Born to Run

by John M. Green

  TWO hours earlier on Butaka, under a canopy of stars and the glow of candlelight on her beach hut’s veranda, Niki’s soft pallor lingered alongside Mario’s all-over bronze. Apart from his wavy black mane and the fine stroke of hair that tapered down from his navel, he was shaved smooth all over. She selected a few lonely strands to twirl and tweak just above his penis, enough to spring it back to life. She lay back on the day bed and looked up at the night sky, using her old Air Force survival skill training to estimate the time. Suddenly, she whispered in his ear, but it was hardly what he expected: “Get me new batteries for the radio.”

  She was an unusual customer, he reflected with just a little arrogance; their activities throughout the time she’d been here had so far proved that to his, and thus her, satisfaction. “You want music?” he asked. “Mario will sing for you?” He leant back on his elbows and broke into a lightly accented “Moon River” scraping even more rasp over it than Ol’ Blue Eyes ever did.

  “I want the news,” she said, and the back of her hand flicked at his prick, setting it bobbing like a metronome.

  “S-sure,” he squealed, and jumped to his feet partly to mask the sting, and ran outside to his buggy.

  Niki heard him start it up over the waves softly lapping the sand. She guessed he had to drive back to the main pavilion on the other side of the island to fetch the batteries. From the airstrip to her hut yesterday had taken them thirty minutes… but she had no idea how much further away the service pavilion was. She put her Ted Williams cap over her face and dozed off, smiling.

  IF she’d heard the beat of the rotors, Niki’s educated ear for aircraft would have identified it as a twin-engine Apache attack helicopter, but the chopper stayed far enough aloft not to wake her. A commando wearing night goggles tossed the end of a thick cable out the jump door, and once it hit the beach near her hut, he slid down it and thudded his boots into the sand.

  “Mmm. Mario?” she murmured. She got no answer and rolled over to look, her only covering, her baseball cap, falling onto the mattress. The young man who was hovering over her—he’d been careful not to cast any shadows over her face—confirmed the telltale rose tattoo specifically mentioned in his order, then snatched at her wrists, in one slick motion handcuffing them behind her.

  “Who the fuck are y…?” she started, thrashing her legs and twisting violently.

  “No, it’s who the fuck are you!” he replied as he clamped her ankles. “Niki Abbott… or Diana Hunter?”

  Her eyes bore into him.

  “Whoever… you’re coming with me.” With one hand at her feet and the other on her handcuffs, he rolled the naked woman, carefully, onto the canvas sling bag he’d just laid out on the floor next to the bed. Despite her writhing and squirming, he zipped the bag around her, leaving only her head exposed. He had tossed in her cap as well. Only a neanderthal would leave something as valuable as a Ted Williams Red Sox cap behind.

  “Who the f…,” she started to shriek until he pressed a strip of grey duct tape over her mouth with his thumbs. Her head twisted from side to side, spraying her red hair back and forward like musket fire. Suddenly, she stopped still. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she tried focusing her frigid blue eyes on the helicopter hovering in the dark above her. They pulled back so she could scan her captor’s uniform, but it was also without any identifying insignia.

  “To answer your question, ma’am… I’m not the fuck anybody.” He grabbed at the zip and pulled it up further to encase her head. Next, he unclipped the stainless steel karabiner from his belt and snapped the straps from Niki’s pod into it, stepped back to grab the loop at the end of the cable still dangling down from the chopper, and once he’d securely locked the karabiner onto it, he reclipped himself to the higher loop, ominously slipped a gas mask over his face and gave a circle-wave above his head with his finger. For good measure, he gave a tug on the cable and he shot up into the air, followed a split second later by Niki in her cocoon. From his fast-rising vantage point, he saw a car’s headlights stopping just outside the hut and a guy, naked he thought, racing over and brandishing his fists to the sky.

