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The next day, the family flew across the North American continent in Air Force Two. They landed in Seattle, and a smaller plane took them to MCP's chalet in the Cascades Mountains. Meredith was pregnant again, and never looked lovelier.
Louis wanted to spend a day or two with her in blissful enjoyment before all hell broke loose—before he could no longer delay acting on the Taunton papers and the recording. In his private office upstairs, he had a little inner sanctum. It was a converted meeting room that could hold a dozen persons at a long table. He'd had the table removed and a desk put in. There was a beautiful gray granite fireplace in one corner with a beveled chimney flue, and a large plate glass window to the left of that, which afforded a breathtaking view of the mountains and of the valleys below. Aside from the desk, the only furniture was a half-empty bookcase with old law books and a few odds and ends. From the cabinet below the bookcase, Louis took a velvet-lined case with a well-oiled .38 Magnum Smith and Wesson and a spare cylinder of bullets. He wouldn't need the spare. One bullet would be enough. He set the case on the table. From a liquor cabinet outside, he brought a bottle of excellent scotch whiskey, and a glass. Locking himself in, he opened the case and looked at the gun inside. He did not pour himself his first shot—yet. Drenched with sweat, shaking, he took a long hot shower, dressed, and rejoined his family. He went through this ritual several times that week, but each time stopped short of starting on the bottle.
Louis and his family played on the snowy slopes around the MCP chalet. Meredith’s cheeks glowed and she was full of energy. She was eating well, and she had stamina. In a snowball fight, she actually made him cry uncle. When he was out of breath, she was still running circles in the snow. Louis Jr., Annie, and Albert yelled as they tried to catch their mother.
A couple of times she asked: “Are you okay, Louie? Are you okay, sweetheart? Is something bothering you?” and he’d deny it each time. Then she’d look hurt, and he’d comfort her. He smothered her with cocoa and love and love making.
“You are a real romeo,” she said laughing one time as he pulled away from her.
“I’ve got it all under control again for the first time in a long time, that’s why.”
Louis and his family stood sight-seeing on the helipad, watching the black ocean of an Arctic storm wheel in. Dark gray snow clouds rolled silently across a brilliant tapestry of stars. Fog reached the helipad and crept around their ankles. The temperature dropped a few degrees, and the fog was replaced by thick, whirling snow flakes. The Cardozas went inside.
Louis sat with his family by the roaring fire. He held Meredith in his arms, while Louis Jr. demonstrated his guitar playing skills and Annie fought with Albert. To tame the situation, Louis laid out a Monopoly game from the Ready Room downstairs, and for several hours the family lost themselves in a game. Louis Jr. and Meredith were the last ones in the game, until Meredith landed on Boardwalk, where Louis Jr. cleaned her out.
For two and a half wonderful days, Louis almost forgot the hell that was Washington—except when he withdrew to his private office, telling Meredith he needed time to think. Her frowning, thoughtful glances told him she was halfway on to him. She already knew what a crook Robert Lee Hamilton was. She just had no idea in how much hot water everyone around Hamilton was.
4:30 p.m. The sun, a swollen marble wrapped in frosty breath, winked out. The baby blue sky turned black, speckled with a million points of light. There were so many stars that Louis could not recognize any of the constellations. It seemed as if he were a million light years from home—and for all that he felt, he might as well be.
High in the Cascades Mountains, Bryson Airfield had gotten a foot of new snow during the past 24 hours. As long as the Vice President was in town, the airfield had to be kept open. As long as it snowed, a special Air Force detachment kept snowplows, sanding trucks, and hummers running up and down the main runway. The Vice President’s twin-engine jet sat in a hangar awaiting his command while he spent what was supposed to be a two-week winter vacation with his wife and children at the Middle Class Party’s secure chalet.
Five p.m. At Bryson Airfield, argon aviation lamps sketched lines of light across the valley floor, growing more noticeable as night fell. High above the airfield, cliffs towered from horizon to horizon, topped by pine forest.
