The Threat

Squatting in front of the satchel, he tried to fight down the terror. His throat was so dry he couldn’t swallow. He could barely think. But he had to. He might have only seconds left.

The warbler circuit. They’d use that for the detonator.

In that pressurized moment he realized that though his body was on the edge of animal panic, he could still think. Still act. As he’d always been able to when decisions had to be made.

If it ended here … better than in an abandoned factory in Bosnia.

If you run, you meet the bullet.…

“Keep those idiots back!” he screamed at McKoy.

“Get away from it!” the agent howled back, face mottled dark. Past him the spectators milled. Dan couldn’t believe it. They were pointing cameras. Chattering on cell phones.

Dan nodded, but for reassurance, not to acknowledge an order. He switched his attention back to the blackly waiting satchel. Reviewing his options as McKoy shouted again, swore, voice cracking raw. As Marine One, blades clattering with a hellish racket, banked and headed off, rotor-chop fading into the honking of stalled traffic. At least the president was safe. Whatever that was worth.

He put out fingertips and brushed the leather surface.

Maybe he should back off, as McKoy was telling him to. But screw McKoy! Once the president was safe, the protective detail wasn’t in charge anymore.

He was the military aide. This was his responsibility.

He rubbed his face, trying to focus. This … thing was no crude homemade, strapped in duct tape and pushed into a mailbox. This was professional. He didn’t even want to think about by whom. Not right now.

He remembered the guy who’d carried the briefcase into Hitler’s bunker.

Somebody had tried to motivate him. Make him just like von Stauffenberg. Make him want to be a killer. An assassin. Or at least to look exactly like one, after the fact.

The honking had stopped. McKoy wasn’t shouting anymore either. The quiet felt eerie after the tremendous racket from the helo.

He could almost hear the case ticking. Though of course it wouldn’t tick.

Forcing his hands to function, he unsnapped the broken latches once more. He lifted out the “device,” as McKoy had called it. Then glanced around, judging the crowd that now entirely surrounded them. McKoy, assisted now by a rent-a-cop from the mall, was trying to move them back. But the public wasn’t cooperating. They kept edging in. Didn’t they have any fucking police here? Or any sense?

He couldn’t just cut the cord. Whoever had put this together would have anticipated that.

The smart thing would be to just leave it. Retreat, call the D.C. bomb squad, help McKoy keep the crowd back. But it might go off then. And whoever the conspirators were, they’d flee, or go to earth.

To try again. And maybe, next time, succeed.

It might explode. And kill him.

Last chance here, he told himself. You really should do the smart thing and back off.

But if it exploded … they might never find out who’d made it. Where it had come from. And who had made him the patsy.

And that, at the end of everything, made it his problem. To figure out, or die trying.

Taking a deep breath, he lifted the plastic case in both hands. The battery pack came up with it, dangling on the cord.

Leaving the satchel behind, he carried the bomb toward the bank. The crowd at the ATM edged back. Remembering the Beretta at last, he pulled it out of his belt and held it up. A gun: that they understood. Shrieking, they scattered, dropping purses and checkbooks and Dillard’s bags.

He set the thing down near the wall of the bank, hoping the brick, and whatever reinforcement they had around the vault, would stop any flying debris from the blast.

He cocked the pistol, and aimed.

THE AFTERIMAGE ARLINGTON

NATIONAL CEMETERY

The grass, as green that spring as grass ever grew. The breeze, soft as any had ever blown.

On the hillside overlooking the river men and women in uniform stood at attention. Civilians in dark suits and black dresses stood with bowed heads, self-conscious amid the military ceremonial, the funereal ritual.

The crack of rifles, three times three, shattered the air and echoed from the serried rows of stone.

When the last note of Taps died away, the gathering broke up. The participants, subdued, came back along the wending paths two by two or in straggling groups.

Dan, in a new set of blues, paced alone, hands locked behind him. He blinked now and then, caught up in his thoughts rather than the bright day.