You want to guess who she is?"

"Gee, let's see. Mercy's mother?"

Debbi told him. Peggy stopped eating when she heard the name. She leaned forward to stop the stupid drapes from brushing her hair.

"So," Sam said, turning toward Peggy. He looked stunned and ecstatic at the same time. "This section chief of the eco-terrorist group the Forest Preservation Union, this person on the FBI's most wanted list, who bombs trucks, spikes trees, throws tear gas into millworks, and so on, whose identity has heretofore been unknown, is, in reality, the grandniece of a justice of the United States supreme court."

"Yep," Debbi said, "and she's gonna be my buddy."

"You sure somebody isn't pulling your leg? We have another justice with a questionable nephew. That's Mercy's two aces on the court."

"Hey, Sam, you can choose your shoes, but you can't choose your relatives."

"Thanks, Debbi. I'll see you get a raise for this."

"Like you could!"

Sam clicked off. He turned to Peggy. "This is it, Rookie," he said. "This story is–"

Three deep roars deafened the room. A great blast of wind pushed Peggy from behind. The drapes that had been behind her scattered through the room like tattered tissues. She watched, puzzled, as Sam dived over the far side of his bed. The lamp on the table next to him jumped, shattered, and rained against the far wall. Peggy watched all this through an obstruction of glitter, a flashing tumble of glass, of thousands of flakes — of shards — of glass. She heard a screech of tires, the tinkling of glass onto the floor, and sudden quiet.

Peggy still sat in her chair, still held her pizza slice in one hand. She sat stock-still, shocked, covered with glass and now the first inquisitive flakes of snow through the empty window frame. She looked down at the pizza slice poised at her mouth. It had a fresh extra topping of glass. She watched as blood dripped onto the slice, coloring the shards like sauce.

"Are you all right?" Sam asked, as if from a great distance. She heard him crunching and banging toward her.

Peggy fainted.

#

He felt the phone vibrate at his hip, and knew it was time. Just to make sure, he snatched the device from his pocket and peered at its screen. The message was short, as it had to be: GO.

He replaced the phone, then looked around for his target. She signed something at the third cashier, her partner already holding the computer box under one arm. He reached under his coat and released the pistol from its shoulder holster, then started toward the girl. As he drew closer, he uncovered the weapon and lowered it along his side. His breath came in rushes. This was so easy. Just a few more steps. He raised the pistol, straight-armed. Its muzzle bore down on her from only feet away.

Patricia looked up as his shadow crossed her ink pen. All she saw was the gun.

#

"We have to wait," Louis Hoy translated. "Trouble outside and down the street. It seems the Ghost Shadow has paid this neighborhood a hostile visit." He spoke in Chinese to the An Leung soldier/messenger, who bowed and walked away. Many of the guards had donned their coats and stood outside on the sidewalk. Only a half dozen or so remained in the restaurant with their journalist clients.

Steve's tablet lapsed into sleep. He and Hoy had exchanged all pertinent information on prism, including everything on Hoy's valuable spy, Mr. Westerly, and had set another meeting for two days later in Indianapolis. Steve's machine carried a careful, secretive note on its Things To Do list. After this story, he intended to offer Louis Hoy a place at See It Now. He hoped the old man accepted.

"Why do you call it Kato?" Hoy asked, standing. His laptop hung once more from his hand.

"Hmmm? Oh. I used to collect comic books. I name all my computers after the manservants of superheroes."

"Really? And Kato is...?"

"The Green Hornet's right hand man. Then there's Alfred, associated with Batman, and Jarvis at the office. He was the Avengers' butler." They moved toward the door. Their remaining guards seemed more concerned with matters outside than with the activities of their charges. The atmosphere on the street seemed unchanged. Firecrackers still exploded and celebrants still crowded storefronts and holiday stalls. A party of lion dancers cavorted onto the pavement from a side street down the way, their gold and red papier mache lion heads undulating to the movements of the ten or so performers holding them aloft. The colorful, fantastic heads swayed, swooped and jiggled for passers-by, hiding the identities of the dancers beneath multiple streamers of colored crepe paper.. They shook and nodded in the doorways of businesses, blessing any who offered donations of red New Year's money. Except for the grim faces of Wo Chu's army, it made a happy scene. Patricia would have loved this.

"Very creative," Hoy said. "I would never think to name my primary electronic servants after butlers."

"Manservants. Kato wasn't a butler, strictly speaking. He was also Chinese, you know."

"Whatever, Mr. Tallman. We could use your Batman today. If we're lucky, we might not witness a heavy duty tong war."

"Who are the Ghost Shadows?"

"Soldiers for a rival tong. Pretty much the same as Wo Chu's boys."

"Dangerous men?"

"All of them are dangerous. Both sides. But not all are men. Many still get around on a learner's permit, if they're old enough to drive at all."

Behind the lion dancers came their accompaniment, a large wood and brass drum on wheels, pounded by its college-aged player. Other players banged on cymbals and gongs, set off firecrackers, and somehow kept the drum rolling along the snow-packed street. Including the lion dancers themselves, who worked the crowds for gratuities, about thirty marched in the parade, a mix of locals and non-Chinese tourists.

Wo Chu's men infiltrated the crowd, many moving down the street away from the dancers. Every one of them walked with coats open to the cold.

"Won't be long now," Hoy said.

A dancer pranced toward the restaurant entrance, but two guards intercepted him, signaling him away. He failed to take a hint, and cavorted before the guards in energetic swooping motions. After a moment, one of the guards handed the dancer some money, and he angled away to another sucker.

Steve thought he heard deeper, more businesslike roars above the din of firecrackers and drum banging.

Another dancer approached the restaurant and was blocked by the same two guards. This time they made no allowances for holiday ritual, and signaled the performer on his way with gestures impossible to misconstrue. The lion head swayed for a moment in front of the guards, then landed upside-down on the pavement.

The performer stood unmasked before the guards. He drew a compact sub-machine gun from its shoulder holster. He was not Chinese.

#

Chelsea reached for the pistol, sure that she was inches too late. Then some other hand intervened. Some other hand grabbed the pistol arm and forced it toward the ceiling. The weapon roared twice, belching metal, flame, and the acrid rotten egg smell of burned gases. Ceiling tiles vaporized into white powder and overhead fluorescent lamps exploded, showering the checkout stand in glass. The cashier screamed and jumped away from her station.

The brown-parka man held tight to the assailant's wrist, keeping the gun pointed upward. The two struggled, crashing into the impulse shopper displays, sending cheap phones and data pens clattering over the floor. The gunman, with one hand loose, elbowed and pushed at the brown parka, enraged that someone interfered with his kill. Then the parka man twisted the gun hand until a grisly crack of snapping bones sounded above the melee. The gunman screamed. The man in the brown parka released him. He stepped back a bit. Then, with a long arc of his arm beginning far behind his back, he landed a fist in the gunman's face. The gunman collapsed into a heap on the floor.

The brown-parka man knelt beside his victim, and began searching his coat pockets. After a moment, he noticed Chelsea and Patricia still standing there, gape-mouthed, Patricia's pen still poised on her credit slip.

Where had he come from?

"Get out of here," he said. "It isn't safe."

#

The guards before the lion dancer gunman spun under a wrenching fusillade of bullets. Wet bouquets of red blossomed about them. People screamed. They stampeded in all directions, clearing the street around the dancer turned killer. The man knelt even before the guards' bodies hit the ground, and sprayed bullets into the crowd.

The guard next to Steve cursed. He snatched a pistol from beneath his coat. He muscled himself between Steve and the gunman, shouting in clipped barks of Chinese to his counterparts in the restaurant. Someone shoved Hoy deep into the dining room. The An Leung soldiers gathered at the windows and doors, weapons drawn.

"Oh, well." Hoy showed a trembling grin of panic. "No luck today."

"This is nuts," Steve said, breathing deeply to remain calm. "That guy isn't Chinese. Your neighborhood's been invaded." His hand darted into a coat pocket, closing around the injector it found there.

The restaurant windows exploded inward, glass flying about the dining area like shrapnel. One guard screamed and fell onto his back, his face gone. Steve threw himself to the floor. He grabbed Hoy and dragged him down. The remaining guards threw a rain of metal past the frame of the destroyed window. They screamed enraged bravado. Steve saw two hunched soldiers dart in through the hole of the former doorway. They were not reinforcements, but retreated from the low, quick burping of weapons outside.

"That's a pulse action Uzi," Steve said to Hoy, who cowered with him on the floor. "Do the tongs have access to military weaponry?"

"How should I know? I'm a journalist, not a gangster!"

Another blast of fire slammed into the restaurant, decimating the front and causing the paintings, scrolls, and decorative kitchen utensils on the back wall to spring as if alive from their hangers. A stainless steel colander rolled pell-mell between Steve and Hoy, then ricocheted off the wrecked streetside wall. It made no sound above the thunderous smash of bullets and the associated low burp of weapons fire.

"There's more than one machine gun," Steve said.

"More than one? How can you know?"

"I know."

The waiter appeared at the kitchen door, looking horrified.

"Get down!" Steve shouted.

The kitchen wall and door erupted into drywall dust and splinters. The waiter flinched in spasmodic instinctual jerks of fear, but survived miraculously untouched. He turned and ran back into the kitchen.

The guards had run for cover during the last barrage, but slinked back to the shattered streetside wall as the bullet storm abated. The machine guns still spoke, but had apparently gone for other targets. Then something metallic arced through the window opening. It bounced and rolled toward the dining room's center.

"Grenade!" Steve dragged Hoy up and dived through the kitchen doorway, propelling the old man alongside him. The next instant, a loud pop deafened his hearing and rattled against his eardrums. Atmospheric overpressure rushed through the building like a bulldozer, collapsing the kitchen wall and part of its ceiling. Steve and Hoy stumbled to the floor. An avalanche of mangled tables and chairs pursued them. It took the two a moment to recover their wits. By then, men stepped over the shattered remains of the streetside wall and into the dining room, their Uzis searching ahead, anxious as vipers. Steve saw no place to hide. The kitchen wall no longer existed.

#

"She's on her way!"

A thin peal of excited cheers rose from the people lining both sides of the courthouse steps. Their faces flushed red, they breathed freezing vapor, and their clothes whipped and snapped in the stiff wind, but they were there. They wanted to be there.

Anna loved these moments, more so since precious few of them came her way. This was no Dubuque, with fifteen supporters at a photo op, or Phoenix, with no reception at the airport. Over two hundred people stood freezing on those steps above her. She hoped for a thousand next week, ten thousand after that. For the first time in months, Anna thought this thing might work. For the first time, she could just about smell the White House.

She climbed from the car and stood on the curb, taking it all in. Her eyes roved from the crowd to the TV crews on their step ladders, to the policemen working the spectators, and back to the crowd again, that wonderful crowd. Multi-age, multi-ethnic, multi-moneyed, it showed a perfect mesh of faces for a broad-based campaign. She hoped Kate's camera hires got this down. Ray needed the video for his next batch of ads. There was Parker, coming down the steps to her. She would visit the new courthouse to thank the workers setting up the voting station there. This was an easy run, no speeches, no names to remember, just shaking hands and giving hugs. It would only last minutes. Anna wanted it to go on for hours. She wanted to drink it up.

"Ready?" Parker shouted over the wind and the crowd.

Anna slipped her arm through his. Parker was a dear. For the hundredth time, he had done all he could; he was her guardian angel.

Ray joined them from the car. Kate drew next to him, the two behind their candidate. Anna squeezed Parker's elbow and nodded to the state police escort in his heavy uniform parka.

"This way, Governor," the trooper said, and led the way up the steps, staying very close to her and choosing a path straight up the middle between the cheering supporters. Kate and Ray followed close behind, but not so close as to obstruct the newsmen's camera angles.

"Parker, look at all the people!" Anna cried. "We should stop and mingle."

"Not this time, boss. The arrangements are barely acceptable. Too many changes too recently."

"But, Parker, they came out here to greet us, and in such nasty weather."

"No. In and out."

Anna considered pressing the point, but a disturbance in the crowd caught her attention.

#

Donald Washington saw men pushing toward him. He'd been made. He hadn't noticed cops in the throng; he had thought them all up there, holding back the people. Now he hesitated several feet back from the edge of the crowd, unable to see Dearing, holding a sawed-off shotgun he had taken from beneath his coat. His instinct said run, but he arrested the urge and planted his feet for a confrontation. They'd just gun down his black ass, anyway. He leveled his shotgun at the charging men and the intervening people, and pulled the trigger.

#

The trooper grabbed Anna's shoulders just as the blast slammed through the crowd. "Come on! Now!" he shouted, and practically carried her up the steps, tearing her arm from Parker's. The crowd scattered like startled birds, overwhelming the police lines in a single breath.

Another blast roared through the crowd. Anna saw six or seven spectators and one uniformed cop fall over like bowling pins. By God, an assassin! Where were her people? Was Ray all right? Was Parker?

Anna felt her escort flinch, then jerk away down the steps. He rolled end over end toward the street, like a Slinky toy. She looked up the steps just as another cop fell over onto his face, his gun clattering toward her. A boy approached from behind the cop. He stood straight, relaxed, as if out for a stroll, and his brown face smiled. He held a pistol extended in both hands.

Two of them, she thought, wondering at her detachment from the surrounding terror. There were two assassins. And, God help her, this one's skin was as black as hers.

Two policemen interposed themselves between her and the boy, their own weapons extended. The boy seemed to concentrate a moment, then his hands jerked one, two, three times. One of the cops fell over, landing on Anna. She crashed onto her side, a gonglike agony ringing through her shoulder. The policeman's body sprawled across her. The other cop returned fire, hitting the assassin in the shoulder. The boy sat down hard, almost dropping his pistol. Then he fired twice more, hitting the policeman both times, dropping him onto his back. The body slid a good ten feet down the steps before coming to rest.

#

Washington fired another blast at a plainclothes cop while angling up the steps toward Dearing. He didn't hit the man, only the bodies already prone on the steps, but the man kept his distance. Washington saw Calvin engaging cops at the top of the steps. He saw him go down, finish off the cops, then rise to his feet once more. He saw the kid move unsteadily toward the now defenseless Dearing. Washington didn't like the look on his face. He ran toward them, bulling aside a redheaded man and the woman in his way.

#

The boy with the pistol grinned wide enough to split his face as he stepped down toward Anna, his gun extended ahead of him. His eyes widened with the anticipation of triumph. No one was home there, no human anyway. Then someone stood over Anna. He interposed himself between her and the assassin, reaching for the police pistol a few steps above her. Parker! The boy saw this, looked momentarily confused, then pivoted his weapon's muzzle toward his new enemy. Flame flashed from the assassin's gun. Anna choked on knotted breath. Parker bucked at an impact to his shoulder, but nonetheless closed a bloodied, swollen hand on the sought after pistol grip. He stood, twisted, and coughed four rounds toward the assailant. Two connected, sending the killer sprawling like a slapstick comic slipping on a banana peel. Parker twisted full in the opposite direction, where the boy with the shotgun rushed up to engage him.

The gunman's eyes widened, his mouth a loose "O". The shotgun muzzle hovered only a few feet beyond Anna's head. She noticed with despair that this one, too, was black. Did her own people hate her so?

Her friend and partner showed a blank, businesslike face even through blood, his red, swollen gun hand, and his torn and stained clothing. His arm steadied its wide swing at a point directly over her. A drop of blood dripped from his hand onto her face.

An explosion of heat, sound and choking gas crashed over Anna. It deafened her ears. This close, the sound rent reality, flinging matter and space aside like an absent-minded swat from the hand of God himself. Parker dissolved under the shotgun's force, peeled apart in sloppy layers. To Anna, it happened in extreme slow motion, so heightened were her senses to the moment. She saw his clothing stripped away. She saw his skin and muscle vaporize to reveal his ribs and skull, and she saw the bones themselves distort, crack and pulverize under the point blank blast of the shotgun. Anna screamed an agonized sound that froze every surviving thing on the steps of the New Concord Courthouse. It was the first sound she'd uttered in the eight seconds since the attack began.

#

Washington blinked, shaken by that scream. He looked at the still standing figure of the chink guy, watching what was left of it settle to the steps. He looked at Dearing, her face so contorted you'd think she was shot. He watched her reach for the dead man, but the cop still covered her body, and the pulverized corpse of her bad-luck protector fell away from her as its knees gave out.

Washington looked around. Bodies littered the steps. People, some wounded, some cowering, crouched among the dead. The TV cameramen and still photographers staggered to their feet, hardly realizing what had happened. Washington saw two plainclothes men stumbling toward him, both wounded. The tall, redheaded man had disengaged from the woman he was with, and approached over bodies and blood-slicked steps. The job was done. Messy as hell, but done. Washington threw down the shotgun, drew his pistol from its shoulder holster, and pointed it at the approaching redhead. The man stopped coming. Washington stepped over Dearing, picked his way around the bodies of cops and spectators, then ran like hell from the scene.

#

"You're Tallman," the man said, the muzzle of his Uzi pivoting from one human target to the other. "Funny, you don't look so tall." He chuckled, impressed with his doubtful wit. He looked down at Steve and Hoy, both on their backs in the destroyed kitchen. Hoy tried to scrabble backwards from the man, but ran up almost immediately against the punched-in remains of a stainless steel counter. Steve stayed in place, only lifting himself to a more upright position. Escape was impossible. He worked to control his breathing, and wondered if the injector in his pocket survived intact, or if he would ever need one again. He glanced toward the second gunman, who stood centered in the rubble of the dining area, watching toward the street. Sporadic gunfire still erupted there, though most of the battle's principles had evacuated, or lay dead on the pavement.

"I have a message for you, Tallman," the nearer man said. He took a palm phone from his coat pocket and tossed it into Steve's lap. He turned to Hoy. "I have a message for you, too." The Uzi belched twice. Perhaps a dozen rounds thudded into Hoy's old body. He jerked against the metal counter, then was still. Steve did not flinch. He did not turn to check the old man.

The man with the gun nodded to Steve. "Happy New Year," he said, then turned with apparent nonchalance to leave the kitchen.

They hadn't killed him. Steve watched the man's departing back. He had assumed they were there for him. Instead, they came for everyone else. He looked down at the phone in his lap. A message? What kind of message was that?

Four loud cracks rang from the sidewalk. Steve looked up just as both machine gunners fell over like trees. He had no interest as to why. They kill. Somebody kills them. Who cares? For a moment, he closed his eyes, concentrating on his breathing. When he thought himself ready, he turned toward Louis Hoy, or what remained of him. The two bursts of pulse amplified Uzi fire had obliterated the old man's torso. The twisted wreck Steve found behind him seemed more like half the remains of two people than the body of a single man. Steve turned away. He did so not from nausea or sorrow, but because his clinical inspection of Hoy's body both startled and embarrassed him. Why didn't he feel anything? Sure, he had only known the old man a few hours, but had genuinely, immediately liked him. Did so many corpses crowd his life that one or two more were of so little consequence? Old habits really die hard.

An An Leung soldier, dirtied and bowed, stepped into the tomb of the dining area, his pistol held ready. He scanned the restaurant with the blank eyes and controlled face that Steve knew so well in the Chinese. What did that boy think? His friends lay strewn about him. Not one of them had been old enough to drink, or vote in the upcoming primaries. The restaurant was a mausoleum for children, and that soldier knew every one of its occupants. With a flash of recognition, Steve noticed the boy's cast.

The soldier noticed him at about the same time. He stepped carefully over and around the mangled guts of the dining room and into the kitchen. He stopped before Steve and squinted at Hoy's broken body with controlled stoicism. Then he holstered his pistol and knelt beside Steve. He said something in Chinese, but spoke again in labored English when Steve did not respond.

"You are okay?"

"I suppose. Yes, I'm okay. How about you?"

The boy helped Steve to his feet, helped brush the glass and dust from his clothes. Then he pulled Steve's elbow, urging him out of the building.

"One moment," Steve said, and bent to pick up the palm phone. He placed it in a pocket as he negotiated the rubble of the restaurant. He tried not to look at the bodies, but so many littered the floor that he had to acknowledge them just to cross its width. Except for the two machine gunners, they all lay broken in that familiar pattern of an exploded compression grenade, a military weapon. All of these kids, unless first taken by gunfire, had died of something close to the bends. Where had the attackers found current military ordinance? Another hint at Mercy's terrible power.

Steve noticed something familiar within the rubble, and crouched to pull Kato from the glass and dust. Its casing was dented and scraped, and he found the screen shattered when he turned it over. The computer was dead, but its hard drive backed up in real time, so no big loss. Hoy's machine lay nearby, crushed by a heavy Formica table flung onto it during the explosion. Nothing remained of the old newsletter writer, nothing except the document EOG_Back.tdoc, and the new data prism in Steve's pocket. And a daughter in San Francisco.

Steve shook his head. The old man had been right. He'd gone on a long journey, though sooner than he planned, and to a different place.

"I take it there are no other survivors?"

Steve turned toward the voice. On the street, Wo Chu leaned against a battered, dusted car. He held himself as if for comfort, a pistol dangling from one limp hand. His remaining soldiers, a half dozen or so, worked in the background along the street, checking bodies.

"You don't look so happy," Steve said, standing. "What's the matter, Wo Chu? Worried about your job?"

"This is no joke!" the old man snapped.

Steve paused a moment at Wo Chu's tone, then started moving toward Hoy's dead laptop. "Yeah, you're right. How bad is it?"

He heard Wo Chu's sigh from thirty feet away. "Learning never stops, Mr. Tallman. Only days ago, I honored your feats in the war. Now I stand amid the aftermath of my own war, and I see no honor in it. How do you know victory, when so many fine boys – and so many innocents – lie dead in the street?"

Steve wrenched the laptop from beneath the heavy table. "Victory isn't measured in lives, Wo Chu. It's measured in missions. Did our attackers accomplish their mission? Did we accomplish ours? The one who achieves what he sets out to do is the victor." He kicked aside a jagged chunk of drywall and worked his way out to the street and toward the An Leung enforcer. "Sometimes, who won and who lost is all rather gray."

"There are no shades of gray today, Mr. Tallman. My mission was to protect the lives of you and Louis Hoy. Their mission was to silence Mr. Hoy so that he could not expose their activities. I failed in my mission. We killed every one of them, eleven in all, but I failed, nonetheless. Mr. Hoy is dead. I know this because our young man in the cast has not brought him out. And we lost ten men. They, on the other hand, succeeded in their mission, even though they lost all of their people."

Steve leaned against the car, next to Wo Chu. He dropped the two computers onto the hood. "They failed," he said.

Wo Chu's eyes darted in surprise. Steve noted how transparent the old man seemed. "You say that Mr. Hoy lives?" Wo Chu turned toward the restaurant, where his young assistant went from body to body, checking for life and finding none.

"Don't yell at him," Steve said. "Mr. Hoy is most definitely dead." He took the data prism, the one containing Louis Hoy's latest research, from his coat pocket. He held it at arm's length for Wo Chu to inspect. "Everything Hoy knew, I know. I have his data, and his contacts. Jonathan Taylor Mercy made a big mistake today. He went for the man, not the information."

"You will proceed to expose his damnable plans?"

"Watch your local CBS station."

Wo Chu looked off into the restaurant. "I am grateful. But that does not excuse my failure. I will have much to answer for to the dai low, and to them." He nodded toward the demolished restaurant, where the boy in the cast picked his way through scattered furnishings and bodies to find his way to the snow.

The two older men flinched at a piercing squeal from Steve's coat pocket. Steve pulled out the palm phone and stared at it with something close to dread. "It's from them," he said. "A message." The phone bleated insistently.

"You had best answer it," Wo Chu advised.

Steve clicked on the phone. "Yes?"

The screen remained blank. "It's 3:47pm," a male voice said. "Do you know where your children are?"

"What? What the hell—?"

The connection went dead.

"God damn it!" Steve heaved the phone toward the restaurant. It arced through the gaping hole of the entrance and ricocheted off a table near the back wall, finally clattering to rest within the floor's carpet of wreckage. The boy in the cast paused to watch its flight, then continued across the bloodied and blackened snow.

"What did they say?" Wo Chu asked.

"They said the time, and asked if I knew where my children were. I don't believe those bastards. They kill all these kids, and then they call to joke about it!" He bit off further comment, feeling rage and frustration finally welling within him. He clenched his teeth and tried to calm his breathing once more.

Wo Chu grunted, then spoke to his soldier. "We must depart," he said to Steve. "We must get you home."

"What? What about the police? They'll be here soon."

Wo Chu took him by the elbow and opened the back door of the car. "Please, listen. You mistake the context of that message. It was very personal, meant for you alone."

Steve froze half way into the car. "Patricia."

"I'm afraid so." Wo Chu moved around to the driver's side. His broken soldier wrestled himself into the front passenger seat. "These are criminals, Mr. Tallman, just as I am, by your estimation. They brag, but perhaps they brag too soon."

Wo Chu pulled the car around the bodies still scattered in the street, then increased speed on the snow-packed pavement. Steve sat in the back, at once terrified and incensed. The man in the restaurant had enjoyed shooting Hoy. The man on the phone had been smug in his threat. Their ambush had been well-planned, a lesson for Steve's benefit, and now they revealed another teaching point to reinforce that lesson. They threatened Patricia. More likely, she was already hit. What had that bastard said at CBS News? If I come after you, I won't only destroy you, but your company, your friends, your colleagues, everything and everyone you hold dear. Patricia.

He reached deep into his coat pocket and brought out the injector that always traveled with him. As Wo Chu negotiated his way onto Broadway and north, Steve flipped the safety cap, gripped the thick cylinder, and plunged the needle into his leg.

#

"Anna! You all right?" Ray heaved the policeman's limp form aside and reached for his friend and partner. "Are you all right?" he asked again, dreading the answer she might give. He ran his trembling hands over the length of her body, searching for wounds. Finding none, he pulled her to a sitting position. The rattling, racked sound of her breathing scared him, as did her flooding tears. Why hadn't he gotten to her sooner? It was the crowd, he told himself; he had been trapped protecting Kate from the stampede. But all explanations ran sour in his mind. Whatever the circumstances, his place should have been with Anna.

Anna's eyes darted from Ray to the policemen laid around her like sand bags, and finally to the buckled mess that had been Parker Nguyen. As she focused on Parker's body, a terrifying sound welled up from her throat, an animal, stricken noise. She scrabbled to her knees and pushed roughly past Ray to the bloodied, pulpy corpse of her security specialist. Ray watched as she paused over the body, then gently, lovingly maneuvered herself to rest its fleshless head and shoulders in her lap. Ray knew how she felt about Parker, but the sight still struck him as nothing less than gruesome.

Anna held the body gently in her lap. She sobbed, dripping tears onto the nonexistent face. She clearly saw something other than the grotesque mess before her. "Parker," she whispered to no one in particular. "Minh Dinh, I'm so sorry."

Ray shuffled to her side despite the almost overpowering sense of revulsion instilled in him by the sight of Parker's body. "Anna, Parker's gone. Come with me. It isn't safe here."

She looked up at him, her face wet with tears, her features melted in sorrow. "He saved my life, Ray, and they killed him for it. What do I say to Minh? He's her only son."

Ray had no answer. What clever, soothing thing could he say on bloody courthouse steps, surrounded by the bodies of policemen and friends, lives suddenly erased by kids? By kids! What sense did any of this make? What could those boys have been thinking? How could words do anything to set it all to rights? He reached for Anna and did the only thing he knew how. He cradled her head on his chest, and let her sobs flow.

After a moment, she pushed him away. She sucked back a portion of tears, trying, as he knew she would, to regain control. She wiped her bloody hands on her coat, and tried to use its sleeve to wipe the tears from her face, but the sleeve, itself spattered with blood, smeared her face and glasses. Ray sought the dress handkerchief in his blazer, but his hands still shook, and it took a while to maneuver past his coat. Finally, he pulled out the white cloth, and wiped Anna's face with it. She seemed more collected now, breathing hard, but evenly. Her eyes shone sharp and focused again, taking in the mayhem around her. She hardly noticed his ministrations.

Over a dozen bodies lay scattered about the steps, most obviously dead, some moving feebly in the cold. A few wounded hobbled about in shock, moaning and listening to the undercurrent of cries around them. Kate stood in the center of it all, her face ashen and blank. She was a frigid goddess in her black, tailored suit and black wool overcoat, the angel of death surveying her realm.

Anna focused on the press people, who mobilized through the scene like a slow tide. They moved from one grisly vignette to another, capturing horrors on CCDs. They performed their duties with the jerkiness of robots, seeming not to yet realize what had just happened.

"Look at them," she said. "They're vultures. Where are the police, Ray?"

"They're dead," Ray answered, confused by the question. Where did she think they were?

"No, the other ones." Her eyes darted as she rethought her question. "Why haven't any other police come?"

"Anna, it happened just over a minute ago. There aren't any police yet. That's why we should go. It isn't safe for you here."

She turned her eyes full on him. All doubts as to her state of mind vaporized in that instant. A decision jelled behind those eyes. The slack, pained expression vanished, replaced by something hard, uncompromising, adamantine. She rarely showed that face, devoid as it was of the smoke screen of femininity that her career so often required. This was the Dearing that Ray Yonelson served.

"We have to help these people," she said.

No thought of protest entered his mind.

Anna lowered Parker gently to the concrete, as if he slept. She showed such care with the body that Ray could almost recall its human beginnings. She rose to her feet, rumpled, blood-soaked, and dirty. She looked terrifying, an effect that only heightened her reacquired aura of power. "Take care of Kate," she said, her voice steadying, and left him watching after her.

#

He had just shaken off his shock, had just come to realize the significance of the moment. The photographer stuffed his standard lens, the one for low-res Net pix, into his bag and snatched out the 15-1000 4p. He hoped he could get the close shots, every pore on every face sharp, and send them onto the Net ahead of everyone else. No sweat there. Burkhart, his main competitor, just got to his feet, his stuff scattered over the steps from his run-in with those stampeding spectators. Yes, Burkhart needed a few minutes to collect his senses and straighten his underwear before he offered any pressure. Only a few still photographers roamed the scene, and they looked stunned, too zapped for real work. Good. Two or three minutes, that's all he needed.

A woman lay curled at his feet, a child not three years old enveloped in her arms, as if shielded from harm. The red river snaking from their bodies down the steps highlighted the futility of that protective embrace. Tough break, honey. He brought the two into focus, took a moment to crop the shot for its best tear jerker appeal, and clicked off three frames, the camera automatically bracketing the f-stops to ensure a good exposure. Here came the cavalry, as office workers and security from the courthouse began straggling into the weather, hatless and in shirt sleeves, to investigate all the commotion. He caught with masterful precision the horror that leapt to their faces when they saw what lay before them. Good enough for now. Time to plug the camera into his tablet and send the images over his cell. A few minutes, and he could collect his Pulitzer nomination.

His viewfinder passed over her cleanly, then paused and reversed for a second look. Yes, it was her, the governor herself, kneeling over some old guy flat on his back, his head facing down the steps. A must shoot.

He padded up the steps, weaving past wounded and dead alike while he arranged her in the viewfinder and maneuvered the courthouse dramatically into her background. He used the wide-angle end of the lens to avoid blurring the building he wanted for his backdrop. Of course, the shorter lens required an in-close shot, but he wanted her bloody face clear in the frame, so everything worked for the best.

#

She couldn't stop the bleeding. The hole in the old man's chest alternately sucked then expelled air and blood. She had to impede the suction or he'd die. She put her palm against the hole, and felt the man stiffen.

"I'm sorry. I have to stop the bleeding."

She looked around and saw a photographer not ten feet away. "You!" she said. "Come over here. I need your help."

The photographer seemed not to hear. He peered through his viewfinder, snapping consecutive pictures.

"Get over here!" she snapped. "Get over here right now!"

Her tone commanded. He lowered his lens and moved to her side before he could form a refusal.

"I've pictures to take, lady. I've a deadline."

"Put your hand here." She took his hand and pressed it against the wound, then snatched the tablet from its carry bag at his side.

"Hey! What in hell–"

"Don't move your hand. Put it back, dammit. If you move your hand, he'll die."

Anna hammered the tablet against the concrete. The screen bezel burst apart. The photographer yelped as if stabbed. He snatched his hand from the old man's chest and reached for his busted computer, his tie to the net. She swatted his fingers away.

"I'll pay you later," she snapped. She ripped loose the sturdy Mylar that had backed the monitor glass. She wiped it quickly against her hip to clean it of plastic and chemicals, then laid the film over the old man's wound. The suction from within his chest grabbed the plastic and sealed it against the wound. The bleeding stopped, at least externally.

"You'll be okay," she lied to the old man, who was barely conscious in any event. Then she removed her coat and placed it over him for warmth.

"Okay," she said to the photographer, grabbing and jerking his elbow. "That man over there, the one you stepped over to get to me. Go see to him. Do anything you can for him. Do it, or, so help me, I'll personally smash every piece of photo equipment you own." She turned away, dismissing him, and shouted to those approaching from the building. "You people! We need blankets, coats, first aid kits, whatever you can dig up. And some of you get down here right now. Help these wounded here." They stopped, momentarily confused, then moved again in apparent compliance with her instructions. Anna turned her attention once more to the bodies around her, searching for that next feeble sign of life. Sirens grew in the background. The cold bit through her thin blouse. She couldn't care about either. Her energy, her commanding presence, and her forceful supervision kept things together until the EMTs arrived. No one questioned her authority on the courthouse steps.

"Get inside and get warm," the fire company captain said to her on arrival. "We can handle this, now."

She paused only a moment to acknowledge him with a nod. Then she put him to work, as well.

#

"I don't believe it," Chelsea said for the umpteenth time, shaking her head. "This is too much, Patty, too damned much."

"Who was he?" Patricia wanted to know. She had asked the question several times, though Chelsea couldn't give her an answer. They rode the elevator up to their floor after having waited in the hotel lobby for an empty one. They trusted no strangers, so unnerved were they by their experience in the store. Chelsea kept her finger on the CLOSE DOOR button.

"I thought he meant me harm, but he ended up saving my life," Patricia said, still trying to put it together. "Who was he?"

"I don't know, Patty. I do know that we're packing our bags and getting the hell out of here. If your daddy wants to hang around and play super detective, then I'll be glad to pick him up later. Or, better yet, send someone else to do it."

The bell sounded. Chelsea bolted before the doors fully opened. Patricia grabbed the computer box and followed close behind.

"I swear, this is too damned much," Chelsea said again. "That man meant to kill you, Patty. We're going back to Indy, good ol' laid back Hicksville Indy. I just don't believe this."

"Are we safe in Indy?" Patricia asked. "They went after Uncle Ben in Arizona. Mr. Clemmons found them in Montana. Is any place safe?"

Chelsea reached their door, her new card in hand, but froze inches from the key slot. The door hung open a crack.

"What's the matter?" Patricia asked before Chelsea shushed her. "Oh."

Perry, Chelsea thought, or even Steve. But they knew the importance of security, especially after that first unwelcome visit from the Chinese Mafia. The custodial staff had their own master cards, nor would they ever leave a door hanging open. She should go next door to call security, maybe even the police, but anger smothered her fear. She replaced the door card in her purse, and extracted her keys from her coat pocket. "Wait here," she whispered to Patricia, and eased the door open. She crept down the entrance hall, light on her toes, noting with irritation that Patricia followed. She heard the television running in the common room. Well, their visitor, friendly or hostile, was not at high alert. She paused at the end of the hall, corralling her last errant bits of fear. She was up for this kind of thing, she told herself. That Chinese jerk knew it, and so would today's trespasser. She was a war hero, after all. At least, that's what Wo Chu kept telling her.

She turned the corner into the common room, the keys held in front of her like a knife.

He sat in one of the big easy chairs, hunched over the coffee table and a tray trimmed with steak, green vegetables, and a large baked potato. He had pulled the whole thing in front of the television, where he ate and watched.

"Well, howdy!" he exclaimed. "Don't you look glad to see me!"

It was Ben Tallman.

Chapter Fifteen:

Missions

 (Back to Contents)

Ghosts stole from house to house in the cold dark of the Bosnian mountains. They carried armloads of possessions from each home they entered, dumping their finds in the wheelbarrows, bags, and suitcases spread along the road. They scavenged the essentials for outdoor survival: blankets, food, warm clothing. Every now and then, their supervisors fished an unauthorized item from a pile and tossed it aside. The rejected items were often toys. These ghosts, after all, were only kids.

Mike's captors had discovered a shabby band of preadolescents early that afternoon and had incorporated their directionless, undisciplined numbers into their cadre of older men. The merge made the group larger, but also more fragile. The men each supervised three or four boys, taking responsibility for their training as guerrillas, and firmly, sometimes roughly, instilling their charges with much-needed military discipline. Mike watched the informal training with interest and horror, interest in how the rebels passed on their skills and purpose, horror at watching children learn to hate, and kill.

Capron's killer approached Mike where he kneeled cross-armed and cold in the snow, a guard's rifle against his back. He sat down in the snow beside Mike.

"Soon, school begins," he said. "Another step in your journey toward the truth, Mr. Eller."

"Looks like looting to me."

"This? Oh, surely you can't be that naive. Tell me, would you like to ask any questions? Don't be shy. I promise I'll be as honest as possible. Lessons must be developed carefully, to give the student the best possible chance of learning."

Mike looked at the man but could muster no expression. His face hung slack from too much running, too little sleep, and no food.

"Well, why not?" The man shrugged. "I'll probably kill you tomorrow, anyway."

"Who are you?"

The man in Capron's jacket turned back toward the houses and the hurried scavenging detail. "Not a terribly efficient beginning to an interview of undetermined length, but I understand. You're tired. If you really want to know, I was once Andrej Adnan Vidovic, professor of Comparative Political Studies in Sarajevo. That was three years ago. Now, I'm just a common murderer." He thought a moment. "Well, maybe not so common. Okay, you know who I am. How about a more pertinent question?"

"Why? Why do you do this?"

The man looked pained. "I'm disappointed. I thought you a better journalist than that. But, to move things along, I think I heard you ask why we are here, in this place, at this time." He gestured toward the houses. "Seventeen families, none of which exist officially in this country. Here in the Serbian Confederation, you don't have much status when you refuse to live in a ghetto, when you refuse the privilege of dermal identification — that's kind of like branding, you know — and when you decline being shot and thrown into a mass grave. Anyone so uncooperative lives out his life in the war zone, in whatever shelter presents itself. Seventeen families, mostly old women, girls, and small children. Some of their boys and men are my companions, and I try to come around every few weeks so that they can see each other. I'm such a softie." He paused to smile. Eller did not smile back.

"Well, it's moving night tonight," he continued. "These seventeen families are the object lesson for tonight's Schoolhouse session, and we don't want them here when Teacher arrives. We're lucky tonight, you see. We often receive no warning at all. On such occasions, we do most of our retrieving in lonely town intersections. You see, Mr. Eller, we aren't looting; we're being good neighbors, helping with the packing, so to speak."

"I don't understand. Moving where? Why? What's Schoolhouse?"

Vidovic stared at him, his eyes hard. "You almost convince me that you really are as ignorant as you seem." Someone yelled in that unfamiliar Arabic-sounding dialect. Vidovic answered, then rose to his feet.

"You'll know soon enough about Schoolhouse," he said. "We're ready. It's time to go."

"Who are those guys?" Mike asked as his guard pulled him upright. "I don't recognize their dialect, and I thought most Bosnian rebel men were POWs, or dead."

"You think right." His captor slapped him on the back. "But then, few of these men are Bosnian. They, too, are good neighbors. They are mostly Mujahadin, from Afghanistan and Russia. They've come all this way to do what's right, which is more than I can say for your people. Let's go. If we're caught here at the wrong moment, it'll be a hard lesson indeed."

They ran. Mike saw it as nothing else. Over a hundred and fifty people streamed out of the hamlet through however many inches of snow, hauling among them their precious vessels of hastily gathered survival gear. Vidovic herded the group into the mountain rocks. His men pushed and dragged the old people, and screamed at the young boys lagging behind. They corralled everyone among the boulders far outside the village and ordered them to the ground and into silence. They then dispersed throughout the group to enforce those directives. Everyone obeyed the armed men instantly, but not entirely out of fear. There in the rocks the rebels were heroes, honored, respected, and deserving obedience. Only their methods brought fear.

Everyone waited. Mike sat with his back against the mountain, hugging himself for warmth, amazed that so many people could remain so quiet for such a long time. How long had it been, five minutes, ten? He wanted to check his watch, but they had taken it from him the day before. At least he still had his coat, which was more than he could say for many of the noncombatants shivering with him in the winter night.

"Look to the south," Vidovic said from beside him, his Army field jacket pulled tightly around him. "Your truth approaches."

Mike squinted into the hills beyond the hamlet. What did he look for, anyway?

He ducked at the sudden roar of aircraft overhead. He knew that sound. "Seahawks!" he shouted, and Vidovic struck his shoulder to quiet him.

"A point guard," the professor in the field jacket explained in a quiet tone of voice. "They always come ahead. Now for the finale."

Mike barely discerned them against the darkness, black wedges high in the atmosphere, descending. He watched as they drifted toward the hamlet, looking at a distance like black swallows.

"Hurricanes," he said.

The swallows dipped, then bobbed toward the sky again.

The first flash stung Mike's eyes. He threw a hand across his face, but Vidovic jerked it away, ordering him to watch. The explosions mushroomed in clusters among the houses, like fiery, blinding cauliflower. The superheated gas and flame of the bombs engulfed the hamlet. One whole wall of a house flew from the hungry fireballs into the hills, flame trailing along its clumsy arc. The Muslims cringed from the conflagration. Their protectors squatted into the rocks to avoid exposure in the extreme brightness thrown against the mountainside. The heat did not reach them, but the wind of the battering overpressure did. Children cried. Mothers shushed them at the urging of scowling men.

"Jesus!" Mike breathed. "Jesus Christ!"

"Yes." Vidovic said. "I agree."

Energy floated off the now non-existent hamlet in pulsing globes of gas and smoke, like luminous jellyfish rising through a dark ocean. Fires on the ground sputtered on inadequate fuel. There wasn't much left to burn.

"What did you do to deserve this?" Mike asked. Ten minutes earlier, and everyone around him might have died within the flames.

"Now, that is a competent question," Vidovic mused, his voice an eager whisper. "Perhaps we earned such treatment by attacking the American occupation forces. Maybe these mothers and their babies have killed innocent fighter-bombers flying in from Mediterranean safe havens. A satisfying explanation, from your point of view, but a fictional one. No, my friend, we've committed more diabolical acts than that. We are unashamedly guilty of non-cooperation. Of being in the way."

"Now what the hell does that mean?" Mike demanded, flustered. "You have shot down aircraft. You've used missiles and rifle fire against them. Sometimes they weren't even bombers. Sometimes they carried humanitarian aid, or just enforced the no-fly zone, which actually helps your efforts. I was in some of those vertols you shot at."

"Watch your voice!" Vidovic hissed. "Sound carries far in these mountains, and we are not alone." He pointed to the destroyed hamlet. Mike saw black shadows silhouetted against the flames. Vertols.

"They come to check their kill. They will be disappointed." Vidovic moved around to a more comfortable squat. "To partially answer your question, yes, we do shoot your aircraft, but only after they bomb our families and homes. Until six months ago, we avoided contact with Americans. Your people were not our true enemy. But, that's changed now. More than ever, you are puppets of a Serb government bent on genocide."

"But you shot down the aircraft–"

"Yes. A few. But our expertise with missiles is wholly inadequate, and the weapons themselves rare. You'd be surprised how few of your deaths can be blamed on us."

"Then who did the shooting? Surely, you don't blame the Serbs. They're locked up in barracks."

Vidovic watched as soldiers sprang from the distant vertolifters. They spread throughout the bomb zone, checking what little debris remained. "For a journalist, your facts are astoundingly deficient. But that's okay. We're here in the Schoolhouse to learn."

"I'm telling you, I don't know anything about Schoolhouse. Tell me. I want to understand."

Vidovic turned eyes upon Mike. The journalist recalled the threat of death against him. "I don't have to explain Schoolhouse," the former political science professor said. "Your own people do, if you'd only listen."

#

The young soldier sped down the hall to the hotel room's open door, his pistol held high in his good hand. Steve wondered what would happen if another door should open and a hotel patron enter the hall, if the An Leung soldier was wound too tight to differentiate foes from bystanders. But no doors opened, no innocents stepped into the boy's field of fire. He hurried for the door to Steve's room, to the open door that should have been closed. He ignored the big cast sticking out from his side, and the almost comical impression it made. He looked like some huge, muted TV chicken flapping down the hall, ungainly, but silent as a cat. Wo Chu followed not far behind, his own weapon drawn, his jerking advance-and-pause progression in sharp counterpoint to the younger man's fluid charge.

They hardly paused at the door. The two Chinese rushed down the entry hall, their guns leading them, and spread out once in the common room. Steve followed as closely as his tired, still grumbling body could manage.

"Holy shit!" someone exclaimed. "Time for decaf, Peter, m'boy!"

Steve cleared the hallway. He found Wo Chu, the gunman-soldier, Patricia, Chelsea, and, of all people, Ben Tallman facing each other in the common room. The Chinese already holstered their weapons.

"Daddy!" Patricia cried, and threw herself at him. They held each other in a selfish embrace while the others looked on. The young soldier went back down the hall to close and lock the door.

"I was scared for you," Steve said, his relief flowing in shudders from his body.

"Somebody tried to shoot me!"

"What?"

"You've had quite a day yourself," Ben said, picking at Steve's dirty, blood-encrusted clothes.

"Where have you been, old man?" Steve snapped. "I'd almost given you up for dead. And what's this about getting shot at?"

"Chelsea, honey," Ben continued, "why don't you order down to room service for a pizza or something. Looks like story time all around tonight."

Chelsea didn't move. She watched Wo Chu and his man.

"Don't worry," Steve said. "They're with us."

#

Traffic crawled on Park Avenue. Chelsea stared out the hotel room's large windows, trying to balance the tension inside against the hypnotic progression of the headlights below. All stories were told, all shock and worry expressed. Now the planning began, and recriminations. Chelsea hadn't spoken since explaining the attempted attack on Patricia. Her stomach still twisted from her own stupidity in the face of threats, from the horror of Steve's experience, and from his apparent inability to recognize his continuing danger. She feared for him. Had she ever felt this way? Had she ever, since the war anyway, had cause?

"This is bullshit," Ben Tallman said as he paced the floor. "You've had information on Mercy and EOG for over a month, boy. When did you plan to use it, on a cold day in hell?"

Steve's voice was flat, a counterpoint to his uncle's frustration. "Your data was useless, no more than conjecture. Without the source, we had limited options for fleshing it out. We've come a long way since then. Depending on the other teams, we might have enough for a broadcast in two, maybe three weeks."

"Two weeks? They erase your sources every day, your old uncle's been running like a rabbit in a greyhound kennel, your daughter almost gets shot, and they blow up half of Chinatown to get you. Two weeks from now you'll be a dim memory in the back of Mercy's head. Everyone in this room will be dog food."

"What do you expect from me, Ben? Go off half-cocked, spread that data prism all over the Net while making insupportable accusations against a powerful political figure or three?"

"Why, yes, that's exactly what I want!"

"Irresponsible, bad journalism."

"Maybe bad journalism, but damned good politics. Broadcasting that data disk would put Mercy in a sweat. Every news agency in the country would investigate your 'irresponsible' claims. Mercy's friends wouldn't recall his name on a bet. And you, and me, and all these here fine people would be safe and snug as kittens on a fleece bed. With the spotlight on, Mercy couldn't touch us. He'd have to shake his fist and grit his teeth, and like it."

Steve leaned deeper into the corner of the couch. He looked drained. "I'm not that kind of journalist. You knew that from the beginning."

"Yes, I did, by God. I knew I should have gone to FOX, but I wanted to give you one good chance to fulfill your life."

Steve dropped his head onto the couch arm and covered his face with his hands. Here we go again, Chelsea thought.

Wo Chu stepped to the window, next to her.

"You are silent tonight," he said. She flinched when he spoke. "I apologize. I intrude."

"I was just thinking." About how her mistakes had nearly gotten Patty killed.

"This is a time for thinking. I will leave you to meditate."

"You fought to protect Steve's life."

"His life was never in jeopardy."

"But, you didn't know that, and afterward you came to protect us."

Wo Chu smiled an honest, fatherly smile. "I am not the monster you imagine, Miss Van Arsdale. I have my sense of duty. It sometimes, admittedly, conflicts with accepted norms, but I nonetheless find honor in my daily tasks."

"I'm sorry I busted your buddy's arm. Would you tell him for me?"

Wo Chu chuckled. "No, I don't think so. He has lost enough face as it is."

"What are your plans? You said the dai low would want your head after today."

"Perhaps he will settle for my retirement." But, to Chelesa, he seemed disingenuous.

#

Patricia sat cross-armed and stiff on the couch. No one noticed her, not even her father, only inches away. She stared at the television screen, using its electronic balm to erase the discussion around her. Periodically, she thrust her hand at the remote control in her lap, skimming the channels for their most innocuous and deadening offerings: the commercials.

"There's more at stake here than your journalistic bullshit," Ben said. "These people are unapologetic racists. Native peoples haven't faced a greater threat since Francis Amasa Walker, or maybe Custer. We need the truth out there, where we can use it as a weapon. It's your destiny to put it there."

"I don't work for the God damned Native American Movement. I'm a journalist. Do I have to get you a dictionary?"

"I know what a journalist is, boy. You're the producer of one lousy TV show in a fiber Net universe. Edward R. Murrow, you ain't."

"And Cochise you ain't."

"Maybe you could both stop strutting and make some definite plans," Chelsea interrupted. "For instance, I'm for clearing out and hightailing it back to Indy."

"Sorry," Dad said, "but we have a detour to make in DC."

"Mercy lives in DC," Chelsea pointed out.

"You should get back to Indy to put this show on the air," Ben insisted.

"We'll put the story on when the story is complete. That's why we're going to Washington."

"We'll be a whole lot safer in Indy," Chelsea said.

"Dammit, I'm not going to fret over safety!" Dad sat up as if propelled. "Do you hear yourselves? Why do you think they attacked us today? To scare us the hell away! I won't submit. I won't let them win. We're made of better stuff than that."

"Excuse me, Captain America." Chelsea turned away from the window. "They didn't attack to scare us away. They attacked to kill us."

"If they had wanted to kill me, they dropped their opportunity."

"If not for some random bastard in a store, they would have succeeded with Patty. Has that gotten through your head, dumbass? We aren't safe here."

"We aren't safe anywhere. Mercy launches his goons at all corners." This prompted a choking sound from Patricia, which she smothered under a demonstrative swallow. Dad looked at her, then touched her knee gently. Patricia didn't expect the movement. Her face jerked toward his, then she forced her eyes back to the TV. There was a President's Day sale at Macy's.

Her father looked hurt, but only for a second. "Mr. Wo Chu, would you be open to a little security consulting?"

"I don't understand. What is it you ask?"

"He wants you to protect my grandniece," Ben clarified. "How about it, Peter? You figure an old man and a busted up boy with no English can take on the whole friggin' white supremacy movement for two or three weeks?"

Patricia's thumb hammered away at the remote's channel button.

"We will never know, Benjamin. I am tied to the dai low's service."

Dad gestured toward the phone on the coffee table. "Then I'll do you a favor, seeing as you're in deep boiling water with your employer. You call the dai low. Tell him I need protection if I'm to get this story out. Tell him I want you, and I'll settle for no other."

"I appreciate the thought, but I must decline. Your uncle is correct. I could not match the task."

"Sorry, but to borrow a term from my uncle's lexicon: bullshit. You might find this hard to believe, but after today, you're about the only person I'd trust with my daughter."

"Trust is not an issue. As you said, Mr. Mercy launches his goons at all corners. Somehow he managed to enlist Ghost Shadow aid as a diversion for this afternoon's attack. Perhaps he paid them; perhaps they ally themselves with him. But they pulled much of our security away from the actual threat. Then he infiltrated the dragon dance ceremony. We found the four actual dancers in an alley, dead. Mr. Mercy's dancer-assassins managed to get close enough to pose a threat to you, a lethal one to Mr. Hoy. They had backup in the procession, disguised as tourists. All this was my fault. I could not stop it from happening."

Dad nodded. "I understand, and I'm sure you'll beat yourself up for years, but the fact remains that you fought an army today, not a criminal gang. Pistols against grenades and machine guns? You wouldn't have stood a chance even with ten times your number of men."

"All the more reason to question my competence."

Patricia flinched as her father pounded a fist against the couch cushion. "I can't get the US damned Marines, Wo Chu. You're the best option I have. I don't know that I'd trust Patricia to anyone else."

"You can believe him." Ben stood next to the Chinese gangster. "This boy has a taste for Asian cutthroats. By the way," he said in an aside to Steve, "did you know that receptionist of yours is packing a gun?"

"Yes, I know she bought one, and she's my administrative assistant, not my receptionist."

Ben snorted. "Well, that's the last time I track you down on your own turf. Too damned dangerous. Why don't you hire her to watch Patricia for you?"

"What about that man," Chelsea said, "the one in the brown parka? How does he fit into all this?"

Dad shook his head. "Can't say. At least somebody out there isn't after us."

"Ben?" Chelsea asked. "Is he one of yours, a NAM member? Mr. Wo Chu?"

Both men shook their heads. Chelsea rubbed her chin, her fingers trembling. "I really think we should get the hell out of here. Not only is this city too dangerous, but the police will come looking for us soon. We're witnesses to violent crime, after all."

"We'll conference all EOG story reporters to flesh out what we have," Dad said. "We'll do that from Indianapolis. But first we go to Washington to find and enlist Louis Hoy's contact in the Republican National Committee. After we accomplish all that, I can go to CBS News for an air date."

Patricia gasped. The commercial on the TV had changed to something horrible. She had to think a moment how to reverse the remote.

"—but the attempt was foiled by one of her own senior staff members, himself killed in the melee," the television blared. "The governor is apparently unscathed. In fact, she took charge of the scene until more police arrived, drafting onlookers to aid the survivors."

"We're rerunning the video now," the familiar anchorman voice said. "Kevin, any idea how the Dearing campaign will move this to their advantage? An emphasis of the crime issue, a blast against the administration for not providing Secret Service security?"

"Well, Tom, the president is already taking heat on the Hill. Some are suggesting that perhaps he hoped for Dearing's assassination, though I don't know what worth you can put on all that. Sources close to Dearing claim a political spin is the last thing on her mind. I was here during the attack; it was quite devastating, as our viewers can surely tell from the video. And she seemed, when it was over, genuinely concerned for the survivors, and with those who were killed in the mayhem..."

Images filled the screen in a jerky, roughly edited progression. People fell, policemen charged, more people fell, all in some ghastly, badly performed modern dance. Then Anna filled a steadier frame, directing the Samaritan efforts of people with numbed-looking faces. The camera pulled in to close-up, detailing the dirt and blood smearing her face and clothes, but also the hard set of her mouth, and her searching, task-oriented eyes. She looked terrible, and magnificent.

"My God..." Ben said. He stepped toward the TV and partially blocked its screen. Patricia blinked, released by that interruption from something cloying and dark. She turned her eyes toward her father, who sat leaning toward the television. He worked his lower jaw.

Chelsea snatched up the phone and punched keys furiously.

"Police are still unsure of the assassins' identities," the TV said, "but both boys appeared on camera wearing small tattoos on their faces, like those favored by the militant Black Panther Fellowship out of Los Angeles..."

"Get Betty," Chelsea said to the face on the phone. "This is Chelsea Van Arsdale, calling for Steve Tallman." She reached across Patricia to pass him the handset.

"She's all right, Steve," said the face of the east coast team chief, "not a scratch on her. Her security chief got killed, but nobody else in her team was hurt."

"Parker."

"Right. Parker Nguyen. Kate Clancy was admitted for shock, but is otherwise uninjured."

"Daddy?" Patricia asked, then realized she didn't have a question.

"Where's Anna?" asked her father, his voice shaky.

"Her hotel," Betty answered. "I have a man in the lobby. Would you like to get a message through?"

The suggestion seemed to startle him. "No. Thanks. You're a friend."

"Boss, I, uh, know this is a bad time to ask, but we also have a team in Chinatown. Was that you?"

"Yeah." He clicked off.

"...Again, a dramatic assassination attempt against the Democratic candidate for president, former California governor Anna Marie Dearing, on the courthouse steps here in Concord, New Hampshire. One assassin lies dead at the scene. Another is at large after having murdered eleven people in his attempt to reach the governor..."

"Daddy?"

He scooted near her and pulled Patricia gently into his arms. As he embraced her, she let loose a stream of hopeless, mewing sounds. He took the remote from her hand and clicked off the television.

Ben and Chelsea spoke at once. Ben wanted him in Indianapolis to air the collected information on EOG before anyone else got hurt. Chelsea hoped to fly him to Concord.

"You have to go," she said. "Think what she means to you. Think what you mean to her. You don't have a choice here."

"He has a mission here," Ben countered. "The best way to serve everybody concerned is to get this damned story on the air. Listen, boy. Don't think about what you want to do, think about what you ought to do."

"For God's sake, stay out of this!" Chelsea shouted. "I know him better than you. How often do you breeze into his life, Ben Tallman? Once or twice a year?"

"This is bigger than his life, bigger than all of us." Ben turned back to Steve. "I told you how big this was. I told you you'd know what to do. Now, let's do it, boy. Let's put the light on these cockroaches!"

"Shut up, both of you," Patricia heard from her father. His voice was an even drone, a willed effort at control. He needed her. He needed calm, too, but she couldn't give him any. She sobbed into his shoulder, her hands limp in her lap.

The others ignored him in their efforts to drown each other's points.

"Shut the hell up!" he said with more force.

Patricia pulled away from him then and looked into his eyes. Just as she thought. He was there, part of him. Steve Tallman blazed from behind those searching eyes and that thin line of a frown. He showed the strength people sought from him, the iron will that had ended a war, had built a media empire, had attracted a bulldozer of a woman like Anna Marie Dearing. She felt her fear recede in the company of that strength. This was the Steve Tallman the history books knew.

Patricia turned her head to take in the others around her. She felt her neck creak with the effort. Ben projected confidence, an old Apache warrior from the days of carbine rifles and horses. Chelsea stood stricken beside him, sure that she saw another tragedy rising in her best friend's life, self-inflicted and unnecessary. Only Wo Chu and his gunman-soldier appeared expressionless. Wo Chu spoke quietly into his cell, ignoring the entire discussion.

Patricia sobbed in snotty hitches. "They're going to kill us all," she moaned.

Steve took her by the arms and turned her toward him. "They aren't killing anybody, you hear? They've exposed their limits. They're done. And, remember, they aren't everywhere. I doubt the attacks on us and the one on Anna are even related. Can you see Mercy in league with the Black Panthers? Anyway, we'll be more careful from here on out." He patted her cheek and traced a thumb beneath her eye, wiping away the tears on that side of her face. He turned to the others, released Patricia, and rose from the couch.

Something in Patricia collapsed. He was lost to her.

"Listen to yourselves," he directed. "You're panicked, scared, ready to cave. I admit, this isn't what we thought it would be." He looked into Ben's eyes. "You played it like another political chess game, an information and influence war. You hoped to win this conflict, then laugh about it afterwards in the company of your opponents. You spoke way back in January about the end of the world as we know it, but back then it was rhetoric. Now that your rhetoric stares you in the face, you aren't quite as cool in your thinking." He stepped over to Chelsea and squeezed her arm at the shoulder. "You came along for a trip to New York. Night clubs, shopping, sight seeing. You just aren't a political animal, Chelsea. After everything that's happened, you're still caught in the side issues; you still don't get it. This is a war, old friend. A real war, but an asymmetrical one. They fight with threats, weapons, terror. We fight with words and images." He looked from face to face, even to Patricia. "I have a mission. I have a story to build, then to tell, so the forces that run this country can adequately do their jobs."

"Look at that TV," Chelsea said, her voice quavering. "Look at it. I bet every channel is on it. You don't have to be one of them."

"We started out with this story. We're going to see it through."

"Even at the price of your life? Our lives? Even at the price of Anna?"

"Damn it, Van Arsdale, that's not a fair question. I have to go to Washington. There really isn't any other choice. Will you fly me there?"

"Steve," she whispered, "as your friend, I'm begging you. Send someone else. There are others. Anna needs you."

"I can't. I want to, but I can't. Will you fly me?"

She visibly shriveled before him. He would destroy his personal life to satisfy his honor, his professional rules of conduct. It was Mom all over again, Patricia knew, and was not surprised. It was the war, really, the war that had taught him that passion destroys. Her father had the ashes of a million incinerated people on his hands. He had done something once against the rules, had saved billions by breaking the rules, and that tragedy would not release him. Chelsea could do nothing to deter him. So she nodded hopelessly, defeated, and dropped her eyes from his. Patricia wondered when and where she would clean up the mess from this latest mistake. He had made the mistake before, so she knew it would be soon.

#

The Gulfstream Commuter surfed the currents above West Virginia as it paced toward Indianapolis International Airport. Patricia hunkered down in her window seat, the new tablet in her lap. She hated this flight. She was separated from her father, attended by four Chinese gangsters she certainly did not trust, and trapped with them on their boss's private jet. Uncle Ben flew with her, but he seemed at home with her escort. He sat across the small cabin, playing cards with Mr. Wo Chu and two others. Where had he learned Chinese? she thought, reminded of how little she knew her uncle.

She noticed the tablet. After a moment's consideration, she powered it up. She didn't think she'd accomplish much, but she was idle enough to play with her machine's CellAir as she started that job for Dad.

Her almost immediate connection to the Net drew her away from unease, pushing Wo Chu and his cutthroats back from the front registers of her mind. She tried a few experiments to test her machine's limits, and found it performed as advertised. Well! she decided, maybe she could get some work done.

She drew a few prisms from the overnight bag in the seat beside her, plugged one in, and began to load its program. Within minutes, she sat hunched over the unit, absorbed in the one intellectual activity at which she really excelled. By the time they landed in Indy, she had broken three secure government networks, and was carefully storing confidential data for presentation to her father. Her work was barely begun.

#

"...and get hold of Sam, and recall him to Indy. I need to speak with him as soon as I'm done out here."

Steve imagined Emma's acknowledging nod. He knew she would handle things on her end. Besides, he couldn't do much of anything from the passenger bay of a vertol.

"I understand," she said from across the microwaves. "Is there anything else?"

"That'll do it, Emma. I should return in a day or two. How are things at your end? Nothing unpleasant, I hope."

"Not at all. The suspicious people seem to have followed you to New York."

"Oh. That's... swell. See you later."

"Mr. Tallman..." Her tone made him sag into his plush seat. More unasked-for advice. He had more advice than he cared to remember. "Mr. Tallman, I'm not sure I ... approve of your decisions regarding your daughter."

"Oh?" Approve?

"I'm sorry if I overstep myself," she continued, "but you cannot protect her if she isn't near you."

"I can't protect her if she is near me, Emma. Wo Chu will keep her safer than I ever could."

"There is nothing greater than the conviction of a father protecting his daughter," she said with special emphasis. Was this a personal statement? Steve thought. "Also, do you think it wise to involve her directly in this investigation?"

"The data search is pretty innocuous, and it'll give her something to do, to take her mind off the craziness."

"And it could place her across the path of your enemies. There are more than have shown themselves, make no mistake on that."

"I won't, Emma. Thanks for the advice. I promise to consider it. Don't forget to feed the fish, okay?"

"I'm only trying to help."

"I know," Steve said, trying to hide his impatience.

Dead air marked her hesitation, then her voice returned, its flat tone unchanged. "I will have everything ready upon your return."

"Thanks. 'Bye." Steve clicked off the phone, sighed, then placed it back in his inside blazer pocket.

A vinyl-wrapped tool kit clanged to the floor, barely missing his feet. A thick ring-bound book landed there also, and tumbled end over end to the far wall of the vertol. Steve rose from his seat in the passenger area and leaned out the cargo door. Chelsea closed an avionics access door near the rear of the aircraft, slamming it with far more force than necessary.

"That's it," she said to Perry. "Stow the tie-downs, pressurize the turbines, and make your checks with tower. Everything's ready."

She walked back to the cargo door, elbowing her way past Steve without so much as a grunt of recognition. She stowed the tool bag and operator's manual in their hidden compartments beneath the carpeted deck. Steve eased back into his seat, watching her.

"The bird's all set," she said as she heaved the operator's manual into its hole. "Your bag's in the bin. You didn't bring enough for an extended stay. I'll have Perry pick you up some clothes in DC, to replace the ones that got ruined."

"Sounds like my mother sending me off to camp," Steve ventured after a moment. Her anger was obvious.

"Perry's your pilot. I'm headed back to Indy." She slammed the compartment door on its contents, then wrestled her way over the center instrument console and into the pilot's seat. There she took up a clipboard holding the ship's maintenance log.

"I thought you were flying me," Steve said.

"I changed my mind."

"I'd rather you didn't. Change your mind, I mean."

"I won't have anything to do with this. You want to ruin your life again, be my guest." She scratched at the clipboard with her pen.

"I'd feel better if you went along."

She turned to look at him for the first time. She wore a disbelieving, irritated mask of incredulity. "I'd feel better if you weren't such a God damned asshole."

Okay. "Ordinarily, I'd go to her, but Ben's right, in a way. This is bigger than me, bigger than her–"

"Look, I don't need that self-righteous, testosterone-laced honor shit. It's fucking bullshit, that's all it is. I won't bite. Like I said, you want to ruin your life all over again, be my guest. But I won't watch you do it."

"What do you mean, 'all over again'?"

She slapped the clipboard back onto its Velcro stay. "You're such a moron, Tallman. This is Belinda all over again."

"What does Belinda have to do with this? Anna is nothing like—"

"No, but you are. You drove Belinda away. You gave her reason to hate your guts. You're doing the same thing to Anna. Steve, you haven't seen her or talked to her in over a month. Now you won't go to her when she needs you the most." She balled her hands into frustrated fists. "My God! What do you think she is, some little doll you can take out and play with at your leisure?"

"You're out of line, Chief."

"Well, I think she'll pointedly be somewhere else next time you want to play. And don't use that tone of voice on me. I don't need this job."

The pilot's door swung open. "Tie-downs are stowed," Perry said. "Ready to go. Boss?"

"Sorry," Chelsea said, her tone clipped, "I'm in your seat." She climbed down past him out the door, then walked around the front of the aircraft and toward the terminal building.

"We'll be airborne in a minute, sir," Perry said. "If you'll–"

Steve stepped from the aircraft and followed Chelsea.

"It's all right!" he heard Perry calling. "We can wait as long as you want!"

"Hold up, Chief!"

"Don't call me that," she said over her shoulder. "I've been out of the Army for fifteen years, and I'm not in your personal army now." She snatched open the steel door to the terminal, then pulled it closed in his face.

Steve cursed under his breath and wrestled open the door. He thrust after her up the stairs to the concourse, still feeling the weakness of his recuperating body. He pushed through the security door at the top of the stairs, finally catching her as she angled through the crowd toward an exit.

"Hold it!" he said, grabbing her shoulder and regretting it immediately. She shrugged off his touch and faced him with the full force of her anger. Her usually rich blue eyes were frozen to gray, and hard lines at her brow and mouth attested to her grim state of being. Steve involuntarily retreated a step.

"We have nothing to talk about, Tallman."

"Let's make a deal," he said, puffing. "You fly me to DC tonight. We'll locate this Carlton Westly or Western or whoever he is, and fly him with us to New Hampshire. It shouldn't take more than four, maybe six hours."

She sneered him up and down. Actually sneered. "Are you saying you have to be bribed to go to the woman you allegedly love? Thank God I was never screwed up enough to marry you, Tallman. I'd have killed you by now."

"Look, you're right. This isn't a free choice thing. I'd rather go to Anna. I'd rather we had less demanding, jealous jobs. I'd rather live with her in the suburbs some place, raising 2.5 kids, a dog, and geraniums in the garden. I'd rather the whole imaginary clan was there to get worked up over a visit from Aunt Chelsea. But none of that wants to happen, none of it ever will. It just isn't in the cards, the bones, or the alignment of the planets, okay? Sure, I love Anna, and I know she loves me, but this career owns me, and she's owned by hers. So, where does that leave us? It leaves us with a mission that can't be ignored, the successful completion of which could help over four hundred million people maintain the freedoms inherited from their fathers, or at least let them give it all up with open eyes. It leaves us with a game centering on the turning point of the last three hundred years of history, and a nasty little fate laughing 'Tag, Tallman, you're it!' and, hell," he spread his hands helplessly, "you just have to play, Chelsea. There's no other way."

She watched him, but no words escaped her. Would she capitulate? He hoped to do this thing with her, not with a stranger like Perry.

"I don't know," she said, shaking her head in frustration. "And after such a florid speech. What do I get out of this? You throw up all around me, get me kidnapped, shot at, make me crazy. It's like a 21st century version of a Thin Man movie."

"You have to go with me," Steve insisted. "I can't do it without you. If not for you, I'd already be dead."

"Humph! You will be dead when Anna gets hold of you. But you haven't given me a reason to stay."

"Because you promised you would," he said, without the slightest guilt. "You promised to stand by me."

And she had. People made promises all the time and broke them, but he spoke of words too basic to ignore. His mind raced over their shared life, highlighting half-remembered images, words and emotions that had bound them together over the years. The memories swamped him unbidden, flashes of unconsidered truth that surprised and even confused him. He saw the same confusion in her eyes, a rush of memory, of senses, of visceral commitment to that frustrating other in each of their lives. Steve saw a flick of her eyes, a sudden weave on her usually steady feet, as if from a loss of equilibrium, and wondered what had touched her so forcefully. Perhaps the same thing that unsteadied him.

"Okay, I'll fly," she said, recovering, "but we'll do it on my schedule. You agree to this, and follow through. If you welsh, I'll take my business back to LA and you won't lay eyes on me until your funeral, understand?"

"Agreed. You run the schedule. If I can't locate this guy in a timely manner, we head up to New Hampshire and back to Indy, and I turn the whole thing over to my regular people like a good boy."

"You're a son of a bitch, Tallman. You were supposed to argue political responsibility with me."

"I have my limits, Chi—"

She threw up a warning finger.

"—Chelsea."

#

They rested. Vidovic squatted in the snow in front of Mike, gently massaging a heat pack taken from his hostage upon capture. The others, minus civilians, crouched or sat in clusters along the road, barely visible in the weak light from the cloudy sky.

"Radio isn't much use," Vidovic said, continuing a conversation interrupted earlier. "Most of our radios are cheap consumer devices. They only work on three satellite channels, and those are blocked by the Serb government. But we have a few army radios liberated from their previous owners, so we listen in on military traffic now and then."

Mike coughed. The cold molested him. "Why not use them to communicate?"

"Oh, no. They're so much more valuable for eavesdropping. The Serbs are careless. We have access to their channel logs, the documents that list the channels used from day to day by various units. We also have their encryption protocols." He grinned. "Not all Serbs are monsters, Mr. Eller. Some are sympathetic to our cause. Anyway, we can sometimes overhear their plans, and so stay out of their way. Most importantly, we sometimes hear them discussing administrative arrangements for your Navy's fly-over routes. Air traffic control, you might say. We know where your planes will approach from the sea, and we know where they will clear the land on their return flights. Sometimes, anyway."

"And that's how you know where to ambush them."

Vidovic smiled knowingly. "No, but we put the information to good use. In fact, we're on one such mission right now, a mission entirely for your benefit."

"I'm honored."

Vidovic chortled. "Come, Mr. Eller. Don't lapse into sarcasm. We've gone through so much trouble to give you a proper education."

"What's Schoolhouse?"

"It's something you know nothing about, a condition we will remedy."

Mike snapped in a violent sneeze. He wiped his face with one dirty hand.

"Are you cold, Mr. Eller, perhaps hungry?"

"I've felt better."

"I'm sorry to hear it. I'm also sorry that I can't offer you relief until I'm sure of your place in this grand scheme of events. After all, if you disappoint me, I'll have to kill you. That would be a terrible waste of food and heat, don't you think?"

"Very reasonable of you," Mike grumbled. He despised Vidovic and his acid sense of humor. He hated watching these bastards eat his food and clutch his heat packs. They intended to kill him, same as Capron, but first they would torture him with weather and starvation. When would they demand his coat and outer clothing?

"Yes," Vidovic said, placing the heat pack in a coat pocket, "we try to be reasonable. A difficult prospect in unreasonable times. Have a rest. We move again in ten minutes. We don't want you expiring before the big pop quiz."

He rose to his feet, laughing at his own joke, and wandered off to cheer and encourage his men.

Mike hugged himself tighter against the chilly night. A stiff wind rattled along the road, causing him to shiver.

#

"My God, Ray, have you always been such a ... such a ghoul?"

It hurt Anna to say those words, as she knew it pained Ray to broach the subject in the first place. Ray tried when she couldn't, worked when she grieved. Only he knew of her collapse after the ordeal on the courthouse steps. No one except her closest staff knew of the wracking crying fit that had immobilized her for hours, thankfully hidden behind her hotel room doors. Ray maneuvered to keep it that way while Anna thought only of Minh's hysterics after receiving the news of Parker's death. Parker was all Minh had. He was her treasure.

"It's been over ten hours, Anna. The lobby downstairs is crammed with reporters. I'm sorry, but I can't stall them anymore. Some of them are making noises about 'Dearing's Fragility' and 'The Stress of Crisis On a Sentimental Mind.' I know it's hard, but you have to make some decisions. The polls open in less than five hours."

She sat on the edge of her bed, dressed in a fresh suit and drained from the change. She stared at Ray, trying hard to see his point of view. The small room did not allow privacy. The staff stood or sat around, unmoving, wondering at the outcome of this confrontation. They needed their candidate back. Many wondered if that candidate lay dead among all the other victims of the afternoon shooting. The wrecked woman before them was certainly devoid of the strength and energy that had lured them to her cause. Ray, for their sake, could not make allowances for her ordeal, or for her sorrow over the dead.

Anna blinked back more tears and looked around at the expectant faces. "I can't think about a replacement for Parker," she said, and tried to master the tremble in her voice. "He isn't even cold in the earth; how can I think about replacing him? Ray, you handle security until I can consider this." Her people frowned, fidgeted, looked off into corners or at the ceiling. What in hell did they want? "I'll speak to the press," she offered, "give them something ... something to make them happy. But, not now. I need a few minutes."

"Of course," Ray said, but Anna heard doubt in his tone. "Clear out, people. It's been one hell of a nasty day. The boss needs to concentrate."

They murmured understanding – at least that was a start – and milled toward the door.

"You sure it's a good idea?" Ray whispered as the staff turned its collective back. "Talking to the press, I mean."

"Isn't that what you want? Isn't that what they want? A show of strength?"

"Anna, I just wonder if you have the strength to show. We can't have you breaking down in tears in front of the national media."

"Uh-huh. I swear, Ray, you can't make up your mind about anything today."

A commotion brewed at the door. A state trooper excused his way through the stream of departing bodies. "Someone at the elevator to see you," he said to Anna. "His name is Steve Tallman. He says you'll let him through."

Her breath stopped at the name. She had given up hope of seeing him, or even hearing him over the phone. She had called him first, even before Minh, perhaps because she had to call Minh.

"Ma'am? Should we let him through?"

"Yes. Please."

The trooper nodded and left the room.

"You okay?" Ray asked. "I'll stay, if you want."

"No. I'm fine."

Ray patted her shoulder, then left her standing in the middle of the room. She watched the doorway, unsteady under the swirling emotions Steve's visit evoked. She had surrendered so completely to his absence that his impending presence confused her. She wasn't sure how to react when he showed.

The door opened. A trooper held it wide. Steve pressed past him and stopped self-consciously just inside the room. The trooper looked to Anna for approval, then pulled the door closed when she nodded.

"Hi," Steve said. "It's me."

She stepped toward him, and immediately her actions became automatic, instinctual. Her pace quickened, her breathing fluttered, her eyes welled with tears. Her arms came up, reaching for him. Her fingers made coaxing, grasping motions. He reached for her as well, sought to meet her half way across the floor.

Then a curious thing happened, surprising her. As he touched her, his fingers brushing her wrist, she recoiled, pulling in her arms, and her muddled feelings intensified into one great emotional focus. She arced one hand upwards, and slapped him hard across the face.

"You ... son of a ... bitch!"

Steve froze, stunned. "Anna?"

"I called you," she spat, striking his chest with a fist. "I called you for weeks, over and over. I needed to share with someone, with you, and all I ever got was that God damned machine!" She pounded her small fists against his chest as if against a punching bag. Each blow grew more vicious, each word from her mouth more weighted with bile.

"I'm sorry," he said, and her anger intensified because she knew he meant it. He tried to touch her, but she slapped his hands away.

"Where were you?" she cried. "Why didn't you return my calls? What gives you the gall to show up now?" Was it her? she thought. Did she distract you so much? She realized, horrified, that the words crawled spider-like up her throat. She bit them back.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I wanted to come. I came as fast as I could."

"Not fast enough, dammit!" Her fist smacked against the cell phone in his blazer. She reached under his coat and snatched it out. "Look, it's right here." She looked up at him with suddenly pleading eyes. "All I want is a thought, Steve..." She dropped the phone. It clattered at their feet. "Just a thought, every now and then..." She fell forward against his chest, heaving from sobs.

Cautiously, Steve embraced her. Meeting no protest, he held her tighter, patting her back.

"It's okay," he said. "I really am sorry. I don't know how much I can say it."

"Not enough," she mumbled into his chest. "Not nearly enough."

#

Carlton Westerly resembled, indeed, a dark little mole. Short, overweight, and wearing thick round-rimmed glasses, he looked exactly like Mole in The Wind in the Willows. Now he stood in the black cavern of the Lincoln Memorial, hunkered down for warmth in his heavy overcoat. He was glad for the late hour, glad the monument stood deserted, the lights turned down. He appreciated the nearby park ranger, who hovered close by for security, but far enough away for privacy's sake. Carlton came often to this place. To have Abe to himself, he always came late.

The great man sat upon his throne, a brooding apparition in the dim light from the skylight. He looked, as always, deep into Carlton's soul, offering harsh counsel. Of what did he disapprove tonight? That Carlton helped monitor Republican office holders to keep them in line, or that he had entered into a conspiracy to expose that practice and the results of his work? Why would Lincoln complain about that? Hadn't he been a pragmatist? Hadn't he freed the slaves to deprive the south of a crucial labor force? Hadn't he offered to allow slavery if the south came back to the Union? Surely he understood both the necessity of solidarity and the necessity of individual integrity, and the tendency of both to clash. Carlton felt that the great man, if he lived, would shake his head at the present predicament, but would also understand.

Carlton turned away from the statue and shuffled into the cold Washington night. He lowered himself onto the top step of the monument. The city seemed like a frozen photograph. Even the water of the Reflecting Pool lay still, mirroring a perfect image of the distant Washington Monument. How things had changed in this town. Three years earlier, Carlton had arrived on a bright spring day and come to this place even before reporting to work, even before he had a place to stay. Now the city glowered. It sucked the energy from him like a great limestone vampire, and Abe no longer inspired or challenged, but ruled from darkness with disdain. It was more than the change of seasons. Washington fell to a great fear, the same fear that had smothered it two hundred years earlier before Abe came to town.

That Tallman guy had offered Carlton a chance to do something, a greater chance than that afforded by Louis Hoy weeks ago. Carlton, not the hero type, sought no fame for the action he contemplated. His job might be in jeopardy, but what other options presented themselves? He didn't want his country to fall into the South African trap, or mimic Nazi Germany, or – God forbid – the Serbian Confederation. The democracy Americans took for granted was a fragile, even ethereal thing, readily subject to damage. Supposed patriots were often the most dangerous enemies of that democracy, and Carlton prepared to cross the most powerful of the breed. But, Carlton was just a computer guy, a warehead, they called him. He encrypted and transferred data. His party bosses didn't even know he existed.

He issued a short, humorless chortle. They sure as hell would know about him soon.

#

Anna had pulled away, and sat once more at the edge of her bed. Steve sat beside her, solicitous, his head and shoulders bent to her level. Her crying jag had passed, and she seemed calmer, but Steve still treated her with caution.

"They killed Parker," she said with a sniffle.

"I know. He was a good kid."

"I had to tell his mother. It didn't go well."

Steve watched her in silence. What could he say to that?

"Now, Ray wants me to talk to the press, look presidential, that sort of thing."

"Are you up to it?"

"No, but I have to do it. I just want to be left alone. You have no idea..."

"I have some small idea."

He reached into his coat pocket. He pulled something out and held it toward her. It was a 3 Musketeers candy bar. "Happy Valentine's Day." He grimaced. "I didn't realize the date until an hour ago."

She stared at the candy bar. "Gee. No flowers?"

"Are you mad at me?"

She took the candy from his hand and hefted it in her own. "Only until Labor Day."

They sat. Anna forced her breathing to grow heavier, more controlled. She prepared herself.

"They'll be wanting me soon," she volunteered. "The press. I have to get under control."

"You'll handle it," he said, and expelled a breath of relief. What had he thought just then, that she prepared herself to give him the heave? Should she?

"Need some company?" he asked. "I'll go down with you."

She looked at him sidewise, and he knew his mistake.

"I don't think so," she said, smoothing a harshness that wanted into her words. "Aside from the conflict of interest, Mr. Journalist. You were nowhere earlier. You can stay that way tonight."

"Anna—"

"I know, Steve. You're sorry."

Silence once more smothered the room. Then she stood and paced across the floor and back.

"I have to go. It'll be a few minutes."

"Want me to wait?" She stared at him. Heat grew at his collar. He anticipated an answer, and feared it.

"You know, it's been a long, trying day. Also, I need to visit Minh tomorrow, help her with arrangements. Maybe it would be better..."

"Yes. You need your sleep."

"Yes, I do."

A soft knock at the door, and Ray stuck his head into the room. Had he been listening?

"I'm coming," she said. "It was nice to see you, Steve. Maybe we can spend more time someday, when our schedules don't conflict so much."

"I'd like that," he said.

She started to turn away, but froze a moment in indecision. Then she stepped forward and kissed him quickly on the cheek. It might have been a brother-sister kiss, or a kiss good-bye. It was not a kiss of lovers.

"I have to go." She scooped her suit jacket up from the bed. "Keep in touch." With that, she turned toward the door, and left him alone in the room.

#

Against her better judgment, Chelsea waited outside the hotel. She sat on the curb with her back to the milling reporters, those who couldn't squeeze into the lobby. She watched the cars go by, what few of them roamed at such a ghastly hour. The cold made her miserable. It squirmed its way past her big parka and into her flight suit with the insistence of a fox terrier after a cat. What a terrible place, New Hampshire. It was obviously the home of unfortunates unable to move to California. She wondered what humor lay in that thought, then someone dropped to the curb beside her.

"Well, how'd it go?" she asked.

"Just as you said," Steve grumbled. "I never listen to you."

She looked at him, then defused the acerbic comment poised at her lips. He looked hang-dog enough to hug. "There's a pub down the street. See the sign? They aren't closed yet. Want to engineer a chemical memory erase?"

"Very tempting," Steve said, looking down the street, "but you're pilot-in-command. You don't drink."

She slapped his knee and climbed to her feet. "Special occasion. Come on, Moon Eyes. My treat."

She took him to the pub. She intended to enjoy a drink with her friend, maybe two if he was willing. The world seemed too dangerous, too fraught with prowling enemies, to go too far off one's guard. But, as they say, one thing led to another.

They drained shots of whiskey, complained of past lovers, retold old war stories, and critiqued one another's personal failings ad nauseam. When the pub closed an hour later, they sought out another with minutes left to serve. There they continued their rambling, pointless discourses, expanding into the territories of religion, politics, and how best to display the UPC symbols on product packages. They discovered an obscure, despicable Chinese beer, and drank two bottles apiece, toasting Peter Wo Chu and his Army of Kung Fu Killer Adolescents with each deep swig of liquid. And they fell into more morose recollections of war, and post-war adjustments, and of dark and threatening dreams of godlike animal shadows, always waiting, always expectant. They quickly abandoned the beer, stigmatizing it as an engine of depression. They returned to the whiskey, determined to laugh, to enjoy each other, to fly back to happier times.

Eventually, that bar threw them out as well, and they found themselves walking, sometimes staggering, along the deserted sidewalk, trapped in euphoria and inebriation.

"So, the nurse says 'How far apart are the contractions?' and Belinda answers–" Steve stumbled over a rise in the sidewalk, and they both burst into goofy laughter. "And Belinda," he tried again, wrestling down his guffaws, "she says 'How far apart? They're about as far apart as my fingers from your throat, now get this baby out of me!'"

They exploded into laughter again, which ruined their balance against the inexplicable pitches and heaves of the sidewalk.

"You don't ever want to do that," Steve said. "I don't want to do it again, and I wasn't even the pregnant one."

"I don't need kids," Chelsea laughed. "You're more than enough kid for me. Oh! Steve, a taxi!"

"Allow me, m'lady." Steve stepped into the street, his arms raised. The cab screeched to a halt five feet in front of him.

"Are you fuckin' crazy? I almost ran you down!"

Steve turned back to Chelsea, who yucked it up from the sidewalk. "See? Direct and effective."

They hauled open both back doors, and leaned across the top toward each other. "So, what do we do now," Steve asked. "I think this town has gone to sleep."

"I wouldn't know, you big goof. Let's ask our coachman."

"I think you oughta sleep it off!" the driver complained from behind the wheel.

Steve's face brightened. "Excellent idea! How about it, Chelsea?"

"How about what?"

"Let's go to bed together."

"What?"

"Hell, yes. Enough of this dancing. We've known each other for centuries. It's time we knew each other better."

"Hate to disturb the romance," the cabby snorted, "but do you want a ride, or not?"

"Hey, run the meter," Steve answered. "We'll put your kid through college." He turned back to Chelsea. "How about it, Chief? Aren't you just a bit curious?"

"I think you're smashed." Chelsea smiled, delighted and surprised by his attention. "I also think you've forgotten your girlfriend awfully fast."

Steve mugged a semblance of deep thought. "You know, you may be right. But true love has forsaken me, read me the riot act, kinda-sorta. Can you blame a man finding solace in the arms of a beautiful woman?"

He thinks I'm beautiful! "Yes, I can. It makes him seem fickle."

"Me? Couldn't be! Pickled, yes, I'd grant you that. But I'm sober enough to know that we'll wind up together in the end. Nobody else will have us. Why not now?"

She mimicked his previous lampoon at concentration. "Hmmm... Nope. I don't think so, but thanks for the offer."

"That's twice in one night. I'm shattered."

"Don't be, little boy. You don't really want it. We'd just get all mussy and end up hating each other."

"Not possible. I've always loved you." He said it with absolute solemnity, then released spitting titters at the sound of it. He slapped a hand against the top of the cab, he found himself so amusing.

"I know you do," Chelsea said sweetly. "It's because I'm so adorable." She bent her head and climbed into the taxi. Steve settled onto the seat beside her.

"Airport Holiday Inn," he told the driver, "and take it easy on the turns. I feel a little queasy." He turned his head toward Chelsea. "So, not interested, huh?"

"Nope."

"Not even a bit."

"You're drunk."

"Not that drunk."

"I think you'd regret it."

He smiled mischievously. "Regret, I can handle."

She slid over to him, snuggled close to his chest. He put one arm clumsily around her. "I love you, too," she said. "Always have. So, let's not ruin it, okay?"

Chapter Sixteen:

Missionaries

 (Back to Contents)

Anna won. It shouldn't have surprised anyone. She was, after all, the only major candidate, but Philip Mackie's supposed strength still captivated the pundits even as the voting public turned pragmatically away from his recently withdrawn candidacy. Even more powerful in the minds of voters were the constantly replayed images of a former governor supervising relief at the scene of her near-assassination. The video went viral, ubiquitous on both Net and TV. On all those screens, Anna communicated a dynamism and a strength that went far beyond delivering votes or winning polls within a party machine. She demonstrated the raw root of her character. Over and over, day and night, not as a paid commercial, the video burned into the public's collective mind an impression of strength, of a leader.

Overnight, Anna transformed from a one-time loser to a folk heroine. Her fame and popularity only grew from there. She won nearly all the votes cast that February 15th, a public confidence that was, for her, a far greater reward than the tiny clutch of delegates her victory secured.

Days later, a massive crowd greeted her in Des Moines upon her arrival for the Iowa caucuses. Her crisp, new Secret Service shield needed expansion to deal with her unforeseen celebrity status. This was protection more appropriate for the president than for the opponent he intended to beat. Some wondered aloud if that outcome was as much the foregone conclusion the political analysts assumed it to be. In San Francisco, at Parker Nguyen's funeral, they began to wonder in earnest.

