The Assassin

by Stephen Coonts

  Seems that waiting is the way I spend half my life. One of these days I need to get a real job.

  The wind was shaking the main barn doors and blowing through tiny openings here and there. Khadr waited for about thirty minutes after the power failure to give everyone a chance to settle down, then made his way by feel to the ladder and descended to the main floor of the barn.

  The horses were restless. He opened their stall doors and let them wander out into the walkway of the barn. They immediately bunched up. The noise he and they made was lost in the storm.

  Then he went to the door that led to the area between the barn and the house and unlatched the door. The doors quivered. They would blow open any second.

  He walked back behind the horses, trying not to spook them.

  Sure enough, within half a minute one of the now unlatched doors blew open and crashed against the barn with a bang. The startled horses whinnied and pranced. Khadr slapped the nearest one on the rump. That was enough to set them off. They charged for the open door and galloped through it.

  He followed them to the doorway and molded his body to the wall, his pistol in his hand.

  “What was that noise?” A male voice on my headset. “Harry?”

  “The barn door blew open and the damn horses are out milling around. Uh-oh, they’re coming around the house toward you.”

  “Oh, man, the main gate is open. They’ll go out into the road.”

  “Let them go, Nick. I’ll check out the barn.”

  I heard someone coming down the stairs. Saw him in infrared, carrying a rifle. Grafton!

  “Tommy?” he said aloud.

  “I’m over here by the cabana door.”

  “Robin?”

  “Behind the bar.”

  “Stay there.”

  “Admiral, the best place for you is the basement,” I said. “If it’s Khadr, that’s probably the most likely entrance.”

  “Okay,” he said. His penlight flashed on, and he headed for the kitchen and the stairs down.

  “Stay where you are,” I told Robin.

  “I can’t shoot with these damn goggles on,” she said disgustedly. “I can’t see the sights.”

  “Just point the thing and pull the trigger.”

  The lenses on Harry Longworth’s goggles were wet, which reduced their effectiveness by a large percentage. He wiped at the water with his fingers, then adjusted the gain and contrast. Standing outside the barn looking through the doorway—one door was open and the other was waving back and forth—he couldn’t see anything. A wet door, wet lens . . .

  “Shit,” he said softly. He took off the goggles and let them dangle on his chest. He pulled his flashlight from his hip pocket and, shielding his body against the door, held the light in his left hand at arm’s length and shined it around the interior. The stall doors were open. He saw nothing.

  He pulled the light back and used his left hand to key the mike button on the belt-mounted transceiver. “Hey, upstairs!”

  Don’t tell me they slept through that bang when the door blew open!

  Caution shrieked at him.

  Well, he was going to have to go in there, one way or another.

  He threw himself through the door and did a belly flop on the floor, his rifle out in front of him.

  Khadr’s first bullet caught him in the neck. Before he could react, he felt rather than saw movement on his right. As he tried to swing his weapon to his right, another bullet hit him, this time ricocheting off his forehead, laying open a two-inch gash clear to the bone and stunning him. The third slug hit him above the ear and penetrated into his brain. He never felt the fourth and fifth bullets, both of which were fired point-blank into his skull.

  Khadr took the time to change magazines in his pistol, then ran as fast as he could go toward the dark, silent house.

  “Harry, the horses are going out the gate into the road.” I recognized Nick’s voice. He was in front of the house.

  Harry didn’t answer, which was ominous.

  Squatting, I opened the door to the cabana area and scanned it with the night vision goggles in infrared, then switched to ambient light. The sleet was forming a crust on everything. Even though I was crouched in the door, the wind buffeted me.

  Something was happening over at the barn—that much seemed obvious. A distraction? I thought so, so I didn’t move. If Harry and the two guys asleep in the barn couldn’t handle it, one more guy wouldn’t help. My best choice was to stay put.

