Rawhide Down

by Del Quentin Wilber

  Unrue aimed the heavy limousine for T Street and with his right hand flipped the switch that activated the car’s lights and siren. As he peeled away, he replayed the sight of Tim McCarthy falling to the sidewalk near his rear right wheel. God, don’t let me run over Timmy, prayed Unrue. I hope I don’t run over Timmy.

  * * *

  AGENT DENNIS MCCARTHY—no relation to Tim McCarthy—had been scouring the crowd of reporters and spectators behind the rope line, looking for trouble, as the president walked through the VIP doors. Then he heard what he thought were firecrackers—until he saw bodies falling and spectators ducking and people running for their lives.

  But where was the gun? Suddenly he saw it: a black pistol in the hands of a man who was crouching between a photographer and the wall and inching toward the president as he fired. Desperate, the agent hurled himself at the pistol. I have got to get to it, his mind screamed. I have got to get to it and stop it.

  As he slammed into the attacker and they fell to the ground, the gunman kept pulling the trigger. Despite the screaming and tussling and commotion, McCarthy could clearly hear the hammer click, click, clicking against the revolver’s now-spent cylinder.

  Sergeant Herbert Granger was facing the president when he heard the first cracks of gunfire. Whipping around, he spotted a blond man in a combat crouch. The gunman was holding a small revolver with both hands and firing at the president, tracking his target from right to left. Granger lunged toward the shooter, but his body felt strangely sluggish, as if he were moving through syrup. He heard screams and his own grunting, but they echoed in his ears like an audiotape being played on its slowest setting. He was puzzled by the gunman’s blank and emotionless expression; then he watched as an elderly man in a yellow sweater raised his arms and slammed them down on the neck of the assailant. “Kill the son of a bitch!” the old man yelled. “I’ll kill you!” Meanwhile, another man was throwing wild punches at the shooter.

  Granger’s vision narrowed. It seemed to take forever to reach the gunman, but he arrived at almost the same moment as Dennis McCarthy. Then a flurry of agents and officers crashed into them, propelling McCarthy, Granger, and the gunman into the stone wall with such force that the sergeant’s Timex watch shattered.

  At the bottom of the pile, Dennis McCarthy handcuffed the attacker, who offered no resistance. McCarthy scrambled up from the sidewalk, his mind repeating a single thought: We have to keep him alive, we have to keep him alive. Now his job was to protect the assailant instead of the president—there mustn’t be another Lee Harvey Oswald.

  A roiling mass of people—agents, police officers, journalists, and spectators—converged on McCarthy, Granger, and the gunman, many of them screaming or shouting.

  “Get out of the way!”

  “Back up, back up!”

  “Get me a squad car!”

  “You motherfucker!”

  “Call an ambulance!”

  A police car appeared, and a scrum of agents and police surrounded the would-be assassin and surged toward the car’s rear door. McCarthy punched a man who stepped in their way. Another agent scrambled inside the squad car but couldn’t get the right rear door to open. Outside the car, officers couldn’t budge the door either—it was jammed.

  “Let’s move him to another car,” McCarthy yelled. They hustled their suspect toward another police car that had just stopped on T Street, and after McCarthy opened the right rear door he jumped inside, dragging the gunman behind him by his handcuffed wrists.

  A second later, they were joined by Dennis McCarthy’s partner, Agent Danny Spriggs. He too was thinking about Oswald. They had to get the gunman away from the scene, but they needed to find someplace safe. Where to go? Spriggs ruled out the service’s Washington field office—located on busy L Street, it would be too crowded with civilians, and escorting the shooter through the office’s public lobby would be a nightmare. No, they should go to D.C. police headquarters. It was built like a fortress, and it had an underground garage and a secure cell area. “Head to police headquarters,” Spriggs told the officer driving the cruiser.

  McCarthy thrust his prisoner’s hands onto the grate that separated the front and back seats. He wanted to keep those hands where he could see them.

