“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.