  Yet I couldn’t really see much here in the doorway. I steadied myself with my left hand and moved outside, staying low, alongside the outside bar. From here I could see the pool, the outdoor sauna and toilet building and the hedge that surrounded the whole area. The hedge and trees were waving madly in the wind. I tried to ignore them and searched with the goggles for human movement.

  I slipped down to the end of the outdoor bar so I could see around it.

  One step, two . . . and something walloped me in the head and I went out cold.

  Khadr didn’t look again at Carmellini, who lay sprawled on his face where he had been shot.

  He used his infrared scanner to examine the interior of the house, then moved to the door and looked in.

  He saw no one. But he did see the stairs leading up to the bedrooms above. That was where Grafton and Winchester would be.

  Pistol in hand, he rose and trotted across the room toward the stairs.

  Robin Cloyd poked her head above the bar in time to see the man running for the stairs. In infrared, he was quite plain.

  “Tommy?” she asked loudly, above the noise coming though the open door.

  The answer was a bullet that slammed into the bar with an audible whack, just inches from her shoulder. She didn’t hesitate. Robin pointed the shotgun and pulled the trigger.

  The report was muffled somewhat by her headset and the adrenaline coursing through her, but she didn’t notice. What she did notice was that the muzzle flash had overwhelmed her goggles. Blind, she pumped the slide and fired again toward where she thought the running man might be. Did it again and again, then dropped down and began shoving shells into the bottom of the gun. She paused and keyed her mike. “Tommy?”

  She heard a thumping from the staircase.

  With two more shells in the gun, all she had, she flipped the goggles to ambient light and ran to the bottom of the stairwell. She saw something moving at the top of the stairs, so pointed the gun and fired upward.

  After she worked the slide she saw no more movement.

  I heard Robin’s voice in my ears. That’s when I realized that I had also heard her shotgun hammering.

  I tore off the goggles and tried to rise. Later I found out that a bullet had hit the goggles, a bullet that would have killed me if I hadn’t been wearing them. I fell again. Worked at it and got up. I still had the shotgun.

  I found the flashlight, fumbled with the switch, got it on and headed back inside, shouting Robin’s name.

  I saw her in the light at the bottom of the stairs, saw her shoot once up the stairwell. She lowered the gun and started up, but I grabbed her arm.

  “No.” I gave her my shotgun and pulled out the Colt .45.

  With the flashlight in my left hand and the pistol in my right, I went up the stairs. Saw the blood all over the carpet. So she got lead into the son of a bitch. Good!

  At the top of the stairs, I paused and used the light to scan the hallway, which was to my right. Empty. No, a door was opening. A head came out, looking toward the flashlight. I recognized the face: Jerry Hay Smith.

  “Get back in there, you son of a bitch,” I roared.

  The head disappeared.

  The second door was open. A blood trail led that way.

  I trotted toward it, looked in, using the flashlight.

  A figure in black was standing there. He was holding Callie Grafton with his left arm and had a pistol against the side of her head. Even with the flashlight I could see the blood on his leg. And the ghastly
white of her face.

  “Drop the weapon or I’ll kill her,” he said roughly.

  The distance between us was maybe twelve feet. He couldn’t see me, I knew, because the flashlight must be blinding him—that wasn’t a conscious thought, just something I knew. I don’t even remember thumbing off the safety. I lifted the Colt and aimed as best I could and shot him. He went over backward. Callie fell away to his left, my right, pulled down by his grasp.

  I walked over, watching his right hand, which still held the pistol.

  Blood was pumping out his neck below the black balaclava. He had taken the bullet in the jugular vein and was bleeding to death.

  I didn’t wait. I could see the whites of his eyes through the opening in the black cloth when I emptied the pistol into him. When the gun wouldn’t shoot anymore, I reached down and jerked the black hood off his head.

  Someone was there beside me. Marisa.

  “It’s Khadr,” she said.

  I shoved her out of the way and shined the light on Callie. She was conscious, with no bullet wounds. Relief flooded over me. I helped her up. She sat on the bed, didn’t even look at the corpse.

