Operation Damocles (24 page)

XXXIII

President Vanderbilt paced the room thoughtfully, one hand holding a smoking cigar, from which he took an occasional puff, his other hand in his pocket.

The large Georgian manor house suited him. It wasn’t as big as the White House had been, but it was big enough. In some ways, it was more palatial, with its sweeping staircases and interior columns that reached upwards of thirty feet in the reception hall. The floor-to-ceiling windows of his new office looked out into a beautifully manicured garden that was just beginning to bloom. Huge magnolias and fir trees formed shaded canopies and screened, open glens in a parklike vista of sculptured shrubbery and flower-bordered paths. In many ways, he liked the southern city much better than Washington. Parts of it, like the section he was in, reminded him of the great estates and houses of the landed English nobility of days gone by. It suited Vanderbilt’s image of self.

“Are you telling me that the man who killed Broderick is one of our own agents?” he asked.

He spoke with the Director of the C.I.A., Orville Tomlinson, and his Deputy Chief of Operations for Internal Affairs, Frank Ketchum. Vice President Joseph Miller was present also.

Tomlinson and Ketchum were standard-issue Washington civil managers—medium height, gray suit, nondescript haircut. Seeing a crowd of them together made one think of a bunch of actors that all came out of clone-makeup at the same time.

Perhaps that’s what they were, after all, Vanderbilt thought.

Ketchum was briefing him. “The man is a rogue, Mr. President, wanted by the agency. His name is James Reed. He was a computer and telecommunications expert who was recruited for Broderick’s section from Covert Operations, just last year. He had a good record—maybe too good. He apparently didn’t fit in at Special Ops. Broderick reported a problem with him when he was ordered to eliminate a woman newscaster in Indiana. Reed objected to killing an American citizen.

“He ended up wrecking the hit on the woman, then he disappeared. So did the woman. Broderick had an APB out on him, but couldn’t get a whisper.

“From what we know of Reed, it’s not surprising. He was a good field agent, as well as being a technical specialist. He worked the Middle East for eight years.”

“Why didn’t Broderick just have him reassigned to another section?” asked Vanderbilt, stopping his pacing to look at Ketchum and to take a puff on his cigar.

“You know . . . or rather you knew Broderick, sir. He tried to force Reed to go through with it. He was a size-conscious little tyrant, and he could never stand it when a big guy like Reed defied him. He wanted to break Reed—get a hold on him so he could bring him to his knees.”

“Yes, I knew the little snake,” said Vanderbilt. “Except for the fact that we’re going to lose his contacts, I can’t say I’m especially sorry that he’s bought the farm. What are we going to do about that end of things?”

“We’re on it. As secretive as Broderick was, we managed to discover some of his ties. It will take some time to make friends, but introductions are under way. We’re spreading a little money where it will do the most good. The local fish are biting, but naturally, the international connections are cautious. It will take awhile, but it will happen.”

“Are they that important to us?”

“It always helps to have the local talent on your side, when you’re doing something in a foreign country. It would make things a lot more difficult without it. It’s awfully time consuming trying to recruit people to sell out their countrymen. Chancy, too. You never know if you’ll recruit some citizen with ideas of patriotism, who will alert others and mess things up. Also, it’s messy to clean up after amateurs, if anything goes wrong. No, it’s always best to work with pros.”

“Where is this Reed, now?”

“Working for a firm called Prouss Engineering in Mountain View, California. Going by the name of Townsend. Before he hit Broderick, he used an inside buddy named Fred von Braun in Atlanta to gain access into the community computer, and load in a background file and an industrial security clearance. Von Braun got nervous when Reed told him that he was looking for Broderick and started preaching a lot of anti-government crap to him. He was able to get away from Reed long enough to leave a phone message for his section supervisor, but he wasn’t very coherent. Really upset. Didn’t really know what information Reed entered, but knew it was for a low-level industrial clearance.

“After that, it was easy. We just looked at all the files written to the system that were not on the previous day’s backup tapes, found the one that fit the time period, and
voila!
Reed must have found out that von Braun gave him up, though. The kid was found dead in an engineered car accident, on the outskirts of Atlanta. Broken neck.”

“Why do you suppose Reed wanted an industrial clearance?” asked Vanderbilt. “What good would that do him?”

Ketchum thought a minute. “In my opinion, he just wanted to disappear, Mr. President. He needed a clearance to work on federal defense contracts; that’s his company’s primary business. They don’t do anything top secret, just civil and industrial engineering projects and the like. He’s taken a new identity, and lists a wife. The physical address he gave is phony, we’ve already checked that out. We’ll find that out in the next few days, though.”

