The Devlin Deception: Book One of The Devlin Quatrology (16 page)

While he was in the bathroom, dousing the wound with hydrogen
peroxide and putting on a large bandage, the rain and wind picked up
again and Jake hurried out to close the sliders. But he slipped on
some rain that had blown in on the tile floor and fell through the
screen, cutting his right thigh on the frame of the screen door and
scraping his cheek, hands and one forearm on the river-rock balcony
floor.

Back in the bathroom after closing the slider, with more peroxide and
bandages, Jake muttered, “I am not superstitious, I am not
superstitious. I do not believe in omens. This is just a
coincidence. Just a coincidence. Guess I'd better get a tetanus
booster, at least. Geez. What a klutz. Damn, damn, damn.”

An hour later, Jake limped out of an urgent care clinic on Bonita
Beach Road, his wallet 412 dollars lighter, but with a tetanus shot,
four stitches in his shoulder and eight in his thigh, fresh bandages
and a prescription for an antibiotic, which he filled (to his
surprise, for free) at a supermarket on his way home. He also had a
prescription for a heavy-duty painkiller, which he didn't fill, a
choice he later regretted. The doc had also told him not to go in
the water for two weeks and to come back in ten days to get the
stitches out.

He did pick up three small non-spiral notebooks, some
over-the-counter painkillers, a couple packages of hot dog buns and a
bag of his favorite half-ounce meatballs, which he noticed now only
had 65 in the bag, instead of the 80 that each bag had previously
held, but the price was the same. A quick bit of math and Jake
concluded that that worked out to an inflation rate of about 23
percent in a few months.

As he went by the frozen food section, he noticed that the ice cream
he'd bought the previous week for $5.75 for one, then get one free,
was now not on a BOGO, but was now priced at $4.89. He didn't bother
to do the math on that, but it seemed that a true BOGO should still
be at the lower price.

“Geez,” he muttered to himself, “I gotta find some
way to put those in the book. Wonder what Donne would do? Hmm; what
would Donne do? Cool. WWDD. Or … hmm … WWGD? Hmm.
Do I dare?”

Chuckling, Jake left the supermarket, where he saw two tables set up,
one with a pro-Obama sign and one with a pro-Republican sign, both
attempting to register voters, and he debated only briefly before
approaching the Obama table, where he told the two people manning it
that he thought Obama was the biggest liar ever to be elected
President and then mentioned the book he was writing and challenging
them to read what he had online; he gave them the web address.

Then he walked over to the Republican table and told them that he was
writing a book about a guy who buys the country and legalizes gay
marriage, abortion and marijuana, and challenged them to read what
he's got online, also giving them the web address.

He walked to his car, again chuckling about the WWGD idea, but then
he reminded himself about Pam's warning, so when he left the parking
lot, he stopped for a small tub of ice cream at the Princely Dollop
on 8th Street, then drove around some random streets in Bonita
Shores, saw nobody following him and returned home, getting there a
bit past eleven.

He mopped up the water on the tile floor and used hydrogen peroxide
to remove the bloodstains on the white shag rug around his bed,
careful to avoid aggravating his new injuries. Half an hour later,
finally satisfied with his cleanup, he settled back on his bed and
continued consolidating his notes, adding “WWDD” and
“WWGD” to the batch. He also added “MBs, +23%”
and “$5.75 vs. $4.89” and “MD, $412!!”

By noon, Jake's butt hurt from the tetanus shot, so he popped a
couple of the OTC painkillers, told himself, “There's a nap for
that,” rolled over on his side and took one.

-23-

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

3:55 p.m.

The White House Press Room

Washington, DC

By a quarter to four, rumors about something going on in the Mideast
were circulating among the members of the press corps who had
returned to the room. Some of them were on their cell phones,
frantically trying to get the latest information from their main
offices and Mideast correspondents, for the most part unsuccessfully.

