by Vince Flynn
Dropping his leg, he ran toward the corner where the meat had been deposited and immediately started to snap up the small pieces of beef. The motionless man listened intently as the dog feasted on the meat. After several minutes, the creaking noise of the back door opening broke the silence of the cool night air, and without being called, Fritz sprang away from the fence and ran into the house.
12:05 A.M Friday
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Daniel Fitzgerald’s limousine lumbered north along Massachusetts Avenue. It was just after midnight, and the Senator was sitting in the backseat, drinking a glass of Scotch and reading the Post. He’d just left his third party of the evening and was on his way home.
Fitzgerald was the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and one of the most powerful men in Washington. He had a full head of gray hair and a red, bulbous nose that was a direct result of his heavy drinking.
The Senator had two vices—women and alcohol. He had already been married three times and was currently separated from his third wife.
He’d been through approximately a half dozen treatment programs, none of which had worked. Several years earlier, he’d decided to stop fighting his addiction. He loved the booze, and that was that.
During all of the personal turmoil’s of ruined marriages, bouts with depression, and six children that he didn’t know, the Senator had always clung to one thing-his job. It was all that was left in his life.
Fitzgerald had been in Washington for over forty years. After graduating from Yale
Law School, he had gone to work for a prestigious law firm in Boston, and then, at the age of twenty-eight, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives. After serving as a Congressman for three terms, one of the two Senate seats in his home state became available. At the urging and financial backing of his father, Fitzgerald launched the most expensive campaign New Hampshire had ever seen. The political machine his father had built ensured a victory, and Fitzgerald was elected to the United States Senate.
For the last thirty-four years, he’d survived scandal after scandal and hung on to that seat like a screaming child clutching his favorite toy. Fitzgerald had been a politician his entire adult life, and he knew nothing else. He’d grown numb to the day-to-day dealings of the nation’s capital. The forty-plus years of lying, deceit, deal cutting, career trashing, and partisan politics had become so ingrained in Fitzgerald that he not only thought his behavior was acceptable, he truly believed it was the only way to do business. Dan
Fitzgerald had been pulled into the vacuum of Washington politics, and like so many before him, he’d checked his conscience and morals at the door. For Fitzgerald, such things as integrity, hard work, taking charge of one’s own life, individual freedom, and the Constitution of the United States had little meaning. To him, being a leader of the country was not about doing the right thing. It was about holding on to power.
Holding on no matter what it took. Fitzgerald was addicted to power no differently than a crack addict is addicted to the rock. He always needed more, and he could never get enough. Fitzgerald lived only for the present and the future. He had never bothered to look back on his life until now. He was experiencing something that many of his predecessors had gone through late in their careers. He’d sold his soul and integrity to get to the top, and now that he was there, he was starting to realize it was a lonely place.
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With old age staring him straight in the face, he was, for the first time, forced to look back on his life with a critical eye. He had always known he was a failure as both a father and a husband. Everything he had, he’d put into his career. Leaning his head against the window, he took a long pull off the fresh drink and closed his eyes. Senator Daniel
Fitzgerald had never been interested in the truth, but now in his waning years, he could no longer escape it. He had never liked being alone. He had always needed others around to feel secure, and it had only gotten worse over the years. He had worked his whole life to get where he was, and now that he was there, he had no one to share it with. But, even worse was that deep down inside something was telling him he had wasted his life fighting for the wrong things. He finished off the glass of Dewar’s and poured another.
The limousine turned off Massachusetts Avenue and wound through the narrow residential streets of Kalorama Heights. One block before its destination, the limousine passed a plain, white van. Inside were two men who had been waiting-waiting and preparing for this night for over a year. The limo stopped in front of Fitzgerald’s $1.2-million brownstone, and the driver jumped out to open the door for his boss. By the time he got around to the rear of the car, Fitzgerald was out of the backseat and stumbling toward the house. Fitzgerald fancied himself too important a man to shut car doors, so as usual, he left it for the driver to take care of. The driver shut the door and wished his employer a good night.
Fitzgerald ignored the pleasantry and continued up the steps to his front door. The driver walked back around to the other side of the limo and watched Fitzgerald punch in his security code and unlock the door.
When the door opened and the Senator stumbled into the foyer, the driver got into the limo and drove away. Fitzgerald set his keys down on a table to the left of the door and reached for the light switch.
He flipped it up, but nothing happened. He tried it several more times, and the result was the same. Swearing to himself, he looked around the dark house. The front door was bordered on both sides by panes of glass six inches wide that ran from the top of the door to the floor. Through the two narrow windows, the streetlight provided a faint glow to the front hallway. From where Fitzgerald stood, he could barely make out the white tile floor of the kitchen, just thirty feet away, straight down the hallway. As he started for the kitchen, he passed the dark entryway to the living room on his right and the stairs that led to the upper floors on his left. His heavy, expensive wing tips echoed throughout the house as they struck the hardwood floor with each step. The dim light shining through the windows cast a long shadow of him that stretched down the hallway toward the kitchen.
