The Fury and the Terror (28 page)

"Well, hel
lo
."

"Hello yourself," the girl said, aiming the gun at him. "Why don't you get away from them?"

"You're even prettier than your picture. Where did you come from?"

"You'd be amazed. I
said
get away from them.
Now
."

"Well, the truth is, I feel
much
safer where I am. Knowing you probably won't try to shoot me. Because I just don't think you're the warrior type. Oh no no no no. And I think, being a sensible young thing and not all that proficient with a weapon like the one you have in your hands, that you're just a teeny bit worried about cutting loose and oh my, I can assure you there will be a
hail
of bullets the instant your finger squeezes the trigger. It doesn't take much pressure. I won't tell you how much. I
would
advise you not to hold the stock against your shoulder. And I'm not shitting you. Someone near and dear could also be shot. It's very likely, in fact. You might even shoot yourself. Being unfamiliar with that weapon."

"Untie Geoff and Riley."

"I'm
not
unwilling, if it would pacify you. But
he
used duct tape. You know what that's like. Yards and yards of duct tape. Once it's twisted and knotted, there's no way. I'd need a sharp knife or scissors to cut through the tape. You must have slipped in by the back door. Yes? But I didn't hear a car. Did you ride in on your mountain bike?"

"Betts, you have your hands free. Find some scissors."

Betts looked from Eden's face to her hands, as if she'd forgotten about them. She glanced at Face, reached up, and tried to pull off the tape covering her mouth. Face slipped in behind her, locking an arm straight up, placing one hand on the side of her head. The other hand cupped Betts's chin, forcing her head up and sideways.

"Push-push-
snap
," he said. "If you don't put the gun down, Eden. Really, you'd be amazed how little force is needed to separate the spine from the head. We've never involved the girls in bloodletting, but that doesn't mean—" His voice changed suddenly, and Haman took over, all business in spite of the getup. "—I
won't
do it, you little asshole. Now let's just move over there, Mama Frizz, so Eden can hear it nice and loud when your neck breaks."

"Here," the girl said. "You want it, just take the fuckin' thing."

She pitched the stubby machine gun as if she were letting fly with a set shot from thirty feet. A lot of arc to the toss, the gun almost hitting a rough-hewn redwood beam overhead before coming down. As soon as the gun left her hands she turned and was running toward the door of the deck at the back of the house.

Haman's reflexes were almost as good as hers. He released Betts, giving her a sideways shove, caught the machine gun in one hand, leveled it, and shot off half a magazine at the fleeing girl.

Bullets stippled the screen wire as she was going out the door. She was hit at least twice, high on her back, and went down on all fours on the deck outside, her only sound a strangled gasp as the door slapped shut behind her.

Haman kicked off the heels and started after her. Betts reached up from the floor where she'd fallen and grappled, trying to stop him. He turned and struck her in the side of the head with the butt of the H and K, delivered a side-kick to her chin, dropping her unconscious across Geoff as he struggled on his stomach with his hands tied close to his ankles. Haman turned the machine gun on Geoff, muzzle four feet from the back of his head, then decided it could wait until he finished off the girl. He should have been able to see her, lying out there on the deck, but apparently she'd dragged herself away from the door.

So walk out there, flip her over, look her in the eyes. Smart-mouth little bitch. Had the drop on Face. Wasn't
his
approval rating at stake. Hit Eden again, a quick burst, walk away. Or, no, she owed him a few minutes of play time. Carving knife, not the H and K. Beginning an inch below the navel, left-right, back again, all the way to the trachea, see if it could be done in a single smooth cut, finishing ear-to-ear. Then drag her by the heels inside to complete the family diorama. Torch the place. And home to Glitter Gulch before dark.

CAMP DAVID • MAY 29 • 10:40 A.M. EDT

H
is appetite is good," Clint Harvester's personal physician told Rona. "Physically I'd say he's in the best shape of his life. He runs and swims at least two hours a day. His resting pulse is fifty-eight. His blood pressure—"

"Is this supposed to be the good news? So he's not in a wheelchair. I'd take that anytime if I knew that one day soon Clint would be able to put enough words together to make a sentence I could understand."

"His mind is quite active," R. Traynor Daufuskie said encouragingly. We've done PET scans while he watches TV or is subjected to various other stimuli. He appears to be listening when we speak to him. He hears words, but his ability to generate them is nearly gone. He can obey simple directions accompanied by demonstrations. Of course we have no definition of what consciousness—language, visualization, self-awareness—is. The concept is not measurable by means currently at our disposal. Clint's language skills have mysteriously vanished. I say 'mysteriously' because the cognitive areas of the brain show no abnormalities, such as would occur from a burst blood vessel. The seizures—electrical misfires—are occurring randomly throughout the brain, but they are greatly diminished. No more than one or two a day. Neurons have been destroyed, obviously. Dead neurons probably can't be replaced, although there is some evidence now to the contrary. The plenum temporale in the right hemisphere appears normal. The failure may be in the neurotransmitters, which could improve greatly with the monoamine oxidase. A protocol we have him on."

"I don't have a clue as to what you're telling me. Tray, does he know who I am when I walk into the room?"

"Yes. But for now his memories are all post-trauma. That's how retrograde amnesia works."

"He doesn't know when or where we were married. He can't recall how we first met." Rona's head was down. She bit her lip until tears came. "He doesn't know he's President of the United States." She used a handkerchief, dabbing at her cheeks, then looked up with a forlorn smile. "There's no chance he'll simply snap out of it?"

"Please don't give up hope. The human brain exhibits remarkable plasticity. The President can and probably will relearn a good deal of what has been erased. But we must be patient."

"I'd like to take Clint home. I mean, to the White House, not the ranch. Sit him down behind his desk in the Oval Office. Who knows? Familiar sights, people he's been around for the last three years, something might go clickety-click."

