A Bomb Built in Hell (22 page)

“I'll be coming out, kid.”

“I know.”

The Ford remained idling on the street until Wesley crossed and threw open the red steel door. He tossed his gear on the dark floor and closed the door from the inside, just as the kid crossed the street holding a gasoline-soaked rag. The kid wiped down the outside of the door as Wesley attached the floor-mounted brace from the inside. Working in unison even though they could no longer see each other, the kid and Wesley each broke open a full tube of Permabond and squeezed a beady trail of the liquid all around the edges of the door.

The kid smacked the door sharply twice with an open palm to tell Wesley that it looked fine from the outside now—in a few minutes, the door wouldn't open unless it was blasted again. The body language of the men he'd seen there before told Wesley that finishing this building wasn't a rush job, and a phone call had told him no work crew was scheduled for Saturday.

Wesley began to plan out his moves. Then he realized that his open hand was still pressed against the door in unconscious imitation of the way people said goodbye to each other in the Tombs—palms pressed against the cloudy Plexiglas.

The kid, driving the Ford back toward the Slip, was thinking, too.
He didn't take the dog with him
. That
thought relaxed him, and he drove professionally the rest of the way.

Wesley worked carefully, slowly laying out the two dozen sticks of dynamite the kid had purchased from a construction worker a few weeks ago. After he had screwed in the blasting caps one at a time, he stuck them all together with more of the plastique putty, driving the wires through and around the deadly lump and into the rectangular transmitter. Finally, he gently positioned the unit under a dark-green canvas tarp in a far corner of the first floor.

Wesley climbed the seven flights of stairs to the top floor. The place was nearly completed. He found himself in a long hall, with doors opening into various rooms. He tried each room, looking across to the pier with the night glasses, making sure.

The elevator shafts were already finished, but no cars had been installed. There was another staircase at the opposite end of the building, parallel to the one Wesley had used.

Wesley stored all his stuff in the room he was going to use and began to retrace his steps. He tried the portable blowtorch on the steel steps first, but quit after a few minutes, only halfway through the first step. Then he pulled a giant can of silicon spray out of his duffel and began to spray each individual step carefully and fully, working his way up the steps backward until he again reached the top floor. Then he went down the parallel staircase to the first floor and worked his way back up again, repeating the procedure.

He looked down the stairs and gently tossed a penny onto the step nearest him. The penny slid off as if it were propelled and kept sliding all the way to the bottom of the flight. Satisfied, Wesley then applied the Permabond to each of the two top doors. He used all the remaining silicon to paint his way back toward the entrance of the room he was going to use.

He walked to the opposite end of the floor and worked his way backward, so that the only clear spot on the floor was in the very middle. Then he stepped inside the door and, without closing it, sprayed an extra-thick coat around the threshold. Finally, he closed the door and applied a coat of sealant to the inside.

It was 3:18 a.m. when he finished. Between Wesley and the ground floor were some incredibly slippery stairs, all separated by doors bonded to their frames.

Wesley set his tripod way back from the window, only about three feet from the door. No matter how the sun rose the next day, the shadows would extend at least this far back. Wesley would be shooting out of darkness, even at high noon. He went to the window and leaned out. The street below was narrow and empty. It was a long way to the ground.

Wesley took a long coil of 11mm black Perlon line from his duffel. It would support five thousand pounds to the inch. He anchored it securely to the window frame and tested it with all his strength. He laid the coiled line inside the window and attached the pair of U-bolts to the window frame to make sure.

Next, he spread a heavy quilt on the floor. On it he
placed a bolt-action Weatherby Magnum. From all Wesley's research, this one had the flattest trajectory, longest range, and greatest killing power. He'd tried several rifles set up for the NATO 5.56mm cartridge, but the Weatherby gave him the best one-shot odds. If he put one of the Nosler 180-grain slugs anywhere into Fat Boy, that would get it done.

