At all costs

by John Gilstrap

  “Thanks, Ronni.” Clayton accepted the cup of coffee she’d prepared for him, and allowed her to help him off with his car coat. “How are you holding up?”

  Veronica made a snarling noise and curled her lip, digging deep furrows into the already wrinkled skin around her mouth. “Those reporters make me so mad,” she fumed. “Sometimes I wish somebody would just blow every newspaper to kingdom come!”

  Clayton smiled. “You know, Ronni, I’ve shared that very thought more than once this morning.”

  “I’ll buy the explosives,” Chris MacDonald chimed in, filling the doorway on his boss’s heels. At fifty, Chris was the baby of the room; and at six-three, he was the tallest by six inches.

  “This is where we really hope that the office isn’t bugged,” Clayton grumped. He led Chris into the inner office and closed the door behind them.

  Without invitation-he didn’t need one after all these years-Chris took his assigned seat in the leather chair in front of Clayton’s desk. By now, he swore that the seat bore his buttprint. In the midst of chaos, Chris remained forever unflappable. And as a twenty-five-year veteran of Senator Albricht’s political wars, Chris MacDonald was exactly the right man to have on your side in a crisis. Clayton knew it, and so did Chris.

  “Let me have it,” Albricht opened. He knew from his chief of staff’s body language alone that the day had yet to bring its first bit of good news.

  Chris opened the leather binder on his lap, exposing a rat’s nest of papers and chicken scratchings. “It’s just getting uglier, sir,” he said evenly. “The distinguished gentleman from Arizona has called for your resignation from the chamber floor.”

  “Oh, now there’s a surprise,” Clayton scoffed, lowering himself into his high-back leather chair.

  Chris produced a pair of drugstore-issue half-glasses from his suitcoat pocket and flicked them open with a jerk. He settled the white plastic monstrosities just so on his nose, then read from the transcript. “‘So loathsome are pedophiles to the American people that the mere accusation of such deviancy lessens a legislator’s ability to govern…’ ”

  “Oh, Christ!” Clayton boomed. “This from a man who’s tried to defile every pretty young thing on the Hill!”

  Chris continued without breaking stride. “‘… I’d like to believe that for the sake of not only his own reputation but that of this esteemed chamber, the senator from Illinois would have the common decency to step down and save us all the embarrassment of his inevitable fall.’ ” He looked up. “God, how that man does ramble!”

  Albricht shook his head. “I don’t suppose he mentioned the billions he’s stolen from the taxpayers just to keep those useless Army bases open in his home state, did he?”

  Chris smiled and pretended to search through his stack. “No, I don’t remember seeing anything to that effect.”

  A moment of silence passed between them. Typically, Chris ended up being the de facto leader of these thrice-daily briefing sessions, but under today’s circumstances, he felt that the senator should set the agenda.

  Finally, Clayton began with a deep sigh. “Anyone from our side of the aisle weighed in yet to help?”

  He already knew the answer, and Chris replied only with a look. As the feeding frenzy grew geometrically by the hour, both in size and in ardor, Albricht understood that his colleagues would pull away from him. He already felt it happening. The media had convicted him as the worst type of criminal, and try as they might to retain an open mind, the general public believed what the media told them. Some crimes-or even rumors of some crimes-were simply unforgivable to the average American, and a smart politician would never provide such low-hanging fruit for his political enemies as to be seen within fifty feet of a man who diddles boys.

  The more Clayton proclaimed his innocence, the more defensive he looked, and everybody knew that only guilty people were ever defensive.

  Good God, Frankel was good. However he’d managed to put this all together, he’d done a masterful job. But there was time. Clayton’s constituents wouldn’t really have to get involved in any of this for another five years. Fortunately, rhetoric alone didn’t seem to do permanent damage anymore-a fact proved every day by the lying sack of shit who currently owned the White House. It was all about the length of a story’s legs. When the media got bored, the public forgot. And there, the president and his friends had the advantage of leading the media’s preferred party. Still, Clayton couldn’t imagine how the story could stay active for another five years. Certainly, his future opponents would dredge it back up, but by then, the voters’ passions would have dimmed.

