Fallen Masters Read online

  The driver got out of the car then hurried around to open the door for him. He saw the little Porsche parked in front of them, and the publicist came back to meet him.

  “We will try not to curse out the hosts of this show, won’t we, Mr. Rask?” she chastised.

  “I will make a concerted effort,” he replied with a smile.

  The show was The Circle, which very much reminded Dawson of an American talk show, The View.

  It started with what could have been an awkward moment, when one of the women said, “Mr. Rask, I do hope that you are more comfortable with us than you were with Mr. Mayer. I wouldn’t want to be told to—uh—well, do what you told Jim Mayer.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Dawson said.

  “Don’t be,” one of the other women said. “Do you have any idea how much I would like to tell him the same thing? And I’m not the only one—I’m sure that half of Australia would like to as well.”

  “Bully for you,” another woman said, and their laughter made him feel quite welcome.

  It helped that all the women on the show had read not only this book, but his previous two novels as well. And they were quick to tell him that they were all fans of his writing.

  This was such a change, and such a relief, not only from his previous show this morning, but many other shows that he had done, that he was able to relax and actually discuss his book with them.

  The questions were rapid fire and interesting. Better than that, they were germane to the story. Dawson was a seasoned pro by now, having done the media rounds over the last few years, but he was very impressed by the chemistry the ladies of The Circle had. They laughed and joked throughout the show and evidenced a great respect for each other’s energy and intelligence, as well as Dawson’s writing talent.

  Chrissy Swan was young, with cobalt blue eyes and a vivacious personality. She was doing the interview for his segment, with cohosts Umi and Giorgi listening to cues coming in from their earbuds.

  Dawson had just launched into an explanation of his motivation for The Moses Mosaic, when he realized something was wrong. All the women’s faces reflected shock, horror, and sorrow.

  He hesitated a moment in his response to the question, and Chrissy held out her hand as if asking him to be quiet for a moment. The others looked at her.

  There was breaking news coming into the studio that would forever change the world.

  Suddenly, the interview was terminated, and Dawson not only understood, he was glad. This was no time to be talking about a novel. Returning to his hotel room, he spent the rest of the morning watching the coverage and feeling a sense of helplessness and vulnerability. He couldn’t help but remember the events of 9/11 and his last telephone conversation with Mary Beth.

  Part

  TWO

  CHAPTER

  45

  At Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas, John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was pronounced dead at 1 P.M. on November 22, 1963. At that exact moment, Marcus L. Jackson was born to a black mother and white father at the University of Chicago Medical Center on the city’s South Side. Jackson’s mother was a schoolteacher, and his father a policeman.

  Marcus had gotten his first indoctrination to how his life was different from those of his friends when he was still in grade school. Because of his mixed heritage, he literally saw no difference in skin color. Then one day as he was on the playground with two of his white friends, the father of one of them came over and pulled his son away.

  “Can’t you find some white kids to play with?” the father asked his son. Then he turned to Marcus. “You would be better off to play with your own kind,” he said.

  Later that evening, Marcus asked his father what his “own kind” meant.

  “What do you mean?” Lieutenant Matt Jackson asked.

  “I was playing with Terry and his father came and took Terry away, then told me I should play with my own kind. What’s that?”

  “Romulans are not your own kind. Vulcans are not your own kind.”

  Marcus laughed. “Those aren’t real. Those are people from other galaxies on Star Trek.”

  “Oh, well then, you aren’t likely to run into any of them then, are you?”

  “No.”

  “That leaves everybody else,” Lieutenant Jackson said. “And everybody else is your own kind.”

  Matt Jackson’s definition of who was his own kind resonated with Marcus, and as he grew older he moved with equal ease among white and black classmates.

  By the time Marcus was a sophomore he was a starting offensive lineman for his high school football team, and when he was a junior, he made All-Conference.

  Then, one week before school was out for the summer of his junior year, he stepped down from the school bus and saw three police cars in front of his house. Because his father was a lieutenant in the police department, it wasn’t unusual to see a police car in front of his house from time to time. He had even seen two cars there on occasion, but he had never seen three cars.

  Marcus ran to the house, then burst in through the front door. “Mom!” he shouted.

  His mother sat on the sofa, crying. Sergeant Golda Bernstein was sitting beside his mother, holding her hand. In addition, there were at least two more officers, including a captain and the police chaplain.

  “Mom, what is it? What happened? Where is Dad?”

  “Your father was a hero, son,” Captain Ken Watson said.

  Marcus still had the front page of the Chicago Tribune that told about his father.

  CHICAGO POLICE OFFICER KILLED IN LINE OF DUTY

  Hunting a violent career criminal wanted for murder, Chicago police detectives knocked on the door of a South Side apartment building Thursday morning. When the man’s mother let them in, the police saw that there were two small children present in the room.

  Lieutenant Jackson asked if Corey Draper was present, but before his mother could answer, Corey Draper suddenly appeared from another room with his pistol blazing at point-blank range.