At five minutes to four, the screen to the right of the podium came
to life with a shot of the Situation Room, showing Donne and several
military and civilian personnel gathered around the table, most
staring intently at something slightly to the left of the camera
aimed at them. All the journalists either shut off their phones or
held them up to record or transmit what was on the screen.

Donne looked up at the camera and smiled at the milling press corps
as an aide handed him a microphone. Donne fumbled with it for a
moment, then found the on/off switch and clicked it on.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be joining you there in a few
minutes, but I just wanted to let you know that we have just wrapped
up three operations in the Mideast, capturing or killing three
senior-level Al Qaeda leaders, with no American casualties and no
collateral damage, as far as we know at this point.

“I can't tell you more than that, other than that it was a
joint military/CIA operation and that it was the culmination of
several months of cooperative intelligence gathering by many, many
agencies in our government and others. At least that's what I was
told in the briefings I've gotten on this since Friday morning.

“In any event, I'll be back with y'all in a few minutes, ten at
the most. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.” Donne handed the
microphone back to the aide and then said to Cissy, who was seated
next to him, “I've always wanted to say that,” apparently
unaware that he hadn't turned the mike off. The screen then went to
black.

-24-

Five Months Earlier

Thursday, July 7, 2011

2:55 p.m.

Bonita Beach, FL

Jake was startled awake by a bright flash and a loud clap of thunder,
which seemed to come from right outside his window. Automatically
reaching under his pillow, he grabbed his .38 and leapt to his feet,
sweeping the gun from left to right. Another clap of thunder, this
one further away, and Jake realized what had awakened him, so he
relaxed, but only a little.

Limping a bit and being careful not to disturb his stitches, he did
his now-routine check of the alarm system and the house, this time
going carefully down the inside stairs from the first floor to the
ground level, where he checked the garage doors, the extra fridge,
the hidden safe and his car. Finding nothing amiss, he returned to
his loft bedroom and secured his weapon back in its hiding place.

Padding carefully over to the sliding glass doors, he looked out at
the screen flapping in the breeze and, seeing that his fall had only
pulled it from the frame, he decided he'd try to fix it himself once
the rain stopped.

But he also noticed that one of his southern neighbor's trees must
have been struck by the lightning bolt that had awakened him and was
now lying across their pool, stretching toward the shoreline.

The surf was huge, some of the waves cresting at seven feet, maybe
eight, and the stakes and tapes around most of the turtle nests in
front of his house and his northern neighbor's McMansion were gone.

But he also saw that a few surfers were out, braving the rain and
seeming to be enjoying riding the big waves.

“Idiots.” Jake shook his head, went back to his bed,
took another couple of painkillers and pulled his laptop and his
notebook off the side table and continued with his organizing and
consolidating. But he was much more careful with the spiral
notebook, just crossing things off rather than tearing the pages out.
He was also careful about putting pressure on the wrong place on his
butt, but within half an hour, he was again lying on his left side,
fast asleep.

-25-

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

4:05 p.m.

The White House Press Room

Washington, DC

As he'd promised, Donne returned to the press room, preceded and
followed by his retinue, and he smiled a bit grimly at the crowd.

“Before I take any more questions, we're preparing a release
for y'all on the operations we just finished, including the names of
the AQ we killed and the two we captured. So I won't have to try to
pronounce their names. You should have that release in just a few
minutes, on your phones, tablets and on our web site.

“Now, I've got time for only a few more questions. Yes?”

“Yani ____, from _____. On these operations, do you give
President Obama credit for those?”

“Of course, to the extent he authorized the original
intelligence ops, as did President Bush before that. But as for
actual credit, that goes to our military intelligence agencies,
especially the CIA, and other countries' intelligence agencies, as
well as the military people who participated in the actual ops.
Beyond that, I won't be able to go into any operational details.
Classified. Okay. Yes?”

“Samantha ____, _____. In your directives, particularly
Numbers 148 through 161, you've eliminated OSHA, the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration, and many functions of the Food and
Drug Administration, the Federal Communications Commission and the
Securities and Exchange Commission. Could you explain how you plan
to accomplish their missions?”

