The alarm would be given, and they would be boxed in the stairwell. They could already hear the elevator ascending to the third floor and knew that it would contain at least two guards with cocked weapons. Others in the security force would be coming up both flights of stairs.
They had one more flight to go when they heard the clatter of heavy boots on the landing below.
Cory waved Ginny back and crouched by the open railing. He waited until the guards were halfway up the flight, and then stood to fire a long burst from his machine gun.
The weapon bucked on full automatic as bullets ricocheted from metal walls and whined off in a dozen tangents.
The two men with Kalashnikov rifles crumpled in rag heaps as the .45 projectiles stitched across their chests.
There was a final guard by the metal detector near the rear door. Cory fired the remainder of the clip. The grease gun vibrated in his hands and swept upward until it was empty.
They went through the rear door and ran down the alley. Cory threw her the truck keys as he fumbled to place a fresh magazine in the machine gun.
As Ginny began to turn the ignition, Cory saw the Wiltshire Club doorman rush into the alley entrance. The man’s jacket was torn open, and he fumbled at a shoulder holster. Cory fired through the windshield of the van.
“Go!” he shouted, and the truck leapt forward.
They abandoned the van, with its still-sleeping owner, at a subway entrance and ran down the steps and boarded the first train that arrived. They changed trains twice before Cory was satisfied they had shaken any followers and felt safe enough to take a final train to Brooklyn.
He found a phone booth in a tobacco shop near Court Street, in Brooklyn, and dropped the necessary quarters into the slot for the call to Maryland.
A cautious voice answered. “Yes.”
“Get me Crescatt.”
“Ah, it must be Mr. Williams?”
“Who’s this?”
“Al Smythe, Cory. You don’t mind the familiar, do you?”
“Fuck you, Smythe. Where’s Crescatt?”
“It’s over, Cory. The game is ended.”
“I’ve got the list of the Committee, Smythe, and you’re on it. Get the President on this line.”
“President Crescatt is not available. This line is going to be disconnected when this call is terminated. They called and told me about your visit to the Wiltshire Club. The general is still groggy.”
“He gave me the names.”
“You’re very unimaginative, Williams. I don’t need the list. There never should have been a list in the first place, and your possession of it is meaningless.”
“I have names and locations.”
“And who will believe you? You have no credibility, my boy. Accumulation of names is meaningless, with your lack of veracity. If you are captured, which you shall be, and if you are still miraculously alive, who will believe your sense less prattling? They didn’t believe you the first time.”
“Crescatt will.”
“The President will not.”
Cory hung up. It was obvious what was going to happen, and he did not want to run the risk of a trace. He went outside, where Ginny waited, and took her hand as they walked down Montague Street.
“Want to take a walk on the Promenade?”
“What’s that?”
“A raised walkway that overlooks the New York skyline.”
“Sounds great.” They walked quietly for a moment. Cory took the laundry bag containing the field-stripped grease gun from her shoulder and threw it over his. “What did he say?”
“He wasn’t able to come to the phone.”
“Are you going to call back?”
“Not quite.” Cory began a chuckle which turned into laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
“I just had a thought. I think you and I are going to have to overthrow the government … you, me and one drugged, tennis-playing doctor.”
Dr. Edward Halliburton sat up against the headboard of the bed. He held a Styrofoam cup of black coffee in one hand and one of fresh orange juice in the other. He alternately drank from each and cursed Cory in English, French, and a few words of unrecognizable Spanish. He was a very angry man.
“And why, you raving psychopath, would the President have sent me if I couldn’t be trusted?”
“I couldn’t take any chances.”
“A layman administering drugs to a doctor! You blithering idiot!”
“We did it the way you said.”
“Thank God for that.” He drank more coffee and orange juice and seemed to calm slightly. “Did it work?”
“What?”
“The goddamn secret operation you two hydocephalics are involved in.”
“Yes,” Cory answered. “We got what we came for. However, we have run into what is usually termed an unexpected difficulty.”
“You’re going to have to help us, Doctor,” Ginny said.
“The last time I helped you two, I got myself Mickey Finned for thirty-six hours.”
“This is going to be even more dangerous.”
“I wouldn’t go to a cartoon film festival with you two creeps.”
“You mut know the layout of Camp David fairly well.”
“Crescatt loves the place. He drags us up there about every third weekend.” Halliburton drank more coffee.
“Does anyone know why you came to New York?”
“No one except Crescatt even knows I came to New York.”
“Were you missed at Camp David?”
“I signed out for two days. They sent a backup physician from Bethesda.”
“Then you have access back into the compound?”
“Of course! What the hell! As soon as I’m able to walk, I’m leaving you two to whatever you’re up to.”
Cory began to clean the grease gun with patches cut from a T-shirt and a coat-hanger cleaning rod. He dismantled and oiled each piece carefully. “After I’ve finished telling you my story, Ginny is going to play you a cassette. You will know how we obtained the information, because you gave us the resources.”
“The drugs?”
“Yes. And you also know that the President trusted us.”
“God only knows why.”
“You know he does, because he sent you here with the drugs and the gun.”
