The Second Shooter (23 page)

"As a matter of fact, that's exactly what I said."

"And history proved you wrong."

Garcia was tired of arguing. "What do you want from me?"

"Make sure the Frenchman doesn't fuck it up."

"Why do you think I'm here?"

"You're running out of time."

"I'll find him."

"Do it quick," Chessman said. "And then get out of town. They'll be a lot of blowback."

"You think?" Garcia said, hoping the sarcasm in his voice conveyed more than his words.

But Chessman had already hung up.

***

Gertz knelt on the balcony of the high-rise apartment as the sun was starting to peek above the horizon to his left. He rested a pair of 15x80 Steiner binoculars on the railing and looked south. He focused on the rear of a seven-story building a mile away. On the first floor, a pair of glass doors opened onto a short set of concrete steps that led down to a small parking lot. He estimated the angle of deflection from his balcony to the double doors to be about thirty degrees. The deflection had to be factored in, as did the wind, even with such a heavy bullet.

He looked up from the binoculars and stared across the mile of city between him and the building. "That's a very long shot," he said to himself in German. Then he pressed his eyes again to the precisely ground ocular lenses of the Steiner binoculars and refocused on the distant building.

The plan, already a complicated undertaking with a hundred moving parts, had gotten progressively more complicated in the eight weeks since Gertz had arrived in the United States.

He was a shooter, not an actor, so it had come as a surprise to him that in addition to establishing his residency and his routine in a leased high-rise apartment with a clear, if distant, line of sight to the target, and becoming an expert with a rifle that could engage targets at such a range, his employers had also wanted him to befriend the patsy, a brain-damaged ex-soldier named Ray Fluker, by playing the part of "George," a rich but generous American playboy. Something that had proved to be no simple task because Fluker, it turned out, was not an easy man to meet, much less become friends with.

It had taken Gertz three tries to accidentally "meet" Fluker, who lived in a dilapidated motel on the ragged outskirts of Dallas and who apparently did absolutely nothing other than shuttle between work and his motel room. Fortunately, the ex-soldier had a kind heart, so when he saw "George" trying unsuccessfully to change a flat tire on his Mercedes-Benz, he offered to help. It took some more time, but the reluctant Fluker had finally opened up.

And as if all of that wasn't enough to keep Gertz busy, there was the shot itself. When Gertz's employers had first approached him in Germany, they told him he would be positioned on an apartment balcony approximately twenty stories high and would fire at a stationary target at a range of one thousand meters. As described, that shot was going to be very difficult because it was at the outer edge of the performance envelope for most military-grade sniper rifles chambered for the .308, the .30-06, and even the 7mm Magnum.

Fortunately, Gertz wasn't going to have to rely on a weapon chambered for any of those rounds. He had insisted on, and his employers had agreed to provide him with, a Barrett M-82 .50-caliber rifle. Finding a place to train with the huge rifle had been yet another challenge. Even in a state as big as Texas, people tended to notice someone firing a bullet that was the primary armament for US fighter planes during World War II and Korea. Eventually though, after some diligent searching, Gertz had found a place to practice with the Barrett, but it was a hundred miles west of Dallas.

Gertz's biggest surprise, however, had come immediately after his arrival, during his first face-to-face meeting with his cutout, an American he knew only as Walsh.

Two months ago, sitting at a kitchen table in Walsh's apartment, the cutout had shown Gertz a satellite photograph of downtown Dallas. Two buildings were circled in red. Gertz knew one of the circled buildings. It stood at the corner of North Houston and Elm streets and had once been known as the Texas School Book Depository. Now it was a local government office building and its top floor housed a museum dedicated to the Kennedy assassination. The other building circled in red was north of the old Book Depository and on the opposite side of an elevated highway.

"We lost the apartment," Walsh said. "The owner took it off the market before we could sign the lease."

"Is there another apartment in the same building?"

Walsh shook his head. "That was the only one high enough and on the right side to reach the target."

"So the operation is scrubbed?"

