Under Siege

CHAPTER TWENTY

Henry Charon dialed the radio to a Washington news-talk station and pointed the car north, toward Frederick. A woman was debating with various callers the appropriateness of the federal response to the AIDS crisis. At Frederick he turned east on I-70. When he saw a rest stop, he pulled off.

He parked the car on the edge of the lot and removed the galoshes. These he put in the trunk. He carefully wrapped the spent missile launching tubes in the rugs and wound the rugs with gray duct tape. After closing the trunk and ensuring the car was locked, he walked fifty yards to the rest rooms and relieved himself.

Rolling again, he was listening to the radio when the announcer broke in with a bulletin:

“A United States Marine Corps helicopter carrying the President of the United States and several other high-ranking officials has crashed in northern Virginia north of Dulles Airport. Emergency crews from Dulles International are responding. We have no word yet on the condition of the President. No further information is available at this time. Stay tuned for further news as we receive it.”

The radio station stopped taking calls. In short order the woman guest was off the air and two newsmen began discussing and speculating about the bulletin. They mentioned the fact that President Bush had spent the weekend at Camp David and was presumably on his way back to Washington when the accident occurred. They called it an accident. They read the list of the officials that had spent the weekend with the President and speculated about the reasons the helicopter might have crashed. The reasons they advanced all concerned mechanical failure or a midair collision. It was obvious to Charon that neither man knew much about helicopters.

He turned the radio off.

So it had started. The hunt was on and he was the quarry.

He turned off the interstate and followed the twists and turns of a county road for several miles until he reached a landfill. He pulled up to the booth.

The woman inside had the radio on.

“Five dollars,” she said distractedly.

He took out his wallet and gave her the money. She pushed a small clipboard at him. On it was a form, a certification that he was not disposing of hazardous materials. False swearing, the form said, was perjury in the second degree.

“What’s happened?” Charon asked as he scrawled something illegible by the printed X.

“President Bush’s helicopter has crashed.”

“You’re kidding? Is he dead?”

“They don’t know yet.”

Charon handed the clipboard back and was waved on through.

More luck. His was the only vehicle there to dump trash. A snorting bulldozer was attacking a small mountain of the stuff while a huge flock of seagulls darted and swooped.

Henry Charon opened the trunk and got rid of the galoshes and the two missile launchers wrapped in carpet. He threw the cylinders down toward the base of a garbage pile that looked as if it would be next. Then he got the sandwich wrapper, bag, and coffee cup from the floor of the rear seat and added them to the garbage wasteland spread out at his feet.

He pulled the car out of the dozer’s way, carefully avoiding the soft ground off the vehicle ruts. A pickup truck loaded with construction debris parked a little further down the cut and the driver began throwing off trash. He was still at it when the big dozer shoved a hill-sized pile of garbage and dirt over the rug-wrapped missile launchers.

Special Agent Thomas Hooper got the news at the FBI facility in Quantico. Hooper, Freddy Murray, and an assistant federal prosecutor were interrogating Harrison Ronald when the call came.

Prior to his assignment three years ago to the drug crimes division, Hooper had served for five years as special agent in charge of the FBI SWAT team. He was still on call. Use of the FBI for paramilitary operations was rare, but occasionally a situation arose. When the situation required more men than the SWAT team had available, the watch officer went down the standby list of qualified agents. He wanted Hooper to go to the crash site. He passed the news, the order, and the location in as few words as possible.

Hooper hung up the phone and found the other men were staring at him, no doubt in reaction to the look on his face. “The President’s helicopter just crashed,” he told them, “with him in it. I gotta go.”

“Is he dead?”

“Don’t know,” Hooper muttered to his stunned audience on his way out of the room.

Jake, Callie, and Amy Grafton were returning to their apartment from a shopping mall when they heard the news on the radio. The family carried the packages upstairs and Amy ran for the television. Regular programming had been interrupted and the networks were using their weekend news teams.

Like tens of millions of viewers all over America, the Graftons got the news as the networks acquired it. Four people were dead in the wreckage and four were injured, three critically. Both the pilots were dead, as was the secretary of state and the national security adviser. One of those critically injured was the President, who had been flown to Bethesda Naval Hospital by another helicopter. Mrs. Bush, on vacation in Kennebunkport, was flying back to Washington.

Footage of the wreckage was shown, shot from about a hundred yards away.

Later in the evening witnesses to the crash were interviewed. One elderly woman working in her flowerbed had seen the craft fall. She searched for words as the camera rolled: “I knew they were going to die. It was falling so fast, twirling around, I closed my eyes and prayed.”

What did you pray for?

“For God to take to Himself the souls of those about to die.”

Amy decided she wanted to sit beside her father on the couch. He wrapped his arms around her.

