"You can't talk to me that way, you smug cracker!"
"Ah'm doin' it. And you gotta take it. Yoah pushin' fifty. You ain't crow bait. But you hang on a man's arm and smile and coo at his friends so he looks good. Ah like that. Folks respect me for my broadmindedness marryin' a pinko and reformin' her, makin' her respectable again. Not that you were all that respectable to start with." He rolled the cigar in his mouth. "Now do you behave or do Ah gotta really get rough?"
"I hate it when you pull that macho crap!"
Jed Burner beamed. "Then why ain't you strugglin' harder?"
The KNNN tower was once described by Architectural Digest as the only modern office building with a serious toadstool infestation.
In fact, it looked like just about any major office building in downtown Atlanta. There was too much glass, too much design, and an atrium with enough wasted space to warrant the architect being courtmartialed.
Except for the satellite dishes. They added that distinctive toadstool touch. There were three of them, each one aimed at different satellites orbiting somewhere in the heavens. Only one actually pointed at a satellite hanging over the Atlantic. The rest of the KNNN transponders were out over the Pacific. The signal was relayed over ground-based microwave towers to an earth station that connected with the Pacific birds. That was how KNNN fed a news-hungry world.
The satellite dishes made a shadowy cluster around the KNNN helipad, from which KNNN correspondents would be rushed to the Atlanta airport to wing their way to the world's trouble spots.
They also made excellent cover for when the Superpuma touched down.
"Better stay low," Jed Burner told his wife. "We're agoin' in."
Layne Fondue flattened and closed her eyes. She crossed her fingers as well. She was not big on obeying her husband. Except at times like these.
A lot of people thought she had married Jed Burner for his money. That was ridiculous. Layne Fondue was wealthy in her own right.
Or that it was a case of opposites attracting. That was absurd. Both were as mouthy as two human beings could be.
The real reason that the despised Haiphong Hannah-the most hated woman since Tokyo Rose or Axis Sally-had married Jed Burner was that he had almost as many enemies as she did.
The chief attraction was that Jed Burner came to the altar with a fabulous security system in tow. It was as simple as that. Theirs was a marriage of convenience-and mutual survival.
Layne figured if the worst happened, the bullet was as likely to catch him as her. She calculated her odds of surviving an assassin's bullet doubled whenever they traveled together.
So she stayed flat, with her husband's heavy foot on her left breast as the Superpuma settled onto the anchor-shaped helipad.
"Honey, we're home," Burner said, popping the door and stepping out.
"Coming, dear."
Layne Fondue sat up and followed Jed Burner as he slipped down a flight of steps to his private elevator.
That's when all the shooting began.
Chapter 12
Melvin "Moose" Mulroy liked his job a lot more before his boss got married.
Not that being head of security for the burgeoning Kable Newsworthy News Network was ever easy. It was just that there were triple the headaches involved in bodyguarding two flaming lunatics as one.
Moose Mulroy's troubles had started when Jed Burner married Haiphong Hannah Fondue. That was the bitch. Oh, it was one thing to pluck an aging spoiled rich kid falling overboard in a mint julip stupor. It hadn't happened so much since Captain Audacious had settled down.
But bodyguarding Haiphong Hannah was another matter. Moose Mulroy was forty-three years old---old enough to remember Layne Fondue when she had been a two-bit actress stepping everyone's lines on the silver screen. Nothing to write home about. No Jayne Mansfield. Certainly no Bridget Bardot-to Moose Mulroy the height of distaff thespian talent.
Moose had indelible memories of Layne Fondue's infamous trip to Haiphong, Vietnam to lend comfort to the enemy. He still had his "Hang Haiphong Hannah" bumper sticker on the back of his aging Thunderbird.
Now a lot of people disliked Jed Burner. He was a mouthy loose cannon. And an open mouth made a mighty tempting target. But folks hardly ever tried to kill him. Mostly, he was about the business of getting into trouble on his own hook.
But Haiphong Hannah was a mare of another odor. People were always sending her death threats, obscene faxes, and the occasional Fedex surprise package.
Moose didn't mind the live tarantulas so much. And the deer ticks hadn't been so bad. No one had actually acquired Lyme disease either time.
It was the crazies showing up at reception with the hidden weapons. That was the bitch.
The metal detector caught most of them before they got past the lobby. Except for the anticolorization nutjob with the hang glider. And Moose had personally brought him down with a lug nut and slingshot. That way, it looked like an accident, and no one sued.
The Vietnam vet with the plastique girdle had everyone sweating for three hours the day he showed up, demanding Haiphong Hannah be brought to him. But Moose had talked sense into that one.
At least he hadn't stormed the building shooting. Those were the guys who made Moose Mulroy break out in cold sweats every time the big revolving door went whisk-whisk-whisk.
The revolving door was going whisk-whisk-whisk now. The sound snapped Moose's attention as rigid as his spine aligning in anticipation of trouble. He fixed his eyes on the man walking in through the atriumlike lobby, towering for twenty stories of glorious, glassy, totally wasted space.
Immediately, Moose became suspicious.
He wasn't a suit. But he wasn't a cameraman either. They usually wore polo shirts and raggedy jeans.
This guy wore chinos and a T-shirt. He looked kinda fruity, except that he walked with a casual, almost aggravating, cock-of-the-walk grace. Like he owned the building. Moose noticed his wrists. Big wrists. Too big. They hardly looked real.
As the thick-wristed man walked toward him, his face unreadable, Moose noticed that his eyes had that flat, dead kinda look, the classic thousand yards stare of the Vietnam vet. Trying to be casual, Moose shifted his body as he stabbed a button on the monitor array, simultaneously touching the concealed buzzer button.
That alerted the hidden sharpshooters. They were the first line of defense, but a last resort. The uniformed security were already percolating around the lobby, putting themselves in position to surround the strange guy in the T-shirt.
The cameramen, of course, would be piling into the elevators to record the slaughter. The bastards. But company priorities were priorities. Mulroy was under explicit instructions to hold fire until the videocams were in place and taping. Even the wall-mounted security cams had a direct feed up to master control.
Mulroy released the button, looking up from the main monitor.
"Can I help you, sir?" he asked the approaching man.
"No, but you can help yourself."
"Come again?"
"You can tell me where to find Jed Burner."
"Mr. Burner is not in the building."
"Fine. You can tell me where I can find him, then."
"I can't do that without knowing your business with Mr. Burner."