Make a last quick check that no traces of Juba remained.

Dump the gloves, mask, and cap in the getaway bag.

Slip out the door, which would lock behind him.

Go to the street without hurry or urgency.

Walk due south on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and look for a black BMW SUV to pick him up.

He came out of his projection and back to the scope.

The golfer finally had come to the ball and was preparing for the putt.

1503.23

City and river slid by in a blur as the craft ate the distance between the FBI roof and the Anacostia River. Vibration, like a charge of electricity, roared through everything. The wind was a primal reality, bashing at him.

Bob lay prone on the deck of the bird, legs splayed for stability. He hadn’t gone to a shooting position yet because he didn’t want to hold it before he had acquired a target. But the rifle against his shoulder, its barrel projecting outward to the broad bright expanse of reality that was before him, was reassuring.

He wore a headset and throat mic, and now used it to address the pilot, “Lieutenant, if I have to shoot, can you hold her steady?”

“Yes, sir,” came the pilot’s reply. “Give me a second’s notice, and I’ll go to autorotate, which means I cut the engine, tune the blades, and we just sustain ourselves on the rotation without the buzz. I’ve only got about ten seconds, though, before I have to power up.”

“Got it, and great. I’ll sing out.”

The copilot said, “It’s got to be that newer building. The upper floor would get you the vantage.”

“Yeah,” said Nick. “If he’s anywhere, he’s there.”

“Okay, boys,” said the pilot, “I’m laying myself right in his angle on the target. I’m coming around and holding. Find him for the sniper. Find him.”

1504

Now at last.

The man was still. He bent over the ball, addressing it squarely, all his attention focused on it. He did not know that the red dot of Juba’s 5.5×25×56 Schmidt & Bender lay without tremor or remorse upon the center of his body and that Juba’s finger caressed the curve of the trigger, that all systems were perfect, that it was only a matter not of technique but will.

Juba’s focus went to the dot, not the target, and his trigger finger began its microprogress—

And then the image disappeared.

Something blurred and heavy settled between himself and it, and he recognized the shape as a helicopter. His fingers flew to the focus ring, and he dialed the blur to sharpness. And now he recognized the open hatch and, in one corner of it as if from his nightmares, bent and concentrated and unmoving, the American sniper.

1505.5

“Open window, middle, top floor!” screamed Nick.

“On it,” Bob replied. “Lieutenant, go to auto.”