The Generals of October

by John T. Cullen

Overview

The Generals of October--a political suspense thriller centered on two young Army officers who uncover a plot to seize power in the U.S.--anticipates the worst U.S. crisis since the Civil War. And it’s right around the corner, as vivid as tomorrow’s scary headlines.

This is not some wild, imaginary tale. There is a ticking time bomb in the U.S. Constitution, called Article V, which one day soon will spawn a nightmare that has been more than two centuries in the making.

Young Army officers David Gordon and Victoria ‘Tory’ Breen must unravel a conspiracy of the treasonous Hotel Generals, who plan to hijack the Second Constitutional Convention (CON2). David and Tory must bring together the forces of tradition and reason—and help restore the original and true U.S. Constitution.

Cpt. David Gordon is on a military intelligence mission, under cover as an Inspector General officer. Lt. Tory Breen is Executive Officer of the most ultra-secret military computer operations unit in the nation’s capital. As prelude to a coup, her unit is highjacked by military extremists for a take-over of the United States, using CON2 as a Trojan Horse. One of her chief NCOs disappears—and may be brutally murdered by the extremist commandos of a long-dormant Government of Occupation reserve unit. Tory and David are sucked into the undercurrent of an investigation that leads to the coup plotters. The conspiracy bears the code name Operation Ivory Baton—and an image of Napoleon I, astride a horse, waving his imperial baton.

Such U. S. military organizations are real. They exist in a gray network of shadowy, little-known reserve units. They were originally intended for U.S. forces occupying conquered foreign nations, like Germany after Hitler, but now they are employed to help the military govern a post-Constitutional U.S.

Along the way, David and Tory fall in love. If their passionate but scattered wartime romance is to thrive, they must solve a terrible personal secret from her past life.

This is the first book (fiction or nonfiction) to really think through a lot of the major issues. The government will be crippled overnight as the Constitution is so weakened as to be constructively suspended. The delegates will have a form of diplomatic immunity, putting them above the law (which is based on the old, crippled Constitution), and run wild. And then there are the Generals of October, who restore order by forcing their own unbending, tyrannical document on a nation exhausted by civil war.

Several leading law school libraries have accepted this book for their reference collections--a rare honor for a work of fiction that hits home and is the most important thriller since Seven Days in May and The Manchurian Candidate.

The time for CON2 is rapidly approaching, given the current climate of incivility, partisan destructiveness, and media brawling. The Generals of October is both a rousing, entertaining thriller, and a cautionary tale. The recipe for doom is right there, enshrined in the U.S. national contract.

Can today’s shallow, self-interested politicians really do better than the Framing Fathers who created our fundamental national document during the (First) Constitutional Convention, in Philadelphia, during the long hot summer of 1787?

Product Details

BN ID:	2940011241192
Publisher:	Clocktower Books
Publication date:	02/27/2011
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	555 KB

About the Author

John T. Cullen is a San Diego author of both fiction and nonfiction. He lives with his wife, son, and cat in the 1870s town of Grantville, within San Diego city limits. Find more information at his author website (www.johntcullen.com). His nonfiction specialties include history and science writing. With the nonfiction book Dead Move: Kate Morgan and the Haunting Mystery of Coronado (2008) he became the first researcher to plausibly explain the 1892 true crime at the Hotel del Coronado, which gave rise to one of the nation's premier ghost legends (erroneously called that of Kate Morgan). More on this below. He is the author of an acclaimed virtual tour of ancient Rome, titled A Walk in Ancient Rome (first authorized edition due out 2015 from Clocktower Books). His fiction includes historical (The Spy's Daughter, Lethal Journey) and suspense thrillers (Doctor Night, Vanished Flight 777). His political thriller Autumn of the Republic is a thriller and thought experiment based on the terrifying premise: "What if we invoked Article V of the U.S. Constitution and called a Second Constitutional Convention (CON2) to revise or even discard the 1787 Constitution?" His novel, written as an entertaining thriller, is the first book to actually think through many of the details and ramifications; it has been adopted by several major university law school libraries as hypothetical reference material. Likewise, his acclaimed June 2014 novel Vanished Flight 777 is a thriller and thought experiment based on the premise that Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 may not have crashed into the Indian Ocean, but was hijacked by Islamic terrorists, is being weaponized, and will be used in a horrifying attack that may trump those of 11 September 2001. Vanished Flight 777 is currently on an official recommended reading list for U.S. Navy personnel (Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy's reading list) and is being considered for inclusion in other military and intelligence reading lists. He is recognized as an early pioneer in online science fiction publishing, both for his writing and publishing under the pseudonym John Argo, and for editing and publishing the acclaimed pioneering online speculative fiction magazine Deep Outside SFFH, later Far Sector SFFH (1998-2007). John T. Cullen is becoming known for his ground-breaking discoveries about the 1892 true crime at the Hotel del Coronado near San Diego. Like the Mission, this Hotel and Resort is a U.S. National Landmark. John is the first person to plausibly explain the ghost legend associated with the violent and mysterious death of the Beautiful Stranger at the hotel, thus solving a cold case well over a century old, even after it had been laid to a very uncertain and dubious rest. The author followed his true crime analysis with a noir period novel (Lethal Journey) that is very closely based on the true analysis in Dead Move. As a history writer and a transplanted European (born a U.S. citizen), John T. Cullen is intrigued by the venerable history of his U.S. home area. Humans have inhabited the San Diego region for well over 12,000 years. Europeans discovered the great natural harbor in 1542, calling it San Miguel. The San Diego name was given in 1602 by another Iberian explorer. Grantville was founded in the 1870s as a U.S. Civil War veterans' retirement town with its own mayor and post office. It was until the 1950s located among the dairy farms of Mission Valley near 1769's la Misión San Diego de Alcalá, (relocated from the Presidio area to Grantville in 1774). Grantville was swallowed up in the sprawling post-World War II expansion of San Diego and Southern California. The mission area, including central fountain amid then-ruins, is described in Richard Henry Dana's 1836 Two Years Before The Mast.