At a point on the edge of the cliffs, the Middle Class Party’s chalet glowed like a cozy yellow lantern. The chalet’s upper floors gave the illusion of being airy and light, though composed of bullet-proof glass, and of missile-deflecting steel beams made to look like wood. The lower structure was an undisguised concrete redoubt anchored in mountain granite, capable of sustaining a small army of Secret Service personnel and military advisors. All day long, wind-borne snow looked like white fog over wooded ridges. Snowflakes plummeted past mountain walls, past pines at the edges of cliffs, down into a black abyss, into valleys that were not only the lair of wolf and bear, but also of humans with a relentless hatred of the Government—and the means to strike. In the concrete redoubt, narrow slits covered in thick glass formed observation windows. Telescopes oscillated back and forth all day and night, sending streams of visual data to the chalet’s central data processing unit, where pattern recognition engines churned the pixels at multigigahertz clock speeds, looking for predetermined threat patterns—anything from an incoming missile to a human figure approaching from where it shouldn’t. On top of the chalet, by the helipad, in a glass cube, were two other lookouts—human, with powerful wide-field binoculars, backing up the machines.
In the chalet sat the Vice President. He had told his wife he needed privacy upstairs. He'd kissed them all good-bye and locked himself into his office and further locked himself into the private room. Cranking the top off the bottle with a determined twist, he sat down and poured himself a shot. He downed it, and exhaled a fiery, peppery breath. His eyes teared as he overlooked the beauty of mountains and valleys with their drifting clouds of frosty air. Downing his second shot, he unlatched the case at his elbow.
5:30 p.m. As evening deepened into night, the snow storm passed by leaving blanketed and stunned silence under a night sky.
Louis downed a third shot, and then a fourth. He began to feel the numbing effects of the scotch. He took out the gun, surprised at how heavy it felt. He touched the glint, the hardness, of its dully burnished surfaces as if it were hot rather than cold.
He downed a fifth shot and tested the hammer mechanism by lightly cocking it back a quarter inch with his thumb. He felt the trigger stir against the tip-pad of his index finger as if it were eager to shoot, the way a fine horse is coiled like a spring and eager to bolt on a run. It was a fine weapon, this.
Louis poured himself a sixth and last shot. Six in the glass, six in the cylinder. It seemed appropriate, especially since the six o'clock hour was approaching—and there was that Biblical thing about 666, who turned out to be his boss. It was time to put an end to his private hell.
Outside, someplace, he heard the piping sound of a small child laughing at play. Glass halfway to his mouth, Louis paused. The child's voice was like that of an angel. Then he heard Meredith calling to the child in that voice of hers, mellow like melted butter pouring over pancakes, with a laugh built in like sunlight trapped in a jar of honey. The angels were telling him something.
6:00 p.m. The storm outside had died away. Louis stared through the second-story office window across a pristine landscape of pine forests and rugged mountains smothered in snow. Like the passing of the storm, his anguish evaporated. He pushed the full glass aside and closed the gun case with the weapon shut inside like Gabriel's trumpet deferred.
He spoke into a collar com button, asking his aides to order a jet from Bryson to Seattle, and thence Air Force Two to Washington D.C. within the hour. He ordered a service of strong coffee. The storm had passed.
6:30 p.m. The storm blew away into Idaho and points east. The clear night air was crisp and still like ice water. A full moon’s mercurial light glowed on snowy mountain peaks which in turn illumined surly cloud bottoms. About nine p.m., the helipad atop the chalet received a phone call from the Secret Service chief special agent on station. The Vice President wanted to fly out immediately. The helipad control center replied that the helicopter would be grounded for several hours because water had gotten into the fuel. Could another chopper be flown up from Bryson, the chief special agent asked. No, was the reply, because there was only one helipad, and the disabled chopper sat on that. Next, the chief agent called the motor pool. Yes, he was told, two vans would be available immediately. It was five miles to Bryson by the winding, switchback road, which could be done in less than hour, provided the road were plowed.
In a sky the color of blue ink, a few stars seemed dipped in silver and left to float. A stray snowflake drifted down, but the rug of clouds was moving east. From the chalet’s garage, a county snowplowing truck started down the winding road to the airport.
7:00 p.m. A plow scraped as the truck crawled along, piling snow on top of older snow to one side, while the sander left circles of grit on the road. The truck’s headlights and red warning lights looked lost amid mountains of piled snow.
7:30 p.m. Louis finished speaking with Meredith in their family quarters, telling her as much as he could of the situation. She was visibly shaken, but determined not to reveal her fear to the children, who played in another room. “Do you want us to come with you?”
