Chapter 56
Frank Madera knew it was bad.
He staggered through the alley, stepping in a pile of juicy mush as he crossed from one side to the other. It smelled like apples. Stinky, rotten apples. It was amazing how the sense of smell could remain robust even as the rest of the body was shutting down from trauma.
His feet were heavy and could carry him no farther. His knees buckled, and he fell against a Dumpster. He managed to grab the rusty lid and hold himself up, but not for long. Slowly, he slid down the side of the green Dumpster, his back swiping it with a long crimson streak. Too much blood. The exit wound from the bullet was even worse than he’d feared.
He reached inside his jacket to assess the damage. The entry wound was just to the right of the sternum. The clean hole on his shattered rib could have been full-metal-jacket ammunition, but Madera sensed that something even more deadly was at work. Though his body was slipping into shock, the pain not fully expressed, he could tell that this bullet had yawed violently on impact and blown through his body like a snowplow, compressing soft tissue, shredding his lung, and pushing bone fragments out what had to be a devastating hole in his back. Perhaps it was just his mind running wild, confusing rifle with pistol ammo, but the wound had modified.45-caliber FMJ written all over it, probably a tail-heavy cartridge with an interior tip of aluminum, or possibly wood pulp. What did it matter?
He pulled his cell phone from his inside pocket. It felt incredibly heavy in his hand, and he had to wipe the blood off the keypad with his sleeve. He was about to dial 911 when he noticed that the eerie black flow at his sternum was starting to foam. Pneumothorax-a sucking chest wound. He’d watched a fellow soldier die from one on the battlefield. Two weeks later, he’d shoveled the remains of his best friend from a street in Baghdad after a car bombing. He himself had been wounded in combat in a second tour of duty, this one in Afghanistan. None of the suffering or sacrifice, however, had diminished his sense of duty. He’d come home and joined the Secret Service, the only member of his class to have seen combat and hold a Purple Heart. But as time wore on, others were promoted, and Madera was not. Two of his classmates made it to the presidential protection team, and he was denied. That was when he’d cut his deal with Joe Dinitalia. The way he saw it, Madera was good enough to fight for his country, good enough to kill for it, and good enough to die for it. He was good enough to lose a tiny bit of hearing in his right ear in service to his country, only to have the Secret Service hold it against him. He was damaged goods, not good enough to guard the president. So, he figured, he might as well own him.
His breath was short. The foam around his wound was thickening. Madera had even less time left than he’d thought. Calling for an ambulance would have been pointless. He could have called Dinitalia to tell him that he’d failed, but that, too, seemed pointless. Nothing seemed to matter, except for one thing.
Maybe the loss of blood was making him delusional. Perhaps the shame of a good soldier turned bad finally came to a head. Or it simply could have been a dying man’s bitter sense of irony. Whatever was driving him in those final moments, Agent Madera chose to make things the way they should have been.
He did his Secret Service duty and called the commander in chief.
The call came on an encrypted cell line that only one man ever used. The message, however, was unlike any that President Keyes had ever received.
“Agent down,” said Madera, “and it’s me. Sergeant Chavez, MDPD, is your go-to on the Greek. Texting you his number now. You’re on your own with Sofia.”
“What?” said the president, but in the time it had taken to put the question, he grasped Frank’s meaning. That hollow, fragile voice reminded the president of his father’s final breath.
“Frank, are you still there?”
The line was silent, but the president didn’t hang up right away. No matter how he felt about Frank Madera, hearing him utter his last words-a warning-was unsettling.
The president tucked away the phone and peered out the dark tinted window of the armored black Cadillac DTS.
Traffic was stopped at every intersection as the presidential motorcade, thirty-five vehicles in length, headed away from the airport. The president and Harry Swyteck were alone in the rear compartment, the president facing forward and Harry seated directly across with his back to the driver. The television was tuned to
“You look upset,” said Harry.
They passed a Japanese car dealership that was flying a lighted American flag as big as Montana. The president looked at Harry and said, “You really want the truth?”
“I told you I did.”
President Keyes nodded, turning very serious. “The truth is that my worst fears have been realized.”
“How so?”
“Frank Madera killed Phil Grayson.”
Harry’s mouth fell open. “How do you know?”
“He just confessed to me. He said he’s going to turn himself in to the FBI immediately.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“Think about it. Frank was in Florida when Phil died. He was head of his security detail. He had access to and control over everything Phil did, everyone he saw, everything he ate, everything he drank. It’s entirely plausible that he overmedicated Phil, so to speak, which caused the heart attack.”
Harry took a moment. “That’s a lot of information you just gathered from a half-minute phone conversation.”
“Much of it is deduction on my part.”
“I don’t understand the motive. Why would Frank Madera kill the vice president?”
“Like I mentioned to you before, Phil had his thing with Chloe Sparks when she worked for him. Things were heating up between the two of them again. Don’t quote me on this, but it’s beginning to sound to me like some kind of deadly vice president, Secret Service agent, girl-gone-wild triangle.” The president glanced at the television, then back at Harry. “And this Demetri character seems to have figured it all out.”
“Incredible,” said Harry.
“Incredible, yes,” said the president, wondering how much of the story Harry was really buying. “And yet entirely plausible.”
The telephone rang in the FBI command center. It was another star-69 return call from Demetri. Andie answered on the second ring.
“Do you have protection for Sofia yet?”
Andie hesitated. The worst thing for any negotiator was to be caught in a lie, but she could tell from Demetri’s tone that there was only one acceptable answer.
“Yes,” she said.
“Good girl. Let me speak to her.”
“She’s not with me.”
“You said you had her, liar!”
“No, you asked if I had protection for her, and we do.”
“Don’t play word games with me! Where is she?”
“Everything’s cool, all right? I’m going to follow up right now and prove it to you. I can call you back in ten minutes with an update.”
“You’ve got five minutes, and counting, to put Sofia on the line. Or I start shooting.”
He hung up on her.
Andie’s hand trembled, but not for long. As quickly as she could, she dialed Theo’s number.
Chapter 57
