Danny Marciano was down, clutching at his left arm, but Carmine and Silvestri were already too near for a long rifle, clumsy at close distance.
The sniper got off one last shot, useless, but no one heard the rifle, drowned in the much louder report of two revolvers as Carmine and Silvestri fired together, and again, and a third time. The smaller branches heaved and crackled as a limp body hurtled through them to lie motionless on the ground.
Sirens were wailing, flashing lights showing eerily on South Green Street; someone with a walkie-talkie must have radioed in almost as soon as Carmine moved.
“He’s dead,” Carmine said. “That’s a pity.”
“We couldn’t risk the kids,” Silvestri panted.
“Jesus, the gall!” Carmine looked up at Silvestri from a crouch. “How’s Danny? We need to cordon this off, John, right now, so get it done.”
Off came the silver-encrusted jacket; Carmine flung it to one side and knelt to examine his quarry. A total stranger, which was a disappointment: in his early forties, fit and trim in a brown sweat suit, his face streaked with brown greasepaint that would have made him all but invisible high in a coppery tree.
Silvestri returned. “Danny’s okay—winged, but the bullet missed anything vital. Who is the bastard?”
“No one we know.”
“Who did he mean to kill?”
“My guess is M.M. ahead of the Mayor, but probably as many on the dais as he had time to take out.” Carmine picked up the rifle, anchored by a lanyard to the assassin, who was too well versed in his job to let it accidentally fall. “A Remington .308 chambering five rounds. New firearm, I’ve never seen one.”
“Marine issue this year.” Silvestri followed such things. “How dare he?” The Commissioner swelled with a terrifying rage, his lips peeled back to bare his teeth. “How dare anyone do this in my town? My town! Our kids were here—our kids! Someone is shitting all over us, someone who can get hold of a new weapon!”
“Someone we have to stop,” Carmine said. “One thing I can tell you, John—I’ll never bitch about this uniform again. My collar was giving me hell, so I was moving my head around. A ray of sun sneaked through the leaves and hit the lens of his sight just as I stretched my neck. I saw a flash, then another. It reminded me of a situation I had once at Fort Bragg. Know what? Danny’s always at me to switch to an automatic, but if I hadn’t been packing a long-barreled revolver—and the same for you!—we’d never have gotten the motherfucker.”
“Yeah, right, Carmine,” Silvestri said, thumping him on the back in what looked to Channel Six like a congratulatory gesture. “But Danny’s right, snipers aside, and we won’t get another of them. Time to go automatic.” He sighed regretfully.
“There’s nothing more we can learn here,” the Commissioner went on. “Let’s check out the turkeys in this shoot and make sure no one’s hurt.”
Dignity was sorely wounded, but nothing else except Henry Howard’s Tudor bonnet, which was used as a vomit bowl by several grateful men. The probable primary target, Mawson MacIntosh, was too enraged to think of his dignity or his skin. He stalked over to Silvestri and Carmine with the kind of look on his face that had congressional committees shivering well before his tongue cut them to ribbons. The only person he was known to be afraid of was God.
“What is the world coming to, gentlemen?” he demanded, his eyes snapping fury. “There were children here!”
“I’m sure you won’t feel like saying yes, M.M., but have dinner with me tonight at Sea Foam and I’ll tell you a long story,” Silvestri said. “Seven o’clock, no wives, and I don’t give a flying fuck about security clearances!”
The President of Chubb exchanged his furious look for a triumphant one. “I know enough to realize I don’t know nearly enough,” he said. “I’ll be there, John. And I want it all.”
“You’ll get it all.”
Carmine suppressed a sigh. Whatever Special Agent Ted Kelly and various heads of various departments in Washington might say, once Holloman felt itself invaded, the ranks closed against all outsiders. Even Hartford tended to leave Holloman alone.
And it was such a beautiful day, he thought as he walked back to Cedar Street and County Services, where the first thing he would have to do was lodge his sidearm with the duty sergeant. Just as well it hadn’t been a prolonged shootout; he didn’t carry spare rounds in a dress uniform. This hadn’t been a nasty case in that respect, either. His wife and son had suffered, but no one had tried to gun him down, even including on the Green this morning. Too insignificant a target? Well, Mr. Ulysses, you keep on thinking that way.