Bullseye (Michael Bennett 9)

There were two, maybe three other people in the world who would even think of attempting the incredible shot. But he wasn’t attempting it. He was going to do it.

He would kill the president not because he was the best shot in all the world, he knew.

He would kill the president because he was the best shot who had ever been.

The assassin removed the electric blanket and clacked back on the Barrett’s bolt slide, jacking the first huge .50 BMG into the chamber.

The bullet would be put in a museum when all was said and done, he realized as he glanced at the long gun. Maybe even the Smithsonian.

He pictured visiting it one day with a grandchild, seeing it there like a relic or a moon rock in some crowded gallery.

He was a very visual thinker and he smiled as the image of a huge mushroomed .50 mounted in a shadow box lingered in his mind.

It warmed him to think that the work of his precious h

ands would be preserved forever and ever under thick panes of alarmed glass.

Chapter 5

We arrived in Manhattan five minutes in front of the motorcade.

It was incredible how fast the limos and SUVs moved through Queens, somewhere between seventy and eighty miles an hour. Well, I guess not that incredible, since they had every highway and byway blocked off and the entire road to themselves.

They were supposed to have taken the Van Wyck to the Long Island Expressway to the Midtown Tunnel, but at the last second, they had changed their mind about the tunnel for some reason, and now they were due to come into Manhattan over the 59th Street Bridge in a minute or two.

We were pointing west in a low thousand-foot hover somewhere over Yorkville just to the west of the bridge, waiting on them. In the helicopter, I sat to the pilot’s right, and on my right was the east side of Manhattan’s endless wilderness of buildings and windows. Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue, the green mat of Central Park ahead.

Due to the helicopter’s vibration, a high-powered spotting scope was pretty much useless, so I was using just a pair of 10-power binoculars to scan the windows and rooftops. It was a beautifully clear day, hardly any clouds in the cold blue sky.

I had my gloves off, and I blew on my hands from time to time to warm them. The pilot’s heater blew on the upper half of me, but beneath the metal footrests, it must have been open in places because my feet and lower half were freezing.

“What’s the range on the inner perimeter around the UN again?” I said as I stared down at the congested Monopoly board of buildings.

“A thousand yards,” said Greg, the sniper, over the chopper’s interphone.

Three thousand feet, I thought, looking down. The UN was to our left, between 42nd and 43rd Streets on First Avenue. Cross street blocks were each two hundred fifty feet, I knew. So that meant what? The interior scan perimeter was twelve blocks north and south from around 30th to 54th Street, and then west to Lexington.

How many windows in that area had a vantage on the sidewalk in front of the UN? I thought, looking at grid after building grid of them. Too many to count, let alone watch. Plus a sniper would be far back in a room, probably up on some platform, and would need only a slit of an opening.

“Wait. I see something,” I suddenly said, scanning over by Park Avenue. “Go over to Park by the MetLife Building.”

“Where?” said the pilot.

“The MetLife Building,” I said, pointing to the left. “That big fifty-story headstone-looking thing on Park Avenue.”

“Are you crazy? That’s too far out,” said Greg.

“I don’t care. I saw something, some movement,” I said as we flew closer.

“Where?”

“Underneath the rim of the roof, that black area beside the sign where the satellite dishes and equipment are.”

After another minute, I heard Greg, the sniper, laugh.

“What’s the power on your glasses?”

“Ten,” I said.