Джеймс Паттерсон - Target - Alex Cross

Mahoney’s work cell rang and didn’t go to that robotic voice. I went into the other room, listening to the ringing. He never answered. I left a message, went back to the kitchen. “What’s going on?”

Nana Mama said, “Capitol Hill Police are ordering congressmen and senators to stay in their offices while dogs are searching all federal buildings.”

On the screen, Blitzer sent coverage live to the White House, where the press corps was in pandemonium, shouting questions at Dolores St. Mary, President Hobbs’s shocked and rattled press secretary.

“What’s the president’s condition?” one yelled.

“Who’s in charge, Dolores?” shouted another.

“Who’s running the country?” a third demanded.

The press secretary held up her hands, said, “Please, we are going to handle your questions as best we can, but today’s events are unprecedented and evolving at a rapid pace. We don’t yet know the president’s condition other than he is alive, as is the secretary of defense. We’re waiting and praying for them just like everyone else.”

She took a deep breath. “I’m going to introduce U.S. attorney general Samuel Larkin, FBI director Derek Sanford, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Alan Hayes.”

The three men looked like they’d been through a firefight when they climbed onto the dais. Attorney General Larkin went to the lectern.

Larkin, a powerfully built man in his fifties, was no stranger to controversy or conflict. He’d had a reputation as a crusader and social climber when he was U.S. attorney for Lower Manhattan, and he often was accused of grandstanding in events. The late president, Catherine Grant, had named him to the post, and he’d had to survive a difficult nomination and confirmation process.

Since then he’d been an attorney general with remarkably good approval ratings, so good that James Hobbs had kept him on after taking the oath of office.

But that day Larkin was profoundly somber as he put on reading glasses and glanced at a prepared statement before looking straight at the cameras.

“President James B. Hobbs was shot by an unknown assailant this morning. Seconds before that attack, treasury secretary Abigail Bowman was shot and killed in cold blood in New York. Seconds after the president was shot, Secretary of Defense Harold Murphy was also severely wounded.”

He paused, looked down as if he could not believe what he was about to say, and then raised his head up and went on in a commanding voice. “Under the Twentieth and Twenty-Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and by the Succession Act of 1947, with the president incapacitated and the office of vice president vacant, power passes to the Speaker of the House, and if that office is vacant, to the Senate president pro tempore, and if that office is vacant, to the secretary of state. If that office is vacant, the secretary of the treasury assumes power. If that office is vacant, the secretary of defense is president.”

Larkin swallowed hard then firmed the set of his jaw. “It is my miserable task to inform the nation that West Virginia senator Arthur Jones, the Senate president pro tempore, died of a heart attack at GW Medical Center earlier this morning.”

He held up his hands, shouted, “Let me speak!”

The rabble quieted.

Larkin said, “I must also inform the nation that about an hour ago, at a quail-hunting ranch in West Texas, Speaker of the House Matthew Guilford and Secretary of State Aaron Deeds were assassinated by long-range snipers. We’ve only just gotten word.”

Gasps went up from a shocked press corps.

“It’s a coup,” I said in shock and awe. “A coup attempt in the United...”

“What does this mean?” a reporter shouted. “So who takes office?”

The attorney general said, “Under the order of succession, with the secretary of defense incapacitated, I do.”

More shouting. “You’re assuming the office of presidency?”

“I am,” Larkin said. “I did not seek this role, but our nation is under attack. Make no mistake, our country, our Constitution, our way of life, it’s all under attack, and because of that I will take the oath of office as acting president, working closely with General Hayes and FBI director Sanford in defense of our country.”

Before the reporters could yell anything, Larkin said, “To that end, after my swearing-in, I will sign executive orders giving full authority to Mr. Sanford and the FBI to implement the U.S. Justice Department’s assassination-contingency plans and to lead the investigation to uncover who was behind this coordinated attack on our democracy. I will also sign orders instituting a state of martial law in the United States of America for the next one hundred hours.”

“What?” I said. “Holy... has that ever happened?”

“Nothing like this has ever happened,” Nana said.

Larkin ignored the reporters freaking out in the White House press room and left.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Hayes went to the microphone.

“All travel in U.S. airspace is suspended for the duration of martial law. All planes currently in the air out of New York, Washington, and Texas are being ordered to the ground and impounded. All other flights in the air will proceed to their destinations.

“All public-transit systems will halt. Drive if you have to, but know that your vehicle, especially in and around the District of Columbia, is subject to search. We will find whoever is behind these assassinations, and we will find them—”

I heard the doorbell before the front door opened and I went to the hall to see Mahoney rushing toward me. “Let’s go, Alex,” he said. “We’ve got work to do.”

Sitting in the Suburban in the driving rain, snarled in traffic trying to get on the Brooklyn Bridge leaving Manhattan, Martin Franks was listening to 1010 WINS all-news radio about the attacks.

Franks swallowed hard against the searing pain in his upper right arm. Waiting for the narcotics to kick in, he checked the belt he’d placed as a tourniquet just below his shoulder and just above the gaping wound.

The treasury secretary’s bodyguard’s second shot had blown through Franks’s upper right shoulder, shattering the humerus bone and destroying nerves. Years of training was the only thing that kept Franks from blacking out in agony.

At the first stoplight south of the church, the assassin had looked in the rearview, saw no flashing lights, and dug with his left hand in his pockets for the two things he always carried into battle: commercially made foil packages that contained bandages treated with clotting agents and antibiotics and a small envelope containing forty OxyContin pills.

Franks shook six pills into his mouth and chewed them as he tore open his shirt. Swallowing the pills, he used his teeth to rip one clotting bandage free of the foil.

He slid it in under his shirt. When he stuffed the bandage in the entry wound, he almost fainted. When he got a second bandage and used it to stuff the exit wound, he’d dry-heaved and moaned.

The light turned green. Shaken, woozy, not thinking straight, Franks drove on rather than trying to take a left onto John Street.

His original escape plan called for him to abandon the Suburban as soon as possible, then get off the streets and use the subway to get uptown to Penn Station, where he’d catch an Amtrak to Albany and points north.

But being wounded like this changed everything.

Franks had to use the car to take him someplace far away where he could call for a specialist to help. The specialist would cost Franks hundreds of thousands of dollars, no doubt, but he’d live. He’d live and he’d...