A Bomb Built in Hell

remembered from Korea. He lay prone in the weeds, listening. It was a simple equation: the Prince had to be close to kill, and Wesley didn’t have the luxury of shooting from a distance.

Wesley could hear the street noises above him, but they were normal—no one knew they were down there.

He heard the kind of tearing sound grass makes when it’s pushed against the way it normally grows. He forced himself not to relax. He could lie there for hours without moving, and the Prince couldn’t come up on him without getting blown away. But he didn’t have a long time. If the Prince got out of the site, he’d have a hundred freaks surrounding the place.

Wesley focused, blocking out everything but the sounds of movement. As soon as he picked them up, he fired twice in that direction. The silenced bullets were only slightly amplified by the depression in the ground—Wesley heard them whine close to the earth. The movement had been about fifty yards away from him when he fired. It all depended on how close the Prince was now.

The next movement was closer. Wesley fired three times, as fast as he could pull the trigger. The site was a bowl of quiet inside the street noises. Wesley started to move around as if in a panic, making it clear where he was. He heard another movement about twenty yards away. The Prince was probably moving the grass with a stick. He looked hard for the diamond-flash but it was black out there—he guessed the target had made the sacrifice.

Wesley pulled the trigger rapidly. The whine faded to a dry, audible click! as the firing pin hit air. “Fuck!” Wesley said in a voice just past a whisper and full of panic. He viciously threw the gun at a spot about ten feet away and sprang to his feet, the now-unarmed assassin lost without his weapon.

Wesley made all the sounds of a panic-stricken man trying to remember to make as little noise as possible. He rolled onto his back and started pushing himself toward 51st Street with his legs, the two-inch Colt now in his right hand.

The Prince flew out of the darkness in a twisting, spinning series of kick-thrusts, offering a tiny target if Wesley had a knife. He was about eight feet away when he saw the pistol and threw himself flat on his back, already tucking his shoulder under to kick upwards when the x-nosed slug caught him in the chest, pinning him to the ground.

The noise from the two-incher was deafening—magnified by the bowl, it was cannon-like. The street noises seemed to all stop in unison. Wesley walked slowly toward the Prince, saw he was choking on his own blood—the slug must have caught a lung:

“A ... million dollars,” the Prince gasped. “A million if you don’t finish me, man. Just...”

The Prince launched himself off the ground, the knife-edge of his hand extended. Wesley saw it all in slow- motion—he had plenty of time to single-action out another round, slamming the Prince back to earth. Wesley walked up calmly and emptied the pistol. Two shots into the face, which disappeared under the slugs’ impact, and the third into the throat.

The street noises were getting much louder. Wesley quickly reloaded, pocketing the empties. He scanned the field, looking for the silenced Beretta, but gave it up in a second. Then he pulled the pin on one of the grenades and held it tightly in his right hand—with his left he pulled the Prince’s hands up until they were on either side of what had been his face. He stuffed the grenade into where a mouth should have been and released the lever.

By the time the blast echoed throughout the city canyon, Wesley was at the perimeter of the site. As he slid under the fence, he saw a crowd of people outside Lynch’s Bar on the corner ... and a squad car. He looked to his left, toward the river, and saw that way was still clear. Wesley threw himself prone and unsnapped the last grenade. He pulled the pin and held it tightly in his right hand. With his left, he aimed the pistol carefully at the big cop trying to hold back the crowd.

The revolver boomed twice. Wesley was up and throwing the grenade before the crowd started to panic and run. It arced through the night under the streetlights, then exploded in the middle of the crowd. Wesley was running toward Tenth Avenue on the follow-through from his throwing motion. The closest car was at 40th and Twelfth. Wesley knew he only had a minute or two to disappear into the shadows. He kicked his legs high into his chest, trying desperately for a burst of speed that wouldn’t come.

As he crossed Eleventh Avenue, a cab flashed its lights off and on twice. Wesley turned toward it, the little gun up and ready. He ran toward the driver’s window and was only half surprised to see Pet behind the wheel. He was into the cab and it was heading downtown before Wesley could catch his breath. The cab turned left on 23rd and headed crosstown.

“What were you doing in the street?” he finally asked Pet.

“I was cruising Twelfth all night. When the police-band said there was a report of shots fired in the construction site, I figured it might be you. I knew 40th and Twelfth was the closest car, and you wouldn’t be trying to go crosstown to Fifth with all that heat around.”

“What if I didn’t come out?”

“I was going in.”

“After me?”

“After that Prince motherfucker.”

The cab hit the FDR Drive and grabbed the service road. They were back onto the Slip and into the garage by 12:15. The police-band was still screaming CODE THREE!

47/

The Post had a bylined story on the riot in Times Square the night before. Police theorized that it was a terrorist attack of some kind, probably aimed directly at the “Guardians in Blue.” There was no mention of a man found in the construction site. Pet looked up from the paper at Wesley, who was staring with fixed concentration at a completely blank white wall.

“There’s nothing in here about the Prince,” the old man said.

“Why should there be?” Wesley wanted to know. “There wasn’t much left of him.”

“They always got fingerprints ... dental charts ... something.”

“With any kind of luck, they won’t get either off him. But some of his freaks probably took him away and buried him.”