The Last President: A Novel of an Alternative America (27 page)

“Reports are coming in now, sir,” Captain Fargo, his adjutant, said from the back seat of the jeep. “A pattern is emerging.”

“How’s that, Captain?”

“All the streets into the downtown area seem to be jammed. One of our scouts who surveyed the jam on foot reports that there’s a roadblock on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“Police? Construction?”

“No, sir. MPs, he says.”

“MPs?”

“Yes, sir. I have the other scouts checking their streets now, but I’ll give four to one that they find the same thing.”

During the next few minutes two more reports came in confirming the adjutant’s bet. “This,” the colonel said, “is a whole new ball game!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Notify the senior officers to get their collective asses up here on the double.”

“Yes, sir.”

Colonel Hanes paced in front of his jeep while waiting for his officers, hands locked behind his back, shoulders up, jaws thrust forward—the way he had once seen Omar Bradley pacing in some World War II film footage. When his officers were gathered around the hood of his jeep he stood in front of them and jabbed at the street map with his right forefinger. “New York Avenue is jammed for ten blocks,” he said. “Roadblocks set up by some MP unit. Half a mile of civilian vehicles piled up and no way to get around them.” He turned to his officers gathered around him. “You know our mission, gentlemen,” he said. “What do you suggest? We have an appointment with the President in front of the White House in approximately twenty minutes. I intend to keep that appointment—with your help.”

“What about sending some infantry forward to eliminate the blockage?” This from Major Morgan, the commander of one of the three heavily armed battalions that made up the Fifth Brigade.

“I don’t think so, Morgan,” Hanes replied. “A firefight would get all the civilians out of their cars and scattered from here to Baltimore. We’d never get the mess cleared up.”

“What do we do, then, sir?” one of his captains asked respectfully.

“We divide the brigade up into three elements,” Hanes said. “Major Morgan will take the first element along the B and O Railroad tracks, cutting off somewhere this side of Union Station and heading in toward the White House on interior streets. Captain Fargo will take the second and backtrack to Montana and around, coming in on Rhode Island. If it’s blocked at any point, jog to the left.” His finger stabbed down on the map. “If you make it to here,” he said, “where you intersect Massachusetts and Sixteenth, go in on Sixteenth, if it’s clear. If not, keep heading west until you find a clear street. They can’t have the whole city cut off.”

Colonel Hanes folded up the map. “I’ll take the third element and head in through Mount Olivet and over to Maryland,” he told them. “We’ll keep in close radio contact. Remember, the important thing is to get through to the White House as fast as possible and set up a defensive perimeter. If you find a thin spot, with only a few cars between you and a clear street, remember a tank will go over a car. It won’t leave much of the car, but that’s just a goddamn shame. Try to get the civilians out first before going over their vehicles.”

“What about the use of weapons, sir?”

“If those damn MPs get in your way, blast them. When you reach the White House, defend it. Remember, don’t take orders from anyone but the President himself, Mr. Vandermeer, one of their direct representatives, or me. I intend to beat you there, but in case I don’t, remember who’s in charge.”

“Yes, sir,” Major Morgan said.

“What about civilian casualties?” Captain Fargo asked.

“Try not to shoot civilians, but if any get in your way and refuse to move, you may assume they’re enemy force and treat them accordingly.” Colonel Hanes waved his hand. “Back to your vehicles. Let’s get out of this mess and go do our jobs.”

The scene was deceptively peaceful. There was a roadblock visible about ten blocks down Constitution Avenue, and the cars were backed up past the White House. But most of the drivers were being very phlegmatic about it. For whatever reason, there was surprisingly little fuss.

The Executive Protection Service guards behind the White House fence paced stolidly by in their parody uniforms and pretended to be unaware that anything unusual was happening.

Grier Laporte was slumped against one wall of the phone booth across from the van, the handset cradled between his shoulder and his ear, making notes with his oversized black pen on a yellow pad. He looked like nothing so much, Adams thought, as an anxious bookie.