  Realizing the danger the children were in, Lieutenant Matthew Jackson threw himself in front of them, taking three bullets as he did so. He returned fire and with one, well placed shot killed Draper. The other officers on the scene attempted to give emergency medical treatment to Lieutenant Jackson, but he died before the ambulance arrived.

  Lieutenant Jackson’s name has been submitted for the Carter Harrison Award, the Chicago Police Department’s highest award for bravery.

  When he graduated from high school, Jackson received an appointment to West Point, graduating with the class of 1985. While at the Academy, he played football, an offensive lineman who, as a pulling guard, helped the Army’s Wishbone attack achieve a record of eight wins, three losses, and one tie, including beating Navy 28-11 in the 1984 classic.

  Not bad for a kid from a “mixed” background on the South Side …

  By 2006, as a Lieutenant Colonel, Jackson was serving as an infantry battalion commander in Iraq.

  Saba al Bor, Iraq

  “Looks like we’ve got something here, Colonel,” Sergeant Steve Hoeler said as he looked through the thermal sight of the Long Range Acquisition System that was mounted on the command Humvee.

  “What do you have?” Colonel Jackson asked.

  “I’ve got six targets with weapons,” Sergeant Hoeler answered.

  It was pitch dark and the insurgents, dressed in black and blending into the night, thought they were safe. But thermal imaging enabled the Americans to see them as clearly as if they were standing in the middle of the street in broad daylight.

  “Paint the target and call in the fire mission, Sergeant,” Colonel Jackson ordered.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Less than a minute later, a half-dozen loud booms rattled the neighborhood as great balls of flame erupted at the target building. The flame was followed by a huge, billowing cloud of smoke and dust.

  Jackson almost felt sorry for the insurgents who had just died. They
died from misguided zeal and ignorance. They were unable to even imagine a technology that could not only find them in the dark but could also bring death and destruction down from the sky without warning.

  The next morning Colonel Jackson perched on an overturned bucket behind a free-standing wall at the battalion command post. At the moment he was eating MREs and staring at images on a TV monitor, the images being projected from an unmanned aerial vehicle that was circling, unchallenged, over the city. A gray-painted Ford Expedition marked with the word “Press” on each door drove up behind him.

  The two men who got out were both wearing sleeve flashes that identified them as TV reporters. One carried a camera. The other man Jackson recognized.

  “I’m looking for the CO,” the reporter announced.

  “I’m Colonel Jackson,” Jackson said without interrupting his eating.

  “Colonel, I’m John Corrigan with Satellite World News.” Corrigan was somewhat shorter than average, with dark hair, dark eyes, and a deeply tanned face. “I came here to be imbedded with your battalion. I already have authorization from the division commanding general.”

  “All right,” Jackson said abruptly, standing up and discarding the residue of his breakfast. “What do you say, Captain Lindell? Are you ready?”

  “Battalion strength, sir?”

  “No, one company only. Get Captain Crawford up here.”

  A moment later Captain Charley Crawford, CO of Charley Company showed up at the command post.

  “What’s up, Colonel?” Crawford said.

  “We’re going to do a company strength reconnaissance. You take the number two spot, Charley. I’ll take the lead,” Jackson said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And, take these august members of the press with you,” he said.

  Five minutes later Colonel Jackson saw a stream of smoke coming toward them from the tower of a mosque. A rocket-propelled grenade passed over his Humvee and slammed into Captain Crawford’s vehicle, just behind him. The powerful blast ripped into the Charley Company CO’s Humvee sending up a flash of fire and billowing cloud of smoke.

  When Colonel Jackson looked back, he saw Captain Crawford’s gunner hanging face down on the gun ring in the burning Humvee. The impact of the grenade had not only set fire to the Humvee, it also caused it to turn broadside across the road, effectively blocking off all the vehicles behind it.

  Colonel Jackson ran toward the fallen soldier and saw that he had been hit between the eyes. His body lay motionless on the street. Jackson then ran to the burning Humvee. Captain Crawford was still alive, but it was obvious he couldn’t move on his own, because his left leg was badly lacerated.

  Captain Crawford looked at Jackson and tried to speak, but though his lips moved, nothing came from his mouth.

  “Don’t try to speak, Charley. I’m going to get you out of there,” Colonel Jackson said.

  “No,” Crawford said, weakly. “Go, while you can.”

  “At ease, Charley, and that’s an order,” Colonel Jackson said as he took the belt off the dead driver then put it around Crawford’s left leg. He cinched it up as tight as he could, so he could use it as a tourniquet.

  Then he pulled Crawford from his seat, and with the Captain draped across his shoulder, started running back up the street. Bullets whizzed and popped by him as he ran, many of them hitting the pavement close to him, then whining as they ricocheted away.

  “Come on! Hurry, hurry!” one of the men from the edge shouted, as Jackson started back.

  “Damn! Look at him go! Who would’ve thought the old man could run like that?”

  “Well, he played football at West Point.”

  Almost as if he had no weight at all to deal with, Colonel Jackson dashed back through the machine gun fire until he was finally out of the kill zone. Then, on the sidewalk and out of the line of fire from the mosque, he lay Captain Crawford down as the medic came over to take a look at him.

  “Let’s get a med evac for Captain Crawford.”

