As he sat there, Nick phased out the rest of security check-ins, and tried to reassemble his thoughts on the Eduardo Lanzman case, because he wanted to really get cracking on it as soon as Flashlight was out of town. The report from Salvador, just in, had been a disappointment: the Salvadoran National Police had no Lanzman on their rolls, and who up here could prove different? And Nick also had the Bureau research people trying to find something out about this RamDyne outfit he’d picked up on from Till and he thought that -
But then the message came rumbling across the net, “Ah, Base Four, Flashlight has debarked and the motorcade is about to commence.”
“All right, people, let’s look sharp,” said Base Six. “Game time.”
“Ah, Base Four, Flashlight has debarked and the motorcade is about to commence,” Bob heard over the radio. Then, “All right, people, let’s look sharp. Game time.”
“Bob, that’s it, the show’s begun.” It was Payne nearby.
“Okay,” Bob said, “got you clean and simple and am all set.” But he wished he had a rifle and in fact felt like a simpleton without one.
He was a good four hundred yards from the president’s speech in the fourth-floor room of an old house on St. Ann, but he didn’t look toward the park; he looked back, toward and over the French Quarter. Seated at a table, he stared through a Leupold 36? spotting scope that he had carefully aimed at the church steeple still another thousand yards out. It was the steeple from which he’d predicted the shot would come. Payne and a New Orleans uniformed cop named Timmons were with him, Payne on the radio, Timmons just more or less there.
He heard the security people on their network.
“Ah, Base Six, this is Alpha One, we are progressing down U.S. Ten at approximately forty-five miles per hour, our ETA is approximately 1130 hours, do you read?”
“Have you, affirmative,” said Base Six. “Units Ten and Twelve, be advised Flashlight and friends are moving through your area shortly.”
“We have it under advisement, Base Six, everything looking fine here, over and out.”
Bob thought it was like a big air-mobile operation in the ’Nam, an orchestration of elements all moving in perfect syncopation and held together by some command hotshot on the radio network, as the various units through whose sector Flashlight moved called in their reports.
“Ah, Base Six, this is Ginger Dragon Two, we have all quiet in our secure zone at present,” he heard Payne speak into the phone.
“That’s a roger, Ginger Dragon Two, we’re reading you, our apprehension teams are on instant standby.”
“Anything yet?” Timmons now asked him. He was a large, dour man, whose belly pressed outward against his uniform; he seemed nervous.
Bob’s eye was in the scope. Though the target was so much farther out, he could see three ramshackle arched openings under the crown of the steeple, each louvered closed, each dirty and untouched.
“It’s the middle window,” Payne now said calmly.
“I know what window it is,” Bob said. Why were these guys
“Maybe he’s not there yet,” said Timmons.
“Oh, he’s there. It’s too close to time. He’s there.”
If he’s anywhere, Bob thought, he’s there. He’s sitting very still now and though we can’t see him, he’s drawing himself together for the shot. He’s probably taken as close as can be constructed to this shot a thousand or so times, maybe ten thousand times. I know I would if I were in his shoes. But he’s a little nervous; he’ll want to be alone and he’ll want it quiet. If there are others in the room with him, then they’re just sitting there, not making any noise, letting him accumulate his strength.
According to Colonel Davis, a very skilled FBI embassy penetration team had discreetly planted light-sensitive sensors in the belfry, and the sensors had recorded data to suggest that every night between four and five A.M. a working party of five men entered the room and made preparations. Bob assumed they were soundproofing the walls and building a shooting platform to get the proper angle into the president’s site fourteen hundred far yards away. At the precise moment, three or four of the louvers would be removed; he’d scope and shoot and the team would replace the louvers. The window of vulnerability was maybe ten seconds.
“Ginger Dragon Six, we are beginning our apprehension maneuver.”
“Keep it discreet, apprehension teams.” Bob recognized Colonel Davis, who was running this operation, the one concealed within the larger drama of the president’s arrival and security.
“Fuckin’ A,” said Payne, “they getting ready to nab the sucker.”
Bob looked at his watch; it was only 1115 hours now, still an hour from the shooting event.
“Man, I hope your Federal team has got it together. This is a very nervous cat, he’s got spotters himself making sure he hasn’t been blown.”
“These are the very best guys,” Payne said. “These guys have been training for this one a long time. Lots and lots of dues gonna get paid off today, I can tell you. It’s payback time.”
Something melodramatic and movielike in Payne today irritated Bob.
“Ginger Dragon Two, you have the best angle on the target, you have anything to announce?”
“He’s talking to you, Swagger.”
“That’s a negative. But if they’re there, they probably came in late last night; and they’ll be real quiet. Tell him that. Lack of activity is to be expected.”
“Uh, Ginger Dragon Six, this is Dragon Two, uh, spotter has a negative so far.”
“Is he sure?”
“Oh, Christ,” said Bob. “Tell him they’re there, goddammit, and that I’ll sing out when I get a visual confirm, and that that will be at the point of shooting, and goddammit, he better get set to bounce his people in there fast.”
Now wasn’t the time to begin doubting the scenario. They all believed in the scenario, they’d discussed it dispassionately all afternoon yesterday.
“Uh, confidence here is still high, Dragon Six,” said Payne.
That’s what ruined operations and that’s what killed people in the field – that sudden, last-minute spurt of doubt, like the lash of a whip: it made people morons. So many times Bob had seen it; it was exactly what sniping wasn’t.
“We may have to go early,” said Ginger Dragon Six.
“Do that, and you got nothing,” said Bob. “He’s there. Goddamn, I can
He wished he had a rifle too.
“Okay, Alpha Team, this is Base Six, Flashlight’s ETA is now just five minutes.”
“Base Six to Alpha, Flashlight is now in your zone.”
“We have Flashlight, thank you, Base Six, good job.”
“Roof Team, this is Base Six, any activity?”
“Negative, Six, all clear except for our people.”
“Keep me informed, Roof Team, we are near maximum vulnerability now.”
“Have you, Six.”
“All teams, Max V condition, on your toes, people, on your toes.”
On his toes! Nick felt so out of it he almost had to laugh. This is your life, Nick Memphis. He sat in the car alone in a zone so barren of life it seemed despoiled, or some vista in a sci-fi movie set after the end of the world. All the tourists had hustled on by to get a look-see at the president. Here he was, on the far outside.
Now he saw it. The motorcade hurtled down North Rampart, and just briefly the gates to the park were opened, and through it sped Flashlight’s three-million-dollar Lincoln which no bullet could penetrate, sixteen New Orleans motorcycle cops, the Security Detail quick reaction van, and two cars of reporters and TV people. And then they were gone.
Man, he thought, I’m so far to the outside there is no inside.
He tried to stay alert out of respect for the ritual, and the big Smith in the pancake holster was some help. It gouged him but in his curious way he enjoyed it.
