Power Curve (17 page)

Washington, D.C.

The message light on the answering machine was flashing when Bender arrived home that Wednesday night. It was Nancy. “Dinner’s in the oven and should be cooking. I’ll be home around seven, set the kitchen table for three. We’ve got a house guest.”

House guest?
he thought.
Nancy hadn’t mentioned it before she went to work at the hospital. It must be a friend or acquaintance if we’re eating in the kitchen
. He changed into casual clothes and set the table as she asked. At exactly seven o’clock, Nancy walked in with Shalandra. The thin bandage covering the stitches in the girl’s right ear was hardly noticeable, and she was wearing clean jeans
and a new sweatshirt. Bender was stunned by the change and how young she looked. Shalandra’s eyes widened when she saw him and turned into large brown pools of surprise. Nancy had assumed Shalandra knew who her husband was, but the girl had not made the connection until she actually saw him.

“It’s OK,” Nancy said. “He won’t hurt you.” Shalandra stared at him and said nothing. “The bathroom is through there,” Nancy said, pointing the girl down the hall. Before Shalandra could move, Nancy held out her hand for Shalandra’s handbag. Without a word, Shalandra handed it over and headed for the bathroom while Nancy dumped the contents of the bag on the counter.

“What are you doing?” Bender asked.

“Searching for drugs,” Nancy said.

“I mean, is this wise? Bringing her here.”

Nancy stuffed the contents back into the bag and breathed a sigh of relief. “She’s clean.” She turned to face her husband. “She was released from the hospital today and has nowhere to go. I’m trying to get her into child protective services to find a good foster home. It’s only for tonight, and she’ll be gone in the morning.”

“But in our own home?” he protested. “There must be temporary facilities somewhere.”

Nancy shook her head. “The snowstorm screwed up everything. If I send her home, she’ll be doped up and back on the streets in an hour. She’s a pretty girl and still free of AIDS. How much longer will that last?”

“I’ll pay for a hotel room.”

“She doesn’t need a room,” Nancy said. “She needs people who care.” She reached up and touched his face. “She’s very passive and not dangerous at all. You don’t know what a big step it was for her to call for help and get way from her uncle.”

“Was he the pimp?”

Nancy nodded. “All the men in her life are either pimps, drug pushers, in jail, or a customer. For her, a relationship with a man means abuse, physical, emotional, sexual abuse. This may be her only chance, and I don’t want to lose it. If you’re really upset, I’ll check us both into a hotel. But I’d rather stay here.”

Bender gave in. “I hope this isn’t an ongoing requirement now that you’re getting paid.” He made a mental note to set the security alarm in the hall outside the guest room after Shalandra went to bed.

Nancy reached out and touched his cheek. “I know this goes against all good sense. It won’t happen again. It’s just—just that—it’s the way I’m holding on right now.”

Bender smiled, breaking the tension between them. “You’ll pay for this, woman.” He saw Shalandra staring at them from the doorway. “Welcome to our home,” he told her.

Nancy said, “He won’t hurt you, Shalandra. You can trust him.”

“I hope you ladies are hungry,” he said, holding a chair for Nancy. Shalandra looked at him for a moment and then sank back into the hall.

“It’s OK,” Nancy called. “You can eat with us.” Slowly, the girl emerged from the shadows and came into the kitchen, her eyes still full of fear and apprehension.

This is not good
, Bender told himself.
Nancy knows better
.

Late that evening, Turner curled up on the couch in her private study. Two attaché cases were open on the floor beside her and the TV was on, tuned to CNC-TV. The fire crackled and sent out a warm glow as she burrowed in for a hard night’s work. A discreet knock at the door broke her concentration, and she laid the speech she was editing aside. “Come,” she said.
When did I start saying that?
she wondered.
It doesn’t sound like me
.

Jackie Winters, her personal assistant, peeked in. “Is there anything you need before I leave, Mrs. President?”

“No, I’m fine,” she said, smiling. “Jackie, do you have a significant other waiting for you?” A shy look and tentative shake of the head answered her. For a moment, Turner considered asking Jackie to sit and chat for a few minutes if she wasn’t in a hurry to go home. But a request from the most powerful person in the world carried an imperative that could not be refused by a normal human being, and Turner knew that would be intruding. She smiled. “Thank you, Jackie.”

