Art strolled easily, his hands in his pockets. His FBI shield, clipped to his black belt, was the only official ID he needed, being a ranking and easily recognizable special agent of the Bureau’s L.A. field office. His specialty was OC, organized crime investigations, an area he had worked mostly in for fifteen years, and exclusively in for the last ten in the City of Angels. In rank he was fourth in L.A., under Lou Hidalgo, Jerry Donovan, and Special Agent in Charge William Kileen. Art liked to think that the Irish blood at the top was a sign of luck, at least for himself and his fellow agents, but he also knew there was a long tradition of Irishmen in the Bureau, dating back to its beginning. There was an abundance of the people from across the sea back then, almost all sturdy, patriotic individuals who took to their new home quite well. Art’s ancestors had had no such luck in the early 1900s. Just avoiding the lynch mobs his grandmother had told him about seemed to have occupied much of their time in Alabama. He didn’t put much stock in the belief that something was owed the black man, though, instead believing that one’s true grit could be measured by exploiting his own abilities. Some called it pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Art called it having balls…and using them.
He stopped at the corner of Wilshire and Figueroa, the northeast corner of the Hilton’s block-square complex. There were a number of uniformed officers of the Los Angeles Police Department standing at several points in the intersection, some near the open-doored squad cars that blocked the streets for two blocks in all directions. Art could see, south on Figueroa, the more heavily guarded area near the presidential limousine, which was hidden from view under the south side covered drive. Numerous black and some white chase-and- lead vehicles were visible lined up through the intersection of Figueroa and Seventh. The short covered drive, with both its entrance and exit on Seventh, was totally hidden from Art’s line of sight, but he had seen it many times. It was similar to the one on the north side, though not as ornate, for lack of a better word. Anything other than his beloved, comfortable TraveLodge was ornate to Art.
Catercorner from the Hilton was a Los Angeles landmark, the 818 building, called the ‘eight one eight’ by the natives. Its light red masonry facade had been refurbished ten years before, when Art was beginning his tour with the L.A. office, and the interior was restored as faithfully as modern civilization would allow to its early-1900s decor, save the large, glass-encased show windows on its street sides. The old architecture of the city was a check in the pro column when Art was considering a move from the Chicago office to the West Coast. It reminded him of the beautiful antiquity showcased in his native Alabama, though scholars of design would tell him that the two styles were products of totally different influences. Art didn’t look at the subject that deeply. His was a simple appreciation: The buildings looked nice to him.
Atop the 818 a single two-man counter-sniper team was visible, the spotter’s head a foot or so above the tiny circular silhouette of his partner’s. Art knew the routine: the spotter would scan a sector, his slice of the pie, with the naked eye, using his binoculars only to take a closer look at what was seen with unaided vision. It might have seemed strange not to use the magnification of the powerful Bushnells. Not so. The unaided eye was the perfect tool of the spotter, able to detect motion over a wide area, which was the basis of his training. See movement where it should not be. The rest, following an instantaneous decision, would be up to the rifleman.
The engines of the war wagons behind Art started, signaling that the president would be leaving soon. He stretched out his left arm to uncover his simple, black Casio digital. Ten-thirty. With any luck he might make it home by one after accompanying the motorcade to the airport. His Bureau Chevy Caprice was only a few feet away, nosed south on Figueroa. He spit the wad of gum into the gutter—the flavor never seemed to last too long, or be very satisfying—and started for his car.
* * *
James ‘Bud’ DiContino, the Deputy Adviser for National Security Affairs, commonly known as Deputy NSA, labored down the stairs of the Hilton with his stainless-steel-edged Anvil briefcase in his right hand. He could have given it to an aide to carry, but the contents were sensitive and ripe from the meeting between his boss, NSA Jeremy Paley, the president, and the visiting British foreign secretary. His late wife had given him the case after some subtle comments about how distinctive yet practical it was. At the moment it was neither, feeling simply like a ton of weight, and making him wish there had been room in the elevator.
