05.Under Siege v5 Read online

  “How do you plead?”

  Liarakos half rose from his chair. “Not guilty, your honor.”

  The magistrate ordered a not guilty plea entered in the record, then addressed the prosecutor. “I understand you have a preliminary motion in this matter, Mr. Bader?”

  “Yes, your honor. May I approach the bench?”

  She nodded and he walked up and handed the clerk a paper, which the clerk stamped and passed to the magistrate while Bader handed a copy to Liarakos.

  “The prosecution is asking the court for a gag order in this case, your honor. The order is to apply to attorneys for both sides and the defendant.”

  “Any argument, Mr. Liarakos?”

  “No, your honor. We will have some motions of our own, and I understand you have set a date next week to hear them?”

  “That’s correct.” She gave him the date and time. “Without argument, Mr. Bader, your motion is granted.” She consulted the proposed order. After a moment, she read, “ ‘Counsel for the government and the defendant, and the defendant, are enjoined from discussing this case, the facts, legal theories, possible witnesses, testimony to be introduced at trial, and any and all other matters connected therewith with the press or any of the representatives thereof. They shall not do, say, or write anything for publication or broadcast that might in any way prejudice possible jurors or interfere with the orderly administration of justice.’ Is there a motion for bail, Mr. Liarakos?”

  “Not today, your honor.”

  “Mr. Bader?”

  “We have filed a motion, your honor, to confiscate the defendant’s assets as proceeds of criminal activity.” The courtroom buzzed and the magistrate looked stern. She raised her gavel but the noise ceased before she could tap the anvil. Bader continued: “We’d like you to set a date for a hearing.”

  The attorneys and the magistrate discussed the scheduling and checked their calendars and settled on a Monday in January.

  “This matter is adjourned until next Thursday.” The magistrate rose from the bench as the bailiff intoned, “All rise,” and the reporters gathered their coats for the dash to the phones.

  As the marshals put the cuffs on him, Aldana got in a heated discussion with his attorney. Yocke edged as close as he could.

  “Why didn’t you argue against this?”

  Liarakos spoke too softly to hear, although Yocke tried.

  “But she can’t make me be silent!”

  More whispers.

  “No one can gag me up. No one.” His voice was loud, but the sharp edge of command was there too. The crowd stopped dead, captivated by this drama. “That woman can’t gag me up while they send me up the railroad for a crime of which I am not guilty. This is supposed to be America! Not the Germany of the Nazis or the Russia of the Stalinistas.”

  “This is not the time or place—”

  “Are you my lawyer or their lawyer?” The voice was a brutal snarl.

  “Shut the fuck up.” Although Liarakos’ voice was low, it cut like a whip.

  The lawyer turned to the nearest marshal. “Clear these people out of here, please, and give me a moment alone with my client. You may wait in the hallway. Ms. Lewis will knock on the door when we need you.”

  “Everybody out.” The crowd began to move.

  Just before he went through the door, Jack Yocke glanced back at Chano Aldana. The defendant was glaring at Liarakos, his face dark with fury, his lips pressed together. His body was tense, coiled.

  In the hallway Yocke sprinted to catch up with Jake Grafton. “Captain, wait! Please! Jack Yocke of the Post. I was at your party the—”

  “I remember you, Jack.” Grafton had his dark bridge coat over his arm and held his white hat with the scrambled eggs on the bill in his left hand. Yocke glanced at his chest to see if the blue-and-white ribbon of the Congressional Medal of Honor was displayed there. It wasn’t. Maybe Mergenthaler was correct: he had said that Grafton never wore the decoration he received several years ago for ramming El Hakim’s plane with his F-14 over the Med.

  “I’m curious, Captain. You were the last man in town I expected to see here today. Why’d you come?”

  “Wanted to get a look at Aldana.”

  “Officially?”

  For a fraction of a second Grafton looked annoyed. “What’s an official look?”

  “I mean is this personal or does the Joint Staff have some interest in Aldana?”

  “No comment.”

