“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.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sitting in his room in the FBI dorm at the Quantico Marine barracks, Harrison Ronald Ford flipped through the Monday morning Post looking for the story about Ike Randolph’s body. Most of the paper was devoted to the assassination attempt. That and a minute-by-minute account of Bush’s life, including interviews with people who knew him when.
At first Ford thought it wasn’t there, but he finally found the story on page B-7, three whole paragraphs: Body of a severely burned unidentified black male shot through the head found Sunday morning by a military policeman on a routine check of the perimeter of Fort McNair. Well, that was better than the anonymous phone call idea, though Ford was sure that someone had told the MP to go look.
He was disappointed. Likely as not Freeman and the boys would never see this little piddley story, considering what great readers they were. The whole damn crowd didn’t invest a dollar a month in reading material. If it wasn’t on the top half of the front page and staring at them through the glass of the newspaper dispenser, they would never see it.
Maybe one or two of the TV stations had picked up the story and run it when they were momentarily out of George Bush footage.
He tossed the paper on the desk.
Nothing was going right. The grand jury appearance had been postponed, Hooper was out chasing assassins all over Maryland and northern Virginia, Freddy was unreachable at the J. Edgar Hoover Building. And he was sitting here stewing. Wondering what was going through Freeman McNally’s agile little mind.