The Generals of October

by John T. Cullen

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry, I have something very important to tell you and you’ve got to give me a minute of your time,” she blurted.

  He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Then he pulled the door open. “Come on in.” He hopped slightly with each step to move so large a frame about. She’d had no idea he was so big. To millions of Americans he was a strong, fatherly voice, a face both powerful and kind. His features, a racial cocktail, were mahogany-colored and handsome. “Want a cola? What’s on your mind?”

  “Thanks, no. Well, I don’t know exactly how to go about this--”

  “You’ll have to be quick, because I’m due back--”

  “Okay. I think there is a plot against CON2.”

  He sat down, tired. “Why doesn’t some general tell me that, if it’s true?”

  “Because--” she choked up. My career will be down the drain and I’ll have nothing again.

  He stared at her.

  She felt a wrong chemistry and blurted: “Because there is evidence that General Montclair wants to destroy CON2. There was a computer file. We had written evidence, but it was destroyed in an explosion--”

  He popped a soda can that made a fizz. “You are either out of your mind or very courageous, or both. Are you a flying saucer nut too?”

  She became heated. “Your convention is out of control. Total chaos. You’re in this hotel, cut off and out of touch with the mayhem out there. There have been disappearances, murders, disturbances. Your own assistant was just murdered. Chairman, you’ve got to believe me. The military, I don’t know why, is against you and they’ll do anything--”

  His eyes widened. “Yes, I know that. Do you think I’m blind? These fertilizer patriots killed Vern. Their purpose is to intimidate me to stop CON2, which I shall not do. But these conspiracies gives me a damned headache. When will you people ever--?”

  “Sir, I’m not making this up.”

  He smiled broadly, and for a moment she was lulled by that smile’s warmth. “Okay.” The smile thinned. “Enough.” Anger seeped into his tone, and the eyes blazed. “Young lady, do you have any idea what thin ice you’re on?” His words whipped around her like cat-o’-nine-tails. “Do you have any idea of the scope and the concerns and the delicacy with which I have to weigh every action I take and every word I say? I have to be careful of every nod, every glance, every betrayed emotion. You know why? Because this convention, if it is to work, has to be a hundred per cent free of influence from the established government, executive, judiciary, and legislative; and especially the military! General Montclair was hand-picked by General Norcross and the President of the United States to head the task of protection for me and my convention. Do you know what my inclination is? To ask you to hand over your gun. To call Montclair and have him come over personally, arrest you, and throw you in jail.”

  Tears stung her eyeballs. “I wish you would not do that.” She felt herself badly failing here, and unable to save the situation.

  He rose and jabbed a huge finger in her face. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll think about it. Out of all this stuff that’s going on, reshaping this country, I will take a few minutes over the next day or two to deliberate within myself if I want to help you finish ruining your career or not.”

  “Yessir.”

  “This could mean the end of your career. You hear me?”

  “Sir?” Her knees knocked together. “I hope I’m wrong. I felt I had to warn you. I have a friend who--” She started to tell him about David and the Task Force, but he wouldn’t listen. He moved toward her, waving his arm dismissingly. “You poor crazy woman. Get out of here and hope I decide to forget this conversation. Go!”

  Tory walked out woodenly, pulled the door shut, went to the nearest ladies’ room, began to cry. Then she vomited. For a moment she felt utterly beaten and helpless. Then she remembered David. And hoped Jet had the file she needed. Her duty was not done. She was needed in many places, and she shoved the bathroom door open in a running start.

  As she did so, her com button sounded. “This is Dispatch. Lieutenant Breen?”

  “Yes?” She felt a thrill of fear.

  “Colonel Bentyne orders you to report to Top Five right away.”

  “Sure--what’s up?” Tory’s heart began racing.

  “You’d better come up here, Lieutenant.”

  “All right, I will.” She forced a bright tone. “Connect me with Computer Ops?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Tory rang off and tried Jet’s personal com. The dispatcher cut in again: “I’m sorry, that unit is out of circulation.”

  “Is it broken?”

  “I have no information.” There could be no mistaking the tone of menace in the dispatcher’s voice.

