White Star

by James Thayer

  "You going to get up, Dad?" Julie asked.

  "I want to lie here a minute." He could still taste shoe leather in his mouth. No part of his body did not ache except maybe his hair. He didn't trust his legs to get him up or keep him up. "You girls can go with Ms. Wade now. She'll take care of you."

  Adrian Wade led the twins away. Both girls glanced over their shoulders at him several times until they disappeared through the gym's door.

  "I've heard these things about white girls, but I never believed it till now," Joe Leonard called. "Was it good, Owen?"

  Gray levered himself to standing. His legs seemed to work. Maybe nothing was broken. Ignoring Leonard, he wobbled in the direction of the locker room. He was tiring of these ignominious retreats to the shower.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  "Idon't like it, none of it," Pete Coates said. "But I can't talk the commissioner out of the plan. He told me he'd sign the documents and have them here within the hour. He's going to turn that Marine and you into New York's finest for a day."

  Gray was sitting on a metal folding chair across from the detective's desk. "Did you talk to the commissioner, level with him?"

  "I told him the police department is in the business of arresting criminals, not whacking them. But he said Nikolai Trusov is never going to let himself be arrested, and he'll kill four or five policemen before he goes down. So your plan is a go."

  "And my part in it?"

  "The commissioner knows your file better than I do. He says you are the only one who has a chance to beat Trusov."

  Coates's office had the dimensions of a closet. His desk filled most of the space, with room left only for two folding chairs and two black file cabinets. Gray had to sit rigidly upright because his knees were pressed against the front of Coates's desk. An interior window opened to a hallway and other offices. A hum of distant conversations and typing and telephone ringing filled the area. There was no window to the outside, but even so, other detectives and policemen stayed well away from Owen Gray. The office was not air conditioned, and Coates's tie was loose around his neck and damp patches appeared on his shirt under his arms.

  The desk was covered by an inch of assorted documents, and by abandoned paper coffee cups, doughnut wrappers, a telephone, a Rolodex, and a plastic cup of pens. Files were piled high on the cabinets and on the floor in two corners. An empty coat hanger occupied another tight corner. The computer's CPU was squeezed between the desk and a wall, and its fan filled the office with a low drone. A square glass case was mounted on the back wall with a sign on it reading "In Case of Emergency, Break Glass." Inside was a Thompson submachine gun.

  Coates turned from the monitor to Gray. "So you think Nikolai Trusov will go for it?"

  "He wants something from me."

  "Or he wants you to do something," Coates amended. He had been working two shifts, and his face was wan and his eyes red-rimmed behind his spectacles. He needed a shave.

  "Trusov will strike again, because I haven't gotten his message yet. I don't have the slightest idea what he wants."

  Coates said, "He hasn't had any targets in three days. You haven't been in the open near anybody."

  "So the Russian is probably hungry to deliver his message again. Maybe even desperate. I think he'll go for it. The super at this condo four blocks from my place reported a suspicious-looking character on the roof of the building next to his condo. The description fits Trusov. The Russian was scouting a firing site. That building's roof has a clear view to my apartment."

  "We should just wait for him on that roof," Coates said. "Surround him."

  Gray adamantly shook his head. "Pete, you still don't realize who you're dealing with. He'll kill a lot of your men before it's over. The only way to get this guy is from a distance, a long one."

  When the telephone chirped, Coates snatched it and pressed it to his ear. He said a few words, then held the phone out for Gray. "It's Adrian Wade."

  Gray made a face. He had told Coates about his free fall at Sam Owl's gym. "Tell her I'm busy. Tell her an orthopedic surgeon is putting my legs in casts, thanks to her." But he reached for the telephone anyway, adding, "At least she can't maim me over the phone."

  With overwrought courtesy, he conversed a moment with Adrian, ending with "I'll be there in about three hours." He passed the phone back to Coates and said, "Mrs. Orlando, our nanny, hasn't arrived at our place yet. She's late, and has undoubtedly found one of her new boyfriends. It's more romantic to walk along the Brooklyn Heights promenade than appear for work."

