Over her angry objection, Colletti was sent to the nearest trauma center. Understandably, with dozens of casualties admitted from the hotel lobby explosion and the rooftop garden massacre, she waited so long to be seen she walked out in a huff. Determined to return to the field, she joined in the search for Bohannon.
Thankfully, in the Westin Peachtree bombing, no one died or was severely injured. Sadly, the same couldn’t be said for the Faculty of Law. Eight dead, among them the Gunowner’s Association President, a prominent Hollywood actor, a senior Georgia State senator, and an Agent of the FBI. It was yet to be determined if Special Agent Lorraine Backus was shot by The Shooter or a clueless attendee who’d fired indiscriminately into the panicked crowd of guests.
Back in his motel room in Chamblee, Mathias messaged and auto-dialed Tara even though her number returned the message This line is no longer in service.
Shortly after midnight, a knock at the door: Toni Colletti standing in the hall looking drawn, pale, and drunk.
“Resnick is gone. Who do I report to now? You?”
“Not me; I almost got you killed.”
Pushing Mathias aside, she said, “No, you didn’t. Circumstance almost got me killed. Maybe Mark Lavender, God rest his soul.”
“A cluster-fuck is still a cluster-fuck,” Mathias said, closing the door.
“You called it, Mathias. But Bohannon is ruthless. Could you predict the woman? The bomb inside the hotel? Your former Chief is batshit crazy.”
Second-guessing his decisions wouldn’t undo the damage.
“What’s the plan now?” Colletti asked.
“Whatever it is, it doesn’t include me.”
“You don’t strike me as a quitter.”
“Just stating a fact.”
“Fact is, Mathias, I’d follow you into battle anywhere. You saved my life. Barely.”
A rebuke softened by a sly smile.
SEVENTY
WASHINGTON, DC
“DON’T BEAT YOURSELF UP over it, Rez. You came awfully damn close, didn’t you?”
“According to the Director, the President is threatening to call in the military, mobilize the National Guard.”
Dabney Berkshire laughed a hearty rumble. “He wouldn’t.”
“The man is unstable; he would.”
“Trust me, he won’t. We have a meeting.”
“You’re meeting with the President?”
A sly grin. “The President is meeting with me.”
“How?”
“Alexis Kim.”
“Committee on Crime and Terrorism?”
“You think Bohannon hasn’t got the Administration’s attention? Bohannon makes the President look foolish and weak, his cabinet incompetent. He’s a one-man wrecking crew terrorizing the nation. Can you imagine if his name was Abdul or Hassan? There’d be an uprising.”
“What can Kim do that we already haven’t? Her husband is Director of the FBI, for God’s sake. Does she plan to throw him under the bus?”
“No one is being thrown under the bus, Rez. Least of all Padgett or you. We all understand your limitations.”
Turning suspicious, Resnick said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Leaning over the table, swishing the ice in his drink, Berkshire said, “Listen, Gloria, I apologize for questioning your resolve. Truth is, the Bureau is handcuffed. You lack the resources, the intelligence to do your job effectively.”
“And how does this change after you meet with the President and Alexis Kim?”
“Patience, grasshopper.”
◊◊◊
An hour later, in another bar across town, Berkshire said to Mathias, “Clearly, Bohannon has upped his game.”
“If you call that shit-show in Atlanta upping his game, I agree.”
“But our intelligence wasn’t wrong, Mathias, was it?”
Berkshire ordered himself a second Jack Daniels over ice, Mathias another soda.
“You should have shared what you knew with Resnick, Berk, with the Bureau and Atlanta PD. They would have taken the threat seriously if it came from the CIA and not exclusively from me.”
“Like they did 9/11? You’re delusional if you think domestic law enforcement will ever cooperate willingly with spooks. If it got out the NSA and CIA were feeding the FBI intelligence gathered domestically and illegally, the internet would explode. It would be like the Pope outlawing abortion in California.”
“Politics versus lives,” Mathias lamented.
“In the battle for lives, politics trumps.”
