Stephen Cannell - The Plan

Haze was in the Imperial's presidential suite with its twenty-foot-high ceiling and ornate paintings. The arched windows commanded a view of the picture-book city. The floor of the main room had an inlaid wood surface and was half the size of a basketball court. Ten-foot-high portraits of various Hapsburgs hung on the walls. Napoleon, he'd been told, had slept in the huge bed in that very room when he'd been in Vienna in 1797. . Kennedy, Eisenhower, DeGaulle, and Churchill, as well as just about every famous ruler in three hundred years, had wandered these floors and looked out of the arched windows. And now it belonged to Haze Richards, the next President of the United States of America.

The election was two weeks away, and Haze was scheduled to return home the next morning. The staff wanted him to make a quick swing through the farm states, where they were showing a slight weakness; but everywhere else, he was way ahead. It looked like Haze was going to chair a blowout over Pudge Anderson.

He went into the bedroom, flopped down on the canopied bed, and started doing his daily regimen of fifty stomach crunches.

Two more weeks. Thirteen days. Three hundred twelve hours and Haze Richards would be the forty-third President of the United States of America. "Whatta fucking country." He grinned.

He was flat on his back, doing aerial bicycles, right in the middle of the bed where Napoleon had once slept.

The satellite news-gathering truck and mobile control center were easier to find than Cole would have guessed. When Ryan flicked on the morning news, the sportscaster announced that the UBC NFL Game of the Week was tomorrow at Giant Stadium. The truck was probably already there with the setup crew.

They found the two trucks parked on the service road just inside of the stadium. They had switched cars and pulled a gray station wagon into the parking lot and parked. It was just past midnight on Sunday morning. They sat looking through the windshield at the portable satellite news-gathering dish that sat in the back of a six-wheel pickup and the enormous eighteen-wheel mobile control center attached to a Peterbilt tractor.

"There she is," Babbling John said, fondly saluting an old friend.

Ryan had worked construction during summers when he'd been playing ball and he had some experience driving heavy equipment. The eighteen-wheel MCC truck had one extra axle but he thought he could handle it.

"Think you can hot-wire a Peterbilt?" Cole asked Lucinda.

"If the ignition wires are under the dash by the key box, I can."

Ryan had suggested that he and Lucinda should steal the trucks. If they failed and got caught, that would leave the experienced TV journalists Cole, John, and Naomi still at large to try another broadcast tactic.

They watched in silence for about twenty minutes to make sure nobody was guarding the equipment. Then Ryan got out of the station wagon. His leg had stiffened and he felt awkward as he walked around to get the tire iron out of the back. Then he and Lucinda moved across the parking lot toward the trucks.

The service gate was unlocked and they moved inside. Ryan climbed up on the running board and looked into the cab. There was an Acme sleeper behind the front seat with the curtain pulled.

Ryan stepped down and whispered to Lucinda. "I'm gonna break the glass and open it up. If there's somebody in the sleeper, I'll try and handle him. Stand back," he said. He hadn't bargained for hitting an innocent driver on the head with a tire iron. He hoped he could control the situation without violence. If there was an alarm, he'd have to turn it off fast.

Suddenly he was flooded with doubts. He thought about Kaz and, once again, wished the ex-fed was with them, growling and chewing the unlit cigar, telling them what to do. Ryan knew it was now up to him.

He swung the tire iron at the window, shattering the glass and the alarm went off, hee-hawing in the still night. The curtain behind the front seat was jerked back and Ryan found himself a foot from a startled man in jeans and T-shirt with a gray beard.

" 'The fuck?" the driver said as Ryan reached in and grabbed him by the front of the T-shirt and yanked him onto the front seat, holding the tire iron at the ready.

"Shut off the flicking alarm," Ryan demanded.

"Huh?"

Ryan slammed the tire iron viciously into the doorjamb for effect.

"Okay, okay, buddy, take it easy." The driver fumbled for the genie and shut off the braying alarm.

"Gimme the keys," Ryan commanded, and the man handed them over. "What about the other truck. . You got those keys?" Ryan asked. The man shook his head in fright.

Lucinda ran to the SNG truck and pulled the ignition wires loose. Then she touched them together and the engine started on the six-wheel Dodge pickup with the 4.1-meter K-U band satellite uplink in back.

Ryan helped the frightened driver out of the cab and climbed in behind the wheel. The truck was different from those he'd driven years ago, but he hoped it worked roughly the same way. When he turned the key, the big brown Peterbilt rumbled to life. The driver turned and sprinted away in the dark.

From the station wagon in the parking lot, Cole watched in amazement as the big eighteen-wheeler pulled away from the fence with the SNG truck behind it. Both vehicles started a slow, lights-out roll along the interior service driveway.

Cole followed both trucks as Ryan turned right, past the tennis courts where the U. S. Open was held every year. Finally, lights on, they pulled onto the expressway, heading toward Kennedy Airport.

Inside the Peterbilt, Ryan's heart was pounding. He looked over the shiny brown hood at the cars below. He downshifted and the big engine growled.

He realized he was smiling.

Earlier, they had spotted a truck sales lot right off the freeway two miles from Giant Stadium. A sign advertised:

THE TRUCK MART CLOSED SUNDAY. They had decided to hide in plain sight, to park there with all the other used trucks. They would disguise the SNG truck with its telltal e s atellite and hope to get through the day and into the evening.

John and Cole decided to broadcast on Sunday night for several reasons. First, there were relief crews on duty then and they would be more confused when the signal went down than the regulars. Confusion would buy them a few extra minutes. Both Cole and John were concerned about the ATIS. Once they started broadcasting, it would give their position away, but they didn't tell the others about it. It was a problem they hadn't solved. A second reason they chose Sunday night was that viewership HUT levels were high and they wanted a large audience. Third, the streets were less crowded and chances of getting across town to UBC' s Black Tower with the stolen trucks were marginally better. Cole wanted to get on before 60 Minutes aired on CBS, so that they would maximize viewership. They ended up deciding to take Brenton Spencer's old Six O'clock News spot on UBC, an irony no one seemed to enjoy.

They found the off ramp and pulled the truck up to the sales lot that was decorated with a red and white fence. Cole grabbed the tire iron from Ryan and broke the padlock, then opened the gate, and Ryan pulled the stolen truck in between a white Kenworth and a blue Mack. Lucinda backed the SNG truck into a protected spot behind the office. Their hearts were pounding, their adrenaline flowing. No sooner were the trucks' lights off than two patrol cars screamed by on the expressway, going code three, toward Giant Stadium.

C. Wallace Litman got the call Sunday Morning at five A. M. Steve Israel woke him up.

"Sorry to wake you, sir, but somebody stole an SNG truck and a mobile control center from Giant Stadium," he announced without preamble.