Free The Art of War: A Novel by Stephen Coonts Page B

interim thing. Then, he thought. Then. Get the plane out. Go on some cruises. See some of Europe. Maybe Israel. Spend some time with daughter, Amy, and the grandkid.
    Jake Grafton promised that to himself.
    He arrived in Rehoboth Beach on the Atlantic about seven o’clock Monday evening. Callie was packed and ready. After a kiss, he hit the bathroom, showered, shaved and changed clothes. He felt better. At least the director’s office had a shower, and he vowed to use it. He topped off his suitcase, loaded their bags into the car, locked up the house, and off they went the other way, back toward Washington.
    “It was on the evening news Saturday night that Mario Tomazic is dead,” Callie said. “Big write-up on Tomazic in the newspaper this morning. I kept a copy of the Post in case you didn’t see it.”
    “We couldn’t sit on it,” Jake explained. “The local sheriff was there, plus the county coroner. There was a news chopper overhead before I could get out of there.”
    “Drowned!” Callie exclaimed. “With his daughter and grandchildren asleep in the house. How horrible!”
    “Yep.”
    Jake concentrated on driving.
    “Was it an accident?” Callie asked suspiciously. She could read him like a book.
    “Maybe. Maybe not…” He decided to be honest. “Probably not.”
    “Who in the world?”
    “Damn if I know.”
    “So is Merritt going to run the agency until a new director is confirmed?”
    “No. I am.”
    “ You? For Christ’s sake, Jake! You? ”
    “Yep. President’s choice, according to Sal Molina. I didn’t want the job—don’t want the job—but thought it over and said yes.”
    “Oh, my God!” his wife moaned. “There went our holiday season!”
    “You getting hungry? I thought we could stop somewhere ahead and get a hamburger.”
    “Amy is coming in two weeks, bringing the grandbaby,” Callie said bitterly. “And you’ll be locked in at the office. Damn it!”
    “No, I won’t. You’ll see.”
    “Why can’t you just retire, for God’s sake?”
    “Tomazic was probably murdered, Callie.”
    “Maybe, you said.”
    “It’s just an interim appointment. I’ll be acting director. Get to use the director’s parking place for a couple months, shower in his office, deal with the Beltway trolls for a while, make lots and lots of new best friends, then that will be that.”
    His wife sat watching the countryside go by. Jake had been lukewarm to the idea of retirement in the past, told her he’d think it over. Now this!
    The silence was broken several minutes later when Jake asked, “You want a hamburger or Subway for dinner?”
    “Whatever.”
    Callie Grafton was peeved, but as she sat watching the road unwind before them she tried to put it all into perspective. She had known Jake Grafton was a warrior when she married him, way back when, and he had proved it many times since. Mario Tomazic was not Jake’s personal friend, but he was a brother officer, and Jake stood by his fellow warriors. It was in his DNA. Tomazic’s fight was his fight. She bought it when she married Jake and she bought it now. She sighed inwardly. She was ready to ditch it all and do the grandparent thing, let life slow down, hang out with other retirees. Jake obviously wasn’t. And perhaps he never would be. He could smell a fight from a mile away, and he found the prospect irresistible. That was who he was.
    She had never liked the president, had voted for the other man, but thank God the stupid SOB had the sense to appoint Jake as interim director. He couldn’t have found a better man if he had scoured the earth for candidates. No doubt Sal Molina had something to do with it: Callie had heard Jake mention his name several times. Molina was the president’s right-hand man, his brain trust, if any of those idiots in the White House had any brains. Many pundits assured their readers daily that they didn’t.
    “I love you, Jake,” she said.
    He glanced at her, flashed that grin that had always