“I don’t know. There’s an order from the Pentagon to arrest me. But I don’t know if it’s the good guys, who are fooled by the phony evidence planted against me, or the bad guys, hoping to use that as an excuse to get their hands on me and shut me up for good. Where are the kids?”
“I confined them to their rooms. Mark and Nick are entertaining the girls and J.P.”
Aunt Margaret came in dangling keys. “Take my PT Cruiser.”
“We won’t all fit,” said Reuben.
“You aren’t taking the kids,” said Margaret. “Don’t be insane. People are shooting out there. This is a nice little house in a nice little town in the Garden State. But the two of you are very smart. You need to get away from the kids to keep them safe.”
“In your PT Cruiser.”
“I have your nice SUV. Where’s the one you borrowed to come here?”
“In the city,” said Reuben. “I don’t want to leave the kids.”
“Neither do I,” said Cessy.
Her cellphone rang. “I guess it’s not you,” she said.
She said hello and then listened. Then she said “all right” about five times and hung up.
“That’s one hell of a cold-call salesman if you just bought new carpet,” said Reuben.
“That was Sandy. LaMonte wants us to meet with him.”
“Us? You and me?”
“And Captain Coleman. Where is he? He’s all right, isn’t he?”
“He walked the last couple of blocks in full battle gear. In case this place was surrounded.”
The doorbell rang. Aunt Margaret opened it. “You have blood on your uniform, young man.”
“I had a cut thumb,” said Cole. He held up his Minimi. “In a neighborhood like this, I feel like a little kid playing army men. Can I come in?”
“May I come in is more proper,” said Aunt Margaret, opening the door wider to let him pass. “But it’s rude to correct people’s grammar, so I never do.”
The PT Cruiser didn’t like going faster than 65. At 70 it started trembling.
Then again, Cessy didn’t like driving faster than 65 anyway. And she was driving. Cole was sitting behind the seats with the shelf over his head. They looked like two nice citizens on their way to or from church. Unless you looked closely and saw all the weapons on the floor of the back seat. And the guy in the back with the machine gun.
Aunt Margaret was taking the kids to the home of some very good friends in Hamilton. “Good Croatians,” she said. “They’ll not breathe a word. And I’ll stay with the kids the whole time.” She was only driving Charlie O’Brien’s car as far as Lawrence, and her friends were picking her up there. She’d mail Charlie’s keys to him and tell him where to get the car. “I feel like a spy,” she said.
“You should feel like a refugee,” answered Cessy.
But it still tore her apart to leave the kids behind. And she could see that even though Mark was as manic as ever and Nick as quiet, they were scared. There was terrible stuff happening on the news, and their own parents were right in the thick of it, and now they were going into hiding. The girls, of course, were irritated that Mom and Dad were leaving them, but they had no clue about the outside world. They’d be fine, she was sure of that. Fine fine fine.
“I thought I turned down that job in the White House,” Cessy said.
“Well,” said Reuben, “technically, since the President isn’t in the White House . . .”
Cessy wished she could have heard the discussions when LaMonte told them he wasn’t going to Camp David or any of the known locations. “Since we don’t know whom we can trust,” LaMonte would have said, “we can’t vouch for our security anywhere.”
“Some political adviser was bound to say, “It’ll look like you’re in hiding. It’ll cause confusion and make you look bad.”
“I’m not running for anything right now,” LaMonte would have said. “And the country doesn’t need another dead President right now.”
But . . . why Gettysburg?