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37
Tory sat with General Devereaux in the lead one of fifty infantry vehicles or LXs, each with ten soldiers and light equipment. The vehicles were rugged and utilitarian inside. The men sat on canvas and steel seats. The cockpit up front had two high-backed seats and glittered with red lights. Slit-like windows of bullet-proof glass ringed the bulkheads at standing eye level and kneeling eye-level. Radio equipment occupied a wall niche. Tory and the general sat in the front pair of seats. The two young infantrymen they displaced sat on their backpacks in the aisle. Each vehicle had exit hatches high middle right and in several low areas where men could egress, crouching low, to avoid flying bullets.
The column passed through hastily thrown up checkpoints manned by National Guard and Reserve personnel, visible to Tory through mesh-covered windows. At several checkpoints a similar scenario played out. A sentry challenged: “Who are you?”
The vehicle commander shouted: “399th Iowa, the President’s.”
“Right on, 399th! Go get ‘em!”
Within an hour, they rolled through the familiar checkpoint outside the Atlantic Hotel, past Towers Three and Two. The hotel was surrounded by troops in blue-yellow camouflage, with automatic weapons and NBC masks. They look ghoulish with their reptilian snouts and large inhuman eyes, Tory thought.
They stopped near the gate where Tory had only yesterday joined sick call in her desperation to escape. Now there was a makeshift barrier of parked cars, piled furniture, and commandeered civilian delivery trucks preventing access to the hotel. A large civilian garbage truck blocked the one entrance through the barrier. The glass entrance to Tower One, raised on concrete steps and tucked between sculpture gardens, was about 300 feet beyond. The garbage truck was apparently fully loaded, for papers and rags hung from its rear loading mouth.
“Wait here,” Devereaux told Tory. “Everyone wait. I’m gonna handle this myself.” At his wave, a tech opened a side hatch.
Tory’s stomach gave a twist. Fifty unmufflered LX engines racketed, and diesel smoke drifted over the sidewalk as she watched. One by one, at Devereaux’s order, the engines shut down, leaving an eerie silence. Tory could hear wind blowing among the tires. Flags snapped in the night, high up on the hotel’s display masts. She smelled gasoline, grass, something else—food! Gravy, beef, something. Her stomach growled, but her skin crawled more noticeably at the moment.
General Devereaux climbed down the side with surprising energy for a man of his age. He wore a long Army coat with four stars on each lapel. He had an old-fashioned steel pot helmet with four white stars in a horizontal row, front and back. He had a cigar stuck in his mouth, and the .38 dangled in a holster by his right hip.
He climbed down and marched swiftly toward the garbage truck.
Sentries appeared on top of the walls. Rifles pointed at him from the lower, nearer hotel windows. Two men emerged at a crouch, assault rifles pointed and ready to fire.
Tory heard him say: “I’m General Devereaux. You boys stop this right now.”
“You can’t come in here, Sir,” a young fellow’s voice quavered.
“Now don’t be silly, son, I’m a general. I give the orders and you do what I say. Don’t we pay you to do that?”
“Yessir, but—”
“Young man, I didn’t drive all the way over here to chat with you. Go get me General Montclair right this instant! I want to talk with him person to person right out here in the street.”
“Sir—,” the boy stammered.
A short, massive looking colonel appeared from around the truck. Colonel Bronf, Tory realized. She’d seen him go up and down in the elevators. David had told her about him. He was a dark, ominous looking individual. On him, even a regulation Army uniform looked somehow totalitarian, his saucer cap resembling something an SS officer might have worn. And he carried a swagger stick! He moved a gloved hand in a brief but formal salute. “General, my compliments to you.”
Devereaux removed his cigar and said: “Are you in the U.S. Army?”
Bronf’s lips formed a grim line, and his eye cavities darkened. “Yes.”
Devereaux’s voice was smooth as an aged whiskey, with just that much hint of warning in it, as he returned the salute. “Well then, howdy, Colonel, my compliments to you. Say, who am I complimenting here?”
“Colonel Bronf, Sir. Assistant Chief of Staff, Security, 3045th M.I. Detachement, Reserve. General Montclair is getting ready to make a radio address and unfortunately is not available right now.”
“Colonel, I don’t have time to wait around, and what I need is for him to surrender this place to me immediately. Not only that, but I demand that you turn over Mr. Mattoon to me personally right this minute, and release all the delegates. Why don’t we begin by you dropping your gun on the ground and ordering all these fine red-blooded American boys to throw down their arms and just walk up the street there with their hands up?”
“General, we don’t have time to play games.”
Devereaux shouted. “You hear me, boys? I represent the President here. On behalf of your Commander in Chief, I am ordering you to throw down your weapons and come out here. You won’t come to any harm, I pledge my good name on that.”
“General—,” Bronf barked, stamping his foot and stepping forward.
The young soldiers exchanged a chorus of boos and pleas with each other.
“You better hurry, boys!”
After another minute it was clear that nobody was surrendering.
“Okay, Bronf, have it your way,” Devereaux said and turned.
Bronf stood staring, while Devereaux walked toward the row of LXs.
Bronf shouted after him: “General, it’s very important that there be no bloodshed. This is a peaceful and temporary transfer of power until the country can be be restored to order and tranquility.”
Devereaux half turned, but didn’t stop walking. “What’s your idea of order and tranquility? Taking hostages? Terrorizing the entire nation? Why don’t you begin by stopping your crazy scheme? You can’t win.”
Bronf stood silently glowering.
Devereaux raised his hand in a signal, and the engines coughed into life.
As Devereaux climbed up the ladder into the open port, Tory heard him mutter, “Well, we brought our toys.” Devereaux climbed down and dusted himself off. The coat flapped, and the .38 swung in its holster. The half-burned cigar had gone out, and he stuck its dark, soggy corpus between two radio buttons on a wall panel. A private pulled the hatch shut and turned the crank to lock it.
