Under Siege

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

About two in the morning Harrison Ronald heard the fire door on the first floor of the stairwell being opened. It made a metallic noise that was clearly audible here on the third-story landing of the Quantico FBI dorm, where he sat in the darkness with the slab-sided Colt in his hand. Nobody had ever oiled the push-bars on the heavy doors, thank the Lord.

Harrison Ronald eased his head between the rails and stared downward into the darkness, trying to see. There was nothing. Not a glimmer of light. There should have been light, of course, but Harrison Ronald had unscrewed all the bulbs over two hours ago.

Somebody was down there.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on what he could hear. He even held his breath. Yes, a scraping sound. A shoe sole on the nonskid of the concrete steps.

Harrison Ronald pulled his head back and sat absolutely still, the automatic held firmly in both hands.

This is really it, he told himself. Anybody with a legit reason to use this stairwell would not try to be quiet.

This is really it!

He sat frozen. Any movement he made the other man was bound to hear. His feet were out of position and his butt was cold, ice-cold, on the hard concrete step. He sat listening, breathing shallowly.

A light! The man below was using a small pencil flash, looking things over. Now it was gone.

Somewhere outside a car horn honked. It sounded far, far away.

The man was at the second-floor fire door. The intruder would have to push down the thumb latch on top of the grip, then pull the door open. The thumb latch would require some serious pressure since it mechanically moved the push-bar on the other side.

The latch clicked and the sound echoed in the stairwell.

The man below stood for the longest time, also listening.

Harrison Ronald didn’t even breathe.

Then the door opened and the intruder went through. He let the door swing shut but stopped it before the latch clicked.

Was that right? That’s what it sounded like to Harrison Ronald. He eased himself upright, massaged his cold, stiff bottom, and still trying to make no noise, crept across the landing and down the stair to the second-floor door.

He felt the steel door, slid his fingers across to the jam. Yes, it was ajar.

He eased his eye to the window in the door and looked down the hallway. The man was outside his door. A thick figure, medium height, carrying a long weapon.

Harrison Ronald moved away from the window and stood in the darkness, trying to think.

The man might not come back this way although he had left the door ajar. Even if he did, he might be expecting Ford to be waiting here. If the man goes into the room, Ford asked himself, should I go down the hallway toward the room? Back up to the third-floor landing? Or down to the first floor?

He took another look.

The man was bent over, working on the lock.

What if there is more than one man?

That thought froze Harrison Ronald. No, not a sound here in the stairwell. Maybe another man coming from the lobby, using the elevator or the stairway beside it. If so, where was he?

He took another peek through the window. The stout man was going through the door. No one else in the hall.

The man would come out of there in seconds.

What to do?

Amazingly enough, the simple expedient of avoiding the man never occurred to Harrison Ronald Ford. He had lived with fear too long. He sought now to surprise his enemy, confront him in a way that maximized the slim advantage that surprise bestowed on the aggressor. For Harrison Ronald intended to be the aggressor. Growing up black in the blue-collar neighborhoods of Evansville and as a young rifleman in the Marine Corps, he had learned the lesson well: attack — fiercely, ruthlessly, with iron-willed determination — always attack.

The door to Ford’s room opened silently. A head peeped out and surveyed the dimly lit hallway. Now the stout figure emerged, moving lightly for a man so large, and came along the corridor toward the fire door standing ajar.

He opened the fire door and slipped through.

Crouching on the second step, Ford swung the edge of his hand with all his strength at the man’s legs. The man pitched forward headlong. He made a sickening splat on the landing.

Ford was on him in seconds. His hands around the prone figure’s throat, squeezing with all his strength. After a few seconds he stopped.

The man under him was absolutely limp. Sitting on his back, Harrison Ronald felt the carotid artery. Nothing.

He rolled the body over and felt gently in the darkness. The forehead was smashed in, pulpy. No blood, or at least no slick, smooth wet slimy substance.

Still breathing hard, still pumped with adrenaline, Ford grasped the dead man’s arms and pulled the corpse up the steps. The weapon clattered away.

The body was heavy, at least two hundred pounds. Ford heaved and tugged with all his strength. He paused twice, but with one last mighty heave he managed to get the corpse to the second-floor landing.

He checked the hallway through the window in the door. Empty.

