Hitman Damnation

THIRTY-EIGHT



The limo shot south, jumped the sidewalk, and tore onto Independence Avenue, on the westbound-only side. Luckily, traffic had been halted there due to the rally, but police cars and other emergency vehicles lined the road. Instead of turning the limo and following the avenue west, though, Carson navigated between a fire truck and an ambulance, dissected the street, and continued south, jumping onto the grass again.

“What the hell are you doing?” shouted Wilkins from the backseat.

“I know a way out!” the driver yelled.

The limo cut between trees and then slammed hard onto westbound Maine Avenue SW.

“You’re going to kill us!” the reverend screamed.

“Shut the f*ck up, Charlie!”

The car was back on the grass, still pointed south. A wide-open patch of grass and trees lay between them and eastbound Independence Avenue, which had not been closed to traffic.


Behind them, Agent 47 tightly gripped the bus’s steering wheel as the heavy vehicle bounced and bumped across westbound Independence Avenue, over the grass, and dissected Maine Avenue. Despite the siren-shrieking police cars behind him, he was intent on staying with his prey.

For a moment he imagined ending his days on earth in a hail of bullets from law-enforcement personnel. Even if he did catch up to Wilkins and manage to kill the man, how would he get away from the police? Hundreds were after him. If this was to be the day he died, then so be it. He would shuffle off this mortal coil with the knowledge that he had done his duty, completed the assignment, and rid the world of a nasty and dangerous criminal. What more could he ask for?

The love of a woman?

No. That was impossible. He’d almost had that and he intentionally rejected it. The flirtation with a normal relationship had been a learning experience and one that he would treasure for the rest of his life, but it wasn’t for him. Not for a man who constantly remained one step ahead of Death, the Faceless One whose identity 47 still had to expose.

The bus approached eastbound Independence Avenue, closing the distance between it and the limo, which was now fifty yards ahead. The hitman noted the heavy traffic on the road and realized they’d never get across without a major collision. He figured the driver planned to merge into traffic and drive east with the flow. It would be a difficult maneuver, but the limo could do it.

The bus would not be so accommodating. It was too big and cumbersome. 47 would be forced to slow considerably in order to do so, and by then the police would be on top of him and the limo would be long gone.

Whatever.

The assassin kept his foot on the pedal and stayed the course.

* * *

“Are you mad? You’re going to kill us!” Wilkins shouted again.

“Seriously, shut the f*ck up, Charlie!” Carson screamed.

The Greenhill employee knew it would be a do-or-die maneuver. The oncoming traffic on Independence Avenue was heavy and fast, with no breaks in the lines of cars and trucks. Carson’s only hope was that the other drivers would see the limousine ripping through the grass, followed by a huge yellow school bus and dozens of police cars with sirens blaring. Surely they would stop!

The car approached the road at a speed of seventy miles per hour.

“Hold on, Charlie!” Carson commanded. The reverend braced himself.

And then they were there.

The limousine hopped the curb and dropped onto the avenue as Carson spun the wheel to change directions—

—and a U-Haul truck slammed ferociously into the vehicle.

Then an SUV plowed into the truck.

Three passenger cars collided with one another while attempting to avoid the catastrophe.

The pileup dominoed down the line as horns blasted, tires screeched, and an ugly, crunching, crashing cacophony topped the police sirens in decibels.

The limousine flipped and rolled once, twice, three times—before it slid, upside down, a hundred feet along the road and came to a stop.


Charlie Wilkins, secure in a seat belt, had hit his head on the window. At first he thought he was dead, for the world was topsy-turvy. It took him a moment to realize that the limo was upside down. He took stock of his body. There was a lot of blood, but he could move his arms and legs.

He was alive.

“Mitch?” he called.

The same could not be said for Carson. The driver slumped in his seat at an obscene angle. The man’s face was completely crimson.

Then Wilkins remembered what was happening. He heard the sirens, looked toward the National Mall, and saw the yellow bus about to jump the curb and come crashing down on the road.

The Agency’s hitman was almost upon him.

Wilkins struggled to unbuckle his seat belt, kicked the door open, and crawled out of the wreckage. As he stood, the earth spun and he almost collapsed. But the sight of the bus, now plowing through other wrecked vehicles and heading toward the limo, motivated him to move.

