Behold a Pale Horse

by Franklin Allen Leib

  “Wait one,” Blackstone said. He held his cellphone and pulled the radio from his belt. “All airborne surveillance, this is Blackstone. Anyone seen on rooftops, no matter how far out?”

  “This is Bureau 332,” came an immediate reply. “There’s an old black guy on the roof of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, pushing a broom.”

  “Get back over him,” Blackstone said. “J J you hear that?”

  “Get the president off the podium, Matt.”

  “I concur.” Blackstone hung up and began barking orders into his radio.

  J J Early ran out of his room with no idea of where he was going and what he would do.

  COBRA WATCHED AS the president waved to the crowd, both arms outstretched, his Bible in his right hand, just as he had at Gettysburg. Cobra could hear applause and boos, even from 1247 meters away. When he drops his hands, he’ll pause, and then he’ll begin to speak, just like on Cobra’s videotape from Gettysburg. He steadied the rifle, felt the slight breeze on his cheek, and made a final adjustment to the gun sight. Even at its highest power, the telescopic sight showed the president’s head as a tiny dot. Cobra centered the crosshairs on the president’s hairline, right over his nose. He increased the pressure on the trigger every time his heart paused, held steady when it beat. His breathing was as soft and shallow as he could stand. The president dropped his hands and he looked out at the center of the crowd. Cobra was patient, but as the first words came from the president’s mouth, the shot broke.

  Cobra shook off the bright flash and the deafening report, and kept his sight picture. He rotated the bolt back and forward and fired again. Then again. His hot loads had a muzzle velocity of 950 meters per second, so two if not three were in the air before the first was due to arrive.

  MATT BLACKSTONE RADIOED the detail standing right beside the president. “My fellow Americans, God is sending a message,” the president said. The Mormon, on the Secret Service net, was closest and dove to tackle Tolliver, while a young Secret Service agent came from the other side. The Mormon had a hand across the president’s chest when the bullet struck him in the mouth, only six inches lower than the shooter had aimed it. The mercury load blew the president’s brainstem and spine to foam and splinters. The brain stem controls the autonomic nervous system, the automatic pilot that runs the heart, the lungs and other involuntary muscles. Tolliver’s heart spasmed briefly, then stopped.

  Contrary to popular belief, the brain cortex does not die instantly when the heart ceases to supply blood. The second bullet, arriving less than two seconds later, struck the Mormon on his shoulder, nearly severing his arm. The third hit took a large chunk of stone out of the Memorial’s top step.

  The young Secret Service agent laid the president down on the cold stone, covering him with his body. He keyed his radio and bellowed for backup. The president held his Bible, and seemed to try to speak even as his eyes dimmed. He had his thumb in the book, toward the back, as the Secret Service agent gently prized it from his grip. Tolliver died, and four minutes later Jim Bob Slate expired from massive loss of blood.

  The crowd milled and cried out in confusion, not really understanding what they had seen. Matt Blackstone pushed through to the dead president, and to the young agent. “He tried to speak,” the agent said. He held the Bible open to where the president’s thumb had left a bloody print. “Revelation,” the agent said. “Chapter sixteen, verses sixteen and seventeen. Read it, sir.”

  Blackstone read: “And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon. And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air, and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done.”

  “You will say nothing of this,” Blackstone said to the shocked agent, taking the Bible with him.

  COBRA WATCHED AS his work was done. The president’s wife, a dark-haired beauty, held the body and seemed to peer right back into Cobra’s eyes. The conspirators that had hired him had wanted the widow as well, but Cobra didn’t fire again.

  The Mall was silent; the sirens would start soon. Cobra picked up the three brass shell casings and pocketed them. He took his old Remington 700 and swung it from the stock, hitting the barrel as hard as he could against one of the brick chimneys, sending brick dust and mortar into the air. He did it twice before the stock broke. The heavy barrel was bent, so slightly that even Cobra could barely see the damage, but it was enough; no one would ever fire a bullet through it for ballistics comparison. Who knew whether Cobra’s employers might have made tests?

