Chapter 222: Kaine’s Sniper

The city from the rooftop was a chessboard of hard edges and quiet treachery. The beat of Sabatine’s blood was a drumroll of intent as he went down the fire escape, seared in his mind with the image of the black BMW and its two shadows, Kaine’s sedans. The decoy began to swirl. The game was afoot. Now he had to get to the switch point before the temporal mechanism burst.

He sprinted into the alleyway, grey workman’s coat billowing out from under him in gusts. His route took him on a carefully calculated crisscross pattern through the side streets, evading the thoroughfares, where police attention would be focused. His objective: a derelict printworks delivery entrance on Rue des Eaux-Vives, where Leon hopefully would be waiting with the white maintenance van.

The lockdown hum in the city had a different rhythm on the streets—a nervous, repressed excitement. The police barriers were in evidence at street ends, flashing light a sterile blue and red in the grey light of dawn. Few civilians were in evidence, peering out from behind drawn curtains. Geneva was catching her breath.

He was two blocks away from where they were supposed to meet when his instincts, more honed than any knife, screamed at him to be wary.

It was a glint. A small spot of reflected light from a tall window in a building above the Rue des Eaux-Vives. Not the print shop building, but the one next door—a seven-story office building with a mansard roof and a row of identical, mirrored windows. The sun was not yet high in the sky, casting a warm glow over the faces of buildings. A west-facing window shouldn’t have reflected the sun.

He froze, blending into the recessed doorway of a closed café. His monocular was in his hand in an instant. He raised it, focusing on the window—fourth floor, third from the left.

The window was ajar, which seemed out of place in a climate-controlled facility during a lockdown. And then, just peering into the dark crevice beyond the glass, a hint of a figure emerged. A cylindrical figure with a definite curve on one end. A suppressor for a rifle.

A sniper team. Not on a roof but in a nest. Peering over into the very same street where the maintenance van was supposed to have waited. Where Anton would have emerged from the BMW in order to switch cars.

Kaine was smarter. He hadn’t blindly bitten at the decoy. He’d divided his troops. Some to follow and ambush the motorcade. Some, a precise instrument, in place to take out their quarry as soon as he showed himself, came what may concerning the fate of the convoy. He’d expected a switch, a trick. He’d planned for a definitive answer.

Cold fury, pure and honed, replaced the drumbeat in Sabatine’s veins. They had a rifle trained on the spot where Anton would step out into the open. In minutes, perhaps seconds.

No time to warn Leon or Anton. Comms were a risk – a signal, a vibration, could spook the shooter. He had to handle this. Now.

He surveyed the building. The main entrance will be guarded or under surveillance. Fire escapes on the south side. His way was clear.

He was a shadow again, moving across the small street and into the service alleyway beside the office building. The fire escape ladder on this side of the building was old, wrought iron, with the bottom ladder retracted a full ten feet from the ground. But this did not slow Sabatine down a fraction of a second. He leaped with both hands outstretched, catching the cold, damp bottom rung of the ladder.

Fourth floor. The window was located around the corner on the front face of the building. He had to get in, make his way through the corridors.

He gained access to the fourth-floor landing. The lock on this window was old, but it was single-pane glass. He used the tail of his coat to make a fist and smashed out the glass. The sound was a crash of ice falling. He swept the broken glass aside, opened the lock, and slid inside.

He was in an empty office. Dust covers were over the furniture. The air was thick with stale air. The hallway outside was dark, with emergency light signs flickering. He moved quietly, the submachine gun in his hands a soothing presence. He had to be quiet, fast, and deadly.

He had arrived at the corner of the L-shaped hallway. The door to the sniper's nest, office 407, stood twenty feet away, shut. But he saw light seeping under it from the hallway.

At least two. A shooter and a spotter.

He took a deep, silent breath, picturing the room on the other side. The door would swing inwards. They’ll have their attention on the street, their backs turned to the door, or perhaps the spotter will be facing it. He had one trick up his sleeve.

He did not knock. He did not call out. He moved.

In three quick strides, he was at the door. He did not attempt to turn the handle. He raised his foot and kicked with all the strength he had left.

The door burst inward with a splintering crash.

The scene inside was a freeze-frame. Two men in civilian hiking clothes, but with a locked-down office worker air to them. One lying prone with a heavy gun and a bipod, a high-powered rifle with his eye to the scope, his finger on the guard. The other with a spotting scope on a tripod, a radio in his other hand. The room was a photographer’s hide—black cloth over a wide-open window to eliminate their silhouette, and cases for their gear laid out on the floor.