Read an Excerpt

* * * *Article V:

"The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress..."

* * * *

Chapter 1

U.S. Vice President Louis Cardoza and the man licensed to kill him actually once came within 25 feet of each other. This happened at a reception in the White House, a year before the option needed to be exercised.

There was nothing accidental about this near-meeting.

It was a cold, calculated exercise by the Second Service, the shadowy intelligence arm of the equally shadowy government-in-waiting in Washington, to show that they could penetrate what they called the Rots at any level, any time, at will.

A preppy-dressing man of 35, Cover had a bland, unmemorable youthful face that could belong to any serious but impish graduate student, and could blossom into a warm if somehow distracted grin. His blond hair was cut short around the ears, and was already receding from his bulbous temple ridges. Only the thinning hair, a certain slouch when he relaxed, and hard lines around his eyes, gave away his real age. He preferred to wear custom eyeglasses with thin steel rims, because he could kill a man with them if all else failed.

At areception in the East Room for diplomats and their wives, Cover posed as a Swedish correspondent. The Swedes were naive and open, and he slipped in among their party as they left their embassy for a row of limos. The Ambassador's wife wore a leather coat and smelled of a faint, expensive violet perfume. Cover hovered by her side, speaking sufficient Swedish to impress her. When the Ambassador noticed, Cover smiled disarmingly, and the man nodded and smiled back with a bit of a confused look--was this an old friend whose name would come back to him? Cover nodded and smiled, and the Ambassador smiled back.

At the reception, Cover held a sturdy saucer in one hand and a steaming coffee cup in the other. A waitress in black, with white apron, offered miniature blintzes from a silver tray, and Cover accepted one. Behind the thin lenses, his eyes twinkled cornflower blue, and his cheeks dimpled in a smile. The woman gave him a lingering look of appreciation before moving on.

Cover sized up his man. The Vice President, Louis Cardoza, was a former boxer. Light-skinned for a Mexican-American, and sandy-haired with gray sidewalls at 48, Cardoza was movie-star handsome. Cardoza's beautiful wife stayed by his side, a smallish brunette from immense old Anglo wealth, with a model's picture-perfect face. She looked stunning in a little black dress that complemented her tanned, firm breasts and well-exercised thighs. Cover could easily understand the charm these people had upon a nation mired in the Second World Depression, with all its poverty, homelessness, crime, and despair. A nation waking up from nearly 200 years of uninterrupted rule by a two-party cabal that used billions of dollars of taxpayer money as a reelection slush fund each year--roads to nowhere, bridges over nothing, ships the Navy didn't need, planes the Air Force didn't want, to bring tax dollars to one's district, and get votes--grand larceny, felony theft in Cover's dictionary. He was reminded of the Romanovs--300 years in power, and nobody had believed there was any other way to rule the country. Soon, America would awaken from its long sleep.

Cover was a moral man. There was a job to do. Actually, these people were so pretty, he hoped they would not get in the way, because then he'd have to do fearsome things to them.

Wiping sugar dust from his lips as Louis Cardoza moved within 25 feet of him, Cover beamed. The Secret Service Rots hovering out of earshot from their man had no idea the Second Service was at all times moving among them, as Cover's ideological arch-enemy Chairman Mao had said, 'as a fish swims in the sea.'

One of them even brushed Cover's sleeve, and mumbled, "Excuse me."

Cover shrugged matter-of-factly, waving a napkin, and said: "think nothing of it."

A year passed.

* * * *

Chapter 2

Vice President Louis Cardoza received a visitor late one December evening at the Vice President's House on Observatory Circle in Washington, D.C. The Secret Service detail did not detain the visitor long: Senator Donald Taunton, M-Va (Middle Class Party, Virginia). Taunton was an important committee Chairman. The Senator got out of his car and lumbered through the early dusting of snow on the asphalt driveway. Snow glittered yellow-orange under street lamps.

Meredith Cardoza and the children were at home--at the moment, the house was in an uproar because the Cardozas were getting ready for their annual Christmas vacation in the Cascades Mountains, courtesy the Middle Class Party. Party founder Robert Lee Hamilton had donated a large chalet there on private land to the Party Steering Committee, to be used for VIP vacations and various planning functions.

At three p.m., Senator Taunton rolled up in his black limousine. Meredith was chasing around the house after one or another of the children while maids scurried about and butler-types carried suitcases down into the garage.

Louis, wearing sweats and thick fur slippers, stepped down into the entrance way wiping his hands on a kitchen towel. "Oh, Senator. I am just making applesauce pancakes at my daughter's demand." He noticed that Taunton looked tense.

"We need to talk, Louie." Taunton was a heavy set 70ish man with straight white hair that hung just over his ears without seeming messy or too long. As always, he wore conservative clothes--a dark suit and a white shirt, neither of which seemed to fit very well, and a dark red necktie.

"Of course." Louis led him upstairs into his small library on the second floor. He waited until Taunton was inside before closing the thick, sound-proof door.

