The Second Shooter (27 page)

Gertz pulled a chair over to the table and stacked two sofa pillows on the seat. Yet another thing he had discovered about his shooting position was that with the rifle resting on the sacks of beans and elevated a foot above the table, even at six feet tall he could not comfortably raise his eye to the scope while seated in one of the chairs.

For any precision shot, and particularly one at extreme range, like the one he was about to make, his body and the rifle had to work as one. Every muscle needed to be relaxed. He had to mold his body around the rifle. Tension anywhere, in his back, his neck, his arms, even his fingers, could move the muzzle a millimeter off its true aim, and even a single millimeter off at the muzzle equated to being off target several feet once the bullet traveled fifteen hundred meters downrange. That was why preparation was so important. There was no such thing as luck. There was only prepared and unprepared.

Gertz sat on top of the pillows in the chair and pressed his eyes to the binoculars. He moved them slightly, then adjusted the focus ring to bring into clear relief his target area, which was only three hundred feet short of a mile away. A long shot even with this amazing rifle. And under difficult conditions. He took a deep breath, held it, then let half of it out. He felt a calmness seep over him. Then he let his eyes fix on the double glass doors at the back of the Dallas County Administration Building, the same building that had once been known as the Texas School Book Depository.

Jake slammed the pimp mobile to a stop in the fire lane in front of the high-rise apartment building. He looked at Favreau in the passenger seat, then glanced in the rearview mirror at Gordon and Stacy. Stacy was looking out the side window, craning her neck to see the top of the high-rise. "That's a big building," she said.

Turning back to Favreau, who was also staring up at the building, Jake said, "You sure about the apartment?"

"I'm sure the number two-two-zero-five was written on the photograph of this building," Favreau said. "But I'm not sure what it meant. Maybe an apartment...maybe not."

Jake too looked up at the tall building. How many apartments were there in that thing? "It's all we have to go on."

"Beggars can't be choosers, right?" Stacy said.

Jake nodded. "Exactly."

They climbed out of the Cadillac.

Jake led them across a concrete patio and through a revolving door into the lobby. They stopped for a moment to get their bearings. Straight across the lobby stood a bank of elevators. To their right a security guard sat behind a long counter. He was an older man with thick gray hair swept back from his forehead and a neatly-trimmed cop mustache. The guard glanced up from something he had been looking at behind the counter. "Can I help you?" he said.

Jake heard the low-volume drone of a television and noticed the top of a flat screen TV peeking up over the short parapet that ran along the front edge of the counter. The TV sounded like it was tuned to a news broadcast. "No, thanks," Jake said. He started walking toward the bank of elevators. The others followed.

"Excuse me," the guard said.

Jake ignored him, but in his peripheral vision he saw the guard, almost certainly a retired cop, jump to his feet, and heard him say again, much louder this time, "Excuse me."

Still ignoring the security guard, Jake punched the elevator's UP call button.

"You have to sign in, sir," the guard said.

The ding of a bell announced the arrival of an elevator car. When the door opened, Jake pulled the others inside and jabbed the button for the twenty-second floor. As the door closed, Jake saw the guard pick up a telephone.

***

Sitting at the breakfast table, Gertz breathed in, held it, then breathed out. Total relaxation, that was the key to making a good shot. And today he needed to make a great shot. He checked his watch. The president was scheduled to speak in two and a half hours. Gertz allowed himself a tiny smile. His preparation had paid off. Everything was in place and ready. Exactly as it should be. He glanced at Fluker. Still unconscious and still breathing. Perfect.

***

The elevator stopped and the bell dinged again. The floor counter showed '22'. Jake glanced at his companions. The door opened. "Okay," he said and stepped out. Favreau, Gordon, and Stacy followed. Behind them the elevator door closed.

They stood in a long hallway lined with apartments. The carpet, the paint, the art were tasteful and expensive, as befits a luxury apartment building. For an instant Jake thought about the somewhat rundown apartment in the slightly seedy part of Washington, DC, that he shared with Chris Stanley. Used to share with Chris Stanley was more like it, he thought. He wondered what Chris was doing now? Probably helping track me down.

"Jake?" Stacy said.

It snapped him back to the here and now. He turned to her.

