Threat warning

by John Gilstrap

  She started running. Uphill, of course.

  By the time Michael had made his decision to shoot, the moment had passed. The national anthem ended, and the president took his seat in the middle of the stage, behind the lectern, but in front of the wall of flags.

  Michael knew the target spot for that location, too; but with the potential for true drama lost, it no longer made sense to vary from the plan. He could shoot and kill the president, but Brother Franklin would be caught off guard. Even a slight delay of a few seconds would ruin the effectiveness of a cross fire. After the first five seconds-and the fastest Michael had ever been able to fire the Barrett and reliably hit his target was one round per second, give or take-the Secret Service will have caught on, and people will have started to panic, meaning that the last five rounds of his ten-round magazine would be less deadly. The more concentrated the crowd, the more effective every shot fired.

  On the television, a military chaplain droned out an invocation.

  With Michael and Brother Franklin firing simultaneously, those first five seconds would put ten rounds on target while the crowd on the stage was still its thickest. To shoot early would squander that. It wasn’t worth it.

  Michael could wait. The chaplain sat, and another man stepped to the microphone. Blah, blah, blah. Then, “Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.”

  Again, he could hear the roar of the crowd through the window. The User-in-chief stepped to the lectern and pressed down on the air with his hands as a gesture for silence that everyone knew he didn’t want. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you. Please be seated.”

  Those words didn’t count in the countdown. He and Brother Franklin had discussed this, anticipated it. Only when he got to the text of his speech-when he started lying in earnest-would they begin the count.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered at this hallowed place this morning…”

  That was it. Michael pressed the START button on his digital timer.

  Three minutes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY – NINE

  Gail was still a long block away when she heard the cheer erupt from the grounds of the Iwo Jima Memorial. Not polite applause, mind you, but a roar, the kind you’d expect from a football game. The kind that will travel across four lanes of a busy highway. The kind that would come when the president of the United States is introduced to a crowd of eight hundred.

  The cold air had dried her nose and throat to the point of rawness. Her legs felt leaden on the long uphill slog, and she realized that she’d slowed. Not now, she thought. She could stroll on the beach after she arrived in the Caribbean. Now, she had to run.

  Concentrate on the task, not the distance, she told herself, rekindling the mantra that got her through the endurance tests at the FBI Academy a thousand years ago. Sometimes, it helps to keep your eye on the goal when you’re running a long distance, but that only worked for her on level ground. On a hill, she found it was better to watch her feet.

  And when the sidewalk changed from gray concrete to red brick, she knew she was there.

  She headed for the front door, pausing to control her breathing. Then she opened the door and strolled into the lobby. Approaching the security desk, she used her coyest smile in an effort to sneak past, but it didn’t work.

  “Excuse me,” said the woman behind the desk. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m going to ten-thirteen,” Gail said. “Compliance Services.”

  “Not without signing in first, you ain’t.”

  The door to the outer office of Beacon Accounting was locked, and the door looked to be of stout stuff. Jonathan pressed the doorbell.

  “Really?” Boxers mocked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you use a doorbell.”

  Jonathan smiled. He’d known some freakishly calm warriors in his time, but Boxers set the standard.

  “Who are you, anyway?” Farmer asked.

  After no one had answered the door in five seconds, Boxers elbowed his boss out of the way. “Stand back,” he said. He took a step back and prepared to kick in the door.

  “Wait!” Plano yelled. “I have a key.”

  Boxers fired a savage kick to the door that cracked the frame, but the door stayed in place. The second kick did the trick. The door exploded inward and rebounded off the parallel wall.

  “I have a key, too,” Jonathan said. Leading with their drawn pistols, he and Boxers squirted into the room, side by side, the Big Guy covering high and right, Digger covering low and left.

  Farmer and Plano stayed in the hall. “Ah, shit,” Farmer moaned. “Do you have a warrant for this?”

