Behind me, I could hear Grant raising an objection, but I didn’t care. I had to get away from them. It wasn’t just that I’d been cooped up in a car with them for the past seven hours, though that probably had a lot to do with it.
I had so many different thoughts and emotions pinging through my brain I thought my skull would explode.
The reality of what we were doing pressed down on me. I was in Washington D.C., staying overnight in a hotel with a group of lunatics bent on assassinating the new President. Somewhere in this city, Grant and Martin had hidden a pair of M107 sniper rifles and enough ammunition to disintegrate a human being. And here I was, going right along with them.
I hitched my collar against the cold, huddling into myself, and tried to pretend the chill I felt came from the elements outside. The sidewalk below me glistened in the lights from the street and storefronts, moving faster as I picked up pace. Soon it was rushing beneath my feet. I ran for a block before stopping to catch my breath, hands on my knees. Panting vaporous gasps, I stared at unfamiliar buildings that frowned on my dubious presence.
All the roads here hit the corner at an odd angle, bleeding southward toward the heart of the Capitol. The city fathers designed its streets to draw people forward to the center of power, as if unaware of its inevitable corruption. Lord Acton’s warning came almost a hundred years too late: power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Like a singularity, the city sucked everything in, distorting it all in the process. I crossed the street, feeling exposed.
There was one reason I was with these men. One reason I was willing to think the unthinkable, let alone act upon it. I agreed with them about our country, about what was broken. Washington was an expanding abyss, a sinkhole sapping the foundations of everything in this nation, leading to an inevitable collapse. The compact was broken. Leaders no longer served for the good of their fellow citizens. The rise of the political class ensured it. Power was its own end, its own reward. Even its own punishment. In a sad way, the men and women who worshipped in the corridors of power were more the victims of the beast than its masters. Like the ancient servants of Krishna, they hurled themselves in adoration before the juggernaut to be crushed beneath their idol. Every broken promise spun the wheels faster, and no one had a clue where it was going, or how to grind it to a halt.
Everyone except us.
We had to stop it. If it meant we’d be crushed beneath its wheels as well, we had to try. I stopped walking and leaned against a lamppost, staring down the street toward the heart of the city. I couldn’t see it right now, but I knew the Capitol, the White House—it all lay directly ahead of me. I thought of Patrick Henry, his fiery rhetoric championing our cause. “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me; give me liberty, or give me death!”
Like his, ours was no passive resistance to tyranny, the kind of civil disobedience so in vogue since Gandhi and Martin Luther King. We deigned to fight power with power. Mao was right about this at least, murderous bastard that he was. Power flowed from the barrel of a gun. In this case, our guns. So long as we allowed the rulers to remain placid and undisturbed in their regal halls, none needed fear the consequences of their ideas, especially when they could so easily exempt themselves from the same, and leave the rest of us to suffer for their hubris and vanity. Nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, King George and Parliament thought nothing of passing the Stamp Act and the Intolerable Acts, insulated as they were behind an oceanic moat. They’d have thought differently had we brought the battle to London.
Washington D.C. was just as insular, hiding behind a balustrade of bureaucrats, corporate lobbyists and special interest groups whose fawning and financing blinded the elected to the suffering of their constituencies. It would take an act of uncompromising defiance to breach that wall, the very sort of action we had in mind.
I sniffed and looked at the ground again, and felt a claw of panic grip my heart, squeezing it, making it pound in my chest. Could I really do this thing? Was I just trying to convince myself that it was right? I was sliding downhill, plunging into darkness, grasping for anything.
I had no love for the President-elect. And loyalty to country could not stop my slide. If anything, such thoughts only hastened my fall. I couldn’t turn to the police for help. That would only guarantee Martin’s death. I’d seen Grant reach for his thirty-eight at a routine traffic stop. There was no doubt in my mind they’d fight to the death any attempt to apprehend them, unless, of course, they never saw it coming.