"Here before us lies an American," Anna said when she stood for him in the crisp air of the beautifully landscaped cemetery. She spoke without notes, looking both grim and beautiful in the black suit that would become her trademark. "Some of us see here the coffin of a young man gunned down by evil, and we grieve not only for him, but for a society that callously allows such tragedy. We characterize that society as malignant, cancerous, destined for oblivion. We assign such terms not against an enemy, but against our own home. This is understandable. It has always been easier when faced with adversity to fall into the quagmire of morose recrimination. Some of us, though, share a brighter vision, even from within this sorrowful moment. We see the seven-year-old forced from his homeland by the last great war against evil, the young graduate of refugee camps in Australia, and then Hawaii. We see the poor boy of a destitute mother, delivering groceries for less than minimum wage, just to help buy supper for a day, a boy facing discrimination every day of his exiled life. 'Why are you here?' they ask him in fear. 'Your kind, you've come to take our jobs. Why don't you speak better English?' Parker Nguyen, like so many millions before him, knew these sorrows, but was not destroyed by them. They could not hold him down, for he also held a great faith, a faith that his adopted land, an America driven more by compassion and truth than by its more obvious evils, was at heart a great light to the world. He knew America was a better place, no matter how often he went to bed hungry. He knew America was a better place, no matter how often they taunted him or beat him for the color of his skin. He knew America was a better place, no matter how often they turned him down for a job, or an apartment, or a friendship. He knew America was a better place. Better because of her capacity for change, a capacity powered by the great engine of spoken discourse, of argument and debate, of one vote for each man and woman regardless of belief or origin, and the shaking of hands after those votes are cast. Better because this same engine has improved the lives of so many others in this land, especially those without power beyond that one minuscule vote that so many of us take for granted. Parker Nguyen had faith in that vote. That vote makes America a better place.

"I knew Parker Nguyen. He was my friend. It is difficult," and she seemed to falter, to reach for her glasses, then change her mind before touching them. "It is difficult for me to think of him in the past tense, for his faith so thoroughly imbues my own. It is something we share, something that makes us one, makes us alike in a world defined by differences. I believe that, as long as I hold his faith within me, as long as I seek to spread that faith from hand to hand and heart to heart, as long as I live and believe the faith, the tenant, of America as a better place, then Parker Nguyen can never die.

"So, I make a pledge to you, Parker, and to all these people here to see you off, and to all those who know and need the faith. I pledge to believe for the two of us, to shine forth the truth that binds, to hold a light to that better place within America's heart. We will not fall prey to fear, to apathy, to defeatism. We are made of better stuff than that. Instead, we will conduct ourselves as acolytes to the faith, as martyrs, if need be. We will conduct ourselves with the honor that you so completely lived. We have no choice. Our natures demand it. For America is a better place, a place within us all, a place called strength, and courage."

On that note, the theme of her presidential campaign was reborn, and Parker Nguyen became a paragraph in history.

#

Steve Tallman heard the speech while over Ohio on his return trip to Indy. He fidgeted from too little in-flight activity, and her voice did nothing to lessen his disquiet. He still stung from her rejection, though its ambiguity confused him. She had shown less hate, less angry disdain toward him, than disappointment. He felt more punished than ejected from her life. Or was that gullibility speaking? What did she want? What did he want? Though he tried to deny it, a part of him recognized some small relief in the thought that they were finished. At the same time, he ached from the loss of her, could barely stand the sound of her electronically reproduced voice. He felt at once overwhelming pride in Anna, and nagging shame that he had treated her so poorly. These contradictions raked at his soul, pushing him toward that hollow refuge, the insulating tedium of work.

His precious mission, which had taken Anna from him, moved resolutely forward. His teleconference from Concord with Sam and the others (Chelsea had been unable to fly him home, as originally planned) had set hard parameters for the fast-gelling story. He intended an explosion of the accumulated data on EOG, along with interviews with NAM representatives, leaders in New York's Chinese community, and members of Congress on both sides of the EOG argument. More intimate interviews with Tom Merritt and Jim and Susan Johnson would provide flavor and illumination, bringing the issue closer to regular Americans. Finally, Steve hoped the broadcast of Southerman's tapes would cement all the opinions and deductions into truth. Mr. Westerly claimed as much, but Mr. Westerly was an untried element, difficult to read. That small doubt aside, See It Now stood ready for its next big coup. The network prepared to sell advertising and subscriptions, and awaited Steve's acceptance (or not) of a special hour-long time slot for only a week away. Sam flew east to counsel that decision and to accept a new, unexpected assignment.

After so many weeks of false starts and disappointments, it all came together with unsettling rapidity. Steve's only anchor sat six feet ahead of him in the vertol's command seat, scrupulously attending to her work. She hadn't mentioned his foolish advances from two nights ago, and he loved her for it. He marveled at Chelsea's fidelity, at her ferocious devotion to him. She protected him, often from himself. She knew his heart even when he did not. She helped him maintain his options with Anna, such as they were. As he had childishly lashed out at the source of his pain, Chelsea had held him in gentle check, realizing for him that a spiteful sexual fling would destroy any chance at reconciliation. It was like her to look after him so. Steve knew he would never earn a greater friend than Chelsea Van Arsdale.

#

Jonathan Taylor Mercy caught the speech on television from his office. Such a morbid setting for such a splendid speech, he thought as he absently chewed his fast food lunch. Had a presidential hopeful ever kicked off their campaign from a cemetery? Did symbolism hide in that strange choice of settings?

His phone rang. He pressed the intercom button. "Yes?"

"Mr. Southerman on the line," his secretary said. "Shall I fend him off?"

"No, not at all. Put the gentleman through, Virginia."

"He seems somewhat agitated, sir..."

"I'm not surprised. Put him through."

Southerman's heavy face appeared on the monitor. "Jon? Is your TV on?"

"I'm watching it, AJ. Quite a show. I wonder who convinced the bereaved mother to put her son's funeral up against the soaps..."

"None of your jokes, Jon. It's a disaster. A big, fat humpback whale of a disaster."

"Don't worry, AJ. It'll pass."

"It'll pass? Have you seen her latest numbers? Our Gallup instant polls have her gaining almost twenty points against the president in the last three days alone. This speech of hers makes things worse."

"It's a spike. It's to be expected. A week or two from now, things will get back to normal."

Southerman's face turned red, even across the low-res video link. "This is reality, dammit! This is it. Our pollsters say Dearing has hit something with the electorate, that their affectation with her is deep, that her numbers will only rise. She's gonna kick our collective ass. If we don't do something, she's gonna blow us away."

"The election's nine months out," Mercy said, as if to a child.

"The election's now, you idiot! The polls–"

"To hell with the polls. What's the matter with you? Polls don't win elections, neither do voters. Electors win elections."

"I know my grade school Constitution. I also know that if this keeps up, we won't get so much as one elector to follow us to the bathroom."

Mercy sighed, then pushed away his lunch. "Was there some reason you called me, AJ?"

Southerman's ruddiness deepened. "Yeah, I did call for a reason. We're pulling together a summit up here, to plan the rest of the year against this latest turn of events. We're gonna get dirt on this Dearing and put it to her in no uncertain terms. We're doing window dressing on Chenault, too."

"I'm not interested. I have other business."

"And that's the way it's gonna stay, you understand? You're a liability. Dearing can make bales and bales of hay off your association with Chenault, especially considering the company you keep lately. You're to stay away from the president. Don't call him, don't support him, don't comment on him, don't know him. You understand that, Jon?" Southerman looked pompously pleased with himself.

"You're shutting me out."

"You've shut yourself out. Your associates are too far off. You can only hurt Chenault's chances."

Mercy spoke slowly, evenly, trying to hide the anger rising in his gorge. "I put Chenault in the White House. Chenault is mine. I will not be snubbed like some worthless hayseed $200 contributor."

"I put Chenault in office, Jon. I did. You just put up the money, like a lot of other people who put up the money. We appreciate your patronage, but times have changed. You aren't welcome in this club anymore."

"I can destroy your puppet as easily as I built him..."

"And put Dearing in office? I don't think so. Let us handle this. We want the same things. This is one time when you get what you want by just staying out of the way."

The monitor went blank. Mercy imagined Southerman's laugh across town. He stared at the blank phone. His jaw tightened. His temples throbbed.

"...knew America was a better place, no matter how often they turned him down for a job, or an apartment, or a friendship. He knew America was a better place." The noxious replay continued with anchorman overdubbing. Mercy snatched up the remote control, stabbed the "off" button, and heaved the remote after its signal. The thin plastic box clattered off the blank screen, tumbled to the floor, and landed back at Mercy's feet.

The television snapped back to life, the channel changed. Dearing was gone. Instead, Wyle E. Coyote, still kicking after all these decades, experienced another SNAFUed trap for the Roadrunner. Mercy watched Coyote's umpteenth demise beneath a falling boulder.

Did symbolism hide in a cartoon? He wondered.

#

Sam Clemmons heard the speech from within the passenger enclosure aboard Strat 1. The television monitor built into the wall blared throughout the sound-proofed chamber, but still competed poorly against the aircraft's jet turbine engines. Sam nonetheless felt the power of Anna's words, and envied reporters on the scene. How it must feel to record a moment of history, to have earned the right to say in later life, "Yes, I was there, with Dearing, when she made America a better place."

Then he noticed Peggy lying along the cushioned bench across from him, her face to the wall, bandages covering the back of her neck and that place between her shoulder blades where the doctor had extracted three shotgun pellets and needles of glass. Did she feel the rush of purpose, the awe of history that drove him to continue under such dangerous circumstances? No, she did not. She was a quiet girl at heart, a homebody. She harbored no need to enter the crucible of history. Sam recalled her reaction to the corpse on Merritt's range. Did she mull a career change as she ignored the news feed on the monitor? Perhaps. Of course, a shotgun blast in the back could take the shine off any adventuresome philosophy, but what journalist would keep their back to such a moment in time? Peggy probably found Dearing's better place a grim, gray horror full of mutilated corpses, a place that hurt when you stretched the muscles in your back. She was a good person, a good researcher, even a good reporter, but she lacked the swashbuckling, in-your-face, do-or-die drive — or perhaps insanity — of the See It Now satcameraman. She held up, but that was all. He resolved to discuss the matter with Steve. If she didn't catch the groove soon, she might get killed on this job.

#

Donald Washington never heard the speech. He ran from the cops, instead. They had taken his third room in the third motel in two days, and now caught his scent in the street. He dodged off the sidewalk into a parking garage as a police car crawled by, the serious clutch of the officer's face connoting something other than idle patrol.

Washington walked as idly as possible past the attendant in the cashier's booth. He felt trapped. He needed to get out of town, but his money was back in the room, his stolen car in the lot down from the motel, and the police all over both. He had nothing.

He walked up into the garage, convinced the police car would drive in behind him. He wished he had a gun. He glanced into each car he passed, hoping to find something, anything, that could help him evade his hunters. A coat, a purse, a cellular phone. Anything at all. Then he saw the Chrysler Helios with its driver's side window cracked. What idiot drove around in the dead of winter with his window down?

Washington approached the car. He saw by the sign that it occupied a reserved spot. He tried the door. Locked. A locked door with the window open. Washington wormed his fingers through the thin slice of space between glass and doorframe. When he found a good grip, he pushed downward, determined to make enough room to squeeze in his arm and unlock the door. The window did not budge. He considered smashing the glass, but thought the noise might attract the garage attendant. Still, this car was for him. It occupied a reserved space. The owner wouldn't show up until afternoon, hours away. Washington could drive to the next state by then, even switch to another vehicle. He wanted this car.

So, he took it. He kicked at the window until it buckled, then pulled out the sagging mess of safety glass. After a moment, he was inside, fiddling with the ignition wires under the dash. He had done it all before. Only the attendant stood between him and a margin of freedom. The parking permit, his ticket to escape, hung atop the driver's visor, but would the attendant recognize the car and notice a different occupant? Washington would deal with that problem when necessary. He kicked the charging cable loose from its wall receptacle and pulled slowly down toward the booth. An automated exit beckoned next to the attendant's post. Washington had only to hunker down to avoid the attendant's eyes. He inserted the permit into the stamper/reader that raised the guard arm, and drove onto the street unnoticed and with a full charge.

After a minute, he relaxed. No police cars burst upon the pavement to chase him down. No one stood alongside the street, pointing at him frantically. He turned up the heater to counteract the cold air through the wide-open driver's window, then clicked on the stereo. He pulled a clutch of prisms from the console between the bucket seats and frowned at title after title of country-western music. Finally, he pitched the prisms onto the passenger seat and tuned the radio to a classical music station. The deep tones of Wagner droned from the speakers. What was that, Tristan and Isolde? Washington hated Wagner, the racist son of a bitch. According to Mr. Brenner, the Critical Thinking teacher back in LA, Wagner had been Adolf Hitler's favorite composer. But even a racist classicist was better than what passed for country these days, and it wouldn't last that long, anyway.

He turned the car south, headed toward the interstate, and freedom.

#

Patricia heard the speech with her Uncle Ben as they sat before the television in the apartment high in the Thomson Electronics Building. They watched Anna's bold delivery, and absorbed the historical words. Ben watched and listened with greater intensity than his grandniece.

"She'll inspire a lot of people," he said, "but many will shrug it off as more of the same old rhetoric." He took a sip of his whiskey.

"How could you have one reaction and the other?" Patricia asked. She sat close to Ben, as much for his company as in response to the bodyguards elsewhere in the apartment. She did not trust Wo Chu's men.

"People trust what they know," Ben said. "If you live in the mainstream and things have been good, you might take hope from what she says. But the ghetto people, like so many of your own people, develop a heavy shield of cynicism against politicians' words."

"I don't have any people," Patricia said. "You're the only Indian I know, Uncle Ben."

"Your uncles and aunts, honey. Your daddy's brothers and sisters."

"We hardly see them," Patricia shrugged. "And most of them have chosen to be black. I don't know. This isn't exactly the closest family. Except for a few of his brothers who went out west, Daddy's family lives right here in the city, but they never get together. He sees Gramma pretty often, goes there after work to see if she needs anything, that sort of thing. About the only time we see any relatives is if they happen to be at Gramma's when we're there."

Ben snorted. "That's your granddaddy's fault. He left his kids no binding ties. He left them no history. That's why your daddy clings to artificial, external beliefs, because his father didn't pass down real ones."

Patricia regarded him levelly. "You didn't like Grampa much."

"I loved him. He was my brother."

"How come you talk so bad about him?"

"It isn't bad mouthin'. It's just the truth. He cut his kids off from their heritage, from everything that gave them a firm grounding in life. I think he was ashamed."

"Why?" she asked. "What's the big deal about being an Indian that he had to be ashamed of it?"

"That's a good question," Ben said, looking at her through squinted eyes. "It would take quite a while to explain why some Indians – and some black folks, for that matter – feel ashamed of their heritage. But, it might be more instructive to ask about yourself. You show no pride, honey. Do you know who you are?"

"Come again?"

"You said you have no people, but you have three strong histories, from three strong peoples. You're luckier than most, little lady."

Patricia considered his words a moment. "Dad always says as much, but I can't follow. I don't feel like a member of three cultures. My black friends don't see me as black, not really. My white friends don't see me as white. They all see me as ... something else."

"You've come to think of yourself as something else."

"Right. That's it. Not a very comforting thought."

"Have you talked to your daddy about this?"

"Sure, but that's when he gives the rich triple heritage speech. It doesn't feel all that rich. There aren't any clubs for multi-ethnic people."

"Thank God," Ben said. "It's the clubs that cause all the trouble."

#

"Oh, for pity's sake!" Steve exclaimed. "Is it too much to ask? Emma! The mail!"

"Stop hollering," Chelsea said from the doorway. "Emma's just taking care of you. In fact, we're in cahoots. Are you gonna yell at me, too?"

Steve rocked back in his chair, staring hard at the ceiling. They hadn't been back in the office five minutes, and already... "I need to do some work," he insisted, his voiced quieted. "You can take care of me when I'm not so swamped."

"Anything you need to do can wait, Stephen Tallman. Right now, you need to check your mail." She walked over to his desk and took the chair across from him. "Emma deleted all the business stuff and the junk, as per your surly order. But, look what's left. You'll be surprised."

Steve groaned. "Jarvis. Display unread mail addresses."

"There is one message on E-mail, and seventeen on Voice," the computer said. "All messages originate from Anna Marie Dearing as priority dialog." A list of addresses sprang onto the screen. They paralleled Anna's itinerary over the last several weeks. Steve sighed.

"My opinion exactly," Chelsea said. "I hope you feel like a first-rate heel."

"I don't need to hear these. I already know what they say."

"You have no idea what they say. Listen to them."

"All right, I'll listen to them. Could I have an ounce of privacy to do so?"

"Are you gonna listen to them?"

"I said I would, didn't I?"

"Steve..."

"For Christ's sake, Chelsea, you're some sort of terminal disease!"

She rose to her feet. "I can't make you," she said. "At some point you have to give priority to the people in your life. I hope it's today." She turned toward the door, but continued speaking as she marched from the office. "I'm going up to the apartment to visit Patty. I notice you haven't taken care of that chore, either."

He sat motionless at his desk for long minutes after her departure. He did not want to hear Anna's messages. Who in their right mind asked for a kick in the gut? But, he had promised Chelsea, even if just to get rid of her, and perhaps he deserved the punishment.

"Play the Voice," he grumbled to the computer.

"Pardon?"

Steve leaned forward, head in hands, then mustered the necessary voice control to make himself intelligible to the machine. Everyone was a critic today. "Jarvis. Play the Voice."

Anna's words floated into the room, inflicting upon Steve the same troubling ache as her speech had on the vertol.

"Steve? It's Anna. I just wanted to talk. I have such fantastic news! Please call as soon as possible."

The next several messages rearranged the first, just as he had feared. Then, somewhere half way through the line-up, Anna's tone took a downward turn.

"Yoo-hoo... Anybody home? This is Anna Marie. I'm starting to feel a little foolish here. I know you're in New York, but I also know you can access your mail anywhere you are. Think you could ring me up, just for a second? I'd appreciate knowing you're still alive."

"Sorry about that last message. I'm a little down. I love you. Did you get the ticket? It's kind of a peace offering. Call me in New Hampshire. Oh, this is Anna."

Four more calls from New Hampshire, then the queue came to its last message.

"Steve? Please pick up. I need you." He barely understood her through blubbering sobs. "Something happened today. Parker... Steve, please pick up. Are you there? Call me. I need you to call me."

Nothing else could have illustrated so clearly the extent of his neglect.

"The last Voice message has played," Jarvis said happily.

"You're such an asshole..." Steve said.

"Pardon?"

"Never mind, Jarvis. Just talking to myself."

"Would you like to check your E-mail?"

"Sure, why the hell not. I mean, yes, Jarvis, run the E-mail."

"Part of the message is a graphics object designated hard copy only."

"Print it."

Jarvis's matter printer hummed to life. It delivered up a 5X7 eggshell colored envelope, Steve's name embossed on the front. Steve took it with dread from the hopper. He opened it and extracted a folded sheet of embossed paper. It was an invitation:

You and your guest are cordially invited to the

Texas State Democratic Party Fund-raiser Ball

in honor of

Governor Anna Marie Dearing,

a candidate for the presidency of the United States.

Festivities begin this 23rd day of February, 2056, at 8:00pm,

in the Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum, Austin, Texas.

An honorarium of $1000 is appropriate.

More information followed: addresses, sponsors, RSVP notes. The message was over a week old. Steve wondered if the invitation still held. He looked for the accompanying E-mail message:

YOU DON'T HAVE TO PAY. ANNA.

The sentiment was surely outdated, Steve thought.

"Jarvis. Get me Emma."

"Would you like her on intercom, or in person?"

"In person."

She appeared at the door a moment later.

"I'm sorry I'm such a bastard," he said.

Emma said nothing.

"Transfer a thousand dollars from my personal checking account to this address." He handed her the invitation.

She read the paper. "Will you be going?"

"Why?" he asked sourly.

"I just want to update your calendar."

"I don't think she wants me to."

Emma folded the invitation neatly in half. "I will see to this immediately."

"Thanks."

#

Emma left the office. She did see to it immediately. First she transferred the money, then she faxed the invitation to Chelsea.

#

First had come snow, then bitter wind, then a brief, balmy rush of almost spring-like warmth. And now rain. The weather varied mercilessly. Uneven mud only recently frozen to knife sharpness now spread like black mucous over the land. It covered Mike. It clung to his skin, to his pants and coat, it oozed into his boots. He hated the mud. He hated the entire country. He could not understand why anyone fought over such a rancid armpit of dirt. Vidovic spoke of freedom and home. If this were Mike's home, he'd pack up and move.

Vidovic slid into the ravine where Mike, his guards, and the rest of the small army waited.

"Wonderful weather we're having," he said when he came to a stop beside Mike. "We'll have to raid a Serb neighborhood soon, to get more clothes. It won't do much good to wash these. What do you know of Serb responsibilities under the current cease fire, Mr. Eller?"

Here we go again. "They can't fly any aircraft," Mike said, his voice hoarse. He coughed a deep, croaking burst of breath and phlegm. "They have to keep their troops in garrison, not attack you or the Muslim population."

"Absolutely, and they have so far honored their commitments. That is, they stick to the minute letter of the law. Tell me, what does the cease fire directive say about the Serb police?"

"Nothing. Why should it? The UN certainly doesn't want the job." He broke into another bout of moist coughing.

"You really should take care of that," Vidovic said, looking concerned. "You could catch pneumonia. Maybe some fresher air will set you right up. Follow me." He said something to the nearest soldier, then scrambled on his belly back up the slope.

Mike watched his captor, then started after him once the nearby guard started poking at his back with a rifle. He crawled uphill, resigned to yet another incidence of torture, another of Vidovic's God damned lessons. Hunger and sickness slowed his climb. He slid backwards in the slick, cold mud after every few feet of progress, until it seemed he would never reach the top. Eventually, though, he crawled to within a few feet of Vidovic, who lay prone atop the ridgeline, his binoculars to his eyes. Mike reached him through sheer force of will, and unkind prodding from the guard following at his back. He flopped next to the Muslim leader, his muscles aching and his hands numb from fatigue and cold. His breath rattled, heavy and thick.

"Don't breathe so loudly," Vidovic said. "They might hear." He pointed down the other side of the ridge.

Mike followed his gesture. He saw a tall chain link fence about three hundred meters away, and a stone wall within the fence. The wall enclosed a fairly large complex of stucco-covered, red-roofed buildings, some of them quite large. The whole assemblage spread over many acres of level land tucked amid the uneven scars of ridges and gullies. A wide gate in the wall faced them, echoed by a second gate in the fence, both of them manned.

It's three hundred meters, Mike thought. A portion of his mind, the part still free of encroaching fatalism, wondered if he could make it.

"Serbian radar installation," Vidovic offered. "They recently liaised with your aircraft carrier Evan Bayh for a fighter patrol fly-over. The fly-over will take place in five hours. We heard it all on the radio." He took his eyes from the binoculars to look hard at Mike. "I know," he said with sympathy. "You see escape. If you could get to that gate, you might be safe from us. But you can't get to the gate. You're too worn out from your climb, and we would shoot you, in any event, before you got ten meters. Resign yourself to watching, Mr. Eller. Even if we didn't shoot you, the Serb guards would. They aren't very sociable." He turned back to his binoculars. "Tell me, what do you see? What does your keenly observant journalist's eye divine for us?"

Mike raised himself onto his elbows. He described what he saw between deep gulps for air. "And there are troops on the fence gate and the wall gate," he finished. "The road out of the gate goes off to the left, wherever the left leads. Now, why did you want all that? You can see it better than me. Is this another so-called lesson?"

Vidovic handed Mike the binoculars. "Have a closer look."

"The troops on the fence gate are Americans," Mike said after a moment.

"Look farther inside, past the Serb guards on the wall gate."

"What? There's nothing there. Just some troops milling around. What is that, a garbage truck?"

"A garbage truck. The Serb army delivers it to the gate. Local police take it out. There your American friends search it, not very well, I'll add, to keep soldiers from sneaking away from the barracks. The police take the truck away, then bring it back empty. The Serbs send that truck out several times a week since about a month ago. Very filthy, those Serbian soldiers."

"I suppose this has a point?"

"Not tonight, not for us. I suspect this garbage truck's destination is far out of our walking range. But we'll get our chance. They'll sooner or later head somewhere we can meet them. Then, you'll learn something." He rolled over onto his back and pulled out one of Mike's ration packs.

"Sooner or later, huh? So, there'll be no daily threat about killing me in the morning?"

Vidovic tore open the pack and started sucking out the cold contents. "I'm changing my mind about you," he said between swallows. "You're a willing student, though a slow one. We'll just take your education one day at a time. I can always flunk you and have you shot."

"I could always let out a holler and bring those soldiers down on you like God and an avalanche."

"No, I doubt it. Then you would never learn what I'm trying to teach. What exactly is chili, my friend? It tastes revolting."

"You should cook it. I don't think you plan to kill me. I think you keep me around for company, like a dog you like to kick."

Vidovic took a moment to answer as he chewed and swallowed another mouthful of food. "Interesting point of view. You know, Capron said the same thing at one point." He sucked out more chili. "After that, I took his coat."

#

Steve turned neither left nor right as they sat down next to him, but remained unmoving on the hard, cold, concrete bench. His hands hid deep in his overcoat pockets, and his lapels protected his ears against the chill wind sweeping across University Park, the bench, and on past the President Harrison monument toward the Federal Courthouse across the street. Steve stared across the rush hour hysterics of New York Street to the neoclassical facade of the courthouse. He wondered what detail Harrison found so mesmerizing that he could watch it unceasingly for over a hundred and fifty years.

"Cold," Chelsea grumbled. "Could you maybe find a hiding place that's indoors?"

Steve turned first to her, then to Sam. They hunched against the cold as well, but seemed more harassed than he by the wind. "It isn't as cold as the last time we were here," he said, turning back to the courthouse and its fake, squared-off columns. "Spring is on the way."

"It's spring all the time in LA," Sam said, "except when it's summer."

Steve made no reply for long seconds. "How's Peggy?" he finally asked.

Sam waggled a hand, then thrust it back into the warmth of a pocket. "She got shot. Luckily, it was minor, cuts and a few shotgun pellets under the skin. Physically, she'll be all right, though her back might give her problems for some time to come."

"So, how is she psychologically?"

"I don't think she'll make it. She doesn't have the fever, man. She isn't sure the job is worth the danger."

Steve nodded. "We need to hold on to that one. She's smarter than any of us. What job is worth dying for? I've been mulling that over for hours."

"Frankly," Sam said, "I hadn't planned on dying this time."

"You've seen what can happen," Steve said. "They murdered one of your sources to keep his information out of public hands. They tried to do the same to you. They came close with Peggy."

"These people fight to stay hidden, like cockroaches. They're done when the light goes on."

"True, but these aren't ordinary lawbreakers or conspirators. They're something we haven't seen in this country for a long, long time."

"All the more reason to expose them."

"The question isn't whether to expose them, but how. More than one person has told me recently that I don't think enough about those around me." He looked at Chelsea, who studied the courthouse architecture and ignored the conversation. "I intend to take their warnings to heart."

"What does that mean? You getting cold feet? The metaphorical kind, I mean?"

"I'm thinking out loud."

Steve fell into silence. He focused his thoughts, drawing near to his decision.

He looked not at Sam, but at Chelsea. "Fifteen years ago they made me a war hero. Gave me a ticker tape parade in New York, the Congressional Medal of Honor, the whole bit. I had commandeered three nuclear warheads, and dropped them on an unstoppable, advancing enemy. I killed almost a million people in just a few seconds, brought down what we had known as China, and won a war, all for a great, undeniable cause." He turned forward to watch the bronze president's back. "Now here I am, trapped in another cause. We've set ourselves the mission of informing the public so that it might protect itself from its enemies. That's the purpose of See It Now. That's what drove the concept of satcam."

Steve stood suddenly. He stepped to the foot of Harrison's statue. The breeze tugged at his pant legs and played with the hem of his overcoat as if attempting to fill a sail. He read the words engraved in the concrete behind his two companions:

The Supremacy of Law

Unselfish Public Service

The Union of the States

The words reinforced a decision from which he had never fully retreated since Ben Tallman's gift of the EOG data prism. Doubts had plagued him from the beginning, but never with strength enough to dilute his sense of a great – and inevitable – responsibility.

"I've been told that we Americans have the tools to fight our enemies, but are too often afraid to use them. I think we need to use those tools, or risk the loss of the freedom that makes living here bearable." He stood tall in his coat despite the cold. "Network has given me an hour slot."

Sam nodded, and stood. "I'll call the others, and finalize the lineup."

"Then wait for me in the office," Steve said. "I have a special mission for you."

"Good enough. You coming, Chelsea?"

She stared at the courthouse, as if entranced.

"I'll return to the office," Sam said after a moment, and walked quickly down the sidewalk toward the Thomson Building. He did not look back.

Steve regained his place on the bench, slouching against the concrete back. "Well, got something to say?"

"I remember things a little differently."

"What things are those?"

She looked straight ahead, but not at the building across the street. Her eyes peered deep into the past. "I remember abject terror, over a million of our own people dead. They didn't take many prisoners in that war. And I remember Taiwan going up in a whole volley of mushroom clouds, not ours. I remember Hong Kong simply disappearing, and Burma and Vietnam and all the others crying for months before anyone came to their aid. They begged us to protect them, but we couldn't. The Chinese army was just too big. We had no command and control. The chain of command was obliterated. Weren't the Russians planning a preemptive strike, to protect their own border? No one knew what to do. No one but you."

"I didn't know shit. I had three nukes and no other options. I let fly what I had."

"What you had was just what we needed."

"We glorify mass murder if the dogma is right. Wo Chu thinks I'm Abraham Lincoln. There's no glory in killing. The only true thing about shooting from the hip is that people get shot."

"You did the right thing. It doesn't matter that you did it off the cuff."

"Chelsea, I'm a mass murderer. I'm a monster. I conceived that plan. I made it happen. I turned fifteen minutes of desperation into a pyre four hundred miles wide. I learned then that emotional, knee-jerk responses are the worse kind of lies. Not only are you lying to those around you, but to yourself, as well."

"You think you'll do better with all these rules you follow?"

"I don't have anything else."

She sighed. "That's a shame. Then and now, I thought you always had me."

#

"She's in her room," Ben said.

Steve barely noticed him in the dark, but was not inclined to brighten the apartment against the winter blackness. He took a seat beside Ben, and for a moment relished the small sounds of normalcy: the clink of ice in his uncle's glass, the tap of keyboarding from one closed bedroom door, the murmur of a television from behind the other. It was like any home on a slow, cold winter evening. If he ignored the skyscraper vantage point through the wall of window glass, if he shut out the net-delivered Chinese over the TV, then he could almost recall what "normal" life was like. But it was all an illusion, and one needing help from more imagination than Steve cared to muster.

"The show's on," he said into the darkness. "It airs next Friday."

Ben took a swallow from his glass. Steve braced for whatever speech his uncle prepared to launch, whether it be congratulations for doing the right thing, or castigation for taking so long. Perhaps he'd remind Steve of his purported destiny, of his rendezvous with some cosmic, spiritual Bear. Never do anything repugnant to your spirit, he'd say. One day you'll meet yourself, your Bear, and you'll need to look yourself in the eye.

"Well, that's good," the old man said.

"Thanks, Ben."

"It's about time."

"Thanks, Ben."

Ben's glass rose to his lips. The ice inside clinked like tiny bells. "That's me being controlled," he said. "Just make sure you're doing this for the right reasons, like, for yourself. None of those slogans you like to pin up on your mind's wall."

"Excuse me?"

"You know, 'The People's Right to Know', 'The Free Interchange of Ideas', all that bullshit. Something like this you got to do on faith, not reason. Faith in yourself."

"Yes, Ben."

Ben groaned. "Go ahead, keep on not listening. This is your ancestors I'm talking about."

He lapsed into silence. The two sat rocking on the couch, nodding their heads thoughtfully, as if in prayer. Steve caught himself in the movement and paused. He wasn't that much like his uncle.

"I've done some terrible things," he said. "In the war. I did them from my heart. I don't trust it anymore."

"Clearly. You've gone from a man with cast-iron guts to a man who over-thinks. I guess that's your flaw. Maybe it isn't possible to both believe and understand."

Steve tapped his uncle's knee. "I'm glad you're here, Ben. I really am." He rose to his feet and turned away from the couch, walking toward the typing sounds. He stopped at the door, unsure if he should disturb her, then decided to enter anyway. She would want to see him, even if only for a minute.

Patricia sat on her bed, hunched over the new tablet, her legs tucked under her. She did not interrupt her work as he entered.

Steve peered over her shoulder and saw the output of the strange, homemade looking software she used. Where did she get such software? Did she write it herself? Did she buy it in some store or some warehead black market? Did it pass unceasingly between the hands and Net files of warehead friends and acquaintances? This unknown aspect of his daughter's life fascinated him. How had he missed it? He bent over and kissed her lightly on the head.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

"How's it coming?"

"It's coming. I ought to have the data you want by the time you get a pizza delivered."

"Fair enough."

"Dad, are you going?" She asked the question without ceasing her staccato taps on the tablet's glass.

"Going where, honey? To order a pizza?"

"To Texas. To that dance."

Steve rubbed the back of his neck. "Emma's been slinking around behind my back again?"

"I think you should. Chelsea told me what happened in Concord."

"Oh?" He sat on the edge of the bed. "She told you everything that happened in Concord?"

This time, Patricia paused. "She told me Anna dumped you. Was there something else?"

Steve sat forward, elbows on knees, to cover his embarrassment. "You girls consider my life communal property."

"We love you, Dad."

"You could demonstrate that love by allowing me some privacy."

"We will, just as soon as you learn to take care of yourself along with the rest of the world."

"I take care of myself just fine. I made it to forty-three years, didn't I?"

"Have you taken your four o'clock medicine yet?"

He winced. That was two hours ago.

Patricia twisted around in place, loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top of his shirt. She pulled out the vial he wore around his neck and extracted from it the requisite five pills. Then she leaned to the bedside table for her Pepsi, and held both the drink and the medicine out to him as if they constituted some bizarre medical Eucharist. "You're lost without me," she said. "Now, are you going to Austin, or not?"

Steve swallowed all five pills with one gulp of Pepsi.

"Don't stall, Dad. Are you going or not?"

"I doubt she wants me there."

"Well, duh! She sent you an invitation."

"That was before."

"I think you should go," Patricia announced imperiously. Steve might have laughed, except that she looked serious despite her tone. "I think you should take this as an opportunity to make up."

"Funny," Steve said, standing, "I always thought you distinctly lukewarm toward Anna."

Patricia turned back to her work. "I won't lie. I'll never call her mamma. But this isn't about me, it's about you. I think you should go. Otherwise, you'll mope around for years."

"I'll consider your advice." Steve moved toward the door. "In the meantime, I'd better order that pizza. Have to eat, and it's a long drive back to the house."

Patricia turned to him once more. "The house? What about the house?"

"Ben and I have to sleep somewhere, honey. With you, Peggy, and Wo Chu's men here, this apartment's clean out of space."

"I'll go with you."

"You're safer here." Her insistent tone surprised him a little.

"I don't feel safe. I'll stay with you."

Doesn't feel safe. She still distrusted Wo Chu. Well, who could blame her? She didn't understand the intricacies of honor and face that directed Wo Chu's soul.

Steve shook his head. He sounded like Ben Tallman. "Okay, honey, right after supper. We'll all go back to the house. It's bigger, anyway."

#

Peggy sat up when he stepped through the door. She leaned toward the bedside lamp, but froze in mid-reach from an obvious jolt of pain.

"Don't bother," Steve said. "I'll only be a moment."

He groped half-blind for a chair and hauled it across to the shadow sitting up in bed. He straddled the chair backwards, leaning forward against its wooden back, and allowed his eyes to accustom themselves to the dark.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"I'm fine, sir. Just a little stiff, is all."

"Please, call me Steve. It's required of all my battle-tested reporters."

"Yes, sir."

"That was a joke. It was meant to make you feel at ease. By the way, if you keep calling me 'sir,' I'll have to start calling you Ms. Smith."

"I'm sorry. It's a habit. My father..."

"Taught you well. But this isn't an employer/employee relationship here. More like family. Now, are you really all right? Sam says you're having second thoughts."

"I am not!" The response was sharp. Steve wished he could see her face.

"I'm glad. You've been an asset so far. But more experienced reporters have opted out of See It Now. It's a far more dangerous job than ordinary photojournalism. Anyone who sticks with it is a little bit crazy. There's no shame in backing away."

"I'm not backing away." Her voice quavered with the intensity of her words. Steve saw that she really had thought about quitting. "I've wanted this job for three years, since back in high school, when I first heard of the satcam concept. I read about it in Omni. That was before you went on the air. Dad didn't like the idea. He wanted me to be an accountant. Earn a lot of money, drive a nice car, live in a good neighborhood. But, I wanted something different, something a little more exciting."

"Well, you got that. Not many accountants take shotgun blasts in the back."

"Are you going to fire me, Mr. Tallman?"

Steve shook his head. "I never fire reporters. Why should I? I pick the best from the start. The question is, are you going to fire yourself?"

"I'm not giving up."

"Good. But that isn't the question. Are you going to fire yourself? Do you think you should be fired? Are you good enough for this job?"

"I don't understand. I said I'm not giving up..."

She seemed so much like Patricia. "It's one thing not to give up. You can stick out a job for which you are wholly unqualified, and know all the time that you're in over your head."

"Is that what you think? I'm in over my head?"

"What matters is what you think. If you doubt your abilities in this job, you'll get hurt, possibly killed. So, what is it? Are you a satcameraman, or just getting by?"

"I never saw it coming," she said. "Sam wasn't touched."

"Sam's been dodging bullets since he fought his way from the womb. Don't use him for comparison. How do you feel about yourself?"

"I don't know..." She spoke so softly that he almost didn't catch it.

"Would you like to find out?"

No answer.

"Would you like to find out?"

"Yes, sir. I would."

"Sam's going on to DC. He's already at the airport. The story is going live this next Friday. I need you back in Montana to handle the interviews there."

Steve heard rigidity in her tone. "By myself?"

"You're my ace, Peggy. You already know what's going on. I could pull another reporter and they could go in there cold, but I'd rather have you." The challenge was deliberate, like a splash of cold water in her face. She made no immediate reply.

Someone knocked on the door. "Not now!" Steve yelled, not taking his eyes off Peggy's indistinct form. "It'll be dangerous," he said. "The show is preceded by heavy advertising. They'll know you're coming. You shouldn't stay in one place very long, and you'll have to protect your sources, too."

"Sir, I've only been with the show three months. I'm not sure I'm up to it."

"That's the point. Do you want the opportunity to find out?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, then, Ms. Smith, you have it. You can leave tomorrow. Anything you need, just ask. Okay?"

"Yes, sir, I mean, Steve."

"That's better. You're learning already." He half-turned to the door. "Enter!"

The door opened. Light flooded in from the living room. Emma's silhouette threw a long shadow across the floor. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Mr. Tallman, but there's a phone call you'd better take right now."

"Who's it from, Gossip, my high school sweetheart?"

"Mr. Tallman..."

"I'll be there in a second, Emma. Pipe it into the living room there."

"I already have, sir. Your party is waiting."

She did not close the door as she retreated into the apartment.

Steve stood. "Take it easy, Peggy. Rest your back. We're all going to my house for the night, but you can stay here, if you want."

"How come she doesn't call you by your first name?"

"Because she runs the place. Can't you tell?"

He left the room, closing the door after him. Emma waited at the couch, where she had arranged the phone on the coffee table. Ben rummaged around in the kitchen at the other side of the apartment.

"Ain't you got any liquor around here?" he yelled. "This place is uncivilized!"

Steve did not recognize the face waiting on the monitor. "Who is it, Emma? You asked, I imagine."

"He is an associate of your man in Serbia. His name is William Charter, of the BBC."

Chapter Seventeen:

Plans

 (Back to Contents)

Mike stumbled, exhausted, as they propelled him along the streambed. He slipped on sharp, loose stones, finding himself frequently on his face in the inch-deep freezing water. He fell behind, even the younger boys passing him with ease. His keeper prodded him forward with a single repeated word, always underscoring the apparent order with a forceful shove between the shoulders. The man's meaning was clear. Go faster!

But he couldn't go faster. He was a wasted husk from exposure and from feeding only on the refuse of others. The guns and threats no longer moved him. He saw death as an option for relief. Death suited Mike just fine if he didn't have to see Vidovic's smiling face anymore, or listen to his cryptic Schoolhouse pseudo-professorial bullshit. The man embodied all the teacher nonsense that had driven Mike from college and into the war zones. Irrelevant to most of the world, the Muslim leader carried himself as if he knew everything, and anyone cared.

And there he stood, the psychotic son of a bitch. Vidovic waited fifty feet ahead, where the steep streambed split against a thin ridge. A dozen or so soldiers surrounded their leader. Others crouched on the muddy slopes, watching along the multiple courses of water. Vidovic held Mike's satcam in one hand. He thumped it impatiently against one leg.

"You're slow," he said as Mike fell into the cold water at his feet. He held out the camera.

Mike took it and made automatic, if shaky, checks of the shoe box-sized machine. "What's this?" he asked.

A signal from Vidovic, and a rifle butt propelled Mike onto the ridge that split the stream. He stumbled, crawled, and groped his way upward, not looking back, offering no complaint. It was routine by then.

Atop the ridge, he regained his footing.They herded him along the ridge spine with continued urgency. Branches and underbrush struck at him, for he followed no path. Finally, a hand pushed him to his knees. He landed in the weeds like a bag of rocks, his breath exploding in phlegmy coughs. He tried to hold back – he didn't want a kicking for making too much noise – but his lungs and throat were too agonized to obey. His escort warned him. Mike readied himself for punishment, shielding the satcam to keep it safe.

Vidovic crashed through the underbrush to within a few feet of his prisoner. He snapped orders to the half-dozen soldiers gathered about, including Mike's threatening guard, then watched as they beat down the dead, brown vegetation. Within moments, a circle lay flattened atop the ridgeline, large enough for Mike at its center and three or four others. At the circle's edge, a young boy listened into a radio pickup. Other soldiers slogged back into the brush, slapping at the weeds and thickets as they went. Except for the radio operator and one guard, Mike and Vidovic lay alone in the circle.

"I wish we had time for our usual pre-lesson pleasantries," the Muslim leader said, "but the lesson starts soon, and I don't have an exact schedule. Is your camera working all right?"

"It's fine," Mike said, still breathing raggedly. "Battery's low."

Vidovic said something to the guard, who disappeared back down the rough beaten path. "You'll have your battery soon," he said. "Can't have you running out of power at an inopportune moment."

"What's the shot?"

"A revelation, Mr. Eller. Remember three nights ago? Your friends from the aircraft carrier entertained us with that marvelous fireworks display?"

"What do you mean?"

"Don't be so suspicious. Tell me, what made them kill, or try to kill, all those noncombatants? Any idea?"

"How could they have known?" Mike said, irritated. "Hundreds of feet in the air, and in the dark. Besides, that place could have been an armed camp five minutes before we got there." He spat into the grass. "Great ruse to fool the press guy."

"Interesting idea." Vidovic rubbed his chin. "I'll keep it in mind. Now, why did your American friends bomb that village, regardless of their intended targets?"

"To teach you Muslims a lesson for doing something you shouldn't have. Shooting down a patrol plane, for all I know." Mike coughed.

"Good! Retaliation. The most common, if also the most childish, of motives. Now, tell me about the radar station yesterday. What did you see?"

"I saw a radar station. Serb held, American guarded, just as it should have been."

The guard returned, puffing, from below. He handed Vidovic the small slab of a fresh battery, then sank to his knees a few feet away. Vidovic handed the battery to Mike.

"Are you sure that's all you saw? Are you really no more observant than that?"

The radio man spoke suddenly, and held up three fingers.

"That's it," Vidovic said. "It's final exam time. Follow me, and have your camera ready." He moved at a crouch toward the circle's perimeter, then into the weeds at a low crawl, barely disturbing the high brush around him. Mike strapped the satcam to one arm, then followed in kind.

He stopped beside Vidovic at the edge of a dramatic bluff, a dizzying drop-off of a hundred feet. Mike squinted out over the rough terrain as it rippled away like waves into the face of a distant mountain. He saw a gray ocean, the land hidden beneath a tight canopy of leafless trees and tall brush. A ridge line two formations distant stood conspicuously bare in the wild landscape. The bare space showed a narrow stretch of worn gravel road, a pitted, in some spots overgrown, manmade scar robbed of shoulders that had long since fallen into the ravines on either side. Mike marveled at the clarity of the view after so many days skulking in gullies, ditches and rocky foothills. The sun shown, and line of sight to the high road, even to the distant mountain, ranged unobscured before him. Only the weeds bordering Mike's position limited his vision in any way.

A vehicle trundled into view along the road. Mike sighed.

"A garbage truck."

"We intercepted the dispatch four hours ago. That's why all the rush." Vidovic hauled out his binoculars. "Your camera. Take a closer look."

Mike unstrapped the camera and placed it in front of him. He watched the rectangular viewfinder on its top housing, then thumbed the power switch and the REC button. An image of the road reflected onto the screen. He panned across to frame the truck in his lens, then tightened the view to magnify his target. The vehicle stopped in plain sight. Two men in gray uniforms descended from the cab, leaving the driver aboard. They walked to the rear of the truck, then, curiously, climbed into the trash compartment.

"Serb federal police," Vidovic said.

After long minutes, the men emerged from the trash. They jumped to the road, hauling a long, gray fiberglass case after them. The box was about the size of a coffee table, and appeared to be heavy.

The truck drove on, leaving its former passengers standing casually in the road, wiping refuse from their uniforms. Mike tracked the truck out of sight, then panned back to find the men seated on the box as if on a park bench. They smoked cigarettes.

"Mighty confident for being in a war zone," Mike said.

"The whole country's a war zone, Mr. Eller. One gets comfortable in uncomfortable situations. Besides, this is a safe area. There are no Muslim rebels in this sector."

"Ha, ha. So, do we sit here and watch these guys smoke and joke all day?"

"One also learns patience in a war zone."

Vidovic said nothing more. He watched through his binoculars for another few minutes, then, satisfied that the policemen went nowhere, rolled onto his back, intertwined his fingers across his chest, and watched the gray clouds above. Mike laid his head in the dirt beside the camera and watched the men without the use of his viewfinder. A few birds sang, an insect buzzed, and the Serbs could be heard as the indistinct murmur of faraway voices. Otherwise, the countryside lay absolutely silent. Coupled with the thin heat of direct sunlight, it was a pleasant enough atmosphere. Mike began to relax, then doze, despite his hunger, sickness, fatigue, and caked-on filth.

"Now," Vidovic said, slapping Mike lightly on his flank.

Mike started. He glanced at the count on the satcam's chronometer. Ten minutes had passed.

"Hear the engines?" Vidovic said as he rolled onto his stomach. "Planes. Watch the policemen closely."

The policemen opened their big box. Mike tightened the view to crowd out extraneous background. He touched his SHARPEN control to reduce the graininess of the long telephoto shot. The men hauled two cylinders out of the box, each about four feet in length.

"What the hell is this?"

"Watch."

Each man took something like a pistol grip from within the box and attached it centered on his tube. Then he tapped something Mike could not make out — a button, probably — and waited as a smaller cylinder pivoted out from within the tube, just above and forward of the pistol grip and parallel to the whole assembly. Each man hefted his transformed tube to his shoulder and placed an eye against his respective smaller cylinder.

"Those are surface-to-air missile launchers. Who are they planning to shoot?" But Mike already suspected the answer. He strained to hear the aircraft sounds Vidovic had alerted him to. He widened the angle of his viewfinder.

Each tube exhaled a blast of smoke from its rear. Each spat a blunt-nosed four-foot projectile toward the sky. Mike shifted immediately to his knees to better track the missiles. They floated languidly upward like Nerf rockets, then accelerated as their propellant ignited fifty meters from the firing point.

Mike caught two tiny needles of high altitude aircraft entering the frame of his viewfinder, but the missiles veered away from these and shot off low toward the horizon. Mike searched his viewfinder for any sign of targets. He found three insectoid shapes cruising in the distance, just above the trees.

"They're shooting down those vertols!" Mike exclaimed.

"Who is shooting them?" Vidovic asked blandly.

"What do you— Jesus Christ!" Mike yelled, realizing what he watched.

"Right again!" Vidovic said, and rolled onto his back, laughing.

Mike watched the vertols scatter like disturbed gnats. Vapor trails betrayed the missiles' approach. They shot unerringly toward the dissipating cluster of aircraft, the white lines corkscrewing as the missiles locked onto and tracked their targets. Mike watched, horrified, as one trail angled closer to a jerkily weaving insect, then connected.

First came a flash like that of a distant flare, then a super bright explosion arced gracefully down into the trees, followed by a black tongue of smoke. The other missile lost its intended target and plowed pointlessly into the woods. Both explosions spoke moments later, sounding like the grumble of far off thunder.

"Good hit," Vidovic said as he rose to his feet. "My people are in trouble tonight." He grabbed Mike's shoulder. "Come on. The fast movers will be here any second, hoping to exact payment for this unwarranted act of hostility by Muslim insurgents. We won't be here when they arrive."

Mike panned off the black smoke of the kill zone and back to the gravel road two ridge lines away. The policemen were gone. He left the camera on record as he turned to follow Vidovic, but stuffed it under one arm, pointing it ahead.

They ran back along the spine of the ridge, following the path beaten down half an hour earlier. As the ground sloped downward, gravity carried them on. They fought only to remain upright during the headlong descent. No one guarded Mike. In fact, he was last in the pell-mell file. He could have veered away from his captors at any time, but the thought never occurred to him. Then his feet splashed in cold water. They had reached the base of the ridge.

Vidovic took the pickup from his radioman and spoke rapidly over the airwaves. His security force gathered around him, weapons directed outwards, their attention fidgeting from their boss, to obvious ground approaches, to the thankfully camouflaging canopy of trees. Those not assigned to Vidovic scrambled up the streambed in all three directions, heading in groups of up to a dozen to the small army's next rendezvous. No one loitered.

A jet screamed overhead. Everyone but Vidovic ducked. Mike recorded everything from his hip.

"What's going on?" Mike asked when Vidovic finished on the radio.

"We don't have a full picture. The Americans are already jamming our frequencies." He handed the pickup to the radioman and said something curt to him before shoving him on his way down the streambed. "They shot down a troop carrier. The gunship and the press carrier are still up there."

"The press carrier?" Mike kept the camera trained on Vidovic's face.

"Yes, your old taxi, and presumably your old friends. But, I'm more worried about the gunship. It hunts like a wolf. It will scour this terrain at the deliberate pace of a predator; that makes it more dangerous than the bombers. But, we'll worry about that in a moment. First, some local business."

He clapped his hands. Four men jogged toward him from some distance down an arm of the stream. They herded two others between them. The policemen.

The prisoners dropped face-first into the water at their enemy's feet. "Just to ensure there is no accusation of artifice," Vidovic said in an aside to Mike as the Serbs were dragged to their knees. He turned to the policemen and demanded something in the Serbian tongue. They said nothing. They were too frightened to speak.

Vidovic reached under his jacket for the pulse pistol. He shoved it hard against the nose of one man, then made the same demand again. Mike aimed the camera to frame the gun and the unfortunate man's face. He knew the end to this scene. If Capron hadn't stood a chance, then these guys certainly didn't.

Better them than me, he thought.

Vidovic repeated his demand. Mike backed away. He didn't want guts on his camera. The policeman babbled something. It sounded, in tone and cadence, something like a name, rank, and serial number. Vidovic nodded, patted the man on the cheek with his free hand, then stepped to the other Serb. He repeated the same demand, got a similar response.

"You see?" Vidovic said happily, turning toward Mike. "People have this way of cooperating with me." He swung the gun back toward his prisoners, and shot each man through the head.

#

Delicate shadows striped the Tallman back yard. Their translucent beauty mirrored the gauzy filigree of maple canopies along the back property line. The trees stood naked in the cold, holding aloft their gray veils against the dismal backdrop of winter. The world lay still in that grayness, like a black and white photograph. It was a silent time of day, a time for reflection. Steve appreciated this period of quiet. The stillness was a companion that focused him, and set him on his way.

"He's a cameraman for BBC," Steve said as he poured corn flakes into his favorite bowl, "part of the press pool for the Serbian Confederation. I guess he and Eller are friends, and Eller brought him in on his plans."

Kenny, framed in the wall phone's screen, watched his friend top the corn flakes with Rice Krispies, then Kix. "Well, we have people monitoring the freqs he gave you. The thing is, what do we say to Eller when we get him? Any message?"

Steve hardly glanced at the phone across the room. "No message. As soon as you get Eller, send him through to my cell number. I'll carry the phone to the shower, if I have to." He sipped his orange juice. He looked about the kitchen and out the windows to the lightening sky. The house stood absolutely still, though full of people. Wo Chu slept upstairs, as did Patricia and Ben. Four An Leung security men slept in the guest quarters next to the kitchen, and another two sat silently, watchfully, in the living room, the house watchdogs through the night.

"So why do you think it took so long? Getting notified your reporter was missing, I mean?"

Steve stepped toward the refrigerator. "Technically, we haven't been notified. The military hasn't said a word, and they're normally so efficient about such things. I wonder who's honchoing that aircraft carrier."

"You want I should find out?"

Steve pulled a plastic gallon jug of milk from the fridge. "No, no. I've put Emma on it."

"That Brit camera jock's a risk taker," Kenny said. "I bet he used up every favor he ever hoarded to make his call to you in private."

"They're both taking chances. I wonder what Eller found worth putting his life in danger for."

"Think it has anything to do with your other thing?"

Steve thought a moment. He held the plastic jug ready to pour.

"I can't imagine how they relate," he said finally. "Neither Southerman nor Mercy have influence over United Nations missions. And any involvement by Chenault would have been monitored and examined by the world press." He shook his head. "Nah, it's a new adventure. They often overlap."

"Well, at least you won't run out of work after Friday."

Steve poured the milk. He repeatedly, absently, crunched his spoon into the cereal.

"Umm, you will be busy after Friday, won't you?" Kenny asked.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. There's always shit in the mix."

"That sounds less than uplifting."

"It's a mood, Kenny. Don't tell anyone, but I'm getting tired."

"Really." Steve didn't like the smug sound of that voice. He continued to crunch his cereal into the milk. "I mean, really, dude. I can't see why. Nobody's shot at you in, what, three whole days?"

"Have a heart, Beachman. I sent Peggy back to the field last night."

"Oh, wow. I feel for you, man. Who the hell's Peggy?"

"Rookie. The one who got shot." Steve looked up at the phone. Beachman sat in the frame, munching an apple. "You don't seem impressed."

"I'm trying to be, but I'm just not that good of an actor. Instead of 'God, that's terrible' I'm thinking 'Better her than me'."

"Kenny..."

"Dude, what did you expect? So what if she's a rookie. You pay her a big pile of money to throw herself into danger. It isn't like you forced her."

"No, I didn't force her, I just told her to jump into the lion's den. And I sent Sam to climb into the lion's mouth, and what the hell is Eller climbing into? It feels like the war all over again."

"I hope not, because, if I remember right, you were ground zero for collateral damage. I'd want to move a few states to the west."

"Ha. Ha-ha. I'm trying to keep it under control, but I don't know, man. It's a bitch. So many lives lost already. I don't know what might happen by Friday. I—"

Kenny let loose a piercing wolf whistle.

Steve turned in his seat toward the kitchen's hall entrance. Patricia stood there, disheveled and groggy in a white Mickey Mouse emblazoned t-shirt that fell barely to her knees. She looked stunning despite her sluggishness and the huge yawn stretching her face. Too damned stunning, Steve thought.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked, rising to his feet and stepping around the table to get between her and the phone.

"Ugh," Patricia answered. She went to the counter and grabbed the coffee carafe.

Steve killed the video link. "Hey!" Kenny protested, "You just want the view to yourself!"

"Shut up, child molester." Steve turned back to his daughter, who expended huge portions of concentration to get coffee into a cup. "We have company, Patricia. Upstairs. You. Finish dressing."

"I just want some coffee. Uncle Kenny on the phone isn't company."

"Honey, you aren't ten years old anymore."

She looked at him from under hooded eyes, the cup to her lips. Those were hard, irritated eyes. Cranky eyes. Steve saw Belinda looking back at him.

"I'll take it to the living room," she said, and flounced away from him.

Steve thought to stop her, but checked himself. Sometimes kids had to learn on their own.

"Hey, Steve," Kenny said from the phone, "isn't there a–"

Patricia's yelp carried throughout the ground floor.

"Yeah, I thought so," Kenny said.

Patricia skittered into the kitchen, now fully awake, and stopped just inside the doorway. "God, Dad! Do they have to live with us?"

"I told you we have company. Now, get your butt upstairs and put on a robe, at the very least."

"Do something about this," she groused. "I'm not living with strangers, especially criminals."

"Those criminals are here to protect you, young lady. Show some respect."

She exhaled a frustrated burst of air and slapped her cup onto the counter. Hot coffee spattered the formica. "One of these days, a normal life!" She padded across the kitchen and back down the hall. After a moment, Steve heard her feet on the stairs.

"She's ticked," Kenny said from the phone. "You'd better make her waffles."

"I think," Steve said, "I'll quit the show instead."

#

Vidovic nudged the blackened lump with his foot. Burned. Burned to char and fibercell slag, but he supposed it to be a teddy bear or other cuddly toy. Burned, scorched, seared. The words seemed clinical when applied to a child's toy, like some entry in an inventory somewhere. Item: Bear, stuffed. Condition: burned to carbon residue. A dismal description for a stuffed bear, a terrifying one when applied to flesh, and a child had owned that incinerated toy. Did that child play on the rough slopes now, unaware of his teddy's demise? Was he away at school, growing into a productive citizen? Did he visit with grandmother? No, he was burned. Burned beyond recognition. He was dead. His mother, if he had one, was also burned. They were a matched set, so to speak.

And, what of the other children? What of the mothers, the grandmothers, the grandfathers? What had become of them in this blasted-out, charbroiled erasure mark of a community? Vidovic could not escape the answer: burned, all burned. But, given that, where were the ashen lumps of the bodies? Were they piled like firewood in some American vertolifter, destined for some anonymous street corner in some besieged city far away? Were they destined for display, to educate the enemies of America, lined up nice and neat like dolls in the window of some grisly curio shop? All burned. A fire sale.

The American Schoolhouse plan struck Vidovic as clean, perfect, admirable in its visionary directness. The general or admiral responsible had been a scholar of Muslim culture. He launched brutal counterattacks that cut to the heart of the Muslim family. Destroy the soldier's family, and destroy his reason and will to fight. Burn them both to pointless ash. And, why not? It was fitting retribution lowered onto an enemy that struck against the rules, even against noncombatant targets like aid and press ships. Vidovic couldn't blame the Americans. Too bad that, in their usual political myopia, they attacked the wrong target.

And too bad for Eller. Vidovic scanned the blackened landscape of ruined houses for the reporter. He found him squatted a short distance away at the edge of the carnage, his back to it all. Eller had learned his lesson. This visit to this Schoolhouse brought it all home, made it all real. There the American sat, a citizen of a terrorist state.

Vidovic called for the radioman. From the boy's shoulder, he retrieved the mission bag taken from Eller. Then he walked over to the reporter, fishing from the bag a package he had hoarded for days. He stooped beside his prisoner and looked sideways into his eyes.

Eller's face was wet.

"I'm sorry..." the American said.

"I know you are. But, as I used to tell my children before this war took them, sorry doesn't make it better."

Eller wiped his eyes with two grimy palms.

"So." Vidovic turned his eyes on the foil bag in his hands. "Will you use the resources of your tiny television station to tell the world our story?"

"Hell yes, I will."

When he said nothing more, Vidovic asked the obvious question. "And, exactly what will you tell them?"

"That the Most Holy and Righteous United States of America is bombing innocent civilians and collecting and displaying their bodies as examples to their enemies." He took a deep breath. "That they were duped into it by an enemy they can't even see."

"And when will you tell them this?"

"I can't right now. I have to get satellite codes. I'll call my boss at noon GMT. This is going on the air. I swear it."

Vidovic nodded. "I believe you." He handed Mike the package. "Here. You've earned it."

Mike took the meal packet. For a moment, he just looked at the bag, seeming not to recognize it. Then he tore it open and raised it slowly, trancelike, to his lips.

"School's over," Vidovic said. "You are free to go."

Mike stopped sucking the packet. He stared at his captor with rheumy, red-rimmed eyes.

Vidovic shrugged. "Sorry, Mr. Eller, but you aren't worth the bullet."

"I don't want to go."

"Excuse me?"

"I don't want to go. I want the bastards who did this. You're gonna help."

Vidovic laughed, a strange sound in that outdoor crematorium. "Okay, my friend. I suppose we have nothing better to do." He sat down beside Mike while the reporter devoured his meal.

#

The military's electronic jamming umbrella prevented contact with the See It Now world operations center for two more days. In the interim, Steve's staff in Indianapolis laid out the pacing for the EOG show, assigned story schedules, and wrote up the direction script that would keep the right cameras in the right regions on the air at the right times. It was pedantic work, but necessary for a live broadcast on a single subject in prime time. They did not want their message diluted by technical snafus.

Steve's cell phone rang on his way down the steps for breakfast that Monday morning. He snatched it from his sport coat pocket and brought it to his ear. It was At 6:05am, the agreed-upon time for commo check from Serbia, so he suspected the caller's identity. He recognized Mike's voice, even through the tinny scratchiness of the bad radio connection.

"Eller? It's Steve. What's the matter, man? Sounds like jamming."

"The whole country's jammed on civilian frequencies," Mike's small voice squeaked. "It's a bitch pounding through. We need to work fast, boss. I don't know how long this'll work."

They did not discuss the revelations of Schoolhouse, only the technicalities of code settings for Mike's uncalibrated satcam. Once Mike read back the codes and verified them with Steve, the two agreed on a time for Mike to call via satellite. They said their good-byes and broke their tenuous connection.

Steve put away the cell and continued into the kitchen. Patricia sat at the dinette table, stirring a steaming bowl of Cream of Wheat dotted with cubed apple. She wore jeans and an Indy ComputerCon '55 T-shirt, her winter coat hanging over the back of her chair. She hunched close to her propped-up tablet, occasionally touching the screen as she read from it. Wo Chu sat across from her, tracing a finger around the rim of a coffee mug. He wore the same sort of impeccable suit as in New York, though his men favored less restrictive casual clothing. Both he and Patricia looked up as Steve entered the room.

"Good morning, all," Steve said as he took a bowl from an upper cabinet. "Show time minus four, eh?"

"You're working too hard again," Patricia said, still hiding behind her computer. She obviously wanted to minimize contact with the Chinese enforcer across from her. "If you're going to work like this, all weekend and late every day, you'd better eat more than cereal for breakfast."

"Yes, Mom, but I feel just fine." Steve made his habitual round of the pantry, refrigerator, and silverware drawer, then lowered himself to a seat at the table. "Morning, Mr. Wo Chu. Are you feeling fine today?" He laced his cereal liberally with sugar, then wet it with milk.

"I am rested, thank-you," the old man said, slightly bowing his head. "Your nights are quieter than I am used to, but I'm sure I will adapt."

"It's called country living, Wo Chu. Good for what ails ya, so to speak. You guys should move Chinatown to Bloomington, Indiana. You'd be less intense, and fit right in, too, with the be-all-you-can-be, honor-onto-thy-soul stuff going around down there. You know, college basketball."

Wo Chu smiled slightly. Steve ate his cereal. Patricia watched him from tablet defilade.

"I have that information you wanted," she said after a moment. "I can give it to you on the way downtown."

"The license plate, the gun registration, the glasses ID?"

"And the Net address from Mr. Clemmons. The glasses were a dead end, but I got everything else."

"Good girl. If you give it to me now, you could spend the day doing girl stuff. No need to come in to work."

"I want to come in to work," she said. "I'll drive you today, so we can talk in private."

Steve turned to Wo Chu, who seemed oblivious to the conversation; he watched a rabbit through the dinette's French doors. "We rented the big car for security, honey. Your Sunracer only seats two. Well, and a half, considering that ridiculous back seat."

"Dad, for pity's sake..."

"What do you think, Wo Chu? You're the security boss around here."

Wo Chu faced Steve, his face impassive. "It would be best to travel in the one big car, but we can follow behind, if you wish. You have only two guards today, Mr. Tallman, so I will go along as well."

"Only two? The night guard is getting their sleep, but— Oh, I remember. Li Chen has his cast off today. You sure it isn't too soon? Just over a week for a busted arm?"

"His arm was not broken, just removed from its socket. Medicine is so efficient these days."

"Okay. You sure two cars are okay? Fine. You have a passenger, Patricia."

Steve finished his cereal. Wo Chu finished his coffee. Patricia hardly touched her Cream of Wheat. How transparent we are today, Steve thought as he watched her.

#

The cars reversed down the driveway, past the two vehicles rented for errands and now pulled far to one side of the gravel surface.

"So, you're on a first name basis with them now?" Patricia said icily once they hit the street.

"Excuse me?"

"Li Chen, Dad. Li Chen?" She shifted into forward, then plunged the Sunracer along the road.

"Oh. Actually, that's his last name, or what used to be his first and last name. It's complicated."

"How would you know? He doesn't speak a word of English."

"He speaks some English, but he understands it fine, and Wo Chu translates."

"Dad, please..."

"No, seriously. The kid's parents came over during the war. Li is the family name, and our boy's given name was Chen. But, his folks wanted him to fit in with the other kids. When he was about four months old, they legally changed his name to Larry Li Chen. He doesn't like Larry."

"He doesn't fit in with the other kids, either."

"And he feels it," Steve said. "You'd know all this if you'd just talk to him instead of prancing around like Miss Snooty I-Don't-Hang-Out-With-Gutter-Trash-Chink-Boys."

Her mouth dropped open. He saw her eyebrows raise behind her reflective sunglasses. The only thing missing was a strident "Well, I never!"

"Dad. Are you calling me a racist?"

"I'm calling you rude as hell, that's what."

"These are the same people who all but threatened your life just over a week ago."

"Of course they did. It was their job. Now their job is to protect us. Try to see it from their point of view, won't you?"

"I think it safer to see it from my point of view."

You're sounding like your mother, he almost said.

They rode in the silence of the electric car, only the hum of their tires filling the void between them.

"The guy who attacked Uncle Ben out west, the owner of the car anyway, is Joshua Schooley," Patricia said after a moment. "He manages an auto parts store in Flagstaff, Arizona. That bit of information took a simple interrogation of all fifty state BMVs."

"Simple? You need legal empowerment to interrogate BMV records."

"Not if you know what you're doing. The gun is registered to an Emmett Paterson of Brockway, Montana. That one's from a slightly more sophisticated scan of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms's weapons registration web. They keep a database of all state and local firearms registrations."

"You mean he used a registered weapon to threaten somebody? How dumb can you get?"

"Pretty dumb, I guess," she said, looking at him. "Now, I told you that the glasses were a big, fat goose egg. Sorry, but national medical property databases just aren't complete enough to do much with."

"You've done good, honey. I'll get Jerry McFadden to free up a few reporters to check those guys out. Schooley, anyway. Peggy can handle this Paterson character." He looked his daughter up and down. She wore the aviator sunglasses Chelsea had given her a few years earlier. He felt a sudden pride in her beauty, and in her spiritual strength. Where did she get that strength, from Belinda, from him? Or maybe from Chelsea, who had been Patricia's idol for years.

"I'm proud of you, honey, criticism aside, and surprised, too. I had no idea you were so well versed in computer stuff."

She aimed the reflective lenses at him for a moment before turning back to the road. "You just don't listen, Dad. Well, try to hear me now. This next stunt took a few days. That Net address you got from Montana, the one to the closed and encrypted site? It's run by a bunch of real crazy people. Hitler worshipers, paranoid conspiracy theory types. Some of them claim the whole world is run by Citibank on behalf of the devil. That's the devil, Dad. You know, the horns and pitch fork, tossed out of heaven, tempted Eve in the garden, satanic devil."

"Well, everybody needs faith. How did you get in? Sam said it was just about an impossible problem. How did you break the encryption?"

"I could have, but that might have taken weeks. They've got a freaking 4096-bit RSA port." She glanced at him and, seeing what must have been a dumb expression on his face, offered a thin smile. "Not important. I tried a more direct approach. I applied for membership through their Net carrier."

"Say again?"

"They advertise on the net. I remembered you telling somebody in a meeting that this guy you're after is tied to the Aryan Nation. We log on to their free pages now and then, leave insulting bogus messages and such."

"Who's 'we'?"

"Stop being a father. Friends, okay? Well, I figured these paranoid types network with each other. That's what Sam said about the ones in Colorado. So, I subscribed to all their closed-access sites."

"What?"

"About fifteen of them, all encrypted, all firewalled. It'll cost a small bundle. It took all this time because they had to do a background check on me, and verify my credit card balances, and so forth."

"Credit cards? You subscribed using credit cards?"

"Oh, please, do you think I'd register as myself? Once they found out whose daughter I was, they'd shut everything down and erase all the records in one hot minute. I registered under a multi-layered alias, fifteen of them, actually."

Steve stared at her, amazed and befuddled. He wanted to ask the obvious questions, but the answers were surely more than he could tolerate.

"This is the thing, Dad. The site you're after is Freedom Fighter. It's stuffed with articles from all those weirdoes I told you about, very scary stuff. Do you know that some of them advocate that multi-racial people be deported?"

"That isn't a new idea, though I'm sorry you were exposed to it. There are a lot of frightened, hateful people out there, honey." Steve shifted in his seat. He didn't want to explain to her the 150-year-old history of racial separatism. "Did you find anything we could use?"

"They have a bulletin board where they get assignments and get paid for jobs. Some of the postings are wide open to anybody, but many are double-encrypted. I got into some of them. Apparently, their interior security isn't much to sweat about." She giggled and hid her mouth behind her hand. "You'll love this. I got on the board, made a few posts, had some conversations. Then, to be friendly, I posted naked pictures of myself."

Steve's throat seized. He felt his eyes grow huge and his mouth start to speak. What wanted to come out would not be constructive.

"Don't freak out," she said, waving a hand at him. "They were really images from one of those stock photo sites, the ones where you can buy pictures for royalty-free use." She looked at him over her glasses. "You understand that, right, Dad? I didn't sext myself."

"You and I," Steve said. "We're going to have a talk. Exactly what did you do?"

"I took the pictures and embedded malware into the images. I posted them and waited around for a moderator to check them out. My software grabbed his security files and gave me access to everything he had authority over."

"My god! I sired a criminal mastermind!"

"Thank you. They're up to something in Montana. I think you'd better warn Peggy."

"What are they up to? Did they say?"

"There's a big Tuesday gathering at the MRA meeting house in Belise. All the membership is ordered to attend. It's a media bashfest."

Steve thought a moment. The tiny cockpit of the car faded from his consciousness. He thought of Peggy alone in Montana, unsure of herself, known to her enemies. Should he extract her, have her gather the story witnesses and take them to a more neutral environment, maybe all the way to Indy? Would it do any good? No matter where they ran, it would take the wide-ranging network of Mercy's true believers only hours to locate and exterminate them, if that was their wish. Maybe she should stay in place, where she understood the danger, and would not grow careless. And where she would find out what she was made of. Of course, an aggressive defense could improve her chances.

"Maybe," he said to no one in particular, "Peggy should attend that meeting..."

Chapter Eighteen:

Deployment

 (Back to Contents)

The advertising for See It Now: Freedom Under Siege hit the Net and the airwaves on Tuesday. The one-time subscriptions rolled in, threatening to set a capacity record for television news shows. The commercials on prime time and the downloadable trailers on the Net sent panic throughout the aggregate of reporters, producers, subjects, witnesses, politicians, and pundits that composed the EOG story community. The satcam reporters assigned to the story, few of which knew the full scope of the project, were surprised by the strong accusations made in the commercials. Many, out of caution, changed their living accommodations and consciously varied their regular activities, in case some wacko sought to make an example of them. The regional producers also feared reprisals, and armored themselves with attorneys in order to cope with the organizations mentioned in the ads.

Peggy Smith's chief interviewees just about bolted, afraid they might face retribution at the hands of their militia neighbors. They almost deserted her despite the fact that Montana was not directly mentioned in the ads. She convinced them to assemble at Tom Merritt's ranch house, where isolation and their numbers afforded at least an illusion of safety. For her part, Peggy abandoned her motel room. When she wasn't at Merritt's, she lived, ate, and slept in her rented Ford pick-up, and damned both herself and her boss for sending her into the wilds without protection.

In Congress, lawmakers scurried to dodge the rising EOG controversy. The House of Representatives exploded like a disturbed anthill, the rhetoric and accusations erupting in predictable, if intense, partisanship. Many charged the media with making a circus of serious legislative affairs. Some, like Congressman Abe Foster of Louisiana, exhausted themselves over the next four days staving off attempts by their more reckless associates to invoke prior restraint against CBS. Philip Mackie and his small core of like-minded senators watched and fretted from their side of the capitol building, and encouraged their partners in the House. EOG, which had survived for months in a low profile, back burner context, suddenly became the only subject of merit within the Washington community. Its survival was now thrown into doubt.

All the while, Steve's production staff built the best vacuum they could in which to complete Friday's show. They ignored the frenzied world around them and dealt only with each technical increment of the concept-to-script process, intertwining their assets with meticulous expertise. Their efforts often faltered against continued story development. Mike Eller reported that American peacekeepers conspired to kill noncombatants across the war zone, a war crime if there ever was one, and that the Serb government directed their actions. All the patriotic dribble of the last several months stood exposed as the biggest of lies, and only CBS had the story. But how did Eller's bombshell fit into the EOG universe? Finding no clear connection, the editorial staff tabled Eller's story for another episode, perhaps a special edition. Sure of the magnitude of both stories, some of Steve's people talked openly of Pulitzers. Steve thought first of survival, and then retirement.

Jonathan Taylor Mercy thought only of revenge. On Tuesday, he told Decker to roll up all connections between the militias and Americans for Civil Equality. He didn't care how, and he didn't care who it hurt, but he wanted all ties with paramilitary fringes erased. Then he sought out Donald Washington through the usual intermediary, and turned petulant when contact proved difficult. Washington still ran, skirting every law enforcement agency in the country for his attempt on Dearing's life. He had become invisible. But, none of this impressed Mercy. He wanted to unleash that rabid, untraceable animal on his ultimate enemy. He wanted Stephen Tallman and See It Now obliterated.

Jerry McFadden flew to Arizona to find and interview Josh Schooley. As he sat bored in the rental car across the street from Schooley's small house, he regretted being the nice boss who gives his overtaxed cameramen the week off. Jerry hadn't done surveillance for years, and now remembered why. As he sat in the uncomfortable car with his satcam and his Chicken McNuggets, he wondered how long he would wait for Schooley. Hours? Days? Certainly not past Friday.

#

"You sure you want this?" Tom Merritt asked as he drove the Kiowa slowly past the MRA meeting house.

Peggy leaned forward in the front passenger seat, keeping the building in sight as long as possible. "I have to," she said. "It's my job."

"Humph!" the old man said. "Helluva way to make a livin'."

"I didn't see anybody around. Can you turn around and go back?"

Merritt coaxed the Jeep through a wide U-turn. This was an easy prospect even on the narrow two-lane road, for nothing blocked the vehicle for hundreds of yards in any direction. Nothing but short, weedy grass and snow. "I have to tell ya, young lady. This thing you're doin', it's crazy. If they catch you at it..."

"I know. Pull over here. Less snow, and out of the way. Somebody might not notice we were here."

"Lot of traffic at this place. Shouldn't matter."

Merritt parked at the end of the meeting house. It was a long, one-story, wood frame barn, really, the kind of thing used as roadside trading posts, and as army barracks in black and white movies. One door faced the road and another was cut into the end Merritt parked near. Windows were spaced every twenty feet or so. To a girl from the city, even just Bakersfield, the place came across as drab, lonely. It seemed tall in the flat land despite its hunkering design.

With the Jeep halted, utter silence reigned. The only thing moving around the building were the crystalline flecks of snow settling to the ground.

"Okay," Peggy said to break the unearthly quiet, "We'd better get going before anyone shows up."

"I reckon so."

They pushed open their doors. A stiff, cold wind invaded the truck interior. Peggy hunched deeper into her parka.

"I won't be far," Merritt said as he climbed from the vehicle. "But it won't do you no good, not if they find you."

"If that happens, don't be a hero." Peggy pulled her mission bag from the Jeep. "They hate you as much as me."

"I doubt that. Anyways, if all goes well, I'll pick you up an hour after they leave."

"Right." She hefted the bag and crunched gravel around to his side of the truck.

"That's assumin' there's anything left to pick up," Merritt added.

"Now, Mr. Merritt, don't talk like that. I'm scared enough as it is." Peggy tried to show him a brave face, but her forced grin wavered at the edge of collapse.

Merritt grabbed her arm. He waited until she caught his eyes. "You oughtta be scared," he said, his tone measured and firm. "You know who these people are. You know what they think of you and you know what they've done with their own kind. I wish you'd reconsider. If they find you out, ain't nobody comin' to help you."

Peggy forced a wavering smile. "It's okay, sir. With what you've given me, I think I can do this."

He held her gaze a few seconds more, then released her arm and patted it. "Well, all right. I reckon we can't complain about you young folk no more. You're a brave young lady, Miss Peggy Smith."

Peggy didn't know what to say to that, so she said nothing at all. She hitched her mission bag higher on one shoulder, then trudged through brittle grass and dirty snow toward the front door of the building. Merritt maintained a pace alongside her.

Okay, thought Peggy, Steve wanted her to record the night's meeting. No parabolics would get the job done. No bug would be efficient enough; she'd never be certain of getting what mattered. And she couldn't very well just show up and take a seat in the audience. Maybe they should have sent a white reporter.

But, no, they'd sent her. They'd sent her because Steve trusted her, that or he tested her. Hell, maybe they sent her for both reasons. Anyway, she had a plan and preparation, so she had a fair chance. And if that didn't work, she could run like a hunted rabbit.

As she walked along the face of the building, the place seemed to watch her with its blank, square windows. It seemed to disapprove, to wish her ill will. This is a white man's place, the building seemed to say. No niggers here, you move right along.

Hard to believe the place doubled as a church on Sundays.

Following Merritt, Peggy mounted the three wooden steps to the door. Merritt fished a key ring from one of his parka pockets and began sorting it out. He had to have a dozen keys on the thing.

"No breaking and entering here," the old man said. "Half the county can open this door, from churchmen like me to scout leaders." He half-turned to offer her a wry smile. "And others."

He disengaged the door lock and the deadbolt, looked around behind them, and slipped into the building. Peggy followed.

The interior spread out bare before them, just a white and blue speckled linoleum floor and white walls. Two racks of metal folding chairs stood against the far wall and two long work tables occupied the left end and center of the open space. The drywalled ceiling showed three furnace outlets, two cold air return vents, and the square of an attic access door. Those last two were the only things that interested Peggy.

"The utility closet's back here." Merritt veered right, crossing the echoing expanse to a square, walled-off intrusion into the rectangular floorplan. Peggy laid her bag near the middle of the floor, almost beneath the attic access door. Then she went to help Merritt.

Within the back room they found the furnace, of course, and a toilet. A snow shovel stood against one wall along with two trash cans, a bag of rock salt, and an eight-foot step ladder. Peggy helped Merritt wrestle the ladder from where it was jammed between the furnace and the wall of the crappy storage room. They hauled it into the great room and over to where she had dropped her mission bag.

"Careful, don't scratch the floor," Peggy said, then felt like an idiot. The floor was scratched to hell and back already. It must have survived a score of country-western barn dances. She feared detection, yes, but she shouldn't show it with such magnified concern. Merritt had the decency not to mention her slip.

"More important," he said, "you just watch gettin' up that hole. Careful with your back, okay?"

"Oh, yeah." Peggy climbed the ladder. Pressed close to the attic door, she steadied herself, pressed her fingers against the square of drywall, and pushed it slowly, steadily upwards.

It seemed to go up forever though she knew the frame surrounding the door wouldn't be more than four inches thick. 2X4. 4X6. Just the width of a board, right?

Holding the ladder, Merritt didn't say a word. He did, however, glance at his watch.

Okay, so the sixty-something year old rancher thought she was being a wiener.

Grimacing, she gave the door one good push. It cleared the frame with a scrape and she shoved it to the side. Then there was just a glance down to Merritt, two more steps up the ladder, and she grabbed the lip of the ceiling opening and started pulling herself into the attic.

Pain stabbed her like a pitchfork in the back. It was all she could do to regain her perch on the ladder.

"What's the matter?" Merritt asked, grabbing her pantleg to prevent her from falling. "It's the gunshot wound, is it?"

"Oh." She shook spots from her vision. "God."

"You gotta git up there or we need to leave."

"Boost me?"

Merritt's grumbling showed more in his eyes than his words. "I'm gettin' on too old for the circus." But he stepped onto the ladder, climbed two steps toward Peggy, and clutched her about the thighs and knees. "You ready?"

She grasped the lip of the access hole again. "Ready."

"Pull!"

Merritt's strength surprised her. Peggy felt herself propelled upward, hardly needing to lift with her arms. The moment held a flash of terror as gravity seemed to desert her and the ladder complained, dancing against the floor. Then her elbows came even with the lip of the hole, she braced them against wood, and hauled herself the last few feet into the attic. Pain lanced between her shoulders, white hot coals that made her gasp for breath and almost pass out. She lay face down across the ceiling joists, white fiberglas clinging to her sudden burst of sweat. Her legs still hung down the hole.

"You all right?" Merritt called up.

Peggy couldn't answer just then. She busied herself trying to catch a breath.

"Miss Smith?"

"I'm fine." She panted like a winded Greyhound. "Peachy." She concentrated, counted to three, then dragged the rest of her into the attic.

She finished on her back across multiple joists, staring into the near blackness of the unfinished space. Nothing there but wood framing and blown insulation, and the ghostly reflections off aluminum venting.

Her mission bag came up through the hole. Merritt peeked over the edge. "You got a pair, I'll say that, young lady. You can manage from here? I'd hate to have to drag you back out."

"I can manage. The hard part's over."

"All right, then. Put the lid on, then I'll clean up down here. You got about five hours before they show up, 'cept maybe for them that put out the chairs."

"I'll watch for them. Don't forget to pick me up."

"Wouldn't miss it, darlin', even if I gotta pick you up on a shovel." He laughed then, incorrectly assuming his witticism might be funny. Then his face descended back through the hole.

Peggy rolled onto her side and cautiously pushed to a sitting position. She rested a moment, feeling the vicious terrier pain back off for a nap, then grabbed the square of drywall and replaced it over the hole.

The world went black after losing the light from below. Despite the sound of Merritt scraping around, Peggy suddenly felt alone. She sat there, her butt on one joist, her boots propped against another, hunched over the access door like a sick man over a bucket. The cold chilled the sweat on her face and seeped into her gloveless hands, and she could feel it in her breath. Then the fussy sounds of cleanup ceased from below and she heard the rattle of the door.

A moment later, her world fell utterly silent.

She didn't welcome that silence. It emphasized the loneliness that had taken her once the door cut her off from Merritt. Because, of course, she really was alone. She sat in darkness above a room that would soon fill with monsters. Those monsters were surly. They were man eaters. She was their favorite food. And Peggy sat there in the dark with no easy means of escape.

She'd volunteered to be there.

She shook her head before she worked herself into a panic. Time to go to work; that would take her mind off her wildly stupid undertaking. She felt around for her mission bag and dragged it closer. Inside, she found a chemical lantern, which she shook into a brilliant blue-white light before adhering it to a rafter with the light's gummy adhesive.

Next, she rummaged for the power screwdriver. Tool in hand, she worked herself around to approach the aluminum cold air return duct a few feet away. Careful to place her feet only on joists, she crouched at the base of the metal rectangular form and brushed fiberglas insulation away from the spot where the duct column met the ceiling. After a few minutes with the screwdriver, she had the duct disconnected. She shoved it aside with much thrumming and echoing, sure anyone could hear the racket within a dozen miles.

The duct out of her way, Peggy peered through the vent it had covered, and into the room below. She could see pretty good, as Merritt had supposed. Through the angled slits in the vent she could see from her place above the middle of the room all the way to the front. She could not see to the rear of the building, but that wasn't much of an issue. Anyone important would stand at the front, so that's where she worked to focus her satcam.

The camera came equipped with a tripod that sprang from its lower left edge when Peggy released a particular snap catch. Rotating the tripod on the arm that held it secured to the camera, Peggy extended its improbably skinny but rigid legs and spread them apart. She spent a good five minutes in the harsh glare of her chemical light attaching the tripod feet to the joists to either side of the vent cover. When she finished, the satcam's lens was suspended a few inches from the slits in the vent, trained to cover the front third of the meeting house. With her focus set far to the front of the intervening vent, the obstruction would be blurred to a bare fuzz that obstructed nothing.

She worked steadily for ten minutes double-checking her programmed camera focus parameters, detaching the viewfinder and cabling it back to the camera so she could watch and control what the satcam saw without hunching over it in the cramped space of the attic. She also cabled a microphone to the machine and taped the live end between two slats in the vent. It wouldn't pay to go through all her work only to be rewarded with muffled sound.

When all was done and checked, Peggy lay down across the joists and stared up at the underside of the roof. Nothing there but rafters, plywood, and the randomly scattered teeth of nails driven through from above. She had several hours to lie there before the first militiaman showed up, several hours in which to go mad with fear.

But no. Fear would not take her there in that harsh, wavering light from her lamp. It wouldn't take her in any case, even if she lay in the cold dark. Fear was a tool of her enemy, of those monsters soon to gather beneath her. They expected fear, used it as a kind of force multiplier, for when you got down to arithmetic, the good guys outnumbered the bad by a margin so large as to be ridiculous. Without fear to fog the minds of their opponents, people like the racists of the Montana Rural Auxiliary hadn't a chance to press their agenda.

Peggy had something more powerful than fear, she told herself as she drummed her fingers against the front of her parka. Peggy had faith. She had faith in her technology, the camera that would make her a silent witness to whatever evils her enemy hoped to spread. She had faith in the people who supported her, in Merritt out there ready to pick her up, and who had conceived the method by which she infiltrated the upcoming meeting. She had faith in the training Sam Clemmons had given her. She had faith in Steve Tallman, who had faith in her.

She could handle these people, she told herself. She could handle it, she repeated for emphasis.

Then she reached into a parka pocket, pulled out her cell phone, and played arcade games to help the hours pass.

#

Two hours later, three guys showed up. They clamored their way through the front door jackjawing about women and cars, then grabbed clattering folding chairs and arranged them in rows over the width and depth of the floor. Before their arrival, Peggy had repositioned herself three times for comfort. She covered the chemical light with a rag from her mission bag when she heard the lock rattle in the door below. While her visitors crashed and banged below her, she remained perfectly still.

After forty or so minutes, the men finished their task. Someone must have cranked up the furnace, because a mechanical groan issued through the building and rattled the disconnected air return. One man complained about the odd sound in the vents, making Peggy break into a sweat at the prospect they might climb up to have a look. But these were just nobodies drafted to set up chairs, so the intimated layman's repair job died before it was actually suggested. After another moment of conversation, the tail end of an argument about Japanese football, the door slammed and Peggy breathed again.

She took the rag from the light and wiped sweat from her face. Then she slumped beneath the roof beams, her head between her knees.

This terrified her, she thought.

This was also a rush.

#

Another hour and a half later, the meeting house returned to life. Men arrived in ones and twos, stomping snow from their boots at the door and claiming seats by draping coats over them. They stood, smoked, and talked while Peggy, her space darkened once more, watched them on the viewfinder in her hands. They seemed so normal, so ordinary, not a white sheet or swastika among them. Young men, old men, grizzled, smooth-chinned, even accompanied by kids. Kids, all boys, some no older than twelve. They might have been a masonic lodge, or a Knights of Columbus bunch, or they could have been trying to escape their wives. Peggy saw nothing in appearance or in the snatches of conversation she listened to that set the gathering apart from any other in any other place. This bored her and unnerved her at the same time.

By a quarter to five, the place was thinly crowded with thirty or forty men and boys. Most milled about without much aim beyond pressing the flesh and talking sports and beef prices. Some, however had distinguished themselves as officers of the gathering. The other men deferred to them, knots of humanity split as they approached, and the occasional attendee separated from his conversation clique to talk with the leaders in intent whispers.

Then Leon Decker entered the building. It was him all right, clearly the same man pictured in her files. He greeted everyone expansively, shook random hands like a politician trolling for votes, and gathered three or four of the leaders around him near the front of the hall. Just as interesting, he entered in the company of a half dozen other men, all dressed as Decker was in black military uniforms and carrying assault rifles or shotguns. They looked out of place, as if the army walked into a cub scout meeting. When Peggy zoomed on their faces for still shots, not one of them looked like they wanted to be there. They had etched disdain across their faces; they didn't seem to care who saw it.

There was one other man. Accompanying Decker into the hall, he stood out for his lack of theater. He didn't wear the stupid military gear and he didn't carry a scary-looking gun. Nor did he dress in the jeans, t-shirts, or flannels that characterized the crowd. Slightly overweight, hunched deep into his shoulders, he wore a cheap suit and a wool overcoat, like he had just come from selling washing machines at Sears. Peggy panned and zoomed, waited for him to look up to gauge his surroundings, and snapped his picture. She'd check his identity later when she dared to establish a satellite link, but she was almost sure the man was Josh Schooley, that is, if she trusted his drivers license photo.