  Tory slowed to a walk. “I’ll be up in a minute,” she lied. She needed time to think. Was she imagining things? Had she really just spoken with the former Senate Majority Leader and put her career on the line? Surely this was a bad dream and she’d wake up any moment. She had sworn to do right for her country, for the Constitution.

  There seemed to be a lot of activity in the common areas of the hotel. Burly young men in distinctive blue-and-yellow camouflage uniforms waited in knots here and there, at corners and elevator doors. No females in that outfit! They wore subdued rank markings and carried weird assault guns that might have been designed by insect engineers. Some had unit patches on the right shoulder, indicating past combat service. All wore airborne-qualified patches.

  As she waited for the elevator down, she glanced outside hoping to see David. She saw only coils of barbed wire, parked trucks, troopers with rifles. The sea of olive green was spattered with endless repetitions of the words Military Police in black letters on white background, as in some schizophrenic dream.

  In the elevator, she took out her 9 mm. automatic, checked the clip, and put the gun back in her holster. She checked to make sure she had extra ammo on her belt.

  She met Jet in the doorway of the computer center. Jet looked scared as she shoved a piece of paper toward Tory. “That’s part of the list. I was printing to a spooler file when they cut the power off. It’s back up now, but I lost the rest of the file and all my other work.”

  “Thanks,” Tory said. She glanced down the list, saw Montclair’s name on it among others. That was all she needed for now. “Keep trying,” she ordered Jet. “Keep trying until you find the rest of that list!” She hugged Jet briefly, then ran.

  “Lieutenant Breen,” the dispatcher said from her collar com.

  “This is Breen.”

  “Request status.”

  “I’m near the elevator on the first floor. What is the emergency?”

  “You will be given that information by Colonel Bronf.”

  Tory remembered Colonel Bellamy, the Provost Marshal. She hadn’t met him, but David had told her about him. If there was anyone left who might help, it had to be Bellamy. She had part of the list now. Someone must believe her. The MP station and patrol desk were on T-3-12 on the way to Bronf’s HQ. She noticed in the lobby an MP sergeant she knew, and waved. He waved back, looking puzzled at the informality. She motioned, and he met her halfway. “Hi,” she said, “can I borrow your baton?”

  “Sure, Ma’am,” he said cheerfully and gave her the baton. She gripped the solid, heavy weapon in both hands, hefted it, tested the feel of its side-grip. The elevator opened for her as she walked toward it, as though some unseen eye guided it. She was alone inside as the door closed. Her mouth felt dry and her heart beat strongly as the elevator began its quiet rumble upward. Her stomach felt giddy, as though she were weightless. She held the baton in both hands and looked up as if she could see through the elevator roof toward her fate. “Lieutenant Breen, status please.”

  “I’m on my way up.” Something was wrong here. All the buttons from Floor One through Floor Thirty-Five were lit up. As she passed each floor, the light in that button dimmed momentarily. Someone had rigged the electronics. Was she trapped
in this elevator? Would they take her up to the forbidden floors? Maybe they already had David up there.

  Impulsively, she poked the baton against the red STOP button. The elevator shuddered to a halt. The cage rocked. The shaft echoed loudly with an emergency bell.

  “Lieutenant Breen,” a man’s voice said. “What are you doing?”

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “I asked first,” she said.

  “This is Colonel Bronf. I am giving you a direct order to report to me personally on the Thirty-Fifth Floor immediately. Do you hear?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Or it’s curtain time for you and the Army. Release the STOP button.”

  She reached over, held the button, tried to think for a moment.

  “I order you to release the button.”

  When no thought came, she pulled. The bell stopped, and the elevator moved.

  “Very good,” Colonel Bronf said.

  The Nine button flickered. Then the Ten button.

  “Keep coming,” Colonel Bronf coaxed.

  Eleven. Twelve.

  Impulsively, Tory jabbed the STOP button again. The elevator stopped. It rocked gently. The emergency bell again filled the elevator shaft.

  “Lieutenant Breen!”

