Piranha: Firing Point

“Keep going through the disk, and stay on top of the SS-12. And, Paully, my guess is we’ll be getting out of here soon — Warner doesn’t seem in the mood to play with this thing. So keep your things packed. If it comes to it, we’ll sleep on the plane.”

“Aye-aye, sir. Good luck.”

Pacino walked down the log-lined hallway to the end, where half-log steps rose to the upper level. The suit-clad staff woman was waiting with her ID tags around her neck and a radio in her hand. She mumbled into it as he approached. She led him up two nights of stairs to the huge main level. Pacino emerged in a large open area, near a window wall overlooking the twinkling lights of the village. Two stone fireplaces were lit in the open area across the way, framing an arrangement of furniture.

The fireplace hearths were each big enough to roast a pig in, and the massive logs in them filled the room with warmth. In the center of the sitting area was a coffee table as big as a queen-size bed, cluttered with Writepad computers and printouts, old-fashioned colored paper maps, and coffee cups. Gathered around were four long couches and four deep easy chairs. To the side of the room two pine dining tables had been moved together, their surfaces covered with large notepad computer displays, charts of the East China Sea, and maps of White China. Tacked to the wall was a huge, twenty-foot-tall colored map of all of White China and the East China Sea.

The first thing Pacino noticed about the men gathered in the room was how casually they were dressed.

O’Shaughnessy wore jeans and hiking boots with a ski sweater; James Baldini, the Army chief, looked like he was ready for a cocktail party, wearing a designer sports jacket and gabardine pants; the remainder were wearing ski pants and long-sleeved T-shirts or turtlenecks, after-ski boots. The only exception was Lido Gaz, the Secretary of War, who looked like he was back at the Pentagon, wearing an Armani three-piece suit over a starched white shirt and red-patterned tie. Dressed in service dress blues, Pacino felt like a fish out of water.

“Admiral, make yourself comfortable,” Jaisal Warner said. She was standing by the fireplace slim and shapely in her ski pants and boots, her hair tucked behind her ears. She held a steaming mug of coffee in one hand, a small Writepad in the other.

Pacino smiled at her. “Thank you. Madam President.”

He removed his service dress jacket and placed it on the back of the one empty easy chair, near the window side of the couch arrangement. Warner nodded to the seat, and he sat in it.

To Pacino’s right was O’Shaughnessy, James Baldini seated on the couch next to him. On the right corner easy chair was Jack Daniels, and in the couch to his right, facing the window, was Chris Osgood and Stephen Cogster. Warner returned to her easy chair in the midst of all of them. On an opposite couch, between Secretary of State Freddy Masters and Vice President Al Meckstar sat the Secretary of War, Lido Gaz. He was of medium height, slightly thick in the middle, in his late fifties, with silver hair and a craggy, coarse-featured face, and usually the best-dressed man in any room. Gaz would impress people on his initial meetings with his charm and his intelligence, but in the Pentagon E-Ring suite where he held his offices, he was moody, explosive, sarcastic, and bombastic. Pacino was careful around Gaz, and that approach had seemed to pay off. Gaz had always treated him with respect and courtesy.

Between Gaz and Pacino was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Bill Pinkenson, who shot Pacino a dazzling smile. Pinkenson always seemed like a favorite uncle, telling stories and talking to the troops.

Yet when he focused on the task at hand, his judgment was sound and invariably on target.

As Pacino settled into his chair, he found every eye in the room looking at him. A bad taste rose to his mouth, a pool of bile forming in his stomach. This was not the kind of meeting where he would sit in and watch the debate go back and forth. He’d been called to give his opinion. For the tenth time that day, Pacino wondered why he was there, and why O’Shaughnessy had yet to talk to him.

“Admiral Pacino, I want to thank you for coming out with Admiral O’Shaughnessy.” President Wamer smiled.