The plan was proceeding much as Adams had expected it to. Colonel Green and his regiment from the Eighty-Second Airborne were not going to make it. Adams had never expected them to. In the world he was trained to operate in, the surface plan was what you fooled the enemy with. You might also have to fool a couple of friends, but those were the breaks of the game. Colonel Green’s regiment would keep the remaining two thirds of the Eighty-Second holed up in Fort Bragg, and that’s all Adams had ever really hoped for.

A coup is a largely mystical process, Adams thought, involving the transfer of an intangible godhead of power from one group to another. If the transfer occurs, regardless of the size of the force involved, then the coup is legitimatized and the fighting stops. And if everyone thinks that power has been transferred, then it indeed has been.

The trick, then, is to convince those who make the decisions—the great majority of noninvolved military, judicial, bureaucratic, and political personnel—as well as the television-viewing public, that, for good or evil, the deed has been accomplished. Even in a country as vast as the United States, the number of people required for success is astonishingly small, if the other factors are right. Within the next couple of hours Aaron Adams would discover whether the United States of America was prepared to remove a sitting president.

Laporte dropped the phone, leaving the handset dangling, and stomped across to Adams. “A couple of bad breaks. The President’s troops are on their way,” he told Adams morosely.

“Which troops?” Adams demanded.

“At least two companies of mixed armor coming in from the north. Fitzpatrick says he figures it’s a reinforced brigade—probably the Fifth.”

“Can he hold them?”

“As long as they can’t get at him, he can hold them. He says that when it occurs to them to use infantry to knock out the roadblocks, he won’t be able to stop them.”

“But even after that, it will take better than an hour to clear out traffic so the tanks can get through.”

“Fitzpatrick says that, too. He says they’ll probably try to go around.”

“Well, that will take an hour, anyway.”

“Have you heard the news on the radio?”

“What news?”

“Federal marshals picked up most of the members of Congress this morning.”

“Shit!” Adams said. “Not that it’s unexpected—but shit!”

“You expected it?” Laporte asked. “Doesn’t this blow the whole thing? Don’t we need the impeachment business? I thought that was the heart of the plan.”

“It’s like playing chess, Grier,” Adams said. “There are layers within layers. You hope the outer one will work, but you’re always prepared to play a deeper game.”

“Are we prepared?” Grier Laporte asked.

A faint droning noise came from the south like a distant swarm of bees, and a phalanx of troop-carrying helicopters dotted the southern sky and came steadily on.

“What you see before you,” Adams said, waving his hand toward the southern sky with the air of a smug magician, “is phase two of the master plan, otherwise known as the unexpected jab to the solar plexus.”

“They’re on our side?” Laporte demanded.

“I do believe,” Adams said.

Adams watched the approaching Marines. It was like watching a textbook exercise. The twenty-two helicopters from the
U.S.S. Guam
spread out into their prearranged pattern and began touching down, rapidly, one after another. They landed inside the White House fence, as well as in Lafayette Square in front of the White House and the Ellipse behind it. Battle-dressed Marines leaped from the great cargo doors of the Chinook copters and immediately began setting up a defense perimeter surrounding the Executive Mansion. Within minutes the full complement of Marines and their air-portable equipment was offloaded, and the copters then lifted off and settled, in neat rows, along the far side of the Mall.

Sporadic shooting broke out as some members of the Executive Protection Service and Some Secret Service men fired on the Marines. But General Moor’s training held; the firing was answered and stopped by the specific troops fired upon, and did not spread. Within a few minutes the shooting had stopped. Most of the EPS officers, unsure as to which side the Marines were on, and lacking specific instructions, retreated to the inside of the White House or the small guardhouses by the White House gates and awaited instructions. The Marines left them alone.

Five minutes after the first copter had put down, the tranquil scene had transformed into an armed camp, ready for battle. Squads of Marines covered each entrance to the grounds and the White House itself, and antitank squads and sharpshooters settled behind the statues in Lafayette Square. General Moor, in plain battle fatigues with no sign of rank visible beyond an almost palpable air of command, ignored Adams and set up a command post to the side of the statue of Rochambeau.