"Everything okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said, then smiled. "Peachy. How about you?"

She smiled back. "Peachy."

"I was just thinking about Chris. And all that's happened in the last...What's it been, two days?"

She nodded. "I know. But if we're right, we're going to stop an assassin and save the president."

"Then what?" Gordon asked. "You think he'll pardon us?"

"You haven't done anything illegal," Jake said. "Stacy either. I'll make sure they know that."

"Let's find the shooter before we start passing out pardons," Favreau said. He pointed to a brass plaque with arrows indicating the way to different series of apartment numbers. He nodded to the left. "This way." Then he led them down the hall.

The fifth door on the right bore a small brass plate beneath the peephole that read 2205. Jake motioned the others to stand on either side of the door, just as he'd been taught at the FBI Academy. Standing directly in front of the door was a good way to catch a bullet or a shotgun blast in the gut, his instructors had told him and his classmates during their training on how to property execute search and arrest warrants. Jake had never actually executed a warrant before, search or arrest, but this situation was pretty close to it, so he figured he would soon found out just how much of that training had sunk in.

Jake slid a Beretta pistol from under his jacket. Favreau drew another Beretta. Jake had stashed both pistols in the trunk of the Caddy when he thought they might have to walk through the security perimeter set up around Dealey Plaza, but since their plan-if it could even be called a plan-had changed from simply trying to spot the shooter and reporting his position to the local police or Secret Service to actually finding the shooter themselves and...and what? Arresting him? Killing him? Jake wasn't sure. They would have to play that part by ear. A lot would depend on what the German did once they found him.

But since the change of plans, Jake had dug the guns out of the Cadillac and given one to Favreau, still self-aware enough to appreciate the irony that he, Mr. Law and Order, Mr. Straight-as-an-arrow, Mr. By-the-book FBI agent, was handing a loaded gun to an international fugitive and confessed presidential assassin. There actually was a federal law on the books that made it a ten-year felony to give a gun to a fugitive.

So that was yet another crime he would have to answer for, this time probably to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which enforced the nation's firearms laws. But maybe if he bagged the German shooter and saved the president, the Department of Justice would have to cut him some slack. Then again, he had broken about a thousand laws in the last two days, so maybe DOJ's idea of slack would be fifteen years at Leavenworth instead of thirty.

Stacy pulled a Glock from under her jacket, the same Glock Jake had handed to her in the motorhome, the same one he'd used to shoot a man in the throat. Jake stared at her. She was an analyst, not a field agent. She met his stare. "We're talking about the president's life."

Jake nodded. Then looked again at the brass number plate on the door, 2205. He glanced at Favreau and whispered, "You sure about the number?"

The Frenchman shrugged. "Pretty sure."

Jake shook his head, then glanced at Stacy and Gordon. "Ready?"

They nodded together.

Stepping squarely in front of the door, Jake shifted his weight to his left foot so he could kick with his right. Only in movies and on TV did cops try to break down doors by slamming their shoulders into them. Real cops kicked doors open. "Like the lady said," Jake mumbled, "we're talking about the president's life."

Then he took a deep breath and raised his right foot.

***

Gertz set the butt of the rifle down on the table and stood up to stretch his back. A quick glance verified that Fluker was still out cold and still breathing. Gertz unlatched the binoculars from the small tripod and stepped around the table to the threshold of the sliding glass door.

"It was almost like one of those out-of-body experiences. I saw myself doing it, but at the same time I felt like I was watching it from a distance. Like it was on TV. I just knew I was going to go through that door and save the president. But, of course, that didn't happen."

***

Jake drove his right foot against the door two inches to the inside of the knob. Perfect placement. And putting all of his 180 pounds behind it. The frame splintered as the door burst open. He charged into the apartment. Favreau followed quick on his heels with Stacy behind him and the unarmed Gordon trailing.

Eyes scanning for danger, pistol thrust out in front of him in a two-handed combat grip, Jake took two steps into the apartment then broke left. From the edge of his vision he saw Favreau break right. Jake saw nothing but empty apartment. Then movement jerked his head to the right. Favreau had seen it too and altered his course. They aimed their pistols at the threat.

