The Road to Omaha (45 page)

“The obvious,” replied Sam. “The circumstances surrounding this assignment, as you call it, must remain secret.”

“That’s acceptable government-speak, not merc-speak.”

“Merc?”

“Mercenary language. We accept high risk for high dollars, but we’re not duty bound to operate in the dark on a, let’s say, need-to-know basis. That’s for career intelligence junkies who go deep cover into Cambodia or Tanganyika and are lucky if their families get their full pensions when they don’t come home. Do you begin to see the difference?”

“So far it’s not very difficult to grasp, but I don’t know what you’re driving at.”

“I’ll spell it out for you. The absent pages of this scenario have one of two possibilities. The first is unsanctioned government intervention, which means nobody can know anything because anybody who does, official and otherwise, could end up in Leavenworth or in a lye pit… and the second possibility is even less promising.”

“Do tell?” said Devereaux, his anxious eyes studying the impassive face of Cyrus M.

“A sting operation, Counselor.”

“A
sting
…?”

“Yes, but not the lovable sort that trips up a crook who’s mounting a con, or even one that catches nasty people taking bribes when they shouldn’t, but a far more lethal one.… There’s a term for it; it’s called a ‘permanent sting’.”

“Permanent?”

“As in no recovery.”

“You mean—?”

“
Dum-dum-tee-dum, dum-tee-dum-tee-dum-tee-dum
,” hummed the huge mercenary.

“
What
?” yelled Sam.

“Keep your voice down!… I’m trying to explain the second possibility. A wall of protection is built to disguise the real intent. Execution.”

“Jesus
Christ
!… Why are you
telling
me this?”

“Because I may pull Roman Z and me out.”

“
Why
?”

“I didn’t like the third mere they sent, and beyond that, now knowing who Commander H is, somebody’s really after your general’s ass, probably all of your asses since you’re all in his sandbox. You may be lunatics, but from what I can see, you don’t deserve this, especially the girl, and I don’t want to be a part of it.… I’ll set up the lithium trips—if they ever get here—and then we’ll think about it.”

“My
God
, Cyrus.…!”

“I thought I heard voices, also a few shrieks,” said Jennifer Redwing, walking through the kitchen door carrying a cup of tea. “
Sam Devereaux
!” she roared, staring at the attorney’s trousers. “You did it
again
!”

The six men ranged in age from twenty-six to thirty-five, some with more hair rather than less and several taller or shorter than the others, but there were three constants that applied to all. Each face had a distinctive “look,” whether sharp- or broad-featured, with piercing or neutral eyes, the face itself had a quality of immediacy, of … let’s face it, theatricality. And each body was a trained body: the years studying acrobatics, swordsmanship, dance (modern and chorus), martial arts (stunt pay, according to the Screen Actors Guild), double takes and pratfalls (indigenous to low comedy and farce), costume movement (very big in Shakespeare and those Greek playwrights)—these were necessary. Lastly, each pair of vocal cords was capable of the widest range of octaval pitch, along with an even wider range of dialects (mandatory for voice-over commercials). All of the above were essential to their craft—nay, their art!—and naturally to their résumés, which had fallen with staccato regularity on the desks of unappreciative agents and producers. They were
actors
, the most bled and most misunderstood human beings on the face of the earth—especially when unemployed. In a word, they were unique.

Their unit, too, was unique in the annals of covert operations. It was initially formed by an elderly G-Two colonel
in Fort Benning who was an addict where films, television, and the stage were concerned. He was known to call off whole night training sessions if they interfered with a movie he wanted to see in Pittsfield, Phoenix, or Columbus; he also reputedly cadged air force transportation to see certain plays in New York and Atlanta. But becaue of its accessibility, television was his personal narcotic. It was confirmed by his fourth wife in their divorce proceedings that he incessantly stayed up all night in front of the TV set watching, at times, two or three late films by switching the channels on his remote control. So, naturally, when six actors, real, honest-to-Equity
actors
, showed up at Fort Benning, his imagination went into high gear—some fellow officers claimed the old boy let it fly right out of the gearbox.

