Unfortunately, they also cut off her vantage of the target.
She had no choice now but to step out into the cleared center of the street, putting her in the wide, suspicious open.
* * *
Cloaked in official emergency-response-team garb, Service creds dangling in full view from lanyards, Orphan A and the Collins brood had been able to move freely, strolling in front of the sawhorses, their FN P90s at low ready. Overzealous agents had checked their credentials twice, but the documents were—if fake—authentic government-issue.
Irate over Ricky’s death, Wade was running on a high simmer, breathing so hard his nostrils quivered. Holt didn’t know if he’d kicked something extra into his bloodstream—a shot of epinephrine, a hit of PCP, the blood of a Spanish bull.
Holt had positioned his team in the dense network of streets north of Pennsylvania Avenue because that was the corridor he would have chosen were he plotting the assassination. They’d started in a wolf pack, then spread out gradually, Holt going solo but splitting the remaining Collinses into teams of two. He directed them over the radio, maintaining close contact.
When he’d heard the explosions, he was in position near the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial, a triangular granite shaft with bronze reliefs depicting Union soldiers holding stately poses. Ideally located at the intersection of 7th, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, the circular plaza gave him clear sight lines through a good swath of Penn Quarter.
His first reaction was to not react. He’d hopped up onto a bus bench, widening his focus, reading the river. Looking two blocks north, he’d caught the convoy as it blasted along E Street. Moments later two more charges detonated up Indiana Avenue.
Now he understood.
X was guiding Bennett into a kill zone.
Holt looked overhead now, using the helicopter to chart the location of the lead limo beneath it. It was vectoring south hard toward Pennsylvania Avenue.
At last he moved, sprinting a half block south and spilling onto the wide thoroughfare a block from where Cadillac One would intercept it. He looked wildly up the street, searching for something, anything, that could pass for a sniper’s wind indicator.
There it was.
A plastic grocery bag stuck artfully on a telephone line over the dead center of the street by the Newseum, high enough to catch the sight line of a roof shooter. The bag fluttered in a low breeze.
Already he was sprinting for the nearest building, activating the radio. “He’s set up for a shot somewhere near Sixth and Pennsylvania. Get here now.”
Slinging his submachine gun, he plowed into the Federal Trade Commission Building, flashing his badge at the security guard—“Emergency! Emergency!”—and smashing through the door into the stairwell. Pounding up three at a time, he headed for the roof, shouting, “Do you copy?”
At last Wade’s voice came back. “I got eyes on a woman standing in the middle of the intersection at E and Sixth. I think she’s spotting for him.” The connection crackled and then came clear once more. “Me and my boy gonna take the bitch now.”
50
A Sleek Instrument of Destruction
Candy had to straddle the center line of 6th Street to hold the presidential limo in view, and even then it was a challenge with the SUVs weaving side to side behind it. She ran south down the middle of the street, courier bag smacking against her lower back.
Cadillac One crossed D Street, hurtling away from her.
There were still enough panicked pedestrians dashing across the road to cover Candy for the moment, but the area was dotted with agents, so it was only a matter of time before—
She sensed him from the corner of her eye, a hulking figure wrapped in an ERT combat-utility uniform, stepping out from between two parked police motorcycles.
His energy drew her focus immediately, something off about him—not just size but a ferality behind the eyes. He was sweating heavily, a trickle running down the side of his throat leaving a bluish stain.
No—not a stain.
A makeup-covered tattoo.
That happened to be a swastika.
His shadow stepped out from behind him, and she realized it wasn’t his shadow but a slightly less enormous version of him.
Wade Collins and one of his cousins. Bob or Jimmy. Either way it wasn’t going to go well for him.
In her ear came X’s voice. “Standing by.”
She looked ahead at the vanishing rear of the presidential limo and then back over at the men confronting her.
A still moment, as fragile as a spiderweb, all of them connected by silk threads and trembles in the air.
And then Wade charged, his cousin at his heels. Stray tourists were still darting between them, so Wade dropped his FN P90, letting it dangle from the sling, and opted for the SIG in his hip holster.
Instead of running away, she ran at him.
She had to intercept him before his arm got to horizontal.
She barely did.
Seizing his rising wrist with her left hand, she planted a foot on his thigh and literally ran up his body, seating her other boot in his gut before flipping backward and locking up his arm between both of her legs. Her weight ripped him forward off his feet, and they pitched together to the asphalt. Even as they fell, she reached to his side with her free hand, grabbing the swaying submachine gun, and squeezed off a burst under his armpit.
Impact with the street was brutal, Wade’s weight crushing her into her courier bag.
But she held the arm bar, keeping his limb clamped between her legs, the elbow flexed outward, a breaking hold.
Behind them Bob or Jimmy held his feet a moment, staring down at them. Then crimson spots bloomed through his ERT uniform like shirt buttons, a neat line up his torso.
He toppled.
Screams split the air, leading to another mini-stampede, nearby agents and cops strobing in and out of view in the seething crowd. A few alerted to the gunfire and started forging toward them.
Keeping pressure on Wade’s arm, Candy twisted hard over her shoulder and stared down 6th Street.