  He dumped everything down several chimneys and ran for the stairs. He had made the impossible shot, but he felt no pride.

  By now sirens screamed everywhere.

  JJ SPRINTED ACROSS the Mall, but even halfway to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing Building, he heard a vast sigh rise from the crowd gathered around the Lincoln Memorial. It was done, he thought. He pushed through the doors of the building and ran to the security desk in the lobby. “I’m looking for a black man,” J J blurted, panting for breath.

  The guard rose and drew his .38 revolver. “You done found one, cracker. Be a bunch of us, this town. Who the fuck are you?”

  J J produced the I.D. he had received from Matt Blackstone. “He’d be on the roof.”

  “He’d be gone, he had a lick of sense,” the guard said, picking up his handheld radio. “President’s just been shot, over yonder.” He pointed west toward the Memorial.

  J J struggled for breath against sharp chest pain. “Logs. Anybody in this building that shouldn’t be?”

  “Not on my shift.” He picked up a clipboard and ran a thick thumb down the left column. “Hm. On the last shift, one signature missin’ goin’ out. Rufus Coombs, a cleaner.”

  “How do I get to the roof?”

  “Elevator, then stairs.” A loud siren sounded within the building, and the guard moved rapidly back to his console. “Basement door just opened.”

  COBRA PUSHED THROUGH the fire exit in the first basement and ran up the stairs to the street. He heard the siren go off inside the building and the big red bell outside. He walked rapidly, resisting the impulse to run, south to D Street, where he had parked the van. He removed a parking ticket from beneath the windshield wiper and pocketed it, started the van and headed left around the block to Independence Avenue, then on to Pennsylvania. He turned onto the Beltway going north, and almost immediately onto the Baltimore-Washington Expressway. Military and emergency vehicles of all descriptions were headed into Washington, and helicopters buzzed around with no apparent plan. Cobra depended for his escape on the confusion lasting several hours, and control spreading slowly outward from the capital to the rest of the nation, then the rest of the world.

  In half an hour, he was at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport; he hadn’t wanted to risk the Potomac bridges to National or Dulles. He parked the van in a spot near the main entrance marked “Reserved for Senator Barbara Milkulski” and ran inside. His Delta flight to Miami was the last to depart before the FBI shut down the three Washington-area airports.

  Cobra sat back and allowed himself several deep breaths. His single small shoulder bag was in the bin over his head; the Astra automatic, the three shell casings, and the last of his conspiracy-supplied documents dumped in a trash container in a men’s room just before the metal detectors. He’d flushed the rubber gloves and the parking ticket down the toilet.

  HIS EMPLOYERS HAD told him to go to Union Station and take a slow train to Canada, then fly to Europe. No sane fugitive would confine himself in a train, easily stopped and surrounded at any remote point along its route.

  Cobra used the phone on the plane to make a reservation on Varig Airline’s 6:00 P.M. departure for Rio de Janeiro, using another of his many credit cards, all legitimate if the names on them were not, bills paid by his bank in Brussels. He wanted to go someplace, and on an airline, where black people would be commonplace. He would decide the next step if he got through Miami and
be gone.

  J J RAN TO the basement and out the door with its still-ringing alarm and the siren within. The fat black guard followed at his own pace, puffing. There was nothing to see. J J walked to the Lincoln Memorial, showed his Secret Service I.D. to an agent, and was taken to the podium where he met Matt Blackstone. Two stretchers, both with faces covered, were being lifted up and carried to ambulances. “They’ll take them to Walter Reed to be pronounced, J J,” Matt said. “But they’re both as dead as St. Peter.”

  “The president? Who else?”

  “The Mormon. His bodyguard; some say other. Jim Bob Slate. He took the second round.”

  “Matt, I’m almost sure the shots came from the roof of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.”

  “We and the FBI have forensics teams combing the place now.

  “We won’t find the shooter.”

