Michael Walsh Bundle (88 page)

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Authors: Michael Walsh

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C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-SEVEN
Oceana Naval Air Station, Virginia
The three Super Hornets were waiting for them, as promised, at Oceana, right there on Tomcat Boulevard in Virginia City, an homage to the old Grumman F-14 Tomcats. Room for one pilot and one passenger in each. Twenty percent larger than the Legacy Hornet, and fifteen thousand pounds heavier at max weight, with a third more fuel capacity, the F/A-18F Super Hornets could kick just about anything's ass. At fifty-five million dollars a pop, they'd better.
“Don't wreck 'em, okay?” said Commander Stephen Joseph. “These babies almost cost real money.”
“Range?” asked Devlin. “And don't bullshit me, because I'll know.”
“Twelve hundred nautical miles, in and out.”
“Airborne refueled?” asked Danny.
“What, do I look stupid?”
“Radar?” Devlin again.
“If they're looking you in the face or up the ass, they ain't gonna see ya. Not quite Stealth level, but good enough for government work. Full ECM. But try to fly straight.”
Danny was walking around one of the three Super Hornets. “Weapons? I see a twenty-millimeter Gatling, four Sidewinders, JD
AM
s. . . .”
“And you can get them in red if you don't like them in white or blue,” said Joseph. “Sparrows, Mavericks . . .”
“JDAM bombs. I like that,” said Danny. “I hear CBU Clusters, too.”
“If you say pretty please.”
Danny kicked one of the tires. “We'll take three,” he said.
“Where to, sir?” asked Commander Joseph.
“Diego Garcia, and we'll take it from there,” said Devlin.
Diego Garcia was a small atoll in the Indian Ocean south of the subcontinent. Administratively, it belonged to the BIOT, the British Indian Ocean Territory, but in practice its forty-four square kilometers were entirely given over to a joint forward operating base of the Americans and the Brits. Basically, it was a stationary aircraft carrier fashioned from a coral reef. Strategically situated among East Africa, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, India, Indonesia, and, at a stretch, Australia, Diego Garcia controlled one of the most critical areas on the planet.
“What about you, Mr. Harris?” asked Joseph. “And you, Mr. Barker?”
“We're headed elsewhere.”
“We'll need some choppers, too,” said Danny. “Carrierbased in the Gulf of Oman. The
Eisenhower
will do just fine.”
“Heavy lifting? MH-47s? We can have those there as well.”
Danny shook his head. “More along the lines of MH-60Ks. The new ones, with Stealth technology. Six will do just fine.”
Commander Joseph smiled. “ ‘Night Stalkers Don't Quit,' huh?”
“They never die, either.”
Joseph looked at the two men standing before him. This was probably the last time he would ever see them, no matter whether the mission was a success or a failure, whether they lived or died. But he was proud to be serving with them.
“I suppose this is all classified.”
“Got it in one.”
“Dangerous? I mean, more so than usual?”
“Any man KIA, his family will be taken care of. No worries there. But I'd prefer bachelors, if you catch my drift.”
“Got three hot-sticks flight teams itching to mix it up.”
“They're going to get to scratch that itch. And if you know your men, Commander, they'll all be coming home.”
“Outstanding,” said Commander Joseph.
“Now load those suckers up with JDAMS and get them in the air.”
Devlin and Danny started to walk away. They were heading back to Washington to go over the plan with Danny's Xe ops once more and then they'd be in the air, and on their way to the Al Dhafra Air Base in the Emirates, which would be their jumping-off point. Joseph called out after them.
“We're going to get it right this time, aren't we?”
Smart fellow.
Devlin turned and gave a thumbs-up, and then they were gone.
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-EIGHT
St. Louis
“I hate Missouri,” said Angela Hassett. “I hate everything about it. I hate the weather, I hate the humidity, I hate the cold, I hate the damp, I hate the symphony, I hate the people, I hate the blacks, I hate the whites. I hate the French and the Germans who founded it. I hate the Okies in the Ozarks. I even hate Branson.”
