Runyon picked up Wynette’s dead hand, put it around the pistol, got fingerprints all over it, then dropped the gun on the floor.
“Damn,” said Cart McKiernan. “I think he shot himself. Get the staff in here for the bad news.”
Jake Grafton sat everyone down after breakfast and announced that Mr. and Mrs. Johnson and their children were staying at the safe house, along with Mrs. Price and the young Sarah. “Armanti, would you be willing to stay here with them and keep an eye on things?”
“Yes, sir,” Armanti Hall said.
“I’m staying too,” Sarah Houston announced.
“No, you’re not,” Jake Grafton said, eyeing her. “Too much is at stake.”
Sarah looked at me, then shrugged.
“Uh, Admiral,” said Willie Varner. “Maybe I could stay too. I ain’t much of a shooter and all, and—”
“We may need your lock skills,” Grafton said crisply. “Tommy, load the trucks. Leave what you can for the people who are staying, and let Armanti keep whatever weapons he might need. Pistols for all the adults who want one.”
“What about the plane?” I asked.
“I’ll fly it. Mr. Johnson has given me his permission and the ignition key. Take me down to the hangar and let’s get it out.”
We pulled the plane from the hangar, spun it around, and I helped Grafton in. He wasn’t spry and obviously had some discomfort, but he seemed able to move without pain.
He looked over a sectional chart that Johnson had used to get here, and said, “You get everything loaded up. I’ll be back in about an hour.”
He started the engine, taxied down to the far end of the runway, swung the plane around, and ran the engine up to a pleasant hum. I looked at the sky: clear above, hazy, only a couple of knots from the north, just enough to stir the wind sock a little. The morning dew hadn’t yet burned off in the sunny places, so people and the plane left tracks in the grass. If you didn’t know any better you’d think it was just another late summer day in paradise.
After a moment the Cessna accelerated down the runway with its tail-wheel off the ground and got airborne. It flew away to the north, climbing slowly. The plane got smaller and smaller and more indistinct, then it merged into the haze and the sound of the engine faded completely away.
The guys and I loaded the trucks. Willie the Wire did some bitching. “Hell, he don’t need me to open locks when he’s got you.”
“The only place you know how to rustle grub is in a grocery store,” I said. “You eat too much to leave you here.”
“We get back to Washington, dude, there ain’t gonna be no grocery stores. Not ones with anythin’ in them to eat, anyway. Did you think of that?”
“No liquor stores or beer joints either,” Armanti offered. “Gonna be like Baghdad or Damascus. Nice of you to share the pain, Willie.”
Willie Varner said a crude phrase.
“Look on the bright side,” I suggested, just to buck him up. “It couldn’t be as bad as the sewers of Cairo. Did I ever tell you about the month I—”
“You too, Carmellini.”
Sarah Houston and I got to spend a few minutes with young Sarah before we left. The girl was sobbing, finally letting her emotions out, which was a good thing. The Sarahs put their foreheads together and hugged. Finally Sarah kissed the kid and said, “I’ll be back.”
On the way down the hill, I told her, “You’re optimistic.”
“Live every day until you die,” she retorted. Then she touched the pistol butt in its holster on her web belt. I doubt if she even realized she did it.
“You’re taking your computer along, I see.”
“Yes.”
“When do you suppose you’ll get a chance to use it?”
“You never know.”
When Grafton landed, he said the roads were clear to the airport in Elkins, which looked deserted. “Before we go, run me down to that clinic.”
“Okay.”
In Greenbank Dr. Proudfoot didn’t seem surprised when Grafton and I walked through his door. He and Grafton shook hands.
“Could we have a little talk in your office?” Grafton asked him.
While they were talking, I went into the room where Mrs. Greenwood was. She was still in a coma. The nurse and I chatted.
After about fifteen minutes, Grafton and the doctor came back. “Dr. Proudfoot is going with us. He needs to run up to his house for some things, and he’ll join us at the hangar.”
Back at the hangar, Grafton spread out the sectional chart and our one roadmap on the hood of my pickup, and Travis, Willis Coffee, and I studied them.
“If there are rebels around,” Grafton said, “I suspect we will find them at Camp Dawson, where FEMA had their concentration camp. I want to fly up to Elkins, wait for you there, and then we’ll fuel the plane if we can and I’ll fly up to Dawson and look around. If it’s safe, we can all go.”
“Why Dawson?” Travis asked.
“A National Guard base figures to have an armory. People with deer rifles are guerillas. To turn them into an army you need machine guns, mortars, and artillery, if you can find some.”
Right then I began to suspect that Grafton wasn’t leveling with us. Maybe everyone else thought he was, but I was no virgin. I had worked with him too many times in the past. I kicked myself for not cornering him several days ago and getting the lowdown. If anything happened to Jake Grafton, Sarah and I and all these other fools were going to be up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Too late to brace him now, though.
Grafton got back in the plane and we climbed into the trucks. The doc and Sarah rode with me. As we rolled along he wanted to talk about Jake Grafton. He was obviously star-struck and called him “Admiral” in every sentence, finishing with, “You didn’t tell me he was a retired admiral.”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
“Or director of the CIA. Why didn’t you say so?”
“Because I didn’t want you telling anyone anything.” I turned my head and locked my eyes on him.
Dr. Proudfoot got uncomfortable and shifted his eyes to the road ahead. “Well, I’m glad he asked me to go along. It’s a great honor.”
I thought he should talk to Willie Varner about that, but I kept my mouth shut and drove. Sarah just sat looking out the window.
The JCS staff was shocked by the suicide of General Martin Wynette. Still, everyone knew he had been under tremendous pressure from the White House, and after the deputy chairman and the army and air force chiefs of staff were summarily executed by Secret Service personnel, his personal choice to end his own life was understandable, if tragic. While his remains were being carried away to a freezer in the cafeteria, to wait for a better day for his funeral and burial, the four surviving heads of their services met in a conference room behind locked doors.
“Gentlemen,” Cart McKiernan said, “we have some critical decisions to make, and not much time to make them. We must announce Wynette’s demise, and no doubt the White House will have a serious reaction to the news. Either Soetoro will send people over here to take over the Pentagon, or he will think this is the start of a putsch. Your thoughts, please.”
The army deputy chief Franklin Rodriquez said, “I think it would be a terrible precedent if the armed forces were involved in decapitating a president or in assisting a popular uprising to overthrow him. Or in assisting in keeping a hated president in office in the face of a revolution. In my opinion, the best thing for America is for the armed forces to remain neutral.”
“As if we could,” Morton Runyon scoffed. “We’re already up to our necks in this.”
The acting air force chief of staff, Erhard “Bud” Weiss, said, “We can’t win, gentlemen. If we fight for or against Soetoro the people will never trust us again. We must let the American people sort this out.”