With each step his round body blocked more and more of the light coming from the street. By the time he reached the kitchen, he was surrounded by darkness. He turned to his left and searched for the light switch.
Before Fitzgerald could find it, a pair of gloved hands came out of the darkness and grabbed him from behind.
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The blond-haired intruder yanked the older man off his feet and slammed him face first into the tiled floor. Dropping down on his target, the powerful man thrust his knee into the center of Fitzgerald’s upper back and grabbed the Senator’s head with both hands.
In one quick burst of strength the assassin brought all of his weight down on the back of
Fitzgerald’s head and yanked up on his chin. The noise that the Senator’s neck made as it snapped shot through the quiet house like a brittle tree limb broken over a knee. The crack was followed by silence, and then an eerie gurgling noise that emanated from
Fitzgerald’s throat.
The dying Senator’s eyes opened wider and wider until they looked as if they were about to pop out. About thirty seconds later the gurgling noise subsided, and Fitzgerald’s body lay lifeless on the cold, tile floor. The assassin rose to his feet and exhaled a deep breath. He looked down at the dead body on the floor with a sense of great satisfaction.
The killer standing over Fitzgerald had just avenged the deaths of eight of his closest friends-eight men who had died a senseless death in a desolate desert, thousands of miles away, all because men like Fitzgerald didn’t know how to keep their mouths shut.
The killing of Fitzgerald was personal, but the next two would be business. The thin arm of a microphone hung in front of the assassin’s square jaw. He spoke with a precise voice, “Number one is in the bag, over.” After a brief second, a confirmation came crackling through his earpiece, and he went back to work. Grabbing the body by the ankles, he dragged it down into t
he basement and deposited it in a large storage closet.
The assassin took one last tour through the house, collecting the electronic listening devices he had placed there the previous week.
Before leaving, he zipped the collar on his coat up around his chin and pulled his baseball hat down tight over his short, blond hair. He stood at the back door momentarily, looking out the window into the small yard. The wind was picking up, and the trees were swaying back and forth. Once again he spoke softly into the mike, “I’m on my way, over.”
He locked the door and closed it behind him. Casually he walked across the yard, through the gate, and into the alley. When he reached the end of the alley, the white van stopped just long enough for him to climb in, then sped off down the street.
3:45 Friday
The blue Johnson Brothers’ Plumbing van was again driving through the streets of
Friendship Heights. It pulled into the same alley it had stopped in five hours earlier.
While the van was still moving, the passenger jumped down onto the pavement and walked beside it, crouching and holding on to the door. The dome light on the inside of the van had been removed. As the van stopped, the broad-shouldered, dark-haired man quietly closed the door and darted into the shadows.
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He waited while the van drove away.
Slung over his shoulder was a large black canvas bag. After several minutes passed, he started to make his way down the alley. When he reached Burmiester’s fence, he pulled a can of WD-40 out of his bag and sprayed the hinges of the gate. He waited for the oil to take effect, then carefully lifted the latch on the gate and opened it. Slipping into the backyard, he dropped down behind a row of bushes and looked up at the windows of Burmiester’s house and the neighbors’, waiting to see a face peering out or a light being turned on, announcing that someone had seen him. For almost five minutes he sat behind the bush, waiting and watching. There was time to be careful and that was the way he liked it, the way he’d been trained. The man reached into the bag, this time retrieving a pair of wire cutters. Cautiously rising to his feet, he walked along the edge of the garage and then darted across the small open space to the back stoop, where he crouched down. Again, he used the can of WD-40, spraying the hinges of the screen door. While he waited for the oil to soak in, he grabbed the pair of wire cutters and cut the phone line running into the basement of the house. He put the wire cutters back in the bag and grabbed a glass cutter. Jumping up on the stoop he opened the screen door about two feet and slid in between it and the back door. The back door was wood with the top third split into four sections of glass. He placed the cup of the glass cutter in the middle of the bottom left pane and swung the cutting edge around the suction cup in a clockwise direction. After five revolutions, he took both hands and pressed in on the newly created circle. The freshly cut piece of glass popped free and stayed attached to the suction cup.
Sticking his arm through the hole, he unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped into the kitchen, carefully closing the door behind him. He stood completely still and looked out the window, staring at the neighbors’ houses, looking for anything that might have changed while his ears focused on the inside of the house. He heard the dog breathing and turned to see him lying on a piece of carpet in front of the kitchen table, completely relaxed and limp. Pulling the microphone down from under the brim of his baseball cap, he spoke in a soft whisper, “I’m in, over.” His partner was sitting in the blue van, six blocks away, around the corner from a small, twenty-four-hour convenience store. He was monitoring the local police scanner.
Calmly, he spoke into the microphone hanging in front of his mouth, “Roger that, everything is clear on my end, over.”
