The Second Shooter (33 page)

The driver backed away, keeping his eyes on Jake as he put some distance between them. Then he turned around and ran.

"Can we go now?" Favreau said as he climbed into the passenger seat.

Jake let out a long sigh. Then he slid behind the wheel of the taxi. "Yeah, we can go."

***

Walsh watched the live television broadcast of the events taking place in Dealey Plaza. The glider was sitting outside on the balcony ready for launch. The timing had to be close to perfect.

After being launched from Walsh's balcony, some two hundred feet in the air, the glider had to cover the two and a half miles to Dealey Plaza and be directly over the plaza-the closer to the front of the Administration Building the better-during the president's speech. Not a moment before, not a moment after. It had to arrive overhead during the speech.

Walsh had tested a duplicate glider in nearly identical conditions, but since by their very nature gliders lacked any onboard power and were totally dependent on gravity, aerodynamics, wind, and air currents to propel them, they were fickle contraptions at best. Now there was nothing to do but wait until the president began his speech, then launch the glider and steer it to the target. And hope for the best.

On television, the Republican governor of Texas, Rory Peck, who had been the Lone Star State's chief executive for thirteen years—hadn't they ever heard of term limits in Texas?—and who had run hard for the Republican nomination just last year and a chance to unseat Noah Omar, was now bloviating about two great presidents, the 35th and the 44th, and about how much had changed in Dallas since that dreadful day in November 1963.

Walsh smiled, pleased with the irony that another Texas governor would be present at the assassination of another US president. Only this time it was unlikely the governor would catch a bullet, as John Connally had. Too bad, Walsh thought, as he listened to the ex-cotton farmer-turned-governor blather on.

***

The cab lurched to a stop in the fire lane in front of the thirty-story high-rise apartment building a mile north of Dealey Plaza. Jake craned his neck to stare up through the windshield at the tall glass and steel tower. "You sure this is it?"

Favreau was also looking up at the building. "This is it."

"How are we going to find the right apartment?"

As they climbed out of the car, Favreau said, "He's six floors down from the roof, on the far right side. That would be..." He glanced up at the noon sun. Then his eyes swept the horizon. "The east side of the building."

"Six floors down from the roof?" Jake said. "You couldn't count up from the bottom, so we'd actually know what floor he's on?"

"No," Favreau said. "I couldn't."

"Why not?"

"I couldn't see the bottom of the building from that balcony."

***

On the television screen, Walsh saw Governor Peck half-turn toward a chair behind him and say, "So without further delay, it is my great honor and privilege to welcome the president of the United States, Noah Omar, to the great state of Texas and to the great city of Dallas." Then to a surge of clapping and cheering from the crowd, President Omar rose and shook hands with the governor, both men smiling hard and trying to hide the loathing they surely felt for one another.

After the governor took his seat, the president stood at the lectern for a long moment, smiling, eyes half closed, just letting the sounds of the mostly-friendly crowd wash over him. Then he raised his hands and gently motioned for silence. When the noise subsided, the president rested his hands on top of the lectern. "Good afternoon and thank you for being here to share this moment with me," he said. "I am honored to be here in the great city of Dallas and in the great state of Texas because today, as we honor the memory of a truly great man and great president...I am a Texan."

Laughing at the clumsy parallel Noah Omar was trying to draw to the famous line Kennedy had delivered in Berlin, "Ich bin ein Berliner," Walsh stepped onto the balcony and keyed the walkie-talkie. "Showtime. Showtime. Showtime." Then he picked up the glider and launched it over the railing.

***

"Showtime. Showtime. Showtime," Gertz heard from the speaker of his walkie-talkie. He reached a hand to the small radio and clicked the transmit button twice to acknowledge the call. Then he pulled on his shooter's earmuffs, took a deep breath to settle his nerves, and molded himself to the M-82 rifle.

As he pressed his cheek to the nylon stock and adjusted his neck to achieve the proper eye relief from the ocular lens of the Leupold scope, Gertz felt a sadness settle over him. These were the last two bullets he would ever fire as a professional shooter. So he would make them the best two shots of his life.

