Authors: Stephen Coonts
Another of the gunmen was shot to death in the House dining room after he sprayed the diners with two magazines
and used the third on the chandeliers. His weapon jammed. He was crouched amid a shower of shattered glass trying to clear the weapon when two guards standing at different doorways opened fire with their revolvers. The man went down with three bullets in him and was shot twice more as he lay on the floor.
One of the gunmen somehow ended up in the old Senate chamber which, mercifully, was empty. Didn’t matter. He stood near the lectern and sprayed two magazines of slugs into the polished desks and speaker’s bench. Then he threw the Uzi down, drew a pistol, and blew his brains out. The only terrorist taken alive was shot from behind as he ran down a corridor on the second level. He had killed over a dozen people and wounded nine others before a woman guard leveled him with a slug through the liver.
Watchin-gthepandemoniumontelevision-everystation in town had a crew at the Capitol within twenty minutes and two of them had helicopters circling overhead-White House chief of staff William C. Dorfman took the first comreport from the FBI watch officer over the telephone in his office.
“How many of them were there?”
“We don’t know.”
“Have you gotten them all?”
““We don’t know.”
“CasuWties?”
Don’t know yet.”
“Well, goddammit, call me back when you know some iine you fucking idiot!” Dorfman roared and slammed the phone so hard the plastic housing on the instru cracked.
temper tantrums were a character defect and were him no good politically. Dorfman knew it and was to control himself. Still …
c minute later the telephone rang again. it was Vice knt Quayle. “I’m going over to the Capitol. I want you
‘with me.”
from. ViPresident, I don’t think that’s a good idea,”
Dorfman replied as he jabbed the button on the remote to kill the TV volume. “The FBI ust told me that they don’t know if the guards got all the terrorists. The nation can’t afford to lose you to a-was
“I’m going, Dorfman. You’re coming with me. I’ll be at the Rose Garden entrance in five minutes. Have the cars brought around.” The line went dead. comallyessir,” Dorfinan said to nobody in particular.
The administration was sitting on a bomb with a lit fuse, Dorfman realized, and the fuse was dangerously short.
Tefforists! Not in the Middle East, not in some Third World shithole that nobody had ever heard of, but here! Washington, D.c., the capital of the United States! The next thing you know wild-eyed lunatic ragheads will be blowing stuff up and slaughtering people in Moline and Columbus and Tulsa. My God!
At least Dan Quayle was smart enough to comprehend the gravity of the situation. That was undoubtedly why he wanted to personally view the carnage at the Capitol, console the survivors, and be seen by the American people doing it. That would help calm all those people from Bangor to L.a. who were right now beginning to feel the first twinges of panic.
Dorfman regretted his first impulse to advise Quayle not to go. Quayle’s political instincts were sound. He was right.
Dorfman called for the cars and had a thirty-second shouting match with the senior Secret Service agent on duty, who didn’t give a tinkees damn about politics but did care greatly about the life of the VicePresident that was entrusted to his care.
He also took the time to call Gideon Cohen and tell him to meet the VicePresident’s party at the Capitol and to bring the director of the FBI along with him.
Dorfman shared the limo with the VicePresident, who had brought along his own chief of staff, one Carney Robinson, an intense blow-dried type who in his previous life had made a name for himself in public relations.
Dorftnan apologized to Quayle for advising him not to 90
to the Capitol. “This is wise,” Dorfman said. Neither Quayle nor Robinson replied. They sat silently looking back at the people on the sidewalks looking at them.
After a bit Dan Quayle cleared his throat. “Will, use the phone there. Call General Land at the Pentagon and ask him to meet us at the Capitol.” Without a word Dorfman seized the instrument and placed the call.
Henry Charon woke up a few minutes after ten a.m. at the Hampshire Avenue apartment and made himself a pot of coffee. While he waited for it to drip through he took a quick shower, brushed his teeth, and shaved.
Then he dressed, even putting on his shoes and a sweater. Only then did he pour himself some coffee and turn on the television to see what the hunters were up to.
