Balance of Power

by James W. Huston

  “Yes, I know. Somebody at the Pentagon leaked the gist of the report to the press, basically saying we killed an American missionary, killed a bunch of terrorists, and killed a bunch of Americans. Not presented very flatteringly.”

  “What do you think the spin on this whole thing is going to be?” Dillon asked.

  “Hard to say. Unless we get your story out ASAP, telling exactly what happened and how our men saved the captain of the Flyer, took care of those terrorists, and rescued a missionary, the President is going to have the high ground.” The Speaker hesitated, not sure when to say it, but knowing it had to be said. “I want you to have a press conference tomorrow afternoon to tell our side.”

  Dillon felt a chill. “What do you mean, our side?”

  “The side that proves it was the correct decision. You know how this works, Jim. Everything can be presented to look good or bad. Everything. They’ve got their side out—making the Navy look stupid—and me, by the way—and now you’ve got to put out what really happened.”

  “I don’t know. It may have been classified,” he said, not knowing whether to tell the Speaker he had actually gone ashore.

  “Oh, nonsense,” the Speaker replied. “As soon as I heard you were inbound, I set a press conference for tomorrow afternoon at four P.M. Do you think you can make it?”

  Dillon grimaced. Hard to avoid something the Speaker had set up already, just for you. “Yes, sir, but tomorrow is Tuesday. I wanted to go to that Supreme Court hearing.”

  “You’d better be there. Grazio said he’s going to camp out all night or do whatever it takes to get a seat and he is going to save you one. The hearing is at seven o’clock A.M. I want you to be there. It should be fun.”

  “Yes, sir, I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

  Dillon’s body was out of sync with day and night, and his hygiene was out of sync with clean and dirty. He had lost weight on his quick trip to the Southern Pacific but still wasn’t hungry. He dressed in his best suit and put on a crisply starched white shirt and a navy blue tie with small gold diamonds. This would be practically the first day he walked out the door without a briefcase full of papers since he moved to Georgetown.

  As he was leaving he again noticed the stack of Posts. He hauled them inside and took off the top one. Bold black letters in an unusually large headline read:ROGUE CONGRESS? SUPREME COURT TO HEAR THIS MORNING. Dillon scanned the other front page stories. Below the fold were various stories on the Letter of Reprisal, the actions of the battle group, Admiral Billings, and the Indonesian terrorists. He put down that day’s paper and quickly scanned the front pages for each of the days he had been gone: “ROGUE CARRIER F-14S SHOOT DOWN TWO INDONESIAN F-16S, INDONESIA SAYS.” “MARINES STORM ASHORE ON INDONESIAN LAND WITHOUT PERMISSION.” “19 MARINES DEAD IN ATTACK ON ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISTS PRIVATE ISLAND.” The word of the week seemed to be rogue. A rogue battle group, a rogue admiral, a rogue Congress—rogue, occasionally interspersed with renegade. The Post must not approve. Otherwise it would use words like bold, or courageous. He folded the papers and threw them back on the floor.

  He walked out the door, locking it behind him. He rode the Metro to Union Station, the station nearest the Supreme Court, and walked the rest of the distance. It was just becoming light. Six o’clock in the morning, but he still hadn’t beaten a large crowd to the steps. The camera crews were already set up; the journalists were poised, looking for someone they recognized.

  He pulled up the collar of his blue wool overcoat to partially conceal his face without looking as if he were hiding. He made it into the courtroom with very little opposition. He was surprised, though, that virtually all the seats in the gallery were already taken. The clerk had opened the doors at 5:30 and journalists and other interested people had poured in. He saw Grazio sitting midway down the left side. Grazio saw Dillon at the same time and his face lit up. He waved at Dillon, who quickly made his way to the chair Grazio had saved for him.

  “Hey!” Grazio said, lifting his hand to receive a high five. Dillon slapped his hand. “You made it!”

  “Of course I made it. I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

  “No, I mean you made it back from the big war.”

