Authors: Stephen Coonts
assured, we’ll report this to the right people, but the investigation will be classified and we won’t be able to tell you anything. Sure, if someone gets prosecuted for stealing antitank missiles you’ll hear about it, but that’s if and when.”
Yocke raised a hand and nodded.
“Just passing the info along for what it’s worth.” He got out of his chair. “Now I have to go look in the command post room and call the office. If you guys go charging off, please come and find me.”
“Sure.”
After Yocke left, Toad went over to the door, waited about thirty seconds, then opened it and looked out. The hall was empty. He closed the door and stood with his back to it.
“I never thought he’d mention that to anybody.”
“Guess his conscience got him,” Jake Grafton said.
“Well, what do you think?”
“He’s a pretty smart kid. I think he’s ninety percent certain and is just making sure that Uncle Sam knows to cover the other ten. That’s my feel.” Jake shrugged. “But I don’t know,” he added, and put his feet on the floor and closed the desk drawer. “I guess we’ll know what Yocke thinks if we see a story about it in the paper someday with his byline.”
He tore three pages of notes from the legal pad and held them out for Toad. “Here. See these get to the CIA. Don’t leave them lying around.”
“Should I do a cover memo?”
“Yep. Top secret.”
“The CIA guys are gonna think you raised this subject with him. They’ll never believe he gave us this out of the blue.”
“It was a good operation,” Jake said after a moment. “Yocke doesn’t really know anything. He just suspects. But Castro’s out and we have Zaba, and Aldana is going to get what’s coming to him. That’s the bottom line.”
“Yocke’s a pretty good reporter,” Toad said grudgingly, Jake shooed Toad out with a wave of his fingers.
He called the telephone company and asked for Lieuten Colonel Franz. The colonel was one of the officers from s Joint Staff group. Jake had sent him to the telephone company yesterday morning.
“Colonel Franz speaking, sir.”
“Jake Grafton. What’s happening over there?”
“We’re doing our best, sir, but we only have three people counting me. It’s like trying to sample the Niagara River with a beer can.”
“Uh-huh-“
Franz sighed. Jake could hear him flipping paper, probably his notes. “All we do is listen to calls at random. No method. But we have heard three that seemed to be discussing tilde sniping at troops. One concerned “taking out” some rivals-I got that one. They must have had some kind of gear on the line that told them they were being monitored, because I only got ten or twelve words and one of them hung up while the other was talking.”
“Exactly what was said?”
““With Willie out the field is open so we got to take them out before-” Really, it was over before I even realized what I was listening to.”
“Anything else?”
“One interesting thing. It seems there’s going to be a rally this evening. The others have heard calls on that. Five calls altogether. You realize there could have been five hundred calls on that subject and we’ve intercepted five.”
“A rally?”
“Yeah. That’s the word they used. A rally.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
A rally? What in hell did that mean? Jake Grafton wrote the word on the pad in front of him. “What d’ya think?”
“We could use some more people,” Colonel Franz told him.
“Look around. Find out how tough it would be to turn off the whole phone system. There’s got to be some switches
around there someplace that would shut the whole thing
down.”
“Turn it off Wow! Are you…”
“Just look around. I’ll call you back.”
Jake put in a call to General Land at the Pentagon. The would be tied up for another quarter hour. His chairman aide said he would leave him the message.
Jake doodled as he waited. Henry Charon. Apartments. Sleeping bags in caves. Poacher and small rancher.
Why is Henry Charon still in Washington? If he is. Jake wrote that question down and stared at it.
He called the FBI and asked for Special Agent Hooper. “You had some excitement last night.”
“He got away,” Jake said. “Any developments?”
“The people in New Mexico got a warrant and searched Charon’s ranch and took prints. Most of them were of one person and they match the prints on the stuff your people brought us last night from that cave in Rock Creek Park. It’s definitely the same person.”
“Any photos of this guy?”
“Nothing in the house in New Mexico. Not a one. We’re looking.”