Decker broke off conferring with his local officers. One of the locals turned toward the group and put his hands in the air. That one was Dennis Paterson, she noted, son of good ol' Emmett, whose gun had been used to intimidate Ben Tallman. Peggy had checked on that bit of mystery. The senior Paterson had reported his gun stolen a week before it showed up in Arizona, and he had seemed as innocent as a two-month-old baby. Dennis, however, had proven to be a hell raiser, frequently in trouble with the local authorities, frequently thrown out of local bars, and an energetic member of the MRA. And, it seemed, one of its leaders. Could he have stolen his father's gun? Was he Ben Tallman's attacker?

"Everybody," he called into the room. "Everybody, let's get the meeting started. Everybody take a seat, please. Jack and y'all, could you lay that off and join in with the others? That'd be great, yeah."

Decker stared at him as if at a mangy dog. Decker's men spread out into the hall, some of them striking up cigarettes.

"That's it," Paterson the younger continued. "That's it, everybody take a seat."

Peggy couldn't see the whole group from her vantage point, but from Paterson's body language the militiamen shuffled into order.

"Now," he said after a long moment, "we got us here a special meeting to go over future—"

"Could we have everyone sit a bit closer?" Decker interrupted. "And fill in toward the center?"

"I can hear just fine from where I am," someone called.

"We have some important shit to discuss, and I don't want to go hoarse doing it, okay?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Decker," Paterson said, and waved his people forward. "Everybody, come closer to the front. That's it, these are your neighbors, y'know. Get to know them a little."

"It's because I know 'em that I don't want to sit with 'em," another voice called, and the room mumbled good-natured laughter.

More men entered Peggy's field of vision, but Decker's army rejects were harder to keep track of. They stood far toward the walls of the building.

"Okay, that's better," Paterson said. "Now, like I was saying, Mr. Decker here has come all the way up from Oklahoma to let us know what's up with the network. It's got to do—"

"Could we have a roll call?" Decker asked.

"What?"

"A roll call. It's a meeting. We ought to have a roll call."

"A roll call? We haven't ever done anything like that. Hell, we know everybody that's here."

"I'd feel better with a roll call. Or at least a positive head count."

What the hell? Peggy hadn't pegged Decker as a stickler for formality.

"Well..." Paterson squinted out over the audience. He started pointing at heads.

Geez, Peggy thought, we'll be here all night.

"We got everybody here," Paterson said, a little short. "Except for Ed Isner and the Hollingshead boys. Ed slipped and hurt his back shoveling off his roof, and the Hollingsheads had to make a feed run to Billings. Won't be back until Thursday." He snapped his fingers as if remembering something. "Oh, and Tommy Jacketer, but you sent him on a job out east."

"You sure nobody else is absent? We'll need those boys addresses so we can get them up to speed later."

To Peggy's horror, the meeting devolved into a multi-speaker discussion of what the missing men's phone numbers and addresses might be. It seemed to go on forever.

"Okay, that's good enough. Let's get back on track," Decker called into the room. At that moment, he became Peggy's best friend. "You go ahead and sit with the boys, Paterson. I'll take it from here."

Peggy followed Paterson to a front-row seat, then panned back over to Decker.

"Here's the long and the short of it," Mercy's enforcer said. "You boys, you fucked up big time."

Murmurs of confusion.

"No, it's clear. You fucked up with that Belew kid, made the press more interested, not less. You fucked up with the Indian, and your buddy Jacketer screwed the pooch on his surveillance job."

Some of the men raised their voices in angry protest, started rising to their feet.

"Sit back down and let me say my piece. Then we'll talk about it, okay? This is my point, that your mistakes have embarrassed me to my superiors and have brought on a lot of visibility we don't want. Have you seen the commercials for that See It Now show? That's all about us, boys."

"Mr. Decker!" Paterson sprang to his feet, and Peggy zeroed in on him. "We haven't ever done anything you didn't ask us to do. If you're feeling like you want to roll some shit downhill, I'd say the bottom of the hill is you."

Lots of agreement there. Peggy zoomed out to catch the crowd reaction. She thought it was hilarious.

"Yeah," someone complained. "You wanna piss yourself when we follow your orders, maybe you ain't the man for your job. I mean, what you want us to do, anyway?"

"What I want is for you dumbasses to shut the fuck up and disappear. Thankfully, that can be done. Boys."

Peggy jumped at the first shotgun blast. It was all she could do to stay with her camera. Then the assault rifles burped beneath her, their staccato bangs accented by cries of terror and agony. She recovered after a few precious lost seconds and snap-zoomed as far out as possible.

Jesus! For a moment she thought she might have shouted it, and almost wet her pants. But no one looked up. No one pointed their weapons at her.

The room was a bloodbath. Most of the militiamen were dead, splayed in broken poses on the floor, in chairs, having knocked chairs over in the moment they died. Little boys, dead. Almost all of them in just a few seconds. The few still living moaned and flopped in broadening pools of blood. One crawled, broken, toward the door.

One of Decker's men stepped up to that man and shot him in the head.

Peggy's breath came in thunderous heaves, sucking and blowing between clenched teeth. But she managed a razor's edge of control, working the camera, panning the scene. Part of her tried to claw out through her skin and run, to pound out a square of plywood from the roof, to scrabble out through that hole. Part of her, if she let it escape, would have jumped the ten or twelve feet to the ground and run off gibbering into the dark.

And she would have died. The only thing that kept her alive was holding still, freezing like a rabbit before a dog, and biting her tongue until it bled.

"That's about it," one of Decker's men said.

"Okay. Let's get going. I have a flight. You two go get that Isner asshole and you two drive out to Jordan and finish those Hollingshead dumbshits."

"Yessir. What if we miss the Hollings-whoevers?"

"Good point. One of you go to Billings, and one of you camp out at their place. I want this rolled up by tomorrow, got it?"

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. He just stood there, no reaction at all. His men might have just fixed a rat infestation. Who in God's name were these people?

Then Peggy swept her lens over Schooley and reversed to take in his face. She looked mainly at the man's balding head, but his mouth hung slack and his hands nervously sought refuge in his coat pockets, then came out and wiped their palms on the wool. The 4p definition of the viewfinder noted the color draining from his face. Schooley, at least, was human, though he hadn't lifted a finger to halt the massacre.

"What's the matter, Schooley? You look sick. Man up, buddy, we got more of this shit to do."

"My god, I thought you were just gonna lean on 'em!"

"Yeah," Decker skirted the edge of the mayhem, moving toward the door. "I'd say we leaned on 'em."

Sniggers. Peggy heard sniggers. Her stomach rolled over at least twice. She forgot the camera and grasped a joist with a free hand, grasped it so hard her hand ached. She sucked in air until she thought she might faint, trying to keep her gorge down.

Her brain registered affable conversation though she could not understand the words any longer. The door to the outside sounded loud in her ears. She heard every bit of gravel crunch under grinding tires.

Long after the men left, Peggy sat still as stone in the attic.

#

The world ceased to exist. Peggy had no idea how much time she had lost until a sharp, insistent tone intruded into her consciousness. She took a while to realize what the sound meant.

She looked down at the satcam, the movement of her head jerky. The camera was a dark shape between her feet, that and a blinking red light. Dark. She glanced around her. The chemical light had faded almost to nothing.

She snapped her gaze back to the camera, then to the viewfinder still in her hand. DRIVE FULL, the message said.

She clicked off the REC button, took a deep breath, let it out. What time was it? Had Merritt returned for her? She had to report what had happened.

She clicked on the satellite functions and hit the CALL button.

"Base. Smith."

Nothing. She almost called again.

"Yeah, this is Base. What you got?"

"Smith." Tears welled in Peggy's eyes.

Another moment of silence, then, "Roger, Smith. What do you need, Peggy?"

Who was that? Little? Malcolm Little? "They're all dead. He killed them all."

This time, the silence stretched into seconds. "Uh, Peggy? Are you all right?"

She burst into tears.

"Okay, okay. We're here. Let me call up your mission card. Are you hurt?"

"You've got to get me out of here."

"You're at that meeting in Montana. What do you mean—"

"He killed them all! They're all dead, all of them! He gunned them down to shut them up!"

"Fuck. Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

She understood him for the first time. She checked her body with twitchy hands. "I— I think so."

"What happened?"

"I—"

"Do you have data?"

"What?"

"Do you have data? Video. Sound. Are you still at the meeting place? Wait, I'm interrogating your camera."

"I have video."

"I have you at a GPS location near Belise, Montana. Checking your reporter's notes and phone book."

"I have video and sound."

"You do? Send it."

"Huh?"

"Send the goddamned data, Peggy. I can't help you if you don't snap out of it."

His words were a splash of water in her face. She shook her head and realized who she was. She navigated her viewfinder, found the file (Jesus, it was big! How long had she sat there like a catatonic dumbass?) and selected it for transmission. She pressed the send button.

"Okay, we're getting data."

"Can you send a vertol for me?"

"No can do. The closest unit is two states away. You'll have to manage on your own. But I found your contact in your phone book. He'll be there in two minutes."

"Mr. Merritt?"

"That's him. Can you get to the front door?"

"I'm good. I can handle it."

"Okay. I'm tasking a vertol now, but it'll be hours before you can evac—"

"Nevermind that." She started breaking down her camera kit and gathering her gear. "I'm not going anywhere."

""You sure? You said—"

"Forget what I said. And don't tell the boss."

"Huh. I wouldn't know what to tell the boss, Peggy."

"That's good. Signing off." She stuffed gear into her mission bag, a bizarre operation she seemed more to watch on television than to actually do herself.

Jesus, you're in shock. Get it together. Any second, those bastards could come back, or the cops could arrive. Anyone.

She zipped shut her bag, decided to hell with putting the vent back together, and made her way to the access door by the waning light of her chemical lamp. Once she forgot and stepped into insulation. The drywall her foot met complained and she snatched her foot back to the joists.

She found a handle bolted to the top of the drywall square that acted as an attic door. She bent over, grabbed it, and hauled it up and out of its frame. She tossed the door away without looking where it might land and fought the mission bag onto her back. Then, with haste built on a primal urge for flight, she scrambled to get herself down through the hole.

At just the worst moment, she twisted the wrong way and felt a stab from the wound between her shoulders. She stiffened, winced, and lost her balance over the hole.

She fell through, arms pinwheeling, to the floor.

Something broke her fall. When she realized what it was, she gasped, fought to her knees, and scurried away on all fours. She was panting again. She tried to control it, tried to hold it in, but her mind faded fast. An animal took over.

The room was dark. She just noticed that. They had turned out the lights when they left. Be a good citizen, don't waste energy!

A mad cackle escaped her lips. Hearing it, she stuffed one fist into her mouth.

That fist tasted of dirt, fiberglas, and copper.

Calm down, calm down, calm down. Oh, Jesus, this never happened to accountants.

The fist in her mouth hampered her crawling. She stopped, removed it, and breathed, closing her eyes and counting to ten. By seven, she lost her place. Fuck it. She opened her eyes wide and scanned the dark for the door. There it was. She talked herself silently onto her feet, not looking around, trained on the door, and moved to the exit, one shaky step at a time.

Peggy had almost reached her destination when the doorknob rattled.

She tripped to a stop. Urine ran down her legs.

Let it be Merritt, please, please...

But when the door swung open, the first thing past its frame was the long barrel of a shotgun.

All that escaped Peggy's lips was a dull burst of "Ah!" She hadn't the breath for a scream. Neither had she the wherewithal to flee. When she turned to run, no idea where to, she tangled her feet within a few steps and crashed to the floor atop her mission bag.

"Miss Smith!"

She tried to work her arms and legs, tried to crawl away. A keening moan squeezed past her clenched teeth.

"Miss Smith!" Someone grabbed her shoulder. He grabbed her hips when she fought off his arm. He pulled her to him, blocking blows from her wild fists.

"Miss Smith, it's me! It's me, Tom Merritt!"

The name drew her up short. She blinked, and recognized his weathered face, his bush of a mustache.

"Are you all right, Miss Smith?"

Why was everyone asking her that?

"Let's get out of here," Merritt said. He pulled her to her feet, then reached for the shotgun he had dropped to the floor. "Can you walk?"

"I'm good."

"Let's go."

Outside, the cold air revived her. Peggy shook her head and alternately squeezed shut and opened wide her eyes. Merritt propelled her along the front of the building, then beyond it along the edge of the road. Dark. Nightfall. What was it, February?

The Kiowa loomed out of the black. Merritt helped her to the passenger door and into her seat, then hurried around to his side of the car. "I'm sorry," he said as he started the truck and pulled onto the road. "I came back like I said, but there were still cars out front. I drove by twice, but I didn't know what to do."

"They're all dead, Mr. Merritt. He gunned them down."

"I know. I saw. Your people called me. That's why I came when I did. I'm sorry."

"Me, too," Peggy said, and that's when she lost it, that's when she cried, and that's when she started to feel a little better.

Chapter Nineteen:

Recon

 (Back to Contents)

"...thirty-seven confirmed dead, according to FBI spokesmen, some of them children. As seen in this exclusive video shot by See It Now correspondent Peggy Smith..."

Decker, Mercy thought, and the name darkened his living room even more than his brooding had already managed. He snapped off the television. Decker, that unbalanced, violent son of a bitch. He had to go. His juvenile antics in Montana had probably worked to the enemy's advantage. The authorities would be livid, goaded by the press, and far more given to investigation.

Mercy needed a subtler enforcer, one with a drop, at least, of political sense. Of course, he saw no contradiction between his disapproval of Decker's methods and his own orders to the recently uncovered Donald Washington. He had ordered See It Now shut down by means as violent as those used in the frozen north. He could see one method as unwise extravagance and the other as the cost of business. The militiamen in Montana had once been almost invisible; now they were evidence in the hands of government policemen. It would take the limits of Mercy's influence to keep that force in check. Tallman's program, however, was different. The restraining measures introduced in the courts and in Congress had failed. The judges and politicians entrusted with that tactic were gutless imbeciles too afraid of the press to move. More direct methods were necessary to shut Tallman's mouth. Untraceable direct methods.

Contradictions, Mercy realized. His thinking might seem erratic to an outside observer. But he shunted that line of thought aside with one more sip from the scotch in his hand.

The privilege Mercy derived from issuing orders was that he didn't have to scrutinize them all that much.

#

"You follow me around like a dog."

Chelsea showed Steve a wide and toothy smile as they walked along the airport concourse. She looked younger than he had noticed in weeks. Maybe it was the ponytail subduing her mass of black hair, or maybe it was the unseasonably mild morning and her lack of the usual tent-like parka; she always looked good in a flight suit. Most likely, it was her attitude of superior chessmanship from having pestered him into his present predicament. She seemed proud of herself. She enjoyed crawling under Steve's skin, especially when he deserved it.

"Well, you do," Steve continued, flustered. "I can buy a dog, you know."

"Ruff-ruff."

"You're such a comedian."

"And you're such a sourpuss. Here you are, off to meet your once eternal love on a God-sent opportunity to kiss and make up, and all you do is grouce. You should be electric with anticipation, Tallman."

"I am," Steve said. "I'm so electric I can already feel the chair." They stopped short of the security post to his airline. Two planes, each tethered to accordion-style jetways, showed beyond the huge windows of the outside wall.

"Electric chair. I get it. Ha. Ha. But seriously, Steve, I'm getting a little worried here. For a guy who just had his little heart shattered, you sure are taking it well."

Travelers dodged past them, rushing to go through the cave-like passage of the full-body scanner. Steve stepped aside, then dropped into one of the vinyl upholstered chairs standing like neatly aligned soldiers facing the windows. Chelsea took the seat next to him. She faced him with legs crossed, her smile gone.

"Well?" she demanded. "Do you want Anna back or are you relieved to be free of her?"

Steve squinted at her. "What the hell kind of question is that? Where do you come off asking me—?"

"I'm your friend, Tallman. I want what's best for you, which is about opposite of what you want for yourself."

"You're pushing that friendship excuse just a bit over the edge, Van Arsdale."

She frowned. "Well, what do you expect? You're such a baby. I had to escort you here to ensure you got on the plane. And you should have been devastated when Anna sent you home to mommy. But aside from some foul-tempered moping around the office, you seem none the worse for the experience."

"I'm not a whiner. Anna made her feelings perfectly clear."

"She did nothing of the sort. She left you a way in and she expects you to crawl through it. On your hands and knees."

"Well, that's being charitable."

"That's being a woman with a sense of the appropriate."

Steve watched the planes through the window. A RAD truck hunkered beside one aircraft, its crane-mounted particle detector panning across the fuselage, sniffing out heavy atoms. "This is a mistake. She sent the invitation before she lowered the boom. She doesn't want me at this dance."

Chelsea released a long, loud, theatrical sigh. "Come here," she said, and waved him to lean closer.

When he did, she slapped her palm hard against his forehead.

"Oww!"

"You dope. If things work out the way I think, you win after eating a healthy portion of pride. If your prediction holds and she tells you off, what's changed?"

"We're talking about Anna Marie Dearing here. She has an oratory skill that, right now, scares me half to death."

"SOUTHWEST AIRLINES TO AUSTIN NOW BOARDING AT GATE B5."

Steve stood and took up his bag and the suit carrier holding his tuxedo. Chelsea stood beside him.

"Well," she said, "you have the address, and your car rental stuff."

"Yes, Mom."

"Now, that guy owes me a few, so he was glad to loan you the house while he's out of town. Beats that antiseptic hotel room the network owns. Now, he said—"

"No parties, no girls, yeah, I remember."

"But I told him to shut his face, so you feel free to take home any girl you want, so long as her first name is Governor."

They entered the security line, silent as they watched the armed attendants examining their screens and greeting passengers with saccharin smiles. Steve clutched his ticket and overnight case in one hand and balanced his suit carrier in the crook of his free arm. His muscles began to complain. Chelsea fidgeted at his side. She looked from the attendants to Steve with regular, furtive glances. She seemed unsure what to do with her hands.

"You're something else," Steve finally said. "First, you practically run me out of the city. Now, you act as if you can't let me go. What goes on in that head, Van Arsdale?"

"More than you'll ever know."

"Try me. I'm a quick student."

The beautiful woman at the head of the scanner offered Steve a professionally friendly smile. "Excuse me, sir, but you'll have to step through. You're holding up the line." Her manicured hand rested casually on the butt of her shoulder-holstered pistol.

Steve apologized and stepped out of line. "Well, this is it," he said to Chelsea. "You'll be here when I get back? So I can say I told you so?"

"I'll be here."

"Tell Patricia I won't be long. She hangs on me like a wart these days."

"Don't worry about Patty. We'll have a good time."

He stood there; so did she. Finally, he turned back toward the line. "I'll be back day after tomorrow. Maybe we'll have lunch."

Chelsea grabbed and hugged him for a long, awkward moment. "Good luck," she whispered. "Come back happy."

"Well, I guess!"

She released him and stepped backward into the small stand of well wishers. She shooed him away. Steve rejoined the security line, but glanced back over his shoulder to her. Chelsea amazed him and confused him. Fifteen years, and he didn't know her, really know her, at all.

He was still looking back at her when he stepped into the scanner.

#

Carlton Westerly shuffled up the east stairway with Sam and the other tourists. He looked grim. That and his natural ungainliness gave him the appearance of struggling up the steps, like a man short of breath.

"You pick the strangest places to meet," Sam said under his breath.

"It's intentional. I want you to understand the issues here."

They reached the top of the stairs and followed the crowd into the largest room Sam had ever seen, a cavernous ballroom affair longer and wider than most entire houses. Sam itched to record the phenomenon, but his satcam lay stored in its case, secure in the hotel safe. He stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets.

"You could tell me what it's about," he said. He whispered to guard their conversation, and because the room demanded awe. "That would go a long way toward understanding. I'm telling you, I hate this secretive crap. First, the Lincoln Memorial, then the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, now this. We could have gotten the same amount of work done over a cheeseburger at Mickey D's."

"That's the problem with you reporters. To you, these places are little more than backdrops for stories. You've no sense of scale, of the big issues."

The crowd gathered in the center of the room. White-shirted security guards watched from both ends of the floor, looking pleasant enough, Sam thought, as long as everyone cooperated. The guide spoke.

"The East Room is the largest in the White House, spanning seventy-nine feet by thirty-six and three-quarters feet. Last remodeled in 2014, it was restored to its earlier 1902 luster, the year of the first major renovation. Guests are entertained here after official banquets with the president. Some great stars to perform in the East Room were..."

"We're on the air tomorrow," Sam said. "It would help if I could see the office complex, and if we could rehearse the plan."

"Rehearse? You're kidding. Do you expect to walk into the headquarters of the Republican National Committee, brandishing a TV camera, and have everyone smile for the picture?"

"By rehearse, I mean walk the halls, check for obstacles, time our approach to the vault, check for possible electronic interference. This camera gig isn't as simple as point and shoot, you know."

"Forget it. You're talking about secure areas. You almost need a pass to go to the bathroom. You can't walk around in there like you're lost on your way to the Smithsonian."

"Bullshit," Sam said. Westerly's spy versus spy routine grew more than a little tiresome. "This is politics, not the Pentagon. The Republicans and Democrats aren't fighting a war."

"But, they are, Mr. Clemmons, and, though I can't speak for the Democrats, the Republicans definitely protect their secret weapons."

"Sons of bitches know they have plenty to hide."

The crowd moved again, this time filing through a much smaller but still spacious parlor with luscious green silk for wallpaper, then into an ornate oval enclosure set up as a sitting room or reception area.

"Actually," Carlton said as he looked from delicate furniture to decorative walls to ornate molding, "from their point of view, the Republicans have little reason for shame. They just want to protect their knowledge, and their knowledge gathering capability, from the enemy. What good is a secret if everyone knows it?"

"It's been my experience that people with secrets usually know they're in the wrong," Sam said.

Carlton stopped in his obedient march through beautiful rooms. He looked at Sam's set face, and giggled.

"What's so funny?"

"You are." Carlton started walking again. "You're so monumentally naive. The Republicans don't see themselves as evil. Neither do the Democrats. One thing the parties have in common is their absolute certainty of their own inherent goodness."

"Really? Then why does the GOP hide its involvement in this EOG thing? If it's such a noble cause, why not do everything out in the open?"

"Tactics. Look at you. You nurse an alleged noble cause in investigating EOG. Why is your research done in secret? Because it's stupid to give your enemies fair warning, that's why. They could block your efforts. They could even characterize your efforts as dangerous, illegal, or evil. You're convinced your cause is right, but you work your cause in secret to protect your chances of righteous victory."

Sam, uncomfortably, found himself answerless.

The shuffling snake of tourists suddenly energized. Excited whispers rippled along from the next room, and everyone squeezed into a narrower line.

"What's going on?" Sam wondered aloud. "Are they serving food up there?"

The object of excitement appeared in the doorway ahead, tall, handsome in a grandfatherly sort of way, smiling and laughing with the crowd. He squeezed through the doorway and moved down the line, grasping at outstretched hands. He seemed pleased to see every one of the strange faces, as if he had personally invited them into his house. Then he stood before Sam, one hand extended in the reporter's general direction, the other patting Carlton on his shoulder. Sam took the proffered hand.

"Good morning, Mr. President."

"It is a good one, isn't it?" Chenault said, pumping Sam's arm. "Every morning's a good one, if we make it so."

"You bet, Mr. President."

Then he was gone, working along the crowd as if on a conveyer belt, turning his full attention to the next awed face, and the next, and the next. Sam looked after him, feeling more than a little foolish at having been caught in the wash of an old man's enthusiasm. Every morning's a good one, if we make it so. What did that mean, besides nothing? And he had meant every word of it. Regardless of his involvement with EOG and Mercy, regardless of his possible involvement in war crimes as reported from southern Europe, regardless of any unsavory thing he might have done or might do in the future, this president was, without doubt, a thoroughly likable guy. Sam looked down, surprised at his still outstretched hand.

"That's the issue," Carlton said.

Sam shook himself back to earth. "What do you mean by that?"

Carlton smiled. His thick glasses reflected the overhead lights, hiding his eyes. "I watch people, Mr. Clemmons. If anyone stuck a voting box in front of you just now, you'd vote Republican."

"I'm not that easy. Still, the man has charisma."

"He's a good man, doing his best, in a world he can't control. And you plan to destroy him for it."

"No," Sam said, wiping his hand on his jeans. He thought about his momentary high upon shaking the president's hand, and the free sample of Saturday morning philosophy that had struck him for an instant as succinctly brilliant. He sighed at the cult of personality that had taken control of the presidency, that ushered likable but incompetent men into the highest office in the land. Chenault did have charisma, but did anything back it up? Brains? Cunning? Guts? Or did he continue the young tradition of bowing to unseen authority, to the party bosses that held real power? And, what about Dearing? In the popularity contest the presidency had become, how did her charisma stack against Chenault's? "No," Sam said, shaking his head. "If anything I do destroys him, it won't be for what he's done, but what he's allowed to be done in his name."

#

The band seemed capable of anything, from Duke Ellington, to the Beach Boys, to the percussion-driven stuff that passed for popular music in the mid-twenty-first century. But Anna wasn't there for the music. She beamed polite interest in the millionaires, environmental advocates, local politicians and party functionaries in order to help her treasurer rack up pledges. To keep Kate Clancy happy, Anna endured the formal gown, a close-fitting strapless thing that made her feel half-naked and obvious. She hated that dress; it was fitted not for modesty, but for press appeal. According to Kate, it made her look successful. Successful at what, picking up johns? Anna felt unfaithful to Parker's memory while cocooned in the gown's white luster. Consequently, and to Kate's vocal chagrin, a wide black band circled one arm as a reminder of her mourning. Anna could only be packaged so far.

Anna endured that damnable dress and Kate's annoyance for the greater glory of the national committee and its state affiliates, and for an ulterior motive all her own.

Would he come? she wondered, sneaking a peek toward the ballroom's entryway, then turning her measured look of near-adoration back to her balding, fat, but wealthy companion. Would he come? He had the invitation, but he also had a nasty burn, carried over from last week. Steve had a persistent streak that she admired, but he was also vexingly unpredictable. Anyway, she was ready, if he had the nerve and the heart to show up.

"So, I reckon it's all takin' center stage, wouldn't you say, Governor?"

"Umm?" Anna refocused on her fat bag of money. "Oh, certainly! And you know what else is takin' center stage? My thirst." She watched him submit to her bright, practiced smile.

"You just wait here, Governor. I'll go get you a drink." Anna noticed his eyes roam quickly where they shouldn't. She wanted to kick him.

She held her bright expression even as he turned away; you never knew whose eyes were on you. She scanned the crowded room for Ray and found him thirty feet away at the bar, watching her. She mouthed silently across to him.

Rescue me.

"I hope scotch is all right," the old bore said as he returned. He held a huge tumbler out to Anna.

Ray's hand dropped onto the man's shoulder. "Excuse me, sir, but I must speak with the governor."

Anna looked stricken. "Oh, can't it wait, Ray? We're having such a wonderful conversation. Oh, I'm sorry," she said to the contributor. "This is Ray Yonelson, my campaign manager."

"Sorry, Governor, but it's an emergency."

"You sure, son?" the contributor said, trying to shoo Ray away. "You sure it ain't something you drones can handle with a little imagination and spit? We're talkin' policy here."

"I'm sorry, sir. I wouldn't interrupt unless it was really important."

Anna sighed. She patted her bore on his tuxedoed arm. "There's no fighting it, hon. The campaign manager is God. We'll have to continue this conversation another time. You will stick around won't you?"

"I most certainly will."

"That's great! Now, Ray, what is it that can't wait even a few short minutes?" She took her campaign manager's arm and distanced herself from her erstwhile companion.

"I'm sorry, Governor, but Kate tells me–" He grinned impishly. "–that there are only twelve more songs 'til the fat lady."

"Thank God in heaven. Ray, I swear, I'll have your baby if you get me out of this with my sanity intact."

"You do that, and Kate will have a baby, with no help from anybody."

They stopped near a wall. Upholstered folding chairs lined the baseboard.

"Thanks for saving me from that latest oaf," Anna said. "I guess all the really dapper moneybags are Republicans."

"Well," Ray said, "just rest here a minute. I got Kate to tag team him; he won't remember he even spoke to you when she's done charming him. I'll run interference with everyone else."

"Thanks. You're a dear."

"It'll only buy you five minutes, at best."

He left her by the wall in comparative isolation. A state senatorial candidate moved toward her, but found himself blocked by Ray's big, friendly arm. Anna dropped into the nearest chair.

She tried not to sag, but she was tired and despondent, despite her acting job to the contrary. Parker's death weighed upon her, swamping her in remorse and guilt. But the pressure and pace of campaigning soothed the most jagged edges. Though the pain still lived within her, still bled in hemorrhages whenever she thought of Parker and Minh, she had learned to control it, to beat it down when it dragged at her.

Not that she wanted to forget. She reached to touch the black band on her arm. One of her own had tried to kill her, and Parker had stepped between them. If she became president, the god-damned Black Panthers would cease to exist. That was her first, private, presidential promise. Whatever it took, they would not threaten another life in this world.

She returned to the present, to the money engine that made her aspirations possible. Only a few more obnoxious backers, only a few more hopeful straphangers, and she could retire to her room and get a few hours of needed sleep. Soon, she would once more enter the political wars: South Dakota, Louisiana, New York, and the now-fortified Texas, all on Tuesday. She had no competition to speak of, but the primaries were excellent platforms for sniping at the giant that was John Robert Chenault. She nodded to herself, newly centered for the rest of the evening, and refocused her eyes on the party.

And there he stood.

Steve fidgeted in the entryway far across the room while the host and a Secret Service attendant checked his ID and invitation. He looked delicious in the Oscar de la Renta tux that Anna had suggested to him two years earlier. He was not too tall or athletic, but slim, so tailored clothes complimented his five-ten frame. His shock of a gray beard contrasted the black double-breasted coat. She loved him in that tux. Was this only its second time out of the closet?

He's here, she thought, half-incredulous. The melancholy of the last several hours burned away in the heat of her discovery. She rose and started toward him.

#

Steve saw her across the floor. She was a dark-skinned goddess in that white dress, more beautiful than he had ever known. She extended her arms toward him, made that characteristic coaxing, grasping motion with her fingers. A power flowed from her along the line of her arms, capturing him, pulling him toward her. The crowd parted between them.

"Hi," Steve said, conscious of the same anxiety he had known on their last meeting. "It's me."

She clutched the lapels of his coat, urging him to her. She looked up at him with a sly smile, sly eyes, and a mischievous tilt to her head. She scared him half to death.

"You look nice." She ran one hand down a smooth sleeve of his coat.

"Well?" she whispered. "Dance with me. Everyone's watching."

And they were. The guests looked on as if watching the king and queen of a prom. The press was more avid, the still photographers jockeying for front positions, the TV guys scurrying to reorient their stationary rigs. All were arrayed along the perimeter of the room, for the cables and crew with the satellite gear would have made a wreck on the dance floor. Their blinding LED lights pinned the couple as if they were stage actors. Steve didn't care. He watched the only person who mattered, embraced her at the waist and took one of her small hands in his. He stepped into a languid slow dance, leading her. The crowd retreated to give them room.

#

Anna tried to tune out everything but her dance partner, a difficult task, thanks to the flaring strobes of the photographers and the steady, blinding assault of the TV lights. She closed her eyes and withdrew her hand from Steve's, then hugged him close and buried her face in his chest.

"Hmmm, hold me closer..."

He did. She felt warm in his arms, like a woman again, rather than some damned national icon. She focused on his strength and warmth, and the music, the slow, sultry music that framed their existence.

She felt him kiss her lightly on the head.

"If you're gonna do that, then do it like you mean it," she said into his chest.

"It's awfully public here."

She raised her eyes to his. He seemed so strong, all the way up there, holding her within the silky, black arms of his tux. "They're your people, darling. What do you suppose they want?"

"A show."

"Well, let's not be rude. Give them one."

"Excuse me?"

"What's the matter? Scared?"

He stopped dancing and looked at her, amused. She saw him think about it, saw him wonder what had gotten into his girl. She thought he would balk, but he surprised her by reaching down to plant a gentle kiss upon her lips, right there in front of God and everybody.

"You taste good," she said.

He took her wrists and put them to his neck. Then he kissed her again, ardently. She stretched high to return it, hanging from his neck. She felt his arms tighten around her as the music swelled. Then her feet left the floor. Distantly, she heard an eruption of applause, but it meant nothing to her. Only his lips mattered.

#

Like everyone else, Ray watched. Knowing what Kate would make of it, knowing she would be horrified that her candidate showed a romantic side, he almost laughed aloud. Then he saw Anna wave to the press while Tallman held her off the floor, and he thought: Good for her! She's having fun, for once. But his mirth faded as the tidal animal of reporters, now satiated of pictures, pulled away from the candidate, reoriented itself, and surged in his direction.

#

"We're alone," Steve said, easing her to the floor.

"Yes," she said. "Part of the plan."

The song ended. The band swung into a tighter, faster, Latin rhythm. The guests milled about, some dancing, others headed toward the bars, or just plain standing around. With the "show" over, they politely ignored Anna and Steve.

"Part of the plan? What's the rest of it?"

She grinned and took his elbow. "Take me for a walk, Mr. Tallman."

He obeyed, leading her toward the door, past the Secret Service agent there, and into the spacious lobby of the Lyndon B. Johnson Memorial Library. The architect had sculpted the semicircular area in concrete. Long banks of glass doors led to the several wings of the building, each on separate terraces of a wide, half-moon staircase. One of those doors fronted the library proper, another the museum that attracted most of the site's tourism. The lobby and the plaza outside swarmed with Secret Service agents and Texas Rangers, not to mention the volunteers and paid staff working the night's festivities. That night, privacy was a fantasy.

"Let's visit the museum," Anna said. "They opened it for the fund-raiser. Special treat."

"Is this part of the plan?" Steve asked, escorting her down the long, curved steps from the ballroom to the main tier of the lobby, then across the carpeted floor.

"That's a silly question," Anna said. She squeezed his arm. "You know me; I always have plans."

They mounted the steps on the far side of the lobby and headed toward the open glass doors of the museum. Steve stopped her just outside.

"I just need to say, I'm really sorry–"

"I know."

"No, I mean it. When this latest story is over, I'm quitting the show. I won't neglect you again."

She stretched to caress his neck with a kiss. "Don't make promises you can't keep."

"I love you, Anna."

"I know that, too." She tugged him gently through the doors.

The museum was a subtle affair. A polyresin sculpture of the late president met them just inside, but the bulk of the exhibit consisted of photographs on the walls, memorabilia in glass cases, and a small ten-seat TV theater that presumably showed highlights of Johnson's career. Anna led Steve to the back of the museum, where realistic mockups of Johnson's senatorial office and the Oval Office of the White House stood in full-scale glory.

Standing before the Oval Office replica, Anna squeezed Steve's arm harder and rested her head against his sleeve. "That's where I'm going. Consider this a preview of visiting me at home."

"I hope you make it," Steve said, but the thought weighed him down — not the thought of Anna as president, but the thought of the office itself.

She leaned forward, seeking his eyes.

"And what was that about, honey?"

"Hmm? Oh, nothing. It's the story I'm working. Shop stuff."

"Fair enough." She nodded. "We didn't come here to talk shop. Let's have a seat."

She led him to the theater, then lowered herself onto a back row seat, straightening her dress. What was she thinking? Steve wondered, then paused half way onto the seat beside her. A gray-suited man watched them from the museum doorway.

"Oh, don't mind Agent Huey," Anna said, noticing Steve's discomfiture. "He's my shadow. Actually, it's Agent Brown, but I've three of them coming and going at four hour intervals: Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Sit." She patted the seat. "We should talk."

"Does he have to stare?" Steve settled into the chair.

"It's his job, dear. If you try anything naughty, it's his responsibility to put you down."

Steve leaned forward, elbows on knees. What did she want to talk about? Was this the big lecture? Was he foolish to think he'd escaped?

"What are you thinking?" she asked. She sat tall in her chair.

"Truth?" he warned.

"Truth."

"I'm expecting bad news."

"Oh? From whom?"

"Anna Marie, don't play games with me. I've treated you badly. I imagine you've had enough."

She laughed. "Oh, Steve! Did you just dance with a woman who's had enough?"

He turned toward her.

She stifled her humor with a hand at her lips. "Sorry. That was inappropriate." She patted his back, then absently traced circles between his shoulder blades. "Yes, Steve, I was very offended, more because you never answered my calls than anything else. Yes, I think I deserve better. Hell, I could easily get better. But better treatment isn't the point, not here, not with us. With us, it's something deeper." She ran her hand up his back, squeezing with her fingers as she did so, stretching to caress the side of his neck. "Are we in love, or are we not?"

"Truth?"

"Truth, may God have mercy."

"I don't deserve you, Anna."

"No, you don't. But, I've been a very good girl, so I definitely deserve you. But again, that isn't the point. It's not what we deserve, or want, or who we need, but whether any or all of those things spell love."

"Oh? And how do you know if they do?"

She grinned at him. "Rules again? You always want... parameters." She watched him a moment, and the grin vanished. "Okay." She reached over and tapped his left arm. "Show me."

There was no need to speak of it. He knew what she meant. Steve unbuttoned his tux jacket and shrugged it off. He laid it across a neighboring chair then rolled up the sleeve on his left arm.

There on the skin just below the elbow was a tattoo of a bar code.

Anna reached for his arm and ran her fingers along the image. Her touch felt good on his skin.

"That," she said. "That's how you know. You have that, and I still want to spend my life with you."

"Do you even know what it really means?"

"Eh. Not entirely, but I've an inkling. Berkley, you know. It's in my state. Lots of smart government research there."

She withdrew her caresses and leaned forward, removing her glasses. It took a moment to realize that she had no cloth to polish them.

Steve understood the glasses. He handed her the show handkerchief from his breast pocket.

"Thanks," she said, and wiped the oval lenses. "Steve, you have to understand something, and take it to heart. My love — and my patience — extends only so far. You're right. I won't take any more. I need you in more than just name. If things don't change, then we'll have to call it quits, no matter how much I need you, no matter how much it hurts."

"Fair enough. More than I deserve, in fact." Steve rolled down his shirt sleeve. "I'll do better, Anna. I promise."

"Now, now. Remember what I said about promises..."

They sat leaning across their knees, Steve with his hands clasped in front of him, Anna polishing her spotless glasses. The remote tones of the band filled their silence, another slow tune from a few years ago.

"So, I've said my piece." She settled her glasses back into place and held out the kerchief to him. "How such words could come from a woman in love, I don't know. Of course, I've little experience in these matters. I'm more a 'married to my work' kind of lady, you know. Now, honey, it's your turn. I've made my confession. You need to return the gesture."

"I thought I had."

"Humor me."

He straightened, pulling her gently up as he did so. He took the glasses from her, and placed them on a neighboring chair. Then he put an arm around her shoulders, and pulled her close. She snuggled into his chest.

"I came here against my will," he said, petting her arm. "Chelsea made me come."

"Uh-huh." He felt her stiffen in his embrace.

"Don't do that. Truth, remember? I wanted to come. I wanted things to be right between us, but I was sure you didn't want to see me again. I'm glad I was wrong. I'm glad I'm here." He felt her relax a little.

"I'm glad you're glad. How is Chelsea?"

Steve thought it an odd question. How often had they met? Once? Twice? And then only for moments? "Chelsea's Chelsea. As irritated with me as you are, I imagine."

"I never understood your relationship with her."

"That's okay. She understands my relationship with you." He kissed her lightly on the head. Her hair smelled of apples, and the fried sweetness of a hot comb in pomade. "What about you, Anna? Do you know? How I feel, I mean."

"Pretend I don't. My ears are yours, honey."

She has no idea, Steve thought. She thinks in terms of romantic and physical love, of possession, faithfulness, and physical and spiritual need. How could he explain?

"Remember when we first met? You were on a speaking tour. I was producing an unrelated remote for CBS News."

"We were across the street from each other. If it hadn't been for ice cream..."

"Right. I came over to get an ice cream cone while the crew packed up from our story. You came from the other direction, and we met at the door."

"You were such a gentleman. You held the door for me, even though you got there first."

"I was stunned to immobility. From the moment I noticed you walking toward me, I knew you were something perfect, and that the greatest portion of my life would be meaningless without you."

"Umm, honey, you really ought to tone back the compliments. They kind of lose credibility–"

"No, you don't understand. I didn't see just a pretty woman headed for the ice cream store. My head doesn't work that way. I see the pretty girl, see her mannerisms, her cares, impressions of her thoughts, her whole life. Those first instances, however they turn out, are the basis of all that follows. When I saw you there, I didn't meet you so much as recognize you."

"Interesting. So, you don't love me for my body. Too bad for you."

"Anna..."

"Go on, dear. I'm listening."

He stroked her hair. "There isn't much more. You struck me with a great power. You're ... the most profound soul I've ever encountered, the only one whose approval matters."

"My! And to think you won't write me or return my calls. Odd combination, don't you think?"

"I make this too hard, Anna. An almost impossible chore. But, try to understand, I'm never without you. I carry you everywhere, here." He tapped his heart. "I sometimes ... forget ... that you need more than that." The flash in her eyes hurried him on. "I was ready to worship you the first time I laid eyes on you. It's true. I didn't read that off a card. I fell in love the first time you spoke."

"Oh? And what was the first thing I said? 'Thank-you,' I suppose, since you opened the door for me."

"Actually, I didn't think you noticed me, but I was a little giddy. I think I underwhelmed you."

"Oh, come on. I thought you were cute. I gave you the eye, didn't I? Didn't I give you the eye?"

"No."

"Oh, well, I meant to. So, if I didn't give you the eye, or say 'thank-you,' then what made you fall in love with me?"

"You said: 'One dip of mint chocolate chip, please. In a cup.'"

She laughed, and hugged him. "Boy! You're easily impressed!"

"That's what you said," he continued, reminiscing. "It was everything missing in my universe."

"What, mint chocolate chip? In a cup?"

"No, dummy!"

She brought her face even with his and kissed him on the mouth. "So, is your universe now complete?"

#

The hot rush of wind shocked him. It withered and snatched away the mini-theater and the delicious face of his lover. He stood in his tux on the barren desert plain. Red dust powdered the flapping legs of his black trousers. The coat felt hot. He squinted into an almost featureless dark, the grumbling heart of an approaching storm. He glanced around, but found no shelter. The storm dived for him, a raptor.

#

"Steve?"

"No. It isn't."

"Steve?"

#

A figure coalesced from the falling dark, an old man, splitting wood. He swung his ax in a long, fluid arc, shattering the wood with the lazy effort of one used to hard outdoor work.

"Ben? Ben Tallman?"

The old man looked up from his chore, and laughed. "Well, howdy, boy. Kind of overdressed for the neighborhood, ain't ya'?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Same as you, boy. I live here!"

He lives here? "What do you mean?" Steve shouted over the hot wind's howl. "I don't understand!"

Ben Tallman leaned his ax against the chopping block and squinted into the lowering black. His ponytail snapped in the wind like a streamer. "Storm's comin'," he said. "Gonna be a bad one."

Steve stepped toward his uncle, fighting the now blistering gale, but Ben seemed to move farther away with each closing step, and to fade more and more into the dark. Steve felt the flesh bubbling on his exposed skin. It was a sudden, unexpected agony. He fell prostrate, raising his boiling eyes just as Ben vanished into the black. Diamond hard points of light glowered in the old man's place. Wet sabers scrabbled across the ground, searching for Steve's soul.

Someone squeezed his shoulder. The touch soothed the pain of his broiling, splitting skin. "Don't worry, you'll make it," she said. "I know, because I love you."

#

The blackness vanished. His eyes blinked against stinging light. He wrenched them shut until they watered, then slowly allowed them open to a squint.

Anna held him at arm's length, her eyes wide as white saucers.

"Steve! Talk to me. What's the matter?" She shook him by the shoulders.

"Governor. Is there a problem?" The Secret Service man had approached to within a few feet.

"Steve!"

"I'm okay," he said. He raised himself to a sitting position. When had he lain down? Had he collapsed?

Anna stared at him, tense, her brow furrowed, breathing in heavy gulps. Slowly, she unclenched her hands from his shoulders. Slowly, purposefully, she relaxed her anxious body. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, fine." Steve wiped his sweaty forehead.

"Governor?" the agent asked.

"We're okay, Agent Brown. We don't need any help."

The agent nodded, and returned to his place at the door.

"Steve?"

"I'm okay. What happened?"

"That's my line, honey. You just glazed over, then started to shake. Did you have one of those seizures?"

Steve sat straight in his chair. He inventoried his condition. He felt none of the nausea or weakness that accompanied an attack. He felt fine, but a little confused.

"It wasn't a seizure," he said. "If I'm wrong, it was a damned strange one."

"Should you see a doctor, or take some medicine? Just in case?"

"It wasn't a seizure," Steve said, thinking. "It was a vision."

"A vision?"

"A waking dream. Something shot into my head. For a while, I went somewhere. Things ... happened."

"Was it one of those dreams?"

He looked at her, at the worry in her eyes. He brought her close, and hugged her.

"Don't worry. It's all right. You were there."

"Me?" She pushed away from him. "You really should get it looked at, Steve. It'll kill you one day."

"They've already looked at it."

"What did they say?"

"Can't tell you. Maybe they will, when you're president."

#

Steve lay awake that night. He tried to blame it on his worries over Anna, but that was a weak lie. Truthfully, he was afraid. His ominous encounter with the Bear disturbed him. The newly aggressive apparition no longer waited with infinite patience at the dark horizon of that phantom desert. Now it attacked, and across the previously impassable barrier between sleep and consciousness. There was no safety now, Steve admitted.

Now, not even wakefulness offered escape from his dreams.

Chapter Twenty:

First Battle

 (Back to Contents)

"System GO for ground station retrans. Time: cue minus twelve minutes, thirty-four seconds, mark."

"Roger your mark, twelve three four," Steve said over his headset mike to the systems controller down the hall. He looked to Hailey, his source supervisor, whose short-cropped red hair flashed from output screen to output screen, verifying feed queues with the icons on her monitor. Rick, the originator of those feed queues, sat to Steve's left, looking asleep with his head dipped lazily to his chest. As transmission tech, his duties were done until broadcast time. His tiny battery-powered TV squatted atop his console, tuned to the network and its current offering of police docu-drama. A tablet propped up against a box of pencils duplicated the video as it was fed from the net. Rick and Hailey would watch their labors on those little screens. The broadcast monitor in the control room gave them the feed just before it jumped to space, but Rick's portables showed them the program as it really looked to subscribers, complete with blue screens, freezes, and commercial breaks. They weren't the best at their jobs, these two; they hadn't the experience of Jerry McFadden's bunch in LA. But they were thorough, competent, and eager. Steve anticipated smooth, professional efforts from his young engineers.

"This is it," Steve said, biting back excitement. "A little over ten minutes 'til the most important show you'll ever work. You'll tell your grandkids about this one, folks."

"Not me," Rick said from behind closed eyelids. "I've had a vasectomy."

Hailey punched his shoulder. "Is it really necessary to share that with us? Geez, Ricky, I can't imagine anyone more disgusting."

"I could fix you up with my brother..."

"Later," Steve warned, seeing Hailey bristle. "Let's send our crews the broadcast cue warning. Hailey?"

"On it, boss. Phoning as you speak."

Steve clicked his headset remote, tuning it to Hailey's channel. "Colorado, ready," he heard as his reporters acknowledged the signal from her console.

"New York Queens, ready."

"New York Chinatown, ready."

"DC Justice, ready."

"DC Mackie, ready."

The litany continued, all voices radiating the energy of strained expectation. Whose story would make the difference tonight? Whose would even make the air? Eighteen cameras on this biggest story of See It Now's two-year run, and only sixty minutes to use them. Both Pulitzers and anonymity awaited their owners tonight, awards determined by fate, necessity, and the whims of the clock.

#

"Montana, ready," Peggy said to the satcam, then leaned back in her chair. Tom Merritt's house stood dark in the growing twilight, the gloom transforming her stories into serious black shadows. They sat or stood about the living room, listening to the television in one corner, but trying not to look at it. Each shadow put on its most serious air, trying its best not to be afraid, trying to make a more heroic impression. Jim and Susan Johnson sat together on the couch, Susan prim and straight, Jim rocking rhythmically at the edge of his seat. They were so frightened, those two, and embarrassed by their obvious fear. But Peggy admired the couple for their determination to push the truth to its natural ends. She had learned much from them over the last several days, lessons in moral strength that anchored her own fledgling sense of confidence.

Merritt paced the length of the cherrywood floor, his feet sounding exasperating clumps in the near-silent room. Periodically, he stopped at the shuttered front windows to peek out at his guards, ranch hands he trusted to protect the house and the lives it contained. Peggy remembered him standing over Jimmy Belew's corpse, days ago. He had sworn himself to a dangerous mission that night, knowing some good could come of it with the media's help – with her help. Peggy was the linchpin for his success or failure, her and his solid assurance of righteousness.

The meeting house firefight hadn't surprised Merritt. He had accepted that horror as the new fact of life and set to building the protective force he now employed. He had even expected the others, the townspeople who appeared on his doorstep, wanting to join his cause, to stand in opposition to the dark forces growing in their community. For, though the militia seemed dead, shot down by its leadership, its shadow still crept across the lives of the innocent.

Dennis Paterson's father came to Merritt's house, a small penance for blindness toward his son's monstrous activities. And others from the region had arrived throughout the week, bearing tidbits of information that solidified the story of the Montana Rural Auxiliary. Fifteen people waited in the dark of Tom Merritt's living room, their separate hopes and their unified purpose centered on the big city cameralady who would place their truth before the world. Peggy had come to think Montana a haven for misanthropic insanity. Now she knew its true heart.

They waited in darkness, lost in their anxieties. The moon crept above the horizon. No one asked to light a lamp or to turn up the whispering TV. Peggy needed light to set up her shots, but she would wait as long as possible, to give these people their last private moments. Soon, they would bare their allegiances to millions, including the enemy they stood against. They risked much for her story. She offered no gift or protection in return.

#

Mike Eller wasn't in the cue. He didn't know about the EOG show, about the slaughter back home, about any of it. He only knew he had satellite contact managed by the boys and girls in L.A., and it was almost time to send them his feed.

He strapped the satcam tighter to his arm. He knelt amid a frenzy of Muslim fighters as they took up their positions on the ridgeline above or scurried to other duties for the coming attack. Vidovic slapped Mike on the back, then tugged him to his feet.

"Time for a televised lesson, eh?" the Muslim leader said. "Distance learning, the hard way."

"In just minutes, the world will know what goes on here," Mike promised. "Your war is about to change, Mr. Vidovic."

"Let's hope it's for the better, Mr. Eller. Come on, the attack begins."

Mike jogged behind the ex-professor of political science as they made their way along the floor of the barren, mud-slimed ravine. He had no trouble keeping up; the medicine dispensed to him at Vidovic's command had begun to work its magic. A bodyguard stayed at his rear, but as protection, not jailer. Mike no longer required a keeper; he had crossed over during his last week with the Muslims, abandoning the objectivity of his profession and adopting the Muslim perspective. He was on their side now. To his mind, no other side made sense.

After a few hundred yards, they came upon a cluster of two dozen or so armed men and boys. Vidovic stopped in their midst, Mike close behind him. The Muslim leader exchanged brief words with a lieutenant, then patted the man on the shoulder and said something casual to the troops. The men laughed, a nervous but thankful sound. Then they turned to their gear. They secured the varied rifles, machine guns and portable anti-tank rocket launchers that made up their meager arsenal, as well as their bulky assortment of homemade satchel bombs and long-bladed knives. They hung their weapons from their bodies, dropping all other possessions, what little they owned, to the ground.

"We're ready," Vidovic said. "These men will attack the front gate moments after diversions are launched against the back quarter of the facility. Then we, in the confusion, will creep unnoticed under the fence. With luck, we should have interesting video for your viewing audience. Wouldn't you rather watch from the ridgeline?"

"I've been shot at before."

"Suit yourself."

"And Vidovic. I have to remind you, this isn't going out live. It's being cached for three days out."

Vidovic grinned. "I've been fighting for years. I can be patient a few days longer." He snapped orders to his men.

Ten Muslim soldiers scrambled up the ravine's slope, weapons ready. Most of them were boys.

#

Sam never got the signal. His camera was silent, the battery removed to prevent remote activation. He walked alongside Carlton Westerly toward the first floor reception desk of the Headquarters, Republican National Committee. The security guard on duty eyed them with disinterest, recognizing the oddball little guy with the thick glasses, but not the tall, black one in the expensive suit.

"I don't think he likes us," Sam said under his breath.

"They aren't paid to like anybody," Carlton returned. "Just concentrate on that data I gave you."

They stopped at the desk. The guard eyed them. The tinny speaker of his portable TV prattled from beneath the counter, the end credits to that cop docu-drama just before See It Now. A fan?

"May I help you?" the man asked without warmth.

"A little late work." Carlton smiled, a tremulous effort that Sam was sure gave them away. "This guy's from the Information Security Office. He needs to check my procedures upstairs."

"Excuse me?"

"Sorry." Carlton tried again. He hauled his ID card from a pocket and showed it to the guard. "I'm Carlton Westerly. I work in Mr. Southerman's office? In Information Security? This guy's here to check my procedures, make sure I'm doing my job right."

"You can't do this during the day?"

"Running late," Sam said. "Got a lot of clients. Got more after this one." He handed over the stolen ID Carlton had given him. "Can we get this over with?"

The security man regarded Sam's ID with open suspicion. "Who approved your visit, Mr. Denny?"

"Nobody approves my visits. That's why they're called surprise inspections."

"I don't have you on my list."

Sam leaned across the desk in his best approximation of a threat. "Did IQs drop drastically in the last few minutes? It's a surprise inspection, buddy. They don't put surprises on your list."

"You'll have to see Mr. Southerman."

"Fine. Where's Southerman?"

"He's at home, I imagine. I can call him..."

"You must be joking." Sam turned to Carlton. "Is this how it works, Westerly? You keep me here for an hour yammering to your boss while somebody cleans up your mess upstairs?"

"Please," Carlton beseeched the guard. "This is my job..."

"It's all right," Sam continued, enjoying himself. "I'll just see to my next appointment. Wouldn't want you folks put out. But I'm shutting you down as of right now." He looked hard at the guard. "Take a good look at your security monitors, buddy. They go dead about thirty seconds after I wake my phone."

"Mr. Denny?"

"Yes? Hurry, please. I have appointments."

"Your operating number."

"Excuse me?"

"Give me your operating number, please."

Sam rattled off the nine digits, hoping he got them right. "You want my wife's maiden name, too?"

The guard tapped keys on his desktop unit. "This says you're single."

"Great! You can read." Oops!

"You don't look much like your picture, sir."

No kidding! "Next time, I'll try Sexy Shots."

The guard surveyed him with disapproval, then reached one hand beneath the desk. He slapped a clipboard down in front of the two.

"Sign here."

Sam took the clipboard's tethered pen and scribbled an approximation of Mr. Denny's signature.

"Thank-you," Carlton said as he, too, signed the visitor's sheet.

The two sagged in unison once behind the closed elevator doors.

"I'm surprised that worked," Sam said.

"It hasn't yet."

"Did you see that visitor's list? There must be another dozen people in this building."

"I saw. We'll have to be careful."

The doors opened onto an empty alcove. Carlton went first into the hall.

"Nobody," he said.

"Somehow, I don't feel lucky, Mr. Westerly."

Carlton shrugged as he led Sam through a maze of intersecting hallways. "There're only a dozen other people in the building aside from security and the janitorial staff. It's a big building. They might all be on some other floor."

He veered down a dead end to a metal door marked with bold, stenciled lettering:

Office of Information Storage

Secure Access Only

Carlton took a plastic card from his wallet and inserted it into the reader mounted next to the doorway. A click from the electronic lock, and they pushed into the office.

"I've seen better security at McDonald's," Sam said.

"That wasn't an American Express card. This place doesn't open for just anybody."

"Don't challenge me."

The office resembled a bank's loan department. A half dozen desks were caged within individual low partitions, and a stretch of glass blocked off a steel door at the back of the office. Carlton used his pass card to negotiate the glass wall, then stopped outside the vault.

"This is it," he said, his card poised. "This door will record my access time for everybody to see. It's the end of my job, Mr. Clemmons."

"Your choice, man. I just carry the camera. Speaking of which..." He removed his jacket, then unbuckled his belt. "You make your decision. I'll get the gear."

Sam pushed his pants down to his ankles. The satcam hugged the inside of one thigh, held there by an athletic bandage.

"Isn't that uncomfortable?" Carlton asked.

"Only when I walk. Or don't." Sam freed the camera from its hiding place, then drew his pants back up. "Come on, let's do it."

Carlton fed his card to the doorside reader.

#

"Begin replay." The insistent percussion of See It Now's theme rippled through the control room. From the wall-mounted "on-deck" monitor fronting the studio, a black and white Edward R. Murrow watched the proceedings sternly. His portrait vanished, replaced by Harry at the anchor desk, arranging his tablets. Steve ignored the screen. He watched the old-fashioned analog program clock on the wall, focusing on its sweep hand. "Live in four ... three ... two ... one... Cue announcer!"

"The news of today, of minutes ago, of right now," the canned voice said over the percussion and keyboard lead-in and the frenetic montage of action visuals. "A commitment to truth. A commitment to timeliness. The informed have come to the right place. CBS presents ... See It Now!"

The theme ran. The visuals careened across the monitor. Hurricanes. Wars. Crime on the Streets. The President and Congress. A Baby Delivered. The Flag. A flood of icons, some wrenching, others mundane, still others poignant or played for shock. This lead-in had won an Emmy in the show's opening season. Not a frame of it had changed.

"Bring Harry on deck. Send the count. Five .. four ... three ... and cue anchor!"

Harry's face blinked from "on-deck" to replace the Fred Friendly screen saver on the neighboring broadcast monitor. "Good evening," he said at precisely the right time. Steve turned away to set up the next cut with Hailey and Rick.

"A single story tonight, but one that affects all Americans," Harry continued. "It begins years ago, with a prediction that sparked mounting fear in some sectors of America's white community, a prediction by demographers that changing birth rates would make Anglo-America a minority by the year 2056. And it's happened. The European-derived cultural base that has dominated this country since its inception now represents only the largest minority group in the land. With no population leverage afforded to any one group, does America finally fulfill its promise of an ecumenical existence for all? Does she descend into civil strife as her former masters refuse to surrender power? The surprising answer tonight, on See It Now."

#

The vault wasn't much, no more than ten feet by ten feet, its walls lined with shelves made heavy by cardboard boxes of roughly organized bio-photonic prisms. Some of those boxes lay open on the floor and on the room's one table, where Carlton Westerly worked the desktop computer. Carlton had stacked a half-dozen discs next to his workstation, and plugged one after the other into the machine's I/O port.

"Everything's here," he said. "Mercy's conversation as he proposes EOG to Southerman, their subsequent discussions as they realize the bill is political dynamite, and their decisions to go under the table with it. Their choosing of the freshman congressman to offer up the bill in the house–"

"Yeah, that's fine, but we know most of that. Solid information, but it doesn't have teeth."

"Here's Southerman's conversation with Chenault, giving him his marching orders for when EOG gets passed."

Sam whistled. "Now, that has teeth. Put that in memory and cue it up. Let me hook that box of yours to the camera..."

#

"It was routine. Illegal as hell, but still routine." He was bronze-skinned, thick-featured, and surrounded by an incongruous background of computer monitors, bio drives, and the geometric pattern of a Navaho weaving that hung against his wall. But he wasn't Navaho. A wooden kachina figure stood atop the monitor just beyond his shoulder, identifying him as Hopi, or some other of the Pueblo Indians. The kachina showed a realistic human body crowned with a canine head.

Coyote, Steve thought, or one of his lieutenants. The ultimate trickster. How appropriate for an electronic pirate in the Native American Movement.

"We found the document EOG_Back on a regular net sweep. Then we geared up for it, tagged its codes for interception. We snatched it a couple of times to read, long before we decided to copy it."

"Didn't it bother you," the reporter asked, "prying into other people's private documents like that?"

The man released two quick barks of laughter. "It's a war, you know? We're doing electronic warfare. Hell, we learned it from you people."

#

"Goddammit, why isn't that show off the air?" Mercy was livid, angry enough to call his NSA contact from home. To hell with Southerman and his bullshit phone taps!

"I'm doing as you asked, sir," the patient reply came. "You wanted the locations of their cameras, right?"

"You said you could track them before Tallman went on the air, when his people initialized with their network base. They've been on for ten minutes!"

Mercy heard the man sigh. "Sir, I said it was possible to pick them up early, not guaranteed. There are factors to consider, variables such as the weather, electromagnetic interference–"

"Get them off the air! Send me the locations you have and get them the fuck off the air!"

"Yes, sir. I'll do that, if that's what you want. I can send them dead in the next minute–"

Mercy slammed down the phone. He stood there in his dinette with his hand on the receiver, listening to his own snorting breath. A tablet played on the kitchen counter. All the TVs in the house blared. That girl occupied the screen. She purposefully, vindictively, stabbed his EOG with deadly accusations.

"I think they bribed my uncle, threatened to tell the press about me if he didn't cooperate. Well, he doesn't have to cooperate anymore. If this doesn't take away their blackmail ammunition, I don't know what will."

"You're taking a big risk," the unseen reporter said. "So far, your only real protection has been your anonymity. Now, the FBI, the Department of the Interior, everybody knows who you are. Was it worth it?"

She responded deadpan. "These people are monsters. I gladly give up my security to ensure they are stopped." Then she smiled coltishly. "But, don't worry. I'm good at hiding."

#

"What's this?" Sam picked a prism from the scattered mess on the vault floor. It stood on end amid the others, its label exposed to his eye.

Carlton worked at his keyboard, queuing up a third file at Sam's request. "What's the label?" he said without looking. "Maybe I'll remember."

"It says 'Schoolhouse, August '55.'" Now, wasn't that name familiar?

"Oh, yeah. Chenault, Southerman and Mercy worked together on that one. I remember because it was a conference call, one of the rare times Mercy ever spoke directly with the president. The prism is a series of calls, actually, all related to military matters."

Sam stared at the prism label. "The name's familiar," he said. "Steve told us something– Holy shit!" He turned to the satcam and threw one hand toward the MIC button.

#

"Sam's on the box," Hailey announced. "He says it's an emergency."

"Stand by," Steve said. He concentrated on the broadcast monitor, where his cameraman at the Justice Department tried to corner an uncooperative Supreme Court justice. Should he stick with this one, or go to the Capitol Building, where Mackie stood ready and willing to talk?

#

"Three minutes, everyone," Peggy called through the house. "Mrs. Johnson, could you turn on all the lights, please? And someone turn off the TV. It'll cause an echo."

She stood centered in Merritt's living room, the satcam strapped to one arm. Everyone moved when the first lamp went on, but a cautioning wave of her hand settled them back in their places. "Everyone stay put unless I tell you otherwise. We don't need all the background noise. Mr. Paterson, could you pull that easy chair over here? This'll be the interview space–"

Someone pounded the front door. Everyone jumped like scared cats. "Mr. Merritt?" one of the sentinels yelled from outside on the porch. "Sir, we got company."

#

"Enough of this," Steve said, disgusted. "Send him the ten-second count. Put Mackie on the air, Montana on deck."

"Okay," Rick said, reaching a hand toward his touchscreen. "Setting up the switch on my end. Hailey– Hey, what the hell?" He half stood and smacked the flank of his portable TV. The screen showed only a bright blue field.

#

Mercy almost called Southerman at home. The stupid son of a bitch, they were in his own office! He dialed the party boss's number and listened to the first few rings, but cut the connection before anyone picked up. An idea occurred to him. Perhaps he could handle this latest insult in much the same way as he did those pests in Montana. The necessary instruments were absent in DC, but with a little creativity... He stepped across his wife's former sewing room to the computer and clicked the DC icon in his database. He found the best possible number, decided which favor he would have to call due, and clicked the dial button.

#

"What do you mean, we're off the air?"

"I'm telling you, boss, we are off." Rick shook the little TV.

"Are you sure?" Steve said, pretty damned sure himself but disoriented by the news. "What about batteries? Are you low on juice?"

Rick pressed the channel control, cycling through the scale as fast as he could. Every channel came in sharp and loud until he returned to CBS. Blue. "The net feed's empty, too."

"We need a resolution," Hailey warned. "We've missed the count. My sources are getting antsy."

Steve hesitated a moment, then gave the automatic orders for such an occurrence. "Do the cut. Bring on Mackie, and everybody else according to the script. Rick, I want a diagnosis now, and a technical difficulties flag posted from all ground station transmitters."

"You got it, boss, but I don't think anything's wrong..."

"Systems controller!" Steve snapped into his pickup after clicking the proper channel. "Hank? I need a status on the main ground hub and the satellite uplink. We're off the air."

"Stand by," the controller said. Steve turned away from his engineers, hoping to block the noise of their effort to repair this worst of live broadcast disasters.

"Both the ground station and the uplink check out fine," the controller said. "Is there a problem in your control room?"

"I don't think so."

"Then I guess it's in the satellite. Is it still up there?"

"I'm sure it is," Steve said, and his thoughts crystallized. It just isn't listening to us. We're being jammed!

"Rick! That diagnosis!"

"There's nothing wrong! Everything checks out fine!"

"Hailey! Talk to your sources. Tell them to start recording, that we're off the air and don't expect a timely return. Rick, start recording from here, as a backup."

"You got it, boss!"

"What about network?" Hailey asked, brow furrowed. "Are you gonna call?"

Steve sighed. "I guess I'd better."

While his people tried to salvage the broadcast that wasn't, Steve stepped to the wall phone for CBS News in New York. The standard line beside it rang before he grabbed the handset. Instinctively, he snatched it up.

"Steve? It's Kenny."

"I'm a little busy here, Beachman..."

"As my TV indicates, buddy. Is this problem what I think it is?"

"I believe so. We can't find anything else."

"Well, I know you have a lot to think about, but remember, jamming isn't all these people can do."

Steve almost dropped the phone.

"You there, buddy? Steve?"

"Gotta go, Beachman."

"Good luck."

Steve slapped the handset to its cradle. "Hailey! A message for your sources! Tell them to shut down and get the hell out! They're being tracked!"

Hailey just stared at him, wide-eyed.

"What is it? Go on, it can't get that much worse."

"My monitor registers a general transmission/reception fault. The satellite's totally off-line. I can't talk to anybody."

#

Mike wriggled under the chain link fence and past the teenager holding the metal mesh away from the ground. He ran, crouching, to Vidovic, who had flattened himself against the back wall of the nearest building. The air reverberated with the sounds of machine gun fire and minor explosions. The Muslims' double diversion seemed to be working.

"Still sure about this, Mr. Eller?" Vidovic gripped his sub-machine gun, the muzzle trained upwards. His men crouched near him, and against another building twenty meters away.

"I guess it's too late to change my mind," Mike muttered.

This brought a suppressed chortle to the former professor's lips. "Excuse me if I control my laughter. I wouldn't want to attract undue attention." He spoke to the men beside him, then made a hand signal to those across the way. "Let's go," he said to Mike, and slid around the corner of the building.

Mike brought the camera under one arm and started recording. He would send his data later, when he had it all to send. They approached a T-intersection and jogged along its long vertical. Stucco-covered two-story buildings flanked the street, their red-tiled roofs and yellowish walls perfectly aligned with the pavement. Smoke enveloped the buildings behind them, and most of the gunfire came from there. But Mike's back ached from opportunities for ambush. The place was a field of dead zones. Who could say what lurked between the uniformly spaced buildings, or hid within the structures themselves, watching in defilade from windows.

The rebels were split into two groups, one on each side of the street. They leapfrogged their way down the road, always guiding off Vidovic, one group covering the other, never moving both at once. In this way, they negotiated half the length of the compound without incident. Vidovic signaled a halt, then dropped to one knee alongside a cracked wall. His men did the same, orienting themselves for greatest security.

"At the next intersection, we turn left. The armory is two buildings down from that point. How are you holding up, Mr. Eller?"

"I'm okay. Can we go any faster?"

"I don't care much for the Serb government, but I respect its guns. We're going fast enough, I think. Are your friends in America ready?"

"I imagine. I haven't spoken to them."

Vidovic regarded him evenly. "This whole production is for your benefit. I'd hate to waste time and lives—"

"You worry about the military end. I'll handle the news."

Vidovic pressed his lips together. He signaled across the street, then rose and jogged toward the next intersection. The others followed, Mike included. The soldiers trained their weapons in all directions. The overwatch team protected them from across the street.

Just short of the intersection, Vidovic halted, then signaled the other team forward. Mike reoriented his camera on the moving Muslims. They bounded into the intersection, perhaps too quickly, but they had to cross the open space and set up in the corner buildings to oversee their leader's next move.

The first casualties went almost unnoticed. Two boys fell over, as if stumbling. Mike waited for them to scramble upright and proceed more cautiously, but they didn't get up, or even move. Vidovic yelled a harsh command just as the first explosive reports caught up with their bullets.

Four men broke from Vidovic's group and dodged around the back of the building where they had halted. The others crowded at the streetside wall and fired around the corner at targets hidden from Mike, perhaps even from themselves. The group across the intersection also returned fire. The place was a theater of staccato thunder.

Two harsh pops overwhelmed the gunfire, then a detonation like a loud, basso burp rolled up the street. The noise level decreased, though only by comparison, when the Muslims ceased fire. The shrieking racket of the far off diversions continued.

Vidovic peeked around the corner of his protective wall, then turned back to his men and issued a quick command. They rose with him and bolted from their protective space, then down the street toward the expected armory. Mike followed close behind, his camera still aimed from his armpit.

His lens followed Vidovic across the street to the second building, panning briefly to take in the bodies of six Serb soldiers lying on the pavement, four Muslims standing over them. It angled back as Vidovic burst through the front door of a building, only a few of his men following while the others spread out for security.

Mike did not hesitate. He passed the armory's threshold at a run.

#

"On your bellies! Get down, now!"

Peggy hesitated. In that frozen moment, the flood of gray combat uniforms overwhelmed her, pouring through the front door and in from the kitchen and bedroom areas. They had been in the house even before the sentinel's warning.

Other uniforms entered behind the grays. Policemen, the county sherriff. Then a rifle butt slammed into Peggy's back, propelling her to the floor. The pain at the base of her neck screamed, drowning out the frightened, and in some cases angry, protests of her companions. She threw out an arm to cushion her fall, her camera arm. She felt paralyzing agony as her stiffened elbow took her fall. She heard the lens of her camera shatter against the cherry planks of the floor.

"Stay down! Nobody moves!"

Peggy heard Mrs. Johnson sobbing and Merritt spitting indignant protests, but she could not lift her head to find them. Her shrieking arm and back immobilized her.

"You have the right to remain silent! If you waive this right, anything you say can be used against you in a court of law! You have the right–"

Well, at least they weren't executioners.

#

"Local stations have taken over," Rick said. "This is embarrassing. Here in Indy, our slot is filled with Gilligan's Island, of all things."

"Gilligan's Island?" Hailey slumped at her station. She rubbed her face hard. "Oh, my God, Gilligan's Island. Have they had it on contract for a century?

"Stop," Steve snapped. He paced the control room floor. "I don't give a damn about what's playing down the street. We have to talk to those cameramen."

"We can't," Rick said. "We talk to them through the cameras. The cameras are dead. End of discussion."

"Half those guys may not even know we're gone," Hailey added.

Steve slapped Rick's useless console. "I won't settle for that."

"You're gonna have to, boss."

Steve bit his lower lip. He scratched his beard with one forefinger. "Okay, so let's not talk to all our cameramen. Let's talk to the ones in trouble. Most of our cameramen are just inconvenienced. They might have problems with the cops, but that's okay. I pay them enough for that. But we must talk to Sam. He has his head down the lion's throat, and it could bite at any time."

Rick ran fingers through his hair. "Boss. It doesn't matter if it's one reporter or one hundred. The satcam is our only link. Without satcam, we can't talk. I mean, hell, you want I should whip out the AT&T card and call them on the phone?"

"Why not call them on the phone?"

"Because they don't have any!"

"They don't carry phones in the field, yeah. Too high a risk of the things going off when they shouldn't. But Sam's in the Headquarters of the Republican Party. I imagine they have a few phones."

"Well, sure," Hailey said, "but what good does that do? We don't know which is nearest to Sam, and do you really think he'll stop to answer a ringing phone while he's essentially burgling their place?"

"Call up the DC phone book. What numbers can we get for the Headquarters, Republican National Committee?"

"This is a production station," Hailey said with the patience of a first grade school teacher. "It doesn't have that kind of software. You'll have to use an office workstation for stuff like that."

"I'll be back," Steve said. He hurried for the control room door.

"Are you kidding?" Rick called. "You can't leave here. The control room's still active, and you're the line producer."

"Now, you're the line producer." Steve disappeared out the door.

#

The security guard stiffened as they burst into his lobby. Four uniformed policemen jogged toward his desk, their hands on their pistols, a plain clothes officer in their midst. The man in civilian dress flashed his badge.

"Did you make the 911 call?" he asked.

"Excuse me, what 911 call?"

"Somebody called the emergency dispatch from here, said you had armed terrorists on your fourth floor."

"Terrorists? I don't know anything about terrorists."

"Nothing, huh? The fourth floor?"

"The only thing we have on the fourth floor is Mr. Westerly and... that other guy."

The policeman looked hard at the guard. "I want any info you have on the locations of any people in this building. We're going to clear and secure the premises."

"Umm, okay. Then what?"

"Then we call in SWAT."

#

"Jarvis!"

"Access denied," the computer said cheerfully.

Steve halted before his desk in the dark office and cursed his lack of control. He took a deep breath and tried again. "Jarvis."

"Hello, Mr. Tallman," the computer returned. "How are you this evening?"

"Fine, thank-you. How are things in the secretarial kennel?"

"An outbreak of fleas, but otherwise grand."

"There are pills for that, you know."

"I know, but there's a bitch down in accounting who never heard of the things."

"Jarvis, I need the telephone directory for Washington, DC, and all the numbers for the Headquarters, Republican National Committee."

"Accessing information. Please stand by. Would you like to check your mail? There are eighteen messages on E-mail, and four on Voice."

"No, thanks. Just the numbers." He began pacing in the dark. He flexed his fingers, stiff from stress.

"There are fourteen listings for Headquarters, Republican National Committee, and eighty-four extensions."

"Call them up. Deliver the following message to whoever answers the phone. 'Get out. They know you're there.' Do not identify yourself. Deliver the message and hang up."

"Which number would you like me to dial?"

"Dial them all."

"Cycling your message through all ninety-eight numbers, assuming all calls are answered within four rings, will require approximately fifty minutes."

"God damn it!"

"Excuse me?"

"Don't cycle the calls. Call all the numbers simultaneously."

"Setting up a simultaneous transmission to all ninety-eight numbers will require a batch sequencing event of approximately two minutes."

"Much better. Do it, Jarvis."

"Executing now. Stand by."

#

"They aren't there."

Vidovic was, for once, left without a retort. He turned to the cases of SAM launchers his men had dragged from the bowels of the armory. He looked from the scattered ordinance to his men standing a respectful distance away, then to the windows and doors, through which sounded the grating roars of mayhem. He turned back to Eller, and the look on his face was nothing less than dumbfounded.

"I can't accept that," he said. "I can't, and I can't tell my men that, either. You were supposed to expose the Serb conspiracy that dupes your government. You were supposed to expose your government's atrocities against my people. That was the deal. That's why men risk everything here. Now you tell me you can't?"

"They aren't there. I'm not getting through." Mike cringed under the guerrilla's agonized stare. "Christ, Andrej, it isn't like I planned this, you know."

Vidovic looked sick. He made a limp, nonspecific gesture with one hand.

"Hey," Mike offered, aiming the satcam at the launchers, "it isn't like a diagnosis of cancer. I'm recording. Recording's just as good. It'll just take longer to reach the air."

"You're sure? I don't relish the prospect of telling my men that this insane adventure was for nothing."

"You won't have to. We can't transmit just now to America. No sweat. A glitch. But we have the recording. We still have the evidence, Andrej."

Vidovic looked tired. "I'll take your word for it. How long do you need?"

"You got any more stuff worth filming?"

"I believe that's everything."

"Then I'm done."

#

The standard phone shrieked against the control room wall. Hailey jumped as if electrocuted. Rick snatched up the handset.

"Control room!" he said too loudly. The other end of the line remained silent, or almost so. He heard someone's breathing, steady and controlled.

"I'm trying not to be upset," a voice said, quavering. He recognized it as Debbi Robertson's, their correspondent in Colorado. "I'm really trying to be cool about this, hard to do when I'm missing half my fucking teeth..."

"Debbi! This is Rick! We got knocked off the air. We couldn't talk to you. The boss wanted to get to you, but he couldn't. He knew they were tracking you, but he couldn't warn you about it."

Her response was a long time coming.

"I don't know any Rick."

"You take this," Rick said to Hailey. "She's your source." He clicked the phone to speaker.

"Debbi? It's Hailey. Are you all right?"

"No, I'm not all right. I'm in fucking jail. Where's the boss?"

"We don't know."

"What do you– He's supposed to be in the control room!"

"He's trying to get in touch with his reporters. The control room's not good for much right now. We're being jammed."

Debbi grew silent once more. "We can't be jammed," she finally said.

"Yes, we can, as we're finding out. And tracked, too. Did the police get you?"

"Right. And the FBI, and the Interior Department, and the ATF, and the IRS, for all I know. They raided the motel I was interviewing in."

"Are you okay?"

"They know how to show a girl a good time. I need the boss to get me out of jail."

"We'll get you, and your story, too. Was she caught?"

A strangled laugh crawled across the line. "Caught?" she said, "You might say that. My story is dead. They shot her."

#

Orbiting miles from the Republican headquarters building was more than a little tiresome, but Clemmons needed the backup dustoff option. Perry managed the boredom with a periodic sweep of the neighborhood, a high angle buzz that couldn't attract anyone's attention, just to see what he could see. That's how he caught the blue and red lights, at least a half dozen police cars barreling down North Carolina Avenue toward Sam's location. Perry deduced their destination; more lights closed from every direction, their intent obvious from his high angle vantage point.

"Aww, shit." He thumbed the radio switch on his control stick. "Control, this is DC 12. Got authority inbound to pickup location, ETA one minute. Should you apprise pickup of the situation? Over."

He waited for a response. He frowned when none was forthcoming. "Control, this is DC 12. Come in, please."

Nothing. Well, it was a long way to Indianapolis. Maybe some atmospheric anomaly interfered with his satellite signal. He switched to the plain ol' radio frequency for See It Now local.

"DC Base, this is DC 12."

"Base, over."

"I've got authority on its way to my pickup, and I can't reach Indy to pass a warning. Can you assist?"

"Negative, DC 12. Indy is off-line. The whole satcam network is off-line."

Perry grunted. How could See It Now be off-line? Had something happened to the satellite? "Well, hell! What do I do here, Base? My pickup's got a free ride to the lockup in about fifteen seconds."

"Sorry," the radio operator said. Both regret and resignation echoed in his voice. "Your pickup is on his own."

#

"For pity's sake, where are they?" Sam touched the MIC button on his satcam for the third time. "Control, talk to me. I need a count to my spot, and I've got some important information."

The camera sat there, silent.

"Maybe it's the vault." Carlton offered. "Maybe the security system–"

"Nothing interferes with a satcam." Sam checked the camera's chronometer. Only three minutes remained in the show's scheduled run time. Frowning, he tapped the REC button. "Run all those discs. We need a record, though it looks like we aren't gonna air."

He stepped back from the desk to give Carlton room. He wiped his palms on his pants. What the hell's going on?

A blast of sound erupted from the outer office, the piercing, reverberating whine of multiple turboshaft engines. The vault doorway became white light. Harsh shadows whipped against the office walls.

"What's that?" Carlton shouted over the din. He half rose from his chair.

Sam waved him back to his seat, then edged to the door and peered around its jamb. He caught the great flank of a vertol passing across the office windows, its searchlight nailing anything it touched, an accusatory finger of God. Sam threw up his hands to shield his eyes. Then the vertol's nose, along with its blinding lamp, slid off to the windows next door. Sam dodged through the glass partition, around the low work cubicles beyond, and up to the windows across the office. He watched the See It Now logo pass before him, then the vertol's long tailboom. Perry.

What the hell was his problem?

As if in answer, all the phones in the office rang.

Sam looked from desk to desk. The coincidence of the ringing phones struck him with unease. He picked up the nearest handset.

"Get out. They know you're there," someone said with almost breathless vivacity, then hung up.

"What in hell–?"

Then he saw the blue and red lights on the street below, saw police cars milling at the building's entrance, and the black bread truck of a SWAT team lurching up to the curb.

"Uh-oh..."

He raced back to the vault.

#

The guard's phone rang. He picked it up.

"Get out. They know you're there."

"What–? Who is this?"

The line clicked dead. He stared at the handset a moment, then replaced it in its cradle.

His second line rang while he still gripped the handset.

"Get out. They know you're there."

He had two more lines to go.

#

"Get that moron out of there!" Sergeant Chambers shouted. He fumed at the vertol edging along the fourth floor, its searchlight blazing. Chambers had come out to confer with the SWAT leader. It irked him that the press knew what was up so soon.

"How do we do that?" an officer asked. "We don't have air support yet."

"God damn it, who is he? What's the logo say?"

"See It Now, Sarge."

"Those pinheads? Gimme a PA system, ASAP!"

#

"Time to go," Sam said to Carlton, and started yanking cables from the satcam.

"But I only got the first prism. We don't have enough information–"

"We've all we're gonna get." He snatched up the stack of prisms and stuffed them into his pockets. He kept the Schoolhouse data separate, snapping it into the satcam's interface cable storage compartment. He threw the cable into a corner of the vault.

Carlton glanced from Sam's face to the reporter's stuffed pockets. He started to sweat. "You can't take those out of here. It'll set off the alarm."

"That isn't an issue anymore. There's a police convention outside, and I think they request the pleasure of our company."

"The police? How many?"

"The donut shops are empty for miles."

They hurried out of the office and down the hall.

"No elevators," Sam said. They bypassed the gray metal doors. Sam kicked open the stairwell exit and propelled Carlton onto the landing and down the steps. They hadn't negotiated two flights before footsteps echoed from below.

"Roof." Sam retraced their route. He continued upward past the fourth floor.

"This isn't going to work," Carlton complained, breathing hard. "This building is seven stories tall. What good is it to go to the roof?"

"I'm open to suggestions."

"We could give up!"

"We're carrying evidence that incriminates the president. A lot of people have died over this stuff. I don't want to join them."

"But this is the police!"

Sam almost smiled at the sense of deja vu, recalling a similar argument weeks earlier with Peggy. "The police and I have an understanding: I don't run with them so they don't run over me."

They burst onto the roof, onto a stretch of tarpaper assaulted by the full force of activity around them. The vertol's turbofans screamed overhead. The low wall of the roof glittered red and blue from lights below. A public address system blared.

"YOU IN THE VERTOL! CLEAR THE AREA IMMEDIATELY! YOU ARE INTERFERING WITH A POLICE INVESTIGATION! IF YOU DO NOT CLEAR THE AREA, YOU WILL BE SUBJECT TO ARREST AND THE SUSPENSION OF YOUR PILOT'S LICENSE!"

The vertol held its station fifty or so feet above the building, weaving side to side like a dragonfly.

"We're trapped!" Carlton yelled above the rushing whine of the turbines. "Where do we go from here?"

Sam walked along the rooftop, the space nearly empty but for irregular projections of vent towers and air conditioning units at its center. Antenna arrays gripped the corners of the air conditioner/heat exchanger units. Frost coated everything. Sam expelled the cold from his mind, looking instead for more constructive features of the unfamiliar surroundings.

"What are you looking for?" Carlton asked. "It's a roof. We're trapped."

"What's that building?" Sam pointed to the structure next door, its roof separated from theirs by fifteen feet of alley and an additional ten feet of height.

"I don't know, it's an office building. Lawyers and tax experts."

"Good. It'll be closed for the weekend." Sam stooped to the tarpaper. He set the satcam down and removed his overcoat, then his suit jacket.

"What are you doing? It's cold out here."

"I'm sending a message." Sam shivered in the freezing air. He wrapped his suit jacket around the satcam, tangling it to form a passable pouch, one sleeve hanging free. Then he took the prisms from his pockets and shoved them deep into the package. He took the weight by the loose sleeve and jogged to the edge of the roof near the neighboring office building.

"Whatever you're doing, you'd better hurry," Carlton called. "They're coming up the steps."

#

Perry watched helplessly. He wished he could scoop them off the roof, but what would that prove except that three could get jailed as easily as two? Besides, he wasn't Chelsea Van Arsdale. Dustoffs from uncertified rooftops was not something he'd learned in flight school. He held his station and watched, hoping his presence might temper the cops' enthusiasm in the inevitable arrest.

Sam wrapped the satcam in his jacket. What did he hope to do, hide it? Why a suit jacket? Then Sam headed for the alleyside wall. He whirled the bundle twice around his head, holding onto the one loose sleeve, then released it toward the neighboring building. The bundle sailed up in a steep arc, just cleared the taller building's high wall, and crashed to the roof amid a bright display of sparks.

"Well, there goes that camera." But why throw it there in the first place? Was there something on or in the camera that Sam wanted protected from the police? Perry watched as Sam rejoined his companion, watched as the reporter dropped to his knees, hands behind his head. His buddy did the same. Police swarmed from the stairwell door, stormed over the two civilians, and kicked them to the ground. They pressed assault rifle muzzles into their prisoners' backs, but that was it.

Perry jerked his vertol away into the night. He wasn't particular about his heading; he just wanted to escape the scene.

"DC Base, this is DC 12, over."

"DC Base, here."

"My pickup has retired, Base. Somebody needs to fish him from the lockup."

"Understood. We'll advise Legal."

"Right, and I need a favor, Base. I need somebody smart and savvy to make an unscheduled pickup."

"Come again, 12?"

"A pickup. It seems my erstwhile associate dropped something you guys might want to retrieve."

"We're listening, 12."

"Not over the air. Meet me at the helipad, and bring your ingenuity. DC 12, out."

Perry checked the GPS display in his heads up display and settled himself by deciding his immediate flight plan. He nudged the vertol into a wide turn that carried him around the no-fly zone near the Mall, and shot a beeline for the Washington bureau of See It Now.

#

"We got word on ten cameramen," Rick said as Steve came through the control room door. "Harassment by the cops, six crew in jail. Debbi got worked over pretty good, and Sam's on his way to the DC slammer."

"Anything on Peggy?" Steve seemed tired. He visibly controlled his breathing.

"She's one of the ones behind bars," Hailey said.

#

The remainder of the Muslim force rested in the scrubby woods chosen as their rendezvous point, basking in the pride of having confounded their Serb enemy, destroyed his stock of surface-to-air missiles, and, most importantly, secured proof of his deception and atrocities. Mike squatted among them, taking in the excited, if unintelligible, music of their voices while he tried to reach Indianapolis on the satcam.

Everyone's heads turned to the sky. They concentrated their eyes on the gray canopy of bare branches.

An airy whine of turbines, then the gunships attacked.

A spray of large-caliber bullets cut through the trees and slapped earth at over thirty rounds per second. Explosive clouds of dust jumped, tracking irregular wakes across the ground, erasing grass and splintering tree trunks. Mike watched, frozen, as a vicious volley swept around him and pulverized a teenager not ten feet away. The guerrillas scattered. Some snatched up weapons, pointing them skyward in search of the vertols' underbellies.

"No! No shooting!" Mike yelled over the mayhem, then cursed himself for using English. "No shooting!" he tried again in Russian. "Andrej, keep the weapons down! They're just fishing!"

Fifty feet away, Vidovic hesitated, his own weapon raised. Then he shouted to his men, repeating the same orders several times in all directions. Mike saw the weapons come down. A tree exploded next to him. A large branch crashed and tumbled before him, just missing his arm and head. The black, predatory shadow of a gunship passed overhead.

"You'd better know what we're doing!" Vidovic shouted.

"They don't know we're here!" Mike yelled over the sound of engines. "They're just fishing, spraying the ground to flush us out! I've seen this tactic before!"

He heard the screams of nearby men, felt wet spatters against his clothes and skin. Blind or not, those vertols found targets. Vidovic flinched at each scream and wrenching explosion. He held his weapon impotently before him, gritting his teeth. From his knees, he roared frustrated curses at the aircraft.

"They'll suddenly leave!" Mike continued. "After a few more passes, if nobody shoots back, they'll suddenly veer off in one direction or the other! We have to run in the opposite direction! Got that?"

Vidovic repeated his instructions, translating for the soldiers. "What do you mean? Why do we run?"

"Fast movers! Bombers coming in after the gunships! They'll erase these woods within ten to fifteen seconds of the vertols bugging out! We run in to the jets! It's our best chance to escape the blast zone!"

