Free Under Siege by Stephen Coonts Page A

Henry Charon mused as he walked along. Make the hit, ride out the manhunt that would immediately follow, then leave Washington several weeks later for the ranch. Sit at the ranch for several years enduring the agony of waiting for the FBI to come driving up the road, and hoping they never came.
    But Bush was merely the first name on the list. The other five, they would have to be killed after the presidential hit.
    That was the rub. The sequence was dictated by logic. If he first shot the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, or the attorney general, the Secret Service would surround Bush with a security curtain that one man could not hope to penetrate. So Bush had to be the first target. That sequence inevitably created an escape problem of extraordinary complexity. He had to move in spite of the dragnet and find his targets. And escape without revealing his identity. Again and again.
    Could it be done? Could he do it?
    He glimpsed light ahead and doused the flashlight. TW-O hundred yards of careful walking brought him to a steel mesh. Here the new tunnel joined an existing one. He stood in the darkness and waited.
    Yes. Here comes the rumble again, much louder, swelling and growing, rushing toward him.
    He stood watching as a subway train rushed by with a roar, the passengers plainly visible in the windows, standing tilde , sitting, reading, talking to each other. And as fast as the train had come, it was gone, the sound radioand
    Henry Charon extracted a subway map from his hip pocket and consulted it in the dim glow of the flashlight. He traced the lines and looked again at the layout of the system, committing the routes to memory. The avenues and streets and subway lines, they had to be as familiar to him as the ridges and mesas of the Sangre de Cristos.
    With the map back in his pocket, he examined the steel fence carefully and the padlocked mesh door in the middle of it. He could cut that lock if he had to. A Yale. He would buy one just like it, just in case.
    It felt strange here in this tunnel, walking through the darkness with just the glow of the flashlight and the smell of earth in his nostrils. In fifteen minutes he arrived at the cavern that would someday be a subway station and picked his way around and through the scaffolding. He found the opening to the outside world, kicked the plywood off, then reset it. It was chilly on the street After buttoning his coat, Henry walked along absorbing the sights and sounds, and examining the terrain yet again, Before committing everything to memory.
    Could it be done? Could he do it?
    Even if he pulled it off, did everything absolutely right and fate had no nasty little surprises for him-like a cop at an unexpected place or a tourist snapping pictures at the wrong time-Tasson and his unknown masters were still the weak links.
    Who did Tasson work for? How many people in Tassone’s organization knew of the New Mexico hitter, Tassone’s trips, the cash in the suitcases? were any of these people government informers? Would they become so in the future? were any of them alcoholics or drug addicts? Would someone whisper to a mistress, brag at a bar?
    All who knew the identity of the assassin of the President of the United States were serious threats for as long as they lived. They would always carry this immense, valuable secret. If they were ever arrested or threatened ” the immense, valuable secret could always be sold or traded.
    The project tempted Henry Charon. The preparations, the anticipation that would grow and grow, the kill, the chase afterward, just thinking of these things made him feel vigorously alive, like the first glimpse of a bull elk against a far ridge on a clear, frosty morning. Yet the unknown, faceless ones could ruin him at any time. If he successfully escaped he would have to live with the possibility of betrayal all the rest of his life.
    Yet you had to weigh everything, and the hunt was what really mattered.
    Henry Charon walked on, thinking again