Bayou Brigade (5 page)

Pedestrians not hit by the hail of rock fled the area. Television cameras, hitherto focused on the comparatively mild defilement
of Lincoln’s memorial, pivoted a hundred and eighty degrees to record the devastation across the pool.

Winship regained his composure and began screaming orders to the men in lab coats. Llewellyn knelt down to the floor, placing
his ear to its surface.

“Incredible pyrotechnics,” he said.

Winship grabbed him. “Get your men to assist the wounded!”

The doctor obliged; a dozen men jumped into their vans and sped away. A squeal of ambulance sirens filled the silence after
all the rubble had settled.

Slayton commented, “It was timed perfectly, Ham.”

“I think we should try to make sense of that message before any more public structures are blown up.” Winship descended the
Memorial stairs. “There’ll be a meeting in my office in thirty minutes. Hopefully you’ll develop some theories by then.”

“Yes, sir.” Slayton could see a long day ahead.

Karl Baal applied a generous amount of cleanser to wash the shoe polish from his hair. Eyelashes and the false nose came next.
Looking in the mirror, he was reminded of a scene in an Ingmar Bergman film of a woman plucking a nose, eyes, and hair off
her head, then dropping them in a glass container. He rinsed the hotel room tub of the dark residue, scrubbed his face one
last time, and prepared for bed.

The next day he’d be able to leave Washington for New Orleans. Dropping into slumber, he chuckled at the ghastly deeds of
the day. Two senators who thought they could take the money and run had become unwilling martyrs to the cause of international
revolution. He wished he could have seen Parfrey’s expression just before the phone bomb shattered that ugly, puffy skull.
In time, all the fat cats would die, he thought.

Baal was familiar with the poverty of Third World nations. His early missionary work in Central Africa removed the stench
of capitalist West German influences, and though he felt a strong desire to take the vows of priesthood, the sham of organized
religion left him disillusioned. Whole cultures were being suppressed by profit-hungry pigs—infant mortality and sterilization
were encouraged by the amoral financiers of Western civilization. Those forces must be eliminated, he thought. Skyscrapers,
banks, homes, institutions must all be torn down; man must start again from scratch. Baal heard the suffering of maimed, crippled,
fear-wrenched people as he slept; in his reverie, they reached out and called on him to defeat the American capitalists who
exploited them so shamelessly. They would have their revenge through him.

The airstrip was obscured on three sides by a dense subtropical forest. From three thousand feet, Baal could perceive in the
distance the blue-green Gulf of Mexico. Below him, laced between sugar cane fields and thick foliage, was an endless stretch
of bayou swamp. The Cessna 150 bobbed nervously in its final approach, tossed around mercilessly by a strong south wind, settling
evenly as it slowed down near the end of the runway.

Santino Donati swatted a mosquito on his neck, while two more nibbled hungrily on an exposed left arm. Sweat beaded on the
sun-tanned bald spot topping his pudgy head, and the forty-five minute wait in scorching heat reduced his shirt to moist rags.

“There’s that German bastard,” he mumbled to himself, “late as usual.”

The gaunt assassin exited the plane and walked up to the little man with beady eyes.

“Mr. Donati,” he said, “you are perspiring.”

“Mr. Baal,” replied Donati, “you are late.”

They started walking. Near the shade of trees, two hundred yards ahead, a driver waited to take them into the forest. Baal
moved at a fast clip, giving his companion’s stubby legs quite a workout.

“There was a delay in New Orleans,” said Baal.

“So much said.” It was Donati’s favorite expression.

“Are the winters here always this warm?”

“Well, technically, it’s pretty much spring in these parts toward the start of April. But yes, the weather is a tad on the
hot side.”

Baal glanced back at the man. “For a fellow who talks an awful lot,” he muttered, “you don’t say much.”

Fuck you, too,
thought Donati. These elitist urban guerrillas and terrorists were snappy, wise-ass dudes with gold chains and beads around
their necks, toting ridiculous ideologies along with grenades and .38s. Donati had acquired a taste for revolution in the
city environment of downtown Detroit, a hell-hole far worse than any this namby-pamby kraut slush-brain had ever seen.

