gift from God’s Own Hand. Such people could and did shape the ideas of their President just by selecting the things he saw. And you’re going to fight for four more years of this? Ryan asked himself. You fucking idiot.
“I know that look,” Arnie said. “I know what you’re thinking. What can I say, Jack, except that I think you really are the best man for the job, and it’s necessary. I believe that down to my bones. How about you?”
“I’m getting there,” Ryan said.
“You see the business about Iran?” Arnie asked.
“Which part? Their nuclear program or the border exercise?”
“Both.”
“Same houses, different paint,” Jack said. “Tehran knows all it has to do is rattle a little saber and Kealty will react—or overreact. What’s he got Netters sending over there, a whole battle group?”
“Yep. Stennis. Pulled it back from a rotation home.”
“Idiot. They’ve got the President of the United States dancing on a string.” He checked his watch. “How much more time do I have?”
“Ten minutes,” Callie replied. “Can I talk you into some TV makeup?”
“No way in hell!” Ryan thundered in reply. “I’m not a ten-dollar hooker on Sixteenth Street.”
“They cost more than that now, Jack. Inflation, remember?”
Ryan stood and made his way to the bathroom. Losing bladder control was something else to be avoided, and not something he could do in front of cameras. As Ryan grew older, he found himself liking less to wait in line to take a leak. Part of the aging process, he figured. Well, he took his leak, zipped up, and walked back out to don his jacket.
“Off we go, guys?”
“Into the lion’s den, Mr. President.” Arnie called him Jack only in private. Callie Weston had the same privilege, which made her uncomfortable. On walking out of the room, Andrea Price-O’Day was there, along with other members of Jack’s detail, guns securely holstered.
“SWORDSMAN is moving,” Andrea told the rest of her team over her lapel microphone.
Jack walked to the elevator, which was, as usual, held for him, with yet another armed agent inside.
“Okay, Eddie,” Andrea said, and Eddie released the key he’d been holding, and the elevator went down to the second floor, which had the meeting room reserved for today’s announcement.
Forty seconds and the doors slid open, and the Secret Service team went out to lead the parade. There was a funnel of spectators, some of them ordinary citizens, remarkably enough, but the majority of them reporters of various flavors, and their TV cameras. Jack smiled at them—candidates had to smile all the time—waving to a few he knew by name from four years earlier. The smile threatened to make his face crack, Jack thought.
“Mr. President, please follow me,” the hotel manager said, shepherding the party to the back of the room. There was the lectern. Ryan went to it at once. Gripping the wood panel hard enough to make his hands hurt a little. It was his normal practice, and helped synchronize him with the task at hand.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Jack began. “Thank you for coming. I am here to announce my candidacy to run for the Presidency of the United States in this coming year.
“Since I left the Presidency three years ago, I’ve watched the current President’s term of office with disappointment. President Kealty has not responded well to the challenges our country has faced. In Afghanistan and Iraq, soldiers have died needlessly, victims of a rudderless policy of withdrawal. Even when a war is ill conceived, when you have a war, you are stuck with it, and you must play it out. Running away from a conflict is not a policy. President Kealty, as a United States Senator, was not a friend of our military services, and he has compounded his earlier errors to utilize those forces inefficiently, micromanaging their field activities from the Oval Office in such a way as to get our people killed instead of listening to the commanders on the ground.
“Moreover, President Kealty has also mismanaged our national economy. When I left office, America had a growing and healthy economy. In his first two years, President Kealty’s misguided tax policy has stopped that cold. In this last year, the economy bounced off the bottom and is now starting to grow again, but that is in spite of government policy, not because of it. Under my administration, we simplified tax policy. That put a lot of lawyers and accountants out of business—by the way, you might remember that I am still a CPA, and the new tax