“Why bother?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Forget him. If he’s not a threat, let it go. We’ve got more important things to worry about than to waste manpower trying to get revenge on some guy just because he fell out with Broderick. We know where to find him, if we decide we want him. If he’s on the run, he’s also watchful, and he’s a trained agent. Why risk a potentially messy business? We may even want to bring him back in at some point in the future. Doesn’t pay to waste resources, Ketchum.”

“Aye, sir. Guess you’re right.”

“Of course I am. Let him keep his clearance, and his job. Let him get fat and comfortable. Hell, I feel like sending him a cigar for disposing of that arrogant, little bastard.” Vanderbilt smiled, “I never liked him.”

Everyone laughed.

“Let’s get down to business,” said Vanderbilt. “Who is going to do the L.A. job?”

Ketchum looked at Tomlinson, who returned his look and nodded. Ketchum spoke, “We have an Air Force major named Donahue, and two of our agents, both former pilots. They will each lead a crew of three. We have two KC-10s and a C-5 at China Lake, being outfitted with spray equipment. They’ll fly into Miramar Naval Air Station and fuel up there. The fuel is already in storage tanks there. Between them, they can deliver almost a million pounds of fuel to L.A.

“The basic plan is for them to approach along the coast and cut inland near Long Beach. They’ll follow the San Diego Freeway north, and begin spraying somewhere near Inglewood. They’ll make a U-turn when they reach the San Fernando Valley, and follow the Hollywood Freeway south until their tanks are empty. Then, they’ll turn inland over the mountains and return to China Lake. We have an array of incendiary shells set up at a private residence just off Mulholland Drive. They will be fired by remote control just as soon as the aircraft are clear.”

“How many people know about this?” asked Vanderbilt.

“Just the pilots and the nine crewmen,” said Ketchum. “To everyone else, it’s just a training flight.”

“Good!” said Vanderbilt. “It looks like you’ve done well. One slight change, though. I want you to fire the shells before the planes get clear.”

“But, sir . . .” exclaimed Ketchum, his face aghast.

“You have a question, Frank?” Vanderbilt stood staring coldly at Ketchum.

Ketchum held his startled expression for another moment, then subsided. “No, sir,” he said.

“Good. Is the camera coverage arranged?”

Tomlinson answered. “Yes, sir. We’ve arranged for a news crew to be shooting a late-evening, celebrity, memorial-dedication ceremony at Wildwood Canyon Park, just outside Burbank. We’ve arranged the camera angles and timed the ceremony so that the cameras will be aimed back toward Hollywood when the atmosphere is ignited. It will be a direct satellite feed. All the wire services will have it within seconds, and it will no doubt be aired within minutes.”

“What is your estimate of the damage?” Vanderbilt stood before a window, his back to the room, looking out at a newly budding oleander screen that grew along a white picket fence. The fence abutted both sides of a gate that was surmounted by a white, latticework arbor. The arbor was covered with climbing roses, and framed a storybook path that led away into the trees.

He took a puff on the cigar clamped between his teeth; his hands were clasped behind his back.

“A million, minimum. Maybe two,” answered Ketchum.

“That ought to do it,” Vanderbilt said, and smiled.

XXXIV

It was mid-March. Eve Townsend, Hector Ortiz, Ted Wallace, and Wallace’s wife Jenny sat at the Townsends’ kitchen table playing a board game and talking. Teller and Townsend sat in front of the TV set in the adjacent living room. The sound was turned low on the TV, and the two men were absently sipping beer and watching a basketball game as they talked.

Eve moved a piece on the board, then got up and removed a swollen bag of popcorn from the beeping microwave oven. She took two bowls from the cupboard and prepared one for each group, adding a little salt and two sets of paper napkins.

“Would you take this to the boys, Hector?” Eve asked, handing him one of the bowls.

“Sure,” he said, taking the bowl into the living room. “Hey, you spooks want some popcorn? The James Bond Code does allow popcorn, doesn’t it?”

Townsend looked at Teller with a pained expression. “Why don’t you get him fixed?”

Teller glanced up at Ortiz as the latter handed him the bowl and napkins. “Oh, no! You never want to castrate a Mexican. It’s that Latin macho thing. They’ll go weird on you. He’d probably get religion, and I’d have to shoot him. Then where would I be?”

“Dead in a ditch, you old gringo cocksucker. What’re you two hatching up out here, anyway?” Ortiz responded, unperturbed.

“I think you two ought to get married,” grinned Townsend. “You’ve already got the adjustment period out of the way.”

