CHAPTER SIX

The service concluded. The chaplain returned to the microphone and asked everyone to stand and bow their heads. Weston, his wife, and the others on the stage did so, along with the audience. Hushed whispers from the respectful crowd stopped. The only noises Gaspar heard were muffled by distance. The chaplain began his benediction.

A split second later, the first gunshot shattered the quiet. Automatically, Gaspar’s gaze jerked toward the sniper nests he’d located—was that a rifle’s glint he saw snugged up against that HVAC unit?—then back to the stage. He counted two more rapid shots. Like a crazy break dance, Weston’s body lurched forward, propelled by the force of each impact from behind, not from any identified nest. Had Gaspar imagined the rifle’s glint?

After the third shot, Weston crumpled like a marionette whose strings were abruptly severed.

When Weston fell, he opened a window for the fourth shot, which hit Samantha Weston.

The fifth bullet struck the chaplain.

Gaspar and Otto were already rushing the stage with their weapons drawn after the third shot, but their sightline behind the stage was still obscured. They’d left Danimal behind with his own weapon drawn, scanning the crowd for the shooter as he got on his radio.

Like a brief time delay on live television, the audience began screaming and chaos erupted just as Otto reached the stage with Gaspar half a step behind. As Gaspar followed her around the left side of the stage, he counted five additional, rapid shots originating from the parking lot behind. Followed by no further shooting.

When they reached the parking lot, two men were down and two more stood over the bodies.

The chaos became choreographed as moves practiced during countless drills were automatically performed almost simultaneously as Danimal’s base security took charge.

Weston was approached, triaged, and rushed into one waiting ambulance. Mrs. Weston was rushed to a second ambulance.

The chaplain’s injuries were either fatal or minor, judging from the medics’ lack of urgency when they reached him.

More security personnel arrived. Two men were confirmed dead.

Within minutes the entire base was locked down. The voice came on the speaker advising everyone to “shelter in place.” Meaning hunker down until the situation was secured.

Otto and Gaspar hung back from the working professionals.

“We should go,” Otto said, her attention focused on the crime scene. “Those two authorized FBI agents will be around somewhere, maybe calling backup. We can’t be caught here.”

Though Gaspar agreed, he told her to wait there a minute and slipped around the edges to reach Danimal, who was questioning Weston’s bodyguards. The same bodyguards who’d failed to protect their boss. Danimal stepped aside to give Gaspar a brief account of the shooting according to the first witnesses.

“Looks like a lone shooter. That guy,” he pointed to one of the two dead men. “No ID yet. He approached the back of the stage about halfway through the service as if he was authorized to be there. When Weston stood for the benediction, he pulled his pistol and shot Weston in the left shoulder, and both legs. Mrs. Weston was shot in the right femur. The other victim is one of Weston’s bodyguards. These two guys say the shooter killed their buddy and then they killed him.”

Gaspar reviewed the crime scene briefly, then nodded. “It could have happened that way,” he said. “Where did they take Weston?”

“He requested Tampa Southern,” Danimal said. “Call me later and I’ll fill you in. I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Thanks,” Gaspar said, then approached the two bodies for a closer look.

The bodyguard lay face down, lifeless, unmoving in a lake of his own blood. Black hair. Bulky guy. Maybe six feet. Maybe 200 pounds of pumped-up shoulders and biceps. Big, but not big enough to stop bullets fired dead on target at close range.

Less than three feet away, the scrawny shooter was face up on the tarmac, one glassy eye still open and the other covered with a black patch. Like several others attending today’s memorial, grotesque scars from a healed wound gouged his forehead. One cheek was sunken because half the upper jawbone had disappeared some time ago. His Army BDUs were well worn and oversized for the wasted body inside them. Boots polished but old and scuffed as if he’d had trouble lifting his feet to walk. His deformed right hand still gripped the FN Five-seven pistol he’d meant to use to get up close and execute his target.

Brain injuries manifested in unpredictable ways. It was possible the shooter had been unable to control his homicidal impulses and simply lashed out at the nearest targets, but the whole scene felt darkly, undeniably intentional to Gaspar. Shooting Weston in the back. Shooter knowing he’d die trying to kill. Hitting Weston three times before the two wild shots injured others nearby. A crowd of military families and personnel watching.

It felt very, very personal.

No question the shooter was a man with vengeance on his mind.

But he wasn’t Jack Reacher.

Gaspar wondered if Reacher would experience a pang of regret for having his unfinished business with Weston finished for him by this damaged, deranged soldier.

After he’d absorbed all he could about the situation, Gaspar returned to Otto and said, “Let’s go.”

They slipped weapons back into place and merged with the audience as security herded them to their cars and eventually exited the base though the nearby Bayshore Gate.

While they waited in the long line of traffic, Gaspar told her about the glinting rifle barrel in the sniper’s nest, the bodyguard, and the shooter.

“The shooter’s definitely not Reacher?”

“Definitely not. Although it could have been him in the nest. Impossible to know.”

Otto nodded, thinking. “So. Disabled veteran? Maybe served under Weston’s supervision?”

“Iraq has been Weston’s location for long enough. They could have crossed paths there, even if Weston wasn’t the guy’s CO,” Gaspar said. “The shooter was disabled, for sure. Likely a vet. But if we’re betting, I’d say he was focused and lucid when he planned and executed this plan.”

“Why?”

“Two reasons. First, logistics. Getting close enough to Weston to shoot him required stealth and cleverness, but also logic and planning. He had to get on base, locate the best shooting position, have a weapon, and a long list of other things. None of that could have been accomplished if he’d suffered from a significant mental deficiency.”

Otto nodded, considering. “Maybe. One thing we know: the number of vets who suffered head injuries during both Iraq and Afghanistan is staggering. In earlier wars, they wouldn’t have survived wounds like that. We can keep so many more alive now, but the treatments aren’t great and definitely don’t fix the damage.”

Gaspar said nothing.

“Sometimes, they suffer strokes and seizures. Behavior can be erratic, even violent,” Otto said, running through her internal list of possibles. “Maybe he had a grievance against Weston. And maybe he was just not rational. What’s your second thing?”

“He pulled it off. He reached Weston, armed, on a military base designed to stop him. He shot five times before a private bodyguard took him out, but not before he mortally wounded the bodyguard. And he had physical disabilities beyond the head trauma. All of that says logic, planning, knowledge, focus.” Gaspar took a deep breath. Discussions about the abilities of the injured and disabled were bound to lead somewhere he wasn’t willing to go. “My money says the guy specifically planned to kill Weston and he was willing to die trying. But with nothing more to go on, it’s impossible to know. And, more to the point, not our case. We’ve got our own problems. So now what?”

“Assuming Weston survives, those two FBI agents will execute his arrest warrant today, no matter what,” Otto said. “Let’s see if we can get any more out of him about Reacher before we lose the only good lead we’ve got.”

“Okay. But what about Reacher?”

“What about him?”

“If he was the one in that sniper’s nest, he knows Weston wasn’t dead at the time he got into the ambulance. And he knows where to find Weston now.”

“And he’s at least thirty minutes ahead of us,” Otto said.

Gaspar increased the sedan’s speed to tailgate the car in front of them. Maybe today was the day to face Reacher after all. Get some answers right from the source. Finish this assignment and move on.