Weaver nodded. “I don’t know if he’s showing off or if it’s part of this religious crap, but he has been pushing the envelope. And he’s been taking them fast.”
“This Manning, she lives at the other end of this block,” Uri running his finger up the photo, “up the street from the church. So he has to be expecting her to exit the front of the church and walk north up Sheridan?”
“Makes sense.”
“First we set a limit. That first one in Wisconsin? You sure about that?”
“Chen’s sure, which is pretty much like God being sure, at least about ballistics.”
“Better than nine hundred meters through a twenty-plus crosswind with a weapon most people can’t hit shit with beyond five hundred meters. OK, so figure he’s going to be out at least five hundred and at most a thousand. Push it to eleven hundred just to be safe.” Uri measured out a piece of string, pinned one end to the front of the church, and drew two circles on the map, one at five hundred meters, the other at one thousand one hundred meters. “He’s going to be between the first and second circle.”
Uri pointing at the photo again. “We have this building right across the street, what’s that, three or four stories? Blocks any kind of shot due from due east. But tweak the line just a shade north, and you got this cluster here.” Uri tapped a couple of high rises on the west side of Lake Shore Drive. “If he gets on the roof there, maybe an upper west-facing floor, it looks like he’d have a line. You’re getting close to one thousand meters out there, though.” The Israeli stuck a pin in the map, marking the location. “So that’s one spot to watch, it is pretty much the only good option from the east.”
Uri looked at the map for another minute.
“The front door is on the east side of the church, so anything west is out. He’d have to wait for her to walk to the end of the building before he had a shot. That leaves obliques to the north and south, up and down Sheridan. The church is almost built right out to the sidewalk. If anybody coming out takes one step down, then they have to turn either south or north. Manning lives north. He likes to take them through the heart, and that’s going to be a lot easier if the target is facing him. So that gives you these couple of blocks here.” The Israeli ran his finger between the circles where they crossed Sheridan. “Same thing with the south, just to be safe. From the south, he’d have to shoot her in the back, though. That would mean he would be in this area here.”
Uri took a yardstick, penciled lines to the buildings that had line of sight to the church door and that were in the right range bracket. Looked up when he was done.
“Twenty-two possible buildings. Hard to say how many windows exactly.”
Too many, thought Weaver, but no need to let the troops see him sweat.
“OK,” Weaver said, “so where do we put our guys?”
“We need a line to him. Either we put shooters in the church, or we get teams spread out up and down the west side of Sheridan. Put the radar units in the first hides on either side of the church, network everybody in so we all get the data as soon as he takes the shot. How many long guns have we got?”
“Seven, but only five that have done the deed for real.”
Uri went back to work with his string. When he was done, he’d marked five buildings with blue Xs, with two of the Xs circled. “Put your top five in these, with the radar units in the two spots I’ve circled. You’ll have at least one top shooter with a line to any position he can take, usually you’ll have two shooters, sometimes three. Put your two virgins here.” He tapped a building just northwest of the high rises out at the thousand-yard mark. “If he shoots from out there, they’ll only have two buildings to watch. They can pre-sight nearly every window, and the roofline. They’ll have a narrow range to watch and they’ll be inside two hundred meters. Even a virgin can’t miss from two hundred meters.”
Weaver nodded. “OK. Tomorrow, you place the teams.”
Uri left the room to talk with the troops. Weaver worked on his other problem, where to keep Cunningham on game day, where to park the van. That would be his command post. Looked at the map. One of the buildings Uri had circled was Manning’s place. Less than a block to the church, private parking in the back that let out into the alley, so out of public view, a straight shot up or down Sheridan to most of the spots they’d ID’d as possible hides for Fisher. A thousand yards might be a long shot, but it wasn’t much of a drive.
Manning’s place was perfect.
CHAPTER 60 – CHICAGO
Lynch pushed out the door of the Walgreens and headed back to the house. Had enough small arms to overthrow a banana republic, but they were out of toothpaste. Needed to think anyway, so he walked up to the drugstore on Cicero. Halfway back across the parking lot, a fit looking guy in his sixties, buzzed gray head, walked up next to him.
“You Lynch?”
Lynch didn’t say anything, just nudged his jacket open, switched the bag to his left hand, got ready.
The older guy gave him a little smile, held his hands away from his body. “Little nervous, huh? Don’t blame you. I’m a friend of Cunningham’s, from the old days. We need to talk. So how about I give you a lift back to your mom’s place?”
“How do you know about my mom’s place?”
The older guy shrugged. “Had to find you, it’s public record, no real stretch.”
Lynch looked at the guy for a minute, liked the vibe he got, but pulled out his 9mm anyway. “OK. You drive. You don’t mind if I just hold on to this, do you?”
“Suit yourself.”
Lynch followed the guy to the far end of the parking lot. The guy got into a tan Corolla, Virginia plates. Lynch jumped in.
“Sorry for the cloak and dagger shit, jumping you in the parking lot like that,” the guy said. “Brian Jenks, late of the USMC, currently an advisor to various folks on sniper and counter-sniper ops. I was Cunningham’s CO for twelve years.”
Lynch shifted in his seat, got his back to the passenger door so he could hold the gun on Jenks from across his body.
“You’re the guy who told him about the Dragon?”
“Fisher? Yeah, few days ago. Then yesterday, I get these Fed types all over me, all over a mess of guys. Questions about Cunningham. Any Muslim sympathies, something about him being Nation of Islam, even hinting at some Al-Qaeda crap. Guy’s a Baptist. Always has been. But they are tarring his ass with a big brush, and that pissed me off.”
“It’d piss me off, too,” Lynch said. “Not enough to drive half way across the country, though.”
“It wasn’t just the Cunningham shit. I’ve been working with some propeller-heads for damn near a year on some new counter-sniper tech. Real advanced shit. Combines audio and radar input to exactly – and I mean to the inch – pinpoint the source of gunfire. I’ve got two prototypes ready to ship out to Afghanistan for testing. We get these tweaked and in production, we’re gonna save a lot of Marines. Army pukes, too, I guess. Then I get the call from Cunningham. I start hearing noises in the shooter community, somebody way up the food chain snatching up every trigger jockey he can get his mitts on. Then these Feds start nosing around. And now my prototypes get hijacked by some three-letter types – CIA, NSA, who the fuck knows. National security is all the explanation I get. I figure those units are headed here.”
“And you’ve come to babysit them?”
“I’ve come to see what the hell is going on. This ain’t the way this sort of thing is done. It’s gotten way too high-profile.” Jenks turned, looked at Lynch. “You’ve heard of black ops?”
“Been getting an education the last few days.”
“This Fisher guy, from what I hear, he was with a group that’s so black it would make the inside of your asshole look well-lit. These guys just do not like attention. Now they got FBI guys working on their frame job, they got three-letter pukes putting their heads up to hijack hardware. The game just ain’t played that way. Somebody is both real fucking desperate and real fucking powerful.”