“I could never live with him,” said Ortiz. “He has disgusting bathroom habits.”

“Just a word of warning, Jimmy,” said Teller, “never get drunk at his house and pee on his toilet seat. He’ll never let you forget it.”

“The toilet seat, the wall, the floor, the lavatory cabinet, the bathtub . . .” said Ortiz, walking back to the kitchen.

“See?” said Teller, shrugging helplessly at Townsend.

Townsend doubled over, laughing. Teller joined in, their laughter drawing mildly interested glances from those in the kitchen. Townsend finally caught his breath, and subsided with a sigh of weary pleasure. “I really envy you two,” he said. “I’ve only ever had one friend that close. Someone I could share everything with.” He told Teller about a high school chum he had grown up with named David Lebowitz. “When I went to the Middle East, we lost contact. Our lives went separate ways. Now, I can’t even contact him without putting him in danger. I wish that I had made more of an effort to keep in touch with him. I really miss that rapport.” He smiled, slightly shame-faced. “I am beginning to get something like that back, just being among you guys. I can’t tell you how much it means to me, Eddie, your taking me in.”

“Aw, pshaw,” said Teller. “You’re among friends, Jimmy. Things are going to get better. You just settle into that new job and make a life for yourself and Eve. Forget the political shit. That will take care of itself.”

“What about what Broderick has set in motion? We can’t let that happen,” said Townsend.

“That’s being handled. I’ve got a few active contacts yet,” said Teller. “You can relax, as far as that is concerned. Believe me, I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. You did your part by finding out about it.”

“You mean you don’t want to do the newscast thing?”

“We considered it. It’s just not necessary, Jimmy. People are so sick of hearing propaganda that it probably wouldn’t accomplish much, anyway. Whether they did manage to take out a city or not, they would say that your ‘newscast’ was just a preplanned effort to shift the blame. How do John and Jane Q. Public separate the truth? That’s the whole thing with these entrenched bastards and their bought-and-paid-for media: they can turn almost anything to their advantage. If the nationalists do something good, they find a way to take credit for it, then they turn around and kill a few civilians and say that nationalist radicals did it. Nature always favors the weeds, Jimmy, not the flowers. The only way to stop them from taking over the garden is to pluck them out.”

Townsend shook his head, sadly. “I wish that I could come up with some way that I could prove myself to you guys. I think all of you know more than you’re telling me. I understand your caution—I could be a plant, as far as you know. I really want to help, though, and of course, I’m curious to know a bigger part of the picture.”

“We have shown you our trust, Jimmy. Hector and I have put our lives in your hands by not turning you in. You know that it wouldn’t make a damn to the boys in power, that there is no concrete proof that we’ve done anything wrong. If you turned us in on suspicion of treason, we would either die in prison, being tortured, or killed outright when we resisted arrest. Hector and I made that decision, for ourselves. We don’t have the right to put anyone else at risk. You’re going to have to leave it at that, Jimmy.”

“I understand,” said Townsend. “I’ll continue to do what I can, though, on my own. It’s my fight, too.”

Teller saluted him with a raised bottle of beer, saying, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, Jimmy. Just so we don’t stumble over each other, though, let’s keep each other informed of our whereabouts, okay?”

Townsend lifted his bottle in return, and smiled. “You got it.”

XXXV

Three massive planes lifted off the China Lake runway at 0400 on March 21. Like three huge vultures, they wheeled slowly in the night sky, until they were on a heading for Miramar NAS on the California coast.

Two of them were Air Force KC-10s—giant tanker planes used for refueling strategic bombers during flight. The other was a mammoth C-5 cargo plane which was normally used to transport troops, supplies and heavy equipment, such as tanks and armored fighting vehicles, into battle zones.

All three planes had been fitted with spray heads and piping under their wings, and high-volume pumps. A liner of Hypalon rubber had been cut to fit inside the huge cargo bay of the C-5, and seamed together with cement and a heat gun to create a liquid-tight bladder, in order to turn the plane into a tanker. Other engineering modifications had also been necessary, including honeycomb aluminum baffles inside the bladder to prevent sloshing and shifting of the fuel weight, and the unstable flight dynamics that could result.

The fleeting shadows of the three aircraft raced across the moonlit desert, following the fading roar of their engines. The flight was without incident, and they landed at Miramar NAS forty minutes after takeoff. The flight commander presented his orders and flight plan to the operations officer at Miramar. When they had been processed, the nine crewmen were taken to breakfast at the officers’ mess, and then to a BOQ barracks where they could rest and get some sleep.

