But Bennett had masterfully erected a force field around his administration, fogging transparency sufficiently to hold his detractors at bay.
Evan was not interested in politics. Bennett’s transgressions of office, while appalling, were not what had Evan here on the sun-baked concrete outside the White House. It was not about the vast and the conspiratorial. Not about whispered conversations in the corridors of power. Not about kingdom-altering back-channel deals or the Rube Goldberg machinations that disguised originator from outcome, cause from effect.
It was the faces of the dead.
And the fact that the president of the United States had personally ordered the murder of men and women who as children had been taken from foster homes and trained and indoctrinated to spend their existence serving their country. They had done the best they could with the life that had been imposed on them. And he’d snuffed them out for the sake of his own preservation.
Ending Jonathan Bennett was the ultimate Nowhere Man mission.
Finally the motorcade reached the intersection and halted. Again the drivers of the bookending limos turned the tires while stationary, grinding tread against asphalt. And again the wheels of the middle limo rotated only as the driver pulled out.
It had not been a fluke, then. But a habit.
The convoy banked onto E Street and headed for Evan.
He adjusted his baseball cap and slowed his breathing until he could sense the stillness between heartbeats, the sacred space he occupied the instant before he pulled the trigger of a sniper rifle, when even the faintest thrum of blood in his fingertip could put him off his mark.
In less than a minute, the presidential limo would pass directly in front of Evan, bringing him at last within several meters of the most inaccessible and heavily guarded man on the face of the planet.
3
Identified Threat
Excitement electrified the crowd cramming the sidewalk. People surged toward the curb, strained their necks, waved dumbly. A flurry of hands bearing smartphones rose in unison, most people twisting around to capture themselves in the photos. The motorcade barreled forward, the sight that launched a thousand selfies.
As reviled as President Bennett had proved to be, he was still good for a social-media status update.
Surrounded by civilians, Evan watched. The air was East Coast heavy, rippled by a humid breeze. The taste of soda lingered on his tongue, coating his teeth.
The vanguard of G-rides and the front decoy swept by, the presidential limousine coming into clear view. Dubbed “Cadillac One” or “The Beast,” it deserved both nicknames.
Set down on the chassis of a GMC truck, the limo was nearly eight tons, each door the same weight as a cabin door of a Boeing 747. Military-grade armor, an amalgam of ceramic and dual-hardness steel, was coated with aluminum titanium nitride. Slabs of ballistic glass a half foot thick composed the windows. A steel plate soldered beneath the vehicle guarded against the possibility of a frag grenade or an improvised explosive device. Even if a hail of bullets shredded the puncture-resistant, run-flat, Kevlar-reinforced tires, the limo could still drive away on the steel rims beneath. The limo was designed to take a direct hit from a bazooka.
Evan had a Dr Pepper Big Gulp.
If need be, Cadillac One could serve as a self-sustained, fully functional emergency bunker. Bottles of the president’s blood were stored beneath the rear seats. At an instant’s notice, a designated backup oxygen supply fed the air-conditioning vents. Firefighting gear stowed in the trunk was accessible through a hatch behind the armrest. The gas tank self-sealed, preventing combustion. Encrypted comms gear maintained continuous contact with federal and state law enforcement.
Evan had cotton wads in his cheeks.
Behind the wheel of Cadillac One was a master driver from the White House Transportation Agency. The driver would have received highly specialized army training in evasive maneuvers, route analysis, tactical steering, and vehicle dynamics.
Evan had comfortable dad shoes.
The presidential limo coasted up level with Evan, and for a split second he stared from the sea of faces at the tinted window behind which Bennett drifted in a cocoon of safety and comfort.
Close enough for Evan to spit on the pane.
The motorcade drove on.
He reminded his face to relax as he watched it go.
Jonathan Bennett did not sweat.
He never issued a nervous laugh, a tense smile, or gave an accommodating tilt of the head.
And his hands never quavered. Not when as a special agent for the DoD he’d found himself at gunpoint on multiple occasions. Not when as an undersecretary of that same department he’d pushed a button in a command center and watched a black-budget unmanned aerial vehicle unleash hell halfway around the globe. Not when he flipped the pages of his rebuttal notes during his first presidential debate or his sixth.
Body control was a learned skill, one he’d been taught in his early training at Glynco and which he used every day as the commander in chief. Without uttering a word, he could assuage the concerns of the American public and project power on the world stage. He sold himself to the populace not by appealing to their better angels but by manifesting subtle dominance displays that voters registered in their spinal cords.
The fact that he’d been largely successful at appeasing the population was testament to his sheer force of will. His detractors had gained a bit of traction, yes, but he knew precisely which levers he’d need to pull before the midterm elections to maintain control of both houses.
He settled into the butter-smooth leather of the presidential limo now and scanned the urban-development report he was due to weigh in on at this afternoon’s cabinet meeting.
When his driver negotiated the presidential limo into a left turn more abruptly than usual, Bennett registered a slight uptick in his pulse.
He looked at his deputy chief of staff, his body man, and the Secret Service agent riding in the rear compartment with him, but none seemed to have registered the deviation.
He waited two seconds, and then the Secret Service agent stiffened, his hand rising to the clear spiral wire at his ear.
Bennett thought, Orphan X.
He checked in on his breathing, was gratified to note that it had not changed in the least.
The agent’s hand lowered from the radio earpiece. Bennett waited for him to say, Mr. President. We’re deviating course. There’s been an identified threat.
The agent said, “Mr. President. We’re deviating course. There’s been an identified threat.”
Bennett said, “Has there, now.”
He pointedly caught the eye of his deputy chief of staff and then turned and watched the buildings slide by beyond the tinted glass.
Secret Service agents stacked the seventh-floor hall of the upscale residential building. Despite the lush carpet, they moved delicately on the balls of their feet as they eased up on Apartment 705.
The lead agent folded his fingers into his fist—three, two, one—and the breacher drove the battering ram into the door, ripping the dead bolt straight through the frame.