  "Dock her a day's pay," Coates suggested. "That'll cure absenteeism fast."

  "I might, depending on the cleverness of her excuse." Gray laughed. "But Adrian kidnapped my daughters at the gym, took them uptown and had a fine old time, then escorted them to Bay Ridge in a cab. Now John has arrived home from his friend's. The girls have told Adrian a little lie, saying that their father never, never leaves them in the apartment without adult supervision. So Adrian is stuck there with a bunch of hungry, tired kids." He chortled again. "She deserves it."

  "I did you a favor." Coates tempted him by lifting a sheaf of papers and wagging them at him.

  "You've agreed to fund my kids' college educations?"

  "Better. I asked a friend at the FBI to send me some information about Adrian Wade." He waved the paper at Gray again. "When I'm working closely with people, I like to know what makes them breathe hard. This file has got some hot stuff in it. Want to read it?"

  Gray rebuked him. "Pete, I'm surprised at you, thinking I'd stoop so low as to read someone's private file."

  "That's truly noble," Coates replied sardonically. "A lesson I might profit from."

  "Read it to me."

  "She's a widow, for one," the detective said without missing a beat. "Her husband was a pilot for Chesapeake Air Charter, and he went down in a De Haviland Beaver four years ago."

  "What happened?"

  "He ran out of air, I guess. The file doesn't say. She has studied judo for eight years, and was Northeast Judo Association seniors champion two years running."

  Gray said dully, "That news would have been more useful to me this morning."

  "Let's see." The detective skimmed the pages. "She was raised in Los Angeles. Her father and mother were both professors at UCLA. She did her undergraduate work there. She has a BA in psychology and an advanced degree in police science. She works sixty hours a week on average, real gung ho, and appears to be in line for a transfer back to Washington and a promotion."

  Gray shifted on the seat, pushing his knees to one side. "Isn't there anything juicy in there?"

  "How's this? Last November she was walking along Strelka Prospekt in Moscow and was attacked by a guy, a Russian, who shoved her against a wall and tried to yank her handbag away."

  "Poor fellow." Gray rubbed his shoulder, still sore from its collision with the gym floor. "What'd she do to him?"

  "She stabbed two fingers into his left eye socket and flipped his eyeball out onto the snow. The guy ran away screaming and bleeding."

  Gray bit his lip. "Maybe I'd better try harder not to upset her."

  The door was opened by Gunnery Sergeant Arlen Able. The sergeant's nose was covered by black tape. Skin below his eyes had the texture of crepe paper, with touches of sunset purple and malaria yellow and splotches of red from burst capillaries. He was in civvies—navy blue chinos and a black sweatshirt. A cardboard case painted in olive and buff camouflage was in his hands.

  Gray said, "Judging from your face, Arlen, it looks like Nikolai Trusov is hitting about .310."

  "If I laugh, my face will crack open and my brains will fall out." The sergeant pulled a large scope from the box.

  "How's Blackman?"

  "He's got casts on him that make both hands stick out, so he's going to walk around like the mummy for two months, but he'll live. Have you used a starlight scope before?"

  "Some," Gray replied quietly.

  "This is our new model, the AN/PVS-5. Battery
powered. Uses starlight and moonlight for target illumination and amplifies reflected ambient light to brighten the target. Bud Blackman and I were a team in Iraq. Sometimes he'd spot, sometimes I would. No clouds or smog there, lots of starlight, and we used this equipment to hellish effect."

  The starlight scope resembled a bird watcher's spotting scope, about a foot long with an eye shield on one end and a range focus ring on the other from which hung a lens cap on a plastic tether. Above the image intensifier tube housing was a cylinder containing the battery cap, power switch, and oscillator cap. A boresight mount assembly, locking knobs, and an azimuth adjustment knob were on a frame below the central housing.

  "Can I remind you of a couple of things?" Able asked.

  Gray nodded.

  "Keep your eye tight against the rubber eyeshield, or light from the eyepiece assembly will leak around the eyeshield and will illuminate your face, make it a target."

  Gray remembered.

