James Patterson Alex Cross 03 Jack And Jill

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This is not a drill.
Jack is on the move.
"Jack is approaching Pennsylvania Avenue now. He's near the Willard Hotel. He
just glanced back over his shoulder. Jack's paranoid, as well he should be. I
don't think he saw us. Oh, shit, somebody just flashed their high beams in
front of the Willard.
A vehicle is pulling out -- and pulling up alongside Jack! RedJeep!
Jack is getting inside the fucking redJeep."
"Roger. So much for having Jack in our damn crosshairs. We'll follow him
pronto. Virginia plates on the Jeep. License number two-three-one HCY. Koons
dealer sticker. Start a trace on the Jeep, now."
"We're following the red Jeep. We're on Jack's ass. Full alert for the Jackal.
Repeat: full alert for the Jackal. This is not a drill!"
"Do not lose Jack tonight of all nights. Do not lose Jack under any
circumstances."
"Roger. We have Jack in plain sight."
Three dark sedans took off in hot pursuit of the Jeep. Jack was the Secret
Service's code name for President Thomas Byrnes.
Jill was the code name for the First Lady. Crown had been the Service's code
word for the White House for nearly twenty years.
Most of the current-duty agents genuinely liked President Byrnes. He was a
down-to-earth guy, a very regular person as recent presidents went. Not too
much bullshit about him. Occasionally, though, the President took off on an
unannounced date with some lady friend, either in D.C. or on the road. The
Secret Service referred to this as "the president's disease." Thomas Byrnes
was hardly the first to suffer from this malady. John Kennedy, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, and especially Lyndon Johnson had been the worst offenders. It
seemed to be a perk of high office.
The coincidence of the names chosen by the two psychopathic killers in D.C.,
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the so-called celebrity stalkers, wasn't lost on the Secret Service. The
Secret Service didn't believe in coincidences. They had already met four times
on the matter -- long, difficult meetings in the Emergency Command Center in
the West Wing basement of the White House. The name for any would-be assassins
of the president was Jackal.
Jackal had been used by the Secret Service for more than thirty years.
The "coincidence" of the names worried the PPD, the Presidential Protection
Division, a great deal- especially.when President Byrnes decided to go out on
one of his unannounced walks, which for obvious reasons didn't include any of
his bodyguards.
There were two Jacks and two Jills.
The Secret Service did not, could not, accept this as a coincidence.
"We've lost the red Jeep around the Tidal Basin. We've lost Jack," an agent's
voice suddenly exploded over the car-radio speakers.
Everything was chaos. Full-alert chaos.
This was not a test.
PART 2
DRAGONSLAYER
ON MONDAY NIGHT something.finally broke on Jack and Jill.
It was something potentially big. I hoped it wasn't a hoax.
I'd just gotten home to try and catch a bite of dinner with the kids when the
phone rang. It was Kyle Craig. He told me a videotaped message, reportedly
from Jack and Jill, had been delivered to the CNN studios. The killers had
made a home movie for the world to see. Jack and Jill had also sent cover
letters to the Washington Post and the New York Times. They were planning to
"explain" themselves that night.
I had to rush out before Nana's roast chicken hit the supper table. Jannie and
Damon gave me their not-again looks. They were right to think that way.
I hurried to the Union Station section of Washington, around H and North
Capitol. I didn't want to be late for the party that Jack andJillwere
throwing. This was another example of the two of them demonstrating their
control over us.
I arrived at CNN headquarters just in time for the screening and only moments
before the video was to be aired on Larry King Live. Senior agents from the
FBI and Secret Service were crowded into a low-key, cozy CNN viewing room. So
were various techies, administrators, and lawyers from the news network.
Everybody looked incredibly tense and uptight.
The room was completely silent as the filmed message from Jack and Jill began.
I was afraid to blink. We all were.
"You believe this shit?" somebody finally muttered.
Jack and Jill had been filming us! That was the first shock of the night. They
had actually filmed the police outside Senator Fitzpatrick's apartment
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building a few days earlier. They had been right there in the crowd of
onlookers, the ambulance-chasers.
The film was a jarring, documentary-style collage of black and white, with
some color. The opening shots were from several angles outside Senator
Fitzpatrick's building. It was like a well-made student film, but a little
artsy. Then something even more unexpected and powerful came on the screen.
The murderers had filmed the last moments of Senator Fitzpatrick's life,
seconds before his murder, I guessed. There were haunting shots of the senator
alive. It got worse from there.
We saw graphic shots of Daniel Fitzpatrick, naked, handcuffed to his bed. We
heard his voice. "Please don't do this," he pleaded with his captors. Then we
heard the click of a trigger.
A shot was fired only an inch or two from Fitzpatrick's right ear. Then came a
second shot. The senator's head exploded on film. People gasped at the awful
image and sound that carried the senator into eternity.
"Oh, Jesus! Jesus!" a woman screamed. Several people looked away from the
screen. Others covered their eyes. I stayed with it. I couldn't miss anything.
This was all vital information for the case that I was trying to understand.
This was more valuable than all the DNA testing, serology, and fingerprinting
in the world.
The tone of the film suddenly changed after the footage of Fitzpatrick's
vicious murder. Images of ordinary people on the streets of unidentified
cities and small towns followed the chilling death sequence. A few of the
people on camera waved, some smiled broadly, most seemed indifferent as they
were being filmed, presumably by Jack and Jill.
The film continued to weave together black-and-white and color footage, but
not in a disorderly fashion. Whoever had stitched it together had a decent
skill for editing.
One of them is an artist, or at least has strong artistic tendencies, I
thought to myself and made a mental note. What kind of artist would be
involved in something like this? I was familiar with several theories about
links between creativity and psychopaths.
Bundy, Dahmer, even Manson, could be considered "creative" killers. On the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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