Free Warriors by Ted Bell Page B

greenbacks, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. Namely, me. Not bad for a seventy-year-old coot, sugar.”
    “Attaboy! You go get ’em, cowboy. There’s a new sheriff in town and he’s kicking ass and walking tall.”
    Tom McCloskey laced his fingers behind his head, leaned back against his pillows, and beamed at his lovely wife. She was wearing the sky blue Chanel suit he’d bought her on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. With the halo of sunlight touching her auburn hair, she looked like an angel. Which, in his humble opinion, she truly was.
    He really did feel good, damn it.
    In fact, he had made a remarkable recovery since his arrival at Walter Reed Hospital. He was alert, cogent, rational, and in amazingly good humor. His eyes were clear, his skin was radiant. Whatever had been bothering him these last few months, the docs here at Walter Reed were taking care of it. Now he had one overpowering obsession. He was itching to get out of here and get the hell back to work.
    The world was blowing up out there. With a lot of help from China and a little added push from North Korea, war was brewing in the Pacific. The Brits had told him they had a three-star admiral in China who’d refused the Kool-Aid. This top naval-ops guy was going to “retard the process.” But so far? He hadn’t seen dick.
    The Middle East, as usual, was on fire. At home, too many people were out of work. The stock market was rocketing toward twenty thousand, and yet the economy still sucked the big one. And he was one of the few people on earth with balls of sufficient size and the power to fix it.
    Just last night he’d done a fifteen-minute live bedside interview with Bret Baier, the evening anchor from Fox News. Hard questions, no softballs, that was Bret. China, Japan, Iran, Putin’s massive war games. The recent bellicosity of the crazy North Koreans, their threat to nuke Hawaii. And he’d knocked every damn one of Bret’s questions out of the park. Short, concise, cogent answers, backed up with an impressive understanding of the details underlying each issue.
    Bret was the former White House chief correspondent, incredibly savvy and a hell of a nice guy. All-American kid, just the way he liked them. Clean-cut, he looked like he could have been on the White House Secret Service staff. People had been calling all morning to wish him happy birthday and report that the “Twitter-verse” was abuzz with news of the president’s miraculous comeback. The New York Post, they said, was running a front-page photo of him smiling from his bed. They’d Photoshopped a white ten-gallon Stetson on his head. The headline underneath, they said, was “The Comeback Kid!” The copy would talk about how he had his health back, was itching to get back in the saddle, and would be riding tall when he did.
    There was a commotion out in the hall, and Mary Taliaferro, one of his favorite nurses, stuck her pretty red head inside the door.
    “Mr. President? Just wait till you see what all has shown up out here at the nurses’ station. My gosh, you just won’t believe it!”
    McCloskey laughed and looked at his wife.
    “All right, Bonnie, what’s this all about? You know I don’t like surprises.”
    “Oh, honey, you know I wouldn’t do that. Would I?”
    She crossed the room, trying to keep the smile off her face, and pulled it open.
    “Oh my goodness, look who’s here!”
    “Who?” the president said, sitting up and straining to see over her shoulder. “Oh, my Lord, look at that!”
    The first thing through the door was a massive four-tier birthday cake. It was on a rolling table, and they wheeled it right up to his bedside. It was decorated to look like his old homestead in Colorado, the Silvermine Ranch. Miniature ranch house on top, stables, paddocks, and two little figures on horseback that looked like Bonnie and him. Even the old blue Scrambler jeep he used to get around the property. Every tier was