The spotter spun around, his hand flashing to a gun at his belt.

"Sabatine was already firing."

A brief, controlled burst—thwip-thwip-thwip. The suppressor on his own gun gave the shots an angry buzz of bees. The spotter was pushed back against the wall, a seam of red stitching across his chest. He slid down, and his radio went crashing to the floor.

The shooter, surprised by the violence erupting behind him, started to roll, attempting to maneuver his lengthy gun in this small space. This is simply an impossible maneuver.

Sabatine had him in a downward press. He stomped on the barrel of the rifle, slamming it muzzle-first into the floor. With his other hand, he turned his own gun around and smashed the butt into the side of the man’s head. A grotesque thud grated through the air. The shooter went slack.

The entire encounter took less than four seconds.

The silence rushed back, interrupted only by Sabatine’s labored breathing and the distant hiss of the broken radio. He quickly assessed both men. The spotter was dead. The shooter was knocked out, a deep cut on his temple oozing blood.

He walked over to the window, taking care to remain behind the black drapery. He peered downward.

Down below, the Rue des Eaux-Vives was empty. No BMW. No van. Not yet. He’d been in time.

His eyes ran over the rifle. Custom-made .338 Lapua Magnum—with a purpose for ultra-long-range accuracy and guaranteed deadly performance. The cross-hairs were focused on a spot on the parking lot just outside the delivery door of the print shop. A clammy dread, not resulting from his own activity, spread across his skin. He'd have witnessed Anton's head explode into a pink cloud in another second, perhaps a heartbeat.

He turned back into the room. The radio on the floor crackled again. A voice, tinny and irritable: "Echo Two, status. The primary vehicle is two minutes from your zone. Confirm visual."

Kaine's command.

"Sab—"

    Sabatine grabbed the radio. He pushed the button and placed the device against his lips. "Echo Two. Visual confirmed. The street is clear. Awaiting package," he echoed in a voice devoid of inflection, just as he had heard Kaine's men all night.

Moment of pause. "Copy. On the emergence of packages. Clean shot."

"Copy. Out

He tossed aside the radio and quickly immobilized the sniper rifle, removing the bolt and pitching it out of the broken window he had come in through. Then he did the same with the spotter’s gun. He wasn’t going to leave any working weapons behind.

He took one final look at the shooter lying on the floor. He should finish him. It was an operational certainty. A witness, a threat. But he was powerless, and Sabatine had already crossed so many lines. He left him alive, bound with his own zip ties.

He had to leave. The BMW would arrive in two minutes. He had to reach the van and be there when Anton arrived.

He left the room in which he had arrived, leaving the door swinging loose on its hinges. He sprinted back down the hallway, through the empty offices, and onto the fire escape. He went down more quickly than he had come up, his boots banging on the metal stairs.

He smacked into the ground and took off running for the last half-block to the print shop. The white van sat in plain sight, with its engine turned off, Leon a tightwired figure hunched over behind the wheel. Sabatine ripped open the side door and dived inside.

"Go!" he growled. "Now! Circle the block. Come in from a different angle. The nest is clear, but they're expecting the attack. We have to switch up the time sequence."

Leon didn't hesitate. The van burst into life and left the delivery bay, taking a quick left turn from the route they had meant to follow.

As they drove, Sabatine’s hands were shaking. Not from fear, but from the backlash of the violence and how close he had come. He had just intercepted a bullet meant for Anton. He had stepped right into the crosshairs for the man he loved.

He glanced at his hands, noticing the shooter’s blood on the stock of his gun. He had committed awful acts that night. He would go on to commit more before dawn. But this, this preservation of a single, deadly bullet, was the first right action of this very long and very dark night.

The van turned a corner. Ahead of him, he saw a black BMW cut speed, signalling to pull over by a print shop. Right in front of where he had just eradicated a threat.

"Get ready," Sabatine growled at Leon. "We have thirty seconds to get him in. Then we disappear," he added, and slid open a side door of the van, a sliver of grey light flashing into the blackness inside.

He stood watching the BMW, his heart in his throat, waiting for the door to open, for Anton to step into the space where, moments before, a sniper’s certainty had existed. Now, it simply existed as a street in a city under lockdown. Because of him.