The Next President

Prologue - April, 1971
   J.D. Cade thought he'd never have to kill anyone again. He'd come home to Southern Illinois from the war at age 20 having killed five men. Four under orders, one on his own. To his mind, that was more than enough to last him a lifetime, but that was before he'd heard of Alvy McCray. Alvy was someone who, as Texans liked to put it, needed killing. Needed it right away..
    At six-feet-two and a hundred and seventy-five pounds, J.D. was tall and rangy. His sandy brown hair hadn't been cut during his last six weeks in the army and was already long enough not to mark him as a soldier. His eyes were a clear pale blue and his face was unlined and unblemished, but he'd always had a self-possessed air about him that made people trust in his abilities, and made it unlikely anyone would ever guess he had $10,000 in stolen cash stuffed in the bottom of his duffel bag.
    J.D. knew the McCray name, of course. The Cades of Illinois and the McCrays of Kentucky had engaged in a blood feud from the mid—19th Century to the outbreak of World War II. That conflict had damped the fires of the feud by killing off dozens of Cades and McCrays, and leaving the survivors with their fill of death.
    Now, in the wake of a far less popular war, up popped this ex-marine Alvy McCray who'd come home and was doing his damnedest to start the hostilities all over again. Alvy had been hitting every bar, tavern, and road house in Southern Illinois where a Cade might take a drink and whipping the ass off every last one he found. J.D.'s cousin Ben had nearly been killed and lay in the hospital with his recovery still uncertain.
    Alvy was described as a big, mean, rawboned sonofabitch, but the outcomes of the attacks were predetermined by the fact that he had begun each one with a sucker punch. With his victim at his feet, he would sneer, "I'm Alvy McCray, and your sorry Cade ass is mine any time I want it." Then he'd jump in his pickup truck and speed back across the Ohio River to Kentucky before the cops could arrive.
    When the authorities in Kentucky received inquiries from their counterparts in Illinois, they replied that as far as they knew Alvy McCray was a law-abiding young man, and for every time Alvy was alleged to have battered a Cade in Illinois, his father and wife always swore that he was right at home on the family farm outside of Paducah.
    The credibility of these alibis was assisted in no small measure by the fact that many of the local cops were also named McCray. So if the McCray family was not actually cheering Alvy on, they were at least tolerating his assaults on the Cades as not particularly troubling.
    J.D.'s second night home, he drove down to Kentucky. The sun was disappearing as he found the dirt road where the McCray farm was located. As he drove past, he heard shouts and screams coming from a small weathered farmhouse. It sounded to him like some sonofabitch was beating up a woman. Alvy apparently liked to throw a punch at home, too.
     J.D. drove a half-mile past the house, backed his car into a stand of trees on the opposite side of the road, and waited for the moon to rise. His plan was to reconnoiter. He wanted to get a look at Alvy before he had to deal with him at close range. But while J.D. was still in the car, he saw a figure carrying a rifle heading his way.
     The man was moving in a crouch, and the outline of the weapon in his hands was disturbingly familiar. It was either an M-16 or its civilian cousin the AR-15. Knowing that Alvy liked to get in the first punch, J.D. was certain he'd like to get in the first shot, too. But 50 meters short of the stand of trees where J.D. waited, the rifleman executed a left turn and moved away from him. He hadn't seen J.D.'s car at all.
     Puzzled, J.D. eased out of the car and stole down the road. When he reached the point where Alvy had turned left, he realized that he was at the property line of the McCray farm. It came to him then: The dumbfuck was patrolling his perimeter. On a Kentucky farm. Scary.
     J.D. looked at the farmhouse in the distance. A single light burned in a second floor window. He could imagine how terrified Alvy's wife must be having to put up with a violent loon like him. Why the fuck didn't she just wait until he fell asleep one night and shoot him? That' d save . . . save everybody else the trouble. A grim smile formed on J.D.'s lips.
     To test his assumption that Alvy was a time-bomb with a burning fuse, J.D. crept along unnoticed behind him. He waited until he had a large oak to duck behind and a clear path of retreat and then he chucked a stone at Alvy. It caught him squarely on the back of his white-walled head. A man with the least bit of intelligence might have taken the pelting as a sign that somebody didn't like him -- and could just as easily have killed him.
     Alvy's response was to turn and empty his clip.
     From that point on, the first part of J.D.'s plan was simplicity: He had to focus all of Alvy's anger on him. Which meant all the other Cades had to lay low. Some of the older men thought this was a burden J.D. shouldn't have to bear by himself -- until he described how it had felt to have a volley of Alvy's automatic-weapon fire go blazing past your head.
