The Coalition: A Novel of Suspense

by Samuel Marquis

  “Wait,” exclaimed the Apostle, staring through his high-powered binoculars, “you weren’t supposed to—”

  “So I changed my fucking mind.” She took the stock of her rifle and drove it into his binoculars, smashing his face like a hydraulic ram. Then she swatted him a second time, downward, knocking the pistol from his hand. With a third swing of the rifle, she delivered another crushing blow to his head. He crumpled to the roof with a blank look on his face. He was out of commission, at least for the time being.

  Skyler grabbed his pistol with her gloved hand and threw it over the edge. Then she shoved the Winchester into his arms, picked up the dead Agent Hughes, heaved him over her shoulder, and ran for the stairwell door.

  That’s when the chopper appeared.

  It came out of nowhere, a monstrous dragonfly with spinning rotors on the top and tail of the aircraft, its white-and-blue frame glistening in the sunlight as it roared in from the east. The side door slid open and two SWAT sharpshooters opened up on her. Stirred into action, the countersnipers on the rooftops across the plaza and the dome of the Capitol quickly joined in the fusillade.

  Bullets danced all around her, ricocheting off the wall and metal door to the stairwell. Skyler ran as fast as her legs would carry her, straining under the weight of the small but suddenly very unwieldy Agent Hughes. Every stride took tremendous effort, but finally she made it to the door, throwing it open with a free hand while balancing the dead agent over her shoulder like a circus act.

  Then she plunged down the stairs, two steps at a time.

  CHAPTER 142

  SHAKING HIS HEAD CLEAR, the Apostle crawled to the wall for cover, holding a warm Winchester 70T without a round in the chamber. Bullets rained upon him from all directions, like a shooting gallery with him as the central target. He might have laughed at the sheer craziness of his predicament if he had any energy to spare. The bitch was clever, he had to admit. She had fulfilled—no she had wildly exceeded—her contract and then, without pause, she had ensured her own survival. She was good—damned good—a worthy adversary in a world where there weren’t enough of them.

  But she was of no concern to him now, at least until he got off this motherfucking rooftop. If he could just pull himself together, he might be able to get out of this. He and his platoon had been in just as tight a pinch during a Desert Storm raid in Kuwait, and he had come out of that one alive.

  You can do it again!

  But he had to hurry. His chances of escape were dwindling with each passing second.

  He pulled out his backup gun, the compact Beretta in his ankle holster. Releasing the safety, he took aim at the chopper. He fired five times and was answered with twenty rounds of blistering counterfire, not just from the chopper, but the sharpshooters on the surrounding buildings. They were moving into position, trying to get a clear line of sight, a better angle.

  The helicopter swung around, and suddenly the Apostle was exposed, the wall now offering no protection. He retreated to one of the ventilation fans, protruding like a blob of coral on a sea floor. The wail of the rotors and blazing gunfire were deafening. For a fleeting instant, he imagined himself back in Kuwait firing at ragheads. He felt a strange warrior spirit sweeping through him, an unexpected and unusually pleasant sensation. Suddenly, he burst out with maniacal laughter, jumped up, and opened fire at the chopper in a rapid burst, completely emptying his magazine.

  It was then he met with a stroke of good fortune.

  The last shot sailed through the front windshield of the helicopter and drove into the helmeted pilot’s forehead. As his hands slid from the controls, the huge machine shuddered, pitched wildly right, and nosed downward toward the edge of the roof. When the front two wheels of the undercarriage clipped the wall, the helicopter bounced up, bucking and swaying like a rodeo bull. Then the aircraft stalled as the top blade slowed its rotation.

  Again, the front tires smashed into the wall. Only this time, the helicopter plunged over the edge.

  Down the chopper plummeted, a free fall nosedive.

  A terrific explosion shook the building. The next thing the Apostle knew, smoke leapt up along the edge of the roof in a black mushroom cloud.

  There was no time to celebrate. He ran to the door of the stairwell, threw it open, and plunged down the stairs. The thick black smoke rose like a plume of volcanic ash, covering his retreat like a stage curtain.

