Hell's Corner (5 page)
“That’s the prelim conclusion at least, yeah.”
“So running north-south. There were no muzzle flashes on the video,” Stone pointed out. “That must mean they were hidden from the camera’s eyes.”
“Behind trees,” offered Weaver. “Lot of them at the northern end of the park. But the surveillance cameras are positioned mainly for ground-level observation. So in any event they might not have picked up the flashes if the shooters were really high up.”
“Well, the shots had to come from elevated angles,” Stone opined.
“How do you figure?” asked Riley in a way that made Stone believe the man already knew the answer but was simply testing him. Stone decided to play along, for now.
“If they were fired from behind the trees at street level they most
likely would have carried past the park and across Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.”
“How do you know they didn’t?”
“Because you would have already told me if they had or I would have heard about more casualties. There are a lot of people on the White House side. Vehicles lining Pennsylvania Avenue. Sentries doing perimeter patrols. It’s inconceivable that someone would not have been hit. So high ground to low. Fits with my observations. From what I could see, the slugs were all plowing into the dirt. And if they passed through tree canopies first, they had to be fired from at or above that line. And a lot of those trees are pretty tall with thick canopies.” Stone added, “Anyone on the northern end of the park see anything helpful?”
“There was security. Park Police, couple of uniformed Secret Service agents, bomb-sniffing canine. They’re still being debriefed, but preliminarily they didn’t have much on the source.”
Stone nodded. “And why wasn’t the park cleared last night?”
Weaver’s expression showed his displeasure with this query. “I really just want your observations from watching that video.”
“I like to have a fuller understanding of what’s going on before I extend myself.”
Weaver’s gaze lowered to a file on his desk. “John Carr?”
Stone remained silent, staring at the digital image of the man on the wall.
“John Carr,” Weaver said again. “Your file is so classified even I still haven’t seen all of it.”
“Sometimes even a government can be refreshingly discreet,” noted Stone. “But we were talking about the origins of the shots and the park security, or rather lack thereof.”
“Origin of the shots is still being investigated. The park security is really Secret Service jurisdiction and I haven’t received a briefing from them.”
“Of course you have,” countered Stone.
Weaver looked intrigued. “What makes you say that?”
“Security of the president trumps all other things, which gives the Secret Service interagency heft it might not otherwise have. What looked to be automatic gunfire and an explosion happened
right across from the White House over fifteen hours ago. You provide the president with his daily national security briefing at seven every morning. If you haven’t talked to the Secret Service yet, then you couldn’t have briefed the president on the matter this morning. And if you didn’t brief the president this morning about an attack that happened in his front yard, you would no longer be employed as NIC director.”
A twitch at Weaver’s right eye showed that this conversation was not going according to plan. The two men leaning against the wall moved uneasily.
Weaver said, “The Service said that there were thoughts of clearing the park, but plans changed. Since the PM was going directly to Blair, they felt the park would not be a valid threat point. In sum, they thought they had it covered. Does that answer your question?”
“Yes, but it prompts another one.”
Weaver waited expectantly.
“Exactly what plans changed?”
In response Stone received a long Marine stare. “Just give me the rest of your observations if you have any.”
Stone looked at the man, reading the intent behind the blunt words. He could play this any number of ways. Sometimes you pushed, sometimes you didn’t.
He said, “Too many people in the park doing things they shouldn’t have been doing at that hour.”
Weaver settled back in his comfy chair. “Go on.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time in Lafayette. Eleven o’clock at night usually the only people there are security. Last night there were four people who shouldn’t have been there. The ganger, the guy in the suit, the lady on the bench and the jogger.”
“They all could have been there legitimately,” Weaver pointed out. “It was a warm evening. And it is a park.”
Stone shook his head. “Lafayette Park is not a preferred destination to sit or kill time at night. And the Service doesn’t like people lingering there. They’ll tell you the same thing.”
“They actually have already,” volunteered Weaver. “So what are you thinking?”
“Ganger had a gun. I could easily see it without the benefit of optics, so the countersnipers should have already seen it and relayed that to ground forces. Guy should have been nailed as soon as he set foot into the red zone. But he wasn’t.”
Weaver nodded. “Okay, keep going.”
“Lady was dressed nicely. Maybe an office dweller. She had a bag. But sitting on a bench at that hour makes no sense. She talks on her phone, then gets up about the time the motorcade pulls in. Fortuitous for her since she missed the gunfire.”
“Keep going,” encouraged Weaver.
“The suit was checking out a statue and took a long time to do it. Then he made his move toward Decatur House at the same time as the woman was leaving the park. When the shooting started they were both out of my line of sight. After that I picked up on the jogger, who was running toward the Jackson statue. He seemed to simply vanish, but now I know he actually jumped in the hole to avoid the bullets.”
Weaver said, “And got blown up for his troubles.”
“That doesn’t mean that one or more of the other people in the park last night were also not involved.”