“Good night, Mrs. President.” Jackie quietly closed the door, leaving Madeline O’Keith Turner alone.

“Gawd, Jessica,” Shaw moaned, “what a day.” He pushed off his shoes and sank into the deep leather of the couch in his Watergate condominium. “We got the CIA yelling at the DIA about China, and not one of those shit-for-brains speaks the language.” The young woman smiled at him and padded barefoot over to the bar to fix him a drink. Jessica’s bare legs flashed in the soft light, and he felt the beginnings of an erection. She moved with the grace of a dancer, and her blond hair hid her face when she looked down to mix his Jack Daniels and water. She held the drink up to the light to check its color. It was perfect. She tossed her hair back and gave him a radiant smile. “Come here, darlin’,” he said huskily.

He watched as she shed the last of her clothes, dropping her panties near the bar. She walked slowly toward him, her hips swaying to an inner music. He didn’t mind one bit that she was not a natural blonde and half his age as long as she was there, with him. She handed him the drink and dragged her fingernails along the back of his hand, arousing him even more. Then she moved away and settled into the corner of the couch. She drew her legs up, knees together, and stretched her arms out, resting her right arm on the back of the couch and the left one on the padded arm. She tossed her hair back.

Shaw was ready, but Jessica wanted to talk. She had a soft, cultured voice. Bryn Mawr, if he remembered right. He enjoyed the conversation, discussing the finer aspects of computer polling that could instantly take the pulse of the American electorate. He savored the moment. How many men had sat next to a beautiful naked woman and carried on an intelligent conversation while sipping the perfect drink? He tried to think of something impressive to say about the way the White House’s computer programs interacted with local polling stations. He gave up.

“Darlin’, I was a history major because my professors thought computers were an illegitimate cross between alchemy and voodoo. Truth to tell, messin’ around with the
polls is more simple than shoveling shit in Louisiana. Just get the best results money can buy.”

Jessica’s mouth pulled into a little pout as she looked at his crotch. His blood pressure went up thirty points. “Actually,” she murmured, “I’m more interested in attitude formation. Computer polling only confirms if you’re doing it right. And you do it very right. What’s your secret? You always know which buttons to push, with exactly the right people at the right time and place.” She gave him an enticing smile and glanced at his crotch again. “I can predict an emerging trend but—” She stopped in midsentence and came across the couch, slipping her hand inside his shirt, stroking his nipples. Her lips brushed his ear. “But you’re the one who makes it happen,” she whispered.

Shaw wasn’t sure how they made it to his bed or how she had undressed him so fast. But she was there, riding him, her legs clamped to his side. She laughed when he came so quickly. “We’re not done,” she murmured. To his amazement, she was wickedly, delightfully, perversely right.

The phone started ringing at five o’clock the next morning. It was three hours earlier in California and according to the caller, a superior court judge, whose appointment Shaw had sponsored and rammed down the throat of the governor, had been caught with a pregnant hooker in the backseat of his car in an alley behind the courthouse doing his own ramming. The arresting officers reported that the hooker’s lips were definitely encircling the judge’s judicial pogo stick at the moment of apprehension.

A delightful aroma from the kitchen momentarily distracted Shaw. “What’s that I smell cookin’?” Jessica answered him with a wicked laugh.

The caller assumed Shaw was talking to him. “You want us to fry the bastard?”

Shaw thought for a moment. He could still kill the story. “Throw him to the hyenas and let him explain it to his wife.” He dropped the phone in its cradle and homed in on the tantalizing smells coming from the kitchen. “Oh, Lord,” he mumbled, “what more could a man want?” He hadn’t felt so good in weeks and Henry Kissinger’s words
about power being the only true aphrodisiac flitted through his mind.
You got it wrong, Henry
, he thought.
The only true aphrodisiac is a young, long-legged girl with her legs wrapped around you in bed
.

For the young woman who had been squirming under his big belly and doing the cooking, it was the power.

