Capitol Punishment (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 3) (37 page)

“Evening.”

Vorhees looked briefly over his shoulder as he moved away, his eyes admiring the women’s backsides. Both were easily over forty, but it had never been proven that a woman lost her can at that age. At least not to him it hadn’t. He looked forward again with an added bounce in his step and pushed himself along the final mile of his walk, realizing this was the only exercise he’d have for two days. His card was full for the following evening, as it was for anybody who was any—

“Freeze, fucker!”

Vorhees stutter-stopped, the rubber soles of his shoes actually skidding as the dark figure jumped from the shrubs on the right and blocked his path.

“Get ‘em up, dickweed!”

“Easy, easy,” Vorhees said, his eyes fixed on the kid’s hands. Those were the most dangerous parts of a man. These held a revolver that was pointed at his crotch.

“Get ‘em UP!”

Vorhees showed the kid his hands.
Male black, five-four, maybe five-five. Dark clothing.

“Give me your money!” One hand came free of the gun and reached out. “Now!”

“I don’t have any,” Vorhees said, trying to commit more details about his assailant to memory before a fear-induced adrenaline rush made such an effort fruitless.
Dark bandanna drawn across his face, maybe dark blue, and—

“Your watch! Now!”

The gun waved as Vorhees pulled his watch off. He saw that the hammer was cocked, and the punk had his finger on the trigger. It would only take a twitch. “Here.”

The thief shoved the watch in a pocket and took a half-step back, slowly, without any haste at all. That seemed strange to Vorhees, but more so were the eyes. They glowed in the harsh reflection of approaching headlights, and he could see them travel down his body, past the obvious aim point of the gun, and to his leg. The gun followed the eyes the final distance.

“You ain’t chasin’ me, fuckhead,” the thief said.

I’m going to be shot
. The realization hit Vorhees before the punk even spoke. The eyes, the gun, the movement. A switch was reflexively thrown.
Combat. Unarmed versus Armed. Move quick. Disarm. Eliminate.
He was an 82nd Airborne trooper again, moving toward the enemy, hands in motion, one going for the gun, the other for the upper body for a control hold. There was an abundance of clothing to grab. Moving. Reaching. Almost...

BANG.

Vorhees saw the flash, sensed it even on the skin of his left hand, and felt his weight shift awkwardly. It threw the aim of his right hand off, and by now that claw of fingers set to grab had become a fist prepared to strike. It made contact with something hard, with a soft top layer, but he did not see what. He was falling left and back, one arm reaching now to break his fall. His mind searched for pain. Where was he hit? Where was...

There?
He realized where just as his butt hit the sidewalk.
My God, how lucky could I be?

*  *  *

Moises Griggs was through the shrubs and across the field of short, brown grass beyond less than thirty seconds after the shot was fired. He jumped through the open door of the waiting Volvo. The door closed on its own as Darian sped away, heading quickly for the Leesburg Pike.

“Did you get him?”

“Yeah,” Moises said. He pulled the black knit cap off and wrapped it around the .357, tossing both into the backseat.

“In the leg?” Darian pressed, his eyes darting to the rearview.
No flashing lights. Whew!

“Yeah. Yeah.” Moises pulled the bandanna down to hang around his neck, then put a hand to his forehead. “Man, the motherfucker hit me.”

Darian looked right. “Shit, you’re bleeding.”

Moises rubbed above his left eye and felt the wetness. It stung at the touch. “Shit”

Darian drove with one hand and pulled his young comrade’s head over for a closer look with the other. “He gouged you.”

“Huh?”

“A big ol’ hunk of skin is gone, Brother Moises.” Darian let his head go. “It’s gonna be a scar. A good one.”

Moises took the bandanna from around his neck and pressed it to the wound. It stung, but it didn’t hurt. It did not hurt. “Fuck it.”

That’s the attitude, Darian thought. As he did the first police cars, light bars flashing, passed left to right behind them.

*  *  *

“Where are you hit?” the police officer asked as he knelt down. Two civilians had already come to the victim’s aid.

“The leg,” Vorhees answered, laughing nervously. He saw the cop looking at him and thinking “shock.” “It’s a prosthesis.”