"I know this is unexpected," Taunton said, shifting his bulk uncomfortably in a large, ugly brown leatherette easy chair that Louis hated and never used because it made his skin sticky.

"Not at all, Senator. I appreciate your visit." He sat down and waited.

It became clear after a minute that Taunton was under some great stress. His skin was flushed, his breathing was thick, his eyes seemed wide and glazed.

"Let me get you some water, Senator."

"Yes, please."

Louis felt puzzled as he stepped to the wet bar, went through the motions, and handed a clean glass full of ice cubes and water, veiled in condensation, to Taunton. He noticed Taunton's hands trembled as he coaxed a sip to his mouth.

Taunton nearly dropped the glass. He set it down abruptly and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "Well, I'd better get to the point of my visit."

Louis plopped into his chair. "Take your time."

"There isn't time." Taunton took a pair of heavy-rimmed glasses from his inside suit pocket. He fumbled with the glasses, opened them, propped them on his nose. "You have to do something." He pulled some folded papers from his other inside suit pocket. A small recording disk fell out and rolled across the carpet.

"You keep that," Taunton said sharply. "It's priceless information, but only if you act in time."

"Senator, this is very puzzling." Louis scooped up the silvery plastic disk.

"I know. Look at these papers." He extended the oft-folded sheets to Louis--three of yellow legal pad paper, three of standard letter size laser printout paper.

Louis glanced at the documents, some written, some typed. "And this is--?"

Taunton stirred in jerky motions, unable to settle down. "Important enough, I think, that you go patch things up with your old party and get to the President. I think you're the only one who might really make an impression on him. He likes you even if his party has you roasting slowly on a spit." Having spoken, the Senator fell back in a tired slump.

Louis read the documents slowly, and sat gaping as their significance became apparent to him. "I have to say I agree with you, Senator," he said after a long silence.

Taunton said: "I envy you, because you have been kept in the dark. You're not part of this. I'm in over my head, and I didn't realize how serious this was until I found out that I've outlived my usefulness. Hamilton's not giving me another term. I'm out the door like a worn out shoe, and it makes me pretty bitter. But I'm beyond that now." He pointed to the documents. "I got that through another member of a committee I belong to. My source is unimportant, because he was killed in a car crash this morning, and I don't know if it was an accident."

Louis gasped. "Senator, are we down to--?"

Taunton nodded funereally. "I'm afraid it's come to that."

"Then it is the moment truth," Louis said, setting his apron aside. Just as quickly he picked it up again and dabbed at the sweat on his forehead. He looked at the disk. "Those are the names?"

"All of them," Taunton whispered. "Every one of the top players."

"Geez." Louis felt something icy in his gut.

"Louie," Taunton wheezed, "this is where you show your true colors."

Louis nodded. "I thought I had it all under control. Turns out I was riding a tiger and didn't realize..." He and the President were a split ticket, from opposing parties. He'd been isolated like a cyst within this Administration, which had gone its own way on most things.

Taunton chuckled darkly. "Robert Lee Hamilton has kept us all walking into walls for too long." He referred to the founder and guiding light of the Middle Class Party, which had propelled Cliff Bradley into the Presidency. Louis was a New Democrat, and an uneasy fit the MCP's bridge between Old Conservatives and Moderate Republicans.

"What will be the tipping point?" Louis asked.

"The Constitutional Convention, CON2, next year. First one was in 1787, and there hasn't been one since. Too risky. It's allowed per Article V, but theoretically the convention could rewrite the whole thing. The people on that list are going to strike during CON2."

Louis saw it now. "Hamilton put bumbling old Cliff Bradley and me in office. He destroyed the Democratic and Republican Parties so he could put his Middle Class Party in place. But he's had bigger designs all along."

Taunton nodded. "God help us all."

Louis lowered his face into his hands. He'd spent his life building his career to this point. He was the first Hispanic in the Executive, a heartbeat away from the Presidency. The President himself was n elderly caretaker pope with little personality, manipulated by his party and given to spending his days on the golf course. Louis had taken California by storm as a Hispanic, as a Progressive, riding hot on health care issues. He'd quit the Democrats and gone over to MCP at Robert Lee Hamilton's personal invitation. It had been a huge gamble, and it had seemed to pay off, but his term in Washington turned out to be stymied and powerless. It was a pivotal moment, when the Legislative branch seemed to coalesce into the nation's primary power. It was a perverse penalty of the States' Rights delusion. It was a time of decentralization and disorder. The nation was weakened on the international front, Calcuttafied as jobs poured out and debt poured in, as the Third World rose and the First World sank. The ghettoes and Appalachias of the USA blossomed. Ordinary Americans who had not ridden the gravy train of globalism were on the outside, looking in, in their own country, noses pressed to the window while foreigners ate in the best restaurants and held jobs and drove cars fewer Americans could ever hope to own. It was a time, as a leading economist put it, of "back to back serial recessions with no relief in sight." In that chaos, opportunists inevitably rose to the surface. Robert Lee Hamilton had succeeded in destroying the old order, but now it was chillingly apparent MCP and business as usual were not going to be his new order.

"He has used us," Louis said of their party's leader.

"We see him for what he really is," Taunton agreed. "By the time the rest of the country sees it, we may be too late."

There was a silence, in which they could hear the Cardoza children running in the hallways and Meredith's cheery but sharp voice calling them to order.

Louis said: "I will make a decision up at the chalet."

