I Do Solemnly Swear (26 page)

Stevers slid his butt forward and lay on his back.

The fucking straps
.

The tall soldier with a missing front tooth stuck the barrel of his rifle in Stevers’s face.

The colonel said, “No move.”

Stevers clutched the picture in the palm of his hand and tried to conceal it. One soldier secured his arms to the nylon straps and pulled them tourniquet tight. The other wound rope around his left ankle and tied the other end to the leg of the table. Lieutenant Stevers knew why they hadn’t secured his injured leg.

Colonel Bajraf sauntered to the table.

The soldiers stepped away. The short one with the beer gut sat next to Wes and pressed his rifle to Wes’s bruised cheek. It was the first time Stevers had gotten a good look at the colonel. His swarthy complexion was covered with pockmarks. His eyes were wide set, beady, black as obsidian glass.

The colonel whispered in Stevers’s ear, “Now we play.”

Bajraf gently laid the butt end of the rifle on Stevers’s swollen right knee. It felt more like the colonel whacked it with a hammer. A shock wave of pain radiated into Stevers’s shin. He arched his back like an Olympian wrestler. Holding the end of the barrel, Bajraf flipped the butt over and forced the twisting rifle handle to bounce on Stevers’s knee. Stevers gripped the edge of the table with his bound hands, dug his fingernails into the wood, and unconsciously crumpled the snapshot of Debra and Todd. The colonel was toying with him, and the pain was unbearable. How would he endure the pain when the colonel got down to serious business? Stevers, panting like a woman about to give birth, groaned, but he refused to give the colonel the satisfaction he sought. Nausea overwhelmed him, and his mouth filled with sour saliva.

“What the
fuck
do you want from us?” Stevers shouted.

“In time, Lieutenant.”

Stevers again prayed to the god he hadn’t spoken to in years. The colonel set his rifle against the wall. He grabbed Stevers’s right ankle with one hand and gripped the heel of his boot with
the other. He looked at Wes Travis and grinned. Slowly, he pushed Stevers’s foot and forced his knee to bend.

Stevers screamed uncontrollably. His guttural cry echoed in the metal room, and his head snapped from side to side. It felt like his knee had been torn open. The snapshot slipped from his fingers and tumbled to the floor.

“Stop! Please stop!” Wes yelled. “I’ll do it. I give you my word.”

Stevers moaned in agony. He didn’t care what it was Wes had to do. The only thing that mattered at this moment was stopping the colonel. If his partner had to kiss Ahmadinejad’s ass on international television, give him a blow job, piss on the American flag, Stevers didn’t care. Bajraf held his ankle and kept his knee at a twenty-degree angle. Stevers teetered toward unconsciousness. How much more could he endure?

The colonel let go of his leg. Stevers slowly tried to lower it, but it wouldn’t move. He felt an intense throbbing, as if blood were gushing inside his knee. Bajraf bent over, picked up the mutilated photograph, and gawked at it with wild eyes.

“Your wife good fuck-fuck?” The colonel rubbed the photograph obscenely against his groin and gyrated his hips. He laughed hysterically. Sneering at Stevers, Bajraf licked the photograph. “She taste good.” He tore it into tiny pieces, and like confetti, sprinkled them on Stevers’s head.

Stevers growled through clenched teeth. “I’m-gonna-cut-your-fucking-heart-out!”

“We see how brave you Americans are,” Bajraf said. He grasped Stevers’s boot again and violently pushed, forcing his knee to bend to its maximum range. Something crunched in Stevers’s knee, and what he felt was more than pain. His mouth hung open, and he vomited all over his chest. He coughed and gagged and tried to scream, but all he could do was moan. He turned his
head and looked at Wes’s horrified face. His ears popped, and the room began to whirl. His eyes lost their focus, and he could hear garbled words. Lieutenant Kyle Stevers, in his last moment of consciousness, thanked God for his temporary hiatus from hell.