Walsh tapped his finger on the northern building. "I found an apartment here."

"That's the wrong side," Gertz said. He pointed to the green space just below the old Book Depository Building. "He's giving the speech on the south side of the building, facing the plaza. I won't even be able to see him from there."

Walsh touched an open spot on the north side of the Book Depository, opposite Dealey Plaza. "The backup limousine will be here."

For a moment, Gertz studied the distance between the two circled buildings. "What's the range?"

"Fifteen hundred meters."

"That's five hundred more meters."

"That's the closest apartment I could find."

Gertz continued to study the map.

"The gun has the range," Walsh said.

"You are adding fifty percent to the bullet's time of flight."

"That's only one more second."

"Gravity, deflection, wind, even humidity affect the path of the bullet. When you increase the projectile's exposure to them you increase exponentially the difficulty of the shot and the likelihood of a miss."

"You came highly recommended."

"I am one of the three best shooters in the world," Gertz said, "but I cannot guarantee a hit on the target. There are too many variables over which I have no control."

Walsh stared at him. "Can you make a shot at fifteen hundred meters or not?"

Gertz returned the stare. Then he nodded. "Yes."

"Good. Now let's get to work."

"But I can only make the shot if I can see the target," Gertz said. He jabbed his forefinger on the parking lot on the north side of the Book Depository. "The president doesn't ride in the backup limousine."

"He will," Walsh said. "Follow me and I'll show you why."

Gertz followed Walsh into the den, where a homemade workbench had been set up by laying a sheet of plywood across four chairs. On the workbench sat a sleek fiberglass glider with a five-foot wingspan. Next to the glider was a remote control console, similar to the controllers used to play video games. The console had a retractable antenna and two small joysticks, also several buttons and a small LCD screen. Since the remote control was designed to transmit a radio signal, Gertz assumed the LCD showed what radio frequency the device was transmitting on. People who flew remote-controlled model aircraft near each other needed to use different radio frequencies to keep from inadvertently sending wayward signals to other aircraft.

Jury-rigged to the bottom of the control console by a couple of wires was a red button, the kind you could pick up at an electronics store. Also on the workbench was a laptop computer, a string of black firecrackers, and a roll of duct tape. A USB cable plugged into the side of the laptop ran out to the balcony.

Walsh pointed to the glider. "I'm going to move the president with that."

Gertz was not a man who liked surprised. "Tell me your plan," he said.

Walsh slid open the glass door leading to the balcony and stepped out. Gertz followed him. They were twenty floors above the street. Walsh handed Gertz a pair of inexpensive binoculars, twelve-power Bushnells, not the carefully crafted Steiners he was used to, and pointed north to a speck of green about two and a half miles away. "That's Dealey Plaza."

As Walsh explained the new, expanded plan, Gertz focused the binoculars on the plaza and pictured the scene in his head:

President Noah Omar is speaking from behind a lectern set atop a temporary podium in front of the old Book Depository Building, now the Dallas County Administration Building. A few thousand people have jammed themselves into Dealey Plaza to hear the president speak on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Walsh launches the glider from his balcony, two hundred feet above the ground. Taped to the top of the five-foot wing and rigged to an improvised remote-controlled detonator is a string of firecrackers. A small bump in the bottom of the fuselage, just back from the nose, is a fiber-optic camera. Inside the fuselage, farther back under the wing and closer to the glider's center of gravity, is a tiny microwave transmitter that beams a video signal back to an antenna set up on Walsh's balcony, and then by wire to the laptop inside his apartment.

"From this height the glider has a range of four miles," Walsh says. "And unlike the personal drones people have started buying, it's totally silent."

The president continues speaking as Walsh uses the control console and the laptop display to pilot the glider over Dealey Plaza. When the glider is directly above the crowd, Walsh stabs the red button jury-rigged to the console.

The detonator touches off the firecrackers, which begin to pop like machine gun fire.

"The Secret Service will initiate their emergency protocols."