He didn’t really mind, though. This job beat the prospective future of his last one. An Air Force colonel working on defensive penetration systems for the Stealth bomber program in a time of budget slashing did not feel totally secure in his position. The challenges were gone, for him, in the military. Thirty years had been enough. Now he was invigorated by public service. It was exciting and ever-changing, and, most prominently, worthwhile, even with the political BS that came with the territory.
Lugging twenty pounds of material in his shiny briefcase, however, was anything but exciting. Bud looked at his watch as he reached the bottom of the stairs. Ten thirty-one. His wife would slap him if she were there. His lifelong habit of unconsciously checking the time every few minutes had grated on her nerves to the point that he had been required to remove his watch whenever he was at home.
‘We have clocks, sweetie’
was her explanation. He missed her.
The heavy fire door moved against Bud’s weight, opening into the hallway off the south lobby. He turned left at the direction of a Secret Service agent and walked quickly to meet the presidential entourage, which had already reached the ground floor and headed out to the covered drive. Bud stopped upon reaching the expansive lobby. The desk was to his left, and to the front he could see through the glass walls, watching as the president, his chief of staff, and Jeremy bade farewell to Foreign Secretary Smith with double-grip handshakes. Again Bud checked the time. Ten thirty-three. He looked back up, waiting for the president and his two advisers to get into the first limousine. That would be his cue to exit and hop into the follow-up car.
The handshakes ended and the president, a tall, snowy- haired man, stepped back toward his limo with a toothy smile stretched across his deeply—he would say distinctively— lined face. Then Sam Buck, the president’s personal Secret Service bodyguard, reached for the chief executive. His hand had barely touched the president’s sleeve when all hell broke loose.
* * *
The sight reminded Art of his short stay in Vietnam, all played in slow motion through the windshield. He first saw one streak of fire come from a hidden part of the 818 building and dive down to an area at the south end of the Hilton, followed quickly by a thunderous crack and flash. A second streak followed from the same unseen point, shooting through the smoke trail left by its predecessor and exploding closer to Figueroa in what looked to be a much fierier blast.
Art’s cop instincts instantly took over his actions, throwing his body out of the driver’s door into the street. His Smith & Wesson 1076 was already in his right hand when he rolled to his feet, pointing in the direction of the 818. There was no cover where he stood. For some reason the door of the Chevy had closed, leaving him crouched a few feet away in the open.
Then came the gunfire. A shitload of it, he thought. Mostly from where the rockets—
they had to be rockets
—came from, steady bursts from familiar-sounding weapons—M-16s. Then the distinctive cracks of repeated rounds from the counter-sniper teams atop the hotel. The others must have been blocked out, but
they
had a target. Art crouched and ran to the east side of the street for cover against a building and moved swiftly along its wall toward Figueroa and Seventh, looking alternately up to see where the Service rifleman was firing and then back to his front. Automatic fire from the bad guys was kicking up dust and fragments as the .223 rounds impacted the street and sidewalk. For the first time Art could see the impact area in the covered drive, though most of the scene was obscured by smoke from a burning black limo.
Dammit!
He looked behind. Three LAPD officers were crouched almost on his ass, following his lead, and, in the background, Art saw the war wagons disappear east on Wilshire, obviously going around the block. It was the 818!
Across the street two Service agents, one with an Uzi, and the other with a pistol and clearly injured, emerged from the drive and ran to the intersection’s center, finding cover behind a disabled chase vehicle. They immediately began returning fire and, almost as quickly, the injured agent caught some rounds in the head, which exploded as he crumpled into a ball at the side of the bronze government sedan. The instinct to go to the aid of a fallen brother lawman was suppressed by the reality that they had to get to the source of the fire.
