Target of Opportunity td-98

by Warren Murphy

  "Hold the line."

  Pepsie held. She tapped her toes impatiently, counting the seconds. She wasn't going to be scooped again. Not if she had to march up to a local camera crew and seize a microphone.

  The news director came back on the line. "The White House has put out a statement," he said.

  "Yeah?"

  "They say the President will address the nation later this afternoon."

  "That's crazy! We all saw the top of his head come off."

  "They're hinting he's alive."

  "My God! It's a cover-up. Do you realize how big this story just got?"

  "Pepsie, get a grip. Maybe they mean the Vice President. If the worst has happened, he's President now."

  "What are the call letters of our local affiliate?"

  "Don't you dare go over my head and air this story like that time in Baltimore."

  "There's a cover-up going on. And I'm on ground zero."

  "Look, we'll sort the pieces out on this end. Everybody's at the hospital, right?"

  Pepsie scanned the crowd with her wide feral eyes. "Right. Of course. I see MBC. BCN. And Vox."

  "Go back to the shooting scene. See what you can pick up there."

  "But the story's here. "

  "No, the story's on Marine One heading for Air Force One. "

  "Maybe I can sneak on board ...."

  "Fat chance. But if there's a cover-up brewing, that story's back at the Kennedy Library."

  "You'll hear from me," said Pepsie, hanging up and sticking two fingers into her mouth. She blew a whistle shrill enough to derust the Lusitania.

  Looking like a chocolate-milk carton on wheels, a brown-and-white Boston taxicab stopped briefly and whisked her away.

  "Kennedy Library," she snapped, shoving her cameraman in ahead of her.

  The driver stared into his rearview mirror in surprise. "Aren't you Pepsie Dobbins?"

  "None other."

  "Can I get your autograph? I think you're the funniest newswoman on the air."

  "I'm not supposed to be funny," Pepsie snapped.

  "That's why you're so funny."

  "Shut up and drive," fumed Pepsie.

  Chapter 6

  In the hothouse control room under Sam Beasley World, Remo Williams blocked the animatronic stainless-steel hand that clutched at his throat.

  It was neither swift nor strong. The wrist encountered Remo's thicker wrists and, thwarted, the steel hand opened and closed like a clutching flower of metal.

  Remo unblocked his wrists and captured the steel fist in his own fingers. He exerted pressure. The fingers, tiny servo motors whirring in complaint, tried to reopen. And failed.

  Remo looked up at the screen and the eager face of the real Uncle Sam Beasley.

  Uncle Sam was snapping an unseen switch over and over again angrily.

  "Watch this," Remo said.

  And he crushed the metal hand into a ball of steel wool.

  The head of the animatronic Beasley snapped around and, teeth champing, tried to take a chunk out of Remo's wrists. As the porcelain teeth disturbed the tiny guard hairs on Remo's wrist, he brought his hand down hard. Uncle Sam's jaw fell off, trailing sparks and wires.

  Up on the screen, the real Beasley's jaw dropped open. He shut it and demanded, "What the hell are you made out of?"

  "Snips and snails and puppy dogs' tails," Remo said, casually batting the head off its spinal stalk. It flew at the screen. The real Beasley, caught off guard, recoiled. The head burrowed into the shattered screen, and both began emitting acrid electrical smoke after the screen went dead.

  Remo turned his attention back to Captain Maus.

  "Where is he?"

  "I will die before I betray Uncle Sam."

  "Let's test that theory," said Remo, taking Maus's right hand by the wrist.

  "This little piggy went to market," Remo said, dislocating Maus's right index finger simply by yanking it straight. The joint gave a tiny pop. "This little piggy started home," said Remo, doing the same to the ply.

  Maus's eyes widened as he watched his fingers wilt like fleshy flowers under the casual violence of the thick-wristed man.

  "The Sorcerer's Castle!" he bleated.

  From a hidden speaker, Uncle Sam Beasley snarled, "Maus, you are a traitor."

  "But-but," Maus protested, his face twisting like heated wax. "I've been a fan of yours since I was a little boy!"