  “I want Frankel’s head,” Clayton announced.

  Chris arched his eyebrows high. “You mean, you’re still gonna fight him for the directorship?” Politically, there was only one right answer here, and it involved the consumption of a pound of crow.

  The senator scowled and blew a puff of air through his lips. “I’ll hang the son of a bitch with his directorship. The higher he climbs, the bigger the grease spot will be when he hits bottom.”

  Chris suppressed a smile. His boss’s colorful imagery was the single attribute that had made the most popular politician in Illinois the most hated man in Washington. “Do I hear a plan brewing here, or are you just dreaming?”

  Clayton leaned forward in his chair and planted his elbows on the mirrored mahogany of his desk. “That son of a bitch broke the law and he did it with specific intent of hurting me and my family. For the second time, I might add. I want to find a way to ruin him, Chris, and when I’m done, I want the public clamoring for body parts!”

  Chris’s eyes narrowed. “What are you suggesting, sir?”

  Albricht seemed startled by Chris’s tone. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not suggesting anything illegal. Well, certainly not as illegal as what he tried to pull on me.”

  MacDonald scowled and fell silent. As he shifted in his chair, he closed the leather binder. “Senator,” he said carefully, “I know how upsetting all of this is, but you’ve got to remember who exactly we’re dealing with here. This is no minor political rival, sir. This is the FBI. And he’s got the full support of the president of the United States. You’re the one presumed guilty here. If they so much as sense that you’re jiggling the web they’ve worked so hard to spin, they’ll slap you with a felony. The country loves Frankel, and they’ve shown an unending willingness to believe that grass is pink if the president declares it to be so.”

  Albricht completed the logic for him. “And everyone outside the Midwest thinks I’m Adolf Hitler.”

  Chris shrugged. “Well, you do want to kill off all those children and old people.”

  “Don’t start with me.” Clayton’s forefinger threatened, but his wry smile was genuine. “So what do you suggest, Chris? Just sit and do nothing?”

  MacDonald shrugged. “Well… yes. Politically, I think that’s the best course. If you let it go, Frankel gets his big chair, and all the rest of this just runs its course and dies. In five years, if you still want this thankless job, you’ll still have an even shot with the voters.”

  Albricht leaned back again and spun his chair around to face the Capitol. He considered his chief of staff’s advice carefully, then spun slowly back around to face him. “To hell with the political prudence. I’m older than fossil shit as it is. Last time Frankel had me in his sights, I just let him go. I took the politically expedient route, and now the cockroach has come back to infest me again. This time it’s personal, Chris.”

  Chris shook his head and closed his eyes. “I won’t do that, Senator, and it’s not appropriate for you to ask. I will not…”

  “For crying out loud, Chris, will you relax? I’m not suggesting that anyone break any laws, okay? I don’t even want to stretch them a little. Just get people working on Frankel’s background. In a perfect world, I’d have accumulated a ton of shit on him and nailed him on the witness stand during the confirmation hearing, but now that’s not going to happen. C’est la
vie. Frankel’s still got enemies stashed all over the country, though, and I want you and your people to get to know every one of them.”

  “Under what auspices?”

  Albricht shrugged. “I don’t care. Keep it all unofficial. Just find the people who hate him, and take lots and lots of notes. Sooner or later, we’ll have enough to choke him.”

  Chris opened the binder again and scribbled a few notes. “And how do you want to fund it?” he said, looking up.

  The glare he got in return said, Give me a break.

  “Gotcha.” Chris stood. “And as for the media?”

  Albricht frowned. “Tell Julie to keep ’em well fed.”

  His orders clear, Chris MacDonald rose from his formfitting chair and left Albricht’s office, closing the door behind him.

  Alone again in the quiet, the senator spun his chair one more time to take in his favorite view. Chris’s worries were all legitimate ones, and bombast aside, Clayton worried about continued retaliation from Frankel. Those pictures that Wiggins alluded to on the telephone scared the hell out of him. God only knew what hideous poses they’d attach his face to.