  "You are right-eyed, Owen. The starlight scope will be offset to the left of the rifle, and it weighs five pounds, so it's tough to maintain a steady position when sighting with the right eye. Rest your cheek against the stock comb like you do when sighting with iron sights, and use your left eye to obtain the sight picture. And this might very slightly change your zero."

  "What'll be the zero?"

  "Eight hundred yards, the distance to that roof," Able replied. "And your eyes are out of practice. Eye fatigue with this Five will become a factor in about four minutes. So go easy." Able returned the scope to the box, then brought up his wristwatch. "The NYPD swat team is going to let us use their rifle range. It's about forty minutes from here. You ready?"

  Pete Coates responded, "Give me a minute with Owen, will you, Sergeant?"

  Able carried the scope from the office to disappear down the hall.

  "So you are going to do this?" Coates asked. "Can you?"

  "It's like riding a bicycle. You don't forget."

  "How do you know you've still got the talent? You haven't been practicing."

  Gray thought for a moment. "Ever since the Chinaman was killed I've been feeling the little skills coming back."

  "Little skills? Like what?"

  "You had fish for dinner last night. Probably a saltwater fish, salmon or tuna. Not lake trout."

  "So?" A small moment passed, then Coates's features twisted. "How in hell do you know that?"

  "The scent has come through your pores and is on your skin. I can smell it. Saltwater fish give off more odor than freshwater fish."

  "Is that another of your weird talents?"

  "I was born with a good nose but it's mostly learned. It's coming back."

  "Maybe I should've changed my socks this week," Coates said.

  "Another thing. This past couple of days I've been incapable of looking at a distant building or tree and not estimate its distance. Six hundred yards, eleven hundred yards, four hundred yards. My brain has been filled with an incessant flow of numbers. It took me a decade to stop doing yardage estimates, and the numbers are flooding back."

  Coates sniffed his wrist, then pulled up his sleeve to smell his forearm. "It was tuna, but I can't smell it."

  "And once again I've become acutely aware of motion at the periphery of my vision. I'm spinning to these vague movements to the right and left. These are little things, but they are changing me slowly and involuntarily as if I'm in the grip of some terrible potion."

  "Why not just let NYPD SWAT team members handle it?"

  "We know how good Nikolai Trusov is because we've seen him do his work. And the Russians confirm how talented he was in Afghanistan. So it has to be me." Gray took a long breath. "Pete, I've spent many years trying to forget that I'm a freak with a rifle. My talent is an aberration, a suspension of the rules of the physical world, like Michael Jordan with a basketball or Wayne Gretzky with a puck. I've known since I was seven years old that I could shoot the wings off a gnat at five hundred yards. Your swat team has damned good shooters, but on a range and in the field I'd chew them up, even after all this time."

  Coates asked earnestly, "You've been sitting over there, fidgeting, licking your lip, staring at the wall. How's your mental health?"

  Gray pressed two fingers against his temple. "What's worse for my mental health, knowing that anybody standing next to me may get an exploded head or me picking up a rifle again? I don't have a choice, Pete."

  The detective leaned back, lifting the front legs of the chair off the floor. He tilted his head toward Gray as if he might hear his thoughts. "I don't know much about this because I was a desk jockey in the Marines, but have you ever thought that your role in Vietnam was no different than a bomber pilot's or an artilleryman's, just a little more personal? There was a war on. That was legal killing you did. You've been punishing yourself ever since for being a soldier, for doing your duty."

  "You're right," Gray replied vehemently. "You don't know anything about it."

  Coates asked cautiously, "Is there something about your Vietnam days—something more than your role as a sniper—that put you on the medication? There were quite a few American snipers in Vietnam. They didn't all end up as . . . as troubled as you."

  Gray said nothing. He rose and walked down the hall toward the waiting Marine.

  At ten o'clock that evening Sixth Avenue in Brooklyn was still radiating the day's heat. Bricks and concrete seemed to shimmer. Fireplugs and fire escapes and car hoods were still warm. Pink geraniums and purple petunias hung dispiritedly in their window planters. Not a whisper of wind touched the street, and air trapped between the buildings was heavy with the brown scents of auto exhaust, garlic, and sewage.

