“And the embargo?”
“Continues.”
“Russians are starving.”
“Would you like to know how many Poles or Afghans were shot last week?”
“Now you sound like President Thorpe.”
“I inherited a foreign policy that the people wanted. They still want it.”
“The farmers aren’t crazy about it.”
“Did you ever hear Lincoln’s epigram about pleasing the people?”
“Now you sound callous.”
The president got up slowly from his seat. “I guess there isn’t any pleasing you, is there, Miss Longworth?”
“I didn’t come to be pleased, just to get some straight answers.”
“Are you satisfied?”
“Are you?”
“I’m never satisfied, Miss Longworth. Never. I just get older.” He checked his watch once more. “I’m afraid I’m out of time. I hope this meeting was of some use to you. I certainly enjoyed it.”
“You’re a gracious liar, Mr. President.”
“You weren’t a disappointment, either, ma’am. Tenacity fits you rather well, I think.”
“Bitch, too, probably.”
McKenna smiled. “Probably.”
He walked quickly to his desk in the Oval Office. Kimball was at his heels.
“Well, was she everything I said she was?” he asked anxiously.
“I don’t think she got quite what she was after,” McKenna said. He took off his jacket and stretched his back. He went to the window and stared out at the gloom of day.
“What did she want?”
“Same thing they all want, Wayne.” He spoke slowly, tiredly. “I wish I could go fishing,” he said after a long pause. “I’d really like that. A week with a fly rod and hip boots and no Air Force colonel following me around with launch codes in his little black case.”
“You’re the president of the United States. You don’t get vacations.”
“Lucky me.”
“They’re waiting,” Kimball said. “In the conference room.”
“Yes, my little shadow Jules Farber and the rest of the wise men.”
“C’mon, you’re already behind schedule today. You can feel sorry for yourself tonight, cry in your pillow. This morning you have to be commander in chief.” McKenna turned to face his chief of staff. “Sometimes you can be a real prick, Wayne. I guess that’s why I like you so much.”
“I love it when you talk dirty, Mr. President.” Kimball held the president’s coat. “C’mon.” McKenna bent his knees as Kimball helped him on with his coat. “You know, sometimes I think that somewhere out there in space, on some distant planet, creatures are studying our world with a kind of terrible sadness.”
“Well, if they are so smart, why don’t they send us something we can use — like an instant IQ analyzer gun. Something we can use to expose all the fools on this place.” The president laughed. “What, and put me out of a job?” He shook his head and was suddenly serious.
“No, we don’t need more idiots, Wayne. We need something more useful than another gun. Something more important.”
“Yeah.” Kimball walked him to the door. “Like what, for instance?”
“Like missionaries,” McKenna replied. “What we need are missionaries.”
JONES’S STRIP
NORTH SLOPE
0710 HRS
The Eskimo squad reached the runway ahead of schedule by twenty-two minutes. Ten US Army Scouts of the Alaskan National Guard llth Regiment. They had been out now twelve hours on a competitive training maneuver with three other squads who’d taken different routes on a timed exercise of map reading and arctic survival. They were on snowshoes with packs and skis on their backs and they carried M-16s. Unloaded.
Corporal Paul Avalik, the radioman, stopped when the squad leader held up his hand. He noticed the wind sock standing stiff in a hard wind. They’d been walking ninety minutes since their last break and Avalik was dying for a cigarette.
The squad leader shuffled awkwardly to Avalik. “We’re early,” he yelled against the wind in his face.
Avalik could see the outline of a smile beneath the face protector and goggles of his squad leader.
Winning the training maneuver — that is, returning to the company before the other squads — was all his sergeant cared about, Avalik thought. What he cared about was getting home and taking a nice warm pee.
“Right,” the corporal said.
“We’ll get time confirmation from Jones, then head back to base.” The sergeant ducked his head against the wind a moment, then added, “We’ll beat Parsons and his bunch by a good half hour.”
It was too cold to answer. Avalik nodded. Who gives a shit anyway, he thought. The squad leader made another gesture, swinging his arm forward. “Move out.” He was a regular John Wayne freak, his sergeant was.
They moved down the center of the runway toward the cabin. Avalik could hear the wind whistling past the Quonset hut ahead. He hoped Mrs. Jones had coffee made. He knew his sergeant wouldn’t wait if it wasn’t already made. He pictured the Joneses’ cabin in his mind: the kitchen, the pot-bellied stove, the mass of radio gear next to the fireplace. A warm, cozy little place. Yeah, she’d have coffee brewing, he was certain. What else was there to do up here on a day like this?
Avalik saw the shape outside the cabin. He didn’t know if he was the first to see it because nobody else seemed to notice. The corporal had been looking for Jones’s dog, and he saw the shape of a man standing in the small indention where the cabin and Quonset hut came together. There wasn’t anything surprising about it, Jones was probably outside, but they were very near the cabin now and the dog should have been barking his head off. Still, they were walking with their backs to the wind and the snow was blowing…
He was wearing white arctic gear, and Avalik heard his sergeant mutter some curse. It was some jerk from one of the other squads, Avalik thought. They’d got lost and gone to Jones’s place to find their bearings. He saw another figure. Then another. They were all around the cabin holding their weapons in front of them. Stupid nitwits. Why weren’t they inside where it was warm. Why hadn’t they…
They started shooting all at once. The squad leader went down first as he was at the point, the back of his white parka suddenly red with blood from three gaping exit wounds. The soldier directly in front of Avalik windmilled backward, his M-16 falling away from him. And then everyone was falling. The stiff arctic wind was loud with men screaming, whirling awkwardly in their snowshoes as they died stumbling into one another. Avalik was hit on the right hand; the slug ripped off his canvas mitten and twirled him around so that he suddenly faced into the wind, gasping for breath. The second bullet pierced his left leg above the knee. He fell face down in the snow. He’d kicked off both snowshoes and started rolling when the real massacre began. The sound of automatic weapons thundered all around him. The bullets made the snow dance, white sprays which were consumed by the swirling wind and transformed the patch of runway into a white nightmare of death. Avalik tried rolling again and was hit in the side by a ricochet. Another slug destroyed the radio on his back and shattered one of his skis. He scrambled on all fours, mindless of the pain of his wounds, desperate only to get out of the lines of fire.
Unable to see and afraid to stop, Avalik ran like a crippled spider until he dropped headfirst off the edge of the runway. He rolled behind a mogul and stopped. The shooting continued for another thirty seconds though the screams had already ceased. He waited, his mouth clamped shut against the burning pain in his leg and side. He waited, afraid to look back toward the runway to see one of the figures in white coming for him. He waited, but nothing happened. When the shooting ended, there was nothing.