He loaded the rifle and laid it on the floor. Then he used a squirt bottle of window cleaner and a rag on the inside of the window glass. He did the entire window as he scanned the Capitol parking lot and every roof he could see.
Four men in sight on the roofs. Hundreds of people over there around the Capitol.
He had one of the radios in the toolbox. With the earpiece in his ear, he turned it on and played with it until he found the audio broadcast frequency of a television station. In fifteen seconds it was plain that the announcer was on the Capitol steps.
Listening carefully, Charon rigged the tripod and braced the rifle upon it. He turned the scope magnification to its highest setting, adjusted the parallax ring, then settled the rifle on the tripod.
He stood well back from the window, near the middle of the room. Swinging the rifle through the narrow field of view provided by the window sash, he was agreeably surprised at how much he could see. He was looking between tree branches though, and the breeze made them sway. The back-and-forth motion of the limbs made it more difficult to hold the reticle steady on target.
The announcer informed his audience that the Vice-President’s party would soon be leaving the building. He didn’t say how he knew.
If Charon made this, it would be one hell of a shot. Listening to the television audio, moving the crosshairs from person to person, he thought about some of the more memorable shots he had made. None of them had been this iffy, he decided. He wondered if he should really try this one. The images in the scope danced uncontrollably as the instrument’s nine-power magnification exaggerated every twitch and tiny jiggle.
He settled the scope on a cop and took a deep breath, then exhaled smoothly and concentrated on holding the crosshairs of the reticle as steady as humanly possible on the center of the man’s chest. Still, they moved around in a little circle. It was all he could do to keep the two filaments between the man’s armpits. Just when he thought that was good enough, the man moved unexpectedly.
How long after he pulled the trigger would he have to clear the building? Sixty seconds? Less?
And the flight of the bullet would be affected slightly by the window glass. He couldn’t open the window — an agent on a roof might see it and send someone to investigate. So he’d shoot through it. Impossible to say how much the glass would deflect the bullet. Maybe just enough to miss over this distance, a little more than a quarter mile. Maybe enough to throw the bullet ten or twelve feet off.
He thought about it as he turned the horizontal filament adjustment knob to compensate for bullet drop.
Okay. It’s going to take a lot of luck to make this shot. A lot of luck.
What he really needed was a practice shot. Well, when you thought about it, he had had a lot of those. Thousands over the years. This one would have to do the trick.
Aha! The announcer: “Here is the Vice-President now.”
Henry Charon straightened and worked the bolt, chambering a round. He snicked off the safety. He flexed his shoulders, set his feet, then settled the forearm of the rifle onto the tripod and grasped the junction with his left hand. He snuggled the butt into his shoulder and got the stock firmly in place under his cheekbone.
Now he swung the rifle toward the door of the Capitol. Someone had arranged a battery of microphones. The Vice-President ignored them and walked down the steps amid a phalanx of Secret Service agents carrying submachine guns in their hands. There was a corridor of sorts between the cameras and the people.
Behind Quayle — who was that? An army officer. And a naval officer, three or four civilians.
Charon tried to steady the rifle on the civilians, who were coming toward him down the steps. He couldn’t shoot when they were moving: they were just too small at this distance. And until they stopped and stood still he couldn’t even be sure who they were.
At the bottom of the stairs, right beside a limo, the Army officer stopped to talk to Dan Quayle. Okay, the civilians were joining the group. They were close together.
Who are they?
Dorfman! One of them is Dorfman. He’s on the list. Who is the other? Aha! That’s Cohen, the attorney general. Also on the list.
Quickly now. Breath deeply, exhale slowly, relax and squeeze, slowly and steadily. Steady … steady …
Damn tree limbs — swaying around … Squeeze slowly, gently, allow for the wind, keep the crosshairs cen …
The rifle fired.
The report in the closed room was deafening, like two sticks of dynamite. Part of the window glass blew out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Jake Grafton heard an audible thwock and turned, just in time to see Gideon Cohen spin half around and fall to the pavement.
The nearest Secret Service agent roared, “Everybody down,” and the two agents closest to the Vice-President physically pushed him headfirst into the back seat of the limo. One of them dove in on top of him while the other slammed the door.
“Get down! Everybody down!”
Jake crouched, his eyes on Cohen. Was it just his imagination or did he really hear the report of a rifle several seconds after Cohen fell?
Cohen’s groans were audible above the screams and shouts of the panicked onlookers, who were scattering or lying facedown on the steps and pavement. An agent was on top of the attorney general, bracing himself with his hands and knees so that none of his weight rested on the injured man.
“My God!” someone roared. “They tried to kill the Vice-President!”
“Get that fucking car outta here!”
The Secret Service agents pointed their Uzis at the crowd, searching. They were still standing like this five seconds later when the driver of the limo stomped on the gas and made the rear tires squeal as he accelerated away.
Three or four men were examining Cohen. Jake tried to see but couldn’t.
Where? Jake rose to his knees and tried to look for the spot where the shot had come from. All he could see was the backs of Secret Service agents. He stood.
“Goddammit, get back down here, Grafton,” General Land growled. “Never stand up in a firefight. Were you born yesterday?”
As he came out of the stairwell into the lobby Henry Charon bumped into a woman. He reached out and caught her and steadied her on her feet.
“Sorry,” he said, and headed for the door to the sidewalk.
“Did you hear that explosion?” she called.
“Upstairs, it sounded like,” he told her over his shoulder and kept going for the door.
That’s odd, she thought, staring after him. He’s wearing surgical gloves.
Out on the sidewalk Henry Charon walked north at a brisk pace, but not too brisk. Just a man who knows where he’s going and wants to get there. He reached the corner and crossed, then paused and watched an unmarked car with a blue light on the dash and a siren wailing round the corner and screech to a stop in the middle of the block, just fifty feet past the building he had just come out of.
Charon wheeled and walked east. He passed a man jogging in the other direction, toward the Capitol. “Somebody tried to kill the Vice-President,” the man shouted, pointing at a small transistor radio he carried.
Charon nodded and kept going. Behind him he could hear more sirens.
At two that afternoon Billy Enright, one of McNally’s lieutenants, who had been watching television, went into the next room and woke Freeman McNally. Freeman got out of bed and padded in to watch and listen. Someone had taken a shot at the Vice-President, and the feds were calling out the National Guard.
Freeman called T. Jefferson Brody at his office. Normally he never used the phone here for business, since it was probably tapped, but now he was calling his lawyer. “It’s me, Tee. You hear the news?”