Sara’s family and several of her closest friends slowly gathered around as the family’s priest solemnly stepped to the head of the grave, opened his Bible and began to read from it.
***
Once Paxton had been sworn in and congratulated by the Chief Justice, he and his wife stepped back and made way for Arthur and his wife to step forward. With his beaming wife standing behind the Bible, Arthur placed his left hand on the book and raised his right hand.
“Repeat after me,” the Chief Justice began, "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God.”
Arthur firmly and clearly repeated each word. When he’d finished, the Chief Justice smiled and extended his hand to Arthur. “Congratulations, Mr. President,” the Chief Justice said.
“Thank you, Chief Justice,” Arthur replied as the band broke into “Hail to the Chief” and a twenty-one gun salute was fired. Those who had not already been standing, rose to their feet in applause just as a clock in the background chimed noon.
***
The graveside service for Sara had been simple and brief. Just as her casket began to lower into her final resting place, from somewhere far away a clock chimed the noon hour. Her mourners slowly moved away from the grave, their final duty for their child, their sister, their cousin, their friend was done.
After the last car had driven away two men approached and took apart the platform before beginning to fill in the grave from the pile of dirt. Once they had completed the job, placing the flowers on top of the now filled-in grave, they reconstructed the platform over the newly exposed grave.
***
Arthur’s inauguration speech was neither the longest nor the shortest in the history of such speeches. As during his campaign, he had not filled his speech with flowery phases or over-the-top promises no one would ever believe he intended to keep.
He had spoken of the hard work ahead; of what was needed to be done to correct the unintended consequences of previous administrations’ missteps. He spoke of a great country that had gone through a tough stretch, but was very much poised to return to its rightful position as a beacon of freedom and light in an increasingly dark world.
When Arthur had finished, amid the adulation of a cheering crowd, he and his wife stepped out onto Pennsylvania Avenue, followed by Paxton and his wife and a pack of Secret Service agents still stinging from the ambush during the mock parade a week before, scanning the crowd for the slightest sign of trouble.
In the crowd and in every building in the area, agents stood watch as the Arthurs and Paxtons led the parade toward the White House. They were confident they had the situation firmly under control. They were confident they had thought of everything; that they were watching everywhere; that nothing was going to happen on their watch.
They were very, very wrong.
EIGHTEEN
The building that Jack Del Rio had withheld from his recommendations to Doyle was as non-descript as you could find in D.C. There was not one occupant of the building who was known as even a minor player in the D.C. power scene.
More importantly, on this day, no one was looking at that building at all. Even if they had been, they really would not have seen anything to raise an alarm. They might have taken brief notice of the small shed placed on top of the roof. But even if they had, they would not have taken note of the small hole in its side, facing directly at Pennsylvania Avenue.
Jack had though, which is why he’d held it back from Doyle, in case the worst possible scenario played out, and it had played out that way, indeed.
On the other side of the shed’s wall, Jack stood waiting. In his ear was an earbud attuned to the Secret Service’s frequency so he could track the progress of the Presidential party. They would be coming into view shortly, and he was ready.
He hadn’t slept well the night before, having finished his preparations around three in the morning. So far, the world considered him dead, and he had managed to avoid his still being alive being discovered with only a couple of close calls to have survived.
The nearest he’d come to revealing his existence had come at Quantico. It had been a huge risk, but a necessary one. The .338 Lapua Magnum was a sniper rifle developed for the military and had been well-used in the recent Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Although no one, as of yet, had officially recorded a kill from such a distance, a shot fired from the Lapua was capable of travelling two miles before falling harmlessly to the ground, provided the bullet didn’t hit anything first. Jack was about to put that to the test.
The building Jack had chosen was within that range, but well outside the accepted range of any civilian rifle he could have laid his hands on. Nor could he buy one off the rack or simply waltz onto a military base and take off with one without raising an alarm.
But the armory at Quantico had a .338 Lapua in its inventory, and it was the best chance for Jack to obtain one unnoticed. He’d managed to get in and get out with his prize before his “death” had been officially announced. He almost bumped into the old Gunny who still trained the FBI’s agents how to shoot. Had the Gunny turned to his left instead of his right, he’d have spotted Jack and all hell might have broken loose within an hour. But fate smiled on Jack, and he slipped away unnoticed with the rifle and a small amount of ammunition.
The rest of the time had been split between interrogating his prisoner in an old abandoned barn in the Virginia countryside and following the one solid lead he’d uncovered. Unfortunately, his prisoner had little information to give him, and his surveillance of his boss had yielded even less information.
That Collins was involved was beyond any doubt in his mind. Jack knew Collins was not descended from one of the original Russian couples and was not high among the leadership of the plot, but he’d done nothing over the past few days to tip Jack off to who Collins was actually working with.
