Lila listened proudly as McGregor's rich baritone voice flowed from the speakers with the lyrics of Robert Burns.
Farther back in the crowd, near a group of college students who had just put on a lively dancing demonstration during a rousing rock tune, Lori Hill checked her watch and wondered if Burke would get to hear the stirring overture by Tchaikovsky, his favorite classical composer. It would be coming up shortly.
Nikolai Romashchuk stared with alarm when he turned onto Maryland Avenue and saw the unbroken line of cars parked along the curb. Then he spotted the yellow dump truck down the block exactly where it should have been. As he came to a stop beside it, one of the Peruvians began creating a deafening racket with a compressed air drill, digging a jagged hole in the pavement behind the truck. He wasn't overly proficient at the task, but good enough to fool the uninitiated. The drilling kicked up clouds of dust that began to drift northward on the moderate breeze.
Pepe came around to the driver's side to escape the noise. He quickly explained what had happened and how the cooperative policeman had worked things out so they could park the truck in the proper place. The Major got a terrific laugh out of that.
"I knew Americans were gullible," he said, snickering. "But this has to be a new high. I see everybody has his ear protectors ready."
Pepe nodded. The other two were wearing theirs, but his hung around his neck. Appearing like large earphones, they served a dual purpose. Besides protecting the ears from damaging sounds, such as that made by compressed air drills and mortar fire, the devices contained small radio receivers in one earpiece, through which they would receive the signal to fire.
"I'll be back in a few minutes," Romashchuk said. "I need to make a call. I passed a pay phone not far away."
He circled back around to a telephone kiosk and called Adam Stern at the Presidential Plaza Hotel.
"I just came from the truck," Romashchuk advised. "Everything is ready. We've had some problems, though."
"Like what?"
He told Stern about the encounter with Rodman and Shumakov. And he repeated what the investigator had said about the hit man sent after Hill being eliminated.
"It's apparently true," Stern admitted. "I just had a call from my people in Colorado. Hill contacted one of the President's key advisers. Told him about your operation. Fortunately, we had already warned the man that Colonel Rodman had lost his mind and was spreading false rumors."
"They will soon learn it wasn't false."
"True. But they won't find any KGB major. Only some dead Shining Path terrorists, whose movement will take full credit for the fiasco. You've prepared for that, I trust."
"Just as I did in Mexico. The truck and the minivan are both loaded with Semtex. It will look like they planned to destroy the evidence but got caught when it went off prematurely."
Fred Bressler's head bobbed back and forth like a spectator at a ping pong match, but his plight was nothing so commonplace. As his wife Florence had just pointed out for the fiftieth time, or so it seemed, they should have come hours earlier if they wanted to find a place to park and get out to watch the fireworks near the Washington Monument. Every available parking place within miles had been taken. Fred had never experienced anything remotely like this in Mitchell, South Dakota. He was certain he had no interest in encountering it anywhere else.
Glowing red figures on the digital clock showed 8:35 as Fred's 1994 white Chevrolet Corsica crossed the Kutz Bridge, which carried the eastbound lanes of Independence Avenue over the north end of the Tidal Basin. The traffic here moved slowly, but at least it wasn't stop and go, as had been the case a little earlier.
"When are we going to get there?" wailed six-year-old Arnie in the back seat.
"We are there, stupid," said Mandy, ten. "We just don't know where it is we are."
Fred was about to vent a bit of his anger on both siblings when a stream of thick, white exhaust suddenly began pouring out of the blue minivan they had been following. The air conditioner sucked some of it into the car and he hit the brake, backing off. As the van moved ahead, he saw the smoky-like cloud of white drifting quickly on the breeze toward the throng of people packed into the area where the tall, flood-lit Washington Monument rose majestically into the night sky.
It suddenly dawned on Fred Bressler that what had appeared to be exhaust had no exhaust odor to it. Then his eyes began to water and his mouth felt dry, his skin hot. He blinked rapidly, seeking to clear his vision. As he attempted to figure the cause of this strange distress, he felt a wave of fear flow over him. Nothing definitive, just a terrible sense of dread, an inexplicable feeling that bordered on horror. He spun the steering wheel to the right in an unreasoned attempt to escape whatever was causing his problem. It sent the Corsica crashing into a pickup truck parked near the side of the road. As the youngsters began to wail, the siren and flashing light of a motorcycle cop zoomed past.
Traffic Officer Arch Cathey had seen the thick cloud of what appeared to be exhaust and gave chase. He intended to admonish the driver about such a blatant case of air pollution. Moments after he encountered the smoke-like stream, his vision became impaired. Officer Cathey blinked his eyes and shook his head and skidded out of control.
Sgt. Rocky Hazeltine, sitting on his Suzuki police special nearby, saw what happened, flicked on his blue light and siren and gave chase. By now the white cloud had ceased pouring from the rear of the minivan. The sergeant radioed what he had seen just before overtaking the blue vehicle. As he pulled even, he stared at the driver in disbelief. The face was covered by a gas mask. He watched, frozen in horror, as the window came down and the deadly muzzle of an AK-47 appeared. Before he could take any evasive action, a short burst of fire stitched holes across his chest. Sergeant Hazeltine toppled off the motorcycle, mortally wounded.
Burke Hill waited in the Blazer at the park, anxiety building inside him. He thought it was time Roddy should be getting there. He tried to relax the tension in his muscles as he monitored three radios. One was the small handset used to communicate with Roddy, which was silent. Another was the vehicle's AM/FM/Stereo tuned to a broadcast of the symphony concert. The third was a scanner that covered the police band. Dr. Walter Brackin's rationale for the latter was that he might pick up a call for an ambulance which would require his services. It was purely an excuse for an unnecessary expenditure.
As Burke listened, he heard a dispatcher alerting officers in the vicinity of the Washington Monument to a baffling emergency. The "exhaust gas," as she called it, from a vehicle had created panic in the huge crowd. One motorcycle officer had been seriously injured, another killed by gunfire. A blue minivan was being sought.
Inside Base Operations at Andrews, the Security Police staff sergeant stopped and turned to one of the clerks at the operations counter. "You got a room we can hold this prisoner in till the medics get here?"
Rodman had come willingly, offering no hint of resistance, and as he stood there he could feel the hands relax their grip on his arms. Once they got him in a room, he knew, it was all over. The only chance he might have would be to make a move here. As he spotted someone starting to open the nearby door leading to a parking area in front, he knew it was now or never.
He jerked both arms downward, freeing them from his captors' grasp. He followed this with an outward thrust of both arms, shoving the two men with all the force he could muster. And then he bolted for the door that had just swung open wide.