The Next President (3 page)

“I already told them no, Grandma,” Evan said.

“Have they said why they’re here?” Belle Cade asked.

“Just what you heard: a serious matter,” Evan said, pitching his voice low for the last three words. Then he continued in a normal tone.

“They do seem to have their hands on their weapons, though.”

The cops quickly dropped their hands to their sides and had the decency to blush, but this wasn’t enough for Belle Cade.

“What is the meaning of all this?” she demanded, and when the cops weren’t quick to answer, she added, “I’m calling my lawyer right now.”

She left to make the call.

Evan told the cops, “You guys are in for it now.”

Axton looked like he was about to grab Evan, but his partner put a hand on his arm.

Speaking for the first time. Officer Campbell said in an even tone, “We’d just like to take a look in your closet.”

“My closet?” Evan asked, bewildered.

“We want to see your shoes,” Axton blurted.

That left Evan even more nonplussed. Then, looking at the hvo young cops, a thought occurred to him.

“You guys didn’t get a search warrant before you came out here.”

Officers Axton and Campbell turned red once more.

“Too bad,” he told them, and closed the door in their faces.

Belle Cade’s lawyer, Elgar Guerrero, showed up thirty minutes later.

He explained that he would have arrived sooner but he’d stopped at the home of the chief of police, interrupted the man’s dinner, and demanded to know why two fine people like the Cades were being harassed in their own home by a pair of his cops. The chief, who hadn’t known of the incident, made it his business to find out immediately, and then shared the information with Guerrero, but only with great reluctance.

“I had to threaten to sue him, the department, and the city before he opened up,” Guerrero told Belle. Then the lawyer turned his attention to Evan.

“Those two young fools overheard a tip about you this evening, Mr.

Cade.”

“Me?”

The lawyer nodded.

“You’re familiar with a fellow named Ivar McCray, who was electrocuted a few weeks back?”

“I read about it in the paper,” Evan replied. Ivar McCray had been de scribed as a biker who’d died while attempting to manufacture a pipe bomb.

He’d dropped the soldering iron he’d been using into the puddle of water in which he’d been standing.

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“Someone called the police department tonight. Someone who knew that muddy footprints had been found near the dead man’s body.”

“I read that story,” Belle said.

“It didn’t mention any footprints.”

“Exactly,” the lawyer replied.

“Whoever called the police had private knowledge of that little detail. And whoever that snitch was, he said to see Evan Cade if you want to find the shoes that made those prints.”

It was just the Cades’ good luck that the two young rattlebrains had over heard the tip when it was phoned in and raced off to become big heroes neglecting to first obtain the small constitutional amenity of a search warrant.

Had they been able to coerce their way into Belle’s home and found any thing unfortunate, that could have been a problem. A prosecutor could have argued that permission for a search had been given, and you never knew what a court might rule to be admissible evidence in these get-tough-on crime days.

“I didn’t commit any crimes,” Evan pointed out.

“The police have been known to arrest the wrong man,” Guerrero told him.

“Prosecutors have even been known to act… overzealously.”

“That’s why I called you,” Belle told the lawyer.

“A wise decision, but I’m not a criminal attorney,” Guerrero reminded her.

“I will have the name of one for you by tomorrow morning, however.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Evan reiterated.

“Sometimes it matters more what’s done to you, Mr. Cade,” the lawyer advised.

“And from what we’ve learned tonight it’s all but certain there’s someone who doesn’t like you.”

J. D. Cade’s eyes were heavy, but so far he hadn’t been able to sleep. He turned his head and looked out the window. The sky, which had been cloudless at the start of the flight, was now filling with a storm front. A massive cumulus formation bruised with storm cells and bloodied by the light of a disappearing sun stretched as far as he could see. J. D. looked up when a hand fell softly on his shoulder.

“There’s some rough weather up ahead, Mr. Byrd,” the cabin attendant told him, using the alias she’d been given.

“Captain Blevins is going to fly around as much of it as he can, but he asked me to have you fasten your seat belt.”

J. D. nodded and complied with the request.

“Haven’t been able to get to sleep?” the attendant asked.