She was naked, sitting upright in the bed at the old Adam's Mark in downtown St. Louis.
“I thought you loved humanity,” said Jake Sinclair, just as naked, beside her.
“I do love humanity,” she replied. “It's just people I can't stand.”
Sinclair kissed her and then rolled back over on his pillow. They had made love three times already and he was exhausted, although he would never admit it. “In that case,” he said, “you'll make a great president.”
Now it was her turn to kiss him. The press was probably downstairs, but she didn't care. The press fed from her virgin hand every morning, noon, and night. The press was her best friend, her protector. She told them almost nothing, her campaign told them less than nothing, but the press was so wedded to the notion of the First Woman President—historic!—that they would do anything to see it become reality. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” said the wise reporter in
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
How easy it had all been; nothing to it, really. All you needed was a gimmick, an angle, a “first” for the narrative and the media would block and tackle for you all the way to the end zone, which was 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She had quickly learned the First Lesson of Media, which was that nearly all reporters hated being reporters, hated being servile toward those they regarded at the very most as their social equals and, at worst, their inferiors. After all, they had all gone to the same schools together, they socialized together, they lived in the same neighborhoods in Georgetown and on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But the power imbalance thing really pissed off the ladies and gentlemen of the press, which is why they had, in effect, created their own shadow government, a government-in-permanent-exile but always on the job, and an endless round of television shows on which they interviewed each other, hounded some hapless office-holding nitwit, and then interviewed each other about the interviews they'd just done. A more perfect circle of jerks could hardly be imagined.
The Second Lesson of Media was corollary to the first: Most reporters wanted to be something else. The ones who could write a little wanted to be Real Writers. The ones who couldn't write very well wanted to be Hollywood screenwriters. And the ones who couldn't write at all wanted to be movie producers. Every story came with an angle, and that angle had to be Option Money. Every series of stories had to build a Narrative. And that Narrative could only be one thing:
Oppressed Minority Triumphs Over White Men.
Well, she certainly qualified. And now she was wiping the floor with John Edward Bilodeau Tyler.
She had worked hard at establishing the legend, from the time she first burst on the scene as the governor of Rhode Island. Rhode Island! Thank God for federalism, for where else in the world could you and your gang take over a dinkyass state like Rhode Island and be taken seriously? To burnish the legend, she had moved quickly to toss the Italian mobsters who had been running the joint for decades into the federal pen—they had supported her, even helped her buy some choice real estate in Newport, but now that their usefulness was at an end, they had to be made an example of. Hello, Supermax, the ultimate no-tell motel.
And the media had been a part of it, which was why she found herself at this moment in bed with the loathsome Jake Sinclair. This was a consenting adult, two-way-street transaction, a fuck for access and endorsement. In a few weeks it would be all over, and she would never again have to have his hands on her body. She would send him packing back to whatever little chippie named Jenny he was currently married to, and then, when all the reports of campaign irregularities surfaced via leaks from her press office, she'd have him arrested and thrown in jail, preferably for life.
“You're up across the board,” said Sinclair, consulting his iPhone. His newspaper had broken the recent reports of the special tracking chip implanted in every iPhone, which made him laugh, since anyone with a source in Washington had known for years that the iPhone incorporated the SKIPJACK technology from the Clinton Administration: Big Brother was watching you, for your own safety. Naturally, Tyler got the blame. “Eighteen points, in some states.”
Don't get cocky—that was a lesson she had learned long ago, when she was a girl. Never trust a fixed fight until the fight is over and the bum you bet on has his hand raised in triumph. Now that bum was her, and the hand being raised was the one that would not be on the Bible as she took the oath of office on January 20.
