Under Siege

CHAPTER THIRTY

Jake Grafton picked up Toad Tarkington at eight the next morning. They then drove over to the Post building to get Jack Yocke. He was wearing the same clothes he had had on last night.

“You sleeping up there?” Toad asked.

“You know how it is in the big city. Public transportation is the pits and if you drive you have to fight all the traffic.”

“Want to borrow a toothbrush?”

“Thanks anyway. A guy in the newsroom had one and we all shared. You won’t believe who is up there right now talking to Ott Mergenthaler.” Without pausing, Yocke added, “Sam Strader.”

That piece of news didn’t seem to impress the two naval officers.

“And the powers that be have been on the phone more or less continuously with the White House. They want passes for our delivery trucks. Without them we can’t publish.”

Jake grunted. He was thinking about a cup of coffee, wishing he had one. None of the fast-food outlets or corner delis were open; their people couldn’t get to work. Banning cars had shut this town down.

“The thing that has our guys going is that the authorities gave the TV people passes for their camera trucks.”

“Each station got passes for two trucks,” Jake said. “The Post and the Times have hundreds of trucks.”

“Hey, I’m not arguing the case. I’m just filling you in on the news. That’s my bag.”

The silence that followed was broken when Yocke asked Jake, “How about a clarification of the ground rules between you and me. I agreed not to publish until ‘this is over.’ When will that be?”

“When all the troops leave and the civil government takes charge.”

“My editor wanted to know. I left him with the impression I’m getting red-hot sizzling stuff.”

“Are you?”

“Well, at least it’s warm.”

“Body temperature?”

“Not quite that warm. Tepid might be the word.”

“What can we do,” Jake asked Toad, “to give this intrepid lad some sizzle?”

“Let’s think about that. I could tell you what Rita told me last night when I asked for some sizzle, but I doubt if it would help.”

“Probably not.”

Yocke was busy explaining what he meant by sizzle when the windshield popped audibly in front of the driver’s seat and a neat hole surrounded by concentric lines appeared instantly, as if by magic.

Automatically Toad slammed on the brake.

“Floor it,” Grafton said. “Let’s get outta here.”

Tarkington jammed the accelerator down. The next bullet missed the passenger compartment and penetrated the sheet metal somewhere with an audible thud. The report followed a second later.

Toad swerved and kept going. The first corner he came to he went around with tires squealing.

“Anyone hurt?”

“Not me,” Grafton said and got busy brushing the tiny pieces of glass off the front seat. “You can slow down now.”

“Someone’s unhappy,” Yocke said. “There’s a lot of that these days.”

“That asshole could have killed one of us,” Toad groused.

“I think that was the idea,” Yocke said dryly.

Toad Tarkington raised his lip in a snarl. Yocke was still insufferable.

At the armory Jake spent a half hour in the command center. Random shootings were occurring at at least a half dozen locations in the city. Troops were being directed to the affected areas to find the snipers.

“We got over a hundred druggies back there locked up and more coming in all the time,” Major General Greer said. “If it’s just withdrawal or possession, I’m shipping them down to Fort McNair. We’re putting them in the gymnasium there until somebody figures out what to do with them. But the people with weapons, the people that are actively resisting our guys or carrying significant quantities of drugs, I’m keeping them here. We have to separate the wheat from the chaff some way.”

“They’re still carrying guns?” Jake asked.

“Oh yes. Apparently they’re fighting each other and the soldiers. Just two hours ago we had a raging gun battle in the northeast section. Seven civilians dead and wounded by the time the soldiers got there. They were using automatic weapons.”

“Any word on the terrorists?”

“Still looking. But even if we find them, my recommendation to General Land will be that we maintain martial law until this random shooting and gang warfare stops. We can’t just walk out now and leave this mess to the cops.”

Jake went back to the office General Greer had made available and got on the phone.

“I have something I want to tell you,” Jack Yocke told Jake a half hour later when he and Tarkington finally got off the telephones.

Something about Yocke’s tone caused Jake Grafton to raise his eyebrows.

Toad caught it too. “You want me to leave?” he asked the reporter.

“No. Maybe you both ought to hear this. You’ll know what to do with it. Needless to say, it’s not for public consumption.”

“Off the record?” Toad asked, horrified.

Yocke’s lips twisted and he nodded.

Toad tiptoed to the door, opened it and peeked out, then closed it and wedged a chairback under the knob. “Okay, fire away. But remember, even the walls have ears.”

“How do you stand him?” Yocke asked Grafton.

The captain rested his chin in his hand and sighed audibly.

“Three or four weeks ago they had a revolution down in Cuba.”

“We heard about that,” Toad said.

“I figured I’d avoid the mob of reporters and travel down there in a slightly unconventional way, a way that would generate a story. So I went to Miami and walked in on a group of Cuban exiles that might be planning on going back. I promised them I wouldn’t do any stories on how I got to Cuba. They weren’t too thrilled about having me but they took me with them to Cuba. As I said, I promised not to publish anything about them. But I didn’t promise not to tell the U.S. government.”

“Okay.” Jake nodded.

“At Andros Island in the Bahamas they loaded about three-dozen wire-guided antitank missiles aboard. That’s where they said we were, anyway.”

“Maybe you’d better tell us the whole story,” Jake said, and pulled around a pad to take notes.

Yocke did. His recitation took fifteen minutes. When he was finished, both officers had questions to clear up minor points.

Finally, when everything seemed to have been covered, Jake asked, “Why are you telling us this?”

Yocke just looked at him. “Isn’t that obvious?”