"You do that," Taunton said. He rose and extended his hand. "Good luck, Louie."

Louis rose and shook the old man's hand. "Thank you, Senator, for being my friend."

Taunton smiled grimly. "I know you will make the right decision, Louie, for yourself, your family, and your country. You know what you must do, and I believe you have the courage. Only you have the clout."

"Thanks for coming." Louis absently picked up his apron and saw the Senator out. The Senator was chauffeured out of the Naval Observatory complex in his limousine. Louis waved, then returned to the kitchen to join his children in their laughter and fun.

* * * *

Chapter 3

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. A 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 one could not recognize any of the constellations. They might as well be someplace a million light years from home.

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 an 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 during a siege, if necessary. 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 people 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 multi-gigahertz 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 tired 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, intimidated by 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. He could not tell her everything--only what she needed to know to keep herself and the children safe. She was visibly shaken, but prepared not to reveal her fear to the children, who played in another room. "Do you want us to come with you?"

"No," he said. "For now, you'll be safest 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. They bore nylon ammo belts and quick-loader ammo cylinders looped over their snowsuits. Each carried an assault rifle with night scope and flash suppressor.

Archie stepped close as running engines blew milky vapor from trembling tail pipes. "You and I go in Van Two, Sir."

"Okay." He climbed up into the spacious van. It was a shell game--no one must know, until the last minute, in which vehicle the VIP would be.

* * * *

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 weapon 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 van before him 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 on the floor. 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 outside, dark, heavy objects rained down, 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 gone, came down and hit Archie in the back. He went down with a crunch of bones. His eyes were open, but empty, and he did not stir again.

Dreamlike, Louis felt cold.

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, like a bread or a candy made of fresh snow. That was how winter had smelled during his childhood in the San Bernardino Mountains.

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 incinerating flesh.

An owl hooted in the surrounding pine forests and mountains.

Louis breathed peppery gun smoke 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. Old military assault weapons stopped popping like strings of firecrackers. The still air was acrid with gun smoke. 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.

* * * *

Chapter 4

Senator Donald Taunton, after leaving the Vice President's House on Observatory Circle, had his driver take him home to his ten room house in Falls Church. A widower whose children were grown and long gone from home, Taunton lived alone. He had only his Senate seat to live for, and now they were going to take that from him. It wasn't right, any of what they were doing. Taunton took great care to feed his three little old rheumy-eyed dogs, the oldest of which he'd had for 15 years. He and they grown old together, so to speak. Somehow, old age had come quickly after Taunton's wife had passed. He went about the quiet house, puttering, fussing, making sure all the doors were locked and bolted. He mashed up their dinners in three little bowls, as they'd been accustomed since his wife had still lived. Senator Taunton, wearing slippers on the cold tile floor, and wearing his bathrobe, stood in the kitchen waiting until the little dogs stopped twitching, one by one, and lay still on the kitchen floor. He took his .38 special from the kitchen drawer. He walked through the pantry and into the solarium in back. There, across a wintry landscape, he could see the many stars winking in a clear black sky. He was in no hurry, but in time he brought the gun up and put the muzzle up against the roof of his mouth. He breathed evenly and calmly, almost as if asleep. Staring into the lovely innocence and purity of eternity, he pulled the trigger.

* * * *

Before dawn, U.S. Government police in plain clothes knocked on the door of the Vice President's House at Observatory Circle. Displaying a court order and their badges, they sent distraught Secret Service agents packing, and took over. By noon, the Federal police were still going over the house an inch at a time, looking for evidence. The Vice President's computer had been searched minutely, but not even a shadow or a pointer remained of any of the files the experts thought might be on his hard drive. To be sure, they used magnets to degauss all drives and floppies in the office, and then reformatted what they did not haul away in evidence boxes that would be conveniently stashed and forgotten in some Justice Department basement.

* * * *

The real fly in anyone's ointment was the message Vice President Cardoza had sent to himself before leaving the chalet. The Vice President's message and the attached list of names traveled at light speed from the mountain chalet to a relay in Bryson. There they joined other data routed to a fiber-optic relay station in Missoula, Montana. The storm system had knocked out a power station in Missoula, so amid a burst of other data the e-message streaked to a com satellite rolling 38,000 miles above the earth. The solar powered moonlet mirrored the data down to a transponder in Gander, Newfoundland. Cruising along a fiber-optic stream through New York City, and Roanoke, the memo flashed into the nation's capital and joined other traffic heading into the computer network linking the Vice President's (Admiral's) House to the Government info net. Just as the Vice President stepped out of the chalet and hugged his children, the e-message joined a queue in the local data stream. Somewhere in the capital, a squirrel gnawed on a cable, killing itself and forcing a switch to close. For two seconds, parts of the net browned down, running on minimum power in backup mode. The system did a self-check at a million teraflops per second and made a backup copy of every file, including the Vice President's message, to store in a temporary database. By the time the Vice President stepped into the van outside the chalet, the browndown was over, hardly noticed, little more than a brief flicker of lights. The Washington, D.C. net resumed full operation. The original message streaked into the Vice President's computer in Washington, which would be accidentally, perhaps not, cleared of all files the next morning when Federal police began to shut down the building as part of the investigation. In an underground bunker near the Library of Congress was the city's temporary backup database. There, 125,000 ceramic super-chips, each the size and shape of a piece of writing paper and with its own read/write interfaces, hung stacked pagoda-style amid power and relay buses in mid-air. The atmosphere in the bunker was chilled to near zero degrees to prevent overheating the circuits; it was heavy in nitrogen to prevent condensation. Technicians walking the catwalks wore silvery atmosphere suits with oxygen tanks on their backs. Articulated tubes carried their exhaled breath to a plastic bag worn on the belt; here and there steam leaked from the breathing apparatus. The walls were lined with ceramic composites to block outside electro-magnetic fields. In this eerie and inhuman environment lived the backup copy of the Vice President's memo, amid bank records, personnel files, department store transactions, military purchase receipts, payroll ledgers, every recordable transaction in modern life. The backup of the Vice President's memo sat in a storage chip whose virtual address was Carousel 49, Directory Z.