Art peeked around the corner. About halfway down the already bullet-scarred Seventh Street face and five stories up, the fire was coming in steady streams from two windows. One of the war wagons came tearing around the comer of Seventh and Flower, one block east, and skidded to a stop over the curb at the main entrance. Its doors and tailgate swung open, disgorging the black-clad Secret Service CAT team. Two of the agents on the Chevy’s street side, one lying on his back, returned fire almost straight up as their three comrades raced into the building. A burst of fire stitched up the sidewalk to the cover of the building’s corner, catching Art with some shards of concrete kicked up by the ricochets, most hitting his jacket. One caught him on the right jawline and a trickle of blood began to flow from the half-inch wound. He recoiled around the corner, cursing in pain. One of the cops covered the cut with a white handkerchief, which rapidly turned to red.
“Fuck! This shit hurts!”
“Hold on, pal,” the senior cop, a three-striper, said. “It looks like it hit a vein.” He pulled back the stained cloth and probed the wound, feeling the dime-size fragment under the flesh.
“To hell with it,” Art shouted, pulling away. The handkerchief fell to the sidewalk.
The amount of fire from above dropped off. Art looked around again and could see muzzle flashes from only one weapon, but the rapid crack-crack of the long guns high above picked up, peppering the window where the lone source of fire was coming from. Puffs of reddish dust spurted from each impact on the brick frame.
“You guys game?” Art asked, seeing that they were. “Let’s lay some fire on.”
“Gotcha,” the sergeant answered, looking back at his two subordinates and motioning to a white Caprice behind the bronze sedan. Its roof had been opened like a sieve, and its windows spiderwebbed. “On my go.”
Art brought his gun up. “Ready cover.”
“Go!”
The two patrolmen, one still in his peaked cap, sprinted low the forty feet to the cover of the big car. Art and the sergeant stepped from the corner and fired up into the window. It was a long shot for a pistol, but the rounds were meant mainly to discourage. “Out!”
Both men returned to cover, ejected their spent magazines, and inserted fresh ones. The two cops were holding their guns above the trunk in two-handed grips, but not firing. Then it was clear why.
“It’s quiet,” the sergeant observed. He wasn’t exactly right. A lone Service rifleman was squeezing off rounds into the windows, which were all shattered, leaving only frames between the stone columns.
Art looked around the corner’s edge carefully. He saw two black suited Service men moving along the sidewalk against the wall of the 818, their guns trained upward. They weren’t the two who had rolled out of the Suburban. Those two were still at the vehicle’s edge, aiming up, one apparently trying to clear a jam.
For a few seconds it was quiet, almost silent except for the crackling of the burning car in the Hilton’s drive.
Then it seemed like the lights went out.
The blast threw Art back, though it was mostly a reflexive act. He landed on the sergeant as the thunder of the explosion rumbled in the street and shattered what appeared to be every window in the nearby buildings. He didn’t know how he ended up lying facedown very close to the wall—the sergeant must have rolled him there—but it surely saved his life, considering the shower of glass that rained down from above. Smoke and dust were everywhere, turning day to near night, and the sound of debris impacting the obscured area reminded Art of marbles falling into a cardboard box.
He pulled himself up and was joined by the sergeant. Both saw the pair of patrolmen and the Service agent prone in the intersection, raising their arm-covered heads to see what had happened. They were okay. Art came to a crouch and peered around the comer, rising to full upright at the sight before him. A full four floors of the 818 had been blown out onto the street below, two above and one below the fifth, covering and crushing the Suburban and both men near it. He couldn’t see either man, or the two who were about to enter the building, but they could only be under the massive pile of rubble, made up of both the building and its contents. The cop behind him said something into his radio, but Art couldn’t tell what. The smoky, fog-like haze that filled the space between the buildings on each side of Seventh glowed with light from the flames that were licking slowly from the gaping wound on the face of the 818.
Slowly, the police officers with Art began to converge on the piles of rubble, some trying in vain to find a sign of life. They worked without fear. Nothing on the fifth floor could have survived the massive blast.
“Goddammit!” Art swore aloud, safing and holstering his gun before turning to walk back to his car. Along the way, without even knowing it, he stepped on his mirrored aviator sunglasses, which lay in the street, crushing them to bits.
* * *
Bud DiContino brought his head up and was nearly trampled. Four Secret Service agents hurdled him where he lay on his Anvil.
My ribs!