The Generals of October

by John T. Cullen

  ALLISON MIRANDA: We briefly stopped broadcasting while we relocated to the emergency broadcast center in an old fallout shelter in the basement of a location I am not at liberty to disclose. I can tell you that we were acting on rumors that commandos were en route to take over the station. We are under heavy police and military security at this very moment. Many of the major transmitting towers in the Washington, D.C. area have been knocked out, and we are transmitting on special Civil Defense bands. We will continue broadcasting as long as we are able.

  We’ll continue updating you on all the tragic stories pouring in as I speak. There is pandemonium in the Atlantic Hotel as commandos under orders from General Montclair have sealed off all entrances to the building. Trapped inside are most of the delegates to CON2 as well as many members of the press. Details are sketchy.

  General Robert Montclair has sent a taped communique, which he asked us to play over the air. After some discussion, our bureau chief agreed to play the tape, only for its newsworthiness, and you will read a disclaimer across the picture, that this is not the official view of either the Pentagon or the White House, nor of ANN.

  MONTCLAIR: Sometimes in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for people of good moral fiber to stand up against a government that has been taken over by liberals, homosexuals, socialists, foreign agents, and criminal elements. For too long, we solid American citizens have sat back and let crime rule our streets. We have let the greedy rob us in the financial market place. We have been taxed out of our homes. We have sent our children to schools where they were taught they were descended from monkeys, taught homosexual practices, handed needles and condoms and told how to use them. We have had our guns taken away, seen the Bible thrown out of schools, prayer banned, and atheism promoted. Finally, in this hotel, we have seen the death sentence handed to the Constitution. For weeks now, I and my fellow loyal U.S. military officers and a committee of clergymen, business leaders, and elected officials have watched the Constitution gutted. We have watched the compromise of weak and ineffective amendments replaced by a carload of contradictory, radical, and dangerous ideas. They have made their convention illegal and un-American. To all of that we now say, enough. We stand at a decisive crossroads, and there is no way back. I repeat, no way back. The old constitution became a dead item the minute this convention opened. The convention itself has fallen apart and is incapable of producing a new constitution. In the absence, therefore, of a legal constitution, it is necessary for men of good will now to take charge and put this nation back on course. It is time to produce a carefully crafted new constitution put together by the wisest and most Christian clergy, business leaders, elected officials, and other responsible persons. As we assert our rightful control, we will for a very short time freeze all government activities so that that great task can be completed. I ask you all to join with us in creating a new, free, conservative, non-baby murdering, family oriented, gun-owning America in which those who push drugs, liberalism, crime, abortion, queerness, evolutionism, and other bad ideas will be swiftly and severely dealt with. My friends, your daughters will be safe, you can leave your doors open at night, and you will all be heroes in this glorious quest. The top military figures in the nation are fully on the side of this peaceful action. I now call upon General Norcross and all the members of active duty military to join us in this sacred quest.

  ALLISON: There you have it, the taped communique from General Montclair and the Hotel Generals.

  We have this important breaking story from Chicago. Police have confirmed that a body found in a parked car in a garage in a very posh downtown men’s club is that of Robert Lee Hamilton, the eccentric billionaire who founded the Middle Class Party. Details are sketchy at this point, but Hamilton may have been kidnapped while eating alone in a secluded dining room, as reportedly was his custom. The slaying appears to have been execution style. No further details are available at the moment, but we will be following this major breaking story throughout the day

  World financial markets reacted with shock to the ongoing coup attempt in our nation’s capital. After a chaotic opening session with heavy volume, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has halted trading until stability is restored in Washington. Around the world, the story is about the same. ANN Business Editor Walter Golob says world commerce is reeling as financial centers around the world are dumping their dollars and central banks are buying dollars in an attempt to shore up the world’s currency stability. At this moment, the building housing stock market in Shanghai is actually burning out of control. It was set ablaze by investors angry that the Republic of China has shut down trading.

  Chapter 38

  The elevator shot downward and ground to a stop on the 15th floor. The car was locked into position. A bell rang loudly for a moment, boots tromped off, then fell silent. They were alone. In the stuffy silence, they communicated in whispers.

  David said: “Down five more floors before we reach the connecting tunnels to Tower 2 and Tower 1.”