  They were in the anteroom of a larger office outfitted in a colonial decor, with wingback guest chairs and a faux-mahogany receptionist’s desk. An ugly splash of blood marred the papered wall behind the desk.

  “Hey, Scorpion?” Boxers whispered. He nodded to the space on the floor behind the desk, where the body of a woman in her fifties lay in a heap, surrounded by a lake of blood.

  Jonathan nodded toward the office door farthest to the right. “That’s the one farthest south,” he whispered.

  “Oh, my God,” Farmer yelped. “Oh, holy shit. She’s dead.”

  Boxers said, “Mr. Farmer, Mr. Plano, you may draw your weapons now.”

  Michael Copley’s ballistic computer told him everything he needed. He knew the drift and drop, and he held the spot perfectly still in the reticle of his telescopic sight. The sandbags gave him a rock-steady platform for the rifle. The weaknesses from this point on would all be man-made. At this range, every twitch mattered, every jolt of adrenaline. When the time came, he would squeeze the trigger between heartbeats.

  With less than two minutes left, he felt a sense of calm settling over him. After so many years of dreaming and of practicing, now was not the time to seize up, either physically or mentally. It was just as he told his soldiers. Now, if he could keep only half the focus that they’d been able to display thus far in the war Someone rang the doorbell. What a ridiculous sound that was in a business environment. Ding-dong, Avon calling. He ignored it, of course. Whoever it was could come back or not; it wasn’t as if the accountants at Beacon were going to be giving a lot of advice in the coming eternity. If it was a customer coming in for an appointment, they’d surely be upset, and then maybe they’d call to complain. So what?

  Even if someone suspected that something was wrong, by the time Boom!

  That was no knock. That sounded like a battering ram. Then it was followed by a huge bang that shook the entire office suite. Someone was invading.

  No, no, no…

  He lifted his cheek from the buttstock to look behind him at the locked door that separated him from his attackers, and then returned to his rifle.

  Just take the shot! his mind screamed. He’d made snap shots before. He’d proved it just yesterday by blast-butchering a cow. He tucked his cheek to the buttstock again.

  The clock read fifty-five seconds.

  Behind him, he heard voices, and then someone yelled, “Holy shit! She’s dead.”

  Forty-eight seconds.

  Too many distractions. Even this little bit of time was plenty of time for him to resolve the threat and still finish the job.

  Rising from the rifle, he spun away from the table and snatched up the Remington 1100 semiauto twelve-gauge from where it rested against the wall and brought it to his shoulder. Dropping to one knee, he took aim at the center of the door and fired.

  The inner office door erupted as the double-ought buckshot punched a fist-size hole. Jonathan felt the breeze cut by ballistic path as a plug of nine. 32-caliber pellets passed way too close at twelve hundred feet per second. He threw himself to the ground and yelled, “Down!” at the same instant that Boxers yelled, “Gun!” and likewise kissed the floor. From the corner of his eye, he saw a crimson spray as Plano pirouetted and fell, dead before the pellets exited his body.

  A second shot followed a half second later, and then a third. The shattering b
its of office all around him formed a cloud in the air.

  Inexplicably, Farmer just stood there, stunned and staring.

  “Farmer! Get down!”

  A fourth shot caught the guard full-on in the belly, and then he was gone, too.

  Jonathan rolled left, across the floor toward another office, but the shooter had anticipated the move and fired a fifth shot that pummeled the wooden filing cabinet over his head.

  Jonathan looked to Boxers to check his status, and found the Big Guy trapped in the corner closest to the shooter’s door, curled into a ball and trying unsuccessfully to look small.

  Up and down the fourteenth floor, people had started to dial into the violence, and that’s when the panicked screams started.

  As Brother Franklin Demerest watched the digital clock tick down past thirty seconds, his heart hammered as if to break free of his rib cage. His palms were slick with sweat, and despite the open window and the frigid breeze, the room felt stifling-a hundred degrees and the air too thick to breathe.

