Any one of these people could be Jack or Jill, I kept thinking as I watched the crowd.
Get the President and his wife out of here. Do it now! Let go, let go.
The Kennedy Center in D.C. The shooting of the law student, Charlotte Kinsey, in a public place, just like this! My mind kept going back to that particular killing.
Something had happened there, something revealing about Jack and Jill. The pattern had been broken! What was the real pattern?
We began to walk upstairs to the jam-packed auditorium.
If Jack and Jill are willing to die, they can succeed here. Easily!
And yet it seemed to me that they planned to get away with this. That was the one pattern of theirs that was consistent. I didn't see how that could happen in the middle of Madison Square Garden -- not if they chose to attack here.
The real Jack and Jill -- the President and the First Lady of the United States had arrived. On time.
A DROP OF SWEATslowly rolled off the tip of my nose.
A tractor-trailer was sitting on my chest.
The thunderous noise coming from inside the concrete-and-steel auditorium added to the escalating confusion and chaos.
It was decibels beyond deafening once we were inside. Nearly ten thousand people had filled the auditorium by the time we arrived.
I moved toward the main auditorium stage with the rest of the security entourage. Secret Service agents, FBI, U.S. marshals, and New York police were posted everywhere around the President.
I searched everywhere for Kevin Hawkins. Hopefully, at his side, Jill.
President Byrnes never let his smile or his step falter as he entered the auditorium. I remembered his words: “A threat by a couple of kooks can't be permitted to disrupt the government of the United States. We can't allow that to happen.”
It was warm in the building, but I was in a cold sweat -- as cold as the winds blowing off the Hudson River. We were less than thirty yards from the massive stage that was filled with celebrities and well-known politicians, including both the governor and the city's popular mayor.
Cameras flashed blinding light everywhere, from every imaginable angle. Awhine of feedback lashed out from one of the stage microphones. I adjusted a five-pointed star on the left lapel of my suit jacket. The star was color-coded for the day. It identified me as part of the Secret Service team. The day's color was green.
For hope?
Jack and Jill had kept all their.promises so far. They could have found a way to get weapons inside. There were at least a thousand handguns, but also rifles and shotguns inside the huge amphitheater. The police and other security guards had them.
Any one of them could be Jack or Jill.
Any one of them certainly could be Kevin Hawkins.
Don Hamerman was at my side, but it was too loud for us to talk in anything approaching normal tones. Occasionally, we leaned close and shouted into each other's ear.
Even then, it was difficult to hear more than an isolated word or phrase.
“He's taking too long to walk to the stage!” Hamerman said. I think that's what he said.
“I know it. Tell me about it,” I shouted back.
“Watch the crowd movement,” he yelled at me. “They'll stampede if they see a gun pulled. President's spending too much time out in the crowd. Is he taunting the killers? What does he think that he has to prove?”
The chief of staff was right, of course. The President seemed to be daring Jack and Jill. Still, we might get lucky with the trap inside the crowded hall.
Suddenly, the crowd did start to stampede! The crowd began to part.
“Kill the son of a bitch! Kill him!” I heard the shouts a row or two ahead. I moved quickly, pushing, clawing my way forward in a hurry.
“Watch it, you bastard !” a woman turned and yelled in my face.
“Kill him now!” I heard up ahead.
"Let me through? I shouted as loud as I could.
The man who was causing the scene up ahead had shoulder-length blond hair. He wore a baggy black parka with a black backpack attached.
I grabbed him at the same time as someone else from the other side of the aisle. We brought the blond man down hard and fast.
His skull crunched against the cement floor.
“New York police!” the other guy holding the blond man yelled.
“D.C. police, White House detail,” I yelled back. I was already patting down the suspect. The New York cop had his gun in the suspect's face.
I didn't recognize the blond as Kevin Hawkins, but there was no way to tell for sure, and absolutely no way for us to take a chance on him. We had to take him down. There was no choice about that.