  Ten minutes later they heard the distinctive sound of an Abrams tank, the growl of the engine, the clatter of track on pavement, and the squeaking of the track wheels. The tank pushed through the burning Humvee. Captain Lindell was on the radio with the tank driver.

  “What have you got for us?” the tank commander asked.

  “Colonel, he wants to know his target,” Lindell said.

  “Tell him it’s the mosque,” Colonel Jackson replied.

  Captain Lindell repeated the order.

  “I’m going to need some authority higher than a company commander to do that,” the tank commander replied.

  “Colonel, he wants higher authorization,” Captain Lindell said.

  “Give me the horn,” Colonel Jackson said. “Who am I talking to?” he asked.

  “This is Vexation.”

  “Well, Vexation, this is Turtle Six. Do you copy that? Turtle Six.”

  Six denoted commanding officer, and Turtle was the call sign for the battalion.

  “Roger, Turtle Six. I understand you are personally authorizing this mission?” Vexation said.

  Several minutes later, a Blackhawk medical evacuation helicopter landed in the square in front of the mosque. Colonel Jackson was there, holding Captain Crawford’s hand as he was loaded onto the aircraft.

  “You take damn good care of him,” Colonel Jackson said to the flight medic. “Do you hear me, soldier? You take good care of him.”

  “Colonel, I take good care of all my boys,” the flight medic, a specialist, said.

  “I know you do, son. God bless you,” Colonel Jackson said.

  * * *

  At a court-martial back in Fort Benning, Georgia, Colonel Jackson was found not guilty on all charges of conduct unbecoming and assault on the insurgents in the mosque—but he was strongly advised by his superiors to submit his retirement papers.

  “Even though you were found innocent—this court-martial will be a permanent part of your file and future promotions, as well as command assignments, will be affected,” Jackson’s commanding general told him.

  Jackson agreed, and he submitted his papers for retirement.

  * * *

  Marcus Jackson’s wife, Win, did what she could to help him through the transition. Her real name was Ngyuen, but she changed it so that her name was spelled just the way it was pronounced. Win’s father had been a colonel in the South Vietnamese Army. After the fall of Saigon, he was sent to a “re-education” camp, but escaped three years later, then organized a group to leave Vietnam by sea. Win was nine years old when she became one of the “boat people.”

  Marcus and Win were married in 1990, and after almost giving up hope of ever having a child, ten years later, in 2000, their son, Marcus Jr., was born.

  They moved to Savannah, Georgia, after Jackson got out of the army, and for the first six months he augmented his retirement pay by making speeches around the country. He was a gifted speaker, and despite the attacks on him from a sensationalizing press, a popularity poll taken by CNN showed that 83% of Americans approved of what he had done in Iraq. His popularity grew until one morning three people showed up at his house and asked him to run for the U.S. Senate. Running on a campaign of, “Doing what it takes to get the job done,” Marcus L. Jackson became the first black senator from the state of Georgia since Reconstruction.

  Four years later he ran for and was elected President of the United States.

  CHAPTER

  46

  Then time turned once more on its eternal wheel …

  “Mr. President … how are you feeling, sir?”

  POTUS opened his eyes slowly and tried to focus, but the lights in the room seemed overly bright and somewhat painful.

  “I was tackled, pinned down.…” He remembered a more grotesque pain that seemed never to end. Then nothing. Then this. What was this?

  “I might feel better if you could turn down the lights just a bit. I think I might be having a migraine. Or—maybe it is somethi
ng else. I have a feeling it was something more, something worse than a migraine, but I don’t know what it is. I also have no idea where I am, and worse, I don’t even know when or how I got here.”

  “Sir. I need you to just lie still.” The voice was still disembodied, and had a somewhat metallic quality to it, as if coming from a speaker.

  “You need me to lie still? Who are you? Where are you?”

  “I’m right here, sir. Please stay as still as you can. You were shot.”

  “Shot? My wife, my son? Where are they? Are they all right?”

  “Your family is safe and fine. They were proceeding to another part of the auditorium when it happened, and they were evacuated swiftly from the premises. There was only one casualty.”

  “Good. Did they get the person who shot me?”

  “Yes, sir … they did. He got a few rounds off before Secret Service brought him down.”

  “Who was he?”

  “His name was Lee Timothy. He was a nobody, an antiwar protester who somehow managed to be on the honor guard detail. It seems he lost his father and two brothers in the line of duty in the Middle East and Africa.”

  “Then he wasn’t a nobody,” POTUS said. “He was an American who has paid a great price for our freedom. I know how painful that must have been for him. But I am happy to hear you report there were no casualities.”

  “But there was a casualty. One casualty, as I said before.”

  “Dammit! Please tell me it wasn’t Freddy! He must have told me a hundred times that nothing would happen to me on his watch … that he would take a bullet for me if he had to. Was it Freddy?”

  “No, it was not.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Sir. It was you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How badly am I hurt?”

  “You haven’t figured it out yet?”

  “No. I don’t feel any particular pain.” POTUS made a quick pass over his body with his hands. “I can’t find any wounds.”