“I’ll do as you advise, sir,” she said.
“Very good. You call me if you need anything, now.”
Jessica put the handset of her secure phone into its cradle. She looked up at Nick Ruford, who was sitting on the edge of the reference librarian’s desk.
“That was my boss,” she said. “He wanted to make sure you didn’t have a gun pointed at my head.”
“Well, that’s good,” Nick said. “I’ve had bosses who wouldn’t have cared one way or another.” In the hours that had ticked by, Jessica had been able to make more deployments into Spottswood Parish. She’d put a guard at the broken Bayou Bridge to keep people from slipping out of the parish. Another guard went onto the Floodway. The guards were only of modest value, since people who knew the country could boat out elsewhere, but they would have to do until more personnel came along. She wouldn’t be able to accomplish much until the Rangers came from Memphis, which should happen late tonight or early tomorrow morning.
Her guard on the A.M.E. camp reported that the place seemed undisturbed. They’d chased buzzards and dogs off a number of corpses, but were otherwise keeping the place pristine until forensics people could show up. Whatever had happened there, no one had yet had the notion of cleaning it up. By tomorrow, she figured she’d have Spottswood Parish under wraps.
She’d also sent out for MREs and fresh water. It was the best she could do without setting up a field kitchen in the Carnegie Library. Still, she noticed that some of the Warriors didn’t eat a bite until she demonstrated the food’s safety by eating some herself.
Another call came in, from one of her scout helicopters she’d sent out to look for refugees, one with a mandate to check Spottswood Parish on the far side of the bayou in order to look for the refugees who had fled from the A.M.E. camp.
She received the message, acknowledged, then stood behind her desk, raised her voice so all could hear.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I wanted to let you know that your families have been located. They are on the far side of the bayou, and apparently they are all safe. My pilot would like to know if he should attempt to make contact.”
What she did, in the end, was order the chopper to land so that she could put the Warriors and their families in direct radio contact with one another. She stood back from the radio and watched as the heavily armed guerrilla fighters laughed and sobbed along with their wives, husbands, children, and parents.
She felt tears sting her own eyes at the sight. She looked up at Nick Ruford, saw him watching the scene with the expression of a man just dragged by his hair from quicksand. “I really thought we were all going to die,” he breathed.
“Nope.” Jessica grinned. “I bet it’s nice to have a life in front of you, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The words sounded heartfelt.
Jessica looked at him. “I served with a General Ruford once,” she said. “He was my teacher at the War College. I don’t suppose you’re related?”
Nick absorbed this, then gave her a sly look. “Sun Tzu, right?” He laughed at her startled expression.
“General Ruford was my father,” he said.
“He was a good soldier.”
Nick nodded. “I know.”
“You look a lot like him.”
And then, to Jessica’s surprise, Nick turned away, and sobs began to shake his shoulders.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The damage to stock, &c. was unknown. I heard of only two dwelling houses, a granary, and smoke house, being sunk. One of the dwelling houses was sunk twelve feet below the surface of the earth; the other the top was even with the surface. The granary and smoke house were entirely out of sight; we suppose sunk and the earth closed over them. The buildings through the country are much damaged. We heard of no lives being lost, except seven Indians, who were shaken into the Mississippi. —This we learned from one who escaped.
The President watched on television as Jessica Frazetta and the people who had been occupying the Carnegie Library in Shelburne City left the building, stepped into school buses escorted by Humvees filled with Army Rangers, and drove to the field near Clarendon where helicopters waited. He watched as the helicopters rose into the Louisiana sky, then descended onto grassy Mississippi soil near Vicksburg. The President watched as the refugees stumbled out of their doors of the Hueys and ran across the downdraft-beaten grass to be reunited with the families. He watched the weeping, the embraces, the celebration, the cries of joy.
He turned to Stan Burdett and his two principal speechwriters. “You boys better write me a hell of a speech,” he said.
“Yes, Mr. President,” one of the speechwriters mumbled.
They and the President sat on couches in the Oval Office, and watched the news on a console television carefully disguised as an antique piece of furniture.
“I want drama,” the President said. He waved his hands in the air. “I want compassion. I want a promise of punishment for the guilty along with protection for the helpless. I want to call for reconciliation. I want to appeal to the angels of our better nature. When I go to Mississippi, I want to deliver the best speech heard on this continent since Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. I want this to go down in history as the Vicksburg Address.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Now get busy.”
“Sir.”
The speechwriters left. The days in which a President scrawled out a speech on the back of an envelope and kept it for safekeeping in his hat were long gone.
Stan Burdett stared for a long moment at the scene on the television. “I can’t believe this happened,” he said.
“I believe it,” the President said. He shrugged and reached for his cup of coffee. “What does it take to make evil come into the world?” he asked. “A can of beer and a cheap handgun. That’s all. In this case, we had a psychopathic sheriff who was in a position to enforce his orders through martial law. He was a weak and malevolent man put into a position of power during a period in which the normal checks on his power ceased to exist. His actions don’t surprise me in the least.”
The President shook his head. “Where Paxton seems to have been naive is that he apparently thought he could do it without anyone finding out. That was absurd of him—we have a whole class of people in this country who do nothing but hunt out the things that people want to hide.” He shook his head. “You’d better have Bill Marcus contact Jessica Frazetta real soon,” he said. “She showed good political instincts here. We need to get her on the campaign trail soon, and run on our ticket. Oh—look at this.” He pointed at the television. “This guy’s priceless.” The Grand Wizard had appeared on the television, gazing firmly at the camera through glinting spectacles.
“Omar Paxton was a great American,” he said. “He was a hero. Whatever he did, I’m sure it was for the safety of the good people of Spottswood Parish. But now the liberal media are blowing everything out of proportion and trying to make it seem like Omar was some kind of crazed killer! Well, who got killed, that’s what I want to know. Omar Paxton got killed, and his deputies! They got massacred! Cut down in performance of their duty! The liberal media can say anything they want about the dead, I guess, ’cause the dead can’t defend themselves against slander, but I know in my heart that Omar Paxton was right.” The news program switched to a commentator, one of the legion of pompous talking heads who provide instant analysis for the media. The President reached for his remote and switched off the set.