The Second Shooter (31 page)

Jake crawled toward Stacy. Then he heard a gunshot, close by, from the cab. That shot was immediately answered by several more from outside. They sounded like pistol shots. Jake looked through the window between the rear compartment and the cab but couldn't see anything except the shattered windshield.

Tires screeched outside. A woman screamed. Someone yanked on the back door. It wouldn't open. Jake heard more gunshots. Bullets punched through the lock and ricocheted inside the van. He scrambled on top of Stacy and covered her.

The door ripped open. A man wearing a dark suit with a black mask over his face loomed in the doorway. He held a Beretta pistol in his hand and carried it like a pro. The man stepped inside the van in a crouch, his eyes and the pistol pointing at Favreau.

Jake could see Favreau's right hand down behind his thigh. The man in the suit couldn't see what Favreau was holding, but Jake could. The Frenchman had a pair of ankle cuffs wrapped around his fist, like a double set of brass knuckles.

The man in the suit stepped forward, the muzzle of his pistol only two feet from Favreau's nose. Favreau's left arm flew out in a wide arc and swept the Beretta aside. Then his right fist, wrapped in the stainless steel ankle cuffs, smashed into the man's nose. Jake heard cartilage and bone crack as the man's face exploded in blood. Instantly, his body went limp and he collapsed like an imploded building, straight down onto the ceiling of the upside-down van. Probably not dead, Jake thought, unless he drowns in his own blood, but it would certainly be a long time before he woke up. And surgery would definitely be required.

A second man, also in a dark suit and black mask and carrying a Beretta, charged into the van. He fired once and Favreau went down. The gunshot reverberated through the van and stabbed Jake's eardrums. Favreau was on his back, and Jake wasn't sure if the Frenchman had been hit or not. There was no blood, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. At least Jake didn't think so.

The second man advanced, his eyes narrowing to slits behind the black mask. He had Favreau cold. There was no escape. Then the man tripped over his fallen comrade and fell on top of Favreau. His pistol discharged and the bullet bounced around the van.

Favreau swung the ankle cuffs at the man's face, but he didn't have enough leverage to make the blow count. The man jammed the muzzle of his Beretta against Favreau's chest. He smiled under the mask.

Jake threw a loop of leg iron chain over the man's head and wrenched back on it. The man's neck bent and stretched. He tried to turn his pistol around on Jake, but Favreau grabbed the slide. The man fired one shot but the muzzle was angled just wide enough so that the bullet missed Favreau, and the Frenchman's death grip on the gun kept it from cycling and prevented the man from firing again.

Jake crossed his hands and drew the chain tighter around the man's throat. The man's face glowed red. Spittle frothed at the corners of his mouth. His grip on the pistol weakened. Favreau took it from him and racked the slide back to eject the spent casing and chamber a fresh round. Then he shot the man in the face.

Stacy screamed as blood, brains, and bits of skull splattered Jake's face. He scrambled away from the dead man and used his shirt to wipe some of the gore from his face and eyes.

Multiple sirens screamed toward them.

Favreau pointed the dead man's pistol at the open door. "We have to go."

Jake looked at Stacy. Her hands were free but she still wore the leg irons. She shook her head and spread her feet until the chain was taut. "I couldn't keep up."

"I can't leave you," Jake said.

Stacy nodded at Gordon, who was still chained hand and foot and lying on his side with both hands pressed to his bleeding forehead. "I'll stay with Gordon."

Jake turned to Favreau. The sirens were closer.

"There's no time," Favreau said.

Gordon sat up. His face was bloody and he looked like he was in a lot of pain, but his eyes were clear. "You two go. We'll be all right."

"No," Jake said.

"Jake, you have to," Stacy said. "You have to save the president."

Favreau stood in the doorway waiting for him. "Jake."

They were right and he knew it. Jake took a step toward the door. But he turned around...and kissed Stacy hard on the lips. "I'll get you out," Jake told her. "I promise." Then he grabbed the unconscious man's pistol and followed Favreau outside.