Vidovic started to reply when a strafe ran in his direction. He heaved to his feet, ran two steps, and dived. The bullets shook the ground where he had been, then curved away to feed on another, less agile soul.

Mike watched the black shape above, through the dark branches, watched as another joined it and the two arced together over the trees like boats in tandem. The strafing stopped. Mike wondered if the vertols would leave, or if hell would resume in a moment. He peered at the aircraft as they pointed east, their tailbooms raised, and barrelled away from the mangled woods.

"Now! West! Run west!" Mike bolted.

He did not stop to check the others. His legs pumped with every ounce of strength at his command. He dodged around trees, drove straight into thickets and walls of brush, using the camera to beat his way through. He felt branches and thorns snatching at his face and hands. Something grabbed at and caught his coat. Despite the cold, he shook the garment loose and left it behind.

He heard the low keen of diving bombers ahead. He forced his body to run faster, harder, fought the urge to cringe and hide.

The bombs hit, engulfing the woods behind him in hungry conflagration. The shock threw Mike forward onto his face. Dirt, twigs, and rocks skittered across his back. Someone grabbed him by the shoulders, pulled him up and ran him until his legs began to function again.

"Keep going!" Vidovic yelled.

They ran until they could run no further, then collapsed onto their knees with heaving, gasping lungs. Only then did they look back at the firestorm they had so luckily escaped. Vidovic, after a moment, wrestled himself to his feet. He stood breathing raggedly, hands on knees, his weapon forgotten on the grass nearby. He counted the men running in from the bomb site.

"How did they find us?" Mike asked between rattling breaths. "Were we followed?"

Vidovic snared an incoming figure, a man covered in soot and dirt, black as coal and coughing violently. The Muslim leader yelled curt orders, then pushed the man off to the north.

"You said they didn't know where we were, that they were 'just fishing', as you put it."

"Well, yeah, but they don't just shoot up every stand of trees they lay their eyes on. Those bombers came all the way from the Mediterranean, from an aircraft carrier." Mike took a deep, settling breath. "They had some idea of where we were, but no exact fix. The trees were an educated guess."

"Then we were not followed. A tail would know our location exactly."

Mike looked his camera over for damage. "Then how did they know where to find us?" he asked.

Vidovic didn't answer. He counted heads as they staggered in from the fire. There weren't nearly enough of them.

#

The feed magically returned about thirty minutes after See It Now's scheduled sign-off. One moment the little portable in the control room showed a situation comedy; the next a Chevrolet commercial. Steve hardly noticed.

"Everyone's accounted for," Hailey told him. "What now, boss?"

"Close up shop and head home," Steve said. "I'll handle the legal mess. We'll debrief tomorrow. I don't much feel like it tonight."

"So, what's the spin, in case our competitors come asking?" Rick gathered up his TV and tablet.

Steve shrugged. "A technical malfunction. A satellite glitch. We'll be back on the air as soon as possible."

"Still grinnin'?"

"That's the spin. The truth is another matter."

Hailey fiddled with her purse. "Sorry, boss..."

Steve looked at them. He forced a smile. "You were great. You got hit with a nasty problem and you did the best you could. The reporters did great, too. I wish your producer had done as well."

"You couldn't have done a thing about what happened here tonight," Hailey protested.

"I could have anticipated it. These people are more powerful than I thought. They have access to federal resources. They have smartly placed moles in the government. I should have anticipated this."

"We'll get 'em next time," Rick said, but he backed toward the door.

Steve sighed. "There may not be a next time. They have us outdone." He looked once more at his engineers, and his smile collapsed. "They've beaten us," he said. "As long as they control our access to the satellite, they've sown our lips shut. And here I sit with six reporters in legal trouble and one dead story source. We've lost. They've beaten the living hell out of us." He rubbed the back of his neck. "My only question is what they'll do with the win."

Chapter Twenty-one:

To the Victor...

 (Back to Contents)

The last Saturday in February broke clear and bright, the kind of clean, picturesque day that ushered in wistful thoughts of spring after so many months of humid cold. By eleven o'clock that Saturday the temperature stood at sixty degrees. This was an anomaly, but one that coaxed an energized populace out of its fortress walls of brick, concrete and glass and into the plazas and parks of the city. On a similar weekday, office workers would have filled the wooden benches in the downtown greenspaces. From the marble fountain wall in War Memorial Park, they would have gossiped while wolfing bag lunches, everyone as pretty as songbirds in their suits and neckties, their skirts and pumps. But this was no weekday. Now, the homeless, the vagrant, and the few city center residents who actually paid taxes shared the pastoral day in comparative privacy. They delighted in the almost forgotten heat of the joyous sun and the boisterous singing of transient birds. It was a perfect day, entirely unsuited for petty or base enterprise, but soon to be infamous for both.

"Sure you won't come up?" Patricia asked as she slid the Sunracer up to the garage barricade. She pushed her debit card into the reader and waited as the red and white metal arm arced out of the way.

"No thanks," her Uncle Ben answered. "I don't reckon that boy wants to see me right now." He sounded old, and tired.

Patricia glanced at him frequently as she wound her way up the ramp through the Thomson Building garage. She had watched her uncle's mood soar and crash in the last several hours. His excitement during the previous night's show had amused her. He had offered play-by-play commentary as his nephew built the careful case against EOG, Jonathan Taylor Mercy, and the president of the United States. Uncle Ben had been proud of his nephew, and typically critical. It was sweet. Then the slide came: his confusion as the channel screen changed to blue, his anxiety when no explanation presented itself, his speechless fury when Gilligan's Island popped onto the television. He had not been sympathetic when Dad returned home, but accusatory. Dad should have been more careful. He should have been quicker. He shouldn't have let the opposition mobilize against him. He shouldn't have made such an effort to be fair and impartial.

Dad hadn't had the heart for a fight. He had sat and taken it. Now, Uncle Ben punished himself, partly because of his behavior, his lack of support for his beaten kin, but partly because he had meant every word of it.

"Dad isn't mad at you," Patricia said as she angled into a parking space on the third level. The surveillance car pulled in a few spaces down, its doors opening before it stopped.

"I didn't say he was. I just reckon our business is done, and I'd just as soon head for the airport."

"We'll only be here a minute," Patricia said. "And, if you're a good boy, Chelsea might fly you to the airport. She's there now, picking up those two reporters, but you know she won't mind another trip. She'd get extra flight time."

Ben forced a smile and patted Patricia's cheek. "That's all right. I prefer hitching a ride with my favorite niece. No, I'll just sit here and ride the Net, catch up on some late business. Gotta make a living, right?"

Patricia decided not to comment as she threw open her door. She had to go. Wo Chu and his gunslingers waited. "Suit yourself, Uncle Ben. I'll go hug my pop, see if he needs anything, then I'll be right down." She leaned to kiss him on the cheek, then climbed from the car. "Should I tell him you're down here?"

"You will anyway, darlin'."

She grinned, then shut the door and turned for the elevator exit.

#

Ben watched her retreat across the garage bay. She struck quite a picture in her jeans and heavy turtleneck, her keys jangling in one hand. She seemed not to notice the four Chinese bodyguards flanking and tailing her. Familiarity mediates fear, he thought. Somewhere along the line, that little girl had become a woman. She was the best thing Steve ever did.

He reached into the door charger for his tablet and pulled it free then into his lap. He had been truthful about the work. Now that the See It Now gambit lay in shambles, his legislative angles were more important than ever. He could still stop this EOG thing, but his remaining tools were slower, and far less certain. So was he.

#

Chelsea slid the vertol toward its helipad, intent on hitting her mark beside the already parked second bird. She loved flying in crisp weather. Visibility was forever. The normally tricky thermals around downtown, with its cool, still expanses of trees and its contrasting columnar updrafts between skyscrapers, were of no concern today. All she needed was a smooth touchdown and waffles, and her morning was framed in gold.

She felt concrete under her wheels, looked to the helipad technician twenty feet away for verification, then wound down the engines. "All clear," she said to the passengers in back. "Time to dismount."

"Great," Sam said. "The sooner this debriefing's over, the sooner I catch that bird back to LA and sleep in my own bed." He grabbed his mission bags from about Jerry McFadden's feet, taking no heed of his once and future producer. Chelsea rolled her eyes at his gruffness. Sam was a burned-out mess. His eyes shone from dark pits of exhaustion. His lower lip swelled. He had one dried cut at his left temple. His jaw bristled with spiny black stubble. He had given the clean-shaven, shirt-and-tied producer a look of utter disdain upon boarding the vertol back at the terminal. He had no time for anyone who hadn't recently discussed civil rights with the business end of a riot stick, or slept on a concrete floor in somebody else's urine. Sam had earned his bad mood, and spent it freely.

The pad tech threw back the vertol's cargo door, letting in the sharp air. Sam jumped the two feet to the deck and pumped his legs toward the stairs at the edge of the pad, his mission bags ballooning his frame. Chelsea completed her shut-down procedures, then exited through her pilot's door. She met Jerry as she came around the nose of the aircraft. He carried an overnight bag.

"Is everybody that pissed?" he asked.

"Don't mind him," Chelsea answered. "He just doesn't like to lose."

"So, it's true? We aren't going at them again?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," she said, pleasant but dismissive. "I just fly the birds. I'm not much interested in the politics, or the good guy/bad guy thing. I suppose we'll find out soon enough." She threw her flight helmet to the pad supervisor greeting them at the stairs. "Give her a good wash, Joe. The next time I see that ship, it's to take her home to LA!"

The pad supervisor smiled and stepped aside for them.

Chelsea skipped down the grated metal stairs. Just below deck level nestled the tower, really little more than a 10x10 mole hole crammed into the supporting structure below the pad. The stairwell into the building proper descended beyond the tower. The door to the interior already swung shut after Sam. Chelsea pulled it back open, then stood aside for Jerry.

"Thanks," he said. "Want to carry my bag, too?"

"I'm not that considerate."

They tramped down five flights of concrete stairs. Chelsea babbled about the weather, how it made her pine for LA, and what beaches she planned to visit upon returning home. When they reached the fifty-ninth floor landing, Jerry kicked open the door and stepped into the main office complex, a large, open space subdivided into low-walled cubicles. There, all the business drones for Steve's world-wide television production crew scurried about their vital but largely unsung tasks. Some momentarily noted the two arrivals, then returned to their work.

Jerry dropped his luggage onto the carpet. "Ta-daa!" he said.

Chelsea laughed, then tugged him by one arm to the break room next to the stairwell. Two leather-jacketed Chinese youths stood on either side of its arched doorway, looking not at all hospitable. Chelsea had to drag the producer past their scowls.

The break room was a good-sized kitchen/lounge environment filled with familiar faces. Sam lay splayed along the whole length of a couch. Patty sat perched atop a Formica countertop between a sink and a bank of three coffeemakers. Kenny Beacham stood next to her, leaning against the counter, coffee in hand. A few bleary-eyed reporters, one from Jerry's own team, slumped in chairs, as did the two journeyman engineers marked by the previous night's debacle. Except for Sam's dark corner and the two Chinese sitting away from the group, the mood seemed almost celebratory. Satcams cluttered the dinette table centered in the room, part of a haphazard still life of opened donut boxes and half-emptied fibercell coffee cups. The See It Now staffers exchanged fish stories about their failed night's work, laughed at humorous vignettes discovered only in hindsight, and compared their adventure to other disasters at other times.

"So, what's your stake in this meeting?" Sam asked Jerry without moving the arm draped across his face. "Shouldn't you be clean and tanned in Lala Land?"

"Don't know," Jerry said. "I got a call from Walter. He told me to catch the first plane out here."

"Whatever."

"He sounded pissed. I figure if the chief of CBS News is pissed, you fly and ask questions later."

Rick handed him a donut. "He probably wants you to clean up last night's mess. The control room downstairs still smells from my spontaneous loss of sphincter control."

"Ricky..." Hailey groaned in disgust.

"Hey, don't roll your eyes at me. I'm a line producer." Everyone laughed except Jerry and the Chinese, who didn't get the joke.

#

"They're waiting. You should go up now," Emma said from the control room doorway.

Steve sat at Hailey's station, hunched over the dead console. He looked at Emma across the dim closet of a room, barely able to discern her petite frame in the inadequate security lighting. The fifty-eighth floor was dead, as it usually was on Saturdays. Steve needed the dark and quiet. It covered the sting of his defeat and hid him from what was bound to come next.

"How'd you find me?"

"You weren't in your office, not with the others. It was simple."

"Everything's so simple to you, Emma. You don't clutter the table with extraneous bullshit." He leaned back in the chair. He propped one foot against the edge of the console. "I suppose you think I screwed up royal, don't you?"

"It isn't my place to judge. I do what I can to help."

"Now, that is bullshit. I depend on your judgment. You know that."

She stood in the doorway, her hands clasped demurely in front of her.

"So," Steve continued, "did I screw up by writing a good story? Did I screw up by hunting for corroborations, for hard data, for more than innuendo and rumor? Did I screw up by playing by the rules? That's what Ben says."

"You gave them the chance to outwit you. You did not strike when the power was yours; you waited out of honor to your beliefs."

"Honor to my beliefs." He shook his head. "That sounds so noble. Why am I not uplifted by having stuck to my sense of truth and fair play?"

"Because it isn't your sense of truth."

He looked hard at her. "Excuse me?"

She came into the room, silent even in heels on the tile floor. Emma was a kind of panther, gorgeous, small, but, Steve suspected, dangerous when necessary. How many years had she been on the run? How long had she lived in the jungle after fleeing Burma, anonymous in countries hostile even to their own? She placed one small hand on the back of his chair.

"Excuse me if I speak out of place..."

"Yeah, yeah, yadda-yadda-yadda."

"You are not the man who pledges himself to a code of professional ethics. You are not the man who lives by the coded laws of others. You are the man who makes the laws."

"Geez, Emma. That sounds positively diabolical."

"You are not the drone of an orderly world; you are the chaos it fears. You dropped the bombs on the Chinese army. I know you hate to think of it, and I don't mention it to illustrate your heroism. But, you did it. You weren't supposed to do it. Your government did not want a nuclear war. They would have preferred to lose."

Those few words burned the self-control that Steve so carefully cultivated. They wrecked that thing in him, that aspect others saw as coldness, as a disturbing lack of emotional response. With those few words, he fell back to muddy plains under sooty skies, a nightmare filled with the screams of overhead artillery shells, the creak of tank treads, and the rotten egg stink of cordite. "I didn't know," he whispered. "They told me later. They wanted to court-martial me, but it was too late then. I was a hero already. But, I didn't know command would surrender. We were under a heavy jamming umbrella. We hadn't had a clear transmission from outside the zone in days."

"You would not have cared. In those days, you would never have assented to such cowardly thinking."

Heat flared in Steve's face. It was as if Emma had flipped a switch in him. He jerked to his feet, the chair almost striking his admin assistant as it flew out from under him. "How the hell would you know what I thought or what I cared about? You were just a teenager groping around in some Southeast Asian jungle! You didn't know me then!"

"I know you now."

"Oh? You know me now, so you can say without doubt that I get my kicks by incinerating millions of people?"

Emma clasped her hands at her waist and dropped her gaze to the floor.

"I dropped those bombs because I didn't have any options! I prayed for options! I begged God for options! But God was out of town that day, or he wasn't listening, or he had too damn many Chinese on his hands! I didn't have any choice!"

"I know."

He paced the tiny room, wringing his hands, kicking chairs out of his way. Rotten eggs overwhelmed his senses. Faces, burned, melted faces, faces blinded by nuclear flash, stared at him with dead eyes and mouths twisted in agony. "So many people depended on me! The brass were all dead! There were millions behind me! When Chelsea had me up in the chopper, I literally saw them, the sea of refugees heading south. The Chinese were shelling them. Jesus! They didn't even care about us; they wanted to kill their own people! We were in their way!"

Emma lifted a hand to her cheek, wiped it across one eye.

"God dammit!" Steve sent papers and clipboards flying from the console. He threw a few punches at air, impotent, pathetic. Then, running out of energy, he sank like a dying thing to the floor. Emma was right. The root of who he was, of who he had become over the fifteen years since the war, tapped deep into that day on the Chinese plain. He did not want to be that man again. Ever. That man, who was more Steve's real, corporeal spirit than the pretense he lived each day since the war. "Why couldn't it have been different?" he asked through sobs. "Why couldn't they have just ... fought ... us...?" He really wanted an answer.

Emma watched, once more impassive, as he sat slump-shouldered on the floor. She waited without moving for several seconds. When nothing arose from the moment but Steve's hitching sobs, she went to the door, stepping carefully around him, and turned back as she stood between its jambs.

"I am sorry, but you asked me. You are not the man to follow sterile rules. You are a fighter, a warrior, if you'll excuse the antiquated term. You do what is right, without clouds of self-deception. You do what others are afraid to do. You avoid this nature of yours, because of the war, because of the bombs. That is why you failed last night."

"Excuse me," Steve said, making a stab at humor, "but what was the question, please?" He wiped shaky hands across his eyes.

"You failed last night because you feared to be yourself. The others are waiting. They need you. Will you come up?"

"Eventually. I'm waiting on a call."

She did not acknowledge his statement. She stood there placid-faced for a moment longer, in case he said anything else, he supposed. Then she turned from the doorway, and he heard her clicking footsteps fade up the hall toward the elevators.

Heard her footsteps, he thought, almost laughing.

#

He no longer wore the brown parka. He stood across the street from the Thomson Building, watching the five black men approach its main entrance. Men? They were hardly old enough to drive. He recognized a face, and recognition was knowledge. He did not wonder at the contents of the bookbags slung from their shoulders. He pulled out his palm phone and dialed 911.

#

The network phone bellowed six or eight rings before Steve hauled himself from the floor to answer it.

"Yeah. See It Now. Control room."

"It's Walter Marks. You aren't gonna like this conversation."

"You couldn't get Debbi out?"

"Debbi is the least of my concerns, the least of yours, too. Dammit, Steve, you've dropped us into a hell of a soup."

"Gimme a break, Walter. You knew the stakes."

"And so did you, buddy. I told you not to fuck this up. Now you've got the network scared as hell."

"I'm not interested in the network's legal problems. I'm interested in my reporter."

"Well, your interests need adjusting! Haven't you stopped to think? Last night you made lurid innuendoes about the president of the United States, about the chairman of the Republican National Committee, about two supreme court justices, and a fucking ultra-conservative multi-billionaire! And the only corroboration you gave before going off the air came from renegade leftist Indians and a God damned terrorist sociopath! Tell me, Steve, can you spell 'lawsuit'?"

"Look, you aren't telling me anything new. But we have the story. They jammed our signal."

"Didn't you hear me? Rockefeller Center looks like a lawyers' convention right now. The brass is looking for a meal to throw them and if I don't do something, it's gonna be me."

Steve stiffened. He moved the handset away from his ear and looked at the video for the first time. Walter's face was livid. "What is this? What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I've worked like a dog to save three things: the network, my pension, and See It Now. Well, as far as I'm concerned, two out of three is batting .600."

"What have you done to See It Now, Walter?"

"They're hitting us with everything and their mamma's underwear. Character assassination. Libel; six cases of it. Burglary. Interfering with a police investigation. Christ! Aiding and abetting a wanted felon! They might deal under certain circumstances, like we turn over all your data from this EOG show–"

"What? You agreed to that?"

"–and the show goes into hiatus until we can reformat its investigative procedures. Jerry McFadden will handle that. They also want an on-air, prime time broadcast apology, free corrective advertising–"

"Dammit, you can't do this shit! We have control here. We have the data! We're telling the simple, objective truth! What kind of cowardly, chicken shit–"

"–and they want your fucking head on a pike! That's the way it is. I have to protect the network."

"The network is protected! The first amendment–"

"Protects you, not the network. I want your resignation on E-mail in an hour. Got that? One hour!"

Steve stared at his boss's sweating face, flabbergasted.

"Naturally, the network will buy you out of your contract clauses regarding proprietary management of your satcam system. I don't know why, it's a failed system from the look of things." Marks's voice grew calmer, now that his duty was done. "Sorry, Steve. That's the way it works sometimes. Sorry."

The line went dead. Steve stood holding the handset, wondering at his collapsed fortune. Now there could be no reprise of the show, no regrouping and broadcast counterattack. And all the data – all the proof – was gone. How could things possibly get any worse?

#

Emma noticed two things as she touched the elevator button. First: the elevator already approached from below. Second: the lower floor receptionist had left her station a mess. She stepped to the desk and slid things into an orderly arrangement. First impressions were all-important.

#

The sun shown so beautifully down the deserted street that his guard remained low until he entered the Thomson Building. There he found the security station empty. These places always left someone at the desk. Security couldn't even go to the can without posting a relief, for pity's sake. He leaned over the desk to check the monitors, but saw no alarms, nothing at all amiss. So, where were they? He took up the security phone handset. Dead.

He slowly replaced the handset as he scanned the empty lobby. One hand freed his pistol while the other took up the regular phone line. It, too, was dead. Maybe the guard was off checking phones. Maybe he had gone to the restroom without permission, since he couldn't call for relief. Maybe this was all just old-fashioned redneck inefficiency. Maybe.

He crept toward the men's room door twenty feet away. He listened. Hearing nothing, he pushed the door open, stepping through with his pistol leading.

The guard lay face down on the white tiles, his blood pooling around him.

The policeman snatched the radiophone from his belt.

#

Emma looked up from behind the receptionist's desk when the elevator chimed. She watched the doors slide open, saw the men inside, saw the all too familiar shapes in their hands. She didn't think. She didn't need to. She knew these people, had known them all her life.

She reached beneath her suit jacket and hauled the pulse pistol from its holster. She leveled the barrel at the opening doors, registered the shocked look on one man's face, and squeezed the trigger.

The pistol went off like a bomb. A section of elevator door vanished. The surprised man rocketed backward into the lift's rear wall, and the whole elevator spattered in red. Emma's gun arm flew up and back. She grabbed it with her other hand, and brought the pistol back on target.

#

Steve dropped the network phone to the floor. What was that?

#

Both Sam and Chelsea stiffened. The others didn't seem to notice it.

"What was that?" Sam wondered aloud, sitting up on the couch.

Chelsea didn't ask. She knew.

#

"Get the bitch!" someone yelled.

Emma fired again and again, her ears numbing from each deafening explosion. The elevator interior flew apart under her assault. A dark-faced figure leapt into plain view, roaring murderous defiance, his submachine gun burping rapid flashes. The reception desk ruptured to splinters. Papers, pens, and thumbtacks spasmed into a curtain between Emma and the gunman. The wall hemorrhaged behind her. The cherry See It Now logo, twin to the one upstairs, erupted into plywood shards. The man screamed, firing wildly. Emma adjusted her aim, impassive as stone.

Her next shot hit him full in the chest. At the instant of impact she saw right through the coffee can-sized hole in his body, then he was sliding like pudding down the back wall of the elevator.

Another target presented itself, a dark head and shoulder. She fired. Her pistol erased the doorframe just below the head. An amazing racket answered her shot, and six feet of aluminum handrail cartwheeled from the elevator across the lobby.

She readjusted her aim as flashes flared from inside the elevator. Her arm flew up and wide. At first she suspected the pistol's kick, but she hadn't yet fired, had she? Emma watched the gun leave her grip, then drop as if discarded to the mangled desk. A wet stain spread over her sleeve. She tried to reach for the weapon, but her gun arm refused. The pistol bounced atop the desk. She reached for it with her other hand.

At that instant, the other bullets caught her, one in her right shoulder, another in her stomach. She felt her face strike the wall. Hadn't that been behind her? Why did she not feel pain? Why did she experience only snapshots of time? Was this the essence of death?

Using her one good arm, she pushed weakly away from the wall. She turned, looking for the desk, looking for her gun. Again bullets rammed her torso, kicking her once more against the wall, this time slamming her back into the wood. She was done. That was it. Had she served well? She slid to the floor, a red trail tracing her collapse.

#

"Jesus!" one of the Panthers spat, bounding into the devastated reception area an instant behind Donald Washington. "She was strapped, man! You didn't say nothin' about no fuckin' war!"

"She ain't strapped now," Washington said from behind clenched teeth.

"This is bullshit, man! They knew we was comin'! They all packin' steel?"

"Get hold of yourself. Where's Jackie?"

Jackie hid in the elevator, cringing into a back corner.

"I don't believe this!" Washington bellowed. "And to think I hand-picked your sorry ass! Get out here and get to work!"

"I can't," Jackie choked out. He clutched his grenade launcher as if it were a lifeline. He stared wide-eyed at the pulverized corpses at his feet, his compatriots, each with his chest punched away, punched away as if with a giant-assed drill.

Washington spat. He wanted to shoot the bastard, but arrested the impulse. He needed these stupid SOBs, had offered them each ten g's and vice exclusivity on whole city blocks. This was a big job, one he couldn't do himself. And now he had to babysit, too. "Check out the floor," he said to his other teammate. "I don't think anybody else is here, with the lights out and all, but we gotta make sure."

The boy nodded, eyes wide and darting, then turned down the hall toward the offices.

"Get out of the fucking elevator," Washington said to Jackie.

Jackie just stared at the bodies.

"Get out of the elevator, man, or I swear I'll grease you myself."

Jackie glanced at his leader then, but only for a moment. His eyes snapped back to the corpses as if fastened to them by stretched rubber bands. "She done 'em, man. You said these was nothin' but secretaries an' shit."

"So you met the an' shit; the rest are just the secretaries. You being chicken shit, man. Come out now or, you see this Uzi?" That drew the dumbass's eyes back to Washington. "It's like this. We got a thing to do and we got a schedule. You don't come out, I grease your ass or maybe I just crotch-shoot you and leave you for the blueshirts. Or you come out and I give you his share." He gestured toward a random body. "It don't matter to me, just don't tell nobody else, ah'ight?" He glanced meaningfully down the hall that had swallowed their third party.

Twenty-thou, Washington thought. That should coax him out. He could see his man blink. He could see him think about it, or try to.

Then Washington lost patience. He charged his machine gun.

"All right, all right! Okay!" The dumb fucker bounced from that elevator box like a rabbit with size twelve kicks.

"Nobody here,"the third man said as he returned from down the hall. Washington took one look at his big, jittery eyes and his stupid, lying grin and knew he hadn't searched worth shit. He shook his head and signaled them both into the remaining elevator. "Fucking amateurs," he grumbled.

#

"Was that what I think it was?" Sam rose slowly to his feet.

Chelsea stood just outside the break room, looking toward the elevators hidden beyond the now silent cubicle farm.

Wo Chu stood. He glanced sharply at the recently repaired Li Chen across the break room. The boy bared his Uzi and edged past Chelsea into the wide open space of the office. He signaled his associates to follow and began picking his way across the maze of work cubicles to the hall. His action mobilized the room. Reporters pitched coffee cups and grabbed cameras, then moved to the door, crowding past Chelsea into the larger room. "Come here," Wo Chu said to Patricia, the command clear in his voice.

Patricia looked to Kenny. He nodded, then helped her down from the counter.

Wo Chu squeezed past Chelsea. He held tight to Patricia's hand. "Everyone must get to safety," he said, his ugly pulse pistol looking huge in his free hand.

Chelsea caught Jerry's eye. He stood next to her in the doorway. "Get 'em out of here."

He nodded, not a syllable of argument about taking orders from a subordinate, and stepped into the office area. "Okay, everybody," he yelled, "let's practice a fire drill. What's the quickest way out of here, aside from the elevators?"

Kenny pressed by Chelsea. "Gotta warn my R&D people." He jogged along the wall to the back office complex.

"Uncle Kenny..." Patricia called. Her voice shrilled with alarm.

"It's okay," he called back. "I'll return in a sec."

"I'm here," Chelsea assured her.

Wo Chu's soldiers were almost across the cubicle maze, headed toward the hall and the reception area beyond. Reporters marked their progress on camera. Jerry, with Sam, Hailey and Rick's help, herded office workers toward the fire exits.

"No stairs," Wo Chu told Chelsea. "The stairs could be one snare in a many snared trap."

"No stairs?" Chelsea glared at him. "Where do you expect us to go, Wo Chu? Out the windows?"A sudden succession of guttural pops issued from the elevator area, like a chain of firecrackers ignited. A few people screamed. The already skittish office workers surged for the exits, jamming their escape routes.

"What is it?" Sam called. "Bombs?"

"Grenades!" Chelsea answered. "Jerry! Get them out of here!"

A cubicle wall ripped upward out of its floor mounts, then slammed into the hanging ceiling tiles, finally flipping over onto a desk. A nearby file cabinet fell over with a crash. Two of Wo Chu's men sprinted from the hall and vaulted low walls into separate cubicles. They crouched, turned, and fired their submachine guns down the hallway.

Wo Chu shoved Patricia to the floor, dropped to one knee, and pointed his pistol toward the disturbance. His men yelled back to him as they fired their weapons. They moved constantly, never firing more than a few rounds from the same position.

"Three attackers!" Wo Chu said to Chelsea. "Machine guns, a grenade launcher."

"Mercy again? Decker?" A grenade launcher?

"Black men."

The next blast mopped away the middle portion of cubicles, throwing desks, chairs, coat racks and partitions away from the hallway as if with a swat from some gigantic hand. A computer desk tumbled over and through cubicles like a square-edged bowling ball, throwing up a frightening wake of debris from its path. It passed close to Sam. Chelsea saw him go down under its wash of books, ceiling tiles, computers, and other wrecked office accessories. It barreled across the cubicles with remorseless power, crashing to a stop against the partition in front of Wo Chu and Patricia. Smoke spread throughout the office. Wo Chu's men had disappeared.

The lights flickered, then died. With few windows in the open space, it suddenly grew quite dim.

Wo Chu tossed Chelsea his cell phone. "Call the police!" he shouted through coughs from dust and smoke.

She snatched up the phone, dialed 911, and prayed she didn't get a machine.

#

Steve approached the reception area with caution. He hoped Emma was upstairs, wondering at the noise he knew she would find familiar. But that, he knew, was a false hope. Who else could they be shooting at? He bit back a strangling fear and asserted the false detachment that had served him so well in times of stress. He saw the devastation ahead. He smelled the rotten egg stench of expended ammunition. He knew that no amount of artificial control could protect him from what waited.

He stood just outside the reception area, with a good view of the blasted elevator, its mangled doors opening and closing against a bloodied hand. The overhead lights winked spastically.

He stepped into the room. He nudged debris at his feet and approached the devastated receptionist's desk with building trepidation. The more terror he felt, the stonier he made his face. He did not want to see what he knew awaited him.

She sat against the wall amid glass, splinters, and a confused mess of office supplies, her legs crossed at the ankles, her hands limp against the floor. He moved to her and knelt at her side. He needed no examination to judge the mortal nature of her wounds. Except for her head, her entire body was drenched in blood.

"Emma. God..."

Her eyes fluttered open, rolled toward him. She did not move her face, which remained, as always, soberly blank of expression.

"I'll get you a doctor, Emma..."

"I am beyond doctors," she whispered. "Thank-you, Mr. Tallman, for all you have done."

"Thank-you, my friend. I'll miss you."

"I may yet return; we all do." She coughed, a wet, heart-wrenching sound. "They went upstairs, Mr. Tallman."

A sudden roar of ordinance punctuated her words.

Grenades, Steve thought.

"You must go," she said, trying to inject her voice with strength. "You have spent too much time with the dead."

He stroked her head, moved an errant strand of black hair back behind one ear. "Wait 'til I get back," he asked, and kissed her cold forehead. Tears overflowed his controlled facade. When he returned, he knew, she would long since be gone.

#

Wo Chu had dropped his usually passive mask. His eyes darted over the area beyond the partition. He licked his lips. "The police, Miss Van Arsdale?"

Chelsea dropped the phone from her ear, suddenly dizzied by confusion. "They're already here!"

#

Steve stood, turning his face to the ceiling at the next rattle of machine gun fire. Emma's pistol lay on the splintered desk under a white coat of drywall dust. They hadn't taken it with them. Amateurs. Steve picked it up. He absently checked the load and the charge while he considered the appropriateness of the now disturbed shroud of dust. For Emma, white was the color of mourning.

Steve's fingers flexed on the pulse pistol's handgrip. His breathing grew deeper, rhythmic. To a stranger, he might have looked calm, perhaps expectant. But strangers – and most friends – could not have imagined the effort behind that facade. It was an effort as much for survival as for control. He stepped to the one working elevator, pressed the button, and waited. How odd to stand there, hard and still, while the floor above screamed thunderous mechanical roars, and Emma lay violated behind him. Her attackers still raged above his head, probably in the hallway. They had not reached the office pool of thirty or forty more people to kill. The gunshots from there sounded less distinct.

Patricia was up there. Who else but her bodyguards would hold the attackers at bay?

The elevator chimed. The doors opened. He did not hesitate, did not turn back to Emma; he was afraid of what he'd see there. Steve Tallman entered the elevator, the Steve Tallman his Uncle Ben had wanted, the man the bear called to. He listened as the doors closed behind him, but he didn't listen to the doors. His ears tuned instead to the sounds of gunfire from the floor above.

#

Sam scrambled to his feet after his close call with the flying desk. Washington hurtled into what was left of the office pool, his machine gun spraying the approximate location of Wo Chu's men. The two saw each other at about the same instant, and each froze in recognition.

"You!" Washington roared. "I'm comin' for you!"

"Christ," Sam moaned, and bounded over a shattered file cabinet toward the nearest fire exit.

Washington brought his machine gun to bear, then splintering wood and exploding ceiling tiles reminded him of more immediate, more dangerous targets.

"Jackie!" he yelled. "Waste them dudes! They pissing me off!"

"You in the way, man! Get out of the way!"

Washington grabbed his third man by the shoulder and ran hunched-over toward the right, toward the exits. "You take that door, I'll take the other! Nobody gets out!"

#

Ben jumped at the knock on his passenger side window. A policeman scanned the inside of the car, one hand on his holstered pistol.

"Excuse me, sir. License and registration, please?"

"It isn't my car, young man."

"Identification, then?"

Ben set down the tablet and fished his wallet out of his pants.

"And could you step out a moment?"

"Why, of course," Ben responded, though suspicious. He shoved open the door and boosted himself from the small car with an ease belying his age. "Is something the matter?" He held the tablet casually, but ready to swing as a weapon. Over the weeks, Ben had learned a healthy mistrust of policemen.

"This isn't your car?" The patrolman gave Ben's driver's license a sideways glance. "Where is the owner, Mr. Tallman?"

"I think explanations are due," Ben said in his most authoritative lawyer voice. He noticed the other two policemen at the stairwell and elevator entrances, their cars parked to block easy egress. "Is something the matter, officer?"

"What are you doing here, sir? Sitting in the garage, I mean."

Several responses occurred to Ben, most of them rude, but he saw the earnestness of the patrolman's expression, and checked his worse impulses. Something was terribly wrong.

"My niece is Patricia Tallman, daughter of Stephen Tallman, who runs the CBS television news show on these premises. She went upstairs to the fifty-ninth floor to say 'hi' to her daddy. I stayed down here to get some work done."

"She's up on the fifty-ninth floor?"

"I think I said that already."

The policeman took Ben by the arm. "I think you'd better come with me, Mr. Tallman."

#

Sam stumbled to a halt as the drywall exploded in rapid pulses in front of him. He watched the tracking bullets glide into the crowd jamming the fire door. Bodies convulsed. He heard screams. People retreated from the doorway only to fall under a second hail of bullets. He turned away and slid over the top of a desk as the killer ejected one empty magazine for a full one. Sam's hand closed on something his body had swept to the floor. A rock? He turned it over in his hand. "To Mom", the carved letters said. He propelled himself to his feet, aimed, and threw the keepsake as hard as he could. It hit the son of a bitch right in the face, knocking him onto his back.

"Clemmons!" It was Kenny Beacham, waving to him from the R&D entrance. Sam vaulted the three desks and cubicle walls between them, and sailed through the doorway just as the jambs spasmed from weapons fire.

"Quick!" Beacham yelled, and turned through the narrow maze of his department, four or five others ahead of him. Sam launched after them, noticing with detached wonder that this area still had lights.

He almost missed the turn, but Beacham snatched him into a corner laboratory where someone opened a steel vault door, exactly like those in banks. Well, like those in movie banks, anyway.

"Everybody in!" Beacham ordered, and his companions scrambled over the threshold almost all at once. Sam dived through the opening without even a glance inside. He thudded into everyone else crammed into that closet of a room. He watched half-dazed as Beacham squeezed in, then pulled the heavy door until it slammed, and locked, behind them.

#

Chelsea had just about reached her limit. She scanned the shadowed disaster of the See It Now world operations center. The place was a nightmare of mangled, tossed furniture and a smoking fire growing back by the main offices. Flashing, sparking overhead lighting was no longer entirely overhead. It swung from tangled wiring and teetered from twisted aluminum supports. Chelsea heard screams by both fire exits. She knew what those sounds implied, and worried about the prospect of an assassin stepping out of the smoke while she squatted exposed against the break room wall. She looked to Wo Chu and the two boys that had joined him seconds ago. All were armed to the proverbial teeth but with no more answer than she about what to do. They were all on their knees and waiting for a box full of other shoes to drop. Patricia hunkered there among them almost prostrate, terrified into stony stillness. Where was her father? Was Steve even alive? This situation could not go unchallenged.

"Wo Chu! We have to get out of here!"

Wo Chu halted his animated discussion in Chinese. "The exits are cut off! We should hold here, until the police arrive!"

"That's bullshit! We'll be memories by then!"

He looked at her for another instant, but he saw only panic there, and turned back to his men.

His obvious dismissal angered her. Chelsea pounded one fist into the wall and looked back and forth for the hidden enemy she knew would come. Then she realized the seed of a plan.

"The helipad!" she yelled. "Upstairs to the helipad!"

Wo Chu either hadn't heard, or ignored her. She pushed away from the wall and landed on her knees beside him. "We go to the helipad!" she yelled, grabbing his arm. "It's approachable from one avenue only! And the vertols are there! Hold them off long enough, and we can escape!"

Wo Chu stopped talking to his men. Chelsea's words penetrated like solvent. Wo Chu turned slowly toward her, and Chelsea saw something like a thrill enter his eyes, as though he noticed her for the first time.

"Let's go!" she shouted.

He nodded and spoke to the other bodyguards.

Patricia said something in a small, mewling voice. Chelsea at first didn't hear, then caught the girl's desperate eyes upon her.

"What is it, honey? What's the matter?"

"I can't."

"I don't understand. Can't what? What can't–" Patricia's meaning dawned on Chelsea. She looked to the helipad doorway, then back to Steve's daughter. "It's ten lousy feet, girl! Of course you can make it!"

Patricia's wide eyes turned toward the door. It might as well have been ten miles.

"Damn you, Patty, I don't have the time or the patience for this! You'll do it yourself, or you'll do it with my foot up your ass!"

#

Patricia recoiled from Chelsea's tone; she had expected better than that from her friend. Then she found herself hauled up by her shoulders, placed on her feet with Wo Chu sliding between her and Chelsea. His face was blank, the face of a man in a rocking chair, daydreaming on a warm summer day. That face contrasted the precision with which he chose his words, carefully enunciated.

"I will protect you. You will not become another Louis Hoy."

As much as she despised him, as much as she distrusted him, the conviction in his words supported her. She did not believe Chelsea, that any of them could make the helipad door, but Wo Chu's words wore an armor of truth.

"Now!" Wo Chu shouted, and they launched themselves at the door. He pulled Patricia along by her shoulders, floating her above her fear-paralyzed legs.

It was only ten feet, three or four steps.

A bloody-faced black adolescent coalesced out of the dark and smoke, right beside the door. He angled his gun muzzle toward them, and pulled the trigger.

#

The street outside the Thomson Building garage swarmed with police cars, vans, and heavy trucks. The air hummed with radio traffic. Blue-clad patrolmen paced the sidewalks or ran on unknown errands, mixing with more threatening officers in combat boots, helmets, and bulletproof vests. Worming their way through the glut of official vehicles, two fire trucks halted behind a bank of four ambulances faced the wrong way down Michigan Street. Men in gray suits peppered the chaotic scene. All wore white photo ID badges on their lapels and radiophone pickups in their ears. One of these men, not quite Ben's contemporary, and sat sideways, feet on the pavement, in an older model sedan next to a black communications truck. He twisted the headset pickup down to his neck upon noticing Ben's approach.

"Mr. Tallman, captain," the escorting patrolman said, and stood aside.

The man extended his hand to Ben. "Bill Tuttle," he said. "Jake! Get that reporter up here!"

Ben dropped the man's hand. "What in hell is going on here?"

The police captain stared at him, his eyebrows tenting. "Look up, Mr. Tallman."

A smoke trail wafted from the upper floors.

Tuttle pulled a cigarette from somewhere inside his suit jacket and lit it with a cheap Bic lighter. He took a long pull on the stick and let loose a forceful cloud of smoke. "I have bigger problems than your apparent confusion."

"Mr. Tallman?" A girl rushed to Ben, stopping just short of collision. "Mr. Tallman, what are you doing here? Did you see this on the TV?"

Ben crossed his arms. "I don't think I know you."

"Oh. Sorry. Peggy Smith. We met last week. Up in the apartment?" She pointed toward the building's smoking roof.

"Yes. Of course." Ben couldn't have cared less. He turned back toward the captain. "My niece is up there. My nephew. What in hell is going on?"

Tuttle released a stream of smoke. "We have cell reports of shooting upstairs. Fifty-eighth and fifty-ninth floors. Explosions. Fire. We can account for eighteen people. How many were upstairs? Either of you know?"

Ben didn't know what to say. Never in his life had he been struck dumb of words. He glanced back to the upper stories and licked his lips. What the hell?

"The meeting was for about ten of us," Peggy said, "but the world operations center works every day. There might have been as many as thirty, forty people up there."

"Among them my grandniece," Ben said. He looked down at Tuttle and narrowed his eyes. "You still haven't told me—"

"It's See It Now," Peggy said. "It's under attack."

"By whom?" Ben kept his eyes on Tuttle.

Tuttle took another drag on his cigarette. "As far as we can tell, it's Black Panthers, the same bunch that went after Dearing a few weeks ago."

"Donald Washington?" Peggy looked from Ben to the cop. "He has a thing against See It Now."

"Sir," one of the radio operators from the truck interrupted, "we have word from one of the air units. There are people on the roof."

"People? Good guys or bad guys? Let's have some detail here."

"They can't really say, sir. With the orbit restrictions, they're too far away to tell."

Tuttle cursed. "All right. Bring one in for a look. Not that it'll do us much good. With two vertols already up there, we've no room to land and take people off."

"Another message," a second operator called. "It's from Alpha team. They've reached the fifty-ninth floor landing."

"And?" Tuttle ground the word between his teeth. "I want info, not travel log."

"They say it's a mess, sir," the operator said. "A lot of bodies, at least ten. The other team counts bodies at their stairwell, too."

Ben drew himself up. Peggy staggered, then dropped to sit on the pavement.

"Send 'em in," Tuttle said. "Weapons loose, but not too loose. There could be more civilians."

"Be damned careful," Ben said. "I have kin up there."

Tuttle pitched his spent cigarette and lit up another immediately. He did not speak until he had taken a long drag on the new stick. "I'll do my best to protect your niece," he said. "But it's a big building, and I don't want my people shot, either." He looked from Ben to Peggy and back. "Sergeant! Find these witnesses a secure place to wait."

"I'm not going anywhere until I see my grandniece safe," Ben said.

Tuttle eyed him without compassion. "Sergeant? Make sure they have separate cars."

#

Wo Chu's man threw himself in the gunman's path. Bullets impacted his torso before his own weapon came to bear, the hits pushing him hard into Chelsea. Without thinking, Chelsea grabbed the man, then lost her footing and fell toward the wall. With one free hand, she scrabbled for his weapon, caught it, wrenched it toward the attacker, and pressed the dead man's finger against the trigger. The Uzi belched its deafening rattle. Chelsea thudded hard against the wall. She held tightly to the dead trigger finger. Gravity rolled her toward the floor; she twisted herself to stay on target and hold down the trigger. She slammed onto the floor backward, the body atop her, but still held the trigger. She held her aim with such desperate intensity under the prolonged burst that the attacker's torso all but disintegrated under her concentration.

Patricia closed her eyes hard and threw her hands over her ears.

The Uzi jammed.

Li Chen kicked his comrade's body aside, then pulled Chelsea up by the front of her flight suit. Wo Chu hauled open the helipad door, pushed Patricia through, and followed without a backward glance. Chelsea staggered for the closing door under Li Chen's covering scan. She grabbed the handle, propped the door open against the burning muscles of her back, and let the young Chinese enforcer dodge past her through the doorway. As Li Chen passed, he grabbed Chelsea once more by her flight suit, and snatched her through behind him.

The metal door clicked closed on smoking, cacophonous carnage.

#

The elevator opened onto almost identical devastation; Steve could almost imagine never having left the fifty-eighth floor. But Emma didn't slump against the far wall here – the smashed hulk of the holo-receptionist lay there instead. The lighting wavered from sparking wrecks of incandescent fixtures swinging from the ceiling, and from fire down the hall. All this Steve expected. What struck him was the gamy smell of pond water, the lake in the room's far corner, and the blasted out pedestal that had once been Emma's aquarium. Neons lay dead on the soaking carpet, just as Emma did below.

He stepped from the elevator, then turned down the hall toward his office. The pistol hung from his right hand.

He walked a steady pace, glancing into every open doorway, ignoring the closed ones. His own office lay as mutilated as the others. Smoke swirled in from the hall, across what remained of his decimated suspended ceiling, and out the shattered space of his floor length windows, taking with it what papers the wind snatched from his desk and from the cardboard boxes about his floor. Jarvis sprawled dead atop the desk, shattered.

Steve stopped at the cubicle farm entrance, unsure what to do next. A fire raged ten feet in front of him, feeding off the furniture, the spilled papers of several gutted file cabinets, and the cloth coverings of movable partitions. It didn't seem to spread, thanks to the flame retardant materials of the building itself, but the smoke piled down from the ceiling with zeal. Within minutes, anyone left on the floor would suffocate, if they weren't shot or burned first.

Gunfire erupted to his front, somewhere near the helipad exit, a prolonged burst long enough to warp the weapon's barrel. He skirted the fire, leapt a still standing partition, and dodged his way through wreckage toward the shots. His eyes watered from the smoke. The noxious vapors made him cough.

"Shit!" someone yelled. "Come on, the motherfuckers went up here!"

A protest, then a vicious verbal backlash. Steve recognized a voice from Sam's prisms. He turned toward it as if toward a beacon.

"Ain't you got no guts? Why'd I bring you along, anyway?"

"If we don't get out of here, we'll be up to our eyeballs in blueshirts, man! There's smoke out the windows! Some of them people got away!"

"I promised this to that Clemmons fucker! It's delivery time!"

"These people got guns, Donny! Three brothers down, man! You said we'd get rich; you didn't say nothin' 'bout no war!"

Steve felt dizzy. He had expected Mercy, or Mercy through Decker. Was this all as pointless as revenge by an angry teenager?

Washington held his partner against the break room wall. Washington's back faced Steve, but the other one's eyes expanded like white balloons as Steve stepped from the smoky dark twenty feet away. Washington must have caught the expression. He released his accomplice and threw himself around, firing blindly with a submachine gun. The spray rattled noisily off destroyed furniture, flipped a swivel chair over backwards, but hit nowhere near its intended target. The other boy jumped to one side, raised his grenade launcher, stumbled over a butchered body near the helipad door, and recovered. He raised the launcher again while Washington scanned into the smoke.

Steve raised his pistol in a practiced, decisive arc, and shot the grenadier dead. In that instant, he saw the launcher clatter to the floor, saw the boy smack like a thrown doll against the wall, saw the satisfying splat of blood left by the body as it fell. He felt an immense release as his arm arced away with the pulse pistol's recoil. With that release, he threw off the frustration of playing a dangerous gambit for high stakes for so many weeks, only to have everything destroyed in the end. He focused and liberated a feral anger at being forced into monstrous choices by monstrous people for no civilized reason whatever. He took smug pleasure in the knowledge that these were the people who had gone after Anna, who had murdered Emma, and he projected onto them, onto this one boy dead on the floor, the identities of those who had taken Louis Hoy, taken all those people in New York, taken all those people in Montana, who had tried to take Patricia, and who had tried to take Ben. In that instant of release, all the controls of his life vanished. Tears erupted onto his cheeks. He shouted, but didn't hear his words. He wanted to shoot the corpse again, but Washington didn't let him.

The first two bullets struck Steve's shoulder and free arm. He staggered under the twin blows, remembered himself, planted his feet and turned toward the other gunman in his universe. The next bullet slammed into his chest, knocking him against a toppled file cabinet, burning hideous damage into his vitals. Still, he maintained his feet. He brought the pistol in line with Donald Washington, ignored the punching impacts all around him and the tracers lancing out from his enemy's gun. He squeezed the trigger.

Or he tried.

All his finger offered was a disconcerting numbness. But that made no sense; the other arm was the wounded one. Then he noticed, with dawning terror, that the numbness expanded. Hand. Both hands. His wounds no longer burned. He couldn't taste the lack of spit in his mouth. His body disappeared from his senses in one rapid wash of paralysis. The pistol fell from his nonexistent grasp. He collapsed back against the file cabinet, dropped like jelly into the filth of destruction. He tried to locate Washington, who had stopped firing, but he couldn't. He was blind.

#

The old man drew in a sudden, startled breath and dropped his copy of People magazine to the table. The younger man, in his forties, turned from the stove and eyed his elder critically. The old geezer was over a century old; he was way overdue to croak.

"He comes," the old man muttered.

"Well, it's about time," the younger man responded, and went back to frying his cornbread.

#

Washington stood twenty feet away, squinting into the smoke at the gunman's collapsed form. Was he dead? If so, then he sure had died funny, not at all like those blueshirts in New Hampshire. All that wobbling and that slow motion drop. The bullets should've just knocked him right over. He took a curious step toward the man, weapon held ready, but halted at a racket from the nearest fire exit. Someone entered the floor, several someones. It could only be the police.

He forgot the man with the gun. He shuffled to the helipad door. Nowhere else to go; he had remained too long on site. Jackie had been right, after all.

Washington snatched up the grenade launcher. He kicked at the two corpses blocking the door, nudging them enough to let him through. He backed onto the stairwell landing. He crouched there a moment, thinking what to do. He could give up, but he could just as easily point his machine gun down his throat. He was a cop killer several times over, and black. Give up or not, he would never make street level alive. He decided to fight it out, to take things to their natural progression. The brothers would respect him for it. He regretted the loss of all that money, all of it his, with his partners down. But that was minor. As he had told that white black Clemmons bastard, he would have done this job for free.

He checked both weapons for ammunition, slung the machine gun over one shoulder, then took the stairs two at a time. He'd have to do something about that bunch above him. They were armed, and he didn't like the idea of guns both above and below him. Still, the threat of violent death was an old one to him. It had followed him for years. The brothers honored the dead of their cause, spun legends on their behalf. So, he held no regrets that he might die a boy. He could become the focus of stories told on the corner, and in houses after dark. Anyway, his boyhood was long since dead; soon he would only catch up to it.

That was the normal way of things.

#

They put Ben in a police car. The door was unlocked, and no one stayed to guard him. He could have gotten out at any time, but why? What could he contribute to the awful mess around him? Ben slumped in the back of the sedan, drained. He recalled his last conversation with Steve. Well, his last fight with him, anyway. Had they passed a single good word between them?

He remembered only arguments, the struggle to teach that boy his history. Steve denied the old stories, denied the special wisdom of his people, his real people. He was so enamored of the mythology of technology, of logic, of artificial philosophies. He was white as typing paper.

Well, Ben supposed, he'd better remember the old tales soon, for his sake and his daughter's. Only the spirits could protect them.

He was so enmeshed in reverie that the figure obstructing the passenger doorway startled him.

"Excuse me, are you Mr. Tallman?" the uniformed cop asked. His face was young, his eyebrows raised in uncertainty.

"Yes," Ben answered without thinking. "I am."

"Mr. Ben Tallman?"

"Yes, young man, that's me."

The young man's expression hardened. "I've a message for you, Mr. Tallman, from the Americans for Civil Equality."

He unsnapped the safety strap of his holster.

#

Chelsea forced herself up the stairway despite the needling aches in her back, legs and arms. Wo Chu led, practically carrying Patricia along with him. Li Chen took the stairs almost backward, watching the flights below for danger. They no longer heard gunfire. That in itself was suspicious.

Chelsea tried to think what awaited them on the pad. Had Joe put out the tie downs yet? That would increase their escape time. Were the engines too cool for a fast start?

Li Chen bellowed and sent a fusillade down the stairwell, the sound deafening in the close quarters. Chelsea turned, saw a face and an upward pointed muzzle.

"They're coming, Wo Chu!" she cried. "Get moving up there!"

"You fuckers playin' catch?" someone yelled from below. "Catch this!"

Chelsea heard a hollow pop. Her eyes followed the cylinder-shaped projectile as it sailed up the stairwell to clatter against the concrete a few steps down from her.

"Run!" she screamed, and threw herself up the steps. Li Chen grunted behind her. They barely turned the landing before the grenade detonated. Chelsea felt the building thrum, and a stabbing pain in her ears.

They burst just behind the others into beautiful sunlight and onto the tower landing. Joe and his pad tech stood outside their office, gape-mouthed.

"Hide!" Chelsea yelled, and kept running. She grabbed Patricia from Wo Chu and jerked the girl onto the metal stairs to the helipad. "You can hold them at the top of these stairs! I'll get the vertol up!"

She burst into the full day, only the weak blue sky and the sun above her. There stood the vertol, forty feet away. Damn! The tie downs were on. She fought the urge to look back; she could do nothing there. She half-dragged Patricia to the aircraft, held her awkwardly as she pulled open the co-pilot's door, then slumped her against the waiting seat.

"Get in, honey! We're almost out of here. You get in; I have to prep the ship."

Patricia made half-coordinated movements to crawl into the seat. The girl was in shock, hardly able to function.

Chelsea couldn't help that. She ran to the starboard nose tie down and unscrewed the safety catch on its U-link with rapid slaps of her hand against the cylinder. She lifted the horseshoe shaped link from the ship's built in snap hook and threw it aside, tie down cable and all.

Gunfire erupted from Wo Chu's position at the steps. She bit her lip to avoid looking, ran to the next tie down. It took her less than a minute to release the ship from its moorings, but she knew combat, and how long a minute could be. More gunfire from the steps.

She hauled open the pilot's door and launched herself to her seat. Patricia had made it into the co-pilot's seat, but hadn't bothered to buckle. Chelsea cursed the extra time to strap her in, then saw to her own harness.

"Here we go, Patty," she said, trying to sound confident. "You ready to fly?"

Patricia made a choked sound in her throat. Well, at least she tried.

"Here's the test, honey." Chelsea flipped switches from reflex. Her fingers paused at the four engine ignition switches. "Reach out to God," she said aloud, and not necessarily to Patricia. "Pray we don't seize the turbines." She flipped all four switches at once.

The vertol groaned, jerked, then started to vibrate. She heard the familiar piercing whine, saw the proper gauges reach for the proper readings. It worked!

The turbines deepened their tone to a smooth tenor whine. She grabbed for her helmet, brought it onto her head, and in that instant saw the mess at the tower stairs.

The pad tech lay half on deck, half on the stairs, dead. She saw Joe nowhere. Wo Chu and Li Chen had started for the vertol, but knelt with their backs to Chelsea, loosing bullets into the stairs. Someone darted and dodged in that stairway, trying to gain some advantage over the two bodyguards. They had a stand-off, one the Chinese could maintain as long as they had ammo, but from which they could not escape. Wo Chu spared her a glance, and waved her away.

She hesitated, not wanting to leave them behind. Then another cylinder arced up from the stairwell and bounced onto the pad a few feet from the vertol's nose.

Chelsea pulled the collective. She felt the G-forces in her gut as the ship sprang upward and rolled to port in response to an instinctual nudge on her cyclic stick.

She didn't need the warning messages blossoming across her heads up display to know the grenade had detonated. Shrapnel tracks sliced across her windscreen, and metal cowling from the starboard front engine ripped free, slapping the fuselage in front of Patricia's seat before pinwheeling into space. Patricia flinched, turned to starboard, then jabbed a finger toward the engine. She shouted a warning unheard above the alarms sounding from Chelsea's helmet headphones. Chelsea scanned her indicators for information while the vertol completed its arc to port, swung clear of the helipad, and fell below roof level. The black glass flank of the Thomson Building rushed like water along the aircraft's starboard side, uncomfortably close.

Patricia watched smoke whip from the engine two feet away, stared wide-eyed as fire engulfed its refrigerator-sized bulk. She recoiled from the blasting flames as they lashed out at the vertol's frame, turning her windscreen orange.

"Chelsea!"

"I'm on it!" Chelsea hit the engine's fuel shut-off. SHUT-OFF FAULT 01, her visor reported, SHUT-OFF NON-OP. LAND AIRCRAFT NOW. She reached for the engine jettison switch, but snapped her hand back to the collective when the ship veered toward the building. We're falling, she thought, and I can't apply power until I lose that engine. She reached again for the jettison switch, again lost control of the vertol. Patience, she told herself. You have about twenty-five seconds, if the engine doesn't explode first. She righted the ship. Again she reached for the switch; again she failed.

"Patty, throw the switch!" She strained against the collective and her control stick. "The yellow switch guard at your left hand, honey! Can you get it?"

Patricia's eyes snapped back and forth between Chelsea and the hungry fire inches from her face. The plexi in her door warped, seconds from melting.

"I can't get it, honey! You have to try! The yellow switch guard! Throw it up and flip the switch!" Chelsea's stomach tightened at the thought of depending on that terrified girl. How long before they crashed? She glanced out her own plexi. Jesus! There are people down there, police cars everywhere! "Throw the switch, Patty! If you don't, we're going to die!"

The vertol fell at a rate of two stories per second, twisting under its unbalanced thrust of three engines, the fourth hoovering fuel into its ballooning flames. The ship's tailboom struck the black wall of the building, shattering two stories of glass and almost flipping the aircraft before Chelsea snatched clear. Her teeth bared under the strain of controlling the plummeting machine. She watched the police cars grow rapidly larger below.

The ship shuddered. Chelsea heard the explosion even through the frantic alarms in her headphones. She turned just in time to see the flaming engine catapult out and up from the ship. It struck the building, blasting glass, fuel, and metal into the bright morning sky. Patricia stared in horrified awe at the hellish mess, her mouth hanging open, her hand still on the co-pilot's jettison switch. The vertol suddenly lightened and arced toward the building. Chelsea snatched it away, then fed power to rein it up and back. Patricia screamed as the abandoned engine flashed past the ship on its way to the street, barely missing the vertol's nose.

Chelsea bit her lip as the ship corkscrewed upwards, twisting her gut with centrifugal forces. Her breath came in violent snatches. She forced her brain to maintain focus, to read the heads up display, to work the controls against the violent, random pulls of gravity. The black and gray whirl of buildings gave way to open sky, then the Thomson Building's helipad twenty feet below and out the front windscreen. Someone stood on the deck, raising a weapon in the aircraft's direction.

The ship tilted forward, dived in near free fall once more below the roofline. It was not under control.

#

"Incoming!" a patrolman yelled quite unnecessarily.

Peggy watched, gape-mouthed, through fifteen seconds of compressing terror while all eyes followed the engine's descent. Then it was among them, a flaming meteor only a hundred, fifty, twenty feet up. It slammed into the top of a patrol car; the missile couldn't have hit more precisely if it had been aimed.

The car flattened. It threw out flaming offal in all directions. The force of the blow flipped a neighboring prowl car over another, to land upside down on the sidewalk. All the Thomson Building's lobby windows imploded. A bucket seat arced up and into the second story. Nothing much remained of the impacted car but a smoking fire ring.

Peggy stared. She wondered where the wreckage was. Almost nothing stood in the billowing smoke. The cops had placed her in that car. Thank God she didn't follow orders.

#

GEN SYS PROTECTION FAULT. LAND AIRCRAFT NOW.

Chelsea released the collective for a snatch at the rerouters above her head. The message in her visor changed, but not in any way she preferred.

ELEC OVERRIDE OFF-LINE. LAND AIRCRAFT NOW.

"Gotta put it down!" she yelled as ten and seven-story office buildings blurred by beneath them. She wished she knew where she was, but, with fire and projectile damage to her electrical command systems and God knew what else, and collision damage to the tailboom, the ship was barely controllable.

A place to set down, she thought desperately. Forget the street. It was all she could do to avoid catastrophe against any of the threatening rooftops or building facades in the cramped space of Michigan Street. Nor could she gain much altitude to look around, and she didn't know this city all that well in the first place. The aircraft wouldn't last much longer; she needed an LZ soon.

SEIZURE IN PRIM HYDRAULIC COMMAND SYS. SWITCH TO AUX SYS. LAND AIRCRAFT NOW.

She flipped switches on the floor console before the vertol slapped roof on a low office building, then veered headlong at the concrete flank of the COMCAST Building next door. Chelsea shrugged off the shock of the rattling impact and wrenched her controls. This threw the ship into a spin that diverted it from collision and shot it around the corner and straight up a wide, four-lane boulevard. Meridian Street? Patricia threw up all over the windscreen.

"God damn it!" Chelsea screamed, now partly blind on her right. But open space appeared over there, more maneuver room. She slid the ship away from the buildings caging her left flank and– The park! The park was on her right! The park in which she and Steve met so often when he needed to get away. She tried to recall the layout beyond that bordering line of trees. Flower beds, a big fountain centered in the greenspace. She hopped the trees, calculating an arc to drop her north of the fountain and onto flat lawn. There might be a few trees, but–

A multi-rowed bank of aluminum flagpoles barred her way. Their colors fluttered gaily in the sun, all fifty of them. In the instant before collision she even picked out California. Jesus Christ! she thought, the realization a scream in her mind. Wrong park! Wrong park!

#

The vertol hit backwards as Chelsea tried one desperate, futile turn. The aircraft flattened flag poles, got snared in a half dozen others, then snapped downward. Its tailboom accordioned into the paving bricks and concrete below. It sheared from the rest of the aircraft at just behind the cabin, catapulting the fuselage past the barrier, across North Street, and onto the empty grass bowling alley that was the American Legion Mall.

"Holy shit!" the pilot of the police vertol called. "Bird down at North and Meridian, the American Legion Mall! She's blown to hell, Control. Nobody's walking away from that!"

The pilot watched, horrified, as the white fuselage disintegrated, flipping end over end up the length of the grass field. Engines, landing gear, and avionics protrusions all tore away. They sprayed about the grass like marbles from a broken bag, except that some of those marbles weighed in at nine hundred pounds and were full of volatile fuel. He could only imagine the occupants' last few terror-filled moments as instrumentation, chairs, and plexi ripped loose from their mounts and tumbled about in the cockpit, searching for flesh to smash. He saw a cruiser hook the corner at Michigan and Meridian and the ambulance and fire rescue teams that followed. He couldn't believe they'd find anybody to work on. Anybody on that bird was hamburger.

#

The sergeant led with his pulse rifle, pointing it wherever his eyes scanned. He signaled his men to fan out across the floor, to make a quick sweep for hostiles before even glancing at the bodies. He heard their reports in his respirator mask pickup, good news considering the hell through which they prowled. All clear. All clear. All clear. The sergeant ordered one team down the smoky hallway toward the elevators, another through the doors leading to the only lighted area on the floor. Then he gathered his final team of two men at the helipad exit, deployed for security, and called his control.

"Stairwell secure at fifty-nine. Main office complex secure. Send Bravo team to reinforce, Charlie team to take the helipad, over."

"Good job, Alpha. We're on the way, ETA ten sierras."

"Get those firefighters up here, too. And the EMTs. Fire wants to flame up, and we have lots of bodies."

"How many wounded, Alpha?"

"No count, Control. We just got here."

"Roger, Alpha. Control out."

Bravo and Charlie teams trotted onto the floor from different stairwells. One group of combat gear-laden officers spread throughout the floor. The other assembled at the helipad door. Only then did the Alpha team leader relax.

"It's yours, Phil," he said to his contemporary. "Happy hunting."

"Shitfire," the man responded. "This is one hell of a way to make my boat payments."

The Alpha team leader pulled away and began checking bodies for signs of life. His orders were to separate the damage into groups: the well and the walking wounded (to be sent downstairs to a more secure floor for treatment), the operable seriously injured (to be prepared for transport by air or ground, whichever proved most feasible), and the dead or soon to be, whom they just couldn't help.

Someone moved near the south fire exit, trying to extricate himself from beneath three bodies.

"Right here," the team leader said, and pulled corpses away from the struggling form. "Don't get up." He felt the man for wounds and checked his face for signs of shock. "Your name, buddy?"

"Umm, McFadden. Jerry McFadden. Jesus, what happened?" he coughed in the roiling smoke.

The policeman mentally ticked off the name from the list supplied by Control. They wanted this one right away. "Hey! A hand here!" he yelled to one of his men. "You okay, Mr. McFadden? Can you walk?"

"I can walk." Jerry coughed again, almost gagging.

"Good. Go with this officer here. We'll get you to safety. Understand?"

Jerry nodded. The Alpha team leader walked away as his subordinate took over.

"Chuck, this is Tim. You there?"

"Yo," the team leader responded. Now, where was Tim? In the research and development area.

"I have seven more for you, but it'll take a while to get to them."

"Explain."

"They've locked themselves in a vault, the key card's in there with them, and they managed to scuff it or otherwise damage it so the thing won't work the interior card reader."

The policeman snorted at that, then noticed his number two man signaling him from inside the jumbled mess of work cubicles. "Hey, whatever. It's just more overtime."

"Got a weird one," his number two said. He stood over a bloodied, broken form, male, mid-forties or fifties, at least three obvious hits, two in the torso. He sprawled atop a toppled file cabinet.

"Case three." The team leader said. "Forget him."

"He's breathing."

"Not for long."

"I think he could make it, man. I don't know why. He's blasted to the next county, but I think he's a bet."

"We don't have time for this. If there's room on a transport, load him. Otherwise, leave him to God."

He turned away, shaking his head. It was just like his number two to get hung up on a loser. A shipload of bodies to choose from, and he gets silly over a slim chance like that. Maybe he was a bet, but they had numbers to go by, and limited medical transport.

It just wasn't a good day for gambling.

#

No fire.

Ordinarily, EMTs welcomed such news, but he saw the wreckage before him. The fuselage looked like a crushed beer can. "Pull over close," he told his partner, and steeled his stomach for the inevitable mess.

Once outside, he dropped to his hands and knees and peered through an opening in the upside down cockpit. It was probably where the windshield had been, but who could tell? A woman in there. She hung by her harness in the inverted seat, a black curtain of hair blocking her face. Some of it was torn out, tangled in a metal rod impaled through the back of her seat, millimeters from her head. He pushed aside the hair to see her face.

She blinked, then turned dazed eyes toward him.

"Don't worry, ma'am. We're gonna get you out of there."

"No. Her first." She moved one arm feebly, then screamed bloody hell at the pain.

The EMT nodded to his partner, who jogged around to the other side. Then he turned back to the now sobbing woman.

"Patty?" she said. "Talk to me, honey. Patty?"

"Don't move. You may be hurt. My partner's checking on Patty. It's gonna be all right." He turned his head to the fire engine lumbering across the grass. "Let's get that extractor," he urged. "We got some serious cuttin' to do."

#

Peggy finally found Ben in a patrol car back by the garage. From a distance he seemed exhausted; he slumped in the back seat, his head resting on that shelf under the rear window. Well, why not? He wasn't a young man, and this was an ordeal for the strong. She jogged toward the car, hoping the news might help. Personally, she preferred even bad news to none at all.

"Mr. Tallman!" she called, almost out of breath. She stopped at the open back door, resting hands against knees for a moment before speaking again. "Mr. Tallman, they have word on Patricia. She was in that–"

Her voice seized. Her muscles forgot themselves, and she fell onto her backside in the street. She wanted to scream, but only ragged gasps escaped.

Ben sat in the police car carefully propped, a hole blown right through his forehead.

Book Two

"There is no death, only a change of worlds."

– Chief Seattle

Chapter Twenty-two:

Dark Vision

 (Back to Contents)

He lay beneath the great dome of the sky, unable to move, as if the bones had melted from his limbs. Somewhere at his feet, a voice muttered, sometimes singing, sometimes droning incomprehensible verse, but always low and muffled, as if its owner spoke only to himself. Steve felt compelled to acknowledge that voice, but lacked the strength to sit up, to turn his head toward the speaker, or to utter more than a grunt. He lay there, staring up at the glittering stars, listening to the rhythmic incantations of the voice.

After a while, the muttering ceased and a face blotted out the Milky Way above. It was an old face, thin and impossibly lined, with coarse white hair pulled back into a shaggy ponytail. Steve recognized that face.

"No, I am not your grandfather," the old man said. "I am the power you seek, the power that seeks you."

Steve stared into the ancient eyes. He thought a spark of red flared in their depths.

"It is your illness that holds you mute and still. Observe."

The old man held a pinch of yellow powder between gnarled fingers. He pressed the gob to Steve's forehead.

#

A flash of stinging light.

"Male, late forties, early fifties, medium build," the man in the green mask said. He pressed open Steve's eyes and shone a light into them.

"BP 180 over 110," another voice said, a woman's voice. "Match blood as 'O' positive, and he's as hot as my grandmother's stove."

"Stable enough to cut?"

"He has to be."

"It's either kill him here or let him die in the hall," a third voice said.

"Put him under," the first man decided. "Get that spreader. Scan has a lacerated left lung, flail chest, and massive blood loss. We'll work overtime on this one, folks."

#

Steve jolted under the sudden memory. But it wasn't a memory. And it wasn't images, or words either. He had never seen those faces or heard those words. He had known them.

"Sit up," the old man commanded.

Steve sat up.

The old man looked at him, expressionless. Then he shuffled ten feet away, a leather pouch in one hand, and lowered himself cross-legged to the ground. Steve could see him clearly though it was night and no fire burned nearby.

The old man placed his pouch on the ground, centered in some sort of artwork, a mandala fashioned in sand, rocks, and something that glistened like ground-up glass. He drew pinches of colored sand from baskets off to one side and sprinkled it with precision onto his design. The colors of the sand were unnaturally bright, as if lit from within.

"A man-made sickness troubles you," the old man said. "Why don't you throw it off? When a blanket becomes worn and eaten by bugs, you throw it off; you look forward to your next blanket. Now. Show me your arm."

Steve raised his arm, the one he sensed the old man wanted. He pushed back the sleeves of his shirt and sport coat. The bar code showed dully.

The man ignored Steve's arm. He sprinkled more sand on the ground. Red flashed in his eyes once more. "You have lived long enough with your old blanket," he said. Then he paused in his artwork, as if listening to whispers. "No, that is incorrect. Better to say, as someone did recently, that you have lived too long with the dead."

He reached two fingers into his leather pouch, drew out a pinch of yellow dust, and blew it in Steve's direction. The dust flitted across the intervening ten feet as if directed by an intelligent will. It lighted atop Steve's high-tech tattoo. The bar code suddenly felt cold, and itched.

#

Three masked figures leaned over his body.

"This man's bar coded, doctor," an unseen person said.

"I haven't time for that. More patching here, please."

"But the regulations stipulate a bar coded patient be scanned immediately. He could be a prisoner. Has anyone scanned this man?"

"I wouldn't know. They can scan him in the morgue. Clean up there. No, there."

The scraping of metal wheels on tile, then the cold caress of plastic against one forearm.

"Do you really need to do that?"

"I'm the gas passer. Not much else to do right now. What the hell–?"

An insistent beeping filled the room.

"For pity's sake, shut that thing up."

"The monitor shows a bulletin from the National Security Agency. It says 'No invasive procedures permitted. Await instructions from nearest military medical facility before treating this subject.'"

"A little late in warning, I'd say."

"Jesus! It's networking to the hospital security system. It's dialing phone numbers. Any lines it isn't using are blocked."

"Oh, and how would you know that from a scanner screen?"

"Because it says so, right on the monitor."

"Huh! The director won't like that," the surgeon commented, and peered hard at his patient. "Why are you so important?" he asked.

"They're sending people from Wright-Patterson," the anesthesiologist reported. "They'll be here in an hour."

#

Steve's eyes refocused. He lifted himself unsteadily to his feet and stood in the great, flat emptiness of the desert. The old man was gone. His sand painting glowed ten feet away, the leather bag missing from its center. Steve doddered to the artwork and dropped to his knees. Too much, too fast, he thought. His strength drained from him like water from a squeezed sponge. But the artwork fed it back to him. Power radiated from that mandala like heat from a furnace register. He gazed at the colored sand, its four quadrants of black, white, yellow and blue, and its broken outline of a circle. Such a simple design, and so inexplicably alive.

A sound drew Steve's attention, a sharp, familiar thudding that urged him to his feet and pulled him stumbling into the dark toward its source. He fell several times. He crawled when he could not walk. He felt compelled to pursue those steady, dull blows, to find their origin.

A man formed from the darkness, a tiny mud-brick house behind him. The man swung an ax with fluid twists of his lanky frame, splitting wood into neat piles about him. Noticing Steve watching him from the dark, he planted the ax blade into its chopping block and wiped his hands on a rag taken from his hip pocket.

"Well, howdy, boy! Ain't you a visitin' son of a gun!"

"Ben?"

"Come over here. Take a load off." The form of Ben Tallman moved toward the house, turning now and then to gesture Steve forward. He dropped his frame into a rocking chair outside the front door and signaled Steve to take up another chair ten feet away, facing the house. The old man's eyes flickered red as he sat smiling at his visitor.

"You look like shit, boy. Feelin' your limitations, are ya?"

"I feel weak. It's hard to breathe."

"Lacerated lung, don't you remember? Always keep sight of your limitations, boy. They're only limitations when you forget 'em."

"What does that mean? That makes no sense."

The old man smiled an even broader smile. He reached down his shirt front and withdrew a leather pouch that dangled by a rawhide string from his neck.

"You aren't my Uncle Ben," Steve said. "You're the old man who looks like my grandfather."

"If you respect them, limitations needn't be liabilities. You can learn to use 'em, work 'em to your advantage." He took a pinch of yellow powder from the pouch and flung it in Steve's direction.

"What is that stuff?" Steve yelled.

The old man laughed.

#

"I can't believe you'd do this," Chelsea said from the foot of his bed. He ached at the sight of her left arm in a cast. "He's been through enough. They've both been through enough. You can't just waltz in here and snatch them apart like... like perforated paper."

"I beg your pardon," a familiar voice said from off to one side. "I don't see how this is your business."

"I'm his friend," Chelsea said, "and hers, too. I think that counts for something over fifteen years. That's longer than you stuck it out."

Belinda skirted the end of the bed. She jutted her nose into Chelsea's face. "How dare you question my motives! This is my daughter. I love my daughter very God damned much! I won't have her shot at, burned, or crushed in crashing helicopters! She's coming home with me, and I don't think any judge will argue the point!"

"Back off, Belinda. I don't like people in my face..."

"I'm not impressed. Your Amazon queen routine might wow a certain comatose male we know, but it strikes me as frankly childish. As for my fidelity in marriage, I stuck it out longer than most would. I give myself credit for recognizing a losing situation, which is more than I can say for you, Chelsea Van Arsdale."

"Oh? And what is that supposed to mean?"

"You're hopeless if you can't see it. What makes you so special that he won't throw you away like he did me? I gave him four years. I worked hard those four years. But I was never more than a background character in his little self-imposed morality play. It was one great mission after the other, until I got tired of wondering where he was, of going unnoticed whenever he was around. He treats Patricia the same way. Do you think you're any luckier? You'll waste your life on him. You already have. He'll ignore you into submission."

"He never ignored you, Belinda, and he doesn't ignore Patricia. Sometimes he just gets blinders on–"

"Sometimes? All he can see are his dusty, rigid principles! Ever since he killed all those people. Those principles almost killed my baby! They're like bright lights, and he's a moth! They're like a religion! By God, as soon as the doctors let me, I'm taking Patricia away from this maniac, and he'll never see her again!"

She turned away and out of sight. Chelsea stood at the foot of the bed, looking tired. "I'm sorry it was so bad between you," she said.

"Jesus! Why don't you leave me alone? He came back from the war with you! You're like an unwanted pet! He spent more time with you than he ever did with me! You're part of the reason we split. I was invisible, but he'd run off to you whenever you had a problem, some little nightmare, or you broke up with some man! And you did it on purpose! I've always believed–"

"That's bull shit! You're out of your mind!"

"He loves you! He loves you! He didn't realize it then, and he probably doesn't now, but he loves you as much as he ever loved anyone! He loves you, and I resent you for it!"

#

Steve thrashed about as if under attack. He found himself on the ground, the rocking chair laid on its side behind him. The vanguard drops of a brewing storm spattered the dust about him. Thunder rumbled in the distance. He dragged himself to a sitting position, wincing at a stinging pain in his side. Forty-three years old and falling out of chairs, he thought.

The one in Ben Tallman's skin was gone; his rocking chair creaked by the door. Steve heard movement from within the house. He coaxed his body to its feet once more, took four strength-siphoning steps to the open doorway.

The house consisted of a single small room, sparsely furnished, with logs hissing in the fireplace against one wall. Someone leaned against the hearth, staring into the flames. He turned around as Steve scraped over the threshold. This one was not Ben Tallman. He was younger, in his late forties perhaps, with close-cropped dark hair and a flat-featured face. That face was etched deeply into Steve's memory. His heart wrenched to find this man before him.

"God dammit, enough!" Steve shouted. "You've no right to touch his face!"

The man stood there, looking lost and tired. "Come in, Stevie," he said. "Take a seat."

"No more tricks!" Steve continued, dragging through the doorway to lean against the cheap wooden table centered in the room. It rattled on the dirt floor. "Who the hell are you? What do you want of me? How did I get here?"

"You know me. Who do you think I am?"

"My father's dead!"

"I know. Sit down, before you fall down."

Steve collapsed into one of the two straight back chairs, less in obedience than from necessity.

"I'm your dad, Stevie. He brought me here, kept me here until your arrival. I deserved it. I messed up bad. There were things I should have taught you, taught all my children, but you especially. He says I have to stay here until I make things right."

"You don't even get a 'C' for effort. My father is dead!"

The man pulled out the other chair and lowered himself into it. He intertwined his fingers on the rickety surface of the table and looked deeply, if nervously, into Steve's eyes.

Steve returned the stare, but, to his unease, noticed no signature burn of red within those eyes.

"You look good, Stevie. You grew up well. I'm proud of you."

"Dad?"

"Yeah."

"But ... how?" Steve could barely force the words through his tightening throat. He reached across the table to touch the man's hands. He was real. His hands were rough and warm.

"Nobody dies, son. We go on to other places, become other things. Our souls don't die, not until God himself commands it. I should have gone on, or slept, or whatever it is I should have done, but he brought me here, told me I had to wait for you before I could make my journey."

"Who? Who told you this?" How could he talk to this man? It was a trick, a hallucination. But that was his father across the table. Every sense in Steve's being told him so.

Marcus Tallman shrugged. "Can't really say. God. Jesus. The Holy Spirit. Or maybe it was an angel. I don't know. I'm tired, son. I need to sleep. I wish we could talk. I'd like to, but he says I have a job to do."

"What job, Dad?"

Marcus Tallman looked uncertain. "He wants me to tell you a story."

Steve sat there in his seat, numbed. His father, delivering a message from God? What was it all about? The thing that wasn't Ben, that wasn't his granddaddy, that had brought his father before him across the barrier of death, what did it want?

The storm growled outside. Beyond the door and windows an opaque blackness crouched like a living thing.

"It's him," Steve's father whispered. He leaned farther across the table. "I don't know why it's important, but, when I was a kid on the reservation, my brother got sick. They went to the reservation clinic. They even drove him in the pickup to Phoenix, to the hospital there. The white doctors couldn't do anything. They said it was a virus, but he didn't respond to their medicine. Then they said he ate some poison, but they couldn't find any, and he just kept getting sicker over days and days. Poison doesn't do that. If you get through poison, it's out of your system in a few days, generally speaking."

What kind of shit was this? What did Steve care for some kid's childhood stomach aches?

"Dad – your granddaddy – had medicine, but the wrong kind. He found another guy out in Scottsdale who knew the right medicine, and brought him out to our house.

"This new shaman prayed over my brother and examined his spirit. Then he said my brother was the victim of witchcraft, that all the parts of his spirit were forced out of balance. He said the witch was too strong to fight directly, but he might be able to remove the witch's weapons. My brother would get well, but he'd have to leave the reservation, or the witch might take him again."

"Why are you telling me this? What are you doing here, Dad?"

"Don't. I'm too tired. Anyhow, this shaman took an offering for his animal guide, his power source. It wasn't much. Some nuts. Some polished granite pebbles. Then he had a wickiup built outside, kind of a stick tipi, and had my brother taken inside. He prayed over him, sang songs over him, made a sand painting outside and all around the wickiup. All this occurred at night, all the way 'til dawn. Then he stopped, had my brother taken inside the house, the wickiup taken down, the sand painting erased. The next night, he did it again, and the next night, too. On the fourth night, he followed the same routine, but had a fire built just outside the wickiup. Just before dawn, he put his hand to my brother's forehead. There was nothing in his hand; he showed us, so we'd believe afterward. He put his hand there, and he said a long prayer. Then he took his hand away, and there was something in it.

"It was a bone, cut in the shape of an arrow. It was dyed red at the point, blue at the feather end, and some hairs were tied to it. The shaman said it was a human bone, and that the hairs belonged to my brother. It was scary shit, all bright and wet, and tiny, too. It couldn't have been longer than an inch, an inch and a half. I was only seven years old. It gave me the creeps to know that thing had been in my brother's body.

"But the shaman said it hadn't been in his body, but in his spirit. He said it was a deadly weapon, and that my brother would have to leave that night if he was to avoid being hit with another. Then he threw that arrow in the fire, and it blew up with sparks and a loud pop.

"The shaman told us that night that power was a relative thing, that he didn't really have the power to fight that witch directly. But he had better weapons, and he knew them better. That witch was clumsy. His weapons were strong, but without much finesse. They were like bombs, while our shaman's weapons were like good hunting rifles, or really good knives. He said weapons could make all the difference against a greater power, as long as you didn't fight that power directly."

He sighed, as if at the end of a great chore. "That brother was your Uncle Ben. That's why he lives off the res. They sent him to the Indian school."

He was finished. He sat there across the table, slumping. The fire danced in a sudden down draft. The dark pressed through the doorway and windows, and oozed across the floor toward them.

"How's Carol, son?"

"What? Mom? She's okay, I guess."

"Does she miss me?" His voice was blurred, slow.

"Well, Dad. It's been twenty-eight years, y'know?"

Marcus Tallman's head nodded. It was swathed in shadow; the fire no longer provided much light.

"I'm glad she's all right. I always wanted her to be happy. I love her, even now. I love all of you."

"We loved you, too, Dad."

The fire flickered again, but was too weak to affect the lighting. Steve's father was a slumping blob fading into the dark. Steve sat watching, unsure how to converse with a ghost. He just watched, absorbing every aspect of the man, then the man's shadows, then his silhouette. Somewhere inside Steve a voice spoke, urging him to treasure the moment, this new defining memory of his father that would replace the sad hospital bed caricature that had so degraded the man in death. For that, Steve was grateful, and said as much in a prayer.

The fire sputtered, flared, then surrendered its life to the blackness. In that moment, thunder growled just outside the door.

"Good-bye, Stevie. I'll see you again someday."

"Good-bye, Dad."

Blackness swooped in to smother them.

#

A flash of yellow.

Mike Eller squatted in a muddy ditch, oblivious to the rain as he gnawed a soggy hunk of bread. His satcam swung loosely from his shoulder on its long strap, almost slapping the running water at his feet.

#

A flash.

A man in Navy khakis, captain's rank on his collar, peered through the windscreen of an aircraft carrier's bridge. Steve recognized the man, but could not place his name, or remember how he knew him.

#

A flash.

Chelsea dozed in a chair beside his hospital bed. She wore no cast. Her head jerked from fitful dreams.

#

A head pounding series of flashes.

Patricia at school in her mother's house, in a wheelchair, her hair cut to stubble, a cast on each leg.

Sam Clemmons hauling a huge news camera atop one shoulder, trailing cables and following a curvaceous blonde reporter into a shopping mall on a sunny day.

A man in a brown parka, his face hidden, working with black rectangles in the desert.

Peggy Smith sitting bored in a crowded college lecture hall.

Anna surrounded by a cheering throng, pressed by reaching hands.

#

He opened his eyes.

Chapter Twenty-three:

Waking Vision

 (Back to Contents)

He heard soft, melodic humming, full of contentment and strength. He forced his eyes open. Chelsea sat in a chair at the foot of his bed, facing him, but the humming wasn't hers. Her head lolled against her chest, jerking now and again in fitful sleep. The humming came from the side, right at Steve's pillow, but he couldn't turn to find its source. Something held his head still, some sort of brace.

Steve lay there, listening to the melody. Wasn't it a hymn of some sort? Didn't he know that song? Where was this place? It wasn't the desert abode of that thing in his dreams, the Bear that now took human form.

He noted the institutional trappings about him, what little he could see without moving his head. He heard computerized beeps and caught sight of serious-looking monitors just within his peripheral vision. He felt the unnatural texture of something up his nose, and tasted the rubber foulness of a tube secured in his mouth. His arms felt cold, and were frozen in place by unseen bindings. His nose itched.

The humming stopped. A face leaned over him, old and frail, appraising, then smiling with love. At first he saw the old man, but this one's hair was shorter, her skin darker.

"I knew you'd come back to us," she said. "The doctors gave up before they even got started. They said I should disconnect you, but I kept faith in you and the Lord. Welcome back, son."

Steve wanted to acknowledge her, to voice his joy at seeing her, at seeing anyone human and real, but the rubber device in his mouth allowed only the feeblest grunts. Tears rolled from his eyes.

"Chelsea, dear, we have company. Wake up, dear, while I call the nurse."

Chelsea started. She grabbed the armrests of her chair, her grasping hands flexed at the ends of two beautifully functional arms.

"Stephen's back," his mother said as she leaned away from his field of vision.

Chelsea blinked. She rose from her chair, disbelief bare on her face. She moved gingerly toward him, as if any sound or bump might close his open eyes. Her eyes were bloodshot and ringed with darkness. Her black hair flew in every direction. She leaned over him, her hands on the mattress on either side of him. Seeing he was really conscious, she shuddered into tears.

"Now, that's enough of that," Carol Tallman chided. "He's been hospitalized for months. The last thing he needs is a crying woman."

Steve flinched. His eyes widened. Hospitalized for how long?

"Later," Chelsea sobbed as she stroked his cheek. "There's all the time in the world."

#

They removed the thing from his mouth. They removed the thing from his nose. The IVs stayed in his arms, but they took away the head brace and the electrodes on his skull. It made him feel much better, even though his arms were secured for the needles and his hair was shaved to nubs.

The doctors were military. Steve recognized their efficiency, their almost cursory concern for their patient, and their haircuts. In fact, everyone entering his room smelled of the armed forces, even the nurses. He almost imagined he lay in a military hospital, except that the guards on his door wore civilian clothes — black suits with black ties and white shirts. They were also more serious and muscular than the average man off the street. They watched anyone entering or leaving the room. He wanted to ask who they were, but only ragged croaks escaped his mouth, burning his throat.

"Take your time," the last doctor warned before leaving. "You haven't spoken a word in four months. Give your body a chance to adjust."

"You're lucky to be alive," Chelsea said. She sat next to him on his bed, his mother in the chair on the other side.

"I knew he'd make it," Carol said. "Of course, they wouldn't want to listen to an old lady like me." She held up a small, vinyl-bound Bible. "Whenever I left your side, I laid this on your chest, Stephen. The Lord watched over you in my absence."

She glowed with happiness at welcoming back her endangered son. Words poured from her in a torrent of excitement. She assured him that numerous intentions had been sung for him in Mass, that she had prayed at his side every day since that terrible day in February when the TV had reported his fate. She had even brought her parish priest to bless him on several occasions. He was much nicer than that military chaplain, the Methodist one, though they gave her the devil of a time about allowing him in the room. She spooned up family gossip about who had come to visit, who the government people wouldn't let in, whose kids had been well-behaved, and whose had not. It was the endless, meandering soliloquy of a mother relieved from so long fearing for the life of her child.

Finally, she rested, and the room grew darker in her silence.

"Well, Stephen, I suppose we'd better get serious. Things have happened that you should know about."

"Not now," Chelsea cautioned, almost pleading. "When he's better."

"He's forty-three years old," the old lady said, steeling her jaw. "He can handle a little bad news."

She told him about Patricia, about her fractured bones, her shattered eye socket, the lacerations and the cell regeneration therapy. She brushed past his daughter's burns and her suspected brain damage with its associated blurred vision and occasional loss of hearing and smell. Steve saw the subject bothered her and so did not press.

Carol told him about Belinda showing up with a temporary court order granting custody, and how a judge had subsequently granted her permanent jurisdiction over their daughter. She told him how Belinda currently sought a restraining order to keep him away from Patricia for the girl's safety. And she told him about Ben.

