John Gilstrap - Threat warning

Before the door had exploded all the way open, Jonathan saw in a glance what was happening. From posture alone, he knew that Michael Copley was an instant away from letting fly with his cannon.

Jonathan’s Colt bucked three times in his hand. He didn’t aim so much as he pointed and shot; but the. 45 read his thoughts. The three bullets stitched a straight line down Michael Copley’s spine, from the base of his skull to the space between his shoulder blades.

As the leader of the Army of God died, he pitched forward onto his face like a drunk who had finally reached his limit.

With the echo of the shots still ringing, and gun smoke hanging in the air, Jonathan and Boxers squirted into the room and did a quick sweep for any other bad guys. “Clear,” they said in unison.

“Nice shootin’, boss,” Boxers said with a grin. “Looks like we barely made it.”

“Oh, shit,” Jonathan said, pointing at the television. “I think we’re too late.”

The live television picture showed utter mayhem unfolding on the stage at the Marine War Memorial. The president appeared to be on the floor, and Secret Service agents swarmed the scene, weapons drawn. Agents and uniformed officers brandishing automatic weapons formed a tight perimeter around the spot where the podium used to be, and then a scrum of agents hurried the president off the stage on the far side.

“What the hell happened?” Boxers asked, agape. “I didn’t hear him get a single round off.”

“He must have had help,” Jonathan said. Whatever triumph he’d felt ten seconds ago had all drained away. “Damn.”

As the motorcade raced away, led and followed by the counterassault team, one with its roof hatch open and Dillon gun turret deployed, the sound of the sirens was piercing, even at this distance.

Gail made no pretense of stealth as she stormed down the hall toward Suite 1013. She vaguely noticed the Compliances Services logo on a brushed aluminum plate on the wall next to the frosted glass-paneled door. She pulled once, and when she found it was locked, she drew her. 40-caliber Glock and fired a single shot at a spot on the floor on the far side of the glass. The panel became opaque for an instant, and then instantly transformed into a cascade of a million glass beads that tumbled in a neat pile.

A fraction of a second after she’d pulled her trigger, the entire floor shook from the massive explosion that had to be the. 50-caliber Barrett. A second shot followed as she was ducking under the panic hardware on the door and scooting into the office space. The interior of the space was tiny, consisting of an abandoned ten-by-twelve-foot reception area and a single closed office door beyond it.

When she heard a third report from the Barrett, she took aim at the middle of the closed door and fired five shots through the wood panel, punching a near perfect horizontal line of bullet holes from left to right. Then she fired a sixth shot into the spot where the tongue of the lock met the jamb.

She kicked the door open, and the first thing she saw was the massive rifle poised on the top of the desk, its barrel still smoking. But there was no shooter. Her stomach seized when she realized just how perfect a target she had made of herself, literally framed in the doorway, and she dropped to a deep crouch, her weapon up and ready.

Then she saw the feet on the floor, oddly tangled with each other. She led with her weapon as she traced the feet to their owner, a man who was old enough to know better. He lay on his back with his eyes open, bloody bubbles forming around his nose and mouth.

His right hand moved in a slow, almost lazy motion to draw a little five-shot. 38 police special from the waistband of his trousers.

“Put it down!” Gail commanded. “Drop that weapon now!”

He didn’t look at her, but he seemed to hear, because he laid the revolver across his chest.

“Put it on the floor!” she commanded.

Instead, his thumb found the hammer and pulled it all the way back.

“Don’t make me shoot you again!”

Gail didn’t want to kill him. She had killed too much, and she wanted it to stop. But she didn’t want it enough to die for the cause.

Even by police standards, she now had just cause to blow the guy away. But she hesitated. He wasn’t pointing the weapon at her. He wasn’t pointing it at anything in particular, so far as she could tell.

“This doesn’t have to end up with you dead,” she said. “Put the weapon down. Please.”

The man on the floor took a huge breath. It seemed to take all of his energy to say, “We won.” Then in one startling spasm of movement, he brought the revolver up to the soft spot under his jaw and pulled the trigger.

“Oh, my God!” someone yelled from behind Gail.

She whirled, weapon still at the ready, and a young lady in a Polly professional black suit with a white blouse screamed, “No! Please don’t shoot.” She fell on the floor in the hallway and covered her head with her arms.

More office workers were swarming about now, and as the realization crystallized, panic started to spread. And Gail was the focus of it all.

It was time for her to go. Holstering her Glock, she hurried to the emergency stairs and took them all the way down to street level. From there, she tried her best to blend in with the fleeing crowd.

Franklin Demerest had whiffed his shot, pure and simple. Whether it was nerves, or Gail’s noisy sudden entry, they would never know, but that all-important first shot had hit six inches in front of the president’s chest and disintegrated the lectern he was speaking from. The presidential seal medallion was found thirty feet away.

The president had been wounded-not by bullets, but by high-velocity fragments of splintered wood that penetrated both legs. According to the White House physician, the body armor that the president was wearing saved his life, but would have been useless against the size of bullet that was being used.

The investigation was ongoing, as it no doubt would be for many months to come, but the FBI had reportedly discovered a link between the assassination attempt and a West Virginian religious cult that called itself the Army of God. Early reports were indicating that there’d been some kind of rebellion among the ranks of the AOG, as the media was calling it, and the result had been an intense battle that resulted in many deaths and injuries.

In a last feat of unquestioned heroism, a late-morning commuter named Tom Herod had thwarted a suicide bomber on the Metro’s Orange Line by noticing him as he fumbled with the safety pin on the detonator and punching the bomber in the throat. That terrorist likewise was suspected of having ties to the group in West Virginia.

While pundits and talking heads pontificated on the intense dangers of religious cults, domestic terrorism, and the ready availability of firearms, the blogosphere and conspiracy theorists were abuzz with outrageous rumors of assault teams and a helicopter raid. If any of it were true, according to the nutty rumormongers it would mean that the government had overstepped its bounds, and the entire case against the Army of God soldiers would be suspect.

Lounging barefoot and in sweats in his living room, Jonathan watched a recording of Irene Rivers from earlier in the day as she addressed a crowd of reporters. “While we are following every lead, it is simply inappropriate at this time to reveal details of the investigation beyond those that we have already provided.”

Off screen, someone asked something that Jonathan couldn’t hear, and Irene smiled. “You know, after every incident like this, there are going to be kooks who make all kinds of claims. The only two facts that I can state without any hesitation are that the so-called government agents who shot the would-be assassins were not, in fact, a part of any government agency, and that whoever the heroes are who foiled this despicable plot are intent on remaining anonymous, and are very good at doing so.”