Donati viewed most modern terrorists with disdain. They were media superstars. The power of television occasionally gave them
a real command of the world which normally would have cast them aside; violence was glorified to extremes, perpetuated by
the nightly six and eleven o’clock news reports. However unkind the media were to these spoiled-brat killers, no one could
deny the publicity and word-of-mouth generated for terrorist activities via the air waves. It brought an instant notoriety,
an illusion of power which was as false to revolution as their slogans. Terrorists of this sort had no answers, just anarchy.

But who was Donati to pass judgment? A petty hood from the barrel’s bottom who kissed ass to reach the top, his only ambition
in life was to follow someone else’s footsteps. All revolutionaries need flunkies to shine the shoes, serve the booze, and
keep watch over rabble rousers. Donati even managed to get the bosses a few women to screw around with, or beat up, depending
on their pleasure. There wasn’t a thing he couldn’t arrange to make his employers happy at home. He’d never see battle again—too
many of his had been lost to punks who were faster, rougher, or smarter. Having no particular vocation allowed him to become
skilled at many: loading weapons, ordering supplies, assigning guard duty, supervising combat maneuvers. You name it, he did
it. All except actual on-the-scene warfare.

“We postponed today’s tactical seminar until you arrived,” he said to Baal. “I can have someone move your gear into your quarters
and—”

Baal interrupted, “I’ll take care of that myself. Have the security guards meet me at six-thirty in my room.”

This one was playing tough, Donati thought, but the Commander said he was the best man to handle defense at the terrorist
camp. “Whatever you say, sir.”

“Has there been any alteration of the plan to assassinate the President?”

“Not that I know of, sir,” Donati replied.

The jeep ride was two-and-a-half hazardous swamp miles, a train filled with deep potholes and mud. Upon his arrival at the
camp, Baal dined with the Commander in celebration of the success in Washington. Donati watched them both wear out the night,
guzzling whisky and telling tall tales of mercenary action in Pakistan and western China. When they both passed out from exhaustion
and liquor, the roly-poly aide-de-camp cleared the empty bottles and offered thanks to God that he had joined an operation
that, for all its drawbacks in personnel, proposed a terrorist strategy that had every chance for overwhelming victory.

And he was promised a place at the very top.

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!” General Bradley Scott of the Pentagon, chief adviser on inter national
military affairs for the President, laughed out loud.

Hamilton Winship popped two Alka-Seltzer tablets in his water glass. The fizz promised to remedy a twisted, bothered stomach.
“Please, General,” he said in Ben Slay-ton’s defense, “hear my man out.”

Scott let out a noxious belch and harrumphed loudly to exhibit his displeasure. This long-haired Treasury agent was calling
him a liar, and Brad Scott didn’t take shit from anybody.

Slayton glanced at Winship, his eyes begging for moral support. Luckily, Mr. Richards, adviser and representative to the head
of the Secret Service, spoke up before Slayton lost all credibility.

“I think it’s fair to assume,” Richards began, “that the message left etched in the base of Lincoln’s statue has nothing to
do with Santa Claus, as the honorable General Scott has suggested, nor does it relate to some ironic twist of turning the
antislavery Lincoln black as the proverbial ace of spades.

“The mechanism used in the Washington Monument assault was timed to go off thirty-five minutes after the relatively harmless
explosion at the Lincoln Memorial. Both devices were manufactured and designed by people who knew what they were doing. Perhaps
they invented them—Winship’s men have yet to find out why the soot won’t wash off the Memorial statues.” This elicited mild
guffaws from the six gentlemen seated in Winship’s office. Richards paced the room, continuing:

“If these explosives
are
as innovative as everyone suspects, I fail to see why we should ignore Mr. Slayton’s theory.”

Rising from his chair, Scott thumped his fist on the mahogany table, startling his colleagues next to him. “There is no proof
that his theory is correct!”

Winship consumed the antacid brew. “But it’s worth pursuing,” he said, feeling better already. “After all, we’re dealing with
a most insidious and clever subversive group. They will not come forward and claim responsibility for the blast, which makes
them an unknown entity. We have no clues to their identity or base of operation. The media is demanding an explanation of
some sort, and if I don’t tell them something by noon, the rash of speculation will make us a laughingstock on Capitol Hill.”