ALLISON: We have this breaking story from Washington State. The Secret Service confirms Vice President Louis Cardoza has been killed in a savage assault by an unknown private militia, who ambushed a convoy carrying the Vice President from a vacation home to a nearby airfield. Rescuers at the scene say there are at least a dozen bodies--nobody is alive. Hundreds of Federal investigators are heading to the area. U.S. Forest Service rangers at a nearby winter camp said they heard explosions but thought it was part of an avalanche control program by state authorities. The Vice President's widow and three small children are reportedly devastated but composed, and will be flown out of Seattle on Air Force Two bound for Washington. President Cliff Bradley has canceled his appearance at a Middle Class Party fundraiser to meet Mrs. Cardoza. MCP backer Robert Lee Hamilton is preparing a statement of grief and outrage. General Billy Norcross, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has offered assistance by U.S. Armed Forces, but so far the Governor of Washington has only called up a National Guard battalion of helicopter infantry trained for mountain rescues. We will keep you updated on this breaking story.

* * * *

Chapter 5

Nearly a year passed--winter, spring, and summer.

Late on a lazy Sunday afternoon on the cusp between summer and fall, Captain David Gordon, 30, crossed a tree-lined street in Alexandria, Virginia. The Little River subdivision had in recent months blossomed with short-term leases for military officers, paid for by the Government as the Second Constitutional Convention got underway. David's condo was a few blocks from where he now walked. He carried a bottle of wine, a handful of long-stemmed red roses, and a crisp new white plastic throw-disk. He wore a crisply ironed white shirt with rolled up sleeves; light blue jeans; and mahogany loafers. As he walked in that evening sunlight, time seemed to stand still and it seemed to take forever to cross the street. The humid heat of Washington summer had finally collapsed in a brisk, windy autumn. Though a distant plume of smoke rose from some street fight in Virginia, the massive presence of tens of thousands of troops was keeping the nation's capital quiet as if no depression, no poverty, no violence, no calls for revolution were sweeping the land. The trees were turning cathedral colors, and rustling as if filled with important messages. David smiled at those chatterboxes. What could a bunch of leaves have to say to each other? Then again, they were old leaves, wise leaves, dying leaves, and perhaps he'd better listen to their gossip.

Parked cars lined the sidewalks, and not a vehicle seemed to be moving anywhere. The air was smoky with barbecue. The street, still warm and smelling of tar, seemed to point straight into the huge sun that quivered yolk-like in a reddish haze on the city horizon.

Hard to believe that CON2 had already been underway for two weeks, and there were serious signs of chaos as the 1,000 delegates disagreed more and more on the simplest points. Congress, which had called the convention after receiving the mandate from two thirds of the state legislatures, now sat helplessly by while its creation threatened to go amok. Neither the Judicial or Executive Branches had any more power than the Legislative to intervene. And the delegates had full immunity from prosecution for their actions.

Hard to believe all that turmoil, David thought, on a sweetly pensive day like this. He passed a group of young officers playing football, barefoot and shirtless, on a lawn. He walked through a long shady hallway ("The Palms," a sign read, "Condos 2-3-4 BR/Good Rates") and rang a doorbell.

"Why hello there," said the smallish blonde who opened the door--Maxie! Her condo contained shoulder to shoulder people laughing, talking, holding drinks, yet she seemed to have waited only for him. But it was an illusion, a shared gesture, the remembrance of a special relationship. She'd been his nurse nearly two years earlier after he'd had a parachute accident. It had been the low point in his life. Recently divorced from moody and artistic Kristy, with whom he'd had little in common, he seemed to run a streak of bad luck. The accident had cost him his career as a combat arms officer, but as a West Point graduate he'd been offered this mysterious temporary duty with the electrically charged political circus in Washington, the Second Constitutional Convention. He'd had a brief crush on Maxie, but she was looking for a wealthy man to suit her parents' dreams for her. She kept saving herself for some wealthy guy who'd please her family but neglect or even abuse her. Lovable, but unreachable, she was now just a dear old friend. Times were getting better in David's life. He fondly remembered her kindness and support. He wouldn't stay at her party long--just enough to renew his acquaintance. She was so spunky, though, that he couldn't really feel sorry for her. She'd always come out on top, at least in matters other than love. He was glad to see her. "I told you I'd bring that throw-disk."

"Come in, I'm glad you came, the throw-disk is great, oh look at the wine, the roses are so-o-o lovely, thank you." She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. Briefly he held her slight, firm frame. She wore a white summer dress, and he smelled a subtle citrus perfume on her bare back. She was not sweating at all despite the population problem between there and the refrigerator. "You did promise," she said cradling the wine and the roses, "and you are a man true to your word."

"And the throw-disk."

"Close the door. Yes, and the throw-disk. We'll all throw it later. Are you hungry?" She situated him in a comfortable corner chair between two Air Force pilots arguing about landing F-23A's. The pilots held their beer bottles like joysticks and made repeated landings.