Weaver shook his head. “I believe that’s a stretch. You got raking automatic fire in the park and then a bomb that had already been planted there and gets triggered probably accidentally by the poor sucker trying to duck the bullets. I think the guy did us a favor. Ferreted out a bomb before it could have done real damage. Now we have to figure out who, how and why on the gunfire and the bomb.” Weaver studied him. “You have anything you’d care to add to the mix? Because quite frankly, I’m disappointed in the little you’ve had to tell me. I thought you were hot stuff and you’ve really given me not much I hadn’t figured out on my own.”
“I didn’t think it was my job to do your job. But here’s another observation for free.” Stone added, “The ganger was really a cop, right?”
On that, the screen went immediately to black.
W
ITHOUT ANY INSTRUCTIONS FROM HIM
the car dropped Stone off at Mt. Zion Cemetery. This was intentional, Stone knew. It was as if to say, “We know exactly where you live. We can come for you anytime we want.”
Stone walked past the wrought-iron gates that enclosed the cemetery and into the small caretaker’s cottage that was his home. The furnishings were spartan and secondhand and fit Stone’s personality and limited resources perfectly. There was one large room divided between a small kitchen and a sitting area. Against one wall was a large shelf of books on esoteric subjects in multiple languages that he’d collected over decades. In front of that was Stone’s scarred wooden desk that had come with the cottage. A few threadbare chairs sat in front of a blackened brick fireplace. In an alcove behind a tattered curtain was the army cot he slept on. That and a tiny bathroom formed the extent of the premises.
Stone took three Advil, washed them down with a glass of water and sat down in the chair behind his desk while he rubbed his head. Whether he was still leaving for Mexico or not he didn’t know. But for now at least he would proceed on the assumption that he was staying until the men came for him.
He held up four fingers on his right hand and stared at them.
“Four people,” he said to himself. Although perhaps now only three since the video had made clear the jogger was no longer among the living. Yet they still didn’t know who he was or why he was there. So Stone kept the fourth finger up.
“So was the jogger in the classic wrong place, wrong time or was
he involved?” he asked himself. “And where are the suit and the woman? And are they connected?”
And there was the ganger who was probably a cop. Stone had realized that was the only reason the man would have come to Lafayette with a gun. He had a badge and authorization to be there armed. The screen going black on him back at NIC was all the affirmation Stone needed. Riley Weaver didn’t play any nicer with people than Carter Gray had.
What was bothering Stone was that
both
the suit and the woman had left just before the gunfire began. Coincidence? Both just as lucky as the jogger was unlucky?
He closed his eyes and pushed his mind to reach back to the night before. His temples were still throbbing and his scalp still burned from having a pointy tooth rammed into it, but slowly the pictures and sounds returned.
“MP-5s or possibly TEC-9s,” he said out loud. In reality there could be lots of possibilities for the hardware. “Set on full auto. Probably thirty-round magazines that could be configured for fifty or more. So how many shots had been fired? He had not been able to count every round, of course, but he could make an estimate from the time expired. Full auto, assume thirty-round mags, two to three seconds to empty the ammo box. Firing lasted about three to four times that, or twelve to fifteen seconds. Hundred rounds or so. But only if there was only one weapon being fired. If more than one, they were talking
hundreds
of rounds. A lot of firepower. Since most of the slugs had apparently ended up in the dirt, the FBI would be able to get a fairly precise number. But that didn’t answer the far more important question. How exactly had anyone gotten that close to deliver that level of attack?
Stone rose and looked out the window and assembled in his mind the topography of the area around the park. To the north and west along H Street were the United States Chamber of Commerce building and the venerable Hay-Adams Hotel. To the northeast was St. John’s Church. Behind all these locations were federal government and office buildings. He recalled that the Hay-Adams had a rooftop garden area. And it was a taller building than the church. And height was important here to explain the trajectory of the bullets.
He moved on to the next question.
Why did they take me to NIC? Just for my observations? There were other people there who could have told them the same things I did. There had to be another reason. Fair winds and following seas?
Stone looked out the window and saw the black Town Car pull up to the gates. As the occupants climbed out Stone eyed the men. FBI, he thought. Bureau agents tended to spend a little more on their clothes. Stone doubted that they were here to escort him to a plane destined for Mexico. The president would not have involved the FBI in something like that. Too many legal roadblocks. The Bureau tended to follow the letter of the law. And the FBI director had the clout to tell the president no. So perhaps the equation had changed once more.
And maybe this time in my favor.
As the four people drew closer, Stone could see that his initial observation was correct. He had just spied an FBI Academy ring on one of the men’s fingers. There was also a woman with them, and Stone didn’t think she was FBI. Assessing every feature from her teeth to her facial structure to her walk, she was a Brit, he concluded. MI6 most likely. Tasked for external intelligence, security and investigations.
This certainly made sense if the British PM was the target. She was either in country traveling with him, stationed here, or she had taken a day flight over, leaving at around two and getting in at about the same time. By the looks of it Stone opted for the latter.
And it was very clear why they were here. The bullets were one thing, but that bomb had been meant to blow somebody up and Stone didn’t think it was an overweight jogger. And they thought Stone could somehow help them find the truth.
Ironic,
he thought.
The truth.
He kept watching them as they approached his cottage.