“No,” he said. “You’ll be safe here. I want you to stay here the whole week. By then this will be over one way or the other, and we can return to Montecito.”
He returned alone to his office, locked the door, turned on a microphone, and walked to the window. Looking at the clear black sky, he wished it would snow again. He remembered snow sleeting down silently and constantly like a cosmic morphine, and he wished time would stand still. But it didn’t, and he began to speak. His hands were cold, and trembled as he held the mike. “Mr. President, I must speak with you about a matter so grave that I am going to fly out from Bryson tonight to see you. I cannot call ahead because I don’t know who is listening. I am going to forward this message to my personal computer in Washington so that I can be sure it’s there. I’m also going to carry the message on disk in my pocket. We must talk tomorrow. It’s about the Second Constitutional Convention, or CON2. I have definite and provable knowledge there is a grave conspiracy in the air, and I have documentation about it, plus a list of names of men who are involved. These men must be watched closely. And, Cliff, the coming constitutional convention must be stopped. I know you all see me as a defector, and we both understand the atmosphere. That is not important anymore. This is not about my party or yours. This is about the country, and it’s very serious.” He finished the message and forwarded the file to himself at Observatory Circle.
As Louis sat on the couch putting on his winter boots and ski parka, there was a knock on the door. “Come in!” he shouted in a fresh voice.
Special Agent Archie Cooper of the Secret Service stepped inside, holding an Ablass 414 Spider assault rifle pointing up, the frame-only stock resting on his hip. He wore an olive green wood watch cap, and white winter warfare camo and gear. “We’re ready, Mr. Vice President.”
No more time to waste. Louis zipped up his heat-retentive middle garments, and pulled white camouflage overall over those. “Let’s go.”
As they rattled down the huge circular staircase into the main lobby, Archie said: “I’ve got two vans out front and two six person details including myself. We are fully armed and ready to roll, Sir. Airport’s open, and the Lear Tandem is being warmed up on the runway.”
“Good work, Archie. Keep slugging.”
“We’ll wait for you under the portico, Sir.” Cooper clomped out the door, the assault rifle looking toy-like against his long frame.
Meredith, wearing jeans, a sweater, and jogging shoes—she’d primped a little, knowing she’d be seen, bless her—ran out holding something. “Honey, your hat!” She wrinkled her nose. "You smell like a distillery." She pulled the wool watch cap down and zipped his overalls up. He kissed her passionately, then hugged Louis Jr. and Annie. Albert was already in bed, asleep, and Louis took the time to go plant a kiss on his sleeping son. Then he ordered the two older ones: “Go to bed, kids. I’ll see you in a few days. Have fun sledding in the morning.”
“Yay Daddy!” the children said clapping. “We’ll miss you. We love you.”
Meredith gave him a desperately tight hug and whispered through gritted teeth: “Please be careful, darling.”
He squeezed her and whispered: “I will.”
In the horseshoe drive stood the two vans to take him back down to civilization. A dozen Secret Service men and women waited for him, dressed similarly to Archie. Looped over their snowsuits were added nylon ammo belts and quick-loader ammo cylinders. They carried assault rifles with night scopes and flash suppressors. Running engines blew milky vapor from trembling tail pipes.
Archie stepped close. “We go in Van Two, Sir.”
“Okay.” He climbed up into the spacious van, knowing it was the shell game—nobody must know until the last minute which vehicle the VIP would be in.
7:50 p.m. The ride down was slow but smooth, in contrast with the numbness and chaos in Louis’s mind. Snow muffled bumps in the road. The van smelled of machine oil, upholstery, leather, aftershave. It was warm and dark with glowing green and amber dash displays. Layers of plowed snow formed walls on either side of the narrow road. Louis sat in the middle seat of the rear van, flanked on all sides by agents. Archie sat in the other aisle, his rifle between his knees. His eyes were on the road behind, scanning for any signs of danger.
The agents around Louis kept a wary watch. The heater was on, and Louis was a little drowsy now from all of his frenzied deliberation. He felt worn out from worry, and was glad this would not go on much longer.
It was quiet in the van as it crunched gently down the dark slope, blackness enveloping them on the sides as the cones of the headlights probed on ahead.
The red lights of the van in front flicked on and off as the driver feathered his brakes on slippery spots.
