A shrill female voice called back. "I'm practicing for my next video." "Ain't you done enough of them things? Ah don't want nobody sayin' a wife of mine's gotta work her butt off for a living."
"My last workout video grossed two hundred million."
"For Gosh sake's, woman, don't stand so close to the dang rail! You might tumble over and drown that sweet two hundred million dollah butt of yours."
The telephone continued squawking. "Mr. Burner? Mr. Burner? Are you still there."
"Huh? Oh, yeah. Ah'm heah. What was you sayin' about the TV?"
"They just came back on. It looks like all broadcast stations across the country were knocked off the air. It's never happened before."
"Fucking fantastic!"
"Sir?"
"That means all those frustrated couch 'taters grabbed up their clickers and tuned in to lil ol' us. Are our anchors on top of this?"
"Yes, sir. We were the first to air the story."
"Honey, KNNN is always the first to air a story. So don't you go all redundant on me."
"Yes, Mr. Burner."
Hours later, the phone rang again.
"Mr. Burner, Cheeta Ching is here in your office. She's demanding an interview with you. What do we tell her?"
Jed Burner wrinkled his sun-beaten forehead, crinkling his sea blue eyes and asked the last question the man who transformed the way America gets its news would be expected to ask.
"Who the hell is Cheeta Chang?"
Chapter 11
Cheeta Ching, oblate as a satiated python in her dark red Carolyn Roehm maternity coat, teetered on her stiletto heels in the anteroom of Jed Burner's office.
"I heard that!" she hissed. "He asked who I was!"
The KNNN secretary clapped a brown hand decorated with gold fingernails over the telephone receiver.
"I'm sure Mr. Burner misunderstood you, Miss Ching."
"He did not! And he got my last name wrong. It's Ching, not Chang. Chang is Chinese. Chinese anchors are three-for-a-buck. I happen to be one hundred percent Korean. Who the hell does he think he is?"
Fear was in the secretary's liquid eyes now. "Please don't be upset, Miss Ching. I am sure we can work this out."
"Prove it. Answer this: Whose number is 404 555-1234?"
"Why, that's Mr. Burner's private number. How did you get it?"
"Not important. Tell that mouthy ignoramous I got his fax." Cheeta lifted her voice into a sandblasting screech. "You hear me, Captain Audion?"
"It's Audacious," said the secretary, clapping a firm hand over the phone mouthpiece.
"It's Audacious," echoed the muffled voice of Jed Burner. "And tell that sweet-talkin' woman Ah'm on my way."
"Yes, Mr. Burner." The secretary hung up.
Cheeta blinked. It seemed too easy. "He's coming?" she asked in a taken-aback voice.
"That's what he said."
Cheeta's puzzled frown was a pancake question mark.
"I think," the secretary said, "your voice reminded him of his wife."
Cheeta calmed down. "I've always admired Layne for telling the truth about Vietnam. Is she still getting death threats?"
The secretary indicated a vent near the ceiling. "See that? Behind the grille there's a marksman with a .454 Casull all set to pop you if you make a wrong move."
Cheeta's neck and ears paled. But her face didn't change color visibly. It couldn't. It was too heavily made up.
"And there's other security all about the building," the secretary further explained, "including antiaircraft guns up on the roof. Folks have long memories. Especially down here."
"Personally, I supported her work in Haiphong," Cheeta said in a too-loud voice.
From the vent, the cocking of a rifle came distinctly.
"Better get up on the roof," the secretary said, urging Cheeta to the elevator.
"Why the roof?"
"Cause Mr. Burner has his helipad up there. He's flying in."
Cheeta Ching walked backward on red heels, one eye on the dark ceiling vent. Her center of balance wasn't what it should have been, and when she stumbled back into the elevator, a heel caught and the door closed on the sound of her yelp of pain as she landed on her hormonally inflated backside.
"Going up?" an unfamiliar voice asked.
Cheeta looked up. A man was standing in the elevator. He wore a rumpled raincoat of some sort. It was open and the man's hairy legs showed.
