Authors: Stephen Coonts
When Billy Enright came in five minutes later and helped himself to an ice cream bar from the freezer compartment of the refrigerator, Freeman was sipping coffee at the table.
Freeman waited until Billy had unwrapped his ice cream and dropped into a chair at the table. “Y’know,” he said, “I think we got us a real window of opportunity here.”
“What do you mean?”
“If the soldiers show up tomorrow or the next day, what are they gonna be doing’?”
“Looking for terrorists and assassins. Gonna be everywhere. We’ll have to cool it for a while, maybe take vacations.”
Mcationally waved that away. “Think about it. For a week or two all these guys are going to do is h for these Colombians and this dude who tried to off Bush and Quayle. Now is the time to solve some of our little problems so when the Guard leaves we can get back in business. That’s what I
mean. We’ve got a little time here to fix things up and believe me, anything the cops get just now will go right through the cracks. The Guards ain’t cops. They’re mechanics and shoe salesmen. The priority is going to be on catching these big Colombian terror dudes. Dig.?”
“Yeah,” said Billy Enright, lapping at a gob of ice cream that was threatening to run down the stick onto his fingers. “I dig where you’re coming from.”
Special Agent Freddy Murray was busy trying to coordinate the search for the assassin’s trail when he got a call from one of his wiretap experts. “Just recorded a tape I want you to hear.”
n”…O?
“Freeman Mcationally. Conversation with his lawyer.”
“We can’t use that.”
“I know that. But you’d better listen to it. Pretty curious.”
“Bring it up.”
Murray got back to the task at hand. The FBI lab had identified the brand of tires on the vehicle the assassin had driven in and out of the picnic area on the Potomac that had been the site of the missile launching. Murray was assigning sectors in the Washington area, sending agents to interview every retail outlet for that brand of tire. If they had no success, he would expand the areas. And he expected no success.
This was classic police work, and given enough agents and enough time, would get results. The problem was that Murray had very little of either just now. Still, regardless of how loudly the politicians screamed and the deadlines they invented, the assassin would not be caught until he was caught. Sooner or later the elected ones would figure that out. Until they did, agents like Murray would have to just keep plugging.
He took three minutes to listen to the tape twice Freeman Mcationally’s voice, all right. Freddy would know that growl anywhere.
“What’s that mean?” he asked the wiretap man. “‘All the way
I dunno. The bit about the friends is plain enough. I
to put a tail on this T. Jefferson Brody to find out who
‘our friends” are.”
“We don’t have anybody.”
“One or two guys.”
“No! We don’t have anybody available. Log the tape and file it and let’s get back to work.”
“You’re the boss.” The wiretap man was no sooner out of the room than the direct line rang. “Murray.”
Harrison Ronald. What’s happeninle”
on the TV,” Murray snapped. He had no time for this.
“I don’t mean that assassin shit! I mean the grand jury indictment, you twit.”
“It’s been put on hold.”
“Remember me? The juicy little black worm that dangled on the end of your hook? For ten fiwking months?”
“Maybe next week. I’ll let you know.”
“You’ll call me. Ha! I’m supposed to just sit here with my thumb up my ass until you get around to locking these people UPOI, “Harrison, I-was
Just how far down your friggin’ list am I, anyway?”
“Harrison, I know where you’re coming from. But I don’t set the priorities around here. I’ll call-was
Harrison Ford had hung
Freddy stopped when he up on him.
Con oman Samantha Strader was in her early fifties and wore her hair stylishly permed. Representing a congressional district carved from the core of her state’s capital city, she held one of the safest Democratic seats in the nation and, in effect, was in Congress for life. After twenty years in the Washington vortex, Sam Strader embodied the trendy prejudices of upper-middle-class white women. She was pro-choice, anti-military, fashionably leftist, and ardently feminist. She viciously attacked the professional hypocrisy of her co in Congress because she was absolutely
convinced that she herself was pure of heart and free of taint. Political cartoonists found her enchanting.
