Executive orders - Tom Clancy [234]
The protocol was that he had to walk down first and alone. Barely had he stood in the opening when a cheer went up, and this from people who scarcely knew a thing about him. His coat buttoned, his hair combed down and sprayed into place despite his objections, Jack Ryan walked down the steps, feeling more like a fool than a President until he got to the bottom. There an Air Force chief master sergeant snapped a salute, which Ryan, so imprinted by his brief months in the Marine Corps, returned smartly-and another cheer went up. He looked around to see Secret Service and other Treasury agents deployed around, almost all of them looking outward. The first person to come close was the governor of the state.
Welcome to Indiana, Mr. President! He seized Ryan's hand and shook it vigorously. We're honored to host your first official visit.
They'd laid out everything for this one. A company of the local National Guard was formed up. The band crashed out Ruffles and Flourishes, immediately followed by Hail to the Chief, and Ryan felt himself to be a singular fraud. With the governor to his left and half a step behind, Ryan followed the red-what else?-carpet. The assembled soldiers came to present arms, and their ancient regimental standard dipped, though not the Stars and Stripes, of course, which, an American athlete had once proclaimed, dips to no earthly king or potentate (he'd been an Irish-American unwilling so to honor the King of England at the 1908 Olympiad). Jack moved his right hand over his heart as he passed, a gesture remembered from his youth, and looked at the assembled guardsmen. He was their commander-in-chief now, the President told himself. He could give orders sending them off to the field of battle, and he had to look at their faces. There they were, clean-shaven and young and proud, as he would have been twenty-odd years earlier. They were here for him. And he always had to be there for them. Yeah, Jack told himself. Have to remember that.
May I introduce you to some local citizens, sir? the governor asked, pointing to the fence. Ryan nodded and followed.
Heads up, pressin' flesh, Andrea called over her radio microphone. For as many times as they'd seen it happen, the agents on presidential Detail detested this above all things. Price would be with POTUS at all times. Raman and three others hovered on both sides of him, their eyes scanning the crowd from behind dark sunglasses, looking for guns, for the wrong expression, for faces memorized from photographs, for anything out of the ordinary.
There were so many of them, Jack thought. None of them had voted for him, and until very recently few had even known his name. Yet they were here. Some, perhaps, state-government employees getting half a day off, but not the ones holding kids, not all of them, and the looks in their eyes stunned the President, who'd never in his life experienced anything even close to this. Hands extended frantically, and he shook all that he could, moving to his left down the line, trying to hear individual voices through the cacophony of screams.
Welcome to Indiana!-How are ya!-MISTER PRESIDENT!-We trust you!-Good job so far!-We're with ya!
Ryan tried to answer back, achieving little more than a repeated thank-you, his mouth mainly open in surprise at the overpowering warmth of the moment, and all directed at him. It was enough to make him overlook the pain in his hand, but finally he had to step away from the fence and wave, to yet another roar of love for the new President.
Damn. If they only knew what a fraud he was, Jack thought, what would they do then? What the hell am I doing here? his mind demanded, as he headed for the open door of the presidential limousine.
THERE WERE TEN of them, down in the basement of the building. All were men. Only one was a political prisoner, and his crime was apostasy. The rest were singularly undesirable people, four murderers, a rapist, two child molesters, and two thieves who were repeat offenders and, under the Koranic law of their nation, subject to removal of