He monitored each man throughout basic training, marveling at their individual physical capabilities as well as their collective proclivity for calling attention to themselves in a crowd, but always in a positive way. He stood in awe at the way each instinctively mixed so naturally with his immediate and changing surroundings, one minute using the vernacular of the streets with urban recruits, the next employing the down-home language of the country boys.

Colonel Ethelred Brokemichael—former
Brigadier General
Brokemichael, until that lousy Harvard lawyer in the Inspector General’s office had wrongfully accused him of drug dealing in Southeast Asia!
Drugs
? He didn’t know a coke from a cola! He had facilitated the transport of medical supplies, and when offered money, gave most of it to the orphanages, saving a minor amount for future theater tickets. But with these actors, he knew he had found his way back to the rank he so richly deserved. (He often wondered why his cousin Heseltine had opted for resignation when
he
was the one who had been severely reprimanded and reduced in rank, not Heseltine, that whining debutant who always wanted the fanciest uniforms this side of some goddamned operetta.) Nevertheless, he had
found
it! A totally
original
concept for clandestine operations: a unit of trained, professional actors, like chameleons capable of altering appearances and attitudes
commensurate with whatever targets they were to penetrate. A living, breathing, repertory acting company of
agents provocateurs
! A winner!

So the demoted Colonel Ethelred Brokemichael, using a few well-placed Pentagon connections, had his small group of performers assigned solely to him, to upgrade as he wished, and to send into the field as covert projects required. He had thought of calling them “The Z Team,” but the actors, in concert, rejected the name. They refused to accept the last letter of the alphabet, and since the first letter was undoubtedly copyrighted, they insisted on some other appellation, because if there was ever a television series, they wanted control of casting, scripts, residuals, and subsidiary rights, in that order.

The name came with their third infiltration within a nine-month period, when they penetrated a notorious band of the Brigate Rosse in Colonna, Italy, and freed an American diplomat who was being held hostage. They had done so by taking an ad out in the newspapers claiming they were the finest communist caterers in the city, which no one had ever done, and were subsequently hired by the Brigate to cater a birthday party for its vicious terrorist chief at their hidden headquarters. The rest, as the bromide says, was
zuppa dianitra
, duck soup. However, within covert operations, the legend was born. The
Suicidal Six
was a force to be reckoned with.

Subsequent operations in Beirut, the Gaza, Osaka, Singapore, and Basking Ridge, New Jersey, only added to the unit’s reputation. They had managed to infiltrate and draw out many of the world’s most savage criminals, from drug runners and arms merchants to contract killers and real estate developers, and throughout these hazardous missions they had suffered no casualties whatsoever.

They had also never fired a gun, or unleashed a knife, or thrown a grenade. However, only one man knew that—the reinstated Brigadier General Ethelred Brokemichael. It was such a
disgrace
! The famed Suicidal Six, that assumed paragon of those lethal death squads, had never wasted
anybody
—had
talked
their way into and out of every potentially fatal assignment they were given. It was utterly
humiliating
!

When Secretary of State Warren Pease arrived at Fort Benning and drove in a two-man Jeep to the farthest point of the ninety-eight thousand acres that was the army preserve to deliver his top-secret instructions to Brokemichael, did Ethelred see the light at the end of his own personal tunnel, his own very private
revenge
! The conversation went as follows.

“I’ve cleared it with our people in Sweden,” said Pease. “They’ll tell the Nobel committee that it’s a national crisis, and how much herring do we have to import anyhow? Then your boys fly up from Washington,
not
Stockholm, presumably having talked to the President, and the mayor of Boston greets them at the airport with a press conference and limousines and motorcycle escorts, the whole enchilada.”

“Why Boston?”

“Because it’s the Athens of America, the seat of learning, the place where such a delegation should speak from.”

“Also maybe where Hawkins happens to be?”

“We think it’s possible,” interrupted the Secretary of State. “What’s certain, however, is that he can’t walk away from that award.”

“For God’s sake, the Hawk would bust out of a compound in Hanoi and swim across the Pacific to get it!
Jesus
, the Soldier of the Century! Old Georgie Patton will be sending down lightning bolts.”

