by Joseph Flynn
At the speed Crosby and Anderson were approaching their doom, neither man could risk looking at the other; he might not get back to reading his altimeter in time. The only thing each of them could do was pull the rip cord at the very last second he thought he had any chance of survival, and hope if the other guy waited a nanosecond longer the SOB would at least break his ankles for making his friend look like a pussy.
Crosby, feeling his greater age, popped his chute at four hundred feet.
Anderson kept going. For the blink of an eye, Crosby thought Anderson hadn’t been able to get either his main chute or the reserve to deploy. Would leave a round hole in the desert floor. Then, if not at the last second pretty damn close to it, Anderson’s chute billowed.
He still hit hard, but he had his knees bent and went into a roll.
He was still moving when Crosby made his own rough landing.
Both of them were on their feet before Todd and Angeline arrived.
“You okay?” Crosby called to Anderson.
“Dinged my right wrist on the roll. How about you?”
“Once I clean my drawers, I’ll be fine.”
The two of them were laughing like madmen when Todd and Angeline touched down. Angeline shed her harness and sprinted over to them. He face was twisted in rage.
“You assholes! I know what you did. Get the hell out of my jump zone. You cocksuckers are never going to jump anywhere around here again.”
Crosby and Anderson looked at each other.
“I believe we’re no longer wanted,” Anderson said.
“We’re definitely an acquired taste,” Crosby agreed.
They dropped their harnesses. Left their chutes on the ground and walked off.
Todd, who’d overheard Angeline, approached and said in a quiet voice, “I’m very sorry for what happened. I’ll see that they don’t bother you again.”
He tried to offer Angeline extra money but she refused it.
Todd took off his harness, handed it to Angeline and headed to the Buick SUV.
He wasn’t happy with the spectacle Crosby and Anderson had made of themselves.
He was thrilled, however, by what he’d seen the two fools do.
He wondered if he could pull off the same thing.
On the way back to Palm Springs, when Todd told Crosby and Anderson what he had in mind, pushing his own sky diving to the limits, Anderson said, “Maybe we can drop down to Baja for a week or two, do some wing-suit flying. They’re not so tight-assed down there.”
Crosby told Todd, “You check out, they raise a glass to your memory.”
“If you were a good tipper while you were still around,” Anderson said.
“Maybe we can get into the real spirit of things and plug a bandito or two,” Crosby added.
Todd glanced from one of them to the other to see if they were joking.
Without bothering to look at Todd, Anderson said, “He thinks we’re pulling his leg, Arn.”
Crosby turned to look at Todd and said, “You know what a real ass-tickler is? Shooting at targets on the ground on full auto under your canopy as you come in for a landing. Just like Grandpa did on D-Day.”
“Lucky for us, we know where to buy assault weapons in Mexico,” Anderson said.
With a shudder, Todd wondered when and how he’d lost control.
When he’d become every bit as crazy as Crosby and Anderson.
Most of all he wanted to know when they could get started.
The Beverly Hills Hotel — Beverly Hills, California
The president was tired from a long day, five hours of work in the Oval Office and then the long flight across the country. She spent half-an-hour talking with her husband. McGill had told her not to neglect her rest, but don’t let any Hollywood singer croon her to sleep.
Patti met with her former agent, Dorie McBride and Tom Gorman, the producer of that night’s premiere celebrity Internet debate. She wanted to be on hand and watch from the wings.
Patti’s people had made their choice in response to the list of picks Reynard Dix had made for the opposition. Dix had been given a deadline for presenting his choices that allowed Patti’s side time to line up a panel they thought would prevail.
A more savvy political operative would have demanded the choices for each side be submitted at the same time.
Dix, being cocksure of his side’s popular appeal, hadn’t.
The president approved of Dorie and Tom’s picks.
She thanked them and then realizing how short the time would be before she had to fly back to Washington, changed her mind and decided to watch the webcast from the bedroom of her suite.
The White House
The last time McGill had occasion to use the White House workout room to give martial art instructions he’d been showing Patti a few basic Dark Alley moves. She’d used her newly earned defensive skills to leave an indelible impression on the facial structure of the prime minister of the United Kingdom. The man had undergone reconstructive surgery, but had retired from public life, never quite regaining his old take charge personality.
Having learned where the prime minister had placed a hand on the president’s person, McGill thought it was a good thing the man had become a recluse.
Now, McGill was in the room with Sweetie. They folded up the padded mats that covered the wooden floor and stacked them in a corner. McGill swept the floor so neither he nor Sweetie would slip on a sheen of dust and turn an ankle. Wouldn’t do to be in less than top shape in the coming weeks and months.
By now Sweetie had heard the stories of McGill giving his children lessons in Dark Alley and how he’d fared sparring against two Marines. Hearing that McGill had used an Irish fighting stick, aka a shillelagh, against his military opponents, Margaret Mary Sweeney thought she should get in touch with this part of her heritage.
As luck would have it, McGill had a spare stick.
He brought one other item with him, but Sweetie was the patient type.
