Saint (18 page)

Carl pushed the torch under the garbage behind him and extracted his rifle from the golf bag. He rested the gun on the metal floor, careful not to jar the scope. There was only one way to position himself for the shot—on his belly with his legs bent up and his rifle inside his elbow, resting on its bipod. He maneuvered slowly, shoving and rearranging bags as he moved. The hole he'd cut in the floor of the bin clipped his left forearm—unavoidable. He would have to reposition himself just before shooting. Once in place, he pulled the bags of rags over his head, shaping a clearing around the scope as he did so.

He snugged the weapon to his shoulder and peered into blackness. Kelly would move the bin into position and open the hole he'd cut for his shot thirty seconds before the kill.

Once again, the level of information that the X Group had secured to facilitate this opportunity was beyond his ability to comprehend. Feroz would be standing on the stage they'd erected just inside Central Park South, on Avenue of the Americas. He knew now that it would be the president of the United States, not Assim Feroz, but nothing else about the kill had changed.

The street would be closed to both pedestrian through-traffic and cars at Thirty-eighth Street three hours prior to the press conference. The unprecedented security measures would require an enormous effort on the part of the NYPD. But any security envelope could be penetrated by the right person.

In this case, Carl was that person.

Their effort might remove most conceivable threats to those who took the stage, but it would also clear a corridor down Avenue of the Americas for an improbable shot. Perhaps impossible.

To all but him.

“I'm in position,” he said.

“It's 4:36 a.m.,” Kelly said. “You have just over ten hours before the press conference. I'll check in every hour unless we have a problem.”

He would have preferred to set up closer to the target, but there were no garbage bins suitably located for both the shot and the escape. His shot would be just under two thousand yards. As long as the weather cooperated and he was able to acquire the target, he would have a good shot.

“You're okay?”

“I'm fine.”

It was now time to wait.

OUTSIDE, CARS roared by and pedestrians rode a wave of indistinct voices, but in the pitch-black container, Carl lay face-down on a cushion of darkness, shut off from everything except the hourly sound of Kelly's gentle voice.

They didn't talk. She called him on the hour and asked for acknowledgment, which he offered and then retreated into his darkness. He was in his pit, right here on Avenue of the Americas. Truth be told, he was more comfortable in this place than he'd been anywhere since leaving the compound.
In the future, I'll shoot from the darkness
whenever I have the opportunity,
he thought. Maybe always.

The pressure on his elbows and hip bones, the cramping of his muscles, and the stuffy heat reassured him that very few could with-stand such discomfort. He alone could satisfy Kelly with success, because to him the pain wasn't pain at all—he'd shut it down. How many men could do that?

Even though he couldn't yet see the target, he walked an imaginary path from the garbage bin to Robert Stenton. He'd selected a 150gram full-metal jacket for the task, preferring the increased accuracy it offered over a bullet that would flatten upon impact, even though the latter would increase the likelihood of a kill should the bullet miss the chest.

He had no intention of missing the target's chest.

The father was about to die.

Could he kill Jamie's father? Of course he could.

The sound of traffic ceased at noon, when they closed the street fifty yards behind him.

“One o'clock,” Kelly said. “We're on schedule.”

“One o'clock.”

Time drifted by. Twice someone opened the bin, threw some garbage in, then let the lid clang noisily back in place, oblivious to his body hiding below the bags.

At times like this, deep in stasis, he felt as though he might actually be hallucinating. The darkness seemed to touch him as if it were matter.

Agotha had once told him that he drew all of his power from his own mind, that a person who finds silence and solitude boring is a person who is himself boring, empty of anything worth consideration. “These empty shells require outside stimulation to keep them from blowing away in a gentle breeze,” she'd said.

“Two,” Kelly said.

Carl grunted.

In one hour he would send the bullet into the father's chest.

Less than a week ago he'd been strapped into an electric chair and survived an onslaught of electricity. How? By going very deep and affecting the zero-point field that connected him to the objects around him. It was nothing more than mind over matter. Not so different from embracing the dark or slowing his heart rate.

With belief as small as a mustard seed, you can move mountains—a famous teacher had said that. But what if Agotha was wrong about the source of his power? What if he'd tapped into something far greater than the dark musings of quantum theory?

Whatever it was, it had worked. Could work. Would work. More important, his success pleased both Agotha and Kalman. And even more than either of these, it pleased Kelly.

Carl wasn't even aware of the last hour. It was simply there one minute and gone the next.

“Five minutes.”

He methodically reached up and flipped a small switch on the side of his scope. Battery-powered light filled the glass. Without it, his vision would be distorted by the flood of light when Kelly opened the metal flap. He let his pupils adjust.

“We have a go. The target has just taken the stage. I'm coming in.” No need to answer.

The bin swayed once and then began to clatter along the rough concrete. He was like a battleship being maneuvered to bring its guns to bear.

Kelly's boot kicked the metal circle, forcing it inward a few inches. He reached forward and bent it all the way up. Now Carl had a clear view of the street and, thanks to the blockade behind him, the distant park.

“Clear?”

“Clear,” he said.

Avenue of the Americas fell and rose between this point and the park, but on balance it dropped about ten feet on its way to the stage. He would have to compensate accordingly.

Carl peered through the scope, down the street, all the way to the park, a mile and a half away. The bullet would fly a second and a half and drop nearly eight feet before striking the target.

And now Carl could see that target.

The last time he'd seen this view was two days earlier, when he dropped to one knee while picking up a dropped pen to study this line. Then, he'd had to visualize the street vacant of cars and pedestrians. Now a dozen obstacles rose between him and the president—street lamps, light posts, a few tree branches at the end—but the target's torso was in plain view. His bullet would pass under a branch that cut the target off at the neck and enter his chest for a kill. There were no obstacles between his barrel and the father. He studied the man's chest.

