Page 75 of Hush
“I’d like to know more about your past. What you saw. What you experienced.” Mike was still speaking quietly into his ear, over his shoulder. “If you want to talk about it.”
“I do. With you.” Tom reached behind his back and covered Mike’s hand with his own. It was a risk, touching Mike so intimately out in the open, but he craved Mike’s touch, everything about him. He took a breath, and then another. “Maybe… next year we can march together?”
Mike squeezed his hand hard, until his own hand trembled. “When you’re ready.”
The march stopped in front of Capitol Hill, turning into a rally. People swarmed into Union Square in front of the U.S. Capitol and surrounded the smaller reflecting pool at the base of the Capitol steps. Maryland and Pennsylvania Ave were closed to traffic, and the marchers turned into street partiers, chanting, beating on their drums, and clapping in time to raucous chants. Tom and Mike followed on the edges and clung to Pennsylvania Ave, watching from the northern edge of the reflecting pool.
“What’s… going on?” Mike shifted, moving from relaxed and at ease to his law enforcement stance, assuming the hypervigilance that his lawman senses demanded. Tom felt it, the shift in Mike behind him, the way the air around him charged. “Why do the marchers all have Russian flags all of a sudden?”
The march had turned into a street rally, and then shifted into a protest in the space of minutes. Russian flags streaked with rainbows, posters of jailed Russian dissidents, chants decrying the Russian political stance against LGBT people. Everyone faced the Capitol, shouting, screaming, beating their drums and waving their flags as loud and proud as they could.
“Oh my God,” Mike breathed. “The Russian president. He’s here in DC. He’s here at the Capitol.”
“Jesus…”
First Street, between Union Square and the Capitol, was permanently closed to civilian traffic, but was used for dignitary travel and VIP motorcades. A line of slick black SUVs sat in front of the Capitol steps, and in the center, two of the SUVs had little Russian flags waving from the front corners of the hood. Men in dark suits stood at posts around the motorcade, glaring at the crowd across the street in Union Square. Uniformed Capitol police and DC Metro police lined the edge of the square, keeping the protestors away from the Russian motorcade. Men and women in FBI jackets waited on the steps, and more men in dark suits with coiled wires leading from their ear kept a tight perimeter around the motorcade.
And then, the crowd erupted, protestors going wild, bellowing at the tops of their lungs. A group of men stood at the top of the Capitol steps, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Senate Majority Leader. The minority leaders and the right-hand men and women of the leadership clustered in the background. In the center of the group, the Russian president stood, flanked by a joint team of Secret Service agents and Russian security personnel. Even from a distance, the Secret Service and Russian security personnel looked about as pleased to be working together as two bitterly hateful rivals could be.
“I want to see this.” Mike led Tom through the crowd, getting them closer to the Peace Monument at the northwest corner of the base of the grand steps to the Capitol. White marble seemed to stretch forever, steps to the sky it seemed, a deep, cloudless blue sky painted off the edges of the world behind the Capitol dome. “They’re probably going to pass right by us. Head up Pennsylvania to Constitution and then over to Blair House. Usually foreign dignitaries stay at Blair House, across the street from the White House.” Mike made space for Tom near the planters at the water’s edge of the Peace Monument. Above them, marble statues draped in classical robes hid their faces and sobbed. Grief, one of the women, leaned against the shoulder of History. History, the marble statue staring down the National Mall and over the crowd of Pride protesters, held a stone tablet, inscribed:They died that their country might live.
Tom’s blood ran cold, and a shiver tip-tapped down his spine, the patter of a thousand spiders’ feet sliding down his skin.
The Russian president strode down the long Capitol steps, his security team flanking him in a wide V formation. Secret Service, FBI, Russian security. The U.S. congressional leaders stayed at the top, watching him stride away.
The shouts of the protestors grew louder, rose on the furious beats of the bucket drums and the clap-clap-clap of their chants. A megaphone wielded by a slender man with long blond hair bellowed out the names of gay Russians who had been killed, and others wallowing in prison. An effigy of the Russian president rose on a pole, dressed in a tutu, covered in lipstick kisses and holding a rainbow flag in both of his puppet hands. The crowd roared. Tom’s molars vibrated, even through his clenched teeth.
Police sirens whined, chirping on and belting out the harsh warning beep-beep-beep. DC Metro police on motorcycles revved their engines, waiting for the Russian president to enter the motorcade and be hurried away. The frenzy, the roar of the crowd, the strain of the motorcade—the passion in the air was thick as lead. Only a diamond blade could cut through this tension.
As if mocking them, the Russian president stopped a third of the way from the base of the Capitol steps and waved to the protestors, a political kind offuck you. He waved and waved, and the protestors roared. Bellowed. Held up their rainbow flags and signs and posters, sayingfuck you right back. The man on the megaphone screeched in blistering Russian. Men in the Russian president’s security team all shifted, heads swiveling, and stared the protestor down.
A crack split the air.
The effigy of the Russian president fell, as if his string had been cut from the pole holding him aloft. Stunned silence covered the protestors for a half-second.
A second crack, like a far-off cannon, somewhere to the north.
The Russian president crumpled to the steps of the Capitol.
Instantly, a tight circle formed around the Russian president, collapsed, not moving. Russian security threw themselves over him as Secret Service agents stood shoulder to shoulder with their Russian counterparts. FBI agents ducked low and formed a wagon wheel around the inner circle. Everyone had their weapons out, up, ready to fire. Above, the U.S. congressional leadership had already been hustled back into the Capitol.
Another crack, and then another. A fifth. Sixth. Seventh.
A Secret Service agent fell. A Russian security man. Another Secret Service agent, landing face first and sliding down the steps, limp and boneless.
Screams rose, different than the protest chants. Shouts of horror, of shock.
The cluster of agents around the fallen Russian president hefted him into their arms, folded over his body, and raced for the motorcade. They looked like a horde of barbarians running with a battering ram, except the battering ram was the Russian president, shot on U.S. soil on the steps of the Capitol, and the barbarians were being picked off one by one. Another Secret Service agent fell, staggering, tripping and falling, blood pouring from his neck and down the steps. The rest of the agents stepped over his body, racing the Russian president down to the SUV.
A line of blood, a crimson ribbon, appeared behind them, a stream that trailed behind the Russian president all the way to the motorcade.
The motorcade roared, burning rubber and screeching away as the protestors fled, scrambling and shrieking as the reality of what was happening sank in.
Blood stained the Capitol steps, and the bodies of four men lay in the sun, pools of ruby growing beneath their still forms. FBI agents raced to their fallen comrades, hustled down the steps, moved to close off the Capitol, the park, the square. Sirens rose all over the city.
Mike pulled Tom close, ducking them down as low as he could beside a planter filled with summer flowers. “Shooter.” His voice was hard, taut. “Sniper.”
“From where?”