“And once he shows up, your boys take him and we’re off across the Atlantic heading north, far north. Along with every one of the unpatriotic bastards who works for him.”

“Who might they be?” asked General Brokemichael, only mildly interested.

“Well, the first is a Boston attorney who defended Hawkins in Beijing, a lawyer named Devereaux—”

“
Aurragh
!” screamed the brigadier, his roar only to be compared to a nuclear blast on a desert. “The Harvard
prick
?” he shrieked, the veins in his elderly throat so pronounced that the Secretary of State thought he might expire on the adjacent patch of wildflowers.

“Yes, I believe he went to Harvard.”

“He’s dead, dead,
dead
!” yelled the general, suddenly punching the Georgia air with his fists and kicking up the
dirt with his quite unnecessary paratrooper boots. “He’s
history
, I
promise
you!… Brian Donlevy said that at Zindelneuf in
Beau Geste.
”

Marlon, Dustin, Telly, and The Duke sat facing one another in the four front sweel chairs of
Air Force II
while Sylvester and Sir Larry were at the small conference table in the center of the plane. All kept going over their written lines as well as the improv lead-ins that would result in spontaneous rambling conversations. As the official aircraft began its initial descent into the Boston area, the babble of six different voices was heard, all heavily laced with individual interpretations of a Swedish dialect as applied to the English language. Eight-inch by ten-inch mirrors were also held in front of each face as the warriors of the Suicidal Six checked their makeup—three chin beards, two mustaches, and a toupee for Sir Larry.

“
Hi
, there!” yelled a youngish blond-haired man emerging from a closed cabin door at the rear of the plane. “The pilot said I could come out now.”

The cacophony of voices subsided as the Vice-President of the United States walked, grinning, into the wide body of the aircraft. “Isn’t this fun?” he said brightly.

“Who’s him?” asked Sylvester.

“He,” corrected Sir Larry, adjusting his toupee. “Who’s
he
, Sly.”

“Yeah, sure, but what is it?”

“This is my
plane
,” replied the heir apparent to the Oval Office. “Isn’t it great?”

“Take a seat, pilgrim,” said The Duke. “If you want some grub or a bottle of rot gut, just press one of the buttons over there.”

“I know, I
know
. All these swell guys are my crew!”

“He—he—he—he’s the—the—Vice—Vice—Vice … 
you
know,” cried Dustin, shaking his head not back and forth but in circles. “He was born at precisely—precisely—precisely eleven twenty-two in the morning in 1951—–exactly six—six—six years, twelve days, seven hours—hours—hours and twenty-two—two—two minutes
after the Japanese—Japanese—Japanese surrendered on the battleship—ship—ship
Missouri
.”

“
G’wan
, Dusty!” shouted Marlon, scratching his left armpit with his right hand. “I’m sick of that bit—bit—bit, you got an understanding of wherefrom I’m coming from,
huh
, Dusty?”

“You and your streetcar—streetcar—
streetcar
!”

“Hey, come on, baby face, you wanna lollipop?” asked Telly, grinning at the Veep, but with eyes that were not smiling at all. “You’re okay, kid, but sit down and close the choppers, all right? We got work to do, you dig?”

“I was told you’re
actors
!” said the Vice-President, lurching into an aisle seat across from the foursome, his expression alive with excitement. “I’ve often thought I’d like to be an actor. You know, a lot of people think I look like that movie star—”

“
He
can’t act!” pronounced Sir Larry in high British dudgeon from the table behind. “It was all luck and pull and that stupid, implausible face of his, totally devoid of character.”

“A passable director—director—
director
,” offered Dustin.

“Wadda
you, crazy
?” belched Marlon. “That was casting. The actors carried him!”

“Maybe he cast ’em,” suggested Sylvester. “Y’know, it’s possible-like, man.”

“You listen to me, pilgrims,” said The Duke, squinting, his eyes roving around the chairs. “It’s all that dirty business in those offices of them land-grabbin’, cattle-rustlin’ agents. It’s what they call ‘pyramid deals.’ You get the star, you take all the crap beneath.”

“
Boy
, this is real
actor
talk!” exploded the Vice-President.