In place of names, the entries were simply numbered 1 through 10 .
A hush of excitement rippled through the crowd, and she looked up as the presidential motorcade swung into view, a cavalry charge of G-rides and SUVs. She waited as the river of dark steel snaked through the turn, the presidential limos finally appearing. Each flew miniature flags on either side of the hood, Old Glory and the Presidential Standard. Three helos tracked the limos overhead, spread like hawks.
The front SUV of the motorcade had reached her corner now, whipping past the sawhorses, Cadillac One still a quarter mile back. Candy wet her lips, her focus narrowing to the vehicles blurring across the 9th Street intersection a full block away.
Her finger hovered over the first telephone number.
She waited.
Pairs of vehicles shot through the target intersection, as fast as shuffled cards—SUVs, G-rides, another set of SUVs.
She didn’t move, didn’t breathe.
And then Cadillac One’s grand grille appeared, the limo hurtling forward. The rear tires had just cleared the crosswalk when she thumbed the first telephone number.
The manhole cover in the intersection exploded, blasting twenty feet into the sky, severing Cadillac One from the vehicles behind it.
There was an instantaneous eruption of activity.
Four sets of G-rides screeched to the sides, forming a chevron, Cadillac One and its protective SUVs accelerating through them. The dummy limos split north and south, all three limos peeling apart, putting distance between themselves, their respective choppers shadowing them overhead. The motorcade cops scrambled, parting the crowd, shoving sawhorses aside to open up escape routes.
Candy focused only on Cadillac One.
As it raced toward her, readying to bank into a turn around her corner, she thumbed phone number 3 , blowing the manhole cover right behind her, forcing what remained of the convoy to veer back on course and continue along E Street. The Park Police helicopter tilted abruptly to dodge the flying disk, which missed the left skid by no more than a foot.
For good measure she tapped 4 and 5 next, blowing manhole covers to the north of the upcoming intersections so Cadillac One wouldn’t deviate from its course. She sprinted along the sidewalk, keeping it in sight.
Rather than drop low into the building corridor again, the helo swooped to a greater height, providing better overwatch. Sirens blared. Some of the agents lunged out of their vehicles, weapons drawn, shouting into radios—AOP! We have an AOP! Attack on Protectee in progress! Repeat: in progress.
Candy fixed her attention only on the presidential limo. As it neared 6th Street, a quick dial of phone number 8 blasted another cast-iron saucer skyward, steering the limo south. The EOD’s protective measure of spot-welding the manhole covers only added to the explosive force from the charges Candy had placed beneath them last night.
Courier bag bouncing on her hip, she ran after the convoy as it swept out of sight ahead. Onlookers screamed, stampeding up the sidewalks, providing her some cover. But she was running against the current, with purpose, which made her conspicuous. Sure enough the flirtatious motorcycle cop picked her up, his helmet swiveling in her direction.
He revved the bike and accelerated at her hard, steering between G-rides and up onto the sidewalk. She got off calls to 9 and 10 , initiating the Indiana Avenue charges on either side of 6th, funneling the convoy ahead so it would pass behind the Newseum. She couldn’t see the explosions—she hadn’t reached the corner yet—but she heard the eruptions even over the commotion of the crowd.
As Orphan X’s forward observer, she had to get to the intersection to establish visual on Cadillac One and call the shot. If she couldn’t, all their meticulously laid groundwork would be wasted.
The motorcycle cop closed in, a chirp of his brakes shifting his weight forward on the bike. As he drew alongside her, she flipped the phone into his front wheel.
It hit the spokes with a buzz-saw whine, disintegrating into a thousand glittering pieces. The hitch was enough to rip the cop up over the handlebars, an airborne somersault that landed him in a five-foot skid up the sidewalk, his bulletproof vest giving off a fingernails-on-chalkboard screech.
Her contribution to the accident went unnoticed, leaving her free to whip between fleeing onlookers and bolt around the turn in time to catch sight of Cadillac One speeding away. Edging out to the brink of the curb, she thrust her hand into the courier bag, gripped the speed gun, and aimed its nose out through the mesh opening at the trunk of the quickly receding limo.
Red numbers glowed up at her: 53 MPH.
That put the target vehicle smack in the middle of the highest range Orphan X had calculated on the speed chart.
Which meant the visual for the green-light call would be when the limo passed the second old-fashioned streetlamp on the east side of the street.
All she had to do was wait.
She activated her earpiece. “They’re in the chute. Wait for my signal.”
X answered, “Copy that.”
Three SUVs careened around the corner, causing her to jerk back from the curb so they wouldn’t take off her kneecaps. They accelerated to catch up to Cadillac One and assume a rear guard.
Unfortunately, they also cut off her vantage of the target.
She had no choice now but to step out into the cleared center of the street, putting her in the wide, suspicious open.
*
Cloaked in official emergency-response-team garb, Service creds dangling in full view from lanyards, Orphan A and the Collins brood had been able to move in the wide open, strolling in front of the sawhorses, their FN P90s at low ready. Overzealous agents had checked their credentials twice, but the documents were—if fake—authentic government-issue.
Irate over Ricky’s death, Wade was running on a high simmer, breathing so hard his nostrils quivered. Holt didn’t know if he’d kicked something extra into his bloodstream—a shot of epinephrine, a hit of PCP, the blood of a Spanish bull.
Holt had positioned his team in the dense network of streets north of Pennsylvania Ave because that was the corridor he would have chosen were he plotting the assassination. They’d started in a wolf pack, then spread out gradually, Holt going solo but splitting the remaining Collinses into teams of two. He directed them over the radio, maintaining close contact.
When he’d heard the explosions, he was in position near the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial, a triangular granite shaft with bronze reliefs depicting Union soldiers holding stately poses. Ideally located at the intersection of 7th, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, the circular plaza gave him clear sight lines through a good swath of Penn Quarter.
His first reaction was to not react. He’d hopped up onto a bus bench, widening his focus, reading the river. Looking two blocks north, he’d caught the convoy as it blasted along E Street. Moments later two more charges detonated up Indiana Avenue.
Now he understood.
X was guiding Bennett into a kill zone.
Holt looked overhead now, using the helicopter to chart the location of the lead limo beneath it. It was vectoring south hard toward Pennsylvania Avenue.
At last he moved, sprinting a half block south and spilling onto the wide thoroughfare a block from where Cadillac One would intercept it. He looked wildly up the street, searching for something, anything, that could pass for a sniper’s wind indicator.
There it was.
A plastic grocery bag stuck artfully on a telephone line over the dead center of the street by the Newseum, high enough to catch the sight line of a roof shooter. The bag fluttered in a low breeze.
Already he was sprinting for the nearest building, activating the radio. “He’s set up for a shot somewhere near Sixth and Pennsylvania. Get here now .”
Slinging his submachine gun, he plowed into the Federal Trade Commission Building, flashing his badge at the security guard—“Emergency! Emergency!” —and smashing through the door into the stairwell. Pounding up three at a time, he headed for the roof, shouting, “Do you copy?”
At last Wade’s voice came back. “I got eyes on a woman standing in the middle of the intersection at E and Sixth. I think she’s spotting for him.” The connection crackled and then came clear once more. “Me and my boy gonna take the bitch now.”
50
A Sleek Instrument of Destruction
Candy had to straddle the center line of 6th Street to hold the presidential limo in view, and even then it was a challenge with the SUVs weaving side to side behind it. She ran south down the middle of the street, courier bag smacking against her lower back.
Cadillac One crossed D Street, hurtling away from her.
There were still enough panicked pedestrians dashing across the road to cover Candy for the moment, but the area was dotted with agents, so it was only a matter of time before—