“No. Just being a good citizen. I’m telling you on the off chance the U.S. government lost some antitank missiles and wants to find out where they went.”
Jake Grafton laced his fingers behind his head. “Rest assured, we’ll report this to the right people, but the investigation will be classified and we won’t be able to tell you anything. Sure, if someone gets prosecuted for stealing antitank missiles you’ll hear about it, but that’s if and when.”
Yocke raised a hand and nodded.
“Just passing the info along for what it’s worth.” He got out of his chair. “Now I have to go look in the command post room and call the office. If you guys go charging off, please come and find me.”
“Sure.”
After Yocke left, Toad went over to the door, waited about thirty seconds, then opened it and looked out. The hall was empty. He closed the door and stood with his back to it.
“I never thought he’d mention that to anybody.”
“Guess his conscience got him,” Jake Grafton said.
“Well, what do you think?”
“He’s a pretty smart kid. I think he’s ninety percent certain and is just making sure that Uncle Sam knows to cover the other ten. That’s my feel.” Jake shrugged. “But I don’t know,” he added, and put his feet on the floor and closed the desk drawer. “I guess we’ll know what Yocke thinks if we see a story about it in the paper someday with his byline.”
He tore three pages of notes from the legal pad and held them out for Toad. “Here. See these get to the CIA. Don’t leave them lying around.”
“Should I do a cover memo?”
“Yep. Top secret.”
“The CIA guys are gonna think you raised this subject with him. They’ll never believe he gave us this out of the blue.”
“It was a good operation,” Jake said after a moment. “Yocke doesn’t really know anything. He just suspects. But Castro’s out and we have Zaba, and Aldana is going to get what’s coming to him. That’s the bottom line.”
“Yocke’s a pretty good reporter,” Toad said grudgingly.
Jake shooed Toad out with a wave of his fingers.
He called the telephone company and asked for Lieutenant Colonel Franz. The colonel was one of the officers from Jake’s Joint Staff group. Jake had sent him to the telephone company yesterday morning.
“Colonel Franz speaking, sir.”
“Jake Grafton. What’s happening over there?”
“We’re doing our best, sir, but we only have three people counting me. It’s like trying to sample the Niagara River with a beer can.”
“Uh-huh.”
Franz sighed. Jake could hear him flipping paper, probably his notes. “All we do is listen to calls at random. No method. But we have heard three that seemed to be discussing sniping at troops. One concerned ‘taking out’ some rivals — I got that one. They must have had some kind of gear on the line that told them they were being monitored, because I only got ten or twelve words and one of them hung up while the other was talking.”
“Exactly what was said?”
“ ‘With Willie out the field is open so we got to take them out before—’ Really, it was over before I even realized what I was listening to.”
“Anything else?”
“One interesting thing. It seems there’s going to be a rally this evening. The others have heard calls on that. Five calls altogether. You realize there could have been five hundred calls on that subject and we’ve intercepted five.”
“A rally?”
“Yeah. That’s the word they used. A rally.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
A rally? What in hell did that mean? Jake Grafton wrote the word on the pad in front of him.
“What d’ya think?”
“We could use some more people,” Colonel Franz told him.
“Look around. Find out how tough it would be to turn off the whole phone system. There’s got to be some switches around there someplace that would shut the whole thing down.”
“Turn it off? Wow! Are you …”
“Just look around. I’ll call you back.”
Jake put in a call to General Land at the Pentagon. The chairman would be tied up for another quarter hour. His aide said he would leave him the message.
Jake doodled as he waited. Henry Charon. Apartments. Sleeping bags in caves. Poacher and small rancher.
Why is Henry Charon still in Washington? If he is. Jake wrote that question down and stared at it.
He called the FBI and asked for Special Agent Hooper.
“You had some excitement last night.”
“He got away,” Jake said. “Any developments?”
“The people in New Mexico got a warrant and searched Charon’s ranch and took prints. Most of them were of one person and they match the prints on the stuff your people brought us last night from that cave in Rock Creek Park. It’s definitely the same person.”
“Any photos of this guy?”
“Nothing in the house in New Mexico. Not a one. We’re looking.”
“We need those driver’s license photos as soon as you can get them over here.”
“Be a couple more hours.”
“How about this Tassone guy that the fellow in Pennsylvania sold the rifles to?”
“Nothing on him yet. Apparently no one in Vegas has seen him for a couple of weeks.”
“How about here in Washington?”
“We’re working on it.”
“You going to put the Charon DMV photo on the air?”
“Be on the noon news.”
“Tell me, if we shut down the telephone system, would you all be able to keep operating?”
Hooper paused before he answered. “Well, we have the government lines and dedicated lines for the computers and all. If those stay up, we’ll be okay. And the local police have radios.”
“Okay. Thanks. Call me if you get anything, will you? I’m at the armory.”
“Found the terrorists yet?”
“You’ll be the first to hear.”
He had no more than hung up when the telephone rang again. General Land’s aide was on the line. In a moment Jake was talking to the chairman.
“Sir, I’d like to recommend that we shut down the local telephone system. Apparently people are using it to plan attacks on the soldiers and on rival gangs. And somebody is trying to get up a rally for this evening.”
“A rally?”
“Yessir.”
“Bullshit. There’ll be no rallys while we’re trying to put a lid on things.”
“Yessir. I’ll pass that to General Greer.”
“You talk to Greer about the telephone system. If he thinks shutting the system down is warranted, it’s okay with me. Tell him I’ll back him either way.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Jake hung up the telephone and went off to find Major General Greer. He left the pad with his questions about Henry Charon lying on the desk.
His side hurt like fire. The pain woke him and Henry Charon lay in the darkness with his eyes open fighting it. He groped with his right hand until he found the flashlight and flipped it on.
The beam swung around the little cellar, taking in the supplies, the brick walls, the concrete slab ceiling.
He had gotten here at three a.m. after a four-mile trek through the alleys and backyards of Washington. He had successfully avoided the army patrols and a roving band of juveniles, but the effort had exhausted him. Never in his life had he been so tired.
With the pain of the wound and the cold and the wet and the exertion, he had wondered for a while if he would make it at all.
Now as he lay on the sleeping bag, still fully dressed in the damp clothes he had stolen last night, the pain knifed savagely through him, and he wondered if he could move. Only one way to find out. He pulled himself into a sitting position.
Oh God! A groan escaped him.
But he wouldn’t give in. Oh no. Using his right hand, he pulled the battery-operated lantern over and turned it on. It flooded the little room with light.