World of Ashes II (36 page)

              “And now?”

              “And now I’m going to be late for dinner no matter how you slice it.”

              “Well, get used to it, Mr. Sawyer. If you’re willing, your training starts Monday.”

              “And if I’m not?”

              “Then go home and play
Call of Duty
. I don’t fucking care. That’ll be a fitting end to the legacy
this
man began.” Chief Wilcox tipped the manila envelope so a glossy cover photo of Daniel directing fire at the Battle of Lincoln with his machete fell and slid across the desk. “Or… you can be standing outside this office at 0330 this coming Monday, and we can see if this,” his fat finger landed on the black and white image. “Is only the beginning of the mark you’ll make on history.”

              The Secret Service was kind enough to give Daniel a ride home after his interview. He hadn’t expected anyone but Gabe to be home, to his bemusement not only was Gabriel and his mother there but so was Kelly. He hadn’t seen or been able to talk to her since the unit had left for Lincoln. Did she even know what an insane chain of events had transpired?

              The door swung open before he could knock and Kelly jumped into his arms, though one foot was still daintily on the ground. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” Then she lightly slapped him. “Don’t do that to me again. Word that there was a gunfight in the 1
st
VR TOC spread like wildfire in the Mountain. Then they cut off all information about the area for hours. We didn’t know you were still alive until the next day.”

              Daniel actually started feeling something. He didn’t like it and choked it back. “I’m only alive because Sharp was too afraid of the media backlash.”

              “Then who…”

              “Just some dickhead. Killed one of my friends in cold blood. Major Sharp ended it.” Daniel reported as if he were speaking to a superior. It was the only way he could rationalize telling Kelly anything she could believe. The Air Force had its rough and tumble units, but she was never part of them, the idea of shooting mutineers was unthinkable to post-modern sensibilities. “Not the weirdest thing to happen though. I resigned, but then got a job offer from the Secret Service like an hour later.” He was looking at his mother just then, but she shrugged like she really had no idea. He didn’t believe her.

              “The Secret Service?” Kelly was more surprised than he was. “That’s amazing, and weird, yeah. “Hey, babe, would you get me a beer from the fridge? I need to have a talk with the General.”

              Kelly didn’t know how to respond to that, exactly. Under this roof Annette was just Annette, not General Brown, USAF. “Sure… Are you sure you’re okay?”

              He didn’t answer, but it was a rhetorical question. Gabe went too, because apparently this beer required two people to carry it. “So why not your staff?”

              Annette folded her arms. “I liked you better when you were just an Army Private.”

              “Me too.”

              She sat down on a plush chair in the foyer. “Request from the Big Man himself. He doesn’t like Sharp, or the men who backed him, or the Witch for appointing any of them.” She was talking about Madam Secretary of State Holly Clint. Bend the “
l
” and the “
i
” of Holly Clint’s last name into a “u”, and that was a fairly accurate summation of the woman. “Secretary Clint has been consolidating power. She knows she will be president when Martial Law allows for elections again. Since the one demographic she hates more than Military are Caucasian, heterosexual males, I guess the Boss thought offering a job to you would ruffle the harpy’s feathers. I can’t say I disagree with his logic, she’s tried to butter up to me before, but we all know I didn’t join the Marines because I don’t swing
that
way. Besides, she’s old.”

              “Gross.” Daniel nodded as Kelly brought him that beer. It was cold enough to be frosty and tasted better than any beer he’d ever had before. This wasn’t a special beer by any stretch of the imagination, but the fact that he was alive to drink it. “I was told to report on Monday, so I have a long weekend until then.”

              “Take your time, Daniel.” His mother said in an unusual display of compassion, then crushed that compassion in her usual Annette-brand way. “Say the word and I’ll have your commissioned transferred to the Air Force and we can-” 

              “Right, so do you think Secret Service training is gonna be as boring than Basic?”

*

              For some reason Daniel had been expecting to see more people in the line outside the office on Monday. There were six people, him included, which might lead one to wonder just what the problem really was. Was there such a lack of manpower than there just weren’t enough candidates, or did nobody believe in the cause enough to lay down their life for it anymore? Nobody spoke to one another, probably because it was three in the morning, but it still made for something of an intimidating atmosphere. It only took moments for Daniel to realize this was going to be nothing like Basic Training. Everyone he would work with had to same expression on their faces, had lived the same story, knew the same things as him. This was the end of the road not only for their careers, but for the nation as well. If the U.S.S.S. was willing to let them in, that meant anyone genuinely qualified was either busy, or…

              “I’ll forgo demanding you all stand at attention, I think we’re beyond the need to show how good we can goose-step.” A voice echoed through the darkened hallway. Unlike Deputy Chief Wilcox, this woman’s voice was a sharp staccato that reminded Daniel of an M16 barking in a closed space. His mother had tried acting like this once, it was part of her coping mechanism after his father had filed for divorce. Daniel hadn’t responded to that side of his mother very well, but coming from someone who was actually being a professional and not a bitch the tone simply made him pay more attention.

              “My name is Deputy Chief, Special Agent Ejua Locodo,” She said as Daniel got his first view of the slender, tall black woman with the foreign sounding name. “I’ve been in the United States Secret Service since 2003, I know many of you were still in grammar school then, so let’s save the jokes for someone who hasn’t heard them all already.” She stopped at Daniel. “I wasn’t sure anyone Wilcox talked to would bother showing up.”

              “Ma’am, Agent Wilcox has a certain
poetry
about him.”

              “Indeed. Now, if you’ll all follow me we can begin the second round of interviews.” Someone raised their hand, which Ms. Locodo didn’t initially see and they had to clear their throat to get her attention. “Is there something you need?” She asked the young woman.

              “What’s the point of this? Haven’t we all already been interviewed for this job?”

