“So where does it end?” Craig Simms asked, leaning forward in his chair. “You’re in the middle of a secure building. You won’t get out the front door unless it’s with an escort or in a body bag. This is no way to end things, Jim.”
“To hell with you it’s not. I’ve lived my entire life with a gun under my arm or my pillow. Live by the sword, die by the sword. But first, I’d like to pay someone back for all their help.” He jerked the gun around, trained it on Jennifer Pearce, and pulled the trigger.
“No,” Gordon screamed, and threw himself in the line of fire. Too late. The bullet hit Jennifer in the chest and the impact sent her crashing back into an end table. The table took out her legs and she went over on the back of her head on the floor. She lay unmoving, a pool of blood spreading under her on the carpet.
“You bastard,” Gordon yelled, and lunged for Allenby. A quick movement with the gun and a second bullet hit its target.
This time it was Allenby lifting the gun to his head and firing. The bullet entered his temple as a small piece of red-hot metal and exited the other side of his head in fragments, taking a sixinch chunk of skull with it. Gray matter spattered across the room and Allenby dropped to the carpet.
Gordon froze for a second, then looked at Jennifer. Simms and Rothery were already working on her, trying to stop the bleeding, and Elizabeth Ripley was on the phone, demanding an ambulance immediately. He stood in the center of the room surrounded by death. Then something washed over him and he felt a hate that he had never experienced. A loathing so horrible that only one action could cure it. He grabbed the Colt from the floor and ran into the hall. There was nothing he could do to help Jennifer that the men inside that room couldn’t do twice as well. And he had seen the bullet hit. She was fatally shot, he was sure.
Tears welled in his eyes as the elevator arrived and he pushed his way in. He tucked the.45 pistol into his waistband and pulled his shirt over the handle. He had one thing left to do. And nothing was going to stand in his way.
69
“Where’s Buchanan?” Simms asked, looking about the room as paramedics rushed Jennifer Pearce from the room on a stretcher, one of them calling ahead to George Washington University Hospital and clearing an emergency OR.
“He went running out right after Allenby shot himself,” a shaken Keith Thompson said. He was sitting in one of the chairs, aghast that he had just seen a person die. It was a first for him, and he didn’t like it.
“Christ, he’s heading for Richmond,” Rothery said. “He’s going after Bruce Andrews.”
“You want to get some men out to Andrews’s house?” Simms asked.
Rothery thought about it for a minute. “The less commotion we cause right now, the better. We’ve got a containable situation at this point. Allenby killed himself and Dr. Pearce took an accidental bullet. We can put a decent spin on it. But if we start involving our resources in Richmond in this, it’s out of our hands. Let’s keep a lid on it. Christ, if the general public finds out one of the task force leaders was involved in creating the crisis, the shit’s going to hit the fan like you won’t believe.”
“What about Buchanan?” Simms asked. “He’s out there and he knows what’s going on.”
“We’ll worry about Buchanan when we catch him. We might be able to convince him that keeping this thing quiet is in the best interest of the country. If we can’t, we’ll have to deal with it.”
“And Dr. Pearce?” Simms asked.
Rothery shook his head. “She won’t make the hospital. Probably dead already. It’s Buchanan we have to work on.”
“What if he beats us to Bruce Andrews?”
Rothery shook his head again. “Not a chance. I’ll call down to the airport and get the Gulfstream ready. By the time he drives down or catches a commercial flight, we’ll be at Andrews’s house.”
“Maybe it’s best that we just give the press exactly what happened in here,” Simms said. “That would be the easiest way of dealing with this mess.”
Rothery was thoughtful. Then he said, “I’m not sure, Craig. Maybe we’ll have to. But for right now let’s see if we can contain it. Okay?”
“Not a problem.” Instinctively, they both knew that the lid was going to come off, but it was first nature in their business to try to minimize the damage.
Rothery stood in the middle of the room and stared at Allenby’s body. Then he turned to Tony Warner and Craig Simms and asked, “Where is Jim’s gun?”
70
Twenty-seven minutes after storming out of L’Enfant Plaza, Gordon boarded the Lear 31A at Reagan International. He and Jennifer had decided that leaving the plane on the ground and driving up to D.C. for the second time was being overcautious, so they had flown up in the jet. He had used the cabbies’ cell phone to call ahead and have the pilots file a flight plan for Richmond. When he pulled up to the private terminal, the Lear was already fueled and waiting.
Access to the private section of Washington’s terminal is much easier than the main commercial area, and Gordon moved quickly out to the plane, the Colt 1911 still tucked in his belt. He boarded the private jet and they were rolling down the runway inside three minutes.
“Third in line for takeoff, Mr. Buchanan,” the pilot’s voice came over the intercom.
Gordon cursed the delay. Every moment counted. He knew the three remaining men in Rothery’s office would be scrambling to get down to Richmond. It was a race. They wanted Bruce Andrews for prosecution. He wanted Andrews dead.
The plane was equipped with a phone, and he busied himself calling about for the location of Bruce Andrews’s house. When he called, he identified himself as J.D. Rothery, which wasn’t a hard sell as most of the country had just seen Andrews and Rothery on television together. One of the staff at Veritas, thinking he was speaking with the Under Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, dug into the files and found the CEO’s home address.
“It’s a rural address in Chesterfield county,” the man said. “He had a barbecue out there a year ago and he supplied all the employees with directions. First, you take the 360 south out of Richmond until you cross the Appomattox, about twenty miles outside the city boundaries. Turn south on the 153 until you reach Scott’s Fork. Then take a left and drive back to the river. Mr. Andrews’s estate is the third driveway on the left.”
“Thank you,” Gordon said. He hung up the phone and stared out the window. It was still light and would be for another hour or two. Enough time to find the estate, but it would likely be dark as he approached the house. Probably a good thing. He reached down and pulled the handgun out of his belt. He had fired a lot of rifles and was a decent shot, but he had never fired a handgun in his life. He looked over the gun, found the safety, and snapped it on. Then he set the gun on the leather seat next to him and closed his eyes.
Jennifer Pearce. The image of her body jerking back with the impact of the bullet replayed through his mind. So much blood. Rothery and Simms trying desperately to stem the flow. All hell breaking loose. Jim Allenby lying on the floor with his head blown apart. Keith Thompson staring at the scene in horror. Elizabeth Ripley standing quietly in a corner, watching with scared eyes. What a mess.
He let his eyes open and felt the tears spill out. Christ, why were all the people he cared about dying? First Billy, now Jennifer. He felt the plane begin to descend and he tucked the gun back in his belt. He could think about that later. Right now, Bruce Andrews was foremost on his mind.
He rented a car at the booth that serviced the private section of the airport and checked the map for the best route across the southern tip of Richmond to Highway 360. It was a bit convoluted, but half an hour later he pulled onto the 360 just north of Swift Creek Reservoir and double-checked the directions. He crossed the Appomattox, took the turns the man had dictated to him, and finally pulled onto a paved lane running parallel to the river, perhaps half a mile to the north. In the waning daylight, he counted until he reached the third driveway. Bruce Andrews’s estate.