Page 72 of Into the Fire

Trapped Sweat and Spilled Blood

If you looked at the side of the building, you’d see nothing at all. If you squinted hard, perhaps you’d discern the faintest bulge at the fifth floor, the sandstone façade curving outward.

What you wouldn’t detect was the semi-stable folding platform, two feet wide and five feet long, cantilevered out from the ledge of the open bathroom window. You wouldn’t see the mechanical bracketry rigged to the mouth of the sill and braced against the wall outside because it was all—the platform, the bracketry—painted the precise color of the sandstone.

Nor would you see the man atop the shooting platform, literally suspended in midair in a supported prone position sixty-four yards above the sidewalk.

He wore a Crye sand-tan pullover combat shirt, matching cargo pants, and a matching pair of Kevlar-and-leather aviator gloves. Cammy paint on his face and wrists, also the shade of a desert dune, further blended him into the backdrop.

For the short time before engagement, Evan Smoak was nothing more than a slight disruption of the visual field, a tiger standing in tall savanna grass.

Spray paint had worked fine on the Remington 700. There was no need for any intricate design, just enough shading to break up the outline of the rifle. To further ensure his invisibility, he used a killFLASH honeycomb, a metallic anti-reflection device clamped over the scope to dampen any glint or glare.

He’d required a vantage into the courtyard of the Three Monkeys Café that didn’t exist, a shooting position floating in space. A seemingly unsolvable problem that he had, with a little help from his friends, solved.

His toes hooked over the sill behind him, protruding into the room above the row of urinals. The bathroom door was locked, a cleaning cart positioned in the hall outside, accessorized with a mop tilting from a yellow bucket and a RESTROOM BEING SERVICED A-frame sign. The cart featured a canvas basket nicely sized for carrying industrial laundry loads or a portable sniper hide.

A 607-yard shot from a sixty-four-foot elevation wasn’t a hard shot. It wasn’t an easy one either. Especially not with a head sporadically swimmy from a concussion.

The built-up Remington had been modified to accommodate a detachable mag that took ten rounds, which were all Evan would require. The rifle was set up on a bipod, the Manners stock resting against his left shoulder. He was so still that he might have been statuary carved into the building itself, a gargoyle with a sniper habit.

Getting the measurements from Trevon in advance was enormously helpful. Evan had already checked the range card taped to the stock, so he knew how much holdover he needed for the distance and how much cosign compensation the downhill angle required. The combination baseline for scope and rifle was zeroed at four hundred yards, and he’d already ascertained his hold for the round he was using, a 168-grain Federal Gold Medal Match. Knowing ahead of time where to hold on the optic meant that there was no need to mess with the scope.

There Alexan Petro was, tucked into his café table in the restaurant courtyard, sipping espresso and talking on his Turing Phone. He sat alone, which seemed only to enhance his status: Important Man Conducting Virtual Business. Five of his bodyguards were spread around the courtyard and restaurant. Nineteen minutes ago Evan had watched them enter, counting them off like cattle headed to the abattoir. Only two of the men inside were visible at the moment.

That would change quickly.

The sixth member of Petro’s core team waited outside by the armored Town Cars, leaning against a fender and thumbing at his phone.

But Evan wasn’t focused on the bodyguards now. He was focused on Petro.

A handsome man by any standards. That rich mane of silver hair. A certain grace of movement. The overcompensatory noblesse oblige of the newly affluent.

Evan’s world narrowed to a circle marked by stadia reticle increments. He felt his vision get loose, verging on blurry, but he squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again, everything he saw obeyed the normal rules of physics. He was a left-eye-dominant shooter, a stroke of luck since the dilated right pupil was harder to coerce into cooperating at the moment.

His earpiece activated on voice command, sparing him the slightest movement. “Dial.”

The RoamZone in his cargo pocket complied.

Through the scope he saw Petro pull the Turing Phone away from his cheek to check caller ID. His features set in a show of amusement. He clicked over, and a moment later his voice spoke in Evan’s ear. “Hello, boy.”

“Petro.”

The man’s face, magnified in the scope, tightened. “So you found a name. Am I supposed to be scared?”

“Not by that.” Evan kept gentle, steady pressure against the comb of the stock and gauged the come-up, adding the superelevation below the horizontal line.

Petro smirked. “Then by what?”

“By the fact that you had Grant Merriweather killed. And a doctor and two nurses. And Lorraine Lennox. And that you tried to take out Max Merriweather.”

“You think those names mean something to me?”

“No,” Evan said. “I think they mean nothing to you. Or to your men.”

A low ticking laugh came across the line and then the purr of that ten-grit voice. “The world, my world, is a much bigger place than you think. Expand your perspective, boy. At least for the few remaining days you have on this earth. My men have done things for me you can’t even imagine. I’ve watched them take people apart piece by piece while keeping the heart beating until the very end. Do you have any idea how much skill that requires?”

“Anything you’d like to say?”