After that, Steve stopped listening. He couldn't bear the words. He recalled his last acrimonious exchange with his uncle, and fell deep into brooding over the emptiness of their conspiracy and its terrible cost.

Steve's mother rested in her chair by the bed. Her face was drawn and her shoulders slumped, the wages of bad news finally delivered. Chelsea doted on her and convinced her without difficulty to find her way home for the day. She had managed the hard task of informing her son of his most recent tragedies; now Chelsea would deal with the aftermath.

After Carol's departure, Chelsea stood in the doorway, seemingly afraid to approach the bed. "Are you okay?" she asked.

"He was right," Steve said in a gravelly whisper. "He said he'd destroy everything."

"It's over. Let this one go." She reclaimed her place on the edge of his bed.

"I killed Ben. I almost killed Patricia–"

"They killed Ben. They did it right under the cops' noses. Maybe one of the cops themselves... Patricia's okay, Steve. It wasn't your fault." Nonetheless, she stiffened and looked away. Steve knew the signs. Chelsea blamed herself for whatever became of Patricia.

He probably shouldn't have asked, but he couldn't help himself. "Is she really okay? Is she still beautiful?"

"She's healing."

The room played a dirge of machine ticks and beeps.

"I'm sorry, Steve. I'm so very sorry..."

"Shush."

They endured another torture of silence.

Steve licked his dry lips. "He took everything. Walter. That day. He fired me..."

"I know. He fired all of us, anybody involved in the story. Missed Jerry, I guess because he wasn't on that assignment list. They made him executive producer instead."

"How are they? Sam, Peggy..."

She sighed. "Sam's got a local cameraman gig with the FOX station in Chicago. He cringes at the prospect of cold winters, and he's slowly coming to terms with Lake Michigan as a substitute for the Pacific. Peggy's back in school at UCLA, catching up on her degree. The others found work of some sort or other. The network abandoned Debbi. It took us a few weeks to raise her bail, and then there's the legal fees. Her defense is difficult, since the network confiscated all the story data and turned it over to the bad guys. Consequently, Sam and I don't own houses anymore; she needs the money."

"I'm sorry..."

"It's okay. It wasn't your fault. We lost, that's all."

"Where's your cast?"

She looked at him. "Excuse me? How did you know about my cast? It came off over three months ago."

"I saw it in a dream."

She stared harder. He ran his tongue along his cracked lips. She fed him cautious sips of water from a glass on his bedside table.

"Thanks. Mouth tastes like rubber."

"You were comatose, Steve. They said you wouldn't live. You were on machines almost the whole time."

"Who are the guards?"

"What?"

"The guards. Outside the door."

"National Security Agency."

He nodded. It made sense. "Anna knows?"

Chelsea's face was stone. "She's been here a couple of times. The first time, she brought the press, or they brought her. It's hard to tell the difference these days."

"You've been here all this time." He wriggled his fingers. She put her hand in his. He squeezed it.

"Yes, I have."

#

Over the next several weeks, Steve relearned such complicated tasks as sitting upright and walking. He suffered interminable tests, and exercised often and painfully. When the doctors didn't need him, he lay in his bed, unwilling to watch the TV, or read a magazine, or communicate in any other way with the outside world. Chelsea fed him after the IVs came out, spooning soft food into him one bite after the other over hundreds of bites through time. She shaved him when the nurses didn't object, and sometimes when they did. She encouraged him in his physical therapy, hovering so near as to irritate the therapist, but pulling him through the incessant pain of recuperation. Steve's mother occasionally shared in these chores, but she mainly sat in her chair beside the bed, and gossiped about family, or read Scripture. She saw that he took communion every Sunday.

At the end of July, the military doctors pronounced him well, or well enough for mere civilians to monitor. They packed up and left with the NSA men, taking with them all records of his stay, and much of the equipment that had monitored and administered his health. When the staff of Methodist Hospital reclaimed their mysterious patient, it was as if he came to them on his very first day.

"Well, Mr. Tallman," the doctor mused as she put away her instruments after examining him, "you look remarkably well for a man so thoroughly wrecked when you came through our doors."

"Thank-you," he said from his wheelchair by the window. Chelsea sat next to him, the only other occupant in the room.

"I'm serious, Mr. Tallman. You're famous around here. Punctured and lacerated lung, a flailed chest, arteries leaking all over the place, massive smoke inhalation, artificial support for four months, and here you sit as if you'd just had a moderate case of pneumonia. I suppose we should credit that to your personal medical staff – the US Air Force – and the loving care of those CIA types who helped facilitate your convalescence. How come you rate that level of attention? And all at taxpayers' expense, I understand."

"GI benefits," Steve said.

"Okay, I deserved that. Those people warned us you didn't exist." That should have been the end of it, but she didn't leave the room. Instead, she held her tablet across her chest and adopted a strained, serious aspect. "But you do exist, don't you? You're here as our guest and we've no idea what those people did for you. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Well, no." But he did. It wouldn't be the first time a civilian set her mind to do something stupid.

"I mean, Mr. Tallman, that I'm responsible for your wellbeing. I don't know what they did, so I don't really know the state of your health. Consequently, I'm keeping you here a while, just for observation."

"What?" Chelsea sat up straighter on the bed. "You're keeping him here? Without his permission?"

"I wouldn't want to do that, but I saw him when they wheeled him in. You should be dead, sir. None of us had any doubt."

Steve offered a forced grin. "Well, surely you've no doubt that I'm alive today."

"No doubt at all, and that puzzles me."

"You can't hold him against his will," Chelsea said. "He can sign a paper—"

"Yes she can, Chelsea." Steve sucked in a deep breath. Talking exhausted him. "I've been down this road before."

"I'm glad you understand," the doctor said, her lips curving into a slight smile. "It'll just be a few days, I'm sure."

"No it won't." Steve shook his head and turned his wheelchair more directly toward the physician. "It won't be just a couple of days. You'll get too curious to let it go at that."

"It'll be quicker," Chelsea snapped. "About as long as it takes to get a lawyer."

"Chelsea, please." Steve gestured toward the cushioned chair near the wall. "Have a seat, doctor."

He thought for a second she wouldn't, but curiosity almost always got them. Almost.

After a few seconds during which he watched her weigh her options, she took the seat as directed.

Steve signaled her to pull up closer, and she did so.

He leaned toward her. He spoke in a tone that barely carried. "It was an anti-chemical warfare project from the last war."

"Steve..." Chelsea warned.

"Excuse me?" The doctor gave him a sideways squint.

Steve held the doctor's eyes, almost unblinking. He ignored Chelsea sending him incredulous warning stares. "There were ten of us, all officers. The Chinese used God awful amounts of chemical munitions, nerve gas, that sort of thing. The Army's medical corps injected us ten with a series of experimental drugs that played games with our immune systems and seeped into our DNA. They changed us so that our bodies could survive chemical attack. They could replace the tanks and planes and boats, but they couldn't replace men. The Chinese had us so outnumbered."

The doctor twisted her lips into a skeptical smirk. She started to rise, then flinched when Steve grabbed her wrist. "The injections worked, at first, worked so well they considered giving them to whole units. Then the side effects showed up. Seven men developed brain damage. Hysteria and dementia. It looked like rabies, in the end. They died terrible deaths. Another guy got the most horrible melanoma. That was bad enough, but it accelerated for no reason anyone knew, and the drugs kept repairing his cell damage as it happened, but not fast enough to prevent terrible pain. He lived almost a month like that, his body tearing apart, but unable to die. Pain killers didn't work; nothing worked. His body read any kind of medication as cell damage, and corrected for its effects. They finally put him under, but they had to be violent about it, gruesome as hell. He wouldn't die easily, you see. He was practically immortal."

Steve saw the requisite horror in her eyes. "Only one man developed no harmful side effects. I wasn't him."

The doctor snatched her hand from his grip and stumbled to her feet.

"They shut down the program and buried it," Steve continued. "That other guy is God; he gets his pick of assignments, can get away with murder, so to speak. Me? I'm the crazy stepson locked in the attic. They take care of me, but they can't wait for me to die."

The doctor backed a few steps away. Steve waited for her to speak the obvious. "You're kidding, right? You're pulling my leg?"

"The classification is Most Secret. They want that particular war effort buried."

"Oh, my," was all she managed in reply.

"Now here's the part that concerns you." Steve waited for her to stop fidgeting. He stared at her until she paid close attention. "It's classified, as I said. But I've told you. If those serious men who invaded your hospital ever found out you heard what I said, they'd return. They wouldn't punish me; I'm untouchable. They wouldn't punish Chelsea; I've made her untouchable. They would, however, punish you. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

She had backed away to the door. She nodded.

"Now, I could make you untouchable, if I wanted. But I won't."

After a few heavy moments of silence, she fumbled for the doorknob and edged part way from the room. "You'll have your release within the hour," she said, her voice tremulous, and dodged into the hall and a more familiar world.

"Did you really have to scare her?" Chelsea asked.

"I'm tired of burying things."

#

Five months and six days after the infamous Thomson Building incident, Steve returned to his home on the city's east side. The day pressed on him hot and humid, but Alfred had been diligent in his master's long absence, and had kept the climate control at a comfortable level. Only a gray layer of dust betrayed the emptiness of the place.

Chelsea left him in the living room and retrieved his scanty belongings from the truck. He wandered about, leaning against a new aluminum cane, looking forlornly over the home that seemed so cold without Patricia. The guest quarters still held an essence of its last occupants. The dai low's representatives, with Chelsea's permission, had removed the personal effects of their people, but not the evidence of life, the unmade beds and cots, a worn, scattered poker deck on a card table in the corner, and stacks of magazines in Chinese. Steve waited for Wo Chu and the boys to troop through from the garage, but none of them would return. They were long since returned to, and buried in, New York.

Patricia's room had been stripped of her possessions. Even the bed stood naked, its coverings vanished.

Chelsea found him there, looking lost, the cane too little to support the weight of his melancholy.

"Don't do this," she said, taking his free arm. "Come downstairs."

"Ben believed I had some great destiny in life," he whispered, his voice choking. "Is this it, Chelsea, to end and ruin lives, and for nothing?"

He pulled from her grasp and stepped to the bed. He lowered himself to its bare mattress. Chelsea remained standing. She looked careworn.

"Everything's changed, Chelsea. Everything." His eyes roamed the empty room, searching for nonexistent signs of his daughter. "Everything I knew has deserted me; everybody I knew is gone."

"Patricia hasn't deserted you. Neither have your friends. They're scattered, but they'll all be back."

"You should leave, too. Start thinking of yourself. You can't live in a motel, jobless, nursing a collapsed old man forever."

"I'm a big girl. I make my own decisions."

"In the end, I'll be alone. If you don't leave me, I'll have to leave you."

"Is that another dream?"

"A guess."

#

She didn't leave him. She came by every day to help him with his exercises, to clean house and cook his meals, and to sit with him on the front porch, listening for the strange diesel growls of trucks on the faraway street. They spoke very little. He was preoccupied, and forlorn. He hardly left the house, and his TVs and radios remained mute, as far as she could tell. She worried that he slept poorly, or not at all.

After a while, she took him to visit Emma in Crown Hill Cemetery. The grave was beautifully kept, as Chelsea knew he would want it, with a simple, completely unadorned marker showing only Emma's name and the significant dates. Chelsea apologized for the marker; she hadn't known Emma well enough to do any more. But Steve said it was perfect. He found its subdued directness appropriate to the person it honored. Emma would have approved.

Early on, Chelsea reintroduced him to Alfred, and pushed him toward reading and answering his e-mail. His increasing tendency toward isolation worried her. Sam called regularly from Chicago, and many of the old gang wrote to pay their respects, but Steve checked for messages only when Chelsea nagged him, and took his time in answering. Kenny dropped by often to cheer his friend, but Steve largely ignored him, or dismissed him with monosyllabic acknowledgments designed to cut and drive away. Eventually, it worked. Kenny stopped coming. Everyone stopped coming, except Chelsea.

Chelsea became Steve's only dependable link to the world beyond his house. Even so, and perhaps because of this, he pushed her away. He went hours without uttering a sound during her visits. He sat on the porch and stared at nothing, his mind and soul embroiled in some great personal debate that he refused to share. Chelsea watched as he slipped further and further away, closing in on himself. She watched as he became a wholly different man.

His developing isolation showed itself most clearly where Anna was concerned. She called or wired him every few days, and he read those messages ahead of others when Chelsea forced him to the task. But he answered as if tending to an increasingly difficult chore, as if laboring under an obligation. Finally, he refused.

"I can't do this anymore," he said. "What do I say to her? 'Hi, Anna, this is Steve. Still nothing to say.' Is that what I tell her? Is that what she wants to hear?"

"Why not?" Chelsea said, feeling her own tiredness. "She wants to know how you're doing, what's going through your head. If that's it, then that's it."

"If she's so concerned about my health, why hasn't she come to visit? I haven't seen her since February."

"She's deep in her campaign, Steve. It's ten weeks 'til election day. Besides, you'd just scare her off, like you did Kenny."

"I'm sorry I'm such a nuisance," he said, but with bile in his tone, not apology. "I'm due a little privacy, don't you think?"

"Don't shit me, Tallman. You're just being male."

Scowling at her, he turned away to the computer screen.

"I swear, you're such a baby," Chelsea said, fed up. "Stop whining about what's happened to you. Everybody else out there gets kicked around, too."

But he refused to do his mail that day. He sat at the monitor for almost an hour until she left the room in frustration. Then she heard him puttering upstairs, the sound of his cane thunking through the ceiling like some depressing homing signal. I'm in Patricia's room again, it said.

She wondered at the man upstairs. Steve's usual cool self-possession was absent from this broken animal. The circles under his eyes grew darker, his face slacker, and his skin more sallow every day. Why didn't he sleep, and why didn't he tell her about it? She wanted to help, but felt his determined rejection, knew that, in his drive toward seclusion, he tried more and more to dismiss her unavoidable every day company.

The next day, without telling him, she closed her motel room and moved into the house. Into Patricia's room.

"She won't be needing it, Steve. It's time you faced up to that."

"There's plenty of room downstairs. You're doing this to bait me."

"No, I'm doing this to give you a much needed kick in the ass."

"Whatever," he shrugged, and went out to the porch. That was it, hardly the tip of an argument.

And that scared her more than anything.

#

She spent a long first night in the house. She lay awake listening for hours, counting bumps against the wall separating their rooms, flinching at the anguished voice raised occasionally against intermittent moans. Deep into the dark morning, she rose from her bed and stood at his doorway for several minutes while he tossed atop his mattress as if struggling in some ferocious battle. They were the old nightmares, the Bear dreams, she surmised from his partly coherent words. But the dreams were now more intense and had taken on a more personal character. Did she hear right? Did he talk to the Bear?

She wanted to go to him, to wake him and hold him. But what cure could she offer to soothe the torture his dreams inflicted? Nothing she said or did could drive those nightmares away for long. In the end, she returned to her bed to lie awake amid the sounds of Steve's fitful battle for sleep. At times, she dozed, only to jar awake not at any loud noise, but at the rare periods of silence that stretched between his fits. It was like listening to the stillness between the flash of faraway lightning and the crash of its thunder. How had Patricia survived it?

The next several nights continued much the same.

On the fifth morning, she awoke confused. Brilliant sunlight streamed through her window and birds serenaded her in exuberant choirs. How had she managed to sleep past sunrise? How had she managed to sleep at all? She heard the faraway laughter of children playing.

She rose from bed, sluggish, and threw on her robe. What time was it, anyway? Eleven o'clock, the dial of her watch said. Almost lunch? She squinted at the watch again, but the time refused to change.

She yawned her way across the floor and down the hall to Steve's door. It hung open. The bed was a mess, and empty. Alfred painted soaring cloudscapes across his monitor, as if catching a little artistic personal time between jobs.

She tromped downstairs. The living room, too, sat empty, as did the kitchen. Only an empty cereal bowl in the sink spoke of Steve's recent presence. Chelsea opened the door to the front porch, his favorite sanctuary from the hated black-haired nag she had become. The porch stood empty.

"Steve?"

The low roar of a diesel truck answered her from the road.

She closed the front door. On a whim, she hauled open the garage door. The truck stood in its bay. Okay, so he hadn't gone anywhere. Well then, where in the house was he?

Five minutes later, after a fast check of both floors, she stood in the hall outside his room and asked the same question.

"Where is he?"

"Good morning, Chelsea!"

She started at the voice. Alfred's doggie persona panted at her from the monitor.

"Alfred?"

"I hope you slept well. Would you like to initiate a voice security routine?"

"Excuse me?"

"Pardon?"

"Umm, Alfred, why are you talking to me?" She stepped into the room toward the computer. "You've never responded to my voice. You only respond to Steve's."

"I've been assigned to respond to your voice and keyboard commands, and to help you with all available administrative tasks. Would you like to initiate a voice security routine?"

"Alfred, I've never had access to you. Who gave me access, and when did they do it?"

"Access was granted today at 3:47am by Stephen Tallman, my primary user. Would you like–"

"No. I'd like–"

"–to initiate a voice security routine?"

She breathed heavily. "No, Alfred, I would not. I want to know where Steve is."

"He did not leave any message pertaining to his whereabouts. He did say that you are granted full run of the house until his return, and not to get into trouble. Would you like to initiate..."

She left the room. She walked down the hall, down the stairs, out the front door. She caught herself part way down the driveway. Where did she think she was going, and in her robe, no less? She retreated to the porch and sat down on the warm concrete.

He's gone, she thought.

"In the end, I'll be alone. If you don't leave me, I'll have to leave you."

"Is that another dream?"

"A guess."

She slapped a tear from her cheek. Moments later, her whole body wrenched under hacking sobs of abandonment.

Chapter Twenty-four:

The Vision Thing

 (Back to Contents)

See It Now lay dead, a lesson to the enemies of EOG. Some of those enemies fell silent, afraid to suffer similar punishment. Other, braver factions continued their resistance to the forces allied against them, though their efforts were largely ineffective, resulting only in delays of what many saw as an inevitable change in the American agenda.

Phil Mackie was part of that ineffectual resistance. He continued to fight even after the House passed its version of EOG by a close but sustainable margin. The bill's move to the Senate brought him new, if circumspect allies, chief among them the Republican senator from Kansas, Mariam Jellison. If not for her, Mackie's planned opposition would never have gotten a fair start. She warned him of a parliamentary maneuver to bring EOG to an immediate Senate vote, the worst possible scenario from Mackie's point of view. He wanted the Senate to write its own, differing version of the bill. This would mandate a House-Senate conference committee from which Mackie could launch interminable delays that would run out the session and inflict upon EOG the death of unmet deadlines. Jellison warned him of a Republican plot to force a vote in less than a week. Because of her warning, Mackie managed to cut off the opposing party's maneuver. Mackie had never cared much for Jellison, and she reciprocated his feelings. Now they became uneasy partners, Mackie to unequivocally destroy EOG, Jellison to do so without offending the party structure that maintained her in office. Even as EOG gained support from Democrats, it lost allies from the party that gave it birth.

#

The Evan Bayh, without realizing it, also became an ally in the war against EOG. The Chief of Naval Operations arrived on board six months after the ill-fated broadcast that no one on the carrier had known anything about. He brought a planeload of inspectors with him, ostensibly to conduct an unscheduled evaluation of shipboard combat effectiveness. No one questioned his actions, not even Captain Harper. After all, the Evan Bayh had lost enough aircraft to supply a small municipal airport in hell. Harper expected concern, even recrimination. He entertained morbid thoughts of forced retirement, of his ship redeploying in disgrace to Portugal, maybe even Connecticut, her sister ship the Barack Obama already steaming to secure the Southern European zone.

Harper, however, mistook the admiral's intention.

"Umm, what more is there to know, sir?" Harper asked in his sea cabin over a non-regulation glass of scotch. The CNO had invited himself to Harper's bridgeside retreat. He drank the usually hidden liquor after assuring Harper that he trusted him, and needed his help.

"That's my question, Tim. Your man got jammed back in February. An NSA job. It was out of my jurisdiction, but if I had known he was out there and what was going on, I might have stopped the jamming operation. It irks me that I know next to nothing about the primary mission of one of my capital ships. Apparently, outside of the brain trust, the only person with full knowledge of Schoolhouse is your ex-pool reporter, Mr. Eller. Well, his boss knows, I guess, but he's in no mood to talk, not after what they did to his show."

The admiral waggled his emptied glass at Harper, who poured two more fingers. "I need that reporter's data, Tim. We've been feeding you his real-time coordinates as NSA tracks him with the satellite. Every time he uses that camera, we get a fix on him, and therefore his insurgent friends. From now on, your priority is to use that information to find and extract Mr. Eller, not to pulverize him."

Harper hadn't realized his target coordinates were fixed to Eller. How ironic that the man he bombed on a regular basis was the man he himself had sent over. How many runs had the carrier's Hurricanes made at Eller's signal? Eight? Ten? Had they already succeeded in their task?

"Tim, this isn't your standard mission. I haven't informed your task force commander."

"I see. The admiral doesn't know."

"I'm not sure I trust him with this sort of thing. He's a career man, looking for his next star. He wouldn't shed tears if he got it at my expense. He's about to go on temporary duty to NATO for as long as I can imagine a reason. Since his absence is only 'temporary', I'm leaving you, as the ranking officer, in operational control of the task force. The game is to get that reporter, by force, if necessary. You're in charge. I can't stress that enough."

Harper nodded again, but frowned at the emphasis. "Sir, and what if our mission should run into ... uncontrollable difficulties?"

"Uncontrollable difficulties, eh? It's a fair question. The way I see it, you're the man in charge, so you're the man in charge. I'll be damned if I earned my stars to lose them on behalf of some miscreant, no-good, adventure-seeking sea captain, if you get my drift."

"Yes, sir," Harper said, his face wooden. "I just wanted to know where I don't stand, sir."

The CNO handed back the glass and straightened his uniform. "Okay, then. I guess this little discussion justifies the ruse of this inspection. By the way, you'll pass with flying colors. Remember, this is no insignificant task. When I became CNO, I vowed to uphold the integrity and honor of the Navy, a job that seems to have gotten away from me since this Schoolhouse monster hit the block. I hope to reclaim that sense of honor, or at least keep things from getting any worse." He nodded toward the bottle as Harper replaced it in his locker. "If memory serves, you can't get drunk, can you?"

"No, sir."

"A crying shame. If that had been common knowledge fifteen years ago, nobody would have volunteered for that God forsaken experiment of yours."

"No, sir. I reckon not."

After the CNO's departure, Harper stood in his hatch, wondering what the Old Man would say if he knew that the man he trusted so much had sent Eller over in the first place. Then he shrugged, deciding it didn't matter. He closed the door to his sea cabin, reasserting the dark that seemed so appropriate to his new position.

#

Anna stuck her head into Mackie's inner office, smiling. "Knock, knock," she said.

Mackie sat elbows on knees before the television set. "Come in, Governor, but close the door." His eyes never left the screen. CSPAN broadcasted the chessmanship of a modern filibuster, the milling bodies of statesmen in the well of the Senate, the incessant drone of a clerk calling the names of lawmakers.

Anna pulled up a chair and sat down beside her former opponent. She wore a tailored black suit, her established reminder of Parker Nguyen. "Well," she said with a show of airiness, "how's my favorite ex-candidate today?"

"Fair to middlin'. Lots to do."

"Like hiding in your office?"

He grinned. "Part of the job. They can't count me present if they don't actually see me."

"You're such a smart man, Phil. What if they send the sergeant at arms to arrest you? It's happened before."

"I'm not worried. I doubt they'll risk that kind of publicity."

"I feel better for you already. So, what's the plan? Endless quorum calls? Does it go any further than that?"

He sighed. "It's tiresome right now. I suggest the absence of a quorum. They proceed to call in senators to achieve a quorum. All the Democrats hide. Even a few Republicans. After about an hour, they round up close to the required fifty-one senators, and my fellow Democrats come running to answer the call, then run back out. One stays behind, and as soon as the clerk establishes that a quorum is present, he points out that some senators have left the chamber and suggests the absence of a quorum. Then it starts all over again."

"That's it? No backup plan?"

"This is the United States Senate, Governor. We can keep this up 'til doomsday."

"So, you plan to just run out the session?"

"The Senate can't legally conduct business unless a recognized quorum of senators is present. They have my terms. EOG goes to committee. We develop a Senate EOG bill. The House and Senate versions go to conference. Not too greedy."

"Not at all, considering it'll be nearly impossible to get all that done in what's left of the session."

He turned from the TV and looked at her, curious. "What are you doing here? Surely you didn't stop by to say 'hi'."

"I was in the neighborhood. I was supposed to make a speech supporting you, but it fell through. Two hundred or so hecklers showed up to protest my stand against EOG, so my security people nixed the whole thing."

"Yeah, I heard. I also heard you have a leak in your organization. Those hecklers knew the subject of your speech even before the press did. You'd better take care of that."

"We're working on it."

"I'm serious. They may be done with your boyfriend, but they most certainly are not done with you."

"Don't worry, Phil. I'm a big girl."

They watched the television in silence for a moment.

"It isn't too smart to support this filibuster," Mackie said finally. "I'm labeled an obstructionist, you know. I'm holding up important legislation. Highway bills. The minimum wage increase. Steer clear of me, Governor. I'm diseased."

"That's what my people keep singing. They have it down so well, they could form a choir. But, I've never been a good listener. With your permission, I'd like to march right out of here, find the nearest gaggle of lonely press, and announce you as my running mate."

"Not that again..."

"Yes, that again. You're the best man for the job. I want you for vice-president."

"Forget it. I'm having too much fun right where I am. Besides, I couldn't campaign with this thing going on. I'm needed here on the hill."

"Honey, you're waging an effective campaign right now. I can't tell you how proud I am of your efforts here. Please, don't say no. Say you'll think about it."

"I'll think about it," Mackie said, meaning an emphatic 'no'.

She nodded.

"So, what are your near term plans?" Mackie asked.

"I don't know. I might mix things up a bit, to keep our little mole or moles off guard."

"You need to hire an information security specialist."

"We have information security people. They work very closely with the Secret Service."

Mackie grunted. "Good for you. You have to win, Anna Marie. That's the only push I have around here. If you win, and I can hold off EOG until next session, then the bill is dead. They'll want to pass the bill this session, to be safe. If you continue as a credible threat, they'll compromise."

"I love to influence people. I guess I'm just precocious."

Mackie thought about the package in his safe, the one from that Chinese gentleman killed in that terrorist attack in Indianapolis. He considered showing it to Anna, to help her see beyond her personal political desires in this matter, but decided not to. He would show her the papers once she stopped her leak. He did not want Southerman – or Mercy, God forbid! – to know he possessed such information.

"You have to win," he said lamely.

"It's part of the plan," she responded.

Chapter Twenty-five:

Corrected Vision

 (Back to Contents)

The sun hung low in the sky, painting the desert floor with warm reds and ochres and stretching impenetrable blue-black shadows away into the east. The old man crossed from the threshold of his small house to stand on the rough-cut boards of his porch. He waited for the Bureau of Indian Affairs policeman to approach, another man just behind him. Already, a chill descended to Earth, or was it the dread of a future glimpsed, but not understood? The old man's face was etched hard. He brushed aside doubt, squelching his concerns now that this day for which he had long prepared lay upon him. Understanding was irrelevant. Fear was irrelevant. Only the task ahead mattered.

"Evening, Mr. Tallman," the policeman said, removing his hat out of respect. "The white weatherman out of Scottsdale said it'd be warm tonight. Seems he missed it by a piece, wouldn't you say?"

"I reckon so," Joe Tallman said in a voice ground by the millstone of a century's long use. "Got his head stuck so far in his machines, he don't have time to put it out the window. You want a beer, Calvin?" He spoke to the policeman, but his eyes never left the other man.

"No, thanks. I'm way off my route, to tell the truth."

"I know this one," Joe Tallman said, nodding toward the policeman's companion. "Is he the cause of your visit?"

The BIA man turned to Steve, who stood hollow-eyed, worn, and silent, watching his grandfather. He leaned on an aluminum cane that glinted in the departing sunlight like an advertisement on a city street. "Found him wandering around the desert, asking after you. He says he's your grandson." Calvin's voice held mild skepticism. "He don't look like one of us, don't feel that way, neither."

"He ain't Apache," the old man announced as if to a larger gathering. "He ain't much of an Indian a'tall, but we'll take him anyway." He looked directly at the policeman for the first time. "Sure you don't want a beer, Calvin? I could fix you up with a glass of water, even put it in a thermos. Tommy put us a water softener in last month."

"I'm obliged for the offer, Mr. Tallman, but I got plenty of water. If this fella's okay, I'll just be going along now." He replaced his hat and turned away toward the big Ford Commander with the badge on its side. The other Commander stood behind it. Red dust covered them both.

"Good evening, Stevie," Joe Tallman said. "It's been a long while since I saw you last."

"Evening, Granddaddy."

"Better come on in, before you catch a cold." He stepped into the house as the police truck pulled away into the growing night.

#

The house highlighted the rustic character of its owner. A small main room touched an open kitchen. Three doors pierced the far wall, one of them opened into a dark bedroom. The furniture sagged with dust and wear. The floors were bare wood, the walls yellowing sheet rock. Three large windows monopolized a fair portion of the wall space, looking east, north, and south. No curtains hung before them. A micro-satellite dish perched on one windowsill, its cable reaching across to a nineteen-inch TV sitting nearby on the floor. An old movie flickered from the television. Steve recognized Julia Roberts, but not the male actor beside her.

"Tommy! Come on out here. Your brother's visitin'." The old man lowered himself gingerly into an easy chair before the TV. "Only concession I make to old age," he said. "Gotta be careful how I get in this here chair, or I won't be gettin' back out on my own."

A second door against the far wall opened. Light streamed into the main room but was momentarily blocked by a heavyset figure in jeans and a flannel shirt. His face was round and fatty with a broad, flat nose. His skin, like the old man's, glowed a rich, dark bronze. He was about Steve's age, but his hair, long and free, showed little gray.

"Hi, Tom." Steve flicked a wave at his brother.

"Hey, Steve. How's Belinda?"

"We're divorced."

"Oh. Sorry to hear it."

"Don't be. I'm not."

"How's your kid? Cute little thing. Patty?"

"Yeah. Belinda has her. She's seventeen."

"Seventeen? You know, we got a post office out here..."

"I'm sorry."

"Tommy!" the old man snapped, "Get on out to that there truck, if you please. Bring in your brother's luggage, just as I told you."

"I didn't bring any luggage."

Tom Tallman's eyebrows rose. "You came all the way from out east, and you didn't bring no luggage? Did you bring anything?"

Steve shrugged from his position just inside the house. "Nothing to bring."

"Go out to the truck, Tommy. Check it out like I told you. You can round him up some clothes and stuff when you return the truck to the rental company tomorrow. Come here, Stevie. Sit down."

The two men followed orders. Tom edged past Steve and tramped into the almost complete dark. Steve took a wooden chair from the kitchen and carried it toward his grandfather.

"No," Joe Tallman said, shaking his head. "Better sit on the floor. Come and sit here, right in front of me."

Steve didn't question the oddity of it. He released the chair where he stood, then walked to the spot before the old man. His cane made rhythmic slapping sounds on the dry wood. It took a minor effort, considering the cane, but he lowered himself to the floor and sat cross-legged facing the ancient face.

Joe touched the TV remote, and the house fell silent.

"So, why are you here?" he asked.

"I don't know. I had to come, is all."

"Let me help. They took everything from you. They've done in everything you were. You got no place else to go."

"That's about right."

The old man grinned. "Well, maybe you're more Indian than I thought."

#

Steve explained through the still-fresh pain, the events of winter recent in his mind. He felt inadequate through most of it; he hadn't known of Patricia's injuries and subsequent removal into her mother's custody until long after the fact. His telling of the story had the disconcerting feel of facts, not experience, and was colored by the guilt of inexcusable absence, of not having protected his people. These feelings rose to excruciating intensity as he forced his way through the news of Ben, whose grave had lain settled and cold by the time Steve learned of his death. Tom fidgeted from his place on the sagging couch, stopping the forced obituary in mid-sentence.

"We Apache," their granddaddy said with almost imperious authority, "we don't talk much about the dead. We don't mention their names, we don't tell stories about them, and we don't pine away about how much we miss them. It ain't done."

"What do you mean?" Steve asked. "I'm talking about Ben. He was your son, for God's sake."

Granddaddy looked through the ceiling a moment, gathering a thought. "This ain't about family," he said. "It's about common sense. When you whisper somebody's name, what do they do? They move closer to hear what you're saying. Well, I don't think we want them dead spirits coming back when we call their names. The thought gives me the creeps. Besides, they belong somewhere else. Let 'em stay there. You want to talk to the dead? You'll get your chance when you're dead yourself. Don't rush things. Spend your life with the living."

You have spent too much of your life with the dead. Emma. She knew so much.

"Why are you here?" Joe repeated.

"I just told you."

"No. That stuff might make you bitch and moan. It might make you unemployed. It might make you fall in on yourself, maybe even kill yourself, if your head ain't on straight. But it don't bring you to the res. Now, tell me what brought you here."

Steve opened his mouth, closed it, and looked about the room. His grandfather and his brother stared blank-faced at him. "I don't know. I had to leave. I rented the truck and I came west, but I had no inkling where to go. I wandered for four days before I found myself here."

"What compelled you to leave your home? You ain't never come out here before, even while in the neighborhood."

"I had this dream..."

"You need somebody to interpret your dream?"

Steve stared into his grandfather's eyes. He could make no definite answer. Maybe he was too tired to think. Maybe he hadn't thought in the first place. He felt like a child once more, clinging to the old man's wisdom.

"First of all, they ain't dreams." Joe Tallman, slowly, began to rock back and forth in his chair. He held his hands, his fingers intertwined, and stared through Steve's place on the floor. "These things you've seen, they ain't passive enough for dreams. They're visions, messages from a great spirit."

"I think I had a vision, just before going into the hospital. But the others were nightmares; they happened while I slept."

The old man rocked. Back and forth, back and forth. "The vision makers don't sleep. Why should they care if you do? These are visions. You're in contact with a great power. He speaks to you through the visions, you just ain't listening."

He rocked forward and stopped, counting off fingers as he made his points. "First thing to understand: you're enslaved to the white man's world. Look at you. You love your body. You need all them doctors to keep it alive, the same doctors that messed you up in the first place. But, there's more to it than that, much, much more. There's more to you than that weak shell you live in, and there's more to the world than what doctors and their like can see. If you're a white man, everything is about control. Everything is manipulated. If you follow the rules, anything is possible. You bought into that bullshit, tied your life to the white man's rules. Hmmph! The white man don't know shit."

He stole a breath, then ticked off another finger. "Second point: you been marked by the blind, and you became blind yourself. The white man worships 'objectivity'. He worships his science and his engineering. He's engrossed with rules and writing things down. What he writes, he holds up as true, just because he can touch it and see it. It's that objectivity that almost killed you, and killed all them others, and brought you to failure. You see, you got these rules, but the other guy has his rules and his truths, but they aren't the same as yours. That other guy, the one who attacked you, his rules are stronger, because they come from the spirit, not from the mind. You judge him objectively to be in the wrong. But, he doesn't judge you at all; he hates you. That's his advantage. His hate, because it comes from deep within, has more power than your correct, detached, objective judgment."

He leaned back in the chair. For the first time Steve realized that the room had grown dim with the onset of night. His grandfather, from the waist up, all but disappeared into shadow. "So, the beliefs you trust so much are flawed, and they flaw your approach to your enemy." Joe Tallman ticked off another finger. "My third point – and all these points are directed by the spirit mentor in your visions – my third point is that you have to change your focus." He spoke with beseeching intensity. "You are outside yourself, always concerned with the rules and the correctness of your actions. Against the witchery of the Other People's science and logic, the important becomes irrelevant, the obvious obscure. You get caught up in the one thing, one thing at a time, and can't see the swirl of forces playing around you. You're half blind, and so you're doomed. It wasn't always this way. You used to listen to your spirit, and it served you. Once you pay attention again, you might see your way out of this mess you're in. You might see your way to your enemy's defeat. You might even see your way to the powerful weapons available to you, weapons of spirit, not flesh."

"I don't understand," Steve said. This was not helpful. Ben would have said as much.

"You ain't expected to understand, not yet. He done gave me your visions so I can help you. Normally, these things ain't spoken of, but he knows that you need help."

"Who knows, Granddaddy? I don't understand."

"Understanding is irrelevant. You don't have to understand; that's a white man's concept. You got to have faith." He flashed forward like light, his hand seizing up Steve's as if it were a prize. "Start with this," he said. "You aren't made of this. You're a creature of spirit. So is everyone else. Your enemy, your daughter, that woman you love. Even the floor you sit on, the bugs crawling beneath it. All spirit, all intertwined. All are powerful in the universe, made so by the creator who made White Painted Woman and Water's Child, and all the others who came before man. Your written laws can't touch none of that. They can't touch the spirit. So, what good are they?"

He dropped Steve's hand. "Look at me, will ya'? See these wrinkles? Sagging skin? Brittle old bones? Don't judge me by this old body. My allies keep me strong because he commands them, because he needs me to help you. Your white man's doctors are children. I'd be dead for sure with them as my keepers. But I'm still here, ready to help you, as I did when you were small." He sat back in the soft mass of his chair. "So, do I help you, as your power commands? Or do you turn your back on both of us and head on home to that house and what used to be your job? If you stay, it'll be uncomfortable, like that floor under your ass. You'll learn a lot in a short time. But, the choice is yours. Not even he will interfere. We only ask that you decide with your heart, not the mind that gets you in so much trouble. Do you stay, or do you leave? Take your pick."

"I stay," Steve said.

"You speak with confidence," Joe Tallman said to his grandson. "Soon, that will change."

#

"The bathroom's next door, but we share it with the old man, so make sure you knock first." Tom hauled a brand new cot from under his bed, and a sleeping bag still in the box.

"You knew I was coming," Steve said.

"The old man's serious about this power shit. You wouldn't believe the things he sees. He knew you were coming way back in February, and knew you'd arrive today." He snapped open the cot and set it up against the opposite wall. "The top three drawers of the dresser are mine, not that it matters much to you just now."

Tom turned to face his brother. Nothing unusual showed in his face, in his manner. His kin had come for a visit, no big deal. Steve touched the sleeve of a parka hung against the back of the bedroom door.

Tom frowned. "What's the matter, never seen a coat before?"

"A coat like this, and you live in the desert?"

"It gets cold up on the mesa come January."

"It's brown."

"I noticed."

"A man in a brown parka, working in the desert. Thanks, Tom." Steve looked at him, clenching his jaw to hold in tears.

"I just do what I'm told."

"She's precious, and beautiful."

"Yes, she sure is."

"Can I have a glass of water?" Steve held his bag of pills, brought from the truck by Tom.

"Kitchen's out there. I ain't your butler, man."

"I'm sorry to impose on you."

"It's okay." Tom broke open the box and dragged out the sleeping bag. "Granddaddy says you're here to meditate and do manual labor. That's fine with me. You can help with the solar cells around these parts. The res pays me to keep 'em running."

Steve nodded. "Black rectangles. Sounds like he has everything planned out."

"He always does. You'd better get some sleep. If I know the old man, he'll shake you awake before sunrise, to greet the cardinal directions, or some such."

Steve stood in the bedroom doorway. Granddaddy was nowhere around. He had gone out into the night an hour before, and had not yet returned. "I don't understand it, Tom. Why all the urgent spiritualism? I didn't come here for a refresher course in Apache religion."

"If I recall," Tom spread the sleeping bag on the cot, "you don't know why you're here. But he does. Granddaddy's gonna make you a shaman, little brother."

"Oh, give me a break!"

"That's what he says. You got a great power interested in you. By the way, I'd give you my bed, but he says not to make you too comfortable. I had to talk him out of his first idea, that you sleep on the floor in the living room."

"What's this shaman nonsense? I'm Catholic."

"Not anymore. Hope you like eggs. They're the only thing I cook that doesn't burn."

Chapter Twenty-six:

Coyote

 (Back to Contents)

She missed him. She had thought it enough to see or touch him now and again, had believed the two of them the best, most inseparable of friends, and nothing more. But that lie collapsed before her increasing paralysis of mind and spirit as his absence lengthened from hours into days, and then into weeks. She wandered the house like a ghost, busying herself with mundane, barely noticed chores and with long crying jags that left her spent and morose. She ate very little.

So, well into the third week of his absence, when Chelsea heard tires grinding gravel on the driveway, she shuddered on the hot concrete porch, pressed her head more firmly against her knees, and hoped her intruder would take a hint and go away. She didn't want friends. She didn't want salesmen. She wanted no witnesses to the wrecking of her life. She wanted only to cry, to curl up on the porch and rock, and to spiral deeper into depression until her thoughts ground to a hopeless, helpless stop. And she was fairly close to doing just that.

"Aunt Chelsea?"

Chelsea froze in mid-rock at the unexpected voice. She raised her head just enough to verify her visitor through tear-blurred eyes.

Patricia sat behind the wheel of a new Ford Sol, the driver's door open. She sat there, and Chelsea wanted to flee from her.

"Aunt Chelsea? Why are you crying?"

Chelsea wiped her face hard with the palms of her hands. "Oh, I don't know." She sniffed, feigning nonchalance. "Something in my eye, allergies, whatever the hell..." She buried her face in her hands.

She listened as Patricia extricated herself from the car. Chelsea cringed at every scrape of the girl's polycarbonate braces against the driveway gravel. She cowered from the slow, shambling drop of each labored footfall toward the porch. She felt naked before the girl, and guilty.

"It's such a bright day," Steve's daughter said, "and hot."

Chelsea sat with her face hidden behind a fall of dark hair, her knees pulled up to her chin. She wanted Patricia to leave because the girl was a broken bird that Chelsea had failed to protect. She hoped Patricia would stay, and for the same reason.

"Your cast is gone," Patricia said after a short silence.

Chelsea laughed. "Yeah, well, us Van Arsdales. We're tough."

"Where's Dad?"

Chelsea sniffed, then wiped the back of her hand across her nose. She steeled herself, then dragged up her head to look on the cripple she had created.

Patricia was no longer the lively, innocent sprite of a girl from half a year ago. Her round, smooth, beautiful face was still round, but the plastic-like soullessness of reconstructed tissue gave it the look of an uninspired mask. The left eye watched Chelsea with defeatism, an expression Patricia had never known. The right eye stared without light or life, a marble in a shadowboxed socket. As Patricia lowered herself by careful stages to the concrete porch, Chelsea noted the morbid details that further catalogued the girl's afflictions. Jointed braces ensnared her from hips to insteps, a weave of matte black, computerized polycarbonate designed to re-teach her leg muscles. A dozen operations already on her crushed limbs, her shredded flesh, the bashed-in right side of her face. How many more would she endure before regaining normal use of her body? Would she ever?

She wore a heartbreakingly familiar expression on her face, her lips curved down in an attitude of severe control. All too often, her father wore that look. Patricia had finally found burden enough to emulate her tortured parent. Do you have nightmares? Chelsea wondered. Did the earth roll over and over around you, and things fly randomly past your eyes, sharp things, blunt and heavy things, all seeking to slash or impale you, or just to pound you to pulp? The thing that smashed your eye socket: had you seen it coming? Chelsea felt her throat seize, her muscles tighten. She wanted to cry again, and shook with the effort to hold it in.

Patricia watched Chelsea with her one good eye. "Where's Dad?" she asked again.

"I'd guess your mom's asking the same about you." Chelsea embraced her legs, rocked slowly back and forth again. Her head dipped and her black hair flooded forward to block her face as effectively as a wall.

"I'm eighteen now," Patricia said. "I can see anyone I want. Besides, my mom's in apology mode. She got me that car. Hand controls." Her tone demanded attention, such an old voice for a young woman. "Where's Dad, Aunt Chelsea?"

"I don't know," Chelsea wailed, and tears burst from her in a torrent. "He's gone. He just left. He didn't tell me where he was going." She forced the words between wrenching clusters of sobs, threw her head once more into her hands. "I'm sorry," she croaked. "I'm sorry about ... everything." She wiped away tears with wet hands.

"When did he leave?" Patricia asked.

Chelsea just cried, like a broken-hearted child. She was so damned slow. How many years had she wasted? How long ago had she come to suspect, yet chose to hide the truth from herself? Why had she done so?

"Aunt Chelsea?"

"Three weeks. Almost three weeks ago. He wasn't well. He was just out of the hospital, for God's sake!"

Patricia reached out her left arm, her good arm, the one without the gnarled muscles and shiny, plasticized skin, and tentatively patted Chelsea between the shoulders. The charity of that gesture made Chelsea feel loathsome. Her face swam in tears, and her body shook in spasms. Her hands hovered frozen before her, tight claws of frustration.

"It's all right," Patricia said.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! It's my fault, I know! I should have done something more. I should have known where I was. If I hadn't hit those flag poles, if I'd pulled pitch sooner— Oh, God, you must hate me!"

"We've been over this. It wasn't your fault. If anything, you saved my life."

"It should have been me!" For the latest of many uncountable times, Chelsea cursed the engineering that protected the pilot's station above all others. She could kill the designers at Vertolifter. She could strangle them with her bare hands.

"Stop," Patricia said, her voice a calm command. "All this," and she gestured one-handed across her body, "All this is temporary. You heard what the doctors said. In a year or two..."

Yes, Chelsea had heard the doctors' promises. And their hedging, their equivocations.

"There's more to this than what happened to me." Patricia leaned closer. She squeezed Chelsea's shoulder. Her braces scraped on the concrete walk as she shifted her position on the porch. "What's happened," she asked, "between you and Dad?"

And so they came back to the beginning of that confusing, whirlwind circle of guilt. Chelsea had tried so hard, for Steve, for Patricia, for everyone. Things fall apart. "Uhhggh!" she grunted, and lost it. She shot to her feet, pulled her hair, kicked at a rock, snatched it up and threw it at nothing. She so wanted to strike out, or perhaps be struck down herself.

She tried to re-gather her composure. Her arms flapped aimlessly for a moment, just trying to do something, anything. She corralled them at her side, hands on hips, and stared at the grass at her feet. "Your father's a bastard. And so are you for pushing... this."

Patricia made no response. She did that a lot since the crash. The girl was becoming a stoic.

Chelsea sucked in a lungful of air, then released it in a long, wheezing sigh. "I'm making a fool of myself." She kept her eyes on the grass, on a single ant foraging in that forest of green. "But, I can't help it. I – I –" It wouldn't come out. Fear and lingering denial seized her throat. She struggled to say it. If she didn't say it now, she never would. "My God, I love him!" she exploded, then staggered. She slapped her arms across her breasts, hugging her shoulders, refusing to turn and face the girl. She felt her knees wobbling, gravity taking her. She collapsed to her knees like a demolished building. "I – I love him so much..." There. She'd admitted it. She had said the thing that terrified her. It lived. A hitching sob raked at her throat.

"It's okay," Patricia soothed. "It's gonna be all right."

No it wouldn't, Chelsea knew. She had joined that benighted club, the one of women who loved Steve Tallman. That, she knew, was never a going concern.

#

Senator Mackie finally withdrew his quorum demand after two weeks of political mortal combat. By then, negative press had sufficiently frightened enough of his ninety-nine colleagues that the opposition decided to deal. They preferred a camouflaged EOG, and Mackie's maneuvers attracted too much attention. They approached him, offering that EOG would go to committee, that he could choose two of the committee members, that he could even participate himself. Mackie took advantage of the offer, naming two loyal compatriots to the committee. He took secret satisfaction in the knowledge that Mariam Jellison would also serve, drafted by his competition. The Senate's first battle of EOG ended with the second organized to follow. Now Mackie fought to kill the bill before it got to the Senate floor, or to develop a bill sufficiently different from the House version to require a conference committee to work out a compromise. Victory now looked possible, if not entirely probable, from Mackie's point of view.

#

For Anna, the drive toward victory was a daily chore. She sat distracted at the big worktable brought into her Miami hotel room. Her primary staff surrounded her, Ray orchestrating the drone of important but boring reports on scheduling, polls, and money. But Anna wanted only to get on a plane for Indy. It was almost a month since her last message from Steve. A call to his house had netted only her nemesis, Chelsea Van Arsdale. The woman had been unable – or perhaps unwilling – to give coherent information about Steve or his whereabouts. For Anna, he had disappeared. But, why? Steve had grown so good at returning her calls. Did he resent her absence at this critical time in his life? Had he turned his back on her? Anna felt trapped by circumstances, more so since the proverbial shoe was on the proverbial other foot. Hadn't she sailed into Steve about this very thing? Could she expect him to react any better? If not, then the silence from Indianapolis was ominous indeed.

When the meeting broke up, she suggested to Ray a stop in Indiana. He frowned at the request, pointing out Indiana's solidly Republican demographics, which made any stop there a waste of campaign finances. When she dismissed his reasoning, which was little more than a dodge, after all, he submitted a more serious line of refusal. Steve was a bad idea, he said. He had endangered his network with a prominent libel suit. He was associated with organized crime. Never mind the thin reality of such associations; they were ammunition for Anna's opponent. They would play against her if she tied herself any closer to Tallman. With the campaign moving into its final stretch, Anna needed to think toward its ultimate resolution. But, Anna wasn't listening. Ray could be blunt when Anna didn't listen.

"I've never fed you bullshit," he said. "This is the voice of common sense speaking. A lot of people depend on your listening to that voice, rather than to your libido."

Anna stiffened. Had she heard right? She furrowed her brow and stared at him. He stared back. After a moment, after realizing she hadn't imagined his words, Anna looked down at the paper-cluttered table. Her lips worked as she sought some response. She found it hard to connect such crudity to Ray, of all people. She had always trusted his company and his thoughts. Now, she only wanted him the hell out of her room.

"Uh-huh!" she grunted. "Well. I don't know what to say."

"I'm sorry. But it's obvious to everyone but you."

"Obvious to everyone but me," she echoed. "Apparently." Her lips tightened. She slowly, carefully placed her wide-spread hands palms down on the table. She did so to steady their trembling.

"I'll thank you to stay out of my personal concerns," she said, straining for control. She stared at the thin laminate tabletop, afraid what might fly from her mouth if she looked at her so-called friend.

"You don't have personal concerns," Ray responded. "Look, I'm sorry, but somebody has to tell you. You're a candidate for the presidency. Everything–"

"My libido and every other part of me, including my relationship with Steve, is my private business. You will avoid commenting on, thinking about, or spin doctoring anything that falls into that area." The words sprang from her with ragged-edged violence. She shook with building rage. "I mean this, Ray. This is not a point for discussion. Not this time. Where Steve and I are concerned, you are mute."

Ray squared his shoulders. "I'm the campaign manager–"

"That could change–"

"–and it's my duty to point out anything that might impact negatively on the campaign. It's my duty to get you elected."

"If the price is being packaged and sold like some walking Barbie doll, then I don't need this election. I have a life. I have a life. It doesn't belong to you or anyone else."

"Anna–"

"You aren't listening!" she said. She rose to her feet, the chair rattling, almost falling over. She walked to the door. "My personal life, as I define it, is off limits to you and everyone else."

"Why?" Ray blustered. "It was never off limits before. Why is this any different? It isn't like you and Tallman really have a relationship. In the last year, you've only seen him four times, and on two such occasions, he was unconscious. Last winter, you almost gave him the boot when he wouldn't even return your calls. By God, that was the only good thing to – almost – come out of Parker's death!"

She had opened the door. Now she stood gripping the knob. "Get out," she said.

"We have to resolve this."

"As far as I'm concerned, we have. Any longer, Ray, and your removal from this campaign will be the resolution. Get out."

He stood there stubbornly, watching her.

She returned his stare.

Ray broke after a few difficult, wordless moments. He self-consciously rammed his hands into his pockets and walked past her into the hall, almost slamming into another staff member passing the door with an ice bucket.

"Sorry," Ray mumbled, and turned down the hall toward his room.

A Secret Service man stood across from Anna's door, seemingly oblivious to everyone around him.

Anna watched Ray retreat down the hall. She wondered with equal parts anger and sadness what soured between them. They grew more at odds with each passing campaign day and each tick upwards in the polls. The more credible victory grew, the more Ray obsessed with winning the election, and the more Anna sought to maintain who she was amid pressure to lie for victory's sake. The others had fallen into a rabid war mentality. Ungoverned, they would do and say anything to destroy her Republican opponent. Any person, thing, or idea was fodder for their warped cause. Anyone was expendable against the advance of their single-minded but bankrupt focus on winning. Her principles faded in all eyes but her own, victim to the absorbing melees of presidential combat. The amoral fervor spreading among her people shamed her, but a truthful heart made her even more ashamed of herself. For she realized that, sometimes, their coldest suggestions made clear, logical sense.

Would she trade Steve for the presidency? She forced the question aside as quickly as it presented itself.

She turned into her room, wanting only to hit the bed, shut off her brain, and not rise until morning. Then she saw the other Secret Service agent. He stood at his post near the window, a gray-suited statue melting into the ambiance. He watched her with disinterested eyes, or stared through her at the still open door, she was unsure which.

"Umm, look, Agent Brown. I'm going to get some shut-eye. I think you can go join your buddies for the night, don't you?"

"That would be fine, ma'am." The bodyguard nodded once, then left the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

Anna fell backwards onto a couch. "Please, Lord," she said to the ceiling, "save me from ambition."

She hoped He listened, and saw fit to grant her prayer.

#

Later that night, she lay awake, her mind brooding over Ray's suggestion, or, more accurately, her reaction to it. She found herself wondering just how much trouble Southerman and Chenault could make over Steve's loose association with the Chinese underworld and the Black Panther Fellowship. No thoughtful voter could fall for such nonsense, but a good portion of voters weren't the thoughtful sort. Any artfully done TV commercial, no matter how misleading, could sway their support. Maybe some preemptive clarification was in order. After all, Steve, being a journalist, dealt with all sorts of groups, including criminals and militants. How else could he get his stories? She frowned in her dark bed. The explanation sounded so inadequate. It raised more eyebrows than it lowered. Ray was right. If the Republicans used this against her, it meant deep trouble. Maybe she and Steve should cool things, for a while, anyway. That was the simplest tactic. Still, the thought needled her, as did a nagging realization that it was hard to cool down from nothing.

In the last year, you've only seen him four times, and on two such occasions, he was unconscious.

She stretched across to the bedside table and patted about for her palm phone. Grasping it, she rolled onto her back and dialed the house operator.

"Indianapolis," she said to the computer-generated female that responded. "Stephen Tallman." She gave the robot the phone number.

She waited for Alfred's bubbly voice. Even when home, Steve always screened his calls. She wondered about the time. Without her glasses, the clock on the bedside table was little more than a blur.

"Yeah, who is it?" a groggy female voice said, disorienting Anna for a moment. The screen remained dark. It sure as hell wasn't Alfred, and it wasn't Chelsea, either.

"Patricia? Hi, honey. It's Anna Marie."

"Umm, hi." Anna formed a mental picture of Patricia checking the time.

"How are you, dear? I haven't spoken to you since the ... that thing in Indianapolis." And she had hardly spoken to her then, Anna knew, guilt pricking her again.

"I'm fine. Dad isn't here. He walked off three weeks ago, and we haven't heard from him since."

"What do you mean, he walked off? Where did he go?"

"We don't know. He didn't tell us."

Anna groaned inwardly at the plural. Patricia and Chelsea? "I didn't know he was well enough... I mean, isn't he still recovering?"

"Apparently he's recovered enough. Look, I don't mean to be rude, but it's two-thirty in the morning."

"I'm sorry. I was concerned." She was selfish, she admitted.

"Well, maybe you should call again tomorrow."

"Yes. I should," Anna said, knowing she wouldn't. "I'm sorry, Patricia. You get back to sleep, okay?"

The phone went dead. Anna held the useless handset, reminded that Patricia didn't like her very much. She wondered how the press would take a teenager snubbing the next president of the United States.

She depressed and released the switch on the phone. "428," she said to the computer.

"Hello?" a male voice mumbled after two rings. Her new security chief rubbed his eyes on-screen.

"Wake up, Gary. It's your employer."

"Governor?" He squinted from the phone. "Is something wrong? It's after–"

"Two-thirty. I know. I have a task for you, Gary. Are you awake enough to hear it?"

"Sure. I mean, sure!"

"I want you to dig around through your storm trooper sources and locate someone for me. I want current whereabouts, not a mailing address. Current to within the hour."

"Okay. You want this right away? I'm supposed to go set up that Mississippi gig tomorrow."

"I'd like it as soon as possible. The person is Stephen Tallman, the former CBS News producer. He's not at his home in Indianapolis, and I need to know where he's gone. Can you handle that?"

"I'll get on it right away. Sleep is for slackers anyway." He said it with a touch of annoyance.

"Thank-you, Gary. Let me know when you get something." Anna clicked off. She dropped the phone onto the table, then burrowed into her covers. She needed a talk with Steve. He claimed that he loved her, that she was the most profound soul he had ever met. So, why didn't he call, or even e-mail? What would he say about her quandary, the problem raised by Ray?

Anna closed her eyes. Gary Martinez was an efficient little storm trooper, a passing stand-in for Parker. He probably powered up his tablet just then, flashing onto the Net to all his political gunslinger buddies. Maybe he spoke to that other terribly efficient storm trooper. What was his name? McDonnel? No one hid from such people. Martinez would call when he had the information. She could not hurry things along. She knew that, but still she couldn't sleep.

She brooded the rest of the night away, wondering what awaited over the next few days, and if she really wanted to find out.

#

"I told you never – never – to come to this place." Mercy rose to his feet, his bones cracking from having knelt so long. The grass shears hung limply in one hand, clippings still clinging to them from the grave he tended.

"You also said you'd never be late on a payment," Decker quipped. Still, he stood a careful twenty feet from the gravesite. "Sorry to disturb you and the missus, but we have business, we have a deadline, and you don't seem to answer my messages these days."

"You're rather dangerous to talk to," Mercy said.

"That's right, and getting more dangerous all the time. Do you come down here, or do I drag a park bench up there and plop it onto Mrs. Mercy's sweet little face?"

Mercy reddened. His fingers flexed on the shears handle, snapping the blades shut. "Have a seat, Mr. Decker. I'll be with you in a minute."

Decker turned away from his employer and ambled to a bench bordering a nearby brick-lined sidewalk. His face a sharp-eyed scowl, he sprawled onto the bench and watched his boss.

Mercy tried to ignore the bastard. He turned back to his wife's place of rest and struggled down to his knees once more. He clipped the grass with dainty precision, raking the refuse away with his fingers. For years he had clipped and manicured this plot; it was his most intimate testimony to the woman he still loved, gone from him for too long a season. There were her charities, her house, her church duties he had taken on, but the grave, it was her. He couldn't have felt closer to his girl if he had been brushing her living hair at that moment.

Or so he wished. He could not maintain his usual communion with that long-departed soul, not with Decker staring holes through his back. He tried to dismiss the man for all of a couple of minutes, then angrily snapped the shears shut and locked them.

"What do you want?" Mercy asked when he turned from his wife's marker and plodded down the slight slope. He dropped onto the bench beside his chief enforcer. "What's this about a late payment?"

"My people got the old man for you. We did it what, six months ago? You promised payment for getting that bastard."

"Tallman was useless by the time you found him. His nephew was the threat."

"A deal's a deal. I have expenses."

Mercy snorted. "All right, you'll get your payment. I don't care. I won. I can afford to be magnanimous."

"And I need a bonus. The cops and the feds are looking for me. I need cash to blow this country."

"How much?"

Decker told him.

"Are you insane? Who do you think I am, King Midas?"

"I either leave this country for a safe port, or get snatched by the feds and sing like a parakeet. Take your pick."

"I'll give you a third of what you ask, maybe half. The idea is to find a country in which to escape prosecution, not buy one."

"Whatever you can manage. We're all friends here. Right, Mrs. M?" He asked the question loudly and playfully. A dark heat blossomed in Mercy's cheeks. For an instant, just a flash, he considered driving the grass shears through the center of Decker's chest.

"I'll give you the money dependent on your leaving the country and not returning, ever. I want no association with you or your Hitler-worshiping colleagues."

"Well, that'll take more cash. A guy has to eat, you know."

"What about those loose ends? Did you take care of them with your usual efficiency?" Which means I'll have to leave the country myself, Mercy thought.

"Taken care of. Nobody in Montana who knows anything will bother you. They're either scared silent, or they no longer hold a body temperature. You have nothing to worry about."

"What about Carlton Westerly?"

Decker grimaced. "We have all his bases covered. Once he rears his head—"

"That's hardly taken care of. I don't like loose threads. He knows—"

"I told you, it's covered."

Mercy frowned, but let it go. The Tallman thing had grown far too messy for his taste; he wanted it all to just go away. He disliked the risk involved, and the propensity for disaster that lurked behind too little professional help. Decker and Washington, true to their barely controlled ineptitude, had not accomplished all their assigned objectives. The reporter still lived, and had not enjoyed the experience of his daughter's death, as planned. Even the show still lived, though as a weak shadow of its former self. The only things dead after months of conflict were the old Indian and, regretfully, entirely too many bystanders and straphangers. Regardless of the failures, Tallman himself had been humbled, and that balanced things out. Now was a time to reorient toward more comfortable activities.

"I'll take care of you," Mercy said. "You'll receive a lump payment within a week, but not through the usual channels. You're too hot for that. Where can I find you?"

Decker told him the address of his borrowed condo.

"Thank-you. Then we have nothing more to discuss, Mr. Decker. I'd appreciate your leaving this place immediately."

"I'm gone." Decker laughed as he boosted himself from the bench. "Wouldn't want to barge in any more than necessary." He paused to light a cigarette and take one long drag. "Within a week," he said, looking down on his employer. "Don't be late this time. I need that money." With that, he walked away, puffing his cigarette and humming.

Mercy stayed on the bench a long time. He had no intention of paying Decker. The psychotic bastard would never be satisfied with any amount of money. He'd spend it up and come back for more, always extending the threat of talking to the feds. Mercy enjoyed a modicum of protection from that quarter, but was by no means impervious. Decker would receive a payment very different from the one he expected, and from a delivery boy who was, if not more trustworthy, at least more consistent.

After a while he rose from the bench, the grass shears still in hand, and once more climbed the knoll to his wife's grave. He knelt slowly, ran his free hand over the thick cool grass, then resumed his loving work around the base of her stone. Any passerby would have thought him the groundskeeper, but no groundskeeper worked with such fidelity, for so long, for a lone resident in his care. That was the province of love.

Chapter Twenty-seven:

Turtle

 (Back to Contents)

Every day, Steve rose in the dark. Every day, he ate the same scrappy breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast with Tom while Granddaddy snored in the second bedroom. Every day, the brothers trudged out to the ancient, battered Ford pickup. They disconnected its umbilical to the house batteries and began their run to service the solar collectors powering most of the reservation's homes outside the government-sponsored housing areas. Making those rounds wasn't easy. The truck rattled over awful dirt roads, and most of their clients lived far off what few roads there were. This necessitated long walks over the rough terrain to check collector systems deep among hills and along ridgelines, long walks back to the truck for parts, and long walks out again to do the job. That last trek to the truck always beckoned, but they routinely delayed it for cold drinks and neighborly gossip. Then the chore began again.

In this way, the reservation community learned of its newest resident, the Tallman the holy men spoke of, who would come one day to help his people in their need. They thought him polite enough for an outsider only part Apache, though somewhat silent, even grim. And they wondered how he could help anybody, even himself, with a mesquite branch cane to keep him on his feet, and his face etched from wear. This newcomer impressed no one, but they kept those thoughts to themselves. To do otherwise would have been rude. Mostly, when Tom and Steve were present, conversation centered on the weather.

Steve, too, appraised his new acquaintances. Behind his dark eyes and enforced silence, he studied the quiet, unhurried character of a people he recalled only from childhood, and who claimed a sizable portion of his genes. He noted the varied means of their existence. They were sheepherders, miners, craftsmen, teachers, and the indigent on relief. They lived in modern frame houses, and in mud brick huts and timber and brush hogans without running water. Where they lived was determined not so much by economic status as by tradition. They lived in barren desert, in high forests, and on the scrubby shore of a three-mile long reservoir. They didn't live in towns, at least, no town of consequence stood within the forty-mile diameter of the Tallman brothers' range. A thin peppering of single-family dwellings pocked a hot, red earth more vertical than flat, a lonesome, largely inhospitable land.

Each evening, Tom took his brother into Globe, just outside the reservation, a comparative burgeoning metropolis with its eight thousand residents. There they loaded the truck with more equipment out of a storage building owned by the reservation council, then finished their day with the long haul home.

Granddaddy met them on the porch. He always allowed them a needed rest through some simple supper Tom prepared. But as the shadows lengthened into seas of blue and violet along the dusty ground, Joe Tallman took his much younger visitor out of the house and into the rising dark.

"All day you discipline the body," he said each night as he clutched Steve's elbow, reminding his grandson of the dead Wo Chu. "By night, we discipline your spirit."

They tramped into the land, two men with long walking sticks, the one impossibly old, looking deceptively frail, the other still bent from long illness, though growing stronger through hard labor in the pure wilderness air. Though the elder Tallman held tight to his companion's arm, it was no easy task to say who supported whom.

The men spent hours among the rocks and mesquite without a sound passing between them. When the old man did speak, Steve felt compelled to listen.

"We walk at night because the night has power," Granddaddy said. "Most healing and ceremony takes place at night, ends at dawn, and carries on for four nights in all. Four is a powerful number to most Apache."

"What's the big deal with four? Don't some tribes worship other numbers? Like seven, or three?"

"We don't worship numbers at all," Granddaddy corrected, using his stick to knock a rock from his path. "Everything moves in fours, or multiples of four. The four seasons, the four sacred directions, the four ages of man. Everything goes in fours. We even have four sacred colors that correspond to the four directions: black, red, yellow, and white, going from east around as the sun goes."

"How can colors be sacred? Colors are colors. They're just photon frequencies."

"How can God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit be three beings, yet one? Don't question spiritual power. It's the way it is, that's all."

Most of their discussions ended in similar absolutisms. Their talks always involved some presumably important lesson. Sometimes Granddaddy illustrated the mythical histories of the constellations shining from above. Sometimes he told more far-ranging stories, but stories couched in the fertile history and mythology of his people. These were not idle conversations to while away evening walks. These were major issues of philosophy, and fact. Granddaddy played his role as teacher with conviction, carefully selecting which lessons he taught, and when he taught them. Their walks through the night became highly compacted courses in the culture of the Apache people.

#

"Why do you cling to those Other People?" Granddaddy asked one night as they rested. While traversing the floor of a deep gorge, they had taken seats atop a fall of rocks. The old man frowned as Steve dry-swallowed five pills from the vial around his neck.

"What do you mean?" Steve asked, slumping against the rock at his back.

"You asked me once about worshiping things. You wanted to know why the Apache worship numbers. Well, I ask why you worship the Other People's science. You take those pills like you believe they can help you, like you believe what those doctors tell you."

Steve looked across to his grandfather's dark form. After a hard day on the range and long hours out in the night, he wondered if exhaustion had hidden a joke from him. "Well, I do believe them. I mean, they're doctors."

"Doctors? That means they know so much? I'll remind you that they're the same doctors who messed you up in the first place."

"Déjà vu." Steve snorted. "I've heard that before."

"Maybe you hear it so much because it's true. Do you believe those pills can help you?"

"Yes."

"Then why haven't they?"

"Granddaddy, without these pills, I'd be dead."

"So, they keep you from being dead? That's medicine? You know that your sickness can be taken out, taken right out and burned."

"Come on, Granddaddy..."

"You don't believe me? You used to believe, when you were a boy."

Steve folded his arms tightly across his chest. "I'm forty-three years old. I guess I'm not a boy anymore. A little older, a little wiser–"

"Ha! Wisdom doesn't come from college degrees, or money, or age. Wisdom comes from seeing the truth, from the judicious exercise of ordinary common sense." He slapped his stick against the hard ground for emphasis. "Wisdom comes from an open mind."

"I have an open mind," Steve said testily, "but this is ridiculous." He looked to the sky and its winking pinpoints of light. He hadn't seen so many stars since the war. "When I was a kid, I believed in magic. All kids do. Only I kept that belief for a long time, thanks to you, all the way up to the war. Something about that kind of mayhem just knocks the magic right out of you. Granddaddy, everything you taught me was just words; I never saw any of it."

Joe Tallman nodded. "Well spoken, but untrue. You see, you can believe in things you can't see. You once believed in your duty as an Army officer, and you believed in your duty as a journalist. You believed in your feelings for that woman, too. But all those things were phantoms, though you believed in their reality. But some things you don't believe are very real, Stevie."

"Wait a second. What's this woman you're talking about?"

Granddaddy huffed. "That's your business, and I won't discuss it."

"You brought it up, now explain yourself."

"I just made a point. I ain't interested in your love life. Now, as I was saying, some things you can't see are real. They can also be made visible, if that's what it takes."

"Excuse me? You're changing a subject you yourself started. You're getting awfully metaphysical, too."

The old man rose stiffly to his feet, careful of his balance on the uneven ground. "Not metaphysics, just facts. Facts often depend on where you were born and who you are. I reckon you're thinking way too much like them Other People."

"My mother is 'them Other People'. That makes me 'Other People', too."

"Your daddy was Apache. That makes you Apache, too. I'm not telling you to forget half of who you are. I'm telling you to remember half of who you are." He started into the dark, back the way they had come.

Steve boosted himself from his rocky seat and hurried after the old man. Granddaddy sounded like Ben.

"Tomorrow you get a break," the elder Tallman said. "Instead of running around out here, we'll go to a holy place, kind of kick back and meditate."

"I suppose there aren't many churches around here, and they wouldn't be open this time of night anyway. So, do you plan for us to sit out under the stars? Are you planning to build a tipi? Got a sacred cave or something handy?"

"Nothing so dramatic. Tomorrow night, we go to Bob's."

"Bob's? Doesn't sound all that holy to me."

"Bob's is the great meeting place for all the local shamans and council chiefs. Out on US 70 about three miles east of Cutter. It'll be good for you to meet some of the boys." He nodded to himself as he walked back toward the house. "Yeah, you'll enjoy yourself. I should've thought of this earlier."

"Granddaddy, about all of 'this'. I think I've been a good sport. I can get lost in the work with Tom, and I come out here every night with you, even though I'm dog-tired. But, I don't think this is why I came to you..."

Granddaddy grunted. "Last I noticed, you had no idea why you came out here. I suspect you wanted me to set your messy life straight. Well, this is my way of doing it."

"I'm not so sure breaking my back in the hot sun and tripping over rocks in the cold night can do much to straighten out my life."

"You said I could help you. I'm helping you. You ain't no prisoner. You can leave any time you want."

Steve didn't know how to answer that. He wanted to stay. He felt safe in his grandfather's company. Now that he had arrived, he felt a sense of order long missing from his life.

They trudged on, winding their way out of the narrow gorge and into the more open, but still pitted and gouged, land beyond. The terrain was a striking montage of randomly scattered boulders, tree-like cacti, and meandering walls of low-growing mesquite trees, their characteristic twisted, thorny branches thickly intertwined. The desert impressed Steve even more for its contrast with the thick pine forests only an hour's drive north or south, where Steve had worked all day. How could two such opposed biomes exist in close proximity? For a man from more temperate Indiana, it was all very disorienting.

"Don't you find it strange, how varied the land is around here?" Steve asked.

"I've lived here better than 106 years. Nothing in these parts is strange to me." The old man stopped. He leaned on his stick. His head cocked to one side and a mischievous smile cracked his already deeply crevassed face. "Just out of curiosity, how many kinds of land do you see around here?"

"Well," Steve began, expecting the trap as well as the lesson, "obviously, there's the desert and the forests."

"Is that all? Come on, you're a college grad, after all."

"Mountains."

"Yes. And don't forget the water. The lake."

"Well, yes, but it isn't much different there. More scrub, maybe, and – oh."

The old man chuckled. "Everything goes in fours," he said.

Then he launched once more toward home.

#

Tom slapped the hammer down one last time, then used his chisel to flip the formerly fused capacitor from its slot in the solar panel and onto dry earth.

"Nobody knows where his power comes from," he said in answer to Steve's question. "And I'll tell you what: you'll never find out from him. Hand me that new capacitor and four cuts of ten gauge ceramic."

Steve handed the items to his brother. The sun pressed down on him, making him grateful for the absorptive quality of the glass and plastic panels. Even in the ninety-plus heat, they felt cool to the touch. "What's the big secret? He brags enough about how strong he is, so why not identify the source?"

Tom attached the ceramic wire to the new capacitor's leads, then linked the replacement device to its twins ahead and behind in the daisy chain. "He says his power likes its privacy. He's sure that revealing where it comes from might cause that power to desert him. And there's the political angle."

"Political?"

"Yeah. If the source of his power is known, it becomes easier to steal."

"Give me a break! How do you steal magic?"

Tom seated and checked each element of the panel, then began reattaching the glass front. "Not magic, power. And these old guys, they do it all the time. It's like a sport." He winked at his brother. "This is their thing. I just fix solar collectors and watch TV."

Steve sat back on the dusty ground and ran his fingers through his wet, gritty hair. "Well, that's encouraging. I was beginning to think myself the only level-headed skeptic around, I'll tell you that."

After screwing down the glass cover, Tom carefully wiped the solar panel's surface. Something in his attitude bothered Steve.

"You are a skeptic, aren't you, Tom?"

"I don't know." Steve's brother wiped his hands on a rag from his back jeans pocket, then began gathering his tools. "I'm not into this power stuff myself. To me, the greatest power a fella has is a secure job. Having said that, I have to admit that I've seen some odd things these years I've lived with Granddaddy."

"Like what kind of things?"

Tom shook his head. "Nope. I won't play that, man." He stood and stretched his back muscles. "Look, we're done here. Let's go up to the house and see if old Nastile's woman has any of those corn cakes she's famous for."

"That's dodging the question, Tom."

"No, it's refusing the question. I'll tell you, Stevie, I've seen stuff, that's for damned sure. But I don't want to sound like a crazy man." He grabbed his tool box and started toward the house. "Don't worry, man. If you really want to know, you'll find out soon enough."

"And that's supposed to mean?" Steve followed behind, leaning on his stick. The heat pummeled him.

Tom looked back over his shoulder. He watched his brother for a moment before turning his face away. "You're going over to Bob's tonight?"

"That's the plan."

"Then you'll get all your questions answered. I'll keep a beer handy for when you get home. You got an express ticket to weird city, I'll tell you that."

He refused to say anything else on the subject.

They plodded toward the house, Tom lugging his tool box, Steve leaning on his stick and clutching their trash. After a moment, Tom raised one pointing finger to the horizon. The sky looked hazy and gray in the distance. "Rain's building," he said. "Coming out of the north, which is odd for this time of year. Better take the truck or you might get wet on your way home tonight."

"Why were you in New York, Tom? Why were you guarding Patricia?"

"Because he told me to."

"That's it? He just told you to, and you went?"

"It was enough for me. He thought you needed protection, or rather Patty did."

"But, how did he know?"

Tom did not look directly at his brother. "As I said, I don't know about power. But, I know Granddaddy has it. Don't worry so much, little brother. You'll find out all about it tonight."

#

Bob's was a bar. It crouched about two hundred yards off the pitted two-lane ribbon of US 70, an octagonal hogan of stacked timber and mud mortar, a hole centered in its brush roof that allowed the stars a good view inside. Bob's was disconcertingly dark, lit only by candles on a few rough tables about the room, and by a single Coleman solar lantern suspended from the ceiling by a coathanger. Bob himself met Steve and his grandfather at the doorway, effusive in his pleasure at seeing the old man after several weeks, but respectful as well. He was a slightly overweight Indian in blue jeans and flannel shirt, his long hair pulled back in the pony tail now so familiar to Steve. Steve couldn't see him any better than that, or see much of the surrounding room, either. The light was too poor.

"First one's on the house," Bob said, leading them across the packed earth floor to the bar, an old door thrown across stacked cases of beer. "We got beer and we got beer. What's your pleasure, Mr. Tallman?"

"I guess I'll have a beer," Granddaddy said. "Same for my grandson here." He peered into the darkness at the four tables and the shadowed figures around them. "Looks like the boys are here." He inclined his head toward one table in particular.

Bob opened a cooler beneath the bar, and took out two cans. "Yessir. They been at it for two or three hours. Ain't done no smokin' yet. I think they're waitin' for you."

Granddaddy took his drink and motioned Steve to do the same. "Well," he said, "it's nice to be wanted." He stepped over to the table in question, his stick tapping dully on the earth floor.

Three men sat in the glow of a single candle. Its harsh, wavering light exaggerated their features, especially magnifying the wrinkles and pits that accompanied life in the sun. Two of them looked to be in their sixties. The other was smoother-faced, about Steve's age. Unlike his companions, he wore his hair short.

"Well howdy," Granddaddy said. "Mind if we sit down?"

"Go ahead." One of the older men waved to a chair. "We been expecting you, Joe."

Granddaddy sat down. He signaled Steve to pull over an empty chair from another table.

"It's been a while, Joe," the same old man said after a draw on his beer. "We almost thought you was dead."

"No, not me. Just busy. I'd like you gentlemen to meet my grandson, the one I told you about. This here's Steve Tallman. Say hello to the nice people, Stevie."

The group exchanged nods all around.

"And this here," Granddaddy continued, gesturing toward one old man, "is Doc Horserider, chief of the Lipan Apache around these parts. And here," indicating the other, "is Jack Toots. He's Mescalero, like us."

"Like your grandfather," Jack Toots corrected, looking at Steve. "Like you almost are."

"Toots is particular about blood and things," Granddaddy said. "He don't mean no offense. Do you, Toots?"

Toots shook his head. "Never mean no offense." He took a leather pouch from somewhere beneath the table. About two feet long, it contained a long, slender, reed-like object, intricately carved, and a matching cylindrical bowl, both of which he extracted and lay atop the pouch on the table.

"And the young one with the hair problem is Chris Bates," Granddaddy continued. "He represents the Chiricahua Apache here on the res. What is it now, Chris, about ten families?"

"Fourteen, Mr. Tallman."

"Fourteen! I swear, them Chiricahua better stop making babies, or they'll outnumber all of us by middle of next week!"

Sniggers buzzed around the table.

Steve felt a need to say something. "I'm glad to meet all of you."

"Well, young man, we ain't nearly so glad to meet you," Toots said flatly. Steve watched as he attached the carved cylinder to one end of the reed, seating it firmly. He drew a fibercell packet from his clothing, and tapped a small amount of its contents into the bowl. Some sort of ceremonial pipe, Steve thought. "You see, your being here just proves your grandfather's visions, which we'd as soon believe were just nightmares from too much corn liquor."

"It takes more than some college trained almost-Indian to convince me," Bates said, staring at Steve. "I don't see any power around you, Little Tallman. I don't know why you're sitting at this table."

Joe Tallman grunted. "What do you know? You lost half your smarts when you chopped off that hair." He turned to Steve. "This here's our regular table. Nobody sits here. Bob couldn't pay anybody to sit in these chairs."

"I don't understand," Steve said, knowing the lesson approached.

Toots smacked his aged gums and spit onto the dirt floor. "This here table is a center of power on the res," he said. "We have our regular meetings here. Nobody sits here who can't hold his own with the powers around him. If he does, he gets what he deserves." He flourished a Zippo lighter, then lit the contents of the pipe's bowl while dragging vigorously from the stem.

"I still don't understand," Steve confessed. "All I see here is four men swilling beer in a homemade dump of a bar."

"He isn't one of us," Bates said, sneering contempt. "Why is he here, Mr. Tallman?"

"He was chosen. I told you of the dreams."

"No offense, but maybe those were the dreams of an old man who wants something better in his kin." Bates shrugged. "Or, maybe they were chili dreams."

"I'm sticking with corn liquor." Toots let loose a white stream of smoke.

Granddaddy looked hard at the younger man. "This ain't the old days, pup. You don't have to challenge my authority. It ain't polite."

"Let's not have an argument," Steve interceded. "I was asking about power. I still don't see any. Why should I be impressed with all these allusions to the supernatural?" He looked hard at the short-haired man. "What's your power, Bates? I don't see it anywhere."

Bates slapped his beer to the table top, then took the pipe as Toots handed it to him. "You don't see because you don't look." He took a deep pull on the pipe, then passed it to Horserider. The stuff didn't smell like tobacco smoke. The pipe moved in a circle around the table, from Horserider, to Granddaddy, to Toots, and to Bates. It made two complete circuits, bypassing Steve each time. Then he understood. This was a peyote meeting, where shamans communed within the peyote herb's hallucinogenic smoke. Few outsiders participated in such gatherings. This meeting was ancient in Apache culture, and illegal under federal law.

"You don't see any power around here?" Bates spoke with a huff. "That's because you have no power yourself. You're just another blind white guy."

Steve shrugged. "Fine. So educate me. What's your power?"

Bates flinched at the question. He looked around at the others.

Horserider chuckled, then passed the pipe along. He spoke for the first time; Steve had started to wonder if he could. "It's poor form to ask a shaman the source of his power, especially at peyote meetings. You see, there might be one of us who gets his power from peyote, which makes him strongest in this place. If such a one knew my power, he could take it from me, if he were so inclined."

"You got no worry there," Toots said. "Nobody wants power from bullshit."

Everyone laughed except Steve.

"You see," Granddaddy explained, "power comes from many sources: the rocks, the earth beneath your feet, the peyote smoke floating around your head. Most often, it comes from the animal spirits. All sources have their own ceremonies, their own skills that they lend to the shaman, though some are greater than others."

"I've known men with power from Coyote," Horserider offered. "Cunning, skill at the hunt, like Wolf, but full of mischief. Personally, I wouldn't trust Coyote.

"Then there's Turtle. Trust one with power from Turtle. Great wisdom there, the power to see things and know things no others can see or know."

"I once knew a guy with power from Owl," Toots said with a grunt. "Gave me the creeps."

"Owl accompanies the spirits of the dead," Steve said.

That got a nod from Toots. "So, you do know something. I guess your youth wasn't a total waste. Who's your mother, son?"

"His mother ain't no Indian," Granddaddy said.

"Oh. Well, no history there." Horserider accepted the pipe from Bates and drew long on its stem.

Thunder rolled across the night. Steve felt it through his feet.

"Of all the terrestrial spirits, Bear is the most powerful," Granddaddy said. "Only the Creator is greater than Bear, and maybe White Painted Woman and Water's Child."

"Well, maybe the Mountain Spirits," Horserider suggested.

"Sure, the Mountain Spirits are strong, but Bear is stronger than any one of them, maybe any two," Granddaddy insisted.

Steve started to speak, wanting to share his dreams of the Bear. Granddaddy promptly kicked him in the foot.

"So, power comes from many sources," Horserider said. "But, power isn't permanent. It's offered, and can just as easily be taken away. It can also be stolen."

"I don't understand how," Steve said. "How do you steal, or even claim in the first place, something you can't see or touch?"

"You don't claim power," Granddaddy explained patiently. "It claims you. This isn't like joining a church, Stevie. It isn't a philosophical decision. When power wants you, it makes itself known."

Bates rapped on the table. "Give him the smoke, Mr. Toots," he said. "He wants to see power, maybe we can show him some."

"He's not one of us," Toots said, hesitating. The entire group froze.

"But he wants to be," Bates insisted. "Give him the pipe. If he wants to be like us, let him see what he's in for."

"I never said I wanted to be like anybody," Steve said.

"My power doesn't do circus tricks." Horserider grunted. "Come on, pass that pipe."

They sat around the table, silent. The first patters of raindrops smacked dirt in the center of the room.

"Well," Steve said, placing his palms down on the table, "I guess your idea backfired, Granddaddy. I'll meet you in the truck."

He froze half way to his feet. Something clung to his left leg. It reflected blue in the dim, irregular light, and stared up at him with unblinking yellow eyes. It was easily as big as his hand, not including the long, scaly tail that trailed along his calf. Some kind of lizard. Steve glanced at the faces around the table, at Granddaddy looking away, at the old man Toots watching Steve with skepticism, at Bates passing the pipe to Horserider. The room seemed darker, dimming each second, though the creature attached to Steve's leg remained clear in his sight. Black night poured through the hole in Bob's ceiling, radiating like lava over the floor.

"Are you the one?" the lizard asked, paralyzing Steve with even greater shock than he already felt. Smooth as quicksilver, it skittered up his body, stopping at his right shoulder. "Yes, you are," it whispered in his ear.

#

A white flash. Dazzled, Steve staggered from the table. The lizard skittered down his chest, around his hips, and back down his left leg. Then it was gone; he felt it launch from his foot. Steve stood there, defenseless, blinded, afraid to move beyond keeping his footing. He closed his eyes, rubbing them with his hands.

Sound returned as multicolored spots gamboled before his eyes. He heard birds, and the rustling of leaves in windblown trees, and he heard a sharp, liquid sound, like a stone skipping on water. Next, he felt the sun on his skin, but not the desert's vicious furnace. This was the sun of childhood spring days growing up in Indiana.

He heard something move beside him, something big. Reflexively, he jerked away, then felt and heard his foot splash in cold water. Everything focused into clarity.

A stream raced over his foot, dodging around rocks between green banks. The water looked bottle pure, the bordering grass wet, thick, and green. A forest of impossibly tall and muscled pines stood far back from the banks. The landscape was too pure, too powerful, to have stood upon the earth in the company of man.

A huge antelope watched Steve from a few feet away. The wet, black marbles of its eyes did not hold an animal's blankness; they surveyed him critically, as if the beast were some evaluating superior. A blue-green lizard darted near the antelope's hooves. A turtle poked its head from the stream, then rolled over noisily and propelled itself toward the opposite bank. Everything showed such vibrant colors, almost luminescent. All detail lay open before Steve's mind. Even the cold discomfort of his wet foot accosted him sharply, though he was too befuddled to retrieve it from the water.

Across the stream, a bear paced. Steve gasped at the animal. It was easily the size of a minivan, so black that Steve discerned no details beyond its hot red eyes. Those eyes held intelligent, expectant purpose, wandering from Steve to each of the animals in turn. Steve knew those eyes, and the beast that wielded them, and so he accepted without question their miraculous appearance on a bank that, moments before, had been empty back to the distant trees. Nor did he question the equally strange presence of the mesquite tree, with its arthritic branches thrown back toward the woods, reaching, twining, like a half-closed fist. It was so out of place, so suddenly present, and every bit as aware as the beast it accompanied.

A bird flitted about the monster bear's head, singing. Steve understood its song as a tinny whisper within his mind. It was simple, even childlike, full of exuberance.

"He's the one! He's the one! He's the one!"

The Bear sat back heavily, landing in front of the mesquite tree as if arranging itself at a thorny throne. It flashed forelimbs weighted by saber-like claws. It growled, and Steve felt the sound rumble through the earth. The bird swooped around the black head. The turtle crawled from the stream and ineffectually tried to climb one log of a black hind leg. The antelope stepped into the water and crossed toward the much larger beast, the lizard hanging from one of its upper legs. They all went to meet the Bear. They did so purposefully, even with eagerness. And the Bear waited at its knobby, tortured throne, flexing its terrible claws.

The elk and the lizard presented themselves on the far bank. The bird flitted back and forth. The turtle stretched against the Bear's leg. All honored the black, dwarfing form with the huge claws and red eyes. Steve heard a murmur of voices, all acknowledging the same thing: "He's the one!"

The bird dropped four downy feathers into the Bear's lap. The elk shook off four tufts of fur. The turtle and the lizard, by some means hidden from Steve, presented their terrifying master with four bleached claws each. The Bear stretched out its arms, and rumbled. It turned its piercing red lights on Steve.

Steve wanted to shake off his paralysis and run. He didn't know where, he just wanted escape.

The Bear's blackness increased. It engulfed the four animals and the blue sky, then flew at Steve like a storm.

#

Granddaddy held him by the shoulders. "Are you okay?" he asked.

Steve straightened from his half-hunched defensive posture. His eyes pained him from bulging. He jerked his head right and left, looking for phantoms. The bar hung dark around him as a deeper darkness retreated across the floor, then up through the hole in Bob's roof. "Did you see it?" he asked in a too-loud voice, the stream and the bestial ceremony still sharp in his mind.

"No," Granddaddy said. "We didn't."

He released Steve and turned back to the others. Bob had approached from his makeshift bar, looking concerned.

"Think you guys could take it easy?" he asked Granddaddy. "You're scaring the customers."

Granddaddy patted the barkeep's shoulder and smiled. "That's it for tonight, Bob. No more shows." He shooed the man away, then turned to his fellow shamans. "Well? Do you believe me now?"

The shamans stared at Steve, each with some degree of unease. The peyote pipe lay forgotten in Horserider's hand.

They hadn't seen it, Steve thought, amazed. But, what had they seen? They looked so anxious.

Granddaddy regained his seat. He took something from inside his shirt and laid it on the table in the guttering candlelight. It was a small leather pouch, drawn closed with rawhide. He opened its mouth, then reached once more beneath his shirt, this time retrieving a neatly folded handkerchief, which he also placed on the table. He opened the handkerchief gingerly, revealing a powdery smear of yellow and four tiny, sharp objects, each slightly curved. He took the four turtle claws one at a time and dropped them into the pouch. Then he pushed the pouch around the table to Toots.

