protected. Then he’d kill Levy if he had to.
From his position, Levy could see the sentry, the magnificent tomb he guarded, and beyond that row after row of white headstones. There were small American flags near many of the headstones. The top of the Washington Monument was just visible in the distance.
He stood there, in that one spot, never moving, until the sun was above the horizon.
He witnessed a perfect sunrise.
His last sunrise.
“Imagine,” Dillon later said to Claire, “that you had devoted your entire life to God. Imagine that you joined a monastery and took vows of silence and chastity and poverty and prayed six times a day, every day, all your adult life, because your belief in God was so strong, your commitment to Him so great. And then one day, in walks an old man and gives you irrefutable proof that God doesn’t exist.”
Dillon sat with Claire and two of her technicians in the operations room. Through a speaker, he heard Alice.
He’s leaving the cemetery.
Fifteen minutes later:
He’s entering the Pentagon.
“Claire,” Dillon said, “tie into whatever frequency Pentagon security uses for their radios.” Claire nodded to one of the technicians.
Ten minutes later the silence in the operations room was shattered:
Red, red, red! I repeat, red! We need medics to the Chairman’s office, now! Now!
The man speaking was screaming. Two minutes of silence followed.
Where are those medics, goddammit? Where are they?
They’re on the E-ring. They’ll be there in another minute. An ambulance is waiting at the entrance.
Forsythe, take Henderson with you and accompany the general.
Roger that. Where are they taking him?
Arlington General.
Four minutes of silence.
Forsythe. Status.
A siren could be heard in the background.
We’re three minutes from the hospital, sir.
Two minutes later:
This is Gregory Hamilton.
Hamilton was the Secretary of Defense.
Captain, what the hell happened?
Sir, General Bradford was shot.
I know that! But who shot him?
John Levy, sir.
42
DeMarco had been awake for half an hour. He was sitting in the living room of the farm/safe house in Maryland, sipping coffee, watching the morning news. His unsociable bodyguards were in the kitchen, ignoring him as usual. He was wearing the pants, shirt, and shoes he’d worn to Bradford’s office. The suit coat that contained the listening devices had been taken from him-which didn’t surprise him-but they also took away the new belt they gave him and insisted he put on his own. This made him wonder if there had been something special about the new belt or if they wanted him to wear his old belt for some particular reason-because it was bugged or had a tracking device installed. His paranoia made him suspect the latter.
The news guy was going on about a tornado that had wiped out a trailer park in Kansas-which made DeMarco think about Dorothy and her red shoes and the Wizard of Oz-but then the newscaster was abruptly replaced in midsentence by Katie Couric, who was sitting behind her desk in the CBS newsroom with a serious expression on her face.
“We have breaking news,” Katie said. “The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Bradford, has been shot. All we know at this point is that the general was in his office at the Pentagon when the shooting occurred, and he’s been taken to a hospital in Arlington, Virginia.”
DeMarco was as stunned as Katie appeared to be. His first thought was: I wonder who shot the bastard? His second thought was: Maybe if he dies, Dillon will let me get back to my life.
For the next ten minutes, all Katie did was demonstrate how little information the network had, but she made the best of it. The station showed an aerial view of the Pentagon, photos of Bradford with the president, photos of Bradford in combat fatigues, including one of him standing next to a bombed-out bunker in Iraq. Katie filled up airtime by talking about Bradford’s career and then began to wonder out loud how anyone could penetrate the Pentagon’s security and shoot the nation’s highest ranking military officer. The picture then cut to a reporter standing in front of a hospital, who told Katie that he didn’t know zip and that he and all the other reporters were waiting for somebody to come out and tell them what was going on.
A man in an army uniform walked out of the hospital a moment later and took up a position facing the reporters. He introduced himself as Colonel Andrew somebody and said he was the public affairs officer at the Pentagon. He started off by saying that General Bradford had been shot in the shoulder, and although one of his lungs had been nicked, he was expected to make a full recovery. The reporters immediately started yelling questions, the main one being, Who the hell shot Bradford? The public affairs guy got a funny look on his face, like what he had to say was really painful, and finally answered the mob.
“The general was shot by a man named John Levy. Mr. Levy was a civilian employee at the Pentagon who worked for the Pentagon Force Protection Agency.”
Whoa! the reporters exclaimed.
The Pentagon spokesman waited until the uproar died down, then added, “It appears Mr. Levy had some sort of mental breakdown. We don’t know, at this point, why he tried to kill the general.”
“So where’s this guy Levy now?” a reporter demanded. The colonel gave the reporters an irritated look, the look seeming to say, If you damn people would just shut up, I’d tell you.
“Mr. Levy is dead. He was shot by a member of General Bradford’s security detail.”
The reporters started screaming again, but the colonel raised a hand and said, “That’s all we know at this point. As other facts become available, you’ll be informed.”
The television switched back to Couric, who had this wide-eyed, can-you-believe-it look on her face, and then she began repeating for the slow learners everything that the Pentagon spokesman had just told the media.
DeMarco let the noise from the television wash over him. What the hell was going to happen now? He didn’t know, but he was certain of one thing: with John Levy dead it was going to be almost impossible to convict Charles Bradford of a crime. Hell, the way things worked, Bradford might even come out ahead on this thing, an assassination attempt being a public relations dream for any high-ranking official.
Charles Bradford’s right arm itched where the IV entered a vein near his elbow. He’d been shot twice in Vietnam and this wound was nowhere near as painful as those had been. But maybe the painkillers they used these days were better.
The surgeon had told him that some of the muscles in his shoulder had been severely damaged and it was going to take at least one more surgery to set things right, and after that a lot of physical therapy would be required.
He was a man who had always prided himself on his physical abilities and the thought of being crippled, even for a short time, was depressing. And it wasn’t just physical limitations he was concerned about; it was also his image. A general had to appear strong in both mind and body.
He wondered, too, if he was still in shock or if it was because of the drugs, but he felt amazingly calm considering what had just happened.
He had been sitting in his office. He’d arrived at dawn, not being able to sleep, and had been expecting that