In the newsroom of The Washington Post Jack Yocke was assigned to assist a team of reporters in writing a story assessing the presidency of George Bush, a story that would not run unless he died. Two weeks ago Yocke would have chafed at not being sent off willy-nilly to the crash site. Not this evening. As he called up the major stories of the Bush presidency on his computer screen and perused them, he found himself trying to get a sense of this man chosen by his fellow citizens to lead them.

World War II naval aviator, Texas oil entrepreneur, self-made millionaire, politician, public servant — why did George Bush want the toughest job in the world? What had he said? How did he approach the job? Why did he avoid the spotlight’s glare? Did he have a sense of where America should go, and if so, what was it? These questions Yocke wrestled with, though he occasionally took a moment to read the wire service ticker and listen to the television.

He also took a moment to call Tish Samuels.

“Heard the news?”

“Isn’t it terrible?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I feel for his wife,” Tish said. “I admire her so. This must be extraordinarily tough on her, to be so frightened with the whole world watching.”

The helicopter had crashed in a pasture just a hundred yards west of the Potomac, which flowed south at this point. In the glare of portable floodlights Special Agent Tom Hooper caught a glimpse of at least three dead cows. One of them was ripped almost in half. He asked the Virginia state trooper escorting him toward the helicopter.

“Shrapnel from the rotor blades,” the trooper said. “The forward blades were still turning when it hit the ground.”

The wreckage looked grotesque in the glare of the floodlights. The chopper had impacted nose low, so the cockpit was badly squashed. The crew hadn’t had a chance. A team was cutting through the wreckage to get the last body out of the cockpit. Another team wearing army fatigue uniforms was examining the engines. The rest of the machine was almost as badly mangled as the cockpit, but not quite. Hooper marveled that four fragile human beings had survived the helicopter’s encounter with the earth. Maybe.

The senior Secret Service agent was holding an impromptu meeting beside the machine. Hooper joined the group.

“The army experts are ninety-nine percent certain that this machine was struck by missiles. At least two. Probably heat seekers. We’ll know for sure tomorrow when we analyze the warhead fragments.”

“You’re saying that this was an assassination attempt?” someone asked, the disbelief evident in his voice.

“Yes.”

Hooper was stunned. He turned slightly to look at the wreckage, and now the evidence leaped at him — a hole and jagged tears in the right engine compartment, and another spray of small holes near the exhaust.

“When are you going to announce this?”

“That’s up to the White House. None of you are going to say it to anybody. Now there’s a ton of things that have to be done as soon as possible, so let’s get at it.”

The Secret Service assigned the FBI the job of locating the place from where the missiles had been fired. Hooper walked back toward his car and its radio with his mind racing. He would draw a circle with a ten-mile radius around this spot and seal it. Then he would search every foot of ground within the circle and interview every human being he could find. For that he would need people, as many as he could get. The local sheriffs and state police could help with roadblocks. But the searching, for that he would need a lot of people. Perhaps the Marines at Quantico could lend him some.

An assassin. He was out there somewhere. No doubt the Secret Service would redouble its efforts to guard the Vice-President and Mrs. Bush, but he would check to see if they needed more people.

So he got on the radio and began. He knew he would be at it all night and into tomorrow, and he was. Understandably, Hooper completely forgot about the grand jury and Freeman McNally. They would have to wait.

Henry Charon settled into the Hampshire Avenue apartment to watch television. He was munching a bag of chips and sipping a beer when someone knocked on the door.

He scanned the apartment. Nothing lying around that would incriminate him. Leaving the television on, he opened the door.

“Hello, Mr. Tackett,” Grisella Clifton said. “Remember me? The building manager?” She was wearing a frumpy housedress and a bulky sweater.

“Oh, sure. Grisella, right?”

She nodded. “My television is on the fritz. May I watch with you?”

“Sure. Come in.”

She settled in on the couch. He offered her some potato chips and beer. “I just couldn’t. I’m not the least bit hungry. Isn’t this whole thing so tragic?”

Henry Charon agreed that it was and plopped into the stuffed lounge chair.

“You’re watching NBC? I’ve been watching CNN. They’ve been talking to some witnesses who saw the crash. What could have gone wrong with that helicopter?”

Charon shrugged. “We can change the channel if you like.”

“If you don’t mind. I think CNN is so … so newsy.” Obligingly, he rose and turned the dial. “I just can’t believe what happened to my set. The picture suddenly got all fuzzy. Just when there is something important on, it quits. Isn’t that so typical?”

“Ummm.”

“I do hope you don’t mind this intrusion. But I just needed to be around someone. In the midst of life … It really bothers me, y’know?”

He nodded and glanced at her. She prattled on. He found he could hear anything important said on TV and still catch enough of her remarks to make appropriate responses.