“Well, Samantha, in general, I'm getting the government out of
micromanaging and microregulating and replacing those with a freer
rein, but absolute responsibility and accountability on the part of
companies that have been regulated.

“Specifically as to OSHA, the biggest problem with that agency
has been petty-minded and inadequately trained inspectors with
massive checklists going into businesses with a mindset of finding
tiny violations, most often in some part of the byzantine paperwork,
and assessing fines. Like the EPA and EEOC and several other
agencies, it's had a distinctly anti-business bias. So I've
dissolved it, replacing it with a pro-business safety agency, which
only goes into a business after there's an injury, fatality or
environmental incident, on a consulting basis, paid for by the
company, and remains there until the contributing problems, if any,
are corrected.

“If the company reports the incident, compensates any and all
victims adequately and fixes the problems, there will be no fine. If
someone else reports the incident, there will be a fine equivalent to
the assessed damages. But If the company tries to cover it up, shame
on them; not only will damages be assessed, but the fine will be
triple the damages assessed and the officers, directors, counsel and
any other personnel involved in the coverup will be personally liable
for two thirds of that fine … PERSONALLY liable.

"This is sort of like a solution for the problem of reckless
driving that I heard about years ago. If you got rid of all the seat
belts, air bags and other safety devices, and installed knives that
flip out from the steering wheel in an impact, in EVERY vehicle, I
know I'd drive more carefully, and I'd think most sensible people
would. I know that's not a practical solution to that problem, but
the principle is worth looking at. And it's that principle I'm
applying to OSHA.

“As to the other agencies you mentioned, we are not eliminating
them, but they have become so bureaucratic and ineffective that they
need a total culture shift. We will no longer tolerate SEC attorneys
spending their days downloading pornography, and we're going to be
replacing much of the legal staff there with top-notch forensic
accounting people who can actually understand the data that they look
at.

“We will be revamping the FDA to follow the European model and
eliminating most of the byzantine bureaucratic hurdles that keep
promising drugs in the pipeline for way too long. And the FCC will
also be totally revamped and will lose the crony capitalism image
that it's had, because it will no longer be involved in crony
capitalism. Period.

“And ANY agency that's been involved in anything even remotely
smacking of that will be totally restructured and completely culture
shifted, to a culture and attitude of selfless and efficient service
for its customers, the people. Okay. Yes?”

“Carmen _____, ______. Mr. Donne, how can you justify allowing
the resumption of embryonic stem cell research?”

“Because stem cell research has already saved thousands of
lives and discovered cures for hundreds of diseases. To limit this
kind of scientific research, even with embryonic stem cells, on the
basis of some religious belief, is not something my government will
support. Okay. Yes?”

“Dell _____, ____. How is your crowd-sourcing going? Are you
getting any good suggestions from the people?”

“It's very early, but we've received several hundred messages
so far, which get screened for the nutjobs and the pointless, and the
rest get passed up to my staff, who do a further screening, and then
they get passed to Cissy and Cody, who decide which ones come to me.
At this point, I've only seen about forty of those. I also take a
random sample of the ones that have been screened out, just to check
the process.

“The underlying principle is that while I own the country, I
don't know everything, as Cissy reminds me every day … that's
her job … and the innovation, creativity and problem-solving
abilities of the American people can be boundless. Out of the forty
ideas that I've reviewed, about half are surprisingly innovative, and
about half of those are actually doable and will probably be
implemented, and the folks who sent them in will be rewarded. Okay.
Yes?”

“Jessica _____, _______. What kinds of rewards do you mean?”

“I'm still sorting that out, but in some cases, we'll be giving
a percentage of the total we save each year, probably with an annual
max of a million dollars or so, and in some cases, where financial
rewards aren't valuable to the person, we'll figure something else
out, maybe like naming something after them. I'm also open to any
ideas or suggestions that any of our citizens have.”