For a long while, the men sat quiet, nursing their drinks. Songs of the eighties and the nineties hummed in the background. Berkshire’s music, but foreign to Mathias. On a small dance floor, Mathias watched two women move in time to the music. Getting the wrong impression, one of the women smiled. Perhaps, thought Mathias, the lighting hides my scars.
As if reading his thoughts, Berkshire said, “Have you heard from Tara?”
“Nothing.”
“I’m sorry her name got leaked, Mathias. It was never my, or Gloria’s, intention to involve Tara.”
“What Gloria said.”
“You doubt it?”
Mathias watched the woman who smiled approach the bar.
Thinking on his reply, Mathias said, “I joined the military for certainty, Berk. I left Afghanistan knowing for people like you and me, certainty is a bullet to the brainpan.”
The woman from the dance floor now stood close; close enough to trace a roadmap on Mathias’s face with the tip of her finger. And yet, she smiled.
Standing, Berkshire said, “I’ll leave you to it.”
Ten minutes later, Mathias exited the bar alone into a cold Autumn drizzle that made the pavement look greasy, and the sidewalk seem slick. He thought on Bohannon, unable to grasp the enormity of the man’s actions. There, but for the grace of God, go I, Mathias thought.
Though not believing in God, he imagined: There, go I.
SEVENTY-ONE
New York City, New York
OWING TO THE UNSEASONABLY fine weather, Central Park was busy; joggers, dog walkers, elderly couples alone, in pairs and in groups, mothers pushing strollers, children running, skipping rope, playing ball.
There was a cop mounted atop an impressive-looking chestnut steed. A half dozen derelicts sifted through trash bins. On a path leading to the Wollman Rink, movement beneath a filthy blanket: a homeless man waking to the dawn of another misery-filled day. Crossing the Gapstow Bridge, a gray-hair granny with an impressive stride. At the Central Park Carousel, families standing in line for free rides. In the ballpark nearby, an impromptu game of softball, hot dogs smoking on a charcoal grill, tins of sweating ice-cold soda, a vendor selling soft ice-cream, popcorn, candy-floss, balloons twisted into animals.
A perfect day for a Declaration.
◊◊◊
Alexis Kim reassured her husband: “It’s ideal, Charles. Insiders will consider the Carousel a challenge, even an insult. The public will be thinking tax returns, dodgy business deals, patronage, and insider trading; they know who makes money off the thing: The President. Anyway, the children will go home happy, which is the main thing. If the kids are happy, so are mom and dad.”
Never so blessed, Padgett said, “The kids will probably vomit.”
Gritting her teeth, the Chairperson of the Crime and Terrorism Committee said, “You really need to buck-up Charles. Don’t you want to be President?”
“Two years running the FBI, my reputation is a shamble, Lex.”
“No. You’ve had no support from either the President or Congress. You’re considered an outsider, one of the good guys.”
“Sure, a good guy who’s weak on crime, was bamboozled by the Russians, and now can’t catch a terrorist in his own backyard despite a full-court-press. The President is having a field day at my expense.”
“Twitter does not shape public opinion, darling.”
“Tell it to Hillary.”
“Hillary was o
n the wrong side of history. The next woman running for President won’t make the same mistake.”
Regaining his enthusiasm, somewhat, Charles “Chuck” Padgett said, “You may be right, Lexie. If that reprobate can take the Oval Office, why not me.
SEVENTY-TWO
New York City, New York
“IT’S THE EFFECT THAT’S IMPORTANT, not the Outcome,” said the man on the line from DC.
From the ninety-second floor—or to be precise, level, as the area was no more than a steel frame supporting an unfinished concrete box with plywood plank where soon there would be windows—the man in the tower could see to the Central Park Carousel. The day was brilliant; sky blue, sunshine warm, smog-haze drifting out over the Hudson River pushed by a gentle breeze from the southeast.
The ballpark was busy with kids—hundreds of them with parents in tow—licking the drips from melting ice cream cones, fingers and faces sticky with candy-floss, helium-filled balloons with the candidate’s grinning image floating high into the air announcing his campaign.