  “I think my wrist is broken,” the man said. “Can you loosen the handcuffs?”

  McCarthy exploded. “You are fuckin’ lucky that’s the only god-damned thing that is broken!”

  * * *

  AT THE FIRST sound of gunfire, Agent Jim Varey watched Reagan being thrown into the limousine and then turned to find the gunman. But when he saw that the assailant was already under a pile of agents and officers, his attention shifted to the three men lying on the ground. One was his friend Tim McCarthy; another was a police officer. The third was Jim Brady, the president’s press secretary, who lay at the agent’s feet. Brady was moaning and blood was already pooling on the concrete by his head.

  Varey dropped to his knees and put his face right up to Brady’s where it lay on the sidewalk. “Can you hear me?” he asked.

  Brady twitched, and Varey thought he heard him say yes.

  “Don’t move,” Varey said. “Help is coming.”

  Rick Ahearn, the presidential advance man, had been standing near Reagan when the shooting started. Now he rushed to Brady’s side and helped apply pressure to the press secretary’s wounds. Stunned, Ahearn felt blood and bits of brain oozing into his hands. He felt as if he were holding his friend’s head together.

  * * *

  AGENT MARY ANN Gordon leaped from the front passenger seat in the lead police cruiser when the shooting started and sprinted toward the president. She stopped when she realized that the Lincoln’s doors were shut and the limousine was already speeding off. She turned and started back toward the lead police car, but it was now too far away. She looked around and saw the spare limousine right in front of her. She opened the left rear door and darted inside. “Let’s go!” she yelled to the driver.

  Dan Ruge, who was standing near the spare limousine when the gunfire erupted, moved toward the scene of the shooting and carefully studied the clothing of each of the three wounded men. He was looking for the president’s blue suit: every morning, he committed the president’s wardrobe to memory in case of an emergency like this one. Ruge didn’t see the suit.

  A Secret Service agent was shouting at him. “Doctor, get in that car!” The agent pointed to the spare limousine, which was about to pull away. Ruge turned from the scene and hurried into the car’s back seat, just as Mary Ann Gordon climbed over the front seat and took her place next to the driver.

  The spare limousine raced after the president’s Lincoln.

  * * *

  AFTER RAY SHADDICK pushed Jerry Parr and the president into the back of the limousine and shut its door, his first impulse was to jump into the front passenger seat. One agent always rode shotgun in the presidential limousine, and Parr was already in the passenger compartment with Reagan. But Shaddick didn’t want to risk opening the door for another gunman; besides, all of Stagecoach’s doors were now locked tight and the president was secure inside. Shaddick turned and took a quick inventory of the scene: Brady was down and so were a cop and his man Tim McCarthy. Shaddick wanted to help them, but his job was to guard the president, not deliver first aid. He ran to the armored follow-up car.

  He scrambled into the Cadillac’s front passenger seat and picked up the car’s radio handset. “We’ve had shots fired, shots fired,” he said. “There are some injuries.”

  Shaddick told the driver of the follow-up car to pull away. As he did, two other agents jumped on board. One climbed through the open right rear door, picked up an Uzi, and took a position on the left running board. The other agent, who had sprinted alongside the departing presidential limousine, hopped on the opposite running board and was handed an Uzi by another agent inside the car. The car sped off, just seconds behind the presidential and spare limousines.

  * * *

  THE
ASSAILANT’S GUN had only just stopped firing; it was still 2:27 p.m. Spectators ran for cover. Agents and police officers, revolvers in their hands, shouted warnings and instructions. Reporters pulled their notebooks out and began looking for people to interview. Television cameramen continued shooting video; photographers kept snapping pictures.

  All around them, people were frightened and upset—a number of them were crying. Questions started flying through the crowd. Is this part of an exercise? Is the president all right? Are there other gunmen? Is this really happening?