  “Yeah, a big war. Fifteen hundred Marines against two hundred terrorists.”

  “Yeah, but they were bad terrorists. And most important, we kicked some ass.”

  Dillon was not particularly big on bragging about the operation right now. He could tell that a few journalists had recognized him, but he quickly glanced away so they wouldn’t be encouraged.

  Grazio was bouncing his legs up and down. He prodded Dillon. “So what was it like?”

  “What was what like?”

  “The carrier, the war, the whole thing?”

  “It was pretty amazing.” Dillon shrugged, trying to downplay the strike. “I saw a lot I never thought I’d see.”

  “That must have been really cool,” Grazio said enviously.

  “It was pretty cool, but then you realize that real people were getting killed and suddenly it brings it…”

  “Yeah, but they deserved it,” Grazio said.

  “Yeah, well, nineteen Marines got killed too.”

  “Yeah. I heard. What happened? They got a helicopter shot down?”

  “Yeah, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.”

  “Where did those guys get all those weapons? South African surface-to-air missiles? Silkworm anti-ship missiles? Shoulder-fired missiles? What is that?”

  “It’s unbelievable. One of the dead guys was Chinese,” Dillon said. “He was their expert arms acquisitions guy. He knew every arms merchant in the world apparently.”

  “I guess he did,” Grazio said. “What exactly did they have in mind?”

  Dillon thought about it. “I think this is the new terrorist,” he said. “Terrorists for money and power, not political gain. The scary part is, they fake the political agenda so they can use other people.”

  “So why go after an American ship? That’s kind of stupid, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. If they’d pulled off the bit about the Islamic terrorists, maybe they really could have gotten an Islamic movement going in Indonesia and forced the U.S. out of there. We’re the only ones who might actually go down there and try to clean out the terrorists—actually do something about it. So they insult us and try to get us to go home.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think they thought that one out very well.”

  “They would have pulled it off, except for the—”

  “Hey, that reminds me,” Grazio interrupted. “When we leave, check out the Capitol building.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just do it. Think high,” he said cryptically. Grazio continued to scan the audience for anyone he knew. “Hey, check it out. Here comes the big man.”

  Dillon turned around to see the Speaker and his wife enter the room. One of the Court officials escorted them to the front row immediately behind the bar and indicated two seats by the aisle. Dillon looked at Grazio. “What’s he doing here?”

  “Why wouldn’t he be?”

  Dillon shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know. I talked to him last night and told him I was coming; he didn’t mention he was.”

  “Guess who else is…”

  President Manchester strode purposefully from the back of the courtroom escorted by Secret Service agents and his wife. Another Court official indicated the front row on the right as his group walked and took their seats.

  “Manchester,” Dillon breathed.

  “Holy shit. This is going to be good,” Grazio said excitedly. “I’ll bet it’s never happened before. I’ll bet the Speaker of the House and President have never attended an argument before the Supreme Court.”

  “This is incredible.”

  “Notice how the Speaker is sitting on one side and Manchester is sitting on the other,” Grazio said with a smirk. “It’s kinda like friends of the groom, or friends o
f the bride. I could sure tell you which one of those guys is wearing the dress…. Hey, don’t look now…Molly’s here, looking for a seat.”

  “So let her look; she can sit wherever she wants.”

  Grazio disagreed. “Nope, the seats are all gone. Tell you what, she can sit on my lap.” He looked sideways at Dillon.

  Dillon stared straight ahead without saying anything.

  Grazio stood up. “Molly! Over here.”

  Molly walked toward him until she saw Dillon. She stopped.

  Grazio motioned for her to come over.

  “We don’t have any room,” Dillon said softly.

  “She can sit on half of each of our chairs, right between us.”

  Dillon looked straight ahead again, trying to decide what to do and what to say.

  Molly said, “Excuse me,” and stepped across his right leg, then his left leg. The back of her thighs rubbed against his knees and he looked up at her. He knew it was a mistake as soon as he did it. He saw her hair bouncing against her shoulders and he could smell her perfume. Grazio moved over, giving Molly about six inches between them. Dillon slid over to his right. The person next to him gave him a dirty look.