A contingent of four Secret Service agents came out into the West Wing garden to try to find out who was in command of the Marines, and just what they thought they were doing there. The discussion quickly grew heated, and one of the Secret Service men pulled out a pistol and waved it at the corporal he was arguing with. The corporal, a credit to his training, merely gestured toward his squad of men, whose automatic weapons were all more or less loosely pointed in the general direction of the Secret Service agent. The agent cursed, holstered his revolver, and stalked back inside the White House with his companions.

Meanwhile a squad of Marines trotted across the street to the Treasury Building to block off the far end of the so-called secret tunnel which ran from the White House to the Treasury Building cellar.

Adams checked his watch and nodded. Those things that could be controlled had been controlled. The game was well under way. It was time to put the last counters into play. From this moment on, as George Washington had said so many years before, the event was in the hands of God. He lifted the microphone of his CB radio and spoke softly into it.

George Warren found himself stuck in traffic on Connecticut Avenue, unable to approach any closer to downtown Washington. It took the better part of half an hour for him to work his Chevy onto a side street. He would have made better time on foot, and many around him seemed to have deserted their cars to do just that. But Warren could not leave his precious cargo. With many backs and cuts, occasionally driving along the sidewalk, he tacked his way toward the White House.

Suddenly, turning a corner, he found his way blocked by four deserted cars with flat tires—one of a series of improvised unmanned roadblocks that the MPs were creating as fast as they could between the oncoming tanks and their goal.

And then Warren found himself between the tanks and their goal, as two medium tanks came around the corner, blocking his retreat. “What the hell are you guys doing here?” he yelled. “This street’s blocked. Back up so I can get out of here!”

The tank commander in the lead tank waved a leather-gloved hand at him. “Get out of the way, mister,” he said. “We’re coming through.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Warren demanded. “I got to get out of here. Come on, back up.”

“Move it, mister!” the commander ordered.

This was too much. After the hours of fighting traffic, Warren had had it. He would simply have to go through on foot, lugging that mother of a missile on his back. He climbed into the back seat to pry the missile out.

The tank commander watched Warren climb into the back seat of his car, and then through the back window he saw the bulbous nose of the missile appear, and could just make out the shape of the firing tube behind it. “The son of a bitch has an antitank weapon in the back seat!” he announced over his intercom. “Move it before he gets it lined up. Hit that car!”

The tank lurched forward and crunched into the Chevy. The right track climbed the side of the car, ripping the door off and lifting the thirty tons of tank up onto the car. After a few seconds the tank leveled off, with the car collapsing under it. By the time the tank spat the car out from under its massive treads there was nothing recognizably human inside the mangled wreck. The ATX-3 missile was crushed and broken in half. The atomic warhead, safely nestled in a concussion-and radiation-proof shell, escaped major damage.

The second tank followed in the path of the first.

Christopher Young went to the Map Room on the ground floor of the White House and joined Colonel Kovacs and four of his Special Forces volunteers. They had entered the building early that morning and had settled in the Map Room, the room from which FDR had plotted the daily changing course of World War II. They had variously spent the time playing solitaire, reading paperback novels, smoking, dozing on the couch, drinking coffee—and waiting. There wasn’t much conversation in the room during the waiting hours; there wasn’t much to say. But there was a lot for each of them to think about in the mutually respected privacy of these last moments. These men were the hit squad—the enemy within—Aaron Adams’ secret weapon. Their mission was to arrest the President of the United States.

It was Adams’ theory that the longer they waited the more the President’s men would focus on the growing external dangers, and the less prepared they would be to handle a sudden internal threat.

And so they waited. The Eighty-Second Airborne came in and out of action, the 404th MPs moved about the chessboard of downtown Washington, the Fifth Brigade smashed through toward the White House, Miriam and her friends occupied the White House switchboard, the Marines landed on the White House lawn, and still they waited.

The CB transceiver next to Kit’s leg squawked into life. “Good morning again,” Adams’ tinny voice sounded. “This is Jubilee to Trojan Horse. Time for you Greeks to move out. Good luck.”

Kit got up and went to the door. Colonel Kovacs and his men came up silently behind him. As the one most familiar with the White House, and least likely to cause suspicion, Kit was the natural point man for the group. He opened the door to the corridor and stepped out.