He stood in front of the screen staring at it, trying to understand. A group of terrorists? The Capitol?
He sat on the sofa and propped his feet on the chair while he sipped the steaming hot liquid in the cup.
Well, one thing was certain-the FBI and police were going to be thoroughly confused. That, Charon reflected, was more than he had hoped for.
It was also an opportunity.
He drained the cup and poured himself another while he thought about it. After a couple of sips he went to the window and stood looking down into the street. Not many people about this morning. A few empty parking places, though-Another gray day.
The FBI would be around before very long, either FBI or local Police. They would be looking for terrorists and assassins, so they would be knocking on doors and asking questions. Nothing to fear there.
His mind went back to the Capitol. He remembered the office building just east of the Supreme Court. What was it, five or six hundred yards over to the Capitol?
Could he make a shot at that distance? Well, with the best of the rifles he had fired three shots into a one-inch group at a hundred yards, so theoretically at five hundred yards a
shot should hit within a circle five inches in diameallyet the impact point would be about fifty-six inches the point of aim because the bullet would be dropping, affected by gravity. If he made a perfect shot. With no wind. And the distance was precisely five hundred yards.
With the wind blowing and a fifty-yard error in his estimate of the distance, all bets were off.
Henry Charon didn’t have to review the ballistics-he knew them cold. And he knew just how extraordinarily difficult it would be to hit a man-sized target at 500 yards, especially since the target man would not be cooperating by holding absolutely still. It would be a real challenge. He stood watching the passersby below and the bare branches being stirred by the breeze and tried to remember what the field of view looked like from the top of the office building.
He went back to the little living room and stood with the cup in his hand watching the television. The VicePresident was on his way to the Capitol, the announcer said. He would be there shortly. Stay tuned.
His mind made up, Charon snapped off the television. He turned off the coffeepot and the lights, grabbed his coat, and locked the door behind him.
“How many dead?” Dan Quayle asked the special agent who had greeted them and escorted them through the police lines into the building as reporters shouted questions and the cameras rolled. Quayle had ignored them.
“Sixty-one, sir. A couple more are in real bad shape and will probably die. FD-RTY-THREE wounded.”
“Any idea who these people were?”
“Colombians, sir,” the agent said. “On a suicide mission. One’s still alive, barely, and he did some talking before he passed out from internal bleeding and shock. An agent who speaks Spanish took down what he could. Apparently these people were smuggled into the country this past weekend and told their target this morning.”
“Paid to commit suicide?” Dorfman asked in disbelief
“es, sir. Fifty thousand before they left, and fifty more to the widow afterward.”
That stunned the politicians, who walked along in silence. The agent led them to a hearing room where seventeen men and women and the man who had killed them lay as they had fallen. The wounded had been removed, but photographers and lab men were busy. They didn’t look up at the gawking politicos or the Secret Service agents who stood with pistols in their hands.
Quayle just stood rooted with his hands in his pockets, looking right and left. Spent brass casings lay scattered about, bullet holes here and there, blood all over, bodies contorted and twisted.
“Why?” Quayle asked.
44sir”…full
“Why in hell would anybody take money to commit murder and be killed doing it?”
“Well, this one guy-the one that’s still alive-he said he has a wife and eight kids in Colombia. He used to have ten kids but two died because he couldn’t feed them anything but corn and rice and he couldn’t afford a doctor when they got sick. They live in a shack without running water. He had no job and no prospect of ever getting one. So when he got offered this money, he looked at the kids and figured it was the only way they were ever going to have a chance, so he took it. So he said, anyway.”
“Sixty-one people murdered,” Quayle muttered so softly Dorfman had to take a step closer to catch it. “No, that’s too nice a word. Butchered. Slaughtered. Exterminated.”
The agent led them from the room and down the hall toward the cafeteria. They passed several bodies in the corridors. Dorfman tried not to look at the faces, but Quayle did. He bent over each one for a second or two, then straightened and walked on. His hands stayed in his coat pockets and his shoulders sagged.
