by Steve Lewis
Then there was the wind, which channelled down streets and blew at a whim up and down the faces of buildings. Any city was a problem, this one more than most.
He reached into a pocket on his vest and pulled out his smartphone, checking the ballistics solver app restricted to those in law enforcement and the military. It was linked to his wind-velocity meter.
The final crucial variables were air density and temperature. An increase in air density meant more resistance, which would slow down the bullet sooner. An increase in temperature would make the powder inside the case burn faster and lift the muzzle velocity of the bullet.
Happily all those calculations were crunched by his software.
Nothing was left to chance.
A flutter of movement to his left startled him. An errant pigeon strutting across the room. He smiled for the first time that day.
The building and the room had been chosen with great care. Like many in this dying city, the high-rise had long been abandoned and now stood as a 38-storey Renaissance-style tombstone for a more prosperous age.
The windows beneath the ornate green copper roof had been smashed by vandals and the walls were smeared with their profanities. Glass and rubbish were strewn across the floor. The stench of urine was overwhelming.
It was perfect.
The large open window gave him a clear view of the target and meant he could position himself deep inside the room. He was six metres back, lurking in contained shadow. There would be no Hollywood-style tell-tale barrel resting on the window’s edge. All that was visible was a broken frame. His weapon was propped on the remnants of a table, turned on its side and secured to give him a stable platform.
The marksman was ready. He checked the time. Ten minutes to game time: the culmination of a lifetime serving with the very best in some of the very worst places on this wretched planet.
In a world clouded by the lies and deceit of rulers claiming to speak the truth, the only absolute clarity was through his scope. Here everything narrowed to one pure purpose: the elimination of a threat.
His mind wandered back to another target. Afghanistan, eight years ago. The tribal leader had been nearly two and a half kilometres out when he’d lined him up in the sights of his Barrett M82A1 .50 calibre rifle. The bullet took six seconds to strike.
In the elite enclave of military snipers, the Afghani kill was still spoken of with reverence.
He glanced over his shoulder to the open door behind him.
The danger in making any shot was that it revealed your position. The sound would be muffled, but not completely silenced, by his suppressor. Its main function was to diffuse the noise and make it difficult to assess where it had come from.
From the moment of impact the clock would be ticking on being captured. Long practice had taught him to move slowly when the heat was on.
After confirming the hit he would drop to his knees behind the table. It would take him sixty seconds to dismantle the rifle and put it in his rucksack. There were three ways out of the building and he had investigated each one. If his escape was blocked through the quickest exit he would immediately shift to the next, and then the last. He would be on the street in three minutes, a long way from the immediate terror and confusion. Then he would blend with the crowd and vanish.
One last time he focused through his scope on the tiny lectern so far away. It was sharp and clear in the sight. It was a good day for hunting, bright with very little wind.
There was movement on the stage. The moment was close. He felt his heart rate begin to rise. Always he felt a surge of excitement as the game drew into the crosshairs.
There he was, familiar, waving at the crowd as he approached the lectern. The sniper waited as the crowd settled so the quarry could begin his speech. He would never get the chance.
The sniper breathed out slowly and squeezed the trigger. A crack echoed in the room.
His heart beat six times. Through his scope he saw the man’s head rip to one side as the bullet exploded through the base of his skull.
He fell.
The President of the United States was dead.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Washington
Six heavily armed men burst through the door, the sergeant barking out orders to startled congressional staff.
‘Everybody get down.’
They were a fearsome sight, wearing military-style helmets and body armour, their faces covered by balaclavas. Each member of the black-clad Containment and Emergency Response Team of the Capitol Police carried a short-barrel M4A1 assault rifle.
The staff of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives had been bunched around a TV and froze as they struggled to absorb what was happening. Only moments earlier they had been shaken by a shriek from an intern who was the first to see an unbelievable breaking news strap flash up on the screen: ‘President Shot at Detroit Rally’.
The sergeant lifted his weapon to leave them in no doubt: he wasn’t asking, he was demanding.
‘Get down. NOW!’
As the staff dropped to the floor he raced to the office of Speaker Morgan McDonald, followed by two of his colleagues. Big Mac, too, was staring at a TV screen and swung around as the police burst into the room.
‘Sir, you are coming with us.’
Big Mac raised his hands and didn’t budge.
‘Hang on son, where are we going?’
‘No questions, sir.’
The sergeant and another officer grabbed the speaker under each armpit and manhandled him out of the room. As they emerged, the team formed a phalanx round the trio, leaving the staff terrified and sobbing.
The unit moved at a trot like a deadly black spider through the corridors of the Capitol. Two in front, with guns shifting from side to side, eyes peeled for any sign of threat. Two supporting Big Mac, but scouring the corridors left and right. Two trailing, facing backwards and training their weapons on anyone who moved into their sights.
Minutes later, the team arrived at a fortified ‘safe room’ in the basement. The sergeant punched in a security code and a heavy steel door slid open.