  “Let’s wait it out,” Mattoon said. “I’m so terrified I don’t know if I can ever let go of this bench and stand up.”

  “So far so good,” David said. “I’m just glad it stopped moving.”

  “Could we hop out here? Ease down into the car and split?”

  “I wouldn’t take the chance.” Inwardly, he wondered how they’d get off. Looking up, he saw a service platform, but it was ten feet up and four feet across the abyss. As he pondered this, his hands encountered something hard. He looked closer in the dim light, and made out a hand-held control box on a cable. He lifted it, grinning. “Look, Sir. I’ll have you out of here in a minute.” The control box had buttons to make it go up or down, faster or slower. A technician was supposed to be able to ride the thing up and down while repairing the pulleys and what not, and he couldn’t very well reach the buttons inside. David grinned as he pushed green. The car lurched. “Oh Jesus, My Lord and Savior,” Mattoon said, looking terrified. Another button, and the car began moving down. Touching a bar on the side made it go faster. But only so fast. Inching down, the car slowly, slowly descended. To the 14th Floor.

  “Oh my God,” David said looking up. “The door is still open on the floor.”

  “Hope they don’t step without looking,” Mattoon said as 14 passed by. “Not that I care about them, but if they land on us--”

  They just reached 13 when someone shouted above: “Hey! The elevator’s gone.” Someone else shouted: “Look, there’s people on top!” Another voice: “Call downstairs. Get people on every floor, every door. It’s them! We got them!” Floor 12 passed with agonizing slowness. A crowbar thrust through the Floor 12 door’s rubber center buffers, without effect, and the crowbar withdrew. “We’ll get ‘em on the next floor,” a man said coldly as if hunting squirrels.

  “Can’t we cut the power?” someone else asked.

  “We’re on emergency power; we’d cut the lights too. Can’t do it.”

  David had a sudden inspiration. Handing the controls to Mattoon, he reached across the roof and grasped an exposed yellow cord, evidently providing power to something. He gave a yank, and the cord came free just as the car reached 11.

  The car came to a dead stop.

  “You cut the power,” Mattoon whispered. “Oh God what now!”

  The crowbar pried through the rubber again, and a raw-knuckled hand reached in. David touched the thick twist of exposed copper wire at the end of the yellow cord to the crow bar. There was a popping sound and a smell of smoke. The crowbar fell clattering down the shaft, bouncing this way and that. On the other side, a group of men were cursing and wailing, stung by 220 volts and enough amps to drive a powerful engine.

  David and Mattoon fumbled the cord back into its connector. There was a burst, a puff of smoke, but thankfully no fuse out. The elevator began to drop again. At the 10th floor, the commandos had the door open and were waiting in a flurry of flashlights. “There!” one shouted. “Hop on and get them alive!”<
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  David kept the elevator moving. There was no escape if they went up--just minutes of agonized waiting for the commandos to come and get them. As the elevator car rumbled past the floor, three men leapt into the void. Two landed on the car, one with his boot on David’s hand. A third one grunted, groaned, tried to hang on, and then fell flailing with a long sickening scream that came to a soggy ending many seconds later. David pulled the power cord out of its connector and thrust it against the closer man’s thigh. The elevator stopped. There was a rush of smoke, a scream, a stench of burned flesh, and the man collapsed on top of David. The other man had a knife in his hand and was bending over to stab Mattoon. As he raised the knife, David applied the power to his back.

  Nothing. This time the fuse must have tripped and the elevator wouldn’t move. David reached over and slid the knife wielder’s gun from his holster. The knife-wielder couldn’t quite see in the dark, and kept moving his head, trying to focus on his target. David slid the safety off and shot the man in the torso. Mattoon pulled down the sagging body and propelled it on a silent journey into darkness.

  “Get some lights in here!” a voice yelled above.

  David pulled on a lever that released a mechanical brake, and sent the elevator into a slow, jerky, powerless descent. Mattoon tucked the other gun into his belt. Just before the 9th floor, a service shaft opened up. As the men above beamed a light down, David and Mattoon leaped across onto a shelf like the one they’d been on near the 30th floor.

  “They’re in the service shafts!” a voice yelled.

