Faye Kellerman - Suspense Magazine

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