"Well—I don't know how he would respond to that much stimulation. And his attention span is, unfortunately, quite short. Then there's the problem of primitive, aggressive behavior, immediate gratification of his urges."

"Have I missed something?"

"On two occasions the President has attempted to have sexual relations with women who have come into his, uh, orbit at inopportune moments. A Secret Service agent assigned to the POTUS detail, whom he followed into a bathroom, and a Marine Corps nurse who entered the suite to take his blood pressure when he happened to be—"

"Rubbing one off? I'm sure you can give the President a shot of something that will help him keep his mitts off his pump handle. For my sake, if you wouldn't mind. Traynor, my wifely instinct tells me the change from Camp David to Washington will be wonderful for him. I want you to bring Clint down tonight. Late tonight, please."

C
ardinals had flocked to a bird feeder in a tree outside the President's suite. Clint Harvester was standing idly at the windows watching them when Rona walked in. Two Secret Service agents were keeping an eye on Clint.

He was wearing denim, his comfortable old ranching duds. He had a good tan. He saw Rona reflected in the window and turned slowly, eyes without the velocity of coherent thought. She hurried across the moth. Her lips met his cheek as if she were kissing a soap bubble. Clint smiled. "Caw," he said.

"I've talked to Tray Daufuskie. He's very pleased with your progress. We're all praying very hard, Clint."

She turned to the Secret Service agents and let two tears fall.

"I'd like some quality time with my husband."

"Yes, ma'am."

When they had gone Rona took off the jacket of her pink suit and sat down, watching her husband.

"I know you can't understand what I say."

There was a quirk to his lips that couldn't be called a smile. He said something that sounded like "voogle."

"It was never anything personal. I always liked you, Clint. You were just what I wanted, and needed, at the time. Media appeal. A prince from the far country. You never failed at anything you tried. Didn't know shit about politics. Thought there was room for civility. A little spilled blood but never any gore. You needed me to run your show. I could handle the rats. And they're all man-eating rats, aren't they?"

He was looking at the bird feeder again, as if Rona weren't in the room. "If you turned around you would see me crying. But you won't turn around. There's nothing to see behind you anymore."

Clint was now watching a fly that had found its way to the windowpanes.

"By the way, I had nothing to do with Linda's untimely death. You don't just slink away from competition like me and sulk. That hurt little smile, heavy with tooth. She should have come at me with fists flying. Had me tied up and thrown into a stall with a crazed stallion. A woman who won't take a man's dick in her mouth doesn't deserve to keep him. End of story. A few tears. That's my human side. The rest of me requires no explanation. A rabid genius boils the marrow of my bones. A cockeyed soothsayer/poet/surfer told that to me. I was just fourteen. How could he have known? Probably it was just a line he came up with so he could fuck me. Boy did it work. I'd like for you to look at me now, but you won't. If we could go back just one time. Montana. Sky red as sunburn, a hawk drifting home. Your old fleabag asleep by the fire. Horses in shadow wood. Your eyes sliding in and out of me like rapiers and then we do it. Ah. Do it. The peace at our beginning. There are ways of living that are far more unpleasant than dying. I see that. You standing there. I understand. A broken spirit drieth the bones. Someone quoted me that today. I think he's in a little bit of trouble about the soul thing.

I never would have expected that. I'm uneasy. Too much is coming up. All the chips are in the middle of the table. Speaking of poker. You'd have been a far better politician if you had let me teach you how to deal seconds. But that would have diminished you. The American People would have caught on the minute you started dealing seconds. I've never underestimated the AP. The Anointed Media shovels a lot of crap at the AP, as we direct it to do. But there's a knowingness deep in the collective gut of the AP. We keep the lights low and the music soft but eventually you just can't feed the AP any more crap. I know this and it's the one thing I'm afraid of. Dream about too often. Always the smoke and the dead and the blood red skies and the guillotine, waiting at the end of screaming streets. There's never time to do my nails."

Clint murmured something.

"Seriously. I wonder what history will make of us. Rona and Clint in the ambers of time. Myths dressed in mythy black. I'm preparing a gift for you. A martyrdom that will live a thousand years. Magnificent. I feel it's the least I can do, repayment for the ride you've given me."

Clint Harvester watched the fly crawl up the windowpane, crawl down again.

Rona got up; feeling greatly refreshed, put on her jacket, and left the room. Hum-drum, he watched her pink reflection flash good-bye.

The two Secret Service men returned, sat down, and resumed watching Clint. Eight-hour shifts. They didn't play chess. They didn't look at TV.

After a while the fly came unstuck from the glass and rambled away. A word, too, floated in the air.

"Cunt."

The Secret Service men looked at each other.

Clint Harvester stared at the bird feeder as if he were counting seeds in the glass hopper.

GREENWOOD LAKE • MAY 29 • 7:55 A.M. PST

T
he assassin went outside to find that the girl he'd shot wasn't where he'd expected her to be. There was nothing on the redwood deck at the rear of the house except a pile of firewood under a tarp next to a stone chimney.

And a wide smear of blood, what he took to be blood, not as dark as the color of the sealant protecting the wood deck.

The blood had begun to bubble, producing a mist. That was a new one. He'd spilled a lot of blood, but he'd never seen it act like that.

He looked around. No hiding places. There were steps, and a flagstone path through beds of low-growing juniper and redwood mulch to the front of the house. The conifers on the hillside behind the house grew too far apart to provide concealment, and there wasn't much understory rooted in the acid soil. He saw another vacation home sixty or seventy yards away, lower on the hill and closer to the water. Only a part of the roof and chimney were visible from where he stood in broad daylight wearing a designer wig, a padded bra, and Jockey shorts. Holding an assault weapon.