“And what, exactly, is the outcome?”
“To make it look good without actually killing him.”
The man in the tower snorted. “It’s a two-mile shot from a thousand-foot elevation.”
“From experience, I know you’re the best.”
The man in the tower grunted. “Will he be standing alone on the podium?”
“His wife will be standing with him?”
“At his side?”
“Will that be a problem?”
“No guarantees.”
Silence on the line, then from DC, “I can ask her to stand off a-ways to the side. But I’m hoping for a John and Jackie Kennedy moment, here, like in Dallas in sixty-three. It would clinch the nomination and go a long way toward taking the General.”
The man in the tower’s turn to think. “This is important to you, isn’t it?”
“It’s important to the nation. Despite the bluster of the last three years, the Russians and the Chinese have us eating crow. The President thinks the threat to America comes from south of the border: He’s wrong. The real threat is from overseas. Do this, you’ll be doing the country a service.”
The man in the tower believed the real threat to the nation was from men like the man in DC but didn’t say.
“I’ll do my best. But I can’t guarantee where it goes after the bullet passes through the Director.”
SEVENTY-THREE
New York City, New York
BOHANNON CHOSE A DINER serving all-day breakfast at the corner of 3rd Avenue at E 62nd Street. The eatery was full; students, tourists, businessmen, city employees, construction workers, Central Park maintenance crews, and not a few looking like dyed-in-the-wool locals. Arriving as a businessman in a crisp blue suit shouldering an officious-looking document tube, Bohannon was anonymous.
Before securing a table, he entered the restroom. Five minutes later, he exited as a tourist wearing a Yankees ball-cap and tee, well-worn Nike trainers, with an over-size nylon rucksack slung low over his shoulders. When greeted by the hostess, he replied in his most collegial Midwestern drawl “Table for one, sweetie. Just me, myself, and I, indeedy do.”
Bohannon noted but was not concerned, hearing a police siren screaming from the street. This was, after all, New York City. But when he heard the amplified wail of more—four, five, six?—cruisers, he set down his coffee mug to pay closer attention.
Finishing his meal, he dabbed a napkin to his lips. Reaching for a twenty buried deep in his pocket, he slid the bill beneath his breakfast platter without waiting for the check.
Standing, he hefted his bag to his shoulder. Turning to the door, he was caught-up-short by a patrol car, roof-lights flashing, pulling to the curb opposite the diner on 3rd Avenue.
Bohannon watched as two uniform officers exited the vehicle, one male, one female, both looking as young as Police Academy recruits. Standing by the patrol car, they reconnoitered the Avenue north to south. Clocking the diner directly across the street, the female officer hailed her partner. Gesturing, she pointed to the front door.
Bohannon could pull the Magnum from his waistband, put down both officers before they made it through the door. Alternatively, he could turtle, exit from the rear and escape into a back alley knowing the cops would soon follow.
Bohannon could not risk the complications inherent in a gunfight or a chase through city streets.
Taking only a split-second to decide, he reentered the restroom. He found a vacant cubicle. He locked the door. Inside, he removed his backpack, setting it on the toilet seat. To exit the cubicle, he crab-crawled beneath the partition. He stepped from the restroom just as the two cops entered the diner. Eyes roving side-to-side across the crowded room, they spotted Bohannon. No pack-back, no carrying case, nowhere to hide a dismantled long-gun.
Bohannon was ignored; however regrettable, ditching the CheyTac had been the correct call.
Catching the waitress’s eye, Bohannon grinned and waved. Smiling back, the woman called out, “You have yourself a good day, sir. And enjoy your time in the City!”
Sure, easy for her to say; he’d left her an eight-dollar tip on a twelve-dollar tab.
Bohannon exited onto 3rd Avenue. Inside the diner, the patrol officers questioned the customers. Any man in possession of a handbag, briefcase, carrying case, backpack, satchel, or man-purse was ordered to show the contents. Before the door closed, Bohannon heard complaints about First Amendment Rights and illegal search and seizure.
