Under Siege

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ELEVEN DEAD IN DRUG CHASE, the morning headline screamed.

In the backseat of his limo on the way to his office, White House chief of staff William C. Dorfman read the story with a growing sense of horror. Six passengers on a bus had been killed and five injured — three critically — at ten-eighteen p.m. last night when a 1988 Pontiac Trans-Am slammed into a busload of Japanese museum directors and their families on the street near the National Collection of Fine Arts. The Japanese had just attended a reception at the museum and were returning to their hotel when the Pontiac smashed into the side of the bus. Witnesses estimated the car was traveling at seventy miles per hour just prior to impact. The two men in the automobile had died instantly. Two Uzi submachine guns were found in the wreckage.

A husband and wife from Silver Spring died five or six minutes earlier when the same vehicle, chasing an older four-door sedan, precipitated a head-on collision at an intersection on Bladensburg Road. The driver of a large truck belonging to a wholesale grocer had swerved to avoid the Pontiac and had struck the car driven by the Maryland couple.

Finally, if all that weren’t enough, the body of a black man in his midtwenties had been found in a bullet-riddled Chrysler abandoned on H Street, three blocks from the White House. Police believed this to be the car the Pontiac had chased. Ten pounds of cocaine and crack had been recovered from the car, which had also contained an Uzi submachine gun.

The story contained accounts by three or four witnesses who told of the passenger in the Pontiac blazing away with an automatic weapon at the Chrysler as it tore down Bladensburg Road and Maryland Avenue at speeds of up to ninety miles per hour. Eight vehicles had been reported with bullet damage and police expected to learn of more.

Two photos accompanied the story. One was of the Chrysler shot full of holes and the other was of a Japanese woman in a kimono drenched with blood being assisted toward an ambulance.

Before he finished the story, Dorfman snapped on the limo’s small television. The morning show on the channel that came up was running footage of the wrecked bus with the nearly unrecognizable remains of the Pontiac buried in its side. Shots of ambulance attendants leading away crying, bleeding victims followed.

Oh, my God! Why did that woman have to be wearing a kimono?

As if the savings-and-loan insider fraud debacle and the crises in the Baltic republics and Cuba weren’t enough! And to make life at the top truly perfect, George Bush had a press conference scheduled for this afternoon. God! The reporters would be in a feeding frenzy.

Dorfman turned down the sound on the television and dialed the car telephone.

“Why wasn’t I informed of this bus incident last night?” he roared at the hapless aide who answered. He ignored the aide’s spluttering. He knew the answer. Procedure dictated that the chief of staff be informed immediately of national security crises and international incidents, and a car-bus wreck had not fit neatly into either category. Still, he had to do something to blow off steam and the aide was an inviting target. The little wart never went beyond his instructions, never showed an ounce of initiative.

I’m going to have to get out of this fucking business before I have a heart attack, Dorfman told himself. I’m thirty pounds overweight and take those damn blood pressure pills and this shit is going to kill me. Sooner rather than later.

When he charged into his office, an aide started talking before Dorfman could open his mouth. “The Japanese ambassador wants an audience with the President. This morning.”

“Get the Mouth in here.” That was the White House press secretary. “And where’s that memo Gid Cohen sent over here last week? The one that lists all the antidrug initiatives he recommends?”

Thirty seconds later the memo from Cohen was on his desk. Let’s see, the AG wants to change the currency to make hoards worthless — we can do that. It’ll piss off the bankers and change-machine manufacturers and little ol’ ladies with mattresses full of the stuff, but … He wants special courts and more federal judges and prosecutors to handle drug cases: okay, bite the bullet and do it. He wants to fund a nationwide drug rehab program: we’ll need hard dollar info on that. He wants to fold the DEA in with the FBI and make one superagency. Christ, that will drive the Democrats bonkers.

A national ID card? Dorfman wrote no and underlined it. More prisons, mandatory sentencing for drug crimes, changes in the rules of criminal procedure, a revision of the bail laws, an increased role for the military in interdicting smuggling …

Dorfman kept reading, marking yes, no, and maybe. When he had originally received this memo he glanced at it and discarded it as yet another example of Cohen’s lack of sensitivity to political reality. Well, he told himself now, reality was changing fast.

When the press secretary came in, Dorfman didn’t bother to look up. “What’re you going to say about the bus deal?”

“That the President will have a statement at his news conference. The government offers its condolences on behalf of the American people to the citizens of Japan who lost relatives last night. A quote from the President that says this accident was a tragedy.”