The police officer watched as the victim pulled the left leg of his sweatpants up. He held the beam of his flashlight on the sight. “Unbelievable.”

Vorhees heard more sirens approaching as he stuck three fingers into the gaping hole halfway between his knee and the artificial ankle. He moved them around, making a clinking metal sound. “Blew the hell out of it.”

“Better it than you,” the police officer said. He ran his light over the rest of the victim. “What’s that?”

Vorhees noticed the blood on his hand for the first time. “It’s the punk’s. I laid one on him.”

The police officer examined the bloodied hand. There was a large class-type ring on the third finger, some pieces of torn skin jammed between it and the finger, and—he looked closer—yes, even some short hairs still embedded in the skin. “Don’t touch anything with this. I want to get this in an evidence bag. The leg, too, I’m afraid.”

“It’s no good to me anymore,” Vorhees said.

“But how...”

“Don’t worry.” Vorhees laughed a bit, silently likening himself to a car. “I have a spare. An old one, but it’s got a few miles left in it.”

TWENTY NINE

Trojan Horse

John Barrish stepped from the house near Fulks Run for the last time and gazed eastward over the trees. The morning sky glowed with a jaundiced hue that filtered through sheer fingers of clouds flowing northeast, the cold nip of winter stinging his cheeks. It was a beautiful morning. It would be a glorious day.

“John.”

He turned just his head toward the voice, then looked away from his wife’s face.

Louise Barrish came from the house, wearing the closest thing she had to a winter coat. It did little to stave off the sharp chill. “John, Toby is leaving soon.” She said this to his back. Silence followed. “How long will he be gone?”

“A while.”

Louise drew her arms tight against her chest, gripping opposite elbows. “John, does it have to happen?”

Trent wrote once that “
doubters are not followers. Instead they favor proximity to the bold, for it is with them that they find nourishment for their weakness. Doubters need visionaries to justify their existence. The lion is a visionary. The grizzly is a visionary. The slug is a doubter. Doubters are prey.
” Do not feed the doubter, John recalled Trent proposing. It was better to let the behavior starve.

“So many people are dead already,” Louise said, her voice having a surprising edge to it. “Do more have to die?”

“Toby will make the call tonight, then he’ll be back,” John said to the forest. Sparks of light flashed off the ice-covered trees as rays of sun began to crest the horizon.

“John, think about this,” Louise implored. She stepped closer, even though she could see her husband’s fist ball at his side. “How many more?”

“Make sure you make a big dinner. I’m sure he’ll be hungry.”

“John .. . Don’t do this. Stop it. You can stop it.”

“
Don’t let a doubter become a challenger. Challengers are parasites that infect he who allows them quarter
.”

“Please, John.” He was so young, so strong, with such powerful convictions, such grand ideas, such determination. How could she not have fallen in love with him then? So long ago. Now she understood the reality of it all. Her reality. One did not love John Barrish. One either hated him or respected him. Louise knew now that she was unique among those groupings. She was a creature of two selves. She did not love him. Infatuation at one time, maybe. Starry-eyed adoration. But never love. Respect, yes. Fear, most definitely. “Don’t make our sons like you. Don’t.”

John unclenched his fists and slid them into the pockets of his jeans. “Steak. We have some steaks left. Toby and Stanley both like steak.”

“John!”

He looked over his shoulder at her. “They’re my sons! They’re nothing like you! They never have been, they never will be!”

Her eyes were glistening, her cheeks red. Neither were from the cold. “Please!”

Now he turned his whole body and faced her, just looking, not lifting a hand, not making a move. It was a posture he had mastered against more worthy doubters. This one, like the others, would not become a challenger. “One other thing, Louise: if you say anything, do anything, even think anything that crosses me in front of the boys, I’ll kill you.”

Her body didn’t move an inch, but internally she cowered, hunching down into the smallest fetal position she could imagine, hands shielding her face from the monster that stood over her like a giant. The monster looked down upon her, then walked past. It could have stepped on her if it wanted.

It might still, she knew.

*  *  *

“I can’t believe we’re here,” Felicia Griggs said to her husband as they were escorted to the upper level of the House chamber.

