"The hell you are! I found them! They're in Texas-and I'm the goddamned governor of Texas!"
"I don't care if you're the fucking king of Canada! Those kids are coming with us!"
"Prime minister," the Professor said. "Canada has a prime minister, not a king."
The ICE agent gave Jim Bob a "fuck you" look then said to Bode, "These kids belong to the federal government."
"The hell they do," Bode said.
Governors of the fifty states hate natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes and wildfires that tear a swath of destruction across the land, and man-made disasters like an offshore oil rig blowout that dumps millions of barrels of oil into pristine waters, and Wall Street gamblers who play high-risk games with the world's economy and lose, busting state budgets in the process; but they reserve their highest degree of hatred for the most arrogant, self-righteous, and overbearing bastards to walk God's green earth.
"Fucking Feds," Bode said.
Texas Governor Bode Bonner and Texas Ranger Hank Williams put their big bodies between the Feds and the kids. They remained in a Mexican stand-off until Jim Bob made a few calls to Washington. The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security worked for a politician, so she sided with politics. The last thing her Democratic president (who wanted Latino votes in the next election) needed was thirteen Mexican kids shown on the national news being perp-walked out of the lodge like criminals by ICE agents under her command. She ordered the agents to stand down. They weren't pleased, particularly when Bode gave the head agent a parting, "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on." ICE departed in defeat, Bode, Jim Bob, and Hank shared high-fives all around, and Rosita and Pedro searched the lodge calling out to the kids in Spanish: "Please come out, children. ICE is not going to take you away. The governor is going to take you on the airplane to Austin. You will live in the Governor's Mansion. La mansion del gobernador de Tejas."
Legal custody of thirteen Mexican children was now vested in the governor of Texas.
The Professor's idea. He said the political lesson learned from Kennedy was that if you surround a handsome politician with cute children the voting public will form a favorable impression of him even if he's screwing Marilyn Monroe on the side. The man didn't have a Ph. D. in politics for nothing. So they had all flown back to Austin Sunday morning in the Gulfstream. They put the kids in the spare bedrooms in the Mansion, but the boys kept running outside to pee on the south lawn. Turns out, they had never before used an indoor bathroom. Bode gave them a Toilet 101 lesson; fortunately, there were no bidets in the Mansion. Once the boys discovered the kitchen-"?Cocina interior! "-and learned that the chef would cook whatever they wanted upon request, they had eaten around the clock while watching Mexican futbol on cable. Mandy signed on as camp counselor, and Lupe adopted them like the children she never had. They laughed and smiled and seemed like normal kids who didn't speak English, not kids who had been held captive for a year on a remote marijuana farm in West Texas.
Except Josefina. She did not laugh or smile.
They were now scrubbed clean and sporting new clothes from the Gap. Mandy and Hank had taken them shopping the day before and charged $3,000 on the campaign credit card. But the kids would look nice on national TV. Because the governor of Texas was about to do what you do in America when you win the lottery or lose a reality show or claim a politician sexually harassed you or get banned from the prom for being a same-sex couple or kill three bad-ass hombres in West Texas: you go on television and tell the nation how you "feel," that being critical information all of America needed to know before breakfast-along with that Kardashian girl's latest love fiasco, of course. Bode had always experienced the urge to puke his oatmeal at the pathetic people parading their emotions on the network morning shows, desperate for their fifteen minutes.
Now he was about to join the parade.
The local station's producer came over and said, "George is wrapping up his interview with the couple that got kicked off Dancing with the Stars last night. You're up next." He sized Bode up then turned and shouted, "Make-up!" Back to Bode: "New York will run a setup piece then you'll go live with George."
The make-up lady arrived and gave Bode a once-over through her red reading glasses. She then patted a powdery pad on his forehead.
"That'll keep the glare down. Not much I can do about the hair."
Lupe had brushed and sprayed his hair to perfection that morning. The make-up lady stepped away, leaving Bode to stare at Jim Bob in the corner fiddling with his phone. Texting. Twitting. Tweetering. Whatever. Immediately after the shooting on Saturday, the Professor had commenced orchestrating a nonstop media blitz for the coming week. The shooting had made front-page headlines in every major newspaper in the country on Sunday-they called him an "American Hero"-and the Mansion switchboard had been overloaded with calls from media outlets across the country and around the world. Everyone wanted a piece of Bode Bonner. Jim Bob Burnet held the hottest news story in America in his hands, and he was using it to Bode's best advantage-because in the 24/7 news cycle that was life in America today, anyone could become someone in twenty-four hours.
Bode Bonner was now someone.
Jim Bob stepped over to Bode with the phone held high and said, "You got over two hundred thousand followers now, more than Romney. Course, he's a Mormon. How exciting could his life be? Oh, you made the nationals."
"I did?"
"You did. The Rasmussen tracking poll puts you at ten percent among Republican voters, Gallup at twelve. You're in the game now, Bode. America saw you for the first time this weekend and they liked what they saw-a rugged, handsome, action-hero."
He paused as if pondering the mysteries of the universe.
"What are the odds? We go out to John Ed's ranch that day, we're on that ridge and you're already sighted in at the exact moment the girl tries to escape-right place, right time, right gun. If I were a religious man, I'd say it was God's will. But I'm not, so I'd say you are one lucky SOB. And one thing I've learned from gambling in Vegas-when you're on a lucky streak, don't quit."
"Ride the wave."
"All the way to the White House. The 'Bode Bonner for President' campaign starts right now. I've plotted out a media tour for the next seven days, starting with the network morning shows. After that, we fly back out to John Ed's ranch for the 60 Minutes profile. Tomorrow we fly to L.A., then Chicago, New York, and wrap up the week in D.C. on Fox News Sunday. One week from today, you'll be the presumptive Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States of America. If you don't fuck it up."
"How?"
"By saying something stupid on national TV."
"No. How will I be the Republican presidential candidate in one week?"
"Because you're fixing to catch the biggest wave in politics since Reagan in eighty. He was bigger than life, and you're about to be. This is a game changer, Bode. The sort of thing that can put a Texan back in the White House."
"How do you know?"
"Because this is what I do."
What he did was make Bode give up the Armani suits. "Italian suits and French cuffs won't sell in Iowa and New Hampshire." So the governor of Texas was wearing a starched, buttoned-down, long-sleeved, pearl-white shirt with the athletic cut to accentuate his impressive physique, jeans, a black cowboy belt with a sterling silver Great Seal of Texas buckle, and black cowboy boots. The Professor was frowning.
"Did Lupe spray your hair this morning?"
"Of course."
"Well, don't do it anymore. Man using hair spray, evokes vanity and femininity. Voters don't want their president to be vain or their commander-in-chief to have a feminine side."
"You never complained before."