Big Mac had never ventured this far into the bowels of America’s legislature, but he knew this was one of a series of safe rooms that had been built after 9/11, in anticipation of a terror attack. Only when he was inside and the doors were shut tight did the two men remove their hands from under his arms.
Big Mac was a sweaty mess. His shirt was out, one of his braces had come loose. He’d lost a shoe somewhere along the way.
The sergeant spoke, his breathing laboured after the dash through the corridors.
‘Sir, thank you for your co-operation. The president is dead. At exactly the same time he was killed the White House was attacked by drone. It was shot down and exploded near the entrance to the West Wing. The vice president is in Air Force Two, about an hour out from Washington.’
Big Mac’s heart was pounding and his head was swimming. It had been a long time since he had attempted anything more than a brisk walk and he was struggling to catch his breath.
‘We believe this is a co-ordinated attack. After the vice president you are the next in line, sir. We had to secure the leadership.’
‘Thank you, son.’ Big Mac panted as he struggled to regain some of his composure. ‘Now can you hook me up with STRATCOM?’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Air Force Two
‘I don’t care how many windows you break. Get there,’ the voice barked inside the pilot’s helmet.
Lieutenant Daniela ‘Lucky’ Flores and her wingman turned their F-16 Fighting Falcons west and pushed them to Mach 2, just over 2450 kilometres an hour, crashing through the speed of sound.
Four F-16s from the 113th Wing, DC Air National Guard had been ‘hot cocked’ on the tarmac when news of the president’s assassination broke. The ‘Capitol Guardians’ were in the air in less than five minutes.
As they screamed into the sky they heard a broadcast from Andrews Air Force B
ase – a message not used since September 11, 2001.
‘Attention all aircraft monitoring Andrews Tower, this is a warning. I repeat: all aircraft monitoring Andrews Tower frequencies, this is a warning. All aircraft are warned to remain clear of Class Bravo airspace. Any aircraft intruding into Class Bravo airspace will be shot down.’
Two of the F-16s were now tasked with patrolling the skies over DC. Soon they would be joined by many more. Flores and her wingman had been ordered to charge towards the vice president’s plane. At Mach 2 they would haul it in inside half an hour.
‘Is America under attack?’ The vice president was shaken. Although Mikaela Asta had always known that she was just one missed heartbeat away from becoming leader of the free world, nothing had prepared her for this moment. News of the president’s death had been relayed to Air Force Two as she was flying back to Washington from a meeting in California.
Her chief of staff shook his head.
‘We just don’t know yet,’ he said. ‘But we have had two simultaneous attacks, one on the president and one on the White House. So we have to assume they are co-ordinated.’
Asta was conferring with a handful of staff inside her stateroom in the Boeing C-32. It was a surreal moment. For the first time since Kennedy an American president had been assassinated, and she was the next in line. Mikaela Asta, mother of five.
Media commentators had dubbed her the Queen of the Tea Party since she arrived in Washington in 2008, and then called her a ‘surprise pick’ when Earle Jackson named her as his running mate in the 2012 campaign. But it wasn’t a surprise to Asta. All those years ago, when she was still curing homosexuals through her conversion therapy practice back in Minnesota, she’d known God had a plan for her.
She’d brought both feminine charm and northern cred to Jackson’s decidedly southern Republican team. And as the president’s support collapsed, Asta had been increasingly feted by the Conservative Right. Some on Fox News wistfully pondered whether she could restore American pride. Now they were about to find out.
But any sense of elation was crushed by the weight of the moment and the overwhelming feeling of vulnerability. Despite an unrivalled suite of on-board communications, they were flying blind on what this death meant. The vice president was demanding answers and there weren’t any. If there was ever a moment to pray, it was now.
One of the stateroom phones rang and Asta’s chief of staff picked it up.
‘It’s the speaker.’
‘Morgan, thank God, what do we know?’
‘Not much.’ Big Mac’s familiar voice boomed down the line. ‘The drone attack on the White House was low tech; there were explosives on board but not enough to do any serious damage and there was no trace of chemical or biological weapons. The gunman who killed the president was a pro; the secret service and police haven’t been able to locate the shooter’s position, but it’s likely to have been more than a mile from the park. Based on that the shooter has to be ex-military, but that only narrows the enemy down to just about any group of whack jobs here or offshore.’
Big Mac paused and his voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.
‘There was one other attack,’ he said. ‘On some of our military satellites.’
Asta struggled to get her head around the outrageous idea.
‘Which satellites?’
‘Two that circle the globe in tandem in a low orbit. Their code name is Intruder and they scoop up electronic intelligence. They eavesdrop on the communications, navigation and weapons control signals emitted by naval ships. They can pinpoint and track the position, speed and direction of all military ships at sea.’
‘How do you attack a military satellite?’
‘Well, turns out, just like you do in Star Wars. The satellites were hit with a directed energy weapon fired from Earth.’
‘A what?’
