The General's President Read online

  Cromwell was tempted to tell him to knock off the flattery. But he didn't, because he knew it was true. Instead he nodded curtly, almost angrily. "I'll accept if it comes to that. But don't do it to me, Charles, unless you absolutely have to. My first name is Thomas, for chrissake, not Oliver."

  Milstead nodded, and with Ernie Hammaker, stopped somewhat short of the chopper, watching Cromwell and Klein board before turning back to the White House. As the pair of four-star generals took seats and buckled down, Klein said, "Who've you got in mind, Jumper?"

  "Christ, Brad, I haven't had time to think yet. But I'll come up with someone."

  He looked, when he said it, as if he were facing execution, but by the time they put back down at the Pentagon, he'd thought of someone.

  THREE

  Excerpt from a sermon by the Reverend Delbert Coombs, of the Stalwart in God Church of the Apocalypse.

  There are those who deny God. They will be damned! They are already damned.

  And there are those who claim to be Christians but do not believe the Word of God. They are twice damned!

  And there are those who say they are Christians and claim to believe the Word of God ... yet do not believe that the millenium will come! They deny the Word of God as revealed by John in the book of Revelations!!

  Well I'll tell you something, my friend! They too will not enter the Kingdom of God! Unless ... unless they change their hearts! And they'd better hurry, my friends, for the millenium is soon upon us. The years remaining are fewer than the fingers of my hand. And if they do not believe their calendar, and if they do not believe their Bible, then let them look about them, for the signs are everywhere to be seen!

  ***

  There were five joint chiefs. Cromwell was the Chairman; General Fred Hanke was Army Chief of Staff; General Ewell Boyd Trenary was Air Force Chief of Staff; Admiral James L. "Howdy" Dudak was Chief of Naval Operations; and General Francis X. Carmody was Marine Corps Commandant. Bradley Klein made a sixth in the meeting: As commander of the newly reinstituted Continental Command, Klein was in charge of the troops enforcing martial law.

  When everyone was seated, Cromwell, as a matter of form, rapped his small gavel on its plate. "All right, gentlemen," he said, "I have some important news for you."

  He had their attention. "A little while ago, at 0800, Brad and I went over to the White House. I assumed it was to give the president another rundown, and discuss any ideas he might have before the six of us met.

  "He gave us a surprise. A hell of a surprise."

  Cromwell paused then, looking around. "I'm telling you this in strictest confidence; it must not be discussed or mentioned to anyone. The president is in very shaky health, and he intends to resign. In fact, he would have resigned when we were there, but I talked him into waiting two days."

  Trenary's thin face darkened; he was less surprised than angry. "Talked him out of it?! Jesus Christ, Jumper! Quitting would be the best thing he's done lately. What in hell did you talk him out of it for?"

  "There's no vice president. He needs to appoint one; then he can quit."

  "Jumper, he doesn't appoint one," Hanke said drily. Fred Hanke was a tall lanky man whose thin hair still showed blond through the gray. "He nominates one, and then the Congress has to approve."

  "Not now it doesn't," Cromwell answered, then repeated what he'd been told about the emergency powers granted the president.

  "Huh!" Hanke grunted. "So he can appoint his own successor! I'll bet that wasn't the intent of Congress."

  "Beats me. Anyway that's what Cavanaugh and Milstead came up with. And Cavanaugh practiced before the Supreme Court for years."

  "Why didn't he name one last night?" Carmody asked. "Or this morning? Why the two-day wait?" The Marine Corps Commandant was a thick-shouldered, hard-bodied man who, with a sergeant's stripes, could have passed for a drill instructor. Usually he was a quiet, mild-seeming man, but his tongue could take the bark off a tree on occasion, and the whole Corps knew it.

  "He did name one, Frank. But the guy didn't want the job."

  "Who was it?" asked Dudak.

  "I hate to tell you this, Howdy, but it was me. So now I've got the job of finding him one. And I've got two days to do it."

  "Wait," Trenary said. "He offered you the job? That's like offering you the presidency! He's got to be off his rocker! That would really heat things up, appointing a president right off the JCS, for chrissake!"

