“We’re following the red Jeep. We’re on Jack’s ass. Full alert for the Jackal. Repeat: full alert for the Jackal. This is not a drill!”
“Do not lose Jack tonight of all nights. Do not lose Jack under any circumstances.”
“Roger. We have Jack in plain sight.”
Three dark sedans took off in hot pursuit of the Jeep. Jack was the Secret Service’s code name for President Thomas Byrnes. Jill was the code name for the First Lady. Crown had been the Service’s code word for the White House for nearly twenty years.
Most of the current-duty agents genuinely liked President Byrnes. He was a down-to-earth guy, a very regular person as recent presidents went. Not too much bullshit about him. Occasionally, though, the President took off on an unannounced date with some lady friend, either in D.C. or on the road. The Secret Service referred to this as “the president’s disease.” Thomas Byrnes was hardly the first to suffer from this malady. John Kennedy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and especially Lyndon Johnson had been the worst offenders. It seemed to be a perk of high office.
The coincidence of the names chosen by the two psychopathic killers in D.C., the so-called celebrity stalkers, wasn’t lost on the Secret Service. The Secret Service didn’t believe in coincidences. They had already met four times on the matter—long, difficult meetings in the Emergency Command Center in the West Wing basement of the White House. The name for any would-be assassins of the president was Jackal. Jackal had been used by the Secret Service for more than thirty years.
The “coincidence” of the names worried the PPD, the Presidential Protection Division, a great deal—especially when President Byrnes decided to go out on one of his unannounced walks, which for obvious reasons didn’t include any of his bodyguards.
There were two Jacks and two Jills.
The Secret Service did not, could not, accept this as a coincidence.
“We’ve lost the red Jeep around the Tidal Basin. We’ve lost Jack,” an agent’s voice suddenly exploded over the car-radio speakers.
Everything was chaos. Full-alert chaos.
This was not a test.
PART II
THE DRAGONSLAYER
CHAPTER
23
ON MONDAY NIGHT something finally broke on Jack and Jill. It was something potentially big. I hoped it wasn’t a hoax.
I’d just gotten home to try and catch a bite of dinner with the kids when the phone rang. It was Kyle Craig. He told me a videotaped message, reportedly from Jack and Jill, had been delivered to the CNN studios. The killers had made a home movie for the world to see. Jack and Jill had also sent cover letters to the Washington Post and the New York Times. They were planning to “explain” themselves that night.
I had to rush out before Nana’s roast chicken hit the supper table. Jannie and Damon gave me their not-again looks. They were right to think that way.
I hurried to the Union Station section of Washington, around H and North Capitol. I didn’t want to be late for the party that Jack and Jill were throwing. This was another example of the two of them demonstrating their control over us.
I arrived at CNN headquarters just in time for the screening and only moments before the video was to be aired on Larry King Live. Senior agents from the FBI and Secret Service were crowded into a low-key, cozy CNN viewing room. So were various techies, administrators, and lawyers from the news network. Everybody looked incredibly tense and uptight.
The room was completely silent as the filmed message from Jack and Jill began. I was afraid to blink. We all were.
“You believe this shit?” somebody finally muttered.
Jack and Jill had been filming us! That was the first shock of the night. They had actually filmed the police outside Senator Fitzpatrick’s apartment building a few days earlier. They had been right there in the crowd of onlookers, the ambulance-chasers.
The film was a jarring, documentary-style collage of black and white, with some color. The opening shots were from several angles outside Senator Fitzpatrick’s building. It was like a well-made student film, but a little artsy. Then something even more unexpected and powerful came on the screen.
The murderers had filmed the last moments of Senator Fitzpatrick’s life, seconds before his murder, I guessed. There were haunting shots of the senator alive. It got worse from there.
We saw graphic shots of Daniel Fitzpatrick, naked, handcuffed to his bed. We heard his voice. “Please don’t do this,” he pleaded with his captors. Then we heard the click of a trigger. A shot was fired only an inch or two from Fitzpatrick’s right ear. Then came a second shot. The senator’s head exploded on film. People gasped at the awful image and sound that carried the senator into eternity.
“Oh, Jesus! Jesus!” a woman screamed. Several people looked away from the screen. Others covered their eyes. I stayed with it. I couldn’t miss anything. This was all vital information for the case that I was trying to understand. This was more valuable than all the DNA testing, serology, and fingerprinting in the world.
The tone of the film suddenly changed after the footage of Fitzpatrick’s vicious murder. Images of ordinary people on the streets of unidentified cities and small towns followed the chilling death sequence. A few of the people on camera waved, some smiled broadly, most seemed indifferent as they were being filmed, presumably by Jack and Jill.
The film continued to weave together black-and-white and color footage, but not in a disorderly fashion. Whoever had stitched it together had a decent skill for editing.