not know that the crosshairs of a telescopic sight were fixed at a point just above his left eye. He smiled pleasantly as the caterers rushed around behind the platform, squeezed Angela’s hand when he saw the first fuse being touched.
The fuse burned shorter, shorter, and then touched the powder. The first of the rockets sailed skyward, exploding in a shower of blue and green stars, followed by the second rocket almost instantly afterward, silver fishes darting against the velvet night. Explosions rocked the peaceful suburb of Riverhead, shockingly loud explosions that threatened to rip the night to shreds.
In the attic room, Oona Blake dug her fingers into Sokolin’s shoulder.
“Now,” she said. “Now, Marty.”
The men worked together as a highly efficient team, and perhaps everything would have gone smoothly, bloodlessly, had not Bob O’Brien been a part of the team. It was certain that once the men returned to the squadroom, legend and superstition would prevail to single out O’Brien as the culprit.
They had drawn their service revolvers on the front porch of the Birnbaum house. O’Brien stood to one side of the door, and Meyer turned the knob and eased the door open. The living room on the ground floor of the house was dark and silent. Cautiously, both men entered the room.
“If he’s here and plans to use a rifle,” Meyer whispered, “he must be upstairs.”
They waited until their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. They found the staircase then and began climbing it, hesitating when their weight caused the treads to creak. On the second floor, they checked the two bedrooms and found them empty.
“An attic?” O’Brien whispered, and they continued climbing.
They were in the hallway outside the attic room when the fireworks started in the Carella back yard. At first, they thought it was gunfire, and then they recognized it for what it was, and both instantly formed the conclusion that their sniper—if he were indeed in the house—had undoubtedly been waiting for the fireworks before opening up with his rifle. They did not speak to each other. There was no need to speak. The operation they were about to perform had been acted out by them hundreds of times before, either together, or as part of other teams. The fireworks in the yard across the way simply added urgency to the operation but they moved swiftly and without panic, Meyer flattening himself against the wall to the right of the door, O’Brien bracing himself against the corridor wall opposite the door. O’Brien glanced at Meyer, and Meyer nodded soundlessly.
From inside the room, they heard a woman’s voice say, “Now. Now, Marty.”
O’Brien shoved himself off the wall, his left leg coming up, the left foot colliding with the door in a powerful, flat-footed kick that splintered the lock and shot the door inward. Like a fullback following a line plunge, O’Brien followed the door into the room, Meyer crossing in behind him like a quarterback ready to take a lateral pass.
O’Brien was not anxious to fire.
His gun was in his hand as he entered the room, following the jet-catapult of the door, his eyes sweeping first to the window where the man crouched over the rifle, then to the floor where Cotton Hawes lay tied in a neat bundle, and then back to the window again as the blonde in the red silk dress whirled to face him.
“Drop the piece!” he shouted, and the man at the window swung around with the rifle in his hands, the rockets exploding behind him in the back yard illuminating his eyes, pinpointing his eyes with fiery light; and O’Brien’s eyes locked with his, and in that moment he weighed the necessity for firing.
“Drop it!” he shouted, his eyes locked with the other man’s, and he studied those eyes for the space of three seconds that seemed like three thousands years, studied the fright in them, and then the sudden awakening to the situation, and the rapid calculation. And then the eyes began to narrow and O’Brien had seen the instantaneous narrowing of the eyes of a man with a gun before, and he knew the eyes were telegraphing the action of the trigger finger, and he knew that if he did not fire instantly, he would drop to the floor bleeding in the next split second.
Meyer Meyer had seen the eyes tightening, too, and he shouted, “Watch it, Bob!” and O’Brien fired.
He fired only once, from the hip, fired with a calmness that gave the lie to the lurching