Hail to the Chiefs (1)
Oct. 21st, 2011 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsol You know the drill. Start writing without knowing where I'm going. Write at least 1000 words and look for an exit. Repeat until done.
It is four AM in northern Italy. The sky is dark and the city of Milano is still asleep. I'm still mostly asleep myself. But there's a lot of activity on the American airbase where we're stationed. Also, the unit I'm embedded with never sleeps. I drink coffee and rub the sleep out of my eyes. This is no time for snoozing. It's Go time.
We are moving out. A mission has come down from somewhere on high. The Green Berets are completely unsuitable for this kind of action. The Navy Seals are too weak, probably doing things like eating and breathing and sleeping at unreasonable hours of the morning. Only one branch of the armed forces has the skills, training and personnel applicable to the task at hand. That branch does not exist.
It's going to be a six-man strike force. I make the seventh. The Chiefs are totally fine with a relatively green reporter riding along during fairly extreme missions. I've flown with military units of all sorts, and most of them display an extreme reluctance to expose civilians to danger. The Chiefs are completely opposite in this regard. They want me to come along. I have come to believe that this is because they want me to get killed. The Chiefs would find this amusing.
Delano is already in the chopper warming it up. Apart from the rotors spinning above me, there's no way to tell the craft is on, let alone occupied. The thing is black, slick and angular, makes absolutely no noise, and has no lights on. I'm not certain it even has any lights.
Teddy and the rest emerge from the hangar with their kits. Teddy is burly with massive arms and shoulders, a bodybuilder's physique completely at odds with his thick wire-frame glasses. Teddy takes my coffee cup away and drops the butt of his cigar into it.
"Don't want to drink too much of that, boyo," he warns. "Can't have you needing to pee mid-flight. Might jeopardize the mission." He grins, slaps me on the shoulder and hands me back my coffee.
I throw the cup on the tarmac and wait my turn, boarding the chopper behind the other Chiefs. Easy for Teddy to talk about peeing. Teddy peed his last almost a hundred years ago, a decade after leaving office as President of the United States.
We take off. Delano does not pilot for human comfort; the chopper accelerates upwards fast enough to slap me down into my jumpseat. The Chiefs sit there like they're carved from stone.
A more apt analogy might be mahogany. The Process that they all underwent when they swore their presidential oaths has sustained them in a state of unlife, and given them unnatural strength and vitality, but it has a few side effects. They can't heal from physical injury, not completely anyway, which means more than one ex-president looks a little rough around the edges. Also, over time the Process changes the color of the Chief's skin. Gangly Jefferson, who seems to be calibrating a GPS device, is almost black. Nixon, who the other Chiefs still call 'Rookie', just looks like he has a fairly deep tan. Teddy falls somewhere between the two; he has the copper color of an old penny. Teddy catches me looking at him and grins.
"What's the matter, kid?" he teases. "Never seen a badass killing machine before?"
"I was wondering where the bullet hole is," I say.
"Which one?" asks Teddy. "I been shot thirty, maybe forty times. Five times by Contras. Vicious bastards, Contras. Great night vision, though."
"I mean the first one," I clarify. "The one where you went ahead and gave a speech with a bullet in you."
"Oh, yeah," says Teddy. "My Bull Moose bullet." He lifts up his shirt and points out one of the holes that pock-mark his chest. The hole is modest in size compared to some of the other craters. The skin is shriveled and black where it vanishes into the mark.
"Yeah, that bullet's still in there," Teddy boasts. "Almost gave the whole game away. The doctors were fifty-fifty about whether I would have to fake my death if I didn't want to give away the secret of Presidential Immortality. Finally I convinced 'em that I could sell the world on just being a touch sonofabitch. And hey, it worked!"
Teddy's right: the world still doesn't know one of the Freemason's best-kept secrets – that every sitting POTUS has received the Process and cannot die by normal means. If severely injured while in office, each President 'dies' and is replaced by normal succession. Otherwise, a suitable non-suspicious interval is chosen, and a period of fake aging is followed by a staged death.
Originally the intent of the Process was to stabilize the leadership of the Union. But after a near miss with Jackson, it became plain that if a President ever were to be wounded severely, so severely that only alchemy could explain their survival, then the secret would be out. Eventually it was deemed that secrecy was more important than keeping any one person in office.
Teddy nudges Lincoln. "Now, when old Honest Abe here got his, there was no covering it up," Teddy jokes. Lincoln doesn't smile. He never smiles. He wears an eyepatch; Booth's shot in the back of his head blew out his left eye. His survival would have meant a serious outing of the secret of the Process, so it was decided that he should become a martyr and Johnson should replace him. Lincoln's injury also changed him. The other Chiefs are essentially human, with emotions and reactions and feelings. Lincoln has no feelings, none that I can detect anyway. He's a machine, a living weapon the color of old leather, and he shoots anything that needs shooting without remorse.
