Suddenly the aircraft disappeared in a burst of smoke. Cowboy’s AMRAAM had caught it.
But where was number two?
Danny grabbed the lieutenant’s M-16 and ran out to find Mofitt. He’d gotten about halfway across the compound to the mortar station when he saw a body lying flat on the ground.
Mofitt, he thought. Damn.
He ran to the body and slid down next to him. The man’s head raised as he did.
It was Mofitt. He turned his face toward Danny’s, his white cheeks covered with dirt.
“Where are you hit?” Danny asked.
“I… I don’t know.”
A mortar round whizzed overhead.
“Come on. Let’s get you inside.”
“I’m — uh—”
Danny scooped him into a fireman’s carry and carried him back to the bunker. About twenty yards from the entrance, Mofitt seemed to lift off his shoulders. Danny became weightless, spinning around on the ground like a top that had just been pulled off the string. A hailstorm descended around him and he slammed into the ground, face-first.
A black and gray kaleidoscope danced around his head as he caught his breath. He knew what had happened — a mortar shell had hit nearby — but somehow he couldn’t put that knowledge into any context, much less plan what to do next. His confusion seemed to last an eternity, and when it started to fade it was replaced by a heavy rolling sound, the kind a heavy steamroller would make if it were pushing his skull into the ground.
Danny got to his feet. Mofitt was nearby, on his knees, shaking his head. Danny tried to ask him if he was OK, then realized the blow had left him deaf.
It was a good thing they hadn’t reached the bunker. The shell that had knocked him to the ground was a direct hit on a spot weakened by the earlier blasts. It had torn a massive gash in the roof near the entrance, splitting through the metal below the layer of sandbags and dirt.
Danny saw beams of light inside — flashlights. Two men ran up behind him, then began clawing at the dirt and debris that had fallen into the entrance.
Moving in what seemed like slow motion, Danny began to help. The six people who’d been in the bunker were all still alive, but in various degrees of shock. Lieutenant Juno was bleeding from an enormous gash at the top of his head, but his was the lightest injury; his radio man had a compound leg fracture and two broken ribs. Trevor Walsh, the Whiplash technician, was sitting at his bench, dazed and holding his limp right arm against a small but sucking wound at the side of his chest.
“They have lasers,” he told Danny. “Turk just called it in.”
Danny heard the words from a distance; his hearing was coming back.
“You’re wounded,” he told Walsh. He repeated it twice, unsure if he was garbling his words.
A corpsman ran in shouting orders, directing that the injured be taken to a second bunker being used as a med station. Danny pointed to him; Walsh got up slowly, trying to help.
The corpsman looked at him and told him to join the rest of the wounded, but Walsh refused, claiming he wasn’t so hurt that he couldn’t continue to do his job. He went back to his post, adjusted Danny’s tablet, then promptly collapsed. The Marine com specialist, his face dotted with gashes and oozing blood, helped lift him onto a stretcher that had just been brought in, then took his spot.
“Colonel, I have Captain Thomas,” the Marine told Danny. “He wants to know the situation.”
Danny heard the words like faint echoes in the distance. That was a vast improvement from just a few minutes before.
“The radio?” Danny asked.
The Marine handed it to him.
“We’re getting a lot of incoming,” Danny said into the mike. “We just took a big blow to the command center. The lieutenant is out of action.”
“The Ospreys are heading for us,” said Captain Thomas. “I’m going to leave a platoon to mop up. The rest of us are coming back.”
“We’ll hold the fort until then,” said Danny. “Wait—”
He leaned over and looked at Walsh’s large sitrep screen, which was showing the radar feed from the Global Hawk.
“There’s a road about a quarter mile north of the force that’s aiming at our northern perimeter,” he told the captain. “Big enough for the Ospreys to land. Get them in there, roll them up.”
“Affirmative. Can you give me coordinates?”
“I’m going to give you back to your guy who’s looking at everything from the UAVs and aircraft. He’ll punch this stuff straight to you. Right?”
“Got it, Colonel.”
As he put down the radio handset, Danny realized his hearing had returned just in time: he could hear gunfire on the perimeter.
“You stay here,” he told the com specialist. “Anyone else who can stand, grab your rifle and come with me.”
2
Zen would have had to have been the stupidest person in Washington not to realize that Todd’s overture to him meant she wasn’t going to run for President. He would also have to be extremely naive to interpret anything she said as a guarantee that she definitely would support him if he decided to run.
However…
At the moment, at least, she was clearly disposed to helping him. And her support would be useful within the party.
Mostly, anyway. And outside the party it was surely a liability. The administration was under virulent attack for what critics and much of the media called its hawkish worldview.
The funny thing was, Zen thought it wasn’t hawkish enough.
Be that as it may, his main questions now were: why was Todd not going to run for reelection, and why was she backing him?
He could guess the answer to the latter: she loathed the vice president, who, as he’d told her, would be the most likely candidate, and on foreign policy matters Zen’s views were probably the closest to hers in Congress.
So why wasn’t she going to run? Did she fear impeachment, which the opposition party was always talking about? Several House members even submitted bills to do just that, but they had never made it out of committee, let alone to the floor of the House. Her allies held a small but firm majority in the House that usually kept the opposition in its place, but there was always the danger that she would do something to anger just enough of them to tip things against her.
So did he want to be President?
It was what every little boy wanted, wasn’t it?
It had been. Eons ago. These days, only madmen and maniacs wanted to be President.
Zen smiled at himself. He was a little of both. Every fighter pilot was.
There were other things he wanted. Walking again topped the list.
After all these years in a wheelchair, after everything he’d achieved, in the back of his mind that remained a deep desire. Deprived of so much…
Had he been, though? One could argue that he’d gotten everything out of life that a man could possibly want: adventure, a great career, a wonderful wife, the most beautiful and brightest daughter in the world —
“Dad?”
He broke from his reverie and saw his daughter Teri standing in front of him. From the looks of things, she’d been there for quite a while.
“Thinking about senating again,” said the eight-year-old in a voice that dripped of satire. She was never cuter than when she was being impertinent.
“As a matter of fact, I was,” said Zen.
“Well, I’m hungry. When are we eating?”
He glanced at his watch — it was closer to bedtime than to dinnertime.
Ouch! That wonderful wife was going to kill him.
“We’re eating right now,” he told her. “Get your coat.”