April 2: Down to Earth

by Mackey Chandler

  "Yes, Ma'am," he replied smartly and saluted before disconnecting, even though he was in underwear.

  "There's one happy man, to pass the call on to his boss," Papa-san told April. If President Wiggen still had their audio feed on she didn't acknowledge it.

  The screen showed an older man, in even less time than the Commander had taken to appear, but he still managed to have a uniform shirt on, although it was missing any decoration and April had the hilarious thought, that if he were ordered to stand up, he might not have taken the time to put pants on.

  "Captain Ridley. Are you at all familiar with the Security Unit President Hadley had protecting him and if there were any surviving members after the fall of the Deepwell bunker?"

  "Yes Madam President, I was appointed to reconstruct the security group by Admiral Mason, after the fall of Deepwell. He assigned the formation of that group to a Captain Robinson, who died in Deepwell. We found deficiencies in the performance of that group and I was charged with making sure those assigned your detail and others of similar stature performed better, so we determined none of the few surviving members would be assigned to the new unit. It was felt it would be better to start from scratch, rather than attempt to retrain men who had been very thoroughly conditioned to follow other scripts and doctrines."

  "And the two lieutenants that escorted President Hadley from the Deepwell bunker. Has anyone ever been able to discover their whereabouts, or reconstruct the last moments of their actions as his guards?"

  Captain Ridley looked like someone had driven a knife through his back. The healthy tan tone of his face, took about two seconds of awkward silence, to fade to a sweaty pallor.

  "With all sincere respect Ma'am I wish you'd ask that question of Admiral Mason, as I am aware I am not privy to a great deal of the story."

  "Tell me what you do know and perhaps we can salvage some fragment for you. Perhaps at least your freedom, or even your retirement."

  They had never heard such a devastating cold blooded threat, phrased as a possible reward. If that was the reward who wanted to hear the possible punishments?

  "I was told some members of the security detail that day fought among themselves and abandoned their posts under fire and are still AWOL. Admiral Mason intimated that he thought they must actually be agents of Home, who had infiltrated us and were warned about the bombardment, so they could escape at the last moment. He also speculated that is how Home knew exactly where the bunker complex was located, despite elaborate efforts at secrecy. Thus we wanted to take no chance, by using anyone vetted to the duty from before."

  President Wiggen again had the downward glance that said she was consulting her software. "Did he say anything to you about President Hadley being rescued from the bunker and being killed outside the complex?"

  "Absolutely not!" Captain Ridley exclaimed. "Everything I have been told by Admiral Mason, indicated the President died in the bunker."

  "You're hiding something Captain. This is not the right time, nor am I the right person to hide anything from, if you want my consideration when this is all resolved. What else do you know, besides what Admiral Mason told you?"

  "Everything else I have heard, is of the nature of gossip and barracks rumors. I honestly can't say that any of it I heard has any solid basis, or any truth at all. To spread such rumors is dangerous. I honestly wish nobody had burdened me with stories, I have no way to confirm. It's a no win sort of situation. If I have no proof, better to forget them."

  "Very smart, but the software says that no matter how hard you try, you do remember them enough to have doubts and concerns, that show up biometrically. Now I understand your disclaimer and I respect that. But I order you to tell me what the scuttle-butt has been."

  Ridley looked sick. "I was told that a number of the President's evacuation team were found shot to death in a motor home, some distance from the Deepwell bunker and that the vehicle was looted and burned in a remote area of Pennsylvania. The men who guarded it, said the forensic team did not allow any of the normal troops to approach at all and although the dead were officers, they were buried privately in a military cemetery like enlisted men and not returned to their families. But nobody said anything about the President making it out of Deepwell," he insisted. Wiggen looked down again and nodded like she was agreeing with his last statement.

  "Thank you," I believe that is a full statement now. You are to remain at your home until I have you contacted. Please don't consider it an arrest. I'd describe it as protective custody. You are not to call anyone, for any purpose. You will have a guard arrive shortly to protect you and if you have any needs they will see to them. I don't believe it will last more than a day, or perhaps two. I believe you acted to the best of your ability to perform your duty and I won't see you scape -goated for it. Goodnight," she said.