  The bitch! I still have to kill the bitch!

  He might not make it out of this, but he would damn sure take her out before the feds swarmed the building. It would be like a final cigar for a man condemned to a firing squad. The Apostle certainly wasn’t going to be taken alive. If he couldn’t manage to escape, he would at least kill the bitch before making a last violent stand. He had long ago decided that when his time came, he would go out like Butch and Sundance.

  With his pistol blazing, laughing in the face of his enemies.

  CHAPTER 143

  “AGENT DOWN! GUNMAN ON ROOF! CLEAR THE AREA!” Skyler shouted as she ran toward the elevators, lugging the limp Agent Hughes over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

  The twentieth floor of the Denver Tribune Tower was already in a heightened state of alert. Editors, graphic artists, staff reporters, and administrative assistants were peering worriedly out the office windows, wondering what the commotion was about, when the black cloud of smoke shot past them. But Skyler needed more. To get out of the building alive and avoid capture, she needed to incite a complete panic.

  “Agent down! Gunman on roof! Clear the area!” she yelled again, louder this time.

  Now the employees heeded her warning.

  The floor turned into the deck of the Titanic in the final fateful minutes. People fled the offices, cubes, and workstations in panic, choking the hallways like salmon during a summer run. Running, stumbling, colliding, screaming. The bedlam spread with the speed of a computer virus, and people were knocked down as they merged into the traffic flowing toward the fire stairs and elevators.

  It was complete pandemonium.

  Skyler was nearly bowled over by a wave of people as she made a mad dash for the bank of elevators. A silvery-long-haired man who looked like a cross between the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir and Yosemite Sam—whom Skyler recognized as illustrious veteran political reporter Mike Littwin—was frantically punching the Down button. Around him stood a dozen or so people, muttering to themselves and quaking in their shoes.

  “Take the stairs!” Skyler commanded them as she dashed up. “This man needs medical attention and the gunman is after me. Save yourselves and get out of here! Go now!”

  Everyone but Littwin obeyed her command and instantly scrambled for the fire stairs.

  “Why aren’t you going with them! If you stay here you will die!” she shrieked at him.

  “After Columbine, Aurora, and Colorado Springs, I think I’ll take my chances with you,” he said, showing not even a modicum of fear. “My forty-yard-dash time isn’t exactly in the Demaryius Thomas range.”

  “But he’ll kill you!” she cried as the doors to one of the elevators started to open.

  As if to prove her point, a bullet whizzed past Littwin’s left ear, crashing into the heavy steel doors as they parted. Turning, Skyler saw the Apostle running down the hallway toward her, teeth clenched, Beretta firing.

  “Okay, maybe I was wrong—call it a Bernie Sanders moment,” said Littwin, and the veteran political reporter made a desperate dash for the stairwell, running every bit as fast as one Demaryius Antwon Thomas, the blue chip wide-receiver of the Denver Broncos.

  Skyler stepped into the elevator, dropped the dead agent to the floor, and jerked out her Glock as the Apostle charged toward her. Her arm swung up and she fired three times. Then she reached out and hit the button for the garage.

  A bullet drove into her, sending a burning ripple of pain up her arm. Then she was hit again.

  The Apostle came on like a demon, but he was not swift enough.

  Th
e elevator doors closed.

  CHAPTER 144

  PATTON WAS SUCKING MEGAWIND. Running up the fire stairs, his thigh and calf muscles felt like lead, his breath came in ragged gasps, and his lungs burned like an icy fire. He had only two floors to go, but he was fading badly.

  Then he heard shooting, coming from above. It sounded close.

  It was all he needed for a second wind. He charged up the last two flights of stairs and threw open the steel door.

  There loomed the professional killer from last night! Thirty feet away, loping toward him like a big, scary Sumatran tiger!

  The Apostle’s right hand flew up, and he let loose with a rapid burst of gunfire. Patton dove into the cubicle next to the door. The bullets whizzed past, slamming into the door.

