Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

Left to his own thoughts, Cole could not help but remind himself: I'm a general. Not permanently, and it won't count when I retire, but right now I have the President behind me and everybody has to salute me or at least answer my emails. If only Dad could have fought off the cancer long enough to see me get here.

Cole was immediately ashamed of his momentary glee. His "battlefield promotion" had only happened because hundreds of thousands of people, probably millions, were dying, and the Nigerian government was killing the survivors.

I'm going to have to take men into combat and lay our lives on the line again and again—in danger from both enemy action and a deadly epidemic. And I'm thrilled about it?

But such conflicted feelings were common. Everyone knew that it was in wartime that military careers were made. In peacetime, the climbers always rise to the top of the military bureaucracy, and then when war broke out, you had the devil's own time trying to get rid of them and put good field generals in their place.

Bureaucratic generals always hated successful field commanders because they were pretty much opposite personality types, and the ascendancy of one meant the total eclipse of the other. Torrent hadn't put Cole in the Joint Chiefs, but they all by damn knew his face and his name, and he had enormous clout because of the President's obvious trust in him.

Let's not screw this up, Cole told himself. You never thought you'd get anywhere near this kind of position. Being assigned to Reuben Malich looked like the death of your career, and now, three years later, you're in a place other soldiers only dream of.

The meeting ended and everyone left—except the President, Chinma, Babe, and Cole.

Torrent's private words to them were brief. "This boy has spent his first days in America getting stuck with needles and constantly watched, waking and sleeping, while adults forced him to figure out what he wrote with a pencil in the jungle on the day his family was murdered. I want your advice on something. I'm thinking that Chinma needs a good American home. One where they understand something about the pain of having a family member murdered."

Cole's first reaction was: You can't do that to Cecily Malich. And his second reaction was: If Cecily was the first person I thought of, she's probably the right choice.

"Do you think she'll do it?" asked the President.

"If you ask her, sir," said Babe.

"Well, no," said President Torrent. "At the moment I'm not sure she's speaking to me. She didn't like my speech last night."

"Sir," said Cole, "she won't do it for you, and she won't do it for me, and she won't do it for Babe. But she'll do it for Chinma."

"No," said Torrent with a smile, "she'll do it for God."

It was good to know that Torrent was aware that Cecily took her faith seriously. But it was not so reassuring that Torrent thought it was amusing.

"So the two of you will take him to Cessy?" asked Torrent.

"Maybe," said Cole, "we ought to ask Chinma."

Torrent's eyebrows rose in a my-bad expression. "It is a free country, isn't it," said Torrent. "Go ahead and ask."

Babe looked at Cole with amusement, as if to say, You opened your mouth, you do the asking.

"We know a family," Cole said to Chinma. "A good American family. Their father, Reuben Malich, was a great soldier. Mr. Austin and I both served under him. Reuben tried to save the life of the President who was killed a few years ago. But then he was murdered by someone he trusted. His wife and children miss him every day. They're good people. They're Christians—Catholics—I don't know what that means to you."

"My family was Christian," said Chinma. "Not Catholic, though."

"It won't matter, I promise you. They might have a place for you while you're living here in America. Do you want to come stay with them? Because if you'd rather go back to where you've been sleeping the past few days, you can do that instead."

"Soldier family, please, sir," said Chinma.

"Good choice," said Babe. "The woman can cook."

Chinma's face lit up. "Really? Food in America is very bad. No fire!"

Ah, thought Cole, Chinma isn't saying American food is raw, he's saying it's bland. I'll have to warn Cecily. Use pepper!

The boy was too old to hold anybody's hand, but Cole would have expected him to stay close to Babe; after all, it was Babe who got him out of Nigeria and put his pictures on the web. But no. Chinma walked by himself. As if he didn't quite trust anybody—which would be understandable.

But maybe he knew how alone he was in the world, and he was determined to act like a man.

BRRUE BOVS

People know many things, and half of them are wrong. If only we knew which half, we'd have reason to be proud of our intelligence.