Safe House

Dehumanizing the enemy.

Icing up.

It wasn’t a man I had to kill, it was a thing.

A hateful, malignant, evil thing.

Not “him” . . . “it.”

The coyote had spotted the prey—time for the badger to do its part.

In the winter we’d made, food was life.

And only death would harvest it.

Now that he’d called in, the Prof would bail, but he was on foot and he couldn’t get far. Terry was down there someplace too, looking like a teenage boy with spiked hair, stumbling home from one of the clubs. Carrying homicide in the side pocket of his long black coat. No way to stop him from coming. No way to stop him at all if he spotted the creature who would hurt his mother. The Mole had dropped him off a good distance away, but if the kid picked up the scent . . .

Max the Silent was down there too, somewhere in the shadows, raging and lethal. We couldn’t keep him away either. And if he saw the van first . . .

It had to be me. And we only had a few—

“On Hudson, between Jay and Harrison.” The Mole, soft voice throbbing through the phone.

“You sure?”

“Gray Ford Econoline van. Driver only. Says ‘Benny’s Kosher Deli’ in black letters on the sides.”

“Can you jam—?”

But he was already gone.

I hit the speed-dial switch, said “Go!” as soon as it was picked up. I dropped the phone into my pocket and ran across the roof, holding the night-vision scope in both hands, willing Wesley into me.

There it was. Maybe four blocks away. A good spot—Hudson pulled plenty of commercial traffic even that early in the day—nobody would look twice at a van.

The clock high on the steeple corner at Worth and Broadway chimed five times behind me. I swept the area with the scope. No sign of Terry. I knew I’d never see Max even if he was down there. Not much time now . . .

A pearlescent white Bentley coupe came west up Leonard Street, heading for the T-turn on Hudson just north of where the van was parked. The big car moved with slow confidence, a rich rolling ghost. It pulled to the curb and a slim black man climbed out. He was wearing a Zorro hat and a calf-length white fur coat. A woman got out the passenger side. A white woman with long blond hair wearing a transparent plastic raincoat. I could see them talking. Saw the man’s hand flash against the woman’s face. Then he shook her, hard, and wrenched the raincoat off her body. She was standing there in red spike heels and dark stockings, covered only in a tiny white micro-mini and a skimpy black top. She walked a few feet away. A little purse slung over one shoulder banged against her hip. Hooker’s kit: just big enough for a few condoms, some pre-moistened towelettes, a little bottle of cognac, maybe a tiny vial of coke. And the night’s take.

The pimp waited until she looked back over her shoulder, then he pointed his finger warningly and climbed back into his ride, holding the plastic raincoat in one hand. The Bentley took off, making the left onto Hudson and moving right past the van.

The hooker stood on the corner, shivering but hipshot, waiting. A delivery truck passed. She made a “Hi- there!” gesture with one hand. The truck pulled over. She sashayed toward it, waving her hips like a flag. Leaned into the cab of the truck. No Sale. The truck pulled away.

A dark Acura sedan turned the corner. The hooker waved, but the car never slowed.

I snapped the tripod together, positioned the heavy rifle and spun the set-screw to tighten the rig. I nestled my cheek against the dark wood stock, starting to connect. The rifle was bolt-action, unsilenced. It would have to be a one-shot kill or it was all over anyway. I wondered where the target’s hands were. If the detonator wasn’t armed, we had a window of safety. But then the Mole couldn’t find it to jam it and . . .

Dejectedly, the hooker started to walk up Hudson in the same direction the Bentley had gone, arms wrapped around herself for warmth. Cold comfort. I cranked the scope up to full magnification. The van driver was barely visible, just a dark blot in the side window. I prayed for him to be a smoker, but the interior stayed dark.

I had watched Wesley work. That clear-skyed night when he took a mobster off a high bridge, working from a dinky little island in the East River, I was standing right next to him. I knew how to do it.

Breathing was the key. I slowed mine way down, knowing I had to squeeze the trigger between heartbeats. Ignoring the pain in my damaged right hand, my finger on the unpulled trigger, caressing, probing for the sweet spot. So hard to shoot down, calculate the drop. My eye went down the barrel, finding the cartridge. I looked past the primer into the bullet itself. Full metal jacket—I needed penetration, not expansion. It had to be a head shot. Blow his brain apart, snap the neuron-chain to his hand. The hand on the detonator.

I became the bullet. Seeing into his skull. Locking the connection with my spirit before I sent death down the channel.

To keep my house safe.

My heart was a clock, every tick an icepick in a nerve cluster. How much time?

The hooker walked right past the van, not giving it a glance, looking over her shoulder at the wide street, hoping for some traffic. Suddenly, she stopped, turned to stare right at the van, hands on hips. I could see she was saying something. No reaction from the van—it was as dark inside as I was.

Except for that white blob. The target.

The hooker walked over, nice and slow, giving the detonator man a real eyeful. Nothing. She came right up to the van, rapped on the window like it was a door. The window came down. The hooker’s left hand was on the sill, her right hand dropped down to her purse. I saw a whitish face in the scope, wearing a dark baseball cap. Zeroed in until I was one long, thin wire of hate—my mind to my finger to my eye to the slug to the target.

I caught the rhythm of my heart. Started the slow squeeze on the trigger in the dead space until the next beat, the electrical impulse already launched along the wire. The whitish face exploded in fire. A split second later, the sound of the shot echoed up to where I was perched. My finger was still locked on the unpulled trigger, frozen.

The wire snapped.

A motorcycle roared into life. A low-cut racing bike flowed around the back corner like liquid over a rock. The hooker yanked the tiny skirt up to her waist as the bike slid to a stop. The rider was dressed in a set of racing leathers, face hidden under a black helmet and visor. The hooker jumped on the back and the bike rocketed away so fast the front wheel popped off the ground. The blond wig flew off.

I tracked them through the scope in case they needed cover, but they faded from sight long before the bike’s raucous exhaust stopped echoing through the concrete canyon.

I worked the bolt, ejecting the unfired cartridge. It hit the rooftop with a dull thud and I dropped to one knee, pulling an infra-red micro-beam out of my pocket. I found the cartridge, scooped it up and pocketed it.

As I got to my feet I heard a rumble down below and my heart stopped. I looked over the parapet. It was a giant semi with ALCHEMY TRANSPORT SYSTEMS painted on its side, heading right past me. Toward the river. Behind it, a panel truck, a dump truck, the carting-company rig and a pair of station wagons. Convoying together.

Ground Zero, moving.

Past me. Then past a dead crumpled target in a van.

I disassembled the sniper’s outfit in seconds, threw everything into a felt-lined carry-all. I slung the wide padded strap over my shoulder and took the stairs all the way to the ground floor, hoping that Pryce’s fix held and I didn’t run into a security guard, a silenced semi-auto in my right hand in case I did. When I saw the broad back of Max the Silent on the bottom step, I knew that last part was covered no matter what Pryce had done.

We were in the Plymouth, rolling toward the West Side Highway, when Max grabbed my arm a split second before the ground shook and the Hudson River shot straight up into the air, a skyscraper of white