his back. His fingers had just reached the gun’s checkered grip when he realized the swinging kitchen door to his left was standing open, a man-shaped figure standing at the threshold.
“I’m sorry, my friend,” he heard Nima say in some distant part of his mind. “It is for the best. ...”
Over the Arab’s shoulder, Yuriy saw another waiter walking toward them, holding up a tablecloth, ostensibly going through the motions of folding it.A curtain to shield the deed ... Yuriy saw movement in the corner of his eye. He rotated his head to the left in time to see the figure in the doorway—another waiter in a white apron—raising something dark and tubular in his hand.
Somewhere in a still-calm, analytical part of his brain, Yuriy thought, Makeshift noise suppressor. . . . He knew he would hear no noise, see no flash. Nor would there be any pain.
He was right. The 9-millimeter Parabellum hollow-point bullet struck him just above the left eyebrow before mushrooming into a tangled lump of lead that turned a softball-sized chunk of his brain into so much jelly.
10
GODDAMN IT,” former President of the United States John Patrick Ryan muttered into his morning coffee.
“What is it now, Jack?” Cathy asked, though fully aware of what “it” was. She dearly loved her husband, but when a topic attracted his attention, he was like the proverbial dog with a bone, a trait that had made him a good spook and an even better President but not always the easiest of souls to get along with.
“This idiot Kealty doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. What’s worse, he doesn’t care. He killed twelve Marines yesterday in Baghdad. You know why?” Cathy Ryan didn’t answer; she knew the question was rhetorical. “Because somebody on his staff decided that Marines having loaded rifles might send the wrong message. Goddamn it, you don’t send messages to people pointing weapons at you. Then get this: Their company commander went after the bad guys and whacked about six of them before he was ordered to pull back.”
“By whom?”
“By his battalion commander, who probably got instructions from brigade, who got his from some lawyer Kealty’s goons slipped into the chain of command. The worst part is he doesn’t care. After all, the budget process is under way, and there’s that flap over those friggin’ trees in Oregon that has his undivided attention.”
“Well, for better or worse, a lot of people get their panties in a twist over the environment, Jack,” Professor Ryan told her husband.
Kealty, Jack seethed. He’d had it all figured out. Robby would have been a great President, but he hadn’t considered the twisted mind of that old Ku Klux Klan bastard who was still waiting to die on Mississippi’s Death Row. Jack had been in the Oval Office on that day—what had it been? Six days before the election, with Robby comfortably ahead in the polls. Not enough time to set things back in place, the election in chaos, Kealty the only major candidate left standing, and all the votes cast for Robby voided by circumstance. So many voters had simply stayed home in confusion. Kealty, President by default; election by forfeit.
The transition period had been even worse, if that was possible. The funeral, held at Jackson’s father’s Baptist church in Mississippi, was one of Jack’s worst-ever memories. The media had sneered at his display of emotion. Presidents were supposed to be robots, after all, but Ryan had never been one of those.
And with good damned reason, Ryan thought.
Right here, right here in this very room, Robby had saved his life, and his wife’s, and his daughter’s, and his as yet unborn son’s. Jack had rarely known rage in his life, but this was one subject that caused it to erupt like Mount Vesuvius on a particularly bad day. Even Robby’s father had preached forgiveness on the subject, proof positive that the Reverend Hosiah Jackson was a better man than he would ever be. So what fate suited Robby’s killer? A pistol round in the liver, perhaps . . . might take five or ten minutes for the bastard to bleed out, screaming all the way to hell . . .
Worse still, rumor had it the current President was contemplating a blanket commutation of every death sentence in America. His political allies were already lobbying for him in the media, planning a public mercy demonstration on the Washington Mall. Mercy for the victims of the killers and kidnappers was something they never quite