Make or break time, then. One shot, one kill.
The town in which he found himself this morning had a motto that seemed appropriate. He’d seen it emblazoned in a font imitating handwriting on the sign at the city limits: Fort Dodge, Frontier of the Future.
He was crouched on the roof of the county courthouse, the H&K PSG1 at his side, leaning against the parapet. He breathed another cloud out and looked down at the busy little worker ants, wondering which one to choose.
There was no point in making things easy on himself, so he’d deliberately picked a challenging setup. The rooftop was fifty feet up and overlooked the town’s main thoroughfare. The wind was kicking up, which would take adjustment, and the temperature was hovering around freezing, meaning thermals were unpredictable. He could make the task easier or tougher by choosing between a stationary or moving target.
In purely practical terms, a backup man would have been an asset in this situation. It was one of the reasons modern snipers always worked in pairs: one to relay reconnaissance, one to pull the trigger. The shot itself was a task that required perfect concentration, and that meant it was vital to have somebody watching your back.
There was another reason, however, but not one they’d necessarily admit to in the Marine Corps Sniper School. A sniper’s work, put objectively, was murder. A two-man team divided that psychological burden. Needless to say, this was not something for which Wardell felt a particular need. Working alone was one of the best things about going into the murder business for himself.
Time to decide. During his reflection, Wardell had been observing a number of potential targets. There was the cop directing the traffic at an intersection where the lights were out. That would send a message all right.
Or there was the group of three smokers taking an early break outside of a funeral home — he wondered if that was too obvious. Too laden with irony, perhaps? Wardell swept the telescopic sight slowly up Central Avenue. Nobody else jumped out, just hundreds of indistinguishable insects scuttling along, oblivious to his gaze. Perhaps it was time to play one of his little games of chance, like picking the first person he saw wearing pink. Or the first person holding a cell phone in his left hand.
But wait — there he was, his target. Too good to pass up. The man in question had just passed through the intersection with the broken light, traveling on a motor scooter. A moving target, sufficiently difficult to prove his mettle. But what made this moving target perfect was the clerical collar visible below the strap of his helmet. A priest. That would have more of an impact even than shooting the cop; it would demonstrate that he wasn’t fucking around.
Wardell got comfortable, rested the rifle on the parapet. His movements were so smooth and natural that the pigeons didn’t scatter, just shuffled along for him. He ranged the man of God, leading the target a little to allow for the forward direction of travel. He was moving down the street at a cautious twenty miles an hour, slowed by the other traffic. Wardell placed the illuminated reticle of the telescopic sight in the triangle of opportunity: the zone defined by the prospective victim’s head and shoulders.
He had the visor of the priest’s helmet locked dead center, his left arm letting the barrel of the rifle come down incrementally to track the forward movement. He breathed in. Let all conscious thought drift away and pressed hold, pressed hold.
His subconscious was working overtime, which perhaps explained why he adjusted his aim down a fraction just before he squeezed the trigger through the final degree of travel.
Six hundred yards away, the 7.62 NATO round found the inch-wide white square on the priest’s dog collar, passing through it and entering his throat at the Adam’s apple before exiting at the other side, taking a portion of spine and most of the back of the priest’s neck with it.
The pigeons took flight, startled by the shot. Wardell closed his eyes and let the breath out. Another perfect wisp of cloud, a kindred echo of the gun smoke. Off to his right, he heard the spent cartridge clink across the rooftop, a good twenty feet away. A military-spec weapon wouldn’t have done that — too difficult to sanitize the position. Even though he no longer had to worry about forensics or fingerprints, this irritated him. It was… untidy.
He took his eye from the telescopic sight and watched as the moped carried on for three or four car lengths before the priest’s body realized it was dead and shifted, tipping the scooter sideways between traffic lanes.
Wardell kept watching, hoping that the priest wouldn’t be run over — that would muddy the issue.
He was in luck. A taxicab squealed to a halt three feet from crushing the priest’s head like a melon. Bystanders rushed to help. Wardell’s mouth creased into an anticipatory grin. Here it came.
He was too far away to make out the exact words contained in the shouts and screams, but he knew the gist: It was evident in the way the Good Samaritans scattered, the way their heads snapped around, looking for danger. He watched the ripple of terror move from the epicenter, the pedestrians reacting, disbelieving, then pushing for the imagined shelter of the storefronts and awnings. He always allowed himself this when there was an audience. No more than fifteen or twenty seconds, that was enough. Any more time spent savoring the scene would be an unacceptable risk. He would have to get moving, clear the kill zone before the authorities could muster a response.
An urge was building, one he had to fight to repress. He wanted more. He wanted to take out some of those screaming witnesses as they fled — three, four, five, a dozen. Ride the wave of panic like a surfer on a bloody tide.
That would come, but not yet. First things first. He allowed himself a moment longer to savor the scent of fear like the bouquet of a fine wine, then turned and moved quickly toward the door to the stairwell without a backward glance.
21
“Trust me, Agent Banner. We’ve got this covered.” Banner removed the phone from the crook of her neck, getting ready to hang up. She rolled her eyes at the cockiness dripping from every syllable uttered by the junior agent on the other end of the phone. Jesus, he sounded about fourteen. More and more of them seemed like kids these days. Banner herself was only in her midthirties, but if there had been a transition period from green rookie to seasoned veteran, she’d been too busy to notice it happening.
“I’ll quote you on that, okay, Wyacek?”
“Quote me on it? You can take it to the bank.”
Banner terminated the call without further comment and let her gaze drift back up to the map of the greater metropolitan area, mentally circling the three additional potential strike zones Wyacek had just informed her were under surveillance. Which was not, as she well knew, the same thing as “covered.”
She was starting to get the feeling she was on the wrong team.
Castle had seniority, so focusing on Chicago was his call. Would she have made the same decision in his position? Difficult to say. If Wardell was caged early enough, she might get to find out, because she’d be in with a shot of primary on the next high-profile manhunt. Then she’d be the one walking that tightrope: trying to reconcile an open mind and a flexible approach with the hard political necessity of running things by the book.