BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

The president’s limo was a tank in all but appearance. You could shoot bullets at it all day. You could hit it with a rocket-propelled grenade and it would roll right on.

The limo had secure communications, its own oxygen supply, and a stock of the president’s own blood for an emergency transfusion.

The driver was a former navy SEAL with more medals than even he could keep track of. There were Secret Service in the front seat, in the backseat, in an SUV in front and a second SUV behind. Every one of them would take a bullet for the POTUS.

There was no person on Earth better protected.

And yet . . .

Ginny Gastrell was worried, very worried, about her boss.

Gastrell was fifty-six years old, six feet tall, a former forward on the women’s basketball team at Duke University, and looked a bit like Camilla Parker Bowles. She had been married three times, divorced three times, and had no children or hobbies. She was loyal to the president, even more loyal to her party, and most loyal to herself.

Helen Falkenhym Morales had a paper script on her lap. In the end the White House speech writers had had to write something for her. All she had produced herself was ranting nonsense.

Ronald Reagan had shown the early signs of Alzheimer’s while still in office.

Woodrow Wilson was completely incapacitated after suffering a stroke that was covered up by his wife.

Even Lincoln was known to suffer from depression.

But this was different. This was very different. Something was wrong with the president. And now Ginny Gastrell was playing the role once played by Mrs. Wilson and to a lesser extent by Mrs. Reagan. Gastrell was deliberately shielding the president from exposure.

That video, that goddamned video from those Anonymous creeps. That had been the straw that somehow broke Morales’s back. Helen Falkenhym Morales—Mother Titanium, some pundit had tagged her. Tough. Fearless. Determined. Brilliant.

Look at her now. Look at her now.

The president was crunching the papers slowly in her fist. Crunch and release. Crunch and release.

It would be better once MoMo was good and buried. That was it, that was the thing that had derailed the president.

All she had to do was sit there in the front pew at the National Cathedral. Listen to the various speakers. Nod along. Then give one speech, the eulogy.

Then things would go back to normal.

No, they won’t, a voice in Gastrell’s head whispered. The boss is crazy. The boss has lost it. You should be briefing the vice president. Agnelli was a spineless idiot, but he was better than a crazy person.

One lousy church service.

One lousy speech.

“Come on, boss,” Gastrell whispered under her breath. “One hour and we’re home free.”

As she glanced out of the window she saw the crowd lining the street to see the president drive by. And she saw the sign: we know you did it.

Vincent endured the assault by water. It was not the first time he’d been on the receiving end of a desperate attempt to dislodge him. And he had never been beaten.

He grabbed onto the fine hairs on Bug Man’s chin.

That name, Bug Man, how had it come to him? The gloomy creatures in his alternate universe? Had he heard it from them?

Bug Man. It meant something to him, but he couldn’t quite place it. He just knew that this Bug Man was the game space, he was the terrain, and he was the opponent as well.

The razor was an opportunity, not a threat. As the horizon-wide blades descended he raced his biots to the end, to the plastic framing, and leapt aboard.

The razor swept down and down but then rose dizzyingly through the air before touching down again. This touchdown left Vincent able to jump free higher up Bug Man’s face, up above the water storm.

From there he was equidistant between eye and ear. There would be enemy forces in the eye, but his opponent couldn’t twitch as long as he was showering. This, too, Vincent knew. He had played this game before and he had won.