Under Siege

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Henry Charon parked the car a block from the New Hampshire Avenue apartment and walked. The streetlights were on and the sky was dark. Raindrops were beginning to splatter on the pavement and poing on the car roofs.

One of the cars near the apartment house was the green VW bug wearing its trendy bumper stickers. Ah yes, the sweater lady.

He paused in the entryway and used his key on the mailbox. As he suspected it contained the usual circulars and junk mail addressed to “Occupant.” He put them in his pocket. He didn’t want mail to accumulate in the box because very soon now someone would look through that little window. An FBI agent or police officer, or maybe a soldier, but someone. Someone hunting him.

He looked again up and down the street. The rain was getting heavier. Perhaps setting in for the night.

The cold felt good. When you live in the wild long enough you get used to the cold. You learn to endure it and never feel it. It’s a part of everything and you fit in and adapt or you perish.

Henry Charon was good at that. He had learned to adapt. Becoming a part of his surroundings was his whole life.

So he stood for a few more seconds and let the cold and dampness seep over him as he listened to the tinny sound of the raindrops striking the cars.

Then he inserted his key in the doorlock and went inside.

The door to the first apartment was ajar and he could hear the television. This was where the apartment manager lived, the sweater lady, Grisella Clifton.

Wouldn’t hurt to be seen for a moment. He paused at the door and raised his hand to knock.

She was seated in a stuffed chair in front of the television with a cat on her lap. Charon pushed the door open a few more inches. Now he could see the television. And hear the words:

“… an artist’s conception of the man who shot and wounded Attorney General Gideon Cohen yesterday at the Capitol in what may have been an attempt on the life of Vice-President Dan Quayle. This man is armed and very dangerous. If you see this man, do not attempt to apprehend or approach him, but notify the police immediately. At the bottom of the screen you will see a number to call if you think you might have seen this man. Please write this number down. And take a good, careful look.”

On the screen was an artist’s line drawing. Charon stared. Yes, the artist had got him. Probably from that woman he had met in the lobby as he was leaving the building. Who would have thought she had gotten that good a look? Damn!

The cat saw him and tensed. Grisella Clifton turned and caught sight of him.

“Oh! You startled me, Mr. Tackett.”

“Sorry. I was about to knock.”

She rose from her chair and turned toward him. The cat scurried away. “I’m so sorry. I guess I heard the outside door open, but I was just so engrossed in this … this …”

She turned back toward the television. The artist’s effort was still on the screen. She looked from the television to Charon, then back to the television.

He saw it in her face.

She drew her breath in sharply and her hand came up to cover her mouth. Her eyes widened.

“Oh! My God!”

He stood there trying to decide what to do.

“You’re him! You tried to kill Vice-President Quayle!”

“No, I didn’t,” Henry Charon said automatically, slightly irritated. He had been shooting at Gideon Cohen! And hit him too. That was one hell of a fine shot!

He saw her chest expand as she sucked in air. She was going to scream.

Without conscious thought he had balanced his weight on the balls of his feet, so now he pushed out toward her in one fluid motion with his hands outstretched.

Thanos Liarakos didn’t know what made him turn his head to the right, but he did. She was sitting on a park bench there amid the naked black trees, the streetlight limning her.

He sat behind the wheel of the car staring, uncertain, yet at some level deep down very, very sure.

The man in the car behind laid on his horn.

Liarakos took his foot off the brake and let the car move. He went around the block looking for a parking place. Nothing. Not a single vacant spot. He jammed the gas pedal down and shot down the next street. Every spot full!

Around the corner, looking, the frustration welling rapidly.

He began to swear. The goddamn city, the goddamn traffic engineers and the goddamn planning board that let them remodel these goddamn row houses without driveways and garages — he cussed them all while he thought about Elizabeth.

There, a fireplug. He pulled in beside it and killed the engine. He hit the automatic door lock button on the door and was off and running even as the door slammed shut.

