Dressed in a black suit, including a dark shirt and tie, Jack sprinted through the crowd like a panther, his voice seemingly lingering. "Danny, flank at two o'clock, Esposito at ten o'clock, everyone else protect the women and children!"
The funeral was attended not only by Commissioner Montgomery's widow and two daughters, but also by Cassel's beloved daughter, Alexis, and mother, Martha.
By the time his voice reached the crowd, Jack had already broken free from the procession. The two men behind him, receiving the order, followed him without hesitation, breaking into a sprint, quickly catching up from both sides.
The fact that they were overtaken wasn't because Jack was slow, nor was it because the cemetery's complex terrain limited his ability to move. Rather, after leaving the crowd, he began to rapidly advance, employing a marching fire technique.
His legs alternated rapidly, a pace similar to a race walk, his upper body almost motionless from the waist up, his hands holding the rifle straight, achieving a relatively stable shooting stance.
Even in the early morning, the summer sun blazed brightly. Gunfire rang out incessantly throughout the cemetery, but the gunman, hiding high on the hill, never got a chance to fire a second shot.
Jack, relentlessly using his bulky FK7.5 as a backup, didn't mind the cumbersomeness of his rifle. Not only was its specialized armor-piercing rounds capable of effectively penetrating most common bulletproof vests at a distance of 20 meters, but it also far exceeded the effective range of ordinary pistols.
At a distance of over 200 meters, without any cover, charging directly at a sniper with his pistol raised seemed an extremely foolish move, but Jack did it anyway.
In less than five seconds, he darted past the funeral procession and, before anyone could react, closed the distance between him and the gunman to within 150 meters.
From then on, the only sound in the cemetery was the incessant crackle of the FK7.5, its bullets landing within a two- to three-meter radius around a distant tombstone. This radius continued to shrink as the bullets corrected their impact and the distance closed.
Just over half a minute had passed since the gunman fired his first shot, but in that span, his mind had undergone a rollercoaster of emotions.
From the initial, hasty shot, caught off guard, to attempting a second shot at Beckett, to the shock of someone charging straight at him at such a distance, to his attempt to aim at Jack, intending to kill him and escape.
After a rock splintered his eye, the gunman finally realized the situation was dire and tried to flee, but the constant shards of stone from the tombstone in front of him and the bullet holes at his feet reminded him that turning and running was not a good idea.
Jack's firing rate was slow, maintaining a suppressive fire rate of one or two seconds, but his reloading speed made it so that the gunman behind the tombstone didn't notice any unusual pauses.
Finally, after over a minute of continuous gunfire, Danny and Esposito, who had arrived earlier, had completed the encirclement from both sides.
"Surrender! You have no chance." Jack was nearly 40 meters from the gunman, and at that distance, the man had no chance.
He had emptied two spare magazines, totaling 45 rounds, and his FK7.5 was empty, but that didn't matter anymore; his SIG Sauer P320-XTen sidearm was now within effective range.
"I surrender!" Seeing two NYPD officers blocking his retreat from either side, a burly man in a cemetery warden's uniform emerged from behind a tombstone, his hands raised high. He stared intently at Jack, slowly approaching him, as if he were looking at some monster. "
Who are you?"
"FBI, you're under arrest. Stay still unless I blow your head off." Jack's gun was locked, aimed firmly at his head.
Danny, breathless from running, took a few deep breaths before cautiously approaching, handcuffing him.
Soon, the NYPD officers attending the funeral gathered around. Beckett was about to rush forward when Castle pulled her back, shaking his head slightly, indicating that this wasn't the place to question her.
While they still didn't know the true identity of the person behind the incident, since Jack had made it clear last night that he would use unconventional means to resolve the matter, there was no need to make it public.
"Is everyone okay?" Jack looked at Beckett.
"No one was hurt," the female detective rubbed her shoulder. While Castle's leaping lunge was impressive and moved her, being pinned to the grass by the 5'87" tall man wasn't pleasant.
"What should we do with this guy?" Danny, who was also in the know and had a general understanding of what happened from his father, asked Jack's advice directly.
"Leave it to me."
Jack picked up a desert-colored M110A1 sniper rifle from the ground next to the tombstone. Noticing that the serial number hadn't been erased, he took a photo and sent it to Alice.
Judging solely by the model number, this gun might be mistaken for a derivative of the M110, the standard US military sniper rifle. In reality, the two are completely unrelated.
The M110A1 can be considered the US version of the G28E, not much different from the one Hannah usually uses.
The unexpectedly interrupted funeral concluded hastily under the watchful eyes of hundreds of NYPD officers. As Commissioner Montgomery's coffin was covered with earth, an armored vehicle driven by the NYPD's Special Unit (ESU) arrived at the cemetery.
The masked gunman was shackled and pushed into the vehicle. Two Suburbans from the FBI's New York field office
soon joined the escort. The funeral guests dispersed, and the black Lincoln hearse was the last to depart. However, its route was somewhat strange: after leaving the cemetery, it headed straight onto Interstate 495, heading towards Long Island.
"Isn't this a bit overly cautious?" Cassel asked aggrievedly, squeezed into a corner by the sheer number of people in the vehicle.
"Although we all know that the mastermind behind this is powerful, but attacking the NYPD SWAT escort vehicle? Come on, this is not a movie."
Jack, who was checking the messages on his phone, did not refute him immediately. Instead, he raised his phone and put the photo on it in front of the gunman who had remained silent so far for comparison.
"The serial number on the M110A1 sniper rifle shows that its owner was Martin Horst, an Army Ranger who died in an action seven years ago. His body was later recovered, but the whereabouts of the gun have been unknown since then."
The photo shows a young Latino with a flat nose, thick lips, and black curly hair.
The gunman, who was sandwiched between Danny and Esposito, was a white man with brown hair and a high nose bridge. Although he also had a military temperament, his appearance was completely different.
(End of this chapter)