Protect and defend Read Online Free PDF Page A

brand-new Baia sixty-three-foot Azzurra. Garret rolled over, his left leg dangling off the side of the king-size bed. His eyes opened, blinking several times. Slowly the blue numbers of his bedside digital clock came into focus. It was 2:11 in the morning. He let his eyelids close and rolled onto his back. Occasionally, if he changed positions it would take the pressure off his bladder and he could fall right back asleep.
    People all over the world are creatures of habit and Garret was no different. He liked to start his day with several cups of very strong black coffee and end it with a bottle of Chardonnay—sometimes two. These habits and an enlarged prostate made a certain nightly ritual inevitable. At roughly 3:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. he awoke to alleviate the pressure on his bladder. Simply cutting back on the coffee and wine would have been an easy solution, but Garret didn’t like depriving himself of anything he liked. The way his mind worked, getting up to relieve himself wasn’t the problem. It was falling back asleep. The magic bullet he’d found was sleeping on the water. When on land Garret found it almost impossible to get a good night’s rest. On the water, however, he could relieve himself as many times as his swollen prostate required and the motion of the ocean was guaranteed to rock him back to sleep.
    The other benefit of boating lay in its solitude. The older Garret got, the more he realized he simply didn’t like people. Most he found to be irritating and obnoxious, but even the endearing ones wore thin over time. He’d made a small fortune getting men and women elected to public office. Professional charmers who could change personas to fit each potential voter. Even these chameleons found a way to get under his skin. After a while their feigned can-do attitude and politically correct speak became intolerable. Garret was at his core an irascible man who believed everyone acted in their own selfish interests.
    The evangelist who spoke of his love of Christ did so not out of adoration for his savior, but out of a need for others to hold him in high regard. Garret had met one too many Hollywood types who professed their desire to save Mother Earth, while ensconced in one of their several ten-thousand-square-foot homes of which they were the sole occupants. Did they really believe in global warming or were they simply hypocrites? The town had its fair share of sanctimonious phonies, to be sure, but most simply wanted to be accepted and to be thought of as enlightened, intelligent, and compassionate. Garrett had no such need. He yearned for the acceptance of others about as much as he wanted a sturdy kick in the groin.
    The visual brought a sly grin to Garret’s face. He was very happy with the way his life had turned out. Especially in light of how things were going just a year ago. He’d just finished running his second successful presidential campaign. Having helped orchestrate one of the greatest come-from-behind victories in the history of the country, he was flushed with a sense of omnipotence. Manufacturing a victory was probably a more accurate definition of what he’d done, but he wasn’t about to go there.
    The important thing was that he had done his job. Politics was a rough game, each side willing to do the most unseemly things to win. None of it surprised Garret. History was filled with examples. Over time untold numbers of siblings had poisoned and been poisoned while jockeying for the throne; civil wars fought over mere ideas had killed millions; there’d been too many assassinations, bloody coups, and revolutions to even count that had upset entire continents. Julius Caesar had been stabbed twenty-three times by a cabal that included some of Rome’s most learned and intellectual senators. Hitler burned the Reichstag to the ground and blamed the Communists. The examples of men lying, cheating, and murdering their way to power was long and illustrious.
    For Garret, if there was any