“I’m in a suit,” Darren said. “Believe it.”

“I can’t get him in a suit even for church,” Felicia joked, looking back to Anne.

“I can’t get mine
out
of his,” Anne responded, realizing from the shocked look on her newest friend’s face that there was too much interpretation possible in that statement. “You know what I mean.”

“I know,” Felicia said.

“There was a lot of security outside,” Felicia commented. “There were soldiers on the roof of the Supreme Court building.”

“Just a few,” Darren reminded her, though he had noticed, too.

“Art promised it was safe,” Anne assured them. Of course he was miles away watching the whole thing as the guest of some government bigwigs. Well, they were guests of the biggest bigwig, Anne knew.

The House usher stopped and motioned a left to the guests of the president. “This way. To the second row on the right. You’ll be behind the first lady.”

Felicia froze momentarily, as did Anne. Collectively they thought,
The First Lady!

“Come on,” Darren prodded. He led them down the steps, past the half-filled rows to the seats indicated by the usher. It was still early, and the House chamber was only sparsely populated, but more legislators were entering every minute.

“Do you think there’s someone selling peanuts?” Anne asked.

Felicia giggled at the joke and looked toward the podium where the president would be speaking. They were above and to the left of that spot, one of the choicest seats for the yearly event. It was where those whom the president had chosen for special recognition of some sort sat, along with the first family.

“Do you think she’ll bring the baby?” Felicia inquired.

“Not if he yells like he did at that speech the president gave last summer,” Darren answered.

“The child has lungs,” Anne commented.

“I think he’s cute,” Felicia said in defense of the little boy. She squeezed her husband’s hand as thoughts of another little boy filled her head. Darren, not surprisingly, squeezed back.

*  *  *

He shouldn’t have been surprised, but Art Jefferson was when Secretary of State James Coventry met him in the foyer with a long-neck hanging lazily in one hand.

“Jefferson. Good to see you.” Coventry shook the agent’s hand and took his overcoat. It was dry outside, but cold and breezy. “Did the guard dogs give you any trouble?”

Art noticed the smile attached to the inquiry, but doubted that the two Secret Service agents who’d given him the once-over out front would appreciate the secretary’s characterization. “Just doing their job, sir.”

“I know. Come on in.” Coventry led the evening’s final arrival into the main area of the foyer. A long, sweeping staircase curved up to the left, forming an arch over the passageway to the back of the house. To the right was a parlor, and beyond it a dining room. To the left, through twin doors that were open, was the secretary’s study, and the gathering.

“This is a nice house, sir,” Art commented. Nice, big. It was definitely beyond his means, but soon there would be another set of means to add to his. And he would have to start looking for a new place.
Correction
, he caught himself...
they
would be looking.

“Thanks,” Coventry answered, bringing Art into the study. Bud DiContino and Gordon Jones stood to greet him. “You know this fella.”

“Mr. Director.” There was no way around the formality, Art knew. Mister this, mister that. All evening.

“Glad you could make it, Jefferson,” Jones said.

“And you’ve met Bud DiContino.”

“Yes. A couple years back.”

“Good to see you again,” Bud said, shaking the agent’s hand.

“Have a seat, Jefferson,” Coventry offered. “Take your jacket off. You want a beer?”

Oh, wonderful!
He was being told to get comfortable and have a brew in front of the director! Art could see it was a loose-tie and rolled-up sleeves night, but he had a gun on his hip—although Jones did, too, and his Smith & Wesson was there for all to see.

“Relax, Jefferson,” Jones suggested with an amused smile. “Consider it a night off.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Beer?” Coventry asked again as Art hung his jacket with the others.

“Do you have any nonalcoholic stuff?”

“One light-light coming up.”

Art took a seat next to the national security adviser on one of the room’s two couches. Two chairs completed the U around the coffee table, and at the far end, built into a large display case that held some of the secretary’s memorabilia, was a good-sized TV.

“I wish you were in D.C. under better circumstances,” Bud commented.

“To be honest, I try not to find many circumstances to
be
in D.C.”

Bud smiled and looked to a grinning Jones. “He knows the first rule of surviving this place, Gordy: stay away!”