Elizabeth! Sitting out in the rain on a dismal cold night like this. Oh God — if there is a god up there — how could you do this to gentle Elizabeth? Why?

He jogged the last block and darted into the street to see around a tree that was in the way. In the process he was almost run over, but he dodged the delivery van and dashed across the tralffic. Another Christian soul laid on his horn and squealed his brakes.

Liarakos paid no attention. On the edge of the park he halted and looked again.

She was still sitting there. Hadn’t moved.

He walked forward.

As he passed a bench, still seventy-five feet from her, a derelict huddled there spoke: “Hey man, I hate to ask this, but have you got any loose change you could …”

She wasn’t looking around. She was sitting there staring downward, apparently oblivious of the cold and the cutting wind and the steady rain that was already starting to soak Liarakos.

“Some loose change would help, man.” The derelict was following him. He was aware of it but didn’t bother to look behind him.

Her hands were in her coat pockets. The good coat she had worn to the clinic was gone, and in its place she wore a thin, faded cotton thing that looked as if it wouldn’t warm a rabbit. Her hair was a sodden, dripping mess. She didn’t look up.

“Elizabeth.”

She continued to stare at the ground. He squatted and looked up into her face. It was her all right. The corners of her lips were tilted up in a wan little smile.

Her eyes moved to his face, but they looked without recognition.

“Man, it’s a damn cold night and a cup of coffee would do for me, you know? I had some troubles in my life and some of them wasn’t my fault. How about some Christian charity for a poor ol’ nigger. A little change wouldn’t be much to you, but to me …”

He found his wallet and extracted a bill without taking his eyes off Elizabeth. He passed the bill back.

“God, this is a twenty! Are you—”

“Take it. And leave.”

“Thanks, mister.”

Her face had a glow about it. Aww, fuck! She was as high as a flag on the Fourth of July.

“I tell you, man,” the derelict said, “’cause you been real generous with me. She’s in big trouble. She’s strung out real bad, man.”

“Please leave.”

“Yeah.”

The footsteps shuffled away.

He reached out and caressed her face, pressed her hand between his.

The rain continued to fall. She sat with her thin, frozen smile amid the pigeon shit on the park bench among the glistening black trees, staring at nothing at all.

“So what can you tell me?” Jake Grafton asked the FBI lab man.

“Not much,” the investigator said, scratching his head. They were standing in the room from which the assassin had shot Chief Justice Longstreet. The rifle lay on the table. Everything in sight was covered by the fine dark grit of fingerprint dust.

“Apparently no fresh prints. We got a bunch, but I doubt that our guy left any. Be a fluke if he did.”

“Where did the bullet hit the Chief Justice?”

“About one inch above the left ear. Killed instantly. Haven’t got the bullet yet. It went through the victim, through the upholstery and the sheet metal and buried itself in the asphalt of the street. Rifle is a thirty-ought-six, same caliber and make as the one that fired the bullet into the attorney general. Same brand of scope, and I suspect, the same brand of gun oil and so forth.”

The floor of the room in which they were standing had a fine layer of dust on it, and it showed tracks, a lot of tracks, so many in fact that the individual footprints ran together.

“Did you guys make all these?” Jake asked gloomily.

“No, as a matter of fact. Sort of curious, but the guy who did the shooting seemed to come into the room, go to the window, and stay there. He made some footprints, but not many, considering. He didn’t have nervous feet.”

“Nervous feet,” Jake repeated.

The lab man seemed to be searching for words. “He wasn’t real excited, if you know what I mean.”

“A pro,” Toad Tarkington prompted.

“Maybe,” the FBI agent said. “Maybe not. But he’s a cool customer.”

The military curfew was announced at seven p.m., to take effect at midnight. Anyone on the streets between the hours of midnight and seven a.m. would be subject to arrest and prosecution by military tribunal for failure to obey emergency orders. Anyone on the streets in a vehicle between the hours of seven a.m. and midnight would also be subject to arrest. This curfew would be in effect for forty-eight hours, unless it was ended sooner or extended.

