cockpit toward the lights on the horizon. 'You can see the skyline at my one o'clock. We are presently following U.S. Highway 169 on approach to Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport. If you look, you can see that the streetlights are all working and we have some vehicle traffic down there.'
'Thank you,' Kip said. Indeed, he did see a convoy of vehicles crawling along the highway toward the skyscrapers of the city, most of which were still dark. The semi trucks were hauling something in covered flatbeds, most likely grain from the last harvest. From this altitude, he could see the lights of the federal court house and the city hall, where the Midwestern Restoration Authority was headquartered.
'Can you take me for a spin?' he asked.
'We can certainly take an orbit of the city, as instructed, Mister President,' Lowry said. 'Wheeler Tower, this is Air Force One. We'll be orbiting the city for a visual inspection. Copy?'
'Air Force One, this is Wheeler. Traffic pattern is clear. Orbit at your discretion.'
'Copy that, Wheeler. Air Force One out.' She banked to the west, crossing over the mansions of Briarcliff West and across the upper reaches of the Missouri River. Below, salvage crews were working through the night to restore the ruins of the Fairfax Assembly Plant. A random lighting strike back in the Wave year had ignited a fuel storage farm near the factory, creating a firestorm that had severely damaged the facility in spite of the heavy rain. Kipper recalled that all the plant's useful items were to be transferred to the Claycomo Ford plant in the Northland, where vehicles and equipment were systematically stripped for usable parts, inventoried, and stockpiled in limestone caverns through the area. If time were not a concern, he would have loved a tour of the facility, but he had other pressing issues.
To Colonel Lowry's left, the skyscrapers of Kansas City rotated below Air Force One. The tallest, One Kansas City Place, featured a large gash in the side where a private jet had speared into its flank on the day of the Disappearance. Trains rumbled through the West Bottoms, where large animal pens held herds of feral cattle rounded up from the area. The feral livestock was a godsend to the slowly starving Pacific Northwest, breaking what had been known in the press as the hungry time. Three trains a week made the run between Seattle and Kansas City, connecting a number of small outposts where homesteaders were attempting to bring the land back to life.
The pilot turned southeast out over the state line for a brief moment before heading due east over the cleared but still relatively vacant I-35. The collapsed column of the Liberty Memorial spilled down the north hillside into Pershing Road. Kipper could see trains and lights passing through Union Station as well as lights within the Crown Center shopping and hotel complex, which served as a barracks for homesteaders settling in the Midwestern restoration areas as well as the local militia forces. This was all good, he thought. It never failed to lift his spirits.
'Air Force One copies, Wheeler Tower,' Colonel Lowry said, turning the aircraft back to the north. 'Mister President, if you could return to your seat, we will be landing shortly.'
Kipper nodded. 'Thank you for the tour, Colonel. It does me good to see what's going on out here,'
'Thank you, Mister President.'
Returning to his seat, he found Jed awake and sorting through his papers again, filing some away and carefully placing others on his tray table, which was weighed down with a glass of bourbon he had procured from somewhere. If he stuck to his usual routine, he would sip his drink and work on the papers until Air Force One touched down and the seat belt signs were turned off.
'I don't suppose you need me to tell you,' Culver said, not lifting his gaze from the papers, 'that forcing Blackstone into retirement was a mistake.'
Jed had a habit of picking up conversations hours after they had finished. It was disconcerting until one got used to it. Kip had no trouble dealing with it because his wife did exactly the same thing. Like Culver, she also had a spookily forensic capacity for recall and could throw back in his face incriminating statements he had made weeks, sometimes months, after he had foolishly uttered them.
Kip shrugged. 'Couldn't leave him in command. Not after Seattle.'
Jed looked up. 'We could have promoted him off to oblivion. That's what the Romans used to do. If he were a four-star general down in Panama right now, he'd be relatively harmless to everyone but Roberto. A win-win situation there.'
It was an old argument between them by now, one that Kipper responded to without much thought. 'Some of those Romans didn't stay gone, Jed. Guy called Julius Caesar comes to mind.'
Jed shook his head. 'Well, Blackstone is no Caesar any more than MacArthur was. But neither is he the idiot that folks in Seattle think he is. He wasn't much of a politician, either, like you,' he added, indicating the Truman biography lying open on Kipper's seat. Kipper brought his seat upright and looked out the cabin window.
Air Force One passed over the Missouri River again, this time on the east side of the urban core. The bridges of the city were strung with lights, reminding him of dew-dappled spiderwebs in the moonlit nights of childhood summers. Traffic pressed across the bridges while a salvage barge full of farm equipment made its way to the reconstructed docks on the north side of the river. They would be loaded onto trains and transported to Claycomo for processing. Street lamps flooded the roads with a sickly yellow light on the north side of the Missouri River, where most of the permanent population lived in an area known as Northtown. Futuristic spires and gleaming office buildings filled the dark sky with the brightest light.
Culver caught a glimpse through Kipper's window. 'That's the Cerner Campus, home of the Heartland Territorial Government. We've just moved in there. If things go according to plan, we should have Heartland admitted as a state before the next election. That could help us.'
'Cerner? Don't they do medical technology?' Kipper asked, ignoring the politics.
Culver nodded. 'Yeah, they had a lot of people overseas in 2003. Most of them are back here now in their R amp;D division, but not with enough numbers to fill the campus. Territorial government took fully serviced office space there in return for tax concessions.'
Kipper wondered how Jed kept all this stuff in his head.
'Good morning, Mister President and passengers on board Air Force One,' Colonel Lowry said over the speakers. 'We are due to land at Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport shortly. Please secure all belongings and prepare for landing. Security detail and crew to arrival stations.'
'Caesar or not, what's done-' Kipper turned away from the window and looked squarely at his chief of staff. '-is done. Question now is what's to be done next. That's up to you, my friend. Turn your devious mind to it and get back to me with a cunning plan.'
Jed took a pull on his bourbon.
'For now,' he said, 'I'd suggest doing nothing. But only for now, while we're distracted in New York. I'll admit, Mister President, I don't like the way things have gone bad so quickly there. It smells. I do have some plans for Texas, but you're right about needing to focus on the piracy issue first. Especially if it turns out we've got something worse than pirates in New York.'
'But if we do nothing about these forced evictions in the Mandate, now that we know what's happening, it'll be taken as consent and I'll be held accountable,' Kipper said.
Culver shook his head. 'I don't think so, Mister President. Not with the fighting in New York. People will believe you're biding your time, waiting for an opportunity to settle up,' he said, sipping his bourbon.
'He hasn't given me one,' Kipper said.
Jed pointed at a stack of briefing documents on the unoccupied chair next to the president. 'In all of those files, do you have any on your officers? Any officer evaluation reports?'
Kipper's face went blank. 'No, why? I could get them, I suppose. General Franks would probably ship over whatever I wanted, but what good would they do?'
'Well, for one thing, they'd tell you what other officers thought of Blackstone. His file is interesting. I've studied it deeply. He's aggressive, almost to the point of folly. He has a mouth he can't quite control, which is one reason he was at Fort Lewis in command of I Corps in '03, far away from the main game in the Middle East. He overreaches, especially when in command of a military operation. Sometimes skill and a combination of luck and mistakes by his opponents reward that aggressiveness. And…' Jed finished his drink and smiled wolfishly.
Kipper smiled. 'And sometimes his mistakes catch up with him. Like in Seattle?'
Jed nodded. 'See, you're learning. We'll make a president out of you yet.'
The small windows were full of dawn's breaking light now as they descended toward the tarmac at Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport. Culver leaned forward and raised his glass to Kip.