Between the bodies in motion, the motorcade cops, and the weaving SUVs, Cadillac One flashed into view a quarter mile away. It crossed the first streetlamp on the eastern side, and then she lost it.
When it reappeared, it had barreled across C Street.
She strained to snap Wade’s arm, but it was too goddamned thick, a log of muscle. Wade bellowed and bucked, the force lifting her off the ground and pounding her shoulder blades into the street again. Her vision blurred.
It clarified just in time to see Cadillac One occlude the second streetlamp.
She released Wade, flipping free and scissor-kicking him as hard as she could in the side of the head. As she spun up onto her feet, she initiated the earpiece to get out the command.
* * *
The weapon Evan had set up on the rooftop beside him was indirect fire, which meant he’d have to shoot it blind.
Tommy had machined the mortar out of a solid chunk, the same drawn-over-mandrel manufacturing process he used for Evan’s ARES pistols. The mortar was two feet long with a baseplate and a bipod—two legs that folded down off a stainless-steel, heavy-wall, high-pressure tube.
A sleek instrument of destruction with no welded seams. It had no instrumentation, just a simple drop-and-shoot like the improvised mortars perfected by the IRA.
All calculations had to be made beforehand.
Tommy had range-tested the weapon, calibrating it for a precise distance and altitude from the target.
Candy had lased the measurements to the millimeter.
Evan had worked up a speed chart, figuring out how much he needed to offset the interception point ahead of the traveling vehicle—a sniper’s trapping technique. Cadillac One was a full eighteen feet long, which gave him a lot of slop. He’d doped the breeze with the average rate for this time of day in this location, so as long as the shopping bag on the telephone pole didn’t move to horizontal, indicating a
full-value wind, he’d be good to go.
The custom mortar shell was already locked and loaded. Given Evan’s requirements, Tommy had opted to supply a high-explosive squash-head projectile. The tech was generally defunct, having enjoyed wide use in the Second World War and Korea. Before armor penetrators were developed, soldiers had to rely on armor defeaters.
Squash heads featured two key components: a hollow ballistic windscreen of a nose cone, and the C4 load, stored in a bag behind it.
On impact the aerodynamic front collapsed and stuck to the armor, sending the C4 crashing forward inside the shell to make contact with the surface and detonate.
Tommy had weighed the C4 to a tenth of a grain. For the effect Evan required, the explosion could be neither a speck too powerful nor a speck too weak.
Since the charge wasn’t dependent on kinetic energy to penetrate the target, Evan could fire it nice and low over the breadth of the Newseum, keeping it out of the wind. Like lobbing a water balloon—he just had to deliver it and let physics do the rest.
His RoamZone vibrated. If Candy had switched comms from the earpiece to the RoamZone, something must have gone wrong.
He snapped the phone to his face. “What happened?”
“The Scaredy Bugs are back.”
Evan could see the helicopter now, blazing through the airway over 6th Street.
He gritted his teeth. “It’s not the best time.”
Trevon said, “I saw … um, um, I saw the countdown clock had moved, okay? It jumped ahead seventy-two hours and I didn’t know why, but then I got another e-mail from Kiara and it said she was coming home three days earlier ’cuz she ran outta money and now that’s only three days till she’s here and Big Face can get her.”
Within seconds Evan would be spotted by the helicopter pilot. Below him on the balcony, he could hear the museum patrons milling about, confused by the mayhem outside.
He could not afford three fewer days.
He could not afford to be carrying out missions of this magnitude simultaneously on both coasts.
He could not afford to be talking to Trevon right now.
Rising up onto one knee next to the mortar, he pinched the phone between cheek and shoulder and looked back to check the subtle wind indicator one last time. The trash bag showed a moderate wind factor.
On the other end of the phone, Trevon was crying.
“I promised you I would handle it,” Evan said. “And I will. But I have to go now.”
A movement all the way across Pennsylvania Avenue caught his eye.
A man sprinting to the edge of the rooftop of the Federal Trade Commission Building, an FN P90 pinned under one elbow.
Orphan A.
Even through his alarm, Evan felt a stab of admiration. How many hypotheticals had A considered to track Evan to this location at this moment?
Evan let the phone slip from his shoulder, thumbing open a cargo pocket to catch it as it fell.
Orphan A neared the edge of the rooftop across from Evan.
The helicopter was louder now, the sound of its approach thundering off the walls of the surrounding buildings.
Candy’s voice crackled over the earpiece, cutting through Evan’s thoughts. “Shot out!”
Orphan A drew to a halt at the brink of the roof.
Evan gave him a little nod in greeting and then fired the mortar.
It left the tube with a pop.
The shell floated up over the building, past the windscreen of the helicopter, and plummeted from view. Evan saw the pilot’s eyes rise to meet his.
He swung back in the other direction in time to see Orphan A hoist his submachine gun to aim at him.
Rolling onto the metal overhang, Evan gripped the edge with one hand and snatched the backpack with the other. He swung down onto the balcony among the patrons and vanished into the museum’s sixth floor.
