Dream of a Falling Eagle

Chapter 14

We found neither, but behind one of the two doors at the far end of the loft we did find a toilet and laundry sink, where Garth and I washed Fournier's blood off us as best we could. Behind the second door was a small storeroom filled with voodoo paraphernalia and a pipe rack with a half-dozen robes similar to the one Fournier had been wearing.

"Here," Garth said, tossing me one of the robes. "This will have to do."

Garth was about the dead Haitian's height, so his robe fit just fine. Mine did not, to say the least; I looked like a neon, voodoo version of Casper the Ghost. I ended up wrapping it around my body like a sarong, and then we quickly followed Francisco out of the ceremonial chamber toward the front, through narrow corridors and past storage rooms filled with what appeared to be old theatrical props and dilapidated sets. We emerged in a small parking lot of a warehouse abutting Twelfth Avenue. The first thing I took note of was the relative quiet.

"It hasn't gone down yet," Garth said, echoing my thoughts. "If it had, all hell would be breaking loose-helicopters, ambulances, and police cars all over the place."

"Right," I said, looking around me. "Now all we have to do is find a way to stop it."

We were only a few blocks away from the convention center, and traffic was sparse as canny New Yorkers took alternate routes around the cavernous building to avoid the inevitable road blocks and potential traffic jams. There were no cabs, which was a moot point since it was unlikely any hack driver would pick up a party of three with two of them dressed like Garth and me. There were also no pay phones in sight. There were buildings, presumably with phones, on either side of us, what looked to be production studios for various television shows being shot in the city, but they were sealed off by high chain-link fences topped with coils of razor wire.

My pulse quickened when I suddenly heard the sound of sirens approaching from the north. My first thought was that it was a convoy of ambulances speeding to the site of a double assassination, but the sirens turned out to belong to a brigade of police on motorcycles escorting a stretch limousine with smoked windows that streaked by.

Garth said, "Somebody must be late."

"Over here, sir!" Francisco shouted from where he had wandered off to the side of the building, where there was a narrow alleyway. "There's a car!"

Garth and I sprinted to the alleyway, saw a dark green Ford Taurus parked a few yards away, next to a side exit. The car doors were unlocked, and the key was in the ignition. Garth climbed in behind the wheel, I got in beside him, and Francisco jumped in the back. Garth started the car and, with the tires squealing, first backed out of the alleyway, then turned the car and tore out onto Twelfth Avenue, the rear end of the car fishtailing as we headed for the Jacob Javits Convention Center.

We'd gone barely a third of a mile when we turned a corner and came to a road block set up to detour traffic east, around the convention center. Garth and I knew the patrol officer leaning idly against one of the yellow barricades, a cop by the name of Harriet Boone. She started when she saw our car barreling down Eleventh Avenue toward the barricades. She jumped out into the road and began frantically waving her arms, then jumped back when Garth braked the car to a sliding, screeching halt next to her cruiser. She started to reach for her gun, then froze and gaped as Francisco, my voodoo-robed brother, and I leaped out of the car.

"Mongo?! Garth?! What the hell are you-"

"Harriet, there isn't time to explain why we're dressed like this," I said quickly. "Every second counts. You have to get on your radio right now and say anything you have to in order to get word to the Secret Service that they must keep the president and vice president off the stage, or get them off immediately if that's where they are now. There are two assassins down in the front rows getting ready to pop them. Then get us into the hall. We can identify the shooters."

The woman, who still seemed stunned, shook her head in disbelief. "Mongo, there's no way I can get you in there. Security is even tighter than usual. There have been reports that somebody is planning to try to kill the president."

"Harriet," I said, grimacing with frustration, "you're not listening to me. Garth and I are responsible for those reports and the tightened security. But it's not going to do any good unless we act now. The shooters are already in the hall, probably sitting with some delegation that's close to the stage. Both the president and vice president are going to die unless you do what I ask."

A big, strong hand gripped my right shoulder, turned me around. I found myself looking up at a very solidly built man wearing a dark suit, sunglasses, a plug in his ear, and a Secret Service pin in his lapel. His right hand was inside his suit jacket, and he was leaning back slightly on his heels. "What's this talk about assassination?" he asked curtly.