  This was fear, and it was the emotion that he dreaded most. His shot was eighty-three yards shorter than Brother Michael’s, but in some ways required more precision. The bullets he fired would hit from the president’s right side, catching the podium in a cross fire. Once his rounds passed through their initial target-which they would easily do-it looked from the pictures on the television as if they would threaten only the chaplain, and then whoever happened to be in the wings of the makeshift stage.

  It was Brother Michael’s bullets that would do the real damage, which was why he had chosen that perch for himself. From the position on Coolidge Avenue, whatever bullets passed through or missed their mark would drill on into the crowd. Every shot Brother Michael fired, then, would cause destruction. Franklin, by contrast, had to shift his aim a full thirty degrees to the right after his first five shots onto the stage to empty the remaining five shots into the crowd.

  Thirteen seconds.

  Despite the sandbags that wedged the giant Barrett rifle into place, the reticle of his scope quivered and the sight picture danced from his pounding heart and trembling hands. His breathing chugged too fast. He inhaled deeply in a loud, throaty gasp and held it, the way he used to hold the pot smoke back when he was in college, and then he let it go. That should settle him down.

  Seven seconds.

  He reacquired his spot, though it still danced. He took another deep breath, let half of it go, and then held the rest as he settled his finger on the trigger and counted down in his head.

  Four… three… two…

  The pace of the shotgun blasts told Jonathan that the shooter had a semiautomatic-there were too many rounds for an over-and-under, and the cycle rate was faster than even the most skilled guys could shuck a shucker.

  When the gun went silent after five rounds, Jonathan suspected that he was reloading, but there was no way to tell. One thing he was sure of was that cowering on the floor accomplished nothing.

  He looked to Boxers and got an enthusiastic thumbs-up as the Big Guy rose to his haunches. Sometimes a warrior’s greatest weakness was hesitation. He’d taught that at the Operator Training Course, and it was the mantra that guided Boxers’ life.

  Jonathan nodded his assent and rose to a crouch. Boxers kicked the door.

  With the threat in the outer office neutralized-or at least distracted-Michael returned to his chair and his rifle. The clock no longer mattered. His time for martyrdom had arrived, and chances were good that he would die before the clock ticked to zero. That meant that he needed to abandon the plan to achieve the goal.

  The Barrett settled into his shoulder like a familiar lover.

  He acquired his spot, and his finger found the trigger.

  Before the door had exploded all the way open, Jonathan saw in a glance what was happening. From posture alone, he knew that Michael Copley was an instant away from letting fly with his cannon.

  Jonathan’s Colt bucked three times in his hand. He didn’t aim so much as he pointed and shot; but the. 45 read his thoughts. The three bullets stitched a straight line down Michael Copley’s spine, from the base of his skull to the space between his shoulder blades.

  As the leader of the Army of God died, he pitched forward onto his face like a drunk who had finally reached his limit.

  With the echo of the shots still ringing, and gun smoke hanging in the air, Jonathan and Boxers squirted into the room and did a quick sweep for any other bad guys. “Clear,” they said in unison.

  “Nice shootin’, boss,” Boxers said with a grin. “Looks like we barely made it.”

  “Oh, shit,” Jonathan said, pointing at the television. “I think we’re too late.”

  The live television picture showed utter mayhem unfolding on the stage at the Marine War Memorial. The president appeared to be on the floor, and Secret Service agents swarmed the scene, weapons drawn. Agents and uniformed officers brandishing automatic weapons formed a tight perimeter around the spot where the podium used to be, and then a scrum of agents hurried the president off the stage on the far side.

  “What the hell happened?” Boxers asked, agape. “I didn’t hear him get a single round off.”

  “He must have had help,” Jonathan said. Whatever triumph he’d felt ten seconds ago had all drained away. “Damn.”

  As the motorcade raced away, led and followed by the counterassault team, one with its roof hatch open and Dillon gun turret deployed, the sound of the sirens was piercing, even at this distance.

