48 days, week 6

Sunday, 9:00 AM.
Eddie Salazaar drops his paper and punches in a number on his phone; the call immediately goes to voice mail. "Bastard!" he shouts, then hangs up and dials another number. "Where's Hector?" he demands.

"I don't know, last I heard he was headed to the high stakes table on Obama's behalf," Bridgit replies. "Maybe Jennifer took him over to the dark side. Have you tried the churches?"

"It's too early for the sermon. And none of those folks seem too churchy. Listen closely, Bridgit. Hector needs to be in Columbia for the King Celebration. Why? Because all the Dems will be there. HRC wins Nevada and he disappears. What the fuck is going on out there? I thought you guys had a handle on this."

"Relax. Barack won more delegates. House rules or something."

"Weird. But not as strange as Mike Huckabee doing an Elvis impersonation of Take My Hand, Precious Lord. Saw that on YouTube."

"You scare me with that stuff Eddie. Next you'll be telling me you watch Quarterlife. But that was a bad move on the Huckster's part, the analagy is too easy for the bloggers. Elvis IS dead. Tell me you know that. Huckabee isn't far behind."

Monday, 11:00 AM.
CTU agents Tony Almeda and Michelle Dressler stand before Special-Agent-in-Charge George Mason. "Sit!" he commands, and then walks over and closes the office door. "What do you have?"

Tony starts. "Hillary looks like a lock on the nomination given her machine, but the party base is fractured. She's might still be vulnerable to eloquence."

"Bill's or Barack's?"

"Both. But Barack's the one with the dream."

"You think Bill doesn't have one? All he does is dream. Hell, he's had more wet dreams than most people have hopes. As for Obama, once the peckerwoods find out his middle name is Hussein, he's done. And you Michelle, what do you have from the grand old folks home?"

"It all depends on which prophet you follow. Jesus, Joseph, or Ronald. I've give 'em all about even odds in Florida at the moment."

"This is costing the country a whole lot of money. You've been on this for almost 6 weeks running and nothing! Not a damn thing! We're getting a lot of pressure from people in very high places to get a wrap on this and you know the Dick loves Bauer like a child. He's pushing real hard to get Jack back on the street. If you want YOUR name in lights, you better get some juice to the cable, and quick."

"Agreed, Jack's a special agent, but remember, he also a two-time loser. Once more and he's done. And we have managed to kick off some of the fringes."

"Fringes? To date, we've lost the only Spanish speaker, a tv hack, an evangelical, and some geezer white dudes. That sounds like middle America to me! Maybe you should reach out to Bauer again, see what he knows."

"I thought you said he was off-limits for the duration."

"I did, but dirty laundry is his specialty."

Tuesday, 11:00 AM.
There's a loud knock on the door of Suite 777 at the Belagio Hotel and Casino. Then again. Then the door opens and the room attendant calls out in a thick Spanish accent, "House keeping! House keeping!"

She goes to the window and pulls back the curtain. Sunlight floods the room. She turns to see that the room is in complete shambles, champagne bottles everywhere, room service trays, a lamp tipped over. She mutters to herself ¡Ah cabrón!, looks up, then tentatively approaches what appears to be a body beneath the covers. She touches it. No movement. She touches it again. Again nothing. She looks around the room unsure of what to do next. Finally she musters up the coverage to pull back the covers and examine what's underneath. Slowly the covers fall away to reveal Ron Surnow, the out-of-work-writer and Vincent Carter's friend, lying face down on the bed. She nudges him. Nothing. Again. Nothing. "Mierda!"

Just as she begins to back out of the room, she hears a groan. Then another. Ron turns over slowly and tries to open his eyes but the sunlight makes him wince. He can see a woman in the room but he can't make out her features.

"You're still here?" he mumbles. "Don't know if I have another round of role-playing in me without some help," he reaches over to the nightstand and gropes around.
A pharmacopoeia of prescription bottles topple off the nightstand and Ron proceeds to follow them into the floor.

"Give me just a minute here and I'll be ready," he weakly calls to her. He gropes around looking for the right bottle and then sees a couple of polaroids on the floor. He picks one up. It's of him looking very blotto. Standing next to him is a woman who could make cream whip just by looking at the bowl. He's trying to remember her name. Damn, he thinks, he was lucky last night. He tries to grab onto the nightstand to pull himself up, but only manages to pull an ice bucket full of lukewarm water onto to himself. "help me out here! will you?"