  She called the guard over she had initiated the first call and briefly told him to have guards posted to Captain Ridley's residence on her orders, with the chain of command not to proceed through Admiral Mason. Then she called her Secretary of Defense and told him to have Admiral Mason's residence cut off electronically and surrounded, before having him put under arrest and held without questioning, until her instructions were forwarded. On a little further thought, she added to put him under a suicide watch.

  "Jay," she asked her Secretary, "Who would I ask, to determine if a foreign national was hired as a civilian employee of the DOD and what his history was?"

  "A techie or a spook?" Jay wanted to know.

  "A spook I think. Japanese by his looks and name."

  "Almost all of them would be CIA, or one of their cover companies. NSA hardly ever hired anyone not a citizen, except for translating masses of documents, for things like technical manuals. Never intelligence or political documents."

  "Then get me the head of the CIA on the screen, when you are done with the good Admiral," she instructed.

  "Bob is off in Iran, uh, Persia I mean," the Secretary reminded her. "It's into his morning there, so it will be hard to yank him out of whatever he into with the locals now. Why don't you just go with the Deputy? John will probably not know who you are asking about himself, but he can call the right clerk up a lot easier here from Virginia, than Bob can from the Protectorate. And a lot less chance somebody will see the high priority traffic and figure out something is going on." He paused just a second. "Not that anything is going on," he corrected. "You call me up early in the morning to arrest Admirals every Tuesday."

  "It's worse than you think," she assured him. "I'm calling you late at night by my lights. I haven't been to bed yet."

  "Is this all still working out from Hawaii? Or is this a new fire to put out?" he asked.

  "Some fire, new outbreak. I'll tell you tomorrow. Just get me John."

  The screen went blank and she turned her gaze out of their feed and told them, "Damn you for being right, but they are covering something major up about Deepwell. I suspect in the end it will be as you've said, or worse even." She looked very tired.

  "Do you need something to make you alert President Wiggen?" April asked. "You look like you are very fatigued and that is scary in a person who is making major important decisions."

  Wiggen laughed. "You must be concerned if you call me ‘President' Wiggen when you don't have to. It's a hell of a note when you get better advice from your enemies than your allies," she noted. "Adam," she called to the guard, "bring me a coffee and one of those four hour pills. We're five hours ahead of you," she reminded April, if she wasn't familiar with the zones.

  The man that appeared on the screen however looked even worse than the President. He watched her swallow a small red pill and told her. "I took one of those four hour pills about five hours ago. Should have taken a eight hour one, but too late now. You can't take ‘em one on top of another. That'll kill ya. What can I do for you Edna? I just got to sleep about twenty minutes ago and can't even focus. If I were you, I wouldn't bet the farm on anything I say right now."

 
"The mess in Hawaii. There is a man that used to be a DOD civilian employee involved. Japanese looking fellow name of Satos. Can you get your clerks and records checked quickly and see if you know who I am talking about?

  "Oh Dear Sweet God. I don't have to check any records," he said leaning his head across his hand, so his eyes were covered. "They told me Satos retired. They swore it was true, not a ruse. Did that silly ass Harrison do something to personally upset the man, as well as Home? He had no idea you don't just indifferently make enemies, left and right. If Homeland Security screwed around with him, Harrison as number three was probably just popped because he was handy in Hawaii. I thought we were rough on Homeland last night, but if Satos is pissed with them, you can start looking for replacements for number One and number Two, ‘cause they're as good as dead. He'll just calmly go down the list from the top, until he feels justice is balanced and I'm not going to throw anyone away, protecting Harrison's friends after last night. If he's after the Patriot Party good enough. It'll save hanging the traitorous sons of bitches later. I'm still sure they've been behind some of the attempts on you."

