There was a groan from one of the wounded captives, and Dell brought two cups of water to the men in the bunk.

  “You know, you’re not as cold-blooded a son of a bitch as I thought you were,” Powell told the former SAC officer.

  “You know, I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

  “That doesn’t mean I like you,” Powell warned.

  Dell gave each prisoner a few sips.

  “Don’t worry, Willie,” he answered, “I never thought you did.”

  Then Falco began talking about Peru, the anti-American feelings of its revolutionary government that would bar extradition and the good life that the fugitives would enjoy there.

  “Custom-made clothes, beautiful women, champagne,” he anticipated.

  “The local drink is something called Pisco,” Dell pointed out. “It’s a country cousin of Tequila. I don’t know how much champagne you’ll find in Lima.”

  Falco was utterly undiscouraged.

  “A man with one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in U.S. currency can get champagne anywhere,” he predicted. “No, I’m not worrying about the drinks. It’s the President and the troops up above us here that still have me itchy.”

  “Stevens will pay,” Dell predicted, “unless the Army can talk him into another attack of some sort.”

  “What about tricks? They could gun us once we’re on the surface.”

  “Stud, that’s what some sly general might try. That’s what Senator Caldwell would do, but he doesn’t get to be President till January. I think this President is just old-fashioned enough to keep his word if he gives it. To put it another way, I’m betting that Stevens has soul.”

  “There’s that dirty word again,” Powell joked.

  Now Hoxey was singing a psalm, chanting in a loud nasal voice to ease the journey on which Harvey Schonbacher had so violently embarked.

  “Does he have to wail that way?” Falco complained.

  Dell and Powell nodded in unison.

  Beyond any doubt, Hoxey had to and it might well be dangerous to disturb him in this religious experience. The assassin accepted this estimate with a shrug, turned to watching the troops on the surface again. It was a bright clear afternoon, and the ring of men and weapons could be seen quite distinctly. The camera did not pick up the M-60 tanks, for they had been positioned beyond its 300-yard range. There was less activity and movement than there had been the night before. Everyone was waiting, waiting for the word from the President.

  One of those was General Martin McKenzie, who was standing on the edge of the concrete apron at Offutt as Air Force One taxied to a halt. The other big jet—the 707 chartered by the press covering Stevens’ campaign—was pulling to a stop about one hundred yards behind, and as soon as it ceased moving the stairs were lowered and a crowd of reporters and photographers surged out to cover the President’s arrival at the base. The CINCSAC wasn’t paying much attention to them, however—not as much as he usually would—for he was focussed on Stevens’ decision about Viper Three.

  There he was, descending from Air Force One in a cluster of Secret Service men and White House aides. McKenzie was puzzled to see a USAF brigadier general in the Presidential party. The SAC commander stared at the unfamiliar face for a long moment.

  “That’s General Bonomi,” Winters volunteered discreetly. “He flew eighty-sixes with the President in Korea. Hot pilot, they say.”

  “How hot?” McKenzie asked out of the side of his mouth.

  “A real pistol. Eight kills, sir—and five more probables.”

  The band broke into “Hail to the Chief” and McKenzie strode forward briskly to greet the President, trying to smile and to conceal the questions that were troubling him.

  Why had the President decided to visit SAC headquarters now?

  Why was he traveling with this “real pistol” who had eight kills—and five more probables?

  Most important, what would he say about the attack plan proposed by the Joint Chiefs?

  “Welcome to SAC, Mr. President,” McKenzie said.

  Pictures. More pictures. A handshake, repeated four times for still more pictures. Then they entered the limousine and drove to the headquarters building, where McKenzie led the way down to the bunker. After the inevitable ten-minute briefing, the two men adjourned with Bonomi to the Battle Staff seats on the upper level.

  “I’m glad to see SAC’s battle-ready,” Stevens said, “but that isn’t why I’m here. I assume that you’re always battle-ready. You’re the first team, and I count on you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President.”

