"If you're serious, Jake, sure," Castillo said.
"Let me give that some thought," Torine said seriously.
"I myself go on the payroll the first of October," Miller said, "as an LB-12, at $64,478 per annum."
Oh, God, that means they're physically retiring him. Involuntarily.
"Sorry you took a hit. So long, and don't let the doorknob hit you on the ass on your way out."
"What's that 'LB' business?" Castillo asked.
"Lorimer Bureaucrat," Miller said. "An LB-12 is equivalent to a major and a GS-12." He looked at Castillo. "After I gnashed my teeth in agony while rolling around on the floor at Walter Reed begging for compassion, the Medical Review Board gave me a seventy-percent disability pension. Permanent."
"You all right with that?" Castillo asked softly.
"I'd rather have my knee back," Miller said. "But with my pension and my salary as an LB-12, I'll be taking home more than you do. Yeah, I'm all right with it. And somebody has to cover your back, Colonel, sir."
"I hate to tell you this, but I already have a fine young Marine NCO covering my back."
"Don't laugh, Charley," Torine said, chuckling.
"I'm not laughing at all; I owe him," Castillo said. He paused, then said, "Well, before we went off on this tangent, Jake was saying something about me being dangerous."
"And I wasn't joking, either. Only you could get us into something like this. You are dangerous."
"I thank you for that heartfelt vote of confidence," Castillo replied. "And moving right along, what shape is the airplane in?"
"If you had read the log, First Officer, you would know that we're pretty close to a hundred-hour."
"Jesus!"
"Not a major problem," Torine said. "We can get it done when we're in Vegas."
"'When we're in Vegas'?" Castillo parroted, incredulously. "You want to tell me about Vegas?"
"I guess I didn't get around to mentioning that," Miller said.
Castillo looked at him.
Miller explained: "Aloysius is going to replace the avionics in the G-Three. The communications and global positioning portions thereof. Plus, of course, a secure phone and data link."
"You told him about the Gulfstream?"
"Hey, he's one of us."
He's right. He just told Casey we have the Gulfstream, not how we use it.
And Casey really is one of us, and knows we're not using it to fly to the Bahamas for a little time on the beach.
"Point taken," Castillo said.
"Signature Flight Support's got an operation at McCarran," Torine said. "I called them-in Baltimore-this morning, and got them to agree to tell the people in Vegas to do the hundred-hour in the AFC hangar. Somehow I suspected we were going to need the airplane sooner than anyone thought. Wrong move?"
"No. Just something else that comes as a surprise," Castillo said. "Okay, how about this? We go to Chicago and 'assure the family,' and then we go to Midland and either leave Alfredo there or-why not?-pick up Munz's wife and daughters and take everybody to Las Vegas. We get the avionics installed and the hundred-hour done. How long is that service going to take?"
"Twenty-four hours, maybe forty-eight. It depends on (a) what they turn up in the hundred-hour and (b) how long it takes Casey's people to install the avionics."
"Not long, I would think," Miller said, "as I suspect we can count on Aloysius either putting it in himself or standing over whoever else does."
"If it takes more than forty-eight hours, I'll just go to New Orleans commercial to try to talk the ambassador out of going to Shangri-La."
"Where the hell have you been, Charley?" Torine asked. "Louis Armstrong is closed to all but emergency traffic-they're picking people off the roofs of their houses with choppers, using Louis Armstrong as the base. And Lakefront is under fifteen feet of water."
"Keesler?" Castillo asked.
"Wiped out."
"Okay. Moving right along, if they can't do the airplane in forty-eight hours, I'll go to Atlanta commercial and then Fort Rucker and borrow something with revolving wings and fly that to Masterson's plantation."
"That may not work, either," Miller said.
"Hey, I'm drunk with the power I've been given. You were awake, weren't you, when I said the President said he was going to tell the secretary of Defense to give me whatever I think I need."
"That presupposes Rucker has a chopper to loan you," Miller said. "I suspect that their birds are among those picking people off rooftops in New Orleans."
"Then I'll rent one in Atlanta."
"Same reply," Miller said.
"I think they'd loan you a helicopter at Rucker, Charley," Torine said, "even if they had to bring it back from picking people off roofs in New Orleans." He paused. "You sure you want to do that?"
"No, of course I don't. Okay. So scaling down my grandiose ambitions to conform with reality, I'll fly to Atlanta, take a taxi to Fulton County, and rent a twin Cessna or something. That's probably a better solution anyway."
"It probably is," Torine agreed. "I just had another unpleasant thought. Even if Masterson's airstrip is not under water and long enough for us to get the Gulfstream in there, it's probably being used by a lot of other airplanes."
"Yeah," Castillo agreed. "Okay. Correct me where I'm wrong. The priority is to get to Chicago and, quote, assure the mayor, unquote. I suppose I could do that commercial. But we are going to need the Gulfstream, and with the hundred-hour out of the way."
"And, better yet, with the new avionics," Miller said.
"Right. We have enough time left to go to Chicago, then, with a stop in Midland, to Las Vegas, right?"
"Probably with a couple of hours left over," Torine said.
"So that's what we'll do. And wing it from there, so to speak," Castillo said. "Where's Lorimer? Does he have a uniform?"
"Upstairs and yes," Miller said.
"Okay. Everybody but Jake and Miller go play with the dogs or something while we deal with Lieutenant Lorimer," Castillo said.
Miller started to get up.
"Keep your seat, Dick," Special Agent David W. Yung said. "I'll get him."
"This is where I'm supposed to say, 'I'm perfectly able to climb a flight of stairs,'" Miller said. "But what I am going to say is 'You will be rewarded in heaven, David, for your charity to this poor cripple.'"
Tom McGuire came into the living room first.
"Agnes told me," he said. "Jesus!"
"I only took the job because I knew how you hungered to see the natural beauty and other wonders of Paraguay," Castillo said. "You okay to leave right away for three, four days?"
McGuire nodded and asked, "Where we going? Paraguay?"
"First to Chicago, then to Las Vegas. It's kind of iffy after Vegas."
"I am always ready to go to Las Vegas on a moment's notice, but what's going on in Chicago?"
Castillo told him of the President's call.
"…And," Castillo finished, "I think a distinguished Supervisory Secret Service agent such as yourself can help reassure this guy's family, who are all cops."
McGuire nodded his understanding but said, "I think I should fess up right away, Charley. I have been successfully avoiding the drug business since I joined the service, and the only thing I know about it is what I read in the papers."
"I think, then, that this is what they call the blind leading the blind," Castillo said.
The door opened and a uniformed First Lieutenant Edmund Lorimer, Intelligence, U.S. Army, stepped in the room, came almost to attention, and waited.
Castillo thought he looked like a Special Forces recruiting poster, and remembered what the President had said about the First Lady saying that about him.
He's even wearing jump boots, Castillo thought, which triggered a mental image of a highly polished, laced-up Corcoran boot from the top of which extended a titanium pole topped by a fully articulated titanium knee.
"Good morning, Lorimer," Castillo said. "Come on in and sit down. We don't do much standing at attention or saluting around here."
"Good morning, sir. Thank you, sir."
"Colonel Torine you know, and Major Miller. This is Supervisory Special Agent Tom McGuire of the Secret Service."