Wedging the door open, he tugged the body through and pulled it down the hallway, which, mercifully, was polished linoleum. He opened the door to his room and dragged the body inside, then raced back for the weapon on the stairs.

In his room, with the faint light from the parking lot coming through the window, he examined the man carefully. Even with his forehead smashed in, he was recognizable. Fat Tony Anselmo. There was a weapon in his coat pocket, a 9-mm automatic with a silencer as big as a sausage. The long weapon was a shotgun, a Remington pump with the barrel amputated just in front of the forearm. It was loaded.

Ford laid the shotgun on the bed and went through the man’s pockets. A wallet containing cash, no credit cards. A lot of cash, mainly twenties. Ford put the wallet back in Anselmo’s pocket. He quickly went through the other pockets. Cigarettes, lighter, a motel room key, some change, a small pocket knife, two wadded-up handkerchiefs. No car keys.

How had Anselmo gotten here?

Someone was outside waiting.

Ford checked the 9 mm. Loaded, with the safety on.

How long had Anselmo been in here? Five minutes? Four?

He stuffed the automatic in his belt. He was already wearing a jacket over a sweatshirt and sweater. The stairwell was unheated.

He opened the door slowly, checked the hallway, then slipped out. He headed for the stairs that led down to the lobby.

There was a man at the lobby desk, seated on a stool with his head down. Harrison Ford waited behind the fire door, watching him through the small window. The man was reading something on the desk in front of him. He turned a page. A newspaper.

A minute passed. Then another.

Come on! Don’t just sit there all night, you knothead!

The desk man picked up his coffee cup and put it to his lips. He frowned, looked into the cup.

He rose from his stool and walked to his right, Ford’s left.

The pot was in that little office across the hall. Quickly now!

Ford eased open the door, checked that the desk man was not in sight, then popped through and pushed the door shut behind him. He strode across the carpeted lobby and went through the outside door, closing it behind him.

He dropped behind the first bush he came to and looked around. Beyond this little driveway was the parking lot with the mercury-vapor lights shining down upon it.

Using the trees and shrubs for cover, he circled it as fast as he could trot, pausing and crouching several times behind large bushes for a careful scan.

He reached the vantage point he wanted, with all the cars between him and the entrance to the stairwell that Tony Anselmo had used. Crouching, staying low, he moved carefully parallel to the last row of cars with the 9-mm automatic in his hand.

Up there, on the second row. Wasn’t that a head in that dark green car? Hard to tell. Perhaps a seat-back headrest. He moved slowly alongside a car, keeping it between him and the green sedan.

It took fifteen seconds to get to a place where he could look again.

Yes. A man. Apparently white.

He moved slowly now, going behind a line of cars, working closer.

He also checked the other cars. There might be someone else out here.

The door to the green sedan opened. Ford realized it when the interior courtesy light came on.

Then it went off. The man was standing beside the car.

On his hands and knees, Ford crept across the back of the last car in this row, the third one, and looked forward. The green sedan was in the second row, and the man was standing beside the driver’s door, about forty feet from where Ford was hunkered. He was doing something. A weapon. He was stuffing shells into a shotgun.

Ford heard the distinctive metallic snick as the man worked the action, chambering a round. He turned his back to Ford and started toward the stairwell door.

Harrison Ronald Ford rose into a crouch, braced his hand against the side of the car, and steadied the automatic. The damn thing had no sights.

He quickly aligned the silencer and squeezed off a round.

The man staggered, tried to turn. Ford squeezed again. Another pop. And another.

The man went down. The shotgun clattered as he hit the asphalt.

Ford ran to his right, all hunched over, down about five cars, then charged across the driving lane into the second row. Alongside a car he threw himself on his face and looked under the parked vehicles. He could see a dark shape on the asphalt, obviously not a tire.

Harrison Ronald Ford leveled the automatic with both hands, trying in the gloom to sight along the rounded top of the silencer.

Shit! This is crazy! He could not see well enough to really aim, even if he had had sights.

He lay there breathing rapidly, staring across the top of the weapon at the dark shape five cars over. The seconds ticked by.

He was going to have to do something.

If he went back to the spot that he had fired from, the man would have a clean shot between the cars at him. If he went along the first row, the same thing would eventually occur.

If the guy were still alive and conscious, that is.

