Behold a Pale Horse

by Franklin Allen Leib

  Carla preceded Ben from the building. A little buzz in the back of her head: old Rufus? Rufus wasn’t that old, but maybe it was just an expression.

  COBRA’S WEAPON AND equipment were on the cleaning cart but under the linen bin. The real Rufus Coombs was tied up and gagged with duct tape in the service bay in the second basement. Cobra was somewhat surprised the Secret Service would search a building so far from the Lincoln Memorial, but he felt fairly sure they wouldn’t be looking in basements. Coombs would be found in a day or two, dehydrated and scared but not hurt. It was bad news the woman took his name to leave at the front desk, but the fat guard hadn’t looked at Cobra coming in, and probably wouldn’t miss Rufus not going out.

  Cobra pushed the cart and the buffer into the elevator and back down into the service bay, ripped off the duct tape on the scared man’s mouth, and gave him a drink of water from a cooler in the corner. He regagged the man, recovered his weapons, and looked for a secure place to wait out the night.

  Ironically, it was the same in Africa. Nobody ever figured a black man would be the shooter.

  25

  BRAD BENTLEY WROTE the article about the murder of Charles Taylor himself, and ran it on the front page of the Saturday paper, below the fold. He felt righteous but a little ashamed. He had offered to protect the boy, and he would have, but perhaps he should have sent a car or two of the Post’s security force to pick him up. Judging by the police report of the shooting, the people who wanted Charles wanted him bad, and Bentley doubted whether a few rent-a-cops in gray uniforms armed with ancient .38 special pistols most of the guards had never fired would have accomplished much beyond adding to the body count.

  Ashamed or no, Brad Bentley built Charles into a much bigger figure in the world of journalism than he had been in life, the better to punch up the story of Little Cheyenne that would run the following day, front page, above the fold. He was nervous about running the story without proof, but a dead reporter solved a lot of problems. Brad Bentley filed the report of Charles’s death, then telephoned Colonel Alfred Thayer, the old bull Republican who ran the bank where Julia Early worked. He had known Thayer for years and although they disagreed violently over everything political, they liked each other. Thayer and Brad Bentley observed Tip O‘Neill’s rule: politics ended at five o’clock.

  Thayer took the call, after his infamous gatekeeper, the Dragon Mother, kept Bentley on hold for two minutes. “Brad Bentley? Not often I hear your voice.”

  “Colonel. One question. Who is Julia Early?”

  “On the record, Brad, she is a trainee employed by this bank.”

  “And off the record?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Could she be made available for an interview?”

  “She’s presently traveling abroad.”

  “Where?”

  “Abroad. That’s all, Brad. Let me call you for a drink next week.”

  By that time the story will be on its own, Bentley thought. Thayer knows that. “I’d like that, Colonel.”

  “I’ll call.” The banker hung up.

  So you go with your gut, and Charles Taylor’s splattered guts, Bentley thought. The story would run.

  26

  COBRA FOUND A lounge area on the top floor of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing that had a television set, a Mr. Coffee, a microwave oven, a small bar and a refrigerator full of microwavable snacks. He dialed up the Weather Channel; tomorrow morning partly cloudy, warm for November, light southeasterly winds coming up the Potomac.

  Cobra unpacked the rifle, disassembled it to its tiniest components, and cleaned it. Before putting it back together and attaching the stock and telescopic sight, he donned tight rubber gloves he had bought at a Maryland supermarket. He had fifty hand-loaded rounds in the case, with powder mixes and bullets for different shots, all color coded with Magic Marker. For the range of tomorrow’s shot, he would need the hottest load. All the bullets were hollow points, designed to expand when they hit flesh and shatter if they hit bone. For such a long shot, Cobra thought that the increased drag caused by the hollow point would make the bullet’s trajectory less than optimally predictable. He therefore set out to modify his hottest, longest-range loads.