I spun on my heel, heading back for the hotel, a new thought forming in my mind. There was only one way out. I had to take it. For all our sakes.
Thirty-Three
The guys were in bed when I got back into the hotel room. Jerry had taken one of the double beds while Grant slept on the floor, leaving me no choice but to bunk with Martin or take another spot on the floor. I grimaced. Martin and I hadn’t slept in the same bed since we were kids at camp, but the thought of stretching out on the floor was less than appealing.
I changed in the dark, trying hard not to wake them, and slipped beneath the sheets. Martin groaned and turned over then opened his eyes. He frowned, flopped his head over once to look at the clock, then back at me.
“What time you get in?” he whispered.
“Just now.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Nowhere. Just took a walk.”
He grunted softly. “You get things sorted out?”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I think I did.”
“And what’d you decide?”
I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. What could I say to him about this? “Just that we gotta do what we gotta do.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He was silent a moment, and then he said, “So what’s that mean?”
I opened my mouth to answer when Grant spoke from the floor, “You two lovebirds think you can shut up and talk about this in the morning?”
Martin glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t mind him, he’s just jealous.”
“Of who?”
“Both of us, probably. He shouldda been in the Navy.”
A pillow sailed over the bed and landed on Martin’s face. He tossed it back. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
“Shut up!” moaned Jerry.
We snickered, and I turned away from them. Light from the city outside peeked beneath the vertical blinds, glowing ghostly on the floor. My smile faded as my thoughts turned back to the darkness of my decision, but exhaustion won out, and I fell asleep.
***
I woke the next morning to the aroma of coffee. The miniature coffee maker gurgled on the dresser. Sitting up, I swung my feet over the bed and dug my toes into the carpet. Grant came around and handed me a cup of brew.
“Mornin’,” he greeted quietly.
“Thanks.” I took the cup and sipped it, making a face.
“Jerry’s still sleeping, but I figured we go grab ourselves a bite from the buffet.”
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Yeah, that’d be good.”
“Besides, I want to talk to you.”
“‘Bout what?”
“Get dressed. I’ll meet you downstairs.”
I frowned but said nothing. Taking another swallow of coffee, I rose and took my bearings. Jerry still sprawled beneath the blankets on the other bed, snoring contentedly, his hair a damp mop on the pillow. Grant left the room, closing the door gently behind him. There was no sign of Martin.
I went into the bathroom and splashed water on my face, ran a toothbrush over my teeth and wet down my hair, and got dressed. I glanced in the mirror, disappointed by the puffy circles still under my eyes. Grabbing my key card off the dresser, I slipped out of the room and headed downstairs.
The buffet was little more than a continental style breakfast, with some additional fruit and
a do-it-yourself waffle iron thrown in for good measure. I poured a waffle and grabbed some fruit juice, and spotted Grant sitting at one of the tables with Martin. They sat tucked into a private meeting room, just off the main dining area, which was empty anyway.
The same talons of panic that raked my insides yesterday renewed their assault. Grant waved me over. I nodded in their direction and turned around at the waffle stand, as if waiting for my breakfast to finish cooking. In truth, I stood there shaking.
Intuitively, I knew it was a panic attack. That’s what I’d been having lately and now more frequently that we were actually in D.C. I even knew why I was having them, though that knowledge was little comfort. It felt like I’d stuffed some sort of horrible monster into a box, and it kept trying to pop back out, and my job was to stuff it back inside, sit on the box, and pretend nothing was wrong.
Because if I let it out, I’d have to face it.
I took a deep breath, forcing the emotions back down, burying them beneath my veneer of control.
Whatever it was Grant thought he needed to say—especially if it had to do with my walk last night or the decision I’d reached—I’d have to fake my way through it. There was plenty of reason to be frightened by what we were here to do. I wasn’t lacking for convenient excuses.
The light clicked off on the waffle machine. My breakfast was ready, and I’d already lost my appetite. I’d have to force myself to eat. I flipped the iron open and dug out my waffle, burning my fingers on the hot plates. Swearing quietly, I put it on my plate. I studied my fingers as I walked to the table to join them. Oddly enough, the physical pain felt relieving.
