Стивен Хантер - Game of Snipers

“Our masters have spoken,” said Nick. “It will be as it will be.”

Thursday the eighth, 0800

Allah sent him a wonderful day, on the cusp of a wonderful night of deep and restful sleep, untroubled by a visit from his darkest nightmare visitor, the American sniper sent to destroy him and his mission. He awoke to a blue sky, lightly feathered with high cirrus clouds, not much breeze. The air was fresh, even perfumed. The leaves vibrated in the gentle breeze, turning first their dark faces, then their light faces, to him — in effect, shimmering.

At the river that morning, he took his Kestrel readings, came up with a two- to four-mile-per-hour north-northwest breeze, a temperature of sixty-seven degrees, probably to rise a few degrees by midafternoon, and only forty-four percent humidity. The sun was bold, casting sharp shadows, but it would be high in the sky by shooting time and thus would render the image shadeless. The buildings, the grounds, the vegetation, the colors, the lack of activity, the lack of security vehicles or men: all as it should be. On the water, the rills were low.

Praise be to Allah, He who provides .

There was no hurry. He ambled back to the building, halting again for a long, keen observation. Again, nothing, nobody, no cruising police vehicles or plainclothes men in nondescript sedans. No helicopters above, and, with his gifted eyesight, he was sure there were no drones high in the sky.

He entered the lobby boldly, knowing that the TV monitor was down, had always been down. He took the elevator up with a young woman and her two children. Nothing was said, but the mood was calm. The children were well behaved, the mother attentive. They got off on 3, he continued to 6. Hallway empty. He unlocked, entered, and locked again, checked his watch. Time for prayer.

He slipped on his mask, hairnet, and rubber gloves, as always. He went to his prayer rug — a towel — and prostrated himself for seven minutes.

Allah, I beseech Thee, look with favor upon my enterprise today, for it is enacted to Your glory, on Your behalf, for Your war. I give up my life to You, O Allah, and will gladly leave it if that is Your decision. I pray that You make my eye sharp, my hand strong, my heart calm, my finger delicate. In Your interest and according to Your laws I dedicate that which is to come, O Beloved One, and ask as well Your favor on my ancestors and my descendants, for all are a part of this holy moment.

On and on it went, a litany of loyalty, love, and dedication. It poured the lubricant of faith throughout his body so that all processes became easier, slick with grace, beauty, and precision. His mind was narrowing, his breath was smoothing, his fingers were strengthening. Only one thing occupied his mind.

He went to the closet where he had stored a purchase he had made: it was a can of acetone. It would chemically obliterate any traces of himself on the weapon. Using a cotton ball to blot, he assiduously wiped the steel and plastic down, even if the plastic was favored not to preserve fingerprints. He worked at a slow, sure pace, watching the liquid as it spread to a sheen and evaporated, not missing any plausible surface, taking all traces of Juba with it into the ether. The scope, particularly the turrets, demanded special attention, as it could easily retain evidence if not carefully purified, though he had never touched any part of the weapon with his naked fingers.

Next, he drew out several plastic bags. Each contained DNA-carrying microdebris from the actual corpse of Brian Waters — dandruff, flakes of skin, filaments of nostril and head hair — and applied them gradually to the rifle. A piece of tape yielded a thumbprint, and by applying it to the Thunder Beast suppressor — a long tube with chambers and aperture that would dissipate the sound of the shot — then peeling it off, he transferred the image. He applied and then removed another tape — this one for the sake of the trigger finger — around the trigger guard and the trigger itself. In the end, he had rendered the rifle appropriate to the biological reality of his avatar’s presence and his own invisibility.

He did the same to the iPhone, smearing it with the detritus of poor Mr. Waters. A close investigation would reveal nothing except the FirstShot app and the occasional posts of Mr. Waters on his all-but-deserted Facebook page. He checked and saw that certain pages had come to his cue, and he knew exactly the stroke to send them instantly to post on the Dark Web, where they would be found and tracked to this iPhone and to Brian A. Waters. The pages contained superb screeds of hate and blasphemy, which would make the man’s sickness manifest to all and provide the motive for his crime. Brian A. Waters was about to become the most famous man on earth, as well as the most wanted. Too bad he’d been dead for over three months and wouldn’t be around to enjoy all the attention.

Next, he checked his getaway bag. Yes, passport, ID, cash. He knew exactly his escape route, where he would be picked up by Iranian operatives and how he would be smuggled back to Syria.

It was almost over.

He checked his watch.

So little time.

He went to the window in front of the rifle. He had been prepared to cut the glass, use a suction cup to remove the appropriate fragment, shoot through it, then wedge the glass back in place so that no one observing from the outside would know that this room, automatically, was the source of the assassin’s bullet. But a happy surprise had been that the larger pane of glass was flanked on each side by two narrower ones, either of which could be cranked open, revealing a screen, through which fresh air could circulate if the building’s air-conditioning went down. Cranking it open also revealed ample room for shooting, with a perfect vantage on the target. At the last second, he would cut the screen, peel it back, and open a square through which he could shoot. His plan was to fire once as carefully as possible, crank the bolt as quickly as possible, fire nine more rounds, forming a kind of beaten zone, so that the man would take bullet after bullet. He would quickly close the window to obscure the location. The authorities would find the sniper’s nest eventually, but he would be long gone.

Now there was nothing left to do but wait.

1000

It turned out there wasn’t really space in the operations room for Nick and his crew, not with all the bigs who’d crowded in to watch the triumph. Probably that was best for all, as it prevented the bigs from noting the annoyance of the passed-over Nick team, and it prevented the passed-over Nick team from expressing snarky resentment.

At one point, the Director and some otherwise anonymous factotums came up to express gratitude for contributions, creativity, and the success about to arrive, although the leader himself spent more time with Chandler — as what sane man would not — than the others combined. He lurked, breathed, smiled unctuously, closed in too tight and was too fulsome in attention. Such is the expression of power in D.C., and, for her part, she stayed cool and professional and paid no acknowledgment to his interest. When the ceremony was over, the bigs left, and Nick’s people were left alone in their upstairs warren, watching the drama on a closed-circuit TV, where they were free to go as smart-ass as they wanted, though, as it turned out, no one was in any sort of smart-ass mood.

Still, they followed as the parts were carefully layered in. The choppers weren’t airborne yet, but when they were, they would hang in the air about a half mile behind the zone, which was that part of the arc 1,847 yards out in Queens that fronted on the new building over Roosevelt Drive and the East River. The Mogul sub was suiting up in Level IV Kevlar for his shot at glory; Mogul himself would arrive shortly. Teams were locked, loaded, and in place all over, the various Raytheon marvels needed for the intercept in place and tested.