“Kill the bastard! Kill the President!” the blond man continued to scream.
He was absolutely crazy, everything was, not just this asshole on the floor.
“You hurt me!” he started to yell at me and the New York cop.
“You hurt my head!”
Madman ? I wondered.
Copycat?
Diversion ?
KAMIKAZE ATTACK! It was coming any second now. A killer willing to commit suicide. That was why this couldn't be stopped. It was also why President Byrnes was the walking dead.
Kevin Hawkins hadn't experienced any problems getting into a prime position in the noisy, crowded auditorium. He had used his imagination and visual skills to create an unusual identity for himself.
Hawkins was now a tall brunette woman dressed in a dark blue pantsuit. He wasn't a very good-looking woman, he had to admit, but he was much less likely to draw attention because of it.
Hawkins also had a Federal Bureau of Investigation ID, which was authentic down to the stamp and thickness of the paper. It identified him as Lynda Cole, a special agent from New York. The photojournalist stood at Lynda Cole's seat in the sixth row and calmly observed the crowd.
Snapshot.
Snapshot.
He took several mind photos, one after the other, mostly of his competition. The FBI, the Secret Service, the NYPD. Actually, he didn't believe that he had any real competition.
Kamikaze. Who could stop that ? No one could. Maybe God could.
And maybe not even God.
He was impressed by the sheer numbers of the opposition, though. They were serious about trying to derail Jack and Jill this morning. And who knew? Maybe they would succeed with their superior numbers and firepower. Stranger things had happened.
Hawkins just didn't believe that they could. Their last real chance had been before he'd gotten inside the building -- not now. The photojournalist versus the FBI, the Secret Service, the U.S. marshals, and the NYPD. That seemed reasonable enough to him. It seemed like a pretty fair game.
Their elaborate preparations struck him as being ironic. He waited for the target to appear. Their game plan was an essential part of his. Everything they were doing now, every step, had been anticipated and was necessary for kamikaze to work.
“She's a Grand Old Flag” began to play from the loudspeakers, and Hawkins clapped along with the others. He was a patriot, after all. No one might believe it after today, but he knew that it was so.
Kevin Hawkins was one of the last true patriots.
NO ONE stops an assassin bullet.
There was a fire burning inside my chest. I was moving quickly through the crowd -- searching for Kevin Hawkins everywhere.
Every nerve in my body was stretched tight and burning. My right hand rested on the hard butt of my Glock. I kept thinking that any one of these people could be Jack or Jill. The handgun seemed insubstantial in the huge, noisy crowd.
I had made it to the second row, just to the right of the ten- to twelve-foot-high stage. The light in the hall seemed to be fading, but maybe it was the light inside my head. The light inside my soul?
The President was just stepping onto the gray metal stairs.
He clasped the hand of a well-wisher. The President patted the shoulder of another. He seemed to have forced the id
ea of danger out of his mind.
Sally Byrnes climbed the stairs in front of her husband. I could see her features clearly I held the thought that maybe Jack and Jill could, too. Secret Service agents seemed to take up all the available space around the stage.
I was there when it finally happened. I was so close.
Jack and Jill struck with a terrible vengeance.
A bomb went off. The loudest imaginable clap of thunder struck near the stage- maybe even on the stage itself. The explosion was completely unexpected by the bodyguards surrounding the President. It detonated inside the defense perimeter.
Chaos! A bomb instead of gunfire! Even though the auditorium had been swept for bombs just that morning, I was thinking as I rushed forward. I noticed that my hand was bleeding -- probably from the earlier tussle with the nutcase, but maybe from the bomb.
The worst imaginable sequence of actions began to unfold, and in very fast motion. Pistols and riot-control shotguns were pulled out everywhere in the crowd. No one seemed to know where the bomb had hit yet, or how, or the actual calculations of damage done. Or what purpose the explosion was meant to serve?
