Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (59 page)

 
          
A
huge, boxy-looking aircraft with two huge helicopter rotors mounted on the tips
of short fat wings—certainly not a standard little helicopter—hovered just a
few hundred yards in front of the Gulfstream, shining a large searchlight right
at them. It slowly began to descend onto the runway as a yellow-and-blue New
York State Police cruiser with lights flashing sped onto the runway, turning
around in front of the Gulfstream and parking about twenty yards in front of
the jet’s nose. A lone trooper got out of the car
_r
right hand on the
butt of his service weapon, partially shielding himself with his car door. On
the car’s PA speaker, he asked, “How many others in the aircraft?”

 
          
“Five,”
Mantooth shouted back.

 
          
“Any
armed?”

 
          
“One,
a private security employee.”

 
          
“Have
him,
Harold
Lake
, and Ted Fell step out, hands in sight.”
Mantooth turned and motioned toward the entry door—but instead of anyone
stepping outside, the airstairs retracted and the hatch closed tight. “I said I
want
Lake
and Fell out here—right now!” the trooper
shouted.

 
          
But
Mantooth wasn’t watching the trooper—he was watching the approaching aircraft.
He recognized it as a V- 22 Osprey, used by the Border Security Force for
stopping drug smugglers a few years earlier. A door opened on the right side
and several armed men got out. . . and at that same moment, both rear passenger
doors on the State Police car burst open, two men rolled out carrying
submachine guns, aimed their guns at the V-22, and opened fire.

 
          
Mantooth
pounded on the side of the Gulfstream and shouted, “Get out of here,
now!”
He drew his sidearm, but it was
too late—he saw the red glint of a laser aiming beam flash across his eyes, and
then the whole world turned black.

 
          
The
Gulfstream’s right engine roared almost to full power, and the nose did a tight
pirouette to the right, the left wingtip barely edging over the roof of the
sedan. Gregory Townsend, dressed as a
New York
State
trooper, calmly reached into the front seat
of the car, withdrew a LAWS (Light Antitank Weapon System) rocket, raised its
sights, waited until the Gulfstream was about seventy yards away, aimed, and
fired. The Gulfstream III bizjet exploded in a huge fireball, singeing the
man’s hair and eyebrows with the heat. Townsend dropped the spent fiberglass
launcher tube, ignored the heat, the destruction, and his two dead comrades
behind him, calmly stepped into the sedan, and raced away. He was picked up by
a waiting helicopter on the other side of the airport and was gone minutes
later with no possible pursuit.

 
          
The White House That Same Time

           
The bedside phone was programmed
with a gentle wakeup cycle: the ring started out soft and barely audible, and
gradually rose in intensity, depending on the urgency of the call as determined
by the White House operator. On all but a national defense-level emergency
call, the President usually needed three or four good rings to wake up—but not
the First Lady. At the first gentle buzz of the phone she was quickly and
silently out of bed, her lean, agile body barely flexing the super-king-size
mattress. By the second ring, without turning on a light, she had her Armani
robe and slippers on and was all the way around to the President’s side of the
bed. By the third Ting she had touched the
acknowledge
button on the phone and lightly touched her husband’s shoulder: “I’ll be
outside,” she said simply, giving him a peck on the cheek as he struggled to
shake out the cobwebs.

 
          
The
First Lady walked briskly across the bedroom, opened one of the double doors,
and stepped out into the outer apartment, leaving the door partially open.
Theodore, the President’s valet, was just showing a steward inside, carrying a
tray with a pot of strong black Kona and walnut- covered pastries for the
President, a pot of Earl Grey tea and cold cucumber slices for the First Lady,
and a small stack of messages for the President’s immediate attention. A Secret
Service agent stood by the door, hands folded in front of his body, casually
scanning the outer apartment and occasionally talking into the microphone
mounted inside his left sleeve, reporting to Inside Security that everything was
secure. “Good morning, ma’am,” Theodore greeted her pleasantly.

 
          
“Good
morning,” the First Lady said distractedly. She immediately snatched the
messages off the tray, sat down on the sofa, and began to read as the tray was
placed on the table before her and her tea was poured. Theodore had been the
White House valet for two Administrations now, and it was damned unusual to be
greeted by the First Lady when these early-morning crisis calls came in. Most
First Ladies stayed in the inner apartment and waited for the hubbub to die
down in the outer apartment and their own personal staff to arrive and brief
them—not this First Lady. She always got up ahead of her husband, never
bothered to dress before coming out, always helped herself to the messages from
the Communication Center, and rarely waited for her husband to come out before
making notes or phone calls or even going out to the Yellow Oval Room, the main
living room in the center of the second floor, to talk to the Chief of Staff or
whoever else might be out there waiting for a reply.

 
          
“Anyone
outside yet, Theodore?” the First Lady asked.

 
          
“No,
ma’am,” the valet replied.

 
          
The
First Lady picked up the phone beside the sofa. She heard the standard “Yes,
Mr. President” from the operator, silently suffered the gender gaffe, and said,
“Location of the Chief of Staff and the Deputy Attorney General.”

 
          
“One
moment, ma’am ... the Chief of Staff is en route, ETA five minutes. The Deputy
Attorney General is also en route, ETA fifteen minutes.”