“You tell me.”

“I think the U.S. government ought to look into where those antitank missiles came from. Maybe they were stolen from a government warehouse. Maybe — oh, I don’t know. I’ll bet they were stolen.”

“Why didn’t you go to the FBI?”

“Because I’m a reporter. If it gets around that I tell tales to the FBI, I’m finished. People won’t talk to me.”

“Why now?”

Yocke twisted. “I wasn’t going to tell. But I know you fellows and now seemed like a good time.”

“You could have been killed down in Miami,” Toad pointed out.

“Well, I’m still alive.”

“I’m trying to figure out why that is,” Jake told him and leaned back in his chair and pulled out a lower desk drawer to rest his feet upon. “Why are you still among the living?”

“I told you what they told me.”

“Hmmm. You think that was the real reason?”

“It sounded real good to me at the time.”

“How does it sound now?”

Yocke cleared his throat and rubbed his lips as he considered the question. “It doesn’t really hold water. Why should they trust me when a bullet would have solved their problem? They could have just dumped me out in the Gulf Stream. Nobody would have ever known and that would have been that. I don’t know why they didn’t, and I don’t think the people in Cuba are going to give me any answer except the one they gave me then.”

“Surely you’ve got a theory or two?”

“Well, yes. This business about General Zaba got me thinking. You know, it’s easy to assume that our government is made up of a bunch of boobs who never know what’s going on and screw up anything positive they try to do.”

Jake’s eyebrows rose a millimeter and fell.

“I’ve come to believe that most of the time you guys do your job right. It occurred to me that possibly one of the reasons General Zaba is in the U.S. to testify against Chano Aldana is because the U.S. government helped the rebels overthrow Castro.”

“Interesting,” Jake Grafton said.

“I think the reason I’m still alive is because the Cubans were CIA or knew that the CIA would not be pleased if American citizens got murdered.”

Jake shrugged. “It’s possible. But you haven’t brought this up expecting me to find some answers, have you?” Jake asked.

“No. Just being a good citizen. I’m telling you on the off chance the U.S. government lost some antitank missiles and wants to find out where they went.”

Jake Grafton laced his fingers behind his head. “Rest 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 Lieutenant Colonel Franz. The colonel was one of the officers from Jake’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 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 chairman would be tied up for another quarter hour. His 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 Tassone 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 government lines and dedicated lines for the computers and 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 night, the pain knifed savagely through him, and he wondered if he could move. Only one way to find out. He pulled himself into a sitting 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 Sterno 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 clothes he was wearing. He pulled on dry trousers, but he left the shirt off. In a little while he was going to have to change 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 badly — that 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 Vice-president 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.

Deep down Henry Charon had never really expected to make a clean escape. He knew the odds were too great. He had signed on for the hunt and it had been superb, exceeding his wildest expectations.

As the bullets had ripped over his head and the roar of the M-16 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 iron-gray 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.

“Or they can select a target and hit it. Or two targets. Possibly three depending on how many and how well armed they are.”

“Option two.”

“They can hope we don’t find them and give up the search.”

“Three. Any more?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Me either. I like number two the best. That’s the one I’d pick if I were them. I suspect a bunch of civilians paid to get killed won’t do well just sitting and waiting.”

Greer sighed. “As if we knew. Anyway, if they take option two, what will be their target?”

Jake let his eyes roam across the map. “The White House,” he suggested tentatively.

“I have two companies of troops and ten tanks at Bethesda Naval Hospital. One company of troops around the White House and four tanks sitting there, one on each corner. Another company with tanks at the old Executive Office Building. Same thing at the Naval Observatory, where the Vice-President lives. Also at the Capitol on the off chance they’d hit that again, and at the Senate and House office buildings. What else?”

“I don’t know.”

“Join the crowd,” said General Greer.

“What about the Marine base at Quantico?”

“Where they’re holding Aldana? I think not. Chano Aldana doesn’t strike me as the suicidal type. They’d never get him out alive. I’ve given orders to that effect. That’s the last place they’d strike.”

Only half the city had been searched so far. It was going very slowly. The troops were being sniped at from locations throughout the city. Five soldiers had been wounded and two were dead so far. And the soldiers were shooting back. Eleven civilians were dead so far.

Greer turned away from the map and ran his hand through the stubble on his head. He sank into the nearest chair. “Did you want something?” he asked Jake.

The captain told him about the eavesdroppers at the telephone exchange and what Lieutenant Colonel Franz had reported.

“A rally?” the general repeated.

“Tonight.”

“Damnedest thing I ever heard. If it happens we’ll break it up.”

“I suggest we shut down the local telephone system. The people at the telephone company say it can be done. We know the people sniping at soldiers and other civilians are coordinating their activities by telephone. What this rally business means, I have no idea, but I don’t like it. On the other hand, I’m told the television showed a photo of the guy the FBI believe is the assassin on the noon news, along with a telephone number to call if anyone sees him. They’ve been broadcasting similar appeals about the terrorists for two days. If we turn off the phones, we won’t get any calls.”

“Have you discussed this with General Land?”

“Yessir. He says it’s your decision. He’ll back you up either way.”

“Haven’t had any calls so far.”

“No, sir.”

“This rally business, that bothers me. The last thing we need is a bunch of innocent civilians wandering the streets en masse with all these criminals taking potshots at people. Hell, if something like that happens it could turn into a bloodbath.”

Greer sat silently rubbing his head. “Turn the damn phones off,” he said finally. “I’m going to screw this damn town down tighter and tighter until something pops.”