Target of Opportunity td-98

by Warren Murphy

  The angle, everyone saw, was not straight on. The ANC cameraman had been blocked by the broad backs of the Secret Service protective ring. The camera jumped around several times.

  Pepsie wrung her hands. "Come on. Come on. Steady it. Steady it, please."

  As if in response, the camera caught the opening of the limo door emblazoned with the Presidential seal.

  "Here it comes," the technician warned. "Prepare yourselves. It could be gruesome."

  "Be gruesome," Pepsie whispered prayerfully. "Please, oh please, be gruesome."

  The familiar steely haircut ducked up from the dark interior of the limo back, one hand fumbling for the middle button of the dark suit. Abruptly the top of the victim's head came apart.

  "This is better than the Zapruder film," Pepsie screamed. "We've got to go on. We've got to go on right now!"

  "Let go. Damn it, let go," the news director was saying, trying to disentangle Pepsie's claws from his collar. "I make the decisions here."

  "CNN hasn't broken in yet..." the technician reported.

  "No cut-ins from the other networks," an intern called.

  Pepsie pleaded, "Greg, you've got to go on the air with this. Let me do it, please."

  "This is the anchor's job."

  "He's not here. I am. Please, please." She was bouncing on her heels now, pulling the news director by his tie as if trying to ring a church bell.

  "It's news. We gotta go with something."

  "All right. Do it from your desk. We'll superimpose a newsroom background over it."

  "Great. Great. You won't regret this," Pepsie Dobbins said, running in her stockinged feet for her desk.

  Flinging herself behind her desk, she primped her short sassy shag as she stood up straight. Her back was to a blue screen that the camera couldn't read. A computer-generated newsroom would be laid in the background. Only the audience would see it. No one would suspect it didn't exist.

  The red light came on. The news director threw her the signal, and Pepsie Dobbins moistened her red lips as the announcer intoned, "This is an ANC special report."

  "And this is Pepsie Dobbins speaking to you from our newsroom here in Washington."

  Out of the corner of her eye, Pepsie saw the director pointing frantically to the monitor. Pepsie allowed her left eye to dart to the screen. She had the faculty of being able to move her eyes independently of each other so that when she turned slightly she appeared to be looking directly at the viewer while surreptitiously watching her surroundings.

  To her horror, she saw herself on the in-house monitor-against a dead black background.

  "In our Washington bureau, excuse me," she corrected. "This just in from Boston, Massachusetts. The President of the United States was shot by unknown persons as he exited his limousine at precisely-" she glanced at her desk clock and guesstimated a time "-10:47 Eastern Standard Time. ANC News had a crew at the scene, and video is being satellited to us even as I speak. We here at ANC have yet to screen this footage, but in the interest of the public's right to ratings-I mean, to know-and as a public service we are showing it to you raw. We caution viewers that some of the scenes you are about to see may be graphic to the point of gruesomeness and that small children and animals should be shooed away so that they do not see it. Everyone else, pull up your chairs. This is history and you are seeing it almost live."

  The news director flashed a signal to the technical crew, and Pepsie's left eye went to the monitor.

  The monitor was blank.

  "Something's wrong," she hissed.

  Technicians in the control room frantically threw switches.

  The monitor screen winked, and suddenly there appeared the computer-generated ANC Washington bureau newsroom-without Pepsie Dobbins. No footage rolled.

  "Where's the damn footage?" Pepsie screamed.

  Over the air millions of Americans watched the static newsroom shot and heard the disembodied voice of Pepsie Dobbins demand that the footage be telecast.

  The news director shushed her with a finger to his lips.

  "Get that fucking footage on the air before CNN beats us to it!" she hollered, her blue tomcat eyes snapping sparks.

  Millions of Americans heard that, too.

  Then a technician poked his head out of the control room saying, "The deck ate the tape."

  The news director cursed and, without looking back, threw the signal to Pepsie to take back the broadcast.