  Much was at stake here. Truth be told, Clayton didn’t give much of a shit anymore about his future in the Senate-he’d had a nice run, after all-but he cared a great deal about how the history books would record his tenure here.

  The hell of it was, by actually caring about such things, people like Clayton Albricht were easy prey for the political predators of Washington.

  Clayton Albricht had staked his career on middle-class morality, and it had cost him dearly. While his colleagues lied without remorse, he prided himself on his ability to hold the high ground of wisdom over the sewer of political correctness. Now, as he stood on the precipice-yet another hero ready to tumble-his innocence and his sense of fair play had become his greatest weakness, while his opposition grew stronger through a campaign of perpetual deceit.

  Maybe it really was time to retire. He didn’t much like the way the earth had been spinning recently, anyway. But he couldn’t let Frankel go without a fight. If he did, then where would all of this stop? Maybe that was Albricht’s legacy. Perhaps, at the end of the day, the senator’s lifetime of legislative battles would be obscured by this one fight by the Good Guy to prevail over the Bad Guy. The white hat against the black hat, just like in the old movies of his youth.

  Maybe, when the battle was over, Pretty Boy would learn that he’d gambled too aggressively on the public’s willingness to believe sparkling blue eyes over the wizened countenance of a wrinkled old man.

  However it might ultimately turn out, this was certainly a time to be careful. MacDonald had been right about the screams of misconduct and abuse of power if Clayton assigned his own staffers to dig up the dirt on Frankel. He needed help from someone else…

  The inspiration hit him with a near-physical impact. Why he hadn’t thought of it hours ago, he’d never understand. The time had come for some good old-fashioned Chicago-style politics.

  And he knew of no better player at that particular game than his old friend Harry Sinclair. Forgoing the usual formalities, Clayton dialed the number himself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  A body bag with a window.

  Jake had forgotten about the special breed of panic that rushed over him every time he sealed himself inside one of these damn suits. The world seemed very small when the only sound you heard was that of your own breathing. He checked to make sure he could reach his escape knife and found himself smiling. Not only could he cut his way out if he had to, but with the Glock still on his hip, he could shoot his way out as well.

  Typical of training equipment, he supposed, this stuff was old yet functional. Prior to donning the ensembles, Carolyn had insisted that they perform perfunctory tightness-testing by flapping out the folds, much the way you’d shake out a rug, then laying them out on the ground. Once the folds had relaxed, and air entered the body, arms, and legs of the suits, they zipped them shut and rolled the legs up tight, forming a balloon of air in the upper part. With no obvious leakage, Carolyn proclaimed them safe to wear.

  His air pack on his back, and his face mask in place, Jake wrestled himself into the body of the suit and awaited Travis’s help to zip it up around him. As the hood settled over his head, Jake remembered with a dull ache in his gut that the last time he’d looked through a similar Plexiglas face shield, it had a ragged bullet hole through the center of it.

  No one said anything. It had been a lot of years, but Jake remembered from the old days that this was the time of smart-ass machismo, practical jokes, and snide comments. Now the undercurrent of fear was palpable.

  If this didn’t work, they were flat out of options.

  When all the players were at the same stage of readiness, Travis stepped up to each of them in turn and pulled the heavy zippers shut; first Nick, then Jake, and finally Carolyn, where he paused for a long moment and said something to her that Jake couldn’t hear. The comment drew an extended embrace between the two of them, and for just the briefest of instants, he was jealous. Somehow, as adolescence approached, Mom was becoming more important to his son than Dad; and he knew in his heart that it was likely to remain that way forever. The realization triggered a catch in his throat and blurred his vision, but he shook the emotion away. This was neither the time nor the place.

  When Carolyn was at last sealed into her Army-green butyl rubber suit, she initiated a round of thumbs-ups. Radios were not a part of this bare-bones entry operation, but they’d developed a system of simple hand signals to convey essential messages, the most critical of which was the universal distress signal-both hands straight up in the air. Even in the old days, no one messed around with that one. You raise your hands over your head, and you’d better by God be in serious trouble, because people were going to risk their lives to get you to safety super-pronto.

