The radio was turned up just high enough for the news to be comprehensible over noise from the truck’s oversize tires. Maslick normally refused to listen to this kind of political garbage but acknowledged that there were a lot of people who ate it up. What was it about his fellow citizens that made them go to rallies and cheer like Jesus Christ himself had walked out onstage? What did they think these assholes were going to do for them? Why would anyone give a shit that Anthony Cook hadn’t made a personal appearance in weeks or months or whatever? What was he going to say that he hadn’t said a hundred times before?
The announcer became more breathless as the pivotal moment drew closer. The moment that the great Anthony Cook would finally return to the spotlight and bless everyone with his presence. Two more minutes. One more minute. Thirty seconds until he came onstage and made every one of his constituents rich, good-looking, and fulfilled. Fifteen more seconds before he led everyone straight to the fucking promised land.
When the crowd erupted, Maslick looked for somewhere to pull over. The rural road between his home and Washington, DC, was pretty much abandoned, with dense forest on either side. His dashboard suggested that temperatures were hovering in the nineties but he didn’t search for shade, instead selecting a wide spot with no tree cover.
He jumped out and leaned into the truck’s bed, sliding a Nemesis Valkyrie sniper rifle from beneath a tarp and strapping it to the side of his pack. The sound of a motor reached him from the west, but when the vehicle appeared over a low rise, he saw that it wasn’t one of the cars used by the surveillance teams hounding him. Another minute passed before the blue Nissan Murano he was waiting for appeared. When it did, he shouldered the pack, turned in a way that would make the rifle obvious, and then darted into the woods.
President Cook walked briskly across the stage, displaying the strength and energy his supporters had come to expect of him. To need of him. He took a position behind the lectern and raised his hands in the air, drinking in the adulation of the people packed into the small venue.
Cook lowered his arms in a call for quiet, but his followers didn’t obey. Instead, the volume of their cheers increased. This was what made all his sacrifices worthwhile—the almost religious devotion of his supporters. The knowledge that they would believe anything he told them. Do anything he told them. They’d destroy themselves and everything around them to feel the sense of power and belonging only he could give them. He was America. Not Mitch Rapp. Not Irene Kennedy. Him.
The crowd finally calmed down and he began to speak, moving his gaze smoothly from teleprompter to teleprompter. It would provide the illusion of making eye contact with every person in the audience as well as those scattered throughout the country watching through VR technology. The speech itself wasn’t anything special—largely attacks on his political opponents and a healthy dose of flattery for his followers. Public policy was unimportant in modern politics—too remote and complicated to create a connection between leaders and the led. Identity and tribal affiliation were what mattered now.
Out of the corner of his eye, Cook noticed some kind of disturbance offstage. He tried to keep reading his lines but began to falter as the commotion grew. When five Secret Service agents began charging him, he took a hesitant step back. A moment later they had completely surrounded him and he was being pulled toward the exit. Stumbling with feet barely touching the ground, he could hear the screams of his audience, increasingly muffled as he was dragged down a narrow concrete corridor.
When they entered the underground parking area, he saw his limousine speeding toward one of the exits amid an escort of black Yukons. The civilian vehicles crowding the garage were all on the move as well, their screeching tires echoing throughout the space as they abandoned it. He was shoved into the back of a nondescript Ford Explorer and two Secret Service men climbed in on either side of him. The driver joined the fray, melding with the decoys and finally exiting the parking garage to the south.
“What?” Cook finally managed to get out. “What happened?”
The head of his security detail twisted around in the front passenger seat. “Joe Maslick evaded our surveillance on his way to Washington, sir. And when he did, he was carrying a sniper rifle.”
CHAPTER 35
WEST OF MANASSAS
VIRGINIA
USA
THE sun was down, but temperatures were holding in the high eighties. Joe Maslick, now outfitted in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, was in his backyard with a beer in one hand and a spatula in the other. The grill was flaming up around his burger a bit, but better to cook it fast.