She could wait to find out what McGill had in mind for it.
Using the two shillelaghs, McGill showed Sweetie how to hold it, how to defend against someone swinging another long, weighty object by using windshield wiper strokes originating from either hand. Showed her how to build a roof against a strike directed at the crown of her head. Demonstrated the parry for a direct thrust to the torso.
Each defensive move was followed by an offensive counterstrike. Once an opponent’s lunge or slash was deflected, there was a moment when he was vulnerable. If the opponent was quick, that opportunity would be short-lived. But if your timing was right, he’d be shorter lived.
McGill and Sweetie worked through the series of offensive, defensive and counteroffensive moves with Sweetie gaining speed and fluidity. It didn’t surprise McGill that Sweetie would make a formidable nemesis. The smile on her face said she liked practicing with the stick and if a time ever came to use it in earnest, she’d be ready.
After thirty minutes, McGill called for a break.
They were both breathing hard by now.
“That was fun,” Sweetie said. “Of course, it’s so much easier just to shoot someone.”
McGill sighed and nodded.
Knowing him for as long and well as she did, Sweetie had no problem guessing what was on his mind. “You’re still scourging your soul about John Patrick Granby.”
“I am,” McGill said.
“That’s despite the fact that you did nothing wrong and would be far harder on yourself if you’d sat back and let Galia Mindel die.”
“It is.”
Sweetie took McGill’s shillelagh away from him and leaned it and her stick against a wall. She put a hand on each of his shoulders and looked him in the eye.
“Would you be suffering as deeply if it had been Patti’s life or the life of one of your kids you’d saved?”
McGill looked abashed, and shook his head.
“How about Carolyn or even me?”
“Carolyn and you are r
ight there with the others.”
“How about you? Did you ever think you might have broken your own neck doing what you did?”
“Never occurred to me.”
“Still you risked your own health if not life for someone who maybe isn’t your favorite person. How do you think that will be weighed on Judgment Day?”
McGill summoned a small smile. “As a mitigating circumstance?”
Sweetie laughed and gently pushed him away from her.
“You’re going to be all right, and here’s one more thing to think about. However John Patrick Granby is judged, here or above, you saved him from becoming a murderer.”
McGill nodded. Sweetie’s words of wisdom had helped. As usual.
“Refraining from taking another life is why I feel the need to work hard on sublethal techniques these days.” He told her about the political necessity of preventing further bloodshed, what with Burke Godfrey and now Granby already on the mortality scoreboard. “Being limited in my options makes things harder with Damon Todd and the two ex-CIA crazies on the loose.”
Sweetie looked at the other object McGill had brought with him.
To those with an uncritical eye it looked like an umbrella.
“Does that thing fire bullets?” Sweetie asked.
McGill shook his head.
“Is there a sword sheathed inside?”
“No.”
“So what’s the plan?” Sweetie asked. “You get in trouble, you open your brolly and sail off over the rooftops like Mary Poppins?”
Before McGill could answer, there was a knock at the door and Elspeth Kendry poked her head in. She said, “Sorry to interrupt, but I was told all the racket in here had ceased. Is there anything going on I, maybe, should know about?”
McGill smiled and said, “Come in, Special Agent.”
Central Jail — Jackson, Mississippi
Bobby Beckley had been left to sit in his jail cell for four days. He’d been kept in a one-man cell so he hadn’t been cornholed but that was about the only indignity he’d been spared. He was told he’d been charged with assault and battery as a state charge; the feds, though, were looking at the possibility of hitting him with a hate crime indictment, as he’d characterized his victim with a racial epithet.
That little indiscretion seemed to be common knowledge among the inmate population. That meant, of course, the word had been passed to the cons by the powers that be. If Bobby got all high and mighty with one of his jailers or anyone else, why, he might find himself in the close company of people of color. Very large people who didn’t care to have their ethnicity disparaged.
Bobby knew if he wasn’t careful he might never know freedom or another birthday again. He had to get out of jail as fast as he could. He was rewarded for his good manners with a call to his lawyer, one of the top movers and shakers in town. If anyone could spring him, it was —
Sawyer Middleton’s secretary told Bobby the attorney would no longer be representing him on any matter, now or ever.
Bobby was momentarily dumbfounded. When he regained his voice, he responded politely, “I have Sawyer on retainer. He’s already been paid. We also hold common interests in a number of business ventures.”
“Mr. Middleton has already refunded the balance of the retainer. The business holdings have been sold off and your share of the proceeds have been electronically transferred to your account.”
“Huh,” Bobby said. He could only hope the money was sent to his offshore account.
The way he’d become everybody’s whipping boy, though, it probably hadn’t been.
“Mr. Middleton recommends the public defender’s office to help you in your present situation, and he asks that you not attempt to make contact with him again.”
The goddamn public defender? Who was he now, just another nig—
Whoa. He better stop thinking like that. He sure couldn’t say that word in jail.