“I’m not going to repeat myself.”
“When I have finished, and when you have asked all the questions you want, you, good doctor, are going to help us get into Camp David.”
Doctor Halliburton put his empty cups down and looked slowly from Ginny to Cory. He sighed. “God only knows what’s coming, but lay it on me.”
CHAPTER 26
President Orville Crescatt looked out the window, over the rolling Maryland hills. His fingers lightly drummed the desk top where a phone had once rested. “What happened to the phone, Al?”
Al Smythe crumpled an empty package of cigarettes and opened his third new package, for the day. “Which one? Or do you mean that private line on the desk?”
“That’s the one.” Crescatt kept staring out the window.
“Don’t know. Some Signal Corps guys were in here yesterday, fooling around with the communications equipment. Want me to check into it?”
“Yes, do that for me.” He turned to face his advisor, who sat in an easy chair with his legs crossed. “I’m supposed to be one of the most heavily guarded persons in the world, Al. Why is it that I feel so insecure?”
Smythe puffed smoke rings. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that sort of insecurity didn’t strike all the men who hold your office.”
“The disappearing phone is the one Williams calls on.”
“Oh, was it? I didn’t know that, Orville. I wasn’t a party to any of those arrangements. I’ll make a note to get it back.”
“Yes, thank you.” Orville Crescatt sat in the desk chair and swiveled to face his aide. “You must get tired of playing second fiddle all the time, Al.”
Sm
ythe stubbed the half-smoked cigarette out in a coffee cup. “It’s the nature of the game, Orville. We can’t all get elected.”
“I guess not. What do you think of Cory Williams and this Committee business?”
“To tell you the truth, I think it’s all a bunch of crap. I think Williams is irrational, and has been since you did a number on his dad. I think that things are scrambled in his mind.”
“Interesting that you feel that. What do you think I should do?”
There was a pause. When Smythe finally spoke, his words were carefully modulated. “I think you should resign for reasons of health, Mr. President.”
The two men looked at each other across the rustic room.
It was a small Maryland airport. A wind sock hung listlessly from a pole at the far corner of the lone concrete runway. Half a dozen small planes, their wheels chocked, were tied down on a grass meridian not far from the combination hangar/office.
Cory parked near the hangar and entered the office. A youthful-looking man wearing a worn leather flying jacket and cowboy boots had his feet propped on a cluttered desk. He swung them to the floor and turned as they entered.
“What can I do for you folks?”
“We’d like to take a flight.”
“I’d be happy to oblige, but the only thing I have available doesn’t have a radio, so we can’t fly at night. Matter of fact, I was just about to close for the day.”
Cory looked out the dusty window toward the darkening field. “Yes, I can see how that would be a problem.” He turned back to the pilot-manager. “You arrange for parachuting, too?”
“We have a jump club that meets here on weekends. They give instructions, and I do the flying.”
“They store their equipment here?”
“Some of it. I have a corner in the hangar reserved for them. Most of the jumpers have their own chutes, but we keep a few spare for lessons.”
“Fine.” Cory pulled General Rainman’s automatic pistol from his pocket and pointed it at the pilot. “In two hours we’re taking a flight.”
The flyer looked at the small pistol in fascination. “I told you, I can’t do that. It’s against the rules.”
“I imagine it is,” Cory replied. “Why don’t you make us a pot of fresh coffee while we’re waiting?”
The guards had been doubled at the front gate of Camp David. When Edward Halliburton braked his Porsche to a halt by the main sentry house, he was approached on either side by soldiers carrying automatic rifles. A sergeant cautiously approached the driver’s side with a clipboard in hand. He bent to look through the window at Halliburton.
“Name, please?”
“Halliburton, Edward, Colonel.”
The sergeant glanced down at his clipboard, checked off a name, and stood erect to salute Halliburton. “Yes, sir. Please proceed, Colonel, sir.”
Halliburton threw the Porsche in gear and screeched past the sentry point. He parked his car and entered Laurel Cottage. Orville Crescatt and Elizabeth were sitting at opposite ends of the couch, staring into an empty fireplace.
Crescatt beckoned the doctor into one of the bedrooms. Liz followed; her eyes were red-rimmed, and Halliburton suspected that she had been crying.
There was an urgency to the President’s question. “Does Cory have the list?”
“Yes, sir. He does. Let me ask you a question, sir. Is this guy Williams for real?”
“More than you realize.”
“Then his story is true?”
“I have very good reason to believe it is. However, I’m not so sure at this point if it will do us any good.”
“He had a few messages for you he said were important.”
“Yes?”
“Well, to begin with, and I find this hard to believe, but I’m only relaying information that …”
“For God’s sake, Doctor. What is it?”
“He says that Al Smythe is on the list.” Orville Crescatt’s abrupt laugh startled. Halliburton. “I didn’t realize I had said something funny.”
“You haven’t, Doctor. You really haven’t. It’s only that that little nugget of intelligence is a day too late.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“Tomorrow. At three in the afternoon, I am going to resign my office for reasons of health. Under the terms of the Constitution, the Vice-President will assume office.”