     Just in case the stoning Alvy had suffered provoked him into coming armed on his next foray into Cade country, J.D. stuck his late father's army .45 into the pocket of his field jacket.
     Then he set up shop in a roadhouse called the Dew Drop Inn that sat next to state highway 146 just outside the little town of Golconda. That was where Alvy McCray had begun his rampage by fracturing the jaw of Dashiel Cade. It took J.D. five nights of nursing beers before Alvy finally showed up.
     J.D. didn't see Alvy walk through the door, but he knew trouble was on the way when the bartender's mouth fell open. J.D. felt as much as saw people move away from him. He discreetly slipped the .45 out of his pocket -- the gun shielded from Alvy by his body -- and held it close to his leg. He continued to sip beer from the bottle in his left hand and didn't look around.
     He picked up Alvy's reflection in the mirror behind the back-bar. Alvy leaned against the bar three feet away from J.D. and took a particular interest in the name on J.D.'s field jacket.
     "You a real Cade?" Alvy asked him. "Or just some college pussy bought some army pussy's jacket?."
     J.D. turned his head to face Alvy.
     "Yeah, I'm a Cade. J.D. Cade. And from the way those beady fucking eyes of yours are set an eighth of an inch apart, my guess is you're a McCray. So what're you doing over here in Illinois when you could be back home fucking your sister?"
     Alvy cocked his fist, but before he could throw the first punch, J.D. had rammed the .45 into his nose. Cartilage shattered, blood gushed, and Alvy went reeling. But he took the fact that J.D. hadn't shot him dead immediately as an invitation to regroup and charge. Which he lowered his head and did..      J.D. stepped aside and backhanded him viciously across the side of his face with the .45. On the rebound, Alvy's head slammed into the edge of the bar and he landed flat on his back. When Alvy's eyes regained focus, he was staring straight up the barrel of J.D.'s weapon.
     "That was for my cousin Ben," J.D. told him coolly, "and for all the other members of my family you sucker-punched. Think of it as evening up the score. But if you ever come back this way, it's open season on you. You have the brains to understand that?"
     J.D. kept his gun on Alvy as he got to his feet and backed out the door. He could tell from the dumb, sullen rage in the cocksucker's eyes he hadn't had enough. He'd be back.
     So he told him, "Like I said, settle your affairs before you come this way again."
     Alvy returned two weeks later, storming into the Dew Drop Inn with his AR-15 in his hands. Every last drinker in the roadhouse, and the bartender, ran out the back door. But Alvy'd had time to see that J.D. Cade hadn't been among them. He was about to stomp back outside and find some Cade to kill when the public phone rang.
     The call could have been from anybody for anybody, but standing there alone in the roadhouse, Alvy knew who was calling and knew it was for him. When he picked up the receiver he heard J.D. Cade's voice, and it was full of mocking laughter.
     "You up there in Golconda, Alvy? Well, I'm not very far away. Just down on a little farm outside of Paducah. Found a woman here who just loves a man who'll fuck her without beating her up first. What do you think about that, Alvy?"
     Alvy ran to his Ford pickup and jammed the key in the ignition. His tires smoked as he took off south on highway 146. The roar of blood in his ears drowned out the growl of the truck's engine as he hit 60 on a narrow ribbon of asphalt where the posted limit was 45.
      The blacktop entered the Shawnee National Forest. Even though the trees wore thick new mantles of spring-green leaves, the setting sun sent shafts of light poking through the branches that made Alvy squint. But he kept the gas pedal floored even when the pavement rose and dipped and curved. More than once he had to wrestle the pickup back onto the asphalt.
     Then he roared around a curve where the road turned west and the sun hit him squarely in the eyes. At that moment he heard a sharp crack that might have been gunfire. He didn't have time to worry about that possibility because just then a deer bolted out of the trees and directly into the path of his truck. He frantically cranked the wheel to the right, hoping the animal would clear his left fender. But at the speed he was traveling, it came to him with a shock, hitting a tree would be a far more certain way to die. Alvy swung the wheel back hard to the left.
     His bumper caught the animal in mid-bound. The impact swung the deer up and around and its hindquarters smashed through the windshield. At that point, Alvy lost his grip on the wheel, but he managed to jam his foot on the brake. The pickup went into a sideways skid for a hundred feet or so and then the wheels tore free from the pavement and the truck flipped over three times, dismembering the deer, and coming to a rest cab down.
     By that time, Alvy was roadkill, too.
     Just the kind of death J.D. Cade had wanted for him.

Labor Day -- September 6, 2004
    Upward of half-a-million people filled Chicago's Grant Park chanting for the appearance of the man they believed would be the next president of the United States, blissfully unaware that the lectern at which he would speak was already targeted in the telescopic sight of an assassin.