  In TV sets all over America, the empty newsroom was replaced by the sight of Pepsie Dobbins, her head down on her desk, tearing tufts of her short brown-blond mane of hair out with enameled nails, repeating "I'm gonna kill everyone in the control room ...." over and over.

  In her earpiece, the news director whispered urgently, "You're still on, Pepsie. Improvise something."

  Without lifting her head, Pepsie said in a twisted voice, "On behalf of ANC News, I would like to lead the nation in a moment of silence for our martyred President."

  Offstage the news director screamed, "What are you doing? We don't know that he's dead yet."

  "Trust me on this one," Pepsie muttered.

  Then CNN came on with their version of the footage.

  It was merciful. The CNN camera crew, well behind Secret Service rope lines, caught only the shirtfront of an anonymous Secret Service agent as the limousine door opened. In another second the man who emerged from the limo would have stepped into clear sight. But he never did.

  A shot rang out, and the agents whirled, forming a tight protective knot around the fallen man, 9 mm MAC-lls and 10 mm Delta Elite handguns coming up at the ready.

  After that it was aboil in frantic officials. Someone yelled, "It's Dallas all over again!" and the Presidential motorcade sped away from the rushing cameras, grim-faced agents clinging to bumpers and sideboards.

  The camera found a pudding of blood and brains on the pavement and lingered on it for nearly a minute. Then other cameramen saw the stain and they quickly trampled it under their jostling feet.

  America was spared the gruesome sight. But nothing spared them the horror. Their imaginations filled in the Technicolor details.

  HAROLD W SMITH WAS oblivious to the first bulletin. It was ironic. Harold W Smith should have known about the Presidential assassination as it was breaking. At the very least.

  In the best of all possible scenarios, Harold Smith should have seen it coming and been able to intercept the assassin. That, among other responsibilities, was Harold W. Smith's duty, as director of CURE, the supersecret government agency he headed.

  As the first reports were breaking, Harold W Smith, incongruously attired in a gray three-piece business suit, was in a concrete vault in one corner of the basement of Folcroft Sanitarium, the cover installation that masked CURE operations. Smith was completing repairs to the great bank of IDC mainframes that constituted the nerve center of CURE's information-gathering arm.

  CURE had been without its full Intelligence-gathering capability for three months now, ever since the awful morning when a combined IRS-DEA raid on Folcroft had forced Smith to erase the thirty years of data he had painstakingly compiled. And as the lasers were burning the deepest secrets of a fractious nation out of existence, Smith had taken the poison pill that would have erased him, too.

  The raid had been instigated ironically enough by a computer intelligence Smith had already defeated. The doomsday plan had come close to succeeding. The IRS had seized Folcroft and would have auctioned it off over Smith's cold gray corpse but for his enforcement arm, Remo Williams and his trainer, Chiun, the last Master of Sinanju.

  They had brought Smith back from the brink of eternity, and working behind the scenes, the three men had gotten the IRS and DEA off their backs without compromising CURE security.

  In the aftermath a dangerous patient and security threat had escaped, and the CURE computers, only recently upgraded, were reduced to the status of multimillion-dollar blank slates.

  It had taken three months to bring them back online.
It would take another decade to restore the most important portions of their data base. Harold Smith, who had been young during his days with the OSS during World War II, did not know if he had another decade.

  But because he had taken up the responsibility for CURE, he had done what he could. The systems were back online, and the four great mainframes and the slave WORM-drive units once again held the duplicate data bases siphoned off the IRS, Social Security Administration, FBI, CIA, DEA, DES and TRW computer systems.

  It was enough to put CURE back in the Intelligence-gathering and analysis business. It was not enough to restore it to full capacity.

  As he secured the three locks that concealed the CURE computers from prying eyes, Harold W Smith reflected that in these early days of the information superhighway, the proliferation of computers out there meant that in many cases he needn't have the raw data locked in his basement to have access to it. He need only reach out through the telephone system to snare what he wanted.

  Perhaps, Smith thought as he rode the elevator to his second-floor office, that was for the best.