“Let me see the quote.” Dorfman scanned the paper, then passed it back. “Okay. What is the President going to say at the news conference?”

“I’ve got two speechwriters working on it. Have something for you in about an hour.”

“Go. Do it.”

Two minutes later, with Cohen’s memo in hand, William C. Dorfman headed for the Oval Office to see the President.

The secretary in his outer office called after him: “The attorney general’s on the phone. He wants to come over and see the President. He has the director of the FBI with him.”

“Okay.”

Dorfman and Bush had framed a strategy to respond to the public relations crisis posed by the death of six Japanese VIPs and were fleshing it out when the attorney general and the director of the FBI were shown into the Oval Office fifteen minutes later.

“What do you have on this bus thing?” President Bush asked the FBI director.

“For public consumption, we’re working on it, following every lead. Doing autopsies on the people in the cars. When we know who they are, we’ll work backward. For you only, one of our undercover agents was driving the car being chased. He was delivering ten pounds of coke and crack for Freeman McNally’s drug syndicate when the people who were supposed to be guarding the shipment tried to rip him off. Those were the three men who died, two in the Pontiac and one in the Chrysler.”

Dorfman couldn’t believe his ears. He goggled. “Say again. The part about the undercover agent.”

“Our man was driving the Chrysler.”

“FBI?”

“One of our undercover people, temporarily on loan to the FBI from his regular police job.”

“A cop drove like a freaked-out maniac through the heart of downtown Washington and got eleven people killed?”

“What the hell do you think he ought to have done?” the director demanded. “Let them shoot him?”

“Well, Jesus, I think you ought to ask the Japanese ambassador that question. Maybe he can give you an answer. One escapes me just now.”

George Bush broke in. “Our guy okay?”

“Got grazed by two bullets. But he’s okay. Shook as hell.”

“You got enough to arrest Freeman McNally?”

“No, sir,” said Gideon Cohen. “We don’t. Oh, we have it chapter and verse from the undercover man, but we’re going to need more than just the testimony of one man. And most of his testimony will be hearsay. He’s had little personal contact with McNally.”

“When?”

“Soon. But not yet.”

“The press is gonna crucify us,” Dorfman muttered.

“Had to happen sooner or later,” Gideon Cohen remarked to no one in particular.

“Explain.”

“We’ve got over four hundred murders a year here in the District, something like eighty percent of them drug related. It was just a matter of time before some tourists or political bigwigs got caught in a crossfire.”

“I don’t buy that. This drug chase in the downtown sounds like sloppy police work to me. Where were the uniformed police while these people were playing Al Capone and Dutch Schultz on Constitution Avenue?”

Cohen sneered. “Jesus, Dorfman, get real! If four hundred middle-class white people had been slaughtered last year in Howard County, there’d have been a mass march on Washington before the Fourth of July. They’d have dragged you politics-as-usual guys out of the Capitol kicking and screaming and hung the whole damn crowd.”

“I think we’re wasting our time pointing fingers at the cops,” George Bush said dryly and adjusted the trousers of his eight-hundred-dollar suit. “The Japanese ambassador is coming over in a little while to hand me my head on a plate. The country is in an uproar. So what was politically impossible last week is possible now. That’s all any politician can ever try to do, Gid — the possible. I’m not the Pied Piper. I can’t take them where they don’t want to go. And I’m not apologizing for that. I’m not Jesus Christ either.”

Bush picked up Cohen’s wish list from his desk. “A federal ID card for every man, woman, and child in the country? That’ll never wash. The Supreme Court says they can burn the flag as political protest. They’ll be using these cards for toilet paper.”

“That’d be nice to have, but—”

“A national, mandatory drug rehab program? For an estimated ten billion per year? Where are we going to get the money? For another federal bureaucracy that will be so big and bloated it won’t help anybody.”

“It would—”

“And an overhaul of the criminal justice system,” the President continued. “ ‘Streamline and eliminate delay’ you say. The procedures of the criminal justice system, obsolete and inefficient though they are, are mandated by the Bill of Rights according to the nine wise men on the Supreme Court. We’d need a constitutional convention to revise the Bill of Rights. Despite widely held opinions to the contrary, I am not damn fool enough to advocate opening that Pandora’s box.”

Cohen said nothing.

“Some of this stuff we can do. I’ve marked the items. Now, Gid, you and Bill and the secretary of the Treasury get together and come up with specifics. You’ve got two hours. We’ll get the Senate and House leadership over here and brief them, then we’ll go to the press conference and see if I can get through that with a whole hide. I don’t suppose they’ll have many questions about Cuba or Lithuania or foreign aid to the Soviets, all subjects I’ve spent two days reviewing.” He threw up his hands. “In the meantime the Japanese ambassador, one of the best friends America has in the Japanese government, wants to tell me what he thinks of American law enforcement. Mr. FBI Director, you can sit here with me and sweat through that.”

