be highly unlikely to check into such an exclusive hotel. The mayor’s security wouldn’t consider the site a threat.
Upon entering the spacious and tastefully furnished suite, the Night Sniper placed his bag on the bed and unzipped it. He seemed to know exactly where everything was in the bag and didn’t unpack completely, only removed a pair of jeans, a dark T-shirt, and worn jogging shoes. From his pocket he withdrew a pair of flesh-colored latex gloves and slipped them on. From now on he would be extremely careful about what he touched in the suite, or he would be wearing gloves.
After changing clothes and hanging his tailored suit in the closet, he went to a window, opened it, and looked out at the tar and gravel roof of the setback in the building’s construction. There was a drop of about three feet from the window ledge to the roof. The Night Sniper sat on the ledge, swiveled his body, and stepped down onto the firm, rough surface.
He’d scouted the location carefully. It would do, but barely-which was exactly why it was ideal. After tomorrow night, his reputation as a marksman would become legendary, and fear would know no bounds. The roofs of surrounding buildings were all much lower than the outcropping on which he stood, and behind him the Marimont rose another five stories of blank brick wall. No one could peer up at him, or down. The Sniper was invisible to anyone earthbound, but there was always the possibility of a police helicopter spotting him, some observer being alert for anything suspicious even this far from Rockefeller Plaza.
He glanced at the sky uneasily, then went back to the window and hoisted himself back up into his suite.
He returned to the bag he was carrying when he checked in. He felt around in it carefully, then removed a light aluminum frame and a small tool kit. Carrying frame and tool kit, he went back out onto the outcropping roof.
It took him only a few minutes to screw four steel brackets into the roof, then fit the legs of the metal frame into them. On the frame’s top cross braces, he attached with thumbscrews two small but sturdy vises, then returned to his suite and assembled the custom target rifle.
On the roof again, he checked the sky to make sure there were no helicopters about, then went to the edge of the roof, where he’d bolted down the frame and vises. Making sure the telescoping aluminum frames were tight in their brackets, he adjusted the frame so it was slightly higher than the parapet, then fitted the rifle firmly in the vises.
With another glance at the sky, he crouched low and peered through the rifle’s telescopic sight to the corner of a distant building, adjusted the sight, and could see the plaza where the podium was being constructed for tomorrow night’s TBTC rally. He knew his bullet would have to barely miss the distant building’s corner that was almost in line with where the lectern would be, and where the mayor would stand to speak. The Night Sniper thought again that any skilled marksman would assess this as an impossible shot, and would be correct, which was why the Marimont wasn’t being factored into rally security plans.
He waited patiently, sighting through the scope, an ear attuned to any sound in the sky.
The sounds below were from Con Ed continuing lengthy repairs that entailed tearing up the sidewalk near the hotel with jackhammers. Con Ed, the city, his unknowing accomplice. He was amused by the notion.
The Sniper waited for the pounding of the jackhammers to cover the report of the rifle, then squeezed the trigger.
Carefully maintaining the position of the rifle in the vises, he unlocked the legs of the framework from its brackets affixed to the roof. Carrying rifle and framework as one inflexible piece back to the window, he returned to his suite.
Now for perhaps his biggest risk. He placed frame and rifle on the closet floor, then left the suite. The DONOTDISTURB sign was still on the door, but there was always the off chance that a maid or maintenance crew member would for some reason enter the suite and look in the closet. A slim possibility, but the Sniper knew it was such possibilities that posed the most danger. Enough of them, and the odds tilted.
Wearing his sunglasses, he elevatored to the lobby and left the hotel. He walked the three blocks to the blank brick wall he’d just shot. Standing nearby with his arms crossed, his sunglasses hooked over the neck of his T-shirt, he glanced around and above like a tourist taking in the city. It was easier than he’d anticipated to see where the soft bullet he’d fired from so far away had chipped the brick surface, six inches from the building corner it must barely clear. The rifle was shooting true, as he knew it would.
He returned to the hotel, then patiently, patiently, repeated this process three more times. Each time he removed the inflexible frame with vise-attached rifle from the roof brackets and concealed it in the closet, walked the three blocks to the corner, and observed the results of his shots. Each time he calculated trajectory, angle, and windage. The wind, of course, would be the only variable, but the weather report for tomorrow night was a virtual repeat of this evening’s. Fate was cooperating.
His last shot had struck the wall less than an inch from the building’s corner. When he returned to the hotel, the slightest adjustment of the precision scope, the precision rifle, its frame secure in its roof brackets, was all that was needed, and he could be sure.
He felt a warmth spread in him, and a confidence. He’d figured out how to make this seemingly impossible shot. He’d make it by not making it.
Well, not exactly.
In a sense, he’d already made the shot, or at least set it up, though it had taken him four tries. Next time he wouldn’t have to sight in and aim, because that had already been done.
When he squeezed the trigger tomorrow night, he wouldn’t have to rely on the bullet going to the mayor, because the mayor would have gone to where the bullet would be.
The Night Sniper would stay with the firmly mounted and aimed rifle now; it needed only have its supporting frame affixed to the metal roof brackets to duplicate today’s shot. Until the time of the mayor’s death arrived, the Sniper would remain behind the DONOTDISTURB sign, wearing surgical gloves even while eating crustless sandwiches and drinking Evian.
While he was confident about the shot he’d make tomorrow night, it bothered him that the subway stops were being watched. It was something he hadn’t planned on. He’d been counting on his frequent manner of traveling underground and avoiding attention and capture after a shooting; his
He shrugged inwardly, knowing nothing other than vengeance was writ in stone. Perhaps the tight subway security necessitated a change of tactics. He had some ideas in that regard.
Placing his water bottle on the carpet, he walked to the window and looked out at the descending night and the array of lights that lay before him like a kingdom he’d sworn to destroy. His was a life unwasted. A life that meant something grand. Pride stirred deeper emotion. For a moment a yearning for his dead mother and his wronged and lost fathers rose like fire in him and he thought he might cry.
Instead he smiled, liking the way his plans were shaping up, admiring his own nimble adaptation to his opponent’s every move.
Murder was so much like chess.
He went down to the lobby for only a few minutes to use a public phone.
48
By 7:30 PM, the area around Rockefeller Plaza was teeming with over twenty thousand people. Various speakers found their way to the podium: various rights advocates, councilmen, and other city officials spoke briefly to demonstrate their confidence and courage, some of them unconsciously slouching as if to make themselves smaller targets. One of them, a councilman from Brooklyn, actually dived to the plank floor when a nearby balloon popped; then he managed to rise and toe the floor as if he’d slipped on a protruding nail or a wrinkle in the green outdoor carpet. Not a few in the crowd had reacted the same way, so he was greeted with only sporadic boos or
