“Yeah, noon will be fine. I’ll see you then.” Michael hung up the phone and again tried to shake the tingling feeling out of his arm.
He calculated that he’d gotten about three hours of sleep, more than enough to get him through the day. When the meeting in the Situation Room was over, Mike Nance went to his office and waited exactly one hour. Then, pressing the intercom button on his phone, he asked his secretary if she could track Stu Garret down and have him come to his office. Less than a minute later, Garret came puffing through the door and closed it behind him. His entire body was rigid. He paced back and forth in front of Nance’s desk.
“We’ve got to do something about that fucking McMahon. I knew he was going to be trouble.”
“Stu, sit down.”
Garret continued to pace. “We have got to do something. I mean we can’t-” Mike
Nance rose out of his leather chair and pointed toward an armchair by the side of his desk. “Stu, sit down and shut up!” The uncharacteristic remark by the always composed
Nance got Garret’s attention, and he sat. “The only thing you are going to do, Stu, is relax and keep your mouth shut. The FBI can dig all they want and they’ll find nothing. That is, unless you give them a reason to look in our direction.” Nance tapped his clenched fist against his forehead and looked away for a brief moment. “Did you pay attention to what was going on in that meeting this morning?” Garret gave Nance a puzzled look.
“Stansfield watched your every gesture while that tape was being played.” Nance hated dealing with amateurs and was using all of his energy to suppress the contempt he felt toward Garret at this moment.
“He saw you sweating, and he saw you look at me with that stupid, panicked expression on your face. Stu, you have to get a grip on yourself. You have to learn to control your emotions, or you are going to screw this whole thing up.”
McMahon left the White House and returned to his office briefly before leaving for the Pentagon. Kennedy and General Heaney were unaware of the most recent phone call from the assassins. The President agreed that they had to take the call seriously and investigate, but at the same time he knew if the public found out, the conspiracy theorists would go nuts. They would start pointing fingers at every institution of power, and the media would fan the flames. The President directed McMahon to assign a small contingent of agents to look into who might have wanted to kill Turnquist and Olson.
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The agents were not to be told of the tape and the possibility that another group was responsible for the last two assassinations. At the urging of Mike Nance, the President asked for a list of everyone who knew about the most recent call and wanted them informed that they were not to discuss the tape with anyone. McMahon was not happy with the ludicrous and senseless restriction. It drove him nuts watching the huge amounts of energy and time that was wasted on worrying about the media and public opinion. He couldn’t run an investigation if his people didn’t know what was going on. After he’d gotten away with putting Garret in his place, he’d decided not to press his luck. The
President was obviously not in the mood to be challenged, so he shut his mouth with the hope that Roach could get the President to loosen up later. All the way to the Pentagon, McMahon was trying to figure out how he could leave Kennedy and General Heaney out of the loop. He couldn’t. He needed their minds. They gave him insight into an area that he knew little about, and this morning’s phone call was a valuable piece of the puzzle.
Skip entered the conference room just before noon and was slightly surprised. The last time he’d seen the room it was neat and orderly.
Now it had stacks of folders piled everywhere, and the blackboard was covered with writing. Kennedy looked tired and worn, but the general was clean shaven and looking the perfect Marine. “You two look like you got some work done.”
“We’ve been up all night pounding through these files.”
Kennedy stretched her hands over her head and yawned. McMahon nodded.
“Fill me in on what you’ve done.” Kennedy took off her glasses and stood.
“Down at the far end of the table are all of the Delta Force files, in the middle are the
Green Berets, and down here are the two Navy SEAL files. We took the description of the black assassin that killed Downs and tried to match it with the former black commandos. First, we separated them by height and skin color. If they were too short or their skin color was too light, we put them in a pile marked ‘not probable.”
From there, we sorted them by current address, our rationale being that the commandos would need to live in the D.C. metro area to have an alibi. If we go talk to one of these guys who lives out in L.A. and find out that they’ve been out of town for the last two weeks, it’s going to look a little fishy. The commandos that fit the description of the assassin, but don’t live in the D.C. area, are in piles marked ‘possible’.” And the commandos who fit the description of the assassin and live in town are in the piles marked ‘probable.”” McMahon nodded.
“Sounds good. What’s the next step?”
“Well, we’re all in agreement that to conduct an operation of this nature you would need a minimum of four commandos, and they would have to know each other pretty well. As the general said earlier, you don’t do something like this unless you trust the
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people on your team. That led us to the conclusion that it is highly likely these commandos served together when they were in the military.
The odds are this group is composed of all former Delta Force commandos, Green
Berets, or SEALS, not a mix of the three. Knowing that, we are going through the personnel files for every former commando and looking for men that served in the same units with the black commandos that are in the probable stacks.”
“When will we have the list?”
“The general is running a sort on their computer. We should have a list by… When do you think it’ll be done, General?”
