Dave Sinnott did. It was either that or continue working for a lunatic.
Jed Burner called a press conference that very day. He looked tanned and fit in immaculate white ducks, and he was holding two very photogenic blondes rented for the occasion.
"It was mah idea," he said through cigar-clenching teeth. "From the start."
"What about Dave Sinnott?" he was asked.
"I didn't catch that name, boy."
"He was your station manager."
"Front man. Just in case Ah piled up on a reef somewhere. All the time Ah was away Ah was guidin' things by telephone."
"Isn't that an unusual management style for a TV network?"
"If Ah'm gonna cover the entire globe, Ah had to see it with mah own eyes, didn't Ah?" Burner countered.
"Globe?"
"That's right. KNNN is nationwide after only a yeah. We're puttin' news bureaus all over the dang world now. We're gonna be global inside of two yeahs."
The assembled press gasped.
And Jed Burner took his cigar out of his big mouth and beamed broadly.
"They don't call me Captain Audacious for nothin', boy."
True to his word, KNNN went global. When wars broke out, KNNN was there first, booking the best hotels. If there was a coup, KNNN was first on the scene. In the global village, KNNN was the town crier of many faces-fast, rough, sloppy, but instant.
Jed Burner explained it like this in a Playboy interview:
"Not everybody's got the time to brew a good pot of coffee. We're the instant brand. Folks want brewed, they wait for the networks to serve some up. You want it now, you got it-on KNNN."
For one roller-coaster decade, KNNN could do nothing wrong. If their coverage of the Gulf War infuriated some viewers, it didn't matter. There were always more. Presidents swore by KNNN. The Pentagon watched it constantly. If the farting and the belching died down as more anchors were added and coffee and lunch breaks inaugurated, people still tuned in hope of catching KNNN at an awkward moment.
And as KNNN's fortunes climbed, the networks declined. Strapped for operating funds, they closed bureaus all over the globe. KNNN snapped up the leases the next day. Before long, the networks were carrying KNNN footage on a regular basis, trading off economy for the humiliation of advertising their chief rival.
The night broadcast TV went black for seven minutes. Accompanied by his latest trophy wife, his hair now as gray as an old salt's, Jed Burner was on his 129-foot yacht equipped with helipad and Superpuma helicopter.
The deck phone rang. It was his private secretary.
"Mr. Burner," she said tightly, "the networks are blacked out."
"Screw 'em. They're dinosaurs." He clapped and hand over the telephone mouthpiece and hollered in the direction of the bow. "Honey, you're gonna pull a pretty hamstring if you keep bendin' yoahself into petzel-like shapes."
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.