***

When Craig Coleman approached the late-model Corolla, he looked at the rear side window for a valid parking permit.
Ah
, he thought,
bushwhacked another moocher
. Did they really think he was that stupid? If they didn’t want to get caught trying to horn in on a free parking space, they should have wedged their car in the thickest part of the lot, not isolate it in the farthest corner.

Coleman parked the red Chevy Tahoe—with
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY SECURITY
painted on the doors—three spaces from the Corolla. He grabbed his flashlight, the yellow pad of citations, straightened his hat, and hopped out of the Tahoe. He moseyed over to the light-blue Toyota, stood behind the car, and shined the flashlight on the license plate so he could write a ticket. He glanced up from the yellow pad and focused his eyes on the rear window. Something wasn’t quite right. He shined the flashlight toward the window, and Coleman’s six-battery Eveready sliced through the fog and spilled into the car. Either it was the strangest-looking headrest he’d ever seen or somebody was defiant enough to be sitting in the front seat. He didn’t know if they had balls, or they were just plain dumb.

He tiptoed to the driver’s door, shined the light through the foggy side window, and tapped on the glass with his knuckles. The man didn’t move. He tapped again with the butt end of the flashlight. Nothing.
The son of a bitch must be drunk.
Slowly, Coleman lifted the door handle, expecting it to be locked. More than likely, he’d have to call the cops. The door clicked. Not wanting to startle the man, he was careful not to swing it open too quickly.
No telling how a drunk or cokehead might react if he scared the crap out of him. With the door slightly ajar, Coleman shined the light on the side of the man’s face.

As if a rattlesnake were springing toward his head, Coleman backpedaled and almost fell to the asphalt. “Mother of
mercy
!”

It was not necessary for Coleman to shake the man’s shoulder or nudge him with his flashlight; the black man was dead. There was a gaping hole in the side of the man’s head, bigger than a golf ball. Two cigars, Dutch Masters bands around the ends, were sticking out of the man’s eye sockets. He shined the light on the man’s legs. A naked blonde woman—with blood-stained hair and a nose looking as if it had been hit with a sledgehammer—lay with her head on his lap. Her dead eyes were wide open, almost staring at Coleman. The security guard covered his mouth and could feel vomit inching its way to his throat. The woman’s breasts had been hacked off.

He ran to the Tahoe, panting, out of breath, his heart pounding furiously. He grabbed the two-way radio and called the main security office.

“Remember what I told you,” Trevor said. “Objectively listen to the Joint Chiefs. But in the end, Kate, you must follow your instincts.”

The president buttoned her suit jacket, brushed her hands across the front of her skirt, and tugged on each sleeve. She kissed her father on the cheek and picked up a faint smell of Old Spice.

“Sorry I have to leave, but I need some time to review my notes before the meeting.”

His cologne was like a memory-enhancing drug. Its scent always evoked flashbacks of her childhood. As if it were yesterday, Kate could almost feel the metal tools clicking on her teeth. Dr. Westin, seventy-two years old, had hovered over her like a mad professor. How could
any
six-year-old not be terrified? Kate’s repeated cries for her father had done little but annoy the elderly dentist. Maria Martinez had held her hand and wiped away the tears. The soft-spoken Latina woman explained to Kate that her father was away on business. Kate did not understand what business was. But it must have been more important than her first dentist appointment.

“Are you OK, sweetheart?” Trevor asked.

“A little jittery.”

“I’ll be waiting for you.”

“Could be a long evening, Daddy.”

“I’ll manage. The Presidential Suite isn’t exactly a Motel 6.”

No matter how dismal the situation, he could always make her smile. She kissed his cheek again.

She took three steps and stopped. “Why didn’t you spend more time with me when I was a child?”

He set down his coffee and shrugged his shoulders, a look of sadness in his eyes. “I’ve been waiting thirty-five years for you to ask that question. Are you sure this is the right time?”

She didn’t answer, but her eyes welled with tears.

Trevor stood and walked toward her. He stuffed his hands into his pockets like a schoolboy standing in front of an angry principal. “It wasn’t a plan, Kate. It just happened.”

“We didn’t need the money.”