  "We don't know that," Hanke commented. "Probably ninety percent of the people in this country want someone to take hold and straighten things out. They might like the idea of a military president, the way things are."

  "Or they might not," Dudak put in. "Especially if things didn't work out right away. Which they wouldn't." His features, usually reminiscent of a skeptical cherub, were set now in disapproval.

  "Who've you got in mind, Jumper?" Carmody asked. "Someone, I'll bet."

  "Yeah, I've thought of someone." Cromwell looked around at the others, then said nothing.

  "Goddamn it," said Trenary, "don't be so damn coy, Jumper! Why even bring it up to us, if you already know who you want? You're the one the president told to name one."

  "Good question, Ewell. It's someone who's not well known. I felt as if I needed to try him out on you people; see how you react."

  He paused thoughtfully. "I'm not sure any of you have even heard of him. He's got a personal track record of successful research and development and skilled management, and he's made a ton of money." His eves fixed on Trenary. "Unlike a lot of your big money buddies, he inherited nothing but brains; he got rich on new products well designed and well built. No stock manipulations, no mergers, thefts, or public borrow...."

  "Spare us the goddamn buildup, Cromwell," Trenary snapped. "What's his name?"

  Cromwell said nothing for a long moment, eyeing the Air Force Chief of Staff, and when he spoke, his voice was mild. "Ewell," he said, "I have the floor. And I'm sure they teach military courtesy at the Air Force Academy."

  Trenary flushed.

  "And if I seemed to insult some of your friends, my honest apologies. There's nothing wrong with being born rich; I wish I'd been. I just wanted to point out that the guy I'm thinking about started from scratch, from a hard-scrabble backwoods background, playing different games with different rules than most rich men. And he's got different qualities. All of which attributes I consider desirable in the president-select.

  "At any rate it removes all questions about how generally competent he is." He raised his eyebrows at Trenary, inviting.

  "Okay," said Trenary, surly but somewhat appeased. "Is that it for the preliminaries?"

  "Not quite. He's not associated in the public eye or the media with politics or party or any particular point of view. And he's highly promotable to the general public."

  "You've found a clone of Jesus Christ," Trenary retorted. "What's his name?"

  "Arne Haugen. Founder and president of Duluth Technologies."

  Trenary stared in angry disbelief. "Ye gods, Jumper! I've never even heard of the sonofabitch! You can't serve up some unknown to the American public and expect them to hold still for it!"

  "Okay," said Cromwell. "You've made a point: he's not well-known to the public. That means he doesn't have any broad, ready-made support. Or broad, ready-made enmity either."

  "I've heard of him," Hanke put in. "Quite a few people have. He was on the cover of Tech Times a couple of years ago—it's got a paid circulation of about two million—for coming out with a lot of significant developments and improvements over the years. In electronics, plastics—I don't remember what all. The father of blow-on instant paint drier and seasoner, for one thing: something the modern painting contractor and body shop wouldn't be without. God knows how many tens of millions he's made on that one alone. Lee Iacocca he's not, but he is promotable."

  Dudak looked distinctly interested now. "What are his politics, Jumper?"

  "They don't have a brand-name. Believes in basic Ame
rican values and common sense, like a lot of people. Promotable. And promotable is essential today. No matter how able someone may be, people have to be willing to go along with him if this country is going to get back on its feet.

  "He never really belonged to a party, he told me, and today that has real promotional value. He said that given the political system in this country, he could get more accomplished if he didn't get distracted by politics."

  Trenary shook his head. "A bird like that wouldn't work as president. Doesn't know enough; too green. In the White House he'd be a babe in the woods, and this is no time for on the job training."

  "Okay," Cromwell said. "You've made another point: he's unseasoned. But you're overlooking one thing: He won't have to go through all the usual politics with Congress if he doesn't want to. At least not for the duration of the emergency. He can even name his own vice president."

  "Jesus!" Trenary said. "Congress is going to shit when they find out what they did. Or what Milstead and Cavanaugh claim they did."