She ceased talking when a doctor at Bethesda Naval Hospital came on the show. He explained the extent of the President’s injuries in detail to the dozens of reporters and used a pointer and a mannequin to answer questions.

What if he survives? Charon asked himself. He had been paid to kill Bush, not put him in the hospital.

Not a word had yet been said on TV about an assassination attempt, but no doubt the Secret Service and FBI knew. The physical evidence of the helicopter would shriek murder to the first professional aircraft accident investigator who looked. Getting to Bush for a second attempt would be a real neat trick.

Listening to Grisella Clifton’s nervous chatter — why was she nervous, anyway? — watching the images on the screen, he began to examine the problem. The armor might have a crack somewhere. He would have to think about it.

All over America, in hamlets and cities and on farms, people gathered around televisions or sat in automobiles with the radios on. The President of the United States lay in a hospital close to death, and two hundred and fifty million Americans held their breath.

It didn’t matter if you had voted for George Bush or against him, whether you liked his politics, whether you even knew what his politics were. You sat and listened and were deeply moved as the condition of the President became known. He was seriously injured, with a concussion, broken ribs, a damaged spleen and a seriously fractured leg.

The surgeon at Bethesda reappeared on the television and ignored all the shouted questions. “We don’t know. We don’t know. We’re running tests and we’ll see.” He paused, listened to the cacophony a moment, then said, “He’s unconscious. His vital signs are erratic. We don’t know.”

He was not a king, not a dictator, but a fellow American who had been chosen to lead the nation for a period of four years. Four years — long enough for a skillful politician who understood the mood and spirit of the people to accomplish something worthwhile, yet not enough time for a fool or incompetent to do irreparable damage.

The nation had had all kinds of presidents in the 201 years since George Washington had taken the oath of office. Yet each of them had understood that they spoke for their fellow citizens, and by doing so they created in the American people a deep, abiding respect for the office of the presidency and the men who held it that seemed, in a curious way, to have little to do with the individual merit or personal failings of each temporary occupant. Americans expected the president to weigh the interests of everyone when he made a decision, to speak for all of them. From their congressmen and senators they expected partisanship; from their president they expected leadership. This working politician, this common citizen they raised to the high place, he became the embodiment of their unspoken hopes and dreams. In some vague, slightly mystical way, he became the personification of America. And of all it stood for.

So on this Sunday evening in December, all over America people collected themselves and took stock. Churches were opened so that those so inclined could pray and hear words of comfort. Parents told their children where they were and what they had been doing when they heard that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Switchboards jammed as millions decided to call home and touch base with their roots. In airports, shopping malls, and bars from coast to coast, as they gathered around television sets strangers spoke to each other.

There were incidents, of course. In Dallas a man in a bar cheered when an announcer said the President’s life was in grave danger; he was severely beaten and, had he not been rescued by hastily summoned police, would probably have been beaten to death. An Iranian with a long-expired student visa lost his front teeth at a shopping mall in suburban Chicago after he loudly announced that George Bush deserved to die. In San Francisco a waiter dumped a tray of food in the lap of a self-styled animal rights activist who expressed a similar opinion. The activist repeated her remark to the manager who had rushed to apologize, and he summarily ejected her and apologized to his other patrons, who applauded loudly.

At nine-thirty that evening one of the network correspondents informed the White House press secretary’s office that his network had a story that the dead pilot of the President’s helicopter had mentioned explosions—“like missiles”—in his last transmission to Dulles Approach. The network was going with the story on the hour. Did the White House wish to comment.

Yes, it did. The press secretary said he would hold a news conference at ten-fifteen, and he asked the network to hold the story until after the conference. After a hurried consultation with New York, the correspondent agreed.

At ten twenty-two that night the White House press secretary appeared at the rostrum in the basement press room and squinted as his eyes adjusted to the glare of the floodlights. He held a paper in front of him and read from it. At his side were the directors of the Secret Service and the FBI.

“The Vice-President of the United States has authorized me to announce that the helicopter accident this afternoon which claimed the lives of five people was an assassination attempt. We assume—”

He got no further. People who knew better shouted questions at the top of their lungs.

The press secretary waited for the uproar to die. He swabbed his forehead with a handkerchief and continued to stare at the paper in his hand. Finally he resumed:

“We assume that the assassination attempt was directed at the President of the United States, although we have no direct evidence to support or refute that assumption. Apparently a party or parties unknown fired at least two heat-seeking missiles at the helicopter carrying the President, at least two of which appear to have inflicted major damage on the craft, rendering it unairworthy. The pilot immediately lost control. The crash occurred shortly thereafter. If you have questions, the directors of the Secret Service and the FBI are here to help me answer them.”

“How do you know about the missiles?”

“The shrapnel from the warheads punctured the fuselage in many places,” the director of the Secret Service said.

“Do you have any suspects?”

