But nothing came to mind. What would these men consider entertaining? What could he say that wouldn’t offend either of them or their comrades who were sitting to either side of them? Could he make fun of their current plight or the pending operation which was, for Nathan, still very much a mystery?

It was Ortiz, the bolder of the pair, who broke the impasse. “Hey, LT. What made you buy a Saturn?” he asked with a hint of mockery in his voice.

Having been spared the embarrassment of saying something that might not come across well, Nathan smiled. “Not my call. My mom and dad gave it to me as a graduation gift. They thought it would be safer than the one I had picked out.”

“Oh,” Ortiz responded, as if saying, “That’s what I figured.”

Hyde, never known for being able to keep his mouth shut, joined in. “Gee, is that why your daddy let you become a par-a-trooper?”

The double slight was not lost on Nathan. Where he could easily have laughed off Ortiz’s snide remark and walk away, Hyde’s comment was a direct challenge that could not be ignored. Still, Nathan had come to appreciate that such slights were to be expected and not worth endangering his relationship with his men over. “Well,” Nathan replied with a forced chuckle, “I suppose we all turn out better than our daddies expect, don’t we?”

With a hoot, Ortiz turned to his friend and grinned, as if to say, “he got you.”

Having been bested by his companion and anxious to change subject, Hyde looked up at his lieutenant. “Sir, you’re an educated man. Can you tell me what all of this is about? I mean, I don’t much listen to the news and when I do it seems like the people who are supposed to be running this country are more interested in calling their opponent names than telling us what they’re really up to. Sometimes I get the feeling that they’re trying to hide what they’re doing from us.”

Relieved to be on familiar ground, Nathan twisted about in an effort to shift the gear he wore as he considered how best to explain the complex issues and politics that had led up to the confrontation in Idaho. “Well, it seems the governor of Idaho, as well as other like minded governors and politicians, want to reform the way the Federal government goes about its business without rewriting the Constitution.”

“Can they do that?” Ortiz asked. “Can the President rewrite the Constitution?”