To that end, he cleared his mind and focused his right eye through the scope. He saw the north side of the Administration Building and the backup limousine, now with four Secret Service agents standing beside it, one at each fender. All four wore sunglasses and looked suitably alert. They were capable young men, Gertz was sure. They simply had no idea what he had planned for them.

Jake led Favreau through the revolving door into the lobby of the high-rise apartment building and was glad to see that the security desk to their right was empty. He had been expecting a confrontation with a guard. Men in blood-spattered clothes didn't normally get warm receptions in high-end apartment buildings. But there was no guard. Just a small portable television tuned to local news coverage of the president's speech.

At the elevators, Jake punched the up button.

A loud
BANG
echoed behind them. Blood erupted from Favreau's mid-torso and splashed across the wall and the elevator door. The Frenchman drew his pistol but collapsed before he could turn around. Pulling his own pistol, Jake spun around and found himself facing one of the men who had been pursuing him since the Washington Field Office, the tall one, the Anglo. He stood in the middle of the lobby aiming a pistol at Jake.

Jake fired. The man fired.

A bullet punched through Jake's right thigh. The elevator door dinged and opened. Jake collapsed backward into the elevator car. He fired again. The man fired back. Jake kept firing one handed—
BAM! BAM! BAM!
—as he grabbed a fistful of Favreau's shirt with his free hand and pulled. Favreau barely moved. Jake dug his good leg into the carpeted floor and heaved. He almost passed out from the pain, but he managed to drag Favreau into the elevator. As the door closed Jake heard bullets slam into the metal exterior. He jabbed the first button he could reach with the smoking muzzle of the Beretta pistol.

The elevator started to rise. Favreau lay on his back, partly on top of Jake's legs. Jake squirmed out from under him. The movement made his gunshot wound burn like it was being jabbed with a hot poker. He knelt on his good leg beside Favreau. The pain in his thigh was incredible. He had not known something could hurt so bad. He took deep breaths to try to keep from screaming. The Frenchman's eyes were closed. Jake grabbed him by the collar and shook him. "Andre," he shouted, "can you hear me?"

Favreau's eyes peeled opened. "Of course I can hear you," he said. "I got shot in the back, not the head." The exit wound was high on Favreau's right side and gushing bright red blood.

Jake was no medic. His only experience in the medical field had been to pass the required first responder course at the FBI Academy. Until all this started, he had never even seen a gunshot wound in real life, much less treated one. He did know enough, though, to recognize that Favreau's wound was bad. Really bad.

The elevator bell dinged and the door opened on the fourth floor.

"Six floors down from the top," Favreau mumbled.

Jake used the handrail to pull himself to his feet, fighting the pain and the nearly overpowering urge to vomit. He stared at the control panel. The top floor was the 30th.

He scanned down the three vertical rows of buttons looking for '13', a floor number that many buildings didn't use because of its superstitious connotations, which made the 14th floor really the 13th floor, the 15th really the 14th, and so on. This building listed a 13th floor, so Jake didn't need to subtract an extra number when counting down from the top. So six floors down from the 30th would be...

Jake pressed '24'. The elevator door closed.

His finger left a bloody smear on the button.

***

Walsh sat on the sofa in his apartment with the glider's remote control console and his laptop computer. The view on the computer screen was a forward-looking, forty-five degree downward angle from just behind the glider's nose. Walsh appreciated the incredible scene of the city sweeping past as he worked the twin joysticks and sailed the glider north over downtown Dallas toward Dealey Plaza.

He had no accurate way to tell how far the glider had traveled, but simply judging by the time of flight, he guessed it was at least half way to the target. Walsh had to fight the temptation to radio Gertz to give him a progress report. But he knew the shooter was wrapped around his rifle and would not welcome a call. They had discussed and rehearsed the plan. Now it was time to execute it.

He could hear the president on television. "...not just to commemorate the death, but to celebrate the life of the 35th president of the United States and a true American hero, John Fitzgerald Kennedy."