Everyone dropped to the floor in the first twenty rows and up on the stage.
Thick black smoke billowed toward the ceiling, the glass roof, and overhanging steel girders.
The air smelled like human hair burning. People were screaming everywhere. I couldn't tell how many were hurt. I couldn't see the President anymore.
The bomb had detonated close to the stage. Very close to where President Byrnes had been standing, shaking hands and chatting, just a few seconds before. The ringing was still vibrating in my ears.
I frantically pushed my way toward the stage. There was no way to tell how many people had been injured, or maybe even killed, by the blast. I still couldn't locate the President or Mrs. Byrnes because of the smoke and the bodies suddenly in frenzied motion. TV cameramen were wading in toward the disaster scene.
I finally spotted a cluster of Secret Service agents huddled tightly around the President. They had him up on his feet.
Thomas Byrnes was alive; he was safe. The agents were starting to move him out of harm's way The Secret Service bodyguards acted as a human shield for the President, who didn't appear to be hurt.
I had my Glock out, pointed up at the rafters for safety I shouted, “Police!”
Several other Secret Service agents and NYPD detectives were doing the same thing. We were identifying ourselves to one another.
Trying not to get shot, trying not to shoot anybody else during the terrifying confusion. Several people in the crowd were crying hysterically I kept pushing and pulling my way toward the southwest side exit that the Secret Service had used to bring the President in.
The escape route had been established beforehand.
Beyond the glowing red EXIT sign, a long concrete tunnel led to a special visitors' parking area on the river side of the building.
Bulletproof, armor-plated cars were waiting there. What else might be waiting? I wondered. A voice in my head shouted for attention as I moved forward as fast as I could. Jack and Jill have always been a step ahead of us. They missed him Why did they miss ?
They don't make mistakes.
I was less than a dozen yards from the President and his Secret Service guards when it hit me, when finally I understood what no one else did yet.
“Change the route out!” I yelled at the top of my voice. “Change the escape route!”
NO ONE heard me shouting. I could barely hear my own voice in the melee. There was too much noise and confusion inside Madison Square Garden.
I pushed ahead anyway, desperately following the phalanx that looked like the rabble at a prizefight from my vantage point.
The smoke from the bomb had created a kind of strobe-light effect.
“Change the escape route! Change the escape route!” I shouted over and over.
We finally entered the whitewashed concrete tunnel. Every sound echoed bizarrely off the walls. I was right behind the last of the Secret Service agents.
“Don't go this way! Stop the President!” I continued to.yell in vain.
The tunnel was full of late-arriving special guests and even more security guards. We were pushing forward against a strong tide coming the other way It was too late to change the route now. I pushed and shoved my way closer and closer to President and Mrs. Byrnes. I desperately searched the crowd for the face of Kevin Hawkins. There was still a chance to stop him.
Every face I encountered registered shock. The eyes I saw were wide with fear, and they were searching my face. Suddenly, there were several loud pops in the heart of the tunnel. Gunshots!
Five shots seemed to explode inside the tight phalanx of people around the President. Someone had gotten inside the defense perimeter. My body sagged as if I'd been shot myself.
Five shots. Three quick -- then two more.
I couldn't see what had happened up ahead, but suddenly I heard the eeriest sound. It was a high-pitched wall, a keening.
Five shots!
Three -- then two more.
The keening sound was coming from where I had last seen fleeting glimpses of President Byrnes, where the shots had exploded just a few seconds before.
I shoved my body, all my weight, against the crowd and forced myself toward the epicenter of the madness.
It felt as if I were trying to swim out of quicksand, to pull myself free. It was almost impossible to walk, to push, to shove.
Five shots. What had happened up ahead?
Then I could see. I saw everything at once.
My mouth felt incredibly dry. My eyes were watering. The bunkerlike tunnel had become strangely quiet. President Thomas Byrnes was down on the gray cement floor. A lot of blood was flowing in rivulets, spreading down his white shirt. Bright red blood drained from the right side of his face, or maybe the wound was high in his neck. I couldn't tell from where I was.