Harrison Ronald wiped the sweat from his face with a sleeve.

Fuck!

He was sure as hell going to have to do something.

He got to his feet and rounded the front of the car he had been lying beside. The green sedan was plainly visible. Moving carefully, silently — he was wearing rubber-soled running shoes — he went toward it with the pistol grasped tightly with both hands, the safety off.

Kneeling on the asphalt, Ford tried again to see the fallen man between the tires. He saw a piece of him the second time, apparently still in the same place and position.

He rounded the front of the green car with the pistol ready and fired the instant it covered the man sprawled there on his side beside the front tire.

He needn’t have bothered. Vinnie Pioche was already dead.

When Jake Grafton left the Pentagon, Callie was waiting out front in the car. The buses and subways didn’t run at these hours of the night. Jake climbed in and sighed. “I called home. Amy said you were here. How long have you been waiting?”

“Two hours.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Jake,” Callie said as they hugged each other. “I was so worried about you today. Amy called me at school. She was distraught, almost hysterical. They’ve run film clips on TV, over and over, all evening. The attorney general getting shot, the Secret Service agents ready to blast the first person who twitched, and you’re standing up and looking around like a damned fool.”

“Story of my life,” he muttered.

“Hug me again, Jacob Lee.”

“With pleasure,” he said and gave her another squeeze and a kiss. She drew away finally and looked at him with her arms around his neck. “Your mother called.”

He nodded. There was nothing to say.

“Oh, Jake!”

Finally she released him and put the car in motion.

The radio was on. Something about a huge fire in northeast Washington.

“What’s that all about?” he asked.

“Haven’t you heard? Somebody attacked a row house. Set half the block on fire.”

“When?”

“About ten tonight. Have you been working on this National Guard thing all evening?”

Jake nodded and turned up the radio volume.

“What’s happening, Jake? Assassinations, battles … it’s almost like a war.”

“It is a war.” After listening a minute, he snapped the radio off. “This is just the first battle. The have-nots versus the haves.”

“Have you eaten?”

“No, but I’m going to drop you at the apartment building. I need the car for a while. There’s somebody I need to go see.”

“Oh, Jake! Not tonight! You need some sleep. Why, the sun will be up in a few hours.”

Jake Grafton grunted and sat watching the empty streets.

“Let me come with you.”

“You go home and stay with Amy. I’ll be home in an hour or so.”

“They had Mrs. Cohen on television tonight, coming out of the hospital after seeing her husband. And Mrs. Bush. And Mrs. Quayle. This whole mess, it’s so evil!”

“Ummm,” Jake said, still watching the occasional passing car, wondering vaguely who was driving and where they were going at this hour of the night. The problem, he knew, was that the Colombian narco-terrorists knew exactly what they were fighting for and they wanted it very badly. They wanted a place in the sun.

“What I can’t figure out is why Dan Quayle called out the National Guard instead of bringing in Army troops.”

“Who knows?” her husband replied. “Maybe he got tired of all the flak he caught in ’88 about joining the Guard to avoid service in Vietnam. Maybe he’s going to show everybody what a fine fighting outfit the Guard is.”

“Doesn’t that bother you, his avoiding Vietnam?”

Jake Grafton snorted. “I seem to recall that back then most of the guys my age were trying to avoid going to Vietnam. In some quarters the quest took on religious status.”

“You went,” she said.

“Hell, Callie, half the country is still discriminating against Vietnam veterans. The U.S. government says Agent Orange never hurt anybody.”

“You went,” she repeated.

Jake Grafton thought about that for a moment. Finally he said, “I was always a slow child.”

His wife reached out and squeezed his hand. He squeezed hers in return.

Harrison Ronald Ford didn’t hesitate. He wrestled the dead weight that had been Vinnie Pioche into the backseat of the green sedan. He tossed the shotgun into the front seat, then got behind the wheel. The keys were still in the ignition.

He started the car. Three quarters of a tank of gas.

How had two New York hoods gotten by the Marine sentries at the gate?

Leaving the car idling, he got out and walked around to look at the front bumper. Residing there was a nice blue Department of Defense officer’s sticker. Clean and new.

Harrison got back behind the wheel. He closed the door and sat looking at the door that Fat Tony had gone through on his way upstairs to kill him as he waited for his heart to slow down and his breathing to get back to normal. His hands were still shaking from the adrenal aftershock.

