All the while, Jacobs sat here safe and drew bigger money.
But he thought, Lots of folks can shoot straight and get away. I’m the one doing the geopolitical wrangling on these suckers. It’s all in the prep. And I’m worth every dollar.
Jacobs again spoke into his headset. “Approach is right on target. Limo is about to stop.”
“Copy that.”
“Give me a sixty-second buffer before you’re about to fire. We’ll go silent.”
“Roger that.”
Jacobs tightened the grip on his mouse, as though it were a trigger. During drone attacks he had actually clicked his mouse and watched a target disappear in a flame ball. The computer hardware manufacturer had probably never envisioned its devices being used for that.
His breathing accelerated even as he knew the shooter’s respiration was heading the other way, achieving cold zero, which was what one needed to make a long-range shot like this. There was no margin of error at all. The shot had to hit and kill the target. It was that simple.
The limo stopped. The security team opened the door. Bulky, sweaty men with guns and earwigs looked everywhere for danger. They were pretty good. But pretty good did not cut it when you were up against outstanding.
And every asset Jacobs sent out was outstanding.
The man stepped onto the sidewalk and squinted against the sun’s dying glare. He was a megalomaniac named Ferat Ahmadi who desired to lead a troubled, violent nation down an even darker road. That could not be allowed to happen.
Thus it was time to nip this little problem in the bud. There were others in his country ready to take over. They were less evil than he was, and capable of being manipulated by more civilized nations. In today’s overly complex world, where allies and foes seemed to change on a weekly basis, that was as good as it got.
But that was not Jacobs’s concern. He was here simply to execute an assignment, with emphasis on the “execute” part.
Then over his headset came two words: “Sixty seconds.”
“Copy that, Alpha One,” said Jacobs. He didn’t say anything as stupid as “good luck.” Luck had nothing to do with it.
He engaged a countdown clock on his computer screen.
He eyed the target and then the clock.
Jacobs watched Ahmadi talk to the reporters. He took a sip of coffee, set it down, and continued to watch as Ahmadi finished with his prearranged questions. The man took a step away from the reporters. The security team held them back.
The chosen path was revealed. For the photo op it would present, Ahmadi was going to walk it alone. It was designed to show his leadership and his courage.
It was also a security breach that looked trivial at ground level. But with a trained sniper at an elevated position it was like a fifty-yard gash in the side of a ship with a billion-candlepower beacon lighting it.
Twenty seconds became ten.
Jacobs started counting the last moments in his head, his eyes glued to the screen.
Dead man arriving, he thought.
Almost there. Mission nearly complete, and then it was on to the next target.
That is, after a steak dinner and a favorite cocktail and trumpeting this latest victory to his coworkers.
Three seconds became one.
Jacobs saw nothing except the screen. He was totally focused, as though he were going to deliver the kill shot himself.
The window shattered.
The round entered Jacobs’s back after slicing through his ergonomic chair. It cleared his body and thundered out of his chest. It ended up cracking the computer screen as Ferat Ahmadi walked into the building unharmed.
Doug Jacobs, on the other hand, slumped to the floor.
No steak dinner. No favorite cocktail. No bragging rights ever again.
Dead man arrived.
CHAPTER
2
HE JOGGED ALONG THE PARK trail with a backpack over his shoulders. It was nearly seven at night. The air was crisp and the sun was almost down. The taxis were honking. The pedestrians were marching home from a long day’s work.
Horse-drawn carriages were lined up across from the Ritz-Carlton. Irishmen in shabby top hats were awaiting their next fares as the light grew fainter. Their horses pawed the pavement and their big heads dipped into feed buckets.
It was midtown Manhattan in all its glory, the contemporary and the past mingling like coy strangers at a party.
Will Robie looked neither right nor left. He had been to New York many times. He had been to Central Park many times.
He was not here as a tourist.
He never went anywhere as a tourist.
The hoodie was drawn up and tied tight in front so his face was not visible. Central Park had lots of surveillance cameras. He didn’t want to end up on any of them.
The bridge was up ahead. He reached it, stopped, and jogged in place, cooling down.
The door was built into the rock. It was locked.
He had a pick gun and then the door was no longer locked.
He slipped inside and secured the door behind him. This was a combination storage and electrical power room used by city workers who kept Central Park clean and lighted. They had gone home for the day and would not be back until eight the next morning.
That would be more than enough time to do what needed doing.
Robie slipped off the knapsack and opened it. Inside were all the things he required to do his work.
Robie had recently turned forty. He was about six-one, a buck eighty, with far more muscle than fat. It was wiry muscle. Big muscles were of no help whatsoever. They only slowed him down when speed was almost as essential as accuracy.
There were a number of pieces of equipment in the knapsack. Over the course of two minutes he turned three of those pieces into one with a highly specialized purpose.
A sniper rifle.
The fourth piece of equipment was just as valuable to him.
His scope.
He attached it to the Picatinny rail riding on the top of his rifle.
He went through every detail of the plan in his head twenty times, both the shot he had to make and his safe exit that would hopefully follow. He had already memorized everything, but he wanted to arrive at the point where he no longer had to think, just act. That would save precious seconds.
This all took about ninety minutes.
Then he ate dinner. A bottle of G2 and a protein bar.
This was Will Robie’s version of a Friday night date with himself.
He lay down on the cement floor of the storage room, folded his knapsack under his head, and went to sleep.
In ten hours and eleven minutes it would be time to go to work.
While other people his age were either going home to spouses and kids or going out with coworkers or maybe on a date, Robie was sitting alone in a glorified closet in Central Park waiting for someone to appear so Robie could kill him.
He could dwell on the current state of his life and arrive at nothing satisfactory in the way of an answer, or he could simply ignore it. He chose to ignore it. But perhaps not as easily as he once had.
Still, he had no trouble falling asleep.
And he would have no trouble waking up.
And he did, nine hours later.
It was morning. Barely past six a.m.
Now came the next important step. Robie’s sight line. In fact, it was the most critical of all.