“If Cowgirl sees him, you know she’ll offer him a ride,” Robinson quipped.
Knapp laughed. “And Champion will give him a job. Couldn’t do worse than some of his other appointments.” Knapp didn’t share the first family’s attraction to the downtrodden, but he admired it. It was the one passion of the president’s that seemed to come from an honest place.
Knapp didn’t want to take action against this wretched guy, but if he got too close, he’d have to do something. Though heroic to socialists and poets, the preponderance of homeless folks were, in Knapp’s experience, nut jobs — harmless at the surface, but inherently unstable. They posed a hazard that needed to be managed.
He felt genuine relief when the guy parked himself on a sidewalk grate and started to set up camp.
Knapp’s earpiece popped as somebody broke squelch on the radio. “Lansing, Binks. Bring the follow car to the front. Cowgirl’s moving in about three.”
“Thank God,” Knapp said aloud but off the air. Finally.
He and Robinson shifted from their positions flanking the doors of the Wild Times to new positions flanking the doors to Cowgirl’s chariot. He double-checked to make sure that his coat was open and his weapon available. A scan of the sidewalk showed more of what they’d been seeing all night.
When the follow car appeared from the end of the block and pulled in behind the chariot, Knapp brought his left hand to his mouth and pressed the button on his wrist mike. “Binks, Knapp,” he said. “We’re set outside.”
“Cowgirl is moving now.”
This was it, the moment of greatest vulnerability. Ask Squeaky Fromme, Sara Jane Moore, or John Hinckley. These few seconds when the protectee is exposed are the moments of opportunity for suicidal bad guys to take their best shot.
Robinson pulled open the Suburban’s door and cheated his body forward to scan for threats from that end of the street, and Knapp cheated to the rear to scan the direction of the homeless guy and the real estate beyond him. He noted with some unease that the guy was paying attention in a way that he hadn’t before. His eyes seemed somehow sharper.
Knapp’s inner alarm clanged.
Ahead and to his left, the double doors swung out, revealing a clearly unhappy Cowgirl, who seemed to be resisting her departure. She wasn’t quite yelling yet, but assuming that past was precedent, the yelling would come soon.
Movement to his right brought Knapp’s attention back around to the homeless man, who suddenly looked less homeless as he shot to his feet and hurled something at the chariot.
Knapp fought the urge to intercept the throw, and instead drew his sidearm as he shouted, “Grenade!”
He’d just leveled his sights on the attacker when an explosion ripped the chariot apart from the inside, the pressure wave rattling his brain and shoving him face-first onto the concrete. He didn’t know if he’d fired a shot, but if he had, it missed, because the homeless guy was still standing.
He’d produced a submachine gun from somewhere — a P90, Knapp thought, but he wasn’t sure — and he was going to town, blasting the night on full-auto.
Behind him, he knew that Campbell and Binks would be shielding Cowgirl with their bodies as they hustled her toward the follow car. In his ear, he heard Lansing shouting, “Shots fired! Shots fired! Agents down!”
Once Knapp found his balance, he rolled to a knee and fired three bullets at the attacker’s center of mass. The man remained unfazed and focused, shooting steadily at the First Lady.
Body armor, Knapp thought. He took aim at the attacker’s head and fired three more times. The attacker collapsed.
But the shooting continued, seemingly from every compass point. Had passersby joined the fight? What the hell—
Binks and Campbell were still ten feet from the follow car when head shots killed them both within a second of each other. They collapsed to the street, bringing Cowgirl with them. She curled into a fetal ball and started to scream.
Past her, and over her head, bullets raked the doors of the follow car. Going that way was no longer an option.
Keeping low, Knapp let his SIG drop to the pavement as he reached for his slung MP5. This wasn’t time for aimed shots; it was time for covering fire. At this moment, the First Lady of the United States was far more important than any other innocents in the crowd. He held the weapon as a pistol in his left hand as he raked the direction he thought the new shots were coming from.
With his right hand, he grabbed Cowgirl by the neck of her coat and pulled. “Back into the club!” he commanded as he draped his body over hers.
To others it might have looked as though she was carrying him on her back as he hustled her toward the front doors of the club, past the burning chariot and around the body of Charlie Robinson, who’d been torn apart by the blast.
Knapp was still five steps away when searing heat tore through his midsection, driving the breath from his lungs and making him stagger.
He’d taken that bullet for Cowgirl. He’d done his job. Now he just had to finish it.
He had to get her inside.
The next two bullets took him in the hip and the elbow.
He was done, and he knew it.
“Inside!” he yelled as he pushed the First Lady as hard as he could.
He saw her step through the doors the instant before a bullet sheared his throat.
CHAPTER TWO
Jonathan Grave waited at the Learjet’s door while the stairway deployed. When it was down and locked, he centered his rucksack between his shoulders with a shrug and hefted the two green duffels that contained rifles and electronic gear. He turned his head to the right, where he could see Boxers, his longtime friend and cohort, in the cockpit, shutting things down.
“Hey, Box, your ruck and the other duffels are here on the floor.”
“Got it,” Boxers said without looking. “Be sure to leave the heaviest ones for me. I don’t want you hurting your little self.”
Jonathan grinned. “I always do.” And in fact, he always did. A couple of inches shy of seven feet tall with a girth that made linebackers look puny, Boxers was easily the strongest man Jonathan had ever known. Big Guy always did the heavy lifting.
As Jonathan made his way down the narrow stairs onto the tarmac, it occurred to him that this would be the first time in a long while that he wouldn’t need to spend twelve hours after an 0300 mission cleaning weapons and replacing gun barrels and receivers. The mission had been a quick one, and surprisingly uncomplicated. They hadn’t even fired a shot.
As a rule, the covert side of Security Solutions didn’t get involved with recovering errant young people from the clutches of cults, but this case had had the feel of a kidnapping. At least, that’s what the family had thought, though the FBI disagreed.
The kid’s father — Daddy Lottabucks — contacted Jonathan through the usual combination of cutouts and fake e-mail addresses, and was anxious to pay the gate rate for Jonathan’s services. In the end, when Jonathan and Boxers crashed the door to recover the PC — precious cargo — the cult leader just handed the kid over.
That fact alone — the absence of shooting — helped explain Boxers’ fouler-than-usual mood. For the Big Guy, self-actualization had a lot to do with wreaking havoc. It wasn’t that he was homicidal — not really — but rather that he enjoyed the… efficiency of solutions that created fire and noise.