Unpopular Science

Under the bench was a genuine, antique Flexible Flyer children’s wagon. It was one of the first ones ever made, worth thousands to some toy collectors, especially with pristine original paint like this one.

Inside the near-mint wagon was a compact smart bomb, stenciled with the letters:

UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE TOP SECRET PROPERTY OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

Possession of this ordnance is extremely dangerous and will result in the immediate incarceration, military trial and conviction by the Terrorist And Potential Terrorists Isolation Division (TAPTID) of the Department Of Homeland Security (DOHS).

Jack Fast was not surprised to find live, classified ordnance in his home. He waved his sensors at it, waved it away, waved it back.

“Cool!” Fast said. “Hey, Pops, wake up!”

He was waving it around when Fastbinder emerged from his tiny bedroom cubicle in his boxers. His head was wild, his legs were scrawny, and he was scratching his chest drowsily. He was not a pretty sight. “What’s the problem?” Fastbinder grumbled.

“Aw, jeez. Pops, the turtle’s poking out his shell.”

Fastbinder adjusted his boxers. “Better? Now what’s the problem?”

Jack was waving the sensor array around the workshop. “Look at the screen. I figured out what this thing does. And it does it really well.”

Fastbinder, his curiosity aroused, leaned into the monitor. As Jack waved the sensors, the screen took a reading of something.

“What?”

“Ordnance.”

“Ordnance.” An ordnance sensor was definitely nothing new.

“Now watch.” Jack waved the sensors at the wall. The screen jumped.

Fastbinder thought about what was behind the wall. Nothing. Twenty feet of empty dirt. Then the storage house, heavily shielded.

The sensors were seeing through it, registering some of the odd bombs Fastbinder was keeping there.

No sensor should be able to see into that building.

If this sensor could see through bomb-proof shielding to find live ordnance…

“Just think what it could do!” Jack Fast exclaimed.

Fastbinder was wearing a look of rapture. “Yes. Just think!”

Chapter 17

The old fairy tale was that anybody could grow up to be President of the United States. Not true. Sure, anybody could run for President. Even women. Even African-Americans. Jews. Muslims. Hindus. Great Danes named Hal. Ross Perot. Anybody could run.

The truth was that any male WASP American could grow up to be President. Being rich and socially connected was strongly recommended.

Herbert Whiteslaw was all those things. Fifty-one-years old, Caucasian, very middle of the road in terms of his political views. He came from old San Francisco money and had no publicly known skeletons in his closet. He was a four-term state senator from California and had kissed political backside in every federal building on Capitol Hill.

His constituents liked him but he never seemed to get in tight with his peers. He never seemed to get the important party people excited enough to gain their support for a run at the presidency.

What he needed was internal party support, and he knew how to get it: blackmail.

Extorting support within his own party would be a fine first step, but that wouldn’t guarantee him the White House. What he needed was an extraordinary level of support from the most unlikely sources.

“Picture this,” he told his former campaign manager. “I get the party nomination—”

“Too late for that,” Phil Mein interrupted. “You may have read in the newspaper that the primaries are over. We’re just months away from the election, Herb.”

Whiteslaw nodded and stuffed in a forkful of shrimp and angel hair pasta. “Yeah, but the nominees might step down. What’s the replacement process?”

Mein frowned. “I don’t know. What leads you to believe the nominees would step down.”

“Hypothetically, they do. And, hypothetically, I get the nomination.”

“Herb, think about it. You haven’t been actively campaigning for this election. If a party nominee did step out of the race, there are five or six replacements waiting in the wings who’ve been promoting themselves for more than a year. You’re an unknown. But, if by some quirk of politics you did get the party nomination, you’d be the underdog in the general election for sure. You’d never unseat the incumbent.”

“I think I could.”

Mein was twirling his pasta carbonara despondently. When Whiteslaw called him into this meeting he had been excited to think that the senator was beginning to plan his strategy for the next Senate race and, simultaneously, the White House race that was still four years off. Mein didn’t like the direction this conversation was headed. “Let’s talk about the next election. You know, four years from now. You might stand a chance.”

“If I were to get the party nomination, and if the current administration were to suddenly become mired in scandal, what then?”