  When he stepped off the elevator, he saw his secretary sobbing at her reception desk. Harold Smith paused, adjusted his Dartmouth tie uncomfortably and contemplated slipping past the weeping woman and into his office. He detested overt displays of emotion. Especially coming from women. They made him feel helpless and awkward.

  Mrs. Mikulka abruptly looked up, and it was too late.

  "Er, is something wrong?" Smith asked uneasily.

  Eileen Mikulka took a deep, ragged breath, her eyes red and moist. "He's been shot!"

  "The President. Someone shot him. Oh, what is this country coming to?"

  In a stark, still fraction of a moment, Harold W. Smith stood rooted. He remembered an identical time, an identical cold, settling feeling some thirty years ago, when, sitting in his office, he had picked up the telephone to hear his wife sobbing out the identical news. Her words had almost been the same. Why was it that people always said "they" did it. Who were "they"? Why didn't people ever say "someone" shot the President? Or "a killer" shot the President. It was always "they."

  The news of the death of that particular President so long ago had been like a cold dagger in Smith's vitals. For that President had installed Smith in the position of CURE director, entrusting him not only with the security of the nation but the political fate of the President, as well. For both men had known that if the truth ever leaked out, that President would be impeached for setting up an extraconstitutional bulwark against crime and corruption. In order to preserve the nation, CURE routinely trampled all over Constitutional guarantees.

  Smith snapped out of it. "Hold my calls," he said hoarsely. "I will be in my office."

  The renewed sobbing followed him into his office, ceasing only when he shut the oak door that was soundproofed against all noise.

  Smith crossed the Spartan but slightly shabby office in long-legged strides that put him behind a desk that was like a slab of anthracite on legs. The chair creaked under his spare frame. Reaching under the desk edge, he depressed a button.

  Under the black glass desk top, canted at an angle so only Smith could read it, a computer monitor winked into life, its black screen blending with the desk glass. Only the angry amber letters on the screen showed.

  Thin fingers touched the strip of desk top closest to him. A touch-sensitive keyboard illuminated. Smith logged on with hard stabs of his fingers.

  A warning message was already in the system, which patrolled all open news and data feeds in the nation.

  Smith read the first bulletin, and a chill climbed his curved-with-age-and-work spine.

  PRESIDENT OF U.S. SHOT EXITING OFFICIAL CAR AT KENNEDY LIBRARY IN BOSTON, MASS. RUSHED TO MASS GENERAL HOSPITAL. NO WORD ON CONDITION.

  In the spare, stark prose of the wire services lay a world of horror.

  Smith swallowed hard, his bony Adam's apple sliding from sight.

  "It's happening again," he said.

  IN THE MAIN TRAM BAY of Mass General Hospital, Chief of Surgery Kevin Powers was scrubbing for a scheduled colostomy when the hospital's chief administrator burst in and started to say something.

  "The President-"

  A phalanx of men in business suits and impenetrable sunglasses pushed the man and the half-open swinging doors in and, without stopping, seized Dr. Powers by his blue surgical scrubs and walked him out of the scrub room to the OR.

  A gold badge was flashed in his face. "Secret Service," a man said, tight-upped.

  It hit Powers with the clarity only dire emergency brought to the brain. "The President?" he blurted.

  "It's a head wound."

  "Christ."

  They continued walking him down to the OR and marched him like a white-faced automaton through the double doors.

  Dr. Powers started to protest. "You're not scrubbed."

  "There's no time," the agent said. "There he is. Save him, please."

  The patient already lay on the operating-room table. Other agents were finishing stripping off the expensive suit and undergarments. They tore at the clothing with gritted teeth and tears of rage and frustration in their eyes.

  The body lay utterly inert, moving only when the jerking rips made it jiggle.

  "What is it-gunshot?"

  "One shot to the head," the Secret Service agent told him.

  Dr. Powers found himself being impelled toward the head. When his eyes fell on the wound, he knew there was no hope. Not for a thinking recovery anyway.

  The bullet had exposed the pinkish gray mass of the brain. It throbbed lazily as the electrocardiogram machine began emitting jittery pulses and beeps.

