When he heard that, Jack wished he had been there instead of riding in the back of an ambulance with Maxine. He would’ve gone on record as saying that he, for one, was tired of all the special-interest hyphenates and wished that any fill-in-the-blank Americans would be Americans first and something else second.

Even though that was the kind of thing that got you tossed off the air, he reflected. But it was worth it. People said he was insensitive and a racist. He said he was a patriot, which was different from most of the mainstream media who seemed to be happy watching the country perforate along ethnic borders like Spain or the former Soviet Union or Iraq.

Jack lived and worked on a fifty-nine-foot Grand Banks yacht in the Sausalito Marina where, as if reflecting the mood of the region, the wind and tides were making some pretty ugly chop. Still, he managed to snag a few hours’ sleep around dawn then watched as local and national law enforcement across the country were put on high alert and did everything they could to create the impression of ensuring the public’s safety. The President made an Oval Office speech the following morning, reminding the country of his commitment to keeping the citizens of the United States secure-and to raise his mortally wounded poll numbers-while politicos from both sides of the aisle clogged the cable news networks and talk radio with enough hot air to float a horseshoe. That bugged Jack the most. Despite the magnitude of what had happened, and the devastating scope of what had accidentally been avoided, the news coverage had no real depth to it, no dimension, no insight.

Only one thing resonated with him. At the center of the newscasts and speeches, the one piece that was never far from anyone’s mouth was that while debris and shrapnel had caused several minor injuries, there had been only one fatality: Officer Thomas Drabinsky of the SFPD bomb squad, whose attempt to defuse the device had ended as he was en route to the target. There was one thing about him that no one mentioned, however, probably because it was too bizarre a thought for anyone to process. It was something he heard from the marines in Iraq and air force personnel when fighter pilots went down.