Oh God, a flasher, thought Cheeta-until her gaze, traveling up the man's muscular calves, came to his sinewy thighs. He was not wearing pants. He wasn't even wearing underpants. But he wasn't naked either. He wore some kind of green plaid miniskirt. Her almond eyes shot upward. The man's face, made insect-unrecognizable by wide sunglasses and shaded by a wide-brimmed hat, was looking down at her with a cold remoteness.
"Nice timing," he said.
Then a gloved hand came out of a raincoat pocket and pointed a silenced gun barrel at the largest target in the tiny elevator.
Cheeta Ching's bulging stomach.
Jed Burner was listening to the familiar screechy voice over the rotor whine.
Normally, it was hard to carry on a conversation in the Superpuma. It was as soundproofed as a helicopter could be-which meant that holding a conversation under the whirling rotor mast was akin to hearing confession in a giant Mixmaster.
"She'll be perfect!" Layne Fondue-despised by a generation of US servicemen as "Haiphong Hannah" Fondue-was saying.
"Ah never heard of her," Burner snapped.
"She's the most popular TV anchor in journalism."
"So? Ah don't traffic in star anchors. They cost too damn much."
"I'm not talking about hiring her for KNNN. I want her in my next exercise video, Layne Fondue's New Mother Workout."
"We wouldn't need her if you'd just get pregnant like Ah keep tryin' to get you," Burner shouted back.
"I think I must have inhaled some Agent Orange during the war," Layne muttered, primping her pile of streaked hair that made her resemble a hungry Pekinese. "It blocked my tubes or something."
"You ask me, you ain't tryin'. Ah settled down so Ah could have a son and heir, and all Ah get is yappin'. Ah want yappin, Ah'll buy a cockah spaniel. Which come to think of it, you're gettin' a trifle doggy around the edges."
"You sexist pig!"
Burner beamed broadly. "Say it again. Ah don't think the Almighty got the word yet."
Layne Fondue took nothing from nobody. Unless one counted her career, which she had wheedled out of her famous actor-father. She had enjoyed a brief career as an ingenue, rode the celebrity activist circuit in the sixties and seventies while her physical assets succumbed to gravitational erosion, and as her politics went out of fashion, found a comfy niche as the premier exercise guress.
The fact that she had gone to Haiphong, Vietnam and done political commentary for the North Vietnamese, denouncing US soldiers as "baby-eating cannibals," had earned her the unshakable nickname of "Haiphong Hannah."
She was tough, she was hard, and she turned around in her seat and slapped her husband in the mouth.
Jed Burner picked his cigar off the floor, examined the stogie for damage, and blew on the gray ash. It burned red. He put it into his mouth, inhaled long and deep, eyes closed as if thinking.
While his wife watched, slowly relaxing, he suckerpunched her to the floor and kept her there with one foot.
"Let's get somethin' straight, heah," he said calmly. "Ah didn't marry you. Ah acquired you. That makes you mah property. In a manner of speakin'."
"You can't talk to me that way, you smug cracker!"
"Ah'm doin' it. And you gotta take it. Yoah pushin' fifty. You ain't crow bait. But you hang on a man's arm and smile and coo at his friends so he looks good. Ah like that. Folks respect me for my broadmindedness marryin' a pinko and reformin' her, makin' her respectable again. Not that you were all that respectable to start with." He rolled the cigar in his mouth. "Now do you behave or do Ah gotta really get rough?"
"I hate it when you pull that macho crap!"
Jed Burner beamed. "Then why ain't you strugglin' harder?"
The KNNN tower was once described by Architectural Digest as the only modern office building with a serious toadstool infestation.
In fact, it looked like just about any major office building in downtown Atlanta. There was too much glass, too much design, and an atrium with enough wasted space to warrant the architect being courtmartialed.
Except for the satellite dishes. They added that distinctive toadstool touch. There were three of them, each one aimed at different satellites orbiting somewhere in the heavens. Only one actually pointed at a satellite hanging over the Atlantic. The rest of the KNNN transponders were out over the Pacific. The signal was relayed over ground-based microwave towers to an earth station that connected with the Pacific birds. That was how KNNN fed a news-hungry world.
