The Second Shooter

by Chuck Hustmyre

  Secretly, Finch hated Chessman, hated him for the power the man had over him, but there was no question he would do whatever Chessman wanted him to do. Because as Chessman had told him several times, no matter what happened to the president, Finch would leave the administration with a bright future. Unless for some reason, at a crucial moment, perhaps because of some misguided sense of loyalty to the man he had served for five years, Finch did not do everything that was expected of him; then he could be certain that his position as a mole inside the White House would be revealed, but instead of spying for another entity of the US government, the record would be tweaked just enough to make it appear that Finch, although perhaps the victim of a false-flag recruitment, had in fact being spying for a hostile foreign government, the Russians or the Chinese, and he would spend the rest of his life in Colorado's ADX Florence federal supermax prison.

  Chapter 35

  Several sheriff's patrol cars came roaring down the horseshoe-shaped driveway, their tires spinning and sliding in the gravel and kicking up a cloud of dust. Max Garcia tossed his pistol into the burning wreck of the Chevrolet Suburban and raised his hands above his head. He turned to Blackstone, whose face was registering mostly shock as he stared at his dead operator. The one with the burns was still screaming.

  "I suggest you lose the pistol unless you want these rednecks to shoot you," Garcia said.

  As the sheriff's cars skidded to a stop, Blackstone flung his Beretta into the flames and raised his hands.

  "If it makes you feel any better," Garcia said. "I made the same mistake you did."

  Blackstone turned to look at him. "What mistake was that?"

  "I underestimated him."

  ***

  Jake stared at Favreau as the motorhome barreled down the highway. In the cab, Gordon McCay wrestled with the steering wheel to keep the ungainly aluminum box between the ditches. The cabin door banged open and closed with every shift of the Winnebago's center of gravity.

  "I'm not going to arrest you," Jake told the Frenchman. "I'm going to have you committed."

  "Who's going to kill the president?" Stacy asked.

  "The CIA," Favreau said.

  Stacy grabbed one of the homemade bookshelves to keep her balance as the motorhome jounced again. Almost all of the books were now scattered on the floor. "Why is the CIA going to kill the president?"

  Jake turned to her. "Are you seriously going to listen to this?"

  "Just hear him out."

  "No," Jake said. "I'm done listening to him. I don't want to hear another word come out of his mouth."

  "Afghanistan," Favreau said.

  Jake caught Gordon's eye in the rearview mirror. Gordon shook his head. "All of this is news to me. I thought we were just getting together to work on a book."

  "What about Afghanistan?" Stacy asked.

  Favreau stared at Jake.

  Jake looked back at him and sighed. "Go ahead."

  "When President Omar ran for re-election, he promised to have all American troops out of Afghanistan by the end of next year."

  "That's what politicians do," Jake said. "They make promises."

  "He intends to keep this one."

  "So what?" Jake said. "When he ran the first time, he promised to pull our troops out of Iraq, and he did it."

  Favreau nodded. "And the CIA was heavily involved in your war in Iraq, but not like they are in Afghanistan. Do you remember how the war in Afghanistan started?"

  "Not really," Jake said. "I was thirteen years old."

  "The first Americans in were CIA and Special Forces."

  "What's your point?"

  "The CIA is not the U.S. Marines. The Agency is not equipped to spearhead an invasion. It's not even part of your military. Yet, in Afghanistan, that is exactly what it did."

  "Again, I have to ask you, what's your point?"

  "My point is that this has been the CIA's war since the beginning," Favreau said. "For the first year, there was hardly even any news coming out. The country was too remote, too hard to reach, and too dangerous for most reporters. But when the public finally started pushing to find out what America was doing in Afghanistan, the CIA arranged to give the people something else to think about."

  "What was that?" Stacy said.

  "Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction," Favreau said.

  "No, no way," Jake said.

  Favreau nodded. "The CIA has a private army of contractors in Afghanistan to protect the poppy fields and the smugglers...just like in Vietnam. Except now, instead of making tens of millions of dollars, the Agency is making hundreds of millions. All they've done is move the operation from the Golden Triangle to the Golden Crescent."