Okinawa, Japan

The Habu’s mission was simple in the extreme: overfly dangerously hostile territory and take pictures. But in the Habu’s world of strategic reconnaissance, the simple things are always hard. The Habu itself started life in 1959 when Lockheed won the contract for building the A-12. Originally, the A-12 was designed as a follow-on for the U-2 spy plane, and by 1964, the single-seat A-12 had evolved into the twin-place SR-71. Thirty-two of “Kelly” Johnson’s Blackbirds rolled out of Lockheed’s Skunk Works before production ceased in 1967. After an early series of eleven crashes, the SR-71 settled down to a productive life and only one more was lost in 1989. Then, in the face of mounting mission costs, satellite reconnaissance, and the need for an expensive technical upgrade, the SR-71 was retired from service in 1990. But nothing ever replaced it, not satellites, the still-flying U-2R, nor the much vaunted top-secret Aurora. Finally, after sitting out most of the 1990s, the Air Force pulled this Habu out of its storage hangar at Palmdale, California.

Unfortunately, the people and the expertise that had kept the incredibly complex aircraft flying had been lost. It took time to relearn the old skills. Although this particular SR-71A had seen less than 3,000 hours total flying time, it was four years older than its thirty-two-year-old test pilot, Greg Stein. At twenty-eight, Dick Robards, the reconnaissance systems officer (RSO) in the backseat, was the youngest member of the team.

Greg had never intended to be a test pilot, he was planning for an extended retirement, but every flight in the SR-71 was an excursion into the unknown, rediscovering what had been lost or forgotten. Preeminent among the
unknowns was how to contend with the cantankerous ways of the elegant, but elderly jet that was still the fastest and highest-flying operational aircraft in the world.

The mission started late Saturday morning, January 12, when the pilot and RSO suited up in their full-pressure suits complete with space helmets and moon boots. Exactly one hour before takeoff, they were driven to the Little Creek hangar on the north side of Kadena Air Base and began the lengthy process of strapping in and starting engines. It was impossible to simply “kick the tires and light the fires” of the Habu. At exactly 3
P.M.
local time, Greg taxied the SR-71 onto the active runway, eased the throttles into max afterburner, and resumed his career as a test pilot.

The Habu headed south, into the South China Sea, where it rendezvoused with two KC-135 tankers at 25,000 feet. Greg slowed to 350 knots for the hookup. At that speed, the Habu becomes sluggish and is not a happy jet. Greg sweated freely in his pressure suit as he held the SR-71 on the tanker’s boom for fifteen minutes. The fuel-hungry Habu sucked up 70,000 pounds, over 11,000 gallons, of JP-7 before it was satiated. After the boom was disconnected, Greg dropped away from the tanker, lowered the nose to pick up airspeed, and lit the afterburners. With the throttles pushed up to max, they climbed into an incredible cobalt blue sky. But Greg was too busy monitoring the climb, managing the fuel flow, and checking the engine instruments to notice. As usual, Dick had his head down, studying the scopes in front of him.

The flight plan called for them to turn over the northern end of Luzon in the Philippines and head toward Hong Kong at 80,000 feet and Mach 2.8. But before they reached the mainland, they turned to the northeast and headed for the Taiwan Strait, the channel that split the island of Taiwan and the Chinese mainland. Although their track was near the mainland, they were careful to stay over international waters.

“I’ve got two radars painting us,” Dick said over the intercom.

“Anything cosmic?” Greg asked.

“Only your standard issue early-warning radars. They
know we’re here.” The RSO double-checked the defensive electronic systems. The programmable software the mission planners had fed into the system was guaranteed to defeat any electronic threat the Chinese might have had. But the mission planners hadn’t counted on the Habu getting cranky. It started with a little tantrum, just enough to get Greg’s attention.

“Hold on,” the pilot said, “I’ve got a warning light.” He scanned the annunciator panel with its forty-eight warning lights. “We got a bus-tie open.” In itself, that was no problem. The relay that merged the electrical power coming from the generator on each engine into one common power source had flipped open. It just meant that one generator was out of phase or frequency with the other and they could proceed with the mission.

The defensive electronic systems scope in the rear cockpit lit up like a Christmas tree. “The entire fucking Chinese Air Force is looking at us,” Dick groused from his office. “I got a bearing of six aircraft at twelve o’clock coming straight at us. They’re probably going to try snapups.” The hostile fighters being radar-vectored onto the Habu were at 40,000 feet, almost eight miles below the Habu, and strung out in a long line.