“I got on the corporate merry-go-round and couldn’t get off.” He touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “It couldn’t have damaged you that severely.”

“How do you know what I feel in my heart?”

“From a Kansas ranch to the White House is quite a leap. I must have done something right.”

She thought about that for a minute. “If you could go back, would you do things differently?”

“Spend more time with you?”

She nodded.

“All I know”—he swallowed hard and his eyes filled with tears—“is that I love you with all my heart. Always have. Always will.”

She wasn’t sure if she felt love or anger or regret. Maybe a little of each. It was a conversation far too important for the
limited time. She had more to say but left him standing in the dining room.

As she walked through the halls of the White House, the air was oppressive, like a humid Kansas evening in mid-August. The usual cheery glances and respectful nods were now hidden by glares of uneasiness. Everyone was on edge. Kate had quickly learned the paradox of the presidency. When the Executive Office made a favorable decision, Kate’s advisors were credited for their divine wisdom. If they blundered, however, Kate was chastised for incompetent leadership. It was a lonely job.

She entered the Situation Room, first to arrive, and sat in the chair with the presidential seal embossed on the seat back. Kate shook her reading glasses out of their leather case and opened the folder. She’d studied the notes a dozen times, yet some intuitive urge compelled her to consider them one last time. Despite wearing a wool business suit, Kate felt like the air-conditioning was set at fifty degrees. Lately, she’d be covered with goose bumps one minute, and the next her armpits were wet.
Menopause?
She shuddered at the thought. Her periods had become sporadic—she’d even skipped a month occasionally—and the severe cramps were reminiscent of her teenage years. Something was going on; something she wanted to deny. She’d blamed this anatomical phenomenon on her stressful life, but for how long could she continue to deny that the symptoms meant more?

And so, while she waited for the Joint Chiefs, Kate’s ambivalent life unfolded with poignant clarity. To most of the world, she was the president of the most powerful nation on Earth, a woman to be revered for her unprecedented accomplishments. But in her mind’s eye, she envisioned herself a childless woman, estranged from a husband she never should have married.

The door opened. One by one, the Joint Chiefs marched in. It was like a procession of shiny brass buttons and chest decorations. Then, like an ominous cloud, Walter Owens emerged. His shirt was barely tucked in enough to cover his portly midsection, and his tie was four inches too short. Perhaps clothing manufacturers didn’t make neckties long enough to span his portly belly?

Sitting next to such an esteemed group of military officers, Kate couldn’t help but believe that Vice President Owens had to feel completely out of place. She studied his round face and Andy Rooney eyebrows. She did not like anything about this man. In fact, she loathed him. Even in the most diabolical creatures, Kate could find a morsel of good. But in Walter Owens, she had not uncovered one redeeming quality. As everyone adjusted themselves in their chairs and exchanged small talk, Kate cleared her mind and counted heads.

Owens leaned forward. “Have you prepared your speech for the Georgetown lecture?”

World War III was looming over the horizon, and Owens was concerned about the
lecture
? “Under the circumstances, I haven’t given it a second thought.”

He looked at her with owlish eyes. “Dean Whitney is very enthusiastic. Standing room only, he told me. A departure from the craziness in the Middle East is just what you need, Madam President.”

She counted to ten. “We’ll discuss it later, Walter.”

Kate surveyed the eager faces of the Joint Chiefs. She did not sense, as in the past, an air of overflowing male ego. The men looked attentive, anxious to hear her speak. Did it result from their concern with the international crisis, or had she earned some respect? Perhaps, Kate thought, she had broken down a barrier, bridged a gap between machismo behavior and feminine
credibility. Today’s meeting, no doubt, would either augment their confidence in her or forever tarnish her image as a competent leader.

“Gentlemen, thank you for meeting with me on such short notice. Recent developments in the Middle East require our immediate response. President Ahmadinejad has given us an ultimatum: Our troops, battleships, and aircraft carriers must be removed from the Middle East, and he has demanded that we sign an agreement ensuring that we will not engage in any further military action against Iran without a Congressional declaration of war. If we do not comply, our Navy pilots will be publicly executed.”