Don Pendleton - Civil War II (3 page)

"Oh bullshit!" Ritter railed back. "Where else am I going to get operatives who can move about freely?"

"Norm's right, of course," General Bogan put in quietly. "Let's not fall into what-if's and what-might-have-been's.

Let's talk about the current problem."

"Is there any way to head Winston off at the pass?" General Matthews inquired.

"I'm looking into that," Ritter growled. "I got a position report on him just before I came over .He hopped the commuter to Washington—" The intelligence chief glanced at his watch and frowned. "—just about twenty minutes ago. Don't worry, he'll be picked up on the other end and we'll be on his every move."

"Why not just discreedy dispose of him?" Matthews mildly suggested.

"Not until we know for sure how deep he's gone," Ritter shot back. "We want no loose ends flapping about."

"Norm's right, of course," Williams said. "So okay. Assume that Winston is definitely onto the Omega Project. What will he do? What
cm
he do?"

"He'll have to present his case to Arlington, of course," Bogan murmured.

"Clear to the top, immediately?" Williams asked.

The General nodded his head and replied, "Wouldn't you? Besides, he's gone back up the ladder rather quickly in Urban. There's no one between him and the President but the bureau chief. And that guy is a total zero. Yes, that's where I'd go with it. Directly to the top. Where else can he go?" Bogan smiled. "Not to the military, that's for sure. And the federal police . . . well . . ." The old soldier shrugged his shoulders. "I imagine he wouldn't feel too comfortable there."

"I don't know," Mayor Harvey put in. "Winston is gutsy. He'd go to the FBI if he thought he had a case."

"Just what I was thinking," Abe Williams agreed. "That's exactly where Arlington would go, too. He'd have to. He would be moving for a quick and quiet bust, no fanfare, no panic, no loss of face to the administration. The federal cops would be swarming us like hornets in no time at all, and we'd all just quietly disappear." He smiled grimly. "Never to be seen or heard again in the world of living things."

"That wouldn't stop anything," Ritter pointed out.

"No, but Arlington would probably think it might. He's

smart enough to know how long it takes to set up a thing like this. He'd have no way of knowing how far it has gone."

"Any move they make now will simply cause wider bloodshed," Bogan observed. "If they get to us first..."

"Right," Williams said. "The boys would run wild. Okay. We have to stop Winston. We have to stop him dead."

"And advance our timetable," Ritter declared.

"Will that be necessary?" Williams murmured.

Bogan sighed and said, "Yes. We have everything to lose and absolutely nothing to gain by idling along now."

A silence of some thirty seconds followed Bogan's declaration. It was Abe Williams who broke in. He cleared his throat noisily and said, "All right. Let's advance the timetable. Let's move tonight."

Another brief silence, then Harvey said, "Can we do it?"

Williams was watching the military chief. Bogan scratched his head and turned his gaze to his military aide. "What do you think, Norm?"

Ritter jerked his head in a quick nod. "My boys have been up and ready for over a month now. From my end, yeah: Go."

The Air Force Chief said, "Naturally, TAC is always ready. Just give me an hour's notice."

Bogan sighed and turned his gaze to Mayor Harvey. "Well, my adjutant just completed a nationwide inspection of the militia. They seem ready, but I'm still a bit concerned about the discipline. They're eager and they've been penned up all their lives. I just hope we don't have a blood orgy."

Harvey blinked his eyes rapidly and said, "You don't have to worry about the Oakland units."

"I'll vouch for the readiness of the militia," Abe Williams said quickly. "They're ready. I guess the only loose ends we have are political. But we can work out the politics by ear."

"Okay," Bogan said, sighing heavily. "But just remember that the militia will be carrying the brunt. The regular army forces are largely specialists in the quick-reaction philosophy—brashfire teams." He glanced at Abe Williams. "I see no reason for a change in the battle order, do you?"

Williams shook his head. "None at all. Do you want me to contact Admiral Parks, or will you,"

"I'll get with him," Bogan replied. "I'm going to be busier than a cat covering up crap, though, so you'll have to work the readyline with the other units."