  “Aw, come on, Captain! Gimme a break. Why is the military interested in Chano Aldana?”

  A grin spread slowly across the captain’s face. He settled his white hat on his head, nodded, and turned away.

  Jack Yocke watched him go, then remembered he needed to find a phone.

  “You should have seen him come unglued, Ott. That man is something else!”

  “Jack, you need to stop using those banal phrases. People will get the idea you’re a semiliterate bum.”

  “I’m telling you, Ott, you should have seen him! Oh, he never really lost his temper. He didn’t actually threaten Liarakos, but that look! This man could order the murder of hundreds of people. He could kill them himself. I was ten feet from him and I could literally feel the energy.”

  “Maybe you should write a letter to Shirley MacLaine.”

  “Listen to me, Ott. Aldana is criminally insane.”

  “He’s behind bars and guarded night and day. What should we do about it?”

  Yocke lost his temper. “Okay, go ahead and snicker like a retarded hyena. I’m telling you we’ve got a rattlesnake in our pocket and the pocket is cloth. Dammit, Aldana scared the hell out of me!”

  “He scared the hell out of me too,” Ott admitted.

  The telephone rang. Yocke reached for it without looking.

  It was his editor. “Jack, the feds just closed a savings and loan over in Maryland. Please go up there and interview everyone you can lay hands on. Try to find some depositors this time.”

  “You want some brain surgeon who’ll miss his ski Christmas in Aspen?”

  “I was hoping that with some diligent effort you might find some little old white-haired lady who’s got five bucks in her purse and no access to her checking account.”

  “What’s the name of this place?”

  “Second Potomac Savings and Loan.”

  Where had he heard that name before? Yocke asked himself as he pocketed his notebook and checked his pocket pencil supply. Oh yes, that Harrington guy who was killed on the beltway—he’d worked there, hadn’t he?

  The wind made the bare tree limbs wave somberly back and forth under the gray sky. Sitting under an ancient oak just inside the tree line, Henry Charon listened intently to the gentle rattling and tapping as the limbs high above him softly impacted those of other trees. The noise of traffic speeding by on the interstate eighty yards away muffled all the lesser forest noises, the rustle of the leaves, the sound of a chipmunk searching the leaf carpet for its dinner, the chirping of the birds.

  The hunter tried to ignore the drone of the cars and trucks. He paid close attention to the gusts and swirls of the wind, subconsciously calculating the direction and velocity.

  The rest area in front of him was almost empty. At the far end sat a ten-year-old pickup with Pennsylvania plates and sporting a camper on the back. The driver was apparently asleep inside. Closer, facing the highway, sat the rental car that Charon had driven to this rest stop halfway between Baltimore and Philadelphia. He had rented it using one of his fake driver’s licenses and a real Visa card in that name.

  A station wagon chock-full of kids and pillows and suitcases came off the highway and pulled to a stop in front of the rest rooms. Youngsters piled out and ran for the little brick building. New Jersey tags. Three minutes later the station wagon accelerated past the pickup toward the on-ramp.

  Henry Charon adjusted the collar and fastened the top button on his coat. The wind had a chill to it, no doubt due to its moisture content. Yet it didn’t smell of
snow.

  What if snow came while he were still in Washington? How would that affect his plans?

  Charon was still considering it when another car came off the interstate and proceeded slowly through the parking area. One man at the wheel. Tassone. He drove slowly through the lot, looked over the rental car, and braked to a stop beside the pickup. After a moment Tassone’s car, a sedan, backed the hundred feet to the rest room building, where he turned off the ignition and got out.

  Tassone glanced around as he walked toward the rest rooms. In a few moments he came out and strolled over to where Charon was sitting.

  “Hey.” Tassone lowered himself to the ground and leaned back against a tree trunk six feet or so from Charon. “How’s everything?”

  “Fine,” Charon said.

  “Gonna snow,” Tassone said as he pulled his coat collar higher and jabbed his hands into his pockets.

  “I doubt it.”

