Jack Coughlin - Kill Zone

Land speculation and the military, the twin engines of the dynamic San Diego economy, formed her primary political base. The senator was adamant in getting tax breaks for land developers and big business and voted for any military spending proposal. Nobody gobbled up more taxpayer dollars for the Pentagon than Rambo Reed of California. The defense contractors and housing industry tycoons at the receiving end of the money pipeline showed their gratitude with campaign contributions.

Despite all of her money, power, good looks, and adroit phrasing, Buchanan considered Reed to be just another politician to be used like a sweet-smelling bar of soap until there was nothing worthwhile left to be used. There was always another Ruth Hazel Reed out there waiting to be groomed like a colt in training for the Kentucky Derby. This filly might break out and actually win the race for the roses, but a wise owner would have a lot of colts. She had been carefully selected for the role she was to play.

Senator Reed moved to a soft chair and sat down, putting her drink on a small Chinese-style table with a polished marble top inlaid with intricate stonework of precious gems. She considered Buchanan to be a competent number-cruncher and an above-average strategist. It was quite helpful to have him around, and he could be discarded the minute he did not deliver the goods. Headlines hailed him as a genius, but these guys were plentiful in Washington. Arrogant, too. She hoped that Buchanan did not let his pride get in the way of the job he had to perform. Was he up to it? The senator wondered how much the table was worth.

Reed had also spoken with the Senate president, and knew her appointment to succeed Miller was a done deal. Buchanan had to make a big show of everything. To chair that committee was definitely another rung up the ladder, but it should be only temporary. Reed had no plans to run for reelection. By this time next year, she planned to be President of the United States.

“As they say, Ruth Hazel, we live in interesting times,” mused Buchanan.

“True enough. And during such difficult times, our country needs very careful guidance. Not knee-jerk action based on snapshot poll numbers.”

Buchanan caught the insult. He was the most famous consumer of polls in Washington. “Indeed. That is precisely why you will be so valuable in your new position. From the untimely death of one senator can come progress for all.” Unspoken was the barb that Reed was also just one senator of fifty. Only one-fiftieth of one-half of one-third of the United States government. They were even.

Buchanan poured himself a refill and offered her one with a smile. A peace offering. He found politics rather loathsome and did not want public office of any sort. He was a scholar and much too good, too intelligent, to have to explain himself to common voters and fools. Nothing lasted forever, including what he viewed as the American Empire. Buchanan believed that it was his destiny to shepherd the troubled nation to a new level of political evolution, which included writing a new Constitution. His Constitution would replace that antique Jeffersonian piece of parchment displayed under glass in the National Archives. What had been unique and powerful ideas for a democratic republic in the eighteenth century simply did not apply in today’s complex world. It would be even less relevant in tomorrow’s. Thomas Jefferson had been dead for a long, long time.

Rambo Reed could sit in that big chair in the Oval Office, but Gerald Buchanan would run the government.

“You two should hear yourselves talk! What total bullshit!” A slight, whippy man with the build of a marathon runner came into the big hall, walked over, and gripped their hands with the enthusiasm of someone who relished life. “We’re the first of a new generation of leaders, my friends, and we are going to kick a lot of ass and make a ton of money while we save our country.”

Gordon Gates IV had an easy, confident smile that indicated he did not have a care in the world. He wore a loose white shirt of Chinese silk, dark Armani trousers, and soft black Prada boots. A slim, clean Louis Vuitton Tambour chronograph was on his left wrist, and thick sandy-blond hair swept down over his forehead. He was fifty-five years old and looked ten years younger. The intelligent green eyes missed nothing.

He was very rich. His great-grandfather, the original Gordon Gates, was a grease-stained machinist who had invented a tiny part for aircraft engines before World War II, built on that modest success as aviation grew, and within five years owned a giant corporation. America’s fighter planes and bombers could not stay in the sky without Gates equipment. Gordon Gates Jr. expanded military production when jet propulsion came along, established offices abroad, bought a shipbuilding company to make nuclear-powered submarines, and renamed the international company Gates Global. When “GG III” came along, a brilliant engineer in his own right, he seized the early days of the rocket age. Gates Global helped man walk on the moon, provided the electronic brains for missiles that could reach anywhere on the globe, then got into Area 51 secret weapons development with lasers and sound. Markets were locked up and money poured in. When politicians spoke of the military-industrial complex, they were talking about Gates Global. The company always rewarded its friends on Capitol Hill, and its executive ranks were loaded with former generals and admirals, and ex-members of Congress.

The family groomed Gordon Gates IV to carry on the torch. He was a very bright kid when he was attending an elite prep school, but he had a vision of his own. All he had to do was say the word and he could step out of prep school and into Harvard, Yale, or Stanford, and then be prepared to take over Gates Global when his flashy playboy father was ready to pass the baton. But with the added bonus of aggravating his old man, young Gordon joined the U.S. Army as a private, determined to start at the bottom and get the kind of on-the-ground experience that would help him know what the hell he was talking about when he finally joined the family business. He still planned to run it someday, but Dear Old Dad wasn’t anywhere near ready to voluntarily give up the throne. GG IV detested GG III, who felt the same about his only son and heir.

The smart kid from the mansion in Mission Hills, Kansas, enlisted in the U.S. Army as a grunt soldier, became a Ranger, and was a sergeant in the 101st Airborne when he was qualified for Delta Force. After two years as a Delta operator, he allowed the Army to pay for his higher education and was scooped from the ranks to attend West Point. Once commissioned, he took a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford and then got back into the mud with a year’s secondment to the British SAS.

He returned to Delta deep-selected as a major, and served three more years on special missions to the dark holes of the world. The Pentagon loved having Gordon Gates on the payroll, brought him to Washington, made him a light colonel, and buried him deep undercover to plan and implement black operations. It was said around the E-Ring that Gates was a slam-dunk for his first star. Then Daddy GG III wrapped his Ferrari 512 Berlinetta Boxer and his mistress around an oak tree alongside a curving, wet road.

And he was always bitching at me about taking risks in the army! Gordon thought as the casket of Dear Old Dad was lowered into the grave in the family plot in Kansas. It was his turn to take over Gates Global, and he came to the job totally ready as a dues-paid-in-full member of the Pentagon Gun Club.

He established his supreme authority by bringing a squad of lawyers to his first meeting with the board of directors, and fired most of the men and women who had been his father’s staunchest friends and allies. He told the survivors what was coming. The Berlin Wall is a pile of old rocks: there was never going to be a battle between Soviet and American tanks for the Fulda Gap. Continuing to manufacture thousands of new tanks was stupid. Nuclear-powered aircraft carriers were sailing toward a horizon of obsolescence and the giant submarines crammed with world-crunching missiles were outdated. Whole generations of fighter planes had nobody to fight. That really didn’t matter, he said. Gates Global would continue to build the steel and titanium dinosaurs as long as the profit margin remained solid.