might be able to help us with, and that’s Senator Gayle Higgens. She’s going to be besieged by every news organization that shows up on that island, and that basically means everybody. See if you can get her in our corner. We’re sending Chris Randall down there with you to do the actual reporting. Do you want Nicole to come?”
“Yes, I do. She’s incredibly good on the ground, and—”
“You don’t have to convince me,” Elfren interrupted. “I hired her. I think you two are a great team, when you’re not dressed like you’re heading to a Penthouse Pets pajama party.” He threw yet another steely look at Marv.
Elfren walked over to his desk for Jenna’s book, recently reissued with an eye-catching, ecofriendly cover. “I read it last night. I had no idea, I’m sorry to say, that your background was so strong. I knew you’d written a book, but this was very well done.”
“Thank you.” That he might have read her tome in a single evening was another reason for Elfren’s fast-track success: He was a legendarily fast study.
“This is one hell of a story,” Elfren said somberly. “Might be the biggest one in my lifetime.”
“If they blow up the tanker,” Marv asked, “will it look—”
“Orange?” she jumped in. Leave it to Marv to cut to the crassest point. “The video will be unlike anything anyone has ever seen.” She would have liked to equivocate, just to stick it to him, but the truth wouldn’t let her.
“We’re chartering. One o’clock at LaGuardia,” Elfren announced.
“Chartering?” She thought those days had ended when the bean counters had executed their coup de grâce on network coffers. Personally, she was glad never to have flown Lears and Gulfstreams: Jets emitted enormous amounts of greenhouse gases, and private jets were the worst offenders by far.
“Look,” he tapped her book, “I know about the carbon footprint, but one of our own is on that tanker, and we’re going to move as fast as we can to try to help him.”
* * *
Goddamn brown buggers.
The sun beat down so hard that Rick Birk felt broiled alive in the blinding tropical heat. The skinny jihadist he’d dubbed Raggedy Ass had given him a swig of water but it had been hours since Birk had had a real drink. If he’d been dealing with anyone but an Islamist, he’d have offered to split his hooch just to get a few sips for himself. He still had his flask because, interestingly enough, Raggedy Ass and Suicide Sam hadn’t patted him down. Everybody—even fucking jihadists—figured he was too old to be a serious threat.
Well, maybe he, Rick Birk, who had survived the Shining Path guerrillas in Peru, the Vietcong, and right-wing death squads in more Latin American countries than George W. Bush could possibly name, had a gun in an ankle holster and was about to put a stop to all this madness.
Yeah, right. If only …
He wondered if he could convince Raggedy Ass that the flask contained very important medicine. He’d always thought about wearing one of those bracelets that lepers and diabetics have for emergencies, only instead of a snake curled around a staff, his would show a cheerful bottle of Bombay gin.
Fuck. Fat lot of good a medical bracelet would do him now. Raggedy Ass was too busy to bother with him anyway. Had more important things to do, like dragging dead bodies down to the deck, the back of their heads bounce-bounce-bouncing off every metal step on the stairway, then leaving a big smear all the way over to the railing till they got the old heave-ho. Right in front of Birk. Who wouldn’t need a drink?
Oh, no, here he comes with number nine. Birk couldn’t see Raggedy Ass because the aged correspondent was still lying facedown on the goddamn deck. But he heard the head of number nine—bumpita-thumpita-bumpita—and he was keeping track because when he got out of this mess he wanted to be able to report every little detail with absolute accuracy. He could already see the George Polk Award for foreign reporting hanging on the wall of his new corner office.
Christ, this one’s a moaner. Ah, Jesus fuck, there he is. Not just moaning, but rolling his brilliant blue eyes in crazed panic. Catching Birk’s gaze and staring at him while Raggedy Ass hauled him to the railing.
Raggedy Ass paused and stared at the man, whose moans heightened in intensity. Then the jihadist screamed at him. Might have been “Shut up” in whatever bone-in-the-throat