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He liked the feeling. So, some time later, as they walked back toward the hangar-a converted barn, jury-rigged like everything else-he finally got up the nerve to ask the question he'd been mulling over for several weeks.

"Will you marry me?"

"Sure," responded Kathy immediately, her arm tightening around his waist. "Makes perfect sense. I've been working toward this my whole life. Small-town girl from the boondocks of northern California, Las Vegas showgirl, piano bar singer-God, they missed a bet there, those music industry dummies-cocktail waitress, greasy spoon waitress-the trajectory's obvious, isn't it? Where else would I wind up except as Mrs. Strategic Air Command?"

"You'll need an official driver!" piped up Hans from behind them. "Me, of course!"

Kathy turned pale.

Chapter 12

Frank rode with Mike on the way back, since Mike had decided to adjourn the cabinet meeting until the next day. The excitement at the airfield had wound up using most of the afternoon, and Mike said he had an important appointment that evening he didn't want to postpone.

"You pissed at me?" asked Frank, as soon as the truck started driving off. Mike had a fairly ferocious frown on his face. "I guess I should have asked you before-"

"Nah, forget it," said Mike, shaking his head. "We'd talked about putting Jesse in charge, once before, if he ever got that contraption off the ground. It made sense to me then, makes sense now. That's not the problem. It's the damn oil."

Frank's eyebrows went up. "I thought things were going pretty well up there. The last report you gave from Quentin sounded good."

Mike's frown deepened, became almost a scowl. "Yeah, sure. Quentin's a hard-driving manager, about as capable as they get, and you know as well as I do that he'd get that oil field up and working faster than anyone. So I'm sure his report was accurate. He's also got about the worst case of tunnel vision I've ever met in my life. Or have you forgotten?"

Frank smiled. In the days before the Ring of Fire, he and Mike had been coal miners working for Quentin Underwood, who had then been the manager of the coal mine they'd worked at. No one had ever questioned Quentin's managerial competence, to be sure, but… damn near everything else about the man had tended to drive his employees nuts.

"So, naturally, Quentin hasn't given a bit of thought to how we're going to haul the oil, once he's got the refinery running. That's my problem, I guess, not his."

"That's Quentin Underwood, all right. He's probably assuming a pipeline will materialize out of nowhere. Made out of what, I wonder, and by who? A cast-iron industry that's just got up to cranking out potbellied stoves a few months ago?"

Mike shook his head. "Not to mention that Quentin doesn't seem to have the slightest understanding of what the term 'conflict of interest' means. According to Uriel, he's already gotten himself a partnership with the Germans who put up most of the money for the operation. So I'll have to bring the hammer down. Again."

Frank made a face. Quentin had gone out to Celle to oversee the establishment of an extraction and refining operation at the nearby Wietze oil fields in his capacity as the United States' secretary of the interior-not as a private entrepreneur. But, as had been true several times already, the man seemed unable to grasp that there was anything wrong with using his official position to further his own personal interests. As long as he didn't steal anything, of course. Quentin Underwood would have been more outraged than anyone at the suggestion that he was a thief.

My books are good, dammit!

Yeah, fine, Quentin-but they're not supposed to BE your books in the first place.

Mike continued grumbling. "How the hell did two good union men like you and me wind up in charge of a pack of robber barons anyway? I swear to God, Frank…"

He broke off, sighing.

Frank shrugged. "It's not that bad, really. Stuff like this is bound to happen, Mike, under the circumstances. Everything's busting wide open and everybody wants to grab a piece of it. Hell, half the guys in the UMWA have got businesses on the side now. No way to stop it-even if you wanted to anyway, which you don't. However messy it is, we need that economic growth badly.

"I grant you," he added, "it'll make for some nasty situations down the road. But don't forget that we do have a powerful trade union movement also. So…"

He scratched his head. "Becky probably knows more American labor history by now than I do, but I do know this much-when the old-style robber barons were cutting loose in the 19 th century they had all the advantages of labor legislation-if you can even call it that!-that was nowhere near as good as we've got. Not to mention-"