  Mario slid to a stop directly below the chopper, though not all of his body parts did at the same time. “Hey,” he shouted, “what are you doing?” He was in a frenzy. No valet had ever lost a client in the entire history of Butaka although, unknown to him, all his colleagues were suffering similar fates simultaneously all over the secluded island. He ran around screaming up at the bird, feeling helpless as Niki was yanked on board. Stunned, he watched the chopper bank and fly away and, straining for an explanation, he just stood there oblivious to the fine mist of droplets that were drifting down from where the helicopter had been hovering, though he did wonder why, out of the blue, he was feeling so… drowsy.

  NIKI Abbott! Spencer Prentice’s blood was pounding. He pressed his thumb and forefinger into his temples as if forcing it out… SNAP! Outside Foster’s campaign office. SNAP! On his plane. In his…

  “Order! Order!” shouted Mallord. “Sergeant at Arms, please be at your ready should I have to order the ejection of any Member or Senator from the Chamber.”

  Foster again drew his handkerchief from his inside jacket pocket and patted his brow.

  He wasn’t prepared to disgrace himself any more than was essential. His wife already knew the details. Up in Air Force One, under the cutting knife, he had to tell her—how could he avoid it, given where the device had been secreted?—but he didn’t have to completely humiliate himself, or Mitch, in front of the nation, let alone in front of the children watching. All he told Congress and the cameras was that Niki Abbott had through a complex ruse implanted tiny poison delivery devices under his skin and Mitch Taylor’s, devices that a simple radio wave at a certain frequency would trigger whenever the conspirators chose. He held back her precise modus operandi but judging by the eyebrows he could see rising, at least some people in the Chamber were figuring it out.

  “When Mitchell’s device was activated—weeks after it was implanted, so as to distance his death from his, er, encounter with Niki Abbott—it caused a massive and fatal heart attack. I can tell you that Ms Abbott was captured two hours ago on a remote island in the Caribbean… Part of the deception I was forced to put you through the last two days was so we could accomplish that.

  “I regret to say, however, that before we could interrogate her she took her own life using a similar device that she had already planted on herself.”

  Davey grimaced when Ed’s fingers suddenly dug into his shoulders. He wriggled and looked up, but Ed’s mind was elsewhere.

  “With a similar device implanted on my… my own body, the reason I am standing before you… why I survived… is due solely to the patriotism, the bravery and, as you will hear, the astonishing self-sacrifice of someone who jeopardised their own life to save mine…

  “Two nights ago, when we still thought Mitchell Taylor had died of natural causes, I was pulled aside from an official engagement for an urgent phone call. In that call, I learned of the murderous plot as well as its threat to me… and its imminence. Without delay, the President’s protective division of the Secret Service rushed me on board Air Force One.”

  As the President took a moment to close his eyes and take a breath, Spencer wasn’t alone in puzzling over the informant’s identity or why there was such a rush to get Foster onto a plane.

  Foster answered the second question first, “Air Force One is equipped with both an operating theatre as well as an elaborate defence shield which my quick-thinking Security Chief, when told of the threat, knew could be critical to saving both my

  life and this presidency. Once the shield was activated, no unauthorised transmission waves—whether infrared, radio, microwave or any other—could break through it to activate the killer implant. With the protection afforded by that shield, Rear Admiral Dr Raymond Jones, the White House Physician, had enough time, using the plane’s emergency medical facilities, first to locate and then extract the tiny
apparatus… before it could shoot out its drug dose to kill me.”

  As the President stood tall and silent, one of the cameras panned across to the empty seat where, traditionally, the First Lady would be seated.

  79

  “WAIT TILL THEY arrest that bitch,” Goodman slurred.

  “Andy, keep it down, okay?”

  “Can’t. Gotta go to the barfroom. Get it? Barf room?”

  As the ranger staggered past, Paul Dawkins shook his head as though Andy had the shit hanging out of his pants already. “I don’t know what’s worse,” he told the barman, “what the President’s telling us, or drinking with Andy.”

  During the next few seconds of silent congressional anticipation, the TV commentators broadcasting into Daisy’s struggled for banter that was any more intelligent than Andy’s or Paul’s. “An incredible story, Patsy. A lot of Democrats used to laugh about those elaborate defence shields, didn’t they? No more, eh?”

