He had no more than hung up when the telephone rang again. General Land’s aide was on the line. In a moment Jake was talking to the chairman.
“Sir, I’d like to recommend that we shut down the local telephone system. Apparently people are using it to plan attacks on the soldiers and on rival gangs. And somebody is trying to get up a rally for this evening.”
“A rally?”
“Yessir.”
“Bullshit. There’ll be no rallys while we’re trying to put a lid on things.”
“Yessir. I’ll pass that to General Greer.”
“You talk to Greer about the telephone system. If he thinks shutting the system down is warranted, it’s okay with me. Tell him I’ll back him either way.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Jake hung up the telephone and went off to find Major General Greer. He left the pad with his questions about Henry Charon lying on the desk.
His side hurt like fire. The pain woke him and Henry Charon lay in the darkness with his eyes open fighting it. He groped with his right hand until he found the flashlight and flipped it on.
The beam swung around the little cellar, taking in the supplies, the brick walls, the concrete slab ceiling.
He had gotten here at three a.m. after a four-mile trek through the alleys and backyards of Washington. He had successfully avoided the army patrols and a roving band of juveniles, but the effort had exhausted him. Never in his life had he been so tired.
With the pain of the wound and the cold and the wet and the exertion, he had wondered for a while if he would make it at all.
Now as he lay on the sleeping bag, still fully dressed in the damp clothes he had stolen last night, the pain knifed savagely through him, and he wondered if he could move. Only one way to find out. He pulled himself into a sitting position.
Oh God! A groan escaped him.
But he wouldn’t give in. Oh no. Using his right hand, he pulled the battery-operated lantern over and turned it on. It flooded the little room with light.
He eased himself around so he could examine the sleeping bag where he lay. A little blood, but not much. That was good. Very good. The bleeding had stopped.
The best thing would be to lie still for a few days until that bullet hole began to heal, but of course that was impossible.
In spite of the pain he was hungry. He tried to order his thoughts and prioritize what he needed to do. He seemed to be mentally alert. That was also good and cheered him.
First he needed to administer a local anesthetic. He got out the first-aid kit and opened it. He could use his left hand if he didn’t move his shoulder too much. The pain radiated that far.
It took three or four minutes, but he got a hypodermic filled and proceeded to inject himself in four places, above, below, and to the right and left of the wound. The contortions required caused him to break into a sweat and bite his lip, but the effect of the drug was immediate. The pain eased to a dull ache.
The roof of the old cellar was just high enough to let him stand, so he eased himself upright and stood swaying while his blood pressure and heart rate adjusted. He took a few experimental steps. He ground his teeth together.
He relieved himself into a bucket in the corner. He examined the urine flow carefully. Not even pink. No blood at all.
Food. And water. He needed both to replace the lost blood.
He rigged the Sterno can and lit it and opened a can of stew. While it was heating he munched on some beef jerky and drank deeply from the water can.
Still waiting for the stew to heat, he stripped off the clothes he was wearing. He pulled on dry trousers, but he left the shirt off. In a little while he was going to have to change this bandage. The wet clothes he hung on a convenient nail.
There! He felt better already.
After he had eaten the stew, he opened a can of fruit cocktail and consumed that. He finished it by drinking the last of the juice, then another pint of water.
Pleasantly full, Henry Charon lay back down on the sleeping bag. For the first time he looked at his watch. Almost twelve o’clock. Noon or midnight, he didn’t know. But he couldn’t have slept all day, clear through until midnight.
He pulled the radio over and turned it on. In a few minutes he had the television audio.
Noon. It was almost noon. He had slept for about eight hours.
He turned off the lantern to save the battery and lay in the darkness listening to the radio. He had the volume turned down so low it was just barely audible. He didn’t want anyone passing in the subway tunnel outside to hear it—but that was unlikely. With the military in charge of the city all work on the tunnels had stopped.
So he lay there in the darkness half listening to television audio on the radio and thinking about last night. He had heard that officer on the road talking to the soldier who shot him as he climbed the ridge away from them. Really, that had been a stroke of terrible luck. Shot crossing a road! He had damn near ended up a road kill, like some rabbit or stray dog smashed flat on the asphalt.
He sighed and closed his eyes, trying to forget the dull pain in his back.
Any way you looked at it, this had been the best hunt of his life. Far and away the best. Even last night when the soldiers were chasing him and he was hurting so badly—that had been a rare experience, something to be savored. He had been out there on the edge of life, living it to the hilt, making it on his own strength and wits and determination. Sublime. That was the word. Sublime. Nothing he had ever done in his entire life up to this point could match it. Everything up to now had been merely preparation for last night; for slipping down through the forest between the soldiers, for going up that ridge wounded and bleeding and digging like hell, for throwing himself down in the street and rolling clear with the bullets flaying the air over his head, then running and scheming and doubling back occasionally to throw off possible pursuers.
Most men live a lifetime and never have even one good hunt. He had had so many. And to top it off with last night!