  Molly squeezed uncomfortably between the two of them. “How have you been, Frank?” Molly asked, shaking his hand.

  “Primo,” Grazio said in reply.

  “Hi, Molly,” Dillon said.

  “Hello, Jim.”

  The three sat there in silence and stared at the Supreme Court justices’ leather chairs. But the chairs could stand only so much examination. After a while, Dillon and Molly had to look at something else. She turned and looked Jim in the eye. He tried not to look at her, but was unable to stop himself. He tried to read her gaze. There was no anger, no hostility.

  The back doors to the courtroom opened and David Pendleton and Jackson Gray walked in together. Each indicated for the other to go through the bar first. David held the railing open for Gray and followed him through. Pendleton looked ice-cold. Gray looked angry and frustrated, but hopeful.

  Dillon looked for Pendleton’s associate, but no one was with him. He had nothing with him: no briefcase, no papers, no notes, nothing. That’s probably a first, Dillon said to himself.

  Gray pulled out two large black three-ring binders and set them on the counsel table. He then pulled out a smaller black notebook which probably had his notes for his argument and opened it in front of him. I’ll bet he’s been reviewing it all night, thought Dillon.

  Pendleton sat on the edge of his chair with his back straight and his hands folded on the table in front of him. He didn’t look to the left or the right, nor did he review anything.

  Dillon let his leg rest against Molly’s as he watched Pendleton.

  The conversation in the gallery died down as the minute hand rose. Finally, at exactly 7:00 A.M., the nine Supreme Court justices walked through the large curtains in the middle of the room behind the Chief Justice’s chair. The clerk of the Court preceded them. “All rise,” he said.

  37

  ADMIRAL RAY BILLINGS SAT ON THE ADMIRAL’S bridge and watched the flight operations on the deck beneath him. Two F/A-18Cs sat on the bow catapults ready to take off as the arresting-gear crew prepared the flight deck for the last daylight recovery of the long flight schedule. Airplanes circled the carrier in sections at their designated altitudes. Billings watched the fighters enviously and thought of the hundreds of times he had flown that circle. The air was clear in spite of the high humidity. Visibility was excellent and the sea sparkled with a silver blueness.

  Billings’s communications officer handed him a clipboard stacked with messages. Commander Beth Louwsma stood next to the admiral and read the messages over his shoulder. “Nice to be back up on the message circulation list,” she said absently.

  “Yeah,” the admiral said, “except now we have to read them.”

  “Yes, sir, the burdens of leadership.”

  “Had a chance to interrogate the prisoners yet?”

  “We aren’t really interrogating them, sir,” she said facetiously. “We’re interviewing them, checking for spies and the like.”

  “Of course.”

  “One of our cryptologists speaks Indonesian, Thai, and Malay.”

  “Excellent. Get anything?”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly, the subtle indication she was moving to a higher level of mental activity. “It’s very interesting. They seem to want to perpetuate this idea that they are Islamic fundamentalists, yet they aren’t Islamic at all. At least not in any serious way. We found all kinds of drugs and alcohol on these guys and not a Koran in the bunch.”

  The admiral’s eyes sparkled. “What else?”

  “Seems they had big ideas. We’ve gotten one of the lower-level guys to sing. All the leaders are mum, but this one guy—we promised him immunity”—she looked at him questioningly but didn’t see any response—“was ready to talk. They had set up this island which they hoped to build into a fortress. They were going to put in surface-to-air missiles and surface-to-surface missiles from about any country you can name. Their idea was to take their speedboats out into the strait of Malacca and threaten the ships that went by. If the ships agreed to pay extortion money, they’d let them go; if they didn’t, they’d either take the ship or sink it with one of their missiles.”

  “I get that, but what I don’t get is why they started off by attacking a U.S. ship. Did they really think we wouldn’t do anything about it?”