"I'm too beautiful to be shot," says Nixon, smirking. He looks the way he used to look in the old McCarthy Trials footage, young and foxy-sly. I can't tell if he looked older during his Presidency because of makeup, or if some aspect of the Process reverses wrinkling and tissue degeneration. Whatever the cause, he looks good. It's obvious he works out a lot, and there's certainly nothing about the Process that keeps Nixon from bulking up the muscle-mass. He looks like a less-trustworthy Bruce Willis.
"Shut up, Rookie," Teddy roars. "The only reason you're not shot full of holes is that you run for cover in a firefight. Only me and Grant actually stand up and take it like men!" Grant isn't paying attention; he's taking a nip off his flask. Apparently the Process doesn't inhibit an individual's ability to metabolize alcohol, and Grant has enough demons that he needs the bottle to help fight them off. The fact that he can drink on missions and still perform is remarkable. But, really, who's going to say anything? The ex-presidents were never stripped of their status as leaders of the armed forces. Nobody outranks them. That's why they're such effective special forces; they already have the highest security clearance, and nobody can order them to stop.
"Anyway," growls Teddy, miffed at being ignored, "this time I don't think we're going to be shot. The only thing we have to fear is Franklin's flying. Isn't that right, Franklin?" Teddy knows that Delano hates to be called Franklin. He half-turns in his pilot's chair. The doctors quit fooling around fifty years ago and amputated his legs, but he's still a hell of a pilot and gunner.
"Teddy," says Delano coolly, "Speak more softly, and swallow my big stick."
"All right, everybody shut up," snarls Jefferson. The Chiefs don’t have ranks or commanders, but they respect seniority, and Jefferson has that in spades. He also has a gift for gadgetry, a holdover from his pre-presidential years as an inventor and natural philosopher, and people tend to respect the guy with the cool toys. Jefferson stands up with his metal clipboard and delivers his briefing.
"We're going to Rome," begins Jefferson. Nixon whoops and holds out a hand to Grant, who reluctantly hands him a roll of bills. Jefferson frowns, then continues.
"Formosus is loose again," he says. "He and his dead bishops are loose in St. Peter's. We think he's trying to locate his missing three fingers so he can perform benedictions."
"Formosus?" I whisper to Teddy.
"Dead pope from the 800's. Early receiver of the Process." Teddy shrugs. "Long story. Shut it, boyo."
"We have a green light," continues Jefferson, "from the number one genuflector himself, to go for the throat here. We go in, we neutralize the threat, and we get out before anybody knows all the shooting isn't just Eastern Orthodox terrorists, which is the cover story du jour."
"Yeah, great," says Nixon. "Question: how do we take out a millennia-old pontiff and his undead minions?"
Lincoln removes a lighter from his vest pocket. He lights it and stares into the flame.
"There are ways," he rumbles.
**
For your consideration: The Cadaver Synod.
It is four AM in northern Italy. The sky is dark and the city of Milano is still asleep. I'm still mostly asleep myself. But there's a lot of activity on the American airbase where we're stationed. Also, the unit I'm embedded with never sleeps. I drink coffee and rub the sleep out of my eyes. This is no time for snoozing. It's Go time.
We are moving out. A mission has come down from somewhere on high. The Green Berets are completely unsuitable for this kind of action. The Navy Seals are too weak, probably doing things like eating and breathing and sleeping at unreasonable hours of the morning. Only one branch of the armed forces has the skills, training and personnel applicable to the task at hand. That branch does not exist.
It's going to be a six-man strike force. I make the seventh. The Chiefs are totally fine with a relatively green reporter riding along during fairly extreme missions. I've flown with military units of all sorts, and most of them display an extreme reluctance to expose civilians to danger. The Chiefs are completely opposite in this regard. They want me to come along. I have come to believe that this is because they want me to get killed. The Chiefs would find this amusing.
Delano is already in the chopper warming it up. Apart from the rotors spinning above me, there's no way to tell the craft is on, let alone occupied. The thing is black, slick and angular, makes absolutely no noise, and has no lights on. I'm not certain it even has any lights.
Teddy and the rest emerge from the hangar with their kits. Teddy is burly with massive arms and shoulders, a bodybuilder's physique completely at odds with his thick wire-frame glasses. Teddy takes my coffee cup away and drops the butt of his cigar into it.
"Don't want to drink too much of that, boyo," he warns. "Can't have you needing to pee mid-flight. Might jeopardize the mission." He grins, slaps me on the shoulder and hands me back my coffee.
I throw the cup on the tarmac and wait my turn, boarding the chopper behind the other Chiefs. Easy for Teddy to talk about peeing. Teddy peed his last almost a hundred years ago, a decade after leaving office as President of the United States.
We take off. Delano does not pilot for human comfort; the chopper accelerates upwards fast enough to slap me down into my jumpseat. The Chiefs sit there like they're carved from stone.
A more apt analogy might be mahogany. The Process that they all underwent when they swore their presidential oaths has sustained them in a state of unlife, and given them unnatural strength and vitality, but it has a few side effects. They can't heal from physical injury, not completely anyway, which means more than one ex-president looks a little rough around the edges. Also, over time the Process changes the color of the Chief's skin. Gangly Jefferson, who seems to be calibrating a GPS device, is almost black. Nixon, who the other Chiefs still call 'Rookie', just looks like he has a fairly deep tan. Teddy falls somewhere between the two; he has the copper color of an old penny. Teddy catches me looking at him and grins.
