He heard the security people on their network.
“Ah, Base Six, this is Alpha One, we are progressing down U.S. Ten at approximately forty-five miles per hour, our ETA is approximately 1130 hours, do you read?”
“Have you, affirmative,” said Base Six. “Units Ten and Twelve, be advised Flashlight and friends are moving through your area shortly.”
“We have it under advisement, Base Six, everything looking fine here, over and out.”
Bob thought it was like a big air-mobile operation in the ’Nam, an orchestration of elements all moving in perfect syncopation and held together by some command hotshot on the radio network, as the various units through whose sector Flashlight moved called in their reports.
“Ah, Base Six, this is Ginger Dragon Two, we have all quiet in our secure zone at present,” he heard Payne speak into the phone.
“That’s a roger, Ginger Dragon Two, we’re reading you, our apprehension teams are on instant standby.”
“Anything yet?” Timmons now asked him. He was a large, dour man, whose belly pressed outward against his uniform; he seemed nervous.
Bob’s eye was in the scope. Though the target was so much farther out, he could see three ramshackle arched openings under the crown of the steeple, each louvered closed, each dirty and untouched.
“It’s the middle window,” Payne now said calmly.
“I know what window it is,” Bob said. Why were these guys talking so much? “I have no movement.”
“Maybe he’s not there yet,” said Timmons.
“Oh, he’s there. It’s too close to time. He’s there.”
If he’s anywhere, Bob thought, he’s there. He’s sitting very still now and though we can’t see him, he’s drawing himself together for the shot. He’s probably taken as close as can be constructed to this shot a thousand or so times, maybe ten thousand times. I know I would if I were in his shoes. But he’s a little nervous; he’ll want to be alone and he’ll want it quiet. If there are others in the room with him, then they’re just sitting there, not making any noise, letting him accumulate his strength.
According to Colonel Davis, a very skilled FBI embassy penetration team had discreetly planted light-sensitive sensors in the belfry, and the sensors had recorded data to suggest that every night between four and five A.M. a working party of five men entered the room and made preparations. Bob assumed they were soundproofing the walls and building a shooting platform to get the proper angle into the president’s site fourteen hundred far yards away. At the precise moment, three or four of the louvers would be removed; he’d scope and shoot and the team would replace the louvers. The window of vulnerability was maybe ten seconds.
“Ginger Dragon Six, we are beginning our apprehension maneuver.”
“Keep it discreet, apprehension teams.” Bob recognized Colonel Davis, who was running this operation, the one concealed within the larger drama of the president’s arrival and security.
“Fuckin’ A,” said Payne, “they getting ready to nab the sucker.”
Bob looked at his watch; it was only 1115 hours now, still an hour from the shooting event.
“Man, I hope your Federal team has got it together. This is a very nervous cat, he’s got spotters himself making sure he hasn’t been blown.”
“These are the very best guys,” Payne said. “These guys have been training for this one a long time. Lots and lots of dues gonna get paid off today, I can tell you. It’s payback time.”
Something melodramatic and movielike in Payne today irritated Bob.
“Ginger Dragon Two, you have the best angle on the target, you have anything to announce?”
“He’s talking to you, Swagger.”
“That’s a negative. But if they’re there, they probably came in late last night; and they’ll be real quiet. Tell him that. Lack of activity is to be expected.”
“Uh, Ginger Dragon Six, this is Dragon Two, uh, spotter has a negative so far.”
“Is he sure?”
“Oh, Christ,” said Bob. “Tell him they’re there, goddammit, and that I’ll sing out when I get a visual confirm, and that that will be at the point of shooting, and goddammit, he better get set to bounce his people in there fast.”
Now wasn’t the time to begin doubting the scenario. They all believed in the scenario, they’d discussed it dispassionately all afternoon yesterday.
“Uh, confidence here is still high, Dragon Six,” said Payne.