Walking at an unhurried pace toward the river along E 62nd Street, Bohannon entered a bodega run by an Arab. Using cash, he bought a pay-as-you-go flip-phone and a pack of Marlboros.
At the register, he asked, “What’s going on?” With a jerk of his thumb, Bohannon indicated a line of patrol cars peeling up the street.
The man at the register shrugged. “A shooting in Central Park; what’s new?”
Exiting to the street, Bohannon resumed his journey along E 62nd. At Tramway Plaza, he bought a ticket for the short ride into Queens.
SEVENTY-FOUR
New York City, New York
AT ABOUT THE SAME time Ezekiel Bohannon cleared the East River into Queens, Gloria Resnick arrived into Manhattan by chopper. Hovering above One Police Plaza, she waited for clearance to touch down. Rotating the helicopter in a three-hundred eighty-degree revolution, the pilot treated her to a breathtaking view of the Manhattan skyline.
Below, a second chopper deposited two men onto the landing pad. Resnick laughed as she watched Dabney Berkshire scurry over the tarmac, head low, thinning blonde hair tousled by a downdraft from the rotors.
“Bloody CIA,” she quipped to herself.
Then, recognizing the second man, Resnick frowned.
SEVENTY-FIVE
New York City, New York
SEATED IN THE EIGHTH-FLOOR boardroom with the New York City Police Commissioner, NYPD Chief of Police, and the NYPD Chief of Detectives were Berkshire, Resnick, and Mathias. When offered a choice of hot beverage or cold refreshment, Berkshire said, “Suppose I could trouble you for a finger of Jack Daniels over ice?”
Unamused and after seventeen years still smarting from the Agency’s incompetence leading up to 9/11, the Chief of Police said, “We’ve retrieved the weapon used; CheyTac M300. Discovered in the shitter of a diner on 3rd Avenue at the corner of E 62nd. It’s on its way to forensics as we speak. Security-cam video shows a man entering the toilet looking like Carnegie, exiting looking like a Yankees fan.”
The Police Chief pushed an iPad across the table. Berkshire nudged the device toward Mathias.
Viewing the image on the screen, Mathias said, “This is Ezekiel Bohannon.”
Sounding annoyed, the Chief of Detectives said, “Murder rate in the City has dropped to historic lows. My guys don’t appreciate an outsider screwing with our numbers.”
“No one is dead, Chief,” Berkshire reminded the Chief of Ds.
“No thanks to you.”
Berkshire shrugged, longing for a JD.
“Your man will not leave the City by rail, by air, by bus, or by water,” said the Chief of Police. “Only way out is by automobile. He can’t rent, so his only option is to steal. We have the Borough Patrol Commanders on high alert to report missing and stolen vehicles ASAP. The City is locked-down tight. His kill-counter stops running here.”
The Chief jabbed a sausage-thick index finger vigorously at the open airspace between himself and his visitors. Both Resnick and Berkshire turned to Mathias.
Sensing their gaze, Mathias said, “I appreciate your effort, Chief, but Bohannon won’t be so easy to pin down or to contain. He’s spent years evading capture in hostile territory, behind enemy lines pursued by battle-hardened extremists in their own backyard. Hundreds of men chasing him down with a price on his head equivalent to a King’s ransom. Against all odds, he got away from us in Atlanta.”
“Took one of your people hostage, I understand. And now this, trying to take out the Director of the FBI. What’s his beef?”
“Bohannon is ex-military, Chief,” Resnick said. “If he has a beef at all, it’s with the Pentagon.”
Mathias said, “If Bohannon chooses, he can swim the East River into Queens, lay low, double-back into Manhattan, swim the Hudson over into New Jersey. From there, he could go off-road, cross the State line into Pennsylvania and into the Alleghenies, head west from there. Maybe go Upstate into Vermont all the way into Canada. He won’t go hungry; he can hunt, kill, and skin his own food. I suspect he’s equipped with a sidearm. If so, he could take out a platoon of your men before a second wave arrives to take him down.”
“And if he’s unarmed?” the Police Commissioner said, speaking for the first time.
“He’ll improvise.”
American Sniper Page 12