“It's your call, Carl. Take your shot.”

Again, he felt no need to respond.

His pulse slowed. His breathing stalled. He was home.

A man in a blue suit stood to the target's left. Secret Service. An older man in a tweed blazer sat behind the president.

I know this man.

He stared, transfixed by the older man. Aside from the man's beard and general features, he couldn't make out fine details, but he was suddenly and forcefully certain that he knew this man. It was the way he sat with arms folded. The way his head sat on his shoulders. The way he crossed his legs.

Carl blinked, stunned. His heart thumped, ruining his aim, forcing him to reacquire the stillness the bullet would need as it sped down the barrel.

But he knew this man! As a father. The man was his father?

You can't kill the father.

Carl stilled his body. Raised the barrel ever so slightly. Found the light.

But there was more than light in his mind. There was a voice, and it was screaming bloody murder, raging through his concentration.

You cannot kill the father!

Carl began to panic.

KELLY WATCHED the president through powerful binoculars from her perch half a block behind the garbage bin in which Carl lay, wondering why he hadn't taken the shot.

She'd wheeled the green steel box onto the sidewalk and left it directly above the manhole as planned. Carl would make the shot, drop into the service tunnel, discard the weapon, and run one block south, where he would exit through a manhole in an alley and then meet her at the Dragon.

As they'd suspected, the NYPD was too busy rerouting traffic and dealing with mobs of pedestrians behind the barricades to care about a single garbage bin half a block up the street. A handful of workers from nearby office buildings still loitered on Avenue of the Americas, occasionally passing near the bin. Although through-traffic had been cut off, these people were allowed. The streets of New York were accustomed to change. The presence of a garbage bin ten feet from its normal resting place attracted no attention.

So far, so good.

According to the media, the summit had accomplished little or nothing—neither side budged. The president was already into his speech, presumably pitching his final position to the media.

Take the shot, Carl. Now, take the shot!

Most of the expanding gases responsible for the noise of Carl's shot would be baffled by the bin's metal wall, but the few dozen pedestrians within a hundred yards would hear the sound clearly enough. Still, it would take them many seconds to isolate the sound's source and react. By then, Carl would be gone.

This was the plan.

But she wasn't sure that Carl was following the plan.

The president had been talking for several minutes now, and still no shot. She knew he had a clear line for the simple reason that he hadn't said otherwise.

“We are clear.” She spoke deliberately but very softly. “It's time, my dear.”

No shot.

It was this business about his father. She cursed under her breath.
Please, Carl, please shoot
.

What if this was a profound weakness in Agotha's training?
What
if Carl simply cannot bring himself to fire upon a father figure
because he, like me, really does need
—A muffled explosion stopped her thought short—the sound of a car backfiring. But today it wasn't a car.

Carl had fired!

Her hands trembled, momentarily distorting the image on the plat-form a mile and a half away. The bullet would travel for two seconds before—

Robert Stenton grabbed his chest. He sat hard, then dropped back.

For a brief second there was no movement. Then the stage blurred into a picture of confusion as Secret Service swarmed the prone body.

Kelly jerked the binoculars from her eyes. Two dozen people were scattered down the street. Some had stopped what they were doing and were looking around for the source of the sound. Others had probably concluded that a taxi had backfired. None were paying any special attention to the green garbage bin. By now Carl would have already shoved the green metal flap back into place.

She lowered her eyes to the gap between the bin and the sidewalk just in time to see Carl drop through. Then he was gone.

Saint had just killed the president of the United States.

20

C
arl pushed his rifle through the manhole, heard it splash below.

To abuse a weapon so intentionally struck him as profane, but this was the plan. His plan.

He swung his feet into the hole, dropped down to the fifth rung, and pulled the manhole cover back into place. Dim light filtered through a thin gap around the heavy metal plate. He descended the ladder quickly.

Who had he shot? What had he done?
Father
—the word refused to stop pounding through his skull.

Father, father, father. Father!

A foot of dirty water ran down the passage, soaking his canvas boots. He felt for the rifle, found it, and ran south along the walkway on the east side of the tunnel.

The bullet had followed a perfect trajectory, he knew that. What he didn't know was whether he'd succeeded. Or who the old man was. His need to know smothered his judgment.

He had to escape, and he would. But he also had to know what had happened. Why he'd believed with such certainty that he was peering through the scope at his father!

He threw the rifle into a deep alcove two hundred yards south as planned and ran on. They would find the rifle without a serial number and without prints.

Heart pounding like a sledge, Carl reached his exit ladder and climbed from a manhole in the alley two blocks south of the barri-cades. His radio should work now.

“Are you there?”

Kelly was breathing hard when she responded. “I'm here. You did well, Carl.”

He turned up the alley and ran eastward.

“I'll meet you as planned,” he said.

“Hurry.”

Carl ripped the headset from his ears and threw the device into a garbage can at Thirty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue. They'd block-aded Fifth as well, but the traffic would be flowing freely on Third.

Bellevue Hospital was located on First. Although South New York Hospital was technically closer to Central Park, they would take the president down Avenue of the Americas to Bellevue, he'd been told.

He wasn't sure why he hadn't told Kelly of his impulsive change in plan, but the five-block side trip would hold him up for only ten minutes and wouldn't compromise their exit, which wasn't planned until nightfall anyway.

He had to go to Bellevue Hospital because he had to know.

A host of sirens wailed through the streets. If the bullet hadn't killed the president outright, toxic shock soon would. They would waste no time speeding to the trauma unit.