The man in the kitchen of Burmiester’s house pushed the microphone back up under the brim of his hat and slowly removed the black bag from over his shoulder. Gently placing it on the floor, he retrieved a gas mask and a green tank with a clear rubber hose attached to the end. With the tank and mask in hand, he walked down the uncarpeted hallway toward the front door and the staircase that led to the second floor. When he reached the foot of the staircase, he stopped and leaned forward, placing his hands on the fourth step. Again he paused, not moving, just listening. After he was sure that
Burmiester had not been awakened, he started to crawl up the steps, keeping his hands and feet away from the center of the stairs, leaning forward, trying to keep his weight as equally distributed as possible, not wanting the old stairs to creak and wake the owner.
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When he reached the second floor, he stayed on his knees and continued to crawl slowly toward the master bedroom, about twenty feet away. Once again, he waited patiently and listened. Gently, he stuck the rubber tube under the door, put his gas mask on, and opened the valve on the tank. Sitting down with his back against the wall, he started the timer on his watch. After fifteen minutes had elapsed, he turned off the valve and pulled the tube out from under the door. Slowly, he opened the door and peeked into the room. Burmiester was lying with his back to the door and showed no signs of movement. The intruder pushed the door the rest of the way open and walked over to the bed. Reaching down, he nudged Burmiester several times. The old man didn’t move. He took the glove off his right hand, placed it on Burmiester’s neck, and checked his pulse.
After checking it twice more, he concluded with relief that the old man was fine. The intruder did not know the man he was standing over, and he did not wish to see him die.
Harold Burmiester was not the man he was after tonight.
He walked around the bed to the double window that looked out onto the street below and stared straight across at the house opposite Burmiester’s. He lowered the mike and said, “I’m in position.
Everything looks good, over.”
The response came crackling back through his earpiece immediately. “Roger, everything is quiet on this end, over.” Five miles away on the other side of the Potomac
River, the second team had moved into position. The nondescript white van was parked on a quiet side street. Inside, the blond-haired assassin was undergoing a change. He’d taken off his dark jeans, jacket, and boots and had replaced them with a gray pair of sweatpants, a blue sweatshirt, and a pair of Nike running shoes. He sat still while one of the other men carefully applied black makeup to his face, neck, and ears. The makeup was for camouflage, but not in the typical military sense. It was meant to be noticed and to deceive, not to conceal.
After the makeup job was completed, a tight, black Afro wig was placed over his blond hair, and a pair of brown contacts were inserted over his blue eyes. Next, he put his headset back on and pulled a University of Michigan baseball hat over his head.
5:55 A.M Friday
The screen covering Mr. Burmiester’s bedroom window had been taken off, and the owner of the house had been carefully moved from the master bedroom down the hall to one of the guest rooms. The intruder was sitting on a wooden chair, staring out the window at a pair of French doors located on the second floor of the house across the street.
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Resting on his lap was a Remington M-24 military sniper rifle with a customized silencer attached to the end of the barrel. A round was in the chamber but the rifle was still on safety. The alarm on his watch had beeped five minutes earlier, and he was trying to stay relaxed.
The sky was just starting to brighten and the birds were chirping. His target would be rising any minute, and he was making a conscious effort to control his breathing and keep his adrenaline level low. A light was turned on across the street, and the drapes on the other side of the French doors turned from gray to yellow. In one fast motion he brought the rifle up into a firing position, pressing the stock between his shoulder and left cheek.
His finger came up and flipped off the safety, while he centered the crosshairs on the middle of the French doors. He continued taking slow, controlled breaths. A blurred shadow moved from behind the curtains. The shooter inhaled deeply, and j
ust when his lungs were fully expanded, the doors across the street opened.
As they swung inward, they revealed the pudgy, pink-and-white body of
Congressman Jack Koslowski. Wearing only a pair of baby blue boxers, he turned and started for the bathroom. The center of the crosshairs were resting on the small of
Koslowski’s hairy back. The right hand of the assassin rose slightly, and the rifle followed. The crosshairs slid up the spinal column, past the shoulder blades, and rested just below the bald spot on the back of Koslowski’s head. The upper body of the assassin twisted as the sight followed the target across the room.
The left forefinger started its slow, even squeeze on the trigger. A second later it caught, and the hammer slammed forward. The hollow-point round spiraled its way down the barrel, through the silencer, and sliced its way into the still morning air. The bullet slammed into the back of the Congressman’s head, the hollow point collapsing upon impact. Instead of continuing its clean, tight spiral, the now flattened tip was three times larger than its original size as it ripped through the brain, pushing everything in its path toward the front of the Congressman’s head. The round tore through the right eye socket, taking with it chunks of bone, brain, and flesh. The momentum of the impact propelled
Koslowski forward and pinned him against the side of the bed, leaving his body bent backward and his legs and arms twitching. The assassin had already chambered another round and was maneuvering the crosshairs back into position. The next shot struck
Koslowski at the base of his skull and immediately severed all neural communication between the brain and the rest of his body.