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Page 5.

As Louis sat on the couch putting on his winter boots and ski parka, there was a knock on the door. “Come in!” he shouted in a fresh voice.

Special Agent Archie Cooper of the Secret Service stepped inside, holding an Ablass 414 Spider assault rifle pointing up, the frame-only stock resting on his hip. He wore an olive green wood watch cap, and white winter warfare camo and gear. “We’re ready, Mr. Vice President.”

No more time to waste. Louis zipped up his heat-retentive middle garments, and pulled white camouflage overall over those. “Let’s go.”

As they rattled down the huge circular staircase into the main lobby, Archie said: “I’ve got two vans out front and two six person details including myself. We are fully armed and ready to roll, Sir. Airport’s open, and the Lear Tandem is being warmed up on the runway.”

“Good work, Archie. Keep slugging.”

“We’ll wait for you under the portico, Sir.” Cooper clomped out the door, the assault rifle looking toy-like against his long frame.

Meredith, wearing jeans, a sweater, and jogging shoes—she’d primped a little, knowing she’d be seen, bless her—ran out holding something. “Honey, your hat!” She wrinkled her nose. “You smell like a distillery.” She pulled the wool watch cap down and zipped his overalls up. He kissed her passionately, then hugged Louis Jr. and Annie. Albert was already in bed, asleep, and Louis took the time to go plant a kiss on his sleeping son. Then he ordered the two older ones: “Go to bed, kids. I’ll see you in a few days. Have fun sledding in the morning.”

“Yay Daddy!” the children said clapping. “We’ll miss you. We love you.”

Meredith gave him a desperately tight hug and whispered through gritted teeth: “Please be careful, darling.”

He squeezed her and whispered: “I will.”

In the horseshoe drive stood the two vans to take him back down to civilization. A dozen Secret Service men and women waited for him, dressed similarly to Archie. They bore nylon ammo belts and quick-loader ammo cylinders looped over their snowsuits. Each carried an assault rifle with night scope and flash suppressor.

Archie stepped close as running engines blew milky vapor from trembling tail pipes. “You and I go in Van Two, Sir.”

“Okay.” He climbed up into the spacious van. It was a shell game—no one must know, until the last minute, in which vehicle the VIP would be.

The agents around Louis kept a wary watch. The heater was on, and Louis was a little drowsy now from all of his frenzied deliberation. He felt worn out from worry, and was glad this would not go on much longer.

It was quiet in the van as it crunched gently down the dark slope, blackness enveloping them on the sides as the cones of the headlights probed on ahead.

The red lights of the van in front flicked on and off as the driver feathered his brakes on slippery spots.

8:01 p.m. Suddenly, Louis was stunned by a bang and a flash on the road.

“Rocket!” shouted an agent.

“Mountain men!” Louis heard Archie yell into his lapel com. “Base! Base! We’re under attack!”

Louis cringed amid a rattle of gunfire.

Louis heard another bang, saw a flash as a second rocket found its mark and the van before him exploded. Louis’s eardrums rang, and his head felt as though he’d been punched. In a daze, in a dream, he noticed the agents snap into blurring motion around him. One agent jumped to his feet, Colt AR-115 in the air. Another agent sprang forward, speaking into his collar button. Several agents clicked the safeties off on their assault guns and formed a wall crouching around Louis on the floor. Archie stood towering above them, shouting orders, holding his assault rifle ready. “Get down, Sir. Get these doors open, on the double. Let’s all bail out.”

All around outside, dark, heavy objects rained down, which turned out to be car parts, guns, shoes...

Archie kicked open the door and jumped outside, swallowed up by the darkness. “Come on!” he yelled to Louis.

A rear half-axle from the front van, with the wheel and the tire gone, came down and hit Archie in the back. He went down with a crunch of bones. His eyes were open, but empty, and he did not stir again.

Dreamlike, Louis felt cold.

Streams of assault rifle bullets made pinging noises as they streamed into the vehicle from all sides, even through the thin metal skin.

Louis tried to move, but he couldn’t. He felt the weight of four or five dead agents pinning him down. He could hardly breathe.

Louis heard a shouted command, everything got very still.

The air smelled sweet, like a bread or a candy made of fresh snow. That was how winter had smelled during his childhood in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Figures in white snow suits advanced out of the forest. With their helmets under white covers, and black, round goggle lenses, they resembled aliens. Their boots crunched on the sanded snow.

The air began to smell of things burning. Of gun powder. Of incinerating flesh.

An owl hooted in the surrounding pine forests and mountains.

Louis breathed peppery gun smoke as he lay with his cheek on the freezing cold steel floor. He still could not move. He realized that he must have taken several bullets in the lower spine, because he had no feeling from the waist down. And the warmth on his face was the fresh blood of the dead men on top of him flowing together in a metallic, sticky river, over Louis’s cheek, down his nose, and onto the metal floor where small droplets began to haze over in freezing.

Louis’s left eye seemed to be hazing over, also, and his right eye felt blurry. He was able to focus about a foot away on a pair of black combat boots that stood on the gleaming, scuffed floor of the van.

Louis saw snow melting on scuffed toes, making tiny puddles amid the grit. The owner of the boots squatted down. The man wore white, an angel of death. His eyeglasses glittered and he smiled with a baby face. “Time.”

Louis nodded as he looked into the muzzle of an assault rifle. So the angels had only given him a brief reprieve—but he was grateful. He knew that now for him the universe was a space exactly as big as the span between his head and that muzzle. It was a universe whose age could be expressed in seconds, free now of the objects and energies that cluttered space and time in larger universes. The man who hunched aiming, squeezing the trigger, looked surprisingly young, like a preppy law school grad with a wide friendly smile, prematurely thinning blond hair, and steel rimmed glasses.

Louis’s thoughts turned to God, then wandered to Meredith, and Louis Jr., and Annie, and Albert. They smiled at him like a family portrait. He was smiling when the assault rifle bucked and the muzzle flashed. He looked down at his wrist and saw his watch. It was the last thing he saw. 8:09 p.m. How time flew past—already it was a half hour since he'd seen his wife and children. He'd never see them again, and that was his only cause of sadness now. The light in his head went nova before everything collapsed into nothingness.