The Saboteurs by Clive Cussler (top 10 best books of all time .TXT) 📗

robes of a priest, but it made no difference. Schrank recognized the usurper at once.

Schrank looked around. People were practically giddy with the thought of seeing their man. The ghost had said their hero had murdered him by placing the Polish anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Pan-American Expo in Buffalo. The two shots he’d fired to the gut were enough to turn the man into the ghost of John Schrank’s dreams.

Schrank recognized a face in the crowd. It was the nice one, the one who listened to him. The other, the taciturn man who demanded and cajoled and demeaned, wasn’t at his side as he’d been so many times before when he’d tried to carry out the assassination. This was the omen that tonight it would happen. He moved even closer to the front of the crowd, ignoring the sour looks of people who’d waited some time for their coveted positions.

He felt the hard rubber grip of the .38 caliber Colt revolver deep in his overcoat pocket. He was close to the front row of people. The hotel’s door was only a few paces away, and the open-top automobile, with its long hood and sweeping running boards, idled at the curb.

“I can’t believe I’m about to see the hero of San Juan Hill,” a woman said to her husband a little breathlessly.

“I hear he doesn’t like to be called Teddy, but rather TR,” said another voice in the crowd.

Schrank fingered the pistol. He couldn’t allow him to have a third term. No President had ever had one. George Washington himself had refused, fearing it would turn the presidency into a monarchy like the one America had fought to free herself from. John Schrank saw himself as a patriot, like one of the Minutemen, fighting against the tyranny of a man wishing to become King.

The crowd suddenly erupted in a roar of wild cheering. Teddy Roosevelt came down the handful of steps outside the Gilpatrick and waved to the people who’d waited to see him, envious of the nine thousand awaiting his speech a short distance away at the auditorium. Roosevelt gave them a big-toothed smile, his eyes behind his rimless glasses alight with joy. His walrus mustache twitched.

He mounted the car’s running board and lowered himself into the rear seat next to his stenographer, Elbert Martin. Opposite them on the rear-facing seat was another aide, Harry Cochems. The crowd continued to roar and shake the air with their applause. TR gave Harry a knowing smile and got back to his feet, his top hat in hand, to wave once again to the people. They loved him for the gesture, and he loved them for their loyalty and support.

John Flammang Schrank saw his opportunity and lurched a step closer to his target. Without a change in expression, with no real malice at all since he didn’t hate the former President but needed to stop him from retaking the Oval Office, he raised the pistol and took aim at Roosevelt’s head, just a few feet away.

He squeezed the trigger at the same time someone behind him jostled his arm. The gun went off, a single clap of thunder loud enough to silence the crowd. The smell of burnt powder turned the air acrid.

Teddy Roosevelt staggered just slightly, bending at the knee, before straightening up once again, his hat still raised. Elbert Martin was the first to react. He’d played collegiate football and had lightning reflexes. He dove out of the car and crashed into Schrank before he could fire again. Both men fell to the sidewalk, Martin using his superior size to pin Schrank to the ground while he clamped his hands around the assassin’s wrists. A. O. Girard, a bodyguard from the Van Dorn Detective Agency and a former member of TR’s Rough Riders, moved in and scooped up the pistol while two of Milwaukee’s Finest piled onto the scrum.

Harry Cochems jumped to his feet and asked, “Were you hit, Mr. President?”

“He pinked me, Harry,” Roosevelt replied.

“Dear God.”

The crowd was shouting for blood. Cries of “kill him” and “hang him” rang out.

TR waved his hat and bellowed, “Don’t hurt him. Bring him here. I want to see him.” The mob could hardly believe their hero was unharmed, and cheers rose up. “I’m all right, I’m all right.”

The cops yanked Schrank to his feet.

“Bring him to me,” Roosevelt demanded, and the would-be assassin was frog-marched to the side of the idling saloon sedan.

Roosevelt studied the man’s face, placing his hands on his head and tried to recall if he’d ever seen the dull-looking creature before. There was no spark of recognition. “What did you do it for?”

Schrank just looked at him, working his jaw but saying nothing.

“Oh, what’s the use,” Roosevelt said, pain beginning to hone his voice. “Officers, take charge of him, and see that there’s no violence done to him.”

He sat back into his seat as Schrank was led into the hotel and the crowds booed.

The car pulled away from the curb. Once out of sight of his supporters, Roosevelt opened his topcoat and suit jacket. The fine white linen of his shirt was stained crimson over his right side. His aides stared, slack-jawed, at the amount of blood.

“Driver,” Harry Cochems practically shouted. “Get us to the nearest hospital.”

“Ignore that. Keep true for the auditorium,” Roosevelt countered, and accepted a fresh handkerchief from Elbert to press to the wound. Roosevelt held a hand over his mouth and coughed. He showed his white palm to his assistants. “If I were lung-shot, there’d be blood. I’m going to be fine.”

He fished two items from the inside pocket of his jacket. One was the fifty-page speech he planned to deliver neatly folded in two. The bullet had torn a ragged hole through the sheaf of papers. The second item was his leather-covered steel glasses case. It too had been pierced. The bullet had lost enough of its momentum that by the time it struck Roosevelt’s chest it merely punctured the skin and lodged