Howard saw Joker come out of the tunnel and stop dead at the edge of the diamond as if he’d just realised that everyone in the stadium was standing stock still out of respect. Howard smiled at the man’s appalling plaid jacket. He looked across at Clutesi who was also grinning. Clutesi shrugged and Howard shook his head admonishingly. Howard saw that Joker was carrying a can of Budweiser and he groaned inwardly.
Howard surveyed the presidential party. The Prime Minister’s own security team seemed far more relaxed than the Secret Service agents. He wondered when they had last had to deal with an assassination attempt. He recalled the IRA attempt to hit Number 10 Downing Street with mortars and the bombing of a hotel during a Conservative Party conference, but assassinations with firearms seemed rare in Britain. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that gun ownership was restricted there or that the people had more respect for their authority figures than the Americans had for their President. On television, he’d seen British politicians and members of the British Royal Family moving through crowds, seemingly at ease, with little in the way of security. At sports events, too, they generally got much closer to the public than the President ever did, closer even than American movie stars got to their fans.
Howard frowned as he stared at the pitcher’s mound. He pulled his cellular phone out of his pocket and whispered to Clutesi that he was going out in the hallway. Clutesi had his hand over his heart as the anthem played.
Howard nodded to two Secret Service agents standing guard in the corridor, and moved away from them so that they couldn’t eavesdrop. He tapped out Andy Kim’s number in the White House and it was answered on the third ring by Bonnie Kim. She was surprised, and apparently delighted, to hear from him. He asked if her husband was there and she passed the telephone over to him.
“Andy, do me a favour. Can you call up the Baltimore ballpark and tell me what effect it would have if the target was on the pitcher’s mound,” said Howard.
“But I thought the President was in the sky box?” queried Andy.
“I know, I know, but I’ve just found out that the Prime Minister is throwing the first pitch, down on the mound. Try it for me, will you?”
“Sure, Cole, sure. Kelly Armstrong sent me a copy of the Prime Minister’s agenda but there’s nothing on it about him being on the mound or I’d have done it already. It’ll take a few minutes. Do you want me to call you back?”
“No, I’ll hold on.” Howard heard the National Anthem come to an end, and then in his earpiece he heard the Secret Service preparing to escort the Prime Minister and the First Lady down to the diamond where the manager of the Orioles was to present him with the game ball. “And Andy, please hurry.”
Patrick Farrell looked down and made a slight adjustment to the power and turned the nose of the airship into the wind. The movement resulted in a sideways drift and he looked down and tried to line up with the corner of the road and the alley by following Bailey’s terse instructions.
“Good, that’s good,” said Bailey through his headset. “Six feet more.” On the ground below the airship, the small red dot moved inexorably towards the alley. Bailey lifted his head and saw Lovell still with the rifle to his cheek. Bailey wanted some sign from the sniper that everything was okay, but Lovell ignored him.
Bailey looked down through the scope again. The red dot was slowly moving across the pavement. “Steady,” he said.
Farrell eased off on the power to the engines. The GPS display hadn’t changed for some time, an indication of Farrell’s skill at manoeuvring the airship, but it was only accurate to fifty feet or so. The rest was up to Bailey.
“That’s it, perfect,” said Bailey. Farrell wiped the back of his arm across his forehead and it came away damp. In the distance, the pilot could see Secret Service agents gathering around the pitcher’s mound.
Joker took a long pull at his can of Budweiser. It was too warm for his taste but he needed the alcohol rather than the refreshment. One of the Secret Service agents stared at him and looked as if he was about to say something, but Joker pointed to the ID hanging around his neck. Joker drained the can and tossed it behind him. The crowd roared and cheered as the Country and Western singer finished his rendition of the National Anthem. In Joker’s ear a buzzing voice told him that Parliament was making his way down from the sky box. The agents around the mound visibly tensed.
Joker put his binoculars to his eyes and began scanning the crowds. He wanted to get Mary Hennessy so badly that he could almost taste it. He raised the binoculars higher and winced as it put his injured shoulder under strain. He was hot and the bullet-proof vest was a torture to wear. He considered taking it off because it covered such a small area of his body. He doubted that the limited protection it offered was worth the discomfort.
Cole Howard kept his cellular phone pressed to his left ear. The constant Secret Service transmissions in his right ear were irritating, but he knew they were necessary so he didn’t remove the earpiece. He heard Sanger calling ahead that Parliament was leaving the sky box and he flattened himself against the wall of the corridor so that he wouldn’t be in the way when the entourage went by on the way to the escalator.
Two agents came out of the sky box, looked up and down, and then headed towards him. Another two agents followed, and then Howard saw the Prime Minister and the First Lady. The Prime Minister walked slowly, a half step behind the First Lady, and he had a worried frown as if he was dreading the forthcoming pitch. Howard wanted to tell him that throwing the first pitch was a rare honour, one that most baseball fans would die for. The Prime Minister looked at him and Howard smiled, wanting to show some support, but the FBI agent’s gesture was ignored and the Prime Minister’s face remained a stone mask. Howard felt stupid, standing there with an inane grin on his face, and he turned the smile into a face-stretching exercise as if his eyes were itching.
