News item: Top Liberal strategist vows cabinet hecklers will strike again; Martin says they won’t
From the private journal of Captain Willard, Special Ops Detachment, Liberal HQ — June 3, 2004:
The air was sticky and thick with mosquitoes. Diesel exhaust permeated everything on the boat, painting a layer of grime on the guns and our boots.
We were eight, steaming up the Ottawa River on patrol. The others were good men, unburdened with the knowledge I carried: that our mission was anything but routine.
“Cap’n?” asked the sergeant, an ox of a guy from the Saguenay. “We gotta talk.”
I’d been expecting this. I lay my Bowie knife next to the sharpening stone at my feet.
“Something on your mind, Sergeant?”
“The men. They know something’s up. I figure as we got a right to know.”
“The men know what they need to know.”
His eyes narrowed, and I saw them fold into the hardened killer’s face that was probably the last living sight of at least a dozen Bloc canvassers.
“They’re privates, Cap’n, but they’re not stupid. They can read the polls.”
“All right,” I said. I picked up the knife and started sharpening. I pitched my voice just under the squeals of steel on stone. “I’ll tell you, and you decide what to tell them.”
He leaned a little closer.
“There’s a rogue campaign co-chair up-river. Name of Herle. I have orders to terminate his command.”
“Orders?!” he hissed. “To take out one of our own?!”
I set the knife on my knee and reached into the satchel on the deck at my feet. I pulled out the dossier and spread it out for him. His eyes widened when he saw the clippings. And his jaw clenched when he saw the pictures.
“Jesus,” he whispered. “He forced the former chief economist of the Bank of Canada to… to…”
“Yeah,” I said. “And look at this one. That’s a cabinet minister in the dorky red T-shirt, yelling. A cabinet minister, Sergeant.”
He looked up from the photos, and I could see he’d just lost whatever vestiges of innocence he’d managed to cling to.
“So what do you say?” I asked him.
He turned to the Marine in the wheelhouse. “You get me full speed, you hear?” he barked.
