Line of Succession

“On foot?”

“Does your union prohibit it? Get your hand near your piece.” Lime was in motion, heading across the soggy dead grass with his plunging stride, a fresh cigarette dangling unlit. The driver panted to catch up. Ahead of them the five people were moving straight toward the Plymouth, walking very fast. Lime began to run, sweeping back the side-vented coat that accommodated his service revolver. He raised his arm overhead; his hand described a quick arc and Secret Service men began to converge from several points.

Now the five were piling into the Plymouth, still unaware they had been made. The agent from the Senate Office Building doorway reached the passenger side of the car and showed them his gun. Lime, on his toes and ru

It was about forty yards: Lime got down on one knee and braced his shooting arm in the open palm of his left hand and shot for the tires, cocking the revolver with his thumb and firing single-action, six very rapid ones; then he was on his feet and ru

He had exploded a rear tire but the Plymouth was still going, lumping along on the rim. Probably doing thirty miles an hour, with Lime and his men ru

Lime kept ru

Lime pushed past the uniformed cops. He was puffing, and angry with himself for it: he hadn’t run more than three blocks’ distance. In college he had done the four-forty with no effort at all. He swept his glance over the six from the car, trying to single out the leader, but he couldn’t pick a spokesman by looking at them—so he made an arbitrary choice: he selected the weakest-looking face and went to work on Robert Walberg.

The crowd from the wrecked cars in the avenue was making so much noise Lime could barely hear himself. He waved a couple of cops toward the incensed civilians and addressed himself to the Walberg boy. A muscle worked at the back of Walberg’s jaw. Lime kept talking to him: “Where are the bombs, boy? Where’d you leave them? Come on, let’s have it. Where’d you put the bombs, Bobby?”

If you know the name, use the diminutive; it helps break them down, it makes you Authority. Maybe they’d called him Robbie or Bob-o but Bobby was most common, most likely. “Come on, Bobby.” Lime had a cigarette between his lips; he struck a match but did not stop talking so that the cigarette pumped up and down violently while he tried to light it; he succeeded only in blowing out the match, and tried another.

Walberg’s eyes mirrored his terror and Lime didn’t even give him time to answer: he mentioned Stratten and Alvin Corby and made it very clear to Walberg that he knew everything: that he knew a great deal more than he did in fact know; and finally he let himself run down and waited for Walberg’s answer.

It might have worked but the big black one in the Afro butted in and none of the cops had the sense to stop him. “Don’t tell the pig nothing, boy. You go get fucked, honkie. We don’t tell you mothers nothing.”

Lime made an angry gesture and his driver whipped past and yanked the big Negro away. It was probably too late after that but Lime kept pushing Walberg: “Come on, Bobby. Where are the devices? When are they set to go off? Come on, Bobby.” He had the gun in his fist and he allowed the terrible rage to leak out through his eyes; he was right up close against Walberg, breathing smoke into the boy’s face, and the boy’s jaw was juddering with fright.

Then Lime heard the muted chug of the first explosion, like a hard-cued break against a rack of pool balls, and his face changed with the realization that his questions were too late.

12:40 P.M. EST In the Senate the two bombs went off about seven seconds apart.

Dexter Ethridge had watched Gardner, his successor, go down the center aisle to be sworn in, and then take his place at Ethridge’s old desk on the Republican side of the aisle.

And now before Ethridge had time to move, before he had time to react at all, the wall behind the rostrum began to tilt and heave: the shock wave hit him, pressed him back into his chair.

He saw the partition begin to crumble behind the podium, bringing the lower seats of the right-hand half of the press gallery down toward the Senate floor, as reporters shrieked and clawed. Chunks of masonry and wood shot through the air and choking dust filled the chamber and the overwhelming noise echoed and reverberated. A shoe, incredibly intact, hit the arm of Ethridge’s chair and lodged there. It grazed his fingertips, no more. Ethridge drew air wildly into his chest in panic. There were bodies, human bodies in clothes, hurtling through the air like projectiles. Pieces were cracking out of the high ceiling. Plaster andsawdust made an immediate dense stink.

And now Ethridge was moving, sliding out of the chair, seeking blindly for shelter with the intuitive response of a man who once had heard 77mm shells coming in and knew how to dive for cover.

Down on his face: he shoved his head under the seat of the chair and wrapped his arms around his face and he was like that when the second bomb exploded. The floor jumped, bashed his chest; debris rained on his exposed rump and the backs of his legs. He found himself thinking he was going to have a hell of a bruise on his hip from that one and he might be limping for a few days…

Someone was screaming insistently close by, loud enough to drown out much of the other racket. Objects were slamming against walls and furnishings and something in this madness collapsed the chair above him: it broke off at one side and he felt the jarring blinding blow against the back and top of his head, and then he was sputtering and shoving with his arms and scrabbling with his feet to get out from under the weight of the thing that was on him.

This is a hell of a position for the Vice-President-elect of the United States of America. He was giggling a little, backing out of the trap, his butt way up in the air, on his chest and knees, backing out, giggling.… He pulled his head out and up and saw that the chair had broken only on its left side; it had tilted over, rather than flattening straight down, and it had left a triangularly tent-shaped opening which had saved his skull the direct crushing smash of the enormous chunk of plaster that had fallen on it.