Andrew Vachss - A Bomb Built in Hell

Wesley removed the deerskin gloves, and the surgeon’s gloves he wore underneath. His palms were dry from the talc. Wesley took the auger with the four-inch bit and drilled sixteen precise holes in the room—in the walls and in the floor. Into each he put a stick of dynamite. The dynamite was connected with fusing material and the whole network again connected to one of Pet’s zinc-lined boxes. It would have been better to take all the stuff with him, but that would cost time he wouldn’t have. Wesley taped the other eight sticks of dynamite together and wired them to the door, with a trip mechanism set just in case the radio transmitter failed to fire—sooner or later, the cops would be breaking down the door, even if they hit him with a lucky shot as he was leaving the window.

It was 4:11 a.m. when Wesley finished this last task. None of the metal in the room gleamed—it had been worked with gunsmith’s bluing and then carefully dulled with a soapy film. All the glass was non-glare, and Wesley was dressed in the outfit he had field-tested on the roof. He was invisible even to the occasional pigeon that flew past. Wesley hated the foul birds. (“I never saw a joint without pigeons; fucking rats with wings!” Carmine had said once.) But it would be too much of an indulgence to even think about killing one now.

Wesley had no food with him, and no cigarettes, but he did have a canteen full of glucose and water and he took a sip just before he went into a fix on the window. He came out of it, as he planned, at 6:30. The city was already awake. Staying toward the back of the room, he took the readings that he needed. The building was one-hundred-and-eighteen-feet high at window level, the Pier was seventeen-hundred-and-fifty feet from where he stood. Wesley stepped behind the tripod and refocused the scope. There was no ship at the Pier, but he swept its full length and he knew he’d have a clear shot no matter where Fat Boy got off.

Wesley went toward the back of the room again, crossed his legs into a modified lotus, and sat focusing on the window ahead of him, mentally reviewing everything in the room and all the preparations inside. The building outside the one room was blocked off completely. There was no way to go back downstairs anyway, so Wesley’s entire mind was focused in the room and out the window. He mentally reviewed the picture of Fat Boy the kid had clipped from Newsweek . It wasn’t all that good, but Wesley knew the target would wear a ton of medals on his fat chest and would be obviously treated like a big deal when he walked down the ramp to the Pier.

77/

The crowd started to assemble well before 10:00 a.m. At first it seemed like it wasn’t going to be such a big event after all; maybe three hundred people total, half of them government agents. But the crowd kept growing, and Wesley saw the white helmets of the TPF keeping people back. Demonstrators ... with the spotting scope, it was easy to read the carefully lettered signs:

THE U.S. DOES NOT WELCOME TYRANTS!

KILLER OF CHILDREN!

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON!

“ They should be the ones up here in this fucking window,” flashed through Wesley’s mind. He carefully plucked the thought and tossed it into the garbage can of his brain—the part that already contained questions about his mother and the name of the first institution he had been committed to when he was four years old.

By 11:15, the crowd was good-sized, but not unruly. Traffic was backed up on the West Side Highway as people rubber-necked to see what was going on down at the Pier. The dock, which could accommodate two ocean liners at the same time, was still empty.

At 11:45, the Mayor arrived in a helicopter with three men who looked like politicians from the ground, but like bodyguards through the scope.

At 12:05 p.m., the first tugs steamed in, towing the ship. The crowd let out a major cheer, drowning the voices of the demonstrators. Wesley trained the scope on the face of their leader, searching carefully for anything dangerous. But he seemed too beside himself with rage to have planned anything that might get in the way.

At 12:35 p.m., the gangplank was lowered from the ship to the dock. An honor guard came first, flying the Haitian flag and the American flag in separate holders. The soldiers held their rifles like they were batons. As the TV crews trained their cameras toward the entrance to the gangplank, the reporters jockeyed for position at its foot.

At 12:42 p.m., Fat Boy started to walk down the gangplank. In what must have been a carefully orchestrated move, he stood alone, with bodyguards in front and behind, his fat body contrasting photogenically against the gangplank’s fresh white paint.

Fat Boy halted—from the way the men behind him halted too, the whole thing must have been rehearsed to death.

Fat Boy turned and waved to the crowd—a huge roar went up and surrounded him. Wesley felt a lightness he had never felt while working before—a glow came up from his stomach and started to encircle his face.... But it had too many years of breeding and training to compete with. Wesley focused hard on the scope, watching Fat Boy’s face fill the round screen. He watched the crosshairs intersect on Fat Boy’s left eye.

The crowd was now in a huge, rough semicircle around the base of the gangplank and the noise was terrific. The wind held steady at seven m.p.h. from the west—the tiny transistor-powered radio which picked up only the Coast Guard weather reports gave Wesley a bulletin every fifteen minutes. He had cranked in the right windage and elevation hours ago and stood ready to adjust ... but everything had held ... static.

Wesley slowed his breathing, reaching for peace inside, counting his heartbeats.

Fat Boy turned to his left to throw a last wave at the crowd, just as Wesley’s finger completed its slow backward trip—the sharp cccrack! came at a higher harmonic than the crowd-noise. It seemed to pass over everyone’s head as Fat Boy’s head burst open like a rotten melon with a stick of dynamite inside. The screaming took on a higher pitch and the bodyguards rushed uselessly toward the fallen ruler as Wesley smoothly jacked a shell into the chamber and pumped another round into Fat Boy’s exposed back, aiming this time for the spinal area. It seemed to him as if the shots echoed endlessly, but nobody looked in his direction. Still, it wouldn’t take the TPF too long to figure things out.

Wesley stood up, stuck the two expended shells in his side pocket out of habit, and ran to the window. Without looking down, he tossed the coil over the sill and followed it out. Wesley rappelled down with his back to the waterfront, both hands on the nylon line. Either the kid would cover him or he wouldn’t—he didn’t have any illusions about blasting somebody with one hand holding on to the rope. The bottom of his eyesight picked up the Ford as he slid down the last twenty feet. Wesley hit the ground hard, rolled over onto his side, and came up running for the back door, which was lying open. He grabbed the shotgun off the floor of the Ford, heard running footsteps, and saw the kid charging toward the car with a silenced, scoped rifle. The kid tossed the rifle into the back seat and the Ford moved off like a soundless rocket, as good as Pet ever could have done.

78/

The quiet car spun itself loose in the narrow streets of the area. The kid hadn’t said a word—he was watching the Halda Trip-Master clicking off hundredths of a mile. Just before the machine indicated 99/100, the kid slammed the knife-switch home. A dull, booming sound followed in seconds, but the echoes reverberated for another full minute after the Ford had re-entered the West Side Highway and was passing the World Trade Center on the left.

The Ford sped back to the Slip without seeming to exceed the speed limit. A touch of the horn ring forced the garage door up, and the kid hit it again to bring it down almost in the same motion. The door slammed inches behind the Ford’s rear bumper. Both men sprinted out from the Ford and jumped into the cab, which was out the door and heading for the highway again almost immediately.