President Hanover strode into the press briefing room. The reporters stood. The man in the ninth row stood, too, feeling the weapon in his hand. He remembered the training: It’s an extension of you. Will the shot.

Hanover smiled at the familiar faces in the first row. He nodded toward a reporter with a leg in a cast: “Your editor do that for writing that positive piece on our economic numbers?” The journalists chuckled. The President moved to the podium. “Now, remember, this is on deep background,” he joked. The reporters laughed and began to sit.

Still standing in the ninth row, he kept his body stiff. He jerked up his arm. He fired twice. Two bullets slammed into the face of the President.

Done, the gunman thought. Done.

The room rushed toward him. Secret Service agents, weapons drawn, lunged into the crowd of reporters; others surrounded the President. The reporters to each side of the assailant pulled him to the floor. One grabbed the gun. He let it go. Other journalists had dropped to the ground, some shouting to their camera crews to keep filming. Aides ran to Hanover and were pushed back by Secret Service agents. “No, no, no, no,” screamed the assistant press secretary. Blood spattered the blue curtain. The dead President was slumped over the podium.

A correspondent for a business wire service realized he was lying on top of the assassin. He felt Secret Service officers pulling at his back, trying to reach the shooter. In his hand he held the beard that had been attached to the assailant’s face.

“Why?” the reporter shouted at him. “Why the fuck why?”

The man answered.

The correspondent was yanked away by a female Secret Service agent. The fake beard was snatched from his hand. The Secret Service detail descended on the gunman. They kept him on the ground. One agent dug a knee into his back.

Nothing matters now, he thought. Nothing.

Handcuffs snapped around his wrists. Hands moved across his body. There was nothing to find. The White House emergency medical team was in the room. The lead paramedic had his hands covered in blood. The face was gone. He could find no pulse. He barked instructions he knew were meaningless.

Downstairs in the Situation Room, three amber lights turned on. The watch officer punched in a coded signal to the Secret Service team traveling with the Vice President in Dallas. “Recall the football,” he ordered an aide, “and activate the unit on Air Force Two.”

“And immediately secure Nighthawk and Foxtrot,” he said, referring to the First Lady and the Hanovers’ thirteen-year-old son, Jack.

The Secret Service was hustling the shooter out of the pressroom. Television reporters were shouting voice-overs. Live feeds were being transmitted.