The Hit

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.

Inside the storage room, he was staring at a blank stone wall with wide mortar seams. But if one looked more closely, there were two holes in the seams, which had been placed at precise locations to allow one to see outside. However, the holes had been filled back in with a pliable material tinted to look like mortar. This had all been done a week ago by a team posing as a repair crew in the park.

Robie used a pincers to grip one end of the substance and pull it out. He did this one more time and the two holes were now revealed.

Robie slid his rifle muzzle through the lower hole, stopping it before it reached the end of the hole. This configuration would severely restrict his angle of aim, but he could do nothing about that. It was what it was. He never operated in perfect conditions.

His scope lined up precisely with the top hole, its leading edge resting firmly on the mortar seam. Now he could see what he was shooting at.

Robie sighted through it, dialing in all factors both environmental and otherwise that would affect his task.

His suppressor jacket was customized to fit the muzzle and the ordnance he was chambering. The jacket would reduce the muzzle blast and sonic signature, and it would physically reflect back toward the gun’s stock to minimize the suppressor’s length.

He checked his watch. Ten minutes to go.

He put in his earwig and clipped the power pack to his belt. His comm set was now up and running.

He sighted through the scope again. His crosshairs were suspended over one particular spot in the park.

Because he couldn’t move his rifle barrel, Robie would have a millisecond’s glimpse of his target and then his finger would pull the trigger.

If he was late by a millisecond, the target would survive.

If he was early by a millisecond, the target would survive.

Robie took this margin of error in stride. He had had easier assignments, to be sure. And also tougher ones.

He took a breath, and relaxed his muscles. Normally he would have someone acting as a long-distance spotter. However, Robie’s recent experiences with partners in the field had been disastrous, and he had demanded to go solo on this one. If the target didn’t show, or changed course, Robie would get a stand-down signal over his comm pack.

He looked around the small space. It would be his home for a few minutes more and then he would never see it again. Or if he screwed up, this might be the last place he ever saw.

He checked his watch again. Two minutes to go. He didn’t return to his rifle just yet. Taking up his weapon too early could make his muscles rigid and his reflexes too brittle, when flexibility and fluidity were needed.

At forty-five seconds to target, he knelt and pressed his eye to the scope and his finger to the trigger guard. His earwig had remained silent. That meant his target was on the way. The mission was a go.

He wouldn’t look at his watch again. His internal clock was now as accurate as any Swiss timepiece. He focused on his optics.

Scopes were great, but they were also finicky. A target could be lost in a heartbeat and precious seconds could pass before it was reacquired, which guaranteed failure. He had his own way of dealing with that possibility. At thirty seconds to target he started exhaling longer breaths, walking his respiration and heart rate down notch by notch, breath by elongated breath. Cold zero was what he was looking for, that sweet spot for trigger pulls that almost always ensured the kill would happen. No finger tremble, no jerk of the hand, no wavering of the eye.

Robie couldn’t hear his target. He couldn’t yet see him.

But in ten seconds he would both hear and see him.

And then he would have a bare moment to acquire the target and fire.

The last second popped up on his internal counter.

His finger dropped to the trigger.

In Will Robie’s world once that happened there was no going back.