Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

Take her out?

Yes? No?

Negative, Soldier. Stay fixed on your target.

He fired again. The puff of explosion tore another tiny chunk out of the side of the airplane.

Calm. Another shot. The kick in the shoulder, the sweet smell of the burnt powder. A windshield in the cockpit exploded.

This was the shot that did it.

Suddenly there she was – the Wife – forcing her way through the office door, grappling with the young blond cop who tried to hold her back.

No target yet. Keep her coming.

Squeeze. Another bullet tore through the engine.

The Wife, her face horrified, broke free and ran down the stairs toward the hangar to close the doors, to protect her child.

Reload.

He laid the reticles on her chest as she stepped to the ground and started to run.

Full target lead of four inches, Stephen calculated automatically. He moved the gun ahead of her and squeezed the trigger. It fired just as the blond cop tackled her and they went down below a slight dip in the earth. A miss. And they had just enough cover to keep him from skimming slugs into their backs.

They’re moving in, Soldier. They’re flanking you.

Yessir, understood.

Stephen glanced over the runways. Other police had appeared. They were crawling toward their cars. One car was speeding directly toward him, only fifty yards away. Stephen used one shot to take out the engine block. Steam spraying from the front end, the car eased to a stop.

Stay calm, he told himself.

We’re prepared to evacuate. We just need one clear shot.

He heard several fast pistol shots. He looked back at the redhead. She was in a competition combat stance, pointing the stubby pistol in his direction, looking for his muzzle flash. The sound of the shot wouldn’t do her any good, of course; it was why he never bothered with silencers. Loud noises are as hard to pinpoint as soft ones.

The redheaded cop was standing tall, squinting as she gazed.

Stephen closed the bolt of the Model 40.

Amelia Sachs saw a faint glimmer and she knew where the Coffin Dancer was.

In a small grove of trees about three hundred yards away. His telescopic sight caught the reflected glint of the pale clouds overhead.

“Over there,” she cried, pointing, to two county cops huddling in their cruiser.

The troopers rolled into their car and took off, skidding behind a nearby hangar to flank him.

“Sachs,” Rhyme called through her headset. “What’s -”

“Jesus, Rhyme, he’s on the field, shooting at the plane.”

“What?”

“Percey’s trying to get to the hangar. He’s shooting explosive slugs. He’s shooting to draw her out.”

“You stay down, Sachs. If Percey’s going to kill herself, let her. But you stay down!”

She was sweating furiously, hands shaking, heart pounding. She felt the quiver of panic run down her back.

“Percey!” Sachs cried.

The woman had broken free from Jerry Banks and rolled to her feet. She was speeding toward the hangar door.

“No!”

Oh, hell.

Sachs’s eyes were on the spot where she’d seen the flare of the Dancer’s ’scope.

Too far, it’s too far, she thought. I can’t hit anything at that distance.

If you stay calm, you can. You’ve got eleven rounds left. There’s no wind. Trajectory’s the only problem. Aim high and work down.

She saw several leaves fly outward as the Dancer fired again.

An instant later a bullet passed within inches of her face. She felt the shock wave and heard the snap as the slug, traveling twice the speed of sound, burned the air around her.

She uttered a faint whimper and dropped to her stomach, cowering.

No! You had a chance to shoot. Before he rechambered. But it’s too late now. He’s locked and loaded again.

She looked up fast, lifted her gun, then lost her nerve. Head down, the Glock pointed generally in the direction of the trees, she fired five fast shots.

But she might as well have been shooting blanks.

Come on, girl. Get up. Aim and shoot. You got six left and two clips on your belt.

But the thought of the near miss kept her pinned to the ground.

Do it! she raged at herself.

But she couldn’t.

All Sachs had the courage for was to raise her head a few inches – just far enough to see Percey Clay, sprinting, race to the hangar door just as Jerry Banks caught up with her. The young detective shoved her down to the ground behind a generator cart. Almost simultaneously with the rolling boom of the Coffin Dancer’s rifle there came the sickening crack of the bullet striking Banks, who spun about like a drunk as blood puffed into a cloud around him.

And on his face, first a look of surprise, then of bewilderment, then of nothing whatsoever as he spiraled down to the damp concrete.

Hour 5 of 45

“WELL?” RHYME ASKED.

Lon Sellitto folded up his phone. “They still don’t know.” Eyes out the window of Rhyme’s town house, tapping the glass compulsively. The falcons had returned to the ledge but kept their eyes vigilantly on Central Park, uncharacteristically oblivious to the noise.

Rhyme had never seen the detective this upset. His doughy, sweat-dotted face was pale. A legendary homicide investigator, Sellitto was usually unflappable. Whether he was reassuring victims’ families or relentlessly punching holes in a suspect’s alibi, he always concentrated on the job before him. But at the moment his thoughts seemed miles away, with Jerry Banks, in surgery – maybe dying – in a Westchester hospital. It was now three on Saturday afternoon and Banks had been in the operating room for an hour.

Sellitto, Sachs, Rhyme, and Cooper were on the ground floor of Rhyme’s town house, in the lab. Dellray had left to make sure the safe house was ready and to check out the new baby-sitter the NYPD was providing to replace Banks.

At the airport they’d loaded the wounded young detective into the ambulance – the same one containing the dead, handless painting contractor. Earl, the medic, had stopped being an asshole long enough to work feverishly to stop Banks’s torrential bleeding. Then he’d sped the pale, unconscious detective to the emergency room several miles away.

FBI agents from White Plains got Percey and Hale into an armored van and started south to Manhattan, using evasive driving techniques. Sachs worked the new crime scenes: the sniper’s nest, the painter’s van, and the Dancer’s getaway wheels – a catering van. It was found not far from where he’d killed the contractor and where, they guessed, he’d have hidden the car he’d driven to Westchester in.

Then she’d sped back to Manhattan with the evidence.

“What’ve we got?” Rhyme now asked her and Cooper. “Any rifle slugs?”

Worrying a tattered bloody nail, Sachs explained, “Nothing left of them. They were explosive rounds.” She seemed very spooked, eyes flitting like birds’.

“That’s the Dancer. Not only deadly but his evidence self-destructs.”

Sachs prodded a plastic bag. “Here’s what’s left of one. I scraped it off a wall.”

Cooper spilled the contents into a porcelain examining tray. He stirred them. “Ceramic tipped too. Vests’re pointless.”

“Grade-A asshole,” Sellitto offered.

“Oh, the Dancer knows his tools,” Rhyme said.

There was a bustle of activity at the doorway and Thom let two suited FBI agents into the room. Behind them were Percey Clay and Brit Hale.

Percey asked Sellitto, “How’s he doing?” Her dark eyes looked around the room, saw the coolness that greeted her. Didn’t seem fazed. “Jerry, I mean.”

Sellitto didn’t answer.

Rhyme said, “He’s still in surgery.”