a cabinet with canned food and water in the fishing boat’s cabin. Knowing he risked serious infection, Cruz had forced the antibiotics into him before the painkillers. He’d eaten and slept fitfully with the Ruger in his good hand all day, setting his wristwatch to wake him every twenty minutes to briefly loosen the tourniquet.
Even so, when Cruz stepped down on the dock, he felt feverish and light-headed. He needed to put as much distance as he could between himself and Washington, DC, he decided. But seeing a doctor came first.
Cruz was halfway down the dock to shore when he saw a light go on in one of the marina offices. It went off a few moments later, then another one went on and off, and then a third.
That works, the assassin thought.
Without hesitation, he hurried forward and was hiding in the bushes outside the main door to the marina office when the security guard, a scrawny kid in his early twenties, exited. He had a thin caterpillar-like mustache and carried a flashlight in his hand and a small can of pepper spray in a holster on his hip. Cruz waited until the guard walked past before stepping out behind him.
He stuck the Ruger against the back of the kid’s head.
“Stop,” he said. “Do as I say, and you’ll live to see another day.”
The guard froze and then, trembling, raised his arms.
“Please, man,” he choked out. “I got no money. And there’s no money in any of the offices. Nothing worth nothing at all.”
“You have a car?” Cruz asked.
The guard said nothing. Cruz poked the back of his head. “Answer me.”
“I just bought it.” He moaned. “I worked overtime on this shit job just so I could—”
“I don’t care,” Cruz said. “Where is it?”
The kid cursed before nodding toward the side of the marina offices. “Over there. The maroon Camry.”
“Keys?”
He hesitated, then said, “Front right pocket.”
“Keep them,” Cruz said. “We’re going for a drive.”
“I can’t leave.”
The assassin jabbed his head with the pistol’s muzzle. “You must.”
The guard had stumbled forward, and now he looked over his shoulder at Cruz. He saw his battered, swollen, and stitched face. He saw the dry suit, had a moment of realization, and then lost it.
“Oh, man,” he said, holding out his palms. “Please, just take the car. I promise you I won’t say a thing. I’ll just say someone knocked me out and stole my car.”
“This isn’t a negotiation,” Cruz said. “Toss the pepper spray and move, or I’ll shoot you for spite.”
The kid resigned himself to his fate, pulled out the pepper-spray canister, lobbed it toward the water, and then trudged around the building to a small gravel parking lot.
When they reached the Camry, Cruz said, “Give me your coat.”
The guard removed the jacket and handed it to him. Cruz put it on. “Get in. You’re driving.”
After the guard was behind the wheel, the assassin took the seat directly behind him and tapped the back of his head with the gun barrel. “What’s your name?”
“Jared,” he said, flinching. “Jared Goldberg.”
“Nice to meet you, Jared,” he said. “Now drive.”
CHAPTER
83
BACK AT JOINT Base Andrews, as well as across the nation, anxiety was building. Despite the imposition of martial law, protests had broken out at peace vigils held in New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Portland, and Seattle.
No country had lobbed a nuclear warhead at us, but the threat remained. You could see it was on everyone’s mind. Agents were calling home as often as they called for investigative leads, and I didn’t blame any of them for it.
But I simply refused to let the possibility of a world war dominate my thoughts. If I did, I knew I’d be useless in my new role.
When I returned from talking to Dr. Winters, Carstensen, the FBI deputy director, had asked me to move to the team that was synthesizing information. I’d started to protest that I was more useful in the field, but she’d cut me off and walked away.
So I’d kept my head down through the evening, focusing on the flow of evidence crossing my screen and desktop. Twice I’d tried to return Nina Davis’s call, but I’d gotten no answer. But I couldn’t pay attention to that. Every minute seemed to bring an update, a field report, or a result from Quantico’s churning forensics laboratories.
We knew by then, for example, that, courtesy of a bright ER nurse at George Washington University Hospital, we had DNA material and blood from the president’s assassin and possibly his fingerprints