It was amazing how stupid the media was, how gullible. They were just like Churchill's description of the Germans: either at your feet or at your throat. And the only thing you needed to do to keep them away from your throat was to feed them—in this case, information. Information on the other guy. Once they had made up their mind that their precious “narrative” dictated that you were the good guy and the other guy was the bad guy, you had it made in the shade.
Just as long as you didn't do anything stupid. And the later into the election season it got, the smarter you became. At this rate, she wouldn't even need the collapse of the dollar that a certain quiet campaign backer had told her he could deliver. In fact, she'd have to really fuck up now to lose. Either that, or the other guy would have to get awfully lucky. And Jeb Tyler's luck had run out.
Her private phone rang. Sinclair tried to snoop over her shoulder as she looked at the display, but she turned away from him. “I have to take this,” she said, rising and heading for the bathroom.
“Another lover, I suppose?” he said and then flopped back on the pillow. He was very proud of himself, Mr. Sinclair was, getting to advance-fuck a president of the United States.
She closed the bathroom door. “Yes?”
“Are you alone?”
“I am now.”
“Don't tell me it's that awful Sinclair. Really, my dear, I thought you had better taste than that.”
“Yeah, well, you do what you have to. Everything in place?”
At the other end of the line, Emanuel Skorzeny had an uncharacteristic moment of hesitation. “Yes, of course.”
“Don't fuck with me, old man,” she said, her voice rising,
“Need some help in there?” came Sinclair's voice from the bedroom.
“We have a deal and I expect that deal to go off without a hitch. I need to put this bastard Tyler in the ground, six feet under, so that by Election Day he'll be lucky to carry his home state of Louisiana. The country's sick of his ineptitude. It's sick of watching the body count rise on his watch. One more push and he's done.”
“Do not underestimate him, Angela,” said Skorzeny. “I made that mistake once and it cost me a considerable amount of money, staff, and personal happiness.”
“That's your problem. You can always find more money, I'm sure you can find staff, and as for your personal happiness, I don't give a shit. Just tell me our little surprise is going to go off without a hitch.”
“Haven't you been reading the papers? Watching television? I noticed you haven't said a word about the trouble in Africa.”
“Why should I? There's no votes in it, and besides it's more fun to watch Tyler flounder and stew. As far as I'm concerned, that's for your amusement. I want the bang for my buck you promised me.”
“Oh, you'll get it, all right,” said Skorzeny, “and right on schedule. Just one thing, Angela . . .”
“What's that?”
“Do be prepared for Tyler to have a little October Surprise of his own. The man has the cunning of a snake, and if you're going to beat him, you're going to need to be utterly ruthless.”
Angela Hassett smiled. “I think I've done pretty well in that department so far,” she said.
A loud knock on the door. “You going to stay in there all day? I gotta go.”
“Keep your pants on, big boy,” she said sweetly, “and let a girl do what a girl's gotta do.”
“Okay, but hurry up. Jeez . . .”
“What an idiot,” said Skorzeny.
“Yes, but he's our idiot for now,” she replied. “And when he's no longer useful . . . ‘ruthless,' you were saying?”
“Listen to me, Angela. It's not just Tyler. He has people—one man in particular. This man might well be the most dangerous man on the planet, next to me. Pray you never meet him.”
A voice from outside the door. “Aw, Angela, come on. . . .”
“I think I can handle men,” she said to Skorzeny. “Just do your job.”
She rang off, splashed some water on her face, and looked at herself. In less than a month she would be looking at the president-elect and, a couple of months later, the POTUS herself. That's when the real fun would begin, when fortunes would be made and unmade, and when social transformation would begin in earnest.
She stepped back and examined her body in the mirror: not bad for an old broad.
“Angela . . .” He was starting to whine now.
She threw open the door to catch him hopping around like a two-year-old; some men just couldn't hold their water. She caught him as he rushed past her and kissed him. That would get his attention, and pretty soon his mind would be right back where she wanted it to be, which was between her breasts and other parts of her anatomy.
Men were such fools.

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