Andrew Vachss: Safe House

A dark Acura sedan turned the corner. The hooker waved, but the car never slowed.

I snapped the tripod together, positioned the heavy rifle and spun the set-screw to tighten the rig. I nestled my cheek against the dark wood stock, starting to connect. The rifle was bolt-action, unsilenced. It would have to be a one-shot kill or it was all over anyway. I wondered where the target’s hands were. If the detonator wasn’t armed, we had a window of safety. But then the Mole couldn’t find it to jam it and . . .

Dejectedly, the hooker started to walk up Hudson in the same direction the Bentley had gone, arms wrapped around herself for warmth. Cold comfort. I cranked the scope up to full magnification. The van driver was barely visible, just a dark blot in the side window. I prayed for him to be a smoker, but the interior stayed dark.

I had watched Wesley work. That clear-skyed night when he took a mobster off a high bridge, working from a dinky little island in the East River, I was standing right next to him. I knew how to do it.

Breathing was the key. I slowed mine way down, knowing I had to squeeze the trigger between heartbeats. Ignoring the pain in my damaged right hand, my finger on the unpulled trigger, caressing, probing for the sweet spot. So hard to shoot down, calculate the drop. My eye went down the barrel, finding the cartridge. I looked past the primer into the bullet itself. Full metal jacket—I needed penetration, not expansion. It had to be a head shot. Blow his brain apart, snap the neuron-chain to his hand. The hand on the detonator.

I became the bullet. Seeing into his skull. Locking the connection with my spirit before I sent death down the channel.

To keep my house safe.

My heart was a clock, every tick an icepick in a nerve cluster. How much time?

The hooker walked right past the van, not giving it a glance, looking over her shoulder at the wide street, hoping for some traffic. Suddenly, she stopped, turned to stare right at the van, hands on hips. I could see she was saying something. No reaction from the van—it was as dark inside as I was.

Except for that white blob. The target.

The hooker walked over, nice and slow, giving the detonator man a real eyeful. Nothing. She came right up to the van, rapped on the window like it was a door. The window came down. The hooker’s left hand was on the sill, her right hand dropped down to her purse. I saw a whitish face in the scope, wearing a dark baseball cap. Zeroed in until I was one long, thin wire of hate—my mind to my finger to my eye to the slug to the target.

I caught the rhythm of my heart. Started the slow squeeze on the trigger in the dead space until the next beat, the electrical impulse already launched along the wire. The whitish face exploded in fire. A split second later, the sound of the shot echoed up to where I was perched. My finger was still locked on the unpulled trigger, frozen.

The wire snapped.

A motorcycle roared into life. A low-cut racing bike flowed around the back corner like liquid over a rock. The hooker yanked the tiny skirt up to her waist as the bike slid to a stop. The rider was dressed in a set of racing leathers, face hidden under a black helmet and visor. The hooker jumped on the back and the bike rocketed away so fast the front wheel popped off the ground. The blond wig flew off.

I tracked them through the scope in case they needed cover, but they faded from sight long before the bike’s raucous exhaust stopped echoing through the concrete canyon.

I worked the bolt, ejecting the unfired cartridge. It hit the rooftop with a dull thud and I dropped to one knee, pulling an infra-red micro-beam out of my pocket. I found the cartridge, scooped it up and pocketed it.

As I got to my feet I heard a rumble down below and my heart stopped. I looked over the parapet. It was a giant semi with ALCHEMY TRANSPORT SYSTEMS painted on its side, heading right past me. Toward the river. Behind it, a panel truck, a dump truck, the carting-company rig and a pair of station wagons. Convoying together.

Ground Zero, moving.

Past me. Then past a dead crumpled target in a van.

I disassembled the sniper’s outfit in seconds, threw everything into a felt-lined carry-all. I slung the wide padded strap over my shoulder and took the stairs all the way to the ground floor, hoping that Pryce’s fix held and I didn’t run into a security guard, a silenced semi-auto in my right hand in case I did. When I saw the broad back of Max the Silent on the bottom step, I knew that last part was covered no matter what Pryce had done.

We were in the Plymouth, rolling toward the West Side Highway, when Max grabbed my arm a split second before the ground shook and the Hudson River shot straight up into the air, a skyscraper of white foam.

Then the sky behind us lit up with battlefield gunfire, tracers razor-slashing the night.

“It wasn’t the detonator,” Pryce told me thirty-six hours later. “It was armed, all right, but he never got his finger on the button before . . .”

I didn’t say anything. The detonator man had wanted to blow up the world . . . and the last thing he saw was it happening to him.

“We got all of them down the ramp and into the drink but the last one,” Pryce continued. “He must have put a timing device in that one . . . just to be sure.”

“How many—?”

“We lost four,” he said quietly. “The driver, and the three closest on the perimeter.”

“Your people were fantastic,” I told him. Not knowing a better word for heroes. Wishing I did.

The news reports said all six neo-Nazis had resisted. Five had gone down in a blaze of gunfire. No word about the silencer-equipped snipers who had taken out each of the drivers as soon as they were in place. Or how all the gunfire was for show, way after it was really over. The fire-team would have waited until they got the all-clear, counting on their backup to seal off the area. But the explosion on the river had told them they were out of time.

“Seems the van driver took Lothar’s way out,” Pryce replied dryly, telling me that was going to be the story for the press.

“I never thought you’d be able to use tranquilizer darts,” I said. “At that distance . . .”

“It was the only way,” he told me. “Even with that pink flag flying from the antenna to tell us which vehicle had your man inside, we couldn’t risk being wrong.”

So the whole gang had been alive when the river blew. But only one had survived to the end.

One plus Hercules.

“And the one we captured,” Pryce continued, “once we explained the true plan to him, once he realized the detonator man was going to take them all out, he started singing like a canary on crank. We took down almost a hundred of the others all around the country before the media even had the explosion on the air. And there’s more to come.”

Not a word from him about Clarence the pimp. Or Michelle the hooker. Or Crystal Beth the getaway driver. They’d all passed through the sealed cauldron like some vague rumor, leaving it to the whisper-stream to tell the story.

And not a word from me about how Herk and one of the lucky Nazis had gotten tranquilizer darts and nothing else . . . while the rest of them went down in a hail of lead thick enough to shield out X-rays. The others got it easier than the detonator man—they were already asleep, never saw it coming. Pryce had to have been right there—he was the only one who could ID Herk.

“I’m gone,” he told me quietly, holding out his hand for me to shake. “None of the numbers you have for me will be any good after today. And I won’t have this face much longer either.”

I took his hand, wondering if the webbed fingers would disappear too. Watched the muscle jump under his eye. I’d know that one again.