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.