“Morning,” Grant said again as I took my seat. He rose and shut the door behind me, closing us off from the rest of the hotel and blocking an easy escape.
“Likewise,” I said as he returned to the table. “You’re sounding chipper.”
“Nah.” He grinned and put some butter on his muffin. “I just get excited this close to a mission. How about you? Excited yet?”
I tried to smile. “I dunno. I guess. I feel pretty jumpy.”
“Yeah. You look it. Gotta control that.” He bit into his muffin. I stabbed my waffle, grinding through it with my fork.
“I’m trying.” I stuffed a bite into my mouth.
“Where’d you go last night?”
I glanced from him to Martin. Martin kept his head down, eating quietly. I cut another piece and looked back at him. His smile was gone. “Just for a walk,” I answered, raising the fork to my mouth. “You know. It was a long drive.” I shoved the fork in.
After a moment, he pursed his lips and nodded.
“So I wanted to ask you something.”
“Shoot.”
“It ain’t something we trained for—and for that, I owe you an apology. We shouldda covered this.”
“Can’t think of everything, Grant,” said Martin. I looked his way again. He still kept his head down, grazing from his plate.
“Doesn’t matter. Here’s the thing.” He leaned over the table, motioning me closer. I moved forward to listen. “You think you could set up a shot and take it from a walking position?”
I frowned. “Explain.”
“Like say we had to reposition ourselves closer, in a hurry. Say you couldn’t set up from a prone or kneeling stance. You just had to dart around a corner and shoot.”
“Would you be spotting?”
“Yeah, but I probably wouldn’t be right next to you. We’d communicate over the phone.”
I scratched my neck. “I don’t know. Hardest thing would be holding the gun up. It’d be a little like firing blind.”
“But could you do it?”
“There’s no way I could guarantee hitting the target, you know? I guess it’d depend on how far away we were. Why?”
He shook his head. “No reason. Don’t worry about it.”
“Something happen?”
“Nah. We’re good. Martin and I are just thinking through the contingencies.”
“Basically,” Martin drawled, looking up for the first time, “we just want to be sure nothing stops this op. You get that bastard in your sites, just start firing like the blazes, and don’t stop until your gun is empty.”
I swallowed a bit of waffle. “You could do that, I suppose. You might not hit anything, though.”
“Then again, you might hit too much. Might not matter, though.” He returned to his breakfast, poking about his plate. “You get enough people at an event like this and start blasting away with fifty caliber rounds—that alone would be enough to spark a war.”
My fork slipped from my hand. Was he serious?
“See, it’s the shock and awe that we’re looking for,” added Grant.
I stared at them, unsure whether or not to believe what I was hearing. My mind spun.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’d still like to see the bastard put down. But starting the war takes priority over that.”
“Well,” I said. “I suppose if I didn’t have to hit the President, I could dart and fire, like you said—”
“Keep your voice down,” Grant warned.
“Sorry. I guess I could do the dart and fire thing.”
“You still gotta aim,” he said. “There’s people up there we might not want get shot. Like the Chief Justice.”
“Supposedly one of the good guys,” Martin added.
“Yeah. Well. I guess I’ll think about that more.” I retrieved my fork and resumed eating. My heart still thudded, but the tension released. It felt palpably different.
“Why don’t you see if Jerry’s up yet?” suggested Grant. “Then we got some sightseeing to do.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” I dropped my fork and scooted out of my chair, ready to hurry back to the room. As I left the dining hall, I heard Martin say to Grant, “Told you so.”
Thirty-Four
I tried not to think about what Martin meant by that. He and Grant always talked about us behind our backs—always planning and strategizing. The manipulation was so second nature, I doubted they even realized when they did it.