  "Don't be so sure," Carmody put in. "They passed the emergency powers act so the president could take broad steps quickly without 'referring to the legislative process.' I saw Kreiner interviewed on TV the other day, when the bill was before the Senate, and that's the pitch he was using. What it comes down to is, Congress is scared. They're afraid Humpty Dumpty is really broken this time."

  May it not be so, Cromwell thought.

  "Jumper, how did you get to know Haugen?" Hanke asked.

  "I met him at a fishing lodge up in Canada a few years back. I went up there in September after the mosquitoes had frozen out. Then we got a few days of cold rain, and he and I ended up sitting around talking a lot. He was airborne too, back in WW Two. Fought in New Guinea and the Philippines. We started out by comparing wars."

  "World War Two? How the hell old is he?" Trenary demanded.

  "I don't know. He has to be more than seventy if he was with the 503rd Parachute Infantry in New Guinea. But he could pass for sixty."

  "What rank did he hold?" Dudak asked.

  "Platoon sergeant. That's a CPO to you naval types."

  No one said anything for a moment. Dudak looked disappointed. Carmody's face didn't show it, but he was thinking that a platoon sergeant at least knew how to kick ass, which was more than Donnelly did. Correction: Donnelly had booted Strock when the Qaddir scandal broke; he'd had to.

  Then Trenary threw up his hands in disgust. "Jumper, you're going to do what the hell you want to anyway. Why don't you go ahead and do it?"

  Cromwell nodded and got up. "Right. Let's take a break; I've got a phone call to make."

  They watched him leave. Carmody grinned. "I'd like to listen in on that phone call," he said, then did an impression of Cromwell. " 'Haugen, how'd you like to come to D.C. and be President of the United States for a while?' "

  Carmody laughed at his own wit. Hanke smiled. Trenary and Dudak didn't seem to think it was humorous at all.

  ***

  There'd been more than just conversation between Cromwell and Haugen, that September three years earlier. More than long talks on common interest had impressed the general.

  The fishing camp had been some hundred miles north of Sioux Lookout, Ontario. Though the weather had turned bad, the food and company were excellent, and the relaxed atmosphere a welcome change from the Pentagon, where Cromwell had been in charge of the Readiness Command then.

  After two days of rain, the radio had predicted a partly sunny day, to be followed by more cold showery weather. He and Haugen had gone out without a guide, so they could talk more comfortably; Carlson, the resort operator, knew Haugen's backwoods background, and allowed him the privilege. They'd motored five or six miles down the large wild lake to a bay Haugen knew, where the pike grew big and had a mean streak. After fishing for a few hours, the wind had freshened and the temperature began to fall. They started back then, and had just cleared the bay when the motor quit.

  There was a little tool kit in the boat. They'd paddled to shore, and Haugen had stripped the motor down, using the overturned boat as a workbench. The problem had been a blown gasket. He'd been cutting a replacement out of the top of his boot when the storm hit, hours earlier than predicted. Wind whipped up dangerous waves, and it began to snow. Within minutes they couldn't see a hundred feet through the slanting large white flakes.

  Haugen had stashed the stripped down motor under the boat and dispatched Cromwell to cut balsam and cedar branches with his sheath knife. "Get a lot of them," he'd said. But Cromwell wasn't familiar with balsam. "Balsam," Haugen had replied, "is the one with short soft needles. Get a lot of them. The pickery ones are spruce, and they're not good for sleeping on."

  Cromwell had walked back into the forest, cutting

  branches off balsam saplings with his sheath knife, leaving them where they fell to help guide him back to the boat. When he'd returned, arms full, through the thick-falling whiteness of flakes, Haugen had already broken and cut off saplings and was framing a lean-to with them beneath a big old spruce, tying them together with strings from the big landing net. The snow was beginning to stick on the ground. When Cromwell came back with a second armful, the lean-to was already being roofed with bark from a decayed and fallen birch; the old man worked fast. When Cromwell had come back with a third armful, Haugen was beginning another, smaller steep-roofed lean-to, and the snow was an inch or more deep.

