WE RUSHED OUT to the courtyard, where the shots had come from. Joe Molinari and I pushed our way through the crowd. People were gasping, a few had started to weep.

I couldn't see what had happened, and then I could. And I wished that I hadn't.

Eldridge Neal was on his back, a crimson stain widening across his white shirt. Someone had shot the vice president of the United States. My God, not another American tragedy like this.

A woman was being held down by Secret Service agents; she couldn't have been much older than eighteen or nine-teen. Frizzy red hair. She was screaming at the vice president, rambling on about babies being sold into slavery in the Sudan; AIDS killing millions in Africa; corporate war crimes in Iraq and Syria. She must have ............