Re: [Gala: Cat, Flash, Frank]
Across the street, there was a dead man in a tower.
The tower was almost too good, too prosaic and over the top for a guy who wasn't particularly interested in the whole 'phantom of the opera swings on a chandelier' thing that the New York vigilantes were so into. He had a mission to execute, and he just did it. None of this capes and lights in the sky bullshit, and sure, it was good to strike some fear into the heart of a guy. That was useful. But you didn't need a stage costume - or a mask - for that.
Line of sight into the cavernous ballroom and its stupidly long windows was clear as a bell. In a different war, he would have settled in for the long haul, flat on the floor, eye pressed to the scope, until his neck burned and his eyes begged to close, waiting, learning the target, learning their day, their habits, their life until they walked out the front door, or stepped onto a balcony, or slid from under the shade of a tree. Then he'd end the relationship.
The Russians were prepared, but not for this. How could they be? When was the last time a Scout Sniper posted outside their party? Not that this was the same as those long, quiet, concealed days and nights in the desert. It wasn't. He still had armor biting into his shoulders, and he still had warm metal under his hands, but everything else, everything, couldn't have been more different.
Then, there. The old Italian who still thought he was as fuckin suave as 25, talking to the woman in red. Scarlet, she'd be Scarlet in her head, like the one in that board game Luke liked so much. The movie one. Clue! That was it, Miss Scarlet. He saw her, at the tea house, picking her way in, charming her way past the officer on the door. Of course he made sure he knew who went in and out - it made sense that the Russians would have somebody after him, and it looked like he just found out who. And her boy toy, the one flirting with half the room and schmoozing the old guys, he probably had her six. They'd be checking every eye they met for a glint of something uninvited.
Here it came. The bullet smashed glass and struck, not the Italian, not the woman, but the Russian behind the pair, an old bastard, brought girls in sometimes, cousin of the boss and always a little too excited about it, no question.
Frank pulled the trigger and the world settled into a kind of white peace, empty, soundless, reactive and immediate. Nothing about the past, nothing about what would happen in the next few minutes. Right now, right here, everything was right.
Two more shots - the man to cousin's left, a low level enforcer who was already pulling his gun, and then another at the far end of the room, striking one of the men at the back, standing at the door, just to show how deeply the bullets could penetrate.
In the ensuing panic, the bullets stopped. Across the street, in the tower (a spindly addition to one of those crumbling tenements) was a dead man.
And he was actually dead, a real, full blown corpse. Nothing prosaic, remember? He was one of the three men posted to watch the building and protect it from just this sort of incursion. Nah, Frank was nowhere near there. He took his shots from the building adjacent, marked his targets through light fixtures, bunting, and the small, unrepaired holes in the aging stained glass of the crumbling church. Stained glass still cost money, he'd ponied up enough cash to fix the window at the old church in the neighborhood back home to know. He guessed it would be the last thing they'd fix in their big fat 'restore the neighborhood' project, and he guessed right. Good for Frank, bad for everyone else.
The Russians would come out in force with their guys, flooding the street as the civilians ran for cover. They'd assault what they assumed was his position - the obvious nest in that spindly tenement directly opposite the church. They'd find dead men on the first floor and waste valuable time cornering the tower, thinking they had him pinned.