  "Go get some dry branches for firewood," Haugen had said. "The biggest ones you can break off." Cromwell had seen just the ideal source, a large fallen spruce a few dozen yards away. When he returned with his first armload of fuel, Haugen was tepeeing punkwood over a little pile of papery outer bark of birch, beneath the smaller lean-to. Minutes later, getting more wood, he'd heard Haugen breaking branches too.

  When they had a large pile of broken-up branchwood, Haugen had baked pike in the foil from their lunch wrappers. They'd eaten supper beneath their lean-to then, while dusk darkened the forest, and the snow deepened inch by inch.

  They spent the night there, a damp, cold, smoky night huddled together on the fir boughs, dozing and waking, the smaller lean-to reflecting heat toward them from the fire. Every now and then, one of them would put more branchwood on. The snow had slowed, and sometime in the night it stopped.

  When daylight came, they'd tipped the boat, dumping off most of the six inches of wet snow. Then they'd brushed it clean, more or less, and Haugen finished his repairs, fingers red and clumsy with cold, while Cromwell watched, feeling useless. Then, together they'd launched the boat, and with a little persistence, gotten the motor started.

  They'd gone about a mile when they'd sighted the launch out hunting them, Carlson at the wheel. He hadn't been worried, Carlson told Cromwell later. If he'd had any doubt that Haugen could handle whatever came up, he'd never have let them go out without a guide.

  ***

  A president select! And himself responsible for the selection! Apparently it was constitutional; it was if the Emergency Powers Act was. It felt un-American though. But then, so did the troubles.

  Cromwell shrugged off the strangeness in the situation, buzzed his secretary, and told her to get Arne Haugen on the phone, at Duluth Technologies in Duluth, Minnesota.

  FOUR

  Arne and Lois Haugen deliberately avoided watching the news at breakfast. She considered it a poor way to start a day, and he tended to agree. And he didn't often turn on the set in his office at all. But things now seemed so damned critical that, when he arrived at work that morning, he turned on CNN. A commercial was showing, and while waiting through it, he got a cup of black coffee from the coffee station beside his drafting table.

  With the cup in his hand, he paused to look out the window. The main management-manufacturing complex of Duluth Technologies stood near the brink of the Superior Plateau, and his large thermal window looked northeastward across the north end of the city. Beyond lay Lake Superior, ice-blue in the sunlight, stretching to a distant horizon and disappe
aring. A single freighter steamed outbound, a bulk carrier. From its small size and its black smoke plume, it was one of the ancient coal burners renovated when Persian Gulf oil had stopped flowing a year ago.

  Carrying wheat, probably, he thought. Other shipping was way down. Fewer and fewer ships had been in and out of the harbor in recent months.

  Times were very bad in Duluth. They'd been bad for decades as the iron mines played out, then had gradually improved. More recently they'd crashed, and hard times had taken on new meaning. But there'd been no riots here, and hardly any demonstrations.

  Ordinarily he took the TV news with more than a grain of salt; if ten homes were lost to a forest fire somewhere, they'd give the impression that a town had burned up. But last night they'd shown aerial views of fires and fighting in half a dozen cities, and mentioned a dozen others; it had been a sobering, even a frightening thing to watch. For the first time in his life, it was really real to Arne Haugen that the United States of America could go down the tubes.

  Now, from his chair, he watched film of a small battle in the Sierra Nevada of California. Troops against a paramilitary outfit. The newscaster called them "survivalists," but survivalists weren't likely to be challenging the army. Whatever they were, they'd been surrounded on the crest of a forested ridge by elements of the 7th Light Infantry Division, late the day before. The firefight wasn't intense, as firefights went, but Haugen could recognize bursts of automatic rifle fire, the staccato racketing of occasional machine guns, the thump of mortars, now and then the slam of rockets. From both adversaries; the paras had a lot more than deer rifles up there.

  It occurred to Haugen that, while much of the video photography was seemingly from a helicopter, apparently using zoom lenses from a distance, the sound pickup was on the ground, with the infantry.