The important point was, that treacherous bastard, Sawyer, had just told him no other big name defense lawyer in the state was going to argue or even plead his case. He had to count on some poor overworked kid or old burnout, either of whom might have gone to night classes at a law school that advertised itself on matchbooks.
Shit! He was in real trouble.
Then he got head lice. Took to scratching his scalp like a madman. The jail authorities weren’t about to take any chances of the infestation spreading to other inmates. They carted Bobby off to the infirmary, shaved his head to the bone and while they were at it took the rest of his body hair right off him. Put him in a shower that would have scalded the devil’s backside. Made him rub some vile lotion over every last inch of his body.
Naked and with all his hair gone, the final indignity visited on him was making sure he got a good look at himself in a full-length mirror. His scalp was lumpy and red. His jowls drooped with no mutton-chop sideburns to hide them. His chest and belly sagged without a jungle of hair to cover their slide toward his shrunken knob. His shaved legs looked like they might’ve come off a chicken.
As a way to make a man humble, seeing his reflection as presently constituted was hard to beat. The best he could say for himself was he was bug free, no longer itched and had been given a clean jail jumpsuit. Returning to his cell, he curled up on his bunk, closed his eyes and prayed that when he woke up it had all been a bad, bad dream.
It wasn’t, but a young woman from the public defender’s office came to see him. She’d had a preliminary phone conversation with an assistant U.S. attorney and it looked like the feds would be going ahead with the hate crime prosecution. If that wasn’t bad enough, Bobby’s victim was going to file a civil action against him.
That was when Bobby was sure his money from Sawyer Middleton had been sent to his local bank, where it could be seized with the greatest of ease.
The public defender had one more gift to give him.
Nella Beckley had filed for divorce.
More than anything else, at that moment, Bobby wanted to give the snotty woman in front of him a good beating. Luckily for him, there was a slab of polycarbonate resin between them and they were talking by phone. He hung his up gently, stood quietly and waited to be taken back to his cell.
He was fucked. In desperation, he thought if he begged real hard, Senator Hurlbert might take his call and pull a few strings for him. Get him out of jail quick as a whistle and —
Sure, that old gasbag was always a profile in courage.
The way things were stacking up for Bobby, that bastard Hurlbert would probably say his former chief of staff and campaign manager had been a temporary employee, who somehow had managed to hang around the past twenty years.
Bobby’s thoughts turned to suicide.
He was working out ways to meet his end as painlessly as possible when a jailer came and told him to get up. His bail had been reduced and he’d been bailed out. The man looked pained to say those words.
Bobby suspected a trap. All the way out to the street, dressed in the stale, stiff, sour from sweat and spilled booze suit in which he’d been arrested, he thought he would be yanked back inside, returned to his cell, with every last prisoner and guard parading by to laugh at him.
Nobody grabbed Bobby. Nobody stopped him from going his own way.
The only person waiting to greet him was a black kid, maybe twelve years old.
“You Mr. Beckley?” the kid asked.
Suspicious of everyone by now, Bobby only nodded.
“This is for you then,” the kid said.
He stuck a hand in his pocket and Bobby froze, thinking the kid would come out with a gun and shoot him dead right in front of the jail.
But all the kid took out of his pocket was an envelope with Bobby’s name on it.
He handed it to him and walked away.
Bobby’s hands shook as he opened the envelope. He expected more bad news. Who on earth would have a kind word for him now?
Reynard Dix, as it turned out.
Not just a
kind word, but a job offer.
And a thousand dollars cash money.
Bobby caught the first flight north to Washington, D.C.
The White House
Special Agent Elspeth Kendry asked if she could try her hand at Irish stick fighting, saying, “I always wanted to say I had to beat somebody off with a stick.”
McGill was willing to give another demonstration but deferred to Sweetie who told him she’d like to get in more practice. With a sharp memory and a keen eye for detail, Sweetie instructed Elspeth exactly the way McGill had taught her. In a matter of minutes, the two women were going at it harder and faster than he had with Sweetie.
Some guys, those who hadn’t been raised right, might have found an element of titillation in the spectacle of two women whacking at each other with sticks. McGill had other things in mind. He was examining the technical skills being presented. Spotting strengths and weaknesses.
Deciding how he would counter the strengths and exploit the weaknesses.
Not that he expected to fight either woman.
You never knew, though, McGill thought, when you might face someone with a similar style.
After a last flurry of attempted strikes, parries, further attempted strikes and parries, Sweetie and Elspeth grinned wearily at each other, stepped back and lowered their sticks. Then they shook hands.
“Very cool,” Elspeth said, handing her shillelagh back to McGill. “So what’s with the umbrella? You have a weapon hidden in there?”
“Just what I asked,” Sweetie said.
McGill put the shillelagh down and picked up the umbrella.
“You can use this the same way you use the stick, with a few extra moves thrown in.”
“It’s sturdy enough?” Sweetie asked.
He tossed the umbrella to her. She caught it and said, “It’s light.”
“Less than a pound. But you could whack a heavy bag with it until your arms fell off and it would be good as new. It’s called an unbreakable umbrella.”
