The Captain offered the signed receipt back to Major Rodriguez with his left hand, and saluted with his right. “They’re all yours, sir,” he said.
“Aren’t you forgetting something, Captain?” the Major asked. The corners of his lips curled up a fraction of an inch in response to Harkness’s obvious confusion. He returned the salute, and turned away, motioning for his men to take the prisoners out. “You never asked me for any identification,” he said over his shoulder. “How do you know I am who I claim to be? I could be practically anybody waltzing in here, and you just handed these high-profile prisoners over to me without the making the slightest effort to confirm my identity. I should report such a serious breach of security procedures to your superiors. I don’t imagine they would be especially pleased with you. What do you recommend I do, Captain Harkness?”
The blood drained from the MP officer’s face. The possibility of the suspects being cleared of the charges and returning to seek revenge was a little troubling, but it was so unlikely to happen that he could put it out of his mind without great difficulty. But this was different. A report from an NSB agent about a failure of security this serious would undoubtedly blight the Captain’s career forever. It could potentially get him busted down to the ranks, or possibly even court-martialed.
“I, uh, would really appreciate it… sir, if you would overlook it… this one time, Major Rodriguez, sir,” he stuttered. “I… I’m sure it… won’t happen again.”
Major Rodriguez did not wait for the Captain to finish. He squared his shoulders and strode out of the room without another word or so much as a backward glance, while Harkness was still stammering out his plea. Harkness slammed the door shut behind Rodriguez, waited long enough to be sure that the National Security man was out of earshot, and exhaled loudly. “Fucking bastard,” he muttered in the general direction of the departed Major.
* * * * *
“Fucking bastard,” Rodriguez muttered, as he followed Robin, Jodie and his men through the long, unadorned corridor that led out of the Military Police station. They emerged in an underground garage and slid into the back seat of a waiting vehicle, a big command car with tinted windows and windshield. There were three rows of seats inside. One soldier was sitting in the second row on the far side of the car, looking out the window, facing away from the women, and another was in the driver’s seat. The two men who had been holding Jodie and Robin helped them into the second row of seats, then climbed in behind them. Major Rodriguez slid into the second row next to Jodie.
The soldier who had been waiting in the car spoke in a high voice, without turning his head to face them. “This is a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, isn’t it, General Lawrence?” Robin and Jodie both knew that voice. They had known it since their first day at the National Women’s Military Academy. The soldier turned around to look at them.
“Jesus Christ, Steph! What the hell are you doing here?” Robin blurted out. The soldier was the first person she had met at the Academy, a tall, slender brunette and fellow “Cadet Cunt”, Lieutenant Stephanie Carroll.
“She’s here for the same reason I am. We came to rescue your sorry little butts, meaning no disrespect, General, sir,” said Major Rodriguez from behind them. His voice sounded higher than before. Jodie and Robin’s heads swiveled back, as if they were spectators at a tennis match. They saw the NSB man pulling at the mustache on his upper lip, and cursing foully under his breath. “Fucking glue won’t come off.”
Jodie and Robin gazed at him open-mouthed. “Who…?” Jodie asked.
“It’s me, Kate Swenson,” replied Major Rodriguez. Kate was another member of their class at the NWMA, a fellow “Cadet Cunt” from Company A, First Cadet Platoon. She was a natural blonde, with the pale complexion of her Scandinavian ancestors, and it took them a long second to recognize her in her current dark-skinned incarnation. “I just cut and dyed my hair and tinted my skin,” she explained. “Turn around and let me get those cuffs off you.”
* * * * *
After hugs had been exchanged and the tears dried, Kate briefed Robin and Jodie as they drove away from the Military Police compound. “General Cafferson thought that something like this was likely to happen after he died, so last year he formed a special squad from some of his most trusted men and us “Cadet Cunts”. We’re paid out of a ‘black budget’, unofficial and off the books. We all have bogus assignments, disguises and fake identities, spook gadgets, and top level security clearances, but our real job was to keep an eye on you, General, and I wish we had done better job of it. We should have gotten you out of your house before the MPs picked you up, but they moved a little faster than we thought they would, dammit. I’ll have that sorry piece of shit Harkness’ balls for breakfast, see if I don’t.”
