Target: Alex Cross Read online

  He threw the car in drive, put on his blinker, and started to pull out into traffic just as the agent started firing. The first round punctured the rear window, blew through both seats, and shattered the radio display.

  The second shot …

  CHAPTER

  55

  AS NOBODY LOST in nowhere in no time, three hours passed like minutes for Pablo Cruz. His watch beeped at 8:00 a.m.

  He woke feeling deeply rested and ready for the task at hand.

  Cruz got up, dusted off his pants, put the cleric’s collar on, and then put on the excellent toupee. Then he exited the darkened storage facility into the basement hallway.

  He put on a pair of conservative black-framed glasses fitted with photochromic lenses that adapted to changes in light, darker in sunlight, almost clear inside. Walking quicker now, Cruz left the subbasement and climbed the staircase. Beyond the door, he heard the din of a gathering crowd.

  Cruz crisply opened the door and eased out into a stream of earnest youth from all over the world and their adult leaders and chaperones. He smiled at a young woman guiding a group of Asian teens, and she grinned back.

  He got nods and smiles for the next five minutes as he circled the arena, taking note of all law enforcement before heading inside. Cruz entered from the rear, farthest from a stage set in a rainbow of bunting.

  Many of the seats off the floor were already taken. To get on the floor, Cruz showed badges identifying him as the Reverend Nicholas Flint of the First Baptist Church of Nebraska, part of a church group that included a choir from Omaha that was set to sing as part of the congress’s opening ceremony.

  He showed his badges three more times, moving past television cameras, and soon found himself at the back of a throng of people, young and old, who were pressed up against barriers set well back from the stage. His glasses kept lightening in tint until they showed just a hint of gray.

  Cruz reached up to adjust his collar and withdrew a sliver of translucent graphite as sharp as a sewing needle.

  The assassin fitted it between his right index and middle finger, waited until more people filled in tightly behind him, then used it to prick the rear end of a young woman in front of him. She yelped, grabbed her butt, and spun around. Cruz looked at her through the glasses.

  “I just got bit too,” he said. “Someone told me the place is infested.”

  That made her frown. “Really?”

  “Just heard it,” he said. “Can I get by? I’m supposed to get pictures of the choir. They’re in my group.”

  She brightened. “Sure, Reverend.”

  “Bless you, child,” he said, and he slipped past her.

  Forty minutes later, the arena was packed, and Cruz was where he needed to be, one row of bodies off the front and to the far right of the stage behind a contingent of teenagers rallying around a sign that said FLORIDA . There were signs from fifty states and one hundred countries all over the arena.

  Cruz kept looking around in wonder and awe, as if he couldn’t believe how lucky he was to be there. The stage began to crowd with dignitaries. The small church choir from Kansas filled the risers to stage left, almost directly in front of the assassin.

  At 9:57 a.m., a silver-haired woman with a big smile on her face walked to the dais and tapped the microphone.

  “Welcome to this year’s meeting of the World Youth Congress!” she cried, and the arena erupted in applause.

  Cruz clapped his approval, keeping his eyes fixed on her, not glancing at any of the eight burly men wearing suits and earbuds with their backs to the stage who were scanning the audience.

  When the clapping died down, the woman said, “My good young friends, I am Nancy Farrell, chairman of this year’s congress. Today, I have the distinct honor of introducing a new friend who will open your congress with an exciting announcement. Young ladies and gentlemen of the world and of the future, it is with great pleasure that I introduce the president of the United States, James B. Hobbs.”

  CHAPTER

  56

  THE U.S. MARINE corps band came onto the stage playing “Hail to the Chief.”

  Secret Service agents came out from behind curtains at floor level, followed by President Hobbs, in office now less than two weeks. The president strode out, waving and smiling the way any good politician will when the crowd is sure to be on his side.

  Tall, silver-haired, and lanky, Hobbs had grown up on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. He had weathered good looks and a reputation in the U.S. Senate as a man of integrity and geniality, traits that had attracted the late president Catherine Grant.

  On paper, you couldn’t ask for a better guy to lead the country, Cruz thought.

  But as the president began to work the barricade, shaking hands with kids and adults, Cruz could see Hobbs was showing signs of being uncomfortable with the job, or at least with the way the Secret Service men moved in a tight protective phalanx around him on three sides.

  Two tall agents walked behind Hobbs. Each of them had one hand resting gently on the president’s back and the other close to his weapon. Two more agents moved laterally off his left shoulder. The one closest to Cruz was scanning ahead.

  Cruz forced himself not to look at the lead agent but beyond him and his partner to the president. The assassin grinned broadly as if one of the higher points of his life was coming his way.

  He reached up to his hearing aid, pressed on it for ten seconds, then turned it off. He watched the nearest television camera, to his right about ninety feet. It appeared to be trained on the president. The green light on the front of the camera flickered and died. The cameraman’s head popped up, his expression puzzled.

  Cruz looked around and saw the other camera operators doing the same.

  He stood up on his toes and made a show of clapping as Hobbs and his entourage came closer. He glanced around, caught young person after young person’s excited eyes, and nodded to them, mouthing, Isn’t this incredible?

