“Listen, Admiral,” Wilkes said testily, “let’s get something straight. I’m going along with this charade only because I’ve got you and Martindale and Wescott in my face in front of the press. Your Senate subcommittee charter is a joke — it’ll be nullified by the Vice President before the day’s out, and they might even pass a law banning all such charters by the gavel. You may not realize it, even Martindale may not know it, but all this is a sham. I know it and Wescott knows it. After that, you’ll be off this base and out of the picture — permanently.”
“That remains to be seen, Judge.” Hardcastle smiled.
“So what is it you want, Hardcastle?” Wilkes asked. “Is this just another publicity stunt?”
“No more of a stunt than trotting Colonel Vincenti out here in front of the press, accusing him of screwing up the mission, and then letting the press feed on him,” Hardcastle snapped. “I heard your press conference, Judge, and I think you’re wrong: Henri Cazaux is not just ‘a merchant of death,’ he is a homicidal maniac. He will kill anyone to escape, including himself. He has no conception of the sanctity of life.”
“Spare me. We have a full psychological profile on him, Admiral.”
“Then you haven’t read it, Judge — because it would say that trying to apprehend Cazaux would be a waste of lives,” Hardcastle continued. “He will slaughter anyone within reach before taking his own life.”
“The Bureau has dealt with homicidal personalities before, Admiral, and Cazaux is no different.” She sighed, rolling her eyes.
“He’s different, Judge, because he’s got access to aircraft, special weapons, and sophisticated military expertise,” Hardcastle said. “He can begin a reign of terror the likes of which this country has never seen before.”
“Listen, Admiral, I’m sorry, but I don’t have the time for your pro-military speeches — I’ve got an investigation to run,” Wilkes said impatiently. “We will deal with whatever he throws at us — and we’ll do it without using the military, without big, expensive tilt-rotor aircraft loaded with machine guns and guided missiles, without one-hundred- million-dollar oil platforms which are now gathering barnacles and rust out in the Gulf of Mexico, without blimps with radars on them, and without weird robot helicopters that crash-land every time you turn around. Unlike former so-called law enforcement agencies, the FBI doesn’t feel as if we have to harass and scare half the law-abiding population just to find one slimeball.” Her indirect jab at the Hammerheads, Hardcastle’s high-tech drug interdiction and Border Security Force, was fully intentional and heartfelt: Wilkes had always believed the military had no place in law enforcement, and that the rights of all individuals — the accused as well as the innocent — needed to be protected at all times.
“But let me remind you of a few things, Admiral,” the FBI Director went on. “This is my investigation. I am running the show here. I will not hesitate to throw your tail off this base and into a federal lockup if you try to interfere with my investigation while you’re part of this Senate probe. You are not to talk with the crews, you are not to talk with the commanders, you are not to talk with the press about anything you see or hear. Charter or no charter, I’ll have you arrested for interfering with an FBI investigation. I may not be able to hold you for long, what with David Brinkley and Larry King, your good TV talk-show buddies, on my ass, but it’ll be long enough to disrupt your TV schedule. Is all that clear, Admiral?”
“Yes, it’s very clear, Judge,” Hardcastle replied. “But I’ve got one thing to say to you. I’ve seen this once before. Agusto Salazar, Pablo Escobar, Manuel Noriega — they all thought they could take on the United States and win. Henri Cazaux will hide behind the Bill of Rights and use it to get what he wants. Don’t let it happen now. Use all the forces you have available.”
“You’re paranoid, Hardcastle. Why don’t you run for office? You’d fit right in.” She spun on a heel and stepped away from Hardcastle as quickly as she could.
The former Vice President’s limousine was waiting for Hardcastle, and he joined up with them a few moments later. “Well, how did it go, Ian?” Martindale asked Hardcastle as he sat down opposite the Vice President, beside Senator Heyerdahl.
“I don’t think she’s going to cooperate.” Hardcastle sighed. “We’re going to have to battle her every step of the way.”
“Too bad,” Martindale said.
Hardcastle said, “I think I scared her a bit, and that pissed her off.”
“Well, she’s certain to go to the White House and vent now,” Heyerdahl concluded. “Our charter will be history by the end of the day, after the press has gone to bed for the night.” She turned to Hardcastle and said, “Wilkes is a very powerful and very dangerous opponent.”
Hardcastle said, “She’s tough, and strong, and beautiful. The press loves her. But as tough as she is, Henri Cazaux is tougher. And in a battle of wills, his is superior.”
“How do you know this Cazaux so well, Ian?” Wescott, seated next to the former Vice President, asked. “You chase him when you were with the Hammerheads?”
“We’d received a bit of intelligence about him,” Hardcastle replied. “We thought he might begin working with Salazar’s Cuchillos pilots, using military hardware to protect drug shipments. Cazaux was trained to fly everything from Mirage fighters to Huey helicopters, and he was one of Europe’s top commando instructors. Cazaux never moved in, and I lost track of him when the Border Security Force was disbanded. But I know a few Henri Cazauxs, Congressman Wescott, and a few Agusto Salazars.”
“I have no doubt that you’d like to see every one of these sleazoids in prison, or better, at the bottom of the deepest ocean you can find,” Kevin Martindale said. “But let’s keep our ultimate objective in mind — to call attention to the current Administration’s piss-poor military utilization and lack of military planning. But we don’t want to look like armchair quarterbacks to the press.
“We’re here to observe, yes,” Martindale went on, affixing a stern glare on all of those around him in the limo, “but our attitude should be that we’ve got a better way. So the question facing us all during our trip here is simple: if we were in the driver’s seat, what would we be doing better? Faced with the threat from Henri Cazaux ourselves, what would we be doing that the current Administration isn’t? We shit in Lani Wilkes’ cornflakes by crashing her press conference, but in fact the President is doing pretty — much what I’d expect — call for a massive manhunt, order the FBI Director to set up a command center in the area and personally coordinate the investigation. So far, we’d be doing the same thing as the current White House residents.
“We need a specific plan of action, something we can point to and say, ‘The President should be doing this,’ and the American people lean forward toward their TVs and respond, ‘Yeah, the dipshit, he should be doing that, I’m voting for Martindale in ninety-six.’ Everyone got the picture?” There were nodding heads and “Yes, sirs” all around. “Okay, good. Comments?”
“Judging by Wilkes’ attitude, I’d say the Administration is treating this as a random, isolated, one-in-a-million incident,” Hardcastle surmised. “Focus of the FBI’s investigation will be the coordination of the federal agencies involved — actually, their lack of cooperation. Wilkes has already tipped her hand by trotting Vincenti and Gaspar out in front of the press — no doubt Vincenti’s record in Europe will be ‘leaked,’ and everyone will make the same conclusion — that Vincenti screwed up. The federal government, and the Air Force in particular, will take the heat for a screwed-up pursuit and needless deaths, simply to avoid a general panic.”