He was going back through it again, thinking through each impression, reliving the emotions, when he heard his name on the radio. He fumbled with it and got the volume up.
“… has been tentatively identified as a New Mexico rancher and firearms expert. This man is armed and extremely dangerous. He is believed to have been wounded last night by troops in the District of Columbia as they tried to apprehend him. If you see this man, please, we urge you, do not attempt to approach him or apprehend him yourself. Just call the number on the screen and tell the authorities your name and address, and where and when you believe you saw him.
“Why Henry Charon apparently undertook to assassinate the President and Vice-president is not known at this time. We hope to have more for you from New Mexico on Charon’s background later this afternoon. Stay tuned to this station.”
Charon snapped off the radio. He lay in the darkness with his eyes open.
Not fingerprints. His prints were not on file anyplace. If they had his prints they had nothing. It must have been the drawing. Someone in New Mexico must have recognized it and called the police.
That conclusion reached, he dismissed the whole matter and began again to examine the events of last night in minute detail. After all, there was nothing he could do about what the police and FBI knew. If they knew, they knew.
Deep down Henry Charon had never really expected to make a clean escape. He knew the odds were too great. He had signed on for the hunt and it had been superb, exceeding his wildest expectations.
As the bullets had ripped over his head and the roar of the M-16 shattered the night, he had learned for the very first time the extraordinary thrill of coming face to face with death and escaping out the other side. The experience could not be explained—it defied words. So he lay here in the darkness savoring every morsel of it.
Eventually he would turn to the problem of what to do next, but not right now.
“These goddamn terrorists are in the District. You know it, I know
it, everybody knows it. The question is what are they going to do next?”
Major General Greer stood with Jake Grafton looking at the map of the city that took up most of a wall. Greer was a stocky man, deeply tanned, with short iron-gray hair that stood straight up all over his head. He had made up his mind to be a soldier when he was nine years old and had seen no reason to change that decision from that day to this.
He glanced at Grafton. He expected a response when he asked questions aloud.
“They can wait for us to find them, sir,” Jake Grafton said, “and shoot it out right there.”
“That’s option one,” Greer said, nodding. This thinking aloud was a habit with him, one his staff was used to. Jake was catching on fast. Over in the corner, Grafton noticed, Jack Yocke was taking notes.
“Or they can select a target and hit it. Or two targets. Possibly three depending on how many and how well armed they are.”
“Option two.”
“They can hope we don’t find them and give up the search.”
“Three. Any more?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“Me either. I like number two the best. That’s the one I’d pick if I were them. I suspect a bunch of civilians paid to get killed won’t do well just sitting and waiting.”
Greer sighed. “As if we knew. Anyway, if they take option two, what will be their target?”
Jake let his eyes roam across the map. “The White House,” he suggested tentatively.
“I have two companies of troops and ten tanks at Bethesda Naval Hospital. One company of troops around the White House and four tanks sitting there, one on each corner. Another company with tanks at the old Executive Office Building. Same thing at the Naval Observatory, where the Vice-President lives. Also at the Capitol on the off chance they’d hit that again, and at the Senate and House office buildings. What else?”
“I don’t know.”
“Join the crowd,” said General Greer.
“What about the Marine base at Quantico?”
“Where they’re holding Aldana? I think not. Chano Aldana doesn’t strike me as the suicidal type. They’d never get him out alive. I’ve given orders to that effect. That’s the last place they’d strike.”
Only half the city had been searched so far. It was going very slowly. The troops were being sniped at from locations throughout the city. Five soldiers had been wounded and two were dead so far. And the soldiers were shooting back. Eleven civilians were dead so far.
Greer turned away from the map and ran his hand through the stubble on his head. He sank into the nearest chair. “Did you want something?” he asked Jake.
The captain told him about the eavesdroppers at the telephone exchange and what Lieutenant Colonel Franz had reported.
“A rally?” the general repeated.
“Tonight.”
“Damnedest thing I ever heard. If it happens we’ll break it up.”
“I suggest we shut down the local telephone system. The people at the telephone company say it can be done. We know the people sniping at soldiers and other civilians are coordinating their activities by telephone. What this rally business means, I have no idea, but I don’t like it. On the other hand, I’m told the television showed a photo of the guy the FBI believe is the assassin on the noon news, along with a telephone number to call if anyone sees him. They’ve been broadcasting similar appeals about the terrorists for two days. If we turn off the phones, we won’t get any calls.”
“Have you discussed this with General Land?”
“Yessir. He says it’s your decision. He’ll back you up either way.”
“Haven’t had any calls so far.”
“No, sir.”
“This rally business, that bothers me. The last thing we need is a bunch of innocent civilians wandering the streets en masse with all these criminals taking potshots at people. Hell, if something like that happens it could turn into a bloodbath.”
Greer sat silently rubbing his head. “Turn the damn phones off,” he said finally. “I’m going to screw this damn town down tighter and tighter until something pops.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE Longstreet Commission later listed many factors that contributed to the violence that occurred in Washington that day. However nobody disputed the assertion that the black population’s long-cherished, deep-seated belief that they were victims of intentional racist oppression aggravated the situation and brought it to a boil.
