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"General Metcalf is waiting," Fawcett said to the President.
The President pushed a third pillow behind his back and struggled to a sitting position, massaging his temples as the room began to spin.
Metcalf was ushered in, resplendent in a uniform decorated by eight rows of colorful ribbons. There was a briskness about the general that was not present at their last meeting.
The President looked at him, his face pallin, his eyes drooping and watery. He began to cough uncontrollably.
Metcalf came over to the bed. "is there anything I can get you, sir?" he asked solicitously.
The President shook his head and waved him away. "I'll survive," he said at last. "What's the situation, Clayton?"
The President never called his joint Chiefs by rank, preferring to lower them a couple of notches down their pedestal by andressing them with their Christian names.
Metcalf shifted in his chair uncomfortably. "The streets are quiet at the moment, but there were one or two isolated incinents of sniping. One soldier was killed and two Marines wounded."
"Were the guilty parties apprehended?"
"Yes, sir," Metcalf answered.
"A couple of criminal radicals, no doubt."
Metcalf stared at his feet. "Not exactly. One was the son of Congressman Jacob Whitman of South Dakota and the other the son of Postmaster General Kenneth Potter. Both were under seventeen years of age."
The President's face looked stricken for an instant and then it quickly hardened. "Are your troops deployed at Lisner Auditorium?"
"One company of Marines is stationed on the grounds around the building."
"Hardly seems enough manpower," said the President. "The Maryland and Virginia Guard units combined will outnumber them five to one."
"The Guard will never come within rifle shot of the auditorium," said Metcalf knowingly. "Our plan is to defuse their effectiveness by stopping them before they arrive in the city."
"A sound strategy," the President said, his eyes briefly gleaming.
"I have a special news report," sa
id Fawcett, who was kneeling in front of the television set. He turned up the volume and stood aside so the picture could be seen from the bed.
Curtis Mayo was standing beside a highway blocked by armed soldiers. In the background a line of tanks stretched across the road, the muzzles of their guns pointing ominously at a convoy of personnel carriers.
"The Virginia National Guard troops that Speaker of the House Alan Moran was relying on to protect a meeting of Congress on the George Washington University campus this morning have been turned back outside the nation's capital by armored units of the Army special forces. I understand the same situation exists with the Maryland Guard northeast of the city. So far there has been no threat of fighting. Both state Guard units appeared subdued, if not in numbers, by superior equipment.
Outside Lisner Auditorium, a company of Marines, under the command of Colonel Ward Clarke, a Vietnam Medal of Honor holder, is turning away members of Congress, refusing them entrance to hold a session.
And so once again the President has thwarted House and Senate members while he continues his controversial foreign affairs programs without their approval. This is Curtis Mayo, CNN news, on a highway thirty miles south of Washington."
:'Seen enough?" asked Fawcett, turning off the set.
'Yes, yes," the President rasped happily. "That ought to keep that egomaniac Moran floundering without a rudder for a while."
Metcalf rose to his feet. "If you won't need me any further, Mr. President, I should be getting back to the Pentagon. Conditions are pretty unsettled with our division commanders in Europe.
They don't exactly share your views on pulling back their forces to the States."
"In the long haul they'll come to accept the risks of a temporary military imbalance in order to dilute the dreaded specter of nuclear conflict." The President shook Metcalf's hand. "Nice piece of work, Clayton. Thank you for keeping Congress paralyzed."
Metcalf walked along the corridor for fifty feet until it emptied into the vast interior of a barren warehouselike structure.
The stage set that contained an exact replica of the President's White House bedroom sat in the middle of the Washington Navy Yard's old brick ordnance building, which had gone virtually unused since World War Two.
