Overture to Disaster (Post Cold War Political Thriller Trilogy Book 3)

by Chester D. Campbell

  "You're kidding?"

  "I wish I was. My family, Karen and the girls, are in the middle of that crowd. You've got to help me. These guys are in a yellow dump truck. We'd never find it in time except from the air. It's our only chance. Is your crew still around?"

  "I don't have a whole crew. I just gave a couple of congressmen and a general a little familiarization ride. My co-pilot had to leave, but the flight engineer's still in the bird. You'd never guess who he is, Sergeant Jerry Nickens. Barry's younger brother."

  Roddy felt a sudden pang of conscience as he thought of Barry Nickens being blown apart in that crash in Iran. But it was quickly replaced by a sense of bitterness toward the man responsible, General Wing Patton.

  "I'll tell you what I learned about that Easy Street ambush when I see you. But I need to know if I can count on you now. I'm just a few minutes away from Andrews."

  "Well, sure, Colonel. Come on over and I'll see what I can do. The chopper is parked on the ramp near Base Ops."

  "I'll meet you there as fast as I can make it. Thanks, Dutch."

  Thank God for friends like that, he thought. You didn't have to cite chapter and verse to get their cooperation. Dutch had been there before when he was needed, and now he would come through at the most crucial time of all.

  Yuri Shumakov was unconscious for a brief moment but regained his senses in time to hear Romashchuk's parting comment about the 1812 Overture. The Major's second shot had caused no greater damage, but it didn't matter. He knew he was dying. He had seen more than his share of gunshot wounds and bloody corpses. He had gagged at the stench of the morgue while a dispassionate pathologist calmly explained the inevitability of death from a severed major artery. There was no way to stem the red tide that flowed freely from his chest. Pressing a wad of cloth to stop it would not help. It would only divert the blood into his chest cavity and block the action of his remaining good lung.

  He had to warn Roddy about the mortar firing. The Major's meaning was obvious. They would be fired to coincide with the cannon barrage in Tchaikovsky's overture.

  He strained to move his free hand toward the telephone. He raised the handset and pulled it toward his face. With a major effort, he lifted his head to get a view of the keypad. His glasses had fallen off, but the phone was close enough to see without them.

  Yuri had committed the cellular number to memory. Slowly, agonizingly, he pressed the buttons. As he reached the last one, his hand slipped. He wasn't sure if he had pressed the right number. He heard the ringing, lowered his head to the desk and pressed the receiver to his ear.

  "Hello," said a high-pitched female voice. Then, after a moment of silence, "Who is this? Harry, is that you, Harry?"

  Yuri reached a shaky hand to press the disconnect button. He closed his eyes in agony. Then he remembered another scene from his childhood, his mother on her knees lighting a candle before an icon of the Madonna and Child. He murmured in a halting whisper, "If you are up there, God, please help me now."

  Was some unseen force at work? He wasn't sure. He only knew there was a feeling inside that he was no longer in this alone. It buoyed his spirits and gave him a new surge of strength, meager though it was. He lifted his head and punched the numbers again. He heard a distant ringing sound.

  "Hello, Dutch?" It was Roddy's voice.

  Confused at first, he finally muttered, "This is Yuri."

  "Hey, I can barely hear. Where are you?"

  "Romashchuk is gone. The mortars...they will fire—"

  "Can you speak up, Yuri? What's wrong?"

  "Shot...he shot me..." The words choked off in his throat and he coughed, making a weak, gurgling sound.

  "You've been shot?"

  "Yes...no time...cannon fire...1812 Overture."

  "Hang on, Yuri," Roddy urged. "I'll get an ambulance."

  There was no reply. Yuri Shumakov was dead.

  73

  Darkness slowly obscured the neighborhood like a troublesome shadow. The rows of modest houses Burke hurried past were gradually fading into indistinct lines of random shapes. His attempts to look into the immediate future brought views just as cloudy and uncertain. He had taxed his brain to the limit, but nothing he considered seemed to hold any promise. He was simply out of options.

  He switched hands with the gasoline can and swiped a handkerchief across his forehead. He looked up at the cloudy sky. The summer night had the clammy feel of a sweat-soaked beach towel. It only served to deepen his sense of frustration.