  Gail made no pretense of stealth as she stormed down the hall toward Suite 1013. She vaguely noticed the Compliances Services logo on a brushed aluminum plate on the wall next to the frosted glass-paneled door. She pulled once, and when she found it was locked, she drew her. 40-caliber Glock and fired a single shot at a spot on the floor on the far side of the glass. The panel became opaque for an instant, and then instantly transformed into a cascade of a million glass beads that tumbled in a neat pile.

  A fraction of a second after she’d pulled her trigger, the entire floor shook from the massive explosion that had to be the. 50-caliber Barrett. A second shot followed as she was ducking under the panic hardware on the door and scooting into the office space. The interior of the space was tiny, consisting of an abandoned ten-by-twelve-foot reception area and a single closed office door beyond it.

  When she heard a third report from the Barrett, she took aim at the middle of the closed door and fired five shots through the wood panel, punching a near perfect horizontal line of bullet holes from left to right. Then she fired a sixth shot into the spot where the tongue of the lock met the jamb.

  She kicked the door open, and the first thing she saw was the massive rifle poised on the top of the desk, its barrel still smoking. But there was no shooter. Her stomach seized when she realized just how perfect a target she had made of herself, literally framed in the doorway, and she dropped to a deep crouch, her weapon up and ready.

  Then she saw the feet on the floor, oddly tangled with each other. She led with her weapon as she traced the feet to their owner, a man who was old enough to know better. He lay on his back with his eyes open, bloody bubbles forming around his nose and mouth.

  His right hand moved in a slow, almost lazy motion to draw a little five-shot. 38 police special from the waistband of his trousers.

  “Put it down!” Gail commanded. “Drop that weapon now!”

  He didn’t look at her, but he seemed to hear, because he laid the revolver across his chest.

  “Put it on the floor!” she commanded.

  Instead, his thumb found the hammer and pulled it all the way back.

  “Don’t make me shoot you again!”

  Gail didn’t want to kill him. She had killed too much, and she wanted it to stop. But she didn’t want it enough to die for the cause.

  Even by police standards, she now had just cause to blow the guy away. But she hesitated. He wasn’t pointing the weapon at her. He wasn’t pointing it at anything in parti
cular, so far as she could tell.

  “This doesn’t have to end up with you dead,” she said. “Put the weapon down. Please.”

  The man on the floor took a huge breath. It seemed to take all of his energy to say, “We won.” Then in one startling spasm of movement, he brought the revolver up to the soft spot under his jaw and pulled the trigger.

  “Oh, my God!” someone yelled from behind Gail.

  She whirled, weapon still at the ready, and a young lady in a Polly professional black suit with a white blouse screamed, “No! Please don’t shoot.” She fell on the floor in the hallway and covered her head with her arms.

  More office workers were swarming about now, and as the realization crystallized, panic started to spread. And Gail was the focus of it all.

  It was time for her to go. Holstering her Glock, she hurried to the emergency stairs and took them all the way down to street level. From there, she tried her best to blend in with the fleeing crowd.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Franklin Demerest had whiffed his shot, pure and simple. Whether it was nerves, or Gail’s noisy sudden entry, they would never know, but that all-important first shot had hit six inches in front of the president’s chest and disintegrated the lectern he was speaking from. The presidential seal medallion was found thirty feet away.

  The president had been wounded-not by bullets, but by high-velocity fragments of splintered wood that penetrated both legs. According to the White House physician, the body armor that the president was wearing saved his life, but would have been useless against the size of bullet that was being used.

  The investigation was ongoing, as it no doubt would be for many months to come, but the FBI had reportedly discovered a link between the assassination attempt and a West Virginian religious cult that called itself the Army of God. Early reports were indicating that there’d been some kind of rebellion among the ranks of the AOG, as the media was calling it, and the result had been an intense battle that resulted in many deaths and injuries.