Power Curve Read online

  Richard Herman

  Power Curve

  For my children,

  Eric, Susan, Marianne,

  and Neil

  Contents

  Map

  Prologue

  “General, please stand back.”

  Part one

  Appeasement

  1

  Robert Bender stood up when the reporter was ushered into…

  2

  It was still dark when the F-15E Strike Eagle taxied…

  3

  The butler hovered behind the two women and little girl,…

  4

  Robert Bender was fighting the last of the evening’s rush…

  5

  Brigadier General David Martini rolled into the Eighteenth Wing’s Intelligence…

  6

  The summons to the Oval Office came late Friday afternoon…

  7

  Brigadier General David Martini glared at the message, then at…

  Part Two

  Blockade

  8

  The two men walked through the hangar, picking their way…

  9

  Robert Bender was shoveling snow off his driveway Sunday evening…

  10

  Bender came through the west gate the Wednesday morning after…

  11

  Bob Ryan collapsed on the floor of his BOQ and…

  12

  Out of boredom and with nothing to do, Bender retreated…

  13

  The sergeant walked onto the low stage at the front…

  14

  Only the ruffling of pages punctuated the silence in the…

  Part Three

  Collapse

  15

  It was Monday, January 21, the tenth day since the…

  16

  “How’s the jet lag?” Mazie Hazelton asked. It was late…

  17

  Staff Sergeant Lancey Coltrain was the junior command post controller…

  18

  Bender woke with a jerk, rolled over, and automatically checked…

  19

  Lieutenant Colonel Peter Townly sounded like a bored economics professor…

  20

  Turner burst into the Oval Office and stood behind her…

  21

  Martini sensed the change the moment he entered the command…

  Part Four

  Defeat

  22

  Madeline Turner closed her eyes as the first tremor swept…

  23

  Major Bob Ryan cruised the flight line with Terrence Daguerre,…

  24

  Bender let the waiter take his half-eaten breakfast away and…

  25

  The two men stood in the dark on top of…

  26

  The phone call came at exactly eight o’clock Thursday morning,…

  27

  “I hear footsteps,” Larry Burke whispered. The sergeant was lying…

  28

  Bob Ryan stood on the parking ramp with Pete Townly…

  29

  Captain Terrence Daguerre leaned cross his desk in the Security…

  Epilogue

  “Go right on in, Major.” Ryan tried to read the…

  The Wit And Wisdom of Patrick Flannery Shaw

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  Enter the World of Richard Herman

  About the Author

  Praise

  Other Books by Richard Herman

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Map

  Prologue

  St. Louis, Missouri

  “General, please stand back.”

  Robert Bender gave the Secret Service agent a cold look. After seven months, the institutional paranoia of the Secret Service was wearing thin, and he was tired of being moved around like a piece of unwanted furniture. But all very necessary, he rationalized. He stepped farther back into the wings where he could still see the vice president standing at the podium. He split his attention, watching the agents and listening to the speech.

  “…this administration is one hundred percent dedicated to the advancement of equal rights.” A loud round of sustained applause echoed over the stage. Turner’s telling the delegates what they want to hear, Bender thought, like any good politician. Most of the audience had bought into the vice president’s carefully constructed image as “the most intelligent and engaging personality in American politics.” The “engaging” he agreed with.

  Another agent hurried by, speaking into the whisper mike hidden under his sleeve cuff. He shot a worried glance at Bender and skidded to a stop. “Sir, it might be better if you left the stage.”

  “The vice president gets upset when I’m not around,” Bender replied. Hanging around like a trained lap dog, he thought.

  The agent jerked his head in agreement. The agents standing post for Turner felt sorry for the three-star general—when they weren’t laughing about his predicament. The vice president liked having an Air Force lieutenant general dance attendance as a personal aide, and the agents chalked it up as another ego stroke for Turner. “Please display your badge, sir.”

  Bender fished out his White House area badge and let it dangle from his neck on the outside of his class A blues. Why am I here? he wondered for perhaps the thousandth time. Bender’s wife claimed it was because the vice president liked the way he looked: tall and lanky with gray hair and steel-blue eyes. Nancy Bender was determined to get her husband through this assignment with his sanity intact and teased him. “It keeps you humble. Besides, you make a cute little go-for, although you are a bit overpaid.”

  Chuck Sanford, the agent-in-charge of the vice presidential detail, came up the steps from the lower dressing rooms where the Secret Service had set up a temporary command post. “General, have you seen Mr. Shaw?” he asked. A trace of agitation gave his voice a rushed sound.

  Bender frowned at the mention of Turner’s chief of staff. “Not recently,” he answered, his words clipped and abrupt. Why is Sanford upset? he thought. He’s the cool one and never flaps, not even when that crazy preacher had taken two potshots at the president’s limousine.

  “We need to get a message to Magic”—Magic was the code name a Defense Department computer had generated for Turner the day after the inauguration—“and can’t find Mr. Shaw.”