“Not yet.”

She reached into her pocket and then gracefully lowered herself to perch next to J. D.‘s seat. She said in a soft voice, “Sometimes I need a little something to help me sleep.” She opened her hand to reveal a small gold pill case, which she popped open. Four red capsules lay within.

“Chloral hydrate. I’d get in big trouble offering you these as an employee of the charter company, so this is just from me to you… take two if you want them.”

Sympathy for the killer, J. D. thought. Far better than he deserved. But he smiled and took two of the capsules.

“Take only one at a time,” the attendant whispered.

“And if you decide to take one now, you should stick with soft drinks.”

He thanked her and she went forward to her seat.

J. D. put the capsules in his pocket. He wanted to see how well the pilot was able to avoid the storm before he drugged himself. He remembered seeing a sky that looked just like this one as he was landing in Vietnam. But the pilot of that charter flight—on Flying Tigers, normally a freight carrier—had barreled right through the threatening clouds.

The two hundred cherries on board hadn’t sweated what Mother Nature might do to them; the stewardess had just announced that the chances of the plane taking sniper fire were 40 percent.

J. D. Cade had enlisted in the army, but he was drafted into the PANIC unit.

Ostensibly he was attached to the 1st Logistical Command at Long Binh.

This was the outfit responsible for supplying the army in Vietnam with every thing from socks to rockets, canteens to claymores. It worked with area commands supply depots, and support battalions throughout the country.

Which gave its Pilferage and Inventory Control (PANIC) unit, working out of nearby Saigon, reason to pop up anywhere they wanted in South Vietnam to see just who was stealing how much from Uncle Sam on any given day. Visits from PANIC were greeted with the fear and loathing that civilians reserved for the IRS. Everyone was careful to tread lightly around the unit’s auditors. No one ever questioned what they were doing in any area of operations

There would have been even greater fear in some quarters had it been known that the unit’s auditing function was a cover for a small team of assassins commanded by Colonel Garvin Townes. Townes wasn’t really an army officer; that was his cover. He was CIA.

But all his snipers were army recruits. That gave PANIC an extra layer of insulation.

PANIC was an adjunct to the Phoenix Program, the CIA plan to beat the Viet Cong by neutralizing its civilian infrastructure: tax collectors, supply officers political cadres, and the like. The main problem the program faced was that the VCI (Viet Cong infrastructure) it sought were indistinguishable from the general population. Further complicating matters was the establishment of quota systems. In 1969, for example, eighteen hundred VCI were supposed to be rounded up each month; of these, at least 50 percent were supposed to be found guilty and sentenced. Because of the pressure to meet the quotas, the CIA-created-and-armed Provisional Reconnaissance Units of the South Vietnamese government arrested and interrogated civilians seized at random by the hundreds of thousands, and by the end of the war almost forty-one thousand “suspects” had been neutralized to death.

The Phoenix Program grew so big and grotesque that it came to the public’s attention in the United States and generated fierce political criticism and opposition. Moreover, even its architects came to admit to themselves that it was sloppy and inefficient. So PANIC was quietly brought into being.

It was smaller and far more selective in its targeting, and its use of an army front allowed it to operate beneath the threshold of public awareness. In the end, PANIC became something of a spite operation spite with a hard-on.

Anyone of any importance that PANIC didn’t want to live to see the end of the war, much less celebrate a Communist victory, got added to its hit list.

panic’s snipers were culled from likely graduates of the army’s sniper school at Fort Benning, Georgia. Most of the men none older than twenty two who worked in PANIC liked the idea of being part of an elite

covert unit. J. D. Cade, who had joined the army to become a combat sniper, had to be coerced into becoming an instrument of assassination.

Sp4 Jefferson Davis Cade’s first assignment had been described to him as a “cupcake.” His target, he was told, though a nominal ally, was really a vile rodent who should have been exterminated long ago.

Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Van Le of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam was stationed at Lai Khe, not far from Saigon, with the ARVN 5th Infantry Division. But in 1965 Le was still a major, and his ARVN company had been assigned to provide support to the U.S. 1st Air Cavalry Division in their battle with three North Vietnamese regiments in the la Drang Valley in the central highlands. Once the ARVN came under fire, however, Major Le’s men “failed to engage the enemy,” as an after-action report politely put it. American soldiers whose flank was suddenly left exposed and took several casualties as a result put it more bluntly: The bastards cut and ran. Major Le led the way, though he did suffer a slight wound to his left shoulder. A GI later testified that he’d seen the major shoot himself very carefully with his side arm.

The Military Assistance Command in Vietnam (MACV) pushed for Major Le’s court-martial. They felt that his actions set a poor example at a time when the United States was just beginning its buildup of forces in South Vietnam. But Major Le was a cousin of the country’s vice president, and the State Department intervened on his behalf. A spokesman for the U.S. ambassador told the military brass it would be “damaging to bilateral relations with the host country if Major Le were to be disgraced.” To prevent any dam age whatsoever to Major Le’s reputation, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and decorated for having been wounded in the defense of his country.

By the time J. D. had entered the conflict, Lieutenant Colonel Le was preparing to retreat again; he was about to emigrate to France. His mistress was already in Paris setting up his apartment. His suitcases were reportedly stuffed with taxpayer dollars to make his new life a comfortable one. He seemed to think everybody had forgotten about him. PANIC hadn’t, and Sp4 Cade had been chosen to emphasize that point.

As the ARVN was supplied head to toe by the Pentagon, and the South Vietnamese feared the PANIC unit even more than the Americans did, J. D. Cade, his spotter, Lieutenant Donnel Timmons, and two other soldiers who arrived in a separate jeep and would actually go over the ARVN’s books were admitted to the base at Lai Khe without question, and certainly without any one’s asking to search their vehicles.

Timmons pointed out the South Vietnamese flag flying over the base to his companion.

“See that?”

J. D.” who wasn’t in a talkative mood, just nodded.

“Colors of that flag tell you everything you need to know about the Vietnamese military: Everything that ain’t red is yellow.”

j. D. dropped Lieutenant Timmons at the entrance to the base officers’ club and drove around back. It was after lunch and before happy hour, so there was no one around to give him a second glance. Fifteen minutes later Timmons poked his head out the back door of the club.

“Come on, whitey.

Tote dat barge.” J. D. grabbed a rifle case out of a concealed compartment behind the jeep’s seats and joined Timmons inside. Their shooting stand was upstairs in the club manager’s office.

When J. D. entered the room he saw that a large safe in one corner stood with its door wide open. The shelves inside the strongbox had been stripped bare, and a bulging duffel leaned against the wall next to it.

“You major in safe cracking at Wayne State, Lieutenant?” J. D. asked.

Donnel Timmons was from Detroit. He’d joined the ROTC in college and discovered he was a natural crack shot. He joked that all the skills he was learning in the army would come in handy when he went home and signed up with the Revolution. Timmons always said this with a smile on his face, but nobody in the PANIC unit planned to vacation in Michigan once they got back to the World. For reasons known only to himself, Timmons had taken a liking to J. D. Cade. He volunteered to take the cherry out for his first hit.

“Not a word about this, Cade.”

J. D. saw drops of blood on the carpet leading to a closed door. Explanation enough where the club manager had gone.

“A word about what?” J. D. asked.

The window directly behind the club manager’s desk looked out on a street that dead-ended at a parade ground one half-mile away. A man dressed in white was reviewing a formation of ARVN soldiers. Timmons trained his spotter’s scope on the man.

“That’s him,” he said.

“Fucker’s got a tennis racket in his hand. Reviewing troops dressed like that, the sorry sonofabitch deserves to be killed. Go ahead, Cade, do him.”

J. D. already had his rifle steadied on the windowsill, his target centered in his scope. There was no reason to wait. No reason at all. He’d signed up to shoot people. He’d never thought it would be like this, didn’t want it to be like this, but here he was, and what the hell could he do? He squeezed the trigger and the man in the tennis whites went down like wheat before a scythe.