  He didn’t have his loading press with him; it would have been too heavy and bulky to carry. He had a small battery-operated drill, a jeweler’s soldering iron with a reel of self-fluxing solder, and small dressing files. Lacking a proper circular vice, Cobra held each cartridge in his left hand, butt-end firmly against the table. He drilled out the hollow points to widen them a fraction, and tapped out the lead shavings. He cleaned the cavities with a pipe cleaner dipped in rubbing alcohol, and let them air out. With a magnifying glass, he examined each cartridge and selected the five he would load, and three backups.

  Cobra cut tiny pieces of rice paper from a sheet in his kit, and one at a time he chewed them into dense masses. He forced a tiny ball into each hollow point using the drill bit, then added liquid mercury, a drop at a time from a small bottle. Another rice paper ball went in on top. Cobra heated his soldering iron and dropped molten solder in the remaining opening at the tip of the bullets. When the solder was cool and solid, he dressed each bullet into a slightly dull point with a fine file.

  The mercury loads would make the bullets heavier even as they made them more aerodynamic. Cobra refigured the drop on his laptop. He had to compute as well on the drop in altitude between his firing point and the target. Bullets fired downhill tended to float, much as a long pass in American football may seem perfectly thrown by the quarterback and still fly over the receiver’s head.

  The mercury loads were not designed just to smooth the bullet’s shape. Mercury, much denser than the surrounding lead, would decelerate less on impact. Mercury loads did not merely expand on impact, they exploded.

  Nasty business, Cobra thought with a shrug. Yet I’m merely the instrument.

  He ate a microwave pizza that tasted like cardboard and ketchup, washed down by a diet Coke. He wrapped himself in his overcoat, then stretched out on a worn couch for the night. Cobra slept like a cat, ears alert for any sound of a patrol’s footfall. There were none.

  ADMIRAL DANIELS CALLED the Mayflower Hotel again at seven-thirty. J J Early was not in, he was told, and he hadn’t called in for messages. Daniels pondered; President Tolliver was rotten to the core, corrupt, and foolish. Yet he seemed to be getting results. If it would be possible to give him a reprieve, see what came next, crazy or crazy-smart. But if the shooter couldn’t be found, and if he hadn’t simply skipped with the money, he would make his attempt, almost surely tomorrow when the president addressed the crowd from the Lincoln Memorial. How could Daniels alert the Secret Service without implicating himself? He could trust J J Early, if he could just find him. J J knew a lot of secrets and was trusted by anyone who knew him to take them to his grave. Daniels had two pieces of information on the shooter the Secret Service lacked, the only things the admiral knew about the man he had seen only once at Thayer’s estate. The shooter was a black man, and Daniels knew the profiles on shooters always assumed a white. And the shooter killed from very long range.

  Daniels dialed the Mayflower again.

  J J EARLY WALKED the Mall, all around the Lincoln Memorial, looked for firing points around the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial and the Washington Monument. He observed the Secret Service teams checking buildings along Constitution Avenue; he didn’t follow them. They knew their jobs. He walked across the Mall to Independence Avenue, but there was really no good place within reasonable range of the Memorial.

  Would the gunman fire from the crowd and take his chances? J J didn’t sense a fanatic but a paid assassin. It had to be; the president would be targeted because he had pissed off powerful men all over the world. Someone who expected to survive and spend the millions such an evil job would command.

  Night fell softly, a little fog, a little drizzle. J J continued to walk, to watch, to try to puzzle it out. A mercenary could be anyone, yo
ung, old, male, female. Or the killer could be, just might be, a fanatic with a pistol or a bomb. J J rubbed his hands together against the cold and his growing frustration. At four in the morning he retreated to the Mayflower, had a sandwich in the all-night coffee shop, and went up to bed. The message light was blinking on the phone, so he phoned the desk. Admiral Carter Daniels, three messages, marked urgent. J J’s old commander must have found out he was in Washington. J J would call in the morning; Daniels must be nearing eighty and needed his rest.

  COBRA ROSE AT first light, washed up in the nearby men’s room, made himself coffee and a microwaved frozen bagel. He wanted to be out on the roof before any of the day staff, or any Secret Service personnel, arrived. The president was due to speak around noon, a wait of six hours, but Cobra had much to do.

