Out of the Dark

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Evan maintained perfect focus.

  As the convoy started up again, the end vehicles turned their wheels before the vehicles moved, rotating them in place on the asphalt while the limos were still at rest. But the middle driver turned the wheels only as he coasted forward, providing a smoother ride for the president.

  A poker tell.

  If Evan were one to smile, he would have now.

  Instagram Mom tugged her kid upright. “Stand up, Cameron. The president’s coming this way.”

  As the convoy banked around the curved drive, Evan put himself on the move, carving not too briskly through the onlookers, heading to where E Street intersected with East Executive Avenue.

  President Bennett preferred this route, as it allowed him to avoid Pennsylvania Avenue, which ran across the front of the White House and provided a view of Lafayette Square, where an ever-growing mass of protesters gathered to call for his impeachment. They wielded signs and banners decrying a host of constitutional violations. Contravening the Arms Export Control Act. Funneling money and weapons illicitly to foreign fighters. Initiating widespread NSA surveillance of Americans. Monitoring domestic political factions that opposed him. Transgressing international conventions. Providing special access to defense contractors. Circumventing Congress. Usurping judicial powers.

  But Bennett had masterfully erected a force field around his administration, fogging transparency sufficiently to hold his detractors at bay.

  Evan was not interested in politics. Bennett’s transgressions of office, while appalling, were not what had Evan here on the sun-baked concrete outside the White House. It was not about the vast and the conspiratorial. Not about whispered conversations in the corridors of power. Not about kingdom-altering back-channel deals or the Rube Goldberg machinations that disguised originator from outcome, cause from effect.

  It was the faces of the dead.

  And the fact that the president of the United States had personally ordered the murder of men and women who as children had been taken from foster homes and trained and indoctrinated to spend their existence serving their country. They had done the best they could with the life that had been imposed on them. And he’d snuffed them out for the sake of his own preservation.

  Ending Jonathan Bennett was the ultimate Nowhere Man mission.

  Finally the motorcade reached the intersection and halted. Again the drivers of the bookending limos turned the tires while stationary, grinding tread against asphalt. And again the wheels of the middle limo rotated only as the driver pulled out.

  It had not been a fluke, then. But a habit.

  The convoy banked onto E Street and headed for Evan.

  He adjusted his baseball cap and slowed his breathing until he could sense the stillness between heartbeats, the sacred space he occupied the instant before he pulled the trigger of a sniper rifle, when even the faintest thrum of blood in his fingertip could put him off his mark.

  In less than a minute, the presidential limo would pass directly in front of Evan, bringing him at last within several meters of the most inaccessible and heavily guarded man on the face of the planet.

  3

  Identified Threat

  Excitement electrified the crowd cramming the sidewalk. People surged toward the curb, strained their necks, waved dumbly. A flurry of hands bearing smartphones rose in unison, most people twisting around to capture themselves in the photos. The motorcade barreled forward, the sight that launched a thousand selfies.

  As reviled as President Bennett had proved to be, he was still good for a social-media status update.

  Surrounded by civilians, Evan watched. The air was East Coast heavy, rippled by a humid breeze. The taste of soda lingered on his tongue, coating his teeth.

  The vanguard of G-rides and the front decoy swept by, the presidential limousine coming into clear view. Dubbed “Cadillac One” or “The Beast,” it deserved both nicknames.

  Set down on the chassis of a GMC truck, the limo was nearly eight tons, each door the same weight as a cabin door of a Boeing 747. Military-grade armor, an amalgam of ceramic and dual-hardness steel, was coated with aluminum titanium nitride. Slabs of ballistic glass a half foot thick composed the windows. A steel plate soldered beneath the vehicle guarded against the possibility of a frag grenade or an improvised explosive device. Even if a hail of bullets shredded the puncture-resistant, run-flat, Kevlar-reinforced tires, the limo could still drive away on the steel rims beneath. The limo was designed to take a direct hit from a bazooka.

  Evan had a Dr Pepper Big Gulp.

  If need be, Cadillac One could serve as a self-sustained, fully functional emergency bunker. Bottles of the president’s blood were stored beneath the rear seats. At an instant’s notice, a designated backup oxygen supply fed the air-conditioning vents. Firefighting gear stowed in the trunk was accessible through a hatch behind the armrest. The gas tank self-sealed, preventing combustion. Encrypted comms gear maintained continuous contact with federal and state law enforcement.

  Evan had cotton wads in his cheeks.

  Behind the wheel of Cadillac One was a master driver from the White House Transportation Agency. The driver would have received highly specialized army training in evasive maneuvers, route analysis, tactical steering, and vehicle dynamics.

  Evan had comfortable dad shoes.

  The presidential limo coasted up level with Evan, and for a split second he stared from the sea of faces at the tinted window behind which Bennett drifted in a cocoon of safety and comfort.

  Close enough for Evan to spit on the pane.

  The motorcade drove on.

  He reminded his face to relax as he watched it go.

  * * *

  Jonathan Bennett did not sweat.

  He never issued a nervous laugh, a tense smile, or gave an accommodating tilt of the head.

