Termination Orders(95)

It dawned on him almost immediately. “I know,” said Morgan. “It’s an antidote for cyanide.”

“Why would she . . . Oh, God.”

“She’s going to poison the senator,” said Morgan.

“How was she going to do that?”

“Not from a distance, she couldn’t. Whatever it is, it’s already in place.” He thought for a moment, looking at the senator through the scope. Then he said, “The water!”

“What?” asked Lowry.

“She said it’s going to be a spectacle. There’s no way she can deliver the poison from here. That means the cyanide is already there. The only way she could be sure the senator would take it when she was onstage would be to put it in the senator’s water. The water that’s sitting on the podium right now.”

“Are you sure, Cobra” asked Lowry. “This whole thing could be nothing but misdirection.”

“It fits her MO.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“The only thing I can do from here,” said Morgan. “I shoot at her and take care that I miss.”

He knelt at T’s rifle and looked through the scope.

“Cobra, are you crazy?”

“It’s the only way to save her now. The only way to interrupt this speech right now.”

“There are times when we despair,” continued McKay, “and it seems like there is nothing we, as citizens, can do to change anything.”

There was no wind. It was a straight, clear shot. The heat off the lights was a furnace, and sweat ran down his brow and dripped from his nose. He tore off the fake mustache, not needing it anymore. He took off the suit jacket and laid it on the platform in front of the rifle.

“Even if Natasha wasn’t lying,” exhorted Lowry, “and even if you manage to pull this off, you’ll cause a panic. They’ll think you’re shooting at her, and all twenty thousand people in this stadium are going to rush for the exits. People might die.”

“I need to do it. I can’t let Nickerson win.” He looked through the scope. A shot straight through the podium would do it. It would hit the stage, McKay would be unscathed, and her security detail would usher her off to safety.

“Cobra, think about this!”

“But I, for one, believe that in a democracy, it is in the citizens’ power to change things,” said McKay. “So consider this a call to action!”

The crowd erupted in wild cheering and applause.

And then it happened in a split second. She took the glass and began to raise it to her mouth. A shot through the podium would no longer be enough. He had to act immediately. There was no time to take careful aim, yet if he was off by a hairbreadth, he would be doing T’s job for her.

He squeezed the trigger.

The glass shattered in Senator McKay’s hand. Ten thousand screams rang out, a thousand cameras flashed, and her security detail sprang into action.

He didn’t have time to observe the aftermath. It wouldn’t be long until they worked out a rough trajectory from the bullet hole in the stage. They were probably scanning the roofline now for him. He’d done what he had come to do. Now he had to get the hell out of there. Morgan left the rifle where it was, climbed down onto the roof, and ran back in the direction from which he had come.

“Now you’ve done it,” said Lowry.

“How’s Cougar?” Morgan asked.

“Still on Natasha’s tail. He’s almost out to the parking lot. Cobra, you have to get the hell out of there. Guards are swarming up to the roof. At least five are going to be there in under two minutes.”

“Can I get down the way I came up?”

“Not unless you’re planning on shooting your way out of there.”

“Then find me a way to get the hell off this roof!”

“I’m trying!”

He was almost to the edge of the roof, with nowhere to go. “Lowry, which way did Natasha leave?”

“Same way you got there. Why?”

She couldn’t have counted on leaving the same way. If she had shot the senator, she would be in exactly the same predicament he was in now. She wouldn’t have trusted her escape to chance. There had to be another way out of there. He looked along the edge of the roof, and then he saw it.

“Lowry, I think I’ve found the way down.”

The rope was sitting in black coils, anchored tightly to a sturdy railing. He ran toward it and found it already threaded through the rappel device, with a locking carabiner attached to it. But there was no harness—that was in Natasha’s pack, two hundred feet away.

There was no time to go back for it now. He’d have to make do with what he had. Morgan attached the carabiner to his belt and pulled hard. He could only hope that it would hold. He removed his button-down shirt, leaving him in his undershirt, and wrapped it crudely around his right hand. Then he looked down. At the bottom of the first drop was the main body of the stadium, on which the roof sat, and over that edge was a long, sheer drop with nothing but thin, vertical slats for support. Below, people were swarming out of the stadium. He climbed over the railing and stood with his back to empty space.