He and the kid had talked it over for hours. The kid wanted Wesley to go for the chest shot, since it was a much bigger target. But Wesley had shown him the new LEAA newsletter with its successful field-tests of the new Kevlar weave for bulletproof fabric. The publication said the weave would turn a .38 Special at near point-blank range, and Wesley figured Fat Boy to be triple-wrapped in the new stuff.

The 2-24X zoom scope was bolted to the rifle's top; the whole piece was designed so that the bolt could be worked without disturbing the setting. He put the spotting scope, the windage meter, and a handful of cartridges down on the quilt. A silencer was out—there would only be the one chance, so accuracy ruled over all other considerations.

Wesley removed the deerskin gloves, and the surgeon's gloves he wore underneath. His palms were dry from the talc. Wesley took the auger with the four-inch bit and drilled sixteen precise holes in the room—in the walls and in the floor. Into each he put a stick of dynamite. The dynamite was connected with fusing material, and the whole network again connected to one of Pet's zinc-lined boxes. It would have been better to take all the stuff with him, but that would cost
time he wouldn't have. Wesley taped the other eight sticks of dynamite together and wired them to the door, with a trip mechanism set against the chance the radio transmitter would fail to fire. If he had to remain in the room, sooner or later the cops would be breaking down the door.

It was 4:11 a.m. when Wesley finished this last task. None of the metal in the room gleamed—it had been worked with gunsmith's bluing and then carefully dulled with a soapy film. All the glass was non-glare, and Wesley was dressed in the outfit he had field-tested on the roof. He was invisible even to the occasional pigeon that flew past. Wesley hated the foul birds. He could hear Carmine's voice:
“I never saw a joint without pigeons; fucking rats with wings!”

Wesley had no food with him, and no cigarettes, but he did have a canteen full of glucose and water, and he took a deep pull just before he went into a fix on the window. He came out of it, as he planned, at 6:30. The city was already awake. Staying toward the back of the room, he took the readings that he needed. The building was 118 feet high at window level; the pier was 1,750 feet from where he stood.

He stepped behind the tripod and refocused the scope. There was no ship at the pier, but he swept its full length and he knew he'd have a clear shot no matter where Fat Boy got off.

Wesley went toward the back of the room again, crossed his legs into a modified lotus, and sat focusing on the window ahead of him, mentally reviewing everything in the room and all the preparations inside.

The building outside the one room was blocked off completely. There was no way to go back downstairs. Wesley's entire mind was focused out the window. Mentally reviewing the picture of Fat Boy the kid had clipped from
Newsweek
, Wesley knew the target would wear a ton of medals on his fat chest. And be
obviously
treated like a god when he walked down the ramp to the pier.

T
he crowd started to assemble well before 10:00 a.m. At first it seemed like it wasn't going to be such a big event after all—maybe three hundred people total, half of them government agents.

But the crowd kept growing, and Wesley saw the white helmets of the TPF keeping people back. They were moving against demonstrators. With the spotting scope, it was easy to read the carefully lettered signs:

AMERICA DOES NOT WELCOME TYRANTS!
KILLER OF CHILDREN!
LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON!

They should be the ones up here in this fucking window
, flashed through Wesley's mind. He carefully plucked that thought and tossed it into the garbage can of his brain—the part that already contained questions about his mother and the name of the first institution he had been committed to, when he was four years old.

By 11:15, the crowd was good-sized, but not unruly.
Traffic was backed up on the West Side Highway as people rubbernecked to see what was going on down at the pier. The pier, which could accommodate two ocean liners at the same time, was still empty.

At 11:45, the mayor arrived in a helicopter with three men who looked like politicians from the ground, but more like bodyguards through the scope.

At 12:05 p.m., the first tugs steamed in, towing the ship. The crowd let out a major cheer, drowning the voices of the demonstrators. Wesley trained the scope on the face of their leader, searching carefully for anything dangerous. But the man seemed too beside himself with rage to have planned anything that might get in the way.

At 12:35 p.m., the gangplank was lowered from the ship to the dock. An honor guard came first, flying the Haitian flag and the American flag in separate holders. The soldiers held their rifles like they were batons. As the TV crews trained their cameras toward the entrance to the gangplank, the reporters jockeyed for position at its foot.