This woman, who was extraordinarily sensitive to the slightest whiff of male chauvinism, also possessed the chutzpah to tell the press, “I have a uterus and a brain and I use both.” On detecting a slight, fancied or otherwise, she didn’t cast aspersions-she hurled them, lobbed them like grenades, usually when reporters were around to hear the detonations. Her victims, most of whom possessed a brain and a penis but had never seen fit to brag about either, wisely kept their mouths shut and bided their time.
Still, Sam Strader had no trouble envisioning herself, acid tongue, uterus, and all, ensconced in the Oval Office as the first woman President of the United States. She campaigned more or less continuously to try to convince others to see her the same way. Seasoned political observers with a less-biased perspective thought she had no chance of becoming tilde President unless the Republican party, in a suicidal frenzy, nominated Jim Bakker for the job.
One of the reasons Strader’s mouth often got her into trouble was that she had little tolerance for people she considered fools, a trait she had in common with William Dorfman, whom she also despised. High on her list of fools who goaded her beyond endurance was VicePresident Dan Quayle, whose own particular brand of foot-in-mouth disease was of a different strain from Strader’s but, if anything, more debilitating.
This was the man who had said, “I stand by all the misstatements.” There had been plenty of those, God knows. Once, when explaining why he would not be gladhanding around Latin America just then, he told reporters with a straight face, “I don’t speak Latin.” Quayle on the strategic significance of Hawaii: “It is in the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here.” He had spoken to the Samoans straight from the heart: “Happy campers you are. Happy campers you have been. And as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will comalw be.”
Strader’s very favorite Quaylism was this gem, from an
to the United Negro College Fund: “What a waste it lose one’s mind-or not to have a mind. How true that On hearing this, Strader had sneered at the first reporter she met: “That’s the voice of experience if I ever heard it.” On a visit to Chile ten months ago Quayle had purchased comin full view of a contingent of reporters-a souvenir doll with a ffip-up dick. This lighthearted indulgence in the joys of crude male locker-room humor eed feminists coast to coast, including Strader.
Dan Quayle was, in Stradees opinion, the living, breathing tilde personification of all that was wrong with America. That the pampered, privileged son of a filthy-rich white man, one who had majored in “booze and broads” in college and emerged so dismally ignorant that he failed an examination for National Guard enlisted public affairs specialist, could go on to become a congressman, a U.s. senator, then VicePresident, and now, acting President, was enough to test the faith of even the most wildly optimistic.
Sitting here looking at Dan Quayle as William C. Dorfhm explained why the presence of the National Guard was required in the District of Columbia, Sam Stmder realized with a jolt what the future held. Quayle was stupid, practically retarded, and it was written all over his bland, expressionless face for anyone to see. And the whole world was looking! She was going to be the next Presnt of the United States. The premonition gave her goose bumps.
Quayle sat in his chair beside the podium, Stradff said later, like a neolithic about to receive an honorary degree from a bible college in Arkansas. Spread at his feet were two dozen senators and congressmen and reporters from every major television network, wire service, and most of the nation’s major newspapers. And Quayle looked bored with the whole proceeding.
As Dorfinan explained it, the Guard would augment the feden’d security police charged with guarding public buildings and maintaining order, thereby freeing FBI and police to forand apprehend the assassins who had killed the of state, the national security adviser, and the House majority leader, and injured the President and the
attorney general. In addition they would apprehend any Colombian narco-terrorists who might still be lurking about.
The press was restless. Too many questions remained unanswered. The instant Dorfman opened the floor the questions were shouted: Who was behind the violence? How had these Colombian killers gotten into the country? What as could the government give the American people and citizens of Washington that the violence was over?
“We are doing our best,” Dorfman said, “to preserve the public order. Obviously various criminal elements are at work here and we are proceeding vigorously, within the limits of the law, to apprehend those responsible. And to protect-was
Quayle interrupted. He got to his feet and went to the podium. “Listen,” he said. “If we knew who these people were and where they were we’d arrest them. Obviously we don’t. We’re doing everything we can. We will do everything we need to do. I promise.”
“Will you declare martial law?”
Quayle exchanged glances with General Land, who was standing off to one side of the platform. “I will if I have to,” he said slowly. “I’ll do whatever has to be done to protect the public and preserve the Constitution.”