That’s what ruined operations and that’s what killed people in the field—that sudden, last-minute spurt of doubt, like the lash of a whip: it made people morons. So many times Bob had seen it; it was exactly what sniping wasn’t.
“We may have to go early,” said Ginger Dragon Six.
“Do that, and you got nothing,” said Bob. “He’s there. Goddamn, I can feel him. Oh, he’s there and he’s on his rifle, and he’s just settling into it.”
He wished he had a rifle too.
“Okay, Alpha Team, this is Base Six, Flashlight’s ETA is now just five minutes.”
“Base Six to Alpha, Flashlight is now in your zone.”
“We have Flashlight, thank you, Base Six, good job.”
“Roof Team, this is Base Six, any activity?”
“Negative, Six, all clear except for our people.”
“Keep me informed, Roof Team, we are near maximum vulnerability now.”
“Have you, Six.”
“All teams, Max V condition, on your toes, people, on your toes.”
On his toes! Nick felt so out of it he almost had to laugh. This is your life, Nick Memphis. He sat in the car alone in a zone so barren of life it seemed despoiled, or some vista in a sci-fi movie set after the end of the world. All the tourists had hustled on by to get a looksee at the president. Here he was, on the far outside.
Now he saw it. The motorcade hurtled down North Rampart, and just briefly the gates to the park were opened, and through it sped Flashlight’s three-million-dollar Lincoln which no bullet could penetrate, sixteen New Orleans motorcycle cops, the Security Detail quick reaction van, and two cars of reporters and TV people. And then they were gone.
Man, he thought, I’m so far to the outside there is no inside.
He tried to stay alert out of respect for the ritual, and the big Smith in the pancake holster was some help. It gouged him but in his curious way he enjoyed it.
Yet always he felt a little guilt. He’d gotten the easy part: for he knew that the forty minutes of Max V as Flashlight was exposed were absolutely the most terrifying—and exhilarating—for the Secret Service agents who now ran the show.
“Ah, Alpha Four to Alpha Response, I have a squirrel in the fourth row left, can we get a team on him, please, like really fast, guys.”
It was the Crowd Squad, working the people.
“Alpha Four, the Hispanic guy, right, black overcoat?” came Mueller’s response from the roof of the Municipal Auditorium just beside the podium that had been erected in front of a wading pool.
“That’s my squirrel. Guy’s got a shifty, stressed look and his hands are in his pockets. I can’t tell if he’s by himself.”
“Ah, okay, Alpha, we’re moving in.”
The crowd squad maneuvered quickly to neutralize the guy they’d ID’d as a possible. Nick envied them the action even if, as it did 999 out of a thousand times, it turned out to be groundless.
“Okay, Alpha Four, the squirrel just lifted his little girl up to see the Man, and he’s got three other kids with him.”
“Back off then, Alpha Four, good work.”
Nick heard cheers and laughter echoing through the empty streets; the president had made a joke. He checked his watch. They were running a bit behind schedule. It was almost noon and the speech was scheduled to have started at 11:45, but it had just gotten under way. He’d seen the site plan, amazed at how precisely these things are choreographed. There’d even been a rehearsal for the Security Detail to get them used to body moves, to the look of the
situation, so that if something ungodly happened, the place at least would be familiar to them.
But Nick could remember from the site plan where Flashlight would be standing, where the archbishop would be, flanked by his own bodyguard. The rest of the guys up there were Service beef, two staff assistants, and Mr. Football, as they called the Air Force staff colonel who was always a discreet ten feet from Flashlight with a briefcase full of that day’s nuclear go-codes. Nick could imagine them up there in the love and glee of the crowd, these happy men who ruled the world, and who would not even in their older age remember this day.
“Ah, Chopper Four, this is Base Six, can you take a right-hand circle about half-mile out? I have a New Orleans police report of some roofline movement. I’m looking at Grid Square Lima-thirteen-Tango, I got a cop in that area says he thinks he saw something. My countersniper team in that zone has called it a no-show, but take a look, will you, big guy?”
