Michael Ledwidge - Alert

But the strangest thing was what was attached to the top of the rifle. Perched where the scope should have been was a bulky device about the size of a hardcover book that looked like a robotic owl. It had a single viewfinder in the sighting end and what looked like greenish-tinged binoculars in the front.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said ESU sergeant Terry Kelly as he arrived behind me.

“What the hell is it?”

The short, muscular cop spat some chewing tobacco as he knelt and carefully tilted the gun over on its side.

“One of those damn things!” he said. “On a.50-caliber Barrett! Of course. Why not? It’s like the training video said. Only a matter of time.”

“What are you talking about, Sergeant?” I said.

“We saw a Homeland Security video about this three weeks ago,” Kelly said. “See this scope thing on top? It’s a computerized targeting system. It has a laser range finder in front, like rich golf guys have to get exact distances.”

I nodded.

“Well, you get behind it and sight your target through the system’s long-range zooming video camera and just tag it with the laser. Then the computer calculates all the factors of the shot — the air density, Magnus effect, even target movement — and puts them through the computer. Then the computer — not you — robotically positions the gun and fires it.

“Anyone, a three-year-old child, can become a world-class sniper with it. All you have to do is tag the target. What am I saying? You don’t even have to be behind the gun! It has Wi-Fi.”

“So this was probably done remotely,” I said.

“Without a doubt,” he said. “Why expose yourself on a rooftop when all you have to do is set the gun up beforehand and just do it from cover? All you would need is to be within Wi-Fi range.”

“Call the other team and tell them to go straight to the top floor,” I told him. “We need to get the super up here and start searching every single apartment.”

We rushed off the roof and down onto the thirty-second floor and started banging on doors like it was Halloween for cops. Only three of the residents were home. After we were done searching their apartments, the super, a tall, middle-aged guy who looked like a stoner, finally showed up in a brown bathrobe, holding a set of keys.

“Listen, man,” he said, “I’m still waiting to hear back from the management office. I don’t even know if I should be letting you into people’s apartments. Don’t you need a warrant or something?”

“Tune in, bro,” Kelly yelled in his face. “While you were busy watching Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle , the mayor just got blown away with a rifle we found on your roof.”

“What? Okay, okay. Give me a second,” he said, fumbling with the keys.

One by one, we searched seven apartments, but there was nothing.

“What about this apartment?” I said to the super. “Where’s the key?”

“Uh... that one’s vacant,” the stoner said. “It’s for sale, so I don’t have the key. The management company has it, I think.”

“Don’t worry about the key,” said Kelly as he led the way, holding the battering ram. “Fortunately, we brought our own.”

The ESU men blasted open the door of 32J and rushed inside.

When they gave the all-clear and we went in, the first thing I noticed was the shattered living room window. The second was the skinny guy with a gray ponytail sprawled out in front of the kitchen’s breakfast bar with the top of his head missing. There was an iPad beside him.

I turned and looked west, out through the broken window at the Hudson.

On the Jersey side of the river, about a mile away, there was another high-rise.

Where someone else had shot the mayor’s shooter with another computerized rifle, I thought. I would have bet my paycheck on it.

This isn’t good, I thought as I radioed aviation to hit the roof of the building on the Jersey side to see what they could see.

“Mike, you really think this is the guy who killed the mayor?” asked Brooklyn as she stood over the body.

I nodded.

“And who killed him?” asked Arturo.

I stared out the window as the chopper appeared overhead on its way across the Hudson. The sound of the rotors was almost deafening through the broken glass.

“The nut job who’s trying to show us how smart he is,” I yelled.

At exactly 1:23 p.m., thirty-seven minutes after the mayor’s assassination, a hundred blocks almost directly south, a white delivery van turned west onto 81st Street from York Avenue on Manhattan’s famous Upper East Side.

“Dude, four-two-one. That’s it. Up there,” said the preppy white college kid in the van’s passenger seat.

The handsome young Hispanic driver beside him squinted ahead out the windshield.

“That old church there?” he said.

“No, stupid,” said the white guy. “The church? How we gonna put it on the pointy roof of a church? Next to the church there. That crappy white brick building.”

The white guy’s name was Gregg Bentivengo. His handsome Hispanic buddy was Julio Torrone. They were recently graduated New York University students, now roommates and partners in a start-up marketing and promotional firm they’d dubbed Emerald Marketing Solutions.

“A church?” Gregg said again, rolling his eyes. “There’s even a picture of the building on the instructions. Didn’t you see the picture of it?”

“That’s your job,” Julio said, coming to a dead stop as a green pickup two cars ahead parallel-parked. “You’re the navigator, bro. I’m the pilot. Where should I park us, anyway? This block is jammed.”

“Too bad we didn’t pick one of those blocks where it’s easy to park,” said Gregg, rolling down his window and sticking his head out. “The building’s got an underground garage. Maybe they’ll let us leave the van off to the side in the driveway there for a second while we unload. You know, I would have asked for more if I’d known how bulky these damn things are. Plus they weigh a ton.”

“You can say that again. I’m not lugging it across the street again, especially the way you almost let it bail when we were getting it over the curb.”

“ I almost let it bail? I beg to differ, my friend. You’re the one who didn’t tighten the hand truck’s strap,” Gregg said as he rolled the window back up and removed a small navel orange from the pocket of his white North Face shell.

Gregg was always doing that, thought Julio, annoyed. Grossly hoarding food in his pockets like a squirrel or something. Peanuts, little candies. Drove him nuts all through school.

“Besides, you’re the muscle in this little caper,” Gregg said as he began peeling. “I’m the sweet-talking, persuasive guy.”

“The what?” Julio said. “You were tripping over your tongue with the concierge mama at the last place so much I thought you were doing an impression of that ‘That’s all, folks’ pig dude in that old-timey cartoon.”

“Screw you,” Gregg said, flicking a piece of orange peel at him. “When she looked up, she was so hot that I got a little startled is all. I was lovestruck. Besides, I recovered quick enough.”

“That’s true,” said Julio, smiling. “I almost pissed myself laughing when you told her it was the new flux capacitor for the roof, and she was like, ‘Oh, okay, elevator back to your right.’”

“Hey, you know my motto. If you can’t bowl them over with brilliance, then baffle them with bullshit.”

“Hey, traffic’s moving now,” Julio said. “Let’s get this over with.”

It was even easier than the last drop. The middle-aged Asian guy at the garage must have been new or something, because not only did he let them park in the driveway, he also let them into the side door of the building with his key without calling the super or even seeming interested in what the hell they were doing there.