“Bravo, Stewart.” The president clapped several times slowly. “You have an amazing memory.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Baxter appreciated Dorn’s recognizing that, even if he was being sarcastic about how he did it. The president wasn’t nearly as effusive in his praise about it as Baxter believed he should have been. He wasn’t as effusive in his praise about a lot of things his COS did as he should have been. But he was getting better, and they’d only been working together for a few weeks. Another week or two and the president would be acting more respectfully.
“There were two of them,” Baxter continued. “John Allen Muhammad was forty-one years old, and Lee Boyd Malvo was just seventeen. They were basically a couple of coward drifters who murdered innocent civilians with a hunting rifle from long range. They shot people in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia as the victims were coming out of restaurants and stores, filling up their cars at gas stations, or just sitting at a bus stop. They used Muhammad’s car as a moving sniper’s nest. The kid would lie in the back of the vehicle on his stomach and shoot through a hole in the trunk where the keyhole was. They cut away part of the backseat so he could do that. Then Muhammad would drive away as soon as Malvo had shot someone.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Muhammad was executed by lethal injection in 2009,” Baxter continued, “and Malvo was found guilty of multiple murders and is in prison for life with absolutely no chance of parole. He was spared the death penalty because of his age at the time of the killings.” Baxter shook his head sadly. “What happened to their victims is terrible, Mr. President. But at the end of the day, the system worked.”
“Did it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said it yourself.”
“What? What did I say, Mr. President?”
“You said they were a couple of coward drifters.”
“So?”
“Do you remember how long it took to catch them?”
Baxter pushed his lower lip out as he thought about it for a few moments. “It was no more than a week.”
“It was twenty-three days, Stewart.”
“Oh.” Baxter glanced at the young nurse. She was staring down at her book, but she didn’t seem to be reading. Her eyes weren’t moving. They seemed locked on one spot on the page in front of her.
“And,” the president went on, “right up until the end, right up until a concerned citizen called the police about two guys he happened to notice sleeping in a rest stop on Interstate Seventy, eighty miles west of here, late one night because he thought they looked suspicious, everyone believed those maniacs were riding around in a white van. Well, it turned out they were driving a blue Chevy Caprice.” Dorn gestured at the laptop. “The point is that two drifters with no money and very little sanity completely avoided capture for twenty-three days while they murdered ten people and critically injured three more in a fairly small and congested geographic area of this country. And all that time the FBI, the Virginia state police, the Maryland state police, the DC police, and who knows how many other county and local law-enforcement personnel were looking everywhere for them.” He paused. “But they couldn’t find them. The cops set up roadblocks, they went door to door in some neighborhoods, they begged for the public’s help. But they still couldn’t find them. It took a lucky glance by a concerned citizen. Otherwise those two might still be out there killing people.” The president put a hand to his chest, to where the bullet O’Hara had fired had entered his body. “The men who attacked our country yesterday and today are members of well-trained, well-supplied death squads. I’m convinced of that. They aren’t drifters with a few dollars left in their wallets.” Dorn’s voice was shaking. “If it took George Bush more than three weeks and a lucky break to find the DC Snipers, how in the hell am I ever going to find the assassins who shot up eleven malls and killed all those children in Missouri?”
Baxter glanced at the nurse again as Dorn ended his speech. It was obvious she wasn’t reading her book anymore. She wasn’t even trying to fake it. She was staring at the president openmouthed.
“Excuse me, Miss,” Baxter said.
Her eyes raced to his. She was mortified to have been caught staring at Dorn so hard. “Yes, sir?”
“Please leave us.” The woman stood up immediately and bolted for the door. She didn’t protest at all. “Stay right outside the office,” Baxter called as she hurried out. “Don’t go far.”
“Yes, sir,” she called back as she closed the door behind her.
“Mr. President—”
“I should have completely backed Red Cell Seven right from the beginning,” the president interrupted. “I should have given them everything they wanted.”
“No way,” Baxter retorted. “They’re cowboys. They’re going to get you in very bad trouble if you don’t do something about them. They’re a cancer on your presidency. They could end up bringing you down.”
“If I’d shown them more support, this damn thing might never have happened. They might have found out about these death squads and stopped them before they ever got started.”
Baxter rose slowly out of his chair. His heart was suddenly pounding. He had to do this. “I must tell you something very important, sir.”
“What is it?”
“You need to understand that what I’m about to say comes from a friend I’ve known and trusted for a very long time. He’s been in this town a long time, and he’s always been right when he’s told me something like this.”
“What is it?” Dorn demanded again.
Baxter took a deep breath as he put his hands down on the front of the president’s desk and leaned over it. “Shane Maddux wasn’t operating on his own in Los Angeles, Mr. President.”
Dorn’s eyes narrowed. “How do you even know who Shane Maddux is?”
“Don’t worry about it, sir,” Baxter snapped. “Worry about this instead.” He leaned even farther over the great desk and pointed at the president. “The order to assassinate you came from well above Maddux. It came from Bill Jensen.”
Dorn gazed at Baxter for several moments. Finally he shook his head slowly in total disbelief. “You’re wrong, Stewart. Bill Jensen is a fine man, a man of principle. He would never be involved in something like that. That’s ridiculous.”
Baxter rose back up off the desk and raised one eyebrow. “Is it, Mr. President? Is it really that ridiculous?” He hesitated. “Or does it make perfect sense? Is that what’s really bothering you tonight?”
“What are you saying?”
“I gave you those background checks covering Bill and Troy before they got here yesterday. I know you read them. You read everything I send you.”
“So?”
“So you saw that section in the report about Rita Hayes, Bill’s executive assistant at First Manhattan. She’d been with him for a long time before she disappeared a few weeks ago. And they had been intimate. They had sexual relations, and the information I have is that she was about to tell Bill’s wife, Cheryl, what was going on. And then she disappeared.”
Dorn gazed up at Baxter but said nothing.
“Now no one can find Rita Hayes.” Baxter leaned back down over the desk. “Are you still going to tell me that Bill Jensen is a fine man?”
CHAPTER 17
Troy kept moving through the spacious first floor, swinging the hot end of the MP5 from side to side as he cruised forward. He had to make absolutely certain there was only one stairway to the basement from this floor of the house and that this level was completely clear of resistance.