The crowd cheered.

***

The elevator door opened on the twenty-fourth floor.

Jake dragged Favreau across the empty hall and propped him against the far wall. The Frenchman still clutched his pistol. Jake could see part of the gaping exit wound through Favreau's torn shirt. He pressed Favreau's free hand against the bullet hole. "Keep pressure on it."

"Go," Favreau said.

Jake looked up and down the hall. "Which way?"

"Right side." Favreau's voice was weaker with every word. His eyes drooped. "Last apartment."

"I'll be back," Jake said. "Then I'll get you to a hospital."

Favreau nodded. Then his eyes closed.

Jake limped down the hall, leaving bloody footprints on the thick gray carpet. He reached the last door and pressed his ear against it. No sound came through. All he heard was his own heart hammering inside his chest. That and the doubts echoing inside his head.

He willed himself to simply stop thinking. He had come too far and done too much to reconsider what he was about to do. He had to act, and he had to act now. The president's life depended on it. Nothing else mattered. If he was wrong, he'd have the rest of his life for self-recrimination. Although truth be told, he wouldn't bet a plugged nickel on the prospects of him living beyond the next couple of minutes.

Now was the time for bold action.

Jake shifted his weight to his left leg and tried to raise his right foot. He couldn't get it more than six inches off the floor. There was no way he could kick the door open. So he rammed it with his shoulder. Nothing happened. The door didn't budge. There was a reason only TV cops pulled that move.

Pressing the muzzle of the 9mm against the lock, Jake fired twice. The door swung open. He limped into the apartment, gun raised, ready to fire again. His eyes swept the den. They stopped at the glass door that led to the balcony. The door was closed, but the curtains were pulled back. He could see the entire balcony through the glass. It was empty.

"FBI!" he shouted as he hobbled through the apartment and checked both bedrooms, focusing on the windows from where the sniper would have to shoot from.

The entire apartment was empty.

***

Walsh's eyes were glued to the laptop's screen as the glider sailed over Commerce Street. He saw the crowd, like a carpet stretched wall-to-wall across the plaza. He saw the spires of the Red Museum. Then the view swept across Main Street and the Criminal Courts and County Records buildings. The glider was coming in slightly off course, angling in from the southwest instead of directly from the south, but it was still on target as it drifted over the north side of Dealey Plaza.

Walsh pressed the button to detonate the Black Cat firecrackers.

***

Even if he had not been wearing the competition-grade noise-reducing earmuffs, Gertz was too far away to hear the tiny explosions, but he had been watching the approaching glider through the Leupold sixteen-power scope and he saw the little flashes of light as the string of firecrackers began to detonate.

The glider made a crazy lurch as if it had been hit by a powerful downdraft, and a smudge of gray smoke blossomed over the wing. A few more flashes and the five-foot wing snapped in half and ripped away from the fuselage. Then the main pieces of the broken glider tumbled toward the ground with the last of the firecrackers still popping.

Gertz shifted the muzzle down and brought the crosshairs to rest on the glass double doors at the back of the Dallas County Administration Building.

***

"...brought a fire and a passion to the White House, a faithful exuberance, and the unbridled energy to challenge his country to literally fly to the moon," President Omar said. "And that is what was taken from us, all of us equally, those of us who remember that day like it was yesterday, those of us with only dim childhood memories of sadness and grief, and those of us who were yet to be born. John Kennedy's death left a hole in the very fabric—"

A string of loud overhead pops stopped the president in mid-sentence. He glanced up and saw flashes and a puff of smoke about a hundred feet above him. And several objects that appeared to be fairly small and light falling to the ground.

Then several Secret Service agents were shouting all at once: "Red. Red. Red." Strong hands grabbed him and dragged him away from the lectern. He looked for Mona and saw more agents hauling her out of her chair. Then the agents were propelling them both toward the front door of the County Administration Building.

"The apartment is empty," Jake said. He was leaning against the wall, breathing hard and looking down at Favreau. His leg still hurt, but the pain was less now, an unsettling numbness having spread out from the wound.