Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (24 page)

           
Hardcastle closed his notebook,
shook hands with both Vincenti and Gaspar, clasped Vincenti reassuringly on the
shoulder, and moved aside with Wilkes until the crowd passed her by, with just
a few of Wilkes’ aides remaining. The press had left, and they were alone. The
veteran Coast Guard flier extended a hand to Lani Wilkes and said, “It’s very
nice to see you again, Judge Wilkes.”

 
          
Wilkes
put her hands on her narrow hips, sliding her jacket open and slightly exposing
a shoulder holster with a small automatic pistol as well as a slender waist and
a firm bosom. With her sunglasses now in place against the hot summer sun, her
lips red with a touch of lipstick, it was hard not to notice that this tough
lawmaker and civil rights activist was a very beautiful woman. But, like Sandra
Gef- far, his partner and co-commander of the old Border Security Force and
other good-looking female public figures, Hardcastle knew that a very tough
woman still lurked under that beauty.

 
          
“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.”

 
          
“You
mentioned something about him on the way out here,” Martindale said. “What was
it again?”

 
          
“Vincenti
was flying F-4 Phantoms up in
Iceland
—this was just before Gorbachev came to
power,” Hardcastle explained. “He scrambled on a Badger bomber that he found
flying low-level across the ice pack. The Defense Early Warning radars were
out, but he did the pursuit on his own and shoots the damned thing down.”

 
          
“You’re
kidding! I never heard about that.”

 
          
“Hardly
anyone did,” Hardcastle explained. “Turns out the bomber was a rogue—a crew of
fliers sympathetic to Andropov wanted to start World War Three by bombing
U.S.
bases in
Iceland
. They had nukes on board, but they say they
never would have gone off.”

 
          
“But
Vincenti’s not a hero in this story, right?”

 
          
“Yes,
sir. Problem was, Vincenti never got clearance to shoot—no communications
between the controllers and the plane. Vincenti just went ahead and did it,
much like the incident last night. He gets a reputation as a hero with the crew
dogs, but a wild-dog reputation with the brass. The . Badger shoot-down is
highly classified—”

           
“But the Pentagon’s recollection of
Vincenti isn’t,” Martindale finished for him. “Vincenti can’t follow orders.
Vincenti likes to shoot first and ask questions later. Question, Ian: is he a
wild dog?”

 
          
“No,
sir, he’s not—but my reputation is not exactly fresh and clean either,”
Hardcastle said with a wry smile. “In my opinion, putting on my pundit’s hat
for a moment, I think it would be ill-advised for you to openly support
Vincenti. But I want to consult with him on a regular basis. He knows his shit,
and he will be very valuable to us and the Air Force when Cazaux tries to take
on the authorities again.”

 
          
“Wait
a minute, Ian ... So you don’t think this
is
a random incident?” Martindale asked Hardcastle. He was getting nervous
already—his high-profile military guy was thinking in a totally unexpected
direction, and with more press conferences scheduled for that day, he had to be
brought up to speed immediately. “Just bad luck that Cazaux hit that terminal
with a cargo plane and killed several hundred people .. . ?”

 
          
“Sir,
I can’t explain it, but talking with Colonel Vincenti, the F-16 pilot that
chased Cazaux’s cargo plane, I wonder if this is the last we’ll hear from him,”
Hardcastle said. “Cazaux is not going to dive underground.”

 
          
As
enthusiastic as they were about pointing out the inadequacies of the current
White House Administration’s military policies, the others in the limo were not
at all ready to agree with the former Coast Guard and Border Security Force
officer. The former Vice President ran his fingers through his hair in
exasperation. “Jesus, Ian,” Martindale exclaimed, giving him a tired smile, “I
pray you’re wrong.”