DeFord said, “I’ll arrange for a heavy escort. We’ll want motorcycles and squadrols.” He reached for a phone.
4:33 A.M. EST The two FBI agents reached Arizona Terrace and parked at the curb.
“That’s the Senator’s house.”
“All right. No point waking him up. Look, I’ll post myself in that open garage across the street. You stick here in the car. Anybody shows up, we’ll have them crossfired.”
“Okay.”
4:37 A.M. EST Riva parked at the mouth of Arizona Terrace and within moments the Chevrolet drew up alongside. Kavanagh at the wheel.
“Everything okay?”
“So far,” Riva said.
“You want to do this hit and run?”
“He’s got that plate-glass picture window in front. Just throw it in through the window.”
“I don’t know. It’s a cul-de-sac, this street.”
“I’ll sweep it first,” Riva said. “Give me two minutes.” He pulled out into the street and headed up the hill in low.
Forrester’s house was at the bottleneck of the street just before it widened into a circular turnaround. Riva drove slowly into the turnaround. Was that a shadow in the parked car? He looked again. Nothing.
Getting nervous. He chastised himself. It would take them a lot longer than this to get men out this far. Forrester was only a junior senator from an unimportant state.
He cruised around the loop and headed out again. Glanced into the shadows of an open garage; nothing there. The snowfall had let up, the flakes were drifting down singly. He drove back over the crest and down to the mouth of the drive.
“All clear.”
4:41 A.M. EST The FBI agent spoke low into the microphone of his car radio. “Somebody’s just cased Forrester’s house. You better get another car or two up here.”
4:42 A.M. EST Harrison put the satchel charge in his lap while the car climbed the hill. He set the timer for two minutes.
Kavanagh drove past the parked Plymouth and pulled in across the front of the Senator’s driveway. “Go.”
Harrison shoved the door open and stepped out. Started to walk up the driveway toward the front of the house.
“Hold it right there. FBI.”
Harrison turned slowly on his heels, twisting his head to look over his shoulder.
The FBI man stood beside the Plymouth, aiming the pistol casually at the middle of Harrison’s coat and making it clear he felt it was an easy shot.
The timing device was ticking. Harrison dropped the bomb and dived for cover but the FBI man switched his headlights on and caught Harrison blindingly in the beams.
Kavanagh was coming out of the Chevrolet with his gun but there was a wink of orange flame arid a roar from the dark open garage across the street and Kavanagh pitched onto his face.
Harrison got up to run—he couldn’t stay there, the bomb had thirty seconds at most.…
He felt the bullets thud into him but before he went under he heard the earsplitting thunder of the satchel bomb. Something whacked agony against the back of his neck.
4:43 A.M. EST The shots alerted Riva and he reached for the walkie-talkie. “Copasetik?”
When they didn’t answer right away he switched on his lights and drove for the mouth of the street.
A pair of cars came swerving into it. Saw him approaching and slewed across the pavement to block his exit. Riva turned the wheel and floored the pedal, ramming the Dodge up onto the sidewalk, heading for the open boulevard beyond them. But he had their headlights straight in his eyes and it was hard to see.
He heard the bomb go off. Something starred the windshield in front of his face. His wheels banged up across the concrete and the car was slithering on wet snow, the rear wheels shrieking. He spun the wheel to go with the skid and crashed into one of the cars.
He dived across the seat and got out the far door, rolling, bringing the silencer-pistol up. But his eyes were still blinded from the headlights and he couldn’t find a target and then three or four of them were shooting him from behind the lights.
5:10 A.M. EST Four Secret Service cars formed a convoy escort around the limousine and there were pairs of motorcycles fore and aft. Speaker of the House Milton Luke and his wife were surrounded by a flying wedge of security agents from the door of their apartment to the elevator, down to the ground floor, across the lobby, through the doors and across the sidewalk to the waiting limousine. The Lukes settled in the back seat looking aged and half asleep and showing the signs of having dressed hurriedly. Men were emerging from the building with the Lukes’ two overnight bags; more clothing would follow later.
The sirens climbed to a shriek and the limousine pulled out into Wisconsin Avenue.
The burst of engine power sent a hot stream of waste gases through the limousine’s exhaust pipes and the heat ignited the detonator of the hosepipe bomb. When it exploded it ruptured the gasoline tank and the fuel exploded.
The rear section of the limousine was blown to fragments and the passengers with it. The noise was audible thirty blocks away.
8:40 A.M. EST In the clamor of the war room Satterthwaite couldn’t hear the President’s voice. He went out and across into the private conference room and picked up the phone. “Yes Mr. President.”
The President’s voice was thin against the sound of trucks and helicopters and sirens that penetrated the frosty window. The Army was grinding its way through Washington.
“Bill, I want you to get over here as soon as you can.”
“Of course sir.”
“We’ve got a problem here by the name of Wendy Hollander.”
“I wish that were the only problem we had.”
“No you don’t,” the President said, and rage trembled in his voice. “I’d settle for every other problem we’ve got in preference to Wendy Hollander.”
“I don’t follow that, sir.”
“You think about it and you will. Listen, he’s over here camping in the Lincoln Sitting Room. I want you to try and get him off my back for a few hours until I’ve had time to get my head in working order.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Hell, I don’t care. Put him in command of a battalion of shock troops, he ought to love that.”
The President was showing his strain. After a moment Satterthwaite said, “You intend to keep pouring these troops into the city, sir?”
“I do.”
“I don’t think it’s necessary.”
“Well then you’re wrong,” Brewster snapped.
“The FBI nailed them all. There aren’t any of them left, we know that.”
“We’ve been told that. We don’t necessarily know it. And we’ve got to make a show of force.”
“Yes sir. But we’d better keep a tight lid on them.”
“Let’s worry more about keeping a tight lid on the crazies, Bill.” And the President hung up.
The net hadn’t yet been thrown; the roundup was not underway but nothing would stop the pressure for it this time. Milton Luke and Representatives Jethro and Wood and all their wives were dead.
Satterthwaite listened to the wail of sirens and the clatter of Army trucks moving through the streets and when he moved to the window he saw an armored limousine moving up Pennsylvania Avenue surrounded by jeeps in which soldiers were standing up with rifles and submachine guns leveled at sidewalks and windows; they looked ready to fire at anyone who moved.
He didn’t know who was inside the limousine; it could have been anyone, those who moved at all moved like colonial administrators traveling through revolution-torn jungle provinces.
The city was not under siege but it thought it was and perhaps that amounted to the same thing. The Army was reacting with the vexation of a laboratory rat presented with a no-exit maze: all ammunitioned up and no one to shoot.