That set off a stampede. The smoke rolled forward and swallowed the crowd, which turned hysterical. Fire alarms went off. The sprinkler system was triggered.
That set off more hysteria, and people began to slip and fall as they scrambled toward the doors.
Stapleton grabbed Bronson and Crowley. “Until we know what’s going on, we need to get you both out of here, now!”
The video-game creators looked frightened but nodded.
Bronson said, “You don’t think this assassin woman did this, do you?”
Peering through the mist and the smoke at the knots of fans fleeing the building, I said, “There’s not a bit of doubt in my mind she did it. The question is why.”
Part Three
Black Friday
Chapter 45
At one A.M. mountain time on Friday, February 5, Dana Potter parked his truck out of sight on a spur into BLM land off a desolate road in rural El Paso County, West Texas, hard by the New Mexico border.
“Check your phone,” he said as he put on an ultralight communication unit with a jaw microphone.
“It’s off for a reason,” Mary said.
“Let’s triple-check.”
His wife looked irritated but did as he asked while he got out into the cold air and retrieved their packs from the back of the pickup.
“Nothing, no service,” she said. “Dark hole.”
“Thank you.”
“You sure that thing’s going to work on sat phones?”
“Supposed to shut down a mile around,” he said, hoisting his pack onto his shoulders. “We’ll see.”
Mary looked uncertain as she put her pack on, put her boot in the stirrup, and then climbed onto her horse. She sighed.
“What’s the matter?” Potter said once he was in his own saddle.
“I was just thinking of what could go wrong.”
“I plan on seeing my boy day after tomorrow, tell him his life is saved.”
She gazed at him and nodded slowly and then sharply. “Me too.”
“Happy to hear,” Potter said.
They each tugged down infrared glasses that lit up the scrub and the low mesa before them. They kicked their horses and moved in silence and at a steady pace as they cut cross-country along the same route they’d used before.
At two-twenty, one hour and eleven minutes after they’d started out, they reached the arroyo, retrieved the still green paloverde boughs, and, as before, set them in a pile on the opposite bank of the sandy dry riverbed. They tied up the horses well upriver.
It was still pitch-dark, a moonless night, and the stars shone brilliantly when the two crested the hill above the agricultural fields and the ranch.
Potter felt a steady breeze hitting the back of his neck.
“Wait,” he said. “Wrong wind.”
They stood there, calmly waiting, for five, maybe six minutes before dogs barked in the distance.
Wordlessly, they backed down the side of the mesa and removed their packs. They each found an Ozonics device about the size of a thick paperback. The Ozonics was a miniature ozone generator that would destroy their scent; not even dogs would be able to detect them.
They turned the machines on, dressed warmer, and assembled their rifles. With their packs up on their shoulders again and carrying the weapons and the ozone machines, they climbed back up the hill and stood there waiting, listening.
When no dogs had barked after five minutes, they moved quickly forward to their chosen hides. Mary lay belly-down behind her rifle at 2:40 a.m. mountain time, almost ninety minutes before first light. Her husband laid a rectangle of camouflage material over her, from her boots to her head, where it draped across the top of her telescopic sight.
“Good?” he muttered.
“Real solid,” she said. “Night-night.”
“I’ll wake you.”
“Mmm,” his wife said.
Potter set up less than a foot away, got beneath another length of camouflage cloth, and put the Ozonics out in front of him downwind. He got behind his rifle, settled, and heard Mary rhythmically breathing. He still marveled at his wife’s ability to shut the world off at will and find refuge in catnaps that almost always made her sharper.
A match made in heaven, he thought, closing his own eyes. I still believe that.
Chapter 46
I couldn’t sleep that night. I tossed and turned, my mind working in circles. Each trip through the puzzling events of the past week, cycling over and over, made me anxious and stirred up a metallic taste at the back of my throat.
That taste is a sure sign that you’re going to throw up or that you’re so tense you’re burning adrenaline. At four twenty a.m., I said good-bye to any notion of real sleep and got up slowly and quietly so as not to wake Bree.
She’d had a tough day and was back to making little headway in the Senator Walker murder investigation while dealing with Chief Michaels, who was renewing pressure on her.
I eased into our closet, shut the door, and turned on the light. Three minutes later, dressed in long underwear, FBI sweats, and a pair of New Balance running shoes, I shut the bedroom door behind me.
I stood there a moment at the head of the stairs, aware of the ticking of the furnace, the hum of the fan in Jannie’s room, and the squeak of a mattress in Ali’s. Behind the near door, I could hear Nana Mama’s gently rasping breathing.
Those familiar noises calmed me as I walked down to the front hall, where I put on a black watch cap, a headlamp, a windbreaker with reflective stripes front and back, and a pair of thin wool gloves. Outside, it was a clear, moonless night. The temperature hovered just above freezing, and I could see clouds of my breath while I went through some ballistic stretches.
At four forty, I turned on the headlamp, jogged down the stairs to the sidewalk, and took off at an ambitious pace toward Capitol Hill. I hoped vigorous physical activity would take my mind off that vicious circle of incidents, thoughts, and half-baked theories that had been plaguing me since Ned Mahoney and I left Atlantic City.
But no such luck. By the time I crossed Pennsylvania Avenue and started chugging uphill toward the Capitol, they were back again. This time the facts, memories, and ideas flipped through my brain in near chronological order.
Senator Betsy Walker is ambushed and shot by a pro just feet from her front door. Shortly after Walker’s murder, Kristina Varjan, known assassin, enters the country with a fake passport and is spotted by a CIA operative.
Carl Thomas, the medical-equipment salesman from Pittsburgh, is found hours later and a few blocks away, garroted to death in an Airbnb. Access to his files is blocked by Scotland Yard.
Fernando Romero, sworn enemy of Senator Walker, drives cross-country to make a pile of Benjamins, gets caught in a snowstorm the night of Walker’s murder, and drives on into Washington only to die in a firefight with police.
Sergeant Nick Moon, one of the toughest, most skilled martial artists I’ve ever known, is killed in a hand-to-hand fight by another professional not two hours south.
Varjan tries to blow up me and Mahoney. Then she appears dressed in a costume at a video-gamers’ extravaganza. Was she going to be a contestant?
I tried to discount that idea, but then thought, Maybe she’s good at the game.
But then why set off a smoke bomb? She had to have recognized me somehow and was using it as diversion to make her escape.