  He loaded his five best rounds into the rifle after donning a new pair of the throwaway rubber gloves. He put another three mercury-loaded rounds in his bush jacket pocket. If he couldn’t get it done and get away on eight rounds, he reasoned, he’d be dead. He cleaned and loaded a tiny five-shot .380 semiautomatic pistol, an Astra, and shoved it into the opposite pocket. He wiped down all the other equipment, replaced it in the fitted case, and wiped down the case with oil.

  Cobra walked down the hall toward the stairs to the roof and threw the case into a trash chute. They’d find it anyway. He climbed the two flights to the roof with the rifle, a tool belt he had taken from Rufus Coombs’s locker, and his cleaning cart filled with miscellaneous items. He made a careful reconnaissance, staying well back from the parapet, out of sight of anyone on nearby buildings. He wondered if the Secret Service would have observers, even sharpshooters, in the Washington Monument. He’d bet they would; it commanded the entire area. Did the obelisk have windows at the top that could be opened? He didn’t know.

  Cobra planned to rest his rifle on the parapet, about two feet high, and shoot from a sitting position. He’d bought a ten-pound ankle weight filled with lead shot from a People’s Drug store in Georgetown to steady the rifle barrel in lieu of a sandbag, and carried up a sofa cushion from the lounge to sit on. The cushion was dull green and shouldn’t attract attention. Cobra wedged it as close to the parapet as he could, and concealed his rifle beneath it. He then retreated to the shed that topped the stairs to the roof.

  Inside the shed was a padlocked tool locker. Cobra unscrewed the hinges and took out a sealed bucket of liquid asphalt and an oil-encrusted broom. It was too cold to apply the stuff to cracks in the roof, but who in a helicopter would think of that? Cobra put the bucket and broom outside and took a last cautious look at the Mall.

  At eight o’clock in the morning, there were already police below on the Mall, and helicopters circling lazily in the near distance. The fog was thinning, but the wind was picking up off the river.

  If I make this shot, I’ll be immortal, Cobra assured himself. Then he forced himself into the shed and closed his eyes to rest them. One thousand two hundred and forty-seven meters. He would be a god.

  He had to make the shot, then live long enough to escape his pursuers, then gather his money. He would be a legend with a story he could never tell anyone. Or he would be dead.

  Cobra waited as the day warmed, the drizzle and the fog lifted, and the wind died.

  AT 9:00 A.M. J Early called Admiral Daniels at the number he had left and was told the old man was being assisted through his bath. J J left his room number for a callback at the admiral’s convenience, then went down to breakfast in the coffee shop. He couldn’t figure it, but it didn’t feel right; security was tight for such an open space, and the territory was as well known to the Secret Service as any on earth. J J called Matt Blackstone. Bomb-sniffing dogs in and around the Memorial? Of course, in the crowd as well. Buildings sealed? Every one within a thousand yards that commanded a clear view of the Memorial. Sharpshooters on roofs? Yes, and in windows, plus thirty Secret Service agents in the crowd and around the president, backed up by uniformed Washington and National Park police, including SWAT teams and FBI agents. “Don’t worry, J J,” Blackstone said. “We’ve been on heightened alert since he sent the fleet to Korea. It’s as tight as we can make it.”

  J J returned to his room. The message light was flashing. He called the desk; Daniels again. He dialed and the admiral answered immediately. “How good to hear your voice,” J J began. “How’s retirement treating you?”

  “Admirals never really retire, J J, but there’s no time for that. I understand you’re doing some security work for the White House.”

  “Yeah, ’cause I know the man so well.”

  “I heard a rumor. Perhaps you could pass it on, or check it yourself.”

  “Happy to, but why not call the Secret Service yourself?”

  “There are reasons. I ask you to respect that.”

  J J was puzzled, but the admiral had been his commander and he trusted him. Besides, this was Washington. “Whatever you say.”

  “I’ve heard there’s a hired assassin in Washington. A man who has killed from very long range. A man who won’t fit the profile.”

