Yet always he felt a little guilt. He’d gotten the easy part: for he knew that the forty minutes of Max V as Flashlight was exposed were absolutely the most terrifying – and exhilarating – for the Secret Service agents who now ran the show.
“Ah, Alpha Four to Alpha Response, I have a squirrel in the fourth row left, can we get a team on him, please, like really fast, guys.”
It was the Crowd Squad, working the people.
“Alpha Four, the Hispanic guy, right, black over-coat?” came Mueller’s response from the roof of the Municipal Auditorium just beside the podium that had been erected in front of a wading pool.
“That’s my squirrel. Guy’s got a shifty, stressed look and his hands are in his pockets. I can’t tell if he’s by himself.”
“Ah, okay, Alpha, we’re moving in.”
The crowd squad maneuvered quickly to neutralize the guy they’d ID’d as a possible. Nick envied them the action even if, as it did 999 out of a thousand times, it turned out to be groundless.
“Okay, Alpha Four, the squirrel just lifted his little girl up to see the Man, and he’s got three other kids with him.”
“Back off then, Alpha Four, good work.”
Nick heard cheers and laughter echoing through the empty streets; the president had made a joke. He checked his watch. They were running a bit behind schedule. It was almost noon and the speech was scheduled to have started at 11:45, but it had just gotten under way. He’d seen the site plan, amazed at how precisely these things are choreographed. There’d even been a rehearsal for the Security Detail to get them used to body moves, to the look of the situation, so that if something ungodly happened, the place at least would be familiar to them.
But Nick could remember from the site plan where Flashlight would be standing, where the archbishop would be, flanked by his own bodyguard. The rest of the guys up there were Service beef, two staff assistants, and Mr. Football, as they called the Air Force staff colonel who was always a discreet ten feet from Flashlight with a briefcase full of that day’s nuclear go-codes. Nick could imagine them up there in the love and glee of the crowd, these happy men who ruled the world, and who would not even in their older age remember this day.
“Ah, Chopper Four, this is Base Six, can you take a right-hand circle about half-mile out? I have a New Orleans police report of some roofline movement. I’m looking at Grid Square Lima-thirteen-Tango, I got a cop in that area says he thinks he saw something. My countersniper team in that zone has called it a no-show, but take a look, will you, big guy?”
“That’s a big rog, Alpha Six,” came the voice from the chopper, and Nick heard the thing roar overhead, a black Huey.
“Ah, Base, I’ve got an all clear, your cop must have seen a mirage.”
“Okay, Chopper, good work.”
“I’m out of here, Alpha Six.”
The bird’s roar fluttered and diminished.
Nick was alone again, on the face of the moon.
“Time,” asked Bob, and lost the answer in the roar of the chopper.
When the bird cleared, he asked again.
“Eleven-fifty-six, pal,” came Payne’s answer.
Bob breathed out heavily, a stupid move, because it somewhat jittered his eye’s placement against the scope; he blinked, lost his image, came back to find a black half-moon of eye-relief error cutting into the cone of his vision because he wasn’t properly aligned. His heart was pumping.
Goddamn! he told himself, be cool, man.
And there it was again, the arch in the steeple, in perfect clarity, its black dullness sealing off his vision, simply a maze of ancient slats. He stared at it as if pouring himself through it, willing what he wanted to be there to be there, so far away, fourteen hundred yards from the target but just within the range of a world-class shooter like T. Solaratov.
Where are you, you bastard?
And then he saw him. He saw the sniper.
It was a subtlety in the light behind the slats, a shifting, a certain tightening, a certain coming together. As his mind raced to put the various-molecules of light and dark together into a picture, he realized that fifteen or so feet back, the sniper, at a bench like any rifle bench, was feeling his way into position. And in the next second or so, the whole thing assembled in his head; for now he saw also the solemn drift of the others in the room, very slow, very steady, but moving ever so slightly, a man on a scope next to the shooter, two men well back from the window. Then he watched as one by one, with the slowness of a glacier’s move, a slat and then another and still a third was removed. The diagonal slash in the arch was three inches wide. Behind it, he saw something move or tighten.
Very quietly, Bob said, “Payne, he’s there, I got his ass, he’s minute or so from shooting, send the boys in, now goddammit, send ’em in, he’s there, he’s there.”
“Ginger Dragon, we’ve got him, go, go, go, go,” said Payne.
“You got him,” yelled Timmons, the cop, “you got him.”
“Send those damn boys fast,” said Bob, “he’s set.”
Christ, he wished he had a rifle. It was his shot. It was a shot that kept him alive all these years – to have the motherfucker there, the man who did Donny Fenn, the man who blew out his hip and ended the life he was born to live, to have him right where the Remington wanted to go, right where he could put it. His trigger finger began to constrict and he imagined the buck of the rifle as he fired. He could take the trigger slack all the way down and ship a.308 hollowpoint out there and send that fuck straight to hell, drive his heart and spine all over New Orl -
“Goddamn, where are they, get ’em in there. He’s going to – ”
“All elements, move in, Ginger Dragon, go, go, go,” he heard Payne on the radio.
Where were they? There should be a chopper overhead, FBI SWAT guys in black rappelling down it, men moving in from all the hidden parts of the universe, men with guns and purpose, moving swiftly to stop -
“Where are they?”
Bob saw the spurt of flame as Solaratov fired.
“Bob?”
He turned and Payne shot him in the chest from a range of six feet.
Nick yawned and -
He heard the sound of a shot.
It froze him. The universe seemed to halt and his heart turned to stone.
Then the radio exploded.
“
He sat up; swallowed again.
The shot came from close by.
“We are under fire on the podium, Flashlight is hit and down, my God!”
“Alpha Actual, Alpha Actual, all units, Alpha Actual.”
Actual was the code word; it meant somebody was shooting at or had shot the president.
“Medics, vector in those medics, get these people out of here!”
“Medevac, this is Alpha Four, we need you ASAP, the man is down and hit, oh, Christ, oh, Jesus, get him fast, there’s some other people up here hit, oh, Christ!”
“Off the air, Alpha Four, your medevac is vectored in, are you still under fire?”
“Negative, Alpha Six, I think it was two, maybe three shots, I don’t, oh, God, there’s blood all over – ”
“This is Base Six, all units are cleared to fire if you have targets, this means you, countersnipers.”
“Where’s that fuckin’ medevac, we have blood everywhere, guys are down.”
Nick listened in horrified fascination.
“Do we have an isolation on the shot?”
“It was a long one, Phil, a sniper, I think it came from someplace out there beyond Rampart, in those fuckin’ houses, maybe that tall one.”
“SWAT people, let’s get going.”
