Stephen Leather - The Long shot

The spotter spoke into his walkie-talkie. “We have a clear shot,” he said.

“Hold for green light,” said the SWAT team commander.

The Sauer had a three-round magazine, but the sniper knew he would need only one shot. He was using soft-point bullets and they would rip a human chest apart. He nestled the cross-hairs in the woman’s cleavage.

The man in the plaid jacket continued to scrutinise her through his binoculars, and Mary Hennessy instinctively knew something had gone wrong. She turned and looked up the aisle. There were two men standing just behind Kelly Armstrong, men in dark suits and sunglasses. They hadn’t been there five minutes earlier. She looked to her left and saw two more Secret Service agents, moving down the aisle parallel to her.

Her heart began to race. She whirled around and looked at the pitcher’s mound. The Prime Minister was preparing to throw the ball, the catcher squatting down and holding out a gloved hand.

She looked over her shoulder. The two men were moving down the stairs towards her, their hands moving inside their jackets.

“Sniper One, fire now,” she said into the microphone. “Shoot the bastard now, damn you!”

There was no reply and she realised that the microphone wasn’t working. She must have pulled it out of the socket of the transceiver when she turned. She reached behind her for the loose wire.

Kelly saw Mary Hennessy fumble for something at her waist. Something had alarmed her, and then Kelly realised what it was. Two men in suits and dark glasses were moving down the aisle parallel to her. Secret Service agents.

Kelly frowned, not sure what to do. “There she is,” said a voice behind her, and she whirled around. There were two more agents behind her, one young and one middle-aged, so similar that they could have been father and son.

“Excuse me, miss,” said the older agent, moving to get by her.

Kelly pulled out her FBI credentials and identified herself.

“Please let us by, miss, we’ll handle this,” said the younger agent. He put a hand on her arm and tried to move her. Kelly resisted.

“What’s happening?” she said, wanting to give Mary every second she could.

“She’s reaching for something, possibly a weapon,” the spotter spoke into his walkie-talkie. Through the binoculars he saw the female usher groping behind her back. Up above her, moving down the aisle past a blonde woman, were two Secret Service agents. One of them had a pistol in his hand.

“You have a green light,” replied the SWAT commander, “so long as there is no possibility of collateral damage.”

The spotter could see that there was no one directly behind the woman. There were spectators on her left and right, but not close enough to be in the way. “Green light confirmed,” he said. The spotter took the walkie-talkie away from his mouth. “Shoot the bitch,” he said.

“It’ll be a pleasure,” said the sniper, his finger tightening on the trigger.

Todd Otterman stood in the corridor while the two agents from the FBI Academy ran the fibre optic lens under the office door. Many of the businesses in the tower block had agreed to hand over keys to the Secret Service for the duration of the presidential visit, but some of the smaller offices hadn’t been contacted.

One of the FBI rookies was kneeling down and threading the cable through the gap, while his colleague looked at a small black and white monitor. The camera was one the FBI used for surveillance and it was perfect for checking those offices which were locked. Otterman and the rookies had been on the seventh floor in a travel agency whose manager had agreed to open his office late so that the agents could have a comfortable base while the game was on. They’d just been about to start drinking coffee when the call had come in to recheck the offices on the lower floors. Otterman and his two rookies had taken the fifth floor, another agent had gone to the sixth floor.

The agent scrutinising the monitor suddenly stiffened. He put a hand on his colleague’s shoulder and shook him. Otterman went over and looked at the monitor. The picture was fuzzy but there was no mistaking the figure of a man kneeling in front of a desk, his eye pressed to a telescopic sight. Otterman could see that the man was preparing to fire — there was no time to call for back-up. He slid his automatic from its leather shoulder holster and signalled for the two rookies to stand to the side.

Joker watched the two Secret Service agents head down the aisle towards Mary Hennessy, and saw her fumble for whatever it was that was hanging from her belt. He heard one of the agents reporting that she was reaching for something and then he heard another voice giving instructions to a sniper. Off to his right he heard the crack of a high velocity round and then Hennessy staggered back, one hand clutching at her chest. A red stain appeared on her usher’s shirt, and it reminded him of his days in the paintball arena in London. It was a perfect hit. This was different, though, and he knew Hennessy wouldn’t be getting to her feet and complaining about being taken out of the game.

She fell back and sat down heavily on the stairs. Joker could see that her eyes were wide open as if surprised, and the hand on her chest was twitching spasmodically. A blonde woman in a blue jacket rushed by the agents and knelt at her side.

Joker panned across to the office blocks, trying to see where the sniper was. It had been a good, clean shot. As he scanned the sky something passed across his vision, something large and white with the name of a Japanese electronics company on the side. It was so unexpected that Joker thought that he’d seen an advertising hoarding at the far end of the stadium, but then he saw wispy white clouds and knew that he was still looking up high, above the buildings. He took the binoculars away from his face and shaded his eyes with his free hand, gritting his teeth as pain from his shoulder lanced across his back. It was an airship, hanging in the sky more than a mile away. He frowned as he remembered what Cole Howard had told him about the long shot, the sniper who was planning to shoot the President from two thousand yards away, and how there was nowhere the sniper could make the shot from in Baltimore.

He let the binoculars hang on their strap around his neck and spoke into the radio again. His earpiece was buzzing with agents calling in situation reports following the shooting of Mary Hennessy. “Howard, are you there?” he asked, interrupting the agents.

“Is that you, Cramer?” It was Howard’s voice.

“Yeah. Have you seen the blimp?”

“Blimp?”

“The blimp. The airship. Over the city.”

Todd Otterman thought about trying to kick in the door but dismissed the idea. There was no way of telling how strong it was, and the door was certain to be locked. He had two advantages: he had surprise on his side and he had a handgun. The sniper would have to swing his rifle through almost one hundred and eighty degrees to get a shot at the door. Otterman was breathing heavily and he could see that the two rookies were trembling. He motioned with his free hand that he was going to shoot out the lock, and that the two Academy rookies were to kick the door, then move out of the way.

They nodded and watched as Otterman mouthed a quick count: Three, Two, One, then fired at the lock. The metal screeched and the wood splintered and immediately the two rookies kicked at the door, close to the lock. The door flew inwards and Otterman stepped across the threshold, the gun held firmly in both hands.

“Secret Service!” he yelled. “Drop the weapon!”

The sniper began to turn and made no attempt to release his grip on the rifle. There was no way the Secret Service agent was going to take a chance with the President’s life. He shot the sniper twice in the back.