  The firing stopped for a moment and Patton quickly surveyed his surroundings, his muscles tense as brick. He definitely couldn’t stay here. The flimsy pressboard and synthetic fabric offered no protection. He had to keep moving, stay on the offensive, seeking cover behind large stationary objects like desks and credenzas.

  But he also had to be cautious. He was dealing with a trained assassin.

  The same son of a bitch who had come within a millimeter of slitting his throat last night!

  Suddenly, a fusillade of bullets tore through the walls of the cube. Patton scrambled to the side as the little light-filled holes moved from left to right like a buzz saw carving through pressboard.

  Patton ran from the cubicle. The Apostle was standing up on some object and firing down at him from two cubes away.

  Damn! How did he get there so fast without making a sound?

  Patton gave a head fake to the left, in the direction of the cube across the hallway, turned, and ran down a short hallway until he reached an open area with clustered desks. He dove behind one and peered cautiously out from the side. From his Quantico training, he knew you were never supposed to look over an obstacle when under attack. You were supposed to remain in a crouched position and look around it, so as to avoid counterfire. He didn’t see anything, but he heard sounds to his right.

  Now he saw the Apostle again, standing next to a gray file cabinet, his pistol pointing straight at him. There was a crazy glaze in his eyes like a rabid dog as he pulled the trigger. Patton ducked down and returned fire twice, but both shots missed as the Apostle dove behind the cabinet.

  Another shot rang out, sending splinters of oak airborne from the desk behind him.

  Again, Patton returned fire and low-dashed to the next desk over.

  The movement was a mistake. There was a third shot, and this time he felt a burning sensation along his right side. He fell back heavily and slumped against the desk, feeling a rush of warm blood inside his shirt. Looking down, he saw a growing red blot.

  “Target down!” the Apostle gloated from twenty feet away.

  Now Patton thought of his adversary in a new light, one of roiling contempt. You machine! You crazy murdering machine! I’m going to blow your head off, you son of a bitch!

  He heard movement again, a light footfall on the carpet, to his right. He felt his antagonist pressing closer, heard his light breathing. He swung the gun up and leaped out from behind the desk, the already hot gun blazing in his hand.

  There was a look of astonishment as the Apostle took a hit in the left shoulder. He fell back with a grunt. Patton squeezed the trigger two more times, but the bullets drove harmlessly into a cube.

  The Apostle crept away, noiselessly.

  For a half minute, there was a standoff. No one moved or made a peep.

  For diversion, Patton grabbed a stapler and tossed it a few feet away, hoping to draw return fire.

  There was none.

  But there was something else: shuffling feet and voices, coming from the stairwell.

  The cavalry! It’s about fucking time! Now he felt emboldened. “It’s over, asshole! They’re coming for you!”

  His bravado was answered by a burst of gunfire. Then he heard feet thumping across the carpet, followed by a loud metallic banging sound.

  Fire stairs!

  Wincing in pain, Patton staggered to his feet and ran for the exit. He heard the hollow echo of the Apostle’s dashing footsteps in the stairwell. When he reached the landing, he raised his gun to fire, but the man had vanished like Houdini, the door swinging shut behind him. Now Patton heard loud voices, nearby. He looked over the railing and saw Henry Sharp running up the stairs, glowering at him from several floors below.

  “Agent Patton, what the hell are you doing? Stop!”

  Sharp? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me? What should I do?

  He popped in a fresh mag and ran up the stairs, bursting through the door shoulder first.

  The Apostle was there, dancing on the wall, mumbling incoherently as long-range sharpshooter bullets whirred past him like hissing snakes. A dead federal agent in a SWAT uniform and a sniper’s rifle lay at his feet next to the wall. The Apostle held a pistol in his right hand, but it was pointed down in a nonthreatening position.

  “Care to dance with me, Special Agent?”

  A bullet ricocheted off the wall behind Patton. “I think I’ll sit this one out.” He crouched down low to avoid another stray bullet.

  “Don’t you want to know who fired the fatal shots?”

  With an unsteady arm, Patton drew a bead on the Apostle. Blood poured from his side, but he ignored it. He was tempted to just shoot the bastard, but he had him talking now. “I already know the answer—it was you. Why don’t you just step down from there, so the world can hear your story?”

