Never argue with a man with a gun. "Yes," Green said, "this is it." He turned to Mr. Salvador for support. "Isn't it?"
"Yes, this is it," Mr. Salvador said, climbing very gingerly out of his chair, holding his hands together in front of his chest, fingertip to fingertip, in an attitude halfway between contemplation and prayer. He had the presence of mind to look over at Vishniak's monitor screen; it had gone pale and colorless.
Then it turned brilliant green.
"You're the Big Boss of it all!" Vishniak said. He stepped forward, shoved Aaron out of the way, leveled his gun at Mr. Salvador, and began to pull the trigger. He pulled it over and over again and the muzzle flashed like a strobe. Mr. Salvador was backing across the room with his hands dangling numbly at his sides, and before long he collapsed against a window.
But the window wasn't there anymore; it had long since been blown out of its frame, and the only thing there was a closed Venetian blind with a lot of holes in it, flopping outward into the wind, betraying the warm Virginia sunshine. Suddenly, Mr. Salvador was no longer in the room.
"Jesus, where'd he go?" Vishniak said. He stepped forward into the room, looking around suspiciously. He went over to the window, pushed the blind out with one hand, and looked down.
But by that point, Aaron Green was already in the elevator.
The lunchtime crowd in the foodcourt at Pentagon Plaza had first been alerted by a loud rattling noise on the glass overhead. The roar of conversation mostly drowned this out, but a few perceptive diners looked up to see fragments of broken glass sparkling in the sun as they bounced on the greenhouse roof.
Then the body came toward them in a smooth silent arc and punched through the ceiling without any perceptible loss in speed. When it hit the glass it lost its sharply edged silhouette as a lot of stuff was forced out of it by the impact. It continued through the central atrium of the mall, now more a cloud of loosely organized
remains of a corpse, and burst across four separate tables. A couple of seconds later, the broken glass came down in a hailstorm.
Floyd Wayne Vishniak, esq.
Parts Unknown
United States of America
Letters to the Editor
Washington Post
Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. (Or Miss, Mrs., or Ms.) Editor: I have a bone to pick with you. Your coverage of my shooting spree (your way of describing it, not mine!) was the most biased and inaccurate piece of newspaper reporting I ever saw. All this year I have been reading a lot of newspapers (more than $300 spent so far) so that I could be an informed voter come November. But when I read a piece of garbage like your articles of 14, 15, and 16 September it makes me wonder if I have been informing myself at all. Or was I just filling up my head with all kinds of trash that your reporters just made up when they decided it was too much work to just go out and find out the Real Truth?
It was not a "bloodbath," as you have called it over and over. Only five people got killed. And the injuries to the diners in the food court do not count as this part was an accident. Just today you had an article about a car accident on the Beltway where five people got killed, but you never said it was a bloodbath.
You said I "roamed through the office suite firing indiscriminately." This is totally biased. I was not roaming. And I was not firing indiscriminately, or else why didn't I kill the five people who were in the brain-washing room with me? I will tell you why: because these five were average all-American citizens who I was trying to protect, not kill.
The part about the "spray of gunfire" really made my blood boil. There was no spraying. I decided what to shoot and I shot it.
Then in the article on 16 Sept. you said that I calmly and methodically went through the office suite executing people. If I was so calm and methodical then why did you write all that stuff about roaming, spraying, firing indiscriminately, etc. This shows the bias that is in your writing.
I am not a reclusive loner. As you would understand if you had to WORK for a living, it is cheaper to live out in the middle of nowhere. This does not make me a loner, just a poor honest working man.
Finally (this is the BIG POINT of my letter), every single word of your coverage makes me out to be a psycho. Like you would never even consider the idea that I might ACTUALLY BE RIGHT!
WAKE UP AMERICA! The so-called election of the president is a SHAM controlled by the MEDIA MANIPULATORS who have turned Cozzano into a ROBOT by planting a CHIP IN HIS HEAD that receives secret coded transmissions from SATELLITES. These same MEDIA MANIPULATORS have also put BRAIN WAVE MONITORS on average people's wrists disguised as DICK TRACY WRISTWATCHES.
One day I will be recognized as the hero I am for uncovering this secret conspiracy. Then you, the Washington Post, will be exposed for what you are: A TOOL OF THE CONSPIRACY that helps to control people's brains by putting out BIASED SO-CALLED NEWS.
You will be hearing from me again soon, I am sure.
Sincerely,
Floyd Wayne Vishniak
51
The Cozzano campaign was a third-party effort, which meant that it had to fight for every voter and every state. It had gotten off to a relatively late start in July and hadn't really gotten rolling until August; then Cozzano had suffered in the polls for a couple of weeks from his surprising choice of Eleanor Richmond as running mate.
Since then, Cozzano had crushed everything in his path. In city after city he strode up to the microphones, utterly relaxed and confident, shrugging off his aides, ignoring the notes and tele-prompters, and spoke. The words poured out of him effortlessly. He wasn't speaking to the journalists; he seemed to be speaking directly to the American people. In his homburg he looked like a figure from the middle of the century, like one of the men who had defeated Hitler and charted the course of empires and alliances. Compared to the sniping, weasely sons of bitches who had been leading America for the last few decades, he seemed like a throwback to the days when leaders were leaders, when there was such a thing as a great man. He looked as if he would have been right at home at the Yalta Conference, sitting with Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. Whether he was meeting with foreign leaders or tipping a hotel doorman, he conducted himself with surefooted dignity and gentlemanly grace mixed with a kind of earthy, scab-knuckled vigor.
He did not seem to be running for anything at all. He seemed to be going around the country just being himself.
Mary Catherine didn't know a lot about presidential politics, but she knew it was significant when they ended up in Boston for an overnight stay. Massachusetts never went to anyone except Democrats; the fact that Cozzano was there meant that it was now up for grabs. It meant that her father was heading for a fifty-state sweep.
They stayed at a magnificent hotel along the waterfront with a huge arch that opened up like a gateway on Boston Harbor. This was, of course, Ogle's choice; the arch made a great backdrop for television appearances, and the proximity to the harbor made it easier to bash the Democrats on environmental issues.
The campaign had rented out a floor of suites. Mary Catherine and William A. Cozzano shared a two-bedroom suite, which was normal. She came straight from the airport and got settled in while her father hit a number of campaign stops, including tours of some high-tech firms in Cambridge.
The Cozzanos traveled with a lot of luggage, which was an easy thing to do when you never had to carry it yourself, and you had your own airplane. Not all of it was clothing. Some of it was equipment that Mary Catherine had bought for use in her father's therapy. Early in the campaign this had been simple stuff, like wads of stiff putty that Cozzano would squeeze in his left hand to develop strength and dexterity. By this point in the campaign, late in September, he was way beyond the putty-squeezing stage. He was now almost completely ambidextrous. In fact, he could sign his name with both hands at the same time. The left-hand signature looked similar to his pre-stroke version, albeit bigger and lazier. The right-hand signature was completely unfamiliar, though she had to admit it looked more presidential.