  "How could you possibly know that?" Jake asked.

  Favreau looked at Jake and Stacy for a long moment. "Because I still work for the CIA."

  ***

  At the Happy Valley Trailer Park, Bill Blackstone was bent over the hood of a sheriff's patrol car, hands cuffed behind his back. The hood was hot on his cheek, and he smelled burning rubber from the deputies' hard ride to the trailer park. Garcia was facedown next to him, quiet as a wooden Indian. The Cuban hadn't said a word since half a dozen deputies had surrounded them with drawn pistols and shotguns.

  The county sheriff, who had arrived on the scene just minutes after the first deputies, was pacing up and down between two of his patrol cars, his face red and angry. Blackstone guessed he was in his mid-fifties, a short man with a big belly and a bulging bottom lip.

  A pair of medics was loading one of Blackstone's operators into the back of an ambulance. From the medics' chatter, Blackstone had picked up that the man had a head wound, some kind of blunt force trauma resulting in a split scalp and a probable concussion. Another of his men was sprawled on the ground, dead from a gunshot wound and covered with a plastic sheet. The third man was seated on the ground, his back against a patrol car's rear tire, hands cuffed in front. A deputy had slit open both of the man's pant legs with a pocketknife to check his burns. Blackstone had gotten a glance and judged they were mostly second degree, but some were probably third degree. The fourth operator was uninjured and facedown on the gravel, hands cuffed behind his back.

  Blackstone stood up, calling to the deputies and nodding toward the operator with the burns. "That man needs medical attention."

  "Shut your pie hole," the sheriff said. Then he pointed to a deputy, who jammed Blackstone back onto the hood.

  Looking down at Garcia and Blackstone, the sheriff said, "I got one man shot dead, another man with a dent in his skull, another one burned, three under arrest, and a whole passel of automatic weapons. So what I want to know is what the hell happened here, and I want to know PDQ?"

  "You saw his ID," Blackstone said with a nod toward Garcia. "We're federal marshals." The sheriff had yanked Garcia's fake U.S. Marshals Service credentials from his pocket but had barely glanced at them and hadn't mentioned them since. "We're here on a matter of national security."

  The sheriff pointed at Garcia. "I saw his identification, but I didn't see nothing from you. Your pockets was empty. Not even a wallet. I find that a strange circumstance for a federal marshal. Mighty strange."

  "We're working together," Blackstone said. "But for operational security reasons I'm not carrying identification."

  "The gubment, huh?" the sheriff said. Then he spit a stream of tobacco juice on the ground. "I met plenty of federal marshals in my time, and you two don't look like no federal marshals. So maybe this marshal stuff is just a cover, and you boys are some kind of secret gubment po-lice?"

  Okay, now they were getting somewhere, Blackstone thought. The sheriff might not be as dumb as he looked, or sounded. Maybe he just needed time to calm down, to catch his breath. Blackstone raised his head from the hood. He caught the sheriff's eye and gave him wry smile. "If we were...we wouldn't be able to talk about it. You know that."

  The sheriff smiled, then slammed Blackstone's face onto the hood. The sheriff pulled a can of Sk
oal from his back pocket and flicked his wrist several times, rhythmically flapping his index finger against the top of the can to tamp down the contents. Then he twisted the lid off and loaded a big pinch of tobacco inside his already-bulging bottom lip. He put the can back in his pocket and spit again. Then he fixed Blackstone with a hard stare. "I'm the chief law enforcement officer in Le Flore County, and ain't nobody said didley to me 'bout no gubment operation going on in my county."

  "I have a number you need to call," Garcia finally said, still keeping his forehead pressed against the hot hood.

  The sheriff spit again, then whipped the excess tobacco juice from his lip. He leaned over Garcia. "I ain't got to call nobody. And you only get one phone call is all, so I suggest you use it to hire yourself a damn good lawyer."