  “You’ve heard about the JCS plan to plug the silos with tanks?”

  McKenzie nodded.

  “That’s why I’m here. The Berlin situation’s getting warmer steadily, and the latest reports indicate that those damn fool Russians are moving mechanized divisions and preparing to disperse their bomber squadrons. I’ve got to settle the Viper Three mess before something very serious happens—something unthinkable. I’ve got to settle it today.”

  The CINCSAC nodded again.

  “I’ve made up my mind on the JCS plan,” Stevens announced, and then he explained what he’d decided should be done.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I think you’re right, Mr. President, and, if you don’t mind my saying so, I think you’ve got a lot of guts. Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No, you’d better stay here. If something goes wrong, you’d better be here. You know what I want you to do?”

  “Yessir. I’ll take care of it right away.”

  When they reached the door that led from the lobby to the portico outside where dozens of journalists waited impatiently, Stevens paused to brace himself again.

  “Good luck, Mr. President,” McKenzie said.

  “I’ll need all I can get. Thanks.”

  “Mr. President, the authority to launch the nuclear strike force is entirely yours,” Martin McKenzie acknowledged, “but it is within the prerogatives of the CINCSAC to take the precaution of having all our long-range bombers manned and moved down to the end of the runway—ready for take-off. I’m thinking of doing that when I get word that you’ve reached Malmstrom, unless you object.”

  “I see.”

  “We haven’t done it since the Cuban missile crisis, sir. I think you ought to know that.”

  Stevens looked over to his former wingman.

  “It won’t show up on Russian radar,” Bonomi calculated, “and it shouldn’t get them too excited. I’d say they wouldn’t even know about it for a day, and by then it won’t matter.”

  “All right,” the President assented cautiously, “but wait until I’m leaving Malmstrom to join the task force. Wait as long as you safely can.”

  They shook hands again and went out to speak briefly to the press about the power of SAC as a force for world peace and America’s commitment to peace. Twenty minutes later, Air Force One rolled down the runway and took off for the return to Washington. The press plane followed. Nine minutes after it was airborne, however, the pilot announced to the reporters that he was going to have to make an emergency landing because of electrical malfunction in two motors.

  The journalists were furious as they watched the President’s plane disappear into the clouds.

  They would have been even more angry if they’d known that their pilot was lying.

  32

  Everyone seemed to be angry.

  A spokesman for the Chinese People’s Republic told Radio Peking that “the entire Berlin affair” was simply “a cheap and obscene farce cooked up by the scummy American imperialists and the cynical whores of Moscow” that was designed to “trick the Socialist world.” To show his Marxist impartiality, he excoriated both the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. as “moral dung heaps infested by worms such as Gangster Stevens and the hoodlums of the so-called Central Committee of the so-called Communist Party of the so-called Soviet Union.” Radio Peking broadcast this searing statement every hour on the hour, with a recorded version of three thousand voices singing “The East Is Red” as background music.

  In Moscow, Marshal Aleksei Soyuzov was even more angry but his prose was somewhat less lyrical. It was, however, quite explicit and the Minister of Defense had to admit that it had a certain logic. He wouldn’t agree that Barzinko was “an imbecile weakling,” but he did promise to discuss Soyuzov’s arguments for slowing Yamshchik with the Deputy Chairman of the Central Committee. This did little to mollify the tanker, and Soyuzov left the minister’s office with the thought that the minister wasn’t much more effective than Barzinko. The Minister of Defense was also angry, furious that Soyuzov should put him in such a difficult position between the Red Army Chief of Staff and the Central Committee.

  And there was considerable rage in Washington. Senator Caldwell’s running mate for the Vice Presidency, Governor Bankhead, had told some eight hundred members of the Daughters of the American Revolution that the “weak sweet-talk of the knee-jerk liberals in the Stevens administration” was no answer to the “brutal Soviet aggression in Berlin,” and he’d said a lot of other strong phrases that would make colorful copy for the press. The angry remarks made that afternoon by Private Herman Obstler at the Pentagon were even more colorful, but would be less widely reported since a number of them were obscene. Obstler had been on guard duty outside the famous five-sided building when a previously peaceful demonstration by the Women’s Liberation Front erupted into violence. Somebody had hit him in the groin with a sign demanding why there were no females on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and somebody else bit the corporal—twice.