  I popped the magazine out of the Colt and replaced it with the one in my pocket, then started out of the room. I met Jake Grafton coming in.

  “Check on your wife,” I said, trying to keep my voice under control. “I’m going to see if there’re any more of them.”

  In the hallway I met Smith and Winchester. “Who was it?” Winchester asked.

  “A man who came to kill you,” I said as I shouldered past.

  Robin gave me my shotgun, and I headed for the barn, using every bit of cover there was. The sleet had turned to snow. I hid, ran, hid, and ran again.

  Harry Longworth’s feet were visible just inside the entrance to the barn. The howling wind was whipping the big doors open and shut, causing impacts that rocked the building. I dashed between the swinging doors and, after I had swept the flashlight around, briefly examined Harry. He was obviously dead.

  I’m going to end up like that one of these days.

  Taking my time, I inspected the whole place. I found the two dead men upstairs, and had just finished giving the bad news to Grafton on the radio when I heard the wail of the first police siren.

  I sat down beside the dead men in the loft and cried. Maybe I was crying for them or maybe I was crying for me—I couldn’t tell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  When Abu Qasim heard the moan of the police siren over the wind, he put the car in gear and got it rolling along the road, heading away from Winchester’s estate. The siren told him that Khadr was in trouble; even now he might be running for the highway, trying to make the pickup point. Or he might be trapped, wounded or dead.

  In any event, what Khadr wasn’t doing was calling Qasim, and that was telling.

  So Abu Qasim left Khadr to his fate, whatever it might be. He felt no remorse, no loyalty or sorrow, nor, he knew, would Khadr feel any if he were here and Qasim were there. Khadr fought for money and Qasim fought for Allah, whose will would be done in the case of both men, regardless.

  Qasim had the windshield defrosters and wipers going, and between them, they were staying ahead of the snow. He drove westward carefully, taking every precaution. He didn’t plan on stopping for the night, just driving out of the storm. If it got too bad to drive, he would find a place to sit it out.

  As he drove he went over the preparations for the week ahead. In the past month he had won some battles and lost some. He didn’t waste energy savoring the triumphs or rehashing the losses. He had one last great battle before him, and he intended to do everything in his power to win it. Still, the only thing that really mattered was winning the war. That was the only victory that would please Allah.

  “You saved my life,” Callie Grafton said in the wee hours of the morning after the ambulance crews had carried out the bodies and the police had departed.

  “We were just lucky he didn’t squeeze that trigger when the bullet hit him,” I said. “Pure luck.”

  “You saved my life,” she said again. Then she hugged her husband, and together they went up the stairs, holding tightly to each other.

  The truth, as I was keenly aware, was that if Khadr had killed her, I would have had to live with it. Not that I had a lot of choice, but still . . . No one can say that I don’t have my share of shithouse luck.

  I got into Winchester’s liquor pretty hard. Four cops stayed behind, sitting in patrol cars in the parking area, just in case. I looked out a window at the cars being covered with snow and thought savagely that Khadr could have killed them all in fifteen seconds.

  Blood, murder, butchery. For the greater glory of Allah.

  After three drinks I lay down on the couch and went to sleep. When I awoke the power was back on, the sun was somewhere above the overcast, the wind had died, six inches of snow covered the ground and I had a raging headache. I felt as if I had been scalped. The police cars were still in the parking area.

  I had a Bloody Mary for breakfast.

  Sooner or later, I was going to have to get a real life.

  Sooner or later.

  Three uneventful days later we flew to New York on a government executive jet. Police escorted us to the airport for the short flight. Since the attack on Winchester’s estate, I had avoided Marisa and she had avoided me, but somehow we ended up side by side on the jet. At one point she murmured, “I’m sorry, Tommy.”

  I pretended I didn’t hear.