Panic sweeps the crowd. The Secret Service drags the president off the podium and into the Administration Building.

"With the threat vector in front, the security team will use the backup limousine."

Inside the building, Secret Service agents rush the president down a hallway toward the far exit.

"As he exits the north side of the building, you'll have your shot."

In another high-rise apartment a mile north of the Book Depository-turned-County Administration Building, Gertz sits behind the Barrett M-82, .50-caliber sniper rifle. The rifle is mounted on a bipod that rests on top of a small table. Gertz aims through the open sliding glass door that lets onto the balcony.

He peers through the sixteen-power scope and superimposes the duplex reticle's crosshairs on the glass double doors at the rear of the building, just a few feet beyond the waiting backup presidential limousine. Seconds later, two Secret Service agents throw open the glass doors, while another agent yanks open the right rear door of the limousine.

"He'll come through the door in less than thirty seconds," Walsh says.

Gertz takes a deep breath as a phalanx of Secret Service agents burst through the rear doors, shielding the president with their bodies. Gertz expels half of the breath and centers the reticle on the knot of agents. He squeezes the trigger.

BOOM!

The massive 661-grain, .50-caliber bullet rockets toward the president's protective cocoon of Secret Service agents.

"The bullet will take three seconds to travel to the target. The sound will take five seconds," Gertz hears himself tell Walsh.

The bullet strikes the agent directly in front of President Omar. The shockwave knocks everyone down and the shower of blood covers them all.

"By the time the president and his agents hear the first shot," Gertz says, "the second bullet will already be on its way."

Through the scope, Gertz sees several agents pulling the president to his feet. Everyone is splattered with the viscera of the dead. Gertz centers the crosshairs on the dazed president and squeezes the trigger again.

BOOM!

As the rifle settles from the recoil, Gertz sees the president of the United States disappear in an explosion of flesh and blood.

"Then all you have to do is leave the patsy..." Walsh says.

Gertz stands and walks away from the huge rifle. He stops next to Ray Fluker, who lies unconscious on the floor. Gertz pulls the pin on an M-15 white phosphorous grenade and slips the metal ring onto Fluker's finger.

Gertz opens the door and steps into the hallway. He pauses and tosses the grenade back into the apartment. He shuts the door. The apartment explodes in white fire as Gertz walks down the hallway.

"...and exit the building."

Gertz walks out through the apartment building's ornate front doors as all around him panicked residents run helter-skelter. Once out in the street, Gertz glances up at the building and sees dirty gray smoke billowing from the top.

***

Now Gertz was in another high-rise apartment, staring through his Steiner binoculars and making his final survey of the target. The sun was fully up. The sky clear. The wind negligible. It was a beautiful day. A good day for shooting. Gertz stood and walked back into the apartment.

"Now that he had me convinced that a rogue element within the CIA was planning to assassinate the president in Dallas, we couldn't seem to get there. In some ways I think that decrepit motorhome had more sense than we did. It just did not want to go to Dallas."

***

The eighteen-wheeler was stopped on the shoulder of US Highway 271, fifty yards in front of Gordon McCay's stranded motorhome. The truck driver was standing on the Winnebago's front bumper, bent over and half-buried under the hood. His grease-stained bag of tools lay open on the ground. Jake, Stacy, Gordon, and Favreau stood around the front of the motorhome, watching the trucker and occasionally handing him tools as he called for them.

The sun had just come up over the horizon.

"Think I got her," the trucker said from beneath the hood. Then he straightened up and climbed down off the bumper. Gordon handed him a dirty rag. The trucker wiped his hands, doing more to smear the black grease around on them than to remove it. "That lower hose was a real bitch." He glanced at Stacy. "Pardon my French, ma'am."

She smiled and nodded at the truck driver, then gave Favreau a surreptitious wink.

"I'm sorry it took so long," the trucker explained, "but I had a devil of a time getting these here mitts," he held up his big, hairy, dirty hands, "into those tight spaces, but I finally got the new hose on and got 'er done."