Under Siege

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Jake Grafton heard an audible thwock and turned, just in time to see Gideon Cohen spin half around and fall to the pavement.

The nearest Secret Service agent roared, “Everybody down,” and the two agents closest to the Vice-President physically pushed him headfirst into the back seat of the limo. One of them dove in on top of him while the other slammed the door.

“Get down! Everybody down!”

Jake crouched, his eyes on Cohen. Was it just his imagination or did he really hear the report of a rifle several seconds after Cohen fell?

Cohen’s groans were audible above the screams and shouts of the panicked onlookers, who were scattering or lying facedown on the steps and pavement. An agent was on top of the attorney general, bracing himself with his hands and knees so that none of his weight rested on the injured man.

“My God!” someone roared. “They tried to kill the Vice-President!”

“Get that fucking car outta here!”

The Secret Service agents pointed their Uzis at the crowd, searching. They were still standing like this five seconds later when the driver of the limo stomped on the gas and made the rear tires squeal as he accelerated away.

Three or four men were examining Cohen. Jake tried to see but couldn’t.

Where? Jake rose to his knees and tried to look for the spot where the shot had come from. All he could see was the backs of Secret Service agents. He stood.

“Goddammit, get back down here, Grafton,” General Land growled. “Never stand up in a firefight. Were you born yesterday?”

As he came out of the stairwell into the lobby Henry Charon bumped into a woman. He reached out and caught her and steadied her on her feet.

“Sorry,” he said, and headed for the door to the sidewalk.

“Did you hear that explosion?” she called.

“Upstairs, it sounded like,” he told her over his shoulder and kept going for the door.

That’s odd, she thought, staring after him. He’s wearing surgical gloves.

Out on the sidewalk Henry Charon walked north at a brisk pace, but not too brisk. Just a man who knows where he’s going and wants to get there. He reached the corner and crossed, then paused and watched an unmarked car with a blue light on the dash and a siren wailing round the corner and screech to a stop in the middle of the block, just fifty feet past the building he had just come out of.

Charon wheeled and walked east. He passed a man jogging in the other direction, toward the Capitol. “Somebody tried to kill the Vice-President,” the man shouted, pointing at a small transistor radio he carried.

Charon nodded and kept going. Behind him he could hear more sirens.

At two that afternoon Billy Enright, one of McNally’s lieutenants, who had been watching television, went into the next room and woke Freeman McNally. Freeman got out of bed and padded in to watch and listen. Someone had taken a shot at the Vice-President, and the feds were calling out the National Guard.

Freeman called T. Jefferson Brody at his office. Normally he never used the phone here for business, since it was probably tapped, but now he was calling his lawyer. “It’s me, Tee. You hear the news?”

“About the Capitol this morning? Holy damn! I heard all right.”

“The National Guard. Quayle’s calling out the Guard.”

“Oh, that! Just to stand around at public buildings and stuff.”

The problem with Brody, McNally told himself, was that he had no understanding of how things worked. “That’s just the start,” he told the lawyer patiently. “You talk to our friends, Tee. This Guard shit ain’t good.”

“How heavy do you want me to get?”

“Lay the wood to ’em, man. This Guard shit is really bad. Those soldiers ain’t going to spend all their time shining their shoes and strutting around in front of the public library. Once they’re here, they’re going to try to shut down the business. I can feel it.”

“You want me to go all the way if I have to?”

“All the way.”

McNally hung up and went back to the television. In a little while he went to the kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee.

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 doin’?”

“Looking for terrorists and assassins. Gonna be everywhere. We’ll have to cool it for a while, maybe take vacations.”

McNally waved that away. “Think about it. For a week or two all these guys are going to do is search 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.”

“Who?”

“Freeman McNally. 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 McNally’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 want to put a tail on this T. Jefferson Brody to find out who he thinks ‘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 happening?”

“Turn 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 fucking 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 up?”

“Harrison, I—”

“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—”

Freddy stopped when he realized Harrison Ford had hung up on him.

Congresswoman 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 colleagues 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 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 C. Dorfman, whom she also despised. High on her list of fools who goaded her beyond endurance was Vice-President 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 glad-handing 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 always be.”

Strader’s very favorite Quaylism was this gem, from an address to the United Negro College Fund: “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind — or not to have a mind. How true that is.” 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 — in full view of a contingent of reporters — a souvenir doll with a flip-up dick. This light-hearted indulgence in the joys of crude male locker-room humor enraged feminists coast to coast, including Strader.

Dan Quayle was, in Strader’s opinion, the living, breathing 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 Vice-President, 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. Dorfman explained why the presence of the National Guard was required in the District of Columbia, Sam Strader 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 President of the United States. The premonition gave her goose bumps.