  And his hands never quavered. Not when as a special agent for the DoD he’d found himself at gunpoint on multiple occasions. Not when as an undersecretary of that same department he’d pushed a button in a command center and watched a black-budget unmanned aerial vehicle unleash hell halfway around the globe. Not when he flipped the pages of his rebuttal notes during his first presidential debate or his sixth.

  Body control was a learned skill, one he’d been taught in his early training at Glynco and which he used every day as the commander in chief. Without uttering a word, he could assuage the concerns of the American public and project power on the world stage. He sold himself to the populace not by appealing to their better angels but by manifesting subtle dominance displays that voters registered in their spinal cords.

  The fact that he’d been largely successful at appeasing the population was testament to his sheer force of will. His detractors had gained a bit of traction, yes, but he knew precisely which levers he’d need to pull before the midterm elections to maintain control of both houses.

  He settled into the butter-smooth leather of the presidential limo now and scanned the urban-development report he was due to weigh in on at this afternoon’s cabinet meeting.

  When his driver negotiated the presidential limo into a left turn more abruptly than usual, Bennett registered a slight uptick in his pulse.

  He looked at his deputy chief of staff, his body man, and the Secret Service agent riding in the rear compartment with him, but none seemed to have registered the deviation.

  He waited two seconds, and then the Secret Service agent stiffened, his hand rising to the clear spiral wire at his ear.

  Bennett thought, Orphan X.

  He checked in on his breathing, was gratified to note that it had not changed in the least.

  The agent’s hand lowered from the radio earpiece. Bennett waited for him to say, Mr. President. We’re deviating course. There’s been an identified threat.

  The agent said, “Mr. President. We’re deviating course. There’s been an identified threat.”

  Bennett said, “Has there, now.”

  He pointedly caught the eye o
f his deputy chief of staff and then turned and watched the buildings slide by beyond the tinted glass.

  * * *

  Secret Service agents stacked the seventh-floor hall of the upscale residential building. Despite the lush carpet, they moved delicately on the balls of their feet as they eased up on Apartment 705.

  The lead agent folded his fingers into his fist—three, two, one—and the breacher drove the battering ram into the door, ripping the dead bolt straight through the frame.

  They exploded into the apartment, SIG Sauers drawn, two-man teams peeling off into the bedroom and kitchen.

  “Clear!”

  “Clear!”

  They circled back up in the front room, stared at the sight left in clear view of the open window. A tired breeze fluffed the gossamer curtains and cooled the sweat on the men’s faces.

  No sounds of traffic rose from F Street below; the block had been barricaded once the sighting had been called in.

  The lead agent looked around the apartment, taking stock. “Well, fuck,” he said. “Ain’t this theatrical.”

  The breacher glanced up from the windowsill. “It’s been wired,” he said. “The window. Someone slid it up remotely.”

  “How long’s the place been rented?”

  Another agent weighed in. “Manager said six months.”

  There was no furniture, no boxes, nothing on the shelves and counters.

  Just a sniper rifle atop a tripod there in full view of the open window along President Bennett’s route.

  “Someone contact that new special agent in charge over at Protective Intelligence and Assessment,” the lead agent said. “Templeton’s kid.” He tore free the Velcro straps of his ballistic vest to let through a little breeze, his mouth setting in a firm line of displeasure. “Someone’s been planning for a long time.”

  4

  What’s It Gonna Be?

  Evan moved swiftly along E Street a few blocks from the commotion. The closure had backed up traffic through the surrounding streets, though the presidential convoy had already made its retreat, doubling back and darting away before the public was let in on the ostensible threat. Evan had wanted to leave a message for Bennett, yes, but he also wanted to note the driver’s procedures for altering the route in the event of an emergency.

  Commuters were laying on their horns, a symphony of displeasure. Cops jogged by at intervals, spreading through the area. This section of D.C., a sniper round’s distance from the White House, had as many CCTV cameras as a London street corner, so Evan kept his head lowered, his face hidden by the brim of the baseball cap.

  The Secret Service’s Forensic Services Division had cutting-edge software that would review all footage in the area. Not wanting his movements to be pieced together after the fact, Evan paused directly beneath a cluster of cameras on a streetlight, stripped off his Windbreaker so it fell casually into the gutter behind him, and heeled it back through a storm drain. He let the Nikon camera swing low at his side before delivering it to the same fate.

  He waited for the crowd to swell and wash him up the sidewalk. A trash bin waited ahead at the edge of a crosswalk in the blind spot beneath another streetlight. He gave a swift scan for cops, found none close enough to take note of him. Quickening his pace, he removed his Nationals baseball hat, palmed the cotton rolls out of his mouth, and trashed them together. From his back pocket, he pulled out a worn Baltimore Orioles cap and tugged it on before stepping back into the sight lines of the CCTV cameras overhead.

  In his peripheral vision, he noticed a face holding on him for a beat too long. He risked a glance across the heads of the pedestrians crossing the street with him and grabbed an instant of direct eye contact with a square-jawed woman in a sweatshirt.

  She turned away hastily, raising a cell phone to her face.

  A band of pale skin showed on her finger; she’d removed her wedding ring to avoid its snagging on a trigger guard. In an instant he read her build and bearing—a plainclothes officer scouting for suspicious behavior.

