Don Pendleton - Civil War II (6 page)

The navy captain remained in his chair and mildly declared, "No naval problems. We will continue our normal convoy operations for the merchant fleets, outbound only and through noon tomorrow only. All inbound shipping will be turned back at the twelve mile limit, and we seal the bay as of 1200 hours tomorrow. We could catch a bit of guff from the whitey Coast Guard, but we're bigger and meaner, so I see no real problem from that direction."

General Matthews also remained seated for his report. "We'll have two squadrons of fighters alternating in the airspace above the Bay area from dawn until you call us down. We are also going on Continental Alert for the duration, just in case some of our hungry neighbors get sudden ideas to exploit this operation."

General Bogan added, "And of course, we are leaving Automated Defense Command in full operation. Our black brothers in Africa and the yellow ones of Asia are beginning to get frantic. Some idiot might try to capitalize on this internal dispute and try to join the act. Don't worry, they won't."

"Give us the Phase Three wrap-up, Jackson," Abe Williams suggested.

"Okay. Norm Ritter will have the demolition boys out at Golden Gate Bridge. Phase Three begins at precisely zero six hundred hours, when the old bridge will splash into the drink. I'll hate to see that, just between us brothers. But ... everybody agrees that war is hell. So the bridge has got to go. It's a symbol, and that's what we have to go after. Anyway, the explosion will be heard all over the city. Hell, all over the Bay area. This will be the signal for all elements to commence the assault upon San Francisco. Element leaders, using the armored scout cars, will have to mix it up with the whiteys and stay down in there to reconnoiter potential trouble spots. Direct the armored units accordingly. Keep our foot soldiers out of trouble. You never can tell what half a million whiteys might decide to do. You have to respect those people, even if they don't respect us. But remember, this is a
limited
Phase Three. We're not going in there to kill. We just want to tear down some of their beloved symbols, wake 'em up, let 'em see beautiful black faces behind weapons of destruction, let 'em know what we
could
be doing if we had a
mind
to.

"The civic center element will raise as much hell as possible in a thirty minute period. Other elements are primarily screens, except for the Embarcadero units, and they have a few walls to breech along Market. Does that about cover it, Abe?"

Williams replied, "I guess so. But I want to emphasize, and I want all your people to clearly understand, that the Phase Three mission is simply to
wake them up.
No more killing than absolutely necessary. We want to shock them. We want them to be frightened. But we
do not
want them all dead. We want them to be helpless, to be at our mercy, and to
know
that they are."

"Yes, I think that's pretty well understood," Bogan murmured.

"Okay. Uh, Colonel Danniger ... would you care to give us a quick scan over the hinterland section."

"Yes, sir." The militiaman rose halfway out of his chair and turned about to address the junior officers. "As a quick scan ... the first wave from Warhole covers Bay Area targets only. Then the copters return directly to Warhole and embark the hinterland elements. The second wave will place Oakland Rifles and Armor Brigades in a fan-shaped pattern from Redding to the north to Sacramento east. The third wave covers the coastal area between Eureka and Sausalito. Succeeding waves will blanket our part of the state from San Luis Obispo up."

"Thank you, Sam," Williams said. "That's it, gentlemen. Needless to say, every place that's worth it in California—and every other state on the mainland—will know what Phase Two means by early tomorrow morning. All eyes, of course, will be on us, here in California, because we have the only three Phase Three cities. So let's follow the battle order. And ... for God's sake, let's watch it. We don't want to destroy this country. It's
our
country too, you know. And this is probably our very last chance, the final forlorn hope for tomorrow for the American Negro. We've tried everything else, and none of it worked.

We tried humility, and they walked on us. We tried passive resistance, and they terrorized us. We tried the courts, and they weaseled us. We tried economic power, and they cheated us. We tried local violence, and they crushed us. So now we have to try open warfare. We have to try it. We could fail, you know. Let's make it work. I consign our fate to your hands, gentlemen. God stand strong in your presence, my friends. God ride with you all the way."

Williams marched out of the room without a backward glance. The older ones would understand, but he did not want those young men to see the moisture in his eyes. To the young, leaders never cry.

Immersed in his thoughts, he went directly to the old press box, high atop the Warhole, bit off the end of a cigar, and looked out upon the grimy inheritance of Black America. "Not
my
people," he murmured.
"Thy
people, Father. Let this cup pass from my lips. Dear God, take away the cup." But he knew the cup would not budge. There was no place for it to go. Abe Williams was stuck with it. His eyes swept toward the bay. Yes, and San Francisco was stuck with it also.

CHAPTER 7

Winston had been to the Pentagon and to the Bureau of National Labor Standards—and now, he was positive, he'd picked up a. couple of shadows somewhere along the way. A picture had begun to definitely focus in his mind back there at the Pentagon—nothing definitive exactly—but a fuzzy image crawling with all sorts of wild possibilities and insane conclusions. He had been trying like hell to shrug it all away when he became aware of the tail. Two guys, young, impeccably dressed, and doing their job with such skill that only another pro would have spotted them. But dammit they were there. And now Winston was wanting in the worst way to know
why
they were there.

With his two shadows, he hopped the hover jitney to Capitol Hill, knowing that congress was not in session but hoping nevertheless to run into someone from the Senate Aimed Forces Committee. He found there nothing but an army of white tourists being led around by black guides, then he and his shadows took another jitney to the new Senate Office Building in Takoma Park. Here he located a senate aide who laughed nervously at every mention of mothballed war machines but professed complete ignorance of the subject.