“That’s a big rog, Alpha Six,” came the voice from the chopper, and Nick heard the thing roar overhead, a black Huey.
“Ah, Base, I’ve got an all clear, your cop must have seen a mirage.”
“Okay, Chopper, good work.”
“I’m out of here, Alpha Six.”
The bird’s roar fluttered and diminished.
Nick was alone again, on the face of the moon.
“Time,” asked Bob, and lost the answer in the roar of the chopper.
When the bird cleared, he asked again.
“Eleven-fifty-six, pal,” came Payne’s answer.
Bob breathed out heavily, a stupid move, because it somewhat jittered his eye’s placement against the scope; he blinked, lost his image, came back to find a black half-moon of eye-relief error cutting into the cone of his vision because he wasn’t properly aligned. His heart was pumping.
Goddamn! he told himself, be cool, man.
And there it was again, the arch in the steeple, in perfect clarity, its black dullness sealing off his vision, simply a maze of ancient slats. He stared at it as if pouring himself through it, willing what he wanted to be there to be there, so far away, fourteen hundred yards from the target but just within the range of a world-class shooter like T. Solaratov.
Where are you, you bastard?
And then he saw him. He saw the sniper.
It was a subtlety in the light behind the slats, a shifting, a certain tightening, a certain coming together. As his mind raced to put the various molecules of light and dark together into a picture, he realized that fifteen or so feet back, the sniper, at a bench like any rifle bench, was feeling his way into position. And in the next second or so, the whole thing assembled in his head; for now he saw also the solemn drift of the others in the room, very slow, very steady, but moving ever so slightly, a man on a scope next to the shooter, two men well back from the window. Then he watched as one by one, with the slowness of a glacier’s move, a slat and then another and still a third was removed. The diagonal slash in the arch was three inches wide. Behind it, he saw something move or tighten.
Very quietly, Bob said, “Payne, he’s there, I got his ass, he’s a minute or so from shooting, send the boys in, now goddammit, send ’em in, he’s there, he’s there.”
“Ginger Dragon, we’ve got him, go, go, go, go,” said Payne.
“You got him,” yelled Timmons, the cop, “you got him.”
“Send those damn boys fast,” said Bob, “he’s set.”
Christ, he wished he had a rifle. It was his shot. It was a shot that kept him alive all these years—to have the motherfucker there, the man who did Donny Fenn, the man who blew out his hip and ended the life he was born to live, to have him right where the Remington wanted to go, right where he could put it. His trigger finger began to constrict and he imagined the buck of the rifle as he fired. He could take the trigger slack all the way down and ship a .308 hollowpoint out there and send that fuck straight to hell, drive his heart and spine all over New Orl—
“Goddamn, where are they, get ’em in there. He’s going to—”
“All elements, move in, Ginger Dragon, go, go, go,” he heard Payne on the radio.
Where were they? There should be a chopper overhead, FBI SWAT guys in black rappelling down it, men moving in from all the hidden parts of the universe, men with guns and purpose, moving swiftly to stop—
“Where are they?”
Bob saw the spurt of flame as Solaratov fired.
“Bob?”
He turned and Payne shot him in the chest from a range of six feet.
Nick yawned and—
He heard the sound of a shot.
It froze him. The universe seemed to halt and his heart turned to stone.
Then the radio exploded.
“My God, Flashlight is down!”
He sat up; swallowed again.
The shot came from close by.
“We are under fire on the podium, Flashlight is hit and down, my God!”
“Alpha Actual, Alpha Actual, all units, Alpha Actual.”
Actual was the code word; it meant somebody was shooting at or had shot the president.
“Medics, vector in those medics, get these people out of here!”
“Medevac, this is Alpha Four, we need you ASAP, the man is down and hit, oh, Christ, oh, Jesus, get him fast, there’s some other people up here hit, oh, Christ!”