  “No, not likely. Who’s your source, J J?”

  “Believe me, Matt, I can’t tell you. But I am sure he can do no more good than he tried to do.”

  “I’m not sure I believe that, J J, but we’ll talk later. You ain’t going anywhere, are you?”

  “No. Not for a while.”

  J J didn’t know it, but he was protecting a ghost. As soon as he heard of the president’s death, Admiral Daniels had placed the barrel of his Colt General Officer’s Model .45 against the roof of his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  VICE PRESIDENT JOSEPH Donahue was picked up by a Connecticut state trooper at his home in Essex within minutes of the call from Walter Reed announcing the president’s death. He was wearing chinos and a blue turtleneck; he threw on a sport jacket. The trooper drove at high speed to the airport at Groton, where an air force C-140 VIP transport jet that became Air Force One as soon as Donahue stepped aboard was waiting with engines screaming. The plane took off immediately. Thirty minutes later the new president landed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland southeast of the capital. He transferred to the presidential helicopter, Marine One, for the short trip to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The pilots flew high in case the shooter or shooters were still around. Donahue looked down at the Lincoln Memorial and the Mall, a scene of chaos as police and troops contained the crowd that only wanted to escape the place of death.

  It was never my choice, Donahue told himself, rubbing his hands raw as if trying to wipe away blood.

  At Walter Reed, Donahue was taken to the president, who was laid out on a gurney in the morgue. Clarissa was with the body, staring at it, dry-eyed. “May I offer my sincerest condolences,” Donahue began. Clarissa turned and spat in his face.

  Donahue wiped away the spittle with his handkerchief, saying nothing as Clarissa, weeping now, turned back to the corpse. “Rupert, we were so close!” she all but shouted. “You heard the Lord; you were his way.”

  “Clarissa,” Donahue said, still holding his handkerchief ready. “I’m going to Navy House now.” Navy House was the vice president’s official residence. “The Chief Justice will be there, to administer the oath of office. I think it would be healing if you’d come with me.”

  She turned back to him. Her face had softened, but the tears still streamed. “Like Jackie in Dallas, with blood all over her pink suit?” She brushed ineffectuality at the bloodstains on her own dress. “At least I’m already wearing black.”

  “You’ll come, then?”

  “Will you respect my husband’s work, his vision?” she challenged.

  Not bloody likely, he thought. “Of course,” he said.

  PRESIDENT DONAHUE WAS sworn in, a teary Clarissa Tolliver at one side and his wife at the other. He told Clarissa she could have as long as she wanted to vacate the residence section of the White House, but he needed the executive and staff spaces and the sophisticated communications gear, none of which was available at Navy House.

  President Donahue convened the cabinet and other senior advisers an hour later. The president pointed a finger at the Director of the FBI. “Any progress on finding the killer?”

  “No, sir,” the director answered. “We got an anonymous tip that he might be on the Amtrak train that left Union Station at thirteen-ten in the afternoon, to Albany arriving at twenty-oh-five, presumably to make his way to Canada. We stopped the train a mile after it departed; found no one who didn’t check out. We stopped departures from National, Dulles, and BWI airports between one and one-thirty; no viable suspects. We recommend we hold all international flights until they can be checked.”

  Donahue felt a pain in his chest. “Who the hell are we looking for? Do we have any idea at all?”

  “The only lead is from J J Early, and he is vague on the source. He says a black man, an experienced shooter-for-hire. We’re running the data banks here and at Interpol and all over the world.”

  Donahue all but gasped. They were closer than they knew. “Any matches?”

  “Some worth checking. These people use many names; usually none of them their own.”

  “I don’t want to shut down our air travel system on so slim a chance,” Donahue said. “I don’t want to telegraph panic to the world.”

  “Just a few hours, Mr. President,” Matt Blackstone pleaded. “If he’s running he’ll be gone in no time, but if we don’t try, we’ll never get a clue.”

  “You said you had the three local airports controlled.”