Maxie came back minutes later carrying a tray with hors d'oeuvres, southern style chicken pieces, and plastic cups of rosé spritzer. She chased the pilots away and sat on a folding chair beside him. "How are your legs?"

"I run five miles a day."

She frowned as she served. "There's no table surface free. Napkins and laps will have to do."

"That smells great and I could eat a horse. Napkins and laps are fine."

"If you have that kind of appetite you must be feeling okay." She smiled, which was a sunny crinkle in a wonderful face. She had small, white, perfect teeth. Her face had a clean almost boyish squareness, with ash-blond hair flying as she moved.

"I'm feeling just fine. And I want to thank you for being a friend when I really needed one."

"It's my job." But she glowed, searching with small, square hands and greasy fingers for just the right chicken breast. "Aw hell, David, I enjoyed your company too. I missed you after you left."

"I've missed you too. So what's this about you being a combat flight nurse? You promised to tell me all the details."

She sat bolt upright, a little leap from the tush sort of, and folded her hands in her lap as if sitting for a portrait. Her face lit up in a proud, excited smile. She made fists. "I decided I couldn't be an old maid anymore, so I broke off with the man I was seeing. I applied for this combat flight nurse school, and I got in--on my own, with no help from any uncles--and I just graduated a few weeks ago with honors! Can you believe it? So now I'm stationed here at Walter Reed. We spend most of our time up on the flight deck--on the roof--or flying around town."

"What unit are you with?"

"55th Aviation Battalion (MAES)."

"Which means?"

"Medical Air Evacuation Service." She added with a hint of pride: "I'm in Flight 1. We have three flights, each with four completely equipped and staffed helicopters."

"Sounds exciting, Maxie. I'm thrilled for you."

"It is exciting. One chopper can act as a complete field dispensary, or carry six stretchers."

David frowned a little. "So the military has extra MAES units in town. They're ready for a war, sounds like."

She shrugged. "We're training to evacuate sick people from the roof of the hotel, or if someone is in an accident. I doubt there will be anything more than that."

David changed the subject. "The papers came in a few months ago. I'm a single man again." He chomped down, enjoying a mouthful of fried chicken followed by a wash of rosé. The divorce was final. Kristy had sent him a little hand-lettered note of apology and goodbye, with a heart in one corner, and a not very happy Happy Face with a tear coming out of one eye. He'd written her a thank-you note. He didn't expect to ever hear from her again. Which was what he preferred, because he still felt the loss of her passion that had been like an addiction. Often, he thought, there could never be another woman like her in his life. He still felt like a bomb crater inside. It was best to just move on.

Maxie studied him. "Should I say sorry?"

"That's behind me, along with the broken legs, the airborne infantry, and the wars in the Middle East."

"But you want to stay in the Army?"

"Yup. I'm taking it a day at a time. I've seen all the combat I want to. I'm just not ready for a desk job quite yet. This little assignment here with CON2 can't last more than three months. Just enough time to build up time in grade so I can apply for a waiver and move back to Infantry. I want to be a company commander for at least a year or two. Got to have that experience under my belt."

"I see you are still the same never-give-up hard charger, David."

"I'm afraid so. Maybe a little more selective about where I'm charging."

Maxie laughed, apparently reading his thoughts. "Army people shouldn't marry civilians, huh?"

"Not if they're nutty civilians. Oh God, this chicken is good. Did you make this?"

"You always made me laugh, David."

"No, I'm serious. I'll bet these were all first-born chickens with references."

She gave a demure smile that seemed to light up a few freckles on each cheek. She'd confessed once that she felt very self-conscious about the freckles, and spent a fortune on all sorts of creams and salves from around the world. A hint of Southern Lady crept into her voice. "Actually, I had it catered in from a little specialty house in Georgetown, sorry. My little fingers just ache from all that telephoning and debit carding."

He wiped his mouth and fingers with a warm, wet terrycloth towel scented with lemon. "Maxie, you're first class. How do you do it? Have you met Mr. Right yet?"

She sighed deeply, and her slight bosom hove. "I'm afraid not. Those are the first roses I've received in about two weeks."

"Two weeks, huh? So there is a guy." So she'd finally dumped Mr. Wrong in North Carolina, and it sounded as if she'd found another Mr. Wrong in Washington.

"Yes," she said looking down and folding her hands in her lap. The sun was going down outside and some of the sun was going down in Maxie's eyes.

"A doctor," David prodded. She must be getting the run-around again.

"Yes."

"A brain surgeon."

"No, a proctologist."

"Oh." David held up a chicken leg, making poking gestures with its thin end.

She laughed. "Stop it, David."

"I haven't teased a woman since I irritated my two sisters when I was home on leave. That was last Christmas."

"Well you're quite good at it. I'm very irritated." She rose, running her fingers along his cheek. "I have to speak with my roomie. You stay put and rest your legs."

"I jog five miles a day," he said but she ignored him. He watched her walk away--small rear; narrow hips; perfect calves under knee-length skirt.

The Air Force guys floated in again This time they were trying to impress two nervously smiling women, who nodded a lot and made fluttery, wide eyes. The pilots waved Little Smokie Weenies and foreign beers as they made takeoffs and landings, and it was clear they wanted the women to come fly with them.

David ignored them as his gaze roved. He made his way to the front door, plotting his escape, and then back to his seat in the corner. Another half hour, he thought. Time to move on.