They were standing in the cafeteria when Gideon Cohen and General Land and several other military officers joined them. One of the officers was a navy captain, “Grafton” his name tag said, who took it all in, his face expressionless.
“This guy who’s still alive-he said he thinks there were groups smuggled in.”
“How did they get here?”
“By airliner. They were met at the airport and taken somewhere and given food and weapons. This morning they were driven here in a van and dropped.”
,eaWhere are the others? What are their targets?” Dorfman growled.
“He doesn’t know.”
Attorney General Gideon Cohen spoke for the first time. “Aidana’s lawyer says Aldana told him yesterday afternoon that he was responsible for the attempt on the President’s life. That’s confidential, of course.” “Bastard’s lying,” Dorfman said forcefully.
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Cohen rumbled. “Our people in Colombia are hearing rumors, too many rumors.”
Surrounded by Secret Service agents the group kept walking. “Let’s find a place to talk,” Quayle said. The Secret Service led them to an empty committee room-all the committee rooms were empty just now-checked it out, then stood guard outside the door.
Quayle dropped into a chair on the aisle. The others selected chairs nearby. As they were doing so the director of the FBI and another man came in.
“Did these people shoot down the President’s helicopter9l, VicePresident Quayle asked to get the ball rolling.
“You mean these very men killed here?” the FBI agent who had been escorting them asked. “The survivor denied it, for whatever that’s worth.”
The director of the FBI nodded at the agent who spoke. 4 “You may go back to your duties.” The man rose, muttered, “Gentlemen,” and left.
The director addressed Quayle. “Mr. VicePresident, I’ve brought with me today Special Agent Thomas Hooper. He’s in charge of our antidrug task force and he’s been working with the team that’s looking for the people who shot down the President’s helicopter. Before we came in we spent five minutes talking with the senior people who are working on
this…” He gestured vaguely at the room around him. “Hooper, tell them what you told me.” Tom Hooper glanced around at the faces, some of which were looking his way, some averted. “What we’ve got here is a classic narco-tefforist strike. It was committed by people with a minimum of training, people you would classify as apolitical amateurs. It didn’t really matter how many people were killed or wounded here-the publicity the event would get would be precisely the same. This atrocity was apolitical act.
“The attempted assassination of the President was very different in several significant ways. That was meticulously planned, carefully prepared, all to take advantage of an opportunity if one presented itself In other words, a professional assassin.”
“Just one?” someone asked.
“Probably,” Hooper replied. “We’ve found the spot where the missiles were fired-a little picnic area beside the Potomac-and it appears that only one man spent the afternoon there. His tracks are all over. He wore some kind of rubber boots, but he appears to be of medium height, weight about one hundred sixty or so. Those are just tentative conclusions, of course.”
“Who hired the assassin?” Dorfman asked. “No idea, sir,” Hooper said. “Guesses are three for a quarter, but I wouldn’t bet against you if you thought the same people are behind all of this.”
“Aldana,” Dorfman said as if the very name were poisonOUS.
Dan Quayle spoke slowly, seemingly feeling his way: “The question is, what are we going to do to prevent any more of these slaughters?”
“We’ve got to find these other Colombians,” Dorfman said.
“Heavy guards around all public buildings and likely places,” somebody added.
“That won’t stop these people.” The words were spoken quietly but with force. Everyone looked at the speaker, Jake Grafton. He continued, “All these people are is an atrocity. They want publicity, fear, terror, to force government to do their will. They’ll find a target regardless. In Colombia they’re blowing up department stores and banks and airliners. We’ve got all that plus shopping malls and these boutique emporiums, like the ones at the Old Post Office and Union Station. This close to Christmas…” His voice tailed off.
“I want to call out the National Guard,” Quayle said. “We’re going to have to guard the public buildings regardless, and as many of the shopping areas as we can find people for. And we can use the troops to search for these Colombians.”
“Are you talking martial law?” General Land asked. con’I don’t care what you call it.”
‘Troops will never find these terrorists, even if they’re here,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs protested. “We can’t have troops going door to door, searching every house. They aren’t trained for that. That’s what the FBI and police are for.