“The President of the United States?” Greta said.

“Yeah, him. So that’s what I did.”

Oscar considered this fact. “When was this decision made?”

“I called the White House this morning at four AM.”

Oscar nodded. “Hmmm. I see.”

“Don’t tell me that you actually talked to the President,” Greta said.

“Of course I didn’t talk to the President! The President’s not awake at four AM! I can tell you who’s up at four AM, at the White House national security desk. It’s this brand-new, young, military aide from Colorado. He’s a fresh new transition-team guy. It’s his very first day on the job. He’s working the graveyard shift. He’s kinda twitchy. Nothing important has ever happened to him before. He’s not real streetwise. And he’s not that hard a guy to reach, either — especially if you call him on twenty or thirty phones, all at once.”

“And what did you tell the President’s new national security aide?” Oscar prompted gently.

Kevin examined his navigation console and took a left turn into the deeper woods. “Well, I told him that the Governor of Louisiana had just kidnapped the Director of a federal laboratory. I kinda had to spice up my story to hold his interest — Huey’s gang was holding her hostage, there were French secret agents involved, you know, that sort of thing. I chucked in some juicy details. Luckily, this guy was very up to speed on the Louisiana air base problem. Real aware of the Louisi-ana military radar hole, and all that. See, this guy’s a lieutenant colo-nel, and he happens to come from Colorado Springs, where they have this very massive Air Force Academy. Seems there is, like, extremely irritated Air Force sentiment in Colorado. They hate Huey’s guts for making the Air Force look like weak sisters.”

“So this colonel believed your story?” Oscar said.

“Hell, I dunno. But he told me he was gonna check his satellite surveillance records, and if they backed up my story, he was gonna wake up the President.”

“Amazing,” Greta said, impressed despite herself “They’d have never woken up the old guy for a thing like that.”

Oscar said nothing. He was trying to imagine the likely conse-quences if the President’s national security team pressed their panic buttons at four AM, on the very first day on the job. What weird entities might leap from the crannies of the American military-entertainment complex? There were so many possibilities: America’s aging imperial repertoire of delta forces, swats, seals, high-orbital, antiterrorist, rapid-deployment, pep-pill-gobbling, macho super-goons… Not that these strange people would ever be used, in modern political reality. The military killer elite were creatures of a long-vanished era, strictly ceremonial entities. They would jog around the subterranean secret bases doing their leg lifts and push-ups, reading bad historical techno thriller novels, watching their lives and careers slowly rust away…

At least, that had always been the implicit understanding. But understandings could change. And after his night’s experience, he found himself inhabiting a different world.

“Unless I miss my guess,” Oscar said, “our kidnappers had a rendezvous at the Sabine River last night. They were planning to smuggle us across the state line, to hand us over to some crowd of Huey’s militia. But they were jumped in the dark, by some kind of night-flying U.S. tiger team. Airborne armed commandos of some kind, who surprised Huey’s people on the ground last night, and ab-solutely shot them to pieces.”

“Why on earth would they do such a thing?” Greta said, shocked. “They should have used nonlethal force and arrested them.”

“Airborne commandos aren’t policemen. They’re genuine spe-cial-forces fanatics, who still use real guns! And when they spotted that French spy submarine in the water, they must have lost their tempers. I mean, imagine their reaction. If you’re a heavily armed U.S. black-helicopter ace, and you see a secret submarine sneaking up an American river… well, once you’ve pulled the trigger, you can’t strafe a thing like that just once.”

Greta’s brows knitted. “Did you really see a submarine, Oscar?”

“Oh yes. I can’t swear that it was French, but it sure wasn’t one of ours. Americans don’t build cute, efficient little submarines. We prefer our submarines bigger than a city block. Besides, it all makes sense that way. The French have an aircraft carrier offshore. They’ve got drones flying over the bayous. The French invented the frogman-spy tradition… So of course it was a cute little French sub. Poor bastards. ”

“You know,” Kevin said thoughtfully, “normally, I’m very down on law-and-order issues, but I think I like this Two Feathers guy. The deal is — all you have to do is call him! They wake him up at four AM, and your problem is solved before dawn! This new President is a take-charge guy! The old guy would never have pulled a stunt like that. This is a real change of pace for America, isn’t it? It’s executive authority in action, that’s what it is! It’s like — he’s the Chief Execu-tive, so he just executes ’em!”

“I don’t think that a shooting war between state and federal spooks is what the President had in mind for his first day in office,” Oscar said. “That’s not a healthy development for American democ-racy. ”

“Oh, get over it!” Kevin scoffed. “Kidnapping is terrorism! You can’t take a soft line with terrorists — there’s no end to that crap! The bastards got exactly what was coming to them! And that’s just what we need inside the Collaboratory, too. We need an iron hand with these scumbags…” Kevin scowled mightily, gripping the peeling wheel of the car in uncontrollable excitement. “Man, it chaps my ass to think of those crooked tinkertoy coppers in there, getting ready to bust up those eggheads. And here I am — me, Kevin Hamilton, thirty-two years old — a fugitive again, running scared. If I only had, like, twenty heavy-duty Irish Southies with some pool cues and table legs. There’s only twelve lousy cops in that whole laboratory. They haven’t been doing anything for ten years, except tapping phone lines and taking payoffs. We could beat those sons of bitches into bad health.”

“This is a new you we’re hearing from, Kevin,” Oscar observed.

“Man, I never knew that I could just talk to the President! Y’know, I’m a prole, and a hacker, and a phone phreak. I admit all that. But when you get to be my age, you just get sick of outsmarting them all the time! You get tired of having to dodge ’em, that’s all. How come I have to sneak around in the cracks in the floorboards? I tell you, Dr. Penninger — you let me run your security, you’d see some changes made.”

“Are you telling me that you want to be the lab’s security chief, Mr. Hamilton?”

“No, of course I’m not, but …” Kevin paused in surprise. “Well, yeah! Yeah, sure! I can do it! I’m up for the damn job! Give me the damned cop budget. Give me all the badges and the batons. Hell yeah, I can do anything you want. Make me the federal authorities.”

“Well,” she said, “I’m the lab’s Director, and I’m lying down in your backseat, wearing handcuffs. I don’t see anyone else volunteering to help me.”

“I could do it for you, Dr. Penninger, I swear I could. I could take that whole place over, if there were more than three of us. But as it is…” He shrugged. “Well, I guess we just drive around at ran-dom, makin’ phone calls.”

“I never drive without a goal,” Oscar told him.

“So, man, do you know where we’re going? Where is that?”

“Where’s the nearest big camp of Moderators?”