  "I talked to the girl and she called down the bombardment on her spex. Didn't have any apology for it. But I don't think she had any outside motivation, or was acting for anyone but herself."

  "I don't know what happened after the lights went out and the feed terminated," he said, "but Harrison had two Navy and two Homeland boys in the studio with him and a set of four of the same, on the roof. The one aircar on the roof was equipped to take the local wireless net down hard, for a half kilometer around. I just can't believe she defeated them all by herself and walked away."

  "I may get some information on that soon, but that's all I need from you John. Go back to bed and I'll leave messages for when you awaken."

  "Thanks Edna. You take care when your pill runs out too." he closed his window.

  "OK," she told her other listeners. "I believe there are things here I needed to know I had withheld from me. And I don't intend to spar with Mr. Satos about his choice of friends. But if you would explain what happened after the feed from the CNN studio ended, I would appreciate that."

  "Here's feed from the Public Eye I was wearing on my shoulder," April offered and showed President Wiggen the same segment she had shown her friends earlier.

  "You're unnaturally fast, heavily gene modified," Wiggen declared after viewing it, with a hard face and tone of accusation.

  "Of course," April replied, refusing to acknowledge anything wrong with that.

  "Why," asked Wiggen speaking slowly as if it might not be understood "was it necessary to destroy the Kalaeloa field at Barber's Point? That has all sorts of people both inside my own administration and from the public just calling all the more for war again with Home, to avenge the bombing of us with a nuke. The last time I was updated we had over thirty dead and hundreds of casualties including civilian workers and families housed on and around the field. Everything was shook like an earthquake. They tell me there's a huge crater in the center of the runways, the control tower was knocked down and the planes on the apron all hit individually. A lot of the hangers were damaged. How was any spite for Harrison or Homeland Security served, by hitting the Coast Guard base?"

  April screwed her nose up and sort of squinted at Wiggen like she doubted what she heard. "You heard Harrison say he was transporting me to the base, to take somewhere else where I would be imprisoned. So he had the use of forces there against me. If I had left it alone, who knows how quickly his men from the base would have come to rescue him and arrest me? It wasn't exactly a nuke either. You'll find it isn't dirty. There isn't a bunch of fallout to worry about."

  "We could have just air burst a big weapon, or several and knocked everything down for miles, but Jon just put one really small weapon under the runways and ruined them. That really minimized damage. So I say he acted really moderately. This isn't a game, where you can complain we play too hard. There are millions of you and a couple thousand of us. If my friends had to kill fifty million of you to save me, they wouldn't hesitate. That's the sort of thing we keep trying to tell you and you people just don't seem to get it. What do we have to do to make you believe? If I knocked California right off the West coast," she said illustrating with a chopping motion of her hand, "so the ocean goes to Nevada, would your people start to get a clue, we're not going to play tit for tat with you?"

  Wiggen didn't say anything for a moment. Not because she disagreed, or couldn't answer April, but she saw this as a moment not to say the wrong thing. She really could see California sliding off into the Pacific, if she said just the wrong thing right now, in her fatigued state.

  April however took the silence for a lack of belief.

  "Maybe you don't think those guys waving guns around in the dark really meant to hurt me. Maybe they were just trying to scare the kid and when they dragged me to the aircar they would have let me loose and said ‘Got ya!' and had a good laugh. Well check this out."

  April pulled her shirt up and tried to sit up, but it hurt too much. Lin hurried to help her turn sideways, with her feet off the edge of the lounger and sat up with her side turned to the camera. The discoloration on the ribs had deepened and the swelling was ugly. It was shocking enough to someone like Wiggen, who rarely saw any injury, that they heard her sharp intake of breath.

  "And you've been talking with us all this time, hurt like that? I'd think you should laying down, sedated. That happened in the fight you showed me?"