“We need those driver’s license photos as soon as you can get them over here.”
“Be a couple more hours.”
“How about this Tasson guy that the fellow in Pennsylvania sold the rifles to?”
“Nothing on him yet. Apparently no one in Vegas has seen him for a couple of weeks.”
“How about here in Washington?”
“We’re working on it.”
“You going to put the Charon DMV photo on the air?”
“Be on the noon news.”
“Tell me, if we shut down the telephone system, would you all be able to keep operating?”
Hooper paused before he answered. “Well, we have the ment lines and dedicated lines for the computers and govern all. If those stay up, we’ll be okay. And the local police have radios.”
“Okay. Thanks. Call me if you get anything, will you? I’m at the armory.
“Found the terrorists yet?”
“You’ll be the first to hear.” He had no more than hung up when the telephone rang again. General Land’s aide was on the line. In a moment Jake was talking to the chairman.
“Sir, I’d like to recommend that we shut down the local telephone system. Apparently people are using it to plan attacks on the soldiers and on rival gangs. And somebody is trying to get up a rally for this evening.”
“A rally?”
“Yessir.”
“Bullshit. There’ll be no rallys while we’re trying to put a lid on things.”
“Yessir. I’ll pass that to General Greer.”
“You talk to Greer about the telephone system. If he thinks shutting the system down is warranted, it’s okay with me. Tell him I’ll back him either way.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Jake hung up the telephone and went off to find Major General Greer. He left the pad with his questions about Henry Charon lying on the desk.
His side hurt like fire. The pain woke him and Henry Charon lay in the darkness with his eyes open fighting it. He groped with his right hand until he found the flashlight and flipped it on.
The beam swung around the little cellar, taking in the supplies, the brick walls, the concrete slab ceiling.
He had gotten here at three a.m. after a four-mile trek through the alleys and backyards of Washington. He had successfully avoided the army patrols and a roving band of juveniles, but the effort had exhausted him. Never in his life had he been so tired.
With the pain of the wound and the cold and the wet and the exertion, he had wondered for a while if he would make it at all.
Now as he lay on the sleeping bag, still fully dressed in the
damp clothes he had stolen last nigb savagely through him, and he wondered it he O,, Only one way to find out. He pulled hmf’i position.
Oh God! A groan escaped him. But he wouldn’t give in. Oh no. Using his right hand, he pulled the battery-operated lantern over and turned it on. It flooded — the little room with light.
He eased himself around so he could examine the sleeping bag where he lay. A little blood, but not much. That was good. Very good. The bleeding had stopped.
The best thing would be to lie still for a few days until that bullet hole began to heal, but of course that was impossible.
In spite of the pain he was hungry. He tried to order his thoughts and prioritize what he needed to do. He seemed to be mentally alert. That was also good and cheered him. First he needed to administer a local anesthetic. He got out the first-aid kit and opened it. He could use his left hand if he didn’t move his shoulder too much. The pain radiated that far.
It took three or four minutes, but he got a hypodermic filled and proceeded to inject himself in four places, above, below, and to the right and left of the wound. The contortions required caused him to break into a sweat and bite his lip, but the effect of the drug was immediate. The pain eased to a dull ache.
The roof of the old cellar was just high enough to let him stand, so he eased himself upright and stood swaying while his blood pressure and heart rate adjusted. He took a few experimental steps. He ground his teeth together.
He relieved himself into a bucket in the corner. He examined the urine flow carefully. Not even pink. No blood at all.
Food. And water. He needed both to replace the lost blood.
He rigged the Stemo can and lit it and opened a can of stew. While it was heating he munched on some beef jerky and drank deeply from the water can. Still waiting for the stew to heat, he stripped off the
he was wearing. He pulled on dry trousers, but he the shirt off. In a little while he was going to have to this bandage. The wet clothes he hung on a convenient nail.
There! He felt better already.
After he had eaten the stew, he opened a can of fruit cocktail and consumed that. He finished it by drinking the last of the juice, then another pint of water.