“Cole?” It was Andy Kim on the phone.
“Yes, Andy?”
“Okay, this is a rough calculation, but I reckon that so far as the buildings nearest the ballpark are concerned, that’s the Marriott Hotel and the Holiday Inn and the offices nearby, you’d be looking at two floors lower if they were aiming at the pitcher’s mound. For the buildings a mile or so away you’d drop about four floors. Is that any help?”
“Yeah, thanks Andy. One more thing — does dropping the target to the mound mean you get a match for the long shot?”
“Afraid not, Cole, There’s still nothing anywhere near that position.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ve got to go, I’ll call you later.”
Howard switched the phone off and went back to the sky box. Sanger was standing by the door. He nodded at Howard.
“Everything okay?” Sanger asked. “I see you’ve let the Brit off his leash. You know he’s drinking?”
“You’ve got men in all the buildings overlooking the ballpark, right?” said Howard, ignoring the dig at Cramer.
“Sure, we did full searches and now they’re on the floors that Kim recommended.” Sanger’s brow wrinkled. “Is there a problem?”
“It’s not a problem, more a hunch. What if it’s the Prime Minister who’s the target and not the President?”
“We sent the details to Kim,” said Sanger. “They’re together all the time, so it wouldn’t. .” Realisation dawned. “Except for when he’s on the mound.”
Howard nodded. “Kim says he didn’t know the Prime Minister would be there — he was assuming they were together all the time they were in the stadium. The difference is equivalent to two floors in the buildings within a half mile or so, four floors if they’re a mile away. .”
Sanger held up his hand to silence Howard and put his radio to his mouth. He began to call up his agents, speaking quickly and urgently.
Joker put down his binoculars and wiped his forehead with the arm of his jacket. Sweat was pouring off his face and his upper body was soaking wet under the vest. He desperately wanted another beer.
“Parliament is in the tunnel,” said a voice in his ear and he instinctively looked towards the entrance where British bodyguards were standing at attention. A gust of wind lifted the jacket of one and Joker saw an MP5K Heckler amp; Koch hanging from a sling in the small of his back. Joker looked at the gun. It was a shorter barrelled version of the submachine gun he’d used during his time with the SAS. The wind dropped and the jacket fell back into place, concealing the gun once more. He wiped his forehead again and put the binoculars back to his eyes and scanned the stands. He saw parents with children, young couples, old men and teenagers, almost everyone wearing shirts or caps with the Oriole bird logo. Most were eating or drinking, and vendors ran up and down the aisles selling beer, popcorn, burgers and soft drinks.
The stadium was all seating and was better organised than any sports event he’d ever seen in Britain. He remembered the Old Firm soccer matches he’d gone to in Glasgow, Celtic versus Rangers, where the aggression on the pitch unfailingly spilled over to violence on the terraces. The animosity among the spectators was compounded by the fact that Roman Catholics supported Celtic and the Protestants backed Rangers, and the taunts that were yelled back and forth had as much to do with religion as they did with soccer. Compared with that, the ballpark was a night at the opera.
A female usher flashed through Joker’s field of vision and then was gone, but something made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and he panned the binoculars back, searching for her. He found her. She had red hair and glasses and was wearing what looked like an official uniform, but it was Mary Hennessy, he was sure of it. She was leaning against a metal barrier and staring down at the baseball diamond, a faraway smile on her face. Joker reached for his two-way radio and pressed the transmit button.
Mary stood at the front of the middle aisle on the second-level stand looking down on third base. She turned around, making sure that there were no other ushers nearby. So long as she didn’t get too close, no one would realise she wasn’t a regular member of the ballpark staff. According to the map Kelly Armstrong had given her, there were no undercover FBI agents nearby. At the top of the aisle she saw Kelly but she deliberately avoided eye contact. Mary wasn’t sure exactly what Kelly thought she would achieve by being present, but she’d said that she wanted to be close by, to watch and, if necessary, to help.
Mary turned and saw the Prime Minister walk to the centre of the mound, holding the game ball as if not sure what to do with it. His security men were standing to the side, scanning the faces of the spectators, alert for any threatening signs, and beyond them were the agents of the Secret Service. The First Lady stood at the side of the mound, some twenty feet or so from the Prime Minister. Mary smiled. She wished there were some way she could tell the Prime Minister what was going to happen, so that she could see the fear in his face. In a fantasy that made her head spin she imagined shouting to him just before the bullets struck, telling him that he was going to die and cursing him as his chest exploded.
She bent her neck and put her chin down close to the microphone. The transceiver was clipped to the belt of her trousers in plain view. Many of the genuine ushers carried radios and it added rather than detracted from her authenticity.
“Check One,” she said, pressing the earpiece into her ear to cut out some of the crowd noise.
“Check One,” she heard. It was Lovell’s voice.
“Check Two,” said Mary.
“Check Two,” said Schoelen.
“Check Three,” said Mary.
“Check Three,” said Carlos.
“Check Wind,” she said.
There was a pause then she heard Farrell’s voice. “One Nine Seven at Three,” he said. Mary’s heart lifted. The wind was negligible.
“One Nine Seven at Three,” repeated Lovell.
“One Nine Seven at Three,” said Schoelen.