The order was news from coast to coast along with the murder of Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Longstreet and the subway massacre. The death toll continued to mount as two of the wounded succumbed to their injuries. One of them was a pregnant woman.

The mood of the nation, as reflected by man-on-the-street television interviews, was outrage. Politicians of stature were calling for an invasion of Colombia. Several wanted to declare war. Senator Bob Cherry was in the latter group. Ferried from newsroom to newsroom by limo, he abandoned his point-by-point criticism of Vice-President Quayle’s efforts and lambasted the administration as unprepared and incompetent. He demanded the troops be pulled out of Washington and sent to Colombia.

On the other hand, Senator Hiram Duquesne and several of his colleagues journeyed to the Vice-President’s office in the Executive Office Building that evening to offer their wholehearted support. They appeared before the cameras afterward and, in a rare show of unity, laid aside all partisan differences to praise the Vice-President’s handling of the crisis.

Most of the people in the nation spent the evening in front of their televisions. One of those who watched was T. Jefferson Brody. He was sneering at Duquesne’s image on the tube when the telephone rang.

The man calling he had never met, but he had heard his name several times and vaguely remembered that he did something or other for Freeman McNally.

“McNally’s dead.”

The news stunned Brody. There were a hundred questions he wanted to ask, but since he didn’t know where the man was calling from — the line might be tapped — he refrained.

After cradling the instrument, he used the remote control to turn off the television.

Freeman dead! First Willie Teal, now Freeman.

T. Jefferson pursed his lips and silently whistled. Well, it’s a dangerous business, no question about that. That’s why they made so much money at it.

What was he doing for Freeman? Oh, yes, the senators. Well, that was spilt milk. But it was a hook he might use later on somebody else’s behalf. If and when. He would see.

And because his mind worked that way, Brody’s thoughts immediately turned to Sweet Cherry Lane, the big-titted, cock-stroking bitch who had conned and robbed him. Freeman had been unwilling to assist in that little project, but now Freeman and his reasons — whatever they were — were gone, leaving Brody in possession of the field. Bernie Shapiro hadn’t been very enthusiastic either, but he would approach him again.

So T. Jefferson sat staring at the blank television screen and thinking graphic thoughts about what he would like to do to Sweet Cherry Lane. His lips twisted into a smile. This Army curfew would be over in a few days, and then … Ah, yes. And then!

At nine that night Toad Tarkington and Jack Yocke sat in a military pool vehicle with the engine and heater going, trying to stay warm. Yocke was behind the wheel. Since he knew the city so well Grafton had appointed him duty driver. Toad sat in the backseat.

The two naval officers had spent the evening at the Pentagon drafting the orders and plans for the chairman to sign and had picked up Yocke at the Post fifteen minutes ago.

Through the windshield they watched Jake Grafton and an army officer huddled over a map spread out on the hood of a jeep. The jeep was parked on the sidewalk under an apartment house entrance awning.

The rain continued to fall, drumming on the roof of the car in which Toad and Yocke sat.

“Grafton seems like an awful quiet guy for a successful military officer,” Yocke said just to break the silence.

Toad snorted. “You’re a reporter.”

“What d’ya mean?”

“The guy can talk your leg off. You haven’t heard him at the office! What you gotta have to get ahead in the military is credibility. People have to pay attention when you voice an opinion, they have to believe that you know what you’re talking about. Grafton’s got credibility with a capital C.”

Yocke digested this information as he watched Grafton and the army officer. The army guy was wearing camouflage utilities, a thick coat, and a helmet. In contrast, Jake Grafton wore washed khakis, a green flight-deck coat, and a bridge cap with a khaki cover.

Yocke had had a good look at that green coat when Grafton got out of the car. It had grease stains on it in several places, no doubt souvenirs from one of the ships Grafton had been on. The trousers were no better. In spite of being washed so many times they looked faded, the grease stains were still visible. Sitting in the backseat, Tarkington was togged out about like Grafton, except that his heavy coat was khaki.