Steve watched in eerie fascination as each shaman brought small objects into the light and dropped them into the pouch. The lighting was awful, but he knew without doubt what entered the bag.

When the pouch finally returned to Granddaddy, he took a pinch of the yellow powder and sprinkled it over the offered objects. Then he cinched the bag, stood, and handed it to Steve, who still stood paralyzed five feet from the table.

"This is your medicine bag," the old man said, "the center of your power. Our strengths are added to yours, as I was directed they should be, but this bag, this altar, if you'd rather, isn't ready yet. You must make the final addition that will fully release its power." He held out the pouch. Steve took it. The contents rattled from the trembling of his hand.

Granddaddy turned back to the others. He drew himself up as far as his ancient frame allowed, then gathered up his handkerchief and his walking stick. "Our business is done," he said. "Me and Stevie need to head on home. It's late, and he has an early day tomorrow."

The group exchanged farewells. Each man gripped Steve's hand with an extra parcel of strength. They gave him questioning, unanswerable looks through slitted eyes. As he crossed to the doorway, Steve felt their stares on the back of his neck. He felt equally the stares of the other five or six people in the bar. He expelled a breath of relief as he entered the anonymous night.

The rain had stopped. Steve and Granddaddy climbed into the truck, and Steve wrestled it over the uneven ground to the road. He held his silence until pavement hummed under his wheels.

"You didn't see any of it, did you?"

"Visions are a personal thing," Granddaddy said. "I wasn't invited to see it."

"You saw something. The others looked as rattled as me."

"We saw a great shadow surround you, then leave. That was enough."

"Surround me?"

"Like a blanket."

"That isn't what I saw."

"I guess not, but what you saw you should keep to yourself, unless he tells you different. It isn't my place to know."

Steve watched US 70 fold away into the black night. He thought about the stream in his vision and its mythic visitors, and how real that experience had seemed. After all, he hadn't really gone to that place. He couldn't have. He had been in the bar the whole time. His confrontation with those five supernatural beings had occurred entirely within his mind.

He pulled off the highway onto the unmarked dirt track leading to the house. No lights competed with those of the truck. The desert was a great, black cave, the terrain beyond the headlights invisible. Steve navigated by dead reckoning, and judged distance by time. After the correct passage of minutes, he turned off the trail and bounced the truck over uneven ground, hoping he hadn't turned too early or late. If the houselights left on by Tom failed to appear within several seconds of the road, he would have to backtrack and try again.

He slowed after a full minute of bone-jarring cross-country bounces. After another two minutes, he stopped.

"Lost."

"No," Granddaddy said, "just early."

"I'll get out and look around. Maybe I can see something."

"Suit yourself."

Steve shut off the lights and climbed from the truck. He stood beside its fender while his eyes adjusted to the black desert night. He listened to the buzzing, screeching cacophony of insect sounds that pressed on him like an aggressive mob. The desert boiled over with rarely visible life that spoke only at night. No wonder his people sanctified the dark.

Steve shook his head. "My people," he whispered. For the first time, he thought of them as such.

He saw the gray ghosts of stones at his feet, and the phantom line of a horizon higher up. Cautiously, he walked away from the truck, hoping a pinpoint beacon of light would peek at him from behind a cactus or beyond an intervening rise. Nothing, only the usual assortment of changing elevations, scattered boulders, tall cacti and gnarled mesquite. He turned back toward the truck when one such object caught his eye.

The silhouette of a mesquite tree crouched low on the horizon, isolated from its usually hedge-mannered brothers. Its branches swept away as if in a wind, and resembled a half-closed fist.

"What is it?" Granddaddy asked from beside him.

"That tree. I know it."

Granddaddy grunted. "It has a strong presence. I can see the white light around it."

"I saw it in my vision."

"Then, it's begun. I thought we'd get more time, but he calls to you. Come on. We'll return here tomorrow when you're rested." Placing a hand on Steve's shoulder, he tugged him back to the corporeal world.

#

Three white Suburbans shielded Granddaddy's front porch.

"Looks like trouble," he said.

"Looks like the feds."

They stopped the rickety Ford just behind the visitors. A man in a gray suit watched from one corner of the house, just out of the light.

"Got no manners," Granddaddy grumbled.

"No." Steve stepped from the truck. "I think I know what this is, and I'm not up to it."

The two men slammed their doors at the same time, announcing their arrival to the house.

Another suit appeared at the front door and watched their approach past the haphazardly parked government vehicles. He raised a cautioning hand before they mounted the porch proper.

"That's far enough. Are you Stephen and Joseph Tallman?"

"Yes," Steve said.

"Who are you and what are you doing at my home?" Granddaddy demanded.

"He's with me," a voice said from within the house. A figure moved behind the suit. The screen door creaked open. Anna Marie Dearing stepped into view from behind her Secret Service bodyguard. She smiled sheepishly. Her black suit was trim, but dusty from the desert air. Dust or not, she made Steve's mouth suddenly dry. He admired her for an awkward moment, then the door banged, and Tom stood on the porch.

"Well, there they are," he said. "Granddaddy, this is – you won't believe this – Governor Dearing, the one running for president. And these fellas are her guard. She's here to see Stevie."

"I'm surprised." Steve's eyes did not leave Anna.

That sheepish smile widened on her lips. "You shouldn't be."

"Granddaddy, can we – Anna and I – have a minute?"

Granddaddy nodded. He elbowed his way past the Secret Service man and into the house, dragging Tom with him.

Anna touched the elbow of the grim government statue beside her. "It's all right, Agent Wilson. Why don't you and your partner go inside and have a nice glass of water? Or something."

"I'll be over there, ma'am." The agent left the porch, squeezing past Steve to take a position at the corner of the house. The two bodyguards framed the scene like bookends.

"Your brother Tom is a good man," Anna said after a moment. "He's gracious. He also has a sense of humor."

Steve didn't respond except to step up onto the porch. Averting his eyes from her face, he focused them on the wood planks instead.

"Well?" Anna tried again. "Welcome a girl with a hug?"

Steve opened his arms, and she pressed into them. "Hmm," she said, "I'm glad to see you. I've missed you for what seems like ages, for six months, I guess."

"Why are you here, Anna?"

She leaned back to catch his eyes. "Excuse me? That's an odd question."

"Don't you have a campaign to run? I mean, I imagine it's keeping you awfully busy."

"I'm not putting you out, am I? You had some chore you had to do?" The edge in her voice was plain.

"That's not what I meant."

"I know, dear. What you meant was: 'Anna, I love you. I've needed to hold you for months.' Isn't that right?"

He looked at her. The sight of her did not bring joy; she seemed mostly... out of place.

"Isn't that what you meant?"

"We need to talk." He saw her spirit slump behind her glasses, and his stomach rolled. Well, here it comes.

"We need to talk," she echoed. She pushed out of his arms. She turned away and hugged herself.

"Things are different," Steve said. It anguished him to say the words, but his level tone kept that torment from her. "Things have changed, Anna. I've changed."

"I don't see how things are so different."

"Being confined to a hospital room gives you lots of time to think. There's even more time out here in the desert. There's something I need to tell you, Anna. I just needed time to figure out how."

"Don't do this, Steve."

"I have to. I'm sorry." He stepped around to see her face, but she turned away once more. "We have to do this. Don't hide from me."

She pivoted toward the steps and shot off the porch at a fast walk. Steve followed, catching up to her amid the Suburbans, where she turned on him, palms up.

"Don't touch me," she warned. "So, what changed your mind? What happened to make me yesterday's garbage?"

"Don't talk like that. You know how much you mean to me."

"Apparently not!" She paced up and down the flank of a truck, tapping it with the side of a small, tight fist. "I thought you loved me. I thought we'd marry some day, that we'd grow old– I don't know what I thought."

"And that's the point," Steve said. "I thought the same things, or I wanted to think them. But, really, is there ever any chance of it? Do you really think there is?"

She paced along the side of the truck.

"We never see each other, Anna. We're too busy to see each other. I made excuses for a long time. I even turned our long-distance relationship into some sort of ass-backwards virtue. We're always apart, but always together, that sort of thing. But then that thing in New Hampshire happened, and I chose my work over you."

"I forgave you..."

"Yeah, but you shouldn't have had to. Then I wound up in the hospital, and it was your turn to make the excuses."

She stopped pacing. "I did not. I came to you as soon as I could."

"I know you did. That's the problem. Your soonest was a couple of days off the mark. You were there only a few minutes. My mother was there within minutes of my being admitted, and stayed for months. Chelsea was there that same night, and she was hurt pretty bad herself."

"Well, excuse me for not being so close at hand. I came as soon as I could. I made major sacrifices, big changes, to come to you."

Steve sighed. "Did you really? Don't get me wrong. I'm not accusing you. I think I'm just understanding us. How much would you really sacrifice for me? I said I'd sacrifice my career for you, but I didn't. I couldn't. What about you? Would you sacrifice the presidency?"

They stood twenty feet apart in the dark. All Steve saw of her was a silhouette and vagaries blurred by the weak light from the porch.

"What kind of question is that?" she asked. "Are you learning politics? Is that a hypothetical question with no correct answer?"

"It's a fair question, I think." He took a step toward her, but stopped when she flinched away. "We've got jobs and we're good at them. But, those jobs are jealous lovers. I think we met at just the right – or wrong – time. I think we needed a kind of plausible denial of our fucked up lives, someone to point to and say 'Look, that person is mine. They're here for me.'"

"Of course we did." Steve couldn't see her face, but he heard the pain in her shaking voice. "Of course we thought that. It's love, you dumbass. We love each other, or I thought we did."

He wanted to go to her, to hold her, but knew she would retreat further into the dark.

"This is bullshit!" Anna spat with sudden ferocity. "You can't stand there and say you don't love me! And I'll be damned if you decide how I feel!"

"You're right," he said. "I do love you. I'm not taking back anything I ever said to you. I'm not calling it a lie. I'm calling it a dream. When two people with lives like ours fall in love, sometimes it isn't the conquering love of our fairy tales so much as an antidote for loneliness. I used to think that love was enough, but it isn't, is it? If I asked you to marry me and go away from all this, you wouldn't do it. You're going to be president. It's your main thing. If I want to come along, fine, but you're not leaving that track." He shrugged. "And I'm not leaving mine." But, he was leaving his, wasn't he? He felt without clarity that he stumbled in the weeds, that he had missed a curve in his road.

They faced off. Steve couldn't see her, but he heard her heavy, controlled breathing. He imagined her polishing her glasses. He remained surprisingly calm, perhaps because he had faced this scenario often over the months. He had grown into the truth.

Or was it something else?

"I love you, Anna, but I can't marry you. We're a dead end."

He heard a hollow metallic bang as her fist slapped the truck. She took in a breath.

"Well! I suppose that's it. No working it out, not even the slightest attempt. Just it."

"I'm sorry."

"You know, you say that a hell of a lot." She stepped closer, catching the light. Her gaze pointed toward the house. "Well, I guess you can say it to somebody else from now on. I told you once that I don't need this. Don't come running when you find you've made a mistake."

She said this last as she shoved past him toward the house. Steve let her go, knowing he couldn't soothe her. He had said quite enough for a lifetime.

"Gary!" Anna called. "Round up the crew. We're going home."

Steve heard the voices, none of them hers. He sensed the bodies moving into the trucks, people dodging around him as if he were a post. He heard the high whine as engines cranked over, and tasted dust as the vehicle beside him reversed, pinned him briefly in its lights, and disappeared toward the road.

After a moment, he heard crickets again.

She was gone.

"You all right?" Granddaddy asked from his side.

Steve thought about that. "Don't know," he answered, and turned toward the house.

Chapter Twenty-eight:

Owl

 (Back to Contents)

"Wake up," Patricia said, irritated. It was afternoon, she hadn't slept in thirty hours, and Chelsea hadn't risen from bed in almost as long. Patricia's model of confidence, energy, and self-possession had become a confused old lady. Was it due to the vertol crash, or Dad's disappearance? Regardless, Patricia hated the change. She resented playing the adult to a woman way more than twice her age. She wanted Chelsea to lead, provide, and protect, as she always had.

"Come on, wake up," Patricia said as she struggled across the bedroom floor. Goddamned braces! Goddamned ruined muscles! Patricia hated what she had become, hated depending on others for the simplest things, on technology just to move around. She felt like a Frankenstein, and with half her body a plasticized horror, she looked like one, too. She shook Chelsea roughly, and threw back her covers.

"I'm resting," Chelsea murmured, drawing a pillow over her face. "Come back tomorrow."

"It is tomorrow, Chelsea, and you aren't resting, you're falling apart." Patricia tugged away the pillow and heaved it across the room.

"No." Chelsea rolled over and drew her body into a fetal position. "I'm fine. I just want some sleep."

"You act like you want to die. You're pining away for Dad."

Chelsea groaned as she rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. She looked terrible flopped there in her wrinkled, bunching pajamas, her black hair tangled and wild over the sheets. When she spoke, it was with the slow cadence of heavy depression.

"It's my business who I pine for, and when. Don't you have man problems of your own to work out?"

Patricia descended to the edge of the bed, an awkward, painful process partly of forcing her prosthetics and them forcing her. Pain. Numbness. Her new life was a confusion of contradictions as tangled as Chelsea's hair. But, what good could come of dwelling on it? Whether she lived with her afflictions for a year or the rest of her life, she lived with them nonetheless. She had to do that thing Chelsea harped on but rarely did herself. She had to, how did she say it? Maintain an even strain.

She twisted the sheets in her fingers, in frustration with the fingers of her good left hand, in needlelike pain with her right. The bed had been hers months ago, but she couldn't ask Chelsea to move. Instead, she had set up the meager contents of her luggage in her father's room next door. "I think you should talk to Dad and get this thing worked out."

Chelsea looked at her, slit-eyed. "I'm just me. His girlfriend is the next president of the United States."

"So? What's that got to do with anything? You and Dad have been together for years."

"And he's never noticed me. Could you go somewhere else now? I'd really like to get some sleep."

"You can sleep in the car. We're going on a road trip."

"Really. I'll pass. Write me when you find America." She rolled away once more.

"We aren't looking for America. We're looking for Dad." Patricia noticed Chelsea's stiffening back with a twinge of guilty satisfaction. "I found him. He's in Arizona."

"How do you know that?"

"I traced his rental car. That's where he turned it in. What's in Arizona, Aunt Chelsea? Is he going to Uncle Ben's house?"

Chelsea offered no response. She lay perfectly still. Had she heard?

"Chelsea, please."

"He's gone to the reservation. To see his grandfather."

Patricia's good eye widened. To see her great grandfather, the Apache elder and witch doctor? Now, that was something. Patricia herself hadn't seen the man since she was two years old. She didn't recall the encounter; Dad had mentioned it once or twice.

She slapped Chelsea on a shoulder blade. "Then, that's where we're going. Come on. Get up and pack."

"Not likely. You know how to drive and you know where to find him."

Patricia frowned at Chelsea's back. "It isn't about driving. I need you with me. You need to come for your own sake."

Chelsea's back gave no response.

"Please?" Patricia despised the desperate tone of her voice.

Still, Chelsea gave no response. Who was the kid here, anyway?

"Okay, suit yourself." She worked her way up from the bed. "You just mope – I mean, pine – around the house and feel sorry for yourself and look like a stupid little girl. You just waste yourself away over a lousy guy. It's your life. But, I'm going to get my Dad. I'm gonna make sure he's all right, and then make him answer for his bone-headed behavior. And you'd better think about somewhere else to crap around, because I'm bringing him home, where he belongs."

She left the room. She would have preferred to stalk from it, but all she could manage was a jerking shamble. "This is bullshit," she muttered. "Why should I babysit a bunch of dysfunctional so-called grownups? How come I don't get to bum around and kick back at the TV, like other normal, self-respecting eighteen-year-olds?" But, she knew why. She was no longer normal.

She pushed open the door to what had always been her father's room. Her suitcase still stood in the middle of the floor. She struggled to it and wrestled it onto the bed. Throwing open the bag, she snatched random clothes from the bureau, heaving them into the case. "Uh-uh! No cruising the mall for me. No hanging out downtown for me. No, I spend my time getting shot at, smashed up in airplane crashes, carved up by doctors. And these fucking braces! I hate these fucking braces!" She pounded the carbon fiber struts lacing her legs, pounded them with both her fists, great, arcing blows meant to destroy, to deny, to rid her body of demons. One particularly concentrated double-fisted impact buckled her left knee and sent her sprawling. She crashed onto her side by the bed, her arm and hip ringing from the impact.

Patricia lay there a moment, breathing hard. She did not cry. She had no crying left in her.

She lay there on the carpet, staring up at the blank white ceiling. She regretted her foolish display, feeling like a petulant child. She was a grownup now, she knew. God had made her a grownup when he put her fragile bones through the meat grinder. Complaining made no sense. Regret didn't solve her problems. Her head swam as her eyesight blurred, then doubled, like a bad connection on a palm phone. She reached for the bed, grasped its box springs, and began the long process of pulling herself erect. She crawled onto the bed and lay there stiffly, her eyes closed, trying to regain her equilibrium and rebuild the severity that had become so much a part of her over the last few months. It was not a comforting state of mind, or pleasant, but it insulated her from the hell that passed for her life, and kept her with only one foot in depression. She hated her mother for her hatred of Dad and never wanted to see the woman again. And now the two people she loved most in the world behaved just as stupidly as Mom. Where was the dynamism that had so thrilled Patricia about her father's life, and Chelsea's, too? They no longer seemed as elegantly heroic as they always had. They just looked beaten. She wanted to feel nothing so she wouldn't look like them.

"Alfred."

"Hello, Patricia. Would you like to continue your data search?"

"No. Call Uncle Kenny."

"Dialing. Pythagoras has answered for Mr. Beacham. Mr. Beacham is not at home. Would you like to trace him?"

"No, thanks. I don't want to disturb him."

"Would you like to leave a message?"

"Yes. Tell him to call. I'm here, not at Mom's."

"I am delivering the message now. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

Great. Nobody cared but the Goddamned computer.

Patricia released a ragged sigh. It wasn't any good. There was no one to help. She thought she should cry, but it just wasn't in her. She felt as dead as her tank-grown skin that never itched, or felt warm, or sweated. She reviled herself.

"Patty."

Still on her back, Patricia looked toward the door. Chelsea stood there in her pajamas, her black, unkempt lion's mane framing wet eyes. She hugged herself tightly as she leaned against the doorjamb.

"I'm not very lucky with men," Chelsea said. "I'm awfully bossy. High expectations. I'm not what you'd call demure. Some men say that's what they like, but they don't, not really. A few weeks, a few months, whatever. Then they're gone. Steve and I, we've stayed together so long, I think, because our relationship has always been ... platonic." She made a resigned, defeatist sound. "So, you see, this is a lose-lose situation for me. Steve and I wouldn't last as a couple. And Steve and I separate is just ... not bearable."

The room fell silent. Patricia strove up from the bed, bent like an old woman.

"I want you to know something," Chelsea said after a moment. "No matter what happens between your Dad and me, I love you, Patty. I, for one, would be proud to be your mother." She stood away from the doorjamb and stepped into the room, her arms reaching.

Patricia pushed into her embrace; Chelsea met her more than half way. The collision was at once jarring and comforting.

After a minute, the telephone rang.

"Alfred. You get it," Patricia said into Chelsea's chest.

"Hello?" Kenny's voice said. "Anybody there?"

"Kenny." Chelsea cleared her voice. "We're going on a road trip. Pack your gear. You're going with us."

Patricia hugged her that much closer. The Chelsea she loved was back.

#

"What is it?" Granddaddy asked. "What do you see?"

"It's just a tree," Steve answered, but he stood there in the twilight, staring at the mesquite with a strange mixture of curiosity and fear. "It's the sound it makes. Don't you hear it?"

Granddaddy raised his head to the falling night. His white hair fluttered. "I only hear the wind," he said. "Maybe this thing is meant for you alone. It's him, calling you forward."

Steve felt small against the tree's electric presence. He looked out into the world, catching the low-key wind in his face. He heard its insistent rustle through the sparse grass, across the dry soil, and through the branches of the tree. More rain tonight, he thought. A new storm walked the horizon, lightning flashing to earth like skinny, strolling legs. "What do I do?"

"Nothing special. Go to the tree. Do what he says."

Steve turned back to the tree. Did he believe this mess, or not? Did he want any part of it? But, he felt a plague of persistent questions, and the only answers lay through Granddaddy's spiritualist eyes. Finally, he gripped his walking stick more tightly and launched his body toward the only source of answers he knew.

After a few steps, he stopped. Granddaddy did not follow.

"Coming?"

"No." The old man shook his head. "This is your power, your quest. I'd only be in the way. I brought you here, now I'll go back home, and we'll both wait to see what happens." He turned his back on Steve, then walked slowly back toward the road, where Tom waited in the truck. He looked so old, Steve thought, so frail. The light and the fiber of his power were nowhere evident.

"Granddaddy."

"Never mind that," the old man said without pausing. "Mind your own destiny. Keep your mind on where you are, on what you're about. Most important," and he stopped for effect, "be polite."

Steve considered following him, saying to hell with the whole silly affair. In the end, however, he did not retreat with Granddaddy.

He continued toward the tree. He walked around it when he reached the crest of the knoll on which it grew. He looked away toward all cardinal directions, expecting something, he couldn't say what.

But nothing happened. Nothing came. The lightning flashed from miles away and the wind snapped the dry grass and whipped up sand and dust. But no great monster of a bear sauntered out of the desert for a friendly – or otherwise – powwow. Steve almost felt like a fool.

Almost. The strange sound continued, more felt than heard, like a whisper in his mind. The tree stood like no other tree in Steve's experience, with a presence more than human. Steve knew he stood on hallowed ground, in some place other than the world he thought he knew.

In time, he grew tired. He sat down in the dirt, crossing his legs, his stick laid across his knees. Darkness hung like a shroud about him. Clouds had swarmed out of the north to surround his little knoll for miles around, blotting out all remaining traces of the desert sunset. Steve no longer felt fear or curiosity, but relentlessly advancing boredom. Where was Granddaddy? Did the truck still wait on the road? How long would it take to walk to the house?

After a while, he slept.

#

The body lay in the condo entryway, sprawled on its back and missing most of its head. A CSI bent over the corpse, paper shoe covers squelching in blood, hands in blue latex going through pockets. There wasn't much room to work in the entryway, especially with detectives stepping gingerly but frequently past the scene in both directions.

"Fucking mess, eh, Larry?" Sergeant Smitty said from the front door.

The CSI looked up, peering at Smitty over thin rectangular glasses frames. "Hey, Jack, yeah." He turned his eyes and attention back to the corpse. "I wish these bastards would be more considerate. There's a wide-open room just ten feet on, y'know?"

"Nobody ever considers the lowly cop. Denison around?"

"He's in yon aforementioned wide-open room."

"Mind if I..."

"Sure thing. At least you asked."

Smitty edged past the death scene, careful not to touch walls or step into anything that might be evidence. Most of the lab work was probably done if they were down to ransacking the victim's pockets, but he didn't want a lecture if that assumption turned out to be wrong. He found Denison in the combination kitchen/living room beyond, surrounded by patrolmen and dark-suited detectives. They all hunched around the DCPD tablet in Denison's beefy hands. When the detective-in-charge caught sight of Smitty, he waved him over and signaled the others away.

"Took you long enough," Denison said, then blew a bubble of pink gum.

"Rushed over as soon as I heard."

"Well, lookie." Denison waved the tablet to take in the room. "What we got here is Leon Decker's squatter's cave, complete with cable TV, microwave, and dead bodies as welcome mats."

"Leon Decker. That bastard we got the bulletin on? Big time."

"Yep. We got his verified image on cameras here at the apartment building, on the corner outside, and from the gas station cameras half a block north. Not very smart, this Decker dude. Anyhow, he'd already bugged out, but he left us that present up by the door."

"I heard he was one of ours." Considering the number of cops in the condo, plenty of others had heard, as well.

Denison raised an eyebrow. He stepped away enough to glance up the entry hall, then turned back to Smitty. "Cop, yeah. A detective lieutenant out of LA. Not one of ours, as far as I'm concerned."

"What do you mean? He's one of ours, man. This Decker piece of shit killed himself a cop. Doesn't matter what city the man was from."

"Circumstances. I called LA. This cop, name of Frost, wasn't on their list for a medal from the mayor. Rotten bastard. Internal Affairs was putting together a file. And he wasn't here on official business."

"What? Drugs, racketeering, mob shit? What?" Smitty ended the questions with a sneer.

"All of the above, as far as I know. This isn't a case of Frost being the hero and finding a bad guy on the FBI's Most Wanted list. This isn't a case of Frost biting off more than he could chew in the interest of public safety. The man was on call back in LA. No request for time off, no notification of leaving the city. Yet he shows up here, thousands of miles out of his way, in the apartment of a known felon. We don't even have evidence that he traveled any airline."

"You think he was here for a hit?"

"I do. I've got men on his bank account now. I bet he has more than a modest Christmas fund."

"So, who wants to kill a virulent white supremist? Besides everybody, I mean."

"Huh. Anyway, Decker bugged out in a hurry. This place is loaded with evidence, and the murder makes tapping the phone logs easier, no legalistic nightmare involving the phone company. We already have the phone's audio buffer. Here, take a look." Denison handed Smitty the tablet.

Smitty stared at the readout of recent incoming calls. "Mercy? You're shittin' me."

"Nope." Denison cracked gum like a pistol going off. "That guy Mercy called Decker. He told Decker to hang loose here, that an emissary was on the way."

Smitty's jaw tightened. "Mercy's a freakin' billionaire. He's all over the news. He's involved with these scumbags? I don't believe it.

"Buddy, it's right there. Never learned to read?"

"What are we gonna do?"

"We go get him," Denison said without hesitation.

"Don't we need to get the FBI on board?"

"Yeah, I suppose." Denison took back his tablet. "But we got ourselves a mass murderer walking the streets of DC. I'm not about to wait for some fed faggot to comb his hair and brush his teeth."

"What do you need from me?"

"Same as from everyone else," Denison said. "We'll powwow back at the station, but it comes down to this. We retrace this bastard Frost to see what crumbs he left us. We find this Decker and either lay him out or lock him up. We check out this millionaire Mercy character and find out what secrets he keeps beneath his bed."

"This pans out, we'll be hawking our books on the Oprah channel."

"Speak for yourself. I'm holding out for a movie."

#

Steve started awake. He felt dirt on his face from the hard earth beneath his body, and momentary confusion. Then he remembered. He pushed himself to a seated position, yawned, and scanned the knoll and the far reaches of the surrounding terrain. Must have dozed off, he thought.

Then he noticed the sun setting, the rim of its orange disk just visible at the horizon. But, last he recalled, the sun had already fallen. Twilight had almost surrendered to night, and visibility had dropped to just about nothing under a shroud of storm-heavy clouds. Now, the sky was clear. A few stars stared down on him. As he contemplated this puzzle, a shadow crossed his upturned line of sight. He followed it with his eyes, watching with morbid fascination as the bird descended in a wide spiral. It lit on a branch high atop the arthritic fist of the strange mesquite tree.

A great horned owl.

"It's your second night," a familiar yet startling voice said. Ben Tallman walked around to Steve's front, then sat down on the red earth facing his nephew. He was dressed in a characteristic western-cut suit, boots, and a tall, brushed leather cowboy hat. He wore an amused smile, seeming to enjoy Steve's obvious discomfiture at his appearance. He raised his right hand, palm out. "How."

"Ben."

"And how."

Steve found it hard to make a response. A dead man sat before him, cracking jokes.

"You fell asleep last night," Ben explained, "slept through the day, and you're just entering your second night out. Feel your hands. Look at them, if you can in this light."

Steve did as directed. His hands felt scaly, as if the skin peeled, and even in the weak light he could see a hint of red on his limbs. Had he slept through the desert day, in boiling temperatures, without shade, water, or food? He should be dead.

"No." Ben laughed. "That's my department."

"Who are you?" Steve asked. "Are you Bear, or Owl?"

"Now, who do I look like, boy?"

"Ben's dead."

"Yeah, but you don't have to rub it in."

Steve inspected the apparition before him. No reddish glow escaped the being's eyes.

"He sent me back to you," Ben said more soberly. "He figured we have unfinished business."

"I'm sorry, Ben." Steve thought it curious how naturally he addressed the apparent ghost of his uncle. How could he so readily accept this nonsense? He decided it must be a dream.

"It is," the old man nodded. "You aren't really awake, but then again, you are. You're awake within a dream. Your body still lies like carrion on the desert floor, protected from the coyote and other predators by the power that brought you here. But your mind and soul are as alert as they can get. That's the way it has to be, to get you onto his plain."

"I'm sorry," Steve repeated.

"Not as sorry as I am." Ben adjusted his position in the dirt. "So, what exactly are you sorry about?"

"About how things turned out. About how slow I was, and how stupid. I got you killed, and a lot of other people, and I failed."

"Now, hold up." The ghost raised his hands in a time out gesture. "If I recall, I pretty much got myself killed, by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You should've seen the look on that cop's face when he recognized me. I would love to have seen my face. He was the same fella that helped them get that decoy prism out of the mailbox."

"Mailbox?"

"Forget it. It isn't important. Now, about you being a failure. I didn't tell you this at the time, and I should have, but I was too pissed. You see, winning or losing isn't the point. You have to look at how you conducted yourself, what your motivations were. That's what's important. If you have the right motivations, if you stick to your personal honor, then you win, regardless of the outcome."

"Did I have it ... the right motivation?"

"Well ... no."

"Then, I did fail. I am responsible."

"Well, yeah, but that isn't the point, either. What's done is done. You see, you left your personal honor at home a long time ago, boy. You got spooked when it led you to atomize all those people in China. You did what you had to do for the greater good, what you thought was right, but it terrified you to do it. Since then, you've done what other people figure ought to be right, a way to control your impulses, regardless of their merit. That kind of muddy thinking gets you nowhere. Sure, a lot of people died, but so what? They would have died anyway. You aren't responsible for them; only for yourself, for being true to yourself. Six months ago you failed, and were slow, but your main problem was that you didn't draw your decisions from within. You did what you should have done, not what you knew was right."

"I did what I thought was right. I really did."

"Or that's what you told yourself. There's nothing more pathetic than a man who lies to himself."

"So, what would you rather I had done?"

"Only you can answer that question," she said, and her appearance, replacing Ben, flooded Steve's heart with regret. She gracefully altered Ben's cross-ankled pose, drawing her legs under her in a more demure position for her knee-length white dress. She seemed mildly fascinated by the inability of dirt to stick to her.

"I've missed you, Emma."

"And I've missed you, Mr. Tallman. I've worried about you."

"I'm okay, Emma. I came through it okay."

"Did you really? Why are you here, then, in this desert, at this time?"

"I could ask you the same. You aren't even Indian."

"It isn't about Indians, Mr. Tallman. It's about the dead. You must let us go, and all the others. You must live your life for the living, for that wonderful daughter of yours, for Miss Van Arsdale, and for all those millions to whom you've dedicated your service. They need the complete Stephen Tallman, not the ghost of a shadow that you've become."

"I don't know how to do that, Emma. All I get is riddles, not answers."

"The riddles are the answers."

"Thanks. I'll file that away with the other unhelpful tidbits."

Emma watched him with that all-too-familiar blank expression of hers. More than anything else, even the appearance of his dead uncle, her expression wrung agony from his heart. "My people live a traditionally ordered life," she said. "We are taught early to respect authority, to give way to those of higher station. To live in this way gives one the largest possible face, regardless of social standing. It's the correct way to live. But my people are also tortured, abused by their leaders, treated as less than cattle. I was born into the reality of a violent dictatorship. Even dismissing such oppression, I was lucky to be born at all. Girl children are not highly prized in my country; they are more often aborted. I'm struck by how much better life would be if my people lived by what is right, rather than what is proper."

"For one," Steve said, "many more of them would be dead, crushed by the anger of those with power."

"Death isn't so bad," Emma said in soft, musical tones. "I know from experience."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"

"I know you didn't. But you must understand that often death is preferable to slavery, especially if dignity is earned with death."

"I wonder if they felt dignity," Steve mused, "those people in the streets in China, just trying to get to safety, seeing the nuclear firestorm rushing their way. And those people in Chinatown, shopping, then gunned down for no appreciable reason except that they were in the way, and those people at See It Now, and Debbi's eco-terrorist informant. I wonder which they felt, faith or fear. Faith in the immutability of their own dignity, or fear of what ran toward them from the unknown dark. Which did you feel, Emma?"

"An interesting question to which you will not get an answer," Wo Chu said with his amused, almost leering smile. "But I think I can answer for her, if you would permit me." He braced his feet beneath him and stood, reflexively dusting from his expensive suit dirt that wasn't there.

"Why the quickie change routine, Mr. Wo Chu? I wasn't done talking to Emma, or to Ben, either."

"My apologies," Wo Chu said, bowing, "but our time is limited, and we do not control when we come or go. Should I attempt to answer your other question, Mr. Tallman?"

"Sure."

"I remember the moment of my death. In my mind, it was moments ago. Strange as it might seem to say so, that moment was the most fulfilling of my life."

"You're right, Mr. Wo Chu. That is a strange comment."

"Remember that I lost much face in Chinatown, when Mr. Hoy was killed on my watch. I did not wish to protect your daughter because of that terrible dishonor. But I took the job, as assigned by my dai low, and I did a fairly good job of it, too, though I always had a feeling of reasserting myself, of proving my worth again. That moment of proof came on the roof of your Thomson Building, when only Li Chen and I stood between your daughter and the Black Panther terrorists seeking to kill her." Wo Chu stood tall. He pulled in a deep breath of air, puffing his chest. "I am honored to say that your daughter escaped death that day, as did Miss Van Arsdale."

"So, you regained face even as you met death. That's very heroic."

"Not heroic, merely fortunate. I am grateful for this opportunity to thank you for my death."

"Excuse me?"

"I thank you for the manner of my death. I am reconciled; I have regained my dignity, as your friend would put it. She, on the other hand, never felt the emptiness of failure, of being unworthy of respect. She died with pride, having done her part to withstand the evil forces of your world. She will be rewarded in her next life. I hope I will be, too."

"Glad to be of assistance," Steve said dryly.

"That speaks to the heart of our message, Mr. Tallman. If I could be excused for boldness, you must understand that the manner of our deaths – and of our lives – does not concern you, even if you had an indirect hand in both. You are responsible only for your own life, for how you live it, and how you spend it. Live your life with great face, Mr. Tallman. Which is of greater value: to write a proper story, or to do something significant that changes lives forever?"

"A good story can change lives."

"Really. I submit that such occurrences are rare. Homer, Confucius, the Holy Bible, Einstein's theories. Most other stories, even if they foster controversy, are nonetheless forgotten in time, even by their writers." Wo Chu looked into the sky, now black and full of stars, as if consulting a voice heard only by him. "I must go now. I am asked to advise you that one more comes to you this night, and that you must take care in his presence." He began to fade, blending with the night air. "Stay where you are, Mr. Tallman, and you will be protected."

Steve sat alone in the dark. No one came. No supernatural pyrotechnics sought to impress him. A desert breeze rattled through the gnarled mesquite and kicked up dust in lackluster tufts along the ground. The owl remained at its perch, watching Steve without much interest. After a while, Steve dropped his gaze to his crossed ankles, reflecting with wry humor that he sat in what his grade school teachers used to call "Indian style". So strange that this heritage had grown so important in the life of one who considered himself only vaguely "multi-racial". What would his mother, who had no Indian in her, think of him now? He knew the answer. She would ask if he had been to Mass. He smiled. Good ol' Mom...

"Who the hell are you?"

Steve flinched at the voice. It shot icy shards of malice, a voice formed from years of frustration due to injustice, a voice of misdirected defiance. A dark figure stepped away from the covering form of the mesquite, a young man, just a boy, really. His clothing and features were almost equally black in the starlight. Only his white basketball shoes and the wet reflection of his eyes clearly betrayed him in the dark. Steve recognized him nonetheless. He recognized the tight, angry stance and the twisted, hateful tone of voice. This was the Panther from the Thomson Building, the one with the gun, the one who had landed Steve in the hospital those many months ago.

"Why, hello. At last we get acquainted."

"I asked who you are, God dammit, and I expect an answer."

Steve made a vague gesture with one hand. "I imagine you already know who I am. You attacked my offices, remember?"

The boy stood above Steve like stone, an almost animal attempt at domination. "I ain't here to play no shit with no white man. You tell me who you are and why I'm here, or I'll have to mess you up, man."

Steve's eyes opened wider. "You don't know why you're here? Nobody told you? Tell me, Washington, how do you think you got here?"

"Don't play with me, man!" Washington moved to kick at Steve. His foot came up, then he found himself airborne, and crashing against the trunk of the black mesquite tree.

"You're dead, Washington. The Indianapolis Police Department blew you away, right after you attacked my offices, killed some of my friends, and sent my daughter and the woman I love spiraling–" His words dissolved in his throat. The woman I love? Chelsea? Now, where the hell had that come from?

"I ain't interested in your lady problems," Washington said, still defiant, but somewhat less belligerently so. "I saw a flash when the blueshirts came up those steps, and here I am. You're full of bullshit. They never laid a hand on me."

"Suit yourself, buddy. Let's say I brought you here. It's hypnosis. The whole thing's been a dream, to help you lay it all out. So, why, Washington? Why did you attack me? I don't even know you."

"I don't have to answer none of your questions."

"Absolutely right. Forget the hypnosis thing. I'm your guilty conscience. You answer to me or you go straight to hell. Quite literally, man."

"Fuck off!"

The tree came alive. Its branches whipped like garden hoses, snaring Washington's arms and legs, and snatched him from the ground. Washington screamed at the sudden, unbelievable attack. He struggled, then screamed again as the branches tightened their hold, puncturing his skin with thorns. He hung three feet from the ground, as if crucified.

The owl watched him with blank eyes.

"You aren't down on the block anymore," Steve warned. "Answer the question."

"Who are you?" Washington demanded, his voice higher, less bullying, fearful. He began to sob.

"My name is Stephen Tallman. You attacked my offices, See It Now. Why?"

"Because they paid me to. They paid me a lot. And because that bastard Clemmons..."

"Who paid you?"

"I don't know. That blueshirt, Frost, from LA. He always brought the job."

"Why do you hate Sam Clemmons?"

"He's a fucking traitor! He works for bastards like you! I can't ice enough of you!" He wrenched against his bonds, but stiffened as thorns dug deeper into his arms and legs.

"Okay," Steve said, "just supposing it's true, that he's a traitor, as you say. What good is all the violence? All it breeds is more violence. Have you ever even heard of Martin Luther King?"

Washington breathed heavily from his trap. He watched Steve with contempt. "I know about Martin Luther King, white man. And I know about Gandhi, too. And I know how my brothers and sisters live in Watts, and Harlem, and the south side of Chicago. I know that Martin, no matter how well-meaning, was a failure. Huey P. Newton was right. Farrakhan was right. Black men fight a war against the likes of you. A war. And that war won't be over until every white son of a bitch and every sympathizer are dead!"

"You can spare that cadence with me. I've heard it before. Where did this war come from? Why do you believe that whites and blacks can't live in peace?"

Steve saw the squint of Washington's eyes, and the slight, unconscious turn of his head. In that moment, he recognized himself in the bound and suspended killer.

"You don't have a clue," Steve said, amazed. "This is just what you've been taught, what others have loaded on to you. And you bought it all in one bright package."

"You're full of shit! I know the truth when I see it!"

"I'm sure you do, but whose truth? That's what they've been telling me, but I thought they were talking semantics, throwing their one-sided spin on things. You don't even like the things you've done, do you, Washington?"

"Fuck you, motherfucker!"

Steve stood. "Why did you attack Governor Dearing?"

Washington hung mute, tears rolling down his cheeks, his eyes intense with hatred.

"You didn't want to attack her, did you? You did it for the money, and because your own black macho code demanded it. You had to have the money to gain respect back on the block, and you had to show how God damned tough you were. But, even so, you never intended to hurt her. You had the opportunity; no one could stop you. But you left her alone. You probably got a rush out of killing the cops, and all those nameless bystanders just got in the way of you earning your money. But, no matter how exciting it might have been, you didn't enjoy that, either. You didn't want to do it, but your code dictated their deaths. They were acceptable losses in your adapted war. Am I right, Washington?"

He answered with heavy, pained breathing.

"Dammit, man, now I need the answers!"

The branches spasmodically tightened their grip. Washington screamed, wrenching his body in a frantic attempt at escape. Then he arrested himself, terrified to move at all. Steve waited, wordlessly watching as the boy's body slowly slumped into resignation.

"I didn't want any of it," Washington croaked, openly flooding tears. "I wanted to be a teacher, a history teacher. That's all I ever wanted." His chest heaved as he searched for breath. "They all laughed. They said teaching, that was a white thing, that doin' good in school was doin' white. Where I come from, you got to fight. More important than school. I liked school. I dug it. I didn't want Bloods. I didn't want Panthers. I didn't want to do those things at all. But I couldn't be what I wanted..."

Steve stepped away from his spot on the knoll, walking slowly toward the tree and to Washington. He felt the wind gust as he did so, felt an insistent push backward, but he leaned into it, determined to approach the boy. At last he stood within inches of the shadowed figure, looking up at the tormented face two feet above him. He felt anxiety electrify the air. He ignored it.

"You've done some terrible things," he said to Washington, and felt tears spatter against his face. "You've murdered, terrorized, deceived and stolen. You've made human life cheap in your presence. But, worst of all, you've allowed fear and doubt to control you. You could have risen above your circumstances, but you instead let them feed upon you. If anyone deserves hell, then you're it. But, I think you realize your crimes, and I think you truly regret them. I don't know what awaits you when you leave this place, but I offer two things before you go.

"First, I offer my thanks. You came here for a reason: to act as my mirror. Through you, I see the extremes of my own shortcomings. I realize you don't know what I'm talking about, but the others tried to turn me with reason. Your example is more convincing than their words. Like you, I've lived without faith, too afraid to go it on my own. It's easy to give in to fear, to let the status quo rule, to not follow the wisdom of your heart. Not any more. I don't want to end up like you, Washington. Thanks for warning me off that path."

He paused, sure that Washington intended to speak. All that escaped the tortured and bound Panther was yet another binge of uninhibited bawling.

"The second thing I offer you is probably more important. It's probably something you hardly experienced in your life, but something you need more than I need to give it. So, despite the people you destroyed, some of them close to me, despite the horror you brought to my daughter, and despite the many shattered lives I can hardly even guess at, I offer you something those others would hopefully grant you in my place. I offer forgiveness."

Steve felt a change in atmosphere, anxiety turned to something more poignant, a hesitation, or perhaps confusion.

"And that proves one thing," he said to the unseen presence overarching the knoll, "you sure as hell aren't God."

He reached to touch Washington's sagging chest, and was not at all startled by the energy that pulsed from his hand. The tree convulsed, then released its prisoner. Steve caught the boy as he fell, collapsing beneath him. He worked his way to a sitting position, Washington's slashed and punctured body cradled in his arms.

"Am I dying?" the boy asked in a barely audible whisper.

"No, you aren't."

The owl burst into a flurry of wings, and disappeared into the dark.

Chapter Twenty-nine:

Bear

 (Back to Contents)

Steve awoke just after sundown. He lay on his side, stiff from the hard earth, and watched the last glow of light fade in the west. He felt a needling sting on his face and hands, and heard thrashing sounds from the tree. Elemental snorts and growls mixed with the sounds of struggle, but he didn't care. He was tired of visits from the spirit world; he wanted rest. Any phantasm bent on educating him would just have to wait.

He drew his attention inward, conducting inventory of his suspiciously maligned body. Besides the burning manifested wherever clothing or ground touched his skin, and besides the almost arthritic stiffness of each and every one of his joints, he endured a myriad of other discomforts that his tired brain could not explain. His lips felt like roughly torn scraps of corrugated cardboard. His throat burned even drier; it felt cracked and inflamed. He couldn't speak. Even the most basic of sounds sent blasts of pain along his esophagus. His eyes itched, like ants crawling behind them, and blinked repeatedly against sand and dust that scraped like glass. He was starving, and horribly thirsty.

Get up, a voice said within his head. It was deep, impossibly vibrant, more like the bass effect of a stereo speaker than any human sound. Get up. Your gift is waiting.

Steve sat up. A knife protruded from the dark earth before him, looking like a white thorn in the dwindling light. Its blade was mostly sheathed in the dirt, and blended into a rough handle of something like driftwood.

Steve closed his hand around the grip. He felt a silent urging to do so, as if something guided his actions. But he froze in shock at the sight of his hand, at the grisly, unexpected extent of its disfigurement. It was cooked and burst from extended exposure to the desert sun, like a broiled hot dog. He watched, amazed, as clear liquid oozed from cracked blisters. What was this? he thought. He could feel the sting of sunburn, but not the tremendous torment his horror-stricken eyes expected. Why was he spared the agony so obviously due his condition? In fact, why was he still alive?

He pulled at the knife, easily freeing it from the ground. Turning it over, he admired its claw-like crescent blade in the rising starlight. The haft resonated against his palm. Gripping it hard, he felt energy coursing into his arm from the excited molecules of the supercharged air. It was a perfect knife, its blade a translucent, reflective white, honed to such sharpness that it vanished when turned edge-on.

It is yours, to take what is yours.

Steve turned to the tree. It shook as if it might be uprooted. A hulking shadow filled the expanse of its limbs, clutched there as if manacled.

Cracking joints and splinters of pain jolting him with each movement, Steve forced himself to his feet. He staggered to the tree, to the spot where Washington had vanished from his arms the night before.

Unsurprisingly, a bear struggled in the bone-hard branches and sharp thorns. It watched Steve's approach with mixed panic and defiance. It tried to escape only to shudder as thorns more securely grabbed its flesh. Steve stood well within reach of the animal. He almost spoke to it, but its eyes shone feral and desperate. Ropes of slobber slung from its bared teeth. This wasn't the god-monster that had haunted his visions. It was just a bear.

Steve reached out his free hand and touched the beast's matted, bloodied coat. The bear froze momentarily at the advance, staring at its enemy with intent, bulging eyes. Then Steve raised the knife. He brought it between them, blade up. The bear focused on the translucent sliver, then roared bellicose warning. It knew what the knife meant. Unaccountably, so did Steve.

This bag isn't ready yet, Granddaddy had said. You must make the final addition that will activate its power. That final addition roared and thrashed before him, a gift from its greater spirit. The same silent urging that had brought Steve to the knife now pushed him to use it, to take this terrified, trapped animal as his own, to extract from the carcass some spiritual dynamo, a claw, or a sliver of bone. Again, the whispered suggestion seemed perfectly natural, no matter how bloody-minded.

Steve turned the knife to a better striking angle. He grabbed a handful of matted fur at the bear's exposed neck. The beast arched away, but scintillating fields of power held Steve's emaciated body firmly to the ground. The bear could not escape. Steve raised the knife high, tugged at the animal's fur, then slashed the blade downward in a violent blur.

The knife cut as if through water. Then Steve stood before the animal, a tuft of fur in his hand. He twisted the wad into as compact a package as possible, opened the pouch that hung from his neck, and stuffed it in. He felt the same change in atmosphere as when he had offered Washington forgiveness, the same sense of encompassing confusion.

"There's been enough killing," he forced up his pained throat and between his cracked lips.

He looked closely at the mesquite branches snarling the panicked bear. Then he raised the knife once more, and slapped its blade against one big, strategic bough. The knife danced through its target amid a blossom of white sparks. The tree gave up its limb. The bear dragged it out and away, and was free.

Steve listened for several minutes to the animal's frightened, belligerent roars as it lumbered from the knoll into the night. The medicine pouch containing its fur radiated heat and light.

#

"How much longer?"

"About five minutes."

Patricia and Chelsea sat sideways in their respective seats in the little Sol coupe. They leaned forward out of the car, elbows on knees, feet on the pavement, their backs to each other. They both wanted the air. Even the stale asphalt smell of the juice station was preferable to another several hours of human sweat and canned, rubbery air conditioning. On top of that, their bags and assorted trash filled the car's cramped space, a space too small for two and their luggage, and theirs was a party of three. Now the women luxuriated in the hot, humid Texas night, welcoming the mousy, skittering breeze for the change it represented.

Kenny appeared outside the snack shack and beelined for the car. He was a sight in baggy khaki cargo shorts, sandals, and an oversized black t-shirt displaying a green and blue video of a swimming right whale. He carried three colorful fibercell bags, and sucked a large drink through a straw.

"Dinner," he said. He handed one bag to Patricia and walked around to Chelsea's side. "Your choices were burgers, hot dogs, and more burgers. I got burgers."

Patricia unwrapped her sandwich. "We should get going as soon as the car is charged. If we hurry, we could be in Phoenix by morning."

Kenny leaned against the back of the car and attacked his own meal. "It's already going on ten o'clock. We should stop at the first motel that presents itself, then move on after a rest."

"We didn't come out here to sleep in motels, Uncle Kenny."

"So I'm gathering. But I didn't come out here to ride for hours in that fictionalized back seat of yours, either."

"We could have brought your car. It's bigger."

"Excellent idea. First you drag me away from the family, then you take my car. The missus would have loved that."

Patricia turned toward Kenny's voice, but he was on her bad side, and therefore invisible. Then she glanced over her shoulder at Chelsea's back. She should say something, Patricia thought. Kenny's coming was her idea. "Did we get you in trouble, Uncle Kenny?"

"Not at all, darlin'. I just told the wife I was leaving with no notice to tool across the country in a tiny roadster with two beautiful women. She thought it was great. She even helped me pack."

"I'm sorry."

"Are you going to complain all the way to Arizona?" Chelsea had spoken so rarely on the road that it took a moment for her words to register.

"Well," Kenny considered, "that was my plan."

"We need his friends if we plan to bring him back," Chelsea said flatly.

"Really? Well, you picked the wrong friend. I don't recall him listening all that much to me. If anybody can talk him into anything, it's you."

Wrong thing to say, Patricia thought. Chelsea wouldn't talk to Dad, not without a kick in the ass.

Chelsea ate her burger. Patricia imagined the stony, automaton character of her face as she munched down ground beef with all the awareness of a car sucking oil. That same character had shown itself in Naptown, and grew steadily more dominant as Dad drew closer. Fear hid in that character, and resignation, both ensconced behind a carefully constructed shield of hard lines and icy gray eyes. Kenny didn't understand, though his increasingly sharp verbal barbs showed he clearly felt the sourness of his female company. He would just have to suffer, Patricia decided, for the whole emotional mess was too personal to share, especially with a man.

"How much longer?" Chelsea asked.

Patricia twisted to see the charge gauge. "Any minute."

"I'm driving this time," Kenny announced.

"You can't drive, Uncle Kenny. You're too tall. Neither one of us can fit in the back when you adjust the driver's seat."

"I've come how many thousands of miles across this country in that back seat? Hate to be a complainer, contrary to prevailing opinion, but that sucks."

"I'm sorry, Uncle Kenny, but you're just too big."

"Fuck it," Chelsea said. "I'll sit in back." She balled the remains of her hamburger into its paper wrapper and stuffed it into the bag. Then she boosted herself from the seat and, without another word, walked purposefully toward the snack shack. Patricia and Kenny watched her departing back.

"Was it something I said?"

"She's going through a thing, Uncle Kenny."

"That much I figured."

"Sorry. I can't say what it is."

The car chimed. Patricia finished the last bite of her burger, stowed her sack of food on the dash, and checked the charge gauge, which now read the nominal ninety-seven per cent. She maneuvered her legs into the driver's seat and watched while Kenny stepped around to the front air dam and disconnected the cable from the charging station. He retrieved her credit card from the pay slot and collected her receipt. By the time Patricia buckled her safety harness, Kenny had squeezed once more into the cramped rear of the car.

"I thought you wanted to ride up front," Patricia said.

"I guess I'll play the gentleman."

"I'm sorry, Uncle Kenny. It wasn't my idea that you come."

"Oh? I'm disappointed. Seriously, don't fret it. Your dad and I go far enough back, we're like brothers. If he's acting like an idiot, then it's my pleasure to go kick his ass."

Chelsea returned across the asphalt lot. Patricia tapped her ignition switch. The car sighed a soft whine as its engine came up to speed.

Chelsea didn't climb in immediately. She leaned into the rear passenger area to reach the bags crowding Kenny's space.

"Can I help?" he asked.

"I got it." She wrenched an overnight bag from beneath two suitcases, unzipped it, and extracted a fist-sized plastic object. She dropped the bag onto the floor and swung herself into the front passenger seat. She tossed Steve's cell phone onto the dash.

"I'm expecting a phone call," she said, and banged her door shut.

#

They drove into the night, away from the blue glow of Amarillo, across the flat aridness of the lower Great Plains toward Phoenix. After a while, Kenny ceased his acerbic commentary on the cramped space of the Sol's back seat and drifted into fitful sleep. Chelsea ignored her companions. Her eyes flitted alternately from Steve's silent cellular to the black emptiness beyond her passenger's side window. Well, at least she's here, Patricia thought as she tapped buttons on the radio in an effort to fill the silence. She's here, and that's something.

Patricia retreated from the channel selector as a contemporary percussion strain caught her ears. Its vaguely African tempo bounced precociously about the Sol's interior. She recalled how much Dad hated the drums and bass keyboards of her generation. He often wondered derisively where the rest of the music was. But his was the perspective of a man with tastes nearly a hundred years dead. Rhythm and Blues, he called it. Pioneer music, she often corrected him.

"Your dad made a pass at me once," Chelsea said to the windshield.

An oncoming truck couldn't have hit Patricia harder. "He did what? But, you said he didn't know you existed."

"That was before. He did it that night in New Hampshire, after we went to DC."

Patricia did some quick figuring. "He made a pass at you on Valentine's Day?"

"I suppose."

"Primo! I always thought you two were hot."

"There's nothing there. I was just available."

"Tell me how it happened." Patricia tried to stifle her excitement, but this was big news. "Wasn't that the night he went to make up with Anna? How did he make a pass at you?"

Chelsea stared out her window, silent.

Patricia rolled her eye in frustration. She had always preferred Chelsea as a stepmother, if she had to have one. But Dad had never so much as hinted at the possibility. Now that she knew voltage ran between them, she couldn't get Chelsea to part with the details. Old people were so unreasonable at times.

News droned from the radio. The Democrats headed into their convention, and speculation flew as to whom Anna Marie Dearing would choose as her vice-presidential candidate. She undoubtedly huddled in some hotel room there in Miami with her party cronies, brainstorming how best to strain every bit of publicity from the gossip. Why wasn't she with Dad, if they were so big in love? Why wasn't she with him, instead of chumming to a bunch of wrinkled old politicos? Patricia didn't care for Anna, probably because she knew with certainty that more important things than Dad crowded that woman's life.

"It isn't about you; it's about them," Chelsea said softly, as if reading Patricia's mind. "Your father is in that place where he doesn't trust himself. He's been there for fifteen years." She made a vague, unsettled gesture with one hand, like grasping at mist. "Since the war, your father doesn't want to be responsible. For anything. That's why he's such an absentee dad, why Mercy kicked his ass last winter, why he has such a bizarrely detached relationship with the woman he supposedly loves."

Her voice trailed off there. Patricia tried to wait, tried to clamp her mouth shut, but those few empty seconds were too much for her. "Hmmm?" she said to coax Chelsea onward.

"He needs someone, but he needs someone who doesn't need him. That's Anna. She doesn't need him. She just kind of keeps him around, like a trophy or an anchor, take your pick."

Patricia looked from the road to Chelsea to the road again. What was she saying? "I don't understand."

"He's... the other end of it all for her. She's a government public figure, made up just so, the staus quo. Her whole life is choreographed, scripted, spin-doctored like crazy. She doesn't want to admit it, but she's as packaged as cereal. As the press, your dad is the opposite. He's dangerous. He's controversial. He isn't part of the approved story. That makes him a kind of safety line that keeps Anna from the precipice, keeps her in contact with the normal world. It also makes him easy to drop if the two of them get too close."

"Not a strong bond," Patricia mused.

"Strong enough. Fear and panic are usually strong enough."

Patricia glanced at her friend, who leaned her forehead against the black window. "What was it Daddy told you, that everything's changed? What did he mean, Aunt Chelsea?"

"Nothing good. His life is failed. He's alone. His whole world view has changed, just like after the war. Standard mid-life crisis crap."

"But, he isn't alone. He has us."

The cell phone beeped, causing Kenny to flinch. Chelsea snatched up the device and clicked it on. "Sam? It's Chelsea. We need your help."

#

"Any time at all," Sam Clemmons said. He slouched in his favorite chair in his apartment in Chicago, the lights turned low because he hadn't yet adjusted them after coming through the door. "Hey, aren't you on Steve's phone?"

"Yes. We're on the road. Patty, Kenny, and I. It's a long story."

"Tell it to me," Sam suggested.

She did. She told him about Steve's slow recovery from the terrorist attack in February, and about the even slower healing of his psyche. She told him about Steve's deepening withdrawal, and about his sudden disappearance while not fully convalesced. She mentioned Patricia's return, the subsequent discovery of Steve's rental car, and their suspicions about his whereabouts. Sam felt sure she left something out. He could hear an uncharacteristic tightness in her voice. He decided not to press. She'd tell him the rest when she was ready.

"Arizona, eh? Hell, I was just out that way a few days ago," Sam said. "So, you think we need to hunt him down?"

"He isn't well. He needs to go home."

"Sounds to me like that's what he did."

"That isn't what I mean, Sam. I'm worried about him. He's gearing up for another total life conversion, just like after the war. He needs to know that people are still with him, that he isn't alone."

"What do you want from me?"

"Meet us. How soon can you get to Phoenix?"

"By morning, but the Apache reservation is before Phoenix. You'd have to double back. I'll meet you in Globe. It's a little town just outside the reservation boundaries. There's a hardware store on the town square, kind of the local gossip post. I'll meet you there."

"Thanks, Sam. This means a lot."

"Yeah, okay. Anything else?" Her voice piqued his interest. Chelsea seemed distracted.

"No. I'll see you tomorrow."

They exchanged good-byes, and Sam hung up the phone.

"What do you mean, you're going to Phoenix?" Carlton Westerly whined from across the dark room. He paced meandering treks around Sam's furniture.

"Not Phoenix. The Apache reservation nearby."

"But what about me?" Desperation hung on Carlton's voice, and in the stiff, animated movements of his body. "They tried to kill me the other day. They tried to kill me! I got into this because you and your boss convinced me to, and now look at me. I haven't had a day's work in six months, and now people are trying to kill me."

Well, what did you expect? Sam wanted to say. You betrayed them, tried to bring them down, and now they want their weaknesses erased. Of course you're a target. If they would kill a lousy cowboy, a bunch of random shoppers in New York, and God only knew how many of their own people, then it was no big deal to murder their enemies. Sam wanted to say the words, but he opted instead for restraint. If Mercy's efficiency – or maybe his overkill – held true, Westerly was a walking corpse. Sam still felt a twinge of responsibility for Westerly, and wanted to make things right, if he could.

Funny that the same dire circumstance didn't seem to apply to Sam, but he was beaten, after all, and knew nothing of consequence that Mercy couldn't control. Of course, no one suspected the shrink-wrapped and baggied prism hidden inside a mayonnaise jar in the fridge, the prism Sam wanted to check right then to ensure its safety, as he did every night when he returned home.

"You can chill here until I return," he said. "Just stay indoors. There's plenty of food in the fridge. Don't eat the mayonnaise. When I get back, we'll consider what to do."

"And if they find me before you get back? You owe me protection, Mr. Clemmons. I risked everything for you people. You owe me."

Sam sat up stiffly in his chair. His nerves pricked at the predictable claim.

"Mr. Westerly, the organization that guaranteed your safety doesn't exist any longer. They destroyed it the night we got caught. I don't know if I can protect you. I couldn't even protect myself at this point."

"I know your team got its ass kicked. I watch the news. But that doesn't change anything. You owe me. What about CBS?"

"At this point, CBS would just as soon forget you existed."

Westerly stood mute. He stopped pacing. Even in the darkness, Sam felt the attention of his eyes.

"Look, if you don't want to stay here, then you can come with me to Arizona. Tallman's there. Maybe he has some ideas."

"Thank-you," Westerly breathed.

You're welcome, Sam thought with rancor. He didn't want to spend all his waking hours with Carlton Westerly, but he saw no way around it. The man had come for help. A deal was a deal. He boosted himself from the chair and crossed to the kitchen where his personal data device hung wired into the phone. It contained all the latest airline schedules and phone numbers.

The apartment lights remained dim.

#

The sun sailed brightly in the blue sky over Miami, but it could not touch Anna Marie Dearing as she hunched over a scanty breakfast of toast and juice in her hotel room, the blinds drawn and the door locked. She studied the text of her speech, the one she would deliver in just a few days as she accepted her party's nomination for president and revealed her until then secret running mate. She wrote the words herself, having dismissed suggestions for a speech writer. As always, she worked with a tattered pad of legal paper and a ballpoint pen. The low-tech utensils put her more in touch with the words she crafted, like a sculptor handling the medium of her art. Or so she always said. Ray knew that computers routinely vexed her.

Ray sat next to her, ostensibly lending assistance, but worrying more than anything else. Anna didn't sleep as she should. She grew cranky and distant, though she hid it well while in the public eye. She interacted little with even the closest members of her staff, speaking only when required for the sake of work. Something had changed her, and not for the better.

A knock at the door broke his train of thought, if not Anna's. She had studiously ignored the world for two complete days. The television, radio, and clocks had all been removed from the room, and the ProtecServe hire outside turned away unimportant visitors, which meant almost everyone.

Ray rose unnoticed from his candidate's side. He opened the door, and Kate Clancy streamed in, clutching her tablet to her chest like a schoolgirl with books.

"Have you seen it?" she asked, then lowered her voice at his signal. "Well? Have you seen the posts?"

He didn't know what she was babbling about, and it must have showed. She turned the tablet to face him. After a few practiced touches, the front page of the Miami Herald appeared on the screen. The headline was a black scream beneath the banner.

DEARING DITCHED BY HIGH PROFILE LOVER

"Jesus Christ!"

"Keep your voice down," Kate said. "You might disturb Her Majesty."

"When did this come out?"

"Just this morning. But I left my phone in my room, it's ringing so much. Would you like to see more of the same? From other sources?"

"What is it, people, and could you take it outside?" Anna's voice was strained, barely civil.

Ray took Kate's tablet and held its screen before his boss's face.

He saw her eyes track over the words, then confusion and humiliation bloom in her face. He watched her recent air of severe professionalism shatter like an eggshell. She turned away. "No one could have known that, no one outside our team."

"So, it's true?"

"Yes."

He wanted to curse, to throw the tablet in her face. "You know, Anna, one day you'll have to tell me when and how this happened."

"Maybe, but not now. How did the press know? No one could have."

"Tallman knew. Maybe he—"

"No."

"Okay, then we have a leak."

"I want the bastard found," she said. "I want this Republican son of a bitch expunged from this campaign."

Ray wanted to let her have it, to point out the destructive nature of her recent decisions. She was quite the prima donna since the campaign got moving. She had run her staff in circles circumventing their best efforts to keep her safe and help her win. She had nixed effective ad campaigns. Her choice for vice-president could only get them in trouble, and now this. Why hadn't she told them of her breakup with Tallman? Did she want them to look like idiots when the press came howling? Or did she foolishly think it was nobody's business but hers? He leaned toward reproach partly out of anger, but mostly because he cared, and he wanted the best for her. But, he couldn't harangue her just then. She looked almost as frail, lost, and alone as on that night after Parker's death. She looked violated. Did she really love that Tallman guy? No one on the team had taken the relationship seriously. How could they? She saw him only a few times a year.

"I want the bastard found," she repeated. She kept her face steadily away from Ray's.

Ray nodded. He handed the tablet back to Kate. He signaled her to leave, and close the door behind her. Then he sat down on the couch next to Anna.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I had no idea. We all thought he was just ... well ..."

"A passing interest? Is that what you thought, Ray? Sorry to correct you."

"But, Anna. If he means so much, then why did you cut it off?"

She laughed quietly. It was an arid sound, and followed by an expertly discarded sniffle. "I don't recall being given that option."

Ray's brow furrowed. So he dumped her? "Then he's an idiot," he unintentionally said aloud.

"Don't say that. After all, who's the bigger fool? I fell for him, you know."

"A fool is the bonehead who lets go of a woman like you."

She looked at him. Even through her watery eyes, he saw she was flattered. "You're such a dear friend, Ray. I love you for it." She leaned against his arm, and hugged it. "I wish I had ten of you."

"Is it really over?" he asked after a moment.

She sighed. "It seems so. I hope not. Need to spin it for the press?"

Need to know for myself, he thought.

"Just asking," he said.

#

The door to the conference room opened at eleven, gushing senators and representatives into the hallways of the Capitol Building like spill from a broken dam. Phil Mackie pushed himself to a bench across the hall and sat down gratefully. He had been sitting in conference with his House and Senate associates for over two weeks on EOG, three hours on that day alone. But now, for fifteen wonderful minutes he would rest from political warfare against the more numerous forces for EOG's passage, some from his own party. He did not have to invent conflict after conflict, some serious, some entirely absurd, in order to drag out negotiations for yet another day. His maneuverings angered some of his colleagues. They spoke aloud of punishing him, of removing him from the EOG conference committee, even having him censured for abuse of his senatorial rights and powers. But, they didn't speak just then, not during their break. Mackie thanked God for a few minutes to himself. Unfortunately, they were fewer than he had hoped.

"How forlorn you look," Mariam Jellison said as she placed herself carefully on the bench beside him. "One would think you've lost all your friends, or perhaps a political contest."

"You have good eyes, Mariam. Of course, you've had a front row seat the last several days. I'm sure you're bored with the inevitability of it all."

She smiled thinly. "Actually, it's great sport. Your political lunging and dodging is fascinating to watch now that I'm rooting for you rather than cursing your ancestors. You realize you're going to lose, don't you?"

Mackie nodded. "We can't keep it up for eight more weeks. We can only hope that Congress adjourns the first week of October. That would kill EOG until winter."

"They won't." She smoothed the skirt of her conservative gray suit. "You aren't supposed to know this, but my esteemed leadership has decided that the Highway Bill will get held up in committee until the last minute, forcing Congress to stay in session past election day, but only if EOG doesn't move. They plan to wear you out, Phil."

"Still trying to keep it in the background, using a popular piece of legislation as their explanation for working overtime, rather than admitting their stewardship of a more controversial agenda."

Jellison feigned confusion. "Oh? And I thought we just wanted to get the Highway Bill done right the first time around. What are you going to do?"

"I'm getting too old for this, Mariam." Mackie thought about his options, few that they were. His only remaining viable plan seemed to involve the Wo Chu documents in his safe, and the press. "I don't know," he said. "I don't suppose I can count on your help?"

"You just got some, senator. Don't expect anything more demonstrative than that."

"Then we're licked, Mariam. I need a monkey wrench to throw in the works, and you're passing me the flimsiest of nails."

She stood. "I do what I can, dear, but one must look to the future."

"You mean that future where your constituents find out you sold their democracy down the toilet just to please your party machine? That won't get you elected again."

"Don't be too sure, Phil. I haven't the faith you have in the voting public. I think the party will put the best spin on EOG, and the voters will eat it with white sauce and wine. The important thing is that I play the right game with the biggest players. That's the way to get elected."

Mackie tightened his lips at her comment. She was right, after all. More and more, the parties no longer reacted to the demands of a changing electorate, as the founding fathers intended. They orchestrated the media to set a political agenda and stacked the ballot to ensure victory for that agenda no matter the results. Like so many politicians of whatever stripe, Mariam Jellison had pragmatically forgotten the voting public in favor of the real arbiter of her political future: the National Committee chairman.

"Don't feel so bad," she said with a hint of sympathy. "You can't win every battle. Gear up for the next."

Mackie snorted at the absurdity of her advice. "Fantastic," he said. "I bet that's exactly what they told Lincoln the day the South seceded."

#

Granddaddy and Tom stepped onto the porch and squinted into the low-hanging sun. Two vehicles bounced along the wicked trail from the road, throwing up a ground fog of dust. A sporty, but road-caked coupe led the way, with a sport utility vehicle following on steadier feet.

"Better break out some more beer," Granddaddy said. "Looks like we got company."

"You think they'll stay long?" Tom asked. He worried about his grandfather. The man seemed oddly weak, as if he came down with something.

"Can't say. They ain't from around here. Those cars are too expensive. I wonder who they are..."

"You mean you don't know?" And that worried Tom even more.

#

The night descended like a great, black bird. Steve sat on the ground, his legs splayed, his clothes, skin, and blistering sores embedded with dust and sand. At some time during the day, he must have removed his shirt; the consequence of that unconscious act was an ugly, serious burn. But he ignored his reddened, desiccated body and instead stared into the rapidly departing sun, his heat-battered mind focused on the visitation he knew would come with twilight. This was his fourth night in the desert. All things came in fours, Granddaddy had said.

The horizon flared into an atmospheric blast of red and orange before darkening toward black. A bent silhouette suddenly stood before him. This one was human, thin and small, and grasping a walking stick that towered a foot above its head. The figure turned stiffly and hobbled to a spot beside Steve. It dropped by arthritic stages into a sitting position facing him, and laid the stick atop the knees of its crossed legs.

The figure tilted its head at him. "You look terrible," it said.

A chameleon, Steve thought. But Granddaddy was never so frail.

"No," the old one said, "but he is now. In four days he has come to feel the great weight of his years. You," and he poked a shaking finger at Steve's chest, "have taken his protection."

Steve did not attempt to speak. His throat was slashed paper. He would never again utter an intelligible sound. No big deal, since he expected to die in that desert, and soon.

"He did not tell you," the Bear continued. "When he added his fetish to your medicine bag, his power moved from him to you. The same is true of the others, but they are not yet aware of the change. Your granddaddy knows. I told him, years ago." He wet trembling lips. His eyes flashed red, not a reflection of the sunset. "You wield great powers, young man. The wisdom of Turtle, the majesty of Elk, the quick cunning of Gecko, and the industry of Wren. And I give you my own not inconsiderable strength. You ask me why? Because dark times come for your people. They need a champion to protect them."

Which people? Steve thought.

"All of them." The beast, the god, whatever he was let that pronouncement sink in, then once more poked Steve's broiled chest. "You are that champion. I have watched you many years. I have seen your mettle. You surprise me by your subtle use of power. You forgave that boy who was yours to condemn. You released my gift to you, taking only his coat. You do not fully believe, but you are still a good choice."

I believe, Steve's mind admitted.

"Good. Now your lessons begin. I will show you how to use your powers. I will show you how not to use them. Over the past three nights, I have torn apart your skepticism. Tonight, I rebuild you. You have left your world, young man, and entered that of your ancestors. Are you prepared for what you will find?"

"I'm not afraid," Steve said aloud, and the sound of his voice did not surprise him.

The old man nodded. "Good. The time for fear is past. This is the time for faith."

#

They happened upon the group by accident, children mostly, many no more than eight or nine years old. If not for their apparent leader, Vidovic might even have asked them to join his unit, depleted as it was by frequent attacks from gunships and bombers. But an essentially accidental meeting became a violent meeting engagement, and two children lay dead on a carpet of pine needles there in the gray Balkan hills. The rest could claim only slightly better luck. They huddled, frightened and disarmed, within a perimeter of hostile weapons, Vidovic planning to execute them just as soon as a suitably poetic backdrop presented itself. Their leader, the only adult of the bunch, kneeled bound and bloodied in the center of the encampment, where everyone could watch him, and all wanted him dead.

Mike Eller argued for all their lives. Take a few hours, he insisted, a day or two at the most, whatever it took to interrogate the prisoners. Don't lose the moment to impulsiveness.

Why bother? Vidovic had asked. That one there is the enemy, and those children are his accomplices. His status as the enemy required his death, and the children must die as traitors to their people. There was no way around it. War, for all its seeming chaos, had its own immutable laws.

In the end, Vidovic caved. For all his bravado and righteous pronouncements, he did not relish the thought of executing children. He distributed them among his hardest men. They became slaves, carrying their masters' gear, closely watched, an unseen knife or readied bullet close behind them at all times, an unspoken promise. The other one, the older one, made no response as Vidovic hauled Eller to within a few feet of his cowed form.

"He is your responsibility," Vidovic told Eller, and slapped a heavy pistol into the American's hand. "Don't worry. You won't have to watch him long."

"I hope to change your mind about that. He might help us expose the Schoolhouse conspiracy."

"Good luck," Vidovic said, his face sour. The Americans had attritted him down to fifty-seven men before slacking off their attacks, so he could muster no mood for Mike's bleeding heart nonsense. On top of that, Eller's camera had proven useless since its punctured promise back in February. In fact, they had come to suspect the satcam of somehow causing assaults, and so left it silent most of the time. "Michael," Vidovic said carefully, as if speaking to a child, "that man wears the face of your country. He is the Schoolhouse conspiracy." Then he walked away, shutting the matter from his mind.

#

Mike stooped before the prisoner, whose flight suit hung ragged beneath a filthy layer of civilian clothes, and whose bloodied, roughened body hunched slack with exhaustion. The man knelt, head down, defeated, his hands tied behind his back with someone's belt.

"Hey, Pete. Didn't think I'd see you again."

"The pleasure's all yours," Pete Harita said through swollen lips. He raised his eyes. They held no fear, only a fatalism well-practiced over his six and a half months on Bosnian soil.

"How did you get here, buddy? We figured you for dead."

The answer came in halting bursts, between painful swallows and expulsions of bloody spit. "I rode the plane down. They were right on top of me, that first bunch. I ran for three days, lost the signal transponder and the radio. I tried to get to the Serbs, but this terrain, it's empty. Another bunch caught me, but I escaped during a gunship attack. A Croat family took me in, hid me on their farm for weeks. They were isolated, but planes flew over all the time. I tried to signal them without putting myself in jeopardy. The place crawled with Muslim factions. Nothing worked."

"You've been busy."

Harita heaved a great breath. "A bunch of Serbs came, about three months ago. On a hillside about half a mile from the farm. I thought about contacting them, but something made me hold back and watch. A plane came over, a Seahawk, I think. They shot at it with a missile." He looked hard into Mike's eyes. "Are we at war with the Serbs?"

"No," Mike said, "not so anyone notices."

"Hurricanes came an hour later. Blew hell out of the farm. Looked like a Schoolhouse run. I barely escaped. No one else did. I wandered for days, no longer sure what to do. Then I found those kids. Orphaned. Carrying around guns like complete idiots. I took them in."

"You always were a softie."

"The Serbs are shooting at us, Mike. They're using SAMs, just like the Muslims. What's changed? Can you tell me?"

Mike scratched his chin. "I can try, but you won't like it much."

"What are you doing here, Mike? What's going to happen to me?"

"I went over. I can't make any guarantees for you, but I'll try to take care of you."

"That's good enough. You're a friend. Now, what's going on around here?"

Mike settled onto his other knee. "It's all a sham. Schoolhouse, I mean. The Muslims aren't shooting at your planes, the Serbs are."

"They both are. The Muslims just thought of it first."

Mike shook his head. "That's what the Serbs wanted you to think, old buddy. The truth is something entirely different."

Mike told him the whole story, about missiles hidden in garbage trucks, the control over UN air routes from the sea, the stockpiles of missiles on Serb bases. "You have to help me expose Schoolhouse, Pete, stop all this senseless killing, make the Serb government accountable. They're jamming my camera. They might even be tracking it."

Harita's eyes were glazed, distant. "We're all war criminals. We knew that. My pilots didn't want to fly the missions. I flew a lot of them myself, just to protect my men. We were teaching the Muslims a lesson. No fighting, or we blast your homes and loved ones. It got a lot worse after the missiles started flying. Now you tell me they had nothing to do with it?"

"You've been fighting the Serbs' war for them. Worse, you've been furthering their plan for ethnic cleansing."

"Ethnic cleansing? Is that what you call it?" His voice was an unexpected roar. People turned to stare. "We murdered hundreds of innocent people, women, children, old people. There's no excuse. Retribution is no excuse to start with, and we don't even have that now."

"Why did you do it?" Eller asked. Probably, it wasn't the best time, but he wanted to know. "Did the Admiral order Schoolhouse? Surely, it wasn't Harper?"

Harita's voice sank to a desolate whisper. "No. They – we – were just following orders." Mike thought he heard something like laughter escaping Harita's lips, a sound drenched in sarcasm. "Hell, Mike, that puts the Evan Bayh and all the rest of the peacekeeping force in stellar company. You're an impartial judge. How do you figure we stand against the Russians in Afghanistan? Calley at My Lai? The Wehrmacht against the Jews?"

"It's still going on," Mike said.

"And what do you want me to do about it?" Harita shouted once more. "I'm isolated. I can't approach anybody. Your buddy over there plans to ventilate my head."

"You can approach the Americans." Mike held up his camera. "This can bring them."

"You said it was jammed."

"I also said it was tracked."

#

Patricia awoke in the gray dawn, her body stiff from the unforgiving porch. She sat up slowly, balancing on one arm. Greatgranddaddy Tallman still sat in his rocking chair a few feet away, but he no longer radiated charm and animation, and his eyes no longer sparked with interest at her presence. His chin rested against his chest, and he slept. Chelsea still sat at the opposite end of the porch, staring into the desert. She had probably been there all night, ever since discovering where Steve had gone, and that his own people had left him there. She had exploded in disbelief on that discovery. She had thrown a fit, and no one had spoken to her since. The others, Kenny and the newly met Uncle Tom, and Sam and Mr. Westerly, were nowhere around, probably sleeping indoors.

Patricia wrapped herself close in the warm blanket. A chill still permeated the dry air. She had refused the bed arranged for her last night, preferring to lie at the old man's feet and drift into sleep to the sound of his stories. A third of her heritage dozed next to her, the most intact portion of it, in fact. Her Irish Catholic and black American ties were scanty, fragmented, but her Indian roots grew deep in this land she had never seen. Granddaddy, through the lone power of his voice, showed her the magnificent, self-supporting web of her family. Last night, for the first time, she had approached a strong sense of self, a gift delivered through Granddaddy's clever mix of fables and recollections. She regretted his long absence in her life, especially since his age and apparent fragility made a long reunion doubtful.

She fought to her feet, the blanket across her back, and clumped along the porch to sit next to Chelsea. The older woman ignored her approach. She seemed focused on the gray expanse of the desert.

"You okay, Aunt Chelsea?"

"I never understood this nonsense. They left him out there. No water. No food. Four days and nights."

"They called it a vision quest."

Chelsea grimaced. "You, too? They left him out there to die."

Patricia thought silence her best response. On this matter, Chelsea could not be reached. She did not see the romantic dance of ancient tradition in Daddy's plight. She saw Daddy's dead, coyote-mangled corpse rotting on the desert floor. Patricia had to admit to some anxiety of her own, but Uncle Tom had said these vision quests happened all the time, and though Granddaddy agreed, he had qualified the comment with five terrifying words: "But his will be hard."

She heard the old man stir in his chair. "Good morning, Granddaddy," she called softly across the porch, and smiled at the satisfying sound of his grunt, and the creaking of his chair as he stretched his stiff muscles.

"Must of dozed," he called back. "Up too late talkin' to pretty girls!"

"I'm not sure I like that man," Chelsea said under her breath. She squinted more intently into the lifting gray.

Patricia felt a sudden, anxious tingling over her skin, and pulled the blanket tighter around her. Did a breeze stir in the cold air?

The screen door banged. Tom Tallman stepped onto the porch, sipping from a mug. "Morning, all," he said. "I reckon I'm going into the desert to gather up my brother. Anybody coming along?"

Chelsea and the old man seemed not to hear. They stared into the brightening day.

"I'll go," Patricia volunteered, fighting her way upright. But Tom stood frozen, the mug inches from his lips, his eyes squinting past her. Behind him, Sam filled the doorway, shirtless and barefoot, as if moments from bed. Kenny stood close behind him, and both wore the same intent stare on their faces as their eyes drilled past her into the desert.

Patricia's skin tingled to goosebumps. She felt a sudden force of presence, as if someone stood close behind her. She turned deliberately away from the house, and knew exactly where to look.

He materialized out of the dawn into the dusty front yard of his granddaddy's house. He might have walked into the light, or been teleported from some other dimension. He approached with purpose, without the aid of a stick or cane, wearing no shirt or shoes. Instead, a deep, copper tan sheathed much of his figure, the rich darkness of his skin apparent even in the weak light. His hair hung long, almost to his shoulders. It was entirely white.

Her father.

Dad stopped only momentarily at the porch steps, looking down at Chelsea's stunned wide eyes. She looked up at him, frozen by his unexpected appearance. Perhaps, like Patricia, she felt confusion at the health and power he radiated. Only two things drew Patricia's attention from his eyes: the sharp contrast of a whitened leather pouch against his bronze skin, and the reflective plastic of the familiar medicine vial, both hanging from his neck by their respective rawhide and nylon cords.

Dad held out a hand to Chelsea. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet. He touched her cheek with one hand.

He turned from Chelsea and continued onto the porch, slowing a pace as he passed his daughter. He fixed her with serious, exploring eyes, as if seeing her for the first time, but he did not stop. Patricia wanted him to, wanted to talk to him, wanted him to acknowledge her, but he didn't beyond that inspection. Nor did he notice the others, Westerly now among them, bunched in the narrow doorway to the house. He moved straight to his grandfather's rocking chair, where the old man watched him through rheumy eyes. He stooped to lower his eyes to those of the ancient face, and spoke.

"I know what you did. Why?"

The elder Tallman smiled, his face cracking into spider webs of wrinkles. Patricia saw effort in that gesture. "I've lived plenty long enough," he said. "I reckon I've earned a retirement."

"I'll miss you, Granddaddy."

"I ain't gone yet, young man."

Steve Tallman said nothing. Everyone gathered at an unconsciously respectful distance from him, Chelsea and Patricia in the forefront, the men forming a wall behind them. Dad stood. He looked from one earnest, curious face to the other, seeming to measure the fidelity and the need in their eyes.

"It's time to go back," he said.

Chapter Thirty:

Creator

 (Back to Contents)

On his return to Indianapolis, Stephen Tallman launched his first salvo of weapons at the enemy. Kenny, Patricia, and Westerly took over the house on the east side, turning Steve's upstairs bedroom into a mini-laboratory filled with circuit boards, hard copy flow charts, a dozen powerful tablets, and Kenny's prototype satcam, the one from the research and development wing of See It Now's former headquarters. In the center of it all sat Alfred, the de facto fourth member of their team. The group huddled for long hours over a task they only partly understood. They planned, argued, and fought – sometimes loudly. At times they separated, retiring individually to separate corners of the house until they could once more stomach each other's company. They continued this cyclical routine for a week before other occupants heard sounds of congratulations from their room. Thereafter, the three worked in almost total silence, leaving the room only for meals and sleep, and sometimes not even then.

#

Sam Clemmons paced the plaza outside the Los Angeles county lockup, awaiting sight of Marcus Tandy and his people after having paid their impossibly high bail. After several hours, the Panthers finally appeared, surrounded by milling reporters. They made their way from the building's exit toward the taxi stands at the curb, the journalists moving with them like a plague. Sam pushed his way into that mob and slapped Tandy on a shoulder. The Panther leader turned toward him, and his eyes registered recognition.

"I have a car!" Sam shouted, and signaled Tandy to follow.

In moments, they were free of the newsmen, and pulling into downtown traffic in an eight passenger mini-van. Tandy's functionaries lounged in the back seats, ostensibly ignoring the conversation up front.

"So, what's this about?" Tandy asked. "My lawyer says you sprang me."

"Not me, precisely," Sam corrected. "My boss – well, he isn't my boss anymore, but the same guy – he footed the bill. We both agree that you might be getting an unfair deal. And, he wants a favor from you."

"Thanks for the fresh air, but I don't do favors."

"You'll do this one. We're going up against EOG. That's one of your avowed priorities, isn't it?"

"You already went after EOG. It kicked your ass."

"Not this time," Sam asserted, though not really sure of himself. "But, we need to protect our correspondents and our broadcast locations. We'd appreciate your help in LA."

Tandy laughed, not unkindly. "Man, I don't plan to be in LA more than a few days, just long enough to make the jump to Mexico. Hope your buddy didn't plan to reclaim that bail money."

"No," Sam said, "he doesn't expect his money back. But he hopes your sense of mission outweighs your sense of self-preservation. Isn't the Black Panther Fellowship dedicated to helping black folk, not deserting them?" He heard stirrings from the back seats.

Tandy made a motion with one hand, not bothering to look at his people. "I formed the Fellowship to elevate my people, but it isn't working out that way. It's always temporary. The first Panthers in Chicago got blown away by the blueshirts. The survivors had to disappear, leave the country. I thought it could be different this time." He looked at Sam, bravado gone from his eyes. "How come niggers got so much trouble organizing? Sometimes it looks like all we ever do is complain and blame our troubles on somebody else."

"We do get organized from time to time, but we don't always get much done beyond that. We don't always agree on what to do, or on how to do it. Still, we contribute best when we don't work alone. The civil war. The civil rights movement. We tried something last winter, until your friend screwed it up."

Tandy slowly shook his head, a bemused smile blossoming on his lips. "Donald Washington misused his power. He abused our purpose."

"But why? Just because he had it in for me?"

Tandy looked out his window. "The cops came by pretty regularly, whenever Donny did something stupid, like when he went after Dearing, and then your people. They say he did it for money, that they know his safe deposit boxes and they got the bags the drops were made in, and even some of the cash. They want to pin all that on me, conspiracy charges, you know. But, I think they got it all wrong."

"Which part, the money or the conspiracy?"

Tandy laughed, a hard, unfunny sound. "Doesn't much matter. They'll get me for both, if I don't skip to Mexico. We had no control over what Donny did out here. We watched it on the TV, like everybody else. I guess there was money involved, but it wasn't ours." He leaned toward Sam with a mock air of conspiracy. "Despite rumor to the contrary, the Black Panther Fellowship doesn't have a multi-million dollar drug running business. Most of what we earned went to our projects."

"The day care, the clinic, the neighborhood patrols? They're all dead, reverted to gang turf."

"Yeah. Like I said, it's always temporary."

"So, Washington hired himself out? He wasn't much more than a hit man?"

Tandy drew his gaze back to Sam. "It would be easy to leave it at that, but that just shovels over reality. Sure, he took somebody else's money to do some hit jobs. That's obvious. But, why did he do it? Because he wanted the money? Because he was some kind of psycho? Because he was too dumb to know any better? You ever talk to the kid? Of course you have, so you know he wasn't stupid. What did you think of him, by the way?"

Sam thought back to his on-camera meeting way back in January. He recalled Washington's threatening bearing, how frightening he had looked through the camera lens. He recalled the theological cadence of Washington's words when he thought himself on the air, and the rough street tones that characterized his unconscious speech. Mostly, he recalled the intelligence behind the streetwise facade, an intelligence wasted on big threats and small goals.

"He was a smart kid, but not very constructive. He seemed to know a lot about art."

"Art, history, culture, all the things he couldn't have, and it made him angry. Angry, now, not crazy, but the anger was blinding. Like a lot of young black men, he lashed out against the white culture that denied him and taunted him with all it refused to offer. He went counter to expectations, to everything white folks wanted him to be: subservient, cowardly, powerless. It was the only way to control his identity. You understand this. I know you do. You lived in Watts. We were neighbors, you might say."

"It isn't that closed. He could have gotten around the barriers. He was a smart kid."

Tandy shrugged. "Like I said, he was blind. He saw black men like you as sellouts. He wondered about me, too, because I didn't form the Panthers to make war on white people. He, like a lot of the brothers, would rather have spent that money on guns and bombs, not baby sitters. They don't realize that child care means jobs for parents, while guns mean only more bodies, and more blueshirts." He drummed his fingers on the dash. "So, your friend needs a favor," he said after a while. "What the hell is it, anyway?"

Sam told him. Then, despite Tandy's soapbox protest, they went hunting for guns.

#

Chelsea Van Arsdale traversed the European continent in search of fanjet aircraft. Her mission was hopeless. Vertolifter-type technology was still high end, accessible only to governments and major corporations. Since she represented neither, she wasted much effort with the European manufacturers and the secondary sales agencies. Even companies selling second-hand were priced way out of her range. In desperation, she even submitted to the hated World Wide Net, as much as she despised computers. That and a few postings to Net bulletin boards brought her to Gjirokaster Cargo Handling, an air freight company unaccountably headquartered not in the town of its namesake, but in Tirane, Albania.

The untidy, mean little company crouched at the foot of a low, forested mountain within an industrialized fringe of the city. Little business flew from the company's two dirt helipads; the war to the north had seen to that, as had the American aircraft carrier straddling the lucrative, but not especially legal, trade routes south. The company's owner needed Chelsea's cash as much as she needed to part with it, and she recognized his desperation enough to force her slim buyer's advantage. Their interests intersected at a stripped-down beast of an outmoded helicopter, of the type she had flown in the war. She found it functional, but worn, sorely in need of attention, and she used its shortcomings to screw down the asking price in consideration of the overhaul she knew the bird required. She ended the transaction against Steve's American Express debit card, its gold-and-black Millionaires' Club markings expediting the closing.