After some ten minutes of parry-thrust learn-nothing

conversation, Winston stuck a cigarette between his lips and asked the aide for a light. When the guy brought the lighter up, Winston studied the hands and not the flaime, and found there the telltale clues he sought. The fingernails and the palms told it all, as he exhaled the smoke from his lungs, Winston asked the senate aide, "Is Senator Marvin aware that he has a Tom working for him?"

The guy flushed and told Winston to go to hell. Instead, he tried some stunting from hovercar to surface taxi and back to airborne shuttle, and was satisfied at the third shift that he had lost the double shadow—then he proceeded directly to a downtown Washington hotel which, by tacit agreement between the races, catered to those of light skin and tender sensitivities.

He did not register, but went directly to a telephone turret in the lobby, closed the door and locked it, made himself comfortable on the lounge, and dropped his AMS card into the meter. A soft tone sounded and he placed the call in precise audibles, then sat back and folded his arms to await the connection.

A feminine voice filtered up from somewhere beyond the meter to announce, "Mr. Waring's office."

"This is Mike Winston. Is the Chief in?"

"Oh. Are you calling from California, Commissioner?"

"No. I'm in Washington, Becky. This is important. Put me through, eh?"

"I'm sorry, Mike," the warm contralto declared. "He's gone for the day. Will you be staying overnight?"

Winston recognized the tone accompanying that question. He let his own tone become more formal as he told her, "Maybe. Uh, look, this is pretty hot stuff. Can't you zot-spot him for me?"

"I'll try," she replied, a hint of frost settling into her voice. "Just a sec."

A barely audible click sounded and Winston was treated to a minute of soft music, then the contralto returned and the music vanished. "I found him," she reported. "He stopped off at CAC on his way home. Be there about another thirty minutes."

"He still living in Silver Spring?"

"Uh huh. But you could probably catch him at CAC."

"Which CAC is this?" he inquired.

"The Community Accomodation Center," she replied. "The
white
one, of course."

"Uh . . ."

The woman laughed through the connection. "Don't tell me you've never ... It's at the Federal Center, Mike."

"Oh yeah. Okay, I'll try him there." His mind crawled, and he quickly added. "Do something for me first, Becky. Get me passkey codes for Central Computer, data retrieval on military weapons and munitions. Also demographic data on interurban and landflow characteristics."

"Are you calling from a turret?"

"Yes."

"All right. I'll code you through and patch you right now, if you'd like."

"Yes, I'd like that."

"My pleasure." She hesitated a moment, then said, "By the way, I live at the same cube." She laughed with a trace of embarrassment and added, "I mean, if you decide to stay overnight."

He replied, "Okay, thanks. No promise though, Becky—I mean, don't sit up waiting for me. I told you I'm on something hot. But I'll let you know. Okay?"

"Okay. Here's your patch."

She was gone abruptly and the automated voice from central computers was making the standard announcement. Winston fed in the data request, using precise audibles, then poked a button on the turret panel to switch in the printer. Within seconds the machine was running rapid-fire tabulations and the paper was falling in perforated folds into a small box at Winston's knee. He scanned the information as it came through, jotting quick notes along the way, and he was ready with the cross-check interrogation by the time the initial data scan was completed.

Moments after he had programmed-in the interrogation, the data picture he had sought and feared began to take form on the perforated sheets as a data summary. Ten

minutes after he entered the turret, he was fumbling his way into the lobby, hands shaking slightly with the knowledge of the dynamite packed into his briefcase. He ran outside and hailed a hovering air-taxi, and within another few minutes was feeding his AMS card into the plastic box at the entrance to the national capital's most exclusive federally-subsidized sex club.

The dining room was an endless sea of tables and chatter and drifting smoke from a thousand burning cigarettes, all superimposed into the unvarying hum of the electronic waiter service. Winston stepped up to the automated maitre d', punched a button, and spoke into the machine. "Zot-spot Urban Bureau Chief Charles Waring. Commissioner Mike Winston requesting."

There was a brief pause, then a buzzing which was swiftly replaced by a rasping voice announcing, "Waring here."

"Mike Winston, Chief. Hot stuff. Where can I find

you?"

"Where are you now, Mike?" came the cool reply.

"I'm right here in the dining room."

"Oh." A pause, then: "Okay. Come on over. A-22."

"Be right there," Winston assured him. He made his way across the numbered aisleways to the
A
for Availability section, and quickly located his target.

Waring sat there alone, a large hulk with white hair and a perpetually distressed face. These were eyes which Winston had always found it difficult to gaze into .. . there was too much misery there, too much betrayal—self-betrayal, perhaps—and entirely too much bitterness for any one human being to contain. He pulled out a chair and silently sat down, fished the summary sheet from his briefcase, glanced at his boss, then lay the sheet face up on the table.

"I'm sober," Waring said, without preliminaries, "If that's what you're wondering."

Winston doubted that. But he replied, "I wasn't wondering anything of the kind." He glanced at the tray alongside Waring's chair, noted the level mark of the

bourbon bottle, smiled, and tapped the tab summary with a finger. "Something here I want you to look at," he said.

"You eat yet?" Waring wanted to know.

Winston shook his head. "It can wait. Just look at these figures, Chuck."

The nation's head nigger-tender, as he liked to call himself, sighed and reached for the paper. His eyes traveled about in a random inspection. Then he speared ; Winston with a puzzled glance. "What's all this computed yuck about?" he asked unemotionally.

"It's a demographic read-out on landflow and urban I shift, keyed specifically to the Tom count. And a cross- I read on the status of retired military surplus arms, the I mothball arsenal. Look at the flow of the past three years." 1

Waring grunted and said, "So what?"

"So there's some damned significant stuff there. Something is brewing in Black America."