Quayle sat in his chair beside the podium, Strader 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 Dorfman explained it, the Guard would augment the federal security police charged with guarding public buildings and maintaining order, thereby freeing FBI and police to search for and apprehend the assassins who had killed the secretary 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 assurance 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—”

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 furiously while the television people waved their hands and shouted, “Mr. Vice-President, Mr. Vice-President,” 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 head and made a few notes in his small spiral notebook. Nearby Sam Strader cornered Ott Mergenthaler. “Do you really 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 narco-terrorism 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 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 down the electrical cable network for a battery of television cameras. “So what do you think?” Grafton added.

“I think Dorfman 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 down?”

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 Vice-President 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 guest’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. Cherry stripped off his shirt and tie as he stirred through the phone messages on his desk.

“What’s on your mind?”

“The aide said you were over at the White House?”

“Getting briefed. At least that’s what they called it. Jesus, what a day!”

“The networks say that Quayle is calling out the National Guard.”

“Yep.” Cherry found a clean shirt in the closet beside the washroom and put it on.

“My clients were hoping that you might oppose that move.”

“Wouldn’t do any good. Quayle’s made up his mind. Not that I disagree with him. He’s right about this, I think.”

Cherry selected a tie from the rack and looked at his image in a mirror as he worked on knotting it. “Just out of curiosity, what’s your people’s beef?”

“My clients are the people who have contributed generously to your PAC and campaign fund, Senator.”

Cherry made a face. He had assumed that. His estimate of Brody’s political sophistication went down a notch. “What’s their beef?” he repeated.

“Well, Senator, it’s like this. They think it’ll be bad for their business.”

“Pretty damn shortsighted of them, isn’t it? I mean, tourism and business travel to Washington will fall like a chunk of blue ice with all these killers running around loose. The sooner they’re behind bars the safer everyone will be.”

“That’s just it, Senator. My clients don’t feel that way. They think the FBI and Secret Service can find these people. Baldly, troops are bad for business.”

“Sorry. They’ll have to live with their disappointment.”

Cherry selected a sports coat and pulled it on. He came back around to his desk and pushed a couple of the phone messages away from the others with a finger. “I am in a hurry tonight, Jefferson. I have a couple of calls to make before I leave.”

“Senator, I don’t think you understand.”

“Understand?”

“I’m not asking you for a favor. I’m telling you.” Brody grinned.

The senator straightened. His shoulders went back. “Are you leaving or should I call my aide to throw you out?”

Brody sagged back in the chair and threw one leg over the other. “It’s funny, when you think about it. All those contributions, and you never once had anyone check to see who was actually giving you the money.”

“What …?”

“FM Development, that’s a real Florida corporation, and the sole stockholder is Freeman McNally, a prominent local businessman. Maybe you’ve heard of him? ABC Investments, that’s …”

Cherry collapsed heavily into his chair. He stared at Brody.

“I’m sure the FBI could give you a fairly extensive dossier on Freeman McNally, Senator. You have really screwed the pooch this time.”

“What do you want?”

“I’ve told you. No National Guard. No troops.”

“No.” Cherry’s face flushed scarlet.

Brody got out of his chair and sat on the edge of the desk. He leaned toward Bob Cherry. “You just haven’t thought this through yet, Senator. When it gets out that you’ve been flying around the country wining and dining and sixty-nining Miss Georgia and paying your campaign bills with drug money supplied by Washington’s biggest crack dealer, your career will immediately hit the wall. Splat! You’ll be finished.”

“I’ll give the money back. I didn’t know! I’ll—”

“Get real! You politicians sold out to the country-club types who ran out and bought savings and loans. You let them shoot craps with government-insured money — five hundred billion dollars down the sewer. You’ve maneuvered like drunken snakes to get yourselves big pay raises. You’ve voted yourselves the best pensions in the nation while you’ve looted the Social Security trust fund. You’ve damn near bankrupted America. The voters have to pay for all that! Their children will have to pay for it! Their grandchildren will have to pay! They aren’t going to believe that Bob Cherry was so senile, so abysmally stupid that he didn’t check to see who was stuffing the money into his pocket!”

Brody stood. He buttoned his jacket and adjusted his tie. “All you glad-handing backslappers do little favors for each other — a military base in this district, a sewer system there, a dam over here. Isn’t that the way your exclusive little club works?”

Brody’s voice dropped. “You get busy and call in some markers. Raise some hell. I’d better be reading in the newspaper about your courageous stand to keep democracy in the District and the soldiers out, or come Friday you’ll be reading about some very interesting contributions made by big-name dope dealers to a certain senator.”

Brody paused on the way to the door and turned around. “One more word of advice, Senator. People who cross Freeman McNally rarely live to brag about it.”