There was nobody else in the West Wing corridor. Kit hurried along it, taking the most direct path to the Oval Office. Colonel Kovacs and his men stayed a constant ten yards behind.

Through one of the corridor windows Kit could see out to the L of the Rose Garden and past it to the great French windows of the Oval Office. There was someone in the Oval Office, but Kit could not make out whether it was the President. Here was the unavoidable weak point in the plan: they could not control the President’s actions. There was an overwhelming probability that he would remain in the Oval Office, which he seemed to regard almost mystically as the seat of his power. But if Vandermeer had talked him into going anywhere else, they had a problem.

Kit wet his lips and started forward. The door to his left was the Cabinet Room, and past that the short corridor to the Oval Office. Kit strode forward confidently, as though he belonged there, and turned the corner.

The President sat behind his desk in the Oval Office watching a squad of Marines digging in behind the Darlington Oak. “These men,” he said almost plaintively to Vandermeer, “they’re not on our team?”

“That’s right, Mr. President,” Vandermeer said. “But they won’t try to come in here.”

The ranking agent of the six Secret Service men in the room shook his head. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, “but we don’t know that. I’d feel much better, sir, if you’d come back downstairs to the command post in the presidential bomb shelter.”

The phone rang and Vandermeer turned to pick it up. The President looked at Vandermeer and then back at the Secret Service agent. Then he shook his head. “No,” he said. “Fifth Brigade will be here any moment now. Those helicopter Marines won’t be able to stand up to an armored brigade. And the television people are due. It would be bad for my image to be anywhere but the Oval Office in this time of crisis.”

Vandermeer hung up the phone. “It will be your finest hour, Mr. President.” He went to the hall door and opened it. “St. Yves!” he called.

St. Yves appeared in the doorway.

“I have a new name for you,” Vandermeer said. “Just picked it up downstairs in an intercept. It will interest you.” He wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to St. Yves. “Keep an eye out.”

St. Yves looked at the paper. “Son of a bitch,” he said.

“What is it?” the President asked.

“Administrative, sir,” Vandermeer said. “Detail. Have the television crews arrived yet?”

“I don’t see them,” the President said, peering out the window.

“Any second now,” Vandermeer said. This crisis will be resolved on national television. As I said, your finest hour.”

“Yes, it will be, won’t it? The President of the United States directing an armored brigade against a bunch of traitors. It will be living proof that I’ve been right all along. That they’ve been plotting against me. That I was right in postponing the elections.” He slapped Vandermeer on the back. “You planned it this way, didn’t you? A real crisis. You’ve always—” He broke off as gunfire sounded in the outside hall. “What was that?” he demanded.

St. Yves was standing by the door to the Oval office with four Secret Service men when Kit rounded the corner. “Morning, St. Yves,” Kit said, nodding. “Is the President in?”

St. Yves eyed him for a moment, and then extended his right arm rigidly, pointing an accusing finger at Kit. “You’re a traitor,” he said. “You’re one of the enemy.”

“What are you talking about?” Kit demanded, his heart pounding even faster.

“We just found out,” St. Yves said. “You’re one of the bastards—get him!”

The Secret Service agents reached in unison for their guns, and Kit dove back around the bend of the corridor. Four shots boomed through the narrow hall. Four slugs passed through the space Kit had just vacated and buried themselves in the pastel-blue wall, gouging out craters of white plaster to mark their entrance.

Cursing St. Yves, Kit backed up into the protection of the Cabinet Room doorframe and drew his gun. What, he wondered, had gone wrong? How much did St. Yves know? Colonel Kovacs and his men silently scattered into other doorways or behind pieces of furniture in the long corridor.

After a few seconds, a Secret Service man, his head at baseboard level, peered around the corner. Two quick shots from Kovacs’ men caused him to withdraw hastily. Kovacs darted from doorway to doorway until he reached Kit. “We’ll have to rush them to get by,” he whispered. “And the longer we wait, the readier they’ll get.”

“You’re right,” Kit agreed. “We seem to have lost the element of surprise.”

“What are you waiting for?” Vandermeer barked at the Secret Service agents in the Oval Office. “Get out there and help the men in the corridor!”

“Our job is to stay with the President,” the senior agent protested.