  “Kevin, the President’s about to reveal the identity of the hero who made that call. My money’s on Ed Loane. He’s one of America’s true patriots, a Medal of Honour…”

  “Isabel Diaz’s husband? You kidding me?”

  THE President squared his shoulders. “Two people,” he said, “there are two people on this podium who would have benefited directly… if this second stage of the plot had succeeded. I speak of Madam Speaker, Ms Isabel Diaz, and her husband who, as many of you know, was a four-star general and decorated war hero, General Edwin D. Loane. Ms Diaz, please stand. If you can.” Foster kept his eyes forward. Ed was already on his feet.

  The Attorney General, down in the front row, recalled Isabel’s earlier comment: “Now for the public hanging.” What was she thinking?

  Davey was trying hard to follow. Whatever was happening, it was bad and, terrified, he shook as he handed Isabel her cane and helped her up.

  “Both of these people knew Niki Abbott. She was their friend, or at least an associate. General Loane’s own pharmaceutical company manufactured the devices she secreted…”

  Foster let this float for a few moments, until he heard it being sucked in by the intake of breaths around the chamber. Satisfied, he turned his head toward the couple up on the rostrum behind him. “My fellow citizens, I could never bring myself to admit this before but I must acknowledge it now… if Isabel Diaz could have continued her election campaign, I have no doubt she would have won.

  “But that didn’t happen, and I was elected. Democratically elected. The object of this treason was to usurp the presidency from me, for her, as though it were her divine right. But, with minutes to spare before I was…,” he took another sip, “… assassinated, I was forewarned… knowing that it would keep me in my office… knowing that it would keep her out of it.”

  He turned back to the front and his eyes, tired, slowly scanned the room, “The person who phoned me, my fellow Americans, was Madam Speaker, Ms Diaz herself, only moments before she herself drifted into unconsciousness after the shocking wolf attack she suffered.”

  “NO-O-O-O!” howled Andy Goodman, doing his best to emulate one of his wolves. “Fuck no!”

  CONGRESS erupted again, high fives being slapped all around the Hall, and not just among relieved Republicans. Spencer threw his head back and almost punched the air himself, but that would have been undignified. And George had leapt to his feet cheering.

  “Order! Order!”

  During the chaos, the Capitol police officers on the rostrum locked themselves closely around Ed. Subtly, the one directly behind him pulled the General’s arms back and unobtrusively handcuffed him under a cotton cloth of a grey similar to Ed’s suit.

  Davey had felt Ed’s hands leave his shoulders. He twisted around but didn’t see the slick manoeuvre nor, of course, could he hear the click of the cuffs. He turned to the front ready to alternate as before between the signing interpreter and trying to read the President’s lips on the TV monitor placed before the rostrum.

  “And what I later learnt,” said the President pointing back in Davey’s direction, “was that Ms Diaz only found out about the plot herself because of this wonderful young man who I asked her to arrange to be here on the rostrum with me, and I thank this Chamber for permitting that earlier.” Davey turned around expecting to see somebody behind him but there was only Isabel, Ed and the security people, and he looked back, puzzled.

  “I mean you, Davey… Please come down and join me here.”

  A mask of fear fell over the boy’s face. He looked toward Ed and Isabel for a hint of what he should do… was he in trouble? Ed was motionless but Isabel nodded, and nudged him to go to President Foster. The boy walked slowly, worried.

  Smiling for the first time, Foster got down on one knee, “I can assure you I’ve never been more thrilled to meet a single person, Davey,” he said and shook the boy’s hand. “Do you remember this?” he asked, slipping a silver object out of his pocket. Davey nodded and Foster handed it to him before standing back up. “That was Davey’s birthday camera. Davey turned nine only a couple of weeks ago, didn’t you Davey?”

  Davey shrugged, his mind was in a whirl.

  “A few days ago, Madam Speaker flew up for a break at her retreat, located in the mountains above the historic Vermont township of Manifold.”

  “HE said ‘Manifold,’” yelled Andy as though the rest of the bar hadn’t heard it.

  “Shh!” hushed everyone else.