  Tassone wiggled around, trying to find a soft spot for his bottom. “Wanta sit in the car?”

  “This is fine.”

  “What d’ya think about the job?”

  “You’ll have to make a list.”

  Tassone fumbled inside his coat for a pencil. From an inside jacket pocket he produced a small spiral notepad. “Shoot.”

  Charon began to recite. He had not committed the items to paper since the possession of such a list would inevitably be incriminating. Tassone could write it down in his own handwriting and take the risk of the list being discovered on his person. Charon could still deny everything.

  It took five minutes for Tassone to list all the items. Charon had him read the list back, then gave him two more items, with careful descriptions.

  Tassone looked over the list carefully and asked a few questions, then stored the notebook in his pocket.

  “So it’s feasible?” he asked the hunter.

  “It can be done.”

  “When?”

  “When could you deliver everything on the list?”

  “Take about a week, I think. Some of these things will take some work and some serious money. I’ll call you.”

  “No, I’ll call you. A week from today, at precisely this time.” Both men glanced at their watches.

  “Okay.”

  “No names.”

  “Of course. You’ll do it then?”

  “How many people know about me, counting yourself as one?”

  “Two.”

  “Only two?”

  “That’s right.”

  Something was stirring in the leaves behind them. Henry Charon came erect in one easy motion and, with a tree for cover, stood looking carefully in that direction. Then he saw it, a flash of brown. A red squirrel.

  “Ten million, cash, in advance.”

  Tassone whistled. “I—”

  “That’s for the first name on your list. One million for each of the others, if and when. No guarantees on any of them. You pay a million for each one I get. Take it or leave it.”

  “You want the bread sent to Switzerland or what?”

  “Cash. In my hands. Used twenties and fifties. No sequential numbers.”

  “Okay.”

  “You have the authority to make this commitment?”

  Now Tassone stood. “You ain’t going to pop anybody until you get paid, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m telling you you’ll get paid. How long before you get started?”

  “A week or ten days after I get the stuff on that list. Two or three weeks would be better.”

  “Better for you. Not for me. We want you started as soon as possible.”

  “Let’s see how you do getting the equipment I requested.”

  “Okay,” said Tassone, and dusted off his trousers. “Okay. I’ll call you in a week.”

  When Jake Grafton returned to his office in the Pentagon, there was a message waiting. The chairman wanted to see him. He called the chairman’s office and reached an aide. They agreed he could probably get in to see the general in fifteen minutes or so.

  This would be only the fourth occasion on which Jake had met General Hayden Land. For most of the thousand officers on the Joint Staff, a meeting with the senior officer in the American military, even with all the Joint Chiefs present, was a rare occurrence. As he walked out of the office this morning the other six officers in the antidrug section appeared and formed a line of sideboys at the door that Jake would have to walk through. They did some pushing and shoving, then came to rigid attention and saluted with mighty flourishes as Jake walked between the rows.

  “You guys!”

  The other naval officer in the antidrug section whistled, imitating a boatswain’s pipe.

  “Carry on,” said Jake Grafton with a wide grin and headed for the corridor.

  Grafton was the senior officer in the group, which spent its time doing the staff work required to allow the Joint Chiefs to make informed decisions about military cooperation with antidrug law-enforcement efforts. When Jake reported to the Joint Staff a year ago he came to this billet for the simple reason that the O-6 who held it was completing his tour and leaving. Grafton had no special training for the job—indeed, he spent the first two months simply trying to understand what it was the military was doing to assist the various law-enforcement agencies—but no matter. Learning on the job went with the uniform. And this past year the job had grown by leaps and bounds as an increasingly alarmed public demanded every federal resource be harnessed to combat the narco-terrorists, and the reluctant Joint Chiefs had finally turned to face the pressure. So Jake Grafton had been busy.

  The first black man to hold the top job in the military, General Hayden Land was reputed to be as sharp as they come, an extraordinarily fast study on the intricacies of military policy. He was also, rumor said, very politically astute. He had come to his current post from the National Security Council where he had personally witnessed the meshing of politics and national security issues and the resultant effects on the military.