“Where do you navy officers get grease on your uniforms?”

“Flight deck,” Toad muttered, and declined to say anything else.

Yocke looked at his watch. He would like to find a few minutes to call Tish Samuels. Maybe after the next stop.

Grafton came back to the car and climbed into the passenger seat. His coat and hat were dripping. He left the door ajar, so the overhead courtesy light stayed on. The captain extracted a map from his pocket and studied it. After a few moments he held it so the other two men could see it.

“Okay. They are searching door to door in these grids here and here and here.” His finger rested on each in turn. “This third one they’ll finish in about a half hour. There’s just time for that battalion to do one more before knocking off for the night. Which one do you think they ought to do?”

Toad and Yocke stared at the map. “This is a little like roulette,” Toad remarked.

“Yep,” Jake Grafton said. “Go ahead. Pick a winner.”

Yocke pointed. “Why not this one? It has some warehouses and some public housing projects. Those are likely. These projects — you could run four or five Colombians who don’t speak a word of English into a room and they could stay for weeks with no one the wiser. And even if the neighbors are suspicious, they won’t call the cops. They know better.”

“Sold me.” Grafton sighed. He got out of the car and went back to the jeep with the radio equipment.

In about a minute he returned. “Drive,” he said.

With the car in motion, Jake turned to Toad. “Your wife home tonight?”

“Yessir.”

“Think she’d like to ride around with us?”

“Sure. If we swing by that way, I’ll run up and get her.”

Toad gave Jack Yocke the address. When they pulled up in front, Jake said, “Tell her to put on a uniform, as old and grungy as she’s got.”

Toad nodded and walked quickly into the building.

“Nice of you to think of that,” Jack Yocke said.

“She’s only got ten more days of leave left, and I can’t spare him.”

“Off the record, way off, what do you do over at the Pentagon, anyway?”

Grafton chuckled. “Well, I’m the senior officer in a little group of seven or eight people that do the staff work on military cooperation with antidrug efforts.”

“That doesn’t tell me much.”

“Hmm. For example, we more or less have one carrier in the Gulf of Mexico and eastern Caribbean on a full-time basis now. That was one of my projects. I lost.”

“Lost? Isn’t that a good idea?”

“That’s just the trouble. Sounds like a terrific idea on the evening news or when some politician makes a speech in Philadelphia. Have a shipload of planes fly around over the ocean looking for boats and take pictures and call the Coast Guard when they see one. So a carrier home from six or seven months in the Mediterranean has to forgo maintenance and go sail around down there. The squadrons have money for a limited number of flight hours for each crew during the turnaround between cruises. With that money they have to train the new guys and keep the experienced crews sharp. Instead they spend the money to fly around in circles over the water. No one gets trained. The ships and planes don’t get the proper maintenance. And when they’re finished down south, we send them back to the Med.”

“But it sounds good in Philadelphia,” Yocke said. “Honestly, that is important.”

“No doubt. But if we have to send untrained people into combat in Libya or the Middle East, they’re going to die. They haven’t had the necessary training. We’ll lose airplanes we can’t afford to lose. And even if we dance between the raindrops and don’t have to fight, the ships will need more maintenance later, a lot more. Prophet that I am, I can tell you that when that day comes the money won’t be available. Congress will say, Sorry about that. Haven’t you heard about the savings-and-loan disaster and the deficit and the peace dividend?

“And our sailors and junior aviators don’t want to spend their lives at sea. So they get out of the service and we have to spend megabucks to recruit and train new people. It’s really a vicious cycle.”

Grafton took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “My group documents the cost of the choices. We explain the options to the decision makers. That’s what I do.”

Yocke wanted to keep Grafton talking. He changed the subject. “I’ve been looking at these soldiers today. They look pretty young to be carrying loaded rifles through the streets of a city.”