A man, a woman, and two kids-a boy and a girl-stood on the balcony staring back at them in shock. Beside them stood a hobby shop quality telescope mounted on a frail tripod. The woman's eyes picked up Jake's pistol and she screamed. The man stepped in front of his wife and children. "Who the hell are you?" he shouted

Jake lowered his pistol and looked at Favreau.

"This is it," Favreau said. "I'm positive."

"Who are you?" the husband said again.

Jake had no answer for them. He looked back at Stacy and Gordon and saw horror on their faces.

Favreau lowered his Beretta. "How long have you lived here?"

The husband didn't answer.

Favreau took a step toward the balcony.

"Four...four years," the man said, his wife and children still crouching behind him.

"What happened three months ago?"

The husband's face creased with uncertainty. "Three months ago? What do you—"

"Was this apartment for sale?" Favreau interrupted.

The man stared back in confusion.

"Answer the question," Favreau snapped.

"No," the man said. "It wasn't."

Favreau closed his eyes and shook his head.

"But it was for lease," the man added.

"Go on," Jake told him.

"My company was transferring me to Scotland for a year. We were going to lease out the apartment."

The Frenchman opened his eyes. "What happened?"

"I had to have surgery," the man said. "I couldn't take the transfer. So we pulled it off the market. Why do you want to know? Who are you?"

Favreau shoved his Beretta into his pants, then held up both hands in a non-threatening gesture. "Excuse me." He pointed to the telescope. "May I?"

As soon as the husband had nudged his little flock to the edge of the balcony, Favreau stepped through the glass door and pressed his eye to the small lens at the back of the telescope. After a few seconds, he said, "Is that what you were looking at?"

"Yes," the father said.

"What?" Jake asked.

Favreau motioned him forward. Jake stuck his pistol into the back of his pants and stepped onto the balcony. As the Frenchman stepped aside, Jake bent down and looked through the eyepiece. He recognized the scene immediately. The front of the old School Book Depository, where a temporary podium had been erected. A lectern stood atop it. Everything was draped in red, white, and blue bunting. Jake looked at the husband. "You were going to watch the president speak?"

"My daughter," the man said, nodding to the oldest child, a girl of about ten, "is supposed to write a report for school about the speech."

Favreau looked through the eyepiece again, then pivoted the telescope on its tripod and scanned a narrow section of the skyline above the County Administration Building.

"Are you with the Secret Service?" the husband asked, his tone hinting at the rising hope that his family hadn't fallen into the hands of desperate criminals.

Jake didn't answer. He couldn't even look at the terrified family. Instead, he kept his eyes on Favreau, who was staring intently through the telescope, sweeping it back and forth across the same swath of skyline. Then the telescope jerked to a stop, and Favreau tweaked the focus. "There you are," he said.

Jake opened his mouth to ask Favreau what he meant, but before he could get the words out he heard a heavy step behind him and a voice booming, "Let me see your hands!"

Turning, Jake saw two Dallas policemen in the doorway, guns drawn. The first cop was aiming his pistol at Jake and Favreau while his partner covered Gordon and Stacy. Gordon already had his hands up and Stacy was raising hers, though in one of them she still clutched the Glock.

"Drop the gun," the second cop shouted. "Now."

As Stacy set the Glock on the floor, the first cop barked at Jake and Favreau, "I said let me see your hands."

Jake raised his hands. Favreau didn't. The Frenchman kept his eye pressed to the telescope, moving the large lens on the far end down slowly and counting to himself, "One, two..."

The first cop shouted at them again, "Get on the ground. Now."

Favreau ignored him and kept looking through the telescope, counting to himself, "Three, four, five—"

Jake heard a loud pop. He cringed, expecting to see Favreau go down under a bullet. Instead, he saw the two metal darts from a Taser stuck in Favreau's neck and heard the sharp arcing of electricity as Favreau cried out and collapsed. Two thin steel wires attached to the darts ran back to a bright yellow pistol-shaped control unit in the cop's hands. As the 50,000 volts of electric current popped and burned the air, Favreau convulsed in pain-wracked spasms on the floor of the balcony. "That's enough," Jake shouted. "You're going to kill him." The cop let the current surge for a few more seconds, then cut it off.