Even from a distance and through two sets of doors, Harris could see that his face was a healthy pink, his movements economical and assured.
At that moment, the entourage stopped in the corridor and the President and Mrs. Jefferson entered Muldoon’s room. The glassed-in cubicle was too small to accommodate more visitors, and the bodyguards hovered outside, craning their necks, their gazes constantly on the move, their lips murmuring into their hidden radios. A pair of photographers pressed their camera lenses against the glass. The President greeted Muldoon with a handshake, then moved behind the gurney for the requisite photo op.
There was never a specific moment when Harris decided something was wrong. He never saw a maniacal gleam in the impostor’s eyes or heard some sort of evil cackle like in the movies. Real evil didn’t work that way. It was all quite … ordinary.
Sweet baby Moses, thought Harris.
There was also never a particular moment when Harris decided to take action. Making a decision implied a thought process that simply didn’t happen. Harris—and the unsuspecting President—had no time for that. Flipping the silent alert signal on his shoulder-mounted radio, he slipped through the double doors into the next in-processing room, adjacent to where the President was. He knew the security cameras were recording his movements, but the stranger next door didn’t appear to have noticed him.
Harris refrained from shouting or making any sudden movements. The patient was not yet aware of him, and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He had to move fast, though, because his movements were going to look highly suspicious to the security cameras. Those watching him were going to think he was a nutcase or worse—a bad guy.
The flow of events unfolded with a peculiar inevitability. Later—much, much later—Harris would watch the videos made by both the security monitors and the press corps, but he would remember none of it.
Seconds before the personnel in the hallway responded to the alert, the patient swept aside the thermal blanket. With his free hand, he yanked away the gown to reveal rows of dynamite duct taped to a body-hugging vest.
“Anybody takes me out,” he screamed at the glass wall, “and I go up like the Fourth of July. And I take this whole wing of the building with me.” He leaped to the floor and glared at the horrified crowd on the other side of the glass. His fist closed around the igniter, ready to detonate the explosives.
The President stood stock-still. Darnelle Jefferson gave a hiccuping gasp of sheer terror. Harris froze, too experienced to let fear get in the way. He recognized the shield tattooed on Muldoon’s forearm. It was the iron falcon and sword of a Special Forces unit.
So they were dealing with a rogue from Special Forces, as highly trained as Harris himself, a disciplined killer gone awry. The assassin hadn’t seen him yet. He was strutting in front of the wire-embedded glass while a dozen firearms were aimed at him.
Harris studied the homemade explosive vest and wondered how the hell the transport crew had failed to notice it. The explosives appeared to be plastic ordnance with an igniter operated by a toggle mechanism secured with more duct tape and connected to wires that would activate the explosives. It would have to be detonated manually, unless there was a secondary trigger he wasn’t seeing.
Outside the cubicle, bodyguards and marines broke into action. Honed by countless drills, procedure would be followed to the letter. There would be an immediate lockdown, all units would come to full alert and alarms would shriek across the vast, snowy campus of Walter Reed. Even now, a security squadron was probably surrounding the building.
Mrs. Jefferson made a tiny sound for such a big woman and fainted dead away, taking a Lifepak monitor along with her. It crashed to the floor, startling Muldoon, and Harris was sure he’d spook and ignite the explosives. His left hand, which had been gripping the manual trigger, let go momentarily as he regrouped.
Darnelle had given Harris a seconds-long window of opportunity. Knowing he had a chance was all he needed. It was only one chance, though. If he blew it, they were all toast. Or confetti, more accurately.
He burst through the double doors, everything focused on the assailant’s trigger hand. His entire body launched itself at the assassin in a single-move tactic, one he’d been trained for but had never used until now.
Muldoon went down, screaming as Harris crushed the man’s left wrist to disable his hand. They hit the floor together. Muldoon was shocky from the crushed wrist. That was something.
There was a sound like a rifle shot. Harris felt something hit him like a cannonball. Jesus, had the son of a bitch detonated the explosives?
No, the igniter, Harris realized. The impact had triggered it, but it had misfired. That was the good news. The bad news was, the failed explosion was killing him. His limbs went immediately ice cold as if everything had been sucked out of him. He was aware of movement all around, the President taking cover, the frenzy of highly trained Secret Service men jolted into action. Alarms bayed and someone was screaming. A furious ringing sound blared in his ears. The reek of chemicals seared his throat.
The world dissolved into double images as Harris’s consciousness seeped away like the blood on the floor. Sounds stretched out with an eerie echo, as though shouted down a well. “Freeze … freeze, freeze….” The barked order reverberated through Harris’s head. “Nobody move! oove, oove….”
Harris’s pulse was thready. Lying in a widening pool of blood, he imagined each system shutting down, one by one, a theater’s lights going dim after a final performance. He felt himself quiver, or maybe it was the assassin struggling against him. To die like this, he thought, at the President’s feet. That just sucked. Offended his sense of propriety. Sure, it wouldn’t matter to him after he was gone. It shouldn’t matter at all, but somehow it did.
Harris could see his own reflection in the dome of the 360-degree security camera mounted in the ceiling. Blood spreading out like an inky carpet. It always looks worse than it is, he told himself. He said that to his patients all the time.
The swarm descended, a pandemonium of black suits and dress uniforms as the Secret Service came forward to apprehend the crazy and secure the chief executive.
Harris was cold and headed somewhere dark. He could feel himself slipping, falling into a black well.
“Make way,” a loud voice barked, the words echoing, then fading. “Somebody get this man some help.”
PART TWO
“The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.”
—Alan Saporta, American musician
Two
Port Angeles, Washington Summer
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of a half-grown boy must be in want of a husband.” Squinting through her vintage cat’s-eye glasses, Mable Claire Newman defied Kate Livingston to contradict her.
“Very funny,” Kate said. “You tell me this every year.”
“Because every summer, you come back here, still single.”
“Maybe I like being single,” Kate told her.
Mable Claire aimed a look out the window of the property