  “Smoke ‘em out. Get tear gas down there!”

  “No, if smoke goes in the ventilator shafts we’ll screw up the whole hotel and screw ourselves. We have enough guys. We’ll comb every inch of the shafts until we--” The rest of his statement was drowned out as David and Mattoon climbed into a different shaft.

  “If we don’t get away, this is the first place they’ll look,” Mattoon said.

  “There should be a shaft crossing over soon,” David said, praying Bellamy was right again. Both men continued descending down the steel rungs as fast as they could, into blackness, into blindness, into the unknown.

  “I see light below,” Mattoon said.

  Sure enough, they were descending into a brighter area. “It’s a ventilation duct,” David said as they emerged into a tunnel of blood-red brick, a cross between a catacomb and a baking oven. “We’re on the 5th floor.” It was one of those moments, like standing in the lobby, when the building’s immensity made itself felt. Warm air hovered in the huge corridor. There was a dead light every few feet, but there were enough emergency lights to offer visibility. Beyond the lights was a deadness, a stillness, that signified all extraneous machinery was off. In the tunnel, although a warm breeze lingered, there was no sound of propellers pushing it. The tunnel ran straight as an arrow, and they crossed the five hundred feet into Tower 2. Once or twice they heard voices, and they ducked into alcoves, but the only thing they heard close by--or felt--was a rat or two scurrying around their ankles. Mattoon lifted his ankle as though he’d kicked something. “Damn! Time for the civilians to come back with their cats and clean out the vermin.”

  “More ways than one,” David said.

  They came to Tower 1. The shaft ran on, but David pointed to a wall stenciled Elevators. “We’ve got to find a service shaft and go up to the 10th. That’s where we’re supposed to meet Devereaux’s people.” He blindly followed the instructions relayed by Bellamy from Devereaux, but how could the general possibly get anyone into this fortress to extricate Mattoon?

  “Here,” Mattoon said, lifting a sheet of plywood from a brick opening. It was dark in there, and reminded David more than ever of an oven. Without benefit of flashlights, David reached forward and felt a ladder. He felt a gentle gust of air rise to his face. Smelled musty. Spiders fled from his face. “Careful,” David said, “the shaft drops down who knows how far. Nine floors for all I know.” As he climbed up the steel rungs, Mattoon right behind, David’s eyes became accustomed to the dark.

  They climbed for several minutes.

  After moving forward a few yards, David saw a dim light. “It’s another one of those shelves,” he said. He had a sense of deja vu as they climbed up there. Again, they were prisoners in a concrete tomb, with only the elevator shaft opening off to one side.

  “I hear noises down below,” Mattoon said.

  They heard a shout. “Over there. On that shelf. It’s them!”

  Glancing up and to the right in the four-car shaft, David saw young faces staring at them, insane with hatred. Assault rifles clicked as safeties went off. He and Mattoon barely managed to duck out of the angle of fire, pinned on a few square inches.

  The shaft filled with noise and acrid powder. The air whizzed with bullets and bits of concrete nicked off the shelf. Several pieces stung David’s face, and he covered his eyes. “We can’t get back to the ladder, and they’ll be at the other door in a few seconds!” he said. He was beginning to think he’d have to let Mattoon make a run for the ladder while he offered covering fire from both handguns. That might save the Chairman, he knew, but it would cost him his life.

  Chapter 39

  A wall of armed, ghostly figures in blue-yellow fatigues, their faces alien and their eyes like round, black windows in their gas masks, stood on either side as the column of LXs roared straight toward the tunnel entrance into the underground garage complex.

  Tory felt a mixture of hot anger and cold fear as the LXs rumbled around a corner, and down a ramp. What did Devereaux have up his sleeve? Devereaux pulled his cigar down and twirled it between his teeth. “Goddammit, why is there no smoking in government vehicles?”

  “Sir,” Tory said, “are we getting into a trap here?” Her concern deepened as she saw the empty concrete field of a vast underground garage. The hotel was on emergency power, and the batteries threw islands of aseptic light amid an ocean of darkness. Parked cars had been removed. To the left along the wall was the Tower One elevator door.