  Sounds of the street seemed muffled under the blanket of heat. Two cats yowled at each other in the distance. Couples out for evening strolls chatted, but quietly, leaning toward each other as if the oppressive air made speaking loudly too much effort. A stereo playing heavy metal rock could be faintly heard, and the sounds of television sets came through open windows.

  Bay Ridge's tidy apartments and fourplexes were a blend of Greek revival and federal and Italianate styles, most three and four stories high with subdued but distinctive ornamentation. The entrance to Owen Gray's building was guarded by two fluted columns supporting a porch roof above the top step. The small porch was enclosed on the sides by utilitarian iron pickets designed to meet the code. The door was ancient and pitted oak but was bright with red paint. The intercom panel to the right of the door had a button near each of four numbers. Names were not displayed.

  Wood window frames on all four stories were painted black, and many windows were open this night. Gray's apartment was on the top floor. The large window facing the street was to the twins' bedroom. The sheer curtains were closed, but in the bright bedroom the shapes inside were visible—though surely nebulous—through the translucent cloth.

  Gray's bathrobe was a Black Watch plaid that Mrs. Orlando had given him for Christmas. "Don't read too long tonight, girls."

  The words were wasted. The bundles under the two beds were motionless. Above Julie's bed was a poster of Ken Griffey Jr. and above Carolyn's was a print of a woodcut of Frederic Chopin. The room was a mad scramble of tossed clothing, schoolbooks, old dolls, art equipment, and a collection of Breyer horses. A copy of Seventeen magazine was on Carolyn's desk. Mrs. Orlando insisted that the room be orderly each night before bedtime, but she had disappeared for the afternoon, and when that happened, the room's contents spread like a stain, with everything taken out of closets and off desks and from shelves but nothing put back. Gray would complain of having to high-step across their room like a fullback through the defensive line.

  "You two must have had a big day. Adrian Wade wore you both out?" A soft chuckle. "She wears me out, too."

  Each form in the beds received a kiss. "Good night, my girls. Sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs bite."

  The bathrobe moved toward the door to the hallway.

  If that instant could be expan
ded through some quirk of nature, if that second could be dilated so that the swift appeared slow and the slow seemed still, the first indication of order gone awry would be the dime-sized hole appearing as if by sleight of hand in the curtain. The bullet breached the room like a beam of light, crossing the effluvia of the girls' lives, then ripping into the form in Carolyn's bed, digging an appalling trench the length of the body to punch through the headboard and bury itself in the wall.

  Two seconds later another trespassing bullet entered the room through the curtain, this one plunging through the form in Julie's bed.

  At the door, wearing Owen Gray's bathrobe, Pete Coates put the two-way radio to his mouth. "Now. He's done it."

  On the roof of the building, only his starlight binoculars and the crown of his head visible above the cornice, Sergeant Able barked, "I just saw the flash. Zone two, point three, E.D. four. They were right, that apartment roof."

  With those few words, referring to zones and reference points and distances, Able put the shooter on the target.

  Owen Gray nudged the M-40A1 Marine Corps sniper rifle and mounted starlight scope an inch left.

  Able said unnecessarily, "Chink it down a couple clicks."

  "I have him." Gray did not have the time to wonder at the tenor of his own voice, a flat, stainless steel tone he had not heard in twenty-five years. The utter dispassion would have frightened him under other circumstances.

  Through the scope Gray saw the head, low behind a roof cornice on a building four blocks away. A rifle was next to the head, pointed at the air, perhaps coming down for another shot or perhaps in retreat.

  Gray inhaled, let half of it out. He had learned early in his sniping career that it was not always necessary to search for the pulse in his neck or arms, but rather that his vision—everyone's vision—blurred ever so slightly with each pump of the heart. He waited a fraction of a second for his sight of the target to clear between heartbeats. Then he brought back the trigger. Two seconds had passed since Able had given him the co-ordinates.