Andrew Britton - The Operative

This is for us, he thought angrily. The cab was to block traffic, but the deaths were to show that the victims could just as easily have been Kealey or Bishop. The gunman was a helluva marksman.

Even though Kealey realized where the sniper was situated, there was nothing he could do about it. Even if he could get to his bag-he’d left it beside Bishop-his handgun didn’t have this kind of range. The shots were from very high up.

Cops were gathering, and as soon as the first two went down, the rest withdrew to the safety of the station to await armored reinforcement.

Kealey knew the gunman would leave before choppers could arrive. He had to get to the hotel. The killer might be expecting that but did not desire it; otherwise, the shots would have been aimed to Kealey’s rear, a signal he should head forward.

Sirens broke through the terrified shrieks and sobs and the honking horns that were all around him. Traffic was trying to maneuver around the disabled taxi, to pull to the curb or down one of the side streets. The police and emergency units were converging from all directions. His ear attuned to them, Kealey heard police radios rasping behind him.

The gunfire had stopped. People were beginning to rise as a terrible calm spread across the scene. They were in pockets behind the concrete walls of Madison Square Garden or behind the newspaper stand or the line of cabs. They were alone, rushing to get back into the station or into the arena.

And then a flurry of awful gunfire cut through them. It came from the same place, from a bolt-action weapon, judging from the delay, a slashing death that took down bodies alternately to the left and right of Kealey.

The gunman was swinging from side to side, sighting and taking down targets in a heartbeat. It was formidable.

Then everything was silent again. Kealey knew the killer was done. He hadn’t had time to get his gun from his bag, but Bishop was ahead of him: he had assumed the former agent was carrying one and had retrieved it. He flipped it over.

Kealey acknowledged this with a hasty salute as he tucked the Glock in his belt. He pulled out his shirt to conceal the weapon so he wouldn’t be shot by police. Then he ran through the now-halted traffic, Bishop close behind.

Yasmin climbed through the window she had broken to reach the scaffolding. She tossed aside the blanket she’d pulled from the bed to conceal herself, sidestepped the occupant-a young flight attendant whose spinal cord she had cut from behind-and stuffed her XM2010 Enhanced Sniper Rifle into a vinyl wardrobe bag. She had already donned the woman’s blouse and skirt while waiting for her audience to arrive from Washington. Cutting the woman’s neck in the back had prevented her from bleeding out on the garments. A deeper cut to get through the sinew and vertebrae, but as soon as the cord was cut, the woman fell, quite lifeless.

Yasmin passed the bed on which she had dropped the key stolen from the housekeeper. The woman lay dead in a hall utility closet, the cheap pen bearing the Hotel Pennsylvania logo that was plucked from her cleaning cart still stuck a good 4 inches into her carotid artery. Less mess would have been ideal, but there just hadn’t been enough time. She glanced at the mirror to muss her hair and assume a look of panic, then grabbed her garment bag and rushed into the hall. Security here was little more than a few cameras, and it didn’t matter if they had captured her likeness. They would know who was responsible for this.

That was the point, she thought-though the thought was not her own. All the young woman had to do was keep from being caught.

She was in the stairwell and on the nineteenth floor before the first police officers reached the room. She was in the lobby and then on the street before the block had been surrounded. She did not see the men whose attention she had been sent to attract. She did not know who they were, only that the spotter in the station had called her cell phone and told her to start.

Yasmin walked over to Broadway to catch a cab headed downtown. She kept the garment bag with her for the ride downtown, instead of putting it in the trunk. She wanted the gun handy, just in case.

The gun and the marble set in a bracelet on her left wrist.

The hotel lobby was jammed with people who had come in from the street. They stood awaiting some kind of instruction, from anyone. Mobs were like that: big, burly, and impotent until someone struck a match.

Kealey knew it was probably safe, but he wasn’t going to be the one to tell them so. Not because he thought they were safer here-they might not be; the gunman could have herded them here to set off a bomb-but because Bishop had a job to do.

“Stay here and look for your cargo,” Kealey said. Bishop had caught up to him as Kealey started weaving through the packed room.

“How certain are you that she’s the one?”

“Call it a strong hunch,” he said. It was a little more than that: the way the line of fire had skipped them during the sweeping barrage was a hallmark of her precision work. “I doubt she’ll come out this way, but we need to be sure.”

Bishop agreed as Kealey literally shoved his way through.

He asked a bellhop for directions and took the stairs. He felt that would be his best chance of running into her, or at least of finding anything she’d discarded. He drew his Glock and held it close to his ribs as he ascended.

Breathless, his legs aching, he reached the twentieth floor and entered the hallway. He had approximated within a floor in either direction that that was where the shots had come from. He was right. Apparently alerted by guests who saw blood seeping from a utility closet, hotel personnel had just discovered the housekeeper’s body.

Kealey stopped and looked around.

“I need the key to that door,” he said to one of the young executives. He was pointing to a door at the end of this section of hallway.

“Is that your-”

“It’s where the sniper was,” Kealey said. “Let me have the key.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for-”

Kealey showed his Glock. “Give me the goddamn key.”

The man obliged. Kealey ran over. He felt the wall to the side of the door. It seemed solid enough. He leaned against it as he swiped the plastic key. The lock clicked. There was no gunfire. Relatively certain she would not be inside, Kealey nudged open the door with his foot. It swung in to reveal the dead flight attendant lying in her underwear on the blood-soaked carpet and the broken window.

“Oh Christ!” someone shouted from behind him.

Kealey shut the door. He didn’t have long before the police arrived, and he didn’t want to answer questions. Still breathing heavily, he looked around the body without disturbing it. Killed from behind, bled out from there. He walked over to the window. It was an old-fashioned type, wood framed, but a lock had been added at the top, so it opened only a crack. Rather than unscrew the little metal piece, she had smashed the window. He looked around. Saw shards on a discarded pillowcase.

With her fist inside that. He looked out. Large pieces of glass were lying on the scaffolding. She had kicked those out, no doubt.

He took the pillowcase, turned it inside out, crumpled it in a ball, and left the room. The police sirens were screaming from directly below. He tucked the room key in his pocket so he wouldn’t leave prints behind, put the gun back in his belt, and went to the stairs. He ran up to the twenty-first floor and took the elevator down. He did not encounter any police until he reached the lobby. They were directing people to leave by the side doors. The front of the building was a cordoned-off crime scene.

Kealey found Bishop standing on the north side of Thirty-Third Street, watching for him. He had both of their travel bags. Traffic had been stopped on the side street, and Kealey crossed. He cocked his head toward Broadway, and they hooked up as they continued east. The street was a wall of stalled traffic and people either flowing west or staring east. Heads had emerged from windows to look at the carnage. Kealey glanced back. The police were already out on the scaffolding.