  “He could drive,” Director Wilson said. “To Richmond, to Wheeling, to Philadelphia. A few hours.”

  “No,” Donahue said. “The business of the nation must be, and be seen to be, running as usual. Now, the funeral.”

  Zeke Archer cleared his throat. “The First Lady—the widow, sir—demands complete control. He’s being prepared, and will be lying in state in the Capitol by tomorrow. A memorial service at the National Cathedral, then interment in the Texas churchyard where President Tolliver first preached. No parade, no Arlington.”

  The president’s eyes flashed anger. “Bury a president behind some outhouse country church? Better a public funeral here, and at Arlington. It heals.”

  “He’d rest better in Texas,” Archer said sharply.

  “I’d better talk to her.”

  “I wouldn’t, Mr. President,” Archer said evenly. “She doesn’t like you, or trust you.”

  “Who the hell are you to say a thing like that to me?” the president shouted.

  “The ex-Chief of Staff,” Archer said, taking a single-page letter from his briefcase and spinning it across the polished surface of the table toward the president. Zeke got up and left the meeting without another word.

  The president straightened his jacket, determined to ignore the insult. Dora Hollings, who had been his vice-presidential Chief of Staff, tried to defuse the moment, defend her boss. “Mr. President,” she said sweetly, “will there be other cabinet changes?”

  “Naturally,” Malcolm Japes, the Secretary of State, said, “we’ll all offer our resignations immediately.”

  “After the funeral,” Donahue said angrily. “Let’s get through the damn funeral.”

  “Mr. President,” Carolyn White said. “Immediately after the president was shot, I placed the armed forces in DefCon Three, not knowing what we faced.”

  “Stand them down,” Donahue said. He knew, as they did not, that no foreign power had murdered the President of the United States.

  The word “murder” bounced around in his brain. He couldn’t put it away. “In fact, bring the fleets and the troops and air forces home. Let that be our first act: to show we’ll no longer bully the world. All forces not normally stationed overseas should be brought home immediately, and the troops and air force in Korea as well, since they aren’t wanted.”

  “Mr. President!” Admiral Austin exploded. “With respect, sir, President Tolliver’s deployment of our military might worked! We’re the only glue holding the planet together.”

  “Bring them home,” the president said coldly.

  Admiral Austin stood. Tolliver had been right. This lily-livered bastard would never measure up.
“You may expect many further resignations, sir.”

  “After the damn funeral,” the president growled.

  BRAD BENTLEY STARED at Charles Taylor’s story on his computer. Of course it couldn’t run now; the assassination trumped it completely. He downloaded it onto a disk and erased it from his hard drive. In a year or two, he would turn it into a book.

  Charles Taylor was in no position to miss it.

  2

  COBRA CROSSED MIAMI’S impossibly congested airport carrying his little bag. He was glad of the crowds and saw no lines at the counter; there were few waiting. Three women, two light-skinned Latins who were probably local and a black woman with “Da Silva” on her name tag, waited on the late check-ins. Cobra chose the black woman and presented his Portuguese passport. “Boa tarde, Senhor de Morais,” she said, smiling pleasantly.

  “Boa tarde, Senhora da Silva.”

  She tapped at her computer. It spat out a boarding card that she slipped into his passport and handed to him. “Porta Seis, Senhor. Bem vindo a Varig, muito obrigada e boa viagem.”

  “Obrigdo,” Cobra replied, and walked slowly past security, out the pier, and through Gate Six onto the Varig DC-10. It was a long flight, and Cobra would have liked to have indulged himself in first class, but even on Varig, first class was mostly white.

  The big plane backed out, taxied, and took off into the twilight. In a few seconds he was out of the United States.

  3

  PRESIDENT DONAHUE GOT through the funeral, delivering a eulogy that so praised the man who had despised and shamed him he had to fight not to gag. President Tolliver’s remains were flown to Texas in an air force transport with a minimal military honor guard and laid to rest behind the Batesville Church of Jesus Present. Clarissa wept at graveside practically alone.