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“I’ll give the orders as soon as I’m back in my office,” Kate said.
They shook hands and went to their respective cars. Kinney left feeling a little relieved that the president had taken the news as well as he had.
ELEVEN
HOLLY STOOD WITH A DOZEN other trainees in the smaller of the two gymnasiums at the Farm. An instructor with a clipboard walked into the room, counted the names on his clipboard, counted the trainees, then tossed the clipboard aside. Another sergeant, Holly figured, but this one a marine. He was fiftyish, her height, wiry and had a severe whitewall haircut. At his age, only an ex-marine would walk around with that. What was visible of his hair was black, except for a white streak over his forehead.
“Shut up,” he said, though everyone was already quiet. “You can call me Whitey, and when I talk, you listen.”
Holly looked up into the rafters and involuntarily sighed.
“Am I boring you?” Whitey asked.
Holly gazed at him but didn’t reply at once.
“No, sergeant,” she lied.
“I told you to call me Whitey.”
“No, Whitey.”
“You’re a smartass, aren’t you?”
“Possibly.”
He glared at her for a moment, then turned back to the group. “This is a fighting class,” he said. “It is not a self-defense class; it is a hurting class, a maiming class, a killing class. As far as the Agency is concerned, the best opponent is a disabled or dead opponent. Is that dear?”
“Yes, sir,” the class replied as one man, except for Holly, who replied, “Yes, Whitey.”
Whitey heard this and glared at her again. He walked over and stuck his face in hers. “You don’t want to call me ‘sir,” huh?“
“You asked me to call you Whitey,” Holly replied.
“What’s your name?”
“Harry One.”
He looked her up and down. “Yeah, ”Harry‘ is the perfect name for you.“
“Was that a reference to my sexual orientation, Whitey?” Holly asked. She tried not to sound annoyed, though she was annoyed. She had put up with that sort of thing in the Army for years.
“Take it that way, if you like.”
“I don’t like.”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to demand an apology,” Holly said. “Right now.”
“Apology for what?”
“I don’t suppose you’ve read the manual we were given, Whitey, but I have. There is a clear prohibition in the manual against personal slurs, particularly of a sexual nature, and there is a prescribed procedure for dealing with them. Now, you can apologize, or I’ll subject you to that procedure.”
He was back in her face again. “You’d better be careful how you speak to your superiors in this place,” he said.
“I hold a field-grade commission in the reserves of a branch of the United States military,” Holly said. “What’s your rank, Whitey?”
“I’ll show you what my rank is,” Whitey said. He turned, walked two paces away, then faced her, his hands at his sides. “Come over here and hit me in the face,” he said.