  "Consider yourself defrocked of your mouse ears."

  Captain Maus hung his head and blubbered like a child.

  "Grow up," said Remo. "What's the best way to get to the castle from here?"

  Maus kept blubbering, so Remo took his temples between his forefinger and thumb and exerted pressure. The fused skull plates at the top of Maus's skull actually bulged upward under his thin hair, and he let out an inarticulate scream that would have meant nothing to anyone except Remo, who over years of practice had learned to understand people when he squeezed the truth out of their skulls.

  "Hatchinthecenterofthefloorwillgetyouthere," Maus had said at ultrahigh speed.

  "Much obliged," said Remo. "Stay here till I get back."

  But as Remo popped the hatch in the center of the floor, he heard a faint gritty crunch as Maus broke something between his teeth. Maus slumped in his console chair, and Remo shrugged. One less loose end to worry about.

  An aluminum ladder led down to a square brick tunnel. There was a golf cart in the tunnel, and Remo climbed aboard. That made it easier. He sent it humming along the tunnel, which went in only one direction.

  When he reached the end, Remo jumped from the moving vehicle to an identical aluminum ladder hanging from an identical well and was halfway up when the unattended golf cart crashed into a bulkhead.

  By the time Remo reached the top-the well was barely three stories high-the whine of a helicopter was audible.

  Remo stepped out into a stone corridor through a stone niche that had a knight in medieval armor bolted to it.

  The helicopter whine was growing louder. It was coming from above-far above-so Remo ignored the graceful stone staircase that swept upward and slipped out a narrow window. The castle walls were made of big stone blocks with plenty of handholds between them. Remo climbed a turret as if it were made for that purpose.

  The helicopter was a fat green lime with Christmassy red trim and snowy white rotors. It had already lifted off a concealed helipad when Remo came over the battlements and floated toward it on gliding feet.

  Remo snared one snowy skid just as it was lifting out of reach. His fist closed, and his feet left the ground.

  The helicopter tilted and angled out toward the west.

  Below, orange groves and kudzu patches rolled by as Sam Beasley World was left behind.

  Remo waited until the helicopter pilot had settled onto his course before boarding.

  Using both hands, he pulled himself up until his heels hooked onto the skid. He executed this maneuver with such smooth grace that there was no sudden shifting of weight to unbalance the colorful craft.

  Once wrapped around the skid, it was an easy enough matter to reach up and find the side-door handle. Remo yanked it open and slipped in with an uncoiling motion that landed him in the rear seat while pulling the door shut after him.

  "Going my way?" he said airily. The pilot looked over his shoulder, white as a ghost.

  "Where the hell did you come from?" he sputtered.

  Remo started to smile. The smile evaporated when he realized only he and the pilot were on board.

  "Where's Uncle Sam?" Remo asked.

  "Twenty-five years in his grave," the pilot blurted.

  "A popular rumor, if untrue," the filtered voice of Uncle Sam Beasley said from a speaker inside the bubble.

  There came a pop, a puff of evil black smoke arose from the rotating rotor shaft above Remo's head, and the turbine cut out.

  "Oh, Jesus. We've lost power," the pilot snapped, throwing switches.

  Remo kicked open the door.
<
br />   "Where the hell do you think you're going?" the pilot shouted in the sudden silence.

  "Bailing out," said Remo.

  "It's sure death."

  "So is falling straight down in this oversize Christmas ornament."

  "We'll be fine," the pilot said. "The main rotor is still turning. It'll act like a parachute. It's called autorotation."

  Remo stayed half-in and half-out of the bubble just in case.

  The helicopter floated straight down, sustained by the steady braking action of its main rotor.

  It settled in a field of kudzu maybe ten miles west of Sam Beasley World.

  As Remo got out, he saw another Christmas-colored chopper lift off from the fairyland skyline of the theme park and realized he'd been played for a sucker. It angled away and out of sight.

  "Who was that voice that came over the speaker?" the pilot asked.

  "Sound familiar?" said Remo.

