This 44-part series began running in WCT Nov. 8. Readers can read all the installments to date at www.windycitymediagroup.com
From the journal of John 'Jack' Quincy Adams, Chief Secret Service Special Agent in Charge, The White House. Code Name: One.
Part 35. The Ranch
Jack Adams, the Secret Service agent charged with assassinating President George W. Bush and being held for psychiatric evaluation, is telling about having to travel to the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
If there was no other criterion for questioning George W. Bush's qualifications to be president, the fact that he chose to live in Crawford, Texas might be enough to keep him out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And I happen to like Texas.
Obviously there's more to his choice to live there than meets the eye and I'm sure it has to do with things like 'connections' and 'real estate pals.' By the same token, I think you have to be a Texan to see the beauty in Texas, but it is there if you look for it and if you appreciate scrub oak, pine forests and rolling hills. In the spring it is an ocean of bluebonnets, Indian Paintbrush and assorted wildflowers I can't name.
Unfortunately, this time we were there in winter. The first morning, I got up and went into the kitchen to find Trailblazer already up and eating ham and eggs. He also had a diet Dr. Pepper. In a glass.
'Hey, One,' he said as I entered the kitchen. 'Do I look like a sissy yet?' and he held up his glass of DDP. The glass had little pink flowers on it and looked like it came filled with jam.
'Well, I don't know about that, but it is rather unusual. What gives, sir?'
'Look at this,' he said and held up the can of Diet Dr. Pepper that was sitting on the round wooden kitchen table. 'Cans! Laura said it was all they had at the store in Crawford. She did the shopping yesterday. The First Lady of the United States decides to do her own grocery shopping in Crawford, Texas. I could have sent someone to Waco and got some bottles if she'd a just held her horses a minute. Now I've got to finish this whole damned case of cans. Help yourself,' he said, pointing to the case of DP sitting on the counter.
I poured myself a cup of coffee and took a seat by the window. The other side of the property was crawling with security, communications vehicles mounted with huge satellite dishes, and television transmitting trucks. The kitchen side of the house, where we were, was referred to by the staff as the DMZ.
I never mind when we go to the ranch, particularly because Trailblazer tends to see the people around him there more as individuals, but Laura always gets stiffer. After all, the ranch is her home and she's not thrilled to have dozens of strangers traipsing through it all day and all night.
We had a routine established by that time. Outdoor work and local fundraisers during the day, desk work in the late evenings. Trailblazer was always in bed by midnight. My plan was simple: on either of the two remaining nights, when he said let's get a DP, I would offer to get it for him. I would pour the can of DP into his favorite Houston Oilers mug and slip in the contents of my Medic Alert medallion. Then, once I knew he was dead, I would radio the trailer, call a Code Lockdown and ask for the paramedics who were posted in a Medical RV next to the trailer. By the time anyone got there, of course, it would be too late. From there on I would have to improvise.
I didn't even have to wait 24 hours for the window of opportunity to open. After clearing some tinder along the creek in the morning, Trailblazer came in, ate some lunch and took a nap, falling asleep on the leather sofa in his office while reading a Dan Brown book—not The DaVinci Code, by the way; he read that over the first three or four months of his first term of office, but threw it out when Ralph Reed told him it was blasphemous.
What I was about to do may not have been blasphemous, but it certainly would require that I go to confession afterward. I guess that bizarre thought entered my mind because I never do something 'wrong' without thinking of my grandmother, who whenever she would catch me always said, 'Jack, I think you're going to want to come to confession with me Saturday afternoon.' So far as I knew Crawford didn't even have a Catholic Church. And if it did, somehow I just couldn't imagine myself kneeling down in the confessional, making the sign of the cross and saying, 'Bless me father for I have sinned. It has been forty years since my last confession. I have taken the Lord's name in vain, had impure thoughts, and assassinated the President of the United States.' How many Hail Marys would that get me?
Krandall Kraus has published six books, including the Lambda Literary Award winner It's Never About What It's About, co-authored with his partner, Paul Borja.
Krandall Kraus has published six books, including the Lambda Literary Award winner It's Never About What It's About, co-authored with his partner, Paul Borja. He is the recipient of the 2006 Christopher Isherwood Fellowship in Fiction; his first novel, The President's Son, was a bestseller. A former consultant to the Office of the Vice President, his political thrillers are filled with White House insider details.
