The Jefferson Key Read Online Free

penetrated.
    Blue sparks exploded.
    Flames erupted as a rocket left the launcher.
----
    WYATT FINISHED HIS SALAD AS CADILLAC ONE SPED TOWARD the intersection. He’d heard the second window shatter. Men below raced down the sidewalk and were now firing upward. But the Secret Service’s P229 Sig Sauers would do little good, and the submachine guns that usually followed the president in support vehicles had been left in Washington. As had the snipers.
    Mistakes, mistakes.
    He heard an explosion.
    Rocket away.
    He dabbed his mouth with a napkin and glanced down. Daniels’ car cleared the intersection, heading toward the United Nations building and the East River. It would probably take Roosevelt Drive and find either a hospital or the airport. He recalled from days gone by when a special subway train was kept waiting on a dedicated track near the Waldorf Astoria hotel, ready to whisk the president out of Manhattan without delay.
    Not anymore.
    Useless.
    The two suited agents rushed from the restaurant, heading for an adjacent stairway that wound down to the Hyatt’s main entrance.
    He laid his napkin down and stood.
    All of the servers, the hostess, even the kitchen staff were crowded at the windows. He doubted anyone would bring a check. He recalled the price of the salad, compensated for the wine, added a 30 percent tip—he prided himself on being generous—and laid down a fifty-dollar bill. Probably too much, but he had no time for change.
    The rocket never found the ground, and a second and third never fired. Obviously, the hero had completed his performance.
    Now it was time to watch Cotton Malone’s luck run out.

FOUR

    CLIFFORD KNOX SEVERED THE RADIO CONNECTION AND SHUT down the laptop. The rocket launcher had fired only once, and the projectile had not found the presidential limousine. The closed-circuit television feeds—courtesy of cameras installed in both automated units—had delivered jerky images, shifting right and left. He’d repeatedly had trouble keeping the rifle aimed downward, the thing not responding to his commands. He’d ordered both the propellants and the explosives modified, ensuring that the three warheads could destroy a heavily armored vehicle.
    Everything had been in working order this morning.
    So what had happened?
    The image from the television screen, blaring at him from across his hotel room, explained the failure.
    Cellphones from the street had captured pictures and videos that had already been emailed to the networks. They showed a man balancing out of a shattered window in the Grand Hyatt, high above East 42nd Street. He straddled a metal structure and jerked the device one way, then another, finally directing its rifle fire toward the rocket launcher, destroying its electronics just as the weapon fired.
    Knox had delivered the firing command. Three rockets should have discharged, one after the other. But only one emerged, and it flew off into the southern sky.
    The room’s phone rang.
    He answered and a gravelly voice on the other end said, “This is a disaster.”
    His gaze stayed on the television screen. More images showed the two devices projecting outward from dark rectangles in the Grand Hyatt’s glass facade. A scrolling banner at the bottom of the screen informed viewers that there was no word yet on the president’s condition.
    “Who was the man who interfered?” a new voice asked in his ear.
    He imagined the scene on the other end of the line. Three men, each in their early fifties, dressed casually, sitting in an elegant salon, crowded around a speakerphone.
    The Commonwealth.
    Minus one.
    “I have no idea,” he said into the phone. “Obviously, I didn’t expect any interference.”
    Not much could be gleaned about the intruder, except that he was Caucasian, with sandy-colored hair, a dark jacket, and light-colored pants. His face had been impossible to see thanks to the cellphone cameras’ low resolution and plenty of lens movement. The scrolling banner on