Dark Sky (The Misadventures of Max Bowman Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

it pulled the rug out from under my brain.
    “I found out why you’re here,” she said flatly. “And it would be best for everyone if you weren’t.”
    Back in the fucking principal’s office.
    I got up, feeling a little sick again. No Jack, dead Larry, and getting treated like shit all combined to create a minor explosion in my head. “Maybe I should go. Everyone associated with this thing is more interested in abusing me than getting it done.”
    She felt my pain and softened a little.
    “You know who my father is.”
    “You’re Angela Davidson.”
    “Yes.”
    “Then I know who your father is.”
    “Well, I’m very protective of him.”
    I was getting more than a little tired of being questioned. “Do you think I want to hurt a living legend? What, you think I’m going to sucker punch him? Make fun of his wrinkles? Force him to advertise reverse mortgages? What do you think I’m up to here? Give me a hint, because, again, I don’t know .”
    “No, no, no, I didn’t mean…” She trailed off. “It’s just…he…he’s losing his mind.”
    She let out a big breath.
    “What should I do? You tell me,” I said a little too harshly.
    She looked away and then turned back to me. In spite of the bullshit, I think she actually liked me.
    “I’ll take you to him. Everything’s gone too far. You’ll find that to be a recurring theme.”
    She walked, I followed.
    After hiking about fifty miles through the house, we arrived at a big set of double doors that she opened for me. I walked inside and found myself at the back of a screening room with four rows of seats, seven across. In the front one, dead center, was a very old man watching a very old film about a cavalry outpost in the old West. Angela nodded her head down towards him and indicated I should go on and introduce myself.  It kept being clear she wanted no part of whatever was going on and was desperately struggling not to take it out on me.
    I carefully made my way down the darkened aisle as my eyes adjusted to the lack of light. On screen, an ancient Native American chief was telling John Wayne, playing older than he was at the time with grey hair and a moustache to match, that they were too old for war.
    “Yes, we are too old for war,” answered Wayne. “But old men should stop wars.”
    The old chief replied, “Your men die. My men die. No good.”
    That summed things up.
    As I approached the front row, the movie suddenly stopped and the house lights came up. The old man got unsteadily to his feet and let out a little cough.
    I was face-to-face with General “Devil-Eyes” Donald Davidson.
    General Davidson was one of those war generals that the public glommed onto and built into a mythic status, another one of America’s endless succession of John Waynes – Patton, MacArthur, you know the names. Davidson made his name during the first Iraq War, Operation Desert Storm, back in 1990, along with General “Stormin’” Norman Schwarzkopf.
    But, while Schwarzkopf threw off the aura of a big friendly teddy bear, albeit a teddy bear who commanded 700,000 soldiers, Davidson was a fearsome figure whose nickname reflected the cold, hard stare he threw at anybody he thought was less than they should be. After that first Iraq War, Davidson wrote a couple of best-sellers (or, more likely, somebody wrote them for him) and he later became a highly-paid commentator on Fox News. That last gig didn’t last long, because he was too straight a dealer for cable news’ phony outrage. Still, he had made plenty on the speaking circuit and obviously, from the looks of this place and his daughter, he had a few bucks in the bank.
    I knew all this from reviewing his Wikipedia page. I didn’t have a lot of time to do all the research I usually do before meeting up with somebody this high-profile – fuck, he was the most high-profile guy I ever had to have a conversation with – but I found out enough to get a sense of him. He was retired now, and hadn’t