Jake slammed the pimp mobile to a stop in the fire lane in front of the high-rise apartment building. He looked at Favreau in the passenger seat, then glanced in the rearview mirror at Gordon and Stacy. Stacy was looking out the side window, craning her neck to see the top of the high-rise. "That's a big building," she said.
Turning back to Favreau, who was also staring up at the building, Jake said, "You sure about the apartment?"
"I'm sure the number two-two-zero-five was written on the photograph of this building," Favreau said. "But I'm not sure what it meant. Maybe an apartment...maybe not."
Jake too looked up at the tall building. How many apartments were there in that thing? "It's all we have to go on."
"Beggars can't be choosers, right?" Stacy said.
Jake nodded. "Exactly."
They climbed out of the Cadillac.
Jake led them across a concrete patio and through a revolving door into the lobby. They stopped for a moment to get their bearings. Straight across the lobby stood a bank of elevators. To their right a security guard sat behind a long counter. He was an older man with thick gray hair swept back from his forehead and a neatly-trimmed cop mustache. The guard glanced up from something he had been looking at behind the counter. "Can I help you?" he said.
Jake heard the low-volume drone of a television and noticed the top of a flat screen TV peeking up over the short parapet that ran along the front edge of the counter. The TV sounded like it was tuned to a news broadcast. "No, thanks," Jake said. He started walking toward the bank of elevators. The others followed.
"Excuse me," the guard said.
Jake ignored him, but in his peripheral vision he saw the guard, almost certainly a retired cop, jump to his feet, and heard him say again, much louder this time, "Excuse me."
Still ignoring the security guard, Jake punched the elevator's UP call button.
"You have to sign in, sir," the guard said.
The ding of a bell announced the arrival of an elevator car. When the door opened, Jake pulled the others inside and jabbed the button for the twenty-second floor. As the door closed, Jake saw the guard pick up a telephone.
***
Sitting at the breakfast table, Gertz breathed in, held it, then breathed out. Total relaxation, that was the key to making a good shot. And today he needed to make a great shot. He checked his watch. The president was scheduled to speak in two and a half hours. Gertz allowed himself a tiny smile. His preparation had paid off. Everything was in place and ready. Exactly as it should be. He glanced at Fluker. Still unconscious and still breathing. Perfect.
***
The elevator stopped and the bell dinged again. The floor counter showed '22'. Jake glanced at his companions. The door opened. "Okay," he said and stepped out. Favreau, Gordon, and Stacy followed. Behind them the elevator door closed.
They stood in a long hallway lined with apartments. The carpet, the paint, the art were tasteful and expensive, as befits a luxury apartment building. For an instant Jake thought about the somewhat rundown apartment in the slightly seedy part of Washington, DC, that he shared with Chris Stanley. Used to share with Chris Stanley was more like it, he thought. He wondered what Chris was doing now? Probably helping track me down.
"Jake?" Stacy said.
It snapped him back to the here and now. He turned to her.
"Everything okay?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said, then smiled. "Peachy. How about you?"
She smiled back. "Peachy."
"I was just thinking about Chris. And all that's happened in the last...What's it been, two days?"
She nodded. "I know. But if we're right, we're going to stop an assassin and save the president."
"Then what?" Gordon asked. "You think he'll pardon us?"
"You haven't done anything illegal," Jake said. "Stacy either. I'll make sure they know that."
"Let's find the shooter before we start passing out pardons," Favreau said. He pointed to a brass plaque with arrows indicating the way to different series of apartment numbers. He nodded to the left. "This way." Then he led them down the hall.
The fifth door on the right bore a small brass plate beneath the peephole that read 2205. Jake motioned the others to stand on either side of the door, just as he'd been taught at the FBI Academy. Standing directly in front of the door was a good way to catch a bullet or a shotgun blast in the gut, his instructors had told him and his classmates during their training on how to property execute search and arrest warrants. Jake had never actually executed a warrant before, search or arrest, but this situation was pretty close to it, so he figured he would soon found out just how much of that training had sunk in.
Jake slid a Beretta pistol from under his jacket. Favreau drew another Beretta. Jake had stashed both pistols in the trunk of the Caddy when he thought they might have to walk through the security perimeter set up around Dealey Plaza, but since their plan-if it could even be called a plan-had changed from simply trying to spot the shooter and reporting his position to the local police or Secret Service to actually finding the shooter themselves and...and what? Arresting him? Killing him? Jake wasn't sure. They would have to play that part by ear. A lot would depend on what the German did once they found him.
But since the change of plans, Jake had dug the guns out of the Cadillac and given one to Favreau, still self-aware enough to appreciate the irony that he, Mr. Law and Order, Mr. Straight-as-an-arrow, Mr. By-the-book FBI agent, was handing a loaded gun to an international fugitive and confessed presidential assassin. There actually was a federal law on the books that made it a ten-year felony to give a gun to a fugitive.
So that was yet another crime he would have to answer for, this time probably to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which enforced the nation's firearms laws. But maybe if he bagged the German shooter and saved the president, the Department of Justice would have to cut him some slack. Then again, he had broken about a thousand laws in the last two days, so maybe DOJ's idea of slack would be fifteen years at Leavenworth instead of thirty.
Stacy pulled a Glock from under her jacket, the same Glock Jake had handed to her in the motorhome, the same one he'd used to shoot a man in the throat. Jake stared at her. She was an analyst, not a field agent. She met his stare. "We're talking about the president's life."
Jake nodded. Then looked again at the brass number plate on the door, 2205. He glanced at Favreau and whispered, "You sure about the number?"
The Frenchman shrugged. "Pretty sure."
Jake shook his head, then glanced at Stacy and Gordon. "Ready?"
They nodded together.
Stepping squarely in front of the door, Jake shifted his weight to his left foot so he could kick with his right. Only in movies and on TV did cops try to break down doors by slamming their shoulders into them. Real cops kicked doors open. "Like the lady said," Jake mumbled, "we're talking about the president's life."
Then he took a deep breath and raised his right foot.
***
Gertz set the butt of the rifle down on the table and stood up to stretch his back. A quick glance verified that Fluker was still out cold and still breathing. Gertz unlatched the binoculars from the small tripod and stepped around the table to the threshold of the sliding glass door.