"I'll get them in," Williams solemnly assured the general.

"Then I guess that's it," Bogan said. "We hit tonight."

Ritter leapt to his feet and did a little dance alongside the conference table. "Hot damn, hot damn," he cried. "I can't hardly believe it. Tonight's the night, and oh what a night! Burn, baby, burn—and watch my fucking smoke. We're gonna jerk old whitey apart at the seams. Wait'll you see the chao3 in the skies when I blow the whistle on automated airflow. And the gas mains, the power stations, communications—man, I got the whole world in my hand. I got the water systems, the fuel lines, the—"

"Don't forget your assassins," Harvey put in icily.

"Hell yes, I got death in my hand, too—and why're you all sitting around so gloomy? This is the day we've been awaiting for twenty years! Why the hell are you all looking so gloomy?"

Abe Williams smiled faintly and said, "The day of the black cat."

"Yeah," Ritter cried happily. "The day of the big black cat."

"Let's just leave ourselves someplace to live," Williams said. "Remember that. We have to live more than one day. So knock off the Sambo act, Norm. And I don't want any kill orgies. Understand? We stick precisely to the battle

order."

Ritter's big moment was not to be dampened by censure from the chief. He laughed loudly and told Williams, "Sure, Abe, sure. You mad at me? Hell, I'm not mad at anybody. Hey, Jackson, I want one final review with you, I don't want our boys getting in each other's way. For God's sake, Jack, do you know what this means? Do you know what day this really is? God, I don't believe it, I just can't believe it. Tonight's the night, and we're going to tear old whitey apart at the seams!"

"You'd first better be doing something about Mike Winston," Bogan pointed out.

"I'll do that. He'll be the first to come apart. First man out, Jackson, good old Uncle Mose Winston. And then just watch my fucking smoke!"

CHAPTER 3

Winston stepped from the moving sidewalk into the vestibule of the commuter, walked over to a battery of plastic boxes, selected the proper one, fed in Ms AMS card, then stepped over to the escalator gate. His card popped out of a rectangular tube and the gate opened to admit him. He shoved the card into a pocket and moved on to the upper deck of the giant aircraft. There, another plastic box awaited. He inserted his monetary card through a slot at the bottom of the box. An instant later it clicked out on top, bringing with it a thin rectangle of cardboard.

Winston returned the AMS card to his pocket and glanced at his berthing assignment, printed on the cardboard. He grunted with satisfaction, noting that he had drawn a forward dayroom, which meant more head-space for one thing. He decided, once again that there were compensations for the F-VIP coding on his AMS card. The "F"—-indicating Federal—qualification to the VIP rating had usually managed to work against him, but the airlines must have known who was buttering their bread. And this was one time when Winston was prepared to appreciate it. He was unnerved, excited, his thoughts jumbled—and he needed that hour and a half of flight time to collect himself and try to pull together several years of casual observations of goings-on in Black America. Not one thing, standing alone, meant a damn thing. But. .. put it all together and ... it was enough to worry a guy.

He located his room, a six by ten cubicle, closed the accordion-type plastic door and immediately undressed. He AMS'd his suit through the tube to the valet shop even before the big craft left the ground and as soon as the safety light extinguished, indicating that they were airborne, he stepped into the shower stall and refreshed himself.

He could have been in a hotel room, for all the sensation of flight or even movement a guy got from these new supersomics. Had to hand it to the French—those people knew how to build flying machines. As Winston soaped down, he thought vaguely of the old lumbering airplanes of the eighties, the terribly inept, uncomfortable and dangerous cracker-boxes of the seventies and he was glad it was 1999. Imagine wasting half a day just getting from one coast to the other. He recalled his first air trip back in '70 or '71. He'd been about six. He smiled, remembering the excitement of that adventure. Some adventure! Two hours to get a thousand miles! Still, he had to admit, there'd been a vitality to that age. A vitality. Where had all the vitality gone? Had technological smoothness and monetary order sucked the guts out of the world?