The housekeeper comes over and helps Ron to his feet. He looks down and sees more photos on the nightstand. He picks them up and begins leafing through his sordid progression from the night before. There's one of Ron at the cabana with the Clinton staffers. Everyone seems to be having a good time. A couple of them are real babes. Damn, he wishes he could remember more of last night that these photos seem to reveal. He shuffles through the stack. There's one where everyone is skinny-dipping in the pool. Another of them in the room with 2 of the staffers, no one has any clothes on. Ron's starting to get excited.

"¡Estas cabrón!" the housekeeper says to Ron.

He smiles. He continues to look through the photos and until one makes him gasp. Ron is wearing an Afro wig and is tied to the bed. Standing over him is a woman who resembles, at least in the photo, Oprah Winfrey in black leather bondage attire. She's slapping Ron's ass with a whip. But what is really upsetting to Ron, what makes him retch and drop the photos, and run to the bathroom and hurl, is that photo clearly shows that in addition to the bondage, Oprah's wearing a huge strap-on dildo and Ron's got a big grin on his face.

Ron spends several minutes draining most of his stomach contents into the commode, then finally manages to stand and walk back into the room. When the housekeeper sees him she laughs and points, "hijo de mil putas".

Ron looks down and realizes for the first that he's wearing of pair of jockey shorts with a big picture of Hillary Clinton on the front. He bends down for a closer look and the writing scrawled across the bottom. "It was fun! See ya' on YouTube my sweet little Oprah Bitch. signed, the Hillary Nutcrackers."

Ron stomach churns and he heads back to the toilet.

Wednesday, 5:00 PM.
Vincent "Vinnie" Carter's Cadillac Eldorado convertible crosses over the cattle guard with a thunk and stops at what appears to be a lemonade stand. Two lady's, hair in buns against the Texas heat, sit behind a sign that says, CHUCK4HUCK. All U CAN EAT, $15. "Y'all here for the B-B-Que?" the woman asks.

"Yes ma'am."

"Well it's $15 apiece or $30 a family. Ya'll family?"

Vinnie looks over at Ruth, the middle-aged show-it-all-girl he discovered at the Belagio omelet bar, winks, then looks back at Hector Ramirez sitting in the back. Ruth smiles back, Hector scowls. "More or less," Vincent says to the woman and hands her two twenties. "Keep the change."

"You want some sweet tea? Ranch is a ways ahead and it'll be dusty with the top down."

"Sure why not", Vinnie takes 3 plastic cups of tea from the lady, "nothing like a little southern comfort to take the heat off the afternoon."

They drive on. Hector takes a big gulp of the icy beverage, the sticky sweetness rolls around on his tongue, and makes it hard to talk. He pulls a flask from his coat and tops off the drink.

""A little sweet for you?" Ruth asks.

"Yeah, this ticket needs some balance," and he hands Ruth the flask.

"Don't mind if I do"

Vinnie looks over at Ruth, "you ever been to a ranch, a real ranch?"

"There's country, and then there's me, sweetpea," Ruth replies. "I was polling Herefords before they invented push polls."

"How about you?" Vinnie looks up in the rear view mirror and makes eye contact with Hector Ramirez. "Are you country? because this here's supposed to be the real deal." and he sweets his arm out toward the landscapes. "Owned by a real Texas Ranger."

"Bullshit, if this dude is a real lawmen, then I'm a campaign advisor."

Wednesday, 6:30 PM.
Vinnie, Ruth, and Hector are sitting at a picnic table chowing down on some brisket, beans, and slaw, drinking PBR from cans. All around them are white folks with wane smiles and up on stage, Lynard Skynard covers are being tortured out of guitars.

Vinnie looks across to Ruth, grabs her free hand, and suckles the sauce from her fingers, "I always did prefer the sweet to the piquant, now I'm in love."

"You really haven't been out in a while have you Vinnie?" Ruth says, dabbing sauce from her smile. "You're in a campaign. Every one's in love."

"Maybe I'm naive, and yes, I have been out-of-touch of late, but I still want to believe that people from vastly different backgrounds can still find themselves on the road to America."

"Sounds like the stuff of fairy tales," Hector chimes in, "I need to charge my phone, this music is giving me a headache."

Thursday, 5:00 AM.
Hector's up and taking a walk. There's considerable activity around the ranch at this hour, Hispanic ranch hands and men with prostate problems. His phone rings, first time in a couple of days.

"Hector? That you?" Bridgit asks. "Where the fuck are you? Salazaar been going ape shit trying to find you.

"Stopped in Texas for some b-b-Que."

"Wrong meat, Hector. You're supposed to be at Maurice's Piggy Park in Columbia."

"We'll get there. But the buses needed refueling and they're out of money. Had to have a hoe-down just to buy gas."

Friday, 11AM, CTU Headquarters.
Tony and Michelle are sorting through campaign staff emails taking notes. Mason approaches them. "Any word from Jack?"

