Free No Survivors by Tom Cain Page A

fundamentalist Islamic scholars maintain that those who live in the House of War have no right to live. In fact, it’s a religious duty to kill them. And what they mean by that is, kill us, Americans.”
    “But you’ve tried to warn people . . .”
    “As much as I can. I speak to contacts in Washington, the people I do business with every day. I just lay out the evidence, Mr. McCabe. Try to persuade them to see things the way I do.”
    “It ain’t workin’, though, is it, General? You’re tryin’ to make your case, but you don’t have enough to convince the jury.”
    Vermulen grimaced. “Seems like it.”
    McCabe gave a sympathetic shrug, drawing Vermulen in, painting himself as the ally he needed.
    “Well, I guess that’s their problem, ’cause you sure convinced me. I can feel that war comin’, and I want to help you raise the alarm. But you’d better think about how you’re gonna make folks come around to your point of view. I mean, if you can’t find the evidence you need, you’re gonna have to go right ahead and create some. Wouldn’t be the first time. Johnson did it with the Gulf of Tonkin, draggin’ us into Vietnam. Hell, I’m old enough to remember when Roosevelt did it at Pearl Harbor.”
    “I don’t think that was anything other than enemy action.”
    “Whatever you say, General, but plenty of folks say otherwise. Fact remains, you need a Pearl Harbor of your own, somethin’ spectacular, a moment of revelation that’s gonna make the whole world sit up and focus on the threat we face.”
    McCabe was focusing the entire weight of his personality on Vermulen, bringing to bear all the persuasive, almost seductive powers of negotiation acquired over a lifetime of buying low, selling high, and always coming out on the right side of the deal.
    “You know, General, you’ve got me thinkin’—heck, you’ve inspired me. We’re gonna do somethin’ great, you an’ me, and I’ll tell you when it’s gonna happen: Easter Sunday, the day we celebrate the conquest of evil and death. If you’re lookin’ for a time to strike back at the Antichrist, go ahead and name me a better one.”
    McCabe did not wait for a reply before he went on.
    “Let me see,” he said, pulling a slim black appointment book from a jacket pocket and flicking through its pages. “Here we go . . . this year, Easter’s April the twelfth, more’n two months away. So I suggest you think awhile on what I said. When you figure something out that can suit both our purposes, come and tell me about it. If I like what I hear, I’ll pay whatever it costs to make it happen.”
    As he showed Vermulen to the door, McCabe said, “We’re gonna work well together, General, I can feel it. That Sheikh’s about to find out he ain’t the only dog in this fight.”
    McCabe had said his final words with a grin, and ended them with a wheezing cackle, but as he closed the door behind Vermulen, his good humor vanished as if it had never been.
    Alone in the room, with nothing and no one else there to distract him, the darkness fell on him again. His mind was filled with a secret terror as powerful as anything he had experienced as his plane fell from the Canadian sky.
    Just a few weeks before, unable to shake the cough that had dogged him all winter, he had finally gone to see his doctor. Within hours he’d been referred to an oncologist at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. By the end of the week he’d got a second opinion, just to make sure, from the top man at Sloan-Kettering in New York.
    Both said the same thing. McCabe had two inoperable tumors on his lungs. The cancer had also spread to his brain. The doctors weren’t certain, but they thought the cancer might have been caused by the chemicals he’d inhaled inside that burning plane. McCabe could see the bitter irony in that: His assassin had got him after all. He had only months to live, nine at the outside, but he’d be hospitalized in six. He was heading downhill