April 2: Down to Earth (42 page)

"It's worse than you think," she assured him. "I'm calling you late at night by my lights. I haven't been to bed yet."

"Is this all still working out from Hawaii? Or is this a new fire to put out?" he asked.

"Some fire, new outbreak. I'll tell you tomorrow. Just get me John."

The screen went blank and she turned her gaze out of their feed and told them, "Damn you for being right, but they are covering
something
major up about Deepwell. I suspect in the end it will be as you've said, or worse even." She looked very tired.

"Do you need something to make you alert President Wiggen?" April asked. "You look like you are very fatigued and that is scary in a person who is making major important decisions."

Wiggen laughed. "You must be concerned if you call me ‘President' Wiggen when you don't have to. It's a hell of a note when you get better advice from your enemies than your allies," she noted. "Adam," she called to the guard, "bring me a coffee and one of those four hour pills. We're five hours ahead of you," she reminded April, if she wasn't familiar with the zones.

The man that appeared on the screen however looked even worse than the President. He watched her swallow a small red pill and told her. "I took one of those four hour pills about five hours ago. Should have taken a eight hour one, but too late now. You can't take ‘em one on top of another. That'll kill ya. What can I do for you Edna? I just got to sleep about twenty minutes ago and can't even focus. If I were you, I wouldn't bet the farm on anything I say right now."

"The mess in Hawaii. There is a man that used to be a DOD civilian employee involved. Japanese looking fellow name of Satos. Can you get your clerks and records checked quickly and see if you know who I am talking about?

"Oh Dear Sweet God. I don't have to check any records," he said leaning his head across his hand, so his eyes were covered. "They told me Satos retired. They swore it was true, not a ruse. Did that silly ass Harrison do something to
personally
upset the man, as well as Home? He had no idea you don't just indifferently make enemies, left and right. If Homeland Security screwed around with
him,
Harrison as number three was probably just popped because he was handy in Hawaii. I thought
we
were rough on Homeland last night, but if Satos is pissed with them, you can start looking for replacements for number One and number Two, ‘cause they're as good as dead. He'll just calmly go down the list from the top, until he feels justice is balanced and I'm not going to throw anyone away, protecting Harrison's friends after last night. If he's after the Patriot Party good enough. It'll save hanging the traitorous sons of  bitches later. I'm still sure they've been behind some of the attempts on you."

"I talked to the girl and she called down the bombardment on her spex. Didn't have any apology for it. But I don't think she had any outside motivation, or was acting for anyone but herself."

"I don't know what happened after the lights went out and the feed terminated," he said, "but Harrison had two Navy and two Homeland boys in the studio with him and a set of four of the same, on the roof. The one aircar on the roof was equipped to take the local wireless net down hard, for a half kilometer around. I just can't believe she defeated them all by herself and walked away."

"I may get some information on that soon, but that's all I need from you John. Go back to bed and I'll leave messages for when you awaken."

"Thanks Edna. You take care when your pill runs out too." he closed his window.

"OK," she told her other listeners. "I believe there are things here I needed to know I had withheld from me. And I don't intend to spar with Mr. Satos about his choice of friends. But if you would explain what happened after the feed from the CNN studio ended, I would appreciate that."

"Here's feed from the Public Eye I was wearing on my shoulder," April offered and showed President Wiggen the same segment she had shown her friends earlier.

"You're unnaturally fast, heavily gene modified," Wiggen declared after viewing it, with a hard face and tone of accusation.

"Of course," April replied, refusing to acknowledge anything wrong with that.

"Why," asked Wiggen speaking slowly as if it might not be understood "was it necessary to destroy the Kalaeloa field at Barber's Point? That has all sorts of people both inside my own administration and from the public just calling all the more for war again with Home, to avenge the bombing of us with a nuke. The last time I was updated we had over thirty dead and hundreds of casualties including civilian workers and families housed on and around the field. Everything was shook like an earthquake. They tell me there's a huge crater in the center of the runways, the control tower was knocked down and the planes on the apron all hit individually. A lot of the hangers were damaged. How was any spite for Harrison or Homeland Security served, by hitting the Coast Guard base?"