  "Yeah, it did," the pilot admitted.

  "That was Popeye the Sailor Man," said Remo.

  The pilot just stared at him.

  He was still staring when Remo started walking through the endless kudzu toward the nearest highway. The nearest highway wasn't very near, so it was a good twenty minutes before Remo reached it and another ten before he found a gas station with a pay phone.

  He called Dr. Harold W. Smith, waiting impatiently as the connection was rerouted twice before ringing a blue contact phone on Smith's glassy desk.

  Smith's voice sounded hoarse but lemony. "Remo, is that you?"

  "Yeah. What's wrong?"

  "The President of the United States has been shot."

  "Damn. How bad?"

  Smith's voice sank to a hush. "They're reporting his death, Remo."

  Remo said nothing. He was no particular fan of the current President, but in the long moment that the news sank in, he thought about where he had been thirty years ago when he had heard those identical words.

  He had been in class. Saint Theresa's Orphanage. A nun whose name Remo had long ago forgotten was teaching English. There had come a knock at the class door, and Sister Mary Margaret, whose name and face Remo would remember to his dying day, entered, more pale of face than usual. She had conferred in a low voice with the other nun, whose face lost all color, too.

  Then Sister Mary Margaret had addressed the class in a low, hoarse voice. "Children, our beloved President has been shot. We must all pray for him now."

  And Sister Mary Margaret had led the class in prayer.

  Remo could still remember the cold feeling in that classroom that day. He was old enough to understand a terrible thing had happened, yet still young enough to be dazed by the news.

  When the word came that the young President had died, every class had been cancelled and the entire population of Saint Theresa's Orphanage was led in procession to the chapel. A Mass was sung. Those were still the days of Latin Masses.

  It was the first time Remo Williams had ever seen the priests and the nuns-the only authority figures he had known up to that point in his life-weep. It had made him tremble in fear back then, and a little of that sick, hollow emptiness rose up to haunt him three decades later.

  "Who did it?" Remo asked after his thoughts came back to the present.

  "I have no information at present," Smith said, dull voiced.

  "But I do. I found Uncle Sam. He was at Sam Beasley World."

  "Was?"

  "He got away. And I'm stuck in some highway in the middle of Kudzu, Florida."

  "Go to Washington, D.C., Remo."

  "Gladly. What's there?"

  "The Vice President. He may need protecting."

  "We blew a big one, didn't we?"

  "Someone did," said Smith, terminating the connection with abrupt finality.

  Chapter 7

  Secret Service Special Agent Win Workman hated guarding the President of the United States.

  He hated it every time the President with his two giant 747s blew into town loaded down with communications gear, armored limousines and an endless list of demands on the Boston Office.

  Win Workman worked out of the Boston district office of the Secret Service. He liked working out of Boston, where his routine duties included catching counterfeiters, busting credit-card thieves and solving computer crimes. This last category was one of the fastest-growing missions of the service, whose job wasn't just limited to protecting Presidents, whether sitting, retired or aspiring.

  Win Workman had gone to the Service by way of BATF. The pay was higher, the duties more interesting. Just as long as he didn't have to guard any Presidents.

  There was little danger of that, he had discovered. Win was too "street" for the White House detail. The Boston office preferred him to work on undercover assignments.

  So Win Workman worked the street. He liked working the street. The trouble was every time the President blew into town, they pulled him off the street, made him shave and put on his best Brooks Brothers gray suit and handed him the belt radio whose earphone had been custom-fitted from a mold of his left ear for a perfect fit.

  Usually he had to deal with the "quarterlies"-the local nuts and screwballs who had come to the service's attention because they had made public threats against the Chief Executive. They were interviewed every quarter as a matter of routine precaution and were checked out whenever the President came to town.

  But this time he had to stand post, thanks to a virulent flu that had knocked out half the Boston office.

  Win felt like a tailor's dummy standing post as the Presidential motorcade rolled like a segmented black dragon through the narrow streets of the city. All dressed up and hoping for no action. None whatsoever, thank you very much.