The satellite dishes made a shadowy cluster around the KNNN helipad, from which KNNN correspondents would be rushed to the Atlanta airport to wing their way to the world's trouble spots.
They also made excellent cover for when the Superpuma touched down.
"Better stay low," Jed Burner told his wife. "We're agoin' in."
Layne Fondue flattened and closed her eyes. She crossed her fingers as well. She was not big on obeying her husband. Except at times like these.
A lot of people thought she had married Jed Burner for his money. That was ridiculous. Layne Fondue was wealthy in her own right.
Or that it was a case of opposites attracting. That was absurd. Both were as mouthy as two human beings could be.
The real reason that the despised Haiphong Hannah-the most hated woman since Tokyo Rose or Axis Sally-had married Jed Burner was that he had almost as many enemies as she did.
The chief attraction was that Jed Burner came to the altar with a fabulous security system in tow. It was as simple as that. Theirs was a marriage of convenience-and mutual survival.
Layne figured if the worst happened, the bullet was as likely to catch him as her. She calculated her odds of surviving an assassin's bullet doubled whenever they traveled together.
So she stayed flat, with her husband's heavy foot on her left breast as the Superpuma settled onto the anchor-shaped helipad.
"Honey, we're home," Burner said, popping the door and stepping out.
"Coming, dear."
Layne Fondue sat up and followed Jed Burner as he slipped down a flight of steps to his private elevator.
That's when all the shooting began.
Chapter 12
Melvin "Moose" Mulroy liked his job a lot more before his boss got married.
Not that being head of security for the burgeoning Kable Newsworthy News Network was ever easy. It was just that there were triple the headaches involved in bodyguarding two flaming lunatics as one.
Moose Mulroy's troubles had started when Jed Burner married Haiphong Hannah Fondue. That was the bitch. Oh, it was one thing to pluck an aging spoiled rich kid falling overboard in a mint julip stupor. It hadn't happened so much since Captain Audacious had settled down.
But bodyguarding Haiphong Hannah was another matter. Moose Mulroy was forty-three years old---old enough to remember Layne Fondue when she had been a two-bit actress stepping everyone's lines on the silver screen. Nothing to write home about. No Jayne Mansfield. Certainly no Bridget Bardot-to Moose Mulroy the height of distaff thespian talent.
Moose had indelible memories of Layne Fondue's infamous trip to Haiphong, Vietnam to lend comfort to the enemy. He still had his "Hang Haiphong Hannah" bumper sticker on the back of his aging Thunderbird.
Now a lot of people disliked Jed Burner. He was a mouthy loose cannon. And an open mouth made a mighty tempting target. But folks hardly ever tried to kill him. Mostly, he was about the business of getting into trouble on his own hook.
But Haiphong Hannah was a mare of another odor. People were always sending her death threats, obscene faxes, and the occasional Fedex surprise package.
Moose didn't mind the live tarantulas so much. And the deer ticks hadn't been so bad. No one had actually acquired Lyme disease either time.
It was the crazies showing up at reception with the hidden weapons. That was the bitch.
The metal detector caught most of them before they got past the lobby. Except for the anticolorization nutjob with the hang glider. And Moose had personally brought him down with a lug nut and slingshot. That way, it looked like an accident, and no one sued.
The Vietnam vet with the plastique girdle had everyone sweating for three hours the day he showed up, demanding Haiphong Hannah be brought to him. But Moose had talked sense into that one.
At least he hadn't stormed the building shooting. Those were the guys who made Moose Mulroy break out in cold sweats every time the big revolving door went whisk-whisk-whisk.
The revolving door was going whisk-whisk-whisk now. The sound snapped Moose's attention as rigid as his spine aligning in anticipation of trouble. He fixed his eyes on the man walking in through the atriumlike lobby, towering for twenty stories of glorious, glassy, totally wasted space.
Immediately, Moose became suspicious.
He wasn't a suit. But he wasn't a cameraman either. They usually wore polo shirts and raggedy jeans.