This morning in his Pentagon cubicle Captain Jake Grafton read with professional interest the stories in the Washington Times and the Post about the chase and spectacular accident of the previous evening. As the senior officer in the Joint Staff counternarcotics section, he routinely read the papers to learn what the public press had to say about the drug problem. The press, he knew, defined the issues for the electorate, which in turn set the priorities for the politicians. The issues with which the government sought to grapple were those nebulous perceptions created by the passing of selected raw facts through these imperfect double filters: any public servant who failed to understand this basic truth was doomed to frustrated ineffectiveness. Despite the fact that he had spent his professional life in a military organization solving simpler, more clearly defined problems, Jake Grafton, farmer’s son and history major, instinctively understood how things worked in a democracy.

At a cubicle behind him, Jake could hear one of his colleagues, an air force lieutenant colonel, explaining the operation of the computer terminals to Toad Tarkington. A terminal rested on every desk. Tarkington seemed to be soaking up the procedures with nonchalant ease. Jake glanced at the dark screen on his own desk and smiled wryly. He had struggled like Hercules to acquire computer literacy while Tarkington seemed to pick it up as naturally as breathing.

Beside the front-page story in the Post about the car-bus crash was another story that the captain read with interest. By Jack Yocke, datelined Havana, Cuba, it was, the tag line promised, the first in a five-part series.

The story was about a rural family and its trek to the capital to personally witness the downfall of Castro. Why they came, what they saw and ate, where they slept, what they wanted for themselves and their children, these were the strands that Yocke wove. The story was raw, powerful, and Jake Grafton was impressed. Perhaps there was more to Jack Yocke than—

The telephone interrupted his perusal of the paper. He folded it and laid it on his desk.

“Captain, would you come to my office, please.”

Four minutes later he stood in front of his boss, a two-star army general. When he had first reported to the Joint Staff Jake had studied the organization chart carefully and, after counting, concluded that there were fifty-seven flag officers between him and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a four-star army general. Major General Franks was the fifty-seventh down from the top. Jake Grafton had already discovered how short that distance really was.

“Captain, would you go to the chairman’s office on the E-Ring. He is going over to the White House in a few minutes and he wants the senior officer in the counternarcotics section to accompany him.”

“Yes, sir,” Jake Grafton said, and made his exit. He didn’t ask General Franks what this was about because Franks probably didn’t know.

Leaving the Joint Staff spaces, Jake Grafton was hailed by the door attendant. Jake returned Mr. James’ greeting with a preoccupied smile.

Hayden Land was brusque this morning. “They’re in a snit over at the White House. Dorfman ordered me to appear. Ordered me! That man has the personality of a cliff ape.”

The general’s aide accompanied Hayden Land and Jake to the White House. As they rode through the streets in the chairman’s limo, General Land briefed both the junior officers: “The President is going to announce new initiatives to combat the drug business. The White House staff have two proposals that affect the military. They want to increase the number of army teams patrolling the Mexican border, and they want a carrier battle group put into the eastern Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico.”

“The Caribbean?” Jake Grafton echoed, his surprise evident.

“The idea is that the carrier’s aircraft can help intercept and track suspicious air and surface traffic.”

“We do that now with air force AWACS planes, sir. Nothing moves over the gulf that we don’t know about. And to put a carrier in there will mean that it will have to be diverted from someplace else, probably the Med. We’ll only have one boat in the Med.”

“I talked to CNO about it this morning,” General Land said. “Those were the points he made. All you have to do today is listen. I just thought that seeing it and hearing it firsthand would help you do the staff work to make it happen if the President orders it, which he probably will. His staff believes that the incident last night with the busload of Japanese tourists requires an immediate response. Apparently they’ve sold that to the President.”

“Yessir,” Jake Grafton said and took off his white cover for a moment to run his fingers through his thinning hair. “I don’t think a carrier in the Gulf of Mexico is going to help them grab one more pound of cocaine than we are getting now. But putting a boat down there for any extended period of time will have a negative effect on our combat capability in the Med. It’ll cut it in half.”

The aide spoke for the first time. “Sir, I understand there’s also a proposal to authorize the Air Force and Navy to shoot down planes that refuse to obey the instructions of interceptors?”

General Land nodded.