Martin’s words teased me. They might not have been more than just words. I didn’t dare grasp for the slender hope he dangled in front of me. Even if we didn’t actually kill the President, he still meant to start a war, and that was sufficient cause for concern. There was no sense in getting excited about it. I slid my keycard in the lock and opened the door. Inside, Jerry was making the bed.
“Hey,” I said. “You want breakfast?”
“Is that where you guys went?”
“Yeah. Grant thought you needed your sleep.”
He smirked. “He did, huh?”
“It’s what he said.”
“Didn’t know he cared.”
“Don’t know that he does. But he sent me up to get you. Once we finish breakfast we’re going sightseeing.”
“Sightseeing. You mean we’re picking our sniper’s nests and such.”
“Yeah, well, that. Now they’re saying maybe we don’t have to kill the President.”
Jerry stopped moving and stared at me, slack-jawed. “Excuse me?”
“You know, we still gotta set up and take shots, but, uh—the mayhem itself might be enough to—you know: spark the government into the whole martial law thing.”
He continued staring at me a moment longer, and then a sly grin spread across his face. “Is that what they told you?”
“Yeah. Just now.”
“They’re playing you, Peter. Ain’t no way they’re gonna put us through all that training, drag us down here with the M107s, and have us not kill the bastard.”
Martin’s words to Grant as I’d left the dining hall came fluttering back to me. Jerry was right, of course. This was a ploy to test me, or calm me down, or something like that. I was being stupid to think it was anything more.
“Well,” I cleared my throat. “You may be right—”
“I am right.”
“Yeah, maybe. Either way, we ne
ed to get breakfast and get outta here.”
“Shoot, I ain’t got no problem with that. Still, it’s kinda surprising.”
“What is?”
“You. Knowing your own brother’s trying to play with your head, and you not minding. That just don’t make sense to me.”
I half-smiled. “When did you get so concerned for me?”
He stared at me silently a moment, sitting against the dresser. Then he said, “Alright, I guess I’m not. Don’t have to care more about it than you do. I’m just saying, if I were you, I’d want to know why they keep trying to trip my head.” He walked past me into the hall, saying as he did, “But that’s your business, isn’t it?”
I didn’t answer as the door closed behind us.
***
Martin and Grant didn’t add anything further to the matter once Jerry joined us for breakfast. It may have been that things were sufficiently settled in their minds at that point, or that the crowd had grown in my absence and presented us with too many ears to talk freely. Or they’d just quieted down simply because Jerry was with us, and there were things they didn’t want discussed in his presence. I had no idea where the truth lay, and no easy way to find out.
I’d begun to think Jerry was on to something, perhaps even privy to conversations about which I remained unaware. That thought alone was disquieting, and only added to my anxiety, but there was nothing else I could do with those emotions. I stuffed them into the box along with the rest of the monster in my head, sat on the lid and pretended nothing was wrong.
We finished breakfast around nine and headed out the door. The snowstorm from the previous day had vanished into a clear blue, cloudless sky, bright sunshine, and a brisk chill in the air. We drove first to the Capitol building and parked some distance away, climbing the steps to the platform already largely finished. The platform itself lay 10,000 feet square, built of wood so as not to harm the Capitol itself. Yellow construction tape and steel barricades cordoned off the surface, but we were able to get a good look at it. Seeing the podium where the President-elect would take the oath of office, we sighted down its length to the preferred positions Grant and Martin had mapped out for us back in Rochester, before flaming the map into ashes on the floor of the Knapps’ gun shop. We said as little as possible during this time, hoping we looked like all the other tourists milling around on the Capitol steps. Directly in front of us, the empty lawn of the National Mall stretched away toward the thick spire of the Washington monument. In a few more days, the Mall would be filled with millions of people come to watch the Inauguration. Just to the right, the next tallest tower marked the apex of the Old Post Office building. Two hundred and seventy feet in the air, there was a clear line of sight from the bell tower through the bullet-proof panels to the podium below us. As thick as they were, I had no doubt the armor-piercing rounds Grant had procured for us would punch straight through those panels.