  The general relented. Now it was his turn to feel sorry for the Secret Service. It angered him the way Patrick Shaw controlled access to the vice president. It wasn’t worth an agent’s career to bypass Shaw, and even Bender was very correct in dealing with the prickly chief of staff. Shaw had a well-earned reputation for destroying anyone he saw as a threat to his authority. “I saw Shaw about thirty minutes ago, leaving with the brunette in the short black dress.”

  “Damn,” Sanford groaned. “We’ll find him, but he’s going to be pissed if we catch him with his pants down—again.” He hurried away, speaking into his whisper mike. Bender’s frown deepened. He had never before heard Sanford use profanity, and the agent had to be under enormous pressure to be so talkative. Normally, the Secret Service was good for only the time of day, if that. He focused on the activity around him and decided something unusual had to be going down.

  The general allowed himself a rare excursion into profanity. That bastard, he thought. Why can’t Shaw keep his pecker in his pants? How many guests in the hotel would be rousted, bullied, or disturbed just because Shaw’s gonads did his thinking whenever a pretty and eager girl on the make came around?

  Sanford hurried up the steps with two more agents and moved them into place to scan the audience. Some fool has probably threatened the vice president, Bender reasoned. An Air Force master sergeant, one of the communication specialists assigned
to Air Force Two, the vice president’s airplane, rushed up the steps carrying a secure cellular telephone and gestured at Sanford, trying to catch his attention. But before Sanford saw him, two agents grabbed the sergeant and frog-walked him back down the steps.

  Fitzgerald is a good man and doesn’t deserve to be manhandled for doing his job, Bender told himself. Besides, those agents should know him from Air Force Two. Bender moved down the stairs in time to see the agents slam the sergeant against a wall and frisk him down. The general clamped an iron control over his anger. “What’s the problem?” he demanded. The agents ignored him and spun the sergeant around, still searching him.

  “Agent Adams,” Bender said, his voice heavy with command, “I asked you a question.”

  Wayne Adams looked at Bender. The general’s voice carried a punch that demanded his undivided attention. “Ah, sorry, sir.” He paused, breathing rapidly and deciding how much he should say. “You haven’t heard—the president is dead.”

  Bender blinked once, the news pounding at him with an intensity he couldn’t understand. Then he was back in control, rigid and unbending. “Sergeant Fitzgerald, is that why you were bringing the phone?”

  “Yes, sir,” Fitzgerald answered. “The National Military Command Center needs to authenticate the change of command.”

  Bender took charge, overriding the Secret Service. “Do it.”

  “We can’t allow that,” Adams said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because the vice president hasn’t been told yet,” Adams answered.

  “Why not?” Bender repeated.

  “Mr. Shaw,” came the answer.

  Bender shook his head. “Are you that afraid of him?”

  No answer.

  “Tell her now,” Bender ordered. “Don’t wait until you find Shaw.”

  Adams shook his head.

  Bender looked at Fitzgerald. “Tell me the details,” he demanded. The sergeant repeated what he knew. Bender jerked his head once. “Give me your message pad,” he said to Fitzgerald. He quickly wrote a note and ripped off the page before returning the pad. He trotted up the stairs and past Sanford and the other agents posted in the wings.

  “General!” Sanford barked.

  “You know me,” Bender shot back, flashing his White House badge and not slowing as he walked on stage.

  Madeline Turner heard the commotion and turned to look. Bender handed her the note and walked back into the wings.

  “Goddamn you,” Sanford rasped.

  “Without a doubt,” Bender replied, his voice sharp and unyielding. He looked back toward the podium. Turner was unfolding the note, still looking at him. He watched as she read. So this is how history is made, he thought, recalling the exact words he had jotted down moments before:

  Madam President, President Roberts died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage at 2:18 this afternoon in the White House. Your presence is needed immediately on board Air Force One.

  Madeline O’Keith Turner looked up at him, her mouth slightly open. Tears filled her eyes and streaked down her face.

  “For God’s sake, woman,” Sanford groaned. “Not here. Not now.” He never took his eyes off Turner. “You should have waited until we found Shaw.”

  PART ONE

  APPEASEMENT

  Who is Madeline O’Keith Turner? She has been described as “the most intelligent and engaging persona” in American politics. She is certainly that. But she is also a political lightweight with a thin record centered on domestic issues. But as Harry S. Truman warned, although domestic policy can hurt you, foreign policy can kill you. So what foreign policy will emerge when President Turner is confronted with the reality of the new world order? Will it be isolationism or engagement? Only time will tell.

  ELIZABETH GORDON

  CNC-TV News

  1

  Washington, D.C.

  Robert Bender stood up when the reporter was ushered into his basement office under the West Wing of the White House. The press aide made the introductions. “General Bender, may I introduce Elizabeth Gordon of CNC News?”

