Breach of Protocol

TO VANISH IN PLAIN SIGHT

5

TO VANISH IN PLAIN SIGHT

Midtown Manhattan, New York

Rafael let out one long exhale then held it. He applied light tension to the trigger and the crossbow recoiled against his shoulder. His eyes never flinched. The full weight of the crossbow bolt, tipped with a one-hundred-grain Ramcat broadhead, rocketed across the street and entered the skull of FBI Director Stephen Latent just above the right eye. It tore a destructive path through the basal ganglia area of the brain and exited through the rear of the cerebrum. The resulting hole in Latent’s skull was large enough to fit a grapefruit. The arrow continued on its destructive path until it struck a BBC cameraman just behind Latent. The bodies of both men crumpled onto the ground. Neither flinched; they were dead.

Rafael’s motions following the shot were swift, but calm. He crouched behind the upper wall of the rooftop, disassembled the crossbow from the stock, and placed the weapon into a zip-up nylon carry case, which he slung onto his back.

From his pocket he removed a glass vial. The small ampule was filled with sulfuric acid, and contained a tiny, clear glass bead. He dumped the entire contents of the vial onto the spot where he crouched, and threw an olive-green poncho over himself. He was down the stairs and on the street in under ninety seconds. But he deviated from his well-rehearsed escape path which would have taken him down West Thirty-Seventh Street, one block left then one block right until finally descending the stairs leading to the Penn Station subway tunnel at Thirty-Fourth Street and Eighth Avenue. His plan was to be gone from the scene as though he had vaporized into thin air.

As it were, his particular tastes in women led him instead around the rear of the young woman’s apartment building where he picked the lock on a side door, climbed three flights of stairs, then walked down the hall, counting units until he arrived at the fifth apartment from the left. Once inside, he found the young woman still in the shower.

No one heard her screams.