“What about people’s constitutional rights?” Samantha Strader asked in a strident tone that carried over the reporters’ voices.
Quayle looked at her. His expression didn’t change. “I’ll arrest anybody who needs to be arrested and the courts can sort it all out afterward.”
The politicians looked queasy. The print reporters scribbled ftiriously while the television people waved their hands and shouted, “Mr. Vice,-President, Mr. VicePresident,” but the press conference was over. Quayle was leaving. Dorfman, General Land, and their aides all followed. The reporters waited only until Quayle passed out of the room, then they charged for the main doors.
Watching it all from a far corner, Jack Yocke shook his
and made a few notes in his small spiral notebook.
Sam Strader cornered Ott Mergenthaler. “Do you ly think Dapper Danny made this decision, or was it good-buddy Jabba the Hut Dorfman?” she asked.
Ott mumbled something, and Jack Yocke grinned as he annotated his notebook. Ott hated it when people asked him questions-it nudged him off stride. But Strader’s questions were pro forma: she was the elected one, following destiny’s star.
“For five years,” she continued, apparently oblivious to whatever pearl Ott let slip, “the Colombian druggies have used terrorism and murder against their government and their fellow citizens. They’ve blown up airliners, banks, slaughtered thousands. Everyone knew that someday narcoterrorism would come here.” That statement lifted Yocke’s eyebrows a millimeter. “Now the American people want to know, When it came, why were the macho muchachos in our government caught with their pants down?”
Yocke realized that someone wearing a uniform was standing beside him. He looked around into the face of Jake Grafton, who was apparently listening to Strader.
“Want to answer that one, Captain?” Yocke said, inclining tilde his head an inch at the congresswoman. “Off the record?”
“Way off.”
Grafton’s shoulders rose and fell. “They weren’t unprepared. They just weren’t ready, if you understand the difference. It’s almost impossible for people who have known only peace to lift themselves to that level of mental readiness necessary to immediately and effectively counter a determined attack. The mind may say get ready, but the subconscious refuses to pump the adrenaline, refuses to let go of the comfortable present. We refuse to believe.”
“Pearl Harbor,” Yocke replied, nodding.
“Precisely.” Grafton looked around toward a crew breaking tilde down the electrical cable network for a battery of television cameras. “So what do you think?” Grafton added. “I think Doifman is finding out who’s in charge.”
Jake Grafton nodded. A smile flickered on his lips, then disappeared. “You were on the Capitol steps this afternoon when Cohen was shot. Why didn’t you get down and stay downt’ Jake Grafton shrugged. “I figured he’d only shoot once.”
“That was a rather large assumption.”
“As I said, the human mind works in strange ways. But what sane person would want to shoot me?”
“There’s that,” Yocke acknowledged. “But he shot at the VicePresident and missed. You could have collected another stray slug.”
“Did he miss?” Grafton asked. “I got the gut feeling this guy hits what he aims at.”
Captain Grafton turned and left, leaving the reporter scratching his head. He had the feeling that Grafton had wanted to say something else but changed his mind.
Senator Bob Cherry was in a hurry when he got back to his office that afternoon. After the press conference he and a dozen of his colleagues had spent an hour grilling William C. Dorfman, and Dorfman had been insufferable, as usual. How George Bush tolerated the man’s presence, Cherry told himself, was an enigma that only a shrink could explain.
And then there was Dan Quayle, a man with the intellect and personality to be a mediocre deputy sheriff. In a rural county, of course. Cherry had been convinced for years that Quayle had been chosen for VP instead of Senator Bob Dole because Bush and Dole, who had fought hard for the presidential nomination, personally loathed each other. As if personalities mattered.
As Cherry charged through the outer office, he spotted T. Jefferson Brody sitting at the pest’s chair at his aide’s desk. Brody rose. “Evening, Senator.”
“You want to see me?” Cherry asked as he made for the door to his office. Brody noticed the senator gave Miss Georgia a quick smile in passing and got one in return. “Just a couple of minutes, Senator.” “Come on in. A couple of minutes is all I’ve got.” Brody did as he was bid and closed the door behind him.