  Far off against the right wall, Tory saw a vast array of LXs painted in blue and yellow swirls. Armed men ran away toward the rebel LXs as Devereaux’s column screamed down into the garage and took positions. Fifty LXs, Tory figured--500 riflemen. They were well armed. Each LX had at least one top-turret heavy machine gun--but so did the rebels, no doubt.

  Dead ahead was a solid concrete wall.

  Devereaux told Tory and his NCO aide: “We’ll get Mattoon out.”

  Charlie frowned. “How do we get out of here, Sir?” Tory saw what he meant as they rolled forward. Garage walls loomed to their left and ahead. On the right, on the other side of a no man’s land about 300 feet across of oil-spotted concrete under sickly yellow illumination, were rows of blue-and-yellow LXs, and beyond that acres of garage with stacked equipment. The ceiling was an impenetrable mass of steel and concrete twelve feet over their heads. Devereaux’s LXs filed in until the front vehicle nearly touched the wall ahead. Tory heard engines roar behind as the excess vehicles broke rank to form double and triple parallel rows. The soldiers jumped out and took positions behind their vehicles.

  “They’re moving a couple of garbage trucks down the ramp behind us!” someone yelled over the mike. “They’re boxing us in!”

  Devereaux nodded. “Let’s not waste any time.”

  It was a standoff, Tory saw as she clambered out. Hundreds of yellow-and-blue uniformed men took position behind their vehicles. Despite the distance, Tory saw the hostility in their eyes.

  Devereaux opened the hatch, jumped out, and relit his cigar. He stayed well in the cover of his LX. From another LX, several men ran at a crouch with weapons and mountaineer equipment. Their faces were painted black, and they wore beanie helmets and goggles over watch caps. “Those boys are some Montana reservists I borrowed, and smoke jumpers to boot,” Rocky said. “They go mountain climbing for fun in their time off.” They stared as the specialists hurried about their tasks. “I never underestimate my
opponent,” Devereaux said, “but I know Montclair’s style of leadership. He couldn’t lead three piss ants to a urinal.”

  Tory checked the .45 Ciampi had given her. She knew both sides had rifles whose rounds would go through armor, and whiz around like cleavers in a butcher shop slicing people up.

  Two friendly LXs now drove in close to shield the operation so the blue and yellow boys couldn’t see what was going on.

  “We take for granted they screwed up the elevators,” Devereaux said, “so we won’t push buttons and wait for the elevator to arrive. We’ll make our own elevator and go up to the tenth floor. Hold your ears, guys!” He stepped aside and bent away. Tory did the same. She saw a soldier tape something to the elevator door and withdraw. There was a bone-jarring explosion. Tory felt as though she’d been punched. Her head rattled and she was deaf. The elevator doors had been blown off. A grenade rolled in. Another tremendous explosion, and the elevator was rubble. Another grenade rolled in, dropped two floors, and blasted the elevator engine.

  Charlie dropped out of a lower hatch on the safe side. “General, it’s General Montclair.” He handed a field phone to Devereaux, and Devereaux spoke his name, then listened. “Yeah, Montclair, what do you think you’re doing? This is all so pathetic. Give up now, and maybe they’ll let you off with life at hard labor, rather than a blindfold and a firing squad. You might even be paroled before you’re a hundred years old.” He listened. “No, that’s wrong. The military is not going over to your side. General Norcross is not on your side. You might not know this, pal, but he just had about twenty admirals, generals, and colonel types arrested all throughout the area. It’s over before it begins, pal. Norcross just announced this evening that he will take all measures necessary to put down your rebellion, so why don’t you just quit?” After a moment: “What’s that? Time for your radio speech? Sure, if ya gotta, ya gotta. Meanwhile, I’ll make you a deal. You don’t shoot at us, and we won’t shoot at you. How’s that?” Devereaux’s voice rose and he waved his cigar over his head. “I’ve got tanks, cannon, and jets ready to turn this place into rubble, and I frigging mean it. I am prepared to die here tonight, and I am prepared to kill all of you, and I will get all of us killed, and all of those goddam yuppie lawyers who came here as delegates to this stupid convention, but this will end here tonight on my terms. Do you understand that? No? Stick it up your--” He looked at the phone. “He hung up on me!”