* * *
The squash-head round sailed down at the speeding limousine, striking directly above the back right seat of the rear compartment.
Cadillac One’s passengers had a split second to register the thud of the charge sticking onto the roof.
Wong screamed.
The body man covered his head, his cry muffled through his arms.
Naomi jerked her eyes and the muzzle of her pistol upward.
Bennett’s head rotated, too, dread pulling down on his face, gathering his skin at the jowls.
The charge detonated.
51
Breaking News
Candy blazed through the crowd, running at a full sprint. A block and a half and then she could lose herself underground.
Wade had recovered from the kick to the jaw, hustling in pursuit, but she wasn’t worried about him. He was linebacker-huge without the speed.
The agents and motorcade cops were more worrisome. They’d already started to communicate through the confusion of the crowd, radios squawking as they coordinated how to close in.
She tucked in high on the sidewalk next to the buildings so she wouldn’t have to cover her right flank. As a motorcade cop wheeled out of a parking lot in front of her, she darted into a throng of tourists milling like fish trapped in a tank.
She stumbled out of the press of bodies onto the opposite curb and hurdled a low hedge, her shoulder brushing a rectangular post announcing the Judiciary Square Metro Station.
Hemming in the square were multiple courthouses and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. One block south loomed the Metropolitan Police Headquarters. She was running against expectations, sprinting into the heart of D.C., into the heart of authority itself.
She shot a glance over her shoulder. Three agents pursued her on foot and two motorcycle cops—wait, three.
Ahead, the exposed escalators burrowed into the earth, slanting to the Metro station below.
Without slowing she jumped onto the metal slope between the up and down escalators and rocketed into the hot breath of the underground. As she slid past, the rising courtgoers blinked into the light of day, confused.
Riding down on her ass, she dug in her courier bag and yanked out a fat industrial razor, a 380-watt beast designed for shearing sheep. She hit the Metro platform, dumped the bag into a trash can, and shouldered into the spill of an emptying train. Ducking her head, she raked the razor through her hair.
Five wide swoops left her long rose-gold locks on the concrete floor. All that remained were blond roots bristling in a buzz cut. Next she ran the razor up her shirtfront, peeling it away and dumping it onto the tracks. She wore a bright pink jog bra.
Her gestures were largely lost in the herd, though a little boy holding his mom’s hand looked up at Candy with wide eyes. She winked at him as she fastened a magnetic septum bar into place between her nostrils.
A new train screeched up to the platform.
As the agents and cops tumbled down off the escalator, she popped in headphones and bopped her head, watching them in the reflection of the subway windows.
The doors parted.
She got in and turned around, keeping herself in full view at the window. A half dozen officers filed past, checking the cars frantically, their gazes sweeping right over her.
The doors closed, and she pulled away from the station.
* * *
Despite the disruption outside, the Newseum was still filled with patrons. Evan made it through Today’s Front Pages and Reporting Vietnam to the stairs, but shouts carrying up the stairwell forced him out into Breaking News on the fifth floor.
He jabbed his finger at the DOWN button of the elevator, waiting for it to arrive. The wrong set of doors dinged open, and he cursed himself for not asking Candy to prep both cars. With agonizing slowness the car clanked shut and departed.
He clicked the DOWN button again.
Shouted commands reached him, ever louder.
He waited for the other elevator to arrive. He didn’t punch the button more than once. He didn’t bounce impatiently on his boots. He didn’t crowd the doors.
It took all of his training to stand there and wait.
Without the mortar and squash head, the backpack felt light on his shoulders. He prayed the shell had hit home.
Behind him he heard the stairwell door bang open.
At last the doors spread to welcome him. He stepped inside the enormous hydraulic elevator and turned to the others waiting to board. Over their shoulders a stream of agents poured into sight.
Evan held up his hands, blocking the patrons. “You don’t want to be in here. Trust me.”
The rubber bumpers closed on a dozen startled faces.
The huge transparent car, wall-to-wall glass, had a capacity of seventy passengers.
He’d need all the room.
Dumping his skateboard backpack on the floor, he hopped up onto the handrails and tilted the third ceiling panel on the right. A load-out duffel bag slid into his hands.
He ripped out what looked like a stubby mutant rifle. The Lake Erie gas gun, named in honor of the location of the lab that engineered it, was a single-shot break-open with a tube barrel. Tommy had sawed off the butt stock behind the action, the whole thing no more than a foot and a half.
Two ballistic-nylon pouches were prepped and waiting, filled with less lethal thirty-seven-millimeter rubber bullets, the same baton rounds the Brits had used during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The pouches clipped onto his belt, their dilated elastic tops ensuring that he wouldn’t lose any spare rounds as long as he didn’t go upside down.
As the elevator dropped, the cavernous atrium of the museum yawned before him, a 3-D maze of mezzanines, floating staircases, and dangling displays.
Agents and cops scurried on the steps and across various levels, an Escheresque confusion of activity.
He tucked to the right side, partially hidden behind a massive piston nearly two feet in diameter. He’d not been noticed. For now.
Holding the gas gun low by his leg, he passed the fourth floor.
Out of the Dark Page 27