The Schwarzschild Radius (28 page)

he police had been tailing Armand Greyson for the last two days―ever since they received the anonymous photos. McKenna sat in the long-term parking garage at Kennedy Airport with Detective Aldo Marchese, waiting for Greyson to return from Boston. He had flown there yesterday for some kind of art dealer’s thing and was scheduled to return on the six-thirty shuttle. Their unmarked car was three-hundred feet diagonal to Greyson’s, so they couldn’t miss him when he arrived. If he had scheduled an international flight, they would have moved in.

“I say bring him in for questioning,” said Marchese, lowering the sun visor, cutting off the top of his thick head to the outside world.

“All we have now is photos of nude underage girls which we didn’t find on him.”

“They were taken in his apartment.”

“By who? Maybe the person who sent them to us. We still can’t connect Greyson with the photos,” said McKenna. “All we have of him is the base of his cock in the kid’s mouth. We would need a couple of more inches for a conviction. Found out today that Greyson’s not his real name. Legally changed it from Ira Shickelgruber twenty years ago. Wasn’t that Hitler’s real name too?”

“Ira?”

“Schickelgruber.”

Marchese adjusted the seat. “I hate waiting. Never good at waiting.”

McKenna was used to it. Used to waiting in the brush for hours, sometimes days for his target. That’s what snipers do. You play games in your mind to stave off boredom. And you have to remain alert at all times. It was the toughest part of the job. Shooting was the easiest. He wished the shooting part had been harder.

In Afghanistan, he had waited once for two days. They were on a mountain ridge waiting for a Taliban commander and his men who were making incursions behind coalition lines, scoring high casualties using IEDs and snipers. He recalled how bad the mosquitoes were, but they couldn’t use repellant. Snipers weren’t allowed to smoke, use aftershave, or even soap to prevent the enemy from smelling them. You just stand still and take it. If you had to take a shit, you shit in your pants. You endure.

He and his spotter thought they were well-hidden in the shadows. Then, in the early afternoon, two figures passed a hundred meters below them and spotted them. A month earlier, a four-man SEAL team had encountered the same situation. They were discovered by a father and son as they waited to snatch a Taliban commander. They let them go and the civilians alerted the Taliban who returned with a hundred warriors. The four men fought valiantly down the sheer mountain. Three were killed, then a U.S. rescue helicopter was shot down, killing all sixteen aboard. McKenna wasn’t going to repeat that mistake. With a single glance at his spotter, the agreement was sealed. They dropped both targets. Four hours later, the Taliban arrived.

They waited until the group was out in the open, then the commander was dropped first. John McKenna pulled the trigger twelve more times and twelve more bodies littered the landscape. After dark, they descended the ridge. Something in him compelled him to check the two civilians he had shot, a decision he would live to regret. He turned over the first one and pulled off his head scarf. It was a boy of fourteen. The second was probably his brother. Maybe thirteen.

He came home to his wife and seven-year-old Brittany and thought that would help. Two years later, he got divorced. McKenna had given Brittany his email address last year, but never got a message. He checked every night when he got home.

“Yeah, waiting is the toughest part,” said Marchese.

Greyson removed his five-hundred dollar shoes at airport security. He used to enjoy travel, but now with all these security checks, it had become tedious. He had taken a quick jaunt to Boston for the opening of a friend’s gallery. It was a good opportunity to network and there were several Brazilian dealers attending. He had wanted to get an idea of what it was like to operate out of Brazil. Grabbing his carry-on, he headed for a newsstand to pick up the Post.

There was nothing on the front page about any of the disappearances. Good. He flipped through the paper quickly and found a small story on page six about the missing Asian girl.

Police still have no solid leads in the disappearance of Olivia Wallen, the honor student who vanished last week in Manhattan. Teams of volunteers scoured the woods near her house in East Northport while NYPD conducted interviews with everyone known to have interacted with her. Olivia was a volunteer at Transcendence House in Manhattan, a shelter for runaway and abused teens. Police and family are becoming more concerned as the days pass with no clue as to the girl’s whereabouts. She did not leave any notes behind and had never run away before. A sense of desperation has set in, according to one source, after the discovery of Kirsten Schrodinger’s mutilated body this week. Police are as yet unwilling to conclude that the two disappearances are related. In the meantime, a prayer vigil will be held…

It looked like a dead end. He tossed the paper and headed straight for the long-term parking.

He powered up his Blackberry and scrolled through his messages as he walked. His divorce attorney had advised him to get rid of the uptown apartment and rent a modest place to look like he was just making ends meet. So he rented a dump in Brooklyn that reminded him of the way he used to live and was putting his Fifth Avenue place up for sale next week. It was time to start liquidating assets. It had taken a lifetime to gather all the artwork in that place. He couldn’t take it all with him. Ninety percent would have to be auctioned off. He thought of putting it in storage, but it would be too easy for the government to seize. He couldn’t leave any assets behind, just as he had left no trace of Ira Schickelgruber twenty years ago.

Greyson’s green 1966 Jaguar was faithfully waiting for him. This was one luxury he wasn’t going to give up. A quick walk around showed no scratches. If he relocated to Brazil, the Jag was coming with him.

When Greyson turned the key, a large bomb exploded beneath his seat, splattering the remains of his body into the concrete ceiling of the garage.

ntonio Beltran had decided on the method of execution. This was a favorite of the cartel for urban assassination. For three days, he had tailed his prey, following him from Queens to Long Beach, back to malls and the Bronx. The schedule was irregular and the routine varied. The target used the same vehicle every time. That would be his coffin.

Beltran sat in a motel in Queens downloading the rest of the information he needed. On the bed were the tools of his trade: Glock, AR-15, garrote, binoculars, commando knife. He had killed with each of the weapons at close range and long. There was no escaping death. The AR-15 rifle with the Zeiss 12X scope was his favorite for long distance jobs. But most of his work involved the motorcycle helmet he’d brought with him from Mexico. A veteran of several jobs, it was with him when he had ended the re-election campaign of the mayor of Ciudad Juarez. He used it to terminate two rivals of his client in the Gulf cartel.

Wearing rubber gloves, he carefully wiped off enough ammunition to fill the clip of the AR-15 and the Glock. He checked the silencers he had hand made before leaving for this job. He always made his own silencers. These were disposable and caught most of the powder residue in the silencer chamber. Simple device, it was made of a ten-inch section of a brake line, perforated with holes. Then the brake line was encased in PVC tubing, capped at both ends and drilled to accommodate the barrel. The space between the PVC pipe and the brake line was filled with steel wool, then small holes were drilled around the cap to allow gases to escape. Once the target was dead, the silencer was thrown away. Untraceable.

He entered an address into Google Earth and zoomed in on the target. The whole neighborhood could be seen. He traced out his avenue of escape. Now he was ready.