  In Great Falls, the city editor of the Tribune was rather irritated by the run-around he was getting from the public information officer at Malmstrom. He might have felt a little less bitter if he’d known that the managing editor of the Leader, the local evening paper, had received the same vague answers to his identical questions about that closed-off stretch of highway. Then again, he might not, since the Tribune had more circulation and a Sunday edition, which the Leader lacked.

  At the air base itself, Captain Bigelman was getting “pissed off” at being confined to the isolation ward. He rather enjoyed using the quaint phrase, which he’d acquired shortly after reaching Malmstrom, for it proved that he was as earthy as the next man, but he didn’t like being locked up this way.

  “I ought to call my brother,” he ruminated. “He’s a lawyer. He’d get me a writ of habeas corpus. I may send a registered letter to the American Civil Liberties Union too. They can’t just lock us up like this, you know. It’s in the Bill of Rights, Magna Carta, all that stuff.”

  Neither Langer nor the nurse replied.

  “Aren’t either of you going to do anything about this?” Bigelman challenged indignantly.

  “I could sing the first two verses of the ‘Marseillaise,’” Langer offered.

  “And very well too,” added his beaming blonde companion.

  Bigelman glared, realized that he could expect no help from this pair and walked to the barred window. Glancing out into the late afternoon, he saw a large plane—no, it wasn’t one of the B-52s—glide down to a perfect landing nearly a mile away. Not being a member of the American Society for Psychic Research, he could not guess that the big transport was Air Force One.

  General Stonesifer didn’t have to guess.

  He’d known for an hour—since the CINCSAC’s call—and he’d been waiting with the two helicopters for nearly twenty minutes. Stonesifer glanced at his wristwatch as the Presidential jet touched down, saw that it was 5:35. At 5:37, the sweptwing transport stopped less than one hundred feet from the helicopters and the Chief Executive was on the ground himself ninety seconds later. Right behind him was a one-star general carrying two large canvas pouches, each of which contained something that was obviously heavy.

  The President was in no mood to chat.

  After the briefest of handshakes and introductions, he brushed off the Malmstrom commander’s effort to discuss the tank assault and walked directly to one of the helicopters. The general with the grim face and the canvas sacks followed him into the machine, which was airborne almost immediately.

  At 5:54, Falco was in the toilet and Powell was making instant coffee and Hoxey was reciting some of his favorite Old Testament quotes to the two prisoners—intensely. Dell was still in the red commander’s chair, feeling vaguely hungry and specifically tense. It was almost time.

  “Look in the freezer, would you?” he called out over his shoulder as he watched the TV screen. “I think we ought to eat pretty soon.” he suggested a moment later.

  Then he saw the two helicopters move into view, settle down about one hundred yards outside the Viper Three perimeter. A small crowd bunched up around the two machines. About three minutes after that, the crowd opened and a pair of figures walked forward toward the gate in the fence. Dell stared at the men—one carrying two bags—until the phone on the console sounded.

  “Yes…Yes…Okay…He can come down with the sacks, but tell the other man to wait outside the guardhouse—out in the open, where we can see him,” Dell told the caller.

  He was radiating that big Warner Brothers smile as he put down the telephone.

  “Gentlemen, guess who’s coming to dinner?” he asked.

  Powell, Hoxey and Falco, who was zipping his trousers as he left the toilet, all waited for him to answer his own question.

  Dell pointed at the screen.

  “The President of the United States!”

  They had won.