Halliburton stood up in shock. “That’s ridiculous. I, as your personal physician, can vouch for your health.”
“I think, Doctor, that you are going to be replaced.”
“Mr. President, this is ridiculous. It smacks of coup d’état.”
“Yes, it does.”
Halliburton looked thoughtful. “Then Cory’s plan isn’t as wild as I thought.”
“Which is?”
“Breaking in here tonight. With our help.”
“I’m afraid, Ed, that none of us can be very much help. There’s a company of highly trained troops surrounding this complex, and their command has been assumed by Brigadier General Evans.”
“Who’s probably a member of the Committee,” Liz Crescatt added.
“I think we can safely assume that,” Crescatt said.
“But they let me in.”
“See what happens when you try to get out.”
“They can’t do this, sir!” Halliburton’s indignation was so vivid that Crescatt laughed.
“I am afraid they can and will.”
“They can’t control the whole army. You are the Commander-in-Chief.”
“They need only to control that small part of the army here at Camp David. And the only part of that they need to control is one junior general sitting over at Birch Cottage. I suppose Williams told you, we suspect they’re only a thousand strong. Our difficulty is that they are very powerful men in their communities and the federal government. In addition, we don’t know who they are, which makes everyone suspect.”
Halliburton sheepishly took a bulky envelope from his breast pocket and handed it to the President. “Williams asked me to give you this. We all stayed up transcribing it from a cassette. It’s a copy of the list he obtained from General Rainman.”
Crescatt eagerly grabbed the envelope and hastily tore it open. He ran his finger down the long list of names. He stopped halfway down the first page and nodded his head. “Here’s an interesting one. Brigadier Winiman Evans, Fort Meyers, Virginia.” He looked over the rim of his glasses. “That’s the one commanding this camp.” He continued scanning the list.
Crescatt slipped the list into his pocket. “It would seem,” he continued, “that the only members of the Committee presently here at Camp David are Smythe and General Evans.”
“Then we can get the soldiers to help,” Liz said.
The President shook his head. “Smythe has already warned me of that. It seems that General Evans has seen fit to take the same precautions that General Haig took during Nixon’s last days in office. The chain of command has been circumvented. The officers here at Camp David and at the Pentagon have been given word that no one can take a command from me; that I am, shall we say, ‘out of it.’ No one commands the soldiers here at the camp except Evans.”
“What about the Secret Service?” Halliburton asked.
“One of the stewards told me about that,” Liz said. “General Evans called the agents together for a security meeting. When they were all inside one of the cottages he had soldiers surround and disarm them. They’ve been taken to a barracks at the far end of the complex and placed under guard. It doesn’t sound very legal, if you ask me.”
“None of this is legal.” Crescatt began to pace the room. “It’s my own vulnerability that bothers me. I don’t mean my personal safety; I’m worried sick about Liz. It’s the vulnerability of the office—also, the ease with which they are doing this.”
“They can’t declare a well man sick,” Halliburton said, and then stopped abruptly as a thought possessed him. “Unless they use hallucinogens.”
“They will, and with statements from their own doctors, along with the proper press releases, they can succeed. Al Smythe has been orchestrating things for me for years. I know the job he will do; it will be letter-perfect and absolutely believable. You are witnessing the overthrow of your government, and no one will know.”
Edward Halliburton looked ashen. “It would seem, sir, that we should do what Cory Williams suggests. He made me memorize a rather complicated timetable.”
The plane engine droned a monotonous low whine. Cory sat in the front of the four-seater. Ginny sat behind the pilot and pressed the revolver against the pilot’s neck.
Cory glanced at his watch. “In exactly two minutes, I want a course change toward the Cacotin Mountains.”
“Hey, man! That’s restricted area. Camp David is over that way. We could get shot down.”
Ginny pressed the barrel of the gun deeper into the flesh of the pilot’s neck. “The man wants to go to the mountains.”
The plane made a sweeping turn toward Cory’s directed heading. “You guys are nuts,” the pilot muttered.
Cory began checking his gear. He had bought black high-laced boots and a 30.06 hunting rifle from a Maryland sporting-goods shop. Ginny had dyed a pair of coveralls black, and his head was covered with a dark knitted cap pulled low over the back of his neck. He checked the trim on the grease gun and flashlight strapped to his side. He would cradle the hunting rifle in his arms and hope that the jolt of the chute’s opening wouldn’t jar it from his grasp.
On his back was a large black parachute he had pried from the cabinets of the parachute club. He had a small reserve chute hooked to the front of his harness. He checked the load in the weapons and began to rub lampblack on his face and hands.
“You look like a character out of some war movie,” Ginny said from the rear seat. He sensed the anxiety in her voice.
“What’s the time?”
“Five of.”
“We’re on schedule.” Cory looked out the window. It was a moonless night with low scudding clouds at twelve hundred feet. He would jump at two thousand in the hope that cloud covering would obscure most of his jump. It would be a free fall, a kind he had never made before. He would attempt to open the main chute at six hundred feet. He sat back in the seat, as far as his cumbersome gear would allow.
Game Bet Page 26