“Your job is to protect the President,” Vandermeer said, tightly controlled rage sounding in his voice. “And the threat to the President is out there, not in here. Having a divided force will just make it easier for them to take you in two batches.”

“Vandermeer is right,” the President screamed. “Get out there and stop them!”

The senior agent looked from the President to the door, and then made up his mind. “I’ll go out,” he said. “Hoskins, Malzberg, Pronzini; you come with me. Lynn, you and Randall stay in here.” And he headed for the door, beyond which a suspicious quiet awaited.

“You think I’ll be safe here, Vandermeer?” the President asked. “I’m not concerned with my personal safety, you understand, but for the good of the country the President must be kept safe.”

“I’ve been preparing for this moment,” Vandermeer said. “I made ready.”

“How’s that?” the President asked. The staccato cough of a rapid-fire gun riveted their attention to the door for a second.

Vandermeer turned to the two remaining Secret Service agents. “Cover the door from the inside,” he told them. Reaching under his jacket, he pulled out a small revolver that had been stuck in his waistband. “It’s time to make our move,” he said, turning back to his chief.

“Move?” the President asked. He was standing behind his great desk, looking uncertain.

“The most dramatic move, Mr. President,” Vandermeer told him. “The best PR. This will do it.”

“What will it do?”

“There’s a small two-seat helicopter sitting out in the Rose Garden, right on the other side of the French doors,” he said. “I’m going to get you out of here in it.”

“Running away?” the President said. “Wouldn’t that be running away?”

“No, sir,” Vandermeer said. “I’ll land you in the middle of the Fifth Brigade, and you’ll take command of the troops and smash the coup. Yourself. Personally. On national television.”

The President thought it over. “I like it,” he said.

“I was sure you would.”

“Let’s go!” the President said.

In the corridor, St. Yves and the Secret Service agents tipped over a heavy desk that sat to the right of the Oval Office door. Most of them crouched behind it, while St. Yves and one of the agents flattened themselves against the door to the Roosevelt Room across the hall.

Colonel Kovacs cocked his Mauser machine pistol and nodded at two of his men. They began a heavy covering fire and, under its protection, Kovacs and then Kit dived across the T of the corridor and rolled to their feet on the other side. Kit felt clumsy and exposed, but he made it across.

They waited exactly thirty seconds by Kovacs’ watch, and then they rushed the hall from both sides, setting up a continuous barrage of fire as they came. The Secret Service agents fired back, resting their revolvers on top of the overturned desk, and St. Yves snapped off shot after shot with the calm imperturbability of a sailor in a shooting gallery.

The firefight lasted less than a minute, at the end of which the small corridor was strewn with bodies. The superior firepower of the Mauser machine pistols that Kit had smuggled in in the trunk of his car had made the difference. As the last shot was fired, Colonel Kovacs and two of his men were down, along with four of the Secret Service men. Another Secret Service man, with a bullet in his shoulder, was desperately trying to reload his revolver with one hand until Kit knocked the weapon aside. St. Yves and the agent who was with him had disappeared inside the Roosevelt Room and closed the door behind them.

Kit had no time to consider St. Yves: his job was to get into the Oval Office. With the two standing Special Forces men behind him, he kicked the door open and dived into the room.

The two Secret Service men in the room were flanking the door, and they fired simultaneously at Kit as he burst through. Then the Special Forces men shoved machine pistols in their ribs, and they reluctantly dropped their guns.

Kit got to his feet. The President and Vandermeer were by the French windows. Vandermeer was trying to open one with one hand while he kept a small pistol in the other.

“Hold it right there,” Kit said. He raised his pistol, trying for the two-handed, FBI stance. When his left arm wouldn’t obey his instructions to raise, he realized he had been hit. No time to think about it now. “Mr. President, in the name of the Congress and the people of the United States, I am placing you under house arrest.”

“You son of a bitch!” Vandermeer screamed. “You’re not going to stop me now!” He raised his pistol; but he was pointing it at the President, not at Kit.

“What’s this?” the President said, in a choked voice.

“This is for Kathy,” Vandermeer said.