"Look, you're just the man I want-"

"I heard what you said. I want to see identification from the three of you."

I flipped the ends of my robe in exasperation. "I seem to have left my wallet home."

Harriet said, "I can vouch for these men."

The Secret Service agent was unimpressed. "I don't care who you vouch for, Officer. We've got three men here who drive up in a speeding car, two of them dressed in clown suits, and one of them talking about assassination. Now, I want the three of you to turn around slowly and put your hands on top of the car."

"You're a fucking idiot," Garth said as he stepped forward and hit the man with a snake-quick jab to the point of the chin. The man's knees buckled and he went down.

"My God," Harriet murmured, staring in horror at the unconscious man lying on the pavement at her feet. "You can't hit a Secret Service agent."

Garth went to the police cruiser, opened the door on the driver's side. "Harriet, you've got two choices; shoot us, or get us down the block to that hall. Otherwise, we're just going to take your car."

"You stay here!" I shouted to Francisco as I opened the rear door of the cruiser and jumped in.

"No, sir," Francisco replied evenly as he clambered into the car beside me. With impeccable logic, he added, "You couldn't have gotten this far without me. I'm going with the two of you."

"Harriet?" Garth said calmly. "Hurry up and make up your mind what you're going to do."

"Garth, this could cost me my pension!"

"Or get you a medal and a promotion."

"You're going to get yourselves killed if you try to barge in there!"

"We're counting on you and your police radio to keep that from happening. Come on, Harriet. This is righteous. You're about to help prevent two assassinations."

Now the woman reacted, brushing past Garth and sliding in behind the wheel. Garth raced around to the other side of the car and got in beside her.

"This is Officer Boone with a Code Fury emergency!" the policewoman shouted into her microphone as she started up the cruiser, floored the accelerator, and crashed through the wooden barriers in front of her. "Somebody's getting ready to shoot the president and vice president! Get them to safety now! I'm bringing in three men who can identify the assassins! Hold your fire!"

Within less than thirty seconds we had reached the convention center. Harriet braked to a skidding halt beside the stretch limousine that had passed us earlier, and which was now parked up on the sidewalk near an entrance where the door had been left open. Garth, Francisco, and I jumped out of the car. Harriet started to follow, but I pushed her back behind the wheel. "Stay on the radio, Harriet! Keep broadcasting that message!"

A policeman was just coming to close the door when the three of us came barreling through, with Garth pushing the man aside and over a steel railing. Ten yards in front of us was another policeman manning a metal detector, and beyond him a spacious lobby with a stone floor. Three large television monitors suspended from the ceiling broadcast pictures and sound of what was taking place inside the enormous hall on the other side of the closed doors where we were headed; the president and vice president, flanked by their families and a gaggle of politicians, were standing inches from the edge of the stage, holding each other's hands aloft as they accepted the thunderous cheers and applause of the hundreds of delegates in the hall who had risen to their feet.

Garth and I hadn't had time to discuss just what we were going to do if and when we did get this far, but we both seemed to have the same idea in mind. At that very moment the two assassins could be tensing, getting ready to remove the plastic guns mounted under their chairs, step out into the aisle or into the well before the stage for a clear shot, aim, and fire at their exposed targets. There was no time to stop and try to reason with anybody. We had to make it through the double doors on the other side of the lobby; one glimpse of Garth and me in our voodoo robes bursting into the auditorium, shouting and waving our arms, would be enough to get the president and vice president buried under a lifesaving avalanche of Secret Service agents.

We sprinted through the metal detector, past the startled policeman who had leaped out of his chair and was reaching for his gun. I heard a collision of bodies behind me, and when I glanced back over my shoulder I could see that Francisco, bless his quick-thinking and courageous permanent-associate-investigator's heart, had hurled himself through the air and into the man in order to save us from being shot in the back.

