Faye Kellerman - Suspense Magazine
Faye Kellerman - Suspense Magazine
Faye Kellerman - Suspense Magazine
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The SamariTan<br />
STephen BeSecker<br />
Special Preview from Stephen Besecker<br />
PROLOGUE<br />
Bronx (november)<br />
Like any experienced big-game hunter, the man shouldering the highpowered<br />
sniper’s rifle ignored the elements and focused on opportunity.<br />
The temperature hovered near thirty degrees Fahrenheit. Around him, light<br />
intermittent flurries—the season’s first traceable snow—fell, driven by gusts<br />
reaching fifteen miles per hour. At his back, the eastern horizon slowly<br />
brightened, ushering in a late November day.<br />
The hunter wore black insulated boots, a black Gore-Tex hoodie, and<br />
thermal underwear underneath his dark blue jeans. He blended in perfectly<br />
with the flat, tarred roof of the Bronx building, and except for two eyeholes in<br />
the mask, known in military circles around the world as a balaclava, his face<br />
was completely covered, his composed expression hidden.<br />
As he’d done for the past hour, the hunter kept his movement to a minimum.<br />
After weeks of exhausting reconnaissance, the first steps toward the inevitable<br />
shooting war in and around the five boroughs of New York City were about to<br />
be taken.<br />
The sniper’s rifle—a single shot M40A3 semiautomatic with a speciallymade<br />
sound suppressor—rested comfortably against his right shoulder. He’d<br />
chosen a point of reference 324 yards from his perch. Pressing his eye to<br />
the Leupold scope, the hunter sighted a dented garbage can and once again<br />
calculated the wind’s influence at this distance. Minimal. No problem. Control and discipline were his watchwords this<br />
morning. Breathe slowly was his mantra.<br />
Just as he’d been taught, the hunter practiced patience, overcame emotion, and demanded calm. His resting pulse rate,<br />
which he’d monitored over the past three months, was a controlled sixty beats per minute. Steely eyes peered through the<br />
holes in his balaclava as his right index finger rested on the M40’s trigger. Like the snowflakes passing through the scope’s<br />
view, the seconds melted away. The time of reckoning was fast approaching.<br />
The rifle’s barrel rested on a bipod some sixty feet above 161 st Street. Things were quiet in the middle-class neighborhood.<br />
That was about to change.<br />
On the opposite side of the street, a brownstone door opened and closed. An olive-skinned, third-generation Italian-<br />
American man, his hair slicked back with a generous amount of gel, stepped into the cold morning air, his breath visible with<br />
every exhalation. The target rubbed his gloved hands together to keep warm.<br />
The hunter shifted his weight just so. As he’d anticipated, his heart rate increased slightly as his index finger curled around<br />
the trigger.<br />
The target, a man in his late twenties, wore a black leather jacket, designer jeans, and black Gucci shoes. He moved into<br />
the scope’s kill zone.<br />
Like dozens of mornings before, the man he intended to assassinate, a high-ranking member of a powerful New York<br />
City crime family, stood on the top step outside his home, his head turning left and right, observing the street.<br />
The hunter now centered the crosshairs on the target’s left eye, relaxed, slowly emptied his lungs, and gently squeezed<br />
20 <strong>Suspense</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong> September 2011/vol. 026