  As he walked out of the Joint Staff spaces just ten minutes after he had entered, Jake was again hailed by name by Mr. James, the portly door attendant who had been greeting members of the Joint Staff for over twenty years. He seemed to know everyone’s name—quite a feat considering that there were 1,600 officers on the Joint Staff—and shook hands right and left when they streamed past him into the secure spaces in the morning. “Short day, eh, Captain Grafton?”

  “Some people have all the luck,” Jake told him.

  The foyer of General Land’s E-Ring office was decorated with original paintings that depicted black American servicemen in action. As the aide informed the general that he was there, Grafton examined them again. One was of union soldiers in the crater at Petersburg, another was of cavalrymen fighting Indians on the western plains, and a third was of Army Air Corps pilots manning fighters during World War II.

  “He’ll see you now,” the aide said, and walked for the door. That was when Jake’s eye was captured by the painting of a black sailor defiantly firing a machine gun at attacking Japanese planes. Dorrie Miller aboard U.S.S. West Virginia at Pearl Harbor.

  “I like the general’s taste in art,” he muttered to the aide as he passed into the chairman’s office.

  “Captain Grafton, sir,” the aide said to the general behind the desk, then stood to one side. The general carried his fifty or so years well, Jake thought as he scanned the square figure, the short hair, the immaculate uniform with four silver stars on each shoulder strap.

  “Come in, Captain, and find a chair. I called down to your office this morning to suggest you go see Aldana, and they said you had already left.”

  “Yessir, I went over there.” Jake sank into a chair with the general’s gaze upon him. “Just curious, I guess,” Jake added. “The prosecution asked for a gag order and got it. That might help keep the lid on, at least for a little while.”

  General Land turned his gaze toward the window, which looked out across the Pentago
n parking lots at the skyline of Arlington. “You really think it’ll come out?”

  “If only American soldiers knew, sir, I’d be more hopeful. They know what classified information is. But with all those Colombian cops and Justice Department lawyers in on it, there’s just no way. The press is going to get this and probably pretty soon. Who knows? Aldana’s lawyer, Liarakos, may want to make a motion to have the court consider the legality of the arrest. I’m not a lawyer and I don’t know any to ask, but Liarakos looks like the type of guy who will throw every stone he can lay hands on.”

  “Oh, but surely it’s got to be legal,” the general said. “The attorney general is the one who requested our help.”

  “All I’m saying, sir, is that Liarakos may raise the issue with the court. In fact, the press may have already caught the rumblings of this. This past weekend a reporter, one of my wife’s language students, was at a party at my house. He saw me today in court and buttonholed me afterward.”

  “Reporter for whom?”

  “The Washington Post, sir.”

  Land grinned. “God,” he said, “I feel like Dick Nixon. Think Deep Throat’s been whispering?”

  Jake laughed. “I don’t think Gideon Cohen is going to have a heart attack if he reads in the newspapers that American Special Forces troops captured Aldana with the cooperation of Colombian police. I told him that it would come out eventually and he shrugged it off. He knows.”

  “What about this Aldana?”

  “A psychopath.”

  “Umm. When he was captured he told the major leading the raid he was going to see them all dead.” General Land showed his teeth. It was not a nice smile. “I was against us getting into this mess. The military has no business in law enforcement. Won’t work, can’t work, isn’t good for the military or the country. But when I heard that scum threatened our men, my doubts got smaller. Maybe Cohen’s right. Maybe we need to go in there and kick some ass.”

  “General, if you want my opinion, you were right the first time. These cartel criminals have bribed, threatened, bullied, and occasionally subverted the Colombian authorities. They haven’t gotten to our men yet, but now they’re going to try. We’re not set up to investigate our own people. We take any eighteen-year-olds who can pass the written test and the physical and turn them into soldiers, sailors, and marines. Background checks and loyalty investigations are messes we shouldn’t get ourselves into.”