"This is gonna be bad," Jenna said, glancing at Troy. "This could be real bad." Troy nodded.
"Fear not, my fellow Americans;" Harris continued. "We shall not shrink from our newly bestowed mantle of responsibility. I shall not shrink from this newly bestowed mantle of responsibility. I intend to personally ensure that Mr. Fachearon and his six percent will not stand in the way of our nation's future."
With that, the screen faded and chattering talking heads appeared.
"What did he mean by that?" Troy asked.
In the other room, Jenna's cell phone was chirping. "This is Jenna," she said. "Hi, Lucy… yeah… I saw it….. Yeah… lot to digest for sure… Harris is like that….. For sure… he'd be an oligarch himself if he had half a chance….. Yeah… I guess he does have half a chance now….. Well, he said he was going to do it personally….. No, Lucy… I won't tell….. Y'all are kidding me… no shit?… You can't be serious….. Where?… When?… Can you stop him?… Can y'all slow him down?… I'll think of something….. I dunno, Lucy… I'll think of something. Just slow him down."
Jenna tossed the cell phone on the counter and gave Troy a bewildered glance.
"What the hell was that about?" Troy asked, having heard only Jenna's side of the conversation.
"Harris," Jenna said, beginning to pace. "That was Lucy… she's in special projects. She was with Harris this morning as this whole thing was going down."
"Wild. What's going on?"
"Harris… It's Harris. The son of a bitch has got a tactical nuke loaded on the Raven aircraft… he's gonna fucking nuke Fachearon."
Chapter 49
"Thank you for coming," Albert Bacon Fachearon said sarcastically. "And yes, it is rather awkward to receive an emissary from Firehawk on a day such as this. I had presumed that you were bringing an apology and a memorandum of capitulation from Layton Kynelty or Raymond Harris, but apparently not. You can tell them that nothing less than these will be acceptable. You may stay for lunch if you wish, but after that, please make your way back to Washington and convey my sincere dissatisfaction to those 'gentlemen.' "
With that, Fachearon turned and strode away, leaving his visitor standing in the foyer of Laurel Lodge.
Aron Arnold might have been impressed by the gold-leaved eagles, the flags, and the trappings of American presidential pomp and power. His father, who had grown up in a United States that valued patriotism, a nation where loyalty to flag and to country matter, would have been. Aron Arnold was not. As he was growing into a man in the featureless suburbs around Orlando, it was a world in which flag-waving was an irrelevant anachronism.
He had joined the U. S. Air Force because he wanted to fly. He had grown up playing video games, and he wanted to do it for real. He had been good at the game console and proved himself good in real cockpits as well. His total and all-consuming attention to being the best at doing what he did, combined with his detached and easygoing temperament, made him an ideal candidate when Svartvand BV was recruiting pilots — and killers. Aron Arnold was the ideal PMC man, with loyalty only to his employer of the moment, not to the flag beneath which he had been born.
When Svartvand was acquired by Firehawk, Arnold had no nostalgia for Svartvand, just as he had no particular loyalty to flag or country. For Arnold, it was never personal. When he had met Troy Loensch on the night that Svartvand had merged with Firehawk, he had detected a trace of uneasiness. Sure, they had been fighting to the death early that same day, and that was a serious irony — but it wasn't personal. At least it had not been personal for Aron.
He had felt that same uneasiness from Troy Loensch when they met again at Cactus Flat. Arnold was impressed by how Loensch had allowed his professionalism as a pilot trump any bad feelings he had for a man who had tried to kill him in air combat, but on the ground, they had stayed apart. There had been no rounds of boozing at the officers' club that ended with slaps on the back and vows of "no hard feelings."
When Loensch had been killed in the Shakuru crash, there had been wailing and gnashing of teeth at Cactus Flat. A lot of people had been saddened by his death, as people are often saddened by deaths of co-workers. Dr. Elisa Meyers had expressed much anguish for the loss of her Shakuru but had shed a tear for the man as well. Aron Arnold shed no tears. He had no feelings of empathy. It was a job, and Loensch had simply not come back.
Like Dr. Meyers, Arnold was sad to see the Shakuru Program come to an abrupt end, but the broader HAWX Program remained. Within HAWX there would be many possibilities. Raymond Harris. had even intimated that there would be a place for him in the cockpit of the Raven — and that prospect came with great excitement for Aron Arnold.
When Harris was named CEO of Firehawk, Arnold was brought back to the corporate headquarters in Herndon with the promise of "big things" within the HAWX Program.
Arnold had no distinct loyalty to Harris, nor to Fire-hawk, but rather to his job. Like the knights errant of the Middle Ages, or mercenaries throughout time, his master was the task at hand.
Today's task, amid the pastoral beauty of the Catoctin Mountains, had been to persuade Fachearon to submit to Firehawk authority as demanded by Congress.
Today, Arnold had failed, just as he had failed on that day over the Peten jungle to bring down Troy's F-16. It was Arnold's belief that in the long run, Troy Loensch had gone down to a watery grave in the vast Pacific. It was Arnold's belief that in due time, Fachearon would go down, down to obscurity as a footnote to a turning point in American history.
Chapter 50
"This is a Firehawk-authorized operation," Jenna said sternly — and she could be very stern when the moment demanded sternness — as she flashed the Firehawk ID card with its high level of security authorization.
"I don't know," stammered the guard at Reagan National's government hangar. "I wasn't given any advance not i f—"
From the airport, they could look across the Potomac and see the dome of the Capitol building. "In case you aren't aware, this city is in crisis mode this morning," Jenna said angrily. "Not everyone is getting advance notification of everything. In fact, damned few people are."
"I'm still not—"
"Do you want me to put you on Raymond Harris's personal shit list?" Jenna asked.
"No—"
"Do you know what will happen to you for impeding a Firehawk operation at this time?"
"Well—"
"Trust me, you have better things to do with your life than to be sitting around in a cell waiting to be executed for treason," Jenna asserted.
"Okay," the guard said, glancing again at Jenna's ID. "Thank you," she said impatiently.
"What about him?" the guard said, nodding at Troy.
"He's with me," Jenna said, pushing the guard aside.
"Nothing works on a day like this like a Firehawk Ill," Troy quipped as they entered the hangar.
"Wish you had brought your Firehawk Ill," Jenna said.
"I left it in the jungle." He shrugged.
Parked before them were a pair of Virginia Air National Guard F-16s. When the PMCs had taken over for the armed forces, the assets of the National Guard, which were under state control, were not included.
Shortly after she had hung up from Lucy's phone call, Jenna had a brainstorm.
Troy's first reaction was one of "We gotta stop that bastard!"
Neither he nor Jenna had any idea how.
According to Lucy, Raymond Harris was already headed for the car that would take him Andrews Air Force Base. She had promised that she'd try to delay Harris, but they all knew he could not be stopped.