***

Max Garcia sat in the passenger seat of the Tahoe and watched Andre Favreau and Jake Miller stumble out of the overturned police van. The area directly around the crash site was deserted, but the traffic surrounding it had immediately turned into a snarled tangle. The Tahoe was blocked in.

The dozen or so passersby who had run to the scene after the collision fled as soon as the shooting started. But a whole lot of people were standing back and taking video with their phones. Which is why Garcia had no intention of stepping foot outside the Tahoe. Better to lose the Frenchman and the FBI agent than to end up on CNN. He could always go collect his wife, pack a couple of bags, and run. South America was a big place and it was easy to get lost there.

No one tried to stop Favreau and Miller, both of whom were covered in blood and carrying pistols. The other two prisoners, Gordon McCay and Stacy Chapman, did not get out of the van. Nor did either of the two contractors who had shot up the back door and gone inside.

Blackstone pounded his fist on the steering wheel. "Jesus fucking Christ."

Garcia glanced over at him. "Your men are idiots."

The police were closing in.

"If half the Dallas Police Department hadn't been at Dealey Plaza, the police would have reached the scene sixty seconds earlier, and we would have been right back in handcuffs, with even more charges hung on us."

***

The first car Jake saw when he stepped out of the overturned police van was a taxi. It was stuck in traffic in the inside lane of a four-lane street, but there was a clear path out of the traffic jam and away from the accident scene if the driver simply made a U-turn and drove the other way.

The taxi driver was looking down and typing on his cellphone.

Jake pulled open the left rear door and slid in. Favreau climbed in from the other side. A clear plastic security shield divided the front and back seats. The driver, who looked southern Asian and had a prominent birthmark covering most of his right cheek, looked into the rearview mirror and his eyes went wide at the sight of Jake's blood-streaked face. He reached for the door handle.

Jake pressed the Beretta against the partition. "How much do you want to bet it's not really bulletproof?"

The driver let go of the door handle and put both hands on top of the steering wheel. "I don't have very much money, but you are welcome to what I have." His accent was Pakistani.

"Turn the car around and drive," Jake said.

***

Gertz sat behind the huge rifle, its stock resting on the sacks of dry beans piled on the breakfast table. Through the open glass door he could hear the police sirens from the presidential motorcade pulling up in Dealey Plaza.

The Steiner binoculars were back on the tripod, their line of sight matched as closely as possible to that of the Leupold scope mounted on the Barrett rifle. Gertz shoved a sixth cartridge of 661-grain, full-metal-jacket .50-caliber ammunition into the box magazine. The magazine could hold ten rounds, but he only planned to fire two shots, so he doubled that, then doubled it again for good measure.

It wasn't superstition. It was science. The science of preparation.

All of his practice sessions had begun with six rounds in the magazine. Adding more rounds now would change the rifle's weight and thus had the potential to affect his shot. He had trained with six rounds; he would shoot with six rounds.

Raising the butt of the rifle, he inserted the magazine into the well, then tapped it with the heel of his palm until he heard the metallic click of the magazine locking into place. He pulled the bolt handle back-it slid easily on lightly oiled grooves-and watched the nose of one of the fat brass cartridges tilt up toward the breech. Then he let go of the handle and saw and heard the bolt carrier slam forward, driven by the heavy recoil spring, and rake the cartridge from the top of the magazine and jam it into the firing chamber. He checked the safety, mounted to the receiver just above and to the rear of the trigger, and ensured that it was in the horizontal position and set on safe.

On the table now, in addition to the walkie-talkie, the stopwatch, and the 9mm pistol, were a pair of shooter's earmuffs, plus an M-15 white phosphorous hand grenade and a homemade beanbag made from a sock half-filled with dry beans and tied in a knot. Gertz leaned forward over the edge of the table and wrapped his right hand around the rifle's pistol grip. Then he picked up the beanbag with his left hand and slid it under the bottom point of the rifle's butt plate. By tightening and relaxing his grip on the bean-filled sock, he could make micro adjustments to the vertical axis of his aim. Squeezing the sock raised the butt, thus lowering the muzzle. Reducing pressure on the sock did the opposite: lowering the butt and raising the muzzle.

