Black Light

“You were never going to win a Pulitzer Prize,” someone else said. “You don’t work for the Washington Post, the New York Times or the Miami Herald.”

“True enough,” said the first. “I should have said, there goes my fantasy of a Pulitzer Prize.”

His colleagues hooted. Someone threw a wadded-up ball of paper at him. Russ smiled. Journalists. Cynics, smartasses, calculating everything as a career move first and history second.

“Shit,” said Sims to Russ. “Little Rock had its time in the sun. We thought Fort Smith’d get a goose out of old Holly. But no way: too square, too slow, too orthodox.”

“He could put No Doz to sleep,” somebody else said, “unless he was chasing stewardesses.”

“I heard his specialty was nurses,” somebody else said. “He liked the uniform thing and the white stockings.”

“Look at his wife,” somebody else added. “I think she has a DoveBar up her ass.”

The woman stood just behind the man with one of those painted-on smiles lighting up a face that was pure stone.

“Dotty, God,” somebody said. “She makes Pat Nixon look like Mary Tyler Moore. She makes Pat look … perky.”

“A DoveBar is the only thing she’s ever had up her ass.”

“And so,” said Hollis Etheridge, “I hearby announce my withdrawal from the presidential campaign. I want to thank my wife, Dorothy, Paul Osteen, my campaign manager, and all you loyal workers. You people worked like heck and I do appreciate it; now it’s back to private life for this son of Arkansas. Thank you very much.”

“Senator,” a question came, “what will you do with your delegates? And your war chest? You still lead in money raised.”

“That’s to be determined at a later time in consultation with key members of my team,” said Etheridge.

“He could still carry some weight,” somebody said.

“He’s over, he’s finished,” came a counterverdict. “Color him the Jeopardy! answer without a question.”

“God bless America, and God bless the state of Arkansas,” Etheridge said, then turned and walked stiffly away.

“We won’t have Holly Etheridge to kick around anymore,” some wag said.

“Hell, there wasn’t enough of him to kick around in the first place,” someone else added.

31

I

t had been a good day for the general. At eleven, he had finally closed a contract with Colonel Sanchez of the Honduran Army. Colonel Sanchez was el comandante of Battalion 316, the counterterror and insurgency specialists, American-trained. Though the Hondurans had plenty of money to spend, the general could see no justification for pushing the No. 1 System, as it was called. The SR-25 with the Magnavox thermal sniperscope and the JFP MAW-7 suppressor was the most sophisticated system in the world but it was labor-intensive maintenance-wise and he doubted a third-world nation without a sophisticated technical culture would be able to maintain the units through heavy usage. And heavy usage was expected: the current guerrilla war showed no signs of abating and indeed was moving into the cities, where Battalion 316 and Military Intelligence rightly understood that a long-range precision night-vision sniping capability would prove invaluable.

After much hassling and wrangling, the general had finally convinced Colonel Sanchez that a system built around rebuilt army AN/PVS-2 Starlights mounted on state-of-the-art McMillan M-86s with the JFP Technology M14SS-1 suppressors was exactly what the doctor ordered. Twenty of the units would be in .308 Winchester, ten in .300 Winchester Magnum and ten in .223 Remington, giving Battalion 316 a great deal of tactical flexibility.

Of course JFP sniper cadre would field-train designated marksmen in the usage of the weapons system and serve, for an interim time, as consultants and advisers vis-a-vis their deployment in the combat environment. The general had a talent pool of several ex-SWAT and Green Beret snipers who performed such tasks, and were damn well paid too, both in money and in the odd extra kill they could pick up.

The general and the colonel then went to lunch, demolishing mighty amounts of rare roast beef at one of Oklahoma City’s finest establishments, and the general dropped the colonel off at his hotel, to prepare for the flight home. The general himself went to his club, where he played three quick games of squash with his lawyer and one of his board members. He took an hour in the steam room, showered and got back to the office at four. He expected to spend another two hours on paperwork and to begin work on a presentation set in a month’s time for the German GSG-9 antiterrorist group; if he could snatch them from the jaws of Heckler & Koch and its blasted, overrated PSG1, it would be a wonderful feather in his cap!

He sat at his desk, and Judy, his secretary, came in with his messages.

“Anything important?”

“No sir. Your wife. She’s waiting for her payment.”

“Dammit, I sent that check,” he said.

“Two calls from Jeff Harris at the FBI.”

“Yes, yes. They may go night-vision. Wouldn’t that be something?”

“A Mr. Greenaway, the procurement officer for the Cleveland Municipal Police.”

“Oh, I’ll get right on that one.”

“Long-distance, Mr. Arrabenz from Salvador.”

“That old pirate. Okay, I’ll get back to him. In fact, you may as well start trying to put the call through now. It’ll take hours.”

“Yes sir. And Mr. Short.”

The general thought he misunderstood.

“I’m sorry?”

“Mr. Short. He said it was about Arkansas. He said he’d call back. Frenchy Short, the name was.”

The general nodded, smiled, thanked her.

She left the room.

The general sat there, finding his breath hard to locate in his chest.

It was coming back. Swagger, now this.

Goddammit.

He waited and waited. His technicians left at five, as usual, and Judy went home at six, but the general stayed in his office. Twice after Judy left, the phone rang; one was a wrong number and another a hang-up.

You bastard, he thought, nursing a glass of Scotch neat. You bastard.

Finally, at 8:27 the phone rang.

He snatched it up.

“Hello.”

“Jack! Jack Preece, you old son of a gun, how the hell are you? It’s your old pal Frenchy Short.”

The voice was southern and arrived in a laughing tone of fake heartiness.

“Who are you?” Preece demanded. “You’re not Frenchy Short. Frenchy Short is dead. He died in Vienna in 1974. I saw the Agency report.”

“Details, details,” came the voice. “How are you doing these days, Jack? That divorce still takes a pretty penny, I’ll bet. Your daughter likes Penn, does she? Business is booming, isn’t it? Battalion 316? Excellent, Jack. That’s quite a healthy little shop you’re running.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Frenchy Short.”

“Goddammit, who are you?”

The man on the other end let him sweat for a few moments.