“They? Who are they, exactly?” Jodie asked.
“We don’t know, exactly,” Steph answered. “We’re still trying to find out who’s behind this conspiracy…”
“It’s those Navy bastards,” put in the driver, speaking for the first time.
“That’s Captain Dick Murphy, Cafferson’s personal spook,” Kate explained. “I agree, it probably is, Dick, but we don’t have any proof.”
“Yet,” added the intelligence man.
“That’s it, “ Kate said. “We are going to find somebody who knows who the sons of bitches behind this coup are, and we are going to peel him like an onion until we have the details of the plot and the names of the traitorous bastards behind it.” Her eyes had a faraway look, as if she could see the guilty parties trying to hide from her fierce gaze.
She returned her attention to the present. “But in the meantime, you two will have to make yourselves scarce for a while. It won’t do us much good to uncover the plotters if you’re lying in a shallow grave somewhere when we finally clear your names.” Kate looked at Robin and Jodie’s expressions, and nodded grimly. “Yeah. These boys are playing for keeps. There are not going to be any second chances for anybody in this game. It’s their necks or yours, all or nothing.”
“We’re here, Kate,” Murphy said. The car turned up a driveway and rolled into an open garage. The door closed silently behind them.
“Listen, Jodie, Robin,” Kate said urgently. “There’s not much time. Pretty soon somebody’s going to start wondering what happened to the real NSB men we took out before we came to get you away from the MPs, and then they’re going to start asking where you are. In a few hours, you two are going to be hotter than bubbling cheese. This is a safe house, where we can give you cover IDs and disguises, but you can’t stay here for very long. We have to get you out of Washington, and fast.”
Kate took them through a door in the garage, which led into the house. They went up a short flight of stairs into a large living room. All the windows in the room were covered with heavy drapes. The only lighting was provided by a few low-wattage floor lamps. A woman in the dark blue uniform of a West Point cadet was seated on a sofa next one of the lamps, which illuminated her book but left her face hidden in shadow. When they entered, she looked up, then stood and ran to Robin, wrapped her arms around the latter’s neck and exclaimed “Thank God you got them out, Kate!”
“Merry!” Jodie and Robin chorused, greeting Robin’s younger and even more beautiful sister, as she exchanged hugs with Jodie. “When did you get here?”
“The boss thought they would probably pick her up too, and charge her with being part of your ‘spy ring’,” Steph explained. “He figured they might use her to get at you, if necessary.”
“ ‘The boss’?” Jodie echoed. “So, who is this mystery man that General Cafferson’s trusted as head of his black ops squad?”
“I was wondering the same thing,” added Robin.
“That would be me,” they heard a very familiar voice say. From the stairway stepped a broad-shouldered, gray-haired man in an Army uniform, with the silver eagles of a Colonel on his shoulders.
“Daddy!” “Major Bransom!” Robin and Jodie shrieked, respectively. “
What…?”
He raised his hand, gesturing to them for calm. “Colonel Bransom now, actually. Bernie jumped me up when he re-activated my commission.” He smiled at the astonished women.
“General Cafferson foresaw that there would be trouble for you after he was gone, General Lawrence, and he needed someone that he could count on to act when the crisis came,” Colonel Bransom explained, directing his reply to Jodie. “When he told me that Robin and Merry would be in danger, that might have been enough to get me out of retirement. If it was just that, I might have simply told you girls to resign your commissions to keep you from getting caught in the gears. But when he explained that the plot would be aimed at you, General Lawrence, then I had no choice. I could not turn down the job.”
Robin and Merry looked at their father inquiringly.
