The nation's highest honor : a novel PDF
Preview The nation's highest honor : a novel
T H E N A T I O N ’ S H I G H E S T H O N O R nationsHighest-inside-8-printer.indd 1 2/25/09 1:44:25 PM nationsHighest-inside-8-printer.indd 2 2/25/09 1:44:25 PM T H E N A T I O N ’ S H I G H E S T H O N O R A N O V E L J A M E S G A I T I S CLEARWATER | FL | USA nationsHighest-inside-8-printer.indd 3 2/25/09 1:44:26 PM THE NATION’S HIGHEST HONOR Copyright © 2009 by James Gaitis. All Rights Reserved. Published and printed in the United States of America by Kunati Inc. (USA) and simultaneously printed and published in Canada by Kunati Inc. (Canada) No part of this book may be reproduced, copied or used in any form or manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews and critical articles. For information, contact Kunati Inc., Book Publishers in Canada. USA: 13575 58th Street North, Suite 200, Clearwater, FL 33760-3721 USA Canada: 75 First Street, Suite 128, Orangeville, ON L9W 5B6 CANADA. E-mail: [email protected]. F I R S T E D I T I O N Designed by Kam Wai Yu Persona Corp. | www.personaco.com ISBN 978-1-60164-172-4 EAN 9781601641724 Fiction Published by Kunati Inc. (USA) and Kunati Inc. (Canada). Provocative. Bold. Controversial.™ http://www.kunati.com TM—Kunati and Kunati Trailer are trademarks owned by Kunati Inc. Persona is a trademark owned by Persona Corp. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All events described herein are imaginary, including settings and characters. Any similarity to real persons, entities, or companies is purely coincidental and not intended to represent real places or living persons. Real brand names, company names, names of public personalities or real people may be employed for credibility because they are part of our culture and everyday lives. Regardless of context, their use is meant neither as endorsement nor criticism: such names are used fictitiously without intent to describe their actual conduct or value. All other names, products or brands are inventions of the author’s imagination. Kunati Inc. and its directors, employees, distributors, retailers, wholesalers and assigns disclaims any liability or responsibility for the author’s statements, words, ideas, criticisms or observations. Kunati assumes no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, or omissions. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gaitis, James. The nation’s highest honor : a novel / James Gaitis. -- 1st ed. p. cm. Summary: “A literary satire that targets dysfunctional government, the military, cultural malaise and social inequality by pitting a peaceful and innocent outsider with no ulterior motives against the establishment”--Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-1-60164-172-4 1. Political fiction. I. Title. PS3607.A36N37 2009 813’.6--dc22 2009001443 nationsHighest-inside-8-printer.indd 4 2/25/09 1:44:26 PM To beautiful Dawn nationsHighest-inside-8-printer.indd 5 2/25/09 1:44:26 PM What is honour? A word. What is in that word honour? What is that honour? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ‘Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so ends my catechism. Sir John Falstaff, Henry IV Part 1, Act V, Scene 1 6 n JAMES GAITIS nationsHighest-inside-8-printer.indd 6 2/25/09 1:44:26 PM CHAPTER I 1 The black government sedan came cautiously up the road that really wasn’t a road at all but something less—a dirt track, an abandoned wagon trail perhaps—which had been carved into and through the desert apparently with the singular intent of traversing every embedded rock and undulation and obstacle that might have been avoided by routing the road with the slightest degree of care. A windblown landscape cluttered with cacti and mesquite and stony outcroppings and thorny brush. A wasteland, some would think. A vast and weatherbeaten region of a dying and near-dead planet. With resolute patience, the driver did his best to maneuver the car along the ribbon of scratched roadway that twisted through the forsaken expanse of sand and rock and rising foothills that obscured and denied and deceived. But he could not avoid the rock and stone and washboard surface and deep ruts that grabbed at the tires of the sedan and tested its suspension and threatened to strand him there in the middle of God-knows-where. He drove on, in spite of it, determined to complete his mission, at times reacting too slowly; jerking the wheel to the right when it was too late; cutting back to the left only to instantly set the sedan atop a rippled hardpan surface of caliche that vibrated his very core until he conceded his error and cut back hard the other way, back into the potholed craters that dropped the sedan on a sudden and slammed its frame to the ground. But he could do nothing to stop the dust that forced its way in through the vents he had closed and the air THE NATION’S HIGHEST HONOR n 7 nationsHighest-inside-8-printer.indd 7 2/25/09 1:44:26 PM
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