Gunshots. Execution-style.
A professional hit.
Jack and Jill, those bastards!
It was their pattern, or close to it.
I waded forward, roughly, shoving people out of my way, I saw Don Hamerman, Jay Grayer, and then Sally Byrnes. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
Sally Byrnes was trying to get to her husband. The First Lady didn't appear to be hurt. Still, I wondered if she was a target, too. Maybe Jill's target? Secret Service agents were holding Mrs. Byrnes back, trying to protect her. They wanted to keep her away from the bloodshed, from her husband, from any possible danger.
I saw a second body then. The shock was like a low hard punch to my stomach. No one could have anticipated this terrible scene.
A woman was down near the President. She'd been shot in her right eye socket. There was a second wound in her throat.
She appeared to be dead. A semiautomatic lay near her sprawled body.
The assassin ?
Jill?
Who else could it possibly be?
My eyes were drawn back to the motionless figure of Thomas Byrnes. I was afraid that he was already dead. I couldn't be sure, but I believed he'd been hit at least three times. I saw Sally Byrnes finally reach her husband's body. She was weeping uncontrollably, and she wasn't the only one.
JACK SAT STILL and calmly watched the maze of bumper-to-bumper cars and tractor-trailers stalled on West Street near the entrance to New York's Holland Tunnel.
He could hear radios blaring on each side of his black Jeep.
He observed the troubled and confused faces inside the cars.
A middle-aged woman in a forest-green Lexus was in tears. A thousand sirens screamed like banshees on the loose in midtown.
Jack and Jill came to The Hill. Now everyone knew why, or at least they thought they did.
Now everyone understood the seriousness of the game.
Turn off your news reports, he wanted to tell all these well-meaning people approaching the tunnel out of New York. What's happ
ened has nothing to do with any of you. It really and truly doesn't. You'll never know the truth. No one ever will. You can't handle the truth, anyway. You wouldn't understand if I stopped and explained it to you right here.
He tried not to think about Sara Rosen as he finally rode into the long, claustrophobic tunnel that snaked beneath the Hudson.
Beyond the tunnel, he drove south on the New Jersey Turnpike, then on 1-95 into Delaware and points farther south.
Sara was the past, and the past didn't matter. The past didn't exist, except as a lesson for the future. Sara was gone. He did think about poor Sara as he ate at the Country Cupboard near the Talleyville exit on the turnpike. It was important to grieve.
For Jill, not for President Byrnes. She was worth a dozen Thomas Byrneses. She had done a good job, a nearly perfect job, even if she had been used right from the start. And Sara Rosen had definitely been used. She had been his eyes and ears inside the White House. She had been his mistress. Poor Monkey Face.
As he approached Washington about seven that night, he made a vow: he wouldn't sentimentalize about Sara again. He knew he could do that. He could control his own thoughts.
He was better than Kevin Hawkins, who had been a very good soldier indeed.
He had been Jack.
But he was no longer Jack.
Jack no longer existed.
He was no longer Sam Harrison, either. Sam Harrison had been a facade, a necessary safeguard, a part of the complex plan. Sam Harrison no longer existed.
Now his life could be simple and mostly good again. He was almost home. He had completed his Mission: Impossible, and it was a success. Everything had gone almost perfectly Then he was home, pulling into the familiar rounded driveway that was filled with colorful seashells and tiny pebbles and a few children's toys.
He saw his little girl come running out of the house, her blond hair streaming. He saw his wife close behind her, also running.
Tears rolled down her cheeks and down his own. He wasn't afraid to cry. He wasn't afraid of anything anymore.
Jesus God, mercy, the war was finally ended. The enemy, the evil one, was dead. The good guys had won, and the most precious way of life on earth was safe for a little while longer--for the lives of his children, anyway.
Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill Page 27