Against All Enemies Read online

  Richard Herman

  Against All Enemies

  To the 32nd Tactical Fighter Squadron,

  The Wolfhounds, The Queen’s Own,

  Who served at Camp New Amsterdam,

  the Netherlands,

  1954–1994

  “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.”

  —Exodus 23:2

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  The hostess for the rooftop café at the San Francisco…

  Part One

  Multitudes

  1

  Three men clustered around the TV in the President’s private…

  2

  Nelson Durant stood at the picture window and watched the…

  3

  The sprawling complex in western Virginia was anything but a…

  4

  The wake-up call came at exactly six o’clock in the…

  5

  The Vice President was waiting when Art Rios drove the…

  6

  Durant ambled across the campuslike grounds, enjoying the soft morning…

  7

  Nelson Durant was awake early, dressed, and drinking his second…

  8

  It was early and the road leading up to the…

  9

  Durant watched Art Rios as he bent over the big…

  10

  The captain waiting on the parking ramp heard the distinctive…

  11

  The whiz kids were waiting for Durant when he arrived…

  12

  The Project’s fuzzy logic program was working beyond the whiz…

  Part Two

  Vortex

  13

  The whiz kids huddled around a table arguing how “fuzzy…

  14

  The special assistant for internal affairs to the director of…

  15

  Kyle Broderick was waiting for Durant when he arrived outside…

  16

  Agnes had shut herself off and the whiz kids were…

  17

  Art Rios let the plush leather seat of the Hawker…

  18

  The tech sergeant who described himself as Gillespie’s “flight inga-neer”…

  19

  The nurse let Art Rios into the private suite. “Fifteen…

  20

  Durant sat in his wheelchair near the big window overlooking…

  21

  Durant switched off the computer and leaned back in his…

  22

  The ringing phone woke Art Rios from a sound sleep.

  23

  Art Rios pushed the wheelchair into the Oval Office and…

  24

  Art Rios sat in front of the monitor and listened…

  Part Three

  Justice

  25

  “It’s on TV,” Rios said, drawing Durant’s attention away from…

  26

  The phone call from Agnes came just after midnight. As…

  27

  The whiz kids were adamant: they had to do something…

  28

  Durant turned away from the monitor. “At least we know…

  29

  Rios knocked on the door to Durant’s suite, counted to…

  30

  A very unhappy group of scientists huddled around a remote…

  31

  Durant reread the profile on Kamigami the second time. “But…

  32

  Durant was appalled by the obsolescence surrounding him. The National…

  33

  Grudgingly, Durant gave the big computer-driven wall map high marks:…

  34

  The general was on his feet. “Yes!” Then he was…

  35

  Art Rios found Durant asleep in the overstuffed leather chair…

  Epilogue

  Durant scanned the latest edition of the Sacramento Union as…

  Acknowledgments

  Edge of Honor,

  About the Author

  Praise

  Other Books by Richard Herman

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  11:45 A.M., Thursday, March 4,

  San Francisco

  The hostess for the rooftop café at the San Francisco Shopping Emporium made her decision the moment Hank Sutherland got off the elevator. She would jump him to the head of the waiting list. There was something about Sutherland’s boyish face, barely controlled sandy brown hair, and friendly hazel eyes that appealed to her. It was a simple decision made for the most human of reasons. Yet, it was to mean so much.

  At forty years of age and five-feet-ten-inches tall, Henry Michael Sutherland was not an imposing man. Nor was he considered handsome. But women found him extremely attractive and men trusted him. He cultivated a slightly hunched-shouldered stance to enhance his image as a deputy district attorney and let an impeccably tailored dark suit hide his paunchy body.

  “I’m waiting for a reporter,” Sutherland told her. “Marcy Bangor from the Sacramento Union, short dark hair.” He almost added “young, pretty, and ditzy” but thought better of it.

  “I’ll tell her you’re here,” the hostess said, pleased to be of a little more help. She led Sutherland to a corner niche against a side wall. He had barely sat down when Marcy Bangor joined him. She gave him a warm smile and pulled out a microcassette tape recorder and her digital camera.

  “How is the case going?”

  Sutherland considered his answer. Interviews with the press were always tricky. “I’ve never seen anything like it in an appeals court. It was crazy in there.”

  “The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,” Marcy said, “is crazy by definition.”

  Sutherland nodded. He had appeared before the Ninth three times in the past defending cases he had successfully prosecuted. “Jonathan Meredith was there.”

  Jonathan Meredith was always news and Marcy became very interested. “Did he say anything? What was he doing? Any idea why he was there?”

  Rather than talk about his suspicions, he shook his head. “The judges were afraid of him, the audience was packed, there were five bailiffs there, a lot of noise. It was weird and I kept wondering who was running the show.” Their waitress, a pretty young college student from the University of California across the bay at Berkeley, came over and took their orders. She called him “sir” and, suddenly, he felt old.

