Authors: Vince Flynn
The man reached into the bag, this time retrieving a pair of wire cutters. Cautiously rising to his feet, he walked along the edge of the garage and then darted across the small open space to the back stoop, where he crouched down. Again, he used the can of WD-40, spraying the hinges of the screen door. While he waited for the oil to soak in, he grabbed the pair of wire cutters and cut the phone line running into the basement of the house. He put the wire cutters back in the bag and grabbed a glass cutter. Jumping up on the stoop he opened the
screen door about two feet and slid in between it and the back door. The back door was wood with the top third split into four sections of glass. He placed the cup of the glass cutter in the middle of the bottom left pane and swung the cutting edge around the suction cup in a clockwise direction. After five revolutions, he took both hands and pressed in on the newly created circle. The freshly cut piece of glass popped free and stayed attached to the suction cup. Sticking his arm through the hole, he unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped into the kitchen, carefully closing the door behind him. He stood completely still and looked out the window, staring at the neighbors' houses, looking for anything that might have changed while his ears focused on the inside of the house. He heard the dog breathing and turned to see him lying on a piece of carpet in front of the kitchen table, completely relaxed and limp. Pulling the microphone down from under the brim of his baseball cap, he spoke in a soft whisper, “I'm in, over.”
His partner was sitting in the blue van, six blocks away, around the corner from a small, twenty-four-hour convenience store. He was monitoring the local police scanner. Calmly, he spoke into the microphone hanging in front of his mouth, “Roger that, everything is clear on my end, over.”
The man in the kitchen of Burmiester's house pushed the microphone back up under the brim of his hat and slowly removed the black bag from over his shoulder. Gently placing it on the floor, he retrieved a gas mask and a green tank with a clear rubber hose attached to the end. With the tank and
mask in hand, he walked down the uncarpeted hallway toward the front door and the staircase that led to the second floor. When he reached the foot of the staircase, he stopped and leaned forward, placing his hands on the fourth step. Again he paused, not moving, just listening. After he was sure that Burmiester had not been awakened, he started to crawl up the steps, keeping his hands and feet away from the center of the stairs, leaning forward, trying to keep his weight as equally distributed as possible, not wanting the old stairs to creak and wake the owner.
When he reached the second floor, he stayed on his knees and continued to crawl slowly toward the master bedroom, about twenty feet away. Once again, he waited patiently and listened. Gently, he stuck the rubber tube under the door, put his gas mask on, and opened the valve on the tank. Sitting down with his back against the wall, he started the timer on his watch.
After fifteen minutes had elapsed, he turned off the valve and pulled the tube out from under the door. Slowly, he opened the door and peeked into the room. Burmiester was lying with his back to the door and showed no signs of movement. The intruder pushed the door the rest of the way open and walked over to the bed. Reaching down, he nudged Burmiester several times. The old man didn't move. He took the glove off his right hand, placed it on Burmiester's neck, and checked his pulse. After checking it twice more, he concluded with relief that the old man was fine. The intruder did not know the man he was standing over, and he
did not wish to see him die. Harold Burmiester was not the man he was after tonight. He walked around the bed to the double window that looked out onto the street below and stared straight across at the house opposite Burmiester's. He lowered the mike and said, “I'm in position. Everything looks good, over.”
The response came crackling back through his earpiece immediately. “Roger, everything is quiet on this end, over.”
Five miles away on the other side of the Potomac River, the second team had moved into position. The nondescript white van was parked on a quiet side street. Inside, the blond-haired assassin was undergoing a change. He'd taken off his dark jeans, jacket, and boots and had replaced them with a gray pair of sweatpants, a blue sweatshirt, and a pair of Nike running shoes. He sat still while one of the other men carefully applied black makeup to his face, neck, and ears. The makeup was for camouflage, but not in the typical military sense. It was meant to be noticed and to deceive, not to conceal. After the makeup job was completed, a tight, black Afro wig was placed over his blond hair, and a pair of brown contacts were inserted over his blue eyes. Next, he put his headset back on and pulled a University of Michigan baseball hat over his head.
