36: A Novel (39 page)

“Besides, you said you think the Secret Service will already be in place.  That means they’re checking out everyone that passes through the area.  A couple, walking to the coffee house, will attract a whole lot less attention than you by yourself.”

“I’ll wait,” I sighed.

She smiled and disappeared into the unoccupied bedroom after grabbing some items out of the suitcase.  I didn’t want to tell her, but I was damn glad she had come with me.  She was very smart, but also much more thoughtful than I am.  Where I would charge in before thinking, she considered all the angles.

Sitting there waiting, I let my mind drift to Monica.  I’d managed to push thoughts of her aside while we worked on the problem of where to find the ground team, but with a few minutes alone, the image of her roared back into my head.

And Roberto?  Had I gotten her pregnant?  Was he my son?  If he was, did he even know who his father was?  Did he know he’d been sired by a convicted cop killer and drug runner?  I hoped she’d never told him the truth.  No kid needed to have that weighing them down.  Growing up is hard enough without having a father on death row.

Monica looked happy.  Happy with her clutch of kids, and with her husband.  The man that could have been me.  Should have been me.  If only…

I stopped myself right there.  There was no point in dwelling on the past.  Even though I did have access to a time machine, I couldn’t go back that far and change things.  But, what if I could?  Dr. Anholts had been hinting it might be possible.  Did I have the right to go back and undo the happy family I’d just seen?  Not that if I changed things any of them would ever know, but where did it stop?

What if I could go back twelve years and fix my mistakes.  Not go to prison.  What’s to guarantee that Monica and I would ever be more than friends?  Sure, we were heading for more, but how much of that was due to the emotions resulting from the events that transformed my life?

Without me, she’d found someone she obviously loved.  Had children with him.  Built a life.  Apparently a life good enough that they could bring their kids to the nation’s capital for an educational vacation.  If I messed with the past, those other kids would never be born.  The husband, whoever he was, would never meet and marry her.  How many ripples across the timeline that couldn’t be predicted would that create? 

Even if it was possible, I couldn’t take that away from her.  And I couldn’t risk the impact on the present and future.  No matter how much I wanted to.

“Are you OK?”

I snapped out of my musings and looked up to see Julie standing in the bedroom doorway.  She had changed out of the cargo pants and boots into a lightweight skirt and skin tight, white tank top.  Low heeled sandals were on her feet.  Her blonde hair was loose, framing her freshly scrubbed face and falling around her shoulders.  I couldn’t help the big smile.

“You look terrific,” I said without even thinking.  It just came out.

I was surprised when she blushed slightly and looked away.  She fussed with her purse for a moment before turning back to face me, smiling.  I stood, unable to take my eyes off of her.

“I’m great,” I said, answering the earlier question.  “Shall we go?”

I extended my arm and a moment later she stepped forward and slipped her hand through the bend, resting it on the inside of my forearm.  Together, we walked out and headed for street level.

46

We strolled down the sidewalk, avoiding a couple of homeless men who hit us up for change.  I’d thought about passing out some more of the FBI agents’ cash, but was afraid that if I did, word would get around and we’d get mobbed by more desperate people looking for money.  That would make us stand out, and I couldn’t have that happen.

It wasn’t that far to the target, and we covered the distance on foot in about a quarter of the time it had taken to drive it earlier.  We stuck to the side of the street opposite the buildings I wanted to get a closer look at.  Julie kept her hand on my arm, her body close to mine as we walked. 

I didn’t know if she was playing her role as part of a couple, or not.  Perhaps she was enjoying the physical contact as much as I was.  Either way, it was exactly how we needed to appear to anyone who might notice us.

We slowed to a stop in front of the restaurant where the President was going to be killed.  To any observers, we were reading a small menu posted in an enclosed display case mounted to the exterior wall.  Julie was directly in line with it, but I had a clear view of the interior through the heavy, plate glass windows that fronted the street.