“I’m sorry, girls,” he said to them apologetically. “There is only one thing I love more than you: my country. You, General…” he nodded respectfully at Jodie, “…are the most important person in the United States, in the entire Free World. Without you, we have no chance to stop the Chinese. I am ready to give everything I have, my own life, the lives of my daughters, if necessary, for you and for my country. I know it sounds cold, Robin, Merry…” he finished, again addressing his daughters,”…but that’s the way it is. That is the way it’s always been, for me.”
Merry and Robin surrounded him and hugged him simultaneously. “You don’t have to apologize, Daddy. We knew that about you already,” Merry said. “It comes with the uniform.”
“We feel exactly the same way,” added Robin.
Colonel Bransom nodded approvingly. “In any case, I am not about to let a cabal of traitors overthrow the legal government of the United States,” he continued. “A handful of little men are trying to suppress Bernard Cafferson’s political testament and undo everything he has built by seizing power and destroying his chosen successor, and I…”
“His successor? Who do you mean, Daddy?” Robin interrupted.
The Colonel’s gaze swung to Jodie. “In his will, General Cafferson instructed the General Staff to make General Lawrence the new CGS…” (pronounced “sigs”) “Don’t tell me you’re surprised, General.”
Jodie blushed. “Not really. The one time he brought the subject up, I told him that I didn’t want it, and he never mentioned it again. I suppose I should have known he wouldn’t care what I wanted, knowing the way his mind worked. Duty first, right? But the reason I didn’t want the job is that I really didn’t think that I was up to the responsibility of running the whole country. I still don’t, for that matter.”
Robin protested, “But Jodie, you’d be a great Chief.”
She smiled and shook her head. “All I ever wanted to be was a soldier. I never wanted to get involved in politics. Well, it doesn’t much matter what I think, anyway. If he wanted me to do it, I don’t see that I have any choice. How could I refuse to obey his last order?”
“Now you can understand why they made their move so soon after General Cafferson was gone,” Kate said. “Once the General Staff voted you in as the Chief, it would be too late for them to do anything about it. They broke into his safe deposit box and took the original testament from Cafferson’s papers, to keep it from becoming public knowledge.”
“But then…” Jodie said in bewilderment. “…we’re done. We have no proof of his final instructions.”
Colonel Bransom reached into an inside pocket of his jacket and removed a sheaf of folded papers. “They got one original,” he told them, holding up the papers. “This is another, with General Cafferson’s signature, notarized by two witnesses. He gave it to me for safekeeping, in the event a situation like this arose. This will be proof enough of his intentions to satisfy any court.” He slid the papers back into his jacket.
“Now, the next problem will be finding someplace to stash you three wanted criminals,” he said. “If Lieutenants Carroll and Swenson will assist you with disguises, I will try to find a hole for you crawl into and pull in after yourselves, until we’re ready to bring you out.”
Steph and Kate led Jodie, Robin and Merry away to an upstairs bedroom, while Colonel Bransom huddled in an urgent conference with Dick Murphy.
* * * * *
Twenty minutes later, the women returned to the living room.
“So, Daddy, what do you think?” Merry asked Colonel Bransom, when all three women were lined up for his inspection.
He looked them over carefully, up and down, then walked around to scrutinize at them from behind. Finally, he shook his head in wonderment. “It is truly amazing. I would not have recognized any of you on the street.”
The transformation was startling. Jodie was now a redhead, with coppery waves running halfway down her back. Her eyes, formerly sea green, were after the insertion of colored contact lenses, black. She was three inches taller than she had been, thanks to the lifts in her knee-length cowboy boots. Her eyebrows were heavier and matched her new hair color, and her cheekbones were now broad and prominent, giving her a distinctly Slavic appearance. She was still very beautiful.
Robin was now a brunette, with her hair clipped severely short and parted on one side. She wore round, tortoiseshell glasses over her formerly blue, now brown eyes. Her nose was straighter, her ears a different shape, and her figure had changed. Robin was a lovely woman, with a trim physique and fine, but far from enormous breasts that were just perfect size for her slim frame. Now, she was carrying a stunning bosom that nearly spilled out of the skin-tight dress she had apparently been poured into. “You look like why the riot started, sweetie,” Colonel Bransom told her. “But I’m not sure I want you walking around in public looking like that.”