T. Jefferson Brody’s next stop was Senator Hiram Duquesne’s office. He caught the senator on the way out the door.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll walk along down to the garage,” Brody said.

He broached the subject of the National Guard troops.

“You know,” Duquesne said, “if someone had suggested calling in the Guard this morning after the attack on the Capitol, I would have been against it. But after that shot at the Vice-President I’m for it.

“Gid Cohen’s in bad shape. The doctor thinks he’ll make it. Took that slug in the shoulder. Just missed his left lung by an inch.” Duquesne shook his head. “The rifleman fired from a building five hundred and twenty-seven yards away. Left the rifle and a tripod and a toolbox. Just aimed, fired right through a closed window, dropped everything and walked away.”

“Amazing,” Brody agreed.

“I don’t know what we’re up against here, but this shit has got to stop. Quayle’s doing the right thing. Didn’t think that airhead had it in him.”

“My clients want you to oppose this move. They don’t want the Guard in the District.”

“Sorry, Jefferson. This has gone too far for politics as usual. Quayle has the legal and moral responsibility and he is taking steps. The Senate will back him up every way it can.”

Brody kept silent as they walked past the attendant at the entrance to the garage. He waited until they had reached Duquesne’s car and the senator was fishing in his pocket for the key.

“My client is Freeman McNally. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”

Senator Duquesne gaped.

“Freeman McNally. His reputation is a little unsavory, but he’s a businessman. Pays his legal fees without a quibble. Contributes money to worthy causes. Gives freely to certain politicians. Like you, for instance. He’s given you over twenty-five thousand dollars. Remember FM Development Corporation?”

“Why, you greasy, filthy son of a bitch!”

“Now, now, Senator, let’s not get personal here. You were free to check to see where the money was coming from, and presumably you didn’t bother. You were free to refuse the money. You never did.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I told you. My client doesn’t want the Guard in the District. He’s contributed generously to keep you in the Senate and he thought you should pull out all the stops and help him out on this.”

“And if I don’t? Come on! Your kind of slime always has a stick handy if the carrot doesn’t work.”

“My client wants to see you right out front, Senator, waving the banner to keep the military out of the District. If the parade leaves without you …” Brody shrugged. “You’re going to have a difficult time explaining away twenty-five thousand dollars in contributions from Washington’s biggest crack dealer, Senator. Really tough.”

“Get out of my sight, you bastard.” Duquesne balled his right fist and took a step forward.

“Think it over, Senator.” Brody took a step backward. “If I were you I wouldn’t throw away my reputation and a Senate seat over this. I’d bend a little and go on down the road.”

Brody turned and walked quickly away.

“I’ll see you roast in hell, Brody,” the senator called after him.

Brody kept walking.

Captain Jake Grafton and his staff spent the evening at the Pentagon. They had much to do. The National Guard had already begun mobilizing at the armory adjacent to RFK Stadium, but the usual chain of command was about to be radically altered. Grafton and his colleagues drafted an order for the signature of Vice-President Quayle that placed the Washington Guard unit under the immediate operational command of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, thereby removing ten or so layers of generals and their staffs from the chain of command. This change had been requested by the White House. The order would be signed first thing in the morning.

After the order had been sent to the chairman’s office for review, and probably for redrafting, Grafton and FBI special agent Thomas Hooper got themselves a cup of coffee and spread a street map of metro Washington upon Grafton’s desk.

Toad Tarkington, never one to be left out, pulled a chair around so he could see.

“I really don’t have time for this,” Hooper muttered. Jake knew that well enough. Hooper looked exhausted. His shirt was dirty and he had spots on his sports coat. He needed a shave. He probably hadn’t been home in several days. But his superiors had sent him over here anyway.

Jake got a yellow marker from his desk drawer and begin putting yellow splotches on the map. He marked public buildings, the White House, the Executive Office Building, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, the FBI building, the Justice Department, the office buildings that were used by members of Congress.

Then he handed the marker to Hooper. “Your turn.”

Hooper marked the courts, the jail, buildings used by various other government agencies. When he finished, he tossed the marker on the map.

“Twenty-six buildings,” Tarkington said, ever helpful.

“Around the clock, at least three armed men at every entrance.”

Jake pulled a scratch pad over and began figuring. “Anybody want to guess the average number of entrances for each building?”

“Six or eight,” the Air Force colonel said from his seat on the adjacent desk.

They discussed it. They used seven.

“We don’t have enough men. Nowhere near.”

“Get more,” Hooper said. “Men are the one asset you guys got lots of.”

“Until we get more — and that will take some time — we’ll have to put maybe one man at each entrance and keep mobile squads nearby to back them up.”

Hooper shrugged.