  Still clapping, still up on his toes and delighted, Cruz saw how the lead agent was already peering past him and how the agent closest to the president was signaling when each person could reach out to shake Hobbs’s hand. Only then did the assassin glance beyond the president to the ramrod-straight man following the entourage.

  Military bearing. Tight haircut. Gray business suit.

  Those things instantly registered in Cruz’s mind before his happy attention snapped back to Hobbs, now less than six feet away, so close the assassin could hear him saying, “So glad to meet you. Wonderful. Wonderful to see you, young ladies.”

  The three teens directly in front of him pressed forward. Cruz did too, saw the lead agent putting his hand on the arms of the kids. Still clapping, Cruz smiled, looked at the Secret Service agent, and raised his brows quizzically.

  The agent held up a finger. Cruz nodded, glanced at Hobbs shaking the hand of a fifteen-year-old girl and then posing for a selfie with a pimply boy before moving directly in front of him.

  The kids that separated them shook the president’s hands before the leader of the free world looked up and directly into his killer’s eyes. Cruz gave him nothing but heartfelt admiration as he reached over the heads of the kids and extended his hand.

  Hobbs grabbed it, shook it, and winked at him. As the president released his grip, the assassin snapped his hand back and felt the thud of the air gun going off, felt it vibrating through his retreating forearm, no noise at all in that din.

  The 90-grain graphite bullet hit the president square in the chest. Hobbs lurched backward, wild-eyed, not understanding what had happened as he collapsed into the arms of the bodyguards behind him.

  Cruz reacted with immediate shock, drawing his head and upper body back with an exaggerated gape of disbelief as the agents grabbed the president and lowered him to the floor. Kids began to scream.

  Hobbs’s assassin watched, mouth wide in puzzlement. He swung his attention to his left, hands to his head as if he wasn’t sure of what he’d seen. The crowd arou
nd him surged back as more agents and a doctor rushed to the stricken president.

  Cruz saw the man with the military bearing, tight haircut, and business suit eight feet away, looking scared and incredulous. He was standing sidelong to the assassin, offering a narrow profile, not the broadside shot Cruz wanted, but Cruz believed in taking the first solid opportunity he had at a target.

  He raised his left hand, snapped his wrist back. Again, he felt the thud but heard no report of it. The man twisted at the graphite bullet’s impact, spiraling, tripping, and sprawling onto the concrete floor.

  People near him started yelling and ducking down. More in the crowd were trying to get away from the stage. Cruz went with them.

  Then medics rushed in. As quickly as the hysteria had built, it lulled and died in the arena. All the assassin could hear was children crying as he kept slowly retreating, trying to act in fear and bewildered disbelief.

  Fifteen seconds later, when he’d moved far enough to see a clear path to an exit, he reached up to the hearing aid and pressed the on button three times.

  Twelve seconds after that, the lights in the arena wavered, dimmed, and then died.

  CHAPTER

  57

  “ALEX!”

  Nana Mama screamed so loud I heard her in my basement office. I had been unable to get hold of Mahoney, so I decided not to cancel my office hours.

  “Alex, come up here now!”

  I was between patients and heard the horror in her voice. I bolted up the stairs into the kitchen.

  My grandmother was standing by the kitchen table, her mouth open, tears streaming down her cheeks. “They just interrupted my Rachael Ray, ” she said. “They think the president’s been shot.”

  “What?” I said, my stomach plunging as I moved around to see the television. “Where? When?”

  “The DC arena,” she said. “Some youth congress. Maybe ten minutes ago.”

  Nana had the screen tuned to CNN, which was in full alert mode. Wolf Blitzer was talking nonstop over looping video that showed President Hobbs entering the arena and working the rope line, upright and smiling, before the camera went dark.

  “Every network feed was hacked and cut just a few moments before the president collapsed,” Blitzer said. “Witnesses said Hobbs appeared to jerk as if shot before falling back against his Secret Service agents. There have been no reports of guns seen or fired inside the arena, which has lost power and is under lockdown.

  “We have confirmed reports that President Hobbs is being rushed to Walter Reed. We also have confirmed that Secretary of Defense Harold Murphy, widely considered the top candidate to be named Hobbs’s vice president, was also wounded and en route to … hold on.”

  The feed cut to Blitzer, who was listening to his earbud, his expression turning graver and graver before he looked up into the camera and said, “We have just confirmed that U.S. treasury secretary Abigail Bowman has been shot and killed near the New York Stock Exchange along with two of her bodyguards.”

  “Jesus,” I said, shocked, even though I’d suspected something terrible was in the works. “The president? Treasury? Defense?”

  “It’s a plot, a conspiracy!” Nana Mama said. “Just like JFK! Someone’s trying to overthrow the government!”

  Before I could agree, Blitzer announced that trading at all U.S. financial markets had been suspended, and the U.S. Capitol Building, the U.S. Supreme Court Building, and all federal buildings in the District of Columbia were being locked down.

  My cell phone rang. Bree.

  “Are you seeing this?” she said, sounding unnerved.

  “I’m watching with Nana,” I said.

  “I should have listened to you.”

  “Doesn’t matter, and I’m not happy about being right. What’s going on there?”