"What's the matter, kid?" he teases. "Never seen a badass killing machine before?"
"I was wondering where the bullet hole is," I say.
"Which one?" asks Teddy. "I been shot thirty, maybe forty times. Five times by Contras. Vicious bastards, Contras. Great night vision, though."
"I mean the first one," I clarify. "The one where you went ahead and gave a speech with a bullet in you."
"Oh, yeah," says Teddy. "My Bull Moose bullet." He lifts up his shirt and points out one of the holes that pock-mark his chest. The hole is modest in size compared to some of the other craters. The skin is shriveled and black where it vanishes into the mark.
"Yeah, that bullet's still in there," Teddy boasts. "Almost gave the whole game away. The doctors were fifty-fifty about whether I would have to fake my death if I didn't want to give away the secret of Presidential Immortality. Finally I convinced 'em that I could sell the world on just being a touch sonofabitch. And hey, it worked!"
Teddy's right: the world still doesn't know one of the Freemason's best-kept secrets – that every sitting POTUS has received the Process and cannot die by normal means. If severely injured while in office, each President 'dies' and is replaced by normal succession. Otherwise, a suitable non-suspicious interval is chosen, and a period of fake aging is followed by a staged death.
Originally the intent of the Process was to stabilize the leadership of the Union. But after a near miss with Jackson, it became plain that if a President ever were to be wounded severely, so severely that only alchemy could explain their survival, then the secret would be out. Eventually it was deemed that secrecy was more important than keeping any one person in office.
Teddy nudges Lincoln. "Now, when old Honest Abe here got his, there was no covering it up," Teddy jokes. Lincoln doesn't smile. He never smiles. He wears an eyepatch; Booth's shot in the back of his head blew out his left eye. His survival would have meant a serious outing of the secret of the Process, so it was decided that he should become a martyr and Johnson should replace him. Lincoln's injury also changed him. The other Chiefs are essentially human, with emotions and reactions and feelings. Lincoln has no feelings, none that I can detect anyway. He's a machine, a living weapon the color of old leather, and he shoots anything that needs shooting without remorse.
"I'm too beautiful to be shot," says Nixon, smirking. He looks the way he used to look in the old McCarthy Trials footage, young and foxy-sly. I can't tell if he looked older during his Presidency because of makeup, or if some aspect of the Process reverses wrinkling and tissue degeneration. Whatever the cause, he looks good. It's obvious he works out a lot, and there's certainly nothing about the Process that keeps Nixon from bulking up the muscle-mass. He looks like a less-trustworthy Bruce Willis.
"Shut up, Rookie," Teddy roars. "The only reason you're not shot full of holes is that you run for cover in a firefight. Only me and Grant actually stand up and take it like men!" Grant isn't paying attention; he's taking a nip off his flask. Apparently the Process doesn't inhibit an individual's ability to metabolize alcohol, and Grant has enough demons that he needs the bottle to help fight them off. The fact that he can drink on missions and still perform is remarkable. But, really, who's going to say anything? The ex-presidents were never stripped of their status as leaders of the armed forces. Nobody outranks them. That's why they're such effective special forces; they already have the highest security clearance, and nobody can order them to stop.
"Anyway," growls Teddy, miffed at being ignored, "this time I don't think we're going to be shot. The only thing we have to fear is Franklin's flying. Isn't that right, Franklin?" Teddy knows that Delano hates to be called Franklin. He half-turns in his pilot's chair. The doctors quit fooling around fifty years ago and amputated his legs, but he's still a hell of a pilot and gunner.
"Teddy," says Delano coolly, "Speak more softly, and swallow my big stick."
"All right, everybody shut up," snarls Jefferson. The Chiefs don’t have ranks or commanders, but they respect seniority, and Jefferson has that in spades. He also has a gift for gadgetry, a holdover from his pre-presidential years as an inventor and natural philosopher, and people tend to respect the guy with the cool toys. Jefferson stands up with his metal clipboard and delivers his briefing.
"We're going to Rome," begins Jefferson. Nixon whoops and holds out a hand to Grant, who reluctantly hands him a roll of bills. Jefferson frowns, then continues.
"Formosus is loose again," he says. "He and his dead bishops are loose in St. Peter's. We think he's trying to locate his missing three fingers so he can perform benedictions."
"Formosus?" I whisper to Teddy.
"Dead pope from the 800's. Early receiver of the Process." Teddy shrugs. "Long story. Shut it, boyo."
"We have a green light," continues Jefferson, "from the number one genuflector himself, to go for the throat here. We go in, we neutralize the threat, and we get out before anybody knows all the shooting isn't just Eastern Orthodox terrorists, which is the cover story du jour."
"Yeah, great," says Nixon. "Question: how do we take out a millennia-old pontiff and his undead minions?"
Lincoln removes a lighter from his vest pocket. He lights it and stares into the flame.
"There are ways," he rumbles.
**
For your consideration: The Cadaver Synod.