So here Jack was, out of options save the one he had hoped to avoid all along: standing on a roof nearly two thousand yards from Pennsylvania Avenue, with a loaded sniper rife in his hands, and the man who’d been sent to kill him lying unconscious at his feet. Jack had placed a suicide vest on the man; he’d liberated some C4 from the evidence floor at the Hoover Building and easily constructed the crude device.
What he was planning was murder, no matter the justification, and it troubled him deeply. Killing in self-defense or in defense of someone in imminent danger was one thing. And even though the case could be made that there were many in imminent danger, and that many innocent lives had been taken, it was not an easy act to carry out.
More troubling was in all this time, he still did not know which of the two men he needed to target. The safest play was to shoot both and sort it out in the aftermath. He would only truly be a murderer in every sense of the word if it turned out one of them had been an innocent dupe. Even worse, if he picked one and it turned out he should have shot the other.
The earbud buzzed in his ear, updating the progress of the parade. Jack raised the scope to his eye and sighted in on the pavement. In just a few seconds, Arthur and Paxton would walk into view and he would have a window of opportunity to fire of about fifteen seconds before a smaller building would obstruct his view of the roadway. There would be no further opportunities for him to fire again.
The crowds lined up on both sides of the street had begun stirring as the President neared, waving and cheering. Jack sighted in on Arthur as he stepped into view, then swung slightly to sight in on Paxton a second later.
With the seconds ticking away loudly in his head, Jack experienced the events of the last few days of his life—some he hadn’t even seen first-hand—flashing before his eyes in a manic sort of high-speed replay.
Sights and sounds zipped in and out of his awareness, Cashman's small jet crashing into the ocean, meeting with Cashman on his brother's sub, Cashman’s large plane plunging to ear
th in the Appalachian Mountains, the destruction of the Los Angeles, his meeting with Karpov and Sara's plane exploding before his very eyes.
It took all of two or three seconds, leaving one question hammering at him, demanding an answer and demanding the right one. Who do I shoot? Arthur? Paxton? Both?
He sighted back and forth on both as he desperately sought the answer. Had Arthur been the traitor all along or had Cashman been replaced by the traitor Paxton? Even as he switched back and forth between targets, he mentally adjusted for the wind, the temperature, the pace both men were walking up the street, the distance and speed with which the bullet would travel, and how much gravity would pull the bullet down toward the ground.
With three seconds to spare in his window Jack sighted on a target for one last time, adjusting his aim point slightly ahead to account for the distance the target would travel from the time he pulled the trigger to impact.
Then with a silent prayer to anyone listening above that he’d chosen correctly, he pulled the trigger.
Once and once only.
NINTEEN
Doyle had joined the procession as soon as the President had begun walking up Pennsylvania Avenue. Del Rio’s lesson from the mock parade fresh in his mind, Doyle was going to have a very sore neck by the end of the day from trying to watch every single person standing in the area simultaneously.
So far everything had gone off without a hitch, and the President and his entourage were but two minutes from reaching the safety of the White House. The President and his wife had spent the entire walk waving back to the crowd. Doyle doubted the President’s right arm had ever made it lower than the level of his shoulder the entire time he been walking.
The Paxtons, smiling proudly, were walking hand-in-hand. Doyle was looking right at Paxton when the man’s chest exploded in a spray of bright red. Paxton’s eyes went wide and he tumbled to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
There was a very long second when no one reacted, the shock of what they had just witnessed nearly impossible to process. Even before the crowd reacted in horror, before the Arthur’s were aware of the tragedy unfolding just a few steps behind, Doyle’s training kicked in and his agents weren’t but a split second behind their boss in recovering.
The President’s limousine, which had been following a few yards behind, immediately closed the gap and a hoard of agents swarmed of the President and the First Lady. The couple were hurled into the back seat with agents piling in on top of them even as the driver floored the pedal and hurtled down the road, getting the President to the security of his house in less than thirty seconds after the shot had been fired.
Agents had also grabbed Mrs. Paxton and hustled her into the second car which also departed hastily. Doyle checked Paxton for a pulse, knowing it was futile after seeing the hole the exiting bullet had left where Paxton’s heart should have been.
Spotting the hole in the road where the bullet had buried itself after exiting Paxton’s body, Doyle took note of the small entrance wound just below the base of Paxton’s neck and started working out where the bullet had come from. He hadn’t heard the sound of it being fired.
Agents and police officers were all scrambling into action, searching for the shooter close by, but what Doyle had seen told him this bullet had traveled far and fast before finding its mark. He had just worked out the angle and was tracing it back to a building well over two thousand yards away when a powerful explosion erupted from the roof of the very building he was looking at. Debris showered the area as it tumbled to the ground below.
Standing over his failure to perform his duty, knowing the shooter might never be known, as it was likely he had just blown himself up, Doyle took comfort in a bizarre thought. The building the shot had come from was not one that Del Rio had identified as a threat. Doyle might have failed, but so had Collins’ late lamented Golden Boy.
It was cold comfort, but with a dead Vice-President laying at his feet it was all the comfort Doyle could expect for now, and maybe for a very long time to come.
