“There will be a press release at the appropriate time,” Kat told her. “You will have it early, of course.”
“Any word on a likely running mate?” Lucy asked. “I noticed Kenneth Link was here.”
“The ticket will not be announced before the convention,” Kat said.
“Come on, Kat. Off the record. I promise.”
“Sorry,” Kat replied.
Lucy turned to Rodgers. “What about the Op-Center investigation, General Rodgers?”
“What about it?”
“I hear that a gentleman named Darrell McCaskey is on his way over to talk to Admiral Link.”
“What?” Kat said. She stopped, took her cell phone out, and speed-dialed the admiral’s number.
“How do you know that?” Rodgers asked.
“Friend of mine with the postal police was talking to him. McCaskey wouldn’t tell him what it was about. Ed thought I might know.” Lucy smiled. “He wanted to help.”
Kat had turned her back to the others. She was only on the phone for a few seconds when she snapped it shut. “I’ll see you later,” she said to Rodgers and Lucy, and hurried off.
“Come on, Katherine,” Lucy said, running after her. “I just gave you a major heads-up—”
“I know that, and I appreciate it.”
“Show me!”
“When I can,” Kat promised.
That did not make Lucy happy. Rodgers started after Kat, and Lucy tugged his arm. “General, I can help you,” she insisted.
“Thanks.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Lucy said, giving him another tug. “You have to help me, too.”
Rodgers withdrew his arm and started walking after Kat. Lucy followed him. Her persistence did not bother him. That was her job. What frustrated him was something that was roiling in his gut.
“General, talk to me. Just tell me what you’re doing with Senator Orr. Are you working for him or for Op-Center?”
“What do you think?”
“I think that if you were working for Op-Center, Kat would have known about the Darrell McCaskey interview,” she said.
“Makes sense,” he said.
“I know. That’s a direction, but it isn’t a story. Give me something I can use. Anything. A lead, an off-the-record observation, a quote I’ll attribute to an anonymous source—”
“The Hypo-Slayer,” Rodgers said.
“Beg pardon?”
“Is that what you came up with last night when you said you needed a name for the killer?”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “It was the best I could do before deadline.”
“It’s good,” he said.
“Thanks. Now, how about it? Lend me a hand here.”
Rodgers stopped. “You know what? I’m out of the hand-lending business. It’s nothing personal, but I helped Japan. I helped the United Nations. I helped the entire Indian subcontinent. Do you know what it got me?”
“Not a lot of personal press.”
“I don’t care about that,” he said. He was about to cross the fail-safe point but did not care. “It got me downsized.”
“You were released from Op-Center?”
“Released is what you do to a wounded condor or a seal with a coat of crude oil. I was canned, Lucy.”
“Jeez. General, I’m so sorry. May I quote you?”
“Why not? You can also quote me as saying that loyalty is missing in action, along with honor and integrity. Not just at Op-Center but throughout society. Real service is rewarded with lip service, and opportunists are calling the plays. I’ve been invited to join the senator’s team in some capacity to try to change that. I plan to accept because I trust in the American people to see the difference between arrivistes and people of character and principle. Close quote,” he added.
“Would you mind if I asked Paul Hood to comment?”
“No,” Rodgers said. “But Lucy?”
“Yes?”
Rodgers hesitated. He wanted to tell her not to make him sound bitter. However, he did not know how to say that without acknowledging that he was bitter.
The reporter seemed to read his thoughts. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll make it come out right.”
Rodgers smiled softly.
Lucy thanked the general and left. Rodgers stood there for a moment, not sure how he felt. He had not planned to say those things, but then he had not planned on being downsized, either. Or losing Striker in the field. What was it Trotsky had said? The more time you have to plan, the more mistakes you’ll make. This came from the heart.
Rodgers jogged after Kat. He wanted to let her know what he had done, though he did not think she would mind. His comments were not about Orr; they were about Mike Rodgers and Op-Center. Besides, there was a benefit to what he had just done.
He was with them now, mind and soul.
TWENTY-TWO
For Tom Mandor, it was about the money. For Wayne Richmond it was about the money, but it was also about the danger. That was why he had gone to Alaska to drive a rig. That was why he came back to work as muscle.
At five A.M., he had left his cabin and had walked a quarter mile east, into the cold, dark hills. He did that once or twice every week in the late spring, summer, and early fall. That was when the peak was a place of perfect danger. Here, Richmond could confront as much danger as he wanted. He chose more than he needed just to test himself. Life should be a constant series of trials. It was the only way to grow, to be alive rather than simply act it. It was a way of controlling your adversaries and, thus, have a measure of control over your own life.
Wearing high tan western boots and carrying a finely honed Bowie knife, Richmond walked through the windy predawn darkness. He was dressed in a heavy denim jacket and black leather gloves to protect him from the near-freezing temperatures. Here, nearly four thousand feet up, there was even occasional sleet and snow. As he neared the ledge, he saw the dimly lit tops of white clouds a thousand feet below. Above there were still only stars and navy blue sky. When the sun finally began to rise over the sharp, curving ridge and warmed the rocky ledge, danger also wakened. That was where the diamondback rattlesnakes lived.
The snakes nested in a line of boulders right at the edge of a cliff. Each season there were hundreds of them to be harvested. The first light of dawn woke the poikilotherm quickly, raising its blood temperature to the temperature of the new day. The triangular-headed snakes, anywhere from one to three of them, would move out in search of field mice, wild hares, early birds, or any small animals they could devour. It was not necessary for them to see their prey, which was why they could hunt before the sun had fully risen. The pits on the head of the rattlesnakes sensed the warmth of a living creature while their extended tongues could taste the prey on the air, the equivalent of Richmond smelling cooking in the kitchen. It allowed the snakes to pinpoint prey with deadly accuracy. An average adult diamondback was four to five feet long and could leap nearly that far.
The snakes were the color of dirt, invisible to the casual observer until their distinctive rattle warned potential attackers away. It sounded like the buzzing of a large hornet unless the snake was coiled to give it height and striking distance. That position raised the rattle completely off the ground, making it sound more like a pepper grinder. The coiled position also brought the snake’s head up in two or three seconds.
The diamondbacks were defensive rather than offensive creatures. Typically, they minded their own business and sought to avoid confrontations with larger animals like bobcats, coyotes, and humans.