  At a signal from the sheriff, four deputies pulled Blackstone and Garcia off the hood of the patrol car and shoved them into the back seat.

  Chapter 36

  "Suddenly, I didn't have a choice. Because no matter how much of a kook I thought he was, he had just told me about a plot to kill the president of the United States. I knew no one would believe me, but I couldn't just sit on it and do nothing."

  ***

  Gordon McCay's motorhome sat in the parking lot of a building supply store on the edge of the small town of Wilburton, Oklahoma. Jake finished nailing the cabin door shut with a couple pieces of scrap plywood he had scrounged from the Dumpster. Then he checked his watch. It was 1:00 p.m.

  He climbed into the cab through the passenger door and stepped into the cabin. The walls were pockmarked with bullet holes. Stacy, Gordon, and Favreau glanced up at him from their seats around the bolted-down coffee table. Everything else had been knocked to the floor. Jake looked at Gordon. "You smoke?"

  Gordon shook his head. "Doctor made me quit."

  Jake turned to Favreau. "You still got those Lucky Strikes?"

  The Frenchman smiled as he pulled the crumpled pack from his pocket and handed it to Jake.

  Stacy gave him a curious look. "I didn't know you smoked."

  "I don't," Jake said as he pulled a cigarette from the pack. His hands shook. He held the pack out to Stacy. "Want one?"

  She hesitated. "I only smoke if I'm drinking."

  Jake turned again to Gordon. "Got anything to drink?"

  Gordon smiled. "I had to quit that too."

  Favreau handed Jake a lighter. He lit his cigarette and pulled down a long drag. And coughed it right back up. He took a second drag and it stayed down. His hands stopped shaking.

  Stacy reached for the pack. "Oh, what the hell. We're probably about to die anyway." Jake lit her cigarette, then handed the pack and the lighter back to Favreau, who plucked one out for himself and lit it.

  "I still don't understand it," Gordon said. "Half the cops in Oklahoma should be hunting for us by now, but we passed three Highway Patrol cars on the way here, and they didn't give us so much as a second look."

  "The people chasing us aren't going to cooperate with local law enforcement," Jake said.

  Stacy blew out a long stream of smoke. "So the police aren't after us, but a band of killer mercenaries are."

  "And the FBI," Jake said, as he took a seat on the sofa next to her.

  Stacy picked up a cracked coffee cup from the floor and set it on the table as an ashtray. "Somebody remind me again why I signed up for this trip."

  "We came from different directions," Gordon said. "But we're all here for the same reason. To find the truth."

  "Speaking of truth," Jake said, eyeing Favreau. "Start talking."

  Favreau arched his eyebrows and shrugged. "Where do you want me to begin?"

  "Try the beginning," Jake said.

  Stacy took a last drag and stubbed out her cigarette in the coffee cup. "Tell us about Dallas."

  Favreau closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he nodded. "I was the backup shooter. Oswald was the primary. He was supposed to fire when the president's limousine slowed to make the turn onto Elm Street. I was behind the stockade fence, on what people now call the grassy knoll."

  The words grassy knoll flooded Jake's mind with the televised images from that day, especially the Zapruder film.

  The motorcade slowing for the turn. The handsome young president and beautiful first lady smiling and waving to the adoring crowd.

  "But Oswald hesitated," Favreau said. "The limousine made the turn and pulled away. Then it picked up speed. He didn't fire until it was almost too late."

  The president and first lady still smiling and waving as they approach the Stemmons Freeway sign.

  "Oswald missed his first shot."

  The limousine disappearing for an instant behind the sign.

  "His second shot hit the president high in the back."

  President and Mrs. Kennedy emerging from behind the road sign. A look of distress on the president's face. His hands jerking up to his collar. Governor Connally spinning around in the front seat, clearly in pain. Jackie Kennedy turning to her husband.

  "When the limousine reached me, I could see the president was still alive."

  Mrs. Kennedy putting a gloved hand on her husband's shoulder and leaning close as if to ask what's wrong.