  From outward appearances, Callie had recovered from her ordeal. I knew that getting that close to the abyss at the hands of an assassin or maniac leaves wounds that only time can heal, but I didn’t speak to her about it. I figured she had Jake Grafton, and who better? What could I possibly say other than a few meaningless, trite phrases?

  Callie sat with her daughter, Amy, on the plane, and they held hands. Maybe Amy understood.

  The Walden Hotel on Fifth Avenue was really hopping when we arrived. Secret Service agents were as thick as fleas on a camel. Everywhere you looked you saw guys and gals with strange bulges in their clothing talking into their lapels.

  They took us to rooms on the fifteenth floor. I gave the bellboy a five-spot for putting my bag in the room, then adjusted the Colt on my hip and headed downstairs to check things out. Grafton had already beaten me to the lobby. He gave me a pass on a chain, which I was supposed to dangle around my neck. He already had his on.

  “All the cool people are wearing these this year,” he said, which startled me. Grafton doesn’t often try a funny, and when he does it is so unexpected that it jolts you. I managed a smile.

  Standing there in the cavernous lobby of the Walden, surrounded by people bustling about, he looked me in the eyes. “You did the right thing in Connecticut,” he said. “Just wanted you to know that I know that.”

  “Could have come out differently.”

  “It could have come out a dozen different ways, all of them bad and all because Khadr was there to do murder. You used your best judgment, you acted when others might have hesitated, so Khadr’s dead and Callie’s alive. Thanks.” He reached for my hand and pumped it while he gave me one of those Grafton grins.

  I was embarrassed—he could see that—so we left it there.

  From his hip pocket he produced a program. “This is how this thing is supposed to go. There will be precisely one thousand thirty-nine people in attendance tonight, including you and me. The staff has been vetted; the place will be brimming with law. Everyone will be seated and the doors will be closed when the president and other politicos make their entrance. They’ll go directly to the dais, and Senator Isner will make the welcoming remarks, which will last no more than two minutes. Then the staff will begin serving the meals. The president is scheduled to speak after dinner.”

  “So none of the diners will get a chance to get close to the man?”

  “Oh, no. They all will. Sal Molina tells me that the president will mix and mingle durin
g dinner, pressing the flesh. He will visit every table and shake every hand. These people paid ten grand a chair for the right to say hi to the president and be photographed doing it, so he’s going to give them their money’s worth.”

  My eyebrows started dancing.

  “I know, I know. Everyone on the attendance list is a big political donor, a spouse or kid or friend of a donor. The list was finalized weeks ago, and the FBI and Secret Service have worked their heinies off vetting these people. To get in, everyone has to go through a metal detector and produce a photo ID. Absolutely no one will be admitted who isn’t on the list or whose ID doesn’t match his face.”

  “Okay.”

  “The feds have gone over this hotel with a fine-tooth comb. They’ve vetted the kitchen staff, there will be agents in the kitchen watching the food prep and the kitchen staff has to sample every dish before it comes out into the dining room. There will be at least twenty agents in the dining hall.”

  “What’s on the menu?”

  “Chicken Cordon Bleu.”

  “That’s chicken with cheese in it, right?”

  “I think so.”

  “I hate that stuff.”

  “When the president finishes speaking, he’ll leave first, escorted out by a squad of agents, go by motorcade to the airport and leave for Washington on Air Force One. The motorcade into and out of the city is in the hands of the NYPD and Secret Service. They tell me it will be tight as a tick. They’ve even had men in the storm drains on the streets the motorcade will use, checking for bombs. The motorcade is out of our hands.”

  “If Abu Qasim is going to do it, it’ll be here,” I said. “With Marisa watching.”

  “I think so, too,” Grafton murmured. He took a deep breath and continued. “The organizers are filming everything for use in campaign ads. So, yeah, it’ll be here, so afterward the networks will broadcast it and the faithful all over the planet can see the power of al-Qaeda and Allah.”

  “Got any ideas how he’ll do it?”

  “I was hoping you might have.”

  I shrugged. “Gas, bomb or bullet. Or polonium.”