‘A laser, Mikaela. Our satellites were blinded by a laser. Strategic Command is still trying to work out if the damage is temporary or permanent. But one thing they do know: apart from us only two countries have militarised lasers – Russia and China.’
Asta glanced out the window and saw the comforting shape of an F-16 warplane pull up into a flanking position alongside what was now Air Force One.
‘We are going to find the people who did this,’ Asta said. ‘And we are going to make them pay.’
‘We are,’ Big Mac echoed. ‘But until we are certain that our nation is not about to be attacked, you’re flying to Nebraska.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sydney
‘. . . was shot and killed by an unknown assassin.’
Harry Dunkley stumbled from a dream into words he struggled to believe.
‘Just repeating, the American president is dead.’
The former journalist wiped the sleep from his eyes as he tried to make sense of what he was hearing on his bedside radio. Earle Jackson. Murdered. Another madman on the loose.
Dunkley pulled on a pair of tracksuit pants and a rugby jumper, and shuffled over to the seminary’s common room. His regular breakfast companion was standing transfixed in front of the TV, as CNN hit a near hysterical pitch.
‘Police say they now believe the assassin’s shot came from the thirty-eighth floor of the abandoned Book Tower in downtown Detroit, more than a mile from where the president was addressing a rally in Wigle Recreation Park.’
The priest shook his head. ‘Can you believe it? I remember when Kennedy was killed. I was still a young man, early thirties, just back from studying in Rome. Ah, JFK. We had such hopes . . .’
His voice trailed off.
‘This might sound strange, Father, but it’s one of my earliest memories. I was four. I remember an old black-and-white image on a rickety TV with long legs and an oval screen. It had a T-shaped aerial on top with twirly wire around it. It was the first time I saw my mother cry.’
‘I think we all cried that day, Harry.’
Dunkley pulled a couple of lounge chairs close to the set.
‘He was a flawed man though, Father. Far from the saint many portrayed him as, the son of a ruthless tyrant, and a pathological pants-man.’
The priest laughed.
‘That’s what I like about you, m’boy. You don’t waste time on romance. But I’ve never prayed for saints to lead us. Just give me a halfway decent sinner.’
They were glued to the coverage, taking turns to dash to the kitchen before settling down with plates of toast and mugs of tea.
As news obsessives, the seminary priests subscribed to cable, allowing Dunkley and his companion to channel surf between CNN, the BBC World Service and Fox News.
They saw a replay of the vice president’s plane, escorted by two fighter aircraft, flying into Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. One of the journalists who’d been on the plane said the base was the home of US Strategic Command, or STRATCOM. It was an ominous sign because its underground command centre served as a transmission point for a presidential order for nuclear war.
Next, still pictures filled the screen showing Mikaela Asta being sworn in as president by a local judge, then chairing an emergency meeting of the National Security Council via teleconference in the nuclear-proof bunker, before leaving Offutt for the flight to Andrews Air Force Base in Washington.
Dunkley was always amazed by the genius of those who produced rolling news. Most of the time he thought 24-hour news channels were a tedious echo chamber, where the same people said the same things over and over, or where a tiny incident was dissected like a sardine with a cleaver.
But when a serious story broke, the news channels were mesmerising, particularly in the US where the networks had a roster of experts who actually knew what they were talking about, and the resources to cover their nation like a blanket.
It was as the new president’s plane was landing in Washington, and the countdown began to her address to the nation, that the first hints came of a disturbing new twist in an already deeply distressing day. Fox News began quot
ing ‘congressional sources’, saying that there had been a third attack on the US that morning, this one on a military satellite. That lifted the stakes from an attack by a terror group to an act of war by a foreign power.
At 7pm Washington time the networks all switched to the White House. An exquisitely coiffured Mikaela Asta was seated at the desk where Franklin Roosevelt had received the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and George W Bush had made his address on the night of September 11, 2001.
‘My fellow Americans,’ Asta began, her voice as steady as her gaze. There was no hint of her usual Colgate smile today.
‘All I have I would have given gladly not to be speaking to you from this office tonight.’
With an eye to history, Asta’s speechwriters had chosen to begin by recasting the opening line of Lyndon Johnson’s speech to the joint sitting of congress in the wake of Kennedy’s assassination.
‘There are no words to express our grief and none to describe our quiet yet unyielding anger. Today was more than an attack on one man, it was an attack on a nation. If it was an attempt to frighten or intimidate us then our adversary has grievously misjudged the character of the people of the United States.
‘The search is under way for those behind these evil acts. We will bend the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to find those responsible and bring them to justice, be they individuals or nations.’
Asta paused for a second, a neophyte president born for this moment.
‘America has been through difficult times. There are those who say that our power is waning, who believe that our time as the pre-eminent nation has passed. I remind them that there is still only one superpower on Earth.’
The president’s voice was calm, but her steel-blue eyes radiated anger and resolve. This was her commander in chief moment.
‘So whoever our assailants may be, I suggest they ponder the words of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who led the attack against us at Pearl Harbor. All you have done is awoken a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.