The Coffin Dancer

that Rhyme’s urgent grief was not only for the man who had died so violently, whoever he was, but for those who, maybe, were just about to.

    People believe that the rifle is the important tool for a sniper, but that’s wrong. It’s the telescope.
    What do we call it, Soldier? Do we call it a telescopic sight? Do we call it a ’scope?
    Sir, we do not. It’s a telescope. This one is a Redfield, three-by-nine variable, with crosshair reticles. There is none better, sir.
    The telescope Stephen was mounting on top of the Model 40 was twelve and three-quarters inches long and weighed just over twelve ounces. It had been matched to this particular rifle with corresponding serial numbers and had been painstakingly adjusted for focus. The parallax had been fixed by the optical engineer in the factory so that the crosshairs resting on the lip of a man’s heart five hundred yards away would not move perceptibly when the sniper’s head eased from left to right. The eye relief was so accurate that the recoil would knock the eyepiece back to within one millimeter of Stephen’s eyebrow and yet never touch a hair.
    The Redfield telescope was black and sleek, and Stephen kept it draped in velvet and nestled in a Styrofoam block in his guitar case.
    Now, hidden in a nest of grass some three hundred yards from the Hudson Air hangar and office, Stephen fitted the black tube of the telescope into its mount, perpendicular to the gun (he always thought of his stepfather’s crucifix when he mounted it), then he swung the heavy tube into position with a satisfying click. He screwed down the lug nuts.
    Soldier, are you a competent sniper?
    Sir, I am the best, sir.
    What are your qualifications?
    Sir, I am in excellent physical shape, I am fastidious,I am right-handed, I have 20/20 vision, I do not smoke or drink or take any kind of drugs, I can lie still for hours at a time, and I live to send bullets up the ass of my enemy.
    He nestled farther into the pile of leaves and grass.
    There might be worms here, he thought. But he wasn’t feeling cringey at the moment. He had his mission and that was occupying his mind completely.
    Stephen cradled the gun, smelling the machine oil from the bolt-action receiver and the neat’s-foot oil from the sling, so worn and soft it was like angora. The Model 40 was a 7.62 millimeter NATO rifle and weighed eight pounds, ten ounces. The trigger pull generally ranged from three to five pounds, but Stephen set it a bit higher because his fingers were very strong. The weapon had a rated effective range of a thousand yards, though he had made kills at more than 1300.
    Stephen knew this gun intimately. In sniper teams, his stepfather had told him, the snipers themselves have no disassemble authority, and the old man wouldn’t let him strip the weapon himself. But that was one rule of the old man’s that hadn’t seemed right to Stephen and so, in a moment of uncharacteristic defiance, he’d secretly taught himself how to dismantle the rifle, clean it, repair it, and even machine parts that needed adjustment or replacement.
    Through the telescope he scanned Hudson Air. He couldn’t see the Wife, though he knew she was there or soon would be. Listening to the tape of the phone tap on the Hudson Air office lines, Stephen had heard her tell someone named Ron that they werechanging their plans; rather than going to the safe house they were driving to the airport to find some mechanics who could work on the airplane.
    Using the low-crawl technique, Stephen now moved forward until he was on a slight ridge, still hidden by trees and grass but with a better view of the hangar, the office, and the parking lot in front of it, separated from him by flat grass fields and two runways.
    It was a glorious kill zone. Wide. Very little cover. All entrances and exits easily targeted from here.
    Two people stood outside at the front door. One was a county or state trooper. The other was a woman—red hair dipping beneath a baseball cap. Very pretty. She was a cop, plainclothes. He could see the boxy outline of a Glock or Sig-Sauer high on her hip. He lifted his range finder and put the split image on the woman’s red hair. He twisted a ring until the images moved together seamlessly.
    Three hundred and sixteen yards.
    He replaced the range finder, lifted the rifle, and sighted on the woman, centering the reticles on her hair once more. He glanced at her beautiful face. It troubled him, her attractiveness. He didn’t