The Road to Omaha Read Free

I’ve
got
it!”
    “Got what?”
    “The biggest con job the pricky-shits ever
pulled
, the same pricky-shits who made us wear civvies, old buddy!”
    “Oh, I’d love to get those bastards. Where did it happen and when?”
    “In Nebraska. A hundred and twelve years ago.”
    Silence. Then:
    “
Mac
, we weren’t around then! Not even you!”
    “It doesn’t matter, Heseltine. It’s the same horseshit. The same bastards who did it to
them
did it to you and me a hundred years later.”
    “Who’s ‘them’?”
    “An offshoot of the Mohawks called the Wopotami tribe. They migrated to the Nebraska territories in the middle 1800s.”
    “
So
?”
    “It’s time for the sealed archives, General Brokemichael.”
    “Don’t
say
that! Nobody can
do
that!”
    “You can, General. I need final confirmation, just a few loose ends to clear up.”
    “For
what? Why
?”
    “Because the Wopotamis may still legally own all the land and air rights in and around Omaha, Nebraska.”
    “You’re
crazy
, Mac! That’s the Strategic Air Command!”
    “Only a couple of missing items, buried fragments, and the facts are there.… I’ll meet you in the cellars, at the vault to the archives, General Brokemichael.… Or should I call you co-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with me, Heseltine? If I’m right, and I know damn well I am, we’ve got the White House-Pentagon axis in such a bind, their collective tails won’t be able to evacuate until we tell ’em to.”
    Silence. Then:
    “I’ll let you in, Mac, but then I fade until you tell me I’ve got my uniform back.”
    “Fair enough. Incidentally, I’m packing everything I’ve got here and taking it back to my place in Arlington. That poor son of a bitch who died up in this rat’s nest and wasn’t found until the perfume drifted down didn’t die in vain!”
    The two generals stalked through the metal shelves of the musty sealed archives, the dull, webbed lights so dim they relied on their flashlights. In the seventh aisle, MacKenzie Hawkins stopped, his beam on an ancient volume whose leather binding was cracked. “I think this is it, Heseltine.”
    “Good, and you can’t take it out of here!”
    “I understand that, General, so I’ll merely take a few photographs and return it.” Hawkins removed a tiny spy camera with 110 film from his gray suit.
    “How many rolls have you got?” asked former General Heseltine Brokemichael as MacKenzie carried the huge book to a steel table at the end of the aisle.
    “Eight,” replied Hawkins, opening the yellow-paged volume to the pages he needed.
    “I have a couple of others, if you need them,” said Heseltine. “Not that I’m so all fired-up by what you think you may have found, but if there’s any way to get back at Ethelred, I’ll
take
it!”
    “I thought you two had made up,” broke in MacKenzie, while turning pages and snapping pictures.
    “
Never
!”
    “It wasn’t Ethelred’s fault, it was that rotten lawyer in the Inspector General’s office, a half-assed kid from Harvard named Devereaux, Sam Devereaux. He made the mistake, not Brokey the Deuce. Two Brokemichaels; he got ’em mixed up, that’s all.”
    “Horseshit! Brokey-Two put the finger on
me
!”
    “I think you’re wrong, but that’s not what I’m here for and neither are you.… Brokey, I need the volume next to or near this one. It should say CXII on the binding. Get it for me, will you?” As the head of Indian Affairs walked back into the metal stacks, the Hawk took a single-edged razor out of his pocket and sliced out fifteen successive pages of the archival ledger. Without folding the precious papers, he slipped them under his suit coat.
    “I can’t find it,” said Brokemichael.
    “Never mind, I’ve got what I need.”
    “What now, Mac?”
    “A long time, Heseltine, maybe a long, long time, perhaps a year or so, but I’ve got to make it right—so right there’s no holes, no holes at all.”
    “In what?”
    “In a suit