 
          
“Ask
the FBI Director, the Attorney General, and the Communications Director to
report to the White House immediately,” the First Lady said and hung up. The
word “ask” was, of course, superfluous—it was an order, not a request. Besides,
the First Lady thought angrily, if the President had to be awakened, the damned
staff had better be wide awake and in their seats by the time he was up. “You
can go in and see to the President, Theodore,” the First Lady said without
looking up from her reading.

 
          
“Yes,
ma’am.” The Secret Service agent reported that he was leaving the door, then
walked briskly over to the door of the inner apartment, and went inside,
followed by the valet. Another Secret Service agent, a woman this time, took
his place at the outer apartment door and reported the room secure.

 
          
A
few moments later, wearing a short-sleeved college sweatshirt, jogging pants,
and running shoes without socks, his hair slicked back with cold water, the
President emerged from the inner apartment. “I really could’ve used another four
hours’ sleep today,” he said, yawning. “Is this a coffee call or not?”

 
          
“It’s
a coffee call,” the First Lady said.

 
          
“Great,”
the President muttered. “Coffee calls” meant he should have coffee because he
probably wasn’t going to get any sleep the rest of the morning. “What’s the
beef now? Not another Cazaux attack, I hope.”

 
          
“Bad
news and not-so-bad news,” the First Lady said, handing her husband the
messages. “A plane carrying a TV crew was accidentally shot down by the Air
Force.”

 
          
The
President shook his head in exasperation, reaching for his coffee and stuffing
a pastry in his mouth. “Ah, jeez ...” “It happened earlier this morning, but
the staff decided not to wake you about it until later—I think that was an
error in judgment. You should have been called.”

 
          
“I
agree,” the President muttered, not really agreeing with her—he was thankful
for every bit of sleep he was allowed to get these days. “What’s the not-so-bad
news?” “The FBI thinks they got Henri Cazaux.”

 
          
“Hot
damn!”
the President crowed. “That
ain’t not-so- bad news, honey, that’s
great
news! Dead, I hope?”

 
          
“Dead,”
the First Lady said. “Killed in a shoot-out at an estate in northern
New Jersey
, in a raid organized by the
U.S.
Marshals Service and Admiral Hardcastle.”

 
          
“That
Hardcastle is an arrogant sonofabitch,” the President said happily, “but I
could kiss him on the damned lips if he engineered that raid.”

 
          
“The
problem is,
we
didn’t engineer it,”
the First Lady said coldly. “We weren’t briefed by Judge Wilkes or Deputy AG
Lowe about the operation, so we can only assume that Hardcastle exceeded his
authority and freelanced this raid.”

 
          
“Baby
doll, I don’t really care,” the President said, “as long as that Belgian
bastard is dead. We need to get confirmation on this, and they better do it
quick—maybe we can get the morning news shows.”

 
          
“You
are
not
going to show this kind ...
of
glee
on international TV,” the
First Lady decided. “You are going to praise the FBI, the Justice Department,
Governor Seale of New Jersey—I’m sure there were some New Jersey cops in on the
raid too—and the Marshals Service for their efforts. No mention whatsoever of
Hardcastle.” The First Lady paused momentarily, then added,
“Except
when it comes to an explanation
of this accidental shooting of that civilian plane. The message stated the
civilian plane was at fault and that the pilot who fired the missile killed
himself by flying his plane into the ocean ...”

 
          
“Oh,
my . . .” the President exclaimed, reaching for a muffin now.

 
          
“.
.. and we’ll put Hardcastle’s fingerprints all over that screwup,” the First
Lady said, her mind turning to high gear. “This will prove that Judge Wilkes
was right all along: the FBI was better suited to solve this Cazaux problem
after all, and that Hardcastle’s plan to use military forces was a failure
right from the start. You see, we’ve got to wipe
your
fingerprints off this military idea.”

 
          
“It
ain’t gonna matter, sweetie,” the President drawled casually, sipping coffee.
“It’s over. We can go back to normal now.”

 
          
“What
matters,
dear,
is the political
fallout. You approved using Hardcastle, so it’s your fault if innocent people
got killed. We’ve got to portray that fucker Hardcastle as a loose cannon, a
maverick ... I know, we’ll put him up in front of a Congressional panel.” The First
Lady’s legal

 
          
mind
was turning; she was in full damage-control mode: “If Hardcastle’s a witness,
he can’t talk to the press. You may have to strip him of his authority, maybe
even fire him.” “That’s easy,” the President said, swallowing the last of the
muffin. “No one likes him anyway. What I need to do is get back on the
road,
honey. I’ve got an election to win
yet. Kemp and Bennett have been on the move in the east all during this Cazaux
thing,
Wilson
and Brown have been slam-dunking me on the
west coast, and Dole’s been in
Kansas
whipping up the midwest against me—I’ve
been stuck here in
Washington
too long.”

 
          
“I
told you before, hiding behind the trappings of power doesn’t look good,” the
First lady said. “If you simply declare the emergency over, some might say it’s
political. Let Lowe and Wilkes and the terrorism committee make a statement to
the press declaring the air defense emergency over, and have Hardcastle’s
office release a statement taking the fighters and the surface-to-air missiles off
alert status pending the investigation of the accident. The press will listen
to Lowe and Wilkes. When the press starts wondering why you haven’t gone on the
road yet, suddenly they’ll find you on a six-state ‘fact-finding mission,’
beginning in
California
. But let the staff take the heat. I told you before.” “I know, I know
... let public opinion make the tough decisions,” the President said. “Don’t
make headlines—embrace them.”