Four men wearing dark suits were moving about the dining floor.  They were carefully checking over every inch of the room.  Two additional, dressed more casually in slacks and polo shirts, were slowly sweeping across the interior with some sort of electronic equipment. 

I refocused my eyes to use the glass as a mirror rather than look through it.  Turning slightly, I leaned my head close to Julie as if I were talking to her.  But instead of whispering something in her ear, I was adjusting the angle of my view to see the roofs of the buildings across the street.

There was a flicker of movement at the parapet on one of them.  One that I knew would be the location of a counter-sniper team.  Looking back inside, I watched one of the men reach to his earpiece a moment before he turned to look in our direction. 

My head was still close to Julie’s, and I leaned the final couple of inches and kissed the side of her neck.  She stiffened at the intimate contact, but didn’t pull away. 

“They’re watching us,” I whispered, brushing her ear with my lips.  “Smile and laugh like I said something you liked.”

There was a momentary pause, then she smiled brightly and turned to look up at me.  Withdrawing her hand from my arm, she placed it on the back of my head and pulled me down until our lips met.  It may have started as a theatrical kiss for the benefit of the Secret Service, but it immediately became more.  And lasted longer than it should have. 

I wanted to wrap her in my arms and crush her body against mine.  Fortunately, there was still a tiny part of my mind that remembered what we were doing and why.  Breaking the kiss, I looked into her eyes for a long moment before smiling at her and straightening up.

Careful to not look into the restaurant again, I turned to continue down the street.  Julie put her hand back on my arm and pressed against my side.  From the corner of my eye, I could see the man inside the restaurant still watching.  Making a production of the gestures, I pointed across the street at the coffee house, then the crosswalk at the next intersection.

Julie nodded and leaned her head on my shoulder.  We started walking, strolling like two lovers without a care in the world.  After a couple of yards, I heard the restaurant door behind us open.  I wanted to turn and look, but resisted the urge.  I was supposed to be completely absorbed in the beautiful woman on my arm, not worrying about anything else.

We took our time reaching the intersection, pausing for Julie to look in the window of a small shop.  A dress that was fabulous on a mannequin caught her eye.  She stared at it for a few moments before heaving a sigh.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have done this,” she said quietly when we reached the end of the block and had to wait for the signal to change so we could cross.

“What?” 

I was hoping she wasn’t talking about the kiss.  Then I mentally kicked myself for getting distracted from the task at hand.

“Walking the area with the Secret Service watching.  I keep forgetting you haven’t kept up with current technology.  They’re probably already running our picture through facial recognition software.  How many flags is that going to raise?”

I thought about what she said for a few moments.  Facial recognition had been around before I went to prison, but it was slow and laborious.  Now?  I knew computer technology had advanced exponentially.  They probably already knew who we were.

“I think we’re OK,” I said.  “The part of the FBI that is hunting us doesn’t want anyone else to get their hands on us.  They aren’t going to put any alerts out there.  You’ll come up as who you are, and I’ll come up as a long haul truck driver from Dallas.”

“You’re sure?”

“No, but it’s too late to worry about it now,” I said.  “If they find something to make them take an interest in us, we’re boxed in and on foot.  All we can do is what we came here for and hope for the best.”

“Don’t you think the FBI is already here?  Looking for us?  They have to know you’re trying to stop them.”

The light changed and we stepped into the intersection after I glanced both ways to make sure some idiot wasn’t running the red signal.  Crossing, we turned onto the far sidewalk and I moved Julie to my right so I could get a good look at the front of each building we passed.

“I’ve been thinking about that.  There can only be so many agents involved in the conspiracy.  Things like this, well, you don’t exactly invite every Tom, Dick and Harry to participate.  There will be a select few.  They’ve probably known each other for years, or maybe even decades.

“That’s great for operational security, but it sucks when you need resources in different parts of the country at a moment’s notice.  So, you have a good point.  There will be some of the people involved in the plot here looking for us, but I think we got here faster than they anticipated.  At the moment, they don’t even know if we made it off that jet.”