As soon as she could, Chelsea skipped the aircraft to Germany and its waiting, newly-hired maintenance team at Rhein-Main International Airport. She supervised the rehabilitation work, then jumped the much more trustworthy aircraft to its reserved hangar berth at a small Naples airfield. By the tenth of the month she slouched in an AirItalia coach seat, roaring across the Atlantic toward home. She did so with mixed feelings, for she headed straight to Indianapolis, to the house on its east side, and to a man she preferred to avoid, and knew she could not.

#

The man Chelsea thought of spent little time in Indy. Those in the house rarely saw him, growing accustomed to his sudden appearances and disappearances as he checked the progress of their work. He was a different man, this white-haired Steve Tallman, darker, more focused, less open. No one knew the ultimate purpose of their assigned tasks, and Steve volunteered nothing. He expected compliance with his instructions, expected them to approach their tasks with vigor and without question. He expected their faith.

Steve surprised Jerry McFadden in his offices at See It Now's new world headquarters in Los Angeles. Jerry apologized for taking Steve's former job, and was confused when his former boss shrugged off the potential awkwardness. Theirs were strong ties, after all, knotted over three years of pre-production, deadlines, stress, and adversity. When Steve asked for Jerry's help, he got it, though it likely would mean Jerry's job.

Tom Merritt still hunkered on his ranch in Montana, surrounded by more than a dozen locals gathered in solidarity against their still dangerous militia-minded neighbors. They huddled like anxious prey, unable to live their former lives, driven together into an informal commune cemented by fear. Each day of their uneasy existence shamed Merritt greatly. His enemy came at night, killing his bulls on the range, but Merritt kept his men near the house, allowing them out only in daylight, and only in well-armed groups. He screened hate mail intended for his guests, burning each monstrously threatening letter as it arrived at his door. He accepted no packages. He waited for his enemy to tire of cowardly sniping and come in force to confront him. Merritt had sworn himself an honorable purpose that night in the snow over Jimmy Belew's corpse, a purpose degenerated into self-preservation. He needed to strike back, to demonstrate his independence from fear. He hoped he had the men, the guns, and the backbone to prevail when that day came.

When Steve arrived seeking assistance, the old man nodded, glad for the opportunity. He promised his aid, both financial and otherwise. He offered it without reservation, an act of defiance and of contrition to a younger cowboy's ghost.

The Chinese community in New York had weathered too many recent funerals to greet Steve's visit with enthusiasm, but the dai low still counted EOG as his most serious quandary, and Steve as his most ready solution. So, when he heard that Steve's considerable personal fortune had withered under the mission's expenses, he offered supplemental funding of his own. When Steve's security concerns became apparent, the dai low offered his men as he had with Wo Chu, then dispatched them to the appropriate focus points in LA, Montana, the southwest, Indianapolis, and right there in New York. He thrilled at the thought of a rematch against Jonathan Taylor Mercy and his forces, for though the last adventure had acquitted the dai low's people with honor, it had still ended in failure.

Steve crisscrossed the country, stopping regularly at the house in Indianapolis to monitor the most important aspect of his as-yet unvoiced plan. He built a network and resources to once more take on EOG, the bargaining, troubleshooting and travel all taking a tow on his fragile stamina. He harbored no illusions that a few magic trinkets in a leather pouch had changed the basic nature of his health. He still carried the vial around his neck. He still watched his stress level. And, though a small, coaxing voice warned him that the greatest power demanded faith, he still took his medication every day according to the timer on his watch.

He watched his bank account shrivel to the point of disaster, then asked for money from his more wealthy contacts without shame. He had learned a lesson that had always guided him in some vague, unstructured way, that possessions mattered for nothing, that honor and integrity were all a man could own. He lived by his newly solidified philosophy, built in those four nights in the Arizona desert. But philosophy offered no comfort on his most difficult mission, for on that day he sought the company of a spirit far greater than his.

#

Anna almost failed to recognize him. His white hair, far longer than it should have grown in the days since their last meeting, disguised the face she knew so well, and his skin showed darker than its usual light tan. He stood at the crowd's edge, tracking her with serious, intent eyes as Secret Servicemen ushered her to the car. Then he was gone, lost in the forest of figures and faces that always heightened the climax of presidential politics.

She brooded from her seat in the car. The short clip of his face replayed over and over in her mind. What brought him to Miami? Nothing more lay between them; he had seen to that. Any future that face had promised was dead. She smiled thinly, wondering if he regretted his decision and intended to beg his way back into her graces. Then she shook her head. She couldn't manage an image of Steve Tallman begging.

Ray's phone beeped beside her from a pocket within his jacket. "Dammit," he said after answering. "It's your ex-boyfriend. He stopped one of the ProtecServe people. Says he wants to see you."

"Oh? What about?" Anna asked, her face wooden.

"He won't say, but he insists."

She almost waved it off. She wanted Mr. Tallman to know she was busy. She was in a staff meeting, or practicing tomorrow's speech, or flossing her teeth. She was unavailable today and on any other day he suggested. That's what she wanted to say, as directed by the tight knot of anger that still clenched in her gut. But, being a professional, she had learned long ago to control the inclinations of her gut.

"Bring him up to the hotel room."

Ray frowned. "I don't think–"

"It won't take long. I can't imagine what we'd have to talk about."

#

Unease accompanied Steve to Anna's room, ballooning into full-blown anxiety when he found her not alone. Yonelson and the press secretary, Kate somebody, stood in the background like Dobermans while Anna greeted him. She sat behind her makeshift card table of a desk, arms crossed, looking cold. He stopped a good distance from her. "I thought we'd be alone."

"Oh? Whatever gave you that idea? Would you like a seat?"

"I get the impression I should stand."

"Suit yourself. Interesting hair. The bleaching aside, how did you grow it so long in such a short time?"

"Time hasn't been so short."

"Uh-huh. What was it you wanted, Steve? I have to admit, I'm at a disadvantage. I thought you and I were all talked out."

"I'm sorry, Anna..."

"You're always so sorry. Is that what you wanted to tell me? I could have guessed that."

"Please. I didn't come about this." He hated filtering his words for public digestion. Were Yonelson and the woman there to make him uncomfortable? To prevent his speaking his mind? Had Anna any real interest in hearing his piece?

"Then please, Steve, what did you come about? I don't have all day."

"It's about EOG."

"Pardon?"

"It's about EOG. I've heard how it's going in the Senate. It'll come out of conference within a week and get passed by both houses hours afterward. You have to stop it from happening."

Anna sat there. Her people exchanged incredulous glances. Steve expected his ex to remove her glasses for polishing, and admired her control when she didn't.

"You. Came to me. To discuss legislation?" Her tone was a box of glass shards. "Where did you get the audacity...?"

He stood taller. "I've nothing if not audacity. I know I've hurt you, but I need to ask this favor. Believe me, if there were any other way..."

"Thanks so much for the consideration."

"I'm not here for myself. I'm going up against EOG again, but I need time to prepare. I need you to provide that time."

"What makes you think I can? I'm not a senator."

"You have power, the force of your personality. I need you to use it." He pressed his sincerity with something beyond mere words. The room around him darkened just a little. "You're still the most profound soul I've ever met."

"Uh-huh."

"Don't 'uh-huh' me, Anna Marie Dearing. We've lived a long time on parallel paths. That's what got us in trouble. This time, both our purposes come together. We can help each other. Will you use your candidate's soapbox to speak out against EOG, and hopefully scare its proponents back into hiding?"

She watched him with unwavering bright eyes, the eyes of a distrusting cat. Though she tried to appear strong, those eyes betrayed the great control she exerted over distress. "I'll keep my own counsel what issues I attack. I'll think about what you ask, but I won't promise a thing."

"I just need a few weeks, then we'll be ready."

"I'll also keep in mind the futility of your last effort against the EOG. So. Is there anything else?"

Steve glanced at Ray and Kate. "I think we ought to talk. In private."

She hugged herself a little tighter. "I don't know why. We've nothing private between us."

"Anna..."

"Is there any further business?"

He frowned. How had he so thoroughly screwed things up with her? "No. No more business."

"Okay, then. I suppose you know the way out. I have a speech to practice, if you don't mind."

She turned her eyes away from him and started shuffling a stack of papers. For all Steve knew, those papers were there specifically to be shuffled. Ray stepped to the exit. He pulled open the door and held it for Steve.

With no further options, Steve left the room.

#

Later, Anna dropped onto the edge of her bed. She crossed and uncrossed her arms repeatedly, fighting competing emotions of anger and dejection. Until the meeting with Steve earlier, she hadn't really approached the reality of their killed relationship. It had been difficult to admit its end. But he hadn't come to make up; he had come to ask a God-damned favor. Not a wit of emotion, no concern for her at all. Except as a tool.

Had he leaked their breakup to the press after all? But that made no sense. What was there to gain?

She covered her face with her hands and fell backwards onto the covers. She was glad the others were gone, so they couldn't see her collapse. She breathed deeply, to expel the emotional turmoil within. It didn't help much. After a while, she cried.

#

"I don't like this arrangement at all. It goes against every code I've set for myself, against everything I've taught my men. They don't put up with the scanty food, the bad weather, and the regularly occurring threat of death just to coddle disaffected American servicemen." Vidovic gnawed a hunk of stale bread as he sat on the hillside a little apart from his men. He watched Harita, who leaned against a tree fifty meters away, and tried to ignore Mike's steady eyes. He liked Mike's suggestion even less because of its nearly unassailable logic. It accomplished, if successful, their goal of so many frustrating months.

"You want to explain the loss of a trial to your men," Mike said matter-of-factly. He sprawled on the sparse grass, holding Vidovic in a piercing, pushing stare.

"What if he doesn't cooperate? He doesn't exactly bear us the greatest love."

"He's trapped by shame. He's lost face. He'll cooperate to regain his honor."

"I hadn't noticed Americans cared all that much about honor."

"More than you realize. But, he isn't just American. He's Japanese."

Vidovic heaved the tasteless hunk of bread down the slope. His eyes tracked its bouncing, rolling course. How many years had he pursued this nonsense, and why? Where was his classroom, with his eager, inquisitive students?

"We may as well do it," he finally said. "And, if we're going to do it, let's do it sooner rather than later. Let's do it now."

"Does that mean you actually consult with Mr. Harita? Treat him like a real, live human being?"

"Please, don't push. Let's go see your friend."

#

"They usually send in gunships. You see or hear a Hurricane, run like hell. Now, the gunships peek or strafe with equal frequency, so keep your ass behind a tree until you get them figured."

Harita listened. They stood at the edge of a wide clearing atop a low, flat mountain, just him, Mike, and the Muslim commander. Harita had removed his civilian clothes, and had tried to make the ragged remains of his flight suit as obvious as possible. Though he kept it from his face, he couldn't believe what they asked of him. How could his fortune reverse so suddenly?

"I'm a naval officer," he said. "I can take care of myself."

"That's fine," Mike said. He reached into the mission bag hanging from his shoulder and pulled out three prisms. "Make sure this gets to Billy Charter, if he's still aboard, and make sure he has the clear opportunity to send them to Indianapolis. It's footage of the Serbs launching their missiles, of their stockpiles, and of the Schoolhouse sites I've seen."

Harita accepted the packages. He massaged them with his fingers.

"What is it?" Mike asked.

Harita shrugged. "Nothing. It's just that, by turning these over to the press, I betray my ship and crew, accuse my leaders, and violate God knows how many statutes of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They'll probably court martial me."

"Don't get weird on me, Pete. If you don't do this, my buddy here will toss you into the nearest town square and blow your stuffings out."

Vidovic asked something, apparently irritated because of his lack of English.

Mike answered in Russian, then reverted to his native language. "He wanted to know what the holdup is. How about it, Pete? Those prisms are your ticket out of here."

"Don't worry," Harita said. "I haven't changed my mind. I need to do this probably more than you need it done. How do you call the vertols?"

"With this." Mike held up his satcam. "Works better than a dog whistle. I'll make my usual failed attempt at contacting my Indianapolis base. The dogs will be here in anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour."

"Are you sure? Why don't you use your radio?"

"Too obvious. Don't worry, the satcam will work." Mike smiled, and slapped Harita's shoulder. "Why shouldn't it work? All this time we haven't wanted it to, and it's worked just fine!"

#

"Transmission from NSA," the XO said, and handed Harper the scribbled note.

Harper stood on the bridge's deckside wing, a smallish metal balcony hanging out over the flight deck and large enough only for three or four people. He read the note in silence, then crumpled it and stuffed it in a pocket.

"Another trace on Eller and his friends, but we don't have anything out there. See what the Marines and Army have in the area, then get back to me."

"Aye, sir. Should we launch cover, sir?"

"Our orders are to bring him in, not blow him away."

"I understand that, sir. But, it might not be Eller."

Harper nodded. "Fine. Launch cover. Guns and cluster munitions only. And neither they nor the vertols are to shoot unless first fired upon, got that, XO?"

"Aye, sir."

Harper dismissed him with a wave of one hand then turned away from the bridge to once more contemplate the glassy sea and the more agitated realities of his life and career. He willfully sought to circumvent his president at the behest of his Chief of Naval Operations. The CNO's orders were by far the least offensive, but also without sanction, and so extremely dangerous. Nor would the CNO lift a defending finger if things fell apart; that was clear. At least obeying the president left Harper the thin protection of having just followed orders.

Just following orders. The three most terrible words in the history of modern warfare, perhaps the history of humanity. What monstrous force encouraged otherwise circumspect men to commit heinous offenses for the sake of "just following orders"? At what point in the history of man did dedication to orders overpower knowledge of right and wrong? The results of such misguided dedication were well documented. The Nuremberg Trials. The My Lai court martials. The Hague Tribunal. Men following orders.

Harper had followed orders far too long. His ship steamed into a black mire from which there was no escape. But he could close the nightmare of Schoolhouse missions, even if he couldn't correct it. He could summon atonement for himself and his crew. They would face the hard judgment of their superiors and of those from whom their superiors drew power. But Harper felt no fear in that prospect. At least they would face that judgment. They would not be surprised by it.

His decision made, a weight fell from his shoulders, only to be replaced by another of equal mass. He turned from the calming sea and back to the crowded intensity of the bridge.

"CAT ONE, LAUNCHING!" he heard over the intercom, and yet another aircraft screamed away from home.

It was just following orders. But, this time, those orders were his.

#

"I'm getting a message!" Mike watched the call light flicker on his satcam. He had lost hope of contacting The World. Recently, he had stopped calling altogether as his attempts seemed only to bring on the bombers. Now, against all expectations, against the long obsolescence of his digital frequencies, See It Now wanted to speak.

"Vertolifter," Vidovic warned, pointing down the valley approaching their mountain location. A black insect buzzed toward them from three or four miles out, hugging the treetops for cover. Vidovic yelled down the slope to his men huddled in the woods. They stealthily extricated themselves from the scene. "Company comes in twos," the Muslim leader muttered, indicating a glint of metal high in the morning sky.

The moment turned suddenly. The approaching vertol flashed. Thunder rolled up the valley. The wafting glint of metal paused, then arrowed toward the mountain. Mike watched a secondary explosion from where the vertol had been. He cursed as a black finger of smoke lifted into the sky from where the aircraft had been.

Vidovic slapped Mike's shoulder. "Come on! The bomber's coming in!"

"What? What the hell happened?"

"The damned Serbs got your vertol! Its avenger is on the way! Move!"

"Pete!" Mike yelled to the pilot. Harita stood exposed on the bare mountaintop, glancing from Mike to the scene of attack. "Come on, dammit! This way!"

They ran.

The mountaintop erupted in fire and plasma. The three men fell, scrabbled upright, and ran even faster than before.

#

Peggy Smith looked up from her Calculus and found Steve Tallman in the doorway of her dorm room. He stood there looking around as if at a museum display, passing his gaze over the closet-sized space she shared with her roommate. This was not good. Normally, she hardly noticed the anarchy of her life, with more clothes strewn over the beds and floor than probably lay stuffed in her bureau drawers. The previous night's Thai still littered the floor and bedside tables, white cardboard boxes gray stained with grease. Even the chair she sat in at her piled-high desk acted as an impromptu clothes rack. Her cheeks burned from the certain knowledge that she could pluck a few bras from the back of her seat, each still damp from hand-washing. And there stood her ex-boss, appraising it all, looking out of place in his linen sport coat and pants that probably set him back more than her semester's room and board.

"Hey," he said, his hands in his pockets.

"Hey," she sent back, and blinked.

His hair was as white as his button-down shirt.

"Mind if I come in?" he asked just as two girls passed behind him. They looked him up and down and tittered, but thankfully didn't stop to chat.

"Oh! Sorry, yeah. Come on in." Peggy left her chair as her former employer crossed the threshold. She shut the door behind him, then wondered what to do next. Was this a social call? Highly unlikely since they had never shared a conversation that wasn't work-related. Business? What business could he have since she no longer worked for him? To her knowledge, he no longer worked, either.

Tallman took an expansive look around, then smiled at her before speaking. "Nice place."

"Have a seat." Then her cheeks burned with the realization that he wouldn't find a cleared space wide enough to do so. The heat spreading to her whole face and shoulders, she snatched clothes up from her bed, from the floor, from wherever they caught her eye. She shoved them into the closet and closed its sliding door.

Tallman lowered himself to the bed. "So you lost a semester. Was it hard to catch up?"

"I'll let you know when I have," Peggy said. "The math is kicking my butt." She puttered about the room, shoving this or that out of sight, gathering up the old food containers and cramming them into the overfull trash can.

"Sorry about how it all turned out. You in jail and all." He seemed relaxed, like he came by to chat every day.

"No biggie." Peggy snatched up the bras on her chair and flung them under the desk. "I had to explain my spanking new criminal record before they let me back into school, but, hey, who hasn't spent three days in the lockup?"

"Yeah, yeah." He looked down at the cheap brown carpet, perhaps a little embarrassed himself. "It was a rush though, wasn't it?"

Peggy began to wonder if she might be dreaming, if she had dozed off while crunching her numbers. "Excuse me?" She dropped into her chair and leaned toward him. "I got shot. I got taken down in a raid. I witnessed mass murder and the leftovers of a mafia-like execution."

He nodded his head and twiddled his fingers. He might have been listening to music. While waiting for a bus.

"Okay," he said, not looking at her. "So maybe it wasn't so much of a rush." He scanned the room, then seemed to brighten. His fingers stopped dancing. "But you pretty much put that Decker fella out of business. Thanks to your video, every police force in the continental US is hunting him."

"Well, there's that. Which is to say, they haven't caught him yet?"

"Not so much."

"Oh, so that's why I don't leave the dorm at night."

Tallman looked at her then. "I wouldn't worry about Decker. If he hasn't come for you yet, the idea just won't occur to him."

"That's very comforting."

"I want you back, Peggy."

Back where, she wondered, then realized what he asked.

"What?" The question conveyed a well of astonishment she hadn't known she'd dug.

"I'm putting together a team to finish what we started."

"You're kidding."

"I've got Sam. I just need you."

Peggy leaned closer. What lunatic plan was this? Did these people have a death wish? She tapped her chest with two fingers. "Shot. Jailed. Mass murder."

"It's a calling, Peggy. It's something that must be done. I'm asking only those I trust so that it doesn't get away from us a second time."

She shook her head to clear it. Of course, what good would it do to clear your head from within a dream? "What are you talking about? I've kept up with the news. See It Now is tamed, just another tabloid news show. And you don't work for it. How can you finish what we started when you have nothing to finish it with?"

"Everything I own is getting thrown into this story. Everything. I'm broke."

"Which brings up another touchy subject. You still owe me money from last time, Mr. Tallman."

"What?"

"They never gave me my final partial paycheck. You owe me $1563."

"Really. I had no idea."

"And eighty-three cents."

"I can't pay you."

Peggy stared at him. He stared back with burning, almost mad eyes. After a moment, Peggy sat taller in her chair. She ran her fingers through her short, carrot-colored hair. "Okay, wait. Let me get this straight. You can't pay me for then, or you can't pay me now?"

"Both."

"Mr. Tallman! You came all the way out here to talk me into risking my life, again, and for free?"

"This isn't a job, Peggy, it's a—"

"Mission. Yeah, I know, a mission. That's your favorite word." She released a great puff of breath and dropped her hands to her lap. "I'm sorry, sir, but you wasted a trip. I'm finished being shot at, beaten up and threatened. I just want to pass Calculus."

He sat up straighter. His mouth hung open a little. He seemed stunned by her answer, as if he had always known the outcome of their meeting and this was not it. "Oh. I see," was all he managed to say.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Tallman—"

"Call me Steve."

"Huh?"

"Steve."

"I'm sorry, Steve, but I guess I'm just not who you thought I was."

"Hmm." He sat there for a second, then rubbed the back of his neck. He got up from the bed, then crossed his arms. He avoided her eyes the whole time.

He reached up and rubbed his face. "What's the point of that Calculus?"

"Excuse me?"

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Nothing. Nobody uses Calculus. Not unless they're a scientist or an engineer. I just need it to graduate."

"Ah, and what will you do when you graduate?"

What was this? "Get a job? In telecommunications?"

"Right. And who do you plan to approach for this job in telecommunications?"

"Mr. Tallman — Steve — are you threatening me?" He knew a lot of people in the industry. Did he intend to blackball her?

"No, Peggy, no. But you are threatened." He started pacing her floor. "You know how it is. You have dreams. You want to succeed. You try for that job at CBS or CNN, maybe a cameraman, maybe a reporter. You hope to rise on the merits of your talent. Maybe you'll be anchor one day. Maybe producer. Maybe you'll head a major news division."

"Okay..."

"But you run into little problems along the way, little setbacks. You can't put your finger on it. You aren't what they're looking for in this department or that. There are others more qualified. You feel like you're falling behind."

"Steve—"

"Wait. Then you notice that you get an awful lot of ethnic stories handed your way, lots of church stuff, stories about the working poor, hate crimes, Black History Month, Martin Luther King Day. And before you can scratch your head in confusion, you're stuck, set, corralled, whatever you want to call it. You're the black reporter."

He ceased pacing. He stood directly in front of her, bent over with his hands on his knees. "You aren't headed for chief of the news division. You aren't headed to a producer's job. Those positions aren't yours, they're reserved. You can't have them. For other people with your color skin, it's college they can't have, or the better colleges, or Harvard or Yale. Not for them. It's a good neighborhood with the better schools for their children. Locked out. It's the simple expectation of a decent response when they call the police. Denied. That's the way it's been, Peggy. You may not feel it just now with your classes here at UCLA. Maybe you won't feel it until you graduate and enter the job market, or until you fall in love with some guy you want to marry, or you try to buy a condo. Maybe you'll get lucky and never feel it, but it's there all around you. It's been that way, and worse, for five hundred years."

He leaned so close, his eyes so intense that Peggy cowered from him. She wanted to back away through her desk and the wall beyond.

"And now," he continued, "somebody wants to make it legal. Somebody wants to pass into law that you and everyone like you just won't get a break." Suddenly, he retreated. He stood up and away from her. He crossed his arms and tapped his fingers against one bicep. "Does that seem right to you?"

He stood there. He really wanted an answer.

"No," she said, and felt like a third grader giving the obvious answer, the one her teacher had suspected she couldn't see.

"Uh-huh," Tallman said, and drew out the rest of his response. "But you're willing to let it happen."

Bullshit. "No." Peggy rose from her chair. "No, I'm not willing. But I don't see a solution. I don't see a way out. I'm just me, and you're talking about Congress, for God's sake. And don't give me that shit about how one man can make a difference. I never cared for happy-happy slogans."

"Peggy—"

"Shut up. You had your speech, now I get my rant." She stepped toward him; he stepped away. "You're full of shit, that's what you are. You come in here all angry-eyes and baritone and spout bullshit, bullshit, about stopping great evil. But you already tried that gambit back when you had real power, back when you actually scared them." She continued toward him, backing him toward the door. "And you know what happened? They kicked your ass, that's what happened. They killed and mutilated dozens of people. They destroyed your show and your ability to project your show. They put you in the hospital for half a year. They killed your uncle. They crippled your daughter. They did all that when you had power. What do you have now, Mr. Tallman?"

They stood facing each other, Tallman edged against the wall by the door. Peggy wanted to slap him for a fool. "Well, what do you have now?"

His response wasn't what she expected. She had braced herself for another sermon, for protestations about the peerless destinies of right-minded, honorable people. What she got was a growing, sly, confident grin. A little sideways.

"Peggy," he said and put his hand on the door knob, "I have everything possible right now but you."

He opened the door and stepped sideways into its frame.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Peggy asked. He sounded too sure of himself for a man browbeaten into defeat.

"It was right about you," Tallman said and reached inside his sport coat.

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"When you change your mind, open this." He pulled an oversized business envelope from his jacket. With a flick of his wrist, he sailed it onto her bed. "You're important in this, Peggy Smith," he said as he backed into the dorm hallway. "I'll be honest and say that I don't know how important or why you're important, but you are."

He took off down the hall, his pace relaxed.

"What do you mean?" she called after him. "What do you mean I'm important?"

"I saw it in a vision," he replied. He waved to her without turning around. Then he was through the double doors at the end of the hall, and gone.

She fidgeted in the corridor for a few more seconds before shaking a tight fist after him. "Manipulative son of a bitch!" she shouted. "I'm way too smart to fall for your scam! You won't see me for the rest of your life, you'll see!"

She was struck in that instant by two things: by how dumb that sounded and by the mortifying reality that she yelled it at the top of her lungs in a public place. Lowering her fist and glancing sheepishly around, she made eye contact with half a dozen girls peeking from their rooms.

Great.

Peggy retreated to her room and closed the door behind her.

How did he do that? He had talked her into quitting school to join his army of cameramen. Granted, respectable piles of money were involved, but still. Then he had convinced her to march into the frozen north, this after she had taken a shotgun blast in the back, to bring out the story of those who had pulled the trigger. And then that mess at the meeting house near Belise...

What did he plan for her now? If she knew Steve Tallman, the stakes would only be raised.

She noticed the envelope on her bed. With no more thought than a burst of petulant anger, she crossed to the envelope, snatched it up, and split it open with her index finger.

"Damn!" she complained, and decided Stephen Tallman was the devil himself.

Inside the envelope was a business card with a hand-lettered address. And a one-way plane ticket to Indianapolis.

First class.

#

The noise beat upon her in cacophonous waves. Tens of thousands crowded the floor of the Miami Convention Center, all screaming her name, or just plain screaming. Anna crossed the floor to the platform. She smiled broadly, skirting the edge of the roped-off approach to grab the proffered hands of her delegates. To those straining to reach her, and especially to the TV cameras, she played the personification of energy and confidence. Inwardly, she felt awe at the attention lavished upon her.

She mounted the stairs to the platform. Ray followed, along with one Secret Service agent. The other bodyguards stayed below, fanning out into the nearest sections of the crowd. From somewhere, a chant began to build. Unintelligible at first, it grew in clarity as more and more voices took it up.

"Dear-ing! Dear-ing! Dearing for a better place!"

Unconsciously, she reached for her black armband, and her mood momentarily clouded. What power she commanded! All the thousands around her, and millions more in their homes and on the streets, looked to her for direction and purpose. They believed just about anything she said. They internalized her ideas, made her words their own inventions. How had she gotten to this point from the frustrating obscurity of January, only nine months ago? She wondered what strange fates had taken such interest in her fortunes.

"You have power, the force of your own personality. I need you to use it."

How did he know such things? What gift presented him such a clear vision of her worth? All these months she had schemed, as all politicians scheme, and had paraded her chessmanship with pride. Now, in close quarters with a multitude of unquestioning zealots, she was reminded that chessmanship, charisma, and ideas were only parts of a complicated equation. There was also presence, what Steve would call spirit.

She stood atop the platform. Al Bennett waited at the rostrum, having announced her to the thundering crowd. Others applauded from the rear of the stage: a few Democratic governors, the Senate minority leader and other congressional representatives of her party, a half dozen first-time candidates hoping to ride her coat tails. Phil Mackie was conspicuously missing from the group. Did he combat EOG that night, at such a late hour?

She crossed to the rostrum, pushing through deafening adulation as if through a hot wind. She waved to the blur of humanity, to the cameras when she found them, reveling in this, her absolute moment. This snapshot in time excited her more than any other in her life, more than her first inauguration as governor of California, more than her first acceptance speech before this same body four years past.

More than her first moments with Steve.

An ice cream shop, she thought with an odd, sad amusement. And he remembered it better than she.

"How much would you really sacrifice for me, Anna? Would you sacrifice the presidency?"

No, Steve, I wouldn't.

"Thank-you," she said into the roar. "I'm overwhelmed."

The teleprompter swung into place in front of and above her, cleverly unnoticeable by anyone off the platform. She saw the first lines of her speech flash onto the screen. Suddenly, the words she had toiled so hard to craft seemed altogether irrelevant. But she had promises yet to keep, introductions to make, impressions to burn into the collective mind of an expectant electorate. Never mind the jubilation at her feet; she still trailed in the polls, gaining rapidly, but behind nonetheless. Her mission – she sighed at the word – was to engineer the needed bounce that could deliver her to the White House.

And all she thought about was Steve.

The roars of exultation showed no sign of abating, so she stood there at the rostrum, glad for the chance to collect her thoughts. What was Steve up to? How did he intend to reengage an enemy that had already defeated him once, the same enemy that had exhausted Phil Mackie and wrecked his dream of standing before his party? What arrogance made Steve believe that his vendetta against the EOG monster was more important than her chance at winning election? And then she remembered that it had once been her monster, as well, that she had stabbed at the EOG animal before her well-meaning staff had advised her against it. Isolates too many voters, they had said. EOG plays well with the white, affluent male voter. We need those votes to win.

But, just then, winning seemed hardly a worthy intent. It seemed a disreputable accomplice to that word "mission" that Steve invoked so often.

The hall quieted. She did not step behind the rostrum; it was too tall, and she refused to use the box positioned for her. She reached up, unsnapped the microphone from its mount, and looked up at the waiting teleprompter. Taking a breath, she spoke.

#

Ray glanced at the teleprompter. Just as he thought, the speech she delivered was not the speech written. Here we go again...

#

"I look out across this great hall, and I see the face of America. Surprisingly, it's my father's face, may he rest in peace. You see, he had this look about him that could shrivel a lie in the deep part of your throat. Not that I ever told him any, but I had brothers and sisters, after all." She paused for the chorus of polite laughter. "His was a face that demanded honesty and honor. As I look out to you, I see that same face staring back at me.

"And so, I'm somewhat at a loss. I came here with a prepared speech. It was a very good speech, if that pride is allowed me. It was sharp, calculated, direct. But, I cannot deliver it now, not before my father's face. Why? Because that witty, wonderful, practiced speech addresses only what you want to hear, not what you need to know. You want affirmation of your beliefs; all of us do, to feel of value within our community. But, more than security, you need a brave soul to bring you the truth. Some politicians cringe from that challenge. They think you can't handle the truth. I, for one, have greater faith than that!"

The convention center erupted in energetic applause, but approving cheers gave way to a dull, obligatory rumble. They were confused. Was the coming news good or bad?

#

Kate Clancy gracefully extricated herself from her spot below the platform and went looking for a TV camera.

#

"This year, if you believe the TV and the Net, you choose between two very different candidates for the presidency. My philosophy is 'inclusive', whatever that is, while his is often called elitist, even xenophobic. I oppose the war in Serbia, while my opponent pretty much started it, as far as our troops are concerned. We differ in areas of social policy, economics, and how best to deliver government services. But all that really doesn't matter for beans in this election year. Those are just symptomatic of the greater, overarching difference between our two camps. It isn't the difference between liberal and conservative. It isn't the difference between hawk and dove. It isn't even the difference between Democrat and Republican.

"It's the difference between faith and fear."

#

Kate grabbed her party-controlled camera producer by the shoulder. He sat at a card table out on the floor, linked to his three distant cameramen by umbilicals of thick cable.

"Hey, Kate. Why the visit?"

"Never mind, Barney. Show me all your angles."

He flicked the camera feeds through a secondary monitor. "We got a bet, Kate. Is this all an ad lib? Doesn't sound like her usual speech. More personal."

"She's always personal," Kate said, aware of how much these hired hands spoke to their journalist cousins. She viewed Anna's angles critically. Well, she might be off the script, but God, did she look sincere.

#

"Faith versus fear. What drives men to inject military might into the closed affairs of a third rate nation of little or no import to American national security? Fear. Fear of instability, of disrupted global markets, of a change in the status quo. Yet I have faith that, left alone, Serbia can solve its own sizable difficulties. If they need anything at all from us, it's a helping hand, not a heavy boot. I propose the removal of all American troops from Serbia, and the resolution of that conflict at the bargaining table rather than the military planning table."

Anna paused. She controlled an urge to lean into the roaring wave of enthusiasm. Sure, they applauded now, but they didn't know what came.

"But, Serbia, for all its drama, is little more than a side issue. We don't have to look far across the planet to witness the conflict of faith versus fear. A greater agent of fear walks right here among us, turning its purposefully made-up, beautified face to each American it meets, seeking to beguile us into believing that fear is honor and discrimination is fairness. They've even given this, this assassin of democracy an innocuous, patriotic name: Equal Opportunity in Government. What driving fear urges a party to champion the EOG bill, a monstrosity that abrogates the bargain struck at this nation's birth? What has become of the notion of one-man-one-vote, the compact between a free, independent electorate and its subordinate representatives? What pushes a party to control who has access to the political heart of America, and how much access they have? Fear does this terrible thing. Fear of losing prestige, of losing influence. Fear of losing power.

"After all, they built this nation, or so they'd have you believe. They civilized it, engineered its social norms, cleansed its cultural palette. They made America. They conquered its untrammeled wilderness, and it is theirs."

A low roar of protest swept up from the floor. The multi-ethnic crowd was with her, as expected, but what about the television audience? How many had just snapped off their sets or logged off in disgust?

"But, now their power fades. The contract of representational government that they created now betrays them, places them in the uncomfortable seat of the minority. So, what do they do? Do they faithfully take up the task of working within the new coalition that defines American politics? Do they embrace this brave state of affairs in which no one group owns the tools of power, and all must finally, seriously work together? Many do just that. They rise to the challenge of true democracy. Many are right here in this room, and watching this event on television from home, and working to combat this EOG embarrassment in the House-Senate Conference Committee right now. They have faith in democracy.

"But others abhor the word 'cooperation'. They choke on 'collaboration'. They prefer the status quo, in which the former majority continues to rule, allowing all others only a feel-good opportunity to dabble in what is essentially a closed game. To these, democracy is open to those who rule, not to those over whom they rule. Fear drives these people, and like frightened savages, they leap to fend off any perceived threat to their future as rulers. Their weapons are the law books, a coerced court, and a bought president."

The hall exploded in hungry roars. She waited for order to reassert itself.

"But their chief weapon is EOG, an insidious instrument that gives power away by securing it within the white former majority of this nation. All minority communities increase their representation in Congress under this bill, but they can never achieve control of that Congress. It belongs to the white no-longer majority. This goes against all principles of democracy on which this nation was founded. I tell you, if EOG passes, the United States of America will die!"

The crowd erupted. Protesting howls rose to the rostrum in a great pressure wave of sound. Anna felt the platform vibrate under the blast of human indignation born from her words, saw the human sea before her seethe with shaking fists. As she waited a minute, then two, then five, the emotional energy of the moment engulfed her, humbling her before its power. She had done this. Her words had such power.

Eventually, the crowd began to settle. She turned within herself, anxiously hoping to discover what her next words should be.

"So, we can settle for what they give us. We can sit by meekly and allow the fearful to dictate our future and that of our children. Or we can fight back in the most effective way possible, with our as-yet undiluted power at the ballot box. Send me to the White House, and EOG will die, not this great nation of ours. I'll need help, to be sure, but that, too, is only a vote away, if you so allow.

"But choosing a president who chooses faith over fear is not nearly enough. I've been told that EOG might become law before your ballot can decide its fate. For that reason, your country needs you now, tonight, this moment. If you love your country, if you have faith in the democratic processes that imbue her with life, commit yourself now to calling your representatives and writing your senators and telling them of your concern. Urge them to put faith in the process that gave them their jobs. Tell them to wash their hands of the putrescent horror hatched from their midst, to disavow its presence. Go to your telephones, your keyboards, your writing desks. Go right now. Go during the commercial break, if you're watching at home. Speak your congressman's number. Don't know it? It's in the Net book. Tap out his address. Don't know it? Ask your computer. Shake the ink down in that pen. Scratch it purposefully against a single sheet of stationary. It doesn't take a long discourse. It doesn't take a speech. It doesn't take much time. You don't have to get all the words just right. You don't even have to spell them right. You just have to get them out there.

"And, what do you say to your congressman? It's simple. Just write these words in your strongest possible hand: STOP EOG NOW! That isn't so hard. That isn't much trouble. Just type out the words: STOP EOG NOW! Say it into the telephone. Say it after muddling your way past the sentries of computerized voices that guard congressmen from their constituents. Push all the different numbers they tell you to, then, when they finally give you that open line, just say it in no uncertain terms into the voicemail box: STOP EOG NOW! It sounds too simple, I know. But, that's what congressmen hear. It's the sort of directness that they respect, that they fear. This is your country, after all, and the men and women in Washington are your employees. As their employer, make your needs known. And if they ignore you, fire them all!"

#

Kate started at a frantic beep from her cell phone. She snatched it from her purse just as the crowd exploded into another raucous, approving din.

"So, are they pulling out their phones at the convention center?" someone asked. It was her opposite number in the White House.

"Of course not!" she yelled, plugging her free ear with an elegantly gloved palm. "This isn't a Patty Chayefsky movie!"

"Could've fooled me," came the laughing reply. "The phones are sure ringing out here."

"What?"

"Just do me a favor, Kate. Spot me a job in the next administration?"

#

Anna took a long, needed breath. She felt drained. And she still had to introduce a vice-presidential candidate. "Thank-you," she said, then searched the unquiet sea of bodies for some small, intimate contact, a face, perhaps. She settled on an elderly white woman in a dowdy black suit. She carried no banner, waved no flag, and wore no funny hat. She just stood there staring at Anna, the overhead lights reflecting red from her eyes, engrossed in Anna's every word and movement. Her hands poised to applaud the next offered tidbit of wisdom. Anna prayed that wisdom did indeed drive her words. If not, she was in a lot of trouble.

"They told me not to tackle this issue, that it was too divisive, too likely to cost me votes. But, how could I avoid this thing centered on EOG? How could I ignore it while confronted with my father's face? A friend asked me recently if I would give up my quest for the presidency for anyone or any reason, and I found, after much reflection, that nothing meant more to me than the office I seek. But, now I know that isn't really true. I would give up the presidency to protect this country that has been so good to me. For this country, I would gladly give up life itself. I guess what I really want isn't the presidency after all, but the simple, cherished opportunity to serve." She faltered, realizing quite suddenly that those weren't mere clever words. Did Steve feel the same? Is that why their love withered from neglect, because they prostrated themselves to the same demanding, petulantly possessive altar? How terrible to be so estranged, and at once so confluent in spirit. "I love this country," she said, afraid she might have to fight back tears. "I love this country, and all of you in it."

#

The day after Anna's speech, Mariam Jellison moved in a quorum call to recess the Senate until after the elections to give its members time to campaign. EOG's fence sitters, with foreknowledge of her intent, avoided the Senate chamber that morning, knowing the bill's opposition would gain an advantage in the vote. That same opposition took full advantage of such rare, underhanded cooperation, and by 12:30 the Senate was deserted.

No one blamed Jellison. In fact, most senators on both sides of EOG silently thanked her. Her action defused a mounting crisis, at least until November. Now they could get out of Washington, return home to rebuild their positions, and avoid association with EOG until they had earned two-to-six more years to sweep it into the dark. First, however, they had administrative work to see to, work Dearing had forced upon them. Most members of Congress found themselves swamped in phone messages and e-mail, and feared what the post office had yet to deliver.

Jonathan Taylor Mercy boiled when he heard the news. He cursed the acrobatic prevarications of politicians. You just couldn't get anything done with them. He scowled and grumbled from room to room in his empty house, but that only further blackened his mood. So he grabbed the car keys and headed for the garage, hoping a ride in the colorful Maryland countryside would dull the edge of his anger.

It did to some small degree, but not enough to alert his emotionally clouded senses to the car that followed him from his neighborhood's gate. He probably wouldn't have noticed in any case. After all, his community was such a safe place to live.

#

Peggy Smith's arrival at Steve Tallman's house was as understated as could be for a prodigal daughter's return. She dismissed the taxi that dropped her in the driveway and hefted her mission bag, a memento from her earlier servitude, up to the front door. The bag contained nothing of the boss's; it now pulled duty as a container for clothes and toiletries. She pushed the doorbell ringer and waited.

And waited. Birds sang in the early autumn sun. A sweat bee hummed lazily past Peggy's ear. Maybe no one was home.

She pressed the doorbell again and waited again. After a minute or two, she heard sounds beyond the door, a kind of scraping like dragging two-by-fours around.

Another moment later, the locks sounded and the door drew open.

Patricia Tallman stood in the doorway, at least Peggy thought it was Patty. Peggy reassessed the girl standing before her and hoped it didn't show too much. But who could blame her? The last time she had seen Patricia, the girl had been whole, beautiful, the kind of beauty that unnerved Plain-Janes like Peggy. The woman standing in Steve Tallman's doorway might not have been a horror, but she inspired more pity than envy. The plastic face, the plastic, mottled right arm, the legs in the black armor of braces, would this woman ever feel the loving touch of a man?

Peggy shook off the thought. It was unfair and backward. Whatever Patricia's difficulties, she was still Patricia Tallman. That girl's confidence, that girl's maturity, could take her a long way through adversity.

"Hey," Peggy said.

"Hey. Dad?"

"Yeah."

"Cool. What you been up to?"

"Nothing. School. You?"

"Hospitals."

"Bummer."

"Also, crime."

"Now, that's interesting."

"Want to see?"

"Sure."

"Come on in."

So she did.

#

Steve returned home in the middle of the night. No one met him except a silent Chinese guard, a youngster barely fifteen years old, consummately professional, and weighed down by a ferocious-looking Uzi. He stood in a corner of the dark front porch, staring into the night with expressionless eyes. His demeanor unsettled Steve. Did the dai low send his children to some sort of school for enforcers? Thugs 'R Us?

Steve entered the house and closed the door quietly behind him. Another Chinese youth, this one not visibly armed, watched him from the living room couch. Steve waved, and the boy nodded back. Steve wondered if Patricia had placed the others in the same quarters as their predecessors. How many were there, anyway? And, where were Kenny, Chelsea, Sam and Westerly? What rooms did they fill? He carried his suitcase and overnight bag back to the dinette, wondering where he would sleep that night.

Chelsea sat at the dinette table, hunched over a coffee mug held close to her lips. A heavy bathrobe embraced her, and the worn gray of fleece sweats covered her legs. She looked up at his entrance, and quickly down again.

"Sorry," he said, continuing into the room. "I didn't expect a familiar face."

"Couldn't sleep," Chelsea mumbled, and took a sip from her coffee mug. Her black hair fell forward, screening her face and the mug from view.

Steve placed his suitcase in a corner by the French doors, the smaller bag on the kitchen counter. "Not bad dreams, I hope."

"No."

He knew about the hair; it was her portable privacy shield, not to be breached. But he needed to talk to her, had wanted to for days. More important, he felt she needed the same.

"I got the aircraft," she said from within her hair, "but you won't like it. It isn't even a vertol."

"I'm sure you made a wise choice. Are you sure you're okay?"

She threw back her hair. "Me? Sure. Don't you ever have trouble sleeping?"

"Ha, ha," he said, trying not to notice the wet streaks on her face. He pulled up a chair and sat down beside her. "Well, whenever I had trouble sleeping, my dad used to tell me stories, usually pretty mundane ones, to bore me into unconsciousness. Would you care for a bedtime story?"

She looked at him tiredly, and with a surface show of skepticism.

"It goes like this," Steve said, making a pretense at getting comfortable in his chair. "There was this guy. He had everything. A nice, two-story home in the suburbs, a beautiful daughter," he paused and caught her eyes directly, "and the love of two beautiful women."

"I'm sure that's very interesting," Chelsea said, "but I ought to go back to bed." She put down her mug and started to rise.

Steve grabbed her hand and coaxed her back into her seat. "He didn't really have the love of two beautiful women, just one. And he didn't love two beautiful women, either, just one. Funny thing is, the one he loved, he didn't know he loved, and the one he thought he loved, didn't love him. Those two thought they were in love, but it was really more of a need for companionship, something between love and friendship. They–"

"Which two?"

"Pardon?"

"Which two? I've lost track. Which two thought they were in love, but weren't?"

"Umm, the guy and the one he thought he loved, but who didn't love him."

"Which woman was that?"

"The one he was lovers with."

"Oh. Okay."

"Sure. Uh, where was I?"

"They were lovers, though you went around the long way."

"They were lovers, but not what you'd usually call 'in love'. Each filled a void in the other's life. They were lonely."

"Wasn't the other woman lonely, too?"

"I don't know, Chelsea. Was she?"

"Well, it's likely the case, wouldn't you say, when you love somebody and they ignore you like a dirty old rag."

"He did not ignore her!"

"Did he know she loved him?"

"Of course he did. They talked about it all the time. They were planning to get married."

"No, the other one."

"The other one? Oh, no, he didn't know she loved him, not until recently, and he still isn't really sure, especially right now."

"Sounds to me like he was a first class prick who didn't know what the hell was going on around him." She seemed to have a brainstorm. "Steve, this story wouldn't be autobiographical, would it?"

He looked at her, exhausted by the exchange. Chelsea wasn't the gentlest of sparring partners. She sounded as if she enjoyed the punishment she inflicted, but her eyes said otherwise. Steve stood, still holding her hand.

"Come on," he said, and tugged her gently into the living room. The guard looked up from a video game.

"Umm, could you do your thing in another part of the house?" Steve asked, hoping the kid spoke English.

"Ain't no problem, man." The boy rose from the couch, moved to the front door, and stepped onto the porch with his partner.

"Stereo. Thirteen," Steve said into the room, and the air filled with familiar bass and guitar cords, a slow melody perfect for dancing. It wasn't just any melody, though. It was their song, even the right version of their song, with Mickey Gilley's voice singing Ben King's words.

"Dance with me?" Steve asked, and slid one hand around her waist to the small of her back.

Chelsea trembled at the gesture. She allowed him to take her, to lead her through the first few steps, and to hold her closer than he ever had before.

"Did I mention," he said while his cheek stroked her hair, "that he broke up with her?"

Chelsea stopped dancing. "Broke up with whom?"

"With the woman he thought he loved, but didn't. It was for the best. They each needed to find their lives."

"When did he do this?"

"Almost two weeks ago. And it's for real. Final. Which makes him available to the woman he really loves. If she'll have him, that is."

She stared at him, her mouth hanging open in surprise. Steve tapped her chin, closing it for her.

"What's the matter? That isn't a happy ending?"

She pressed suddenly against him, holding him tightly, her face buried in his shoulder. Steve took that as a positive response, and stroked her black mane. After a moment, he took up the dance again, and she followed him gladly.

"I love you," she said into his shirt.

"I'm glad," he replied.

#

They gathered around the table in the tiny dinette, centering their attention on the middle-aged, white-haired man with the bowl of corn flakes held to his chin. Juice glasses, coffee mugs, and half-eaten donuts littered the table and the nearby kitchen counter, forgotten even by those who still held them in loose, perfunctory grips. They were eight people of diverse backgrounds but a single purpose. They planned and argued to decide their immediate futures, some displaying bravado rooted in confidence and deeply seated combative natures, while at least one coped dry-mouthed with fear. Steve Tallman munched his cereal throughout their multi-faceted exchanges. He looked around at these people who made him so very proud, who risked everything for elusive ideals they only partly understood, and a plan they only partly knew. It was time to pull them fully into his confidence, to let them know the stakes of their so-far cryptic mission. They deserved as much, and more.

"Okay, enough about guns. Once we leave the USA, we don't carry any. This is an information processing mission, not combat." He waved his spoon at Chelsea. "Let's run through the overseas segment. Start us off, if you don't mind."

Chelsea leaned against the kitchen counter and yawned. "The helicopter's in Naples," she said. "It has range enough to make the first objective. Fuel and clearance for the second is your problem."

"We have the programs written and the hardware available for the main hub," Patricia said next. "We can run everything from the base, if you get it, that is."

Steve swallowed a mouthful of cereal before answering that concern. "Don't worry, I'll get the base. I have contacts there."

"We can't use the satellite system, not even with Jerry McFadden's clearances," Kenny interjected from his place at the kitchen counter. "The bad guys would jam us just like last time, and backtrace our signals to locate and silence us. But my new satcam can get around that. We'll use it in tandem with a standard satcam unit to beam a narrow microwave signal to a retrans station within thirty miles, which can boost the signal and send it to base as an uninterruptible laser pulse. Since we bypass the satellite, the locations of both satcams are secure."

"Not really," Steve corrected. "In order to locate Eller's satcam, he'll have to log to the satellite, making him traceable. And, since the two cameras have to be within the length of the two-foot cables that connect them, the experimental camera becomes traceable by default."

"Well, yeah. But that's an administrative defect, not an engineering one."

"Observation noted, for what good it does us." Steve went back to his cereal.

"Anyway, I'm the retrans station," Chelsea broke in. "I have to keep line-of-sight, more or less, between me, the transmitting cameras, and base. The laser module of Kenny's prototype does most of the work, but I think I have a flight plan that will really grease the job."

"It's my job to run the laser module," Peggy said.

"Are you up to it?" Steve asked. "That thing isn't a stereo shelf system, you know."

"Mr. Beacham's been drilling me pretty much all week. I can handle it." She sounded vaguely insulted.

"And I'm the poor, dirty, black masochist who gets to go in on the ground," Sam said, his voice sounding considerably more prideful than his words. "I have to get Beacham's delicate leviathan of a camera within kissing distance of Eller's machine, and transfer, in real time, the files he carries."

"It was never meant for the field," Kenny complained, as he had for days. "It's just a prototype."

"I realize that," Sam responded. "It's just that it's a thirty-pound prototype."

"Enough," Steve said. "Back on course."

"Okay." Sam took a bite of the chocolate-frosted donut in his hand. "Back on course. I still don't know why we have to log to the satellite from the very beginning, especially since Eller's stuff doesn't air until near the end of the show."

"We need to be assured of a link-up. Without Eller's footage, the show is hollow words."

"Sitting out there with an electronic target on my head is not a sure path to peaceful retirement."

"True, except that the people tracking you down will be ours by then. Now, let's move on, if you don't mind. I'll get us on the military satellite system. They won't expect to find us there, and they couldn't shut it down if they wanted to. Doing so would blind the US strategic air command and leave the country open to attack. Of course, if they found us there, they could follow the down signal to our ground station in Naples. They probably can't do anything about that, either, but, in case they have friends in the Italian government... Carlton."

Westerly nervously straightened his glasses and ran his hands down his shirt. Steve knew he was frightened. He couldn't get used to them speaking so easily of illegal, even treasonous acts, and him a party to their plans. "Multiple ground stations," he said. "Decoys. Countermeasures. We hope to have at least five set up, maybe more."

"And, from Naples?"

"Everything goes over the Net. No satellite. The routing is dynamic, automatic, centering in Los Angeles, then into every online computer in the country. If they cut off the LA link, we route automatically to New York, or Phoenix, or the Merritt ranch in Montana."

"The software isn't tried, Dad," Patricia cautioned. "It could crash on us, and then we're toast. But Mr. Westerly and I have run some models, and it looks pretty good right now."

"That's fine, honey. This whole thing is half-assed rigged, but it's the best we can do with the limited funds and time available." Steve took a thoughtful taste of his cereal.

Chelsea cleared her throat. "Steve, people have been working blind on this thing for a week. Maybe you could explain just how all this Bosnian stuff will help us catch Mercy."

"We aren't after Mercy," Steve said. "We're after the right honorable Mr. Robert Chenault, President of the United States."

He finished his cereal during the shocked hush that followed.

Chapter Thirty-one:

Water's Child

 (Back to Contents)

"Tower, I need an update."

"Chopper's still coming, sir. Arrow 3 has tried several times to warn it off, but it won't budge from its intercept course."

"ETA?"

"Ten minutes, tops. You should get a visual off the starboard bow any minute now."

Harper took a sip from his big, wide-bottomed coffee mug, the one nobody touched but the captain and the stewards assigned to refill it. He felt the nervous attention of his bridge personnel. They disliked the approach of strange aircraft or ships. For all its power, the almost weaponless Evan Bayh made an easy target. She depended on her aircraft for defense. Her single attending missile cruiser was more a paranoid gesture than a practical shield against attack. It wasn't even in position to engage. In any event, both ships were stymied without a hard target. This latest threat bore civilian markings, making it a very amorphous target indeed.

"Okay. Thank-you, tower. Switch all this downstairs to CIC. We'll handle it from there."

"Tower, wilco."

Harper squeezed his way through the crowded bridge toward the hatch, calling to the officer of the deck as he did so. "Mr. Ollis, bring the ship to general quarters. Probably nothing, but let's be safe."

"Aye, sir!"

Harper descended the companionway to the echoing blare of the alert klaxon. The combat information center waited at the next landing. Its dark, red-lit interior with its glowing radar screens and computer terminals presented a striking contrast to the bridge's sunlit airiness. Hewett, the intelligence officer, met him at the hatch with CAG at her side.

"Theories, gentlemen."

"Radicals," the intelligence officer said immediately as they stepped deeper into the shadowed compartment. "Greenpeace, or some such. They never liked this ship's fusion reactors, and they want to make a grandstand."

"We've been hitting the Muslims pretty hard," CAG offered. "Maybe they got some friends to send a message. Pack a chopper with explosives and toss it at the American devil, that sort of thing."

"Recommendations?"

"Splash the bastard," CAG said.

Harper scratched his left eyebrow, a delaying gesture so he could think. "It could be a bunch of wild college students from Florence, out for a thrill."

"We've warned them off repeatedly," Hewett reminded him. "They don't leave us much choice."

Harper looked around the spacious communications center, frustrated that so little knowledge flowed from its high tech innards. "I need information, gentlemen. I'm blind."

A seaman approached Hewett and handed her a slip of paper. She glanced at the message, then pulled the young man aside to confer with him in rapid whispers.

"We've thought about forcing them down," CAG said, "but there's no way to hit that bird without risking catastrophic results. They just didn't build 'em for safety back then."

"It's a helicopter," Harper thought aloud. "Maybe Arrow 3 could pull ahead, screw up the air its rotors have to grab. Maybe that could drop them into the drink for pickup."

"They're flying at 1500 feet at 170 knots, sir. They'd hit the water like a brick dropped from the Empire State Building."

Hewett touched the captain's arm. "Sir, we have a communication from the bogey. It's in the clear, on our frequency."

"How the hell–? What does it say?"

"Nothing, sir, just what sounds like a unit designation: 327 FH Special Medical Technologies Group. There's no such unit that we can determine, sir."

Harper regarded her narrowly. Hewett had uttered a particularly rude curse.

"Sir?"

"It's okay. You're right. There is no such unit. But there used to be."

#

Chelsea set the helicopter down just aft of the carrier's island superstructure. A team of four Marines and one pilot sprang toward its doors as soon as the skids touched metal. Compared to the Marines in battle gear, the pilot seemed almost naked in his flight suit. The jarheads wore full armor, helmets, and carried big guns. Chelsea knew the next dance would hurt.

"Dismount!" a young corporal yelled as he hauled open the pilot's door.

"My engines are still up," Chelsea said, trying to keep her tone neutral.

"Get the fuck on deck! Now!"

She stared at him a moment, then released the controls. He waited for her to unbuckle her harness, then grabbed the front of her flight suit and hauled her from the aircraft. As he dragged her aside, the pilot brought along to secure the ship replaced Chelsea in the cockpit.

A bolt of pain shot from her leg to her jaw as Chelsea landed on her knees against the steel decking. The sensation, once past its white hot overture, thrummed in her head like a tuning fork, the vibrations from the helicopter invading her. Sam and Peggy dropped next to her, grunting, rifle muzzles at their necks. Chelsea bit her lip. She tried hard to honor Steve's admonishment against resistance. Didn't anyone have manners these days?

Someone slapped her between the shoulders. "Get up! Move!"

They herded Chelsea through a hatchway held open at the island's base. She took inventory, glancing around just enough to avoid a rifle butt in the back. Two Marines led, with Peggy and Sam close ahead of Chelsea in a fast-moving procession. Steve hurried after her. She could not locate Patty.

A brace of pulse rifles at her back, Chelsea forced her attention forward, rushing down companionways and through seemingly aimless meanderings within the ship's anthill-like innards. The rapid directional changes and forced pace left her thoroughly lost. The Marines shoved everyone through a narrow doorway into a cubicle no larger than an extremely small bedroom. It contained only a stripped metal bunk built into one wall. The room reminded Chelsea of a jail cell, but without a toilet. Then the door clicked shut, and she heard the expected turn of a lock.

She glanced quickly around the tight quarters. Sam, Peggy, Steve, everyone mussed by their handlers.

Patricia was missing.

"Shit!" Chelsea slapped a tight fist against the puke green metal wall. "Lost one already!"

"She's okay," Steve said. He paced the limits of the room, hands on hips. "They held her at the bird, called for a stretcher. Everything's going according to plan. More or less."

"Well, which is it, boss? More, or less?" Sam knocked gingerly on the slab of the bare bunk.

A scuffling sounded beyond the door. Everyone backed to the far wall. Chelsea already put up her hands.

The door creaked open. Two marines came through its opening, rifles leading.

"Against the bulkhead!" one of the men commanded unnecessarily. "Clear the rack! Hands on the bulkhead! Now!"

Everyone complied, scattering from the bunk.

Two more marines entered carrying a stretcher. They slapped it to the deck, wrestled a bug-eyed Patricia from its bulk, and sat her upright on the bunk. Her braces screeched against the surface of the rack.

The marines gathered their equipment then exited the compartment with the fluidity of an ebbing tide.

The door locked behind them.

Chelsea took her palms from the bulkhead. "Gruff reception," she said to Steve. "Are you sure you know this guy?"

"Harper's doing exactly what I'd do," Steve answered. "We aren't exactly invited guests, now are we?" He nudged past Sam to Patricia, who slumped on the bunk. Her wide eye persisted and she fiddled with her fingernails. "You okay, honey?"

Patricia showed him a thumbs-up, but her jaw quivered.

"What do we do now?" Chelsea asked. The institutional green of the metal walls already oppressed her.

"We wait," Steve answered. He lowered himself to the floor, next to his daughter's dangling, carbon-wrapped feet.

#

They waited just over seven hours. A khaki-dressed man entered the room, attended by a serious-looking Marine. He wore commander's oak leaves on his collar, and an audio pickup in one ear. He looked very earnest, and young.

"Stephen Tallman," he said.

"Right here," Steve answered. He made no move from his spot on the floor.

"The captain wants to see you."

"When do you plan to feed these people?"

"The captain wants to see you."

"What about a bathroom break?"

"The captain wants to see you."

Steve sighed. He climbed creakily to his feet. The man turned away and back to the hall. The guard waited for Steve to follow, then trailed him like an attentive and forceful shepherd.

Steve once more negotiated the three-dimensional maze of the ship belowdecks, this time noticing a steady upward tendency in his rambling course through the complicated passageways. At one point they stepped through a heavy metal hatch onto the great expanse of the hangar deck. Steve was struck by the brooding authority of the crowded aircraft there, and the immensity of the chamber that housed them. Busy crewmen paused to stare as he traversed the hangar's width. They all knew his sins, if not his identity. This gigantic ship was, after all, little more than a small town.

He followed the commander through a hatchway in a wide, protruding column of metal, the root of the island superstructure. Then it was upward again, a hard climb over six long flights of companionways. Steve breathed heavily after the third landing, sweated after the fourth, while the Navy man and the guard seemed unaffected by the climb. Steve thanked God when they reached the sixth level and turned down a narrow passageway past the guarded door marked "Bridge".

"Come in!" someone yelled as the Navy man rapped on a door down the hall. The commander pushed it open and stepped aside for Steve to enter.

Captain Harper stood at the tiny cabin's rear, his arms crossed. He nodded once, and Steve heard the door click shut at his back.

"Tim. Long time, no see."

"Start talking, Tallman. You're in a hell of a fix. Convince me you aren't a felon and a pirate, or I toss you in the brig and ship you off to the FBI."

"Actually," Steve said, a thin smile creasing his face, "I kind of am a pirate."

"This isn't a game, mister."

Steve sobered. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a prism, which he held out to Harper. "But it is a game, Tim, a real nasty one."

"What's this?" Harper took the disk.

"A clearly illegal recording of a phone call. It'll explain why I'm here."

"Why don't you just tell me?"

"Because you can never tell a man the meaning of a thing." That's a job for the spirit, Steve thought.

Harper stared at him. He was unaccustomed to being manipulated.

"This is serious, Tim. I'm not the bad guy here."

"XO!" The door opened. "Take him back to his friends."

#

They hadn't eaten in the twelve hours since arrival, and Steve's patience thinned with each additional minute. It irritated him to dry-swallow the medication from his vial, even though he usually did so. This time, though, he hadn't even the choice of water. When the door to his tiny prison opened, and Harper rushed past his own guard to shove the prism to within an inch of his old acquaintance's nose, patience snapped like a tired rubber band.

"What the hell is this?" the captain asked. "Who made it for you, or did you falsify it yourself?"

"It isn't a false record. We stole it from the headquarters of the Republican National Committee."

"It's bullshit! You expect me to believe this thing? Are you that bitter about what happened to you? Chenault had nothing to do with it. He was just the mayor of New York at the time."

"This isn't about Chenault. It's about EOG, the Equal Opportunity–"

"I know what EOG is!"

"We can't get its proponents, but we can get its weakest necessary link."

"You want to destroy the president of the United States, my commander-in-chief, and you want me to help? I swore an oath to protect the man!"

Steve exploded. Only Chelsea and Patricia among those present had ever heard that voice, the one revealed at the death of tolerance. "You swore to protect the constitution, God dammit, not the president! I should know; I took the same God damned oath!"

They stared each other down, Steve on the floor with his knees up to his chin, Harper on one knee before him. The others of Steve's party watched spellbound by the exchange.

"Your commander-in-chief is a God damned war criminal," Steve said. "Your whole mission here is a horror show of misappropriated power. It is your duty to expose it."

"I don't need a lecture from you." Harper dropped the prism at Steve's feet, then stood. "You of all people should know how unclear duty sometimes is."

He turned to leave.

"One of your men is with us," Steve said.

Harper stopped. "What did you say?"

"Your former air group commander. He's with Eller, in Bosnia. They're working together to expose Schoolhouse."

"Pete Harita? He's alive?"

Steve ignored the question. "You sent Eller to expose Schoolhouse. You can't have it both ways, Tim."

"I didn't want it either way," Harper said. He left the room as quickly as he had entered it.

The room fell silent for all of ten seconds after the door once more closed and locked.

"Are we there yet?" Chelsea asked no one in particular.

And no one answered, either.

#

Dinner arrived in the form of military field rations delivered through a decidedly un-Navy source. He was in his thirties, with tousled, longish hair, dressed in an old Army field jacket, jeans, and t-shirt. He carried the meals in his jacket pockets and cradled Cokes in the crook of one arm.

"Compliments of the executive officer," he said with a British accent. He lowered himself to his knees, placed the Cokes carefully on the floor, and handed out the gray fibercell bags. "Sorry. Chili-Mac mainly, but there are a few chicken and vegetables for the ladies, and I pilfered these John Wayne bars for the youngsters." He held out two foil-wrapped disks, first to Patricia, then to Peggy. "It's chocolates, ladies. Go on, I'm not being fresh."

"You're Charter," Steve said. "Eller's friend."

"Why, yes, I am, though I can't recall being referred to as his friend. Not that I mind. A good man, Eller. Professional. Reckless, but professional."

"I'm Steve Tallman."

"Michael's boss."

"Not anymore. See It Now doesn't exist anymore, in any real sense."

"Yes. I saw a show months ago. Very droll. Isn't it supposed to be a live show?" Charter paused at the ripple of laughter his question stirred.

"No, it isn't live," Sam said between sucks on his fibercell bag. "It's dead as dirt."

"But, not for long," Steve said. "We're exposing Schoolhouse."

"Pardon? What's Schoolhouse?"

Steve paused as he opened his dinner. He gave the BBC man a questioning look. Nobody knew, he thought. Only us. Not even the world press stuck right in the school's playground knew the goings-on inside the building. "Stay a few minutes," he said. "You'll find out."

#

The XO found him standing forward on the flight deck, so forward that a few steps would drop him over the edge and seventy-five feet to the sea. He watched the waters part before the advance of his magnificent vessel, the greatest warship in history. He looked troubled, and involved.

"Sir, I fed the prisoners."

Harper turned half around, then resumed his restless contemplation of the waters ahead. "It's all going to hell," he muttered.

"Sir?"

"It's all going to hell, XO. Decisions used to be plain. Annapolis prepared me for them. Follow orders. Elaborate when necessary. Complete the mission with honor and dispatch." He shook his head. "Now, they leave me only dispatch. Did the call go through?"

"No, sir. The CNO is unavailable for the indefinite future. That's the message, sir."

"I guessed as much." He dropped his eyes to the gray deck. The XO had never seen his boss so moody. "It's going to be a mess, son. If you'd like to take a few days of leave, I'd understand. You have a career ahead of you..."

"I reckon I'll tend to my duties, sir."

Harper breathed a dry laugh. "Spoken like a lifer, XO, but too quickly. Beyond this moment, there be monsters."

"Are you planning to stop Schoolhouse, sir?"

"Yes, I am."

"Then, my duty requires me here."

#

Charter sat with Steve when Harper returned. The captain, who had brought them together through his XO, did not acknowledge the BBC man's presence. He stepped into the room with the grim authority of a man fixed on a dangerous, but necessary course. Steve saw his mood and rose to his feet. The others followed suit.

"How can I help?" Harper asked.

The tension that had lived for fourteen hours in the little steel room did not dissipate. It thickened.

"Well," Chelsea offered, shyly raising her hand. "I, for one, would like to go to the bathroom."

#

For two days, they planned. Steve lived sequestered with Harper and his chief advisors as they worked out first a common purpose, then a mission, and finally a battle plan to accomplish that mission. The natural animosity of their positions made the task doubly difficult. Harper's professional life centered on diverting disquiet from the country he defended and protecting its honor. Steve hoped to rattle that comfortable illusion of righteousness and force his country to look critically at its deepest self. Steve wanted to solve the Schoolhouse/EOG crisis with publicity; Harper preferred to dispatch his enemy within the deniable quiet of a secret operation. They argued, cursed, and compromised, the door of the Evan Bayh's executive conference room opening only for coffee and sandwiches delivered by the captain's personal steward.

The rest of Steve's party endured the wait as best they could. The XO improved their accommodations by splitting them among open bunks in officers' quarters, but they were not allowed complete freedom aboard ship. Stone-faced Marines escorted them everywhere, carefully controlling their wanderings, keeping them especially from the ship's first three levels, which encompassed the flight and hangar decks, and the ordinance and supplies warehouses directly below. But, in keeping Steve's people from sensitive parts of the ship, the Marines also kept them from the sun, and the ocean breeze that attended it. Theirs was an air-conditioned, fluorescent confinement that mitigated the attraction of stores, rec rooms, and weight lifting equipment elsewhere aboard. Mostly, Steve's people kept to themselves.

#

Sam looked up as Peggy entered his quarters. He smiled thinly and pushed himself deeper into a corner of his bunk.

"What's up, rookie? They treating you well?"

"I'm not your rookie anymore," Peggy said, not unkindly. She sat down on the edge of his bunk, leaning forward elbows on knees. "Why are you here, Sam?"

Sam waved a hand casually. "They keep me from going anyplace else."

"No, that's not what I mean. You had a job, in Chicago. You were making solid money. You quit it to come back."

"So did you."

"School? That isn't leaving much. And I wouldn't have, if Steve hadn't goaded me into it."

"Yeah, yeah, but you did. Hell, you took a bigger risk than most of our government's so-called leaders, and all you did was cut class."

"Dearing took a risk. She stood up against EOG."

"Sure, and look what happened to her. She insulted so many closet racists that she dropped ten points in the polls."

Peggy scooted deeper onto the bunk. She brought her feet up under her. "You still haven't told me why you're here."

"You're right, I haven't. I had a job, sure. Following some porcelain doll of a newsreader around to malls and arts events, playing her personal photographer. The same thing I did for years before See It Now. It was that or the others: liquor store robberies, domestic disputes, fires, car crashes, lake effect snow, and lost puppies. I never did anything decent with a camera but See It Now, and we both know who gave me that job. You want to know why I'm here, answer your own question. Why are you here, Peggy Smith?"

The question loomed large in her thoughts. She felt out of place among her partners, an oversight, or a child graciously allowed to witness the affairs of adults. She didn't even have a job in this project, not one that another couldn't easily fill. Even Patricia, two years younger, claimed greater worth within the group. But, though no reason occurred to Peggy why Steve Tallman had asked her along, she knew without doubt her reason for accepting.

"He believes in me," she said.

Sam nodded and settled deeper into his corner. "Goes a long way, doesn't it?"

#

"You have a room to yourself," Patricia commented as she hobbled through the doorway of Chelsea's accommodations down in fighter pilot country. It was a tiny place furnished to bursting with a single bunk and a table built into the wall, the table positioned so that the bunk itself made a logical chair. The wall opposite the bunk held a second door framed by thick pipes and electrical conduit. Patricia hoped that door didn't open into Chelsea's compartment; the room was really too cramped for that.

Chelsea sat up and threw her feet over the side of the bunk to make room for her visitor. In fleece shorts and a t-shirt, she was barely dressed. "Chaplain's quarters," she said. "Apparently, this particular chaplain – they have three – is on leave. He lives in a closet."

"Cool. Beats my digs for sure." Patricia eased down beside her older friend. "I'm rooming with some geeky electronics lady. Very petty. She doesn't talk to me, like I'm some wild animal, or a prisoner."

"You are a prisoner," Chelsea pointed out.

"Yeah, but nobody made it her job to remind me. Did they?"

Chelsea grinned. "I don't know. I stay in, to be safe. Haven't left this cell for more than food and hygiene in, what, two days?" She slapped Patricia's leg braces playfully. "Want more space? This guy has a great perk that makes up for the cramped sleeping accommodations." Chelsea rose. She edged past the table and Patricia, as if sidling to the aisle in a movie theater. Once clear of the bunk, she took a single step across to the second door, and pushed it slightly open. She peeked through, then, satisfied, signaled Patricia to follow her.

They entered easily the largest room they had seen in their limited explorations. It measured about twenty by thirty feet, and was decorated with paper bunting, dark carpet, and a man-sized wooden cross at a cloth-covered table, an altar. A rostrum stood beside the altar, facing twenty or so mismatched folding chairs. The room had an atmosphere of the quaintly homemade.

"Primo!" Patricia said, crossing herself as she hauled herself over the threshold. "It has kitsch."

Chelsea dropped into a nearby chair. "I think they made it themselves. These big ships usually have one or more big, glistening multi-denominational chapels, but I think my chaplain got permission from the captain, then pieced this little place together for his flock of fighter jocks. I've heard them use it, sometimes tromping in like elephants, sometimes just the whisper of a single person praying. A religious bunch, these kids."

Patricia scraped into the chair beside Chelsea. "It has a warm feeling, like it's made of hope." She sat quietly a moment, contemplating the wooden cross. The worries on her mind drew her to the beginning of Jesus' ministry, and his trial in the desert. He had been tested, to see if he was worthy. She was tested, too, she, her father, and everyone on his side. But, why? What did she aspire to that required so much sacrifice? She looked down at her braces and rubbed their black filigree with her damaged hand. Maybe she asked the wrong question. Maybe there wasn't a why to things. Maybe the struggle was all there was. Maybe life, progress, mortality, maybe it was all about change.

"Chelsea, does Dad seem ... different to you?"

"You mean, besides his zero sunblock tan, his new 'do, and that odd bag he hangs from his neck? Yes."

"It gives me the chills sometimes. He seems to look right through me, like I wasn't me so much as some widget in a toolbox."

"I've got news for you, Patty, he's done that for years, he just does it all the time, now. Sometimes he doesn't see your body, but he does see you. God knows what you look like in his eyes, though."

"He's so cold..."

Chelsea smiled. "Well, I don't know about that..."

"He seems to calculate all the time, move us around like–" She turned in her chair and leaned forward to pin Chelsea with her good left eye. "What did you just say?"

Chelsea put a hand over her mouth to hide her widening smile.

"You spoke to him, didn't you? You finally got around to telling him?"

"Actually, he told me."

Patricia's mouth dropped open. "Go on, girl! He told you? Told you what? Come on, what did he say?"

Chelsea stood. She moved into the narrow aisle between columns of chairs. She hugged herself, grinning enough to light the room. "We danced. To Stand By Me." Her arms spread like wings, her eyes closed, and she glided to the gentle lead of an imaginary partner. "He isn't a very good dancer," she said.

"He's the same man he ever was," Chelsea said after a while. "But, he's finally found himself. He knows who he is and why he's here."

"Are you gonna marry him?"

Chelsea faltered, then took up the step again. "Let's not speculate, Patty. I don't have much luck with men."

"But you love each other," Patricia insisted. "You always have. I knew it even as a kid." And she wanted so badly for something, for someone, to turn out right.

Chelsea stopped. Some of the light dimmed from her eyes.

"Love isn't always enough," she said, and sat down once more by Patricia. "He loved Anna, didn't he? Probably still does, and that didn't work out."

"He didn't love her. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure that out."

"Just don't push things, okay? Let things drop where they may."

A metallic squeak drew their attention to the chapel's passageway door. A pilot stood there in full flight gear, right down to the survival pack and the shoulder holstered revolver. He looked uncertainly from one woman's face to the other, obviously surprised that the room was occupied.

"It's all right," Chelsea said. "We aren't private."

"'Scuse me," the aviator said, and marched heavily into the room and up the outside aisle to the altar. He dropped to both knees and lowered his flight helmet onto the carpeted floor. He sighed. Then, after a moment's attempt to focus, he began to pray.

He did not notice the two women retreat, shutting the door to Chelsea's room behind them.

Chapter Thirty-two:

Monster Killer

 (Back to Contents)

"We've secured vital intelligence through the passengers on that unauthorized flight earlier this week. Apparently, our former CAG, Commander Pete Harita, is alive and well and skulking about in the hinterlands of Bosnia." Harper waited for the expected eruption of hoots and cheers to die down. The combined assembly of bomber and fighter pilots, vertol and CIC crews, and Marine liaisons milled on the hangar deck just off elevator 3 in a frenzy of back-slapping excitement. All 120 of them. A few even hugged each other.

After a respectable interval, Harper raised his hand for order. "That same source has delivered to us classified information that suggests the Serbian government is responsible for the SAM attacks on our aircraft." The jubilance of moments earlier dropped to a more sober tone. "The two reports are connected. Commander Harita has linked up with a television news reporter in the company of a group of friendly Muslim rebels. He has proof of the alleged Serbian conspiracy to shoot down our pilots and vertol crews. That, as they say, is where you come in."

#

"The captain has agreed to all phases of our plan," Steve said to the serious faces of his team. They sat around the table of the informal officers' wardroom, the three doors to halls and kitchen closed and locked. The room was just big enough for the table, the chairs around it, and a little travel space for serving stewards, but there were no stewards then. The group of seven, including a bemused Billy Charter, only half filled the available seats. They clustered at one end of the table, leaning forward to hear Steve's words, anxious about the outcome of his marathon session with Harper. Their concern and seriousness touched him, and the heightened intimacy of the small room and the smaller crowd only amplified the atmosphere of conspiracy that underscored their meeting.

"He only asks that we give no details of our plans to the crew," Steve continued. "He plans to give them his own spin on things."

#

"Your mission is to extract Commander Harita and his journalist contact from the hostilities zone, allowing them to deliver their information to the planning team aboard this ship. You will also initiate and maintain surveillance of likely sources of Serbian illegal activity, such surveillance not restricted to possible SAM launch sites, and you will attack and destroy any point source of hostile activity as opportunity allows."

#

"I've talked to Westerly in Naples, to Jerry in LA, to Merritt in Montana, and to the dai low in New York. They're ready with our impromptu hubs. Sam, your team will go in aboard the carrier's rescue vertol. You'll have Mr. Charter with you to smooth things over with Eller. After all, you and Eller have never actually met. Charter will ensure the meeting comes off. Your task is to get Eller's satcam linked to yours and get his data to Chelsea. Chelsea, you and Peggy are cleared to install Kenny's avionics in the chopper. Captain Harper's air group commander will give you your orbit restrictions. They'll keep you close to, but out of, the action. Patricia, you've been assigned a watchdog, a communications specialist in CIC, to help you set up the gear and marry it to the ship's communications array. You're our story controller; it all goes out through you. I'll be with the captain."

#

"I stress that this mission is strictly compartmentalized. No one beyond the Evan Bayh's decks, or beyond the designated units and command-and-control elements aboard the Marine helicopter assault ship Charles Robb is authorized knowledge of this operation. The importance of this mission is beyond my ability to communicate. The course of the peacekeeping mandate rests upon your able shoulders, the honor of your ship requires your fighting spirit, and the eternal souls of our fallen comrades cry out for your justice. The time has come to prosecute this operation with honor and dispatch, without half-measures."

#

"This is it, people, our last chance. How we perform from here on out will determine if we're remembered as heroes or forgotten in various prisons. There's more at stake here than in any story we've ever done or ever known. Our country lives or dies by our actions. That is not an exaggeration."

#

"I know you will serve. I know you will pile on in the greatest tradition of the United States Navy and the Marine Corps. And, come what may, thanks to this crew and these pilots, no one on this mean, predatory planet of ours will soon forget our ship's honorable name." Harper paused for effect, taking in the stonily serious faces of his men. "Atten-hut!" he called in that voice separate from normal speech, that tone like a cattle prod demanding obedience. All present snapped to alert, stiff as boards. Following suit, the captain offered them an honor normally directed to him. He saluted his men. "Dismissed! And good hunting!"

The deck erupted with the hungry roars of predators.

#

Steve had practiced no flourishing conclusion. These were not soldiers steeped in long esprit, used to the theater of inspiration. These were just people, and a hodgepodge at that. He looked to Sam Clemmons, his friend of three years, and to Chelsea, his oldest friend and new-found lover. His eyes found a bright and fascinated stranger, a twenty-year-old girl whose destiny he felt but could not define. Beside her sat the BBC man, trusted because Eller trusted him. Finally, his gaze came to rest on his own beloved daughter, and he felt a swelling pride and gratitude that he lived among such people. But they needed some final thought, some closure to this long season of plans, conspiracy, action and inaction. They might not all come back at the end. They needed something to balance them over the hours ahead.

"We've risked much," he said, "and the results of our efforts are near at hand. I wish I could tell you it would all work out, that we'd be successful, and wind up heroes. But, I can't. But, I can say one thing with confidence: I'm proud to know all of you, and will be proud to work and live with you again," and he smiled at the thought, "in whatever venue fate allows."

The time for planning was done. Only the act remained.

#

"Oracle away!" the tower boss reported.

Harper watched the light jet's running lights streak down the launch runway and dip toward the sea. The huge piggy-back frisbee that was its electronics dish gave the aircraft a heavy, ungainly appearance in the slight dawn light, as if it couldn't possibly reach the sky. But the electronic warfare and command plane snatched at the atmosphere and began the long climb to its predetermined orbit. There it would become Harper's surrogate eyes on the battlefield. Weaponless and lightly constructed, the Oracle was an easy and desirable target, but its radars and eavesdropping equipment had a very long reach. It would not actually enter the hostile zone.

"The curtain's up," Harper said to Steve, who stood beside him on the red-lit bridge. "Mr. Ollis, let loose that rescue vertol."

"Aye, sir." The officer of the deck spoke appropriate orders to the tower. After a moment, loudspeakers blared at Steve's ears.

"ATTENTION ON DECK! VERTOL O3, ROTATING!"

Steve heard the familiar building whine of vertol fanjets, then saw the black silhouette of the rescue ship rise from its mark forward on deck and rush out over the water, taking Sam Clemmons and the Charter fellow with it.

"I'll need a vector on your man's camera in the next twenty minutes," Harper said as he climbed into his high-mounted captain's chair. "Steve?"

"Hmm? Oh, sorry. We'll have him signal in fifteen. That'll give your NSA guys plenty of time to find him and report to you."

"Is this going to work, Steve? If it doesn't, we're all off to jail."

"It'll work. I know it will."

"So, you have it on good authority. You been speaking to God, or what?"

Steve fingered the leather pouch under his shirt. "I'll go check Patricia and her commo link. Be back in a minute."

"No rush. For the next twenty minutes or so, all we do is wait."

Steve wormed his way from the bridge and down the companionway to CIC, his Marine shadow in tow. He and his people had enjoyed near-unlimited freedom since the captain's embrace of their plan. Their guards had become unarmed willing escorts with disconcerting suddenness, and no doors barred them except those also restricting the crew.

CIC was lit only in red and the sick glow of tactical screens. A flatscreen display against the far wall showed an overview of the Evan Bayh's piece of the world, with indicators of the real-time positions of all aircraft and ships in the region, weather formations, and the locations of troops on the ground. The Oracle's icon arced ever upward toward its assigned orbit, and Sam's vertol crawled toward the Bosnian coast.

In one corner, Steve found his daughter. She sat casually in a padded desk chair, close to the young and entirely too handsome Hispanic kid who was her communications and electronics liaison. They had partially disassembled the kid's console, snaking cabling and wire from several open access panels, down around his shoes and Patricia's sneakered feet, and into various tablets, phones, and other devices littering the floor. It was a necessary mess, the result of tying a jury-rigged Net gateway into the carrier's musclebound communications array.

"Dad! Have you met Petty Officer Vasquez? He's a smart one. He recognized my software!"

Steve gave the commo man the eye. "Is that so? And, how does a Navy electronics worker come in contact with contraband warehead gear?"

"Umm, we have to know about them, sir. To protect our systems." He sounded unsure of his credibility, or maybe Steve's stare unnerved him.

"You're scaring the natives, Dad," Patricia chided.

"Are you ready down here?" Steve asked. "The vertol's on its way. Chelsea launches any minute."

"Alfred," Patricia said to a mishmash of circuits at her feet, "give me a status on Eller."

"Queued and ready. The interface with Military Protocol 3877U15 is working at optimum efficiency!" It bothered Steve to hear that cheerful voice removed from its cute puppy graphic. Most of Alfred remained at home. Steve still felt an unreasonable twinge of guilt about that.

"We're cool," Patricia said with theatrical bravado. "You just call when you want us to call. Right, Eddie?"

Seaman Vasquez grinned, glancing from father to daughter.

Steve nodded, and turned toward the exit. "I'll be back," he said.

Outside, he stood by his guard, unsure of his bearings. "Which way to the hangar?" he asked. "I need to find the vertol pilots' ready room."

"This way, sir," the Marine said, and led the way down the companionway.

#

Steve found her near the forward starboard elevator, which dropped noisily toward the hangar floor. Chelsea looked magnificent in her gray See It Now flight suit augmented with the survival gear, life vest, and harnesses of a carrier vertol pilot. She seemed sharper, more alive and vital, than the world around her. Was it just him? Was he a besotted teenager, or did his spiritual benefactors send him a message? He didn't really want to know; he preferred the dazzle of love.

She stood close to Peggy, adjusting the younger woman's harnesses to fit. "You have to keep these tight," she said, jerking the straps that cinched Peggy's gear. "Let them get out of control, and they'll snag on a cable, get caught in a door, and who knows what all." Chelsea watched Steve approach out of the corner of her eye. "See these d-rings here, here, and here? You hook yourself to the on-board life lines with those, or you unreel this umbilical with the snap link on it and hook on to the restraining rings in the hull and overhead."

"Is all this really necessary?" Peggy asked.

"Only if you don't want to fall out of the aer-e-o-plane. Get along, now. I think I have company."

As Peggy trotted toward the helicopter being towed onto the elevator, Chelsea stooped to grab her helmet from the hangar floor, then stood with it secured under one arm. She reminded Steve of that heroic woman of fifteen years ago, discovered amid the larger than life terror of war. But the hard exoskeleton of severity that had protected her then had long since melted away. She no longer expected the worst from each moment in life; she had begun to learn optimism, and carried it with her as a screaming weakness. The edge of Steve's chief weapon needed whetting, a whispering voice told him. He should correct that defect.

But Steve ignored the voice. He loved Chelsea just as she was.

"You look a little distracted," she said over the hangar noise.

"Just watching you, that's all."

"I'm glad I'm distracting. Did you come to see me off?"

"I wish I were going with you."

Their words sounded forced. They had spent so little time together since the change in their relationship. Each groped with how to proceed.

"Aww, you don't mean that. It'll be boring, turning figure eights for over an hour. Just another day at the office. Do I get a kiss good-bye?"

He kissed her lightly on the forehead.

"Oh. That'll do, I guess."

Such a critic, Steve thought. He took her by the shoulders, pulled her as close as possible considering the bulky flight gear strapped to her front, and kissed her fully on the lips. They drew it out, knowing eyes watched them and multiplied every second.

"Chelsea!" Peggy yelled from the elevator, where the helicopter stood loaded. "Time!"

They separated, and Chelsea looked into his eyes. No more jokes. "I guess I have to go."

No. Stay here with me. Let somebody else take your place. Steve's entire being filled with prescient dread. "Not yet," he said, forcing back fear. He drew the pouch from beneath his shirt, pushed a thumb and index finger into its mouth, and extracted a pinch of yellow powder. Without saying a word, he pressed it against her forehead, lips, and temples.

"Dirt? Gee, thanks."

"Not dirt. I hope it brings you back."

"I prefer leaving that to skill."

"Who's the stiff with Peggy?"

"What?" She glanced toward the elevator, where Peggy watched from beside a tall aviator in vertol gear. He carried a flight helmet in one hand and a compact pulse rifle in the other. He looked as impatient as Peggy. "Oh, he's my watchdog copilot. I didn't get much choice in the matter. Why? Jealous?"

"Your jokes are lousy."

"Come on, Chelsea!" Peggy called. "We'll be late!"

Chelsea kissed Steve quickly on the cheek, then stepped away toward the elevator. Steve heard its growl as it started very slowly on its newest trip to the flight deck twenty-five feet above. In a sudden reassertion of fear, Steve stepped after her, stopping short of the rising metal slab. "I need to know!" he yelled above the rising groan of the elevator motors. "It'll work out, won't it?"

"No!" Chelsea answered as she jumped onto the ascending floor. She turned toward him, looking beautiful even in the bulky pilot's gear, concern clear on her face. "No!" she said again. "But, I'm willing to try!"

#

Returning to the bridge, Steve passed the vertol pilots' ready room. Its door hung open, and a lonely television blared against the constant industrial noise of the hangar. A snippet of programming caught Steve's attention. He paused, then slowly entered, drawn to the flickering set.

"...apparently one gamble too many for a high-rolling campaign," the commentator said with sincere gravity. "Dearing has always sought to be as inclusive as possible, a laudable goal, but one that skirts the sharp reality of a largely conservative electorate. With her liberal stand against EOG, topped off by her choice of Congressman Da'Shawn Foster as her running mate, her liberal stripes have become too much to bear for the white voting majority of this country. She is down fifteen points in the polls with less than a month before the election, and she is likely to stay that way–"

Steve snapped off the television.

I did this to her, he thought.

"It's a shame," his guard said.

"Yes, it is, isn't it."

"Yes, sir. If they'd gotten rid of her earlier, they might have spent more time on Serbia, and less on race relations."

#

"Roger, Nemesis," the tower affirmed, "you are cleared for departure."

Steve watched the helicopter's red, white, and green running lights leave the deck and drift to one side of the ship. The aircraft hovered there a moment, allowing the Evan Bayh to steam past, then Chelsea banked its rotors and threw it toward shore over a hundred miles away. The running lights went out.

"Contact the Charles Robb and have them launch their first sortie," Harper directed.

"Aye, sir."

"CIC reports Rescue 03 has crossed the first checkpoint," the XO said, one hand touching his headset.

"That's your game," Harper told Steve, and sat back in his captain's chair to watch his old friend work.

Steve clicked open his cell phone. He hit a speed dial button. "Patricia? Send the first signal."

#

"Alfred," Patricia said as she clicked off her cell phone, "execute batch file Eller 01."

"Calling now," Alfred responded cheerily.

#

The telephone rang. Jerry McFadden snatched the handset to his ear and waited, reflexively looking at the clock on the control room wall. It was 8:07 pm.

"Collect call to Jerry McFadden from Alfred in Italy, continent of Europe. Will you accept the charges?"