  “DAVEY,” continued the President, “couldn’t join her on the trip since he had school to go to, but he lent her his new camera so she could take snaps of the mountains and the snow and bring them back for him. But saved in the camera’s memory were a couple of video clips that Davey had shot of General Loane with his back to the camera and talking on a speakerphone so Davey, who is deaf, couldn’t tell what was being said. It was days later, up at her shack, that Ms Diaz played Davey’s video clips—to her horror. What she heard was her husband, Niki Abbott, and others many of whom have also been rounded up, coldly handing down their death sentences on Mitchell Taylor… and me… all so Ms Diaz would become President… all so General Loane here would be in a position, as he thought, to pull the strings.” He glanced over at Ed. “Well, General, your own wife has cut those strings.”

  The Attorney General shook his head in disbelief. Isabel Diaz was some woman.

  “Imagine,” the President continued, “Ms Diaz alone in her mountain-top shack, discovering all this, but with no communications with the outside world, hours from the closest town and with sunset almost upon her, the outside temperature sub-zero and dropping. Ms Diaz knows that if she waits till daybreak, Mitchell Taylor and I will both be dead… that she could walk casually, seemingly innocently, into the presidency herself.

  “But Isabel Diaz doesn’t wait, instead urgently setting off into the dark and the snow to get to a town and a phone. As we know, a wolf attacks her and, desperately, she fights back not merely to defend herself, but also this nation’s Constitution. It’s a struggle to the death,” he said, and looked back at Isabel. Her eyes dropped to the floor in modesty, but he continued, “Both she and the wolf lie dying in the snow, losing pints of blood between them and her body temperature dropping fast to dangerous levels.

  “Two unsuspecting heroes, park ranger Andy Goodman and his friend Paul Dawkins, are out searching for the female wolf in answer to a distress alarm from her radio-collar. She is part of an experimental regeneration program run by the Fish and Wildlife Service. They arrive at the blood-soaked scene and stumble on Ms Diaz, who is suffering acute hypothermia and from shocking, terrible wounds that you can only get a hint of today. They desperately race her to the county hospital for emergency treatment. On arrival at the ER, she is floating in and out of consciousness. Her ears pick up that Mitchell Taylor is already dead and her mind snaps back, just enough to demand a phone. And that… that was the call that saved this presidency and my life, though unfortunately it was too late to save Mitch’s.”

  Davey ran back
to Isabel and buried his head in her stomach as the once familiar chants of “Bel… Bel… Isa-bel” rang through the Hall to tumultuous applause.

  INSIDE Daisy’s, Andy and Paul had been hoisted up on their friends’ shoulders and were being circled around the bar, their beers spilling over the floor as well as onto their friends who didn’t seem to care. Brad declared an open tab and Paul, in between swigs, was chanting his own version of “Isa-bel” but Andy, for the first time this evening, was quiet, almost dazed. No matter which way his bearers turned or swayed him, his head and his eyes stayed locked on the TV screen as though he needed to check it was still there, as though this wasn’t for real.

  The shouts in the bar fell to a hush when President Foster started up again.

  “DURING that same first phone call, Ms Diaz had enough lucidity, amazingly given what she’d gone through, to persuade me that we needed to throw her husband off guard, in case there was some back-up plan. She had thought long and hard about this during her trek down the mountain before she encountered the wolf. That is why we faked my asthma attack and created the uncertainty about my whereabouts. Ms Diaz,” he said turning toward her again and placing his hand to his heart, “I thank you… America thanks you.”

  “HE’S bowing to her. He’s fuckin’ bowing!” It was Andy, still in a state of shock.

  “Christ, Andy!” said Paul. “The woman saves the President by fingering her own husband. Doesn’t that deserve a fuckin’ bow?”

  WHEN the congressional applause died down again, Foster explained that in the circumstances, he considered it was in America’s national interest to install a new Vice-President immediately, that in view of the circumstances the nation could not afford even a moment’s delay for the usual confirmation hearings. “And I can think of no better person than this fine woman. Right now, in this joint session of Congress, I formally nominate Isabel Rosa Diaz to the position of Vice-President of these United States of America. Ms Diaz, will you resign as Speaker and consent to my nomination?”