Whiplash by Dale Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

Zen. I just came in for a quick meeting.”
    “That’s no excuse, Colonel.”
    “Hey, hold on a second, OK?” Danny got into the cab and told the driver to take him to his hotel. “Still there?”
    “What the hell are you doing staying at the Alexandria Suites?” asked Zen, who’d heard the destination.
    “It’s nice and not too expensive.”
    “I don’t care—you should be with us. Teri loves your bedtime stories.”
    Danny laughed. The last time he’d stayed with them—a year before—he’d told her fairy tales for half the night, all variations of things his grandmother had told him when he was little.
    “What are you doing for dinner?” asked Zen.
    “There’s a nice restaurant about two blocks away. I figured I’d walk on down.”
    “Forget it. The Yankees are in town to play the Nationals. You and I are going to the game.”
    “Uh—”
    “Listen, buddy, I’m not taking no for an answer,” said Zen. “A senator outranks a colonel by a hell of a lot.”
    “Sir, yes, sir,” laughed Danny.
    When he’d been in the Air Force, Zen played down the fact that his family was wealthy. He’d banked nearly all of his trust proceeds, never took money from his father or uncles, and with one exception had never called on them for help. That exception had been during his fight to get reinstated on active duty after the crash that cost him the use of his legs.
    Now that he was older, however, and had clearly set his own path in the world, he took advantage of the conveniences his family’s money provided. A driver and a van specially adapted to his wheelchair were the most obvious. There were others, though—like open invitation to use the owner’s suite at the Nationals.
    Zen arranged to pick up Danny at his hotel an hour before the game. He grinned as his old friend spotted him and trotted out to the van.
    “Danny,” he said, as Freah pulled open the sliding door at the rear. “How the hell are you?”
    “Is a U.S. senator allowed to use profanity?”
    “Only if his daughter isn’t in the car. Jeez, man, you’re looking good.”
    “You don’t look too bad yourself. You put on a little weight.”
    “Too many fat cat lunches,” said Zen.
    It was a joke. Among his strictest rules was that he always paid for lunch.
    “So how’s Bree?” Danny asked.
    “Good.”
    “Teri?”
    “Ready to run for princess. She’s taking tap dancing lesson now, besides the ballerina stuff. She’s amazing. Must get it from her mom.”
    Zen rocked back and forth in the wheelchair, which was fitted with a special brace holding it in place in the van. The brace was similar to the one he had used in the Megafortress years before. The driver’s side had a similar arrangement, so he could push the regular seat back and use hand controls to drive himself if he wanted.
    Too much beer drinking at a baseball game for that, though.
    “Hear much from your father-in-law?” asked Danny.
    Zen felt himself flinch. “No one hears much from Dog these days,” he said. “Not even Bree.”
    Danny nodded.
    “So don’t tell me that you’re rooting for the Yankees tonight,” said Zen, anxious to keep things cheery.
    “I am from New York.”
    “Buffalo is not in New York. It’s Canada, isn’t it?”
    Danny did, in fact, root for the Yankees, though very discreetly. Zen was anything but discreet as the Nationals took a 6–0 lead into the sixth inning. But then the Nationals’ pitching crumbled and the Yankees mounted a comeback, tying it at 6–6 in the eighth. The visitors went on top by a run in the ninth, the home team scored one, and the game went into extra innings.
    It wasn’t until the top of the tenth that Zen told Danny that he knew he’d been offered the new Whiplash job.
    “I figured there was an ulterior motive here,” said Danny.
    “Actually, my ulterior motive was to get to a baseball game,” said Zen. “If it weren’t for you, I’d be listening to some State Department dweeb telling me about how