The three bodyguards shrugged out of their coats, revealing cross-slung Heckler & Koch tactical submachine guns. Each took the time to extend the retractable metal stock and brace the weapon against his shoulder. The red light of an exit sign fell like blood against their backs. Their shots were precise and clustered. There was no spraying, no wide sweeps. They double-tapped a target and moved to the next. Most of the victims hadn’t even risen from their chairs. A few tried to run. A man made it halfway to the entry before his throat exploded. A woman in a dress rose, cocktail glass shattering in her hand as the bullet passed through it to her heart. Screaming and more shots came from the bar, where a second team had entered. A third team had broken through the back door and were shooting immigrants in chef whites. The mother from Indiana slid beneath the table and yanked her son with her, clutching him in her arms.
When the guns were empty, the men reloaded and began firing again.
Cooper touched the screen of his datapad, and the image froze. The security camera had been mounted near the stairs to the conference rooms, and the angle was at once disjointed and horrifying, the violence more real because of the lack of Hollywood techniques. The pause had caught a teardrop of white fire exploding from a submachine gun barrel. Behind the three, John Smith stood with his pistol at his side, his face attentive but not involved, a man watching a play. The body of Senator Max “Hammer” Hemner had fallen back against the booth, a neat hole punched in his forehead.
Cooper sighed, rubbed at his eyes. Almost two in the morning, but though he was tired and sore, sleep hadn’t come. After lying in bed for forty-five useless minutes, he’d decided if he was just going to stare at something, better it was the case file than the ceiling.
He put a finger on the touchscreen and moved it slowly. The video scrubbed in response. Forward: A shooter released the magazine on his gun, let it fall to the ground as he slotted a replacement and aimed again. Backward: A shooter pulled the magazine from his gun as another leaped up from the floor and inserted itself into the weapon. The whole thing was Zen, smooth and clean and practiced. Almost the same forward or reverse.
Cooper used two fingers to zoom, then panned until Smith’s face filled the screen. His features were balanced and even, strong jaw, good eyelashes. The kind of face a woman might find handsome rather than hot, the kind that belonged to a golf pro or a trial lawyer. There was nothing that hinted at barbarism or rage, no hint of giggling madness. As his soldiers killed everyone in the restaurant—every single man, woman, and child, busboy, tourist, and senator, seventy-three in all, seventy-three KIA and not one wounded—John Smith simply watched. Calm and unaffected. When it was done, he walked out. Strolled, really. Cooper had watched the video hundreds of times in the last four years, had grown inured to the obvious horrors, to the spray of blood and the lethal calm of the soldiers. But one thing chilled him still, a thing perhaps especially frightening to a man with his eyes. It was the total lack of impact the massacre had on the man who started it. His shoulders were down, his neck was relaxed, his steps light, his fingers loose.
John Smith strolled out of the Monocle as if he’d just popped in for a quiet drink.