  Nick paused long enough to duct-tape the combustible gas indicator to the sleeve of his suit before picking up the sledgehammer and leading the way forward. As unlikely as it was to encounter a combustible atmosphere, fire was the single hazard for which these rubber suits provided exactly zero protection. If the detector vibrated against his arm, they would abort the entry and decide what to do about it later. Each of them slung portable hand lights over their shoulders, and Jake hefted the steel pry bar, while Carolyn took custody of the body bags.

  Thumbs-up all around, and it was time to head out. They’d already breathed up five minutes’ worth of precious air, and already their suits had begun to puff out from the pressure of their exhaled breath. Pretty soon they’d all look like the StayPuft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters- one of Travis’s favorite movies.

  Jake shivered as the first drops of sweat blazed a trail down his backbone, despite the chill of the afternoon air. Inside of five minutes, he’d be soaked, with puddles of sweat accumulating in the tips of his gloves and the soles of his shoes. As he trudged off after the others, last in line, he paused for a moment to look back at Travis, who suddenly looked impossibly small standing there amid the empty boxes. Jake ventured a wave, but his son turned away.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Sherman Quill said aloud as he nosed his police cruiser up to the main gate of the Newark site. Of all the times he’d been out to this godforsaken place, this was the first time he’d ever seen anything out of the ordinary, beyond the occasional teenagers locked in carnal ecstasy. Well, there was a first time for everything, wasn’t there?

  Somebody had cut a hole in the damn fence! And he could still see the tire tracks in the grass where they’d driven through the opening and down toward the exclusion zone.

  What to do now, he wondered. The hole in the chain-link was nowhere near big enough for his full-size Ford with its light bar and whip antenna, and Sherman didn’t have the tools with him to make it any bigger.

  He pulled the white microphone from its clip and brought it to his lips. “Unit One to Control,” he said in his practiced monotone.
>
  “Go ahead, Unit One,” the dispatcher replied.

  “Hi, Nan. Listen, I’m out at the Newark site and we’ve got a bit of a problem here. Somebody cut a big old hole right through the fence. I’m gonna check it out, but I want you to see about getting some backup for me from State P.D., okay?”

  “Okay, Sherm,” Nan replied. In a town this size, formal radio procedure just seemed silly. “You gonna wait there till I check on availability?”

  Sherman thought about that one for a moment. Wasn’t a bad idea, actually, but he’d hate like hell to lose the bad guys if he waited, just as he hated the thought of scrambling the state boys only to find nothing there. “No,” he answered at length. “I’m gonna go take a look-see while you call. I’ll give you a shout on the portable if I need anything.”

  “You got it, Sherm.” He could hear Nan dialing the telephone in the background while she spoke. “Be careful, guy.”

  Sherman smiled. Nan was the county grandmother. As dispatcher for both the police and the fire departments, she doubled as secretary and gofer for both.

  “You got it,” he said warmly. After returning the microphone back to its home on the dashboard, he climbed out of the cruiser, set his Smokey the Bear hat just so on his head, slid his nightstick into his belt, and slammed the door.

  Travis watched intently from the top of the nearest mound as everyone disappeared from sight. He felt suddenly lonely. Without anyone around, the woods were way too quiet; and in the absence of noise, his ears played tricks on him. Every time he thought he heard a rustle in the leaves, it turned out to be the wind or maybe a squirrel. In his head, such noises were the telltale signs of approaching police with guns and dogs. So wild was his imagination, in fact, that he could have sworn he heard the sound of a car door being shut.

  He knew the basics of the plan just from paying attention when no one thought he could hear. The trickiest part, according to his parents’ friend Nick, would be to get through the heavy locks on the exterior of the magazine. He brought a thing he called a Dremel tool to do the job. It looked a lot like an electric screwdriver, but with a carbide disc at the end. He said it would cut the Golden Gate Bridge in half if you had enough time. Travis assumed that the sledgehammer and the pry bar were just backups in case the lock proved to be stronger than a bridge.