He ran south toward the Tidal Basin.


Agent 47 witnessed the horrific pileup but didn’t slow down. The bus entered the foray at full speed, barely dodging the ruined vehicles and adding insult to injury.

Stay on target.

The hitman turned the steering wheel sharply toward the east, almost overturning the bus. Two wheels lifted off the ground but then slammed heavily back on the asphalt. The overturned limousine lay a hundred yards ahead on the highway. 47 saw a man emerge from the wreckage and stagger.

Wilkins. Still alive.

But not for long.

The man saw the bus bearing down on him, and he ran south off the road and onto the grass. He was headed for a group of trees that stood between the avenue and the water. 47 couldn’t allow him to get that far, for the trees would act as obstacles and prevent the bus from following the reverend. The assassin had to head him off; luckily, the bus was faster than a running man.

47 pulled the bus in a curve, around and in front of Wilkins, so that the man’s route was blocked. The hitman continued the pursuit, this time chasing the reverend straight for the basin.


Wilkins was out of breath and in pain.

But the Supreme One would stop this attack! Charlie Wilkins was not destined to end his time on earth like this!

Find the Will! You can do it!

But the Will had deserted him.

Stop the bus! Where is the Will? Do it!

When nothing happened, the reverend cursed at the sky and then snapped back to reality. He had to get out of there. A paddleboat-rental facility was located farther southeast along the shore. The parking lot for the attraction was now between Wilkins and the basin. Many cars had taken up slots and therefore created yet another barrier for the bus. That was promising, so the reverend ran through the lot. But then he found himself dead-ended at the bank. What next? He could run along the shore to the boathouse. That was it. He would be safe there. He’d find a policeman or somebody who would protect him from the madman on his heels.

The Supreme One would intervene.

Wouldn’t he?


It was as if Agent 47 had put on blinders. Nothing in his peripheral vision was significant. The crosshairs were on Charlie Wilkins as the man stood on the basin shore like a deer caught in the headlights.

Finish the job.

The assassin didn’t let up on the gas. The bus was a locomotive, barreling across the grass and into the parking lot. The yellow juggernaut crashed through several parked vehicles, catapulting them in opposite directions as if they were insects. Now nothing stood in the way of the hitman and his target.

Wilkins dropped to his knees and folded his hands in front of him.

He was praying.

How’s that working out for you? 47 thought.

For the assassin, the last two seconds stretched into a time slip. The fast-paced, nonstop action suddenly switched to slow motion. All sounds ceased and were replaced by a vacuum. Agent 47 was aware only of his own heartbeat as it pounded in his chest and echoed in his brain.

He locked eyes with Wilkins. For those brief moments, the two adversaries understood each other. 47 saw that the confidence the reverend usually displayed was gone. In its place were fear, despair, and the realization that he had lost. Wilkins had lost his faith and it was replaced by the hand of Death.

The man opened his mouth to scream, but it was too late.

This was it.

The bus broke through the railing, sailed into the air six feet off the ground, and then dropped in an arc. The behemoth’s front end smashed into Wilkins with tremendous force and carried his body fifty feet over the water; then the vehicle pierced the surface and disappeared into the dark green-brown murkiness.

* * *

Emergency crews worked feverishly for an hour to find Reverend Wilkins. Scuba divers finally recovered the battered body and brought it ashore, where it was then taken to the city morgue for an official autopsy.

Area hospitals were overwhelmed by the influx of wounded rally attendees. It was too early to tabulate the number of deaths.

Some of the New Model Army men who were arrested had already begun to talk. The truth of what happened was going to come out.

The school bus was pulled out of the water and thoroughly examined by the FBI. There was no trace of the driver. Divers continued to search the basin bottom and found a lot of garbage, broken bottles, a couple of old tires, and other odd items, but they uncovered no other corpses. One curious retrieved item, which investigators didn’t attribute to the events of November 1, was an empty briefcase bearing a strange fleur-de-lis insignia on its exterior.

A few witnesses reported that it had all happened so quickly that they never saw the man driving the bus. Even more onlookers claimed that no one was at the wheel—that the figure in the driver’s seat was some kind of “faceless shadow.” At any rate, the person who killed Charlie Wilkins had vanished.

It was just one more mystery added to a list of many regarding that fateful day in Washington, D.C.