“Not yet.”

“Do you have any clues?”

“None that we’re going to discuss in public.”

“Are arrests imminent?”

“No.”

“Is it true that the pilot of the helicopter told Dulles Approach about explosions, like missiles, in one of his last transmissions?” This was from the network correspondent who had agreed to hold this story.

“Yes, that is true.”

“Why wasn’t this announced earlier?”

The press secretary was tired and had had a hell of a bad evening. He had little patience with questions like that. “We had to check it out. There are a couple of thousand rumors out there, including one that the pilot was drunk. We will release information when we have verified it and believe it is true. Not before.”

“Was the pilot drunk?”

“Not to my knowledge. There will be autopsies on all the victims, of course.”

Across the nation the mood of those still watching television, and they were many, turned gloomy. An assassin. A killer. Not an ordinary killer, but one who had directly attacked the United States of America.

All four of the networks seized the assassin angle with both hands. Film clips were aired of the Kennedy assassination. Pictures of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley were shown. Profiles of past presidential assassins and would-be killers were hastily assembled and aired. One network sent a crew to the New York residence of Jacqueline Onassis, Kennedy’s widow, and camped outside with the camera running. The lady didn’t come out.

At the Post Ott Mergenthaler stopped by Yocke’s desk. The television in the corner was showing footage of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. “Wanta go get a sandwich?”

“Okay. I can take a break.”

They walked to the elevator and took it down to the cafeteria. Normally at this time of night it was closed, but not this night.

“What do you think?” Yocke asked. “A nut like Oswald?”

“Not very likely. Crackpots don’t shoot missiles.”

“Remember a few weeks ago when they extradited Chano Aldana? That ‘communiqué’ from the Extraditables in Colombia? ‘We will bring the American government to its knees.’ ”

“I remember. If this is their work, they’ve made a good start.”

“So what do you think?”

“I think nobody in Colombia has factored Quivering Dan Quayle into their calculations.”

“As I recall, you called Quayle Bush’s biggest mistake.”

“That’s just one of the nicer things I’ve said about him. I also said he was impeachment insurance for Bush.”

They went through the serving line, helping themselves to cold sandwiches and hot coffee. When they were seated, Mergenthaler continued, “Quayle’s a genuine nice guy, never been accused of being a deep thinker, no ideological cross to bear although he can mouth the conservative line and appears at times to believe some of it. He’s just the kind of guy you’d like to include in a foursome on Sunday morning. Pleasant, affable, likes the kind of jokes dentists tell and can probably tell a few himself. Never worried about money a day in his life. If you hit your last ball into the creek, he’ll toss you one with a grin and refuse to take a dollar for it.”

Ott sipped coffee and munched some on his sandwich.

“Every observer who knows this guy says he grows into his job. People underestimate him — that’s ridiculously easy to do — and he surprises them. He’s got a modest amount of brains but never had to use them before he got into public office. So he learns how to be a congressman, how to be a senator, how to be a vice president. His staff feeds him lines to say and he says them. If Bush dies, Quayle will presumably learn how to be a president. Given enough time, enough good will by all concerned, he can probably learn how to do a mediocre job.”

“He isn’t going to have any time at all,” Yocke said.

“That’s my point. He’s walking straight into a blast furnace. In addition to all the stuff Bush has been juggling, Quayle will have the drug crisis going full blast, hot enough to melt steel. People are going to want this kid who never made a tough decision in his life to do something. And you know what? I’ll bet he will!”

Ott worked on his sandwich some more, then added, “If I was a doper in Colombia, I’d crawl into a hole and pull the hole in after me. The biggest temptation any man in the White House faces is to overreact. You got all those generals who’ll want to go kick ass. If the Extraditables claim Bush as a trophy, the public is going to howl for blood. We may have a real rootin’, tootin’ war on our hands, mister. The hell with the S-and-L crisis, the hell with federal aid to education, the hell with balancing the budget. We’re going to blow the whole wad on a trip to Colombia to burn out that hornet’s nest. You watch. You see if I’m right.”

“I don’t think the Colombian dopers are behind this, Ott,” Yocke said. “Oh, I know, Aldana blew a lot of smoke. But that terrorist gig they’ve been running in Colombia won’t work here. Not in America.”

“I wish I had your optimism. If Quayle sends the Army and Air Force to Colombia to kick ass, that won’t work. The people we’re after will run and hide. We’d have to burn the damn place down and sift the ashes to get ’em. No, if the Colombians start murdering judges here and buying everyone who can be bought, America is going to change and change fast. This will cease to be the America you and I grew up in. I’m not sure what it will become. Frankly, I hope to God I never have to find out.”

“Let’s pray that George Bush doesn’t die.”

Ott snorted. “More to the point, we’d better pray that the Colombians don’t claim they shot him down.”