  Sutherland recounted his day in court. But Marcy wanted to hear about Meredith, not an appeals case involving a questionable roving telephone intercept that could get the conviction of four terrorist bombers overturned. “What do you make of Meredith?” she asked.

  “Off the record,” he said. Marcy gave an audible sigh and turned off her microcassette tape recorder. “He’s a demagogue in the making, complete with a fanatical band of followers.”

  “You mean his First Brigade.”

  “And his Neighborhood Brigades,” he replied, thinking of the next case on his docket. “Meredith already sees himself marching down Pennsylvania Avenue on inauguration day.” He fell silent when the waitress returned, carrying a tray with their food.

  What happened next would puzzle Sutherland for the rest of his life. The waitress just seemed to rise in the air and fly across the patio, two or three feet off the floor. The tray moved beside her as if it were in free fall. He wanted to say something witty or make a telling comment or tell Marcy to take a picture. But he sat there, dumb-founded by the sight. It seemed to take forever for the girl to blow up against the far wall.

  Then the blast hit.

  The sound roared over him and pounded him against the wall. He felt his back grind into the bricks as his feet came
up over his head. He watched Marcy’s miniskirt being blown off as he slipped down the wall into a sitting position. Another part of his mind told him it was all happening very quickly but that he was registering it in slow motion.

  Then he tried to breathe. He couldn’t.

  The blast had knocked all breath out of him, and for a moment, he was on the edge of total panic. With a calm that surprised him, he placed a fist against his chest and performed a Heimlich maneuver. He sucked in the dust and soot that had saturated the air. He coughed out and breathed in. Marcy was slipping away from him as if she were on a slide. He reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling her to him as the floor fell away. He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs that were enfolding him in a gossamer haze. His vision cleared.

  “Whaa,” Marcy moaned. He quickly checked her for bleeding, and other than a few scratches and cuts from flying debris, she was fine. He tasted blood but an inner voice told him he was okay. He looked at his feet. They were hanging over the edge of a precipice, six stories down to the street. What had been the front half of the building had simply disappeared. He could feel the floor shake as it started to collapse underneath his weight. Without thinking, he scooped Marcy up in a fireman’s carry and moved against the back wall. Marcy’s camera was still clenched in her hand and one shoe was gone.

  Now he was standing over the semiconscious waitress. “I’m okay,” Marcy said. He bent over and lowered her to her feet. Smoke billowed up from the street below and washed back toward them. Marcy stood there, one shoe missing and her skirt gone, and snapped a picture. That simple act brought Sutherland into full consciousness.

  The San Francisco Shopping Emporium had been bombed and the three of them were trapped on the slowly collapsing roof. He looked around. What had been a lovely rooftop café was now a grotesque slaughterhouse littered with shattered, twisted bodies. It was a scene from Hell, worse than any nightmare his subconscious could conjure from the depths of his primeval fears and obsessions. And he knew. They were alive only because the hostess had seated him in a sheltered table in a corner niche.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said. The waitress groaned and he bent down. She had a heavy gash across her cheek and her right shoulder was pushed back and her arm twisted at an obscene angle. She had taken the blast full on and was lucky to be alive. He gently picked her up in his arms and she screamed in agony. “I’m sorry,” he said. He looked around, trying to get his bearings. “Where are the stairs?” The girl’s good hand pointed to the left before she passed out from the pain. Marcy pulled off the girl’s shoes and slipped them on. She led the way and stepped carefully over the debris that littered what was left of the floor. He was vaguely aware of a misshapen ball painted with a man’s features. He fought the bile that threatened to choke him when he realized it was a man’s head.

  Marcy led the way through an opening and found the stairwell. It was earthquake proof and still structurally intact. She opened the door and smoke billowed out. The blast had turned it into a chimney. She let the door slam shut. The sound of the floor giving way echoed over them. He kicked the door open. “Go!” he shouted. He held his breath and plunged into the smoke. Badly disoriented, he moved in a sideways motion, feeling his way down the stairs with his left foot. His lungs were bursting. Suddenly, he was clear of the smoke. When he turned and looked back, all he could see were Marcy’s bare legs hanging from smoke. Again, he shook his head. He wasn’t crazy. The blast had blown the stairs into a steep angle and she was climbing down after him, coughing and sputtering.

  The sound of the collapsing roof drove them down the stairwell. The steps were increasingly twisted into bizarre shapes as they descended, and finally, they could go no further. They were standing on the edge of a pit. “Where are we?” Marcy asked.

  “On the first floor, I think.” He ducked as debris fell on him. The girl moaned. He gently laid her down and looked over the edge. “Yeah, I think that’s the bottom. About fifteen feet below us.”

  Marcy did the sensible thing and screamed for help.

  A teenage boy appeared out of the gloom and directed the beam of his flashlight upward. “I’ve got an injured woman here,” Sutherland shouted. The boy yelled back acknowledgment and disappeared. After what seemed an eternity, he was back with two other men. More debris fell down the stairwell.

