commuter trains by the time the “light and sound” show began in just a few minutes.
What a beautiful, beautiful place this is, Soneji thought. How many times he’d dreamed about this scene.
This very scene at Union Station!
Long streaks and spears of morning sunlight shafted down through delicate skylights. They reflected off the walls and the high gilded ceiling. The main hall before him held an information booth, a magnificent electronic train arrival-and-departure board, the Center cafi, Sfuzzi, and America restaurants.
The concourse led to a waiting area that had once been called “the largest room in the world.” What a grand and historic venue he had chosen for today, his birthday.
Gary Soneji produced a small key from his pocket. He flipped it in the air and caught it. He opened a silver- gray metallic door that led into a room on the balcony.
He thought of it as his room. Finally, he had his own room-upstairs with everyone else. He closed the door behind him.
“Happy birthday, dear Gary, happy birthday to you.”
Chapter 7
THIS WAS going to be incredible, beyond anything he’d attempted so far. He could almost do this next part blindfolded, working from memory. He’d done the drill so many times. In his imagination, in his dreams. He had been looking forward to this day for more than twenty years.
He set up a folding aluminum tripod mount inside the small room, and positioned a Browning rifle on it. The BAR was a dandy, with a milspec scoping device and an electronic trigger he had customized himself.
The marble floors continued to shake as his beloved trains entered and departed the station, huge mythical beasts that came here to feed and rest. There was nowhere he’d rather be than here. He loved this moment so much.
Soneji knew everything about Union Station, and also about mass murders conducted in crowded public places. As a boy, he had obsessed on the so-called “crimes of the century.” He had imagined himself committing such acts and becoming feared and famous. He planned perfect murders, random ones, and then he began to carry them out. He buried his first victim on a relative’s farm when he was fifteen. The body still hadn’t been found, not to this day.
He was Charles Starkweather; he was Bruno Richard Hauptmann; he was Charlie Whitman. Except that he was much smarter than any of them; and he wasn’t crazy like them.
He had even appropriated a name for himself: Soneji, pronounced Soh-nee-gee. The name had seemed scary to him even at thirteen or fourteen. It still did. Starkweather, Hauptmann, Whitman, Soneji.
He had been shooting rifles since he was a boy in the deep, dark woods surrounding Princeton, New Jersey. During the past year, he’d done more shooting, more hunting, more practicing than ever before. He was primed and ready for this morning. Hell, he’d been ready for years.
Soneji sat on a metal folding chair and made himself as comfortable as he could. He pulled up a battleship gray tarp that blended into the background of the train terminal’s dark walls. He snuggled under the tarp. He was going to disappear, to be part of the scenery, to be a sniper in a very public place. In Union Station!
An old-fashioned-sounding train announcer was singing out the track and time for the next Metroliner to Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, and New York ’s Penn Station.
Soneji smiled to himself-that was his getaway train.
He had his ticket, and he still planned to be on it. No problem, just book it. He’d be on the Metroliner, or bust. Nobody could stop him now, except maybe Alex Cross, and even that didn’t matter anymore. His plan had contingencies for every possibility, even his own death.
Then Soneji was lost in his thoughts. His memories were his cocoon.
He had been nine years old when a student named Charles Whitman opened fire out of a tower at the University of Texas, in Austin. Whitman was a former Marine, twenty-five years old. The outrageous, sensational event had galvanized him back then.
He’d collected every single story on the shootings, long pieces from Time, Life, Newsweek, the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Times of London, Paris Match, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun. He still had the precious articles. They were at a friend’s house, being held for posterity. They were evidence-of past, present, and future crimes.
Gary Soneji knew he was a good marksman. Not that he needed to be a crackerjack in this bustling crowd of targets. No shot he’d have to make in the train terminal would be over a hundred yards, and he was accurate at up to five hundred yards.
Now, I step out of my own nightmare and into the real world, he thought as the moment crystallized. A cold, hard shiver ran through his body. It was delicious, tantalizing. He peered through the Browning’s telescope at the busy, nervous, milling crowd.
He searched for the first victim. Life was so much more beautiful and interesting through a target scope.
Chapter 8
YOU ARE there.
He scanned the lobby with its thousands of hurrying commuters and summer vacation travelers. Not one of them had a clue about his or her mortal condition at that very moment. People never seemed to believe that something horrible could actually happen to them.
Soneji watched a lively brat pack of students in bright blue blazers and starched white shirts. Preppies, goddamn preppies. They were giggling and running for their train with unnatural delight. He didn’t like happy people at all, especially dumb-ass children who thought they had the world by the nuts.
He found that he could distinguish smells from up here: diesel fuel, lilacs and roses from the flower vendors, meat and garlic shrimp from the lobby’s restaurants. The odors made him hungry.
The target circle in his customized scope had a black site post rather than the more common bull’s-eye. He preferred the post. He watched a montage of shapes and motion and colors swim in and out of death’s way. This small circle of the Grim Reaper was his world now, self-contained and mesmerizing.
Soneji let the aiming post come to rest on the broad, wrinkled forehead of a weary-looking businesswoman in her early to mid-fifties. The woman was thin and nervous, with haggard eyes, pale lips. “Say good night, Gracie,” he whispered softly. “Good night, Irene. Good night, Mrs. Calabash.”
He almost pulled the trigger, almost started the morning’s massacre, then he eased off at the last possible instant.
Not worthy of the first shot, he thought, chastising himself for impatience. Not nearly special enough. Just a passing fancy. Just another middle-class cow.
The aiming post settled in and held as if by a magnet on the lower spine of a porter pushing an uneven load of boxes and suitcases. The porter was a tall, good-looking black-much like Alex Cross, Soneji thought. His dark skin gleamed like mahogany furniture.
That was the attraction of the target. He liked the image, but who would get the subtle, special message other than himself? No, he had to think of others, too. This was a time to be selfless.
He moved the aiming post again, the circle of death. There were an amazing number of commuters in blue suits and black wing tips. Business sheep.
A father and teenage son floated into the circle, as if they had been put there by the hand of God.
Gary Soneji inhaled. Then he slowly exhaled. It was his shooting ritual, the one he’d practiced for so many years alone in the woods. He had imagined doing this so many times. Taking out a perfect stranger, for no good reason.
He gently, very gently, pulled the trigger toward the center of his eye.
His body was completely still, almost lifeless. He could feel the faint pulse in his arm, the pulse in his throat,