Gertz laid his right cheek against the stock and pressed his eye to the scope. The backup presidential limousine was there, just behind the County Administration Building. Two Secret Service agents stood at the front fenders, each with a hand resting on the hood. They were required to do that, Gertz knew, having read somewhere that at least one agent always kept his hand actually on the president's limousine in between the time it was swept for bombs and before the president got in. The purpose was to make sure that an agent was always literally within arm's reach of the president's vehicle and that not even for an instant was it left unsecured. He supposed the same rule applied to the president's backup vehicle as well.

How very efficient, he thought, thus, how very German of them.

Gertz placed the scope's crosshairs center mass on the farthest Secret Service agent. The reticle rose and fell slightly with Gertz's heartbeat. Then he took a deep breath, slowly exhaled half of it, and held the remainder. He willed his body to relax until the slight vibrations of the reticle became unnoticeable.

"Bang," he said. Then he took a deep breath. He checked his watch. "Not long now."

Behind him, Fluker's eyes began to flutter. And his right hand began to twitch.

***

Walsh was still standing on his balcony and looking at Dealey Plaza through his binoculars when the president's limousine turned north off Main Street onto North Houston Street. A block beyond, where exactly fifty years ago President Kennedy's open-top limousine had made that acute left turn onto Elm Street, directly under the looming façade of the School Book Depository, President Noah Omar's limousine drove straight another seventy-five feet, then coasted to a stop at the southeast corner of the same building, adjacent to the presidential podium.

Walsh lowered the binoculars and walked into the apartment.

***

Ten police cruisers surrounded the crash site. Two fire trucks idled nearby. Three ambulances were already on scene, and the blare of approaching sirens signaled more on the way. Crime scene technicians were stringing up bright yellow police tape.

Officially, two cops were dead and three of the four mystery men who weren't cops but who dressed a lot like cops were also dead. One was killed in the crash, and two had been shot in the head. The fourth had a shattered face and was still unconscious. Two prisoners were banged up. Two more prisoners were missing. One of the missing prisoners had claimed to be an FBI agent. It was absolute chaos. Things could not get more clusterfucked than this. It was just the kind of situation in which things slipped through the cracks.

And that was exactly what Bill Blackstone was counting on.

He shoved Stacy Chapman into the back seat of the Tahoe next to Gordon McCay, who was hunched over, holding his cracked ribs with one hand and pressing a gauze bandage to his split forehead with the other hand. Stacy still wore leg irons and her wrists had been re-shackled in front with a standard pair of police handcuffs.

"Where are you taking us?" Stacy shouted. But Blackstone didn't answer. He just slammed the door in her face. Then he looked at Garcia, who was standing in the middle of the crime scene, browbeating a Dallas police lieutenant and waving his phony federal writ in the man's face.

All the real action was over. The gawkers had lost interest and stopped shooting video with their cellphones, and the local TV news crews were all up the street at Dealey Plaza. So Blackstone and Garcia had felt safe enough to crawl out of their vehicle to try to salvage what they could from this total fucking FUBAR.

From fifty feet away, Blackstone could hear Garcia shouting, "...almost got two federal prisoners killed not more than three miles from your own station, so I'm sure as shit not going to let you take them anywhere else, not even to a hospital. If they need medical attention we will provide that. And if you have a problem with that I suggest you drive to Dealey Plaza right now and take it up with the president of the United States because that's who I work for."

Blackstone could see the cop shaking his head but couldn't hear what he was saying. Whatever it was, Garcia didn't wait to hear it all before he spun around and walked away from the lieutenant, who just stood there and watched him go.

"Let's get the fuck out of here," Garcia said when he reached the Tahoe. "Give me the keys. I'm driving."

***

The Pakistani taxi driver was terrified. But he was cooperative and doing just what Jake told him. He had a heavy foot, though, which might attract the attention of a passing police car, although with all that was going on, Jake kind of doubted that. Still, the way his luck was running, he couldn't be too careful. "Slow down," he told the driver.

The driver backed off the accelerator and glanced at Jake in the rearview mirror. "Please don't kill me, sir. I have a family."