April screwed her nose up and sort of squinted at Wiggen like she doubted what she heard. "You heard Harrison say he was transporting me to the base, to take somewhere else where I would be imprisoned. So he had the use of forces there against me. If I had left it alone, who knows how quickly his men from the base would have come to rescue him and arrest me? It wasn't exactly a nuke either. You'll find it isn't dirty. There isn't a bunch of fallout to worry about."

"We could have just air burst a big weapon, or several and knocked everything down for miles, but Jon just put one really small weapon under the runways and ruined them. That really minimized damage. So I say he acted really moderately. This isn't a game, where you can complain we play too hard. There are millions of you and a couple thousand of us. If my friends had to kill fifty million of you to save me, they wouldn't hesitate. That's the sort of thing we keep trying to tell you and you people just don't seem to get it. What do we have to do to make you believe? If I knocked California right off the West coast," she said illustrating with a chopping motion of her hand, "so the ocean goes to Nevada, would your people start to get a clue, we're not going to play tit for tat with you?"

Wiggen didn't say anything for a moment. Not because she disagreed, or couldn't answer April, but she saw this as a moment not to say the wrong thing. She really
could
see California sliding off into the Pacific, if she said just the wrong thing right now, in her fatigued state.

April however took the silence for a lack of belief.

"Maybe you don't think those guys waving guns around in the dark really meant to hurt me. Maybe they were just trying to scare the kid and when they dragged me to the aircar they would have let me loose and said ‘Got ya!' and had a good laugh. Well check this out."

April pulled her shirt up and tried to sit up, but it hurt too much. Lin hurried to help her turn sideways, with her feet off the edge of the lounger and sat up with her side turned to the camera. The discoloration on the ribs had deepened and the swelling was ugly. It was shocking enough to someone like Wiggen, who rarely saw any injury, that they heard her sharp intake of breath.

"And you've been talking with us all this time, hurt like that? I'd think you should laying down, sedated. That happened in the fight you showed me?"

"Hell yes," she said irritated. "What do you think that was when the whole scene jerked sideways and I got knocked down? That was one of Harrison's men, shot me with some big pistol. That's what that slapping sound is when everything jerks. My vest stopped it. The slug was still spread out, stuck on the vest like ten Euro coin when I drove here. But just because it didn't go through, doesn't mean it didn't feel like getting smacked with a sledge hammer. Two of them shot at me, but one connected. I may have got all eight of them and Harrison himself, but it was a technical, not a clean win. The fellow Easy who instructs me on tactics is going to jump all over me, for even allowing any of the opposition to fire a weapon. He'll say it was dumb luck, he didn't shoot me through the head."

Wiggen blinked a couple times, remembering how the Deputy CIA chief couldn't believe the girl could shoot her way out of the CNN studio unaided. "He would expect much better of you?" she asked.

"Oh yeah. I can hear him now saying that I should have found the fourth agent and eliminated him first, not last. I had the sensors in my spex to find him on infrared and I got inpatient and shot the others, just because the lights came on and I felt exposed. I had time to find him if I kept moving. It's easy to see what you
should
have done in a gun fight, running it through your head later. I can move fast enough they could not have hit me while I found him, even if he was well hidden. But you get a free one once in awhile," she added philosophically. "Next time I'll do better," she promised, assuming with chilling ease, that there would be a next time.

Wiggen was definitely going to leave this little interview for John to view.

"The reason I called - obviously we have some internal dissension right now and this is not a safe place for you to be."

"Yes, even within agencies," April remarked.

Wiggen nodded agreement. "I'd like to pack you off home, but I know you're not going to agree to that. Won't you accept an escort of my own security detail? Then if there is more trouble, perhaps we can resolve it without a major bombardment," she said a bit tight lipped.

"I just killed four of these fellow's service mates. Don't you think they may have a little resentment? I'd worry more about my security turning on me, than who I'd run into."

