Rick Mofina - Six Seconds

“Is he coming? Do you see him?” asked a woman wearing gold-framed glasses and clutching a tiny U.S. flag.

Walker’s stomach tightened.

Secret Service radio transmissions crackled softly in his ear.

“Halo advancing to Chariot-”

Halo was Secret Service code for the pope. Chariot was the popemobile. The alert rippled along the perimeter. Agents braced. Walker swallowed. His pulse quickened.

“There he is! I see him!” a woman in the crowd shouted, triggering deafening cheering that rose like a shock wave.

The pope emerged from the building, smiling and waving as agents escorted him along the barricades toward the waiting motorcade.

Walker studied faces. The woman with the glasses, the long-haired man, the old man with the camera. People waved, shouted. Necks stretched, they elbowed for a glimpse. Where was the young, blond-haired man? Walker had lost him. He’d moved.

The blond-haired man had moved closer to the bar ricade’s closest point. But something wasn’t right. This guy was close but Walker couldn’t see the guy’s eyes behind those dark glasses. His unease grew with the crowd’s cheering.

Walker’s heart was racing. The pope was shaking hands, reaching for people, touching people, heads, faces, cheeks, smiling, allowing himself to be touched, taking his time.

The agents wanted him to move faster to the protec tive bubble of the popemobile.

The young blond-haired man looked all wrong in his military jacket. His smile was not right and, dammit, why couldn’t Walker see the guy’s right hand tucked in his jacket pocket? The guy’s shoulder muscles started moving and his mouth opened as he called to the pope.

“Holy Father! Over here, Holy Father, please!”

His hidden hand sprung from his pocket.

Walker’s heart stopped.

Gun?

Was he leveling a gun at the pope? It looked like a barrel and fingers were positioning on the grip and trigger.

Walker’s training took over; he alerted the sniper commander, pulled at the pope’s shoulder to shield him just as two plain-clothed officers materialized, seized the suspect’s hand and took him to the ground amid shouting, screaming and chaos in the immediate area.

Walker and the other agents rushed the pope toward the popemobile, glancing back to see an agent hold up the weapon.

A wooden cross.

Likely wanted the pope to bless it.

False alarm.

Walker exhaled.

As they moved the pope to the popemobile, Walker’s earpiece crackled with a report from a spotter.

“…glint of a scope between the curtains of a window due south overlooking the square…”

Cursing, Walker glanced at some of the nearest high buildings-the Smith Tower and Columbia Center.

Both were in sniper range.

Agents encircled the pope and, in a calm orderly manner, moved him back inside the shelter. “An unex pected delay, Holy Father.”

The pope nodded.

It was done so smoothly no one in the crowd was aware. The spotter locked on the building on 1st Avenue South overlooking the route, then the precise location, twenty-fifth floor, northeast window.

Security moved with lightning speed, those on the ground and those on the roof.

While Walker and the other agents moved the pope out of the line of fire and back into the shelter, SWAT members stormed the suspect building, seized the ele vators and ascended to the twenty-fifth floor.

Helicopters thundered over the buildings. Much of the action was lost on the public. However, some news crews detected the sudden activity and cameras were trained on the building, and reporters began making their way to it.

Something was happening.

Sharpshooters locked on the window’s exterior. Inside, SWAT members rushed from the elevator to the room. Heavily armed agents kicked the door, rushed inside to find a boy and his grandfather, watching the pope with a telescope.

The old man cursed.

His traumatized grandson stood frozen with his hands in the air and his eyes wide open.

“I’m sorry. Please don’t kill me. I’m sorry.” Then the boy started to cry.

The old man was a retired architect.

Walker’s team had argued strenuously for the win dows and curtains in all buildings overlooking the pro cession route be shut or closed. But local anger forced Seattle city officials to push back.

Later, at Qwest Field, the pope’s open-air Mass for one hundred thousand people took place without any security incidents. As did the evening’s events at the Archdiocese.

Long after the pope had retired, Walker and the other agents continued working with updates, debriefs and briefings on the Montana site.

It was well past midnight when they’d finished.

But Walker couldn’t sleep. Adrenaline from the day’s drama pumped through his system.

He soothed himself, anticipating that the next day’s events in Lone Tree, Montana-the middle of no where-would be easier than Seattle. Just as his eyes began to flutter, Walker’s BlackBerry vibrated with a bulletin.

A rancher had reported a mysterious flash explosion at the northeast edge of Malmstrom Air Force Base. Cascade County Sheriff’s Office and the base military were investigating.

The specialized unit from Indian Head had been dispatched.

Walker’s heart rate wouldn’t be normal again until the pope’s jet lifted off for Rome.

In-flight to Montana

Within four hours of Wanda’s call, Maggie and Graham had canceled their flights and had located and boarded a departing charter that served Great Falls, Montana.

“You’re in luck,” the ticket agent had said, smiling. “A number of seats just opened up and we want to fill them.”

Maggie had paid for her ticket out of the six hundred thirty-one dollars she’d won on the slot machine. Graham paid out of his own pocket, deciding to take care of the expense claim when he got back to Calgary.

Because he had accepted the truth.

He could not walk away from the Tarver case. Even though he’d been ordered to return, he couldn’t.

Not yet. There were too many questions. Now, as the plane skirted the Great Salt Lake Desert and neared Yellowstone, and as Maggie drifted off, he searched the clouds for answers.

Emily Tarver’s dying words troubled him. And he swore he’d heard Nora’s voice when he was in the water. If he didn’t pursue the family’s deaths, he’d be haunted by the ghosts of his failures for the rest of his life because this went beyond the case.

This was about Nora.

Maybe he could live with what went wrong if he could make something right for someone else.

Maybe.

By the time the plane passed over the Bitterroot Mountains, Graham had resolved to request immediate personal leave, freeing him to investigate the case on his own and on his own dime.

And if that was denied?

He’d resign.

Would he?

If that’s what it took.

Because he’d be finished.

Because he was hanging on by a thread.

Great Falls was about a seven-hour drive from Calgary, or a short flight. Funny, he thought, looking at the snowcapped peaks reaching up to him, reaching all the way north to the Faust River where he’d stood not so long ago, drowning in guilt as he held Nora’s ashes.

He’d pretty much come full circle.

When the captain announced their descent into Great Falls, Maggie woke, left her seat and took her place in line for the restroom at the rear.

Upon returning, she met the intense eyes of another passenger, a man squeezing by her. Her polite little smile was received with stone-cold indifference, send ing a shiver coiling up her spine as he brushed by.

It couldn’t be.

He looked familiar. Like that creep from her book store.

Maggie glanced back at him, but other passengers blocked her view. She took her seat thinking, no, it couldn’t be him. It was her imagination, given all she’d been through.