  In Moscow, Aleksei Soyuzov had lost. The Minister of Defense and the Chief of Staff had lost their patience with his “lack of cooperation and respect,” and the order had already been drafted relieving him of the post of Chief Marshal of Armored Troops. One stubborn old tanker could not be permitted to interfere with Yamshchik simply because he didn’t understand the political realities of Cold War diplomacy. He was getting off rather lightly, everyone agreed. In the Stalin era he would have faced a firing squad.

  33

  “We made it! We made it!” chanted the assassin exuberantly.

  “We beat ’em!” Powell shouted in tones of mixed joy and surprise.

  Dell’s grin grew larger and larger.

  “You didn’t really believe we’d do it, did you?” he tested the former Marine.

  “Man, I didn’t. I most certainly didn’t,” Powell confessed. “It sounded good back in the Death House, but I never thought it would work. Not all the way. Nobody ever beats the system—nobody like us, anyway.”

  “We beat them—right down to their knees,” Dell said with unconcealed pride. “We beat them all, the generals, the engineers, the politicians.”

  “We beat the shit out of them!” bellowed Falco. “Five million bucks! Five million bucks—for two lousy keys! Fantastic!”

  The ex-major nodded.

  It was fantastic. There was no need to be modest now.

  “Five million for two keys,” he reflected as he took out the pair of them from his pocket. “Willie, I know that you didn’t want to return these—but you did. That was sensible, since we’d had enough trouble over them. Now, in appreciation for your courageous and exemplary service above and beyond the call of duty, I hereby decorate you with the Order of the Key.”

  He gave one of the keys to Powell.

  “You earned it.” Dell said in parody of an officer presenting a medal to a battlefield hero.

  On the screen, they could see the President approaching the guardhouse door slowly with the two pouches. Standing a dozen yards away. Vincent Bonomi also watched Stevens. It was the end of David Stevens’ political career, the former wingman realized, for once word of this surrender and payment got out Caldwell and Bankhead would rip him to pieces. They’d call him a coward. The defense professionals would never admit that what had happened at Viper Three was in any way their fault, so they’d pass the buck to Stevens and insist that they’d been overruled. Of the whole group, McKenzie was the only one with the courage not to fight in this situation and the intelligence to realize that hardware couldn’t solve everything. But the CINCSAC was an unusually independent and outspoken man, a maverick who probably wouldn’t remain CINCSAC once Caldwell was in the White House.

  “Peru! Peru! Women by the yard—that’s what those keys are going to buy us!” exulted “Stud” Falco. “Too bad you can’t keep your souvenir, Willieboy, but we’re selling them for a very good price.”

  “No, we’re not,” Hoxey declared.

  The three men at the console turned, saw the madman had a revolver in each hand.

  “Evil, evil, evil. The world is seething with sin and evil,” Hoxey announced.

  “What the hell is he talking about?” wondered the assassin.

  “Sin and corruption! Sodom and Gomorrah! Filth and horror stalk the streets! The anti-Christ feasts in our churches and homes!”

  “What’s all this crap?”

  “Easy, Stud,” warned Dell.

  “For chrissakes, I’m goddamed tired of this hillbilly weirdo,” Falco bulled ahead irritably. “I’ve put up with all his moaning and wailing and mumbling half-assed prayers long enough. He gives me the creeps.”

  “Fire! Fire! The time for the great cleansing fire has come!” Hoxey said shrilly.

  “Deacon,” Dell began softly. “It’s going to be all right, Deacon. We’ll be out soon, and you’ll have your own place to pray. People will listen to you now, Deacon.”

  “Give me the keys.”

  “Don’t give him anything, Larry. He’s out of his fucking skull, a forty-four carat loony. You’re psycho, Deacon,” Falco announced, “but I’m not. And I’m not going to let any maniac screw this deal up now.”

  Hoxey fired each gun once.

  “Goddam maniac,” Falcon cursed as he clutched the two burning holes in his stomach.

  Hoxey pulled the triggers again, and the assassin lay dead.

  “Give me the keys, Larry,” Marvin Hoxey repeated mechanically.

  Dell held them out toward him.