Premeditated Murder (20 page)

FOURTEEN

This is not a time for speeches. It is a time for mourning. Yesterday was a terrible day for Americans. Without any warning, we suffered a deep and painful loss. Our grief will not be short-lived …

     Approximately one hour after President Graham's death, Chief Justice Kmerski swore me in as President. I don't think of myself as a politician; I think of myself as a soldier. And yet I stand before you in what most would say is the most powerful political position in the world …

     This will be a difficult job for me. I will need your help as I try to handle the responsibilities of leading our country …

     As you probably know by now, our Homeland Security director has recommended that I change the terrorism threat status from elevated to high. She based that recommendation on an understandable sense of caution in light of yesterday's tragic events and the unexpected transition that we all will have to make.

     I have never liked the idea of a “terrorist threat” level. I think it plays into terrorists' hopes of frightening people. I don't believe that it is necessary to make a big show of predicting whether a terrorist act will take place. We all know that terrorism is possible, and we all know that we must help protect each other from these attacks.

     Ever since September 11, we have become painfully aware that our country is at war. Ask anyone who lives in New York, Pennsylvania, or Washington, D.C. Ask anyone who knew any of the victims of that infamous day. Ask anyone who watched the news reports of the destruction and its aftermath.

     This is an unusual kind of war, since our adversary aims to kill innocent people rather than to destroy military targets. But the actions of these aggressors constitute warfare, plain and simple.

     In that sense, every American citizen is a soldier in this war. Most of us do not wear uniforms, most of us do not have ranks or carry weapons, but we are all at war. So we do not need “terrorist threat” alert levels. We do not need color-coded signs to tell us to be aware, to report unusual activity, to watch out for anything that seems suspicious, to protect ourselves …

     To those who would say “Too much change has taken place in our government over too short a period of time,” I say: Never forget that this is a nation of the people—and the people of this great land have not changed. And never have they been more steadfast in the defense of their liberty and of their country.

     And to those who would say “We cannot have a President who has so little experience in government,” I say: Never underestimate the will of a soldier who is fighting for his country.

     And to those who would say “When will we surrender to the fear and the terror, and give up the freedoms that generations of Americans have died to protect?” I say: Never.

(Excerpts from White House address of President Ferguson, December 10)

April 25—Washington, D.C.

WHEN CARLOS OLIVEIRA SAW THE PRESIDENT come out of the Oval Office and walk toward him, the young assistant was puzzled. According to the official schedule, President Ferguson was supposed to be meeting with various national security advisors and the Chief of Staff for a briefing. Did someone forget a report he needed to track down? Carlos set aside one of the many newspapers that he had been reading for the President and rose from his desk.

“Carlos, I had to move some things around on my calendar today, so I won't be meeting with Mr. Browning or the advisors until later this afternoon. I gave the changes to Mrs. Wittenour.” The President glanced down at the stacks of papers covering Carlos's desk and said, “When you get a minute, can you come join me out on the portico? I need to talk to you about something and I want to get a little fresh air.”

“Of course, Mr. President. Right away.” Carlos could feel the familiar swell of pride inflate his chest and pull back his shoulders as he followed the tall man into the Oval Office.
You will never feel more alive than when you are working for this man,
Poppy had said.
He will do anything for you, and you will want to do anything for him.

Just as they were about to open the French doors at the back of the office, a woman's voice said, “I'm sorry, Mr. President. Mr. Browning is calling. He says it's important.”

The President turned to Carlos. “Why don't you wait outside for me. I'll take this call and I'll be right out.” Carlos stepped out of the Oval Office onto the brick and stone porchway that bounded that part of the West Wing of the White House, closed the doors behind him, and watched as two small brown birds swooped down and landed on the back lawn.

He will tell you that I saved his life many times in Vietnam, but I need to tell you what really happened when we were together in that war. We were on a patrol with eight other men. Two of them were new. The army was so stupid. They always sent new men into action too soon. It happened so often the men made up a name for them: FNGs. Fucking New Guys. They always needed more training. They always were getting killed. Some of the guys who had been in country for a while stopped bothering to learn their names.

Anyway, we got intel that some Vietcong were using this spot to cross a river to bring supplies to their troops, so Lieutenant Ferguson and me went to find a good place to set up an ambush. Then that night, our squad spread out on the shore so that right before dawn, when Charlie crossed the river, we would take him out, nice and easy. There were three men to my left, then me, then two men to my right, then the lieutenant, the radio man, and two more men to his right. It was raining, so it was a really dark night. It was going to be a good ambush.

But even though the lieutenant had told everybody to hold their fire until he gave the signal, one of the FNGs—the one farthest to the right—got too hyper. Probably took one of those stupid amphetamine pills the army gave out. As soon as he heard something moving on the river in front of him, he opened fire. It turned out to be a Vietnamese junk—one of those little wooden ships Charlie sometimes used to move supplies. By the time he stopped firing, the junk was all busted up, but we weren't going to ambush anyone else that night.

Then, all of a sudden, everything went bad. Instead of all that noise scaring off a few VC, like I thought it would, suddenly there's this flare flying through the air, and for a minute I can see that there's not just a few VC moving some supplies. There's like a whole lot of them. Like forty or fifty. Maybe even more. And then the shooting started.