     For most purposes, the day was perfect. The sun shone from a cloudless sky, Lake Michigan glistened sapphire blue, and a breeze off the water moderated a temperature of 82 degrees. Streams of people continued to arrive on foot from all directions. Traffic on Michigan Avenue, Lake Shore Drive and all the east-west streets from Randolph to Jackson was at a standstill. Most motorists simply turned off their engines, stood outside their vehicles, and listened to the coverage of the event on their radios.
     But no help was needed to hear the chant of the crowd. It rolled across the lakefront as if the city itself was calling out. Demanding the man who would make history.
     "FDR, FDR, FDR . . ."
     The throng pleaded for the appearance of Senator Franklin Delano Rawley of Wisconsin, who was already an historic figure by virtue of becoming the first black man to be the presidential nominee of one of the two major political parties.
     Presently at the lectern, the city's mayor was doggedly doing his best to finish his speech. A ripple of laughter raced through the crowd as a gust of wind almost carried off the final page of the mayor's oration. Sitting behind the mayor on the stage of the James C. Petrillo Music Shell were the candidate's family, and an elite selection of local, national, and party dignitaries. They looked out at the immense, expectant gathering with undisguised joy.
     The polls said their man was ahead of the incumbent by only five points, scarcely more than the margin of error, but many of the pundits said this was an election year that would be unlike any other. Two hundred and sixteen years after electing George Washington as its first president, the United States was electrified by the possibility that it might elect Franklin Delano Rawley as its first black president.
    "FDR, FD--"
     The chant seemed to catch in everyone's throat for a split second and then it changed to a roar as the candidate appeared.
     Like rolling thunder, the multitude's shout of approval reached the 15th floor room at the southwest corner of the Hyatt Regency Chicago. It was all the easier to hear because the small floor-level window panel to the left of the room's heating and air-conditioning unit had been carefully removed. The rectangle of thick safety glass and the fat black rubberized seal that had held it in place lay nearby, ready for quick replacement.
     J.D. Cade lay in a prone shooting position just back of the empty window frame in the shadows of the darkened room. He'd registered at the hotel the day before under the name of Jack Tenant with his hair colored silver-gray by a wash, brown contact lenses over his blue eyes, a well-groomed but newly grown beard, and two-inch lifts in his shoes. He'd checked out via the TV 15 minutes ago, but a Do Not Disturb sign hung on the outside of the safety-latched door to his room. Now, he watched through the scope of his McLellan M-100 sniper rifle, the barrel steadied by its tripod, as Senator Rawley arrived on the stage of the music shell some 2,950 yards away.
     It had been almost 41 years since John F. Kennedy was killed by a sniper. The Secret Service hadn't forgotten the lessons it learned from that tragedy, but in the manner of their counterparts at the Pentagon, they had prepared for the last war. The helicopters, the agents on rooftops, the entire security cordon were all positioned on the assumption that no current sniper rifle had an effective range beyond 2,000 yards.
     The exception to this limit was the .50 caliber McLellan M-100 which was used by the Navy SEALs and had an effective range of 3,000 yards. The round it fired was powerful enough to shoot down a large aircraft, much less kill a man. But the special agents protecting Senator Rawley -- Orpheus, by his Secret Service code name -- operated under the assumption that this weapon was the exclusive, tightly guarded property of the military.
     Nevertheless, J.D. Cade had one, and the hotel room he'd obtained was beyond the security cordon. A picket fence of high-rise buildings on Randolph Street stood between the Hyatt and the park, but he had a clear field of fire, between the Aon Center on the east and the Prudential Plaza Building on the west, to the northeast facing stage of the music shell.
     Senator Rawley, known as Del on all but the most formal occasions, had just stepped onto that stage and was waving to the adoring crowd. He was already in J.D.'s crosshairs, but at the moment the flags on the stage showed that a swirling wind was blowing. Over a distance of almost 3,000 yards, a strong wind might move even a .50 caliber round far enough to kill someone walking along Michigan Avenue or sitting on a boat in the Monroe Street Harbor. J.D. had to be patient. When the wind died so would his target..      Del Rawley was not a classically handsome man, but even seen through the narrow field of vision of his scope, J.D. could recognize the intelligence in the man's eyes and the star-power in his smile. Having studied his target, he knew that Rawley was a vet like himself, a former combat medic. He had earned his bachelor and master degrees from the University of Wisconsin, had been an educator and an author, had served in the House of Representatives and now the Senate, was a devoted husband, father and grandfa--
     The wind died, the flags went limp, and J.D. Cade squeezed the trigger. The .50 caliber round flew at a speed of 2,500 feet per second, but it had to cover a distance of 8,850 feet. Travel time was 3.54 seconds.