It was Slayton’s turn. At the room’s center he wrote on a portable blackboard:

S NTA   AS B  G DE

“This message on the statue,” he said, is more than a warning. It’s a clue.” Underneath, he chalked in:

SANTAYANAS BRIGADE

Again, General Scott couldn’t resist asserting, “It only proves that Mr. Slayton knows how to play fill-in-the blanks.”

Before Slayton had a chance to pummel Scott with indelicate expletives, Winship grabbed the spotlight. “Gentlemen, let’s remain
cool and open-minded. Ben’s interpretation is the only solid possibility offered thus far. Let him speak.”

Slayton resumed, “Philosopher Carlos Santayana wrote, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ That,
combined with an understanding of the history behind President Lincoln’s assassination, would suggest conspiracy of some sort.
The United States of eighteen-sixty was not all that hospitable to Lincoln, and much has been published on the theory that
he was the victim of a plot by officials inside the White House. Looking closely at the country today, there is social upheaval,
a polarization of voters versus big government, and very little is being done to remedy the nation’s ills.”

Senatorial adviser Roderick Kennedy spoke up, leaning away from the table on a swivel chair. “This Administration is making
great strides in curing the problems you’re speaking of.”

“We must assume these terrorists cannot be interested in changing the system. Terrorist doctrine in general calls for all-out
revolution without partial solutions or constructive change.”

“And The Brigade?” Winship said.

“When I served in Vietnam there were rumors that a company of disenchanted Green Berets had taken matters in their own hands,
touring the mountain areas and murdering North and South Vietnamese troops. They were called The Brigade.”

“Army intelligence uncovered no such commando outfit,” claimed General Scott. “Special Forces investigated those reports,
and it was a hoax.”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” observed Slayton, “I read the records of those surveillance briefings, dated through nineteen
sixty-seven, which confirmed nineteen unauthorized commando raids on villages near the Cambodian border, all of which were
reportedly carried out by American Berets without the order of any commanding officer in the field. The tactics were similar
in all cases—both militia and civilians massacred.”

Scott squirmed in his seat.

Slayton proceeded. “A single outfit was responsible for the attacks. General, you’re aware that prior to nineteen sixty-seven,
Vietnam was an undeclared war. Our boys were there to advise and keep the peace. But apparently some of them felt a need to
do more. A Special Forces report dated late nineteen sixty-six mentioned that ten villages, supposedly under Communist control,
were targets of illegal raids by an unknown American outfit.”

“Goddammit, man,” Scott said, “anyone could have been wiping out those Viet-Cong. It doesn’t make sense to pin it on a squad
of Green Berets which may not have existed.”

“Then you admit to their possible existence?”

“It was a… possibility.”

“Your own computers, General, failed to list twelve names on the MIA bulletins, and they didn’t turn up on Presumed Dead or
Reported Dead tallies, either. And twelve Berets sent to mine a lagoon north of the Demilitarized Zone in March of nineteen
sixty-six never reported back to their CO. Their bodies were never found, and shortly thereafter Americans were ostensibly
seen drilling holes in VC back in the hills.”

Scott’s freckled brow wrinkled in anger. He hated to be out-guessed by anyone, let alone the most unorthodox member of the
Treasury task force. Slayton’s reputation for disrespectful conduct was well known in high circles.

“I still don’t believe any of it,” he croaked, “and I refuse to be intimicdated.”

Winship saw the General working his way into a confrontation with Slayton, and interceded. The last thing he needed right
now was a fist fight between the two, and Slayton enjoyed goading the man. “Let’s try to settle this without resorting to
a duel,” Winship laughed, trying to maintain some humor.

“I think I’ve proved my point,” said Slayton. “Care to add anything, Ham?”

Scott could no longer contain himself. Springing up and down, raving and yelling, he thrust a pointed finger at Slayton. “You
can’t be serious! The combined resources of the Army and the Treasury have scoured all the records, and we came up with nothing!”

Slayton couldn’t resist. “That’s because you boys weren’t looking for a disillusioned squad of Army deserters with dreams
of glory, who weren’t getting enough bloodshed on the front and decided to mount a campaign of their own.”