“Off the air, Alpha Four, your medevac is vectored in, are you still under fire?”
“Negative, Alpha Six, I think it was two, maybe three shots, I don’t, oh, God, there’s blood all over—”
“This is Base Six, all units are cleared to fire if you have targets, this means you, countersnipers.”
“Where’s that fuckin’ medevac, we have blood everywhere, guys are down.”
Nick listened in horrified fascination.
“Do we have an isolation on the shot?”
“It was a long one, Phil, a sniper, I think it came from someplace out there beyond Rampart, in those fuckin’ houses, maybe that tall one.”
“SWAT people, let’s get going.”
“Negative that, this is Base, goddammit, we’ve got to get that chopper in and get the Man out of here.”
But me, Nick thought. I have to move. I have to move. He was out of the car, hating himself for the five seconds or so he’d lost.
Without willing it, the Smith came up into his hand from the pancake. His big thumb snaked out and pushed the safety up and off.
He ran toward the sound of the shot, which was on the left, the big house at 415 St. Ann.
Payne dragged him into another room. He felt the blood on his chest, warm like urine, so much of it. It felt like the last time.
In the blaze of light, as his head lolled and his limbs went limp, he could see a shooting bench, rigged together of cement blocks and weathered pieces of wood, and on it, there lay a rifle, slightly atilt on a brace of sandbags, a heavy-barreled Remington 700 with a Leupold 10x Ultra scope.
The New Orleans cop was talking urgently into his radio unit.
“Base Six, this is Victor Seven-twenty, I have shot suspect white male with rifle at five-one-four Saint Ann, please send assistance, I say again, Base Six, this is Victor Seven-twenty, I have shot suspect in the attic of five-one-four Saint Ann, please send assistance.”
Then Bob looked at the rifle.
It was his rifle.
“I have wounded suspect,” said Timmons. “Get people here fast. Get me ambulance, get me paramedics, get ’em here ASAP!”
“Okay, dump him,” said the colonel, stepping out of the shadows as Bob slid off into stillness, “and let’s get the hell out of here.”
Bob sat there, feeling again what he had felt on the ridge line when the bullet tore through his hip: shock, hatred, pain, but mostly rage at his own stupidity.
It was winding down on him. His breathing came with the slow, rough transit of a train that had run off its tracks and now rumbled over the cobblestones. His systems were shutting down, the wave of hydros
tatic shock that had blown through him with the bullet’s passage upsetting all the little gyros in his organs. He felt the blood in his lungs; there was no pain quite yet but only the queer sensation of loss, of blur, of things slipping away.
Then something cracked in him.
No you aren’t going let it happen
You been shot before
You can fight through it
You be a Marine
He took a deep breath, and in the rage and pride he found what would pass for energy and without exactly willing it, he stood up, again surprised that there was no pain at all, and with a strange, determined gait began to move toward the door.
“Jesus, he’s fuckin’ up!” he heard the cop’s anguished cry, and another shot rang out, hitting him high in the left shoulder, glancing off the bone—a heavy impact and a red sear of pain—but then he was out the door and there were only two steps to go toward a window and he launched himself, felt the window shattering, and amid a rain of glass he fell through bright sunlight toward God knew what.
Nick was looking around in a spasm of confusion. He’d entered the courtyard of the large brick house because he’d heard the cop over his earpiece claiming that he had hit a suspect. But that was a block away, at 514; he was at 415. He heard a helicopter’s roar as it whirled and darted; he heard sirens rising.
But he stood in the sunlight wondering if he should go back to the street to check the address. He thought maybe he was in the wrong area. It was a maze to him; the building scruffy and dilapidated, lots of other houses close by. Jesus, any one of them could have been the location of the call-in.
He froze, wondering what the hell to do, where to go, what he should be doing, who was in command. The gun grew heavy in his hand. He felt idiotically melodramatic, and at the same time wished he were wearing sunglasses, because the sun was so bright.
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