“They are young. But they’re good kids. They joined the Army to get a little piece of the American dream — a job, money for an education later, to learn a skill, to earn some respect. Young men have been joining the military for those reasons for thousands of years.”

“Can they fight?”

“You bet your ass. They’re as good as any soldiers who ever wore an American uniform.”

“But they’re not trained for the way you’re using them.”

“Nope.”

The door to the apartment building opened and Rita Moravia and Toad Tarkington came out. Jack Yocke suppressed a grin. Moravia was a beautiful woman, but dressed in khaki trousers, a heavy coat, boater hat and flying boots, she didn’t look the part.

“Hey, Rita,” Jake Grafton said.

“Captain. Mr. Yocke.”

“Jack. Please.”

“Thanks for including me on your expedition. What’s on the agenda?”

“Let’s go watch the guys do a housing project.” Jake consulted the map. “The Jefferson projects. You know where that is?” he asked Yocke.

“Yeah. I’ve been there before.” Yocke pulled the transmission lever into drive and got the car under way.

The supermarket parking lot was unexpectedly crowded. Charon walked between the parked cars and by the people pushing shopping carts to the pay phone mounted on the wall, beside a row of newspaper vending stands. He glanced around to ensure no one was within earshot. The shoppers were too busy with their own affairs. Charon peeled back the leather glove on his left wrist to reveal his watch. Then he removed the telephone from its hook. He read the instructions. No coin needed for emergency calls. Saved a quarter, anyway.

He dialed 911.

The phone rang three times before a woman said, “Police emergency.”

He spoke quickly, as fast as possible. “There’s a woman being murdered in an apartment house on New Hampshire Avenue. I can hear the screams.” He gave the address. “Better hurry.” He hung up quickly and walked back to his car, which was parked in the darkest corner of the lot with a fringe of trees and shrubs behind, blocking the view. Still, anyone in the lot could see him clearly if they only took the time to look. Predictably they didn’t.

He removed his gear from the trunk and carried it twenty feet away. Then he got out the plastique and the timing device and put them on the floor of the driver’s seat. He inserted the fuse in the plastique and very carefully set the timer. He watched it tick on the LCD display for several seconds. Satisfied, he reached into the backseat and got the one-gallon milk jug. He put that on the floor beside the plastique and unscrewed the lid. Between the lid and the jug he had used a piece of plastic wrap to ensure a good seal. Now he peeled it off and tossed it on the seat with the red plastic screw cap.

The vapors from the gasoline in the jug would fill the interior of the car. When the bomb went off in an hour the gasoline vapors would enhance the explosion and ensure that a very hot fire resulted. If everything worked as he thought it would, there would be no fingerprints left for the police. The confusion and uncertainty caused by the bomb would also slow the manhunt.

He had rigged up a half pound of plastique. That was a lot. Maybe too much. Too bad he hadn’t had time to play with this stuff and get a better feel for the proper quantity to use.

The car keys were still in the ignition. Better remove those. No use tempting some kid to break the window before this thing pops. He put the keys under the seat.

What else?

That’s it. He pushed down the door lock and carefully shut the door. It clicked. He then pushed hard until it closed completely with another click.

The first police officers on the scene double-parked. The driver locked his car door and stood on the sidewalk listening while his partner walked around the car as he checked to see if the shotgun was loaded. It was. He ensured the safety was on.

“I don’t hear any screams.”

“Me either.”

They had just started up the stairs when the building literally blew apart. Both officers died instantly. As the fireball expanded it seared the paint on cars a hundred feet away.

The backup officers two blocks away on New Hampshire saw the explosion and called it in. As the seconds ticked away the rubble heap that had been a building became a roaring inferno.

The first fire truck arrived four minutes after the explosion. Firemen flaked out their hoses and opened hydrants. More police cars rushed to the scene and additional fire trucks were directed in.