Pleasantly full, Henry Charon lay back down on the sleeping bag. For the first time he looked at his watch. Almost twelve o’clock. Noon or midnight, he didn’t know. But he couldn’t have slept all day, clear through until midnight.
He pulled the radio over and turned it on. In a few minutes he had the television audio.
Noon. It was almost noon. He had slept for about eight hours.
He turned off the lantern to save the battery and lay in the darkness listening to the radio. He had the volume turned down so low it was just barely audible. He didn’t want anyone passing in the subway tunnel outside to hear it-but that was unlikely. With the military in charge of the city all work on the tunnels had stopped.
So he lay there in the darkness half listening to television audio on the radio and thinking about last night. He had heard that officer on the road talking to the soldier who shot him as he climbed the ridge away from them. Really, that had been a stroke of terrible luck. Shot crossing a road! He had damn near ended up a road kill, like some rabbit or stray dog smashed flat on the asphalt.
He sighed and closed his eyes, trying to forget the dull pain in his back.
Any way you looked at it, this had been the best hunt of his life. Far and away the best. Even last night when the soldiers were chasing him and he was hurting so badlythat had been a rare experience, something to be savored. He had been out there on the edge of life, living it to the hilt, making it on his own strength and wits and determination.
Sublime. That was the word. Sublime. Nothing he had ever done in his entire life up to this point could match it. Everything up to now had been merely preparation for last night; for slipping down through the forest between the soldiers, for going up that ridge wounded and bleeding and digging like hell, for throwing himself down in the street and rolling clear with the bullets flaying the air over his head, then running and scheming and doubling back occasionally to throw off possible pursuers.
Most men live a lifetime and never have even one good hunt. He had had so many. And to top it off with last night! . He was going back through it again, thinking through each impression, reliving the emotions, when he heard his name on the radio. He fumbled with it and got the volume up.
“…has been tentatively identified as a New Mexico rancher and firearms expert. This man is armed and extremely dangerous. He is believed to have been wounded last night by troops in the District of Columbia as they tried to apprehend him. If you see this man, please, we urge you do not attempt to approach him or apprehend him yourself. Just call the number on the screen and tell the authorities your name and address, and where and when you believe you saw him.
“Why Henry Charon apparently undertook to assassinate the President and VicePresident is not known at this time. We hope to have more for you from New Mexico on Charon’s background later this afternoon. Stay tuned to this station.”
Charon snapped off the radio. He lay in the darkness with his eyes open.
Not fingerprints. His prints were not on file anyplace. If they had his prints they had nothing. It must have been the drawing. Someone in New Mexico must have recognized it and called the police.
That conclusion reached, he dismissed the whole matter and began again to examine the events of last night in minute detail. After all, there was nothing he could do about what the police and FBI knew. If they knew, they knew.
down Henry Charon had never really expected to it clean escape. He knew the odds were too great. He coned on for the hunt and it had been superb, exceedI* his wildest expectations.
As the bullets had ripped over his head and the roar of the M-1 6 shattered the night, he had learned for the very first time the extraordinary thrill of coming face to face with death and escaping out the other side. The experience could not be explained-it defied words. So he lay here in the darkness savoring every morsel of it. Eventually he would turn to the problem of what to do next, but not right now.
“These goddamn terrorists are in the District. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it. The question is what are they going to do next?”
Major General Greer stood with Jake Grafton looking at the map of the city that took up most of a wall. Greer was a stocky man, deeply tanned, with short ironIM hair that stood straight up all over his head. He had made up his mind to be a soldier when he was nine years old and had seen no reason to change that decision from that day to this.
He glanced at Grafton. He expected a response when he asked questions aloud.
“They can wait for us to find them, sir,” Jake Grafton said, “and shoot it out right there.”
“That’s option one,” Greer said, nodding. This thinking aloud was a habit with him, one his staff was used to. Jake was catching on fast. Over in the corner, Grafton noticed, Jack Yocke was taking notes.