  The trouble with standing post for the President of the United States, as Win Workman saw it, was not the boredom factor. High as it was. It wasn't even being pulled off the street.

  Working undercover, you won some and you lost some. Not much glory either way. Not in the service, where you were trained to take your satisfaction in a job well done, not press ink or TV face time.

  Standing post for the President, you got no thank you's if you did your job right. If you didn't, you might as well have been witness to the end of the world.

  Win Workman found himself standing post on the roof of the University of Massachusetts Healey Library building when the shots that all but stopped his own heart rang out.

  His eyes went instantly to the source. Across the plaza. Down on the Science Center roof, there was a man: with a rifle.

  "Fuck!" he said, dropping into a marksman's crouch and opening fire.

  It was a dumb-ass ridiculous thing to do. Win had only his service-issue 10 mm Delta Elite automatic. The range was too short. But he was the only agent close enough to distract the shooter.

  So Win Workman emptied his clip as the shooter, one shot fired, laid his rifle carefully at his feet and took off.

  It was only then that Win saw the man's aviator sunglasses and white coil going from his earphone into his windbreaker collar and realized that he'd waved to the man only minutes before. Waved to what he thought was a D.C.-based Secret Service countersniper named Don Grodin.

  The man walking away wasn't Don Grodin. He was wearing Grodin's service-issue windbreaker and he practically swam in it.

  "Jesus," he said as he pelted toward the stairs.

  After that everything became a mad blur. His earphone filled with so much chatter Win had to pull it out and scream into his hand mike.

  "Shut the fuck up! Everybody! Shut the fuck up right now."

  When the earphone stopped buzzing, he jammed it back into its place. By that time, he was on the plaza. "Boston agents, this is Win. Switch to backup frequency. Suspect shooter has left roof of Science Center. Repeat, suspect shooter has just left Science Center roof. Be aware he's wearing a countersniper windbreaker. I want men on the garage elevator, men on the plaza and at all exits including the damn catwalks. The rest of you sweep the Science Center."r />
  Someone asked, "How is the Man?"

  "Forget the Man. He's the White House detail's problem. Ours is the shooter."

  "Looked like he was hurt pretty bad, " someone else muttered.

  After that the only conversation came in snatches, punctuated by gunfire.

  "We have shooting in the parking garage. "

  A moment later it was, "Shooting in Science."

  "My God! There are two dead agents here."

  "We think he's in the Lipke Auditorium."

  By that time, Win Workman had reached the Science Center with a knot of agents and got them organized.

  The main entrance to the Lipke Auditorium was one floor above. But the stage entrances were on the plaza level.

  "Half of you take stage right. The rest of you come with me. We're going in stage left."

  It took less than thirty seconds for the other detail to report that they were in position. Everyone took deep breaths, and Workman shouted, "Go!"

  They poured into the gloom of the auditorium, flashlights pointing in all directions like a million-feelered insect.

  The shooter was sitting quietly in the front row, exactly dead center. He made no effort to resist as they fell on him, throwing him to the floor.

  "I'm not resisting. I'm not resisting arrest!" he screeched.

  "Good thing for you, you bastard," Workman barked.

  After patting him down and finding no concealed weapons, they hauled him to his feet again. Someone took his wallet and handed it to Workman. He hastily pocketed it and said, "Let's get him the fuck out of here."

  They were hustling him up the steps when someone with a head like a high-tech diver's helmet popped up from behind a section of rows and started firing two pistols at once, straight-arm style.

  It was one of those heart-stopping moments you play and replay in your mind forever, rolling the tape back, looking at your own mistakes or a juncture where you could have done something to change what happened.

  For years afterward Win Workman would do that in the grim hours before he fell asleep. But when it happened, he was just one of the many who mowed down the assailant as he methodically pumped hot rounds into the prisoner.

  THE GUNSHOT ECHOES were still bouncing when Win Workman kicked the .38 revolver and what looked suspiciously like a service-issue Delta Elite away from the dead assailant's hands and shouted, "Anyone hurt? Anyone hurt, damn it?"