  Like, say, a man switching baseball hats in the middle of an intersection.

  Careless.

  And lazy.

  Evan berated himself with the Second Commandment: How you do anything is how you do everything.

  He could see the woman’s mouth moving against the phone. Up the block, two uniformed cops keyed to their radios.

  He kept walking.

  The woman followed him.

  The cops split up, taking opposite sides of the street, fording the current of passersby, heading in his direction.

  Three tails were manageable. No one needed to get hurt.

  People spilled out of bars and restaurants. A guy was handing out flyers for the Spy Museum. A frazzled father had gotten the wheel of his baby stroller stuck in a sewer grate. Chaos was helpful.

  Evan cut around the corner just as another pair of uniformed officers spilled out of an alley ahead, blocking his best route to freedom. An older cop with a ready-for-retirement bulge at his belt line and a muscle-bound kid who couldn’t have been a year out of the academy.

  Twenty yards apart the officers and Evan stared at each other.

  Evan nodded at them.

  And then stepped off the sidewalk and into a bustling café.

  The pair of officers would reverse and cover the rear as the other three flooded into the front.

  Evan had ten seconds, maybe twelve.

  Given his training, that was a lifetime.

  * * *

  Evan threaded through the packed tables, requisitioning a mammoth latte mug from the service counter. In the back of the café, a brief hall led to a gender-neutral bathroom and a rear door with an inset pane of frosted glass. To the side of the hall, a small table remained bare, having just been wiped down.

  Heading for the open seat, he plucked an ice-water jug from a busboy’s hands and sloshed it across the tile floor in front of the table. As he swung into the chair, he reached between the couple dining beside him and snatched their saltshaker.

  The wife aimed a do-something stare at her husband, who managed a feeble, “Dude, what the hell?”

  Evan didn’t answer. He was down to five seconds.

  He unscrewed the top of the shaker and poured its contents into his fist. Then he tilted back in his chair so his shoulders touched the rear wall, tasted the matcha green tea latte, and waited.

  On the surface of the latte, a swan was rendered in steamed milk, its tail smeared to peacock proportions by Evan’s sip. Over at the service counter, an artichoke and sun-dried-tomato panini sizzled on the press, releasing delightful aromas. Evan watched the front door.

  At the behest of a harried manager, a waitress approached, clutching a menu to her chest in withholding fashion. She looked down at the wet floor and then up at Evan, uncertain where to start. “Sir, I’m sorry. You can’t just sit here. We have to seat you.”

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out a wad of hundred-dollar bills.

  “We’re not a nightclub. We’re, like, a café. We don’t take bribes.”

  He kept his eyes on the front door. With his foot he pushed the table away from him another six inches, getting it into position. “It’s not a bribe,” he said.

  “No?” She regarded the proffered bills. “What’s it for, then?”

  “The damage,” he said.

  The plainclothes officer and two cops shoved through the front door of the café, spotting Evan immediately.

  Evan sensed the waitress’s head swivel from him to the officers and back to him. There was a slight, mouth-ajar delay as she processed his meaning. Then the hundreds lifted from his hand and she scurried back to the manager.

  The energy in the café shifted as the officers advanced through the tables. One of the men unsnapped the thumb strap on his holster, and a kid screamed, and then there was yelling and jostling as the place cleared out.

  The cops crept forward, hands hovering over their holsters in case Sergio Leone decided to bust in with a
crew and start filming.

  Evan sipped the matcha tea once more. It wasn’t half bad. He wondered at the kind of life that called for a steamed-milk waterfowl decorating one’s hot beverage.

  The officers stopped ten feet from his table and spread out. But not enough.

  The café suddenly felt quite silent.

  “Why are you chasing me?” Evan asked.

  “Why are you running?” the plainclothes officer said.

  “Because you’re chasing me.”

  “We had an incident a few blocks away,” she said.

  “An incident.”

  “That’s right. And then I saw you switching your hat.”

  The two uniformed cops unholstered their Glocks. They didn’t aim at Evan, not yet, keeping the muzzles pointed at the floor. An ice cube crunched under one of their boots.

  Evan looked at the three cops facing him down. “So that’s why you’re all here? Because I changed hats?”

  “Why would you do a thing like that?” the woman said.

  “The Nationals need some heart-of-the-order bats,” he said. “I decided the Orioles are a stronger bet for the postseason.”

  “And you decided this in the middle of E and Eleventh?”

  He liked her.

  “I did,” he said. “And while I know that civil liberties have been under assault by the current administration, I would think you could overlook an epiphany regarding the national pastime.”

  The amusement went out of her eyes. “Why don’t we stop fucking around?” she said.

  Evan took another sip of the tea. Hot, not scalding. “I’d like that.”

  “I’m gonna tell you what’s gonna happen next,” she said.

  “No,” Evan said. “I’m gonna tell you what’s gonna happen next.”

  He was still tilted back in his chair, casual as could be, but beneath the table he pressed his foot to its base. The uniformed cops were holding their Glocks too stiffly, seams of white showing at their knuckles. The muzzles were now aimed halfway between the tips of their boots and Evan’s table.