Yet it was the other half of the message she most looked forward to delivering, she admitted to herself. Because when Lieutenant Commander Harris reduced the exquisitely sensitive passive systems aboard their drones to so much useless junk, the personal message from Captain Erica Ferrero to Kapitän der Sterne Gortz would be excruciatingly clear.

Don’t fuck around with me, smart ass!

Chapter Twenty-Four

“I DON’T like it.” Thomas Theisman’s voice was mild as he leaned back in his comfortable chair in President Pritchart’s office. His expression was another matter, and he frowned fiercely as he considered what he’d just said. “In fact, I don’t like it one bit,” he amended.

“And you think I do?” Eloise Pritchart demanded. Her voice was harsh, although Theisman knew her anger wasn’t directed against him. “On the other hand, Kevin’s report doesn’t seem to leave us a whole lot of options, does it?”

“You can always fire the son-of-a-bitch,” Theisman suggested.

“I thought about that. Hard,” Pritchart admitted. “Unfortunately, according to certain other sources, he’s prepared to challenge any demand for his resignation as unconstitutional.”

“Unconstitutional?” Theisman stared at her in disbelief, and she smiled bitterly.

“Well, illegal, at least. It seems that according to arguably competent legal opinion, the resolution readopting the Constitution gave Congress the right to approve or disapprove my Cabinet appointments… and any changes to them.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“My own opinion exactly. Which doesn’t mean Arnold won’t take the matter to the courts anyway if I try to fire him.”

“Have you asked Denis about this?”

“I have,” the President confirmed. “He’s of the same opinion you are. Unfortunately, the same source which told me Arnold might try something like this pointed out his longstanding friendship with Chief Justice Tullingham.”

“Oh shit,” Theisman muttered with intense disgust.

“Precisely,” Pritchart agreed. “I doubt very much that he could win in the long run, but he could certainly tie things up in legal arguments for weeks—probably months. And that would be just as bad, in the long run. Which means there really isn’t anything I can do to punish him.”

“It leaves us at least one other one possibility,” Theisman growled. Pritchart cocked her head at him, and he smiled thinly. “If you can’t fire him, then have Denis indict the scheming bastard, instead.”

“Indict the Secretary of State?” Pritchart stared at him.

“Damned straight,” Theisman shot back. “At the very least, he’s already spilled classified information, and there’s no way he did it ‘accidentally’! Not to the bunch Kevin tells us he’s been talking to about it.”

“He’s also a cabinet secretary,” Pritchart pointed out. “And while I personally agree a hundred percent with you, the people to whom he’s ‘spilled’ the information all hold Top Secret clearances of their own.”

“And not one of them, aside from his lying brother, was cleared for this information, or has any demonstrated need to know it,” Theisman shot back. “And you know perfectly well that if he’s told them, it’s only a matter of time before the information gets made public. Which brings us back to exactly the national security concerns I’ve been raising from the day we decided to proceed with Bolthole.”