  "It's bad, isn't it?" an agent said tearfully.

  "Let's get to work," Dr. Powers said grimly as his gloved hands picked up a scalpel.

  Carefully he smoothed the matter-spattered hair away from the area of the wound. Gasps all around. Under his mask, he winced. The wound was larger than it seemed.

  Then the EKG machine began emitting a low, frightening beep, and a nurse said, "Flatline."

  "Resuscitate," someone shouted. It was a Secret Service man.

  "Don't bother," Powers said.

  "We can't lose him!"

  "I'm sorry. He's gone."

  Strong hands came at Dr. Powers from both sides, grabbing him roughly by his gowned shoulders.

  "You save that man," a voice said with rough violence.

  "He's beyond saving, damn it. A third of his brain is pulp. I bring him back, and he'll be a withered vegetable. Is that what you want?"

  No one said anything. Slowly the hands released his gown. The agents began weeping openly. One turned and, with a steady rhythm, pounded the white tile wall with his fist until blood appeared.

  As he did the decent thing and drew a clean sheet over the strong clean body defiled by violence, Dr. Kevin Powers could only reflect dully that he had been a participant to history.

  But he wanted to pound his trembling fists on the wall in frustration, too.

  FOR NEARLY two more hours, the press and the people stood vigil in the crisp December air outside of Mass General Hospital. No word came. In the absence of facts, rumors abounded. They grew in the telling, and across the nation hope for the President's survival began to die.

  A unshaven man wearing aviator sunglasses and a blue L.A. Dodgers baseball cap kept saying, "I'm ashamed to be an American today. I'm ashamed to be an American." A video camera hung from his dead fingers. From time to time he filmed the stunned faces of the crowd.

  At the top of the third hour, Pepsie Dobbins leapt from a cab and forced her way through the crowd. They stood about like sheep, eyes turned up to the top of the building. A few hung their heads in sorrow or prayer.

  Pepsie wormed her way through the crowd, fighting toward the hospital entrance, which was guarded by stony-faced state troopers at stiff attention. An ANC cameraman followed, lugging his Minicam.

  "Let me in. I'm Pepsie Dobbins."


  "No admittance."

  Pepsie started to argue.

  The clatter of a helicopter rotor began bouncing off the buildings. All eyes looked upward. Pepsie took a step back in order to see.

  The big olive-green-and-black shape floated majestically to the hospital roof and disappeared from view. It was out of sight in less than forty seconds. It lifted off again, lumbering majestically in the direction of Logan Airport.

  "That's Marine One," someone whispered. "The President's helicopter."

  "Maybe he's all right," someone else said.

  A third person said in a dead tone, "Maybe they're taking the body back to Washington."

  Pepsie whirled on the state troopers and demanded, "Where are they taking the President?"

  "Back to Washington," said one state trooper in a robotic voice.

  "I demand to speak with the hospital director," Pepsie demanded.

  "Sorry."

  "I demand some information."

  "You know what we know."

  "Is the President alive or dead?"

  "Unknown."

  "Is there a cover-up going on here? Is that it? Has the cover-up already begun?"

  "There's no cover-up," the second trooper said, tight-upped.

  "How do you know unless you know more than you're saying?"

  "No fucking comment," said the first and second state troopers a beat apart. Then they sealed their lips and looked stony eyed over Pepsie Dobbins's head at nothing.

  Pepsie Dobbins struggled her way to a pay phone and dialed the Washington bureau of ANC News and said, "The President has died."

  "You have that confirmed this time?"

  "Marine One touched down on the hospital roof and took off again before the wheels bit gravel. It's on its way to Logan Airport."

  "Have you confirmation the President's body is aboard?"

  "You saw the footage. No one could have survived that shot. Mass General Hospital is one of the best in the nation. If he were alive, they wouldn't dare move him."

  "This is too important to put on the air without corroboration, Pepsie."

  "You idiot! Do you want CNN to beat us again?"

  "Do you want to look like a fool to all America again?" the news director countered.

  "This morning wasn't my fault. It was that screw-up technician."