The snipers in the steeple said, We’re good.
The comm techs were ready to start jamming.
Herc said, My side A-Okay.
Elias said, We’re standing by.
The balloon wranglers gave Gretchen the thumbs-up.
“My friends,” said the congressmen again. “Today, we — no, you — will send a message—”
A cheer went up, spontaneous, unplanned, rolling from the back.
“No — no — no,” the congressman modestly refusing the acclaim.
The crowd was pressing to the front. Jens and Peta, moving through the tight-packed bodies toward the tabouli place, reached a point where further progress was impossible. They were near the volunteers, Jackie Kotteakis and the other Texas teachers, Tim the lawyer from Rhode Island, the tort reform zealots, the global warming Deadheads, the football kids from Maine, the stricken women from Mothers for the Truth — a Napoleonic square of volunteers, waiting, gripping signs, primed to give it up for the VP as soon as someone introduced him.
The congressman boomed through a list of the VP’s great achievements, his record of commitment, his deep belief in the binding causes of the day.
“He believes — as I believe — in the future.
“He believes — as you believe — in tomorrow.
“He believes — as you believe — in the family.
“He believes — as we believe — in the family and the future of the family in tomorrow — yes — and so I ask you, friends — I ask: what do we want?”
The phone-bank kids and volunteers whooped it up (they knew the chant). They shouted in two beats: “Re-form!”
“I can’t HEAR you,” said the congressman. “What do we want?”
The answer was disorganized — no answer, many answers, a buzzing in the square.
The congressman bore down: “What do we want?”
The volunteers were shouting — others picked it up: “Re-form!”
The chant was slowly building, louder and more unified each time.
“WHAT DO WE WANT?”
One voice now: “RE-FORM.”
“AND WHEN DO WE WANT IT?”
Gretchen banged on the van door. Vi saw a shoe, a sock, a pant cuff riding up, a flash of white ankle, and then the man himself, the vice president of the United States.
The vice president looked out at the screaming crowd, firmed his jaw, and said, “Crazy weather, huh?”
“Yes sir,” Gretchen said.
“Right here is where you want me?”
“Yes sir,” Gretchen said.
“Which way do I face?”
“The same way we are facing, sir.”
“—to join me in welcoming a hero of reform, a friend of education, a tireless battler for tort sanity — a great man and the NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITE-IT STATES—”
The signs were dancing. The crowd was pressing in. The cops were linking arms. Vi was chewing gum, squinting at the steeple, casually unbuttoning her jacket.
Gretchen said, “All righty, Vi.”
It was Vi who led them in. The others followed, moving in formation toward choke gold. O’Teen and the troopers were drawing back the barriers, steel across the asphalt, opening a gate.
Vi hit the crowd and cleared a path, parting bodies with her hands, bulling with her shoulders, freely throwing elbows. The agents tried to stay in touch; they were literally touching, the tips of Bobbie’s fingers on Vi’s left shoulder, Tashmo’s hand on Vi’s right haunch. The VP, sandwiched between Bobbie and Tashmo, reached past and over them to shake the outstretched hands, reeling off his greeting, “Howyadoin, goodtaseeya, howyadoin.” Gretchen was behind him, forcing him toward the stairs up to the stage. The crowd surged around them and behind them, faces pressing in, hands reaching over arms to grab the VP’s hands. Some people couldn’t reach far enough and stuck their hands and wrists into the agents’ faces. Vi knocked these aside, scanning hands and faces, moving bodies.
She tried to stay in touch with the other agents, but the people shaking the VP’s hand were jostled from behind, and they lurched, pulling the VP a half step to the right or left, Tashmo’s side or Bobbie’s side, or pushing him back into Gretchen, and Vi, trying to plow a path, was also trying to hang back and stay in touch, but if she didn’t plow full force, two legs and both shoulders, she felt herself loose ground. She heard “Howyadoin, howyadoin, howyadoin,” and greetings from well-wishers all around them, yelled encouragement, applause, bluegrass music, grunts of shoving, Gretchen saying, “Move move move.” Just ahead, between the bodies, Vi saw a postal worker, who held some kind of helmet in his hand. Everyone was moving toward the VP or to the sides, or clapping, or yelling, or pumping a sign, except for this man, who wasn’t clapping or moving. This was all Vi noticed about the man until he opened his hand and let the helmet fall. It clattered in the street and someone kicked it into someone else’s feet and the helmet was kicked around at random until someone tripped on it, and nearly fell, and by then the postal worker had his hand inside his coat, and he brought it out with a magician’s flourish, like when the magician pulls a rabbit from the hat or shows you that the four of clubs has been in your ear the whole time. Vi tried to put the gun over the comm, but her hands were pinned below her shoulders by the force of bodies pressing in, and she couldn’t get her fist mike to her mouth, and the people were reaching and laughing and the VP was saying, “Goodtaseeya howyadoin reallygoodtaseeya,” and Vi went absolutely vacant — vacant even of her training — and she didn’t move. Tashmo shouted, “Gun gun!” and yanked the VP back toward choke gold, which felt to Vi like a great and sudden loss of weight at her back. Gretchen put in the comm, “Gun gun gun!” and Vi heard the SWATs and snipers take it up, Gun gun, like an echo falling off, and saw Bobbie, curling across the VP’s chest to block him from the shots, getting tangled in his legs as he tried to move. People in the crowd were starting to react, turning, screaming. Vi heard the snipers on the comm, barking something, what? Did they have a shot? She thought she’d see the man’s head explode from a steeple round, but the balloons bumping upward through the air were blocking the steeple.
The man seemed quite calm. Vi pushed her way toward him; the strange thing was that his head was sitting unexploded on his shoulders. She hit him half-running, cross-checking him, and he felt soft and yielding for a moment, but then he dipped a shoulder and threw out an arm, knocking Vi off-balance, and people, running now, hit her from two sides, and she fell to the street, and was kicked in the ribs and the face and the knee by running shoes. The man with the black pistol was standing over Vi, his gun arm out, but he wasn’t aiming or even looking at the VP. He was looking up, watching the balloons rise and disperse.
Vi was at the man’s feet when the shots hit. The first shot hit him in the back.