     Given the intervention of Fate, that was long enough for the course of history to be changed.
     What J.D. Cade couldn't see outside the lines of his crosshairs was the man in front of the music shell stage lifting his young daughter who in turn proffered a rose to the candidate. Del Rawley pricked his finger on a thorn, but bending over saved his life.
     The round that should have torn his head off passed over him, streaked between the Mayor of Chicago and the Governor of Illinois seated behind him, smashed a hole the size of a beach ball through the back of the music shell and expended its lethal energy by cutting down a six-inch thick maple tree at its base.
     J.D. Cade watched in disbelief through his telescopic sight, stunned that he'd missed. Del Rawley had already disappeared under a swarm of Secret Service agents. First, they simply piled on him, but within seconds he was dragged from the stage inside a knot of bodies.
     The idea of attempting a second shot never occurred to J.D. Now, it was time for him to run. The M-100's features included both a flash suppressor and a sound suppressor, so his shot's point of origin would not be obvious. Nevertheless, his escape would depend on speed. As he swiftly replaced the hotel's window, he could see that the scene in the park below had changed from one of a political rally to bedlam.
     He'd been careful to wear surgical gloves inside the room, and would continue to wear them for a few more seconds. He had his weapon broken down and stowed inside his suitcase within a minute. The lifts that had been in his shoes were already packed away. Before he'd set up for his shot, he'd shaved his beard but left the mustache. He'd covered the drains in the bathtub and the sink with nylon mesh and retrieved the hair he shed. Those signs of his presence in the room had been packed away, too. He slipped on a pair of sunglasses and exited the room. Now as a final precaution, he flipped the hang-tag on his door asking the maid to clean the room promptly.
     Pulling off the surgical gloves and tucking them neatly into the inside pocket of his suit coat, he rang for the elevator with a knuckle. By the time he reached the lobby, news of what had happened in Grant Park was already common currency. Knots of excited people babbled about who might have tried to kill Senator Rawley; others were rushing to the hotel bar to see televised reports; even the staff behind the registration desk was crowded around a radio listening to a frantic reporter tell them what little he knew..      
   J.D. had to open the hotel door for himself, but he found a cab out front..      
   At first, the driver wanted to stay right where he was and listen to the news. J.D. said that was certainly his choice, but pointed out that if he remained where he was he was bound to get stuck in the gridlock that would doubtless engulf the area in the next few minutes and there went a day's fares.
     The cabbie kept his radio on, but asked J.D. where he wanted to go. Hearing the response, he executed a tight U-turn, made a right on Michigan Avenue, and dropped his fare off at the corner of Fullerton Parkway and Lincoln Park West ten minutes later..      J.D. tipped generously but not conspicuously.
     Still listening to the news reports, the cabbie bid J.D. goodbye by saying, "Jesus, this is awful!"
     "It is a mess," he agreed.
     As the taxi disappeared, J.D. walked north through Lincoln Park, attracting no special attention. At Belmont Harbor, he boarded a 25-foot cabin cruiser called the Wastrel. Below deck, he doffed his coat and tie, and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. He'd chartered the boat in Milwaukee under the name Jonathan Helm, and though he'd paid for it through Wednesday, he'd be returning it in the four-and-a-half hours it would take him to make the 90 mile cruise north.
     He eased the boat out of the harbor. Once out on the lake he ran the craft a mile offshore and then turned north. He proceeded at a steady 20 knots. Just above Kenosha, with no other craft in sight, he stopped long enough to dump the M-100, the surgical gloves, the exfoliated hair, and the phony credit cards, obtained from a computer hacker, which had financed his travels: all of which went overboard tied inside a black trash bag. According to the chart he'd studied, the water at this point in the lake was over 400 feet deep. He also rinsed the gray coloring out of his hair and changed into casual clothes for his arrival at the Milwaukee Yacht Club.
     He returned the boat to its home berth and slipping a blazer on he took a taxi to the private aviation terminal at Mitchell International Airport. Here a Citation executive jet waited for a client named Martin Byrd who was going on a gambling junket to Las Vegas.
     Once he was aboard, reclining in a plush leather seat, he told the cabin attendant that he was a low-maintenance passenger. All he'd require would be a soft drink and a pillow for the nap he planned to take during the flight.
     The woman smiled and said compassionately, "You do look a little tired."     
     "It's been one of those days," J.D. agreed.
     She brought the drink and the pillow, and promised no one would disturb him.
     J.D. fidgeted, unable to get comfortable, as the executive jet climbed smoothly into the sky. He knew sleep wouldn't come easily. He'd left his job unfinished today, and if he did get to sleep it would still be waiting for him when he awoke.

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