  Across T Street, spectators and bystanders stood frozen, staring in bewilderment at the scene and the fleeing limousines and cars. But one woman sprinted straight toward the melee. It was Carolyn Parr, who had been standing directly across the street when the world turned to chaos. As she ran, she prayed that Jerry was safe. Seeing an agent holding an Uzi and standing with his back braced against the hotel’s stone wall, she ran toward him.

  “My husband!” she screamed. “My husband!”

  The agent pointed up the street. “He’s with the Man,” he yelled, his submachine gun pointed into the air. “He’s okay! He’s okay! He’s in the car!”

  CHAPTER 7

  “I CAN’T BREATHE”

  As the president’s limousine hurtled away from the Hilton, Jerry Parr glanced out the rear window. He counted three men down and wondered who had been hit. Turning, he noticed the telltale marks of a projectile’s impact on the right rear door’s bullet-proof window. Parr had no idea what was happening. Was this a terrorist attack? Was the world at war? It occurred to him that he might have been hurt, too, but he gave himself a quick once-over and decided he was fine. He took a deep breath, turned to the president, and helped him into the limousine’s right rear seat. Reagan sat slumped forward—he looked like an exhausted basketball player taking a breather on the bench.

  “Were you hit?” Parr asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Reagan said. “I think you hurt my chest when you landed on top of me.”

  Parr quickly examined Reagan’s mouth and nose for damage or obstructions, then ran his hands along the president’s white shirt and through his hair. He felt nothing unusual. He inspected his own hands. No blood. Thank God.

  Parr fumbled for the radio strapped to his belt, but it wasn’t there. In the scramble for the car, it had been ripped away from his earpiece and sleeve microphone. Parr swiveled to Unrue. “Give me the radio.”

  Unrue handed him the microphone, its cord connected to the dashboard.

  “Rawhide is okay, follow-up,” Parr radioed Shaddick in the follow-up car. “Rawhide is okay.”

  “Halfback, roger,” Shaddick replied. “You want to go to the hospital or back to the White House?”

  “We’re going, we’re going to Crown,” Parr said, using the code name for the White House.

  “Okay,” Shaddick said.

  A few seconds later, Parr turned back to Reagan. Despite his assurance that he was all right, the president looked as if he was in pain.

  “I think you hurt my rib,” he growled. “I’m having trouble breathing.”

  “Is it your heart?” Parr asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Reagan replied.

  Reagan was pressing his left arm hard against his chest. Reaching into his right jacket pocket, the president pulled out a paper napkin that he’d taken from the hotel’s holding room. He wiped it on his lips. When he pulled the napkin away, it was coated in blood.

  “I think I cut the inside of my mouth,” he said.

  Half kneeling, half sitting in the speeding limousine, Parr leaned in and studied the napkin. Then he spotted more blood on the president’s lips.

  * * *

  HUNCHED FORWARD IN the driver’s seat, with the limousine’s sirens wailing and its hood-mounted flags flapping in the wind, Drew Unrue tried to keep calm and alert as they sped down Connecticut Avenue. There was no traffic, because D.C. police had shut down all the intersections in anticipation of the president’s departure from the Hilton.

  Unrue’s big worry, though, was that he would hit something. As they sped away from the hotel, he had swerved just in time to avoid crashing into a stalled police car. Then, as they raced down Connecticut Avenue, a woman pushed a stroller into their path. Unrue dodged left, barely missing her. “Don’t hit anything,” Unrue repeated to himself as he checked his mirrors and watched the road ahead. “Don’t make this worse.”

  It didn’t help that they were alone. They’d pulled away from the Hilton so fast that they’d left the rest of the motorcade behind. Unrue checked the rearview mirror again but still didn’t see the follow-up car.

  He forced his mind to slow down. This was the most important drive of his life, and he could not afford to make a mistake. Don’t compound this, he thought.

  He scanned the road ahead and then took another quick look in the rearview mirror. This time he spotted the spare limousine and the black follow-up car, both racing to catch the Lincoln. At least he was no longer alone.

