Kipper's nuts did a slow crawl up into his body.
He was unfamiliar with the first word, but he well remembered the term 'jihad' both from the days before the Wave and of course from the French civil war that had followed it.
'What are those fucking wing nuts doing here?' he asked.
Kinninmore shook his head as they reached the foyer of the building. The sound of helicopters was growing louder.
'Mister President, at the moment all I have are the first scraps of information from a very confused battlefield. I can't tell you any more than that. What I can say is that this does not look like a flare-up or an ad hoc resistance movement suddenly self-organizing. It looks to me like somebody who knows what they are doing is pissing in our patch.'
Kipper found the colonel's vernacular a strange fit with his cultured accent, but he supposed that Kinninmore must have spent his adult life in the army and so it would be silly to expect him to speak like a merchant banker or art dealer. He stopped just inside the building's entrance, and gave the officer his full attention.
'Colonel, I remind myself every day to listen to people who know what they're talking about. If you feel strongly enough about this to have dragged yourself through the briar patch getting the information to me, I am willing to listen. Right now, though, at this very minute, we have people fighting and dying a few miles from us. First person I'm going to talk to when I get on my chopper is General Franks. I'm going to tell him to devote whatever resources he needs to clearing this city out, once and for all. This is an American city, and it is going to stay that way,' Kipper said.
'Hooah,' Kinninmore replied in soft but firm agreement.
Kipper continued, 'I need you to write me up a report on what you've just told us and forward it directly to Franks as well as your local higher-ups on my authority. I'll have the national security director schedule it as one of our first agenda items for our next meeting, which is…'
He looked across at Jed.
'Three days from now, Mister President.'
'Okay, three days. Is that good enough, Colonel?'
Kinninmore straightened his back and nodded. 'Very well, Mister President. My S-2 has already prepped a report, with attachments. I will have him e-mail it to you via secure link ASAP.'
'Good enough, then,' Kipper said, extending his hand. 'Colonel. Good luck. Kicking these losers out of New York is a higher priority for me right now than knowing exactly who they are. But I do want to know that, too. And make sure Jed gets details of where your wounded are being treated. I will be visiting them.'
'Thank you, Mister President.'
Kinninmore saluted again, looking marginally happier than when Kip had first seen him but still very grim as he replaced the helmet on his head. If they were going to be fighting in the city to the end, he was going to lose many more troopers. A thumping roar announced the arrival of Marine One, Kip's personal chopper, now finished with evacuating casualties from the rocket attack. The Secret Service agents formed up around them, and Kipper was hustled out into the morning air, where oil smoke, dark and thick, obscured the sun and left a burning sensation in his nose. Sergeant Ryan Peckham of the Marine Presidential Security Detail ripped off a perfect salute. 'Good day, Mister President. If you'll step aboard, please.'
Kipper returned the salute, still a sloppy one, he supposed, but Sergeant Peckham took no notice. The president of the United States passed by Peckham's younger brother, Lance Corporal Justin Peckham, who was standing at the ready behind a multibarreled door gun on Marine One. It intrigued Kip why two brothers had ended up on his chopper, but he had never had time to ask them about it.
Many things had changed since the Wave, and Marine One was a perfect example. No longer a brightly polished dark green and white VH-3D Sea King helicopter emblazoned with the presidential seal, Kipper's rotary wing transport was now a gray, camouflaged, and heavily armed AugustaWestland medium-lift chopper, a joint British- Italian design. The Royal Air Force had fitted out six for his use as part of a complicated facilities and equipment exchange deal negotiated under the new Vancouver Alliance agreement. Climbing aboard, he found the cabin was still configured for medical evacuation, with only four seats available up near the cockpit. It was difficult to hear himself talk over the thunderous noise not just of his aircraft but from the three gunships hovering protectively overhead. As he strapped in, Jed Culver dropped into the seat opposite and raised an eyebrow but said nothing, either. Between the Super Cobras of the Marine One escort force and the howling engine over their heads, it was simply too noisy to speak until they were under way.
That took less than a minute, and when they lifted off, Kip felt himself pressed into the seat much more firmly than usual. The floor tilted radically, and the Rolls Royce turboshafts spooled up with a scream. The marines flying him out of New York were not inclined to take chances. They were another sign of the radically changed times. Three marine Super Cobras flew escort for Marine One no matter where the president went. The marines themselves were no longer attired in the smart dress uniforms and white gloves of their counterparts back in Seattle. All of the flight crew's members wore desert tan flight suits and came with a heavy load of personal weapons. Members of the Presidential Marine Security Detail wore body armor, standing at the ready by doors and window apertures that bristled with heavy machine guns. When they were safely away and the noise had throttled back some, Kip leaned over to speak to his chief of staff.
'Jed, can you make sure Tommy Franks gets that stuff from Kinninmore? Especially this fedayeenie-whatsit business. Today.'
'Fedayeen. And it's already done,' Culver said, smiling tightly and waving his mil-grade PDA. 'I've scheduled it as an item for discussion at NSC. Second on the list.'
'What's first?' Kip asked, wondering what could squeeze out a report of possible foreign interference in the pirate war.
'Well, I'm afraid you're not going to like it, sir, but we do need to get to grips with this Blackstone situation.'
Always back to Blackstone. Kip could feel his facial muscles tighten with anger as Jed held up one hand and begged his indulgence.
'I know, Mister President, that you think it's near the bottom of the priority list, and having him down there running wild means fewer federal resources going into border security along the El Paso,' Jed said.
'Look, I don't like Mad Jack any more than you do, Jed. But he was elected. And you may have noticed that we are a bit short of resources,' Kip said.
Even Tommy Franks had pestered him about the importance of controlling the center of the continent, which was part of why there was a heavy federal outpost in Kansas City. But in Kip's eyes Texas just didn't seem worth the aggravation, regardless of what the history books and his own advisers said. If Blackstone wanted to play out some frontier fantasy down there, let him have it. For now. He was still an American. He'd been voted into the governorship fair and square. As big an asshole as he was proving to be, he was a duly elected asshole and that was that. It wasn't like a foreign state had set up shop down there.
'Sir,' said Culver, undaunted as usual. 'We have to start looking at Blackstone as a major impediment to reconstruction a few years down the path. If we don't get this little dictator slapped into line, we are going to lose control of the South forever. He's not making any bones about that.'
'The whole Republic of Texas thing is a joke,' Kipper said. 'I've been reading up on your briefings. They weren't able to make it work in the 1830s, and I do not see how they'll make it work now. Blackstone can bluster on about holding as many referendums as he wants. Nobody outside of Fort Hood is going to vote to break up the union.'
Jed leaned forward in his seat. 'It's 'referenda,' and it is no joke, Mister President. Jackson Blackstone was legitimately elected territorial governor in 2005, which makes it very difficult for us to challenge his position. It's not like that last little coup by stealth he tried after the Wave. What's more, he has plenty of allies in Seattle who would like to see Texas fast-tracked to independence. The reality on the ground, as the military likes to say, is that neither Blackstone nor his territorial legislature respects the authority of Congress or you, or the courts, or anything other than the threat of the 101st jumping in there to smack him upside the head. And sir, we are getting to a point where I doubt the army will be able to do it. For every officer we have like Kinninmore, Blackstone has three, and for every solid soldier we have, Blackstone has anywhere from three to seven, most of them disgruntled veterans.'
'I don't understand why they're so disgruntled,' Kipper said morosely. He didn't understand at all, on any level,