8:01 p.m. Suddenly, Louis was stunned by a bang and a flash on the road.
“Rocket!” shouted an agent.
“Mountain men!” Louis heard Archie yell into his lapel com. “Base! Base! We’re under attack!”
Louis cringed amid a rattle of gunfire.
Louis heard another bang, saw a flash as a second rocket found its mark and the front van exploded. Louis’s eardrums rang, and his head felt as though he’d been punched. In a daze, in a dream, he noticed the agents snap into blurring motion around him. One agent jumped to his feet, Colt AR-115 in the air. Another agent sprang forward, speaking into his collar button. Several agents clicked the safeties off on their assault guns and formed a wall crouching around Louis. Archie stood towering above them, shouting orders, holding his assault rifle ready. “Get down, Sir. Get these doors open, on the double. Let’s all bail out.”
All around, it rained dark, heavy objects that turned out to be car parts, guns, shoes...
Archie kicked open the door and jumped outside, swallowed up by the darkness. “Come on!” he yelled to Louis.
A rear half-axle from the front van, with the wheel and the tire still attached, came down and hit Archie in the back. He went down fast, eyes closed, and did not stir.
As in a dream, Louis felt the cold coming in.
Streams of assault rifle bullets made pinging noises as they streamed into the vehicle from all sides, even through the thin metal skin.
Louis tried to move, but he couldn’t. He felt the weight of four or five dead agents pinning him down. He could hardly breathe.
Louis heard a shouted command, everything got very still.
The air smelled sweet and cold, like a candy made of fresh snow. That was how winter had smelled during his childhood in the Laguna Mountains. It was a smell as wonderful as freshly baked bread.
Figures in white snow suits advanced out of the forest. With their helmets under white covers, and black, round goggle lenses, they resembled aliens. Their boots crunched on the sanded snow.
The air began to smell of things burning. Of gun powder. Of singed flesh.
An owl hooted in the surrounding pine forests and mountains.
Louis breathed peppery gunsmoke as he lay with his cheek on the freezing cold steel floor. He still could not move. He realized that he must have taken several bullets in the lower spine, because he had no feeling from the waist down. And the warmth on his face was the fresh blood of the dead men on top of him flowing together in a metallic, sticky river, over Louis’s cheek, down his nose, and onto the metal floor where small droplets began to haze over in freezing.
Louis’s left eye seemed to be hazing over, also, and his right eye felt blurry. He was able to focus about a foot away on a pair of black combat boots that stood on the gleaming, scuffed floor of the van.
Louis saw snow melting on scuffed toes, making tiny puddles amid the grit. The owner of the boots squatted down. The man wore white, an angel of death. His eyeglasses glittered and he smiled with a baby face. "Time."
Louis nodded as he looked into the muzzle of an assault rifle. So the angels had only given him a brief reprieve—but he was grateful. He knew that now for him the universe was a space exactly as big as the span between his head and that muzzle. It was a universe whose age could be expressed in seconds, free now of the objects and energies that cluttered space and time in larger universes. The man who hunched aiming, squeezing the trigger, looked surprisingly young, like a preppy law school grad with a wide friendly smile, prematurely thinning blond hair, and steel rimmed glasses.
Louis’s thoughts turned to God, then wandered to Meredith, and Louis Jr., and Annie, and Albert. They smiled at him like a family portrait. He was smiling when the assault rifle bucked and the muzzle flashed. He looked down at his wrist and saw his watch. It was the last thing he saw. 8:09 p.m. How time flew past—already it was a half hour since he'd seen his wife and children. He'd never see them again, and that was his only cause of sadness now. The light in his head went nova before everything collapsed into nothingness.
Snowy surfaces flickered red and yellow as the vans burned, each twisted chassis with a wheel or two still attached. Rubber, upholstery, clothing, and bodies soaked with oil and gasoline burned. Vietnam War era rifles stopped popping like strings of firecrackers, leaving the silent air acrid with gunsmoke. Shadowy men in black goggles and white winter camouflage moved off into the wilderness, swallowed up just as mysteriously as they had appeared. Every detail seemed authentic, pointing to mountain men and garage militias, mimicking their hatred of Arabs, Jews, Feminists, Catholics, Evolutionists, and other agents of the U.N. who were taking over America.
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