Warfield shook his head.
The corporal lit up, took a deep drag and exhaled parallel streams of smoke through his nostrils as he studied the Texan. “Look, I don’t know why but I like you. You got some balls walking in there like that. But you don’t know what the hell you’re doing! Either that or you’re stupid. Now tell me what it is you want. Maybe I can help you out.”
Warfield looked at the name plate on the soldier’s uniform. Macclenny, it said. “So, Corporal Macclenny?”
“That’s right. Actually you can just call me Macc. I’m pretty much a peon around here.”
“Didn’t mean to be rude, but I’m gonna see that general.” He told Macc of his two contacts that got him nowhere and showed him the package that had been returned to him. “I want to make a deal with the army and it looks like only some big shot can do it.”
Macclenny laughed. “You are determined,” he said. “Tell you what. I sort the Old Man’s mail when it comes in. Some of it goes in the trash and the rest goes to the other brass on the general’s staff in there. They decide what he sees, and I can tell you it ain’t much. The major back there, he’s the one who collects the winning pieces and puts ’em in a neat little stack on General Feranzo’s desk every morning.”
Warfield’s hopes stirred. “So what can you do?”
“Okay, you give me what it is you want Feranzo to see. I’m in and out of his office all the time. Phone messages and stuff. I’ll put yours on top of his stack.”
Warfield cracked a smile. This was good. “What do I owe you for this?”
“Nothing. But the way I figure it you’re gonna be a general someday yourself. Remember me then.”
The rest was history. Officer candidate school graduation at the top of the class, a degree in international studies from the University of Arizona compliments of the army, graduation from the military’s famous National War College, years of intelligence training and hundreds of undercover operations. These were now part of Warfield’s military innards. As was Macc Macclenny.
Warfield looked at Fleming. Smiling now, she said, “Wherever you were the last couple of minutes, you were having a good time. Better not be because of the redhead dancing out there.”
He chuckled. “The redhead would’ve been more exciting.”
The one-man band across the room included a keyboard, accordion and synthesizer. The voice behind it was doing his best to sound like Dean Martin and had filled the small dance floor. Fleming pulled Warfield onto the dance floor.
“Good as the It’ll Do, War Man?”
Fleming often teased him about his life before her. He’d given her piecemeal glimpses of those days and when she brought them up he accused her of using his own bullets against him. Now and then he still went to the It’ll Do with Macc for a beer and they’d laugh about the women they’d known and dragons they’d slain, but that lifestyle was behind him now.
Being with Fleming like this made him think about the important things he always put aside. Like kids, for one. Not that he was too old for them, but he hadn’t even decided to marry yet. And was marriage for him? Never would he find a better lover and more loyal companion than Fleming, and maybe she came along at a time when he needed something to latch onto besides chasing spies and barflies. But get married? He’d always packed light. A wife and kid or two would slow him down. Kids ought to be raised on a farm or in a small town with a drug store and soda fountain where you could still get a strawberry shake after football practice and talk to your high school sweetheart and go home to a mom who always had dinner for you and a dad who couldn’t wait for your game Friday night and was not preoccupied with catching some terrorist who might be planning to blow up the world. There were men like that. They should be the fathers.
Cameron Warfield had followed his passions. He cared about Fleming, maybe loved her even, if he understood what loving a woman meant, and he hoped she felt okay about him pretty much as-is, because he couldn’t change course right now. Maybe someday, but he couldn’t expect her to wait around for that.
Dean Martin shifted into Everybody Loves Somebody, and Fleming DeGrande snuggled her head under Warfield’s chin. “You’re pensive tonight, Warfield.”
After dinner they meandered out to the car and drifted back to Hardscrabble Ranch. The road was deserted and the CD played loud enough to overcome the sounds of the road. It was still warm out and Fleming stood up in the seat of the convertible and folded her arms on top of the windshield. Her hair was blowing straight back when Warfield looked up at her, and she had removed the straps from her dress and let it fall away, exposing her breasts to the moonlight and balmy evening air. He thought how beautiful she was, how much confidence she had in herself. Twenty minutes later he pulled the Beamer into the garage at Hardscrabble and hit the button that rolled the door down. Fleming smiled. He’d be staying over.
Next morning, Warfield woke up before the alarm and mapped out his day as he went through his morning routine in Fleming’s weight room. After a shower he said goodbye to her and grabbed a yesterday’s bagel on the way to his car. The sun peeking above the horizon glistened in the dew that covered the Lone Elm Mercedes. At the instant he put the key into the ignition switch, he noticed that the grass next to the driveway was matted down by recent foot traffic. In the millisecond it took his brain to register that he should not turn the ignition key, it was too late.
The windows in Fleming’s bathroom crashed in from the shock wave. She looked out at the smoke and dust and ran down the stairs with her half-on robe flying behind her. She figured the explosives were taped to the frame beneath the driver’s seat, because the Mercedes came to rest on its right side. Warfield dangled from the seat belt harness, his lower body and legs hanging down to the right-side door, which now lay against the ground.
Fleming desperately looked for some sign of life. She cupped her hands around her face as she looked through the crazed windshield and saw blood trickling from Warfield’s nose, mouth and ears. She scrambled up to the driver side of the car and tried the doors without success. Even if they weren’t locked or wracked by the explosion, the weight of their steel armor plate made opening them impossible. She banged and screamed but Warfield didn’t respond. Two drivers who heard the blast had driven halfway from the main road to the house. One changed his mind and left and Fleming shouted at the other to call 911.
Fleming felt the helplessness she’d experienced a few times with a patient whose condition was beyond help, but this time it was personal. This was the man she loved. A small crowd of curious and concerned gathered as Fleming sat on top of the car like a guardian angel. Debris covered the driveway. The pungent smell of explosives lingered in the air. The armor plating had protected the fuel tank and at least there was no fire. Some tried frantically to get inside the Mercedes but failed. Finally, emergency crews and a life flight helicopter arrived, and Macc got there at about the same time. Warfield was alive but unconscious when the life flight crew hooked him up to support systems and lifted away.
CHAPTER 10
Cross invited Quinn and Fullwood to the Oval Office on the morning the Ana Koronis trial started. He didn’t want to be blindsided by any embarrassing testimony, and wanted a fresh read on his friend Austin Quinn who as the head of the CIA had been under pressure since the Koronis story broke. It was bad enough that a federal grand jury indicted Ana on charges of spying at the same time she was sleeping with Quinn but ever since the day Otto Stern told Cross she was a suspect, Cross knew the mess would infect not only himself personally, but the CIA and even Cross’s presidency. Over the months, cable news programs made household names of Austin Quinn and Ana Koronis and never missed an opportunity to remind that her parents were Iranian. In the process, it evolved from gossip to speculation to sacred truth that Ana despised the United States for killing her husband and son.