Page 131 of Witness 8

Angel made it through and carried two friends with him.

Protect the team.

Four years later, he’d carried their flag-covered coffins onto the same C-130 transport plane in Bagram Airfield. And he’d vowed never to load another.

That’s when the incidents began.

Children, mostly. Curious by nature, and they liked talking to soldiers. Children who may have had explosives hidden under their clothes, or may not. It stopped mattering to Angel after a while.

Protect the team.

He left the Seals a different man. A man with two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of lethal training, who only knew how to do one thing.

How to pull a trigger and hit a target.

Any target.

He hoisted his tactical bag onto his back and his rifle case onto his shoulder, and left the apartment. In the hallway, there was one door to his right. Locked, but not alarmed.

He picked the lock in under a minute, closed the door behind him and ascended the winding staircase to the clock tower. There were two levels. First was the mechanism house, with four windows on each wall. Above were the clock faces. A north and a south face and the bell.

Angel stayed on the first floor, cut out the window overlooking Leonard Street and unpacked his rifle. The Finnish Sato TRG had a cold-hammer forged barrel and was likely the most accurate factory-built sniper rifle in the world. Heloaded the weapon, adjusted the sight. The clock tower was two blocks from the front entrance to the Manhattan Criminal Court building on Center Street. The surrounding buildings with a view of the entrance were all public buildings. 108 Leonard was the closest private building, and the clock tower, with its elevated position, gave clear line of sight over the corner of the Family Court Building and Collect Pond Park.

About a quarter of a mile away. Four hundred meters. Maybe five hundred with elevation. The rifle had a factory-recorded accurate range of 1,500 meters.

Angel could put a bullet through a buttonhole with this weapon at 1,700 meters.

He checked his watch. It was coming up on nine a.m. Angel put on his ear defenders. The bell that chimed on the hour, every hour, would be deafening without them. The window was just below head height. He would have to bend his knees slightly but he could get comfortable. He was used to waiting for a shot, if he had to.

Eye on the stock. Sight lined up.

Eddie Flynn got out of the passenger seat of a Pontiac Aztek and stepped onto the sidewalk. The driver of the Aztek had unruly curly hair, and even from this distance Angel could see creases in the guy’s shirt.

Angel began his breathing exercises and gently laid his finger on the trigger. Flynn was the target.

And he was on the street.

63

Eddie

The junior associates of Al Parish’s offices were waiting for me on the sidewalk.

Soon as I shut the door on the Aztek, I was surrounded by expensive suits, all the way to the front door of the Criminal building.

Today was going to be a reckoning . . .

For New York’s Finest. For Angel. For Castro.

And for Ruby Johnson.

As I waited for the elevator, I looked around the lobby, but Ruby wasn’t in sight. When the elevator doors opened on my floor, Castro was waiting in the hallway, pacing the floor, a scowl painted across his face.

‘I waited for you for almost an hour last night in that diner,’ he said.

‘Sorry, I got tied up,’ I said.

‘You ruined my night. And I’m not having a good day either. My secretary, Maura, she quit this morning. She said I should ask you about it.’