The Cyclops Conspiracy (51 page)

Fairing, oblivious to the commotion around him, adjusted his scope. His concentration was absolute.

Cooper, on the other hand, was a total wreck. Vomit welled in the back of his throat as he watched the leg wound pump a small lake of blood over the carpet. He puffed his cheeks, suppressing the nausea. A streak of crimson trailed the wounded man to where
he writhed on the floor. The second agent applied a makeshift tourniquet with a cloth.

Cooper shifted his gaze toward the door, unable to take in the sight any longer.

Escape was a memory now. They were trapped. The gunfire beyond the condo walls told him his only means of escape was the open balcony. It was an option he was weighing heavily.

The tinny voice of the elder President Hope came through the speakers. Cyclops was programmed and ready. All Cooper needed to do was press a button, and the infrared laser target would be invisibly projected through the circular hole in the window and paint a twelve-inch reticle on the white canvas a mile away.

“Now, Cooper!” Fairing commanded.

Cooper lowered a quaking finger to the enter button on the keyboard. An inch lay between Cooper’s index finger and worldwide catastrophe.

At that instant, the door burst open. Two men filled the doorway. The one standing had just kicked in the door. The other was on the floor, pointing a gun…

* * *

The elder President Hope talked about the days leading up to his enlistment in the navy. He was proud of each and every one of the kids who had served, he said. After America was savagely invaded at Pearl Harbor, a wave of young men and women had been anxious to serve, totally unified against all threats to freedom. He went on to explain that America had been an “innocent nation” of merchants, and had instantly become a major industrial producer of armaments.

The Secret Service agent’s foot connected with the door, splintering the frame and continuing through. As he kicked, the business end of his weapon tilted toward the ceiling, leaving him totally exposed and unprotected.

Jason scanned the apartment instantly. Four men were huddled in the condo. To the right, the man with the leg wound sat bleeding against one wall. A buddy kneeling over him. Steven Cooper stood in the middle of the group with his hand poised over a keyboard wired to an electronic gizmo. The fourth man was farther away, near a window, sitting in a tall chair behind a wooden platform, manipulating a mammoth rifle with an equally massive scope. Jason immediately recognized Sam Fairing’s diminutive form.

The immediate threat came from the man kneeling over the wounded man. Jason ripped off five rounds as the man fired in the same instant. Two rounds tore into the Secret Service agent above Jason. He lurched backward, landed heavily on Jason’s right leg, and bounced, unconscious or dead. Jason heard a loud pop as pain ripped through his lower leg.

Jason’s shots riddled the kneeling man, two in the left arm causing the weapon to sail away, two more in the lower abdomen, and the final, fatal shot piercing the small depression at the base of the neck. A fountain of red spewed like a geyser from the jugular.

Jason retrained the gun on the wounded man, who had managed to grab a pistol. Jason pumped four rounds into his chest. The wounded man squeezed off only one. It missed.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jason saw Fairing disappear when the shooting began, retreating down a hallway to the left. Steven Cooper stood paralyzed a few feet to the right of the dead shooters. Jason turned the gun on the tall, lanky man. Before he could fire, Cooper dropped his weapon and raised his hands.

Jason crawled into the apartment and rose to his feet with difficulty. His knee was swelling and hurt like hell.

“On the floor, asshole,” Jason commanded Cooper, scanning for Fairing but seeing nothing.

“Don’t shoot!” Cooper pleaded. He dropped to his knees and lay facedown with his hands clasped behind his head. Jason picked up Cooper’s gun and surveyed the carnage.

Four bullet-riddled bodies. Pools of expanding blood, the smell of cordite. The sniper rifle aimed out the window. A handgun abandoned on the platform, next to a laptop connected to some sort of machine.

Anger rose in Jason like a tsunami. The events of the last weeks swarmed him like agitated, malevolent ghosts. He bent over Cooper with a trembling hand and placed the barrel of the gun against the back of his head.

“You scumbag!” he seethed.