Devereaux waggled his finger, and Tory stepped near. “Look out there,” he said. As she bent forward, the LX lurched forward. “I had to borrow something from Mark Nash. Remember Mark? Commanding general, 699th Tank Regiment, Reserve, Bangor, Maine? He just happened to have one old M-60 gathering dust in his armory.”
At that moment, a blocky tank clattered past Tory’s window. It was streaked with mud and dirt. Its barrel was pointed backward and the chassis rocked in rolling motions as it charged toward the garbage truck.
Bronf jumped out of the way just in time as the ancient tank raged at the truck like a dinosaur, tipping the truck over. Truck and tank disappeared into the darkness. Shots rang out, but then someone must have ordered the young soldiers to cease fire. Bronf! He ran up and down, waving his arms and yelling—probably that there must be no shooting.
“I know what he’s saying,” Devereaux rasped. “He’s telling them we’re trying to provoke them. That’s a damn lie. I don’t want to see a single American boy killed or hurt here on the streets of our own capital.”
Careening wildly, the aging tank made a circle under the stairs of Tower One, tearing out aluminum frames and causing picture windows to blow out explosively and then turn to powder under its churning treads. The tank rolled back down the stairs, ran right over the garbage truck which flattened in the middle and bent up at both ends like a banana. The tank then attacked the piled barriers, shoving parked cars out of the way, overturning trucks, and flattening furniture.
“Enough,” Devereaux said. “Let’s exploit our advantage. Tell him to take off, and tell Mark thanks.”
The tank wheeled, flag flapping, and raced away into the night toward its next errand.
The LXs lurched forward with wheezing air brakes—directly into the maw of the Atlantic Hotel and Convention Center. Tory hung on to a metal rail and wondered—was Rocky Devereaux insane?
ALLISON MIRANDA: We briefly stopped broadcasting while we relocated to the emergency broadcast center in an old fallout shelter in the basement of a location I am not at liberty to disclose. I can tell you that we were acting on rumors that commandos were en route to take over the station. We are under heavy police and military security at this very moment. Many of the major transmitting towers in the Washington, D.C. area have been knocked out, and we are transmitting on special Civil Defense bands. We will continue broadcasting as long as we are able.
We’ll continue updating you on all the tragic stories pouring in as I speak. There is pandemonium in the Atlantic Hotel as commandos under orders from General Montclair have sealed off all entrances to the building. Trapped inside are most of the delegates to CON2 as well as many members of the press. Details are sketchy.
General Robert Montclair has sent a taped communique, which he asked us to play over the air. After some discussion, our bureau chief agreed to play the tape, only for its newsworthiness, and you will read a disclaimer across the picture, that this is not the official view of either the Pentagon or the White House.
MONTCLAIR: Sometimes in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for people of good moral fiber to stand up against a government that has been taken over by liberals, homosexuals, socialists, foreign agents, and criminal elements. For too long, we solid American citizens have sat back and let crime rule our streets. We have let the greedy rob us in the financial market place. We have been taxed out of our homes. We have sent our children to schools where they were taught they were descended from monkeys, taught homosexual practices, handed needles and condoms and told how to use them. We have had our guns taken away, seen the Bible thrown out of schools, prayer banned, and atheism promoted. Finally, in this hotel, we have seen the death sentence handed to the Constitution. For weeks now, I and my fellow loyal U.S. military officers and a committee of clergymen, business leaders, and elected officials have watched the Constitution gutted. We have watched the compromise of weak and ineffective amendments replaced by a carload of contradictory, radical, and dangerous ideas. They have made their convention illegal and un-American. To all of that we now say, enough. We stand at a decisive crossroads, and there is no way back. I repeat, no way back. The old constitution became a dead item the minute this convention opened. The convention itself has fallen apart and is incapable of producing a new constitution. In the absence, therefore, of a legal constitution, it is necessary for men of good will now to take charge and put this nation back on course. It is time to produce a carefully crafted new constitution put together by the wisest and most Christian clergy, business leaders, elected officials, and other responsible persons. As we assert our rightful control, we will for a very short time freeze all government activities so that that great task can be completed. I ask you all to join with us in creating a new, free, conservative, non-baby murdering, family oriented, gun-owning America in which those who push drugs, liberalism, crime, abortion, queerness, evolutionism, and other bad ideas will be swiftly and severely dealt with. My friends, your daughters will be safe, you can leave your doors open at night, and you will all be heroes in this glorious quest. The top military figures in the nation are fully on the side of this peaceful action. I now call upon General Norcross and all the members of active duty military to join us in this sacred quest.
ALLISON: There you have it, the taped communique from General Montclair and the Hotel Generals.
We have this important breaking story from Chicago. Police have confirmed that a body found in a parked car in a garage in a very posh downtown men’s club is that of Robert Lee Hamilton, the eccentric billionaire who founded the Middle Class Party. Details are sketchy at this point, but Hamilton may have been kidnapped while eating alone in a secluded dining room, as reportedly was his custom. The slaying appears to have been execution style. No further details are available at the moment, but we will be following this major breaking story throughout the day
World financial markets reacted with shock to the ongoing coup attempt in our nation’s capital. After a chaotic opening session with heavy volume, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has halted trading until stability is restored in Washington. Around the world, the story is about the same. ANN Business Editor Walter Golob says world commerce is reeling as financial centers around the world are dumping their dollars and central banks are buying dollars in an attempt to shore up the world’s currency stability. At this moment, the building housing stock market in Shanghai is actually burning out of control. It was set ablaze by investors angry that the Republic of China has shut down trading; they wanted to move their money from U.S. stocks and bonds into European and Asian securities.
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