Conspiracy

153

Jimmy Fingers sank into the steel hospital chair, his body de-flating into a worthless pile of skin and bones.

McSweeney lay a few feet away, recovering from emergency surgery. The doctors had removed the bullet swiftly and without major complications; the prognosis for recovery was excellent.

But McSweeney wasn’t going to run. Jimmy Fingers didn’t know exactly what had been dragged out of his closet but knew it was serious. According to one of the campaign people, Ball had been ranting in the ambulance, going on and on about how McSweeney had cost him his life in Vietnam. McSweeney, he said, had made him steal government money in Vietnam.

A nut job, obviously. But one who wasn’t going to be easily dismissed.

Especially since what he said tracked with what Dean had told McSweeney.

The ambulance people had heard it, and Jimmy Fingers would just bet one or both of them were on the phone right now with some reporter somewhere, selling tomorrow’s headlines.

The Secret Service agent who had headed the investigation into the threats, John Mandarin, had come to the hospital but wouldn’t talk to Jimmy Fingers at all. That, the aide concluded, was the worst sign of all.

I oughta blow the bastard’s head off, Jimmy Fingers thought to himself. He wasn’t sure which bastard he meant, though — Mandarin, Ball, McSweeney, or Marcke.

Police lines had been set up blocks from the hospital, blockading traffic, but several television crews and a number of reporters had been allowed through and were camped about a block from the front entrance. The Secret Service brought the President to a side entrance near the laundry, blocking off access from the rest of the complex and getting Marcke in before the reporters knew what was going on.

A detail of Secret Service agents, along with backups from the federal marshals’ ser vice and the Drug Enforcement Agency, had effectively taken over the hospital. Armed federal agents stood at every hallway intersection, stairway, and elevator. Dean stayed close to the President, who, despite the pleas from his security detail, kept stopping to shake hands with nurses, aides, and doctors — and their accompanying Secret Service escort — as he made his way around to the emergency surgical center where Senator McSweeney had been taken.

Jimmy Fingers dug his hand deep into his pans pocket, finger-ing the trigger of his pistol.

All the years he’d spent getting McSweeney ready to run, then pulling off the masterstroke — the genius stroke, unprecedented in American history — that brought the senator from underdog to front-runner in one quick shot.

How was he ever going to find someone else to hitch his wagon to?

The short answer was, he wouldn’t. He was too close to McSweeney. If the senator went down, he went down.

Poof.

McSweeney gurgled something. One of the nurses jumped over, checking the monitors.

“Where am I?” muttered the senator.

“You’re at the hospital,” said Jimmy Fingers.

“What the hell are you doing here?” McSweeney asked.

“What am I doing?” Jimmy Fingers felt his anger rise.

“I’m watching out for you, the way I always do.” McSweeney shook his head.

I ought to kill you right now and be done with it, thought Jimmy Fingers.

Two large men in suits, obviously members of the Secret Service, parted the curtains at the front of the room.

“You’re Fahey?” one asked.

“I am,” said Jimmy Fingers. “What’s up?”

“The President is on his way.”

“What the hell is he doing here?” said Jimmy Fingers.

The agent couldn’t have looked more shocked if Jimmy Fingers had turned into a butterfly.

“We don’t want the President here,” said Jimmy Fingers.

“What are you saying, Jimmy?” asked McSweeney.

“Senator, the President is on his way,” said the Secret Service agent. “One of the chief of staff’s assistants should be here momentarily. The President will be along right after that.”

“We don’t want him here, Gideon,” Jimmy Fingers told the senator. “He’s using this for political gain.”

“The President can go anywhere he wants,” said McSweeney. “I’m touched that he’s concerned.”

“He’s not concerned,” snapped Jimmy Fingers. “Not about you. This is all part of some setup.”

“My God, Jimmy, give it a rest. Let the President come if he wants. I’m dying here.”

The president’s chief of staff had located the head of the surgical team that had operated on McSweeney. The doctor and two of his assistants were standing in a small waiting area just outside the recovery room.

“Mr. President, this is an honor,” said the surgeon. “I wish it were under different circumstances.”

“How’s your patient?”

“Doing very well, considering the circumstances,” said the doctor. “He’s conscious. Some of his people are with him.”

“Can I speak with him?”

“By all means.”

They started walking down the hall. Dean stayed close to the President, buttressed by two burly Secret Service agents.

There were armed federal marshals on both ends of the hall, and all the rooms in between had been vacated.

“Charlie, can you talk?” asked Rubens in his ear.

Dean took a few steps away and pulled out his sat phone, pretending to use it.

“Dean.”

“There’s a possibility that the person who set up the assassination on McSweeney was a member of his staff,” said Rubens. “It may have been his aide, James Fahey, also known as Jimmy Fingers. We’re in the pro cess of informing the Secret Service right now. Fahey may be at the hospital. If so, it would be a good idea to apprehend him there now. He needs to be questioned.”

“All right,” said Dean, noticing that the President was heading into the recovery room.

Jimmy Fingers had always prided himself on his ability to keep cool under difficult circumstances, but this moment was more trying than most. It wasn’t bad enough that Marcke had ended McSweeney’s career; now he was going to rub it in by using the assassination attempt to bolster his own image.

It was almost too much to handle. It was too much to handle, but Jimmy Fingers couldn’t do anything about it. He was trapped in the room as the President came in, surrounded by his bodyguards and aides.

Damn all these bastards, thought Jimmy Fingers. Damn them all.

Dean pulled aside Freehan, the Secret Service agent in charge of the presidential detail.

“Which one of these guys is James Fahey?” Dean asked.

“The senator’s aide?”

“We have to talk to him.”

“What?” Freehan put his hand to his ear, listening to a message. Then he looked back at Dean. “You sure about this, Dean?”

“Yeah.”

The Secret Service agent turned abruptly and strode into the recovery room. Dean followed. A short, wiry man stood near the senator’s bedside, glaring at the President, who was just bending over at the right side of the bed.

“Down!” shouted Freehan.

Jimmy Fingers realized the moment he saw the Secret Service agent’s glower that they had figured it all out.

Somehow, they had figured it all out.

And then they were rushing at him, and he did the only thing he could do under the circumstances — he pulled his pistol from his pocket.

Charlie Dean saw Jimmy Fingers start to pull something from his pocket. He launched himself at the man, flying through the air like a guided missile.

Something cracked below Dean about midway across the room, but he continued onward, elbow and forearm up. He caught Jimmy Fingers in the neck and they fell back toward the wall. There were two more loud cracks, and Dean felt incredible pain.

He flailed, unable for some reason to form his fingers into fists, unable to kick with his legs or do anything else but grind his upper body into the other man’s. There were shouts all around him, and another crack. Jimmy Fingers pushed up, and then his face exploded, a few inches from Dean’s.

“He’s down!”

“Go!”

“Go!”

“Dean? Dean?… Dean?”

The pain was so intense that it was impossible to tell exactly where it came from. It surged like a tsunami over Dean, pushing him beneath itself. Then suddenly he lifted free, spinning in a slow circle in the middle of the room.

Everyone was watching.

Not the Secret Service agents. Not the President. Not the senator or his aide. But everyone else.

Everyone. People he hadn’t seen in thirty years, back in the Marine Corps. His first business partner. Sal, the gas station own er who’d given him his first job.

Longbow stood silently next to him, his bolt gun over his shoulder.

“I missed you, Charlie,” said Longbow.

Dean couldn’t answer. The room filled quickly. He didn’t recognize many of the faces. Phuc Dinh was there — or rather, the man Dean had killed thinking he was Phuc Dinh.

Oh, thought Dean. Oh.