He noticed a tall, dark-haired young woman speaking with Maxie as they walked in his direction. The roomie wore a black dress and was bare-shouldered. David's interest perked up, and he forgot about the half hour thing. The roomie was attractive in a sultry, mysterious way. Somehow, in his first impression, he got a sense of something not happy about her somehow, but he brushed it off. She walked in long, languid steps and, when she smiled, her features lit up with mischief and self-assurance. And yet--ah, but how white her eyes and her teeth gleamed, ivory-perfect, against the smooth texture of her skin. She carried a black purse that looked small against her long frame. Maybe because she was tall, she let her shoulders stoop a little and move with the rhythms of her walking.

By the time they were halfway to him, he realized that Maxie's roomie was gorgeous. Of course she would be. Everything Maxie did had class. Take the plastic cups. Anywhere else that would be kitsch. Better glass, or even crystal. But in Maxie's matter of fact world, that would be overdoing it. Plastic was just right, the simple, elegant solution. Less was more. It wasn't that Maxie was affected or snobbish; things just always went that way. And of course Maxie's genes dictated that she act as social glue, rescuing people from being loose ends or third wheels. Maxie was to wallflowers as fresh water was to droopy house plants. David rose.

"David, I'd like you to meet Lieutenant Victoria Breen. Tory, this is Captain David Gordon." David and the roomie shook hands. She had a dry, warm grip; long arms; honey-tan skin with butterscotch freckles on her shoulders.

"David promised me roses, and look over there."

"That's nice, Maxie." Her gaze avoided David's but he sensed she might be interested. Maxie kept chattering, and then she was gone and David was alone with this Breen woman who sat quietly, comfortably leaning her chin on her fist, watching the pilots and their quarry. She seemed to have a playful inward smile, as if she had a secret. And she didn't appear to be in a hurry to go anywhere. She carried herself almost regally, in an unassuming manner, he thought. She had cute eyebrows, too, that seemed knit up in some undefined discomfort which he immediately longed to understand and soothe.

Ah Maxie, you planned this all along.

"Have you lived here long?" David asked.

Breen turned to look at him for the first time. She had rich dark hair piled neatly around her head. On each bare shoulder was a small galaxy of brown-sugar freckles. Her skin was lightly peeling, and the circles of new skin were pinker, but still not entirely fair-complected. Her answer was direct and soft and aimed right at his heart without intending to be, and he didn't even hear the answer--she could have lived here a month, a year, a thousand years--because they looked in one another's eyes--hers teasing and dusky like a forest--and he totally forgot his half hour was up.

They talked about nothing and everything for a while. "Would you like another spritzer?" she asked, looking away, breaking the spell. Her tone had a hint of teasing: "Your legs--"

"No thanks." He added in protest: "I jog five miles a day. Six. Sometimes ten."

"Oh really."

"I'm serious. Airborne."

"I'll be right back." She had a way of closing up, of withdrawing, and then she seemed darker somehow, as if she had something on her mind. Was there a guy? She rose to open a window, long-limbed and graceful, then wandered toward the kitchen. He watched her as she nodded and smiled, first here, then there along the way. She moved with an unpretentious stride. She was indeed pretty, her white smile dazzling. Her head rode gracefully on a long neck. Her features were delicate and even, and her jaw had a brittle china-cup strength.

David and Tory sat talking all evening, most of it on a love seat where they sat close, face to face, gazing into each other's eyes.

"What do you do?" Tory asked.

"I'm working for the I.G. detachment assigned to the Composite." He was sure she'd find that boring, but she actually looked startled, and he wondered why. Some dark wink or thought or other moved in the liquid depth of that dark gaze: an involuntary blink tightening her pupils. The Inspector General's office existed to inspect everything from blankets to burros, from tarps to tanks, from boots to bullets, and make sure it was according to regulations; the I.G. also listened to soldiers' complaints and tried to make right where right was due. Did she have a complaint? The Composite was the 20,000 member military joint command assigned to guard CON2 in these violent times, with so many bomb threats and shootings related to nutty causes. "What about you?" he asked Tory. "What do you do?"

"I'm the Executive Officer of a data security unit. I'm afraid it's kinda hush-hush." She looked regretful, signaling she couldn't say more about her job.

They turned from topic to topic. She was from Iowa. Her grandpa had been an Army officer killed in Vietnam. Her parents had a home in Davenport. Her dad was in real estate, her mom a housewife. She had an older brother and a younger sister.

David liked to read. He'd read some of the same books as Tory. He was sportsy--liked biking, hiking, martial arts, swimming, soccer. Funny, so did she. She laughed. "You're making all this up, aren't you?"

"Yes. I read minds, you see, and I just parrot whatever you're about to say, so that you'll be impressed."

She threw her head back in a cascade of soft laughter. Light gleamed on her teeth, the pink of her palate. It took her a moment to regain control. "Maxie said you could be really funny." She looked as if she were having fun.

People began leaving. Maxie opened some windows and a wonderful breeze came through.

The Air Force pilots left silently and slightly tipsy by the back garden gate, without passengers. Maxie brought two frosty rosé spritzers, and handed David and Tory each one. "Thanks," David said, hardly noticing Maxie's triumphant look.

A while later, Maxie signaled from the kitchen and Tory strode away. David sat with his eyes closed, enjoying the cool night air, and wondering how to make sure they saw more of each other. Maybe dinner? Or lunch?