  Then the radio in his pocket, which he had turned up on leaving the convenience store, suddenly blared.

  "Burke, come in! This is Roddy."

  Even if he hadn't detected the alarm in Roddy's voice, it was obvious from the fact that he had dropped the pretense of code names that something had gone badly wrong. Burke pulled out the radio, pressed the transmit button. "Go ahead, Roddy."

  "I just had a call from Yuri. I left him at Advanced Security a little while ago with an unconscious Nikolai Romashchuk. Obviously the bastard came to and waylaid Yuri. He said the Major had shot him and left. He could barely talk. He may be dead by now. The last thing he said was something about cannon fire in the 1812 Overture. Is that on the symphony program?"

  "Right. It'll be toward the end. Probably between 8:45 and 9:00." Then the import of Yuri's words suddenly hit him. "Oh, God. I'll bet they plan to use the cannons to cover the firing of the mortars."

  "Damn," Roddy said. "It's already well after eight." He told Burke about his conversation with Dutch Schuler.

  "Where are you now?"

  "Almost to Andrews. It's no more than a five or six-minute flight from there to the Capitol. We've still got a chance. Is there a park anywhere near you?"

  Burke thought a moment. "Yeah. There's one around Virginia Avenue, north of the Navy Yard."

  "Do you have your flashlight?"

  "Right here."

  "Find an open area in the park and wait for us. When you see the chopper coming, wave your flashlight in a circle and we'll pick you up."

  The only daylight left was a glow on the western horizon as the stocky man in casual civilian clothes approached the bright lights of the gate to Andrews Air Force Base, best known as the home of Air Force One. He had a disgusted look on his face as he held out his ID card to the airman wearing the Security Police armband.

  "Would you believe my damned car quit on me just a block away?" Warren Rodman said, shaking his head.

  Spotting the "Colonel" on the green DD Form 2, the airman popped him a snappy salute. "Sorry to hear that, sir."

  "Does the base bus stop near here? I've got some people waiting at Base Ops."

  "Just a minute, sir. I'll check something for you."

  Eyeballing the Andrews AFB sticker on an approaching car, the SP waved it through. One just behind it bore no sticker. The airman halted it with a raised hand. "Pull over to the building on your right," he told the driver. "You can pick up a Visitor Pass."

  That was the reason Roddy had chosen to approach the gate on foot. He wanted to avoid the routine of requesting a pass for his car. He didn't know what might turn up on the computer if they punched his name into it.

  "Hey, Sarge!" the airman called to a man standing in the doorway of the nearby building. "When will O'Sullivan be back?"

  "He's on his way."

  "Could he take the Colonel here over to Base Ops?"

  "Sure."

  The young SP nodded. "You can wait for him over there, sir."

  "Thanks a lot," Roddy said, smiling.

  He had hardly reached the building when a small blue utility vehicle drove up and the gravel-voiced sergeant waved down the driver, a lanky, khaki-clad youth with two stripes on his sleeve.

  "O'Sullivan, drive this Colonel over to Base Ops. Then get your ass back here pronto. Capisce?"

  Roddy had too much on his mind to be his usual talkative self, but he forced a bit of banter about the weather and the holiday. As it turned out, O'Sullivan had a heavy Boston I
rish brogue. When he talked fast, as he did most of the time, he was more difficult to understand than Yuri Shumakov with his uncertain English.

  At Base Operations, Roddy hurried over to the counter. The only customer was a lieutenant with a bristly flat-top haircut who had just arrived in a T-37 jet trainer.

  "I'm Colonel Rodman," he said in a rush. "Which way to Major Schuler?"

  "Through that door over there," the sergeant said, pointing.

  He headed out to the flight line and spotted the MH-53J parked about two hundred feet away. Two guards stood nearby, a common practice where the Pave Low was concerned. Just the sight of it brought a flood of memories that swept over him like a warm tide. As he approached the silent chopper, Dutch Schuler stepped out onto the ramp dressed in a dark green flying suit, his blue cap with the gold oak leaf perched at a jaunty angle.

  "Hi, Colonel!" he called, waving.

  The first thing Roddy noted was the look on Schuler's face. It wasn't his usual smile. In fact, there was no smile at all. He appeared downright troubled.