Winston hadn't experienced thoughts such as these for years. They bothered him. What was it Abraham Lincoln Williams had said to him on that chance meeting in New Orleans a few months earlier? Williams was supposed to be an urban lobbyist, and that was something that had never rung quite true for Winston. What was the sense in lobbying? Nobody on Capitol Hill gave a damn for black problems anymore. Williams would be the first man to recognize that fact. The blacks had screwed themselves completely out of the national political picture when they all went to town. The way the country was apportioned now, they couldn't even get a seat in the House of Representatives.

Oh yeah, he remembered now what Williams had said to him. "There was a time," he told him in that quietly

troubled voice he managed so well, "when the black man thought he had a friend in you, Mr. Winston."

Well, shit! Winston hadn't turned the Negro's world over, they'd done it themselves. What the hell could they logically ask of anybody now? What was a guy supposed to do? Get up on a soap box and start preaching? And wind up with his ass nailed to a willow tree?

Thanks, Abe, no thanks, you quietly troubled black bastard. The world has seen enough crucifixions, they're not getting Winston's ass too. They almost did once. Once, Abraham Lincoln Williams, you people damned near got Winston's ass. And for what? Screw you, Black Abe, and your Buck Rogers' ghettoes, too. You asked for them, buddy, and you got just what you asked for. Call
me
an Uncle Mose, eh?

Winston turned off the shower, caught a glimpse of his snarling face in the revolving mirror, and laughed outright at the fierce countenance. But he still felt nettled as he stepped into the cabin—he could not get rid of it all simply by laughing. He went over to the table, lit a cigarette, studied the service box, decided he didn't want anything, then took his cigarette to the recliner and made himself comfortable. Windows! That's one thing he remembered and missed on these modern jobs. Windows! Once there were windows on airplanes. You could sit there at the window and look down to the earth, far below. Well, what the hell . . . never could see anything anyhow. You sure couldn't sit around bare-ass on one of those old crates. You couldn't get your suit pressed, or take a shower, or take a stewardess to bed. Hell, he didn't miss the damn windows.

He lay there in a quietly troubled reverie and finished the cigarette, then dropped the butt into the tube, puffed the pillows beneath his head and began trying to put the pieces back together in his head. His door opened and a pretty young woman stepped in. She wore the familiar sky-blue shortie smock of the Accomodations Stewardess. She smiled and moved to the table, picked up his AMS card and ran it through the service box, then shrugged out of the smock and posed for his inspection.

Accustomed as he was to female nudity, Winston gawked nevertheless. She was a tall girl, maybe five-nine or ten, her body flowingly arranged in rose-tinted hues of soft hills and vales and swinging planes. Her hair was some odd shade between black and red, the eyes wide-spaced—almost oriental—glowing with lights. A red gem, probably synthetic, adorned the deep dimple of her belly button.

"Acceptable?" she asked quietly, turning to give Winston the side view.

"I guess I got the wrong section," he growled.

She studied his face briefly, then said, "This is the accommodations suite. Didn't you want sexual accommodation?"

He shook his head, a bit uncertainly, and told her, "Not especially."

"Then you programmed the wrong box when you boarded," she said. "But as long as you're here .. ."

"Well, let's not, and just say we did," Winston murmured. "Nothing personal, tigress. I just . . . uh . . . want to lie here and think."

The girl moved on to the recliner nevertheless and perched on the edge, a warm hip pressing against him. "I already ran your card through," she pointed out. "You may as well get your ten minutes' worth. If you don't want sexplay, how about a little massage?" Her hands were already kneading the flesh of his arms, the delightful aroma of her creating a delicate atmosphere between the polarized bodies.

His hands merged with the soft warmth of her body. "Don't any girls of this generation ever wear hair?" he asked casually.

The girl wrinkled her nose at the remark and languidly wriggled her midsection in recognition of Winston's presence there. "Girls today don't have that kinkup," she told him. "Anyway, who needs hair
there
? The skin's the thing, isn't it?" She eased down and kissed him softly on the lips, bringing the rose-tipped breasts to rest on his chest. She found him with a free hand, giggled softly into his mouth, and playfully manipulated his torrid zone.