  “You’re a hard man to find,” Gordon said, extending her hand. Her cameraman halted in the doorway, wondering how he could set up the interview in the small, windowless office while the press aide escaped, eager to join the real action upstairs.

  Bender allowed a tight smile as they shook hands. “I’m not very newsworthy, Miss Gordon.” He wasn’t good with reporters or TV interviews. But like all the president’s staff, he had been told to make himself available for media interviews on what Patrick Shaw was calling Media Blitz Day.

  The media had been in a feeding frenzy since Turner had been sworn in as president on board Air Force One. But Shaw, her new chief of staff, had held them at bay for ten days, throwing them tidbits and claiming the funeral and period of mourning for the dead president was paramount. Shaw had used the time to sort out the confusion in the White House, moving his people into place and restructuring the staff. Now it was time to throw the press a bone with meat.

  “Please call me Liz,” the reporter said. “What do you think, Ben?” she said to her cameraman, turning to business.

  “Too small,” the cameraman answered. “Maybe we could do it outside, in the park.”

  “Fine by me,” Bender answered as he grabbed his flight cap and motioned at the door. A frown crossed Gordon’s face, and Bender suspected she was worried what the late afternoon August heat and humidity would do to her makeup. “I know a cool spot,” he told her. He led the two upstairs and through the corridors crowded with the journalists, TV reporters, and camera crews who had finally been released from their confinement in the press room.

  A Secret Service agent held a door open for them that led out of the West Wing and onto the veranda of the colonnade that connected the West Wing to the mansion. “Thank you,” Bender said. A thought clicked into sharp focus: He hadn’t seen the two Secret Service agents Chuck Sanford and Wayne Adams since returning from St. Louis ten days ago. He added it to his action list.

  A hot blast of humid air rocked Liz Gordon back as she stepped outside. “It’s not far,” Bender said, jamming his flight cap on his head, automatically denting the top seam in the back. It was a violation of Air Force dress regulations but a holdover from the days when he flew solo pilot for the Air Force aerial demonstration team, the Thunderbirds.

  They walked down the veranda, and suddenly the air became cooler as they neared the White House. “A venturi effect,” he explained.

  “Perfect,” the cameraman said. He went to work and rapidly set the interview up, positioning Gordon for the best exposure.

  “This is actually quite pleasant,” Gordon said. “How did you find it?”

  “I try to get outside whenever I can,” Bender answered. Nancy, his wife, claimed the way he roamed the President’s Park was a subconscious attempt to break free of his cage inside the White House. He agreed with her.

  The cameraman gave Gordon her cue, and she looked into the Betacam. A gentle breeze ruffled her blond hair, creating an attractive effect. “Lieutenant General Robert. Bender has been President Turner’s military aide since she was vice president. As we have heard many times, he was the individual who told her the president was dead.” She turned to Bender and tilted the microphone in his direction.

  “As Mr. Shaw has repeatedly explained,” Bender said, “I was only the messenger, nothing else.”

  “But you wrote the message,” Gordon said, not willing to drop the subject.

  “I can’t add anything to what Mr. Shaw has already said,” Bender replied. “I just happened to be there.”

  Gordon realized she would not get anything new out of the general on that subject, regardless of the rumors flying out of the White House about what had really happened back stage at the conference.

  “General, you were on board Air Force Two on that fateful flight back from St. Louis. I don’t recall seeing you when President Turner took the oath of office.”

  Be
nder paused and stared at her, not liking the way Gordon implied she was there when, in fact, she was referring to the much played videotape of Turner being sworn in by Justice Lorraine Worthing. Do that again, Miss Gordon, he thought, and we’re in trouble. “To be technically correct,” he replied, his voice flat and boring, “the aircraft becomes Air Force One when the president is on board. It was very crowded, and I was on the flight deck with the crew.” He didn’t tell her that the flight deck was the only sane refuge on that flight.

  “What was your reaction to the first woman president being sworn in by Chief Justice Lorraine Worthing?”

  “The symbolism is obvious,” Bender said, trying not to sound like a pompous ass. “But it was fortuitous circumstance. Justice Worthing had flown to the Bar Association conference with President Turner, and it made sense for her to administer the oath on the flight back to Andrews Air Force Base.”

  “On the videotape,” Gordon said, “I saw very few men at the swearing in.”

  Nice recovery, Bender thought. “Men were there,” he replied. “It was just the camera angle.” He didn’t mention that Patrick Shaw had deliberately surrounded Turner with women.

  “You seem to enjoy a special relationship with President Turner,” Gordon continued. She caught the look on Bender’s face and paused.

  You keep pushing it to the limits, Bender thought. This had better not lead into some sleazy question about her being a widow. Turner’s husband had died of a heart attack while playing tennis during an early primary election campaign, and Shaw had played it to the max, milking images of a grieving widow with a thirteen-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter soldiering gamely on. It had been a major factor in capturing the women’s vote for the Roberts-Turner ticket.