  "Hey, Dutch. Are we ready to go?"

  Roddy suddenly felt a strong hand seize each arm in a firm grasp. He swung his head back and forth and found an armed SP on either side.

  "What the hell...?"

  Schuler wore a pained expression. "I'm sorry it had to be this way, Colonel. But it's the best thing for you. They said you'd get the best psychiatric help available."

  Roddy stared in disbelief. If this was a nightmare, he hoped to hell he would soon wake up. "Psychiatric what...who promised?"

  "General Patton."

  "Wing Patton?"

  "Yes, sir. He and my father-in-law are old buddies. They go way back. That's how I got my commission reinstated. General Patton called yesterday to see if I had heard from you. He told me how you'd gone off the deep end in Guadalajara and killed that woman. He warned me you were having some bad delusions, that you might make some wild claims about terrorists."

  Rodman closed his eyes. His head was reeling. The way he felt right now, he wasn't too sure he might not really be going mad. Obviously, Adam Stern had been busy. The Roundtable leaders should be happy. They had now succeeded in neutralizing the only remaining avenue for stopping Major Nikolai Romashchuk's attack at the Capitol. If anybody needed psychiatric treatment, he thought, they surely did. But they were safely holed up out in the Rocky Mountains, and by the time word got out about the disaster in Washington, those who knew the truth would have been disposed of. He would be locked away in a padded cell. Yuri was likely already dead. They probably had another killer out stalking Burke Hill. Worst of all, Karen and the girls were doomed to die because he had failed them again.

  "Hang onto him," said the older of the two Security Policemen, a staff sergeant, "while I check for weapons."

  He patted Roddy down and pulled the Beretta from a front pocket. Then he removed the small radio from a back pocket, held it in his hand and stared at it.

  "Okay," Roddy said, "so I'm really mad. I'm a music freak."

  "Let him have his radio," Major Schuler ordered. "Get him inside. There's a doctor on the way to give him a shot and take him to the hospital."

  7 4

  As the cheering, the applause and the whistles died down, Lila Rodman glanced at her watch. It was 8:25. Then she smiled broadly and fixed her soft brown eyes on the stage as E. G. Marshall's voice once more rolled from the huge speakers.

  "Our American music, as well as our American heritage, has its roots in many cultures around the globe. Folk music is the purest form to reflect a particular culture. A new group within the United States Air Force Band, called The ThunderBards, will perform a medley of three familiar folk tunes, one Scottish, one Irish, one American. Featured in the Scottish air will be Sergeant Ian McGregor."

  Lila listened proudly as McGregor's rich baritone voice flowed from the speakers with the lyrics of Robert Burns.

  Farther back in the crowd, near a group of college students who had just put on a lively dancing demonstration during a rousing rock tune, Lori Hill checked her watch and wondered if Burke would get to hear the stirring overture by Tchaikovsky, his favorite classical composer. It would be coming up shortly.

  Nikolai Romashchuk stared with alarm when he turned onto Maryland Avenue and saw the unbroken line of cars parked along the curb. Then he spotted the yellow dump truck down the block exactly where it should have been. As he came to a stop beside it, one of the Peruvians began creating a deafening racket with a compressed air drill, digging a jagged hole in the pavement behind the truck. He wasn't overly proficient at the task, but good enough to fool the uninitiated. The drilling kicked up clouds of dust that began to drift northward on the moderate breeze.

  Pepe came around to the driver's side to escape the noise. He quickly explained what had happened and how the cooperative policeman had worked things out so they could park the truck in the proper place. The Major got a terrific laugh out of that.

  "I knew Americans were gullible," he said, snickering. "But this has to be a new high. I see everybody has his ear protectors ready."

  Pepe nodded. The other two were wearing theirs, but his hung around his neck. Appearing like large earphones, they served a dual purpose. Besides protecting the ears from damaging sounds, such as that made by compressed air drills and mortar fire, the devices contained small radio receivers in one earpiece, through which they would receive the signal to fire.

  "I'll be back in a few minutes," Romashchuk said. "I need to make a call. I passed a pay phone not far away."

  He circled back around to a telephone kiosk and called Adam Stern at the Presidential Plaza Hotel.

