Fifty-First State by Hilary Bailey

a live round at anyone in his life.
    After that, there was a terrible silence. Rory was pulled away, stunned, from the soldier and put in the charge of a nurse from the base while marines rounded up the unprotesting and shocked demonstrators and handed them over to the local police. They were herded into vans which had been waiting further down the road. The two demonstrators who had been shot at – one dead, one wounded – were loaded into an ambulance. Paramedics pulled Kim from her car, put her body on a stretcher and took it to a second ambulance.
    The retaking of Hamscott Common by the Marines had cost two lives, that of Damon Jepson, aged 25, a student and anti-war protester, and Kim Durham, aged 27, a primary school teacher and the mother of a young son.
    10 Downing Street, London SW1. June 3rd, 2015. 9 a.m.
    Frederick Muldoon had achieved the highest office in the land. This is not done without a speed and resilience which in another context might be defined as bordering on the psychopathic.
    One phone call, from the White House, had got him into this position. ‘The President feels,’ Ray Hollander had said evenly, ‘that this is a US base and therefore something we have to take care of. She asks, “Is that OK with you?”’ Muldoon found it easy to agree with his powerful ally even though he knew that by doing so he was completely negating the plan agreed earlier at COBRA and confirmed with his own Home Secretary.
    Fifteen seconds after he heard the news of Kim Durham’s death he had moved from concern about the messy and needless death of a young woman to acute concern about his own situation. He saw now that he had played into Hollander’s hands. He saw that the Marines must have been in the air heading for Hamscott before the call. An innocent woman had died and he, Frederick Muldoon, would be held responsible.
    Stalking him like a mugger in an alley were thoughts of Alan Petherbridge, who would pick his time to leak the information that his own plan to retake the base, using the British police, had been safer. All that could save him now was a strong and supportive call from the President of the US, an admission that she had personally backed his decision, her apologies for a tragic mistake, her firm assurance there would be a prompt investigation of the error, and her own words of condolence to the family. He needed it now, and he needed it on screen before the press conference. Importantly, he needed to be able to quote the President’s own words of condolence to the family.
    Muldoon had been waiting for half an hour for the President of the United States to ring back. His office was handling everything else – no other calls would be put through until he had spoken to the President. An aide had woken Hollander in Washington when Muldoon called. Hollander, his eyes sleep-swollen and his hair sticking up on top of his head, had reacted immediately. ‘A terrible accident,’ he said. ‘The President will speak to the victim’s family personally as soon as possible. And there’ll be a compensation package, of course.’
    Muldoon looked at the man who had, only an hour earlier, asked forhis agreement that the Marines should land at Hamscott. Who had gained that agreement from him and promptly gone to bed, to sleep. Who had put him in the appalling position he was in today. He disciplined himself to stay calm. He needed more from Hollander now, much more. He needed to talk to the President. He needed to record that talk on film before 10 a.m., the time of his scheduled weekly encounter with the press. ‘Will you talk to the President?’ he’d asked. ‘I’d like to speak to her personally.’ There was a short silence. It: was four in the morning in Washington and the head of the most powerful country in the world is not woken lightly. For her, perhaps, the death of Kim Durham and the pictures of Rory at the soldier’s