It took the Miramar POL crews twelve hours to fuel the three cavernous tanker aircraft, and because heat causes fuel to expand, and reduces carrying capacity, the refueling crew had to wait until the following evening to top off the tanks—after the sun had set and ambient temperatures had fallen.

The adaptation of the C-5’s cargo hold, and the spray equipment under the wings of the planes had caused some comment among the POL crew members at Miramar. No explanation was forthcoming, though, so the crew had simply followed orders and fueled the planes.

At 21:30 hours that same day, as night was falling and lights began twinkling along the populous Pacific coast, the planes lifted ponderously off the runway at Miramar, and headed west out over the ocean, climbing to their planned altitude. From a height of ten thousand feet, they could still see the afterglow of the sun, setting in the west.

Their “official” flight plan called for a bomber refueling exercise fifty miles off the California coast, near Los Angeles. Once they were out over the ocean, at the fifty-mile point, the planes turned north. After turning, Major Donahue, the Air Force officer who was in command of the flight, gave the order to pressurize the spray discharge systems. He wanted to run a visual check before they lost the daylight.

“TP Two, TP Three, turn on your accumulator pumps and pressurize your lines.”

“TP One, this is TP Two. Pumps are running. We’re holding 200 psi.”

“TP One, this is TP Three. Pressure is steady at 205 psi.”

“Good. I want to run a test. Station your crews so they can see the release nozzles, and release for five seconds on my mark.”

There were a few moments of silence as the flight crews got into position, then:

“TP Three. Ready when you are.”

“TP Two. Same here.”

“Okay, on three. One, two, three, mark!”

A fog of atomized fuel filled the wakes of the aircraft for five seconds, then disappeared in the distance as the valves were closed.

“TP Two, all nozzles are working fine.”

“TP Three, we’re good, too.”

“Fine. Mine are working, too. Looks like we’re good to go.”

Five minutes later, the planes were ten miles south-southeast of Santa Catalina Island, losing altitude as they approached Long Beach. Then, for an instant, their shadows appeared starkly on the surface of the dark ocean, like figures in the beam of a flashlight casting their images on a wall. Then they were gone.

Observers along the southern end of Santa Catalina saw a brilliant flash in the star-studded sky, then an angry, red, fireball cloud that darkened and disappeared as they watched. A few seconds afterward, they heard a loud, popping concatenation of sound, like that of a distant fireworks display. They could not see in the darkness, as a waterspout formed out of an area of boiling sea, just where the fleeting images of the planes had been, nor note the twisting flume heading out to sea, calving a second waterspout, then another, as it went. Fortunately, storm warnings had been issued earlier that afternoon, for impending weather from the west, and no boats or ships were in the area.

The following day, the military reported the loss of three planes on a training exercise, just off the California coast. The names of the crewmen were being withheld, pending notification of next of kin. In the following days, no names were forthcoming, and the incident passed from the minds of the public and the press.

###

Obermiller stared dazedly at the acoustic tile of the ceiling. The drugs made it hard to focus his eyes. One eye was almost blind. It had a dark spot in it that almost completely obscured his vision. How many days had it been? He didn’t know; the days had run together.

They had him strapped to a gurney, even his head was strapped in place. His gums were bleeding. The bleeding and blindness was probably caused by something in the mixture of drugs, he thought. A side effect. The CD changer paused and started over again. It played four rap-music chants, over and over. It never stopped. When they weren’t grilling him, they woke him every two hours with a shot of something that made him burn and itch inside, all through his veins. He wondered how long it would take. He hadn’t had solid food in three days, and his crotch was raw from his feces and urine. They had worked over him in shifts, all the first day and part of the second. Now, they were sleeping eight hours between trials. This was the fourth or fifth period of torture. Each lasted for a week to ten days, he thought, then was offset by a few days of recovery and decent food, and the freedom of his room. He was growing weaker. During the last intermission, he hadn’t been able to get out of bed until almost the day before they started again. His joints ached with lack of movement, as with advanced arthritis. He knew that if he survived, he would likely be crippled for the rest of his life. His internal organs were failing, too. He was passing blood in his urine and bowel movements.

He had alternately cursed Leland for getting him into this mess, and prayed that he would fire the machine at his tormentors, and kill them all. He wanted them to die, even if half the world died with them. He hadn’t said a word to his captors since his arrest. Hadn’t responded to their taunts and torture. They had made lewd, profane remarks about his dead mother, and denigrating comments about his manhood, about his not having “the right stuff.”

Now, he was resigned. Death would be a comfort. Please, God, let it come soon, he prayed. If only he could turn on his side, bring his knees up, move his arms and head, he would be glad to curl up and sleep forever.