Consumed by monumental ire and focused on Cooper, Jason did not see Fairing until it was too late. Jason looked up at the last instant. Fairing’s clothing and skin filled Jason’s field of vision as the pharmacist-assassin struck him hard. The gun flew out of Jason’s hand, bouncing into a corner. The men landed in a heap with Fairing on top, struggling in a swirl of sweat and murderous desperation. Fairing drove a fist at his face. Jason dodged. The fist slammed the hard, carpeted floor. Jason countered with a quick but powerful elbow to the cheek.

Fairing, dazed by Jason’s blow, blinked rapidly as he recovered. Jason seized a fistful of hair, holding the assassin’s head in place as he connected with two rapid punches, snapping the nose. He pushed Fairing away. Blood poured from the assassin’s nostrils. Jason scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain seizing his leg and body. He assumed a fighting stance and began bouncing rapidly. His hands were near his face, balled into fists.

Fairing was dripping crimson droplets on the white carpet before Jason. His head was lowered, his shoulders sagged. Jason thought it was over. Fairing was giving up. But panic seized him when Fairing wrapped his fingers around the pistol that had been knocked from Jason’s hands.

Jason was about to launch himself at Fairing, but the gun was already leveled. The round, black opening of the barrel stared into Jason’s soul. It was too late. His intestines seized. His lungs deflated in a long, slow breath…

A smile expanded slowly across Fairing’s face as his finger curled around the trigger.

A shuffling noise came from Jason’s left. Fairing reacted, shifting his gaze.

“Gun!” Jason yelled as Peter’s limping form filled the door. He launched into a spinning round kick, connecting with Fairing’s hand and knocking the gun barrel aside. Fairing maintained his grip on the weapon. It discharged. Out of the corner of his eye, Jason saw Peter go down. Fairing drove a blow into Jason’s midsection and violently shoved him away.

Jason lunged again, when another loud boom rocked the room. The shot came from Peter’s position. Fairing’s body jerked as Jason grabbed hold of his shirt. A large rosette of blood expanded over Fairing’s upper thigh. Fairing, undaunted, pummeled Jason’s face. Jason blocked the punches and landed three of his own. Fairing’s small but powerful fingers wrapped around Jason’s throat, squeezing it closed. Jason, struggling for air, extended his right fore and middle fingers in
a modified spearfinger attack. It looked like a kind of Boy Scout salute as Jason sank the tips into Fairing’s right eye. The soft, gelatinous eyeball yielded as he buried the digits to the first knuckle.

Fairing screamed, releasing his choke hold. He rolled onto his side in agony. Jason grabbed the weapon, which had fallen to the floor, and kicked Fairing once in the head for good measure. He rolled and gyrated, screaming. Jason watched him for a few seconds.

Satisfied Fairing was temporarily out of commission, Jason went to Peter. His brother clutched the tissue over his right clavicle as blood seeped through his fingers.

“Thanks for showing up,” Jason said.

Peter gave a pained nod.

“Where’d you get the gun?”

“Took it off the dead guy in the hallway. I’m getting tired of saving your ass, little brother.”

Jason scoffed. “Hell, this was nothing compared to saving me from Greg the Goon in fifth grade.” He motioned toward Peter’s shoulder wound. “Is it serious?”

“I don’t think so,” Peter replied, wincing. “Like they say in the movies, it’s a flesh wound.”

The elder Hope described how he’d gone off to war, taking off from the deck of the aircraft carrier
San Jose
. As an officer, he recalled having to read the outgoing mail, censoring the correspondence of his shipmates. “I learned a lot about the strong souls of those kids.” The former president paused, bowing his head, choking back tears.

* * *

The words of the former president were partially obscured by static through the earpiece. The electrical storm was interfering with the signal. Jasmine Kader studied the canvas through the same model scope her brother used, waiting for the laser target to appear. The crosshairs rested on the spot where the laser target should be. She ran her finger along the trigger housing.
That idiot’s late!

The safety was off. One round was in the chamber, with another waiting in the magazine. She had sighted, balanced, and honed the
settings and aspects of the rifle so many times it felt like an extension of her own body.

Jasmine’s upper torso was exposed, pelted by large raindrops. Her legs were covered by the tarp. She’d discovered as she’d maneuvered the rifle under the tarp that its heavy lead hampered her ability to adjust the barrel. A problem that hadn’t been anticipated. After the current president had finished speaking, she’d carefully and slowly peeled back the covering, exposing her body to the elements.