  “It’s chaos. We’re deploying around the DC arena. I’m heading there now.”

  “Keep me posted. I’ll try Ned again.”

  I hung up and hit Mahoney’s number on speed dial even as I watched the feed jump to Walter Reed and footage of an ambulance racing through the gates.

  Blitzer said, “That was the scene two minutes ago as the president’s medical team tried to keep him alive and get him to an operating room. We’re awaiting a statement on President Hobbs’s condition, but early reports indicate he was badly wounded.”

  The screen jumped to the scene outside the DC arena, where FBI SWAT officers were piling out of vans armed with automatic weapons.

  Blitzer said, “No one is being allowed in or out of what has become without a doubt the biggest crime scene in the world. CNN will be focused exclusively on this fast-breaking story and—”

  Mahoney’s work cell rang and didn’t go to that robotic voice. I went into the other room, listening to the ringing. He never answered. I left a message, went back to the kitchen. “What’s going on?”

  Nana Mama said, “Capitol Hill Police are ordering congressmen and senators to stay in their offices while dogs are searching all federal buildings.”

  On the screen, Blitzer sent coverage live to the White House, where the press corps was in pandemonium, shouting questions at Dolores St. Mary, President Hobbs’s shocked and rattled press secretary.

  “What’s the president’s condition?” one yelled.

  “Who’s in charge, Dolores?” shouted another.

  “Who’s running the country?” a third demanded.

  CHAPTER

  58

  THE PRESS SECRETARY held up her hands, said, “Please, we are going to handle your questions as best we can, but today’s events are unprecedented and evolving at a rapid pace. We don’t yet know the president’s condition other than he is alive, as is the secretary of defense. We’re waiting and praying for them just like everyone else.”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m going to introduce U.S. attorney general Samuel Larkin, FBI director Derek Sanford, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Alan Hayes.”

  The three men looked like they’d been through a firefight when they climbed onto the dais. Attorney General Larkin went to the lectern.

  Larkin, a powerfully built man in his fifties, was no stranger to controversy or conflict. He’d had a reputation as a crusader and social climber when he was U.S. attorney for Lower Manhattan, and he often was accused of grandstanding in events. The late president, Catherine Grant, had named him to the post, and he’d had to survive a difficult nomination and confirmation process.

  Since then he’d been an attorney general with remarkably good approval ratings, so good that James Hobbs had kept him on after taking the oath of office.

  But that day Larkin was profoundly somber as he put on reading glasses and glanced at a prepared statement before looking straight at the cameras.

  “President James B. Hobbs was shot by an unknown assailant this morning. Seconds before that attack, treasury secretary Abigail Bowman was shot and killed in cold blood in New York. Seconds after the president was shot, Secretary of Defense Harold Murphy was also severely wounded.”

  He paused, looked down as if he could not believe what he was about to say, and then raised his head up and went on in a commanding voice. “Under the Twentieth and Twenty-Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and by the Succession Act of 1947, with the president incapacitated and the office of vice president vacant, power passes to the Speaker of the House, and if that office is vacant, to the Senate president pro tempore, and if that office is vacant, to the secretary of state. If that office is vacant, the secretary of the treasury assumes power. If that office is vacant, the secretary of defense is president.”

  Larkin swallowed hard then firmed the set of his jaw. “It is my miserable task to inform the nation that West Virginia senator Arthur Jones, the Senate president pro tempore, died of a heart attack at GW Medical Center earlier this morning.”

  He held up his hands, shouted, “Let me speak!”

  The rabble quieted.

  Larkin said, “I must also inform the nation
that about an hour ago, at a quail-hunting ranch in West Texas, Speaker of the House Matthew Guilford and Secretary of State Aaron Deeds were assassinated by long-range snipers. We’ve only just gotten word.”

  Gasps went up from a shocked press corps.

  “It’s a coup,” I said in shock and awe. “A coup attempt in the United …”

  “What does this mean?” a reporter shouted. “So who takes office?”

  The attorney general said, “Under the order of succession, with the secretary of defense incapacitated, I do.”

  More shouting. “You’re assuming the office of presidency?”

  “I am,” Larkin said. “I did not seek this role, but our nation is under attack. Make no mistake, our country, our Constitution, our way of life, it’s all under attack, and because of that I will take the oath of office as acting president, working closely with General Hayes and FBI director Sanford in defense of our country.”

  Before the reporters could yell anything, Larkin said, “To that end, after my swearing-in, I will sign executive orders giving full authority to Mr. Sanford and the FBI to implement the U.S. Justice Department’s assassination-contingency plans and to lead the investigation to uncover who was behind this coordinated attack on our democracy. I will also sign orders instituting a state of martial law in the United States of America for the next one hundred hours.”

  “What?” I said. “Holy … has that ever happened?”

  “Nothing like this has ever happened,” Nana said.

  Larkin ignored the reporters freaking out in the White House press room and left.

  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Hayes went to the microphone.

  “All travel in U.S. airspace is suspended for the duration of martial law. All planes currently in the air out of New York, Washington, and Texas are being ordered to the ground and impounded. All other flights in the air will proceed to their destinations.