More people left. Maxie was in a battle of goodbyes at the door, shaking hands right and left, smiling, hugging, encouraging. A man and a woman in white smocks appeared and began cleaning. David went out into the garden and inhaled a scent of trees. The city loomed darkly all around, sleeping, glowering.

Leaning on a wrought iron railing, he glimpsed the two women inside. Unseen, he watched Tory, trying to figure out how she had managed to tug that one note on his heart's strings that no woman had in years. He was determined to see more of her. Under the thick hair with reddish highlights, she had a wide, dusky smile full of soft secrets. Her eyes seemed to throw off light when she smiled, but at moments she looked sullen and mysterious, almost hurt, and then her mouth took on a sultry pout, lower lip full. Was there a man in her life? This all seemed too easy. Maybe she was getting the proctology treatment from some other geek, and Maxie was trying to fix her up with David as a mercy thing. Everyone is getting the shaft from someone, David thought in a moment of alkaline despair. The world is full of proctologists. Actually, they are an alien race, invading the earth, and killing us off by ruining our love lives and frustrating us until we become extinct. We shall be as dinosaurs. Then the world will become one gigantic rectal exam populated by these people with huge gloves. But how long will they rule? How will they fare before other aliens--endodontists, perhaps--take over by a fiendish ploy? David set down his spritzer. Courage, he thought. He went back inside to mount his attack.

Already, the white-smocked man was vacuuming, and the woman cleaned plastic cups and plates from every surface. Maxie exhaled a puff of breath, and a few straight blonde wisps fluttered over her forehead. "David, I'll invite you again. I'm having a cookout soon."

"I'd love that." He looked over her shoulder, and saw Tory in the kitchen with a broom and dust pan. Her hair looked frizzled from effort, her look pensive. How neatly drawn was the outline of her face, how warm her lightly-rouged lips, how neatly arranged her features seemed, crisp and just right.

"Tory," Maxie said to her, seeing his look. She put her tools aside and walked toward them. Though she conveyed a sense of pleasure, she had something dark in her eyes; not cold at all, but warm and defensive, a beast that could be roused, a wall that might have to be climbed over.

The women walked him out to the street. They swatted mosquitoes and talked for a few moments under bug-chased lights. "Maybe my unit will fly around your building one of these days," Maxie said.

David laughed, teasing: "Don't tell me you wear a flight suit?"

"Bigger than Miami. Helmet, boots, this suit with all these pockets full of medicine packets. I also carry a great big gun on my belt. It's just so cool. Beats doing blood draws and emptying bed pans. No offense--you were a fun patient."

David told Tory: "I would really enjoy having lunch with you. Maybe a movie. We can talk some more about my mind reading and your interests?"

She thought darkly for a moment. Then, as if a sudden breeze had blown those thoughts away, her eyes sparkled and her red lips pleasured in a smile. "I'd like that."

"You have our number," Maxie told David with a conspiratorial dig in the ribs. The women waved and said goodnight as David drove away.

ALLISON: Washington in this pre-election year has a kind of nervous energy that borders on psychosis. Grinding poverty for half the population since the third collapse of the world economy in less than ten years; international humiliations of the U.S.; armies of homeless people on the streets; terrorism; scandals; rioting; the collapse of Social Security; the relentless bickering of hate radio; the endless partisan impeachment struggles between armies of lawyers; these are just some of the complex factors that have brought us to this Second Constitutional Convention. Here is our political reporter in the field, Peggy DeMetrio, for a convention center update. Peggy, can you give us a complete update and analysis of what's at stake, and where the Second Cosntitutional Convention is right now?

PEGGY: Sure. I'm standing before the Atlantic Hotel and Convention Center, near the Islamic Mosque and Cultural Center along Embassy Row. It seems hard to believe that CON2 has been in session now for two weeks. Remember how, when the first bus loads of delegates rolled in, everyone was so upbeat and excited? To quote one delegate I spoke with, "We're tired, we're angry, and we're going to do something about it. The Constitution is close to 250 years old and needs to be amended. We're going to take our country back from the criminals, the foreigners, and the liberals. We're going to stop the constant sniping, the impeachments, the censures, the stealing of our money." That sentiment may st ill be there, but the exhilaration has faded in the midst of gridlock. The convention has been stalled for two weeks now on procedural issues. Radicals of the left and of the right, as predicted, are pushing the center to allow for more amendments. The limit of ten very carefully predetermined amendments so far still stands firm, but one has to ask for how long. People here are beginning to talk not about amending, but about rewriting. People are saying that it was a long, arduous road to this point, and they want to make it count.

There are signs that the American people's confidence in this convention is slipping. Polls show the support level is down to just under 50% today, down from 75% six months ago when this movement roared through the state legislatures like a brush fire. This convention was approved by the legislatures of 45 states as a handshake with the American people--a carefully crafted compromise of positions on abortion, creationism, gay rights, a balanced budget, and other positions--designed to resolve a number of long-standing conflicts without tipping the game to either extreme.

The majority agree on what are called the core amendments--balancing the budget, eliminating the Federal debt, creating a replacement for Social Security, joining every other civilized nation in guaranteeing full medical coverage to every citizen regardless of class differences. Then there are the so-called special interest amendments, designed to mandate positions on abortion, creationism, gay rights, furthering the separation of church and state by taking away the right of clergy to create marriage contracts, and so forth. This is only the first such national convention since 1787, and there are a lot of questions about what to do next at every step.

The most dire warnings were that this convention could not possibly be such a big tent and hold together so many oppos