James PATTERSON: Cross Fire

We’d already run prints on the shopping cart and sledgehammer from Farragut Square. There was no doubt anymore that Wajda was our Numbers Killer. Still, whatever he’d done when he was alive, I felt a wave of pity for him now.

“What’s this?” Sampson pointed at something in Wajda’s hand. I pulled on some gloves and knelt down to take whatever it was from between the clenched fingers.

It was a small greeting card – the kind you usually send with flowers. This one had a picture of a wedding cake on the front, with an African-American bride and groom at the top.

“It’s my engagement present,” I said. I felt a little sick to my stomach.

When I opened the card, I instantly recognized the precise block letters of Kyle’s handwriting.

TO ALEX: YOU’RE WELCOME, – K.C

AFTER FIVE DAYS of lying low with Mitch in the West Virginia woods, Denny got the call he’d been waiting for. Then it was another several days for reconnaissance in DC before they were good to go. It wouldn’t be much longer now, just a little while and he’d be a free man. A very rich, free man.

The door banged open behind him as they came out onto the roof of the National Building Museum.

He turned around, and Mitch held up a hand.

“My bad,” he said.

“Just shut the damn thing and come on,” Denny said, harsher than he meant to.

It wasn’t as if the noise really mattered. The museum was closed for the night, and the nearest threat risk was the twentysomething mope sitting downstairs at a ground-floor security desk, watching horror movies on his laptop. It was more about having spent one too many nights sleeping elbow to elbow in the old Subaru with Mitch, living off of canned food and listening to him yammer on about the “mission.”

He shook it off and walked over to the southwest corner of the roof to look out.

Traffic on F Street was light for a Friday. There was a slight breeze, with the promise of showers for later, but so far everything was quiet. The first limos would start pulling up in front of Sidney Harman Hall – or just “the Harman,” to the locals – in about fifteen to twenty minutes.

Mitch came along and waited silently behind Denny as he unrolled the canvas tarp. Then Mitch set out his gear and started assembling the M110.

“You mad at me or something, Denny?” he said finally. “We got a problem?”

“Naw, man,” Denny said right away. There was no sense in making him uptight tonight. Especially not tonight. “You’re doin’ great. I’m just ready to get this one done, you know? A little overeager. My bad.”

That seemed to satisfy him. Mitch nodded once and went right back to business. He flipped down the bipod, set the rifle on the ledge, and put his eye up to the scope. Once he’d adjusted the buttstock against his cheek, he could start dialing in.

“We’re working in a range tonight,” Denny said, keeping his tone nice and easy now. “Cars are going to be stopping all up and down the block.”

Mitch swept left and right a few times, getting a feel for the sidewalk in front of the theater. “You said these crumbums are a couple of judges?”

“That’s right,” Denny said. “Two of the most powerful fuckers in the country.”

“What’d they do?”

“You know what an activist judge is?”

“Not really. What’s that?”

“Well, let’s just say that the good old U.S. of A.’s better off without them,” Denny said. “I’ll spot ’em and you drop ’em, Mitchie, but it’s going to be fast. You’ve got to be ready, okay? One, two – then we’re out of here.”

Mitch held his position like always, but the corners of his mouth turned up just a hair. It was the closest thing to a cocky little smile Denny had seen on him in a while.

“Don’t worry, Denny,” he said. “I won’t miss.”

BY SEVEN THIRTY, F Street was one long line of black cars.

The event tonight was “Will on the Hill,” an annual fund-raiser for arts education in DC. Two dozen Capitol Hill movers and shakers were all set to perform an “inside-baseball” version of Will Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night for an audience of more of the same – congressmen, senators, Hill staffers, and half of K Street, probably.

Denny watched the road through his sighting scope. “No shortage of foxes in the henhouse tonight, am I right?”

“I guess,” Mitch said, still eyeing over the crowd. “I thought this was going to be a bunch of famous people. I don’t recognize none of them down there.”

“Yeah, well, you’re kind of famous now, too, and nobody knows what you look like,” Denny said.

Mitch smiled. “Point.”

Rahm Emanuel and his wife were just arriving. The House minority leader and Senate president pro tempore had shown up together a minute ago, grabbing a much-needed photo op in the middle of a contentious legislative session.

Each one got out of his car and crossed the redbrick sidewalk, maybe six paces, until he was under the cantilevered glass wall that hung over the theater’s main entrance. This was definitely going to be tight when it happened.

Finally, at ten minutes to eight, Denny spotted who he was looking for. A short Mercedes limo stopped at the curb.

The driver got out and came around to open the door, and the Honorable Cornelia Summers stepped into view.

“Here we go, Mitch. Ten o’clock. Long blue dress, getting out of the Mercedes.”

Right behind her, Justice George Ponti stood up. They stopped long enough to wave self-consciously at the press and the gawkers gathered behind police lines on the sidewalk. Even from a distance, Denny noticed that these two looked out of their element.

“Number two’s in the tux, with the gray hair.”

Mitch had already adjusted his stance. “I’m there.”

“Shooter ready?”

Summers took Ponti’s arm, and they turned to go inside, just a few steps away now.

“Ready,” Mitch said.

“Send it.”

The M110 gave off a familiar sharp pop as the bullet passed through the suppressor at three thousand feet per second. In virtually the same moment, Cornelia Summers collapsed to the ground with a small red blossom just above her left ear.

Justice Ponti stumbled as she came off his arm, and the second shot missed. A glass door about ten feet from the man’s head shattered into a million pieces.

“Again,” Denny said. “Now.”

The Supreme Court justice had turned back toward the car. He already had one hand on the door.

“Do it, Mitchie.”

“I got him,” Mitch said, and there was another sharp pop.

This time Ponti went down for real, and the entire block in front of the Harman was thrown into full-blown pandemonium.

DENNY WATCHED THE STREET while Mitch broke down. A steady rain had started to fall, but that didn’t stop hundreds of people in very nice evening wear from scattering like cockroaches up and down the block.

“What’s going on, Denny?” Mitch had already packed the scope, stock, and magazine away.

Denny motioned Mitch over. “Come here. You should see this. It’s amazing what you’ve done.”

Mitch seemed torn, but when Denny waved him over again, he set down his gear and duckwalked back to the ledge. Then he peered at his work.

The Harman looked like some kind of glass-fronted insane asylum. Police flashers were already rolling in the street, and the only people not moving down there were the two bodies laid out on the sidewalk.

“You know what that’s called?” Denny said. “That’s mission accomplished. Couldn’t have gone better.”

Mitch shook his head. “I messed up, Denny. That second shot–”