Two shots sounded together. The President spun and fell on his face. Vandermeer dropped his gun, clutching his shoulder where Kit’s bullet had entered, and staggered out the French window.

Everyone in the office, weapons and antagonisms forgotten, rushed over to the fallen President.

One of the Secret Service men rolled him over and propped him up. He opened one eye and looked down at his chest, covered with a spreading red blotch.

St. Yves went out through the window of the Roosevelt Room in time to see Vandermeer dashing for the helicopter.

“What’s happened?” he demanded, intercepting Vandermeer by the copter door. “Where’s the Chief?”

“Dead,” Vandermeer said. “Get in.”

“Jesus!” St. Yves exclaimed. He climbed into the helicopter. “You sure you can fly this thing?” he asked. “Looks like you’ve been hit.”

“Minor,” Vandermeer said. “Flesh wound. I’ll make it for long enough.”

As the small helicopter climbed into the air over the White House, St. Yves transferred his interest to the scene below. “There’s a column of tanks arriving,” he said. “Right down F Street. About goddamn time. Johnny-on-the-spot-Hanes sure as hell didn’t make it this time. Who got the Chief?”

“Me,” Vandermeer said.

“Who?”

“Me,” Vandermeer repeated.

St. Yves stared at him. His mouth opened but no words came out.

The copter hovered over the Ellipse as the tanks moved up South Executive Place and continued around until they had partially surrounded the White House. A second column of tanks came into view, heading up Fourteenth Street to join them. Now there was a battalion of Marines dug in around the White House facing an armored brigade, which surrounded them around the outside. Neither side seemed to have any idea of what to do next.

“Some kind of joke?” St. Yves demanded, staring at Vandermeer. “You offed the President?”

“I’ve known for a long time,” Vandermeer said, “what I had to do. I wanted him up here with me, but perhaps this is better. You and I together, St. Yves; the right and left hand—after the head.”

“I don’t follow,” St. Yves said, his voice very calm, as if he were talking to a child. “Perhaps you’d better land this thing so you can explain it to me.”

“I wanted to get him alone up here,” Vandermeer said, “to talk about the past.”

“Past?”

“The whole thing,” Vandermeer said. “The way it grew, step by step. Until we—all of us—ended up somewhere that none of us were ever headed for. Did you ever get that feeling, St. Yves?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” St. Yves said, staring across at Vandermeer. He noticed that Vandermeer’s left sleeve was saturated with blood, but it didn’t seem to affect his handling of the craft.

“Responsibility,” Vandermeer said. “I’m talking about responsibility.” The little helicopter dipped back over the White House. Below, more and more tiny white and black faces, framed by olive-green helmets, stared up at them as they passed.

“I think you need help,” St. Yves said. “You’ve been under strain. You wouldn’t really shoot the President.”

“‘Some say the world will end in fire’,” Vandermeer quoted softly, “some say in ice.’ Our world, Edward, is ending in fire. Don’t you feel that?”

“I don’t think so, Billy,” St. Yves said as calmly as he could. “Land this thing and then let’s talk about it.”

“Look down,” Vandermeer said. “That used to be the Capitol. Where Kathy died. The President has joined her. And now we shall.”

“You’re crazy!” St. Yves said, thoroughly alarmed. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“The Washington Monument, I think,” Vandermeer said. “That would be appropriate.”

St. Yves grabbed for the control rod, but Vandermeer pushed him aside and steered the tiny craft toward the tall spire of the Washington Monument a few thousand feet away. “It’s no use,” he said. “You can’t fly this anyway.”

Down below, the zoom lenses of the television cameras focused on the scene as the two men fought for control of the helicopter. The machine wavered and dipped across the sky as they struggled; one fighting desperately for his life, the other fighting calmly for their death.

Slowly but inevitably the copter headed back across the Mall toward the observers. Then, as those below watched in horror, the little craft darted toward the five-hundred-and-fifty-five-foot spire of the Washington Monument. It crashed two-thirds of the way up and bounced off the rough stone side. A human figure was flung away from the spiraling copter like a rag doll and plummeted to earth. The copter followed, weaving and bucking like a wounded bird, finally falling into the reflecting pool and bursting into flame.