“You realize,” Grafton said, “that all we’re doing here is setting up a shootout if the Colombians or anybody else wants to start something. These troops will be issued ammunition and they’ll shoot. They’ll have to. There aren’t enough of them to do anything else, and they aren’t trained to do anything else. Some of them will be killed. Bystanders will be shot. It’s gonna be real messy.”

“Better not be,” Hooper said. “That’s what you people are supposed to prevent.”

“Let’s trim the list. Protect only key buildings.”

“No. I’ve got my orders. Protecting only key buildings merely sends the terrorists to unguarded buildings.”

“Not if what they’re after is a confrontation.”

Hooper shook his head. “The object of terrorism is to show the impotence of the government. Give them an opening and they’ll take it.”

Toad Tarkington spoke up. “How about a trap? Apparently unprotected buildings with a couple squads of soldiers inside?”

“The buildings would have to be empty,” Hooper pointed out. “But without a stream of civilians coming and going, any observer will immediately see that something is wrong.”

“You’re telling us that this is a no-win situation,” Jake Grafton said.

Hooper raised his hands in acknowledgment.

“How did we get to this?” the colonel asked rhetorically. “Again?”

“You can’t win fighting terrorists,” Hooper said, trying to explain. “The politicians — this is just my personal opinion — will never allow you to move fast enough to get the jump on these people. Politicians are reactive, always looking for consensus.”

“Bullshit,” said Jake Grafton. “Politicians aren’t stupid. This is not a conventional war. Every shot fired is a political statement. The politicos intuitively understand that and the guys in uniform had better learn it damn fast. Until we do, we’re not even in the same ballgame.”

Hooper looked skeptical. He rubbed his face and drained the last of his coffee.

Jake Grafton picked up the phone and called the chairman’s office. Anybody who thought Hayden Land was going to let the terrorists pick and choose their targets, he told himself, didn’t know Hayden Land.

The final fillip of the evening for loyal slaves of the big eye made the eleven o’clock news coast to coast. The networks had spectacular footage.

At approximately ten p.m. Eastern Standard Time four cars drew up to a three-story row house in northeast Washington — two cars on the street in front, two in the alley. The men in the passenger seats of the cars used Uzi submachine guns on the men guarding the house, then sat in the cars and fired a total of twenty-four 40-mm grenades through the windows, totally destroying the interior of the structure and setting the place afire. Then the cars drove away.

None of the witnesses could, they said, describe any of the cars or the men in them. No one could remember a single license number.

Police theorized on camera that the killers had used M-79 grenade launchers. They said the house belonged to a suspected crack dealer, one Willie Teal.

The fire in the background behind the policemen and reporters played on screens nationwide. It was quickly out of control and burned out half the houses on the row.

The following morning when the fire was completely out, officials found fourteen bodies in the house where the fire had started, the one that had been assaulted with grenades. This total did not include the four men shot to death outside. Police also found the twisted remains of over a dozen pistols, three submachine guns, and five pump shotguns. A briefcase containing almost five hundred thousand dollars was in the rubble with most of the bills still intact. Five pounds of cocaine somehow escaped the fire and was discovered in a hiding place in the basement by a fireman searching for smoldering timbers.

Harrison Ronald Ford watched the conflagration on television as he lay in his bed in his room at the FBI dormitory at Quantico. He sipped a soda pop and rubbed his Colt automatic occasionally and listened to the commentators try to sum up the violence and horror of the day.

One earnest female was expounding eloquently when he rose from the bed and snapped the idiot box off.

So Freeman McNally had decided to permanently settle Willie Teal’s hash. Another little lesson for those who thought they could cross Freeman McNally and get away with it.

M-79 grenade launchers, 40-mm grenades through the window. Like this window.

He pulled back the edge of the Venetian blind an inch or so and peeked out at the parking lot and the grass beyond.

What do you do when a grenade comes through the window into your bedroom at night? Do you huddle under the blanket? Pick it up and toss it back?

Hell no! You die, man! Bloody and perforated from hundreds of shards of steel, you die. Just like Willie Teal.

He was breathing hard. His heart was pounding and he was breathing too fast.

He turned off the light. In the darkness he got dressed, layering on sweaters and sweatshirts.

In the bathroom he tried to vomit and couldn’t. His stomach felt like he had swallowed a stone. He closed the door, stuffed a towel under it so light wouldn’t leak, and turned on the light.

The .45 automatic was loaded and had a round in the chamber. The hammer was back and the thumb safety on. Cocked and locked, the DI had called this condition, way back when.

He put the muzzle in his mouth and tasted it.

Go ahead. Save Freeman the trouble. You know that he didn’t decide to annihilate Willie Teal and not lift a finger to solve his biggest problem — you.

He saw himself in the mirror. So pathetic.

He put the gun in his waistband and sat on the commode and sobbed.