Apache Dawn, - [little bear else holmelund minarik txt] 📗

Washington, D.C.

The Naval Observatory

Office of the Vice President of the United States

“And you’re sure this is the only way?”

“If you want what we’re offering, yes,” said the cultured voice on the other end of the secure line.

The Vice President of the United States sighed. “Of course I want what you’re offering. But the price is…steep.” He tried once again to place the very slight accent of the voice. It almost sounded like New England, but had more of a neutral, Mid-Atlantic pronunciation of vowels.

“Nothing of value comes cheaply. You of all people should know that, Mr. Vice President. What have you sacrificed—what have you lost in order to attain the office you sit in at this very moment?”

A chill went down the Vice President’s spine as he listened to the voice on the phone. He barely resisted the urge to look around for a hidden camera. He couldn’t shake the feeling of someone standing just over his shoulder. He sighed again. “Let me think about it.”

There was an uncomfortable pause on the other end. “Think fast. This offer will not last forever and my employers are very impatient people.”

Arrogance started to rear its head inside the Vice President, shrouded cleverly in the form of political indignation. “Now you listen to me, Reginald. I am the Vice President of the—”

“You have 24 hours to decide, Mr. Vice President,” the calm, confident, almost smug voice said. “The President is setting himself up to fall this very week. Our plans must move forward. It would be positively shameful to let this opportunity pass.”

“I, uh, I never really agreed to this…” the Vice President said weakly. He looked at his desk calendar. Monday. Why must bad news always come on a Monday? The President was a close friend of his. Their wives played tennis together every weekend.

“I understand your reluctance, Mr. Vice President. Honestly, I do. But you must remember we have other options…”

“But—wait just a minute,” the Vice President said, painfully aware that fear had crept into his voice. “We agreed you’d leave my family out of this!”

“That was before you decided to change the terms of our agreement. Do you, or do you not have the—how do I say it? Ah, yes, the testicular fortitude—to continue? Answer the question and roll the dice, Harry.”

The line went dead with a soft beep.

“Dammit!” he growled and slammed the secure-link cell phone down on the wide executive desk. The polished glossy surface of the desk occupied most of his austere office at the Naval Observatory. He leaned back in the plush leather chair and steepled his fingers, lost in thought. It was hard to focus.

The proposition put forward by the man he knew only as “Reginald”—and the Vice President had serious doubts that was the young man’s real name—was as sweeping and terrifying as it was tempting.

He drummed his manicured fingers on the desk that had been used for close to 50 years by his predecessors. It was not nearly as nice nor as famous as its bigger, older, more prestigious cousin in the Oval Office. He frowned. That was a fact he regretted every time he sat down to work. But then again, he was the Vice President.

Harold James Barron, Esquire, had spent his entire adult life gaining entrance and ingratiating himself into the tattered American political landscape. He had clawed his way in as an outsider during the heady days of his youth when big government had stretched itself too far and rode the coattails of the progressive movement into office. First at the state level, then the national. At 38, he was the second youngest Vice President to serve the office and was all set to get the nod to be President after faithfully serving as the understudy.

After all, the President had been pretty popular in the first few years of the first term. He had been swept into office on promises that most people knew he couldn’t keep, but they had liked him anyway. The electorate had given him and his dashing young running mate a chance to reform the out-of-control government the current generation of voters had inherited.

Then the reality of Washington politics had set in. The lobbyists arrived, toting bags of money, promises, loans, cars, vacations, plane trips, anything and everything they could get their hands onto bribe the new powers-that-be to lean one way or the other on certain issues. The good-ol’-boy network of incumbency began to entwine with the new-blood administration and suddenly, all those aspirations and promises seemed like just so many words. But still he had held out—he had been the shining beacon of hope and reform the people had so desperately wanted.

It had taken two whole years for him to fall from his lofty ideals into the mire and filth that was the status-quo of national politics. Part of him would forever be ashamed of that fact. The other part reveled in the perks while trying to remain proud that he had lasted as long as he had.

One night on the campaign trail, at a grassroots fundraiser to show support for the little people who still believed they could help elect him, he’d been approached by a young woman straight out of a lingerie catalog. She had been drop-dead gorgeous with amazingly blue eyes and hair of liquid gold. She had that nubile, innocent co-ed look about her that hinted she was fresh out of college.

This alluring girl had been flashing her eyes at just the right moment and leaning over just when he happened to glance her way so he could see heaven itself down her shirt. She had flirted so hard, he felt like a college kid again himself. Just when he’d started to become nervous a reporter might get an improper photo for the next gaffe, he’d blacked out.

He awoke in his hotel room the next day and found her naked and tangled in the sheets on the floor, snuggled warmly against his side. He slowly reached out and touched her perfectly smooth, unblemished, creamy skin.

She proved just as beautiful and willing as he’d quasi-remembered from the night before. He soon discovered she was even more talented in the bedroom than she had been at snagging his attention at the fundraiser. His heart raced every time he remembered what she’d begged him do to her and what she did to him. But, every fiber of his being knew it was wrong.

Harold Barron loved his wife, Alice, dearly. After all, she was the beloved mother of his children, the constant campaign companion, and his rock of stability at the end of a day shaking hands and kissing babies. His graceful, regal Alice had been the debutante queen when they’d met and fallen in love so many years before. They had survived The Great Pandemic together and the destruction of her family. They had been woven together by fate and love. And not once had he ever so much as wondered about another woman in all the years they had been married. He was happy and his star was rising. Why ruin a good thing?

He had been on the road campaigning alone for his running mate, Senator Denton, who would be elected president a few months later. He had missed his eldest son’s birthday for that little campaign stop where he first broke his sacred vows of matrimony. It was an eternal source of shame for his soul that he feared he would never fully erase. And he tried very hard every day to bury that stain and forget it.

His wife would never know what that wonderfully flexible girl had promised him in a husky voice, if he would only do a few things for her employers after he was elected to office. He still remembered laughing at the sexy co-ed while he tried to avoid her grasp. Their team was 27 points behind in the polls, he had told her. The Democratic Party hadn’t been popular then. There was no way they’d win the election, so blackmail would never work.

Yet nevertheless, he’d slept with that beautiful, beguiling woman. When the press found out, he knew he’d be finished, along with the ticket’s chance at victory. It would be the final scandal. He began to resign himself to his fate when a thought occurred to him, cast out from his subconscious like a life preserver on an angry ocean. His one chance at salvation.

He had been drugged. That’s it! Drugged! She merely smiled and mmmm-hmmmmed in response as she crept closer like a tiger stalking its prey, her cobalt blue eyes never leaving his, her blonde hair cascading down around her bare, smooth shoulders like a river of golden sunlight. What they were doing, did, going to do—it was all wrong, he had cried out. He had pleaded with her to stop—not really, because