Shadow Command

EPILOGUE

The young boy cast a fishing line into Lake Mojave from his spot at the tip of a rocky point beside the long, wide boat-launching ramp. Lake Mojave was not really a lake, just a wide spot of the Colorado River south of Las Vegas. It was a popular winter venue for seasonal residents, but they could begin to feel the onset of summer heat even now in early spring, and you could sense the stirring in the place that people were itching to leave. Not far behind the boy was his father, in shorts, sunglasses, nylon running sandals, and Tommy Bahama embroidered shirt, typing on a laptop computer in the shade of a covered picnic area. Behind him in the RV park, the “snowbirds” were packing up their campground and preparing to take their trailers, campers, and RVs to gentler climes. Soon only the most die-hard desert-lovers would stay to brave southern Nevada’s brutally hot summer.

Amidst the bustle of the campground the man heard the sound of a heavier-than-normal car. Without turning or appearing to notice, he escaped out of his current program and called up another. With a push of a key, a remote wireless network camera on a telephone pole activated and began automatically tracking the newcomer. The camera zeroed in on the vehicle’s license plate, and in a few seconds it had captured the letters and numbers and identified the vehicle’s owner. At the same instant, a wireless RFID sensor co-located with the camera read a coded identification beacon broadcast from the vehicle, confirming its identity.

The vehicle, a dark H3 Hummer with tinted windows all the way around except for the windshield, parked in the white gravel parking lot between the marina restaurant and the launching ramp, and three men alighted. All wore jeans, sunglasses, and boots. One man in a safari-style tan vest stayed by the vehicle and started scanning the area. The second man wore an untucked white business shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled up, while the third also wore an open safari-style tan vest.

The man at the picnic table received a tiny beepbeepbeep in his Bluetooth wireless headset, telling him that a tiny millimeter-wave sensor set up in the park had detected that one of the men was carrying a large metallic object — and it wasn’t a tackle box, either. The second man in the vest stopped about a dozen paces from the picnic area beside the ramp to the boat-launching ramp next to a garbage can and began scanning the area like the first. The third man walked up to the man at the picnic table. “Hot enough out here for you?” he asked.

“This is nothing,” the man at the picnic table said. He set his laptop down, got to his feet, turned to the newcomer, and removed his sunglasses. “They say it’ll get above a hundred by May and stay above a hundred and ten for all of June, July, and August.”

“Swell,” the newcomer said. “Cuts down on visitors, eh?” He looked past the man and to the boy fishing beside the boat ramp. “Cripes, can’t believe how tall Bradley’s getting.”

“He’ll be taller than the old man any day now.”

“No doubt.” The newcomer extended a hand. “How the hell are you, Patrick?”

“Just fine, Mr. President,” Patrick McLanahan said. “You?”

“Fine. Bored. No, bored out of my skull,” former President of the United States Kevin Martindale replied. He looked around. “Kind of a bleak place you got here, Muck. It’s not San Diego. It’s not even Vegas.”

“The desert grows on you, especially if you come here in late winter and experience the gradual change in the temperature,” Patrick said.

“You planning on staying?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Patrick said. “I bought a homesite and a hangar at the airpark in Searchlight. Don’t know if I’m ready to build yet. The place is growing. I’m homeschooling Bradley now, but the schools here are getting better, they say, as more and more folks move to the area.”

“And Jon Masters is just a little ways up Highway 95.”

“Yeah, and he bugs me just about every day to come work for him, but I’m not sure,” Patrick admitted.

“That hotshot astronaut Hunter Noble signed up with him. I heard he’s a vice president already. But I’m sure they’ll make a place for you if you want it.”

“Been there, done that.”

“There’s another thing that we’ve both done before, Patrick,” Martindale said.

“I figured you’d be showing up sooner or later about that.”

“You have the Tin Men and the CIDs, don’t you?”

“The what?”

“You’re a horrible liar,” Martindale said with a laugh.

“Is there any use trying to lie? I’m sure your intelligence network is good…”

“As good as the one you’ve reportedly built? I doubt it. I doubt it very much,” the former President said. “Listen, my friend, you’re still needed. The country needs you. I need you. Besides, the stuff you have stashed away is government property. You can’t keep it.” Patrick gave him a direct glance — just a fleeting one, but the meaning was loud and clear. “Okay, you probably can keep it, but you shouldn’t just squirrel it away. You can do an awful lot of good with it.” Patrick said nothing. Martindale took off his sunglasses and wiped them with a shirttail. “Heard the latest about Persia?”

“About the new president being assassinated?”

“When that hits the news the entire Middle East will go bonkers again, and Mohtaz will re-emerge from whatever rock he crawled under when the Russians left and claim the presidency again. The people want Queen Azar to take control of the government until new elections can be held, but she insists the prime minister, Noshahr, take charge.”

“She’s right.”

“Noshahr’s a bureaucrat, a bean counter. He can’t run the country. Azar or Buzhazi should take charge under emergency authority until elections are held.”

“He’ll be fine, sir. If he’s not, Azar will go to Parliament and recommend someone else. Buzhazi flat out won’t do it.”

“You think she’ll ask Saqqez, the deputy prime minister?”

“I hope not. He’s taken too many trips to Moscow to suit me.”

Martindale nodded knowingly. “I knew you were keeping tabs on this stuff,” he said. “Speaking of Moscow — what do you think about that replacement for Zevitin, Igor Truznyev, the former FSB chief?”

“He’s a bloodthirsty goon,” Patrick said. “He’s doing a quiet little purge out there. The word is Hedrov will be next to be ‘reassigned’ to Siberia.”

Martindale smiled and nodded. “Even I haven’t heard that one yet, Patrick!” he said excitedly. “Thanks for the tip. I owe you one.”

“Don’t mention it, sir.”

“Too bad about Zevitin, huh?” Martindale commented. “Unfortunate skiing accident, they said. That tree jumped out from nowhere and nearly took his head off, I hear. Poor bastard. Have you heard anything else about that?” Patrick had no comment. “Funny about that happening right around the same time Buzhazi attacks Mashhad and you come back from Armstrong all of a sudden. I guess strange things do happen in threes, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yeah. Sure they do.” Martindale put an arm around Patrick’s shoulders. “You see, my friend, you can’t leave the biz behind,” he said. “It’s in your blood. I can name a couple hundred hot spots in the world and you’ll tell me something interesting about each one.”

“Sir, I’m not interested in—”

“Mongolia,” Martindale interjected. He smiled when he saw Patrick’s eyes light up. “Aha, you know something. What is it?”

“I heard General Dorjiyn will be replaced as chief of staff because he’s too chummy with the United States,” Patrick said.

“So now he can run for president, right?”

“No, because he was born in Inner Mongolia — China — and proclaimed his allegiance to Beijing as a young officer,” Patrick said. “But his son will run.”

Martindale slapped his hands together. “Damn, I forgot about Myren Dorjiyn…!”

“Muren.”

“Muren. Right. He graduated from Berkeley two years ago with a master’s degree, right?”

“Double doctorate. Economics and government.”

Martindale nodded, pleased that Patrick passed the two little tests he had given him. “See? I knew you were keeping up on this stuff!” Martindale exclaimed happily. “Come on back, Patrick. Let’s join forces again. We’ll set this world on fire.”

Patrick smiled, then looked out at his son fishing and said, “I’ll see you around, Mr. President,” and walked out to join his son in the warm spring morning.

Thanks to fellow author Debbie Macomber and her husband, Wayne, for their generosity.

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