  “You really think it’s that simple?” the Apostle shouted, moving along the wall, back and forth, a cross between a pacing zoo tiger and a high trapeze artist. He just managed to avoid two bullets as they screeched overhead, kicking up gravel on the north side of the roof. The guy had to be insane, Patton thought, dancing along a rooftop with unfriendly fire pouring down on him, indifferent to the fact that with one false step he would plunge two hundred feet to his death.

  Patton waved his arms, hoping to discourage further fire from the countersnipers. “I don’t think it’s simple at all. So why don’t you put down the gun and come down from there. Then you can explain it to me and the rest of the world.” He stepped cautiously toward the Apostle, gun trained on his chest. “You want the people out there to know the truth, don’t you?”

  “You just want me alive so you’ll have a neat and tidy case. That’s the way it is with you G-boys, isn’t it? Always just one guy who did it, one nutcase. Oswold, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, Hinckley. Always a loner, a social outcast, a loser.”

  Patton continued moving toward him, keeping the Glock locked on his chest. The shooting had stopped, which was a huge relief. The spotters must have seen him and given the order to hold fire. “I don’t believe for a minute it was one guy. So who, besides Locke, was behind it? What’s the name of the group? It was the same one behind the Kieger hit, wasn’t it?”

  “I believe you’re catching o—”

  The words died in his mouth as multiple rounds of gunfire pierced the air. Suddenly, the Apostle’s face and upper chest opened up like an egg, squirting blood. He wobbled for an instant before his bandy legs came out from beneath him. His hands reached out and clawed at air, but the effort was half-hearted as only his brain was alive. Over the edge he flew, his high wire act brought to a swift and violent end.

  Patton wheeled to see Henry Sharp and a half dozen CIRG sharpshooters with rifles in a horizontal hold.

  “Goddamnit, Henry, he was about to tell me who was behind all this shit! Why the fuck did you have to shoot him?”

  Sharp said nothing. He went to the edge to have a look. Patton stumbled after him, dripping blood.

  Twenty stories down, splattered against the pavement like a run-over squirrel, lay the Apostle. One of his arms was wrenched back at a grotesque angle. Crimson blood poured from his head like a ruptured fuel line.

  A triumphant smile took hold
of Sharp’s leathery face. He reached down and picked up the Winchester sniper’s rifle. “Good job, everyone—we got our man!”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” pointed out Patton.

  “Like hell we don’t.” Sharp’s eyes widened, as he took in Patton’s wound. “Jesus, Special Agent, you’re bleeding like a stuck pig.”

  “I’ll live.” He wobbled in his stance. “Is...is Fowler dead?”

  Sharp looked at him like he was an idiot. “What the fuck are you talking about? That assassin down there just killed President-elect Fowler, Benjamin Locke, and Senator Dubois. I guess he wasn’t taking any goddamned chances!”

  CHAPTER 145

  “GO—GO NOW!” cried the U.S. government agent helper that had navigated Skyler through the security checkpoint two hours earlier. He banged on the driver’s side door of the ambulance to get her moving before turning and barking into his two-way radio.

  Feeling woozy from extreme blood loss, Skyler flipped on the siren and flashing dome lights, pressed her foot down hard on the accelerator, and charged out of the Denver Tribune loading dock onto the street. The squealing tires left behind a trailing plume of smoking rubber as she swung right onto Sixteenth Avenue.

  She had fulfilled her own personal assignment and killed Fowler, Locke, and Dubois. At the last second, the contractors had officially switched the target from Fowler to Locke—she had received confirmation from Xavier—but she had decided to handle things in her own way. She had no problem with what she had done. Fowler was an idiot—anyone who flip-flopped their positions like that didn’t deserve to rise to the pinnacle of American power; and Locke and Dubois—well let’s just say that the two fire-and-brimstone right-wingers were plain fucking nuts and good riddance to both of the felonious bastards. In any case, in all the frenzied excitement she had been damned lucky to pull off the three insanely difficult shots.