  The door opened, and Tory stepped out into the lobby. Startled Navy and Air Force clerks looked up from behind the thick glass of the patrol desk. Tory stepped to the window. “Where’s Colonel Bellamy?”

  A Navy dispatcher, a slab-faced woman with kindly eyes behind thick lenses, looked panicked. “They already have him upstairs,” she whispered. “Get out of here because they’re coming to get you next.”

  Chapter 29

  Flights 1, 2, and 3 of the 55th Aviation Battalion (MAES) sat alert and ready on the flight pads atop Building 4 at Walter Reed. Maxie, in full flight gear except for the helmet, hurried down a first floor corridor in search of cigarettes--followed by the wide-eyed gaze of staff and patients alike--when a white-coated Dr. Paul Van Meeuwen grabbed her by the arm and yanked her into a semi-dark alcove. “Maxie!”

  She gulped air, trying to get her breath. “What--?”

  “Maxie!” He gripped her arms painfully and shook her. His face was contorted with need, even desperation. “I’ve been calling and calling. Why haven’t you returned my calls? That wasn’t me the other night.”

  She tried to push him away, got one arm free. “Paul, that was you. No mistake about it. Let me go.”

  “Maxie--”

  “I’ve had it, Paul. I’m not taking any more of your baloney. I’m a lady, dammit.”

  “I demand you talk to me! You made a commitment to me.” He grappled with her, trying to regain a hold of her other arm, the one with the gun strapped under it. She twisted to one side, repeatedly slapping his hand away. She had a wiry strength, and suddenly she saw him, as Tory had--a weak man, a bully, a charmer, a selfish boy who had never grown up. “Maxie, please, I promise--”

  “No! Let go. Paul,” she said through gritted teeth, looking right and left in the dim area. Passers-by were beginning to notice, “you can’t go grabbing people. You can’t have your way. It’s over between us.” She grew frightened, seeing rage in his eyes. He reddened and his jowls shook as something built up inside of him.

  She tried to back away.

  He put the fingers of one hand around her neck and squeezed, while raising the other fist way back and up high as if gathering to strike a blow that would surely kill her. The desire to kill radiated from his crazed eyes.

  Breaking through the chains of paralysis, seeing stars already because the blood flow was impeded in her neck, she kicked her steel-toed paratroop boot against his shin. Turning slightly, she raked the boot’s outer edge down along the shin, and stomped on the arch of his foot.

  Van Meeuwen yelled, and his fingers loosened from her neck.

  She kicked him on the knee, and he went down with a grimace of pain, holding his knee with both hands. In her anger--a complete rage, directed not only against him but against her parents, against the whole world that kept molding and compressing her into shapes that brought only pain--she pulled out the 9 mm. automatic and pointed it at him. She wanted to yell threats, but no words would come out. For a moment she wanted to pull the trigger. She caught herself, enraged to the point of shooting this awful man, becoming guilty of killing someone, and ruining her life in the process. She couldn’t do it. The gun faltered and Van Meeuwen’s scheming eyes were upon it, no doubt thinking how he could turn the situation to his advantage. A grin began to spread around his coldly handsome features as he realized her helplessness.

  Lights were going on, and she heard feet approaching at a run.

  Van Meeuwen rose limping, straightening out his long white coat. He took control with a cruel, bullying tone of efficiency and command in his voice. “You won’t get away with this.” It was the Reasonable Doctorly Tone.

  “Get away with what, Paul? Self defense?” she asked bitterly.

  “I am going to destroy your life and your career,” he said calmly, as if offering a lady a chair to sit on. He held on to the wainscoting and hobbled, grimacing.

  “What’s going on here?” a voice yelled from the corridor.

  Swiftly, Maxie pressed the button that dropped the clip out of her gun. She slipped the clip deftly in her pocket. In the same motion she tossed the empty gun high in the air so it would arc down toward him. “Here, Paul, catch!”

  Van Meeuwen reacted by instinct, catching the falling automatic to his gut with both hands in a beautiful football move, with a little sideways dance step and all, before he grimaced and caught himself again on the wainscoting. The gun sat idly in his hand, pointed in her general direction as he squinted down at his knee and gasped with pain.