Sixteen minutes after the initial blast a green 1968 Volkswagen beetle parked a hundred feet away from the apartment building blew up. Investigators later estimated the car contained four pounds of Semtex, a Czechoslovakian plastic explosive. Pieces of the vehicle were found on the roofs of buildings as far away as a hundred and twenty yards.

Seven firemen working on a pumping truck parked beside the VW were killed in the blast. Flying debris decapitated a policeman fifty feet away. The glass in every window on the block that faced the street was blown in, cutting one woman so badly she bled to death. Over a dozen people were injured by flying glass and debris.

The police had sealed the block when Jake Grafton and his junior officers arrived. They stood for a few minutes at the police line and watched the fire in the center of the block rage unchecked. They could just see members of the police bomb squad going down the rows of parked cars, checking each one.

Jake Grafton sent Toad to make a phone call. The military had better have some EOD teams — explosive ordnance disposal — nearby if needed.

Bombs. Terrorists? Or our shooter that lacked the nervous feet?

Nervous feet. What a silly thing to say. The assassin didn’t have nervous feet.

“Captain Grafton?” A uniformed patrolman asked the question.

“Yes.”

“There’s an FBI agent at police headquarters asking for you, sir. They want you to go down there, if you can.”

“Sure. Tell them I’m on my way.”

“Okay.”

Jake looked around. Yocke was talking to Rita. He would know where police headquarters were. Jake had no idea.

It wasn’t a real forest, of course. Here on the side of the ridge in Rock Creek Park where Henry Charon stood the traffic noise was loud. Too loud. It would drown out the noises he needed to hear if anyone came along. Not that that was very likely on a winter’s night like this. Rain, cold, wind. Perfect.

He continued slowly up the ridge, making no noise at all as he moved across the wet ground without a flashlight. On his back was a pack that contained his supplies. A sleeping bag on a string hung from one shoulder.

His weapons were in a long gym bag he carried in his right hand. Three grenades, a disassembled rifle, and plenty of ammunition. Under his coat he carried a pistol. The silencer was in his pocket.

He found the little notch in the rocks without difficulty. His woods sense led him unerringly to it. He felt around carefully. Good! The cache in the crack above his head was undisturbed.

He lowered the bags to the ground and slipped away from the cave. He circled it in the darkness, taking his time, pausing often to listen and look. In ten minutes he returned to the cave and began unpacking.

He fixed a can of hot stew on a Sterno burner, taking care that the light of the small flame was not visible from the slope below. When he had finished eating and had cleaned up, he got the radio down from the crack where he had cached it and inserted the earpiece. Then he pulled out the antenna and settled down cross-legged in the dry, sheltered area at the rear of the cave to listen.

First the television audio. Since they were covering the crisis on a continuous basis, the networks had a habit of summarizing the news every half hour. He didn’t have long to wait.

The chaos on New Hampshire Avenue exceeded his expectations. No fingerprints, no evidence for the police to sift from the apartment. Henry Charon smiled. He didn’t smile often and never for someone else’s benefit. His smiles were strictly for himself.

The military curfew was news to him and he listened carefully, thoughtfully, trying to calculate what it all meant.

Obviously the troops were looking primarily for terrorists, armed Colombians. If they discovered him it would be solely by accident.

When he had schemed and laid his plans he had never considered the possibility of troops. But he knew there would be unexpected complications so he was not unduly worried. As he sat there in the darkness thinking about it, it seemed to him that the thing to do was to stay holed up until the troops found the terrorists and life on the streets returned to normal. Then once again he could melt into the crowds.

The fact that his picture had been widely disseminated didn’t concern him. He had spent too many years as an anonymous face. He had dealt at the same gas station in New Mexico for five years before the owner began to recognize and greet him. And in a city the size of Washington the inhabitants studiously ignore the faces they see, avoiding eye contact. This was no small town. Human nature would protect him.

He tuned the radio to another frequency band, the police band, and experimented until he heard the dispatcher. He would listen for an hour. That would give him a feel for what was happening in the city.