***
After firing the shot, Jack had waited the few seconds needed for the bullet to travel to its target. When he saw Paxton fall, he took no joy in having pulled off the near-impossible shot. Dropping the rifle on his unconscious prisoner, he flipped a timer to the on position on the vest and then ran like hell for the stairwell.
He made it down eight floors before the vest went off. The way the building rocked with the blast, he feared for a moment he had overdone it with the explosives. But the building held, and he sped down to the second floor.
Once there, he exited the stairwell and waited next to the door, It didn’t take very long for an army of agents and cops to storm up the stairs. He imagined they were coming up in the elevator as well, provided it was still functional after the blast.
He waited for the first and second waves to pass by before clipping his Secret Service ID on his jacket pocket. Then, placing a handkerchief with a splotch of red on it that looked convincingly like fresh blood on his head, he opened the door and started back down the stairs.
Several more agents and cops passed him once he got into the lobby, one pointing out where an EMS vehicle was parked that could tend to his injury before heading up the stairs.
Jack exited the building, walked toward the vehicle and kept right on walking around it. In the mass chaos of anger, fear, and confusion Jack got clear of the area without drawing any attention to himself. Three blocks away he stopped at a liquor store and bought two small shot bottles of whiskey and a bottle of water.
With his purchases in tow, Jack ducked into a nearby alley where he promptly threw up into a trash bin. After rinsing his mouth out with the water, he quickly downed both bottles of the cheap whiskey and let the slow fire burn down his throat and into his chest while he waited for the shaking to pass.
TWENTY
Neither Soors nor Cavanaugh had remained on the podium once Arthur had begun his Inaugural Speech. They were both in their cars and long gone by the time the new President had begun his ill-fated walk up Pennsylvania Avenue. After all, they had more important work to do.
Cavanaugh needed to make the arrangements needed to secure the White House while Soors needed to reach out to their contacts in Russia and give them the success code so they could proceed accordingly.
Collins had waited to depart until the parade had officially gotten underway. Even though he had played a role in his protégé’s death, he wanted to make sure the man was buried properly. Sharon would be waiting for him at the mortuary.
So Wells was actually the first member of the conspiracy to be aware of Paxton’s assassination, and that was only because he was watching the live coverage when it happened. He imagined the ghouls that ran the news networks were secretly thrilled to have captured it all live and in living color.
He was glad his wife and daughter had decided to go shopping instead of watching the inauguration with him. Not only would he rather not expose them to such violence, he would rather not have them overhearing the telephone call he was about to make. He dialed Soors number, knowing the call would be forwarded to her whether she was in her car or somewhere else.
“Charles,” she answered, her tone indicating she was unaware of what had just occurred.
“Paxton’s dead,” Wells said without preamble. The shot he’d seen on TV had left little doubt that the wound was instantly fatal. “Shot dead on his way up Pennsylvania Avenue not a minute ago.”
“What?” Soors erupted. “How? Who?”
“He was shot,” Wells repeated, “and whoever shot him intended to kill him. As for who, I have no idea. Do you?”
“Well it certainly wasn’t me,” Soors denied harshly. “I doubt Cavanaugh would do something so insane either, and I suppose we have to assume you aren’t involved.”
“Of course,” Wells said. “However, this does impact us greatly. I propose we hold off until we know exactly who was behind this.”
“No,” Soors answered after a few seconds of silence. “We had a contingency for this and we will use it even if it isn’t a perfect solution to the problem. I will call Bradley and inform him.”
Soors hung up and Wells slipped his phone back onto the receiver with a sigh. As usual, he was outvoted two to one. Lately he had begun to wonder if his compatriots weren’t voting themselves into their own demise. But like it or not, he was in this all the way up to his neck with no way out.
That did not mean he didn’t have options of his own. It was time he started exercising those options to ensure that he would not be receiving a visit from some very angry people wearing badges and carrying guns, looking for any excuse to discharge them.
Cavanaugh had been informed of the assassination by one of his deputies just seconds ahead of Soors call. He agreed with her decision to proceed, but like Wells, he was beginning to wonder if they had some sort of curse hanging over them.
Too much had been going wrong lately, and this assassination, while not terminal to their plans, was not going to make completing their task any easier. He wasn’t at the point of looking for an escape route, not yet at any rate, but he had lost the absolute certainty of success he’d had just one week before.
TWENTY-ONE
As darkness fell over D.C., a shocked nation waited on edge. What was going to happen next? Some wondered if this were some kind of bad omen hanging over the Arthur Administration on the very first day of its existence. They weren’t alone in that as the new President also shared their concern.
Arthur paced back and forth behind his desk in the Oval Office. The lights were turned down low and the blinds drawn over the windows. The glass was bullet proof of course, but Doyle was taking no chances and wanted no one on the outside to know the President’s exact location inside the room.
Jack Del Rio: Complete Trilogy: Reservations, Betrayals, Endgames Page 38