We had passed several of the buildings, and a close up and personal look reinforced the opinion I’d reached after looking at the street on Google.  Arriving at the coffee house, I held the door for Julie and we were greeted by the wonderful aroma of roasted beans being brewed.

Three women were hard at work behind the counter, one of them operating the register while the other two busily made the drinks ordered by a short line of customers.  We stepped up behind a man of no more than 25, wearing an expensive suit, and waited our turn.  He had a phone pressed to his ear, talking a mile a minute.  After briefly listening to the conversation, it was clear he worked for a politician from Minnesota.

When it was his turn, he ordered without even looking at the woman behind the register and tossed a five-dollar bill at her before walking away.  The look on her face said it all as she picked up the money, put it in the drawer and dropped twenty cents of change into a tip jar.

I had read the menu and already knew what I wanted, but after we stepped up, Julie kept staring at it.  My order placed, the woman looked expectantly at her.  Waiting.  After a bit I prompted her.

“Know what you want?”  I asked.

“Trying to decide,” she said.

“Didn’t take you this long to decide to come with me.”

I was teasing, and earned myself a sharp elbow in the ribs.  She finally ordered, I paid with some of my purloined cash, and we moved to a quiet corner to wait for our drinks.

“You don’t think they’ve already counted the bodies on that plane?”  Julie asked in a quiet mumble to keep our conversation private.

“That thing was a blast furnace.  Jet fuel burns at something like 6,000 degrees.  More than hot enough to completely consume a human body.  Maybe the fire department got there in time to knock down the flames, but I don’t think so.  I’ll be surprised if there’s enough evidence for them to determine if we were on board or not.”

“Fine.  But what about the helicopter that fired the missile?  They probably had night vision.  Don’t you think they would have seen us?”  She asked.

I thought about that for a minute.  Replayed the whole scene in my head.

“Maybe not,” I said.  “We were running for the hangar when it fired.  From the far side of the jet.  We should have been screened from the helicopter’s view at the time.  And once that plane went up, it would have washed out the electronics.  If they’d stuck around, they would have eventually seen us when we took the Explorer, but I’m pretty sure they got the hell of the area when that missile struck.”

Our drinks were ready and I walked over to pick them up.  The young man was still on his phone, stepping forward directly into my path to collect his, which had been sitting waiting for him for almost a minute.  I bumped into him, jostling his arm and causing him to nearly drop the phone.

“Watch out, asshole,” he barked without even looking at me.

The impulse to twist his little pin head right off his shoulders surged through me, my hands curling into fists.  Julie must have recognized the signs as she quickly moved up and grabbed my arm, distracting me.  I looked down at her face, the message clear in her eyes.  We could not afford to make a scene.  Nodding, I smiled my thanks at her and stepped back until Poindexter walked away, still completely oblivious to just how close to a serious beating he had come.

“He’s a dick,” the young woman who had made our coffees said when I picked them up.  “Keep hoping someone is going to kick his ass.”

“He has no idea how close he just came,” Julie smiled.

She smiled back and we headed for the door, drinks in hand.  Exiting onto the street we turned left, towards the hotel.  And the building we were interested in.

It was near the end of the block, and when we got there I wanted to turn to check the angle on the front of the restaurant.  But I didn’t want to be obvious about it.

“When we reach the building, stop and mess with your shoe like something’s wrong,” I said to Julie.  “I want to turn around and look at the target.”

We sipped our coffee as we strolled, now holding hands.  Julie was on my right, closer to the street.  As we approached the suspect building, I took note of the three windows that didn’t have any stenciling on the glass.  Two of them had blinds tightly drawn, but the third had them rolled open slightly.

When we were in front of the third window, Julie came to a sudden stop and leaned down to examine her right shoe.  She had held onto my hand and I’d continued to walk so that when I suddenly came up against resistance, it looked perfectly natural for me to turn to my right.  Directly facing the restaurant, across and down the block.