These guys weren't crossing the river into our ambush—they had already crossed the river farther upstream onto our side, and were coming right down our right flank. We were going to get overrun, or surrounded. And just as the lieutenant went to call for support, another flare went up, the radio man got hit, and he spun around and then the radio got all shot up. We couldn't call anyone. We were dead.

By this time, bullets were flying all over the place. The kid who shot up the junk panicked, gave away his position, and was killed in no time. I didn't know it at the time, but the guy next to him had been hit too, and couldn't move his legs. The radio man was screaming, and we looked like we were going to eat it. The only thing keeping us alive was the fact that it was so dark, the enemy couldn't really see us. The lieutenant ran over to my position and told me to hold all fire and take the rest of the squad and retreat. He said that he was going to lay down some cover, and that he would follow with the radio man and the other guy that was still alive.

So the lieutenant started opening up on the VC with his big machine gun, and that slowed them down and diverted them from our position. I started to fall back with the five men at my end of the formation. We had to really move to keep from getting outflanked and pinned against the river. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't shoot, because the lieutenant and those other guys were between us and the VC. That probably saved our lives, since if we'd opened fire, the VC would have been able to find us and kill us.

The last I saw of the lieutenant was muzzle flashes from his machine gun. The VC must have thought there were ten of him, because he would fire off a few rounds, then run like crazy to another spot and fire off a few more. He knew that if he stood in one place, they could fire at where the muzzle flashes were coming from, and he'd be dead. But he could move like a ghost in the darkness, and they never knew where the bullets would come from next.

Carlos looked through the windows of the French doors into the Oval Office as President Ferguson spoke excitedly to his Chief of Staff on the phone. He didn't have any problem imagining young Lieutenant Ferguson, rain dripping off his helmet, single-handedly holding off an enemy force ten times greater than his in the middle of the jungle night, while his men escaped.

So by the time we made it back to camp, it was already late morning. I knew that I had to get back to the lieutenant with backup. But meanwhile, Charlie had started this big offensive away from where our ambush had been set up—a diversion to allow the troops we had met to move down the river with no problem. All the air and river support we had was helping out with that fight. I had to wait until that afternoon before I could get a small boat to go back up the river. What I saw when I found them I will never forget for the rest of my life.

The lieutenant was swimming right down the middle of the river, far enough from shore that the VC couldn't hit him from land. He was doing like the breast stroke, with the radio man on his back. He had tied the radio man's wrists together, and looped his arms over the lieutenant's head from behind, so the lieutenant could keep his hands free to swim, and so the radio man's head would stay out of the water. I don't know how the lieutenant kept swimming. I can't swim for shit. I would've drowned in two seconds.

But that wasn't all. The lieutenant was pushing the paralyzed guy down the river with him, too. He had taken his belt off and tied the guy to a piece of the busted-up wooden boat that the FNG had shot up. It was like a little private raft, keeping him afloat, because he couldn't move his legs.

By the time we reached them, the lieutenant was just about finished. He was so tired that he couldn't pull himself into the boat. We had to drag him over the side. And that's when I saw that he had been hit in the back with about ten pieces of shrapnel from a hand grenade.

Later, I figured out that altogether, the lieutenant swam about five miles, with one unconscious guy on his back, and pushing along another guy, after getting hit in the back from a grenade. It was the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my life. And if you ever ask him what happened, he'll tell you that I rescued him. I'm telling you, he's a great man, Carlos. The greatest man I've ever met.

The French doors opened, and the President came out of his office holding a small piece of paper. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Carlos,” he said, as they walked several paces away from the guard who stood at the Oval Office entrance. They sat down on a bench, out of earshot of the guard, and the President looked down at the paper in his hand and then up again at Carlos. He looked a little tired, or maybe sad.

“Carlos,” he said, “I'm sorry that I have to ask you to do this for me, but I can't think of a way that I can do it myself.”

Worcester, Massachusetts

WHEN SERGEANT PETE VANDERWALL'S PAGER went off, he was having his usual end-of-the-tour cup of coffee at the Double V on Main Street. It wasn't that Vanderwall really needed the coffee so much—it was just something he liked to do before coming in from his shift. Like making sure that the kids were covered in bed before going to sleep at night.

He checked the number on his pager before returning the call. He didn't recognize it. It was unusual for him to be paged. Normally, dispatch would just get him by radio. It was probably a wrong number.

As he waited for whoever it was to answer the phone, he watched the owners of the Double V Sandwich Shop, Maria and Joe, cleaning up. They were in their fifties or sixties, but Pete had never seen them apart. They came to work together and left together. Pete thought of the last time he had spent the whole day with Vicki, and got a little envious.

Earlier that week, Maria had cut herself slicing a tomato, and Joe wasn't letting her get her new bandage wet. “It's nothing,” she insisted with a smile, as Joe gently pushed her away from the sink. Joe knew better. Coming from Maria, “It's nothing” meant anything from a head cold to a dislocated shoulder. She once went two weeks limping around on a sore foot until Joe and their son finally threw her in the car and took her for X rays. Turned out she had a stress fracture.

A friendly, gentle male voice finally answered Pete's call. “This is Pastor Rick Reid.”

“Pastor Reid, this is Sergeant Pete Vanderwall of the Worcester P.D. You paged me?”

“Yes, Sergeant, thanks so much for returning my call,” the voice replied. “I'm the new pastor at the First Congregational Church over on West Street. I wonder if I could speak to you for a minute about a member of the congregation here.”