But Reeder had seen the reduced muzzle flash and, instinct taking over, he leapt from his chair, Rogers rising, too.
Gun still in hand, Akers was trying to get up, the bullet having hit him in his Kevlar vest, but the sandy-haired man — up on the stage now, at Reeder’s far left — leveled what was probably a .45, wearing the bulky extension of a sound suppressor, right at the agent, hitting Akers twice in the side, under the arms, where the Kevlar didn’t cover.
Then the sandy-haired man (not the SIM card blond at all) wheeled toward Benjamin at the podium, the big automatic with its extended snout pointing the speaker’s way.
Three thousand — plus were on their feet shrieking now, like a hellish choir, while members of Benjamin’s security force were coming toward the stage, too little, too late.
This time Reeder heard the cough of the silenced weapon, and the crunch of metal meeting wood as the bullet slammed into the podium just as he threw himself at Benjamin, taking him to the floor, onto his side, covering him as he would a president, bracing for the impact of any rounds from the assassin that might try to get through him to their target.
Reeder flinched at the whipcrack of a round, fired nearby, but not a silenced one, a Glock round, and knew he was all right.
Confirming that came: “Clear!”
Rogers.
Staying on top of Benjamin, who was still on his side, face to the crowd, Reeder shifted enough to see the would-be assassin sprawled on the stage, eyes open wide and a black-rimmed, scarlet-dripping hole in his mid-forehead.
Rogers, on stage, Glock gripped in both hands, swiftly scanned the crowd for other shooters. The hall was half-empty now, many having fled, others frozen on their feet at their seats, some recording the pandemonium with their cells, while the camera crews on their platforms left and right kept rolling. The reporters, on both the left and right of the hall (and politically as well, for that matter), were to a man and woman hiding under their tables.
Frank Elmore materialized and leaned in to say, “Mr. Reeder, we’ll take it from here,” and Reeder rose while four security men in “COMMON SENSE” windbreakers helped the stunned Benjamin to his feet, and formed a phalanx around him, hustling him offstage.
Reeder rushed to the fallen Akers, where Rogers was already down at the man’s side, trying to staunch the bleeding with her jacket. As Reeder knelt opposite her, Rogers lifted her bloody jacket so Reeder could appraise the red-gushing entry wounds under the man’s other arm.
She gave Reeder a look.
He gave her one back.
She returned to keeping pressure against the fallen man’s side with the jacket, for what good it would do.
Akers, his flesh now a wet-newspaper gray, grabbed Reeder’s wrist with surprising strength.
“Cap...” Akers said. “Cap it... all.”
“Cap it all? You mean, Capitol?”
Akers swallowed and nodded once. “... Senk.”
“You mean ‘sink’? What about sink?”
The grip on Reeder’s wrist was limp now. “No! No... Senk.”
“Senk. Is that a name, Jay? Is that—”
But Akers was gone, eyes rolled back as if staring at the ceiling, where netted balloons awaited a celebratory release not to come.
Uniformed police were moving quickly down the aisles now. Soon FBI and Homeland Security agents would descend on Constitution Hall. Rogers stood guard over the dead security man while Reeder went over to where the sandy-haired shooter lay dead as hell on his side, a mere trickle of red out the puncture of a forehead entry wound, while the larger exit wound had puked blood, brains, and bone onto the stage.
Reeder knelt and had a closer look at the man’s face — no, this was not Bryson’s blond, but could possibly be the attacker from the security office. He pulled back the man’s shirt and jacket cuffs, both arms — no Special Forces tattoo. So this wasn’t the man recorded on the Skyway Farer motel security cam.
So who was the man who wanted Adam Benjamin dead?
Elmore was coming over to him again. Reeder stood and met him halfway, near the bullet-pocked podium. Rogers came over and fell in at Reeder’s side, two DC uniformed men huddling around the fallen Akers now.
“Thanks to the two of you,” Elmore said, as if he were reporting the weather, “Adam Benjamin is alive and well.”
Rogers said, “Just doing my job.”
Reeder said, “Instinct kicks in. You know.”
“Mr. Benjamin would very much like to thank you both personally.”
Rogers said, “That won’t be necessary,” just as Reeder was saying, “No need.”
“He’s quite insistent.”
Bohannon and Wade, from Rogers’s team, were coming swiftly down an aisle. Just behind them, trench coat flapping, came DC homicide detective Pete Woods.
Reeder asked Elmore, “Where is Mr. Benjamin?”
“Heading back to the hotel.”
“What hotel?”
“The Holiday Inn Express in Falls Church, of course.”
Rogers gave Reeder a wide-eyed, you-gotta-be-kidding-me look. He shrugged.
Elmore was saying, “We can arrange a limo for you.”
Detective Woods, approaching, overheard that and said, a little louder than necessary, “Mr. Reeder and Ms. Rogers won’t be needing a limo tonight! We’ll be having conversations with them that may last some time.”
Reeder gave Elmore a shrug. “You’ll have to convey our regrets.”
The majordomo nodded curtly, then disappeared into the wings.
Reeder said to Woods, “Let’s have a look at our dead would-be assassin.”
Woods didn’t argue as Reeder led the way, Rogers falling in behind the homicide detective, perhaps not eager for a closer look at the man she’d killed.
“Watch your step,” Reeder said. “Little messy right over there — see it?”
Woods looked a little pale around the gills. Homicide man or not, he was still new to the job.
Reeder knelt near the corpse and Woods crouched near Reeder, who said, “This isn’t the blond from the SIM card. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“By the build, it might be the guy I mixed it up with at Bryson’s, so it could also make him your uniformed officer’s killer. Might even be one of the guys who murdered Chris.”
Woods frowned at Reeder. “‘One of the guys’?”
“Detective, Chris Bryson could handle himself — former Secret Service agent, armed, not a small man. Our failed assassin here, all by himself, could hardly incapacitate Bryson and hang him with his own belt.”
Opposite them, Bohannon had squatted next to the shooter; with a latex-gloved hand, he pressed the dead man’s thumb to his smartphone screen, utilizing its fingerprint ID app. A moment later, the screen displayed the results.
Bohannon said, “Thomas Louis Stanton.” He scrolled through a few screens. “At first glance? A solid citizen... until tonight.”
Rogers asked, “Prints on file because of military service?”
“Yep. Honorable discharge twenty years ago.”
She frowned. “How does a ‘solid citizen’ turn into a political assassin?”
Bohannon gave her half a smile and said, “This app just does fingerprints.”
Over the next twenty-four hours, they would surely come to know Thomas Louis Stanton inside and out. For now, though, Reeder and Rogers had hours ahead of them of police interviews, and after that FBI debriefings.
But it could be worse. It was a bad night to be a rank-and-file cop. This had been a hall filled with up to 3,500 eye witnesses, many of whom had beat it out before the boys in blue showed, though enough remained that a staggering number of names would need collecting for later interviews. And all of that news footage would have to be collected and looked at closely.