  A few moments later, the spare and the follow-up car drew up behind them. Unrue saw two agents, their Uzis drawn, clinging to the armored Cadillac’s running boards. About a mile from the Hilton, the tan Lincoln pulled to the right and allowed Halfback to race ahead and settle in behind the president’s limousine, in its proper spot.

  D.C. police officers were not far behind, and soon at least one squad car and several motorcycles sped ahead of the Secret Service vehicles, taking the lead. The president now had a makeshift motorcade.

  * * *

  IN THE BACK of Stagecoach, Jerry Parr examined the president. Not only was his face gray, his lips seemed a little blue. Clearly Reagan had been hurt in some way—was a rib broken? And whatever his injury, could it be treated by doctors at the White House?

  Parr spun quickly through his options, wondering whether they should return to the White House or head straight to the nearest hospital. But what if the assassination attempt was part of a coordinated attack? What if there were other assassins out there? In that case, the White House was the safest place on earth, and that was where he should go. Besides, if he decided to take the president to a hospital and he hadn’t been seriously injured, the visit might unnecessarily panic the country or trigger a financial crisis. Moreover, the hospital wouldn’t be guarded, so he would be putting the president at great risk, especially if coconspirators were lurking there, waiting, if need be, to finish the job.

  Still, what if Reagan was badly injured? Going to the White House could be disastrous; they’d be much better off at the nearest trauma center, in this case the one at George Washington University Hospital.

  Parr weighed the two options. Neither seemed particularly good.

  He looked again at the president. Having soaked the napkin with blood, Reagan was now pressing his handkerchief to his lips. Parr examined the blood more closely. He noted that it looked frothy, which meant that it was probably oxygenated and coming from the president’s lungs. This was no cut lip—the president had likely suffered some kind of lung injury.

  “I think we should go to the hospital,” Parr told Reagan.

  “Okay,” said the president.

  Parr turned forward and hollered at Unrue. “Get us to George Washington as fast as you can.”

  Unrue picked up his radio microphone. “Gordon, Unrue,” he said, speaking to Mary Ann Gordon in the spare limousine.

  “Go ahead, Drew,” Gordon responded.

  “We want to go to the emergency room of George Washington,” Unrue said.

  “That’s a roger,” Gordon said.

  “Go to George Washington fast,” Unrue said.

  Parr grabbed the radio microphone from Unrue and asked Ray Shaddick if he had received that last transmission. Shaddick replied that he had.

  “Get an ambulance, I mean, get a stretcher out there,” Parr said. “Let’s hustle.”

  Lights flashing and sirens screaming, the motorcade streaked across L Street. They were now abou
t a mile from the hospital.

  * * *

  IN THE FRONT passenger seat of the spare limousine, Mary Ann Gordon tried to reach the lead police car by radio. “We’re going to GW hospital,” she told the police sergeant.

  But she received no reply and wasn’t sure the sergeant had heard her. Worse, if the motorcycles and squad car missed the turn onto Pennsylvania Avenue for the trip to the hospital, the presidential limousine would be exposed. She needed another vehicle to get in front of Stagecoach to help clear traffic and act as a battering ram if confronted by assailants. Gordon also didn’t want Unrue to worry about how to get to GW.

  “We have to get in front of the limo,” Gordon told her driver. He immediately swept around the follow-up car, accelerated past the president’s limousine, and pulled in front of it.

  As Connecticut Avenue turned into Seventeenth Street, Gordon looked ahead and saw the police cars and motorcycles continue straight for the White House. The spare limousine made the sharp right onto Pennsylvania Avenue; a moment later, Gordon spotted a Secret Service sedan ahead of them. It was the so-called route car, which always preceded the motorcade by five minutes to ensure that the streets were free of trouble. Its driver and the agent riding with him had heard the radio transmissions about the decision to go to the hospital and were now clearing a path through traffic. His siren wailing, the driver of the route car honked his horn, flashed his headlights, and sped through each intersection ahead of the motorcade.