“Kill the bastard! Kill the President!” the blond man continued to scream.
He was absolutely crazy, everything was, not just this asshole on the floor.
“You hurt me!” he started to yell at me and the New York cop. “You hurt my head!”
Madman? I wondered.
Copycat?
Diversion?
CHAPTER
89
KAMIKAZE ATTACK! It was coming any second now. A killer willing to commit suicide. That was why this couldn’t be stopped. It was also why President Byrnes was the walking dead.
Kevin Hawkins hadn’t experienced any problems getting into a prime position in the noisy, crowded auditorium. He had used his imagination and visual skills to create an unusual identity for himself.
Hawkins was now a tall brunette woman dressed in a dark blue pantsuit. He wasn’t a very good-looking woman, he had to admit, but he was much less likely to draw attention because of it.
Hawkins also had a Federal Bureau of Investigation ID, which was authentic down to the stamp and thickness of the paper. It identified him as Lynda Cole, a special agent from New York. The photojournalist stood at Lynda Cole’s seat in the sixth row and calmly observed the crowd.
Snapshot.
Snapshot.
He took several mind photos, one after the other, mostly of his competition. The FBI, the Secret Service, the NYPD. Actually, he didn’t believe that he had any real competition.
Kamikaze. Who could stop that? No one could. Maybe God could. And maybe not even God.
He was impressed by the sheer numbers of the opposition, though. They were serious about trying to derail Jack and Jill this morning. And who knew? Maybe they would succeed with their superior numbers and firepower. Stranger things had happened.
Hawkins just didn’t believe that they could. Their last real chance had been before he’d gotten inside the building—not now. The photojournalist versus the FBI, the Secret Service, the U.S. marshals, and the NYPD. That seemed reasonable enough to him. It seemed like a pretty fair game.
Their elaborate preparations struck him as being ironic. He waited for the target to appear. Their game plan was an essential part of his. Everything they were doing now, every step, had been anticipated and was necessary for kamikaze to work.
“She’s a Grand Old Flag” began to play from the loudspeakers, and Hawkins clapped along with the others. He was a patriot, after all. No one might believe it after today, but he knew that it was so.
Kevin Hawkins was one of the last true patriots.
CHAPTER
90
NO ONE stops an assassin’s bullet.
There was a fire burning inside my chest. I was moving quickly through the crowd—searching for Kevin Hawkins everywhere.
Every nerve in my body was stretched tight and burning. My right hand rested on the hard butt of my Glock. I kept thinking that any one of these people could be Jack or Jill. The handgun seemed insubstantial in the huge, noisy crowd.
I had made it to the second row, just to the right of the ten-to-twelve-foot-high stage. The light in the hall seemed to be fading, but maybe it was the light inside my head. The light inside my soul?
The President was just stepping onto the gray metal stairs. He clasped the hand of a well-wisher. The President patted the shoulder of another. He seemed to have forced the idea of danger out of his mind.
Sally Byrnes climbed the stairs in front of her husband. I could see her features clearly. I held the thought that maybe Jack and Jill could, too. Secret Service agents seemed to take up all the available space around the stage.