'Yeah, that sucks,' Hamm thought aloud.
'Little kids. I wonder if they award medals to the Secret Service?'
'They have something, I imagine. I can think of worse things to die for.' And that's what it was all about. Those five agents had died doing their jobs, running to the sound of the guns. They must have made some mistakes, but sometimes you didn't have a choice in the matter. All soldiers knew that.
'God rest their brave souls.' The man sounded like Robert Edward Lee. It triggered something in Hamm.
'What's the story on you guys? You, Colonel Edding-ton, you're not supposed—what the hell do you do in real life?' The guy was over fifty, very marginal for an officer in command of a brigade, even in the Guard.
'I'm professor of military history at the University of North Carolina. What's the story? This brigade was supposed to be the round-out for 24th Mech back in 1991, and we came here for workups and got our ass handed to us. Never got to deploy. I was a battalion XO then, Hamm. We wanted to go. Our regimental standards go back to the Revolution. It hurt our pride. We've been waiting to come back here near on ten years, boy, and this IVIS box gives us a fair chance.' He was a tall, thin man, and when he turned, he was looking down at the regular officer. 'We are going to make use of that chance, son. I know the theory. I been readin' and studyin' on it for over thirty years, and my men ain't'a'gonna roll over and die for you, you he'ah?' When aroused, Nicholas Eddington tended to adopt an accent.
' 'Specially not for Yankees?'
'Damn right!' Then it was time for a laugh. Nick Ed-dington was a teacher, with a flair for the impromptu dramatic. The voice softened. 'I know, if we didn't have IVIS, you'd murder us—'
'Ain't technology wonderful?'
'It almost makes us your equal, and your men are the best. Everybody knows that,' Eddington conceded. It was a worthy peace gesture.
'With the hours we keep, kinda hard to get a beer at the club when you need one. Can I offer you one at my home, sir?'
'Lead on, Colonel Hamm.'
'What's your area of specialty?' BLACKHORSE Six asked on the way to his car.
'My dissertation was on the operational art of Nathan Bedford Forrest.'
'Oh? I've always admired Buford, myself.'
'He only had a couple of days, but they were all good days. He might have won the war for Lincoln at Gettysburg.'
'The Spencer carbines gave his troopers the technical edge,' Hamm announced. 'People overlook that factor.'
'Choosing the best ground didn't hurt, and the Spencers helped, but what he did best was to remember his mission,' Eddington replied.
'As opposed to Stuart. Jeb definitely had a bad day. I suppose he was due for one.' Hamm opened the car door for his colleague. It would be a few hours before they had to prepare for the next exercise, and Hamm was a serious student of history, especially of the cavalry. This would be an interesting breakfast: beer, eggs, and the Civil War.
THEY BUMPED INTO each other in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven, which was doing a great business in coffee and donuts at the moment.
'Hi, John,' Holtzman said, looking at the crime scene from across the street.
'Bob,' Plumber acknowledged with a nod. The area was alive with cameras, TV and still, recording the scene for history.
'You're up early for a Saturday—TV guy, too,' the Post reporter noted with a friendly smile. 'What do you make of it?'
'This really is a terrible thing.' Plumber was himself a grandfather many times over. 'Was it Ma'alot, the one in Israel, back—what? 1975, something like that?' They all seemed to blend together, these terrorist incidents.
Holtzman wasn't sure, either. 'I think so. I have somebody checking it back at the office.'
'Terrorists make for good stories, but, dear God, we'd be better off without them.'
The crime scene was almost pristine. The bodies were gone. The autopsies were complete by now, they both imagined. But everything else was intact, or nearly so. The cars were there, and as the reporters watched, ballistics experts were running strings to simulate shots at mannequins brought in from a local department store, trying to re-create every detail of the event. The black guy in the Secret Service windbreaker was Norman Jeffers, one of the heroes of the day, now demonstrating how he'd come down from the house across the street. Inside was Inspector Patrick O'Day. Some agents were simulating the movements of the terrorists. One man lay on the ground by the front door, aiming a red plastic 'play gun' around. In criminal investigations, the dress rehearsals always came after the play.
'His name was Don Russell?' Plumber asked.
'One of the oldest guys in the Service,' Holtzman confirmed.
'Damn.' Plumber shook his head. 'Horatius at the bridge, like something from a movie. 'Heroic' isn't a word we use often, is it?'
'No, that isn't something we're supposed to believe in anymore, is it? We know better. Everybody's got an angle, right?' Holtzman finished off his coffee and dumped the cup in the trash bin. 'Imagine, giving up your life to protect other people's kids.'
Some reports talked about it in Western terms. 'Gun-fight at the Kiddy Corral' some local TV reporter had tried out, winning the low-taste award for last night, and earning his station a few hundred negative calls, confirming to the station manager that his outlet had a solid nighttime viewership. None had been more irate about that than Plumber, Bob Holtzman noted. He still thought it was supposed to mean something, this news business they both shared.
'Any word on Ryan?' Bob asked.
'Just a press release. Callie Weston wrote it, and Arnie delivered it. I can't blame him for taking the family away. He deserves a break from somebody, John.'
'Bob, I seem to remember when—'
'Yeah, I know. I got snookered. Elizabeth Elliot fed me a story on Ryan back when he was Deputy at CIA.' He turned to look at his older colleague. 'It was all a lie. I apologized to him personally. You know what it was really all about?'
'No,' Plumber admitted.
'The Colombian mission. He was there, all right. Along the way, some people got killed. One of them was an Air Force sergeant. Ryan looks after the family. He's putting them all through college, all on his own.'
'You never printed that,' the TV reporter objected.
'No, I didn't. The family—well, they're not public figures, are they? By the time I found out, it was old news. I just didn't think it was newsworthy.' That last word was one of the keys to their profession. It was news personnel who decided what got before the public eye and what did not, and in choosing what got out and what didn't, it was they who controlled the news, and decided what, exactly, the public had a right to know. And in so choosing, they could make or break everyone, because not every story started off big enough to notice, especially the political ones.
'Maybe you were wrong.'
Holtzman shrugged. 'Maybe I was, but I didn't expect Ryan to become President any more than he did. He did an honorable thing—hell, a lot more than honorable. John, there are things about the Colombian story that can't ever see the light of day. I think I know it all now, but I can't write it. It would hurt the country and it wouldn't help anybody at all.'
'What did Ryan do, Bob?'
'He prevented an international incident. He saw that the guilty got punished one way or another—'
'Jim Cutter?' Plumber asked, still wondering what Ryan was capable of.
'No, that really was a suicide. Inspector O'Day, the FBI guy who was right there across the street?'
'What about him?'
'He was following Cutter, watched him jump in front of the bus.'
'You're sure of this?'
'As sure as I've ever been. Ryan doesn't know that I'm into all this. I have a couple of good sources, and