  "Hell yes," she said irritated. "What do you think that was when the whole scene jerked sideways and I got knocked down? That was one of Harrison's men, shot me with some big pistol. That's what that slapping sound is when everything jerks. My vest stopped it. The slug was still spread out, stuck on the vest like ten Euro coin when I drove here. But just because it didn't go through, doesn't mean it didn't feel like getting smacked with a sledge hammer. Two of them shot at me, but one connected. I may have got all eight of them and Harrison himself, but it was a technical, not a clean win. The fellow Easy who instructs me on tactics is going to jump all over me, for even allowing any of the opposition to fire a weapon. He'll say it was dumb luck, he didn't shoot me through the head."

  Wiggen blinked a couple times, remembering how the Deputy CIA chief couldn't believe the girl could shoot her way out of the CNN studio unaided. "He would expect much better of you?" she asked.

  "Oh yeah. I can hear him now saying that I should have found the fourth agent and eliminated him first, not last. I had the sensors in my spex to find him on infrared and I got inpatient and shot the others, just because the lights came on and I felt exposed. I had time to find him if I kept moving. It's easy to see what you should have done in a gun fight, running it through your head later. I can move fast enough they could not have hit me while I found him, even if he was well hidden. But you get a free one once in awhile," she added philosophically. "Next time I'll do better," she promised, assuming with chilling ease, that there would be a next time.

  Wiggen was definitely going to leave this little interview for John to view.

  "The reason I called - obviously we have some internal dissension right now and this is not a safe place for you to be."

  "Yes, even within agencies," April remarked.

  Wiggen nodded agreement. "I'd like to pack you off home, but I know you're not going to agree to that. Won't you accept an escort of my own security detail? Then if there is more trouble, perhaps we can resolve it without a major bombardment," she said a bit tight lipped.

  "I just killed four of these fellow's service mates. Don't you think they may have a little resentment? I'd worry more about my security turning on me, than who I'd run into."

  "I assure you that can be smoothed over. They were being given illegal orders, I would say. That will go a long way toward shifting the blame for what happened to Harrison. You didn't go out looking for them after all. He took them in there to the interview, as a sort of ambush. They really were not ta
sked with acting for him to arrest people. They were just supposed to be charged with keeping him safe. So if he rushes headlong into a confrontation with someone, he's really making their job impossible."

  "That sounds like an wonderful lawyer's explanation of what happened. But in the dark there, I couldn't tell the Homeland Security men trying to arrest me, from the Naval detail trying to protect him. They were all four men with a gun in their hands, wanting to shoot me."

  "You're right I'm a lawyer. Most Presidents have been for some time. But in fact I am right, that the protective detail should not have acted against you, to help arrest you. But I'm sure they were correct in their own eyes to target you, once you said his life was forfeit. I did hear you say that didn't I?"

  "Yes, but under my law I'm entitled to act, if a person declares his intent to harm me. I am within my rights to act based on believing him."

  "From a practical view, I don't think we could expect these men that are trained to protect their charge to say, Wait a minute. She has the right to shoot him now. We can't defend him. He's on his own for saying that. After all they aren't lawyers to arrive at such a convoluted conclusion, when faced with such a hard legal concept. I could," she admitted. "I wouldn't expect their training to cover such a bizarre situation even. It will be awkward if you can't accept a detail, because I'll have to try to surround you with some kind of protection and they will have a hard time doing that from a distance. And they'll have to scramble to follow you, when you move unannounced. You might even miss a person who intends to harm you in the crowd, if you don't know the players. Can't we reach some sort of accommodation?" she asked.

  "Give me just a second to consult with someone will you?" April asked.

  Wiggen nodded an assent.

  April muted her pad and turned to Papa-san. "You know better how these sort of organizations work than me," she pleaded. "If she tries to build a wall around me like that, it sounds like it will be a major pain in the butt. I'd just tell her no and go on to visit the European Union, but I want to get my two guys out of North America. What can I do to make her happy and not be cut off from everything, by a mob of security shadowing me everywhere. I know they have so many assets, they can make my life miserable. Like - if I buy an airline ticket - they can kick everyone else off and fill every seat with their agents. What can I do?"