This guy wore chinos and a T-shirt. He looked kinda fruity, except that he walked with a casual, almost aggravating, cock-of-the-walk grace. Like he owned the building. Moose noticed his wrists. Big wrists. Too big. They hardly looked real.
As the thick-wristed man walked toward him, his face unreadable, Moose noticed that his eyes had that flat, dead kinda look, the classic thousand yards stare of the Vietnam vet. Trying to be casual, Moose shifted his body as he stabbed a button on the monitor array, simultaneously touching the concealed buzzer button.
That alerted the hidden sharpshooters. They were the first line of defense, but a last resort. The uniformed security were already percolating around the lobby, putting themselves in position to surround the strange guy in the T-shirt.
The cameramen, of course, would be piling into the elevators to record the slaughter. The bastards. But company priorities were priorities. Mulroy was under explicit instructions to hold fire until the videocams were in place and taping. Even the wall-mounted security cams had a direct feed up to master control.
Mulroy released the button, looking up from the main monitor.
"Can I help you, sir?" he asked the approaching man.
"No, but you can help yourself."
"Come again?"
"You can tell me where to find Jed Burner."
"Mr. Burner is not in the building."
"Fine. You can tell me where I can find him, then."
"I can't do that without knowing your business with Mr. Burner."
The security team was hovering just behind the thick-wristed guy. With Moose ready to vault over the security desk, he would have no place to run.
Then the guy made it easy for everyone.
"My business is my business," he said.
"In that case, I'll have to ask you to leave." And Moose motioned for security to close in. The guy's clothes were tight. Not much danger of concealed weapons. He was thin as a rail too. Moose relaxed slightly. The guards were enough. No need to jump in. Besides, he was getting too old for that kind of crap.
One guard hung slightly back, one hand on the butt on his holstered revolver, while the flanking pair moved up to take the man by the elbows. They used both hands, just as Moose had instructed them, so the man would be instantly immobilized.
The hands came up and Moose Mulroy blinked.
The two guards were suddenly clutching one another, and the skinny guy, not six feet away just the blink of an eye before, was no longer there.
Moose blinked again.
And the guy shot up from under the desk top. Like magic. Moose Mulroy found himself looking into two dead eyes that smiled with a faintly humorous light even though the rest of the face wasn't sm
iling at all.
Moose was well-trained in what he did. He went for his sidearm. He heard the snap and felt the pull of his leather holster as it was unceremoniously detached from his gunbelt by a pinkish blur at the end of a thick wrist. The holster flew across the lobby, taking his revolver with it as a second hand-feeling like warm steel-took his throat while the first hand spun him around.
Resistance was the first thought in Moose Mulroy's mind. He knew a little judo, a smattering of aikido, and a lifetime accumulation of rough and tumble.
Resistance never got past the impulse stage, however.
For the man suddenly had Moose by his spine and suddenly the only thoughts in Moose's thick skull were those of pleasing the skinny guy with the irresistible hands.
Now Moose Mulroy understood that a human hand cannot reach in through flesh and walls of back muscles and seize a man's spinal column like it was a tree branch. He knew it, would have sworn to the impossibility of it. On a stack of bibles.
But standing at his security desk, looking at the two security guards doing a four-handed handshake while the third tried to separate them like Moe in a Three Stooges skit, Moose Mulroy knew without a doubt that a hand had wrapped around his spine. He could feel the fingers even through walls of muscles that felt dully painful-just the way they did that time in Pleiku when he had been bayoneted by a Vietcong sapper. It hurt. It hurt bad.
And the truly terrifying thing was that there was nothing Moose Mulroy could do about it.
The man spoke calmly into his left ear. "Say the magic words and keep your spine."
"Glad to," Moose grunted.
Before the man could instruct him further, the elevator doors opened and two sets of camera crews pounded out. They pointed their camcorders at Moose Mulroy standing there helplessly.
My job is history, Moose thought.
Aloud, he managed, "Get those cameras away from here! This is a hostage situation."
Wrong thing to say. The cameraman inched closer. The idiots obviously thought they were bulletproof.
Other security were arriving now. One guard asked a question.
"What do you want us to do, Moose-I mean, Mr. Mulroy?"
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