  “Why not?”

  “The man is black. I believe African; a mercenary. They never notice blacks, especially in this city, J J.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I can do no more.”

  J J stood up, almost at attention. “I’ll get right on it.”

  AGENT BLACKSTONE IS not in his office,“a courteous government secretary told J J.

  “I have to reach him,” J J insisted. “Wherever he is. It’s a matter of national security, and he knows me.”

  “I can try his cellphone and his portable radio, Mr. Early. Where can he call you back?”

  “I’ll hold.”

  “He’ll call you back, Mr. Early,” her voice turned flinty. “He’s very busy.”

  “Dammit, miss, tell him J J Early says urgent. The Mayflower Hotel, room 808. He’ll call me.”

  She had already disconnected. J J looked at his watch: ten minutes to eleven. Five minutes I’ll give him, then I’ll do what? Try to find a black shooter on a roof? What roof? And with what assets? Hell, the best he could do is run to the Lincoln Memorial and try to intercept the bullet with his body.

  Instead, he got out his tourist map of central Washington and looked for a building that wouldn’t be under control.

  AN FBI LOH-6A helicopter made a final circuit of the area around the Memorial and the Mall, checking the surrounding rooftops. Teams of agents and Bureau sharpshooters waved; they were relaxed, the president hadn’t yet arrived. They made a long swing south, circling the Washington Monument. “What’s down there?” the pilot asked. “On the roof; the old Bureau of Engraving and Printing.”

  The observer, who had an M-60 machine gun mounted on a swivel in the open door, looked out with binoculars, spotted an gray-haired black man spreading tar on the roof. He didn’t look up even as the helicopter hovered a hundred feet above his head. “Just some old nigger feeding cracks in the asphalt.”

  “We should call that in,” the pilot insisted. “That building should have been cleared.”

  The radio barked. “Bureau 332, check a group of people carrying signs busting through police lines south of the Ellipse.”

  “Roger,” the observer said.

  “We should call that black guy in,” the pilot said again, even as he turned away from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

  “Christ, Jake, the radio’s going bullshit, and the guy has a broom in his hand close to a mile away from the Memorial. I’ll wait for a lull in traffic.”

  Cobra had gone outside to measure temperature and humidity, and therefore air density, with an instrument called a sling psychrometer. He entered the data in his laptop and barely had time to throw the delicate weather instrument back into the shed and slip the computer back inside Rufus Coomb’s coveralls as the helicopter swung overhead. As it hovered, he played step-and-fetchit with the oily broom. He dropped his broom as the helicopter turned away. His hear
t was racing. It was time. He sat on his cushion, his right foot braced against the bottom of the parapet, his left crossed underneath his right calf. His back was bent forward; it was an uncomfortable position but very steady. Cobra sought to will the fear away. He placed the ankle weight on the parapet and steadied the rifle in one of its sewn seams. He closed his eyes and willed his heart to slow, and his breathing. He entered the state of Nirvana that was so familiar.

  The President of the United States walked onto the podium beneath the massive statue of the seated Lincoln.

  V

  THE SEVENTH ANGEL

  1

  J J WAITED FOUR minutes, studying the map. He figured the buildings on Constitution Avenue had to be under control, so he looked elsewhere. Independence Avenue; more government buildings including the Smithsonian Institution complex. Nearest the Lincoln Memorial was the old Bureau of Engraving and Printing building. He pulled on his raincoat and started for the door. The phone rang and he dove across the bed to answer it.

  “J J? Matt Blackstone.”

  “Matt, I got a believable tip. A black guy; a long-range shooter.”

  “Every roof within a thousand yards is sealed; within five hundred yards patrolled.”

  “Figure longer range. I like the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.”

  “Building was checked last evening.”

  “But it’s not patrolled?”

  “No. Too far.”

  “What about helicopters?”

  “We have to pull them back. The president is about to speak, and he doesn’t want to be drowned out by helicopters.”

  “Can you check and see if they saw anything on their last pass?”