"No, thanks, operator. Have a good night." He broke the connection and looked around at his staff. Montoya and Little sat at their familiar consoles. The rest of the studio was empty. "Last chance, guys. If you want to keep your jobs, walk out now."

Montoya laid a hand on his station's mouse. One click, and the mission assigned them was done. "I reckon we owe the ex-boss this favor," he said. "He got us started, you know."

"Besides," Little said airily, "this gig isn't gonna last much longer, not with the new format they shoved down our throats. Ratings are down. Let's do it, man."

Jerry nodded, and looked to Montoya.

Montoya clicked his mouse, and the See It Now satellite uplink engaged.

#

"That's the message," Mike said, trying to control his excitement. He acknowledged the call light and hit his satcam's SEND button, locking it down to keep the channel open.

"Well," Vidovic said, leaning against a tree, "this is when you leave us, if all goes well. I hope you've had a rewarding visit."

"I'll be back." Mike hitched his mission bag onto his shoulder. "Exposing Schoolhouse is only part of the story. I want to record how it changes the face of your war."

"Any change would be welcome," the Muslim rebel said.

Mike had reached for the satcam, preparing to deliver it to a cleared hilltop nearby, where the vertols could more easily locate it. He stopped, looking hard at the shadow of his tormenter-turned-friend. "You could come with me," he said.

Vidovic laughed. "Why would I do that? I have so much fun right here."

Mike looked around at the small woodland encampment with its shadowy huddles of motley warriors, mostly children. His lips tightened at the pathos of what he saw, that those insignificant souls opposed an industrialized society that only wanted their erasure. What forces caused them to endure such hardships with almost no chance of a just reward? Some of them weren't even Bosnian, yet still they suffered and died for this harsh, mountainous land and its long-oppressed people.

"I can't leave," Vidovic said. "Everything I am is here. The college professor I once was is dead, long-since gone to dust. Now, I'm only Muslim." He looked at Eller, and smiled sheepishly. "It's a hometown thing, I guess. To leave would be like abandoning my soul. Everything I know is a dying flame, soon to be extinguished. But maybe, if I stay, I might yet breathe on the embers, and bring that flame to life again." He shrugged. "It's a dream. It keeps me warm at night."

Eller stood, camera in hand. "Okay, dream then. You can tell me all about it when I come back."

After a moment's hesitation, the two shook hands. Then Mike took his satcam and tromped toward the clearing. A gauntlet of slippery pine needles, thickets, and roughly scarred terrain impeded his progress, the obstacles made worse by a darkness only slightly abated by the first hints of dawn.

He met Harita along the way. The Navy man sat against a tree just short of the clearing, his mood further blackening the shadows about him. Harita had always been disconcertingly serious; now he was almost depressing.

"We have the signal, Pete. I'm sending the response as I speak."

Harita looked up, his eyes hooded with skepticism. Whatever happened to that customarily blank Asian expression? Had months on the run just beaten it off of him? "This plan won't work. Getting the information out will never be enough, with or without the captain's help."

"It'll work, Pete. You don't know Steve Tallman."

"I doubt you understand the forces you challenge. These people ordered a large-scale atrocity, knowingly or not. They won't let that information out into the open."

"The idea is to refuse them the choice. Come on. Walk with me while I position the camera."

#

"CIC has a target fix," the XO announced.

"Is the Charles Robb's force on station?"

"Holding at their assembly point, with two more hours of fuel."

"Move them up. Have CIC transmit the target fix to Rescue 03, and send them in. Also, tell them I'm coming down."

"Aye, sir."

"And issue warning orders to those planes on the catapults. They may be going in soon. Come on, Tallman. Let's go where the action is."

The two men pushed through the cramped space of the bridge. Steve had his cell phone out before they reached the hatch.

#

"It's Mr. Tallman!" Peggy yelled, her mouth next to Chelsea's helmeted ear. "He wants us to test the system!" She held out the cell phone for emphasis.

"Knock yourself out!" Chelsea shouted back. "We'll be on station in five minutes!"

Peggy nodded and turned back to her domain, the helicopter's cargo area. She steadied her feet and clipped the cell phone once more to her harness. Then she replaced her helmet, and sighed with relief as the aircraft noise retreated to a bearable level.

"You look bored," Chelsea said over the intercom to her copilot, who sat staring straight ahead, his arms tightly crossed.

"Not much to do," he answered. "I guess the Old Man wanted a Navy presence at all points of the mission, even on this hunk of junk."

"Is your presence more suited for one of your Marine Dobermans?" She nodded toward the pulse rifle snapped into the rack above his head.

He looked up, then shook his head. "That's my idea. I like to be prepared, in case we get our feet dry."

"We'll be a long way from land, lieutenant."

"Yeah. I've heard that before."

Peggy yanked her umbilical and snapped it onto an o-ring in the overhead. Then she staggered by small, cautious steps to the cargo door, and thrust her weight against it. The door rolled toward the ship's rear and locked in its full-open position. Wind flooded the helicopter interior. Peggy clamped one of her two tiny satellite dishes to the door opening as Chelsea had shown her, then tightened it down against the incessant vibrations of the aircraft. Then she moved to the other side of the ship.

#

"Telemetry from Peggy looks good," Patricia reported as her father came near. "If Mr. Clemmons's unit works, we have a complete system."

"Good girl," Steve said. "How's the mood down here?"

"Just fine, right now. These people are very cool, like they're watching it all on TV."

"Yeah, I noticed," Steve muttered, feeling a squeeze on his heart. When had she become so cool? She had changed since February, since the vertol crash. Impulsively, he bent down and kissed her gently on the head.

Patricia looked up at him. "Dad?"

"Nothing," he told her. "Just a thought. Notify Westerly."

"Alfred," Patricia said, "execute batch file Eller 02."

#

Carlton flinched at the long-awaited chime from his tablet. The others had left him five days earlier. He lived alone in the apartment in Naples, and had begun to wonder if something might be wrong. He examined the message on his screen, and grunted. The plan was on, and his part in it called to him. He hunched over his keyboard and tapped out the commands that converted his machine to a Net hub, it and the other carefully placed tablets in carefully chosen apartments. Waiting had been necessary. It would not have done to create the hubs in advance, only to find them co-opted by commercial enterprises once they were needed! He completed his entries, waited a few moments for the hard drive to settle, then clicked the macro engage button. All his graphics disappeared, replaced by random-looking, ever-changing rows of numbers and punctuation marks.

Done. Such a simple act, to warrant the full punishment of law, and darker punishments beyond it. Carlton rose from his chair. He went to the worn wardrobe across the room, took out his suitcase, and left the room. He had made plans. Tallman's people had helped. If all went well and he knew it would, he would fade into another identity, vanishing forever from a hostile world.

That had been his price of Tallman, and his reward.

Chapter Thirty-three:

Changing Woman

 (Back to Contents)

They waited at the clearing's edge. The sky glowed a warm violet, and lightened each moment toward blue. Mike's excitement had given way to an unexpected sadness since his return to the tree line only to find the Muslims gone. He wondered if he would ever see Vidovic again. The odds were slight in this chaos-driven land.

"Vertol," Harita whispered, nodding toward the west.

A black dot approached, weaving between the trees.

#

"Dismount!" the crew chief yelled as he hauled open the cargo bay door. The sailors in combat gear went first into the swirling maelstrom of dirt, pebbles and grass. Sam and Charter followed. As soon as their feet struck ground, the vertol jerked into the sky and fled toward the nearby trees.

"There they are!" Charter said, pointing to men in the tree line. Sam couldn't say how he recognized them after so many months of separation and in the poor light, but he seemed sure of himself. The troops set a jogging pace toward the men, one leading, the others to either side, with Charter and Sam in the middle. They practically stumbled over Eller's satcam. Sam snatched it up from the middle of the clearing, and jogged on.

"Commander Harita!" one of the soldiers called quietly. Then he unslung a spare pulse-powered submachine gun from his shoulder, and handed it over.

"Thanks," Harita said, checking the weapon's load. "Where's the vertol?"

"They have orders to orbit for an hour, sir. These gentlemen have an on-site mission."

"Well, I guess we'd better organize what little security we can. If you could find us, so can everyone else."

"Hey, Billy, you old fart!" Eller exclaimed as he hugged his friend. "What are you doing here? I thought you'd be home with the wife and kids by now!"

"I might have been, but your Mr. Tallman made me an offer I couldn't refuse."

"You work for See It Now? Great! But, you'll have to do stories from now on, none of that picture taking bullshit."

"There isn't any See It Now," Sam interjected. "The show's been all but dead since February." He held the big experimental satcam slung from a shoulder strap. He turned and paced at the woods' edge, searching for the helicopter's signal.

"And who the hell are you?" Eller asked.

"I'm your contact. You have prisms saved up about the military involvement here in Bosnia. Get them ready. We go live in one minute."

"But, you said the show–"

"No time for that. I have the retrans lock. Get that satcam over here."

Sam knelt in the grass about twenty feet beyond the trees. He felt naked in the open, but couldn't do any better. He placed the big satcam gingerly on the ground, making sure he kept Chelsea's signal, and extracted the necessary cables from his mission bag. Mike brought the smaller camera over and plopped it onto the ground next to its overgrown cousin. Sam slaved the machines together.

"You're Clemmons, aren't you?"

"Yeah. Load your first prism." Sam removed the tablet from his mission bag and plugged it into his confusion of snaking cables.

"Why are you here? You aren't even a war correspondent."

"Doesn't anybody talk to you when they have you on the phone?"

"Beyond cryptic orders? Be here, do this? Not much."

Sam huffed. "Boy, do you have some catching up to do."

He touched Eller's READY button, and crossed his fingers. Then he touched the transmittal icon on the tablet.

#

"We're getting a signal!" Peggy said over the intercom.

"Send it!" Chelsea ordered.

#

"That signal you wanted is coming through," Vasquez said to Patricia. "I don't know if you want it. It's all snow."

"Send it over. It's just what I want."

He slid the incoming data to a specially set up tablet, one with the memory to queue large video files. On a second tablet, Patricia opened her local area network connection, then the import-and-exchange utility.

"Alfred, execute batch file Eller 03."

"Importing data," Alfred reported, as if he loved nothing else. "Sending mail now."

#

To Alfred, it was just electronic mail. As far as he knew, it sailed over ordinary fiber optic phone cable, though in fact his release shot through the Evan Bayh's communications matrix and out to space through the ship's thirty-two inch secondary uplink dish. The digital signal struck the appropriate orbiting military satellite, was briefly chewed, swallowed, then regurgitated to the electronically tagged address in Naples, Italy. The receiver tablet, sitting on a plain table in an empty apartment, its long tail of RF cabling reaching to a tiny dish on a windowsill, did not even beep as it accepted the massive load of data. The monitor filled more fully with numbers, then did what every good net hub does. It sent traffic.

Patricia had expected to invade every on-line computer and TV in America, but it didn't turn out that way. The World Wide Net was more haphazardly intermingled than she had anticipated. Consequently, eight seconds after Sam pressed the transmit icon on his computer, three-and-a-half billion households all over the planet lost control of their monitor screens. Though she had no way of knowing, Patricia played to a very large audience, indeed. Her clever warehead's hat trick became the largest denial of service event in history.

#

"Alfred, multi-task. Load and run document Introduction to Schoolhouse over the active link."

"Opening document now."

"Doesn't that voice send you loopy?" Vasquez asked.

"I think he's cute." Patricia smiled.

#

"My name is Stephen Tallman," the talking head said from billions of monitors. "There's nothing wrong with your set. I've just borrowed it for a few minutes. I'm sorry if this causes you inconvenience, but much is at stake, maybe our whole way of life, and the authorities about which I need to tell you would never allow this broadcast through legitimate channels.

"Months ago, I tried to warn you about a threat to our national security, the congressional bill facetiously named the Equal Opportunity in Government Act. Forces supportive of EOG jammed our television transmissions and put us off the air before we could tell you anything of substance. Then my organization was systematically, and quickly, destroyed. That's why I've taken the present route to speak to you, to ensure that doesn't happen again.

"The story I have to tell, with the help of friends and professionals at great risk to their careers and lives, is one more terrifying than any you've seen in movies or serialized TV, and it's all true, every word. We're exposing a conspiracy of hate and fear that spans American society from your disturbed next door neighbor to those who control the center of national power. But, this isn't just a story, not just something at which to click your tongue while decrying the loss of morals in America. This story, everyone, is a call to action."

#

"Senator!" Mackie's secretary shouted as she burst into his office. "You have to see this, sir. Turn on your TV."

Mackie put down the papers he had been studying, the papers he planned to expose if Congress reconvened with a Republican president. He did not question her; when Donna got excited, and it was usually for good reason. "Which channel?" he asked.

"Any channel, sir."

#

"Don't get your hopes up," Anna said to the crowd huddled before the TV. "So far, it's only words."

"Sure," Ray responded, "but very loud words. This is our chance to recover lost ground. We can work with this."

She wanted to contradict him, to say they were already finished, that Chenault and his people would never bow to this new attempt to derail his re-election. She wanted to say that words were just words, easily turned in on themselves. Unless Steve had something meatier to offer, his clearly illegal invasion of the airwaves would amount to nothing at all. But Ray knew all that. So did the others. Who was she to destroy their resuscitating hopes?

She sat back in the easy chair, her people pressing around her. Some of them watched the TV, some watched on their tablets, and some watched on their phones. Anna sat with her eyes on the large screen, her arms crossed over her chest. She hugged herself, and hoped, not daring to voice her thoughts.

#

The caption read: Recorded July 23, 2054, Andrew Jackson Southerman, Chairman, Republican National Committee.

"It isn't going anywhere," the president said, his grainy image looking surprisingly bland. "We've had troops there for over a year, and there's no end in sight to hostilities. If we don't get those soldiers back home by December, the opposition will make an issue of it."

"You went into this against my directions. Why are you coming to me?"

"I had to do something, dammit! The Europeans were needling me to no end."

"So, what do you suggest? It's your ball."

"I think we have to come out on one side or the other, and roll up the opposition. The only way to end this grudge match is by eliminating one side."

"You do that, and you'll really cause a howl, maybe even get yourself impeached. You'll have to do something quieter."

"I don't know what else. I can't just pull out. They'll say we cut and ran."

"How about a simple separation of forces? Tell both sides to return to their bases. Anybody caught out would be fair targets."

The president seemed to consider that idea, then grimaced. "That wouldn't work. The ragheads don't have bases."

"Precisely."

#

"We have to get them off!" Southerman yelled. His agitation kept him from settling his image on the phone screen. "We have to get them off!" he repeated. "Can't you jam them off the air like last time?"

"They can't be jammed because they aren't on the air," Mercy said. He rubbed his temples to sooth a rising headache. "Tallman learns well. The whole show's on the net." They'll find him, he thought. The old Milnet controls at the heart of the Net scrambled after him, but it was such a colossal network now. It would take time to isolate Tallman's hubs. "How could you launch such a ridiculous plot?" he asked Southerman. "How could you imagine you wouldn't get caught?" He spoke to the man on the phone, but his eyes never left the TV set in his office.

"Will you forget about that? We controlled the military. We controlled the press. We controlled Serbia's borders–"

"Apparently, you didn't control them quite as much as you thought."

"Jon, you think we could be a little more constructive here? Aww, look what he's doing now!"

#

The caption read: Recorded January 12, 2055.

The president jutted his jaw as he glared into the monitor. "My first inclination is to bomb the bastards," he said.

"That isn't the best solution, John."

"No, but I'd feel better. They must be laughing their asses off, making us do their fighting for them, cleaning up their trash. By God, Americans are getting killed over there! What am I supposed to tell the people?"

"I wouldn't recommend telling them anything. It's an election year, you know. Mackie's running. He'll eat you like a steak sandwich in Philly."

"Well, I can't just allow the Serbs to shoot at our men, then blame it on the Muslims. The NSA tells me we haven't had a confirmable Muslim attack against our people in over two months! All these ambushes lately are by Serbs. I have to do something."

Southerman did not react from his off-screen abode.

"Don't I?"

"Maybe not, when you think about it."

The president waited, shifting his position when no elaboration immediately came forth. "I'm slow today, AJ. Would you like to explain?"

"Well, the way I see it, the military doesn't know yet. Don't let them know. Let them go on about their business for another couple of months. With this Schoolhouse mission in force, they'll clean up the problem in Serbia by then, and make the whole thing a non-issue."

The president looked skeptical.

"You wanted to eliminate one side of the war," Southerman went on. "You picked the Muslims. What difference does it make if you do it up front, or in response to Serbian fraud? The result's the same."

"So, you're saying I should let them continue to shoot our troops, to use it as an excuse to go after the Muslims?"

"No, not shoot our troops. Shoot at our troops. In the meantime, this gives you an understandable reason to free up the rules of engagement. You'll look presidential, and the military will thank you for it. It's an 'everybody wins' situation."

"Everybody but the Muslims."

"Oh. Well, yeah. But, that's not an issue. They've already lost."

#

Mackie had heard and seen enough. "Donna, would you please call the office of the Senate majority leader?"

"Well, yes, sir, but why? You've been avoiding him for weeks."

"And get Miriam Jellison, too. We have to recall Congress. Both houses."

"Sir, most of the House and a good portion of the Senate–"

"I know. They've gone home. But, they'll come back. They certainly will for this."

#

Mercy hung up on an increasingly irrational Southerman. The phones in the outer office rang like an anxious choir, and his own flashed an incessant call waiting icon against its screen. He did not answer any of them. He got up from his desk, clicked off the television, and gathered his coat and car keys. It was over, he thought. Chenault had destroyed himself, and every other Republican with him. Southerman would try to salvage matters. He would try the time honored first resort of politics: deny, deny, deny. But, how could Chenault deny his own face and his own words? A clever computer simulation? Some might believe, but most would revile him for a war criminal and a liar. Within hours, the Democrats – and a lot of Republicans, too! – would call for impeachment, and prosecutors, and God only knew what else. Southerman would have to jettison his now-cancerous candidate and see how far he could get on the basically honest, but wholly unknown vice-president. Dearing was pretty far down in the polls. Could the party's second stringer beat her with less than a month to build his presence? Doubtful. In fact, Mercy doubted any party member would care one way or the other. At the moment, they fought in terror for their own doomed jobs, and their party leader fought just to stay out of jail.

Mercy looked grim but undefeated as he left the headquarters of his Americans for Civil Equality. He knew what Chenault's destruction meant. If Chenault fell, then Dearing rose to his place. With Dearing in the White House, EOG was carrion on the floor of the House-Senate conference committee. Tallman must be very proud of himself, but prematurely so. He was a hunted man and the predator would be invisible until it struck.

Mercy, for his part, was a determined predator.

#

The Oracle's ground radar operator nervously keyed his intercom headset. "Lieutenant? I have bogies, sir. Three vertols and two fast movers coming up from the surface."

"Do they threaten us?"

"No, sir. Not apparently."

"Send it home."

#

"Press conference now, press conference immediately after."

"We need to form an attack, first."

"We need to get in front of reporters. There are plenty right downstairs."

"What about Abe? Shouldn't we coordinate with him?"

"Stop it!" Anna shouted, throwing up her arms and making broad cutting motions with her hands. They gathered around her, an excited mob. So many crowded her so closely that she could no longer pace the carpet. "One thing at a time, please. Kate, I'll talk to any reporters downstairs. Round them up in one location. Get some drones on a palmphone to scare up as many others as will come. You can't use the Net; it's completely down. Ray, locate Abe, let him know what our stand is."

"And, our stand is exactly ... what?"

"Horror, Ray. Plain, old-fashioned speechless horror at what some people will do to stay in office. Solidarity with our troops, and a determination to make things right once we're elected."

"They'll be wanting more than that."

"They'll be wanting sound bites, Ray. I'm not the story right now, Chenault is, may God have mercy on – oh, my God!" She gasped, immobilized for a moment, then stepped close to the television screen. The others followed her focused, stricken gaze. All were repulsed by what they saw. Some unconsciously retreated from the screen.

#

The caption read: Recorded February 13, 2056.

"This is strange. These people don't seem to be from here. They're country people, by their dress. Goat or sheep herders. I could understand if some of them were mixed in with urban types, but this is suspicious. Also, most of them are old people, or young girls. I haven't checked them all, but I'm willing to bet there isn't a fighting age male among them..."

#

Harper scanned the tactical display in CIC while the command center's functionaries scurried around him. Steve stood at his side.

"Mr. Hewett. You say they don't threaten our aircraft. So, why are they up?"

"First evaluation is that they're after the broadcast camera, sir. They know what we're doing and they want to shut us up."

"But, how could they find out so soon? The broadcast goes to the US, not Serbia."

"Apparently, Mr. Tallman's Net invasion was more complete than originally believed. The entire Net has been accessed, worldwide. I'm betting the Serbs watch TV, just like everybody else."

"Okay, so what do they hope to accomplish? They don't know the camera location."

"You gave it to them," Steve said. "You did it when you gave justification for crossing the border, when you filed your entrance plan."

"They plan to drop troops on the camera, and bombs, too." Harper frowned. "We can recall the camera crew."

Steve shook his head. "We have about ten minutes to go. The SAM stockpiles and such are yet to come. We can't maintain the link from a moving vertol. They have to stay on the ground."

"Then that calls for Plan B. Ops officer! Launch intercepts. Reload catapults. Prepare to launch Hurricanes against those bases that sent up the planes."

"Aye, sir!"

"Let's see how cocky these fellas really want to get."

They heard the scream of Seahawks knifing skyward outside the tower.

#

Two panel trucks braked in front of the Hancock Building and disgorged their complement of black-clad assault troops. The soldiers charged the lobby, scattering pedestrians with threatening waves of their pulse rifles and yells of "FEDERAL AGENTS! MOVE ASIDE!" Their sudden presence emptied shoppers from the lobby stores and sent them running, frightened and confused, into the street. The security desk was overwhelmed; the guards frozen helpless under the attention of serious young men with well-aimed weapons. A number of people flattened themselves against the lobby walls, hoping not to be noticed. Only a clutch of four black men by the elevators seemed unimpressed by the raid.

"Hey!" one of the men said, sauntering toward the assault team's apparent leader, the one who stood close to the guard desk and directed, with hand signals, his men to the elevators and stairs. "Outstanding entrance, Mr. Federal Agent! You oughta be on TV!"

"Stay where you are, sir! We're federal agents in pursuit of a felon! Do not attempt to approach!" The leader noted the man's black beret and black leather garb. He recalled the notation in his orders about possible Black Panther involvement. He did not notice the large number of cowering civilians with tattoos on their faces.

"Just being friendly, Mr. White Federal Agent. Call me Marcus, Marcus Tandy, that's Marcus with a 'c-u-s', not a 'k'.You're in my house, so to speak, might as well shake your hand."

The assault leader looked Tandy up and down and glanced at the other three blacks closing toward arm's reach, all looking jocular and sly. He turned to one of his subordinates. "Get these sons of bitches the hell out of here, will you?"

A pistol muzzle struck his cheek with enough force to draw blood. "Not nice," Tandy said, holding the weapon at full arm's length, shoving it into the policeman's face. "My mamma ain't no bitch, and she don't get called bitch by any white peckawood blueshirt, you hear?"

All of the Panthers brandished pistols, all trained on specific black-clad soldiers. The assault team leader looked carefully around. Many of those among the crowd also held weapons ready, some showing submachine guns.

"That's right," Tandy said, "it's an ambush."

"What do you want?"

"I don't know. Let's start with you boys dropping your weapons. A donation to the cause, you might say."

The agent stared at him.

"Drop the weapons now, if you don't mind."

The assault leader placed his pulse rifle gingerly on the guard station counter. He heard the clatter of other rifles striking the floor.

"That's good," Tandy said. He showed a wide and toothy grin. "Nice of you to cooperate. Now, just one more thing, and then I can forgive your slur against my mamma. Take off your pants."

"Excuse me?"

"Take off your pants, dumbshit. Don't the federal government insist you know English?"

The agent unbuckled his belt.

#

The vertol touched down despite cherry bombs exploding on the helipad. Its troops dismounted despite small arms fire from the stairwell, and took the steps despite the smoke bombs blinding their descent. They found the See It Now offices deserted; they couldn't have known that Jerry and his people had left moments earlier, and were downstairs in the lobby. A liaison team would later find the ground assault force tied up half naked in the lobby's two ladies' rooms, the entire ground floor of the building deserted.

They found the control room empty, its equipment still running. The assault leader signaled for his resident tech head, then watched impatiently as the youngster took Montoya's deserted station and examined the monitor's screen.

"Too late, sir. They've already transferred the hub. This one's non-operational."

The team leader scowled. "Well, dammit, where's the hub now?"

#

Merritt propelled himself across the dark living room just as the front picture window exploded in shards of glass and shutter splinters. Something plopped onto the carpet and rolled, sputtering jets of vapor throughout the room.

"Gas!" he shouted. "They're trying to gas us out! Everybody to the back of the house!"

"The computer!" one of his men yelled as he retreated with his boss. He pointed to the tablet obliviously perched atop the television, its screen glowing with scrolling rolls of unintelligible numbers.

Merritt spat at the machine. Since the electricity failed, it was the only thing with power, thanks to its battery. "Forget the computer! Worry about your life!" He shoved the younger man ahead of him just as the front door shattered under the force of a police battering ram.

Half dozen others met him in the hallway.

"They're comin' in the back," one of the cowboys said, his shotgun looking huge in his hands. "I reckon you didn't fare any better."

"Follow me." The old man back-tracked, then veered through a doorway into the kitchen. He heard two titanic booms from the shotgun, and an answering hail from pulse rifles and submachine guns. In the kitchen, a cowboy crouched behind the center island, sending short bursts of gunfire through the doorway to the living room. Merritt diverted toward a flight of steps next to the pantry. The attic, yes. A trap, yes. But only accessible by a single approach. They could hold off any threat there short of the house getting torched. He bolted across the kitchen floor, drawing a racketing blast from unseen weapons. Countertops, cabinets, and appliances erupted around him. He found himself splashed with lukewarm coffee.

Once up the stairs and inside the slight security of the dark attic, he collapsed next to an equally exhausted ranch hand.

"Who are they?" the kid asked between heaving breaths. "Militia?"

"Feds. The computer's got the link. We're the hub, now." Merritt made a rude sound. "I reckon that lasted all of ten seconds. They done destroyed that machine by now."

The ranch hand changed magazines in his pistol. "Well, Mr. Merritt, let's hope they don't do the same to us."

The last of their group fled onto the steps, slamming the door behind him. Merritt looked around the dark room. It was filled, as most attics are, with the refuse and mementos of years.

"Let's get some of this furniture and crap and throw it down the stairwell. We block it up good enough, we'll buy a few minutes."

They went to work as their attackers assaulted the stairwell door.

#

"Vertols!" Harita yelled from his post fifty meters down the wood line. "And they aren't ours!"

"Just a few minutes!" Sam yelled back. "We have to get these last few clips in!" He hung helplessly over the purring satcams, Mike and Charter huddling with him.

"We aren't gonna make it," Mike said, voicing the certainty they all felt.

"Who do you suppose our visitors are?" Charter wondered aloud. He stood, and squinted into the distance along the treetops. "Three black dots approaching in an arrow formation. One is breaking away, disappearing behind a line of evergreens."

"They're sneaking up on us," Sam said with a bored nonchalance that denied the heavy pit growing in his stomach.

"It's the landlords," Mike said. "If the Serbs catch us here, we're dead meat." They all looked around at their position, seriously exposed in the rising light. The vertol pilots could undoubtedly see them.

Harita jogged up to their location. "We have to get out of here. Those are Serb vertols, in violation of the UN resolutions. They'd have to be awfully pissed or awfully desperate to risk bringing their aircraft out like that."

"We can't go," Sam insisted. "We have five more minutes of video."

"We'll be dead in five minutes."

"Goddammit, we already got cut off on this story once. It won't happen again!"

As if in disagreement, the ground around them erupted in rocketing gobs of dirt and grass. A soldier screamed and flipped over backward amid a spray of red. The men flung themselves flat against the turf as the thunder of heavy machine guns roared over the hillside, and more grass exploded into the air.

"You were saying?" Harita spat.

Another volley of machine gun fire thudded around them. The remaining two security men ran toward the group cringing with the cameras. A pluming track of bullets channeled its way straight toward them up the hillside.

"I suggest we run!" Charter exclaimed.

They bolted for the wood line and dived into its comparatively secure recesses just as the trees on the clearing burst into splintering havoc.

"Not that way!" Harita warned Mike, grabbing his shoulder. He pointed deep into the woods, where shadows dodged from tree to tree, heading toward them. Harita herded the reporters away from the approaching figures and pushed them into a hard run.

#

The Oracle vectored its fighters in. Then the Seahawks made quick work of their twenty-year-old adversaries, vanquishing the Serb bombers before they had traversed half the four-minute distance to their target. Harper watched it all on his tactical screen and nodded satisfaction at an easy job, neatly done.

"Now, maybe we should clear out those vertols," he said, and turned toward the operations officer to issue his order.

"More bandits, sir," the young man told him before he could open his mouth. The captain snapped his eyes back to the screen.

At least a dozen icons rose from four airfields. They were all fast movers.

"Oracle IDs these as strike aircraft, MIG 43 type, sir."

"Launch bombers. Erase those airfields. Where are those aircraft going?"

"Too soon to say, sir," Hewett responded. "Considering the type, and the fields they're launched from, I'd say they're coming for us, sir."

Harper considered that prospect. Could the Serbs be so stupid? Of course they could. This same government had thumbed its collective nose at every human rights convention and UN resolution since the dawn of its history back in the 1990's. The Serb government, in whatever form, had never shown much in the way of common sense.

"Elevator status?"

"All four engaged, sir. VAQ-83 rising to the catapults as directed, sir."

"Belay that. Get the already loaded bombers up, but the next set has to be Seahawks. We need dog fighters to take out those strike craft. What's on alert?"

"One Seahawk, a Hurricane lined up behind it."

"Launch the Seahawk. Vector it to the incoming bandits. Recall our other two Seahawks. Vector them to the bandits, as well. Get me fighters in the sky, gentlemen."

"What about the camera crew?" Steve asked.

"I have more pressing problems right now, Tallman. They'll just have to dance on their own."

#

Fighters roared and exploded overhead, looking like swarming gnats in the high altitudes over Bosnia. Three Serbian vertols hovered over the hillside where Kenny's camera hummed and transmitted in oblivious efficiency. Harita and his two remaining security men held the assault troops back for a few precious minutes while the reporters continued to seek escape. Sam knew that, despite the wild rush for safety, they still skirted the clearing in a wide, haphazard arc. They had to get back there, or miss their ride home.

"But, we can't," Mike said in gasping snatches as they stopped for a moment to rest. "Serb vertols on the hill. Your taxi is half way home by now."

"They aren't due back for another three minutes," Sam insisted. "We have to go back, and scare off those vertols."

"With what?" Charter blustered. "We don't have any weapons, and I wouldn't know what to do with one if it came with simple directions."

Harita bounded toward them, weaving through the thick pines. "Why are you stopped?" he shouted. "They're right behind me!"

"We need someplace to run to," Sam called back.

"Away would be a good choice," Charter said, and turned to do just that.

He found himself facing the ugly cyclopean eyes of assault rifles.

Chapter Thirty-four:

Conqueror's Realm

 (Back to Contents)

Sometime before reaching the beltway, Mercy made a decision. He could not, under any circumstances, allow Dearing to win the election and destroy EOG. He clicked on his cell phone as his car rolled over the Arlington Memorial Bridge, and waited two rings for his party to pick up.

"Yes."

"Kill her."

Mercy hung up.

He hadn't dropped the phone before a car cut him off. Mercy stomped the brakes, tensing as his body surged forward against his safety harness. Tires screamed, then both cars stopped, only inches separating their bumpers. Another vehicle, a pickup truck, rushed at Mercy's rear bumper, looking like an attacking animal through the rear view mirror. Mercy cringed from the inevitable collision, but only a minor jolt nudged his car, not the rending, murderous crash he expected. A fender bender, thank God.

He threw open his door and stepped scowling from the car, ready to berate the driver up front. Until he saw who it was.

"Well, good evening, Jon," Decker said, a triumphant sneer on his face as he climbed from the car. He walked toward Mercy, mindless of the traffic passing just inches away. He unbuttoned his light jacket as he approached and held open one side to display the gun in his belt. "What's the matter, Jon? Didn't expect to see me again?"

Mercy glanced behind. The truck driver, a fat man with a red face and balding head, stood only a few feet away, one warning hand pointing a solid bulge in his jacket pocket at Mercy's torso.

"What do you want?" Mercy asked, turning back to Decker.

"Now, that isn't nice." Decker waved toward the man with the dangerous pocket. "Schooley, can you believe it? Do you think that's nice?" He trained his eyes on Mercy again. "I'd think you could be a little more solicitous, ask after my health, that sort of thing. After all, you sent that fucking cop to cap me off, but I don't look dead, do I?"

"I said, what do you want?"

"Not much. I just want to kill your sorry ass."

No escape. Decker stood close enough to kill Mercy with ease. Mercy felt no fear, just regret he hadn't pocketed the pistol he always carried in the glove compartment. "You can't get away with this. It's a crowded street, for pity's sake."

Decker made an expansive gesture at the cars rolling by. "These people don't care about us, Jon. They have places to go, things to do. They've no intention of interfering with our business. Besides, it's dark out." He grabbed Mercy's shoulder in a tight, but outwardly nonthreatening grasp, then led him around to the other side of the cars, away from the headlights. "Couldn't pay a lousy fee, could you, Jon? Thought you'd stiff a service provider, then stiff the service provider, didn't you?" He grabbed Mercy's shirt and threw him to the pavement between the cars and the bridge's concrete retaining wall. "Well, I'm here for payment, even if it isn't in dollars." He drew out the pistol, pointed it at his former employer.

"You're insane," Mercy said, but without much conviction. He felt a blanketing sense of exhaustion. He was tired of the whole affair, of the conspiracy, murders, threats, and maneuverings. This bullshit had gone on for a whole God damned year, for God's sake! Maybe this final turn was for the better. "Go ahead, Decker. They'll get you for sure. Murder out in the open on a busy street? You think nobody saw you grab me?"

"Remember, old pal, it's dark. Even darker back here."

"Every car on this bridge has a phone, you dumbass. I bet half of them belong to lawyers."

"Good," Decker laughed, "then I won't have to wait long for counsel." He pushed the pistol toward Mercy's face.

There was no deafening explosion, more like a loud spit, like the sound made by a tennis ball server. Decker jerked. Two more dull spits. Then the militia organizer/killer/terrorist stumbled forward, stepping on Mercy's arm, and fell face down on the pavement.

The other man, Schooley, stood in his place.

"Thank-you," Mercy said dully.

Schooley ignored Mercy. He stepped over his body to examine Decker's corpse. After a moment, he turned back to the man sitting up against the car, cradling his aching arm.

"It's all your fault," he said. "If you hadn't been such a big, rich, stupid asshole, none of this would have happened." He regarded Mercy with derision. "Get out of here. Don't go back to your house. The police are already there."

Mercy struggled to his feet. "Who are you?" he asked.

"A free man," Schooley answered. "One no longer scared for his life."

#

"Come with me," Vidovic said. "Now."

He retreated into the woods at a run.

"Follow the man!" Mike called in English, and pushed after his friend as fast as his tired body allowed. The others did likewise. The Muslim escort of three teenaged boys lagged behind, throwing bursts of rifle fire into the trees behind them. The pursuers returned the gesture with fervor. Trees splintered and underbrush snapped from the impact of hundreds of bullets.

"Get down!" Vidovic yelled, and launched his body behind a fallen tree. Mike dove to the ground beside him, along with Sam and Charter. The rest found other trees to huddle behind, or flattened themselves to the ground.

The already cacophonous woods exploded with the din of double the available machine gun and rifle fire. Grenades shattered, and anti-personnel mines belched nail-like flechettes that raked the air in multiple directions, stripping trees of bark and men of their lives. The noise roared to the point of absurdity, smothering the screams of the violated and the defiant calls of their killers, and drowning the constant whine of the nearby vertol engines. Mike threw his hands over his ears in a futile attempt to deaden the noise. After less than a minute, the gunfire stopped, though its ghost still rang in everyone's ears. Mike heard the vertols again, and the moans of wounded men. He even heard birds as they began to sing again deeper into the woods.

"Forgive my curtness," Vidovic said as everyone rose to their feet, "but you stood in the middle of our ambush." He stepped over the fallen tree and walked back the way they had come. Mike followed. Several of the older Muslims paralleled their leader's track. Bodies lay everywhere, at least twenty Serbs, all in various stages of grisly obliteration. The Muslims collected guns, ammo, and sundry other useful objects, and shot dead any survivors.

"Thanks," Mike said, hardly noticing the mayhem. "I thought you were gone."

"No. It looked like too much fun." Vidovic stopped near a still-moving soldier. The man was blood-soaked, trying to roll over onto his back from a face-down position, but neither arm working very well. Vidovic shot him through the head. "You'll be leaving us now, to make sure your story got out."

"We can't. Serb vertols at the LZ."

Vidovic glanced at his watch. He shook his head at Mike like a correcting teacher.

On cue, two more explosions shook the woods, followed by scraping, rending sounds like those of some intensely magnified car crash. The ground shook from the tantrum stomps of a giant. The woods near the clearing burst into flames.

"Now, take your people and go."

Mike did as directed, shaking off his surprise at the sudden reversal of fortunes. He made brief explanations and lead his group toward the clearing. He looked back several times to find Vidovic walking among the dead and wounded of his handiwork, shooting those who still moved, stripping equipment from all. After a while, the trees hid his friend's morbid task.

The clearing was a shock of horrors. A flaming heap of shattered machinery lay where Kenny's camera had been, gnarled, smoking pieces of vertol lying about like the trash it now was. Other, softer things smoked on the violated grass. Sam and Charter averted their eyes. Mike and the military hardly noticed. Another wreck lay wedged into the tree line, its fuel feeding a rapidly growing forest fire. A half dozen or so Muslims combed the hellish site, looking for souvenirs.

"You know that guy back there?" Sam asked Mike.

"He's a friend," Mike answered. "Watch for that third vertol."

"Our ride," one of the two remaining security men yelled.

The rescue vertol appeared through the billowing smoke of the battlefield, and came to rest on the grass thirty feet away.

#

Harper watched the milling icons on the tactical screen, trying to follow the corkscrewing, intertwining melees depicted there. It was tough for his pilots. They fought not only enemy aircraft, but the g-forces and disorientation of high performance aerial combat, where individual dogfights could traverse the airspace of entire countries in minutes. But, they did their jobs up there; Harper could only do his.

"How many we got?" he asked, filtering as much excitement as possible from his voice.

"Twenty bandits," Hewett yelled from her station, "and eight friendlies. We've taken no casualties, sir, but it's only a matter of time."

"That's affirm. Ops, I need more fighters."

As if in answer, CIC shook from the scream of accelerating engines.

"Four more on the way, sir. Four at the ready, and three more on the elevators."

"Three?" Harper turned toward the operations officer.

"A fault in the forward port elevator, sir. It'll take an hour to get it working again."

"That's an hour too long!" Harper yelled over the scream of departing aircraft. He turned back to the screen. "Maybe we need to rethink our approach."

"What about the camera crew?" Steve asked from his side. "There's another Serb vertol out there."

"Don't interrupt, Tallman."

"Why not? Try all you like, but you can't change the outcome of that air battle. It's up to your pilots. Tend to someone you can help."

"We just lost an aircraft," Ops reported. "One Seahawk down, the pilot has ejected. Four bandits breaking out."

Harper tightened his lips. He watched the four icons split, two headed southwest over the sea, two vectoring northeast and climbing steeply.

"Get your Oracle out of there, Mr. Hewett. They're headed straight for him. Ops, alert the task force. Get that countermeasures ship to weapons free status. We're gonna have visitors."

Orders trampled each other. For a moment, the enforced calm of CIC ruptured. While the captain's lieutenants reached for and maneuvered his distant forces in the Mediterranean, more fighters blasted from the Evan Bayh's deck. The explosive sound of catapult launches grew ever closer to constant.

"You see?" Harper said in an aside to Steve. "I can't help them. I've nothing to help them with."

k

"Tracers! Tracers! Jink left! Right! Left again!"

The vertol pitched like a mad carnival ride. Sam held tight to his space on the cargo floor, sure that he lived his last seconds of life. The heaving, careering aircraft would fall to either its pursuer's guns or some very solid part of the terrain through which it darted. Tree branches scraped the hull, and blurred walls of rock and brush swept by close to the open cargo doors. Harita had lurched to the cockpit doorway, his submachine gun swinging from his shoulder as if alive. He yelled to the pilots, forcing his voice above the aircraft noise and through the insulation of their helmets.

"We won't escape on the run!" he argued. "We can't even see where he is without leaning out the cargo door!"

The pilot said something Sam couldn't hear, then Harita launched into an animated, yelling recommendation.

The vertol wrenched, throwing Sam from his perch and across the bay to the opposite wall. For an instant, he was airborne, then he impacted against the hull. He collapsed like a bag of potatoes, too stunned to arrest his subsequent slide toward the open port doorway. Mike grabbed him, hauling him back before he could slide from the aircraft to be crushed against the Bosnian earth.

"Thanks!" Sam shouted as he secured himself next to Mike. "I used to think your job was easy!" He spat teeth and blood onto the deck. "Not anymore!"

Harita charged his pulse weapon as he lurched from the cockpit area to the wide-open starboard doorway. The crew chief, after listening intently to the pickup in his helmet, groped his way to the starboard machine gun station.

"Come on!" Harita yelled to the two remaining security men. They crawled as fast as they could across the rolling deck.

Then the vertol braked, and the gathered momentum of their bodies flung Mike, Sam, and Charter forward across the floor like loose baggage. All three thudded against the base of the cockpit platform. Even through the piercing pain of impact, they each grabbed for an anchor.

Blurred trees slowed through the starboard cargo hatch, then reversed and rotated as the vertol drew to a hover perpendicular to its previous line of flight. Sam, from his position nearest the opposite wall, looked down a tree-glutted corridor between two ridges that curved away left. In the distance, a vertol appeared from around that bend. It braked suddenly to avoid a collision.

"FIRE!" Harita shouted. The Navy men let loose a barrage of weapons fire pushed on by shouts of bellicose defiance. They fired continuously, heedless of the heat rapidly building in their gun barrels, intent only on projecting a solid ram of metal into their target. The Serb ship hurtled into the deadly hail; it closed so near that Sam watched its windscreens shatter, the pilots throwing up their arms in futile defense. Then an engine exploded, and the aircraft blossomed into bluish flame as its momentum carried it on without the aid of its dead crew.

The Americans dodged, but too slow, too late. The burning aircraft hit them like a wrecking ball.

#

Reporters pressed toward her, making the event all the more infamous. A phone beeped twice, a momentary distraction that drew an irritated glance from Dearing. But they picked up the pace of the conference again, and for all of five seconds forgot about the Secret Service agent with the ill-timed phone call.

But Agent Brown was the man in charge that night, and he didn't like his people stealing the candidate's moment. He glared at Agent Wilson with a supervisor's critical eye. He watched the hurried flash of the phone and its quick disappearance under the jacket, and knew he would discipline that man within minutes. Then the pistol appeared, as smoothly as the phone had vanished.

Brown, in his shock, hesitated. He expected Wilson to shout an alert. He almost turned to find the assassin in the crowd of reporters. Then he saw the gun level, and surmised its target.

"GUN!"

#

"Missiles incoming!" Ops reported. "Impact in twelve seconds!"

"Launch countermeasures!" Harper snapped.

#

Sirens announced activation of the anti-missile defense modules slung beneath the launch deck overhang. Almost simultaneously, the big metal and plastic cubes blew apart, and streaks of white vapor sprang away from the ship and toward the blue horizon. Missiles also leapt from tubes on the anti-missile countermeasures ship ten miles closer to the incoming threat. Specialized antennae expelled intense electromagnetic pulses from the Evan Bayh and her nearby electronic countermeasures ship, signals intended to confound the guidance systems of the incoming projectiles.

Harper and his CIC crew watched the tactical monitor's icons, watched their missiles intercept and destroy one threat after the other in circles of bright white. They watched the outgoing Seahawks erase the Serb MIGs from the sky, and watched four more Seahawks fall over Bosnia after eliminating eight of the enemy. But, the Serbs kept coming. More icons separated from airfields all over the country, all headed toward the carrier's harried strike wing. Icons rose and fell on the screen with the frenetic chaos of flashing lights on a Christmas tree. Only the most disciplined could make sense of the data depicted there.

"Missile through!" Ops said, stating what all saw as obvious.

"Intensify countermeasures! Can we get off more missiles?"

"No time! EC isn't budging it!"

Steve turned from Harper and bounded the few steps toward his daughter.

"Everybody grab hold of something!" Harper yelled, and then the missile hit.

#

Ray flinched at the warning. He turned toward Agent Brown. In the process, his eyes touched Wilson, and the gun seeking Anna. Ray did not think. He took the single step imposing him between Anna and danger.

The gun barked. Lots of them did.

#

Merritt waited in silence, awed by the power of a moment vacant of sound. First, there had been the racket of invaders scrabbling at the piled furniture blocking the attic stairwell. Now, only a great, yawning stillness called to them, one fraught with anxiety, skepticism, and indecision. No one in the attic really believed their enemy would surrender the battle at his moment of victory. So, if he hadn't surrendered, then where the hell had he gone?

After a while, they heard a distant whine. It grew stronger and more familiar until the distinct turbine sound of vertol fanjets spread over and around the house. Then came movement downstairs, a rattle at the attic door, and the stabbing lances of flashlights through the stairwell's piled debris.

"Federal agents!" someone yelled from below. "Mr. Merritt, are you up there?"

Merritt hesitated to speak. He wasn't quite sure why. After all, the bad guys fairly well knew he was there. He just didn't like talking to strangers.

"Mr. Merritt," the voice called again. "This is Special Agent Mooney of the FBI. They're gone, Mr. Merritt. We chased them off. Mind coming down and explaining who they were?"

Such a sad state of affairs that this Mooney didn't know, Merritt thought. After all, the bastards were likely paid by the same accounting office.

Still, at least this latest government agent didn't seem like he wanted to shoot anybody.

Merritt sighed and struggled to his feet.

Somebody had to show himself. Somebody — himself, he figured — had to go downstairs and suss out who was shooting and who was helping, and that wasn't a chore you slipped to a hand. Responsibility was a bitch, he thought as he shuffled to the stairwell.

He just hoped it didn't bite him with a bullet.

#

The headlines were nearly instantaneous, on the Net in less than ninety seconds. They interrupted all American feeds after only six minutes of renewed normal throughput, and they were all as strident as that of the New York Times network edition:

SECRET SERVICE ATTEMPTS DEARING ASSASSINATION

CHENAULT LINKED?

The paramedics were slow in coming, but Brown drafted a doctor nearby and ordered the van around to transport Ray to a hospital. For two minutes, they fought to curb the bleeding, using shirts, towels, even table cloths from the hotel restaurant. They smashed a table to use as a litter to get Ray to the van with the least possible jostling. They did everything they could despite the seriousness of his wound.

Nobody gave a damn about the traitor, who bled to death from neglect.

#

Anna rode in the van with Ray, his head cradled in her lap. For the second time, she found herself wet with the blood of a precious friend. This one, though, struggled with consciousness, so she tried hard to project for him an assurance she couldn't feel. She tried, but it was pointless with the doctor and Brown carrying on above and across him. Ray's mind was sharp. He knew what awaited him.

"I screwed up," he croaked, coughing blood in runny spasms.

"You did fine," Anna said with massive control.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes. Thanks to you."

"I'm gonna die."

"No. You're my best friend. I won't let you."

In the end, though, she did. Ray died in a spasm of bloody coughs long before he reached the hospital, and something in Anna died with him.

#

Deck, consoles, and people all shuddered as a single entity. A muffled blast issued from beyond the island walls. A crash followed a second later, reverberating throughout CIC as if the walls had been struck by an enraged titan's hammer. Lights and monitors flickered, then returned to normal.

"Everybody all right?" Harper asked as calmly as he could. He still held tight to the radar console, hiding his shaking hands. No one answered. He took that as good news.

"XO to CIC!" the intercom blared. "Everything okay there?"

"Affirmative, XO," the captain responded, straightening himself. "Report."

"Missile hit almost abeam, about twenty meters forward of the end of our recovery runway. It'll take an hour or better to repair the runway, and both aft elevators are out of commission. Another two hours to fix them. If your ears are ringing, it's from a hunk of runway that slammed the island right at your aft wall."

"Casualties?"

"Can't say yet. Probably light, if not nonexistent. I'll get back to you."

"Better yet, I'm coming up. Ops, initiate an open mike between here and the bridge. I'll be there in ten seconds."

"Aye, sir."

Steve started to follow, but Patricia grabbed his arm. Her disturbed face alarmed him.

"The monitor, Dad."

"Excuse me? What's the matter, honey?"

She pointed to the tactical screen dominating the far wall. "The vertolifter with Mr. Clemmons. With Charter and Eller. Dad, it isn't there."

#

Harper squeezed past blood-bathed crewmen and their medics to step onto his bridge.

Glass carpeted the floor from shattered windscreens. The officer of the deck hastily briefed replacement crew while he used a tablet computer to sweep glass from the consoles. The XO stood hunched near the captain's chair. He spoke rapidly over his pickup, stopping briefly for voices only he could hear. The intercom blared unedited traffic from both CIC below and the tower above, infusing the cramped room with such drama that Harper's neck muscles tightened in expectation.

"Status!" he called to no one, yet everyone.

"All incoming bandits destroyed," CIC said. "None now threaten the ship. We're down to ten fighters in the air, twelve bad guys."

"I need more fighters." Harper stood at the nonexistent aft windscreen, glaring at the black pall of smoke over his recovery deck. His aircraft would be running low on fuel soon. He'd have to send them elsewhere to land. Since the nearest governments wouldn't touch his birds, he'd have to send up a refueler to help them on to Spain or Germany.

"Seahawk coming up on elevator two," the XO reported. "We'll launch her from cat three. Preliminary damage reports, sir. Two Hurricanes severely damaged in the hangar, Engine Maintenance shop on fire, fourteen injured, none KIA."

"Fine, fine. Now, get that runway repaired, and somebody clean up this damned glass." Harper noticed Steve standing by the bridge entrance, his eyes clouding as he concentrated on intercom chatter from the tower.

"–going down! I say again, we are going down! Launching locator now!"

"03, Tower. Send continuous status, over. 03, this is Tower. Respond, over."

Rescue 03, that was the ship sent for Tallman's people. Steve looked at Harper with resigned, disappointed eyes.

"Rescue 03, this is Tower. Please respond. Rescue 03–"

"Ops!" Harper snapped. "Status of assault vertols on target."

"All teams engaged, sir. Two airfields nearly secure, three critical, teams requesting reinforcements and air support."

"Status of rescue teams off-shore."

"We've had to pull them back to checkpoints one, one-alpha, and one-bravo, sir. Enemy vertol activity, and the threat from incoming fast movers. We've scheduled four pick-ups, sir."

"Okay. No air support for assault teams beyond their own gunships. Detach elements from secure areas to those needing more help. Is the Charles Robb ready with reinforcements?"

"Affirmative, sir."

"Send them. ETA?"

"Forty minutes, sir."

"Roger. ETA rescue ship to Rescue 03's position?"

"Twenty minutes, once the vector is safe. Too much activity right now, sir."

"Send it anyway, and the others, too." Harper turned back to Steve. "You see, Tallman, there's not much more I can do."

"One of your assault vertols could be there in five minutes."

"They're otherwise engaged."

The two men stared at each other, Harper refusing any guilt for perfectly sound decisions. He knew any chance to help Steve's people was nowhere evident, and that Steve knew it, too. All those aboard Rescue 03 were truly on their own, likely never to revisit the Evan Bayh's decks unless carried on in bags. Captain and newsman held each other's gaze. Tallman's eyes squinted from concern toward protest and he started chewing the inside of his jaw. He was ready to complain, Harper realized, even though complaining could not change the facts on the ground. Civilians! He waited for it. Then crewmen passed brooms between them, and the spell broke.

In that moment, reality crowded back to Harper. The glass, the wind through the busted windscreen, the sirens, truck noises, and screaming turbines of taxiing fighters all wrapped him in pressuring bands of distraction. He noticed Tallman touch the pouch at his neck.

"–have to cut power to conduits three-four-seven to three-eight-six, and eight-three to one-one-six, or we'll have an electrical fire..."

"–secured Objectives Stan and Vince, Dave is still contested. I say again, Dave..."

"–on my six! On my six! Arrow 5, where are you?"

"–your pattern. You have no assigned approach. Nemesis, this is Tower. Respond, over."

Harper started. So did Tallman. Wasn't that Nemesis designation familiar?

"Control, this is Tower. Did you authorize a change in the Nemesis flight plan?"

"No," Harper said, "I did not."

#

"This is not in our orders!" the co-pilot said over the intercom.

"Relax," Chelsea responded. "Consider it a morning constitutional."

The lieutenant cursed and shook his head as the helicopter shot straight over the water toward land. His curses grew more colorful when he leaned forward to read the instruments, which put them only twenty feet off the deck, at maximum velocity. "The boss won't like this," he grumbled, and snapped the pulse rifle out of its brackets.

"Planning a mutiny?" Chelsea's voice became cold, businesslike. She likely didn't care about orders or the repercussions of ignoring them; she saw only the land ahead, the crashed vertol, and its hoped-for survivors.

"I don't imagine you'd surrender peacefully?"

"Not hardly."

"Well, I prefer to avoid the stress." He unlatched his harness and climbed carefully from his chair, the rifle slung over one shoulder.

"Where are you off to?"

"I didn't see any machine guns on this tub. If you really want to get shot at, we'll need some way to answer back." He disconnected his helmet's communications jack from the intercom, then stepped over the center console and into the cargo area. Peggy stood there spread-eagled, grasping handholds in the overhead, her feet far apart for balance. Her confusion and worry showed despite the tinted helmet visor covering half her face.

The lieutenant plugged himself into an overhead commo receptacle. "Just a detour," he said, forcing a wooden smile.

"What can I do to help?"

"Got a flak vest on this heap?"

"No."

"Then hide."

#

They struggled down the rocky slope from the mangled remains of their vertol, dragging Charter between them.

"A little easy on the leg, if you don't mind," the BBC man winced.

"Stop bellyaching," Sam said. "It's a pretty day. Sun's out. Birds are singing. You just survived a nasty crash. With only a busted leg." He puffed under Charter's weight and the effort of traversing the uneven ground.

"I hear the surf," the soldier with Charter's other arm said. "We're just short of the sea."

The Britisher issued a forced laugh. "Great! A holiday at the beach!" Then he wailed agony as Sam and the soldier dropped him to the ground.

"Sorry," Sam panted, "but we have to get the others."

"I'll stay here," the security man volunteered. "To watch the ravine approaches."

Sam turned back up the slope, pulling on all fours against rocks, roots, whatever hold he found in the near-mountainous terrain. The vertol's carcass smoked about thirty yards above him, surrounded by burning brush and blasted trees waiting to catch. The place would be an inferno in minutes, and a magnet for Serbian patrols.

The explosion caught him by surprise, so intent was he on reaching the ship. The vertol blossomed into a white bubble of heat, spewing lava-like burning fuel in long, arcing, airborne streamers. The blast released a pressure wave that barreled down the slope, pitching Sam over backwards. He grunted as he fell onto rocks that had only seconds before supported his upward climb. Burning fuel splashed a few feet from his head. The grass flashed into flame.

"Jesus Christ!" He scrabbled to his knees and peered into the flaming wreck above. Five men had been in that mess. Had any gotten out? Then he heard gunfire through the trees, and saw figures stumbling toward him from around one side of the wreck. It was Eller and Harita carrying someone between them. So, what about the others? Where were they? Sam stood to wave, then was startled by the slapping sound of bullets eating the ground at his feet.

Harita half-turned as he ran, pointing his submachine gun along their track. He let loose a random spray of metal. Eller raised another weapon, waving to Sam while almost dropping his human baggage. "Run!" he yelled.

Sam groaned. He turned back downhill and fell more than ran to Charter and the security man.

#

Chelsea rocked the chopper around one final turn down the steep-sided, forested corridor. "They're just ahead," she said over the intercom, "taking fire from the trees just beyond the wreck. I'm presenting the port side for your cover fire."

"Roger!" the lieutenant said, and lurched to the port doorway, weapon in hand. "Come on!" he yelled to Peggy, and pointed to a spot next to the door. "Get ready to help them in!"

The ship rotated, producing a powerful wind through the cabin as it sidled down the ravine at what must have been fifty miles per hour. Peggy staggered tight-lipped to her station and snapped her umbilical into an available anchor. The Navy man stood wide-legged, pressing his upper body against the bulkhead, training his rifle out the doorway. Peggy noticed he wore no tether, but he seemed more confident on deck than she. She looked through the doorway, saw the raging fires, saw Sam hurrying toward her. Mr. Charter hung from Sam's shoulder and a soldier guarded their rear with gunfire. She saw the others – not enough of the others – running, stumbling toward her. She saw flashes from the woods, then the indistinct figures of men through the wreck's billowing smoke. She flinched at projectiles clanging against the helicopter fuselage and the far interior bulkhead, and she felt very mortal and afraid. She recognized matching fear in Sam's eyes, only feet away as the aircraft braked from its rapid approach. She reached for him.

"Please, God," she prayed, realizing her words sounded over her open mike, "don't let me mess this up."

The Navy man's rifle chattered, startling her. It jerked in his hands, like a live thing twisting to free itself. Shell casings clattered at Peggy's feet and bounced out of the aircraft and into Sam's face.

"Take him!" Sam yelled.

The ship held position a few feet off the ground, bobbing just enough to make embarkation difficult on the steep slope. Peggy grabbed Charter by the armpits and pulled, bracing her heels against the door frame and a convenient projection in the decking. She couldn't lift him aboard by herself; Sam had to assist from below. During those few seconds, the lieutenant sprayed shell casings over her arms and back, bullets whanged against the lightly armored fuselage of the ship, and she watched anxiously as the dirt kicked up around Sam's feet. Finally, Charter slid in, screaming. Peggy fell backward onto the deck.

The lieutenant paused his relentless covering fire to reach a hand out to Sam. Then he jerked, pirouetted into the bulkhead, and dropped to the floor. His weapon spun against the overhead, bounced off, then clattered across the deck and onto Peggy's chest.

"Aww, shit!" she heard over her intercom link. "There goes my racquetball arm!"

Peggy pulled herself upright against her umbilical. She stood holding the Navy man's weapon, watching the enemy draw ever closer, watching the others run to make the ship. Sam clawed aboard, his teeth bared by the effort. The security man behind him turned his back to the helicopter, firing toward the approaching soldiers. The ship hovered there, exposed. Bullets sang against the hull and tore the overhead next to Peggy's skull. She brought up the rifle, pointed it at the gunmen, and squeezed the trigger.

The kick was phenomenal, throwing her against the far bulkhead and onto her ass. She blasted two neat holes in the overhead before releasing the trigger.

"Jesus!" Sam yelled. "Who's side are you on, rookie?"

Grumbling, Peggy forced her way back to the doorway. This time she braced herself, and held the weapon tightly under one armpit. She squeezed the trigger again, fighting the rifle's wild struggle against her. She sprayed the ground in front of the men she came to rescue, causing them to check themselves, and stumble.

"Oops!" she cried. "Sorry!"

She raised the rifle higher, then rained metal onto the soldiers firing upon her ship. It felt good, liberating, to expel so much power.

"Ease up!" she heard through her helmet. "Short bursts, or you'll melt the barrel! This ain't no gangster movie!"

Mike and Harita pitched their human burden aboard with no more consideration than they'd afford a bag of laundry. They heaved themselves onto the deck, with Sam's help.

"Somebody's missing!" Charter shouted. "Where are the others?"

"Co-pilot and crew chief died in the crash!" Harita said. "Security bought it on the ground! Let's get the hell out of here!"

The ship banked and turned its tail toward the enemy. The rattling sound of bullet impaction reverberated throughout the cabin like a curse from their enemies. The helicopter leaned into its element, and shot down the ravine the way it had come.

#

The Japanese guy, their Commander Harita, struggled into the co-pilot's seat with the co-pilot's helmet in hand. He plugged it into the commo receptacle and pulled it onto his head. "Your man's hit, but not bad," he said. "We have two wounded. Are you headed to sea?"

"I'm from the carrier, yes," Chelsea answered. "Do you fly choppers?"

"Bombers."

"Great."

"Don't judge so quickly. I might be of some service. Bandits to starboard, two o'clock."

Chelsea jerked her ship away from the distant vertols, dodged it up the blocking slope and into the ravine on the other side. She flew by dead reckoning toward the sea, unable to see from among the towering trees.

"The terrain's smoothing out," Harita observed. "Soon, there'll be no place to hide."

"You want to jump out front and erect a few stone walls, fly boy?"

"Bandits, eleven and two."

"I knew that." Chelsea braked, reversed course and slid along behind a thick growth of trees to regain her course toward safety.

"You can't outrun them. This crate is no match for any model of vertol."

She once more turned from her course. She weaved among the trees and the increasingly flattened hills as if in a maze, keeping distance and obstacles between her and the enemy while stubbornly seeking the sea.

"They're squeezing us," Harita said. He touched her radio controls. "May I?"

"Any time."

He keyed the command frequency. "Control, this is, umm, friendly helicopter, in trouble. Need assistance. At least three bandits attacking, maybe more, over."

"The call sign is Nemesis."

"Nice ring. Control, this is Nemesis, over."

#

"It sounds like Commander Harita," the XO said. Harper, like everyone else, stood staring at the overhead speaker.

"Control, this is Nemesis, in trouble. Need support against bandits, four in all. We have no guns, and we can't outrun them. Respond, Control."

"Nemesis, Tower. Stand by."

"Tower, we don't have time to stand by. Are you going to help us or not?"

"Nemesis, Tower. Stand by."

The XO addressed his captain. "Sir, that's CAG–"

"I know who it is," Harper snapped.

"Don't leave them out there," Steve urged. "They can't defend themselves. They're out-maneuvered, out-gunned, and out-horsed. They need help."

"I don't have the help to spare."

"Bullshit! You've lots of resources, but you've given them to everyone else."

"I've prioritized according to the mission–"

"You're prioritizing those people right out of their lives!"

The bridge hushed. Steve and Harper stared hard at each other. The crew studiously examined their stations.

"Yes, Tallman, I'm prioritizing lives, just like you did in China."

Steve flinched as if struck, and his defiance fell away.

"Now," Harper said tightly, "get off my bridge."

Steve considered a response, but found no words to serve him. Harper couldn't help everyone; Steve knew that. How many aviators fought over the Serbian landscape, wishing for extra help against imposing odds? How many pilots after ejecting from their aircraft evaded ground troops in hostile territory? How many Marines bled on airfields, waiting for evacuation that took its time coming? They needed help as much as any others, and Harper accepted responsibility for them all. Steve had no such burden; he thought mostly of his people, his comparatively small obligation. He had no right to judge. He turned away from Harper and squeezed his way through the crowded bodies to the hatch.

Before reaching it, he stopped, detoured, and stepped onto the starboard wing, the tiny balcony away from the flight deck, hanging over the sea. The wing was technically still part of the bridge, but it was plenty out of the way, and Steve wanted to hear the final fate of his friends. He hoped Harper would defer to old friendship, ignoring the half-hearted compromise of his order.

#

"Ops," the Captain said. "Give me a status on assault vertols."

"Engaged, sir. One down, destroyed."

"Rescue status?"

"Fifteen minutes, sir, at least." Frustration colored the operations officer's voice.

"Thanks, Ops. Carry on." Harper went to his captain's chair. He mounted its high platform and leather comfort. He pivoted until he faced the now unglazed windscreen and the paralyzed deck of his ship, and stared with sad defeat into nothingness. Oh, he'd win this battle, but the losses would be intolerable. They already were. And he had effectively ordered the deaths of civilians by allowing them to founder among the enemy. Harper stared at the blue water and then the gray steel of his flight deck. A single plane taxied for take-off. He felt the attention of his bridge crew, their eyes on his back. He had turned away to give them that outlet. He had also done it to hide his face, to prevent the spread of that sense of defeat he felt heavy upon his features. He watched nothing, listened to the intercom, and tried not to sigh so that anyone would notice.

#

"They're wet," Steve heard from CIC, as if they reported the play-by-play of a game. So, Chelsea was over water. No more sneaking or dodging. With nowhere to hide, she now ran a race she couldn't possibly win. He leaned against the metal railing, wishing for some way to help. He held the pouch hanging from his neck, and waited.

"Four vertols on them," the XO said, for any who cared to know. Then, except for the intercom, the bridge fell silent.

"Looks like a deathwatch in there," a voice said from a corner of the wing.

Steve turned toward the familiar sound, toward an old Indian looking out of place in jeans and button-down flannel shirt. The old one looked amused. His eyes sparkled with eager, expectant red.

"Why are you here? Are you the angel of death, too?"

"Everybody dies, young man. Even spirits die, when none offer them faith."

"Can you stop what's happening? Can you save Chelsea and the others?"

The old-man-who-wasn't laughed. No one on the bridge seemed to hear. "This petty adventure is nothing to me. Why should I stop it? Why should I rescue your friends? I've done plenty enough for you. Now, it's your turn."

"I can't save them. I don't have the means."

"Oh? All these technological horrors here at your command, and you can't prevent the end of nine frail animals all in one place?"

"Please. My people. They're in trouble. Please, help them."

"No, I won't. I expect something first. Something you owe me after all I've done for you."

"Anything. What do you want?"

"Faith, young Tallman. I want your faith."

#

"We're taking hits!" Harita shouted.

"Can't shake 'em!" Chelsea apologized. She jerked her cyclic to one side, whipping out of her pursuer's cone of fire. Somewhere behind, the guns of another vertol sought her out. Tracers streamed ahead and to her right. Chelsea dodged instinctively away from the fire, added power to climb, to maybe confuse the gunners. "Can't keep this up!" she said. "There are too many guns. They'll hit us for sure!"

The ship shuddered. "Chelsea! Bullets coming through the floor!" Peggy yelled. Something smashed into the overhead control panel. Plastic and metal sprayed over the cockpit. Something swung crazily from the overhead by wires, smacking Chelsea's helmet. She threw the ship into a steep dive and winced at a sudden pain in her arm. She glanced down, saw wetness pooling across the lower sleeve of her right arm.

"Watch the deck!" Harita warned.

She jerked back the cyclic, added power to the collective stick on her left. The ship bounced skyward. Harita watched water splash onto his windscreen.

"Peggy!" Chelsea yelled, dodging yet another spray of tracers. "Get them into their life jackets! Can't hold it, honey! We're sure to go down!"

"I'd rather not," Harita said, his attempt at calm not entirely convincing. "I've crashed enough for one career. I'd like to do something new."

"You're in for a treat!" Chelsea answered. "I've crashed a lot! I know all the best ways!"

Twin streams of tracers converged from right and left. Chelsea dived under them, but not far enough. Bullets crashed against the fuselage like hundreds of banging hammers. Then the ship jerked in a sudden, drunken, violent rhythm.

"We've lost part of a rotor!" Chelsea said, more to herself than anyone. She gripped the control sticks tighter against an uneven, recurring lurch.

"Trailing smoke!" she heard Peggy shout. "We're on fire!"

#

"I have faith in myself," Steve said, "and in the truth of things beyond my existence. Isn't that what you taught me? That true purpose lies within?"

"That's what I taught you, but you haven't taken it much to heart. You said yourself, and the other one brought it into the open. This ... war you fight: it's a battle between faith and fear. You have to choose which side you're on."

"Stop talking in riddles. I've made it obvious which side I'm on."

"Oh?" The Bear stepped close. It reached out both gnarled hands and grasped the objects hanging from Steve's neck. It held the pouch in its right hand, the medicine in its left. "This is what it's all about. Faith." He held up the pouch. "And fear." He held up the vial. He stood in that position for a moment, as if offering sacrifice to the heavens. "Faith is a powerful weapon. With just the smallest faith, you could fling off those hostile aircraft, not just from your friends, but from all those afflicted today by your enemies. Your fear, on the other hand, is a trap, a limitation, a terrible binding." He dropped the containers. They dangled from Steve's neck. "But, it doesn't really bind until it controls who you are." The thing turned away, walking back to its corner on the wing. Leaning against the railing there, it crossed its arms, appraising Steve with those red glinting eyes. "Name your allegiance, young man. Faith or fear. It doesn't matter to your friends. They'll die anyway. It only matters to you."

#

"A lot of red lights up here!" Harita warned. "If I saw this much red in my Hurricane, I'd eject!"

"I'll recommend ejection seats for the next model year!" Chelsea pulled up hard, effectively bringing the ship's ground speed from 150 knots to zero almost instantly. Then she reached above as the ship yawed left, and slapped all her circuit breakers in quick succession. The aircraft lost power, was suddenly a multi-ton rock. Only a free-spinning rotor slowed its drop to the water. "Everybody hold on!" she yelled, and screamed defiance into the dead mike of her helmet as the blue depths leapt to meet them.

#

The ship struck on its port side with such force that the water moved out of its way. The cabin occupants shot down into the Mediterranean like bullets, then rode back through the cabin and out the opposite cargo doorway as the sea surged through the port door and blasted out the starboard side like a geyser. Peggy rode the horror of the crash, expecting first to drown, then to sail far through the air before splashing back into the sea. But her catapulted body jerked back hard against the outside of the ship.

The umbilical! She was lashed to a sinking helicopter, to an anchor!

She struggled to her hands and knees atop the helicopter's flank. Most of the ship was submerged. Waves beat at her arms and legs.

I have to go back in, she thought, terrified of the prospect. But, it was that or be dragged down with the steel and aluminum carcass of the ship.

She started at an explosion beside her, and fell through the cargo bay opening into roiling salt water. The co-pilot's door had burst into the sky and fluttered away like an ungainly kite. Harita scrambled out through the resultant hole. He turned on his knees and thrust an arm back into the cockpit.

"Come on!" he yelled. "Take my hand!"

The helicopter shifted. The considerable weight of its tailboom and cabin, increased by the water that coursed into every vent, forced the tail section down and rotated the cockpit skyward. The suddenness of the shift threw Harita flailing through the air to strike the water some twenty feet away. The ship bobbed nose up for a second like some wretched, maltreated buoy, then lowered itself toward the sea floor. Witnesses saw a figure through the cockpit windscreen, struggling in the pilot's seat, unable to escape.

#

"Nemesis is down," the XO said to the captain's back.

"ETA rescue team?"

When he received no answer, Harper collected his face and pivoted in his seat. "Something wrong, XO?"

"Sir, the Oracle picks up new bogies coming from the south, at least twenty fast movers. Her position isn't as good as earlier, so she can't say what fields they came from, or identify aircraft type. They've split into two roughly even groups, one headed for our strike wing over Bosnia, the other headed for us."

Harper nodded. "And us with only one operational elevator, and our fighters dry on fuel. We'll have to depend on missile defenses."

"Sir, we can't handle ten incoming hostiles without intercept fighters. We need to withdraw, sir."

Harper stiffened. He sat taller in his chair. "I see. You want the flagship of the United States Navy to run from a third rate dictatorial government." He looked around the bridge, staring down the uncertainty in the faces before him. "This ship doesn't run," he said to them. "This is a ship of war, not a Caribbean cruise liner. This ship was built to withstand the trials she might soon face, that you all signed on to help her do it. Get me those missile and ECM captains on the horn, XO. We only have a few minutes, at best."

#

Steve clutched the medicine vial, holding it out until its chain hurt his neck. "If I don't take these, I'll die."

The old man shrugged. "Fine. If that's your decision, then I'll be going."

"Now, wait a minute! I'm just being clear. This isn't a matter of faith. It's a matter of fact."

"Facts are the religious dogma of science," the old man said.

#

Peggy pulled along her umbilical, fighting the churning water with every ounce of spirit she owned. The physical effort was bad enough, but terror hunted her, terror of drowning, of being sucked down into the black depths of the sea. It both hindered and goaded her, that fear. It clouded her thinking even as it spurred her on. When she reached the o-ring that held her harnessed, she almost forgot what she wanted there. Then her hands, as if thinking for themselves, unlatched the snap link and set her free.

She darted upward for the surface, wanting only to get as far from the ship as possible. But the hatch was no longer above her; the ship had rotated nose up. Peggy slammed into the back of the pilot's chair, losing much of her remaining, but precious, breath. She looked around, wide-eyed, and found her exit. Then she noticed someone still in the cockpit.

Chelsea was still in the cockpit.

She grabbed hold of the pilot's chair and propelled herself upward. She cleared of the water, bobbed rapidly, uncontrollably higher, and banged her helmeted head against the windscreen.

"Oww! Hey, there's air in here!"

"Get out!" Chelsea shouted, her voice betraying fear. Water surged through the co-pilot's doorway, rapidly filling the cockpit. Chelsea, lying back in her seat, already spat the agitated water from her mouth. She scrabbled at her harness, her fingers white with tension.

"What's the matter?" Peggy asked, lifting Chelsea's head above the water.

"Harness stuck! Get out! She's going down!"

"Stop screaming, or you just might set me off." Peggy smacked Chelsea's panicking hand away, then tried to open the harness herself. It wouldn't budge.

"The buckle's dented. My God, you've been shot!"

"More than once, I think. Peggy, please."

"Don't say it. I'll be back in a second. The tool box back in the cabin might have something to pry it open. Umm, I'll have to let go of your head. Take a good breath."

Chelsea sucked air, and Peggy let her face fall beneath the water's surface.

Peggy dived toward the back of the cabin, straight to the toolbox strapped against the bulkhead.

It wasn't there.

She cast her desperate gaze about, but without time to search the confines of the cabin. Besides, if the box was gone, it was probably really gone, down to the black deep of the sea. She pushed back between the cockpit seats into the bubble of air, and pulled Chelsea's head back to the surface. Peggy was horrified to find the bubble so much smaller in just those few seconds. Chelsea's mouth and nose barely broke the water's surface.

"It isn't there! Maybe we can squeeze you out, push your arms–"

Chelsea screamed. Peggy released her arm immediately. Not knowing what else to do, she once more tugged at the harness buckle.

Chelsea was going to die.

#

"You say the doctors don't know what they're talking about? That the seizures I have when I'm off my medication are all my imagination?"

"No! I'm saying that I'm your imagination!"

Steve stiffened, confused. "But...you're real."

"There you are, young man. You're almost there." Then, as if in inspiration, the old man shouted with mock gravity, "Trust your feelings, Luke! Give yourself to the Force!"

#

"Oh, Jesus! I'm dead!"

"There's still time! Take a breath!"

And the sea streamed over both their faces.

#

Steve yanked the vial from around his neck. "It isn't real," he said, sounding almost surprised.

He tossed the medicine into the sea.

#

They were underwater. Peggy wrestled with desperation spurred by the animal terror in Chelsea's eyes, and by the growing realization that she would momentarily desert this woman, consigning her to isolated, drowning death. Nothing worked. The harness couldn't be opened, dismantled, or destroyed. It would haul the life cradled within it into the deep. With no other options and no more time, Peggy pounded one more time on the buckle.

It popped open as if never latched.

With no time for surprise, Peggy grabbed the straps of Chelsea's flight gear and hauled her from the seat into the cargo bay. She dragged her limp form to the big doorway and boosted them both from the ship, fighting to pull as far from its sinking, sucking carcass as she could. Clear of the wreckage, she slapped the activation units on both their life jackets, and clutched Chelsea close to protect her. The vests inflated. Peggy felt a tug of buoyancy arrest her downward course along the sucking wake of the helicopter. Then they rose toward a yellow light.

Their lungs burned for air. Peggy struggled against the convincing notion that they would drown before reaching the surface. Then air surrounded them, and blue sky, and they gulped it in large, greedy quantities until it pained them to breathe.

In the process, they swallowed the wet saltiness of spray from hovering fanjets. Vertols screamed overhead, with soldiers in their doorways. Peggy mistook them for rescue, then noticed almost nonchalantly the strange symbol displayed where the American flag should have been. At that moment, the nearest ship erupted into a fiery flower of heat, and dropped like a stone to the sea.

#

"They're firing on the Serb vertols!" the XO reported. He looked at Harper with confusion evident on his face. The intercom from CIC cut off any other comment he might have made.

"Control, this is Ops! Those bogies are shooting down Serb vertols! And they're joining the air battle on our side! Preliminary reports indicate– yes, sir, it's confirmed. They're squawking NATO codes, sir. It's the God damned Turks!"

"The Turks?" Harper sounded skeptical. He had not expected this. Had the Turks seen the television show? Had they come to the aid of a renegade ship for once on the right side? "Are you sure?"

"I've got Konya Command on the horn right now, sir."

Harper nodded. "Give them my regards and get their call-back so that I can thank them properly and personally. Oh, and get a grip on your radio-telephone procedures while you're at it."

The friendly jab released tension on the bridge. A wave of quiet chuckles spread through the crew.

#

Steve leaned exhausted against the starboard wing railing. His visitor had gone, vanished as soon as the medicine vial hit the water. Steve's confidence had vanished just as quickly; he no longer knew what to count on in his life, what was real and what was illusion. He would have to rebuild his vision of the world, but at least it was his vision to build, borrowed from no one.

He straightened, then replaced his pouch down the neck of his shirt. He heard celebration from the bridge. The enemy was destroyed, or running. The military saw that as great cause for joy, but at what cost had victory come? Would the others return alive? Would Chelsea? The Bear had said they would die, but when? Today? Ten years from now? Steve had never been much for riddles.

He turned back into the bridge. He stepped unnoticed behind the officer of the deck and out through the hatch to the companionway. His Marine nodded to him, and fell in behind as Steve descended the stairs.

Patricia waited one flight down, outside CIC. Steve heard the same celebratory sounds from the doorway she blocked.

"Any word?" she asked, her voice small with worry.

"It'll be a while," Steve said. He patted her cheek and forced a smile across his tired lips. "Have faith, honey."

"Where are you going, Dad?"

"To wait."

"I'll come with you."

"You sure?" He looked down at the deck, but, his conscience goading him, he couldn't avoid her eyes for more than an instant. "The news is likely bad."

"Then we'll share bad news."

Steve closed the space between them so that she wouldn't have to. He took her in his arms and hugged her. She patted his back.

"We won, Dad. It's all over the Net. Chenault's under siege by the world press. He couldn't get elected county assessor right now."

"But, Chelsea. Sam."

She pushed him away, holding him by his shoulders. Tears wetted her good eye as she looked up at him. "Don't count them out yet. They work for Stephen Tallman."

Steve scooped her from the deck and cradled her in his arms. They descended another level. At the steel hatch to the flight deck, he waited for the guard.

"Sorry, sir. Flight deck is restricted. Safety reasons, sir."

"Nobody's out there, Marine. No jets, no crew to speak of. We want to see the vertols return."

"Sorry, sir. I can't authorize–"

"But I can," Harper said from the ladder. "Let them go, Marine. I relieve you."

"Aye, sir." The young man turned away, and vanished down another flight of companionway.

"I figured I owe you an apology," Harper said, stepping close. "I treated you pretty rough back there."

"No apology called for, unless it's mine."

"Mind if I come with you?"

"It's your ship, Captain."

Harper stepped past them and swung the heavy hatch outward to the sunlit world. Steve and Patricia braced themselves for the banshee din that characterized flight operations, but nothing much at all touched their expectant ears. They stepped after Harper onto the flat plaza of steel, breathed in the chemical smell of jet fuel and soot. A football field to their left, crews repaired the damaged recovery deck. A prop-driven plane, a refueler, leaned into its hold-down clamp on catapult two, over seventy-five yards away toward the bow. As it burst forward and into the sky, the deck it left behind stood nearly deserted, a quiet steel park for private meditation. Steve and Harper walked toward the bow, two city blocks away. Patricia held her father tightly about his neck. The men hardly looked at each other.

"I've news about your people," Harper said. "Some of it you'll like. Some of it you won't."

"That's all right. You don't need to tell me. Whatever happens is as it should be."

"Been speaking with God again, Tallman?"

"Speaking with myself right now."

#

The first vertol touched down more than an hour later. Steve sat cross-legged on the deck fifty meters away, knowing before the aircraft landed that it wasn't the one. Patricia sat beside him, bothered, he knew. She had commented on his fixed concentration on the blue horizon. Three aircraft arrived without piquing her father's interest. Harper welcomed them back with congratulations to rescue crews as they walked or jogged past him toward the island. He thanked and comforted the wounded Marines and aviators they carried. Steve ignored all of these, did not stand until the fourth vertol appeared.

It slapped the deck like any other, brought down its engines like any other, opened its cargo doors like any other. But Steve's heart pounded harder at this latest arrival, and his hands began to sweat. He recognized his feelings as anticipation and fear, sought to shut them away in a controllable space in his mind.

It doesn't limit until it drives who you are.

He stepped toward the aircraft. Faces appeared at the open doorway. People leapt the two feet to the deck. There was Sam, and then Eller. They jumped and whooped upon hitting the gray plates of safety, like boys in the end zone of a tough football game. Sam knelt and hugged the deck with theatrical joy. Eller playfully kicked him in the rear. Then others disembarked. A sailor in battle dress dropped to the deck. He turned to take one end of a litter, the other end carried by a ragged Japanese aviator, the missing air group commander.

Steve turned to his daughter.

She smiled, the expression wavering and barely touching the ruined right side of her face. "Go," she said.

Steve walked toward the vertol, his eyes focused on the open door, seeing nothing beyond its yawning frame. Another stretcher, and another, these carried by the medical people and the divers from the vertol's crew. Eller jogged alongside one litter, the one carrying a loudly complaining, sharp-tongued Billy Charter. He waved to Steve and approached him for the first time in over two years, but Steve's focused, searching face and anxious carriage warned him off.

Another litter emerged from the ship, the officer who had flown co-pilot for Chelsea. Then Peggy stuck her head into the bright sunlight, looked around as if surprised by her surroundings, and jumped to the deck. She turned and extended her hands to help the figure scooting gingerly, seated, toward the doorway's frame.

Steve stopped ten feet away, frozen. Chelsea edged forward until she sat at the edge of the vertol deck, her feet on the steel plates of the runway. Her right arm was bound to her torso by nylon straps, the sleeve torn away to reveal two bloody compress bandages. Her black hair lay flattened to her head, like the coat of a soaked cat. A nasty blue bruise marred her temple. She moved with all the delicacy of an old, arthritic woman. As she rested on the vertol's deck, Peggy holding her arm, Sam leaning over her solicitously, she looked up, saw Steve, and cracked a tired smile.

"Hi," she said. "I'm back."

Steve stepped toward her; no one else mattered.

"Hi, boss!" Peggy exclaimed. "We've had an adventure!"

"Damned straight!" Sam agreed. "Just like out of an action movie. You know, I bet we could put See It Now back together if we did this every week. And forget the network headaches; go straight indie..."

Peggy grabbed Sam by an arm and tugged him away from the vertol.

"I guess your dirt worked," Chelsea told Steve, who knelt on the flight deck before her.

"I'm glad you're okay." He touched her damaged arm, afraid to hurt her more.

"I'm not so okay. I got dinged up. Look! It's the same arm!"

"You look perfect to me." Steve felt awash in the depth of her eyes.

"Give a girl a hand?"

"I'll do better than that." He moved to her side, lifted her gently into his arms, careful to avoid her wounds and bruises. She issued a small squeal, then placed her one good arm stiffly, necessarily, around his neck.

"Let's go home," he said, and kissed her.

#

As Steve carried Chelsea to the island and doctors, as the vertol crew towed their aircraft to its assigned elevator, as deck crew prepared to welcome the next influx of aircraft, Patricia sat on the Evan Bayh's flight deck, happier than she had been in years. Peggy knelt beside her, dirty, salt dry, and grinning from ear to ear.

"I guess your Dad forgot all about you," the cameralady said. "Want I should get one of those stretcher things for you?"

Patricia kicked playfully at the plates beneath her legs. "He didn't forget. He just has more important things on his mind. Besides, there's nothing wrong with me that sweat and determination won't cure."

"But you have to get off the deck."

"Do I really?" Tears augmented Patricia's crooked smile, but, for the first time in months, the tears marked joy. "I'm good with where I am, for right now, anyway. He's okay, Peggy, or he will be. Both of them will. For once... For once, I don't have to worry. I can just take care of myself."

"It's been hard, hasn't it?"

"Yes, it has." Patricia knew what Peggy did, that she kept the crippled girl company so that she wouldn't be alone on the dangerous warship deck. Patricia knew they worried about her when they could find a moment to think outside themselves. She knew this, and loved them for it. But Patricia also knew that she would go on, that she, like her father, would fight through her trials, would get better, stronger. She knew she would be happy one day, as happy all the time as she was just then. "It's been hard. It's been scary, even. But we proved we can make the world better, with work."

The ocean breeze flowed over her. It smelled of oil and fuel. "We lost much. We gained more." Finally, she couldn't contain her joy. She threw her arms into the cobalt blue of an aging, but perfect day, and shouted, turning the heads of the deck crew around her.

"By God," she yelled, "it was worth it!"

Afterword:

 (Back to Contents)

Help!

The author here, dear reader, coming at you from every unprotected node of the Net to offer you a hearty thank you for reading Conqueror's Realm. I hope you enjoyed it, and I suppose you probably did, if you got this far. I know this was a big book, pretty much two books, when you think about it. Unless you're a habitual James Michener reader. So, if you're rested up, you've had a night's sleep, I'd like you to do me a favor. No, I'm not asking for money, so put that twenty away. Here's the deal. Writing is an artistic mission, and I'd much rather be writing books than marketing the ones I've released. Many pundits insist today's writers must also be marketers, that they must blog, podcast, email, Facebook, tweet and otherwise promote, promote, promote if they hope to be successful. These people make me ask, "So when am I supposed to write a new story if I'm busy doing all that?" My answer is: right now. The marketing still has to get done, though, or Conqueror's Realm and all the others drown in a sea of millions of other books, undiscovered and therefore unappreciated. So, I've devised a fiendish plan to make that marketing happen.

I'm asking you to do it.

If you liked Conqueror's Realm, I want you to return post haste to wherever you bought it and put up a review of the book. It doesn't have to be long, but do include a star rating. Give the rating you feel the book merits, of course, though I prefer five stars to any other number, hint, hint. Then, why not join my email list at stephanloy.com, through which you can get freebies, plus news of what's coming up. Tell everyone you know about Conqueror's Realm, on Facebook, Twitter, and every other social medium of choice. Every little bit helps the poor, starving indie author!

That laid bare, I'm hoping for your help in ticking off some great buzz for Conqueror's Realm. The more and more positive the response, the higher Realm will rank in the lists, the more readers will find her, and the more stories I can get into willing, excited hands. The guys and gals at See It Now fight to bring some measure of truth to the public conversation. Let's ensure their message gets the widest distribution.

Thanks in advance,

Steve.

Keep in touch at smloy.net

More Books by Stephan Loy

(Back to Contents)

Last Days and Times

On March 13, 2013, the Catholic Church elected its final pope. An obscure and contested document in the Vatican archives asserts that this pope will see the burning of Rome and the Judgment of the world. There are always apocalyptic predictions, of which this is the latest. Y2K didn't pan out, neither did the Mayan Apocalypse. Now doomsayers latch onto the so-called Pope Prophecies. A mysterious evangelist gone terrorist with supernatural origins latches onto this latest end of the world prediction as a sign that Judgment Day is upon us. He hopes to usher in a biblical apocalypse using stolen atomic warheads. Three stand against him, a seer of good and evil, her academic beau, and a disaffected FBI agent. They and their enemy claim to be soldiers of God, but who, in these times, does God truly favor? An urban fantasy thriller, Last Days and Times delivers an engrossing plot, compelling characters, and a challenging theme.

Shining Star

We killed Earth. Thousands of years later, the survivors, having fled their dead planet in great generation ships, eak out a tenuous existence among the local group of stars. This could have been the end for the last dregs of humanity, but for the rise of a dictatorial church that draws humankind under its wing and flogs it to prosperity. Now, Miranda St. Billiart, a soldier for the Community of God, seeks to escape the power that made her in the first place. With her sister Ilyanya, she uncovers the corruption that made the Church possible. The two of them fight to expose the truth, to redress the evils heaped upon their people, and to discover within the wreckage of their universe who they are and why they matter.

Isis Wept

Egypt, 8000 years ago. The gods walk among men as titans, powerful beings with passions that move mountains, fix stars in the heavens, and master the forces of life and death. Within this world, the evil god Set betrays his brother Osiris, king of rich and respected Abydos. Set kills his kin, then steals all that was his, including the queen, Isis, the goddess of life and beauty. Isis survives defilement by her monstrous conqueror to escape and bend her powers toward finding her love and bringing him back from the blackness of death. In the course of this quest, kingdoms fall, armies clash, and the balance of power between gods and men is altered forever. Who holds the high ground in such a cataclysmic conflict? Is it those who define power, or those who define themselves?