  "I just came from the truck," Romashchuk advised. "Everything is ready. We've had some problems, though."

  "Like what?"

  He told Stern about the encounter with Rodman and Shumakov. And he repeated what the investigator had said about the hit man sent after Hill being eliminated.

  "It's apparently true," Stern admitted. "I just had a call from my people in Colorado. Hill contacted one of the President's key advisers. Told him about your operation. Fortunately, we had already warned the man that Colonel Rodman had lost his mind and was spreading false rumors."

  "They will soon learn it wasn't false."

  "True. But they won't find any KGB major. Only some dead Shining Path terrorists, whose movement will take full credit for the fiasco. You've prepared for that, I trust."

  "Just as I did in Mexico. The truck and the minivan are both loaded with Semtex. It will look like they planned to destroy the evidence but got caught when it went off prematurely."

  Fred Bressler's head bobbed back and forth like a spectator at a ping pong match, but his plight was nothing so commonplace. As his wife Florence had just pointed out for the fiftieth time, or so it seemed, they should have come hours earlier if they wanted to find a place to park and get out to watch the fireworks near the Washington Monument. Every available parking place within miles had been taken. Fred had never experienced anything remotely like this in Mitchell, South Dakota. He was certain he had no interest in encountering it anywhere else.

  Glowing red figures on the digital clock showed 8:35 as Fred's 1994 white Chevrolet Corsica crossed the Kutz Bridge, which carried the eastbound lanes of Independence Avenue over the north end of the Tidal Basin. The traffic here moved slowly, but at least it wasn't stop and go, as had been the case a little earlier.

  "When are we going to get there?" wailed six-year-old Arnie in the back seat.

  "We are there, stupid," said Mandy, ten. "We just don't know where it is we are."

  Fred was about to vent a bit of his anger on both siblings when a stream of thick, white exhaust suddenly began pouring out of the blue minivan they had been following. The air conditioner sucked some of it into the car and he hit the brake, backing off. As the van moved ahead, he saw the smoky-like cloud of white drifting quickly on the breeze toward the throng of people packed into the area where the tall, flood-lit W
ashington Monument rose majestically into the night sky.

  It suddenly dawned on Fred Bressler that what had appeared to be exhaust had no exhaust odor to it. Then his eyes began to water and his mouth felt dry, his skin hot. He blinked rapidly, seeking to clear his vision. As he attempted to figure the cause of this strange distress, he felt a wave of fear flow over him. Nothing definitive, just a terrible sense of dread, an inexplicable feeling that bordered on horror. He spun the steering wheel to the right in an unreasoned attempt to escape whatever was causing his problem. It sent the Corsica crashing into a pickup truck parked near the side of the road. As the youngsters began to wail, the siren and flashing light of a motorcycle cop zoomed past.

  Traffic Officer Arch Cathey had seen the thick cloud of what appeared to be exhaust and gave chase. He intended to admonish the driver about such a blatant case of air pollution. Moments after he encountered the smoke-like stream, his vision became impaired. Officer Cathey blinked his eyes and shook his head and skidded out of control.

  Sgt. Rocky Hazeltine, sitting on his Suzuki police special nearby, saw what happened, flicked on his blue light and siren and gave chase. By now the white cloud had ceased pouring from the rear of the minivan. The sergeant radioed what he had seen just before overtaking the blue vehicle. As he pulled even, he stared at the driver in disbelief. The face was covered by a gas mask. He watched, frozen in horror, as the window came down and the deadly muzzle of an AK-47 appeared. Before he could take any evasive action, a short burst of fire stitched holes across his chest. Sergeant Hazeltine toppled off the motorcycle, mortally wounded.

  Burke Hill waited in the Blazer at the park, anxiety building inside him. He thought it was time Roddy should be getting there. He tried to relax the tension in his muscles as he monitored three radios. One was the small handset used to communicate with Roddy, which was silent. Another was the vehicle's AM/FM/Stereo tuned to a broadcast of the symphony concert. The third was a scanner that covered the police band. Dr. Walter Brackin's rationale for the latter was that he might pick up a call for an ambulance which would require his services. It was purely an excuse for an unnecessary expenditure.