At 12:42 p.m., Fat Boy started to walk down the gangplank. In what must have been a carefully orchestrated move, he stood alone, with bodyguards in front and behind, his white-clad body photogenically playing against the gangplank's fresh red paint.

Fat Boy halted. From the way the men behind him halted, too, the whole thing must have been rehearsed to death.

Fat Boy turned and waved to the crowd. A huge roar went up and surrounded him. Wesley felt a lightness
inside him, one he had never felt before. A glow came up from his stomach and started to encircle his face. But it had too many years of breeding and training to compete with. Wesley went into total focus on the scope, seeing Fat Boy's face fill the round screen. He saw the crosshairs intersect on Fat Boy's left eye.

The crowd was now in a huge, rough semicircle around the base of the gangplank, and the noise was terrific. The wind held steady at seven miles per hour from the west—the tiny transistor-powered radio, which picked up only the Coast Guard weather reports, gave Wesley a bulletin every fifteen minutes. He had cranked in the right windage and elevation hours ago and stood ready to adjust. But everything had held static.

Wesley slowed his breathing, reaching for peace inside, counting his heartbeats.

Fat Boy turned to his left to throw a last wave at the crowd, just as Wesley's finger completed its slow backward trip. The sharp
cccrack!
came at a higher harmonic than the crowd noise. It seemed to pass over the crowd in a wave of sound as Fat Boy's head burst open like a rotten melon with a stick of dynamite inside.

Instantly, the screaming took on a higher pitch. His bodyguards rushed uselessly toward the fallen ruler as Wesley smoothly jacked a shell into the chamber and pumped another round into Fat Boy's exposed back, aiming this time for the spinal area. It seemed to him as if the shots echoed endlessly, but nobody looked in his direction. Still, it wouldn't take the TPF too long to figure things out.

Wesley stood up, stuck the two expended shells in his
side pocket out of habit, and ran to the window. Without looking down, he tossed the coil over the sill and followed it out. Wesley rappelled down with his back to the waterfront, both hands on the nylon line. Either the kid would cover him or he wouldn't—he didn't have any illusions about protecting himself with one hand holding on to the rope. The bottom of his eyesight picked up the Ford as he slid down the last twenty feet.

Wesley hit the ground hard, rolled over onto his side, and came up running for the back door, which was lying open. He grabbed the shotgun off the floor of the Ford, heard running footsteps, and saw the kid charging toward the car, holding a silenced, scoped rifle. The kid tossed the rifle into the back seat, and the Ford moved off like a soundless rocket, as smoothly as Pet ever could have done.

T
he quiet car worked itself lost in the narrow streets of the area. The kid hadn't said a word—he was watching the Halda Tripmaster clicking off hundredths of a mile. Just before the machine indicated .99, the kid slammed the knife switch home. A dull, booming sound followed in seconds, but the echoes reverberated for another full minute after the Ford had re-entered the West Side Highway and was passing the World Trade Center on the left.

The Ford sped back to the Slip without seeming to exceed the speed limit. A touch of the horn ring forced the garage door up, and the kid hit it again to bring it down almost in the same motion. The door slammed
inches behind the Ford's rear bumper. Both men sprinted out from the Ford and jumped into the cab, which was out the door and heading for the highway again almost immediately.

Wesley inserted the tiny earplug and nodded to the kid, who turned on the police-band radio under the front seat. It was more static-free than the regular police units, and Wesley could hear everything clearly.

All units in vicinity Pier 40, proceed to area and deploy
.

TPF is in charge. Acknowledge as you go in. Repeat: acknowledge as you go in
.

Unknown number of men spotted in building directly across from pier. Eighth floor, fourth window from left. Shots fired
.

Then:

Central … Central, this is 4-Bravo-21, K? We're going to try the rear door. Get us some cover, K?

Four-Bravo-21, 4-Bravo-21: Do not enter the building! Repeat: Do not enter the building. Backup is on the way. You are under the command of the TPF captain on the scene. Do not enter. Acknowledge
.