"I assure you that can be smoothed over. They were being given illegal orders, I would say. That will go a long way toward shifting the blame for what happened to Harrison. You didn't go out looking for them after all. He took them in there to the interview, as a sort of ambush. They really were not tasked with acting for him to arrest people. They were just supposed to be charged with keeping him safe. So if he rushes headlong into a confrontation with someone, he's really making their job impossible."

"That sounds like an wonderful lawyer's explanation of what happened. But in the dark there, I couldn't tell the Homeland Security men trying to arrest me, from the Naval detail trying to protect him. They were all four men with a gun in their hands, wanting to shoot me."

"You're right I'm a lawyer. Most Presidents have been for some time. But in fact I am right, that the protective detail should not have acted against you, to help arrest you. But I'm sure they were correct in their own eyes to target you, once you said his life was forfeit. I did hear you say that didn't I?"

"Yes, but under my law I'm entitled to act, if a person declares his intent to harm me. I am within my rights to act based on believing him."

"From a practical view, I don't think we could expect these men that are trained to protect their charge to say, Wait a minute. She has the right to shoot him now. We can't defend him. He's on his own for saying that. After all they
aren't
lawyers to arrive at such a convoluted conclusion, when faced with such a hard legal concept. I could," she admitted. "I wouldn't expect their training to cover such a bizarre situation even. It will be awkward if you can't accept a detail, because I'll
have
to try to surround you with some kind of protection and they will have a hard time doing that from a distance. And they'll have to scramble to follow you, when you move unannounced. You might even miss a person who intends to harm you in the crowd, if you don't know the players. Can't we reach some sort of accommodation?" she asked.

"Give me just a second to consult with someone will you?" April asked.

Wiggen nodded an assent.

April muted her pad and turned to Papa-san. "You know better how these sort of organizations work than me," she pleaded. "If she tries to build a wall around me like that, it sounds like it will be a major pain in the butt. I'd just tell her no and go on to visit the European Union, but I want to get my two guys out of North America. What can I do to make her happy and not be cut off from everything, by a mob of security shadowing me everywhere. I know they have so many assets, they can make my life miserable. Like - if I buy an airline ticket - they can kick everyone else off and fill every seat with their agents. What can I do?"

"I don't know if she'll buy it, but try to negotiate her down to just sending a body guard. Tell her you want quality not quantity. Ask for one or two older experienced agents, not some hot shot young guy, who will be gung-ho about making a fuss around you in public."

April thought about it a little and how security worked on Home. "On Home," she explained I'd rather have Jon Davis the head of Security guarding me, that any of his agents. He teaches them all, but when you get right down to it he's death on wheels and better than any of them. Do you think here, they have one exceptional agent like that, who supervises the training of the others, I can ask for?"

"You can try, but he's probably older, so they won't be assigning him for actual protective duty and his bosses will probably fight having him loaned out tooth and nail, because once you get someone like that it's a fight to keep him from being stolen away, or retiring. On the other hand, they'd be happy they don't have to lose someone from an active group, that's all committed to guard someone else. They must be stretched pretty thin the way things are right now. Last thing anyone will want to do, is actually pull experienced protection off Wiggen. That's amazing she was offering any of her own detail. I'd bet she hasn't ran that idea past them, or they would be screaming. Ask her for the firearms instructor, or the armorer for her detail. Make sure she knows if he's older you'd
like
that."

April went back to Wiggen. "Look," she said, "I don't want to pull a big mob of agents off other duty, when you have so much to cover anyway. I don't want a big detail, that will be like a damn parade going down the road, if I want to go shopping. And for sure I don't want a bunch to try to
manage
me at every turn. How about just temporarily assigning me the guy, who is so skilled he instructs your other agents in firearms and tactics, or is their armorer? Whoever is like the head couch of your team. He's probably older and I'd be more comfortable with him than a young man for my own privacy. I'm used to an older instructor, like my man Easy. Hell, we'd even stripped down together in combat, when we come out of p-suits and had to clean up and he doesn't ogle you like a kid would, ‘cause it's just nothing he hasn't seen before," April could see an amused grin on Papa-san at that. "Would you ask your folks if they have a guy like that? Of course you can give him authority to call in other resources, if he sees he needs them."