  "So I fired."

  The front right portion of President Kennedy's head exploding. Mrs. Kennedy climbing out of the back seat and crawling across the trunk. A Secret Service agent clambering onto the back bumper. The limousine accelerating. Obscured by a tree. Then the film winding out. The screen in Jake's mind going white.

  Silence enveloped the inside of the motorhome.

  Finally, Gordon cleared his throat. "What happened after?"

  Favreau took a deep breath. "I was supposed to meet Oswald at the rendezvous point. My instructions were to kill him."

  "Why kill him?" Stacy asked.

  "He was the patsy."

  Stacy shook her head. "What does that mean, exactly?"

  "There's always a patsy," Favreau said. "Someone to take the blame."

  "Preferably someone who can't talk anymore," Gordon added.

  Jake stared at the Frenchman and heard himself say, "Go on."

  Favreau took another deep breath. "Afterward, I decided—"

  "No," Jake snapped. "You don't get to say afterward and skip ahead. I want to hear it. I want you to admit exactly what you did."

  For several seconds Favreau stared into Jake's eyes. Then in a low voice he said, "After I killed the president..." He looked at Jake. Jake nodded and Favreau continued. "I was finished. I didn't want to meet Oswald. I didn't want to kill Oswald. I didn't want to kill anyone ever again. So I ran away."

  "Where?" Stacy asked.

  "French Guiana to get a new name and a new passport. Then to Africa. I had been a soldier. A paratrooper. I'd fought in Algeria. I liked Africa, so I went to the Congo and joined up with the mercenaries under Mike Hoare and Jean Schramme."

  Jake interrupted him. "You just said you didn't want to kill anyone else."

  Favreau shrugged. "Fighting was all I knew."

  "Go on," Stacy said.

  "After the Congo, I hired out to work security in South Africa. I went back to France in 1980, learned how to fly an airplane and started smuggling. Just cigarettes and liquor at first. Then heroin. I got caught and sentenced to ten years. While I was in prison, technology caught up with me. The French government computerized all of its records. The new system found two sets of my fingerprints, one with my real name, the other with my new name.

  "The CIA sent a man to see me in prison. The same man who recruited me for Dallas. He said he could get me an early release and I could work for him...or he could have another inmate cut my throat that night."

  "What did he want you to do?" asked Jake, who, much to his own surprise, was starting to believe Andre Favreau's story.

  "He wanted me to be the driver and bodyguard for Mad Jack Gillard, the so-called godfather of Marseilles."

  "Why?" Stacy asked.

  "Mad Jack smuggled heroi
n through North Africa to Europe and America," Favreau said. "The CIA was his partner. They wanted someone to keep an eye on their investment."

  "Their investment?" Stacy said.

  Favreau shrugged. "That's the way they look at it."

  "Why does everything keep coming back to heroin?" Jake asked.

  "Because heroin is one of the world's most valuable commodities," Favreau said. "It's worth a lot more than gold. It's easier to sell than diamonds. And it's completely untraceable."

  "You make the CIA sound like the Mafia," Stacy said.

  "No," Favreau corrected her. "The CIA is not like the Mafia. The CIA is much worse than the mafia. And much more powerful. But even the CIA can't operate in a country as dangerous as Afghanistan without the protection of your military."

  "So when the president pulls out all the troops..."

  "The Agency's heroin pipeline shuts down," Favreau said.

  "And they're going to kill him, assassinate him, for that?" Stacy asked.

  Favreau nodded. "Just like they did before."

  Chapter 37

  The city bus ground to a halt at the bus stop in front of the motel at six o'clock. It was already dark outside. Four people got off. Ray Fluker was the last one. He was bone tired and his muscles ached after a long day at work. His battered lunch pail dangled from his hand.

  A new Mercedes S-Class, its engine rumbling with power, pulled up beside Fluker as he walked toward his room. He recognized the car and his face broke into a smile as the passenger window slid down. Fluker leaned down to look inside the car, careful not to put his dirty hands on the door.