Young males in street gangs—black males, by definition in the inner city—began breaking windows and looting stores, and when soldiers showed up, they threw rocks and bottles and everything else they could readily lay their hands on.
At first the soldiers fired their rifles into the air. When that didn’t work, they waded in pushing and shoving and dragging the most belligerent to trucks for transportation to the armory.
Automobiles were set ablaze by the mobs, which became larger and more violent as television broadcast the madness. Inevitably some of the people on the streets were killed by soldiers, most of whom were no older than those who were screaming insults at them and hurling rocks. A television camera caught one of these incidents and instantly it became a rallying cry.
General Land ordered the television cameras off the streets, but by then it was too late. A dozen buildings in the poorer neighborhoods were ablaze and fire trucks and emergency crews were unable to get their equipment to the fires because of the rioting mobs. Some of the army officers decided to use tanks to try to cow the rioters, but the immediate response was to fill bottles with gasoline and stick blazing rags down the neck. These the rioters threw. After one tank was disabled and two men severely burned getting out of it, an accompanying tank opened fire with a machine gun. A dozen people were mowed down. The rioters fled in every direction, setting fire to cars and smashing windows as they ran. The whole scene played on television to a horrified nation.
The smell of smoke and burning rubber wafted throughout the city under the gray sky. Although one could smell the smoke almost everywhere in the city, the rioting was confined to the inner-city neighborhoods, the poor black ghettos, just as it had been during the major urban riots of the Vietnam War era. This did not occur by accident. Over half the twelve-thousand soldiers in the district were being used to protect the public buildings and monuments of official Washington. Still, the vast majority of rioters stayed close to home of their own accord, fighting and looting and burning in their own neighborhoods.
Generals Land and Greer rushed troops to every corner. The only option they had was to continue to increase the troop presence until the situation stabilized. The search for the terrorists was abandoned.
As the sun moved lower on the western horizon, the temperature of the air began to drop quickly from the daytime high of fifty-six degrees. In the armory General Greer and the staff watched the falling mercury as closely as they did the incoming situation reports. Perhaps cold could accomplish what the soldiers couldn’t. Someone prayed aloud for rain.
With darkness approaching General Greer committed the last of his troops to the inner-city neighborhoods. Gunfire and flames still racked the city, but the number of people on the streets was definitely decreasing.
“Captain Grafton. We have a problem out front.” The young army captain was apologetic. “General Greer said he’s too busy and asked if you would handle it.”
Jake laid down the pen he was using to draft a report for General Land. “Yes.”
“It’s out front, sir. If you would accompany me?”
In the hallway the junior officer told him, “We’ve got some people out here, sir, who want their relatives released into their custody.”
“How many?”
“Only three. They had to walk to get here, and with the rioting and all …”
“Yeah. How many have you released so far?”
“We haven’t released anybody, sir. We send the curfew violators and single-possession cases over to Fort McNa
ir, but the rioters and looters and shooters we’ve kept here.”
“These people the relatives want, what category are they in?”
“A looter, a shooter, and a possession case. The possession case is a woman. She was giving a guy a blow job in a car and since they weren’t supposed to be in cars, our people searched them. The guy had some crack on him and she had some traces of powder and crack in her purse. So we brought them in.”
The civilians were standing by the desk near the entrance to the equipment bay. Two were black women and one was a white man. Jake spoke to the oldest woman first.
“I’m Harriet Hannifan, General. I want my boy back.” She was in her fifties, Jake guessed, stout, with gray hair. Her purse hung on her arm. Her shoes were worn.
“What’s his name, ma’am?”
“Jimmy Hannifan.”
Jake turned to the sergeant at the desk, who consulted his notes. “Looting, sir. He was throwing rocks through store windows. We caught him trying to run with a television. He dropped it and it broke all to hell and we caught him anyway.”
“Your son ever been in trouble before, ma’am?”
“He’s my grandson. Lord, yes, he’s been in trouble at school and he runs with a bad crowd. He’s only sixteen and wants to quit school but I won’t let him.”
“Bring him out here,” Jake told the captain.
“How far did you walk to get here?” Jake asked Mrs. Hannifan.
“A couple miles or so.”
“Pretty dangerous.”
“He’s all I got.”
“And you, ma’am?” Jake said to the other woman, who was younger than Mrs. Hannifan but not dressed as well.
“It’s my boy. He shot at some people. I saw the soldiers take him away.”
Jake was tempted to refuse. But he hesitated. “How far did you come?”
“From Emerson and Georgia Avenue. I don’t know how far it is.”
“Five or six miles,” the sergeant said. “Through all that rioting.”
Jake nodded at the captain.
“And you, sir?”
“My name’s Liarakos. I’d like to see my wife. The sergeant says she’s been detained for drug possession.”
05.Under Siege v5 Page 51