  At the same moment, Maxie threw herself on her knees. She extended her arms in a crucifix, knees spread, sprawling backwards not quite falling. She wailed as loudly as she could: “Please, Paul, don’t shoot me. Don’t kill me. Don’t rape me. I’m not the one who stole your drug money. I would never report that you killed those patients. I’m innocent! Oh please, don’t do it. Spare me! I’ll never tell anyone about the dead bodies of all those people you murdered and dissolved in acid.”

  The lights went on fully, and there was Maxie on her knees, pleading loudly, and there stood Paul Van Meeuwen, sheepishly holding the gun. And there came at least sixteen MP’s in full regalia, drawing down on Van Meeuwen. “Hit the floor!” one bellowed hoarsely. “Drop the gun and dive!” the other yelled. “Down or I’ll shoot to kill!” Hammers were cocked with loud clicking noises. A heartbeat away from death, Paul dropped the gun. He hit the floor before the gun did. The MP’s manhandled him. One had a boot on his neck and pointed a gun at his head, while the other handcuffed him. Paul had a distinctly painful, unhappy, and very scared expression. Serves you right, Maxie thought.

  An elderly doctor helped Maxie up. “Are you all right, my dear?”

  She eyed the brigadier general star on each collar tip and realized it was the Chief of Surgery, Paul’s topmost boss. “Yessir. He was going to kill me.” Which was true. She could explain the details later. “I’m glad you all came to rescue me.”

  The general grunted. “I’ve had doubts and questions about this man all along.” He turned and said to the MP’s: “Take this man to psych lockdown for examination. Put him in a straight jacket.”

  Maxie said: “Sir, I’m wanted on the flight deck. It’s an emergency. Can I be excused? I’ll file my report as soon as I’m free from duty.”

  “Just leave your name and ID with the MP’s,” the general said, noting her unit insignia. “Good luck to you, young lady.” He shook her hand. “We’re all so proud of you!”

  Maxie’s last view of Paul Van Meeuwen was his crushed expression as he was led away under heavy guard. He was handcuffed and hobbling; the MP’s still had their guns drawn, no doubt ready to shoot him at the sligh
test sign of psychopathic violence. She trotted back toward the elevator. Dammit, and now she couldn’t make it to the PX in time! What a pain in the rear, this Van Meeuwen. In a corner stood a couple of grizzled old retired soldiers, white haired and gaunt. They wore hospital jammies and were on crutches. One ancient veteran was just about to peel a brand-new pack of unfiltered Camels with shaky fingers. Maxie waved a hundred dollar bill in his face and grabbed the cigarettes at the same time. “Here’s your C-note. Gimme them.”

  The old man smiled toothlessly as he took the money. “I was just about to quit smoking.”

  She ran to the elevators. “Thanks--you are a gentleman!”

  “I’ll gitchee another pack anytime!” he shrilled. “Anytime at all!”

  Within minutes, Maxie was airborne along with the full flight team on Flight 1. All three choppers were sent to a terrible accident at a munitions depot just outside Washington. It had been the main depot for small arms and training explosives for the entire region. Four city blocks were flattened and there were many casualties. They worked with civilian paramedics on the ground and bundled about fifteen badly burned workers for transport in land ambulances to a nearby civilian hospital. Maxie worked hard, ignoring the smells of various things burning, and the screams of the burned. Her flight suit was covered with stains--blood, plasma, tar, ashes. And tears.

  On the flight back, as afternoon turned into evening, Tom Dash made his clumsy, shy pass. Maxie was still in the bloody flight suit because she felt cold; it was drafty in the chopper. One of the other nurses had stripped down to her fatigues and T-shirt and was putting on clean flight overalls she must have brought with her. Another sat huddled in a blanket, looking as though she needed to sob but couldn’t--a new nurse, young, just out of school. Maxie, who had nearly ten years’ hospital experience at age 30, put her hand on the girl’s shoulder and stayed with her a bit. Tom stepped into the rear section holding a cup of coffee and walked directly over to Maxie. “Excuse me, Ma’am, but do you have any sugar?” He outranked her and could have called her Lieutenant.