Final Winter

But it was close. Oh so close. Just one more session with the AirBox boys and in just a few hours the jets would be taking off to bomb the heartland of this country, the very first time it had been bombed since a few futile efforts by the Japanese more than a half-century ago. And she purposely didn’t count 9/11 and the few spastic attempts that had followed. She and the Japanese of the 1940s had one thing in common: an overwhelming desire to see the death and destruction of America.

Adrianna grabbed a light jacket, looked again in the mirror. The CIA cocktail was still working, but Jesus, there would be a price to pay once this was over. Two days of bed rest, if not more, while the body recovered… And then something struck her. One decision she had yet to make.

For where should she go after the aircraft took off? The continental United States was not going to be a particularly fun place to be within the next twenty-four hours, and she had no desire to be stuck here while Mexico and Canada — panicked about what was happening to their north and their south respectively — closed the borders. So where to go in the next few hours? Mexico or Canada? Canada had better government, better amenities, but in Mexico you could get things done quickly, especially certain illegal things, by the judicious passing of folding money to the right people.

Still, she would decide shortly. And she knew it would only be a temporary arrangement in any case, for she had no doubt that in a couple of weeks the entire North American landmass, from Acapulco to the Beaufort sea, wouldn’t be a particularly fun place to be either. France, perhaps. Provence. Nice weather, great food, and even if the politics were self-centered and corrupt, well, at least France had never murdered her family.

She looked at her bag on the bed, ready to be packed when she got back from a meeting at the airport. Her very last meeting, ever.

Adrianna went out of her hotel room, shutting the light off behind her.

~ * ~

At his condo unit at 11:30 at night, Victor Palmer was playing music from the late 1930s, swing band stuff — he couldn’t have identified who was playing what, for all he cared for were the sounds, not the composers or the bands — as he went through his Doc Savage collection, leafing through the brittle pages of the pulp magazines, trying to imagine himself alive and well during those magnificent times. Oh, he knew that the times weren’t that special — the Great Depression was roaring along and the black clouds of fascism and communism were looming fast over the horizon — but there was just such an innocence highlighted in these pages. The diplomas by mail. The truss supports. The pamphlets that promised ‘secrets of the ages’.

And, of course, the stories, the grand, brawling, pulse-pounding, improbable and wonderful stories of Doc Savage and his great adventures. Victor found himself sighing with pleasure as he turned the pages, saw the rough illustrations, and breathed in the unique scent of the old pulp paper. To have been alive back then, to have been innocent of the Bronze Warrior’s exploits and to have seen them fresh, month after month.

Ah, it had been pure delight. A few days ago the Princess had given him a week off, and he was enjoying every single minute, and during all those hours the phone jack had stayed unplugged, and the batteries had remained removed from his pager and government-issued cellphone.

Victor Palmer was currently living in 1935, and he had no plan to leave it anytime soon.

~ * ~

Alexander Bocks felt himself draw up to his full height as his CFO roared up to him. Woolsey started speaking before the ambient noise died down so the first thing Bocks could hear was ‘…fuck you doing?!?’

Bocks leaned into Woolsey, saying, ‘Say again, Frank?’

‘I said, what the fuck are you doing?’

Bocks said, ‘Working. And what are you doing, besides gumming up the works?’

‘The works?!? You think I’m gumming up the works? Besides what you did the other day with the labor contract… what the hell is going on now? I’ve checked the maintenance schedule. You had six aircraft scheduled all week for maintenance. Six! So how come you’ve had thirty-plus airplanes in there in the past three days? The overtime budget alone has been blown for the quarter. Already! And what the hell is so vital that you had to have thirty planes cycled through in three days?’

‘Something important,’ Bocks said.

‘And what’s that?’

‘Important. That’s all I’m going to say.’

‘Fine,’ Frank said. ‘And this is all I’m going to say. I’m out of here and on the phone to a majority of the board of directors, and in a half-hour, you’re out and the locks are put on everything. AirBox isn’t going to be yours in an hour, and everything’s grounded. Got it? Everything’s grounded. I’ve got a fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders and the board, because you’ve lost it. Lost it big time.’