Lightning flashes lit up the sky. The wind and rain were more treacherous. Droplets had formed on the hooded end of the scope and were affecting her line of sight.

Cursing out loud in Arabic, she spun on her belly and retreated back under the tarp. The heavy wind gusted. The rain popped the rooftop like small-arms fire. She extracted the towel from her bag.

* * *

Jason, realizing that his brother was in no immediate danger, stepped over the writhing Fairing. Blood and eyeball goo seeped through the dark skin of Fairing’s fingers. The large hole in his trouser seeped blood, darkening the fabric. Jason quickly picked up one handgun from the floor and the other from the platform. He tossed them both to Peter, who leveled one in the direction of both Cooper and Fairing.

“I’m gonna find something to tie them up with. If they move, shoot them,” said Jason.

“I’d love to,” Peter replied.

Jason frantically searched the apartment. Thirty seconds later, he returned with some duct tape he’d found in one of the bedrooms near the tools used to make the platform. He ripped the cord running from the laptop to the wall and bound Cooper’s hands behind his back with the cord, and his feet and knees with the duct tape.

He next bound Fairing. He needed Peter’s help to restrain the writhing man. When they pulled his hands away from his face, there
was a gaping hole where his eye had once been. Jason dragged the two bound men to opposite corners of the room.

“Don’t fucking move,” Jason commanded the cowering Cooper.

“They were close,” Jason said, surveying the sight through the window.

“Too damn close,” Peter replied.

“You!” Fairing called to Jason. “You think you’ve won. You have not won. Allah will rain the curse of hell upon you and your family!”

“I don’t think so, Sam. You’re done,” Jason replied calmly.

Fairing’s smile widened. “Your presidents are still dead men.”

Remembering, Jason’s eyes found Peter’s. Jason shouted, “There’s still another shooter! Jasmine’s out there!”

“Where is she, Sam?” Jason demanded.

Fairing smiled confidently. “Allahu Akbar!”

Jason noticed Fairing’s eye shift as he spoke the words. It focused for a brief moment over Jason’s shoulder and out the picture window.

Jason knelt down and grabbed Fairing by the shirt. “Where is she?”

Fairing spit in Jason’s face. Jason wiped it away with a sleeve and slammed Fairing in the face with a fist.

Jason looked again in the direction Fairing’s eye had shifted. He saw the James River Bridge in the gray distance.

Peter was on his feet now, clutching his shoulder through a bloodied hand. He saw his brother’s mind working. “What is it?”

“The recording,” Jason began, “said Jasmine would be on the
other
north tower looking at traffic below. We didn’t pay attention to that detail before. We all just assumed it meant this north tower. There’s another one. Right there!” Peter pointed out the large window toward the James River Bridge.

Jason turned back to the one-eyed assassin. “Isn’t that right, Sam?” Then he turned back to Peter. “I bet she’s on that tower!”

Jason grabbed Fairing’s sniper rifle from the platform. He lugged it back to the window and lifted it to his eye, scanning the bridge in the distance.

“If I were her, I’d be right there!” Peter pointed through the bay window overlooking the balcony and the river to the northern tower of the span.

Jason zeroed in. “There’s someone on the nearer tower,” he said. “It’s hard to see, but there’s someone there. That’s her!”

Now that they knew what they were looking for, both men saw the figure with the naked eye, jutting from the rooftop like a tiny bump. “There’s a gun! She looks like she’s wiping off a weapon,” said Jason. Through the high-powered scope, he could see the female form. “She looks like she’s gonna take a shot.”

A bolt of lightning cracked nearby, so close that the white streak was simultaneous with the ear-shattering thunder. Both Peter and Jason flinched.

“Damn, that was close,” said Peter.

“I estimate we’re about three quarters of a mile from the drawbridge,” said Peter. He turned to his brother. “Jason, you can do this.”

“Me?” Jason asked.

“Yeah. You’ve practiced this. I can’t do it. Not with this shoulder.”

Jason thought a moment. “You’re right. It’s our only option. Help me move this platform.” They limped back to Fairing’s platform.

* * *