His effort was for naught. I had only glanced back for a split second, but when I looked ahead again I saw that five men, three of them large enough to play on the San Diego Chargers' line, had materialized between us and the double doors. They were all in a crouched firing stance. One had his gun aimed at Francisco, and the other four had a direct bead on Garth and me.

"Freeze!" the man in the middle of the pack shouted, his voice cutting like a chainsaw through the cacophonous clapping and cheering coming from the television speaker hanging above his head.

Garth and I, the bottoms of our bare feet coated with gravel, slid to a halt and raised our hands. I shouted back, "Listen to us!"

"Shut up! Don't talk!"

"Get the president and vice president off the stage right now," I said loudly but calmly, carefully enunciating each word. "They're about to be shot."

"I said don't talk! Lie down on your stomachs with your arms out to the sides! Do it right now, or you're dead men!"

Garth and I glanced at each other, and once again I could see that we were thinking the same thing. With our reports and warnings we had created quite a fuss over the past few days, and there was enormous tension. As disciplined as these Secret Service agents were, their trigger fingers had to be getting a bit itchy, and I didn't much care for the irony of Garth and me dying as a direct result of the very alertness and caution we had labored so hard to bring about. If we were a few yards short of the goal line, there was nothing to be done about it, except do what we were told or risk being gunned down. We lay down on our stomachs, spread our arms out to the sides.

Instantly four of the men sprang forward, while the fifth rushed over to Francisco. Guns were held to the backs of our heads while our hands were roughly pulled behind our backs and our wrists cuffed. I could hear the cuffs being snapped on Francisco's wrists, and I was very conscious of the smell of industrial-strength wax on the cold stone where my cheek rested.

Something had changed besides our situation; something was different, and with my thoughts racing and heart pounding it took me a few moments to realize what it was.

The applause and cheering had stopped; there was dead silence from behind the doors and over the television monitors.

Then a voice, very faint but still audible, could be heard over the television speaker. The voice said, "Don't do it."

The voice, as muted as it was, sounded familiar. Suddenly the hands that had been holding my head to the marble lifted. Five Secret Service agents and their three captives all looked up at the television monitors, transfixed. And I now realized who had been in the limousine that had passed us on Twelfth Avenue.

It appeared that being Speaker of the House of Representatives was good enough to get you not only a police escort through New York City, but into the convention of the opposing party, and even onto the convention floor itself. It also appeared that William P. Kranes had taken my advice and bellied up to the bar with some of his loonier right-wing admirers. Somebody had given him an earful, and he obviously hadn't liked what he'd heard. Perhaps for the first time the full import of what Garth and I had been trying to tell him had finally sunk in, and he wanted no part, however passively, of any assassination plot. He did not want to preside over the corpse of a country.

The camera picked him up, and then zoomed in on the pudgy man as he slowly walked down the center of the carpeted well separating the stage from the convention delegates. He didn't know where to look, and so he was looking everywhere, out across the sea of faces, alternately waving his arms and then making thrusting motions with his palms out, as if to push back the death he knew was lurking in the hall.

"Don't do it,"he repeated, his voice being barely picked up by the microphone on stage. His voice sounded like it was coming from the far end of a long tunnel. The camera moved back to include the stage, where everybody except a dozen scurrying Secret Service agents was staring at Kranes in stunned amazement. "This isn't the way. It won't do you any good. I won't be president. I don't want to be president. I've resigned as Speaker of the House, so it isn't-"

Suddenly there was a blur of motion and sound. Secret Service agents had already surrounded the president and vice president, but still two young men whom I immediately recognized as the assassins appeared on the apron of the well, holding their guns aloft, searching for their targets. An instant before they were shot dead by Secret Service agents, the head of William P. Kranes exploded in an expanding mist of blood, flesh, and bone that sprayed the faces of the people on the stage and in the front rows of the screaming delegates.

The screams and shouts increased in volume as the pandemonium breaking loose could clearly be heard through the heavy doors as well as over the television speakers.

"Hey, big guy," Garth said to the burly agent standing over him and gaping at the television monitor. "You want to cut us loose now? It looks like you've got other business to attend to."