“That’s been around a while,” Jake said. “The general aviation pilots’ organizations have squealed loudly. God only knows what some doctor putting along in his Skyhawk will do when he meets an F-16 up close and personal for the first time. Cessnas and Pipers going down in flames over the Florida beaches will make great television.”

“The doctors and dentists had better find someplace else to fly,” General Land said in a tone that ended the conversation. “This drug mess just went from boiling to superheated. The administration is going to whale away with everything they can lay their hands on. Anybody that doesn’t want to be hurt had better get the hell out of the way.”

That comment seemed to capture the essence of the atmosphere at the White House. Jake stood against the wall and obeyed General Land’s order: he kept his mouth firmly shut. He listened to William C. Dorfman brief the senators and congressmen on the initiatives ordered by the President, and he watched the President explain his reasoning to the senior officials.

“Gentlemen, the American people have had enough. I’ve had enough. We’re going to put a stop to this drug business. We can’t allow it to continue.”

Senator Hiram Duquesne spoke up: “Mr. President, everyone’s mad right now, but sooner or later they’re going to sober up. I’m not about to sit silently and watch the rights of American citizens trampled by cops and soldiers on a witch hunt.”

“We’re not hunting witches, Hiram,” the President said. “We’re hunting drug smugglers and drug dealers.”

A few smiles greeted this remark, but no chuckles.

“How long is this state of emergency going to last?” Duquesne pressed. Jake Grafton had met Senator Duquesne before, a year ago when he was working on the A-12 project. Apparently Duquesne hadn’t mellowed any these past twelve months.

“I haven’t declared a state of emergency.”

“Call it what you like,” Hiram Duquesne shot back. “How long?”

“Until we get results.”

“It’s going to cost a lot of money to change the currency,” another senator pointed out. “You going to want to do it again next year?”

“I don’t know.”

“This marriage of the FBI and DEA,” said Senator Bob Cherry. “I think that’ll go over like a lead brick with Congress. The last thing this country needs is a bigger, more powerful police bureaucracy.”

“It’s efficiency I’m after.”

Bob Cherry raised his eyebrows. “You won’t get it with that move. More layers of paper pushers means less efficiency, not more. All you get when you add bureaucrats is more inertia. And a big police bureaucracy that can’t be stopped is the last thing this country need or wants.”

“I want to try it,” the President insisted.

“Good luck,” Cherry said.

“I need you on this, Bob. I’m asking for bipartisan support. I’m asking for your help.”

“Mr. President, we in Congress are getting just as much, if not more, heat about that incident last night than you are. People want to know why tourists should have to run the risk of being slaughtered in the streets just to visit the capital of this country. My office this morning was a madhouse. We had to take the phones off the hooks. But Congress is not going to be stampeded. I can promise you this: we’ll immediately look at your proposals, and those that have a chance of working we’ll approve. Speedily. Those that don’t …” He shrugged.

That evening at dinner Jake Grafton told his wife about his day.

“On television one of the commentators said the President has panicked,” Callie told him.

Jake snorted. “And last year they said he was timid. The poor devil gets it from every side.”

“Will these proposals work? Can the drug crisis be solved?”

The captain took his time answering. “There aren’t any easy solutions. There are a lot of little things that will each have some effect on the problem. But there are no easy, simple, grand solutions just lying around waiting to be discovered. None.”

“You’re saying drugs are here to stay.”

“At some level, yes. We humans have learned to live with alcohol and tobacco and prostitution — we’re going to have to learn to live with dope.”

“Even if it ruins people’s lives?” Amy asked.

Jake Grafton chewed a bite of ham while he thought about that one. “A lot of things can ruin lives. People get so fat their hearts give out. They literally eat themselves to death. Should we have a law that regulates how much you can eat?”

“Drugs are different,” Amy said.

“Indeed they are,” Callie said, and gave her husband a sidelong glance with an eyebrow ominously arched.

Jake Grafton wisely changed the subject.

Later Callie said, “Did you read that terrific article in today’s paper that Jack Yocke wrote about Cuba?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m inviting him and his girlfriend over for dinner Saturday night, if he’s back from Cuba. I’ll call him tomorrow at the paper.”

“Oh.”

“Now, Jake, don’t start that. I had him in class all semester and he is a bright young man with a lot of talent. You should take the time to get to know him.”

“Doesn’t look like I’m getting an option.”

“Now dear, you know better than that.”

“Okay, okay. Invite him over. If you think he’s a nice guy, I’m sure he is. After all, look how right you were about me.”

“Maybe you should reevaluate, Callie,” Amy said tartly, and went off to her bedroom to do her homework.