“Under current law—”
“Let me have Carl Abell look into it,” the President said in a slightly perturbed tone, referring to the White House counsel. “He’ll get together with you and whoever else we need and get her a clearance.”
Freeman said, “Very good, sir,” and he smiled and pretended not to take offense at the smug, satisfied expression the Steel Magnolia gave him right then.
TWELVE
The alarm rang at five A.M. Rebecca C. Furness was already awake, so she quickly slapped the alarm clock silent, then dove back under the covers. The bedroom was cold, so she exposed only her head and her flannel-nightshirt-covered shoulders above the thick down comforter. The chill air was sharp, and as she breathed it in it seemed to fill her body with energy. There was no place like Vermont in wintertime, she thought, even at a frosty five A.M.
The man beside her in the bed rumbled his displeasure when the alarm went off, but he went back to his gentle snoring a few moments later. Furness playfully decided that he shouldn’t be allowed to go back to sleep if she had to get up, so she put her hands under the thick comforter and ran them along his shoulders and neck. She was surprised at how cold his skin felt. It was only about 45 degrees in the bedroom — few real second-story country-home bedrooms were heated — but Ed Caldwell insisted on sleeping in the nude regardless of how cold it was. After all, Ed would say, only little boys sleep in bedclothes — even if he died of hypothermia, he would never wear anything to bed.
Her hands moved down to his back, then to his buttocks and the back of his thighs. Despite only being in his late thirties, a few years younger than herself, Ed already had a small set of “love handles” developing on his waist, but their skiing weekends and his job kept him in pretty good shape otherwise. Rebecca hoped the little bit of cold air drifting across Ed’s back and shoulders or her warm touch would wake him up. It would be at least a week before they would see each other again. She wanted to snuggle, talk a bit.
Caldwell pulled the comforter tightly over his shoulders, piled them up around his neck to seal out the cold, and sleepily snorted his disapproval at being disturbed. Five A.M. was definitely too early for Ed. Disgruntled, Becky rolled out of bed, slipped on a robe and a pair of moccasins, and made her way downstairs to make coffee.
Sunrise was still an hour or so away, but the brightening skies to the east rising over the Green Mountains was still spectacular. Furness’ house was on the eastern shore of Grand Isle, a large island in Lake Champlain between northern New York State and northern Vermont, and a large picture window in her living room opening up on the lake afforded a spectacular view year-round. She could see as far south as the Highway 2 bridge running from Mallets Bay to South Hero. On clear nights she could see the glow of the city of Burlington on the horizon about thirty miles to the south. The lake was not frozen yet, but the white carpet of ice was running farther offshore every morning and would soon form a near-solid five-mile-wide bridge to the Georgia Plains of northwestern Vermont.
Rebecca Furness lived on a small, secluded plot of land she rented from her uncle, a United States senator from Vermont, nestled between Knight Point State Park, the Hyde Log Cabin Preserve, and Grand Isle State Park. Grand Isle was mostly state parks nowadays, with only three small settlements remaining on the entire forty-mile-long island. Furness’ uncle used his influence and was able to get his small plot of land on the shore designated as a wildlife habitat, which kept the developers, the hunters, the skiers, and the state parks commissions from taking his land. The island was like a large, annual version of mythical Brigadoon — it came alive only during the fall for tourist “colors” season, and slept in blissful, isolated peace for the rest of the year, with only a handful of persons a day taking the short ferry ride from Grand Isle to Plattsburgh, New York, or the longer drive on Highway 2 through Grand Isle north almost to the Canadian border.
The house was actually an old barn that had been remodeled into a residence, after the original farmhouse burned down some years ago. Rough-hewn logs and boards made up the ceiling, and huge round rocks plowed up from the surrounding fields made up the big double-sized fireplace. The kitchen was the main room of the house, with a small dining area near the back porch and a huge black cast-iron stove and oven. The large old-style wood- and gas-fired stove provided most of the heat for the house, and even though she would be leaving soon, Rebecca automatically slid another round dry log onto the red-hot coals in the firebox. Normally she would boil water for coffee in the big copper kettle, but she was in a hurry this morning, so she settled for the Mr. Coffee. The thing looked so out-of-place in the house.
When the coffee was finished brewing, she took a cup back out to the living room so she could work on the computer and watch the sunrise through the front picture window. The living room served double duty as a parlor and office, with a large light oak desk and two oak lateral files along one wall. A computer keyboard slid out from the center drawer, and by sliding a few papers out of the way she could see the monitor through a glass panel in the desktop. Rebecca did all her books, scheduling, her record-keeping on that computer — it contained virtually her entire life.
With a few keystrokes, Rebecca was connected to her computer at Liberty Air Service, a small air charter and fixed-base operator at Clinton County Airport, across the lake near Plattsburgh, New York. She owned the company, trained commercial pilots, and did a few cargo or passenger runs to fill in for sick or vacationing pilots — but not this week. Calling up this week’s schedule on the computer showed nothing but canceled appointments, all with the annotation HELL WEEK.
Well, Liberty Air could spare the boss for a few days, thanks to the Air Force Reserve.
The electronic mailbox link with her office in Plattsburgh had a few messages, which she briefly answered, mostly with “I’ll take care of it when I get back.” She noticed that the two late-night runs, one to Bradley International in Connecticut and the other to Pittsburgh, had made it off despite low ceilings and the threat of freezing drizzle. Furness’ small eight-plane charter fleet was still composed of all piston-powered planes — all instrument equipped and certified for flight in known icing conditions, but hardly what anyone would call an all-weather fleet. In a matter of weeks she would be looking to buy her first turboprop cargo plane, a single-engine Cessna 208B Caravan with a cargo bay, which would give Liberty Air a true medium-size all-weather cargo capability. Unfortunately, she needed it last week, or even last month. Soon her fleet would be all but weathered in.
Calling up the next thirty days’ calendar found it full of FAA inspections, check rides, meetings, deadlines, and of course the beginnings of tax season — all the things that most people put off during the holiday season were now coming due. Things were busy enough with her working six, sometimes seven days a week, but by the time she returned from Hell Week, she would have enough work to last her until spring.
Hell Week was a part of the new American military and a part of Rebecca Furness’ new life. She had left the active-duty military in early 1992, during a six-month voluntary RIF (Reduction In Forces) period, in which active-duty Air Force officers were asked to voluntarily resign their regular commissions and accept Reserve commissions before their normal enlistments were completed. The Air Force RIFed ten thousand officers in eight months in an election-year firing frenzy that created so much controversy, so much anguish, that it helped, along with an awful economy, bring down a seemingly unbeatable Republican president.