              “Yes. You have all gone through an initial screening process, but know that you’ll be given another interview after this one, approximately midway through your training, and another just before graduation. If this is going to be a problem for you, Miss Acres, a Marine on Presidential Duty will escort you to the public levels.” Ms. Locodo was unwaveringly polite about telling someone off, which Daniel couldn’t decide was either a skill in negotiation, or an expert level badge in Be-otch.

              “It won’t be a problem, Ma’am.” Recruit Acres responded.

              The rest of the morning was taken up by a “Death by Power Point” seminar that put everyone to sleep until a brief break at 0700 for breakfast in a nearby cafeteria. The best of what might have been powdered eggs during the Cuban Missile Crisis were broken out of storage and re-hydrated for the Recruit’s enjoyment, along with some sort of chicken/pork byproduct they would all come to loath as “Chork.” Cows took up lots of room. Chickens and pigs didn’t, not to mention pigs ate almost anything. It made sense but was still gross enough that nobody but the people who’d been truly hungry before ate it without at least a dirty look. Daniel, like most Soldiers and Marines, figured that with enough Tabasco sauce he could make even these chicken butts taste like most any other reconstituted protein paste he’d eaten before. It took a
lot
of Tabasco.

              One of the other male recruits sat at the table Daniel had chosen. “I know you.”

              “No you don’t, no offense.” Daniel kept eating.

              “I saw your picture in the paper yesterday. ‘Famous General’s Son Retakes Bismarck.’” The guy quoted, motioning his hand broadly to emphasize the grandeur of the newspaper fonts. “I’m Shane, by the way. But my friends call me Shane.”

              “Clever.” Daniel considered pouring the spicy sauce in his mouth to drown out the taste of the “eggs,” but he was determined not to waste anything he didn’t have to ever again. Call it a bit of survivor’s guilt, or even a renewed belief in the idiom
waste not, want not.
“Bismarck… yeah, those were better times.”

              “Yeah, the papers are a little behind.”

Daniel nodded, finally setting his fork down. “The Viral Response teams were a good idea. They still are, but I wouldn’t expect to hear the name 1
st
VR again.”

              “Why not?”

              “Bad blood on that name, like
Titanic
or yes, even
Bismarck
. Over the weekend I corresponded via email with one of my former commanding officers. They’re going to reabsorb the unit back into the regular Army, but they’ll be teaching the whole force the same tactics now. It’ll probably work out.”

              Shane pushed his own portion of egg-paste away. “You sound like you wish you weren’t here, like maybe you have somewhere else you’d rather be?”

              “What are you, a fuckin’ psychologist?”

              “Yeah.”

              “What?”

              “I should have introduced myself as Shane Clair, PhD, but that sounds pretentious, don’t you think?” Shane reached for the Tabasco and retried his eggs. It wasn’t a success. “See, we’re all getting the same basic course right now, but eventually they’ll split us up into separate divisions. My job is, or
was
if the Vics hadn’t come along, Behavioral Analysis. It would have been my job to interview and determine if suspects in murder trials are really crazy. Gotta admit though, I never thought about apply for the Secret Service.”

              “I have waking nightmares of a dead girl only I can see.” Daniel said flatly, gaging Shane’s response. “I just choose not to talk to her anymore.” It was the other way around with Lea’s ghost, but he was judging Shane’s response.

              For a moment Shane said nothing, then he smiled. “You’re funny, but I just finished eight years of college in six, don’t think you’re going to get out of this on a Section 8. If someone didn’t want you to be here, you wouldn’t be here.”

              “Who, the Almighty?”

              “No, but maybe someone with a bit of a God Complex.” Shane stealthily pointed his finger at the last portrait in a row on a wall that featured a painting or photograph of every US President thus far.

              “Isn’t he like six months over his second term now?” Daniel leaned back and let the government cheese digest. “My Pop and I were discussing that before I got on the plane.”

              Shane nodded. “Yeah, but Congress voted him emergency war powers, so he’s it till this shit is over.”

              Daniel lowered his eyebrows. “This shit will never be over, Doc. It’s global. There will be new cases for the rest of human existence, I promise you. Hell, Bubonic Plague still exists in the Mohave Desert. It’s just going to be a matter of learning to keep it in check and depriving it of new hosts until one day Envier Plague isn’t thought any more highly of than smallpox.”

              “You can inoculate against smallpox.” Shane countered. “Even a drop-”

              “Trust me. I know.” Daniel said, cutting Shane off as their training officer reappeared. It would have to wait until later, but Daniel knew he needed to talk to Dr. Clair in a more private setting. He wasn’t sure yet he really wanted this job, especially if it meant guarding someone who didn’t deserve to be guarded by so much as a lethargic dog, let alone the most elite security force in the world. The prospect of being declared too crazy to do this job was a bit more appealing than it should have been.

*

              Major Jeffry Sharp sat alone in his quarters, a rundown trailer he shared with two other officers. Neither of them had been in 1
st
VR, which was good, because then they wouldn’t know just how far from grace he had fallen. To them he was just another war weary veteran who had perfected his thousand yard stare. In truth he wasn’t traumatized, he didn’t have any semblance of post-traumatic stress, he was just bitter about losing his command because that aptly named idiot Rambo had to gun down a junior legacy. True, Sharp was moments away from a violent outburst himself, but he certainly wouldn’t have shot Anders just for insubordinate back-talking. He outlined that in his report, but damage done and the wrong people had seen firsthand how fragile his grip on the unit was. It didn’t help that Lt. Anders had surviving brothers elsewhere in the military and a father on the Pentagon staff. Words couldn’t accurately describe how fucked Sharp felt he was with that looming over him. He just didn’t trust that they would be satisfied with Rambo’s death.