Once the all-clear was given, Jonathan and Boxers joined the crowd of returning workers who flowed through the doors like a human river. A phalanx of security guards had formed a gauntlet in the main lobby, and they made a show of checking identification cards. One of them, a short stocky guy who looked like he might be a moonlighting bouncer, zeroed in on Boxers and beckoned him over.
The Big Guy ignored him, but then the security guy pursued him and grabbed his shirtsleeve, adding himself to a very short list of people who had ever done that without spending the next six weeks eating through a straw.
“I need to see your ID,” the guard said.
“I left it in my office,” Boxers replied.
The guard turned to Jonathan.
“Ditto.”
“Neither of you look familiar to me,” the guard said. His name tag identified him as Mr. Farmer.
“So much for saying hello every morning,” Jonathan bluffed. “I’m Dan Banks and this is Marlon Ford. We both work for the Handelsman Group on the third floor.” Anticipating this moment, Venice had searched the rolls for the names of real tenants and employees. They had to roll the dice on the guard not knowing either.
“I need you to step aside while I check,” Mr. Farmer said.
Boxers gave that smile that never led to good things and Jonathan intervened. “Tell you what,” Jonathan said. “I’ve got a conference call that I’m already late for-thanks to your malfunctioning building-and we’re not staying anywhere. You go ahead and make your calls, and if it turns out we’re bogus, you come on up and get us.”
“I’d actually look forward to that,” Boxers menaced.
Without waiting for an answer, they rejoined the crowd and headed for the elevators. Jonathan checked his watch. Nine-forty-three.
When it was finally their turn, Jonathan stepped onto the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor. With no place else to go, and on the off chance that the guard was watching on cameras, he decided that there’d be no harm in paying a visit to the Handelsman Group.
CHAPTER THIRTY – EIGHT
Unlike those of so many other high-rises, the architects of 1101 Coolidge Avenue had been thoughtful enough to include windows that could be opened for fresh air. They weren’t big-God forbid that anyone might fall out-but they were a nod to those who needed to breathe unfiltered air from time to time. It probably never occurred to any of them that their thoughtful design feature would make a sniper’s life so easy.
The folks at C-SPAN likewise probably never gave much thought to how live coverage of presidential goings-on eliminated the need for a spotter. Who needs conspirators when you have live television?
Michael Copley heard the motorcade before he saw it, and that fact alone told him that the wind was blowing from east to west. This would be important data very soon. He looked at the clock. Nine-forty-seven, and C-SPAN was still prattling about other things.
The office he’d rented two years before-actually, he’d sublet it from Beacon Accounting for a ridiculous amount of money-sat on the fourteenth floor, and was designed on a curve, with one window providing breathtaking views of the Washington Monument, the Tidal Basin, and the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials to the east, and a nearly unobstructed view of the Iwo Jima Memorial to the south.
Michael felt bad about what he had to do to the Beacon staff this morning. They were nice people, but they were Users. If they weren’t doomed from the day they were born, they were certainly doomed from the day that Michael Copley was born.
He stayed well back from the windows as he watched the motorcycles lead the procession from Constitution Avenue across the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge. There must have been a dozen of them, looking from up here like so many red-flashing mosquitoes. Then came the D.C. Police cars, and behind them a couple of shiny black sedans with red and blue flashers behind the grille. Behind the sedans were the two presidential limousines-one of them a decoy, there specifically to frustrate people who might steal Michael’s thunder. Behind the limousines, the flood of vehicles continued with all manner of vans and sedans, plus the ubiquitous black Suburbans, all hiding counterassault teams who soon would reassess everything. More vans followed the counterassault vehicles, and then a D.C. ambulance and more motorcycles and police cars brought up the rear.
The lead elements of the motorcade had already made it to the Virginia side of the bridge before the last of the trailing motorcycles had left the D.C. side. Michael didn’t count exactly, but he estimated forty vehicles in all. Such wastefulness.
He didn’t realize until the motorcade turned left onto Arlington Boulevard that it had traveled all the way across the river on the wrong side of the road in order to gain straight-on access to the Iwo Jima Memorial grounds. He found his face getting hot. How was it possibly right-who would think it was okay-to shut down a main highway and inconvenience so many people just so that one man could give a speech that no one wanted to hear because everyone had heard it before?
His Barrett cannon sat poised on his desk, four feet inside the window, already pre-sighted for the spot he needed to hit. As the president’s motorcade disappeared around the back side of the park, Michael settled himself into the hard-backed chair that would one day would be part of the museum dedicated to the day that the world changed. The muzzle bipod was extended, and sandbags were in place under the foregrip and the stock. When the time came, he’d need only to correct for wind and send his bullets downrange.
Settling in behind his scope, and taking care to keep his finger out of the trigger guard, he pantomimed the cross-shaped pattern he would fire. The first would nail the sweet spot, and the next nine-five on the vertical axis and four on the horizontal-would be placed within inches of each other. A kill shot was guaranteed.
Then, in the pandemonium that followed, he would run out of his office, just like everyone else, shouting, “What was that? Oh, my God, what was that noise?” By the time the truth was known, he’d already be out of the building and on his way to safety. If anyone confronted him, well, he had Mr.. 45-Caliber Sig Sauer on his hip to do his talking for him. On the television, C-SPAN switched to their reporter on the scene for the ceremonies. It wouldn’t be long now.
Once on the third floor, Jonathan abandoned the plan to drop in on the Handelsman Group, and instead detoured to the stairwell. He pulled out his cell phone again.
“We’re down to ten minutes, Ven.”
“You think I don’t know this? Nobody in the entire building has any known ties or connections to any of the parameters we set up. For heaven’s sake, most of the businesses in there are defense contractors. They’re huge, and they all have clearances. Even if Copley were among them, I don’t know how he wouldn’t be seen.”
Venice’s statement stirred something in Jonathan’s mind. Something about the businesses mostly being large. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s correct for the large businesses. What are the small ones?”
“Define small.”
“Dammit, Ven, they’re your statistics. Surprise me.”
“Well, Digger, there are a total of seventy-two tenants in the building.”
“The smallest, then.”
“Hold one.”
He heard tapping in the background.
Boxers said, “Hey, Dig? We don’t need every small business. We only need the ones that face south.”
Jonathan’s eyes got big. “Ven, did you hear that?”
“I did,” she said, “and I’m disappointed that I didn’t think of it myself.” More tapping. “I’m cross-referencing tax records with the tenant list,” she explained. “It’s sort of complicated.”
“Talk less and type more, then.”
“Maybe it’s not even this building,” she said. Her frustration flowed through the phone like electricity.
“Focus, Ven.”
“Okay, here’s one. Kendall and Associates. They’re an investment firm with five employees, and they’re on the south side of the building.”
Jonathan’s heart rate increased. “What floor?”