  “We’ll get you out of here,” one of the newcomers shouted. Something about his voice was vaguely familiar. He held up his arms to take the girl. Sutherland told Marcy to grab the girl’s feet while he lowered her over the edge. He used her clothes as handholds as he lowered her head first into the rescuer’s waiting arms. Then he lowered Marcy over the edge by her hands. “We got her,” the man yelled. Chunks of concrete started to fall and Sutherland jumped, slamming his head against the floor and knocking himself out.

  PART ONE

  MULTITUDES

  1

  5:50 P.M., Thursday, March 4,

  The White House, Washington, D.C.

  Three men clustered around the TV in the President’s private office in the west wing. The sound was turned low and the voice of the reporter at the scene was only a murmur. The grisly image on the screen said more than any words could describe. The President hit the remote control and turned off the sound. The silence was complete as the men continued to stare at the screen. “Do they have a casualty count yet?” the President finally asked.

  Kyle Broderick, the chief of staff, picked up the phone and asked the same question. He didn’t like the answer. Broderick was a young man, hard and street savvy, who delighted in using the power that went with being the President’s chief of staff. “I want a hard number in the next five minutes or you’re history.” He punched off the connection and turned to the President. “Sorry, sir. Everyone seems asleep at the wheel.” Almost immediately, the phone rang. Broderick picked it up and listened. He hung up without saying a word. “The initial count is over two hundred and rising fast,” he told the President.

  “You’ll have to go there,” the Vice President said to the President. He was a handsome man who had his eye on the presidency in five years. But first, they had to survive the upcoming election. He looked at his watch. “Time your arrival for early in the morning while it’s still dark. Make it look like you’ve been up all night. We’ll work the networks at this end and have you lead the morning news.”

  The President nodded in agreement. Again, they stared at the TV. The silence was broken by the distinctive beat of a helicopter’s rotor as the aircraft settled to earth on the South Lawn. “That must be Nelson,” the President said. A few minutes later, the door opened and a stocky man with thinning brown hair was ushered in. Nelson Durant was fifty-four, and his rumpled clothes gave no clue about who, or what, he was. He was average looking in the extreme and could disappear into a crowd with ease. His image shouted “wimp” but his blue eyes carried a far different message. “Thanks for coming so quickly,” the President said. The Vice President moved over so Nelson Durant could sit next to the President.

  “Have you seen the TV coverage on the bombing?” Broderick asked.

  The answer was obvious and Nelson Durant ignored the question. Besides, Broderick wasn’t worth his time. “What can I do for you, Mr. President?” Durant asked.

  “We need quick answers on this one,” the President replied. “Can you help?”

  Durant ran a hand through his thinning hair. For those who knew him, it was a warning gesture that he was wasting his time and had better things to do. “If you’re referring to the Project, we’re still a month away from startup and then we’re looking at another year before coming on-line.”

  The President looked disappointed. The Project was a highly advanced intelligence-gathering computer system that one of Durant’s many companies was developing for the National Security Agency. If the Project lived up to Durant’s promises, it could find and track any foreign or terrorist threat targeting the United States.

  “But I’ll have my
people check into it,” Durant said. The President looked pleased. Durant’s worldwide business contacts gave him an intelligence database that rivaled the CIA’s. A discreet knock stopped him from saying more. Broderick opened the door and Stephan Serick, the National Security Advisor, stomped in.

  “You need to see this,” Serick said, holding up a videocassette. Stephan Serick’s childhood Latvian accent was still strong, and the basset hound jowls, heavy limp, and twisted cane were famous trademarks of the man who had served under two presidents of different political parties. “Communications took it off a satellite feed.” He collapsed into a chair while Broderick fed the cassette into the TV. “A tourist filmed it. Damned videos.”

  At first, the scene was a repeat of what they had seen before; the huge crater in Market Street, the mangled cars and the gaping hole that once was the façade of the San Francisco Shopping Emporium. Serick shuddered. “They even got BART.” BART was the Bay Area Rapid Transit subway that ran under Market Street. Then the scene on the TV changed as the tourist ran through the debris following a fireman. The camera jolted to a stop and focused on a man emerging from a cloud of dust and debris, his clothes smoking. He was carrying an unconscious girl in his arms.

  “That’s Meredith,” Serick muttered. They watched as Meredith handed the woman to the fireman, his face racked with anguish.

  “Just like Oklahoma City,” Durant said in a low voice. On the screen, Meredith collapsed to his knees, panting hard. A blanket was thrown over his shoulders.

  A voice from off screen said, “My God, the man’s a real hero.”

  Meredith looked up, his lean, handsome face ravaged. He pointed to four firemen wearing respirators descending into the smoke billowing from the underground BART station. “There’s your real heroes.” He struggled to his feet. “I had to do something…. I was there.” The tape ended.

  “Son of a bitch!” Broderick roared. Then more calmly, “Would you care to guess when this will hit the air?”