"He's been released back the general population, but his former cellmate, a man named Vinnie Carter, was kicked loose last week. Vincent somehow managed to get hooked up with a Huckabee staffer in Vegas. They're driving cross country now and one of Salazaar's men, Hector Ramirez, is traveling with them."

"Do we know what their plans are?"

"Beyond playing Free Bird in all the Purple States we're not sure. Looks like they're headed to Florida."

"So who's Jack bunking with now."

"Some White House intern charged with perjury in the Balco case."

"There's a steroid scandal in politics?"

"Not yet, but the intern was an old friend of W's, from his glory days with the Rangers. Club house attendant or something. Apparently he was also the clubs go-to-guy for the clear. He made the mistake of lying about it to a Clinton appointee."

"Those activist judges will get you every time. You think he's a plant?"

"Either that or a ball boy."

Saturday, 11:50 AM, Zion Baptist Church, Columbia, South Carolina.

The crowd is beginning to get a little restless as they listen to the concluding M.L. King Day remarks about how the lives of public figures have changed in the year's since King's death, how every aspect of the candidates, their families, and their staff's lives have become fodder for the prying eyes of America, "it's played out on television, it's sensationalized in the media, and it's crept into the presidential campaign in a way that serves to obscure the issues" Barack Obama tells the crowd to shouts of "Amen! Amen, Brother! Testify!"

Saturday, 12:20 PM, Capitol Grounds, Columbia, South Carolina.
Tony Almeda surveys the crowd, now estimated to be 5,000 strong and growing, from his vantage point atop the Governor's Building just across from the Dome. He calls Michelle Dresseler who's working the street ahead of the marchers, "What's it look like down there?"

"It's a mixed crowd. State police, locals, SS, plus the campaign staffers working the crowd for product placement opportunities."

"How much longer before they get to the Capitol."

"Tomorrow afternoon if they don't stop kissing babies."

"Any sign of Salazaar's people?"

"Not yet, but we've got people spaced out the entire 6 blocks so if anyone surfaces, we should be in a position to react."

"Keep me posted." Almeda motions to Rico, the SWAT captain to come over. "Listen. Our inside man, Bauer, came across someone in the know who said today's the day. You have specific orders. If a target appears, get a visual lock, copy the image to your handheld, and page it immediately to me. I'll verify the ID and then give you the go ahead. But if deem them an immediate threat, and you can take them out with minimal collateral damage, you have authority to do so."

"Roger that."

Saturday, 12:40 PM, Street, Columbia, South Carolina.
"Tony, it's Michelle, listen I think we've got something."

"Where?"

"Intersection of Assembly and Lady Street, that's one block from you. Can you see it?"

Tony places two fingers to his eyes and motions to Rico. Rico begins scanning the crowd with his 80-power binoculars. "Where? Where? Where?" Tony calls to Michelle.

"Southeast quadrant of the intersection. Check out the guy in the white outfit moving through the crowd. Jumpsuit, glasses, looks like he's wearing a wig. No, wait, it looks like an Elvis costume, from the Vegas years."

"He's out of place, King's birthday was last week. Rico, capture that image and send it to me. I'll run a trace. Tell your men to standby for orders, and DO NOT let him out of your sight."

"How far before the Dems make it to the intersection Michelle?"

"They're a block away. What do you want me to do?"

"I'm waiting on this feed, standby."

"They're getting closer Tony. The guy's behaving erratically, jumping around, yelling, he's moving closer to the street."

"WE can't tip our hand if he's not the one. Give me just a sec, we're paging through files now."

"Sir! The target is moving into the street. I repeat, into the street. I have a clean shot. Should I take it?"

"Hold fire for 10 seconds."

"Tony, the guys in the street now. He's acting crazy, moving around, he's looks like a nut."

"Wait, wait, wait, wait. Could be a distraction. Rico, have your men cover him. Michelle scan the crowd for an accomplish."

There's a beep and Tony looks down at his pda. Status confirmed. "Holy shit! It can't be. Weapons down! Now! Weapons down! I can't believe this shit! It's the President."

"The President. Sir, are you sure, the fat dude in the jumpsuit, the President?"

"Yes, former President Clinton. Looks like he's making good on his promise."

"His promise? to do an Elvis impersonation on Martin Luther King's Birthday?"

"No, he challenged Obama to a dance contest."

"Well sir, he does appear to be winning at the moment."

see also:
m.o.i.: 48 days, week 5
m.o.i.: 48 days, week 4
m.o.i.: 48 days, week 3
m.o.i.: 48 days, week 2
m.o.i.: Season premiere-48 days, week 1
m.o.i.: Damn it! I just can't do this anymore.