  “That’s exactly what they thought,” Beth said. “If they did the terrorist bit, the U.S. would be forced to withdraw from the Java Sea. We wouldn’t come back here very often because Indonesia wouldn’t want the U.S. Navy stirring up their Islamic fundamentalists. It was actually a pretty good plan.”

  “I believe that is called a miscalculation.”

  “I don’t know,” Beth said, “seems they knew our President better than we did.”

  The admiral glanced up at her.

  She went on. “If Congress hadn’t passed the Letter of Reprisal, they would have pulled it off completely. I don’t think Indonesia would have been able to touch them.”

  “Sure they could have. They have a large enough air force to take these guys out.”

  “They’d have to find them first. We never would have found these guys if our submarine hadn’t followed them.”

  “That’s true enough.”

  “Admiral,” Reynolds said from the other side of the bridge, “Admiral Blazer is on the radio; he wants to talk to you directly.”

  The admiral walked to the radio receiver. He looked at his aide. “Is it secure?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Admiral Billings here.”

  “Ray!” said a deep booming voice, which everyone on the bridge could hear over the loudspeaker.

  “Blazer, you lunatic, what’s going on?” Billings asked, smiling.

  “You read your message board this afternoon?”

  “I’m working through it now. They cut me off for several days, so I’m playing catch-up.”

  “I don’t think you knew I was sent down here to ‘intercept’ you.”

  “And what did that mean?”

  “Nobody ever told me. But unfortunately, when we got here, all the fun was over. Hell, I’d probably have been tempted to join you. Did you get the recent message from the White House?”

  “Negative. What does it say?”

  “It says that you and the entire battle group are to report immediately to Pearl Harbor.”

  “Roger that. Hurt me. Send me to Paradise. You call me just to tell me that?”

  “No. The interesting part is that I have been told to escort you.”

  Admiral Billings’s neck reddened. “Escort? For what?”

  “Don’t know. Just said to escort you back to Pearl.” Blazer’s tone was enigmatic. Billings saw that all those on the bridge had heard Blazer. “Well,” he said, “how about that?”

  “So,” Blazer continued more enthusiast
ically. “Consider yourself under escort.”

  “Escort aye,” Billings said, trying to sound chipper. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Think you could helicopter over here for dinner tonight? Maybe we could play some ace deuce.”

  “Not a problem.”

  “1800 okay?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Okay. See you tonight.” Blazer signed off.

  Billings put the receiver back and returned to his chair. He stared ahead of the ship as it plowed through the beautiful blue ocean, northeast toward Hawaii. He looked at Beth, who avoided his gaze. “Sounds like a setup. I don’t think they’re telling us everything.”

  Reynolds spoke first after the awkward silence, “Hard to say, sir. Maybe they’re going to put you in for a medal,” he said without conviction.

  “We’ll see.”

  “I mean,” Reynolds continued, trying to comfort him, “they should…” His voice trailed off.

  Beth spoke. “Admiral, you did the right thing.”

  Billings looked at her with warmth. “Whatever comes of this, it was worth it, Beth.”

  “Yes, Admiral, it was.”

  “Oyez, oyez, oyez. All persons having business before the honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States are admonished to draw near and give their attention for the Court is now sitting. God save the United States and this honorable Court. You may be seated.” Silence filled the room. You could hear the wheels of the chairs on the wooden floor and the squeak of the leather as the justices sat down. The Supreme Court clerks sat to the right near a large marble pillar. Bobby was in front. He looked at Dillon and Molly, who both smiled a friendly greeting. Bobby turned away.

  The Chief Justice wasted no time. He looked over his reading glasses at the attorneys. “Call the calendar,” he said to the clerk.

  David Compton, the clerk to whom Pendleton could now assign a face, read loudly, in his court voice, “Number one on the special calendar, Edward Manchester, as a citizen of the United States and as President and Chief Executive Officer of the United States versus John Stanbridge as an individual, and as Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America, et al. Please state your appearances.”