“Don’t worry, Daddy,” Robin answered. “As soon as we get someplace safe, I’ll take the fake boobs off. Most of the plastic and make-up won’t hold up for more than twelve hours, anyway.”
“Too bad,” Jodie commented admiringly. “You make one hell of a sex-bomb.”
Merry’s transformation was even more radical than the others. Her hair was no longer long, straight and chestnut-brown, but was now shorter, black and kinky. Her eyes were violet rather than their natural green, and her skin had been dyed the color of dark chocolate. Her lips now looked much bigger, and were coated with fire engine red lipstick, and her eyelashes were much longer and thicker. Most remarkably of all, her walk, a distinctive, incredibly graceful movement like the stalk of a jungle cat, was now changed beyond recognition. With each step she took, Merry rolled her hips like a belly dancer, making her shoulders and her greatly enhanced breasts and buttocks seem to move in several directions at once.
“How do you like the new me, Daddy?” she asked her open-mouthed father. “They put something in my shoes that makes me walk like this.” She demonstrated a little more, obviously enjoying the sensation.
“You shouldn’t… I mean, it isn’t right… Oh Christ!” Colonel Bransom stammered. “If you weren’t my daughter, I would… oh, never mind,” he told the grinning Merry. He shook his head, as if to dispel the image. “Captain Murphy and I have come up with the perfect place for you to go to ground. Tell them about it, Captain,” he said, waving his hand at the intelligence man.
“General Cafferson had a vacation cabin for his personal use,” Dick Murphy said. “It was his own private place, completely off the books. He paid for everything out of his own pocket. Nobody but me and two of his bodyguards even knows it exists. It’s fully stocked with food, with well water, and its own geothermal electric power, off the grid. It’s also about twenty miles from nowhere, in the western Virginia mountains. The General also bought up a big piece of land around the cabin, and his property is bordered on three sides by the Jefferson National Forest, so there are no neighbors for miles in any direction. It should be a safe place to stash the three of you until we find out what your enemies are up to, General Lawrence.”
“Any comments or questions?” Colonel Bransom asked, looking around the room. “No? Good, th
en, let’s get moving before the plotters decide to declare martial law and…” He stopped suddenly. “General Lawrence, I want to apologize for my apparent lack of deference for your rank. You may think I’m being insubordinate, ordering you around this way. It may not seem that way, but I do understand that you are the highest-ranking officer in the entire country, and I have the greatest possible respect for you. But I was assigned the duty of providing for your safety by Bernard Cafferson himself, and the only way I can only perform that duty effectively is…”
“Colonel Bransom,” Jodie said, holding up her hand, “please don’t say another word about it. In fact, I want you to consider that to be an order. Until this crisis has been resolved, you may think of me as a piece of luggage, an animated suitcase, to be moved when and where you want me. I would be no more inclined to interfere with the way you do your job than you would jog my elbow if I was working up a plan to meet a Chinese invasion of Australia. You are the head of my security detail, chosen by General Cafferson personally for the job, and that is good enough for me. Just do what you have to do to carry out the mission, and don’t worry about my tender feelings, OK?” She smiled.
“Thank you, General Lawrence,” the Colonel replied.
“Having just told you how I’m going to keep my nose out of your business, I’m now going to stick it in. This is a suggestion, not an order,” Jodie said, “but perhaps we should start addressing each other by our first names right now, for practice. We wouldn’t want anybody to slip when we’re out in public, and call me ‘General Lawrence’…”
“Excellent point, Gen… uh, Jodie. We will follow that procedure, starting immediately,” Colonel Bransom responded. “Now let’s get… Jodie, Robin and Merry out of here before they decide to set up checkpoints and stop every car leaving town.”
Cadet 3 Page 4