The screen covering Mr. Burmiester's bedroom window had been taken off, and the owner of the house had been carefully moved from the master
bedroom down the hall to one of the guest rooms. The intruder was sitting on a wooden chair, staring out the window at a pair of French doors located on the second floor of the house across the street. Resting on his lap was a Remington M-24 military sniper rifle with a customized silencer attached to the end of the barrel. A round was in the chamber but the rifle was still on safety. The alarm on his watch had beeped five minutes earlier, and he was trying to stay relaxed. The sky was just starting to brighten and the birds were chirping. His target would be rising any minute, and he was making a conscious effort to control his breathing and keep his adrenaline level low.
A light was turned on across the street, and the drapes on the other side of the French doors turned from gray to yellow. In one fast motion he brought the rifle up into a firing position, pressing the stock between his shoulder and left cheek. His finger came up and flipped off the safety, while he centered the crosshairs on the middle of the French doors. He continued taking slow, controlled breaths. A blurred shadow moved from behind the curtains. The shooter inhaled deeply, and just when his lungs were fully expanded, the doors across the street opened. As they swung inward, they revealed the pudgy, pink-and-white body of Congressman Jack Koslowski. Wearing only a pair of baby blue boxers, he turned and started for the bathroom.
The center of the crosshairs were resting on the small of Koslowski's hairy back. The right hand of the assassin rose slightly, and the rifle followed. The crosshairs slid up the spinal column, past the
shoulder blades, and rested just below the bald spot on the back of Koslowski's head. The upper body of the assassin twisted as the sight followed the target across the room. The left forefinger started its slow, even squeeze on the trigger. A second later it caught, and the hammer slammed forward. The hollow-point round spiraled its way down the barrel, through the silencer, and sliced its way into the still morning air.
The bullet slammed into the back of the congressman's head, the hollow point collapsing upon impact. Instead of continuing its clean, tight spiral, the now flattened tip was three times larger than its original size as it ripped through the brain, pushing everything in its path toward the front of the congressman's head. The round tore through the right eye socket, taking with it chunks of bone, brain, and flesh. The momentum of the impact propelled Koslowski forward and pinned him against the side of the bed, leaving his body bent backward and his legs and arms twitching. The assassin had already chambered another round and was maneuvering the crosshairs back into position. The next shot struck Koslowski at the base of his skull and immediately severed all neural communication between the brain and the rest of his body.
Across the Potomac River, in McLean, Virginia, the other group sat and waited for their next target. They were parked across the street from Pimmit Bend Park, facing north on Balentrane Lane, which dead-ended into the park. The driver listened to the
police scanner and chewed a piece of gum. Another man was in the back of the van looking out the rear windows at the park. From where they were positioned, he could see the formerly blond assassin leaning against a tree next to the jogging path. He was stretching his legs as he waited, trying to make himself look like just another runner. Several joggers and walkers had already passed by and had taken notice of what they thought was a black man getting ready to exercise in their lily-white park. As he let go of his right leg, the assassin grabbed his left leg and pulled it up behind him. He placed his left hand against a tree for balance and looked at his watch. Their next target was due any minute.
The target was Senator Robert Downs, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and the reigning “prince of pork” in the United States Senate. He lived less than three blocks away and walked his collie religiously every morning, between 6:00 and 6:20 A.M. It was almost a quarter after, and he was due any minute. As the assassin looked up from the tree, he saw the familiar brown English driving cap of Downs bobbing up and down just on the other side of the slight rise in the path. He was fifty yards away, walking at his usual, leisurely pace. When Downs reached the crest of the small hill, the assassin noticed a woman in a brightly colored tennis warm-up about thirty yards behind the senator. She was walking at a fast pace, flailing her arms and swinging her hips from side to side. As they approached his position, the woman was almost ready to pass the senator. The assassin noticed she was wearing a Walkman, and he
breathed a slight sigh of relief. No innocent people were to die.
