Dan Headley screamed, with pain and terror. And his scream echoed into the yard. Rick Hunter was on his way down the walkway toward the main house when he heard it. No one else did. A thousand dreads about the true nature of the grandson of Red God flew through his mind.
Back in the barn, Danny screamed again. He was facing death. He knew that, and he kicked out at the stallion, but it was like kicking a pickup truck.
Rick Hunter was by now pounding across the grass quadrangle toward the boxes as he heard his friend’s second scream. He dashed straight to the first box where Red Rajah lived. When he got there he searched instantly for a weapon, and saw the trusty Louisville Slugger against the wall. Grabbing it with his right hand, he whipped open the door and faced with horror the scene before him — Danny, blood pouring from his smashed right arm, trying to protect himself against the onslaught of the stallion looming over him, preparing to kneel.
Rick never hesitated, wound back the bat and slammed it into Red Rajah’s ribs with a blow that would surely have killed a man. It did not, however, kill Red Rajah. The great white horse swung his head around, as if deciding which of the two boys to attack first. So Ricky hit him again, with all his force, crashing the bat into the ribs of the stallion, simultaneously yelling, “GET OUT, DANNY! FOR CHRIST’S SAKE GET OUT…SHUT THE DOOR BUT DON’T LOCK IT….”
Dan Headley, half in shock, maddened by the pain, rolled and crawled out of the box. Still flat on the ground, he kicked the door shut. And 16-year-old Rick Hunter turned to face the raging horse again.
By now he was in the corner 15 feet from the door, watching the Rajah backing off a stride or two. Rick held the bat in both hands, not daring to swing in case he missed the head, and the horse came at his throat, or, much more likely, his testicles.
In a split second he got his answer. Red Rajah came straight at his face, mouth open. Rick shoved the bat straight out in front of him, still holding the handle with both hands. And the Rajah’s teeth smashed down onto it, splintering it like matchwood.
Ouside Dan Headley had passed out from the pain.
And now Rick was on his own. Again the Rajah moved away a stride, his ears flat back, his white-rimmed eye still flicking back and forth. Rick’s mind raced, back to a conversation he had once had with an old local hardboot, who had told him,
Rick Hunter dropped down onto all fours, knowing that if this ploy failed he might be as dead as Danny would have been if he hadn’t arrived in time.
Rick flattened himself into the pose of the horse’s most ancient and feared enemy, the lion. He tried to assume the crouched, threatening stance of a big cat preparing to pounce, trying to reawaken thousands of years of unconscious phobia in the psyche of the horse. He burrowed his boot into the straw, made a scratching noise on the concrete beneath, snarled deeply, staring hard into the horse’s eyes.
Then he moved his head forward and let out a roar and then another, crawling one step nearer. Red Rajah stopped dead. Then he moved a half step backward, a slight tremor in both shoulder muscles. He backed up some more, dipping his head as if to protect his throat. It was an instinct, not a reaction.
Rick roared like a lion again, all the while trying to get the warm-up jacket from around his waist. The fight seemed to have gone right out of the Rajah, who was now standing stock-still. And he was not prepared when the six-foot-four-inch heir to Hunter Valley jumped up and dived at his head, ramming the jacket hard down over his eyes and face.
Red Rajah was in the pitch dark now, and no horse likes to move when he’s unable to see anything. He just stood there, stock-still, trembling, blind now, with the jacket still over his head. And Rick carefully edged toward the door, eased it quietly open, and made his escape, slamming the lock shut as he went.
Outside, Dan was conscious again. Rick hit the alarm bell, and sat with his buddy until help arrived minutes later.
He, and both of their fathers, remained with Dan all night in Lexington Hospital, while two surgeons meticulously restitched the muscle, reset and pinned the shattered right arm.
And in the morning when Dan was in the recovery room, the patient finally came to, slowly focusing on the young lion from Hunter Valley. He shook his head in silent admiration of his friend’s courage. And then he grinned, and said, “Jesus, Ricky. You just saved my life. I told you we’d be better off in a warship.”
“You’re right there, ole buddy,” said Rick. “Screw this racehorse crap. You can get killed out here. I’d rather be under fire. You think Annapolis is ready for us?”
1
Admiral Arnold Morgan was alone in his office contemplating the two major issues in his life at this particular lunchtime. The first was his decision to stay on as the National Security Adviser to the President for one more year, against all of his better judgment.
The second was a Wagnerian-sized roast beef sandwich, fortified with heavy mayonnaise and mustard into a feast he would never have dared to order had his secretary and wife-to-be, the gorgeous Kathy O’Brien, been anywhere near the precincts of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Happily she was out until 4 P.M.
The Admiral grinned cheerfully. He saw the sandwich as a richly deserved gastronomic reward for having succumbed to weeks of being badgered, harassed, coaxed and ultimately persuaded to remain in this office by some of the most powerful figures in American politics and the military.
His decision to hang in there had been wrung out of him, after nine weeks of soul-searching. The decision to hit a roast beef sandwich
The Admiral, 61 years old now, was still, miraculously, in robust health, and not more than 8 pounds heavier than he had been as a nuclear submarine commander 27 years previously. Immaculately tailored, wearing a maroon-and-gold Hermes tie Kathy had given him for Christmas, he tucked a large white linen napkin into his shirt collar and bit luxuriously into his sandwich.
Through the window he could see it was snowing like hell. The President was, shrewdly, visiting Southern California where the temperature was a sunlit 78 degrees, and right here in the West Wing of the White House there was absolutely nothing happening of any interest whatsoever to the most feared and respected military strategist on the planet Earth.
“I still have no idea what the hell I’m doing here,” he muttered to himself. “The goddamned world’s gone quiet, temporarily. And I’m sitting here like a goddamned lapdog waiting for our esteemed but flakey leader to drag himself out of some fucking Beverly Hills swimming pool.”
Christ, everyone had been there. And no one had even informed him. He’d walked, stone-cold, into a room containing not only General Scannell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but
Their joint mission was simple: to persuade Admiral Morgan to withdraw his resignation, and to remain in office until the Republican President’s second term was over. A few weeks previously, at the conclusion of a particularly dangerous and covert Naval operation in China, the President had demonstrated such shocking self- interest and lack of judgment that he could no longer be trusted to act in the strict interests of the USA.
The world was presently a volatile place, and no one needed to remind Admiral Morgan of that. But the man
