“Ninety seconds,” he said. “Maybe a little less.”
Caruthers shook his head in disbelief. Or maybe admiration.
Sixty-two seconds later, the red telephone buzzed and the red LED started flashing.
McNab took a lot longer to pick it up than he had the first time, but finally put the handset to his ear.
“McNab.”
“Please accept my sincere apologies, General McNab,” Naylor said.
“I will, providing you start acting like one old soldier talking to another old soldier-and a classmate, which puts us on a first-name basis-and tell me exactly why Beiderman chewed your ass to the point where you lost your cool.”
There was a long pause, and Colonel Caruthers had just about decided the LED was about to stop blinking again when General Naylor said, “Bruce, Charley was at Arlington.”
“I’m not surprised. Danny Salazar was on the first A Team Charley ever commanded. But I didn’t send him up there, Allan. I haven’t talked to him since before these Mexican slime murdered Salazar. And I didn’t send the others, either. I didn’t even know they were going.”
“And then they all drove away, just when the President was about to deliver his remarks,” Naylor said. “And their departure was on Wolf News for the whole world to see, thanks to Andy McClarren.”
“What’s the President pissed off about? That they were there, or that they walked out on his speech?”
“Both. And it’s worse than that. Are you alone?”
“Max Caruthers is here.”
There was another long pause.
“I hope that silence doesn’t mean you don’t trust Max,” McNab said finally.
“No offense intended, Colonel Caruthers,” Naylor said. “Actually, what I was doing was rethinking whether I wanted to tell General McNab what I’m about to tell you both.”
“Which is?”
“The President seems to believe that whatever happened that saw Ambassador Montvale named Vice President was the first step in a coup d’etat.”
“That’s absurd. I admit that it has a certain appeal, but that anyone was planning a coup is simply not true,” McNab said.
“People believe what they want to believe,” Naylor said. “Do I have to say whom he views as coconspirators?”
“Where did you get this, Allan?” McNab asked softly.
And again there was a long pause before Naylor replied.
“Natalie Cohen,” he said finally. “And I ran it past Frank Lammelle. He confirmed it.”
“He’s insane,” McNab said. “Not Lammelle. Clendennen.”
Naylor didn’t reply to that.
“What Natalie suggests is that all of us do nothing that could possibly give him a chance to ask for-demand- our resignations.”
“Natalie always keeps her head.”
“Natalie suggests that his plan is to get rid of us one by one, and says that John David Parker was the first one to go.”
“That seems pretty clear,” McNab said.
“It seems pretty clear, Bruce, that you’re next on the list,” Naylor said. “Beiderman made it obvious that he would support me if I relieved you at SPECOPSCOM, or even announced your retirement.”
“What does he think of this coup d’etat nonsense?”
“I don’t know if he knows about it or not, or if he does know, his reaction to it. I think his primary motivation is to keep his job. Which brings us to, what do I tell him about Charley and your people being at Arlington, where they walked out on the President’s speech?”
“To get me out of here would require that you have proof I did something I should not have done, or not done something I should have done. And my skirts are clean here, Allan.
“I have not been in touch with Charley-I told you this before-since before Danny Salazar was murdered. I did not suggest that he go to Arlington. I knew he probably would be there, sure, but I had nothing to do with his going.”
“Bruce, what about the Delta Force people? How do I explain to Beiderman that fifteen or twenty of your people showed up there without your knowledge?”
“When all else fails, tell the truth. Those men-some of them commissioned officers, some of them warrant officers, and the rest senior noncoms-are not PFCs who have to knock on the orderly room door to ask the first sergeant for a pass. So long as they are available for duty-depending on their alert status-immediately, or on one hour’s notice, or six hours, or twenty-four hours-they are free to go anywhere they please.
“Now, I don’t know this, and you might not want to tell Beiderman this, but what I strongly suspect happened here is that after you shoved burying her husband at Arlington down Mrs. Salazar’s throat-”
“That was not my idea, Bruce. The President, to use your phraseology, shoved it down Secretary Beiderman’s throat, and he shoved it down mine.”
“Whereupon, you obediently shoved it down Mrs. Salazar’s. And after you did, I think that she called Charley. And Charley-never forget he’s one of us, Allan-decided that the best thing all around-‘for the good of the service’ comes to mind-was to resist what must have been a hell of a temptation for him to tell her to tell you and the President to go to hell and insist that her husband be buried in San Antonio National Cemetery.
“He probably told her he was going to be at Arlington, and that if any of the people in the Stockade wanted to go, he’d have them picked up at the Fayetteville Regional Airport by Jake Torine or Dick Miller and flown back there when the interment was over. He has several airplanes, and the wherewithal to charter more. So I suspect that the reason they left Arlington right after the funeral was to get to the airport so that they could come back here.”
After a long silent moment, Naylor said, “I’ll buy everything but hurrying to the airport. What they did was go to that suite Charley keeps at the Mayflower. They’re having sort of a wake. As we speak, according to Beiderman, the party’s still going on. And, again according to Beiderman, Roscoe Danton and John David Parker are among the mourners.”
“Which will tend to convince the President even more of the coup d’etat conspiracy,” McNab said.
“Precisely. Well, that’s what I will tell the secretary of Defense. That you knew nothing about Charley Castillo’s presence at Arlington, and haven’t been in touch with him since before this mess started. I don’t have much hope that he’ll believe me.”
“Your skirts are clean, Allan. You issued the orders you were told to issue, and made sure they were carried out.”
“It isn’t that black-and-white though, is it?” Naylor asked thoughtfully.
“Very little is ever either black or white, Allan.”
There was another pause, and then Naylor said, “You said something before. .”
“What?”
“You suggested the President was insane.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, that was a figure of speech, and you know it.”
Naylor didn’t reply.
“I have, Allan, on many occasions, going all the way back to our unhappy days at Hudson High, called you chickenshit. You knew I didn’t think you were really fecal matter excreted from the anus of a
“What if he is, Bruce?” Naylor asked softly.
McNab took a long time to reply.
“Well, that would certainly explain a hell of a lot, wouldn’t it?”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Colonel Caruthers said softly. “If you think about it. .”
“Not only this coup d’etat nonsense,” McNab said. “But. .”
“I think we had all better stop right here,” Naylor said.
“That won’t work, I’m afraid, Allan,” McNab said. “You’ve let a very ugly genie out of your bottle. He’s not going to go back in.”
There was another long pause, and then McNab said, “Allan, I don’t think I’d mention this part of our