When Downs was about twenty yards away, the assassin turned his back to his target, leaned against the tree, pulled his right leg up, and started to stretch again. He could hear the dog panting and the nails of his paws as they struck the black asphalt path. He let go of his right leg and grabbed his left. In a low whisper he spoke into his mike, “How do I look, over?”
The man sitting in the back of the van looked to his right and left and then responded, “The only two people in sight are our target and the woman coming up behind him, over.”
“That's a roger, over.” The assassin turned his head to the right and looked over his shoulder. Downs was within striking distance and the woman was right on his heels. The assassin looked down at the base of the tree and concentrated on his peripheral vision. By the time the two walkers reached the tree, the woman had passed Downs and was steadily increasing the distance between herself and the senator.
The assassin stepped out onto the path and fell into line behind Downs. After about three strides his left hand slid underneath his baggy sweats and grabbed the waistband of his running tights. His right hand reached in and grabbed the handle of the 9mm Beretta. Picking up the pace, he closed in on the senator. Pulling the gun out, he extended his arm and placed the tip of the silencer inches from the back of his target's head. Two quick rounds were fired into the base of the skull, and Downs stumbled
forward, landing face first on the pavement. The assassin turned and sprinted across the park to the waiting van. The female walker continued her trek without missing a stride as the old collie stood over her dying master and sniffed at the pool of blood that was forming next to his head.
THE SUN HAD RISEN IN THE FALL MORNING sky and was fighting to stay out as the wind picked up and the clouds rolled in. A steady stream of gold and red leaves rustled past the black dress shoes of FBI special agent Skip McMahon. McMahon was the special agent in charge of the FBI's East Coast Quick Response Team. The Quick Response Team, or QRT as it was referred to within the Bureau, was composed of an elite group of agents. Their mission was straightforward: to arrive at the crime scene of a terrorist attack and start the immediate collection of evidence and pursuit of the perpetrators while the trail was still warm. The unit had planes, helicopters, and mobile crime labs on twenty-four-hour standby and could be at a crime scene anywhere
from Chicago to Miami to New York within hours.
McMahon rested his large body against a police car and held a cup of coffee under his nose. An old football injury to his knee was giving him more trouble than usual this morning. He told himself it was the cold, damp morning air and not his age. The veteran agent watched without emotion as a black body bag containing Senator Fitzgerald was loaded into the back of an FBI van. This was the third crime scene he'd been to this morning, and the quiet intensity of the murders was setting in. It was a foregone conclusion that the murders were linked. They wouldn't tell the press that, but it didn't take a genius to figure out they had to be connected. He looked down at both ends of the street and shook his head at the crowd of media and curious onlookers who were gathered on the other side of the police barricades. Clasping the cup of coffee with both hands, he closed his eyes and blocked out the surrounding commotion. He tried to imagine exactly how Fitzgerald had been murdered.
McMahon was a strong believer in visualization. In an inexplicable way, he thought that a killer left an aura at the scene of a crime. It was not unusual for McMahon to go back to the places where people had been murdered months, even years, after the crimes had been committed and sit for hours playing scenario after scenario through his head, trying to gain the slightest insight into the mind of the murderer.
Putting himself in the shoes of the killer, he thought about the different ways Fitzgerald could have been murdered. After a while he started to
look for similarities in the way Koslowski, Downs, and Fitzgerald had been killed. He was making a mental checklist of the questions that needed to be answered: How many killers? Why were they killed? Why these three politicians? Who would have the motive? McMahon was laying the foundation for his investigation. Everything he was thinking would be transferred onto a blackboard back in the tactical situation room for his team to review. His concentration was broken by a familiar voice calling his name. McMahon looked up and saw his boss, Brian Roach, walking toward him with his always present bodyguards.