Of course, he could walk out of the District tonight and steal a car in the suburbs and be on his way back to New Mexico when the sun rose, but no. There were two names left on that list Tassone had given him — General Hayden Land and William C. Dorfman. Which should he try first?

Or should he forget about those two and make another try at Bush? About the only way to get Bush now would be to blow up the whole hospital. That would be a project! Impractical to hope one man could successfully accomplish such a project on short notice of course, but interesting to think about. This was getting to be fun.

And once again Henry Charon, the assassin, smiled to himself.

“All calls to nine-one-one are recorded,” Special Agent Hooper explained. “I thought someone from the military might want to listen to this, just for the record, since you guys are sort of in charge right now.”

“I like your delicate phrasing—‘sort of in charge.’ ”

“Anyway, I called over to the Pentagon and they suggested you. The people at Guard headquarters said you would be wherever something was happening.”

Jake let that one go by.

“Anyway, we’ll have this tape analyzed by a computer for background noise, voice prints, all of it. We’ll eventually get everything there is to get. But I thought you might like to give it a listen.”

“Where?”

“Up here.” Hooper led the way up a set of stairs. Toad, Rita, and Yocke trailed along behind Jake.

“There’s a woman being murdered in an apartment house on New Hampshire Avenue. I can hear the screams. Nineteen-fourteen New Hampshire. Better hurry.”

Hooper played the tape three times.

“He’s talking too fast.”

“He doesn’t want to stay on the line very long.”

“He’s from the Midwest.”

“He’s white.”

“He sure as hell isn’t Colombian.”

“Captain,” said Tom Hooper, looking at Grafton. He had sat silently while Toad and Yocke hashed it over.

Jake Grafton shrugged. “He could have edited that down if he had wanted. Even talking fast, he stayed on the line longer than necessary.”

“What do you mean?”

“He could have said as little as this: ‘Nineteen-fourteen New Hampshire. I can hear the screams.’ ”

“So?”

“So. You asked what I think. That’s what I think.”

“Maybe he’s smart,” Jack Yocke said. “Would the dispatcher have sent two officers over Code Red if all she had had was an address and reported screams?”

Hooper thought about it. “I don’t know. I’ll ask. Maybe not.”

“So it’s hurried and wordy and breathless. Unrehearsed, if you will. And it gets immediate action.”

“It did,” Hooper acknowledged. “Officers were there in three minutes. The bomb exploded thirty seconds later.”

“Lot of fire,” Rita Moravia commented. “I wouldn’t have expected that.”

“Probably gasoline,” Hooper told her.

Jake Grafton checked his watch. He needed to get back to the National Guard Armory and talk to General Greer. And call General Land.

“You going to be in your office in the morning?” he asked Hooper.

“Yes.”

“Could you give me a rundown on what you have on the assassin at that time?”

“Sure. But it isn’t much.”

“About ten.”

“Ten it is,” Jake Grafton said and turned his gaze to his entourage. “Well, children, the night is young. Let’s get busy.”

Henry Charon’s sedan exploded right on schedule, just as Jake Grafton was leaving police headquarters. The glass in the huge windows of the nearby grocery store disintegrated and rained down on the unusually large crowd, people there to stock up on food for the next few days. Six people were injured, three critically. Miraculously, no one was near the sedan when it blew, but four parked cars were destroyed by the blast and the intense heat. The fire in the parking lot was burning so fiercely by the time the fire department arrived that the asphalt was also ablaze.

The assassin heard the calls on the police radio frequency. Satisfied, he turned the radio off and replaced it in the dry niche in the rock above his head, then slipped from the cave for another scout around. All he could hear were the sounds of vehicles passing below, and they were becoming infrequent.

The wind was cold, the rain still coming down.

As he undressed and crawled into his sleeping bag he reviewed the events of the last few days. Lying there in the darkness pleasantly tired, feeling the warmth of the bag, Henry Charon sighed contentedly and drifted off to sleep.