These two worked for the Costello-Shapiro family in New York, the Big Bad Apple. Well, tonight they had been attending to a little chore for Freeman McNally.

Harrison had no proof of course, but he didn’t need any. He knew Freeman McNally. Freeman had succeeded at an extremely risky enterprise by killing anyone in whom he had the slightest doubt. Why Anselmo and Pioche had agreed to do this little job for Freeman was an interesting question, but one that would probably never be answered. A favor for a new business associate? Good ol’ Freeman. A friend indeed.

Ford got out of the car again and closed the door. He looked for the spent shell of the last round he had fired into friend Vinnie. It had been flipped fifteen feet to the right of where he stood. He pocketed it and went back through the lot to find the others. The search took three minutes, but he found them.

Back behind the wheel of the car, he picked up the automatic and popped the clip from the handle. Still held six rounds. He slipped the clip back in place and put the safety on.

Other men would come after him, of course. If Freeman could reach him here in the FBI barracks at Quantico he could reach him anywhere — in a police car in Evansville, a barracks on Okinawa, a hut on a beach in Tasmania—anywhere.

It took Harrison Ronald about ten seconds to decide. Not really. It took him ten seconds before he was ready to announce the decision to himself.

It’s the only choice I’ve got, he told himself.

He had actually made the decision before he stuffed Vinnie in the backseat and picked up the shells, but now it was official.

Harrison Ronald put the car in gear and fed gas. He coasted through the parking lot, avoiding the little driveway that went up by the office, and headed for the main gate and the interstate to Washington.

It was funny, when you thought about it. He had been scared silly for ten months, day and night and in between, and now he wasn’t. He should have been, but he wasn’t. As he drove along he even whistled.

Jake Grafton parked the car three blocks from what was left of Willie Teal’s place and walked. Fire trucks and hoses were everywhere. Cops accosted him.

He showed them his military ID. Since he was still in uniform, he was allowed to pass.

Standing across the street from Willie Teal’s, Jake Grafton marveled. The entire row from here to the corner was a smoking ruin. Six firemen played water on the wreckage by the light of three big portable floodlights. Behind a yellow police-line tape, several hundred black people stood watching, occasionally pointing.

Jake turned to the nearest policeman and said to him, “I’m looking for a reporter named Jack Yocke. Seen him around?”

“Young? Late twenties? Yeah. Saw him a while ago. Look over there, why don’cha?”

Yocke was interviewing a woman. He scribbled furiously in his notebook and occasionally tossed in a question. At one point he looked up and saw Grafton. He thanked the woman, spoke to her in a low, inaudible tone, then walked toward the naval officer.

“Somebody said the fireman had used enough water to float a battleship, but we certainly didn’t expect to see the Navy show up to take advantage of that fact.”

“Who did this?”

Yocke’s eyebrows went up. “The police are right over there. They’re working their side of the street and I’m working mine. My version will be in tomorrow’s paper.”

“Gimme a straight answer.”

Yocke grinned. “Prevailing opinion is that Freeman McNally just put a competitor out of business. Off the record, with a guarantee of anonymity, witnesses tell me four cars, eight men. They used grenade launchers. Just sat in the cars cool as ice cubes in January and fired grenades through the windows. The firemen and police are still carting bodies out of Teal’s place. Ain’t pretty.”

“You about finished here?”

Yocke shrugged.

“I want to have a little talk. Off the record, of course.”

“Is there any other way?”

Yocke led the way toward his car. Walking toward it he asked, “You hungry?”

“Yeah.”

They went to an all-night restaurant, a Denny’s, and got a seat well back from the door. The place was almost empty. After they had ordered, Jake said, “Tell me about this town. Tell me about Washington.”

“You didn’t come out here in the middle of the night to get a civics lecture.”

“I want to know how Washington works.”

“If you find out, you’ll be the only one who knows.”

“Okay, Jack Yocke, The Washington Post’s star cynic, let’s hear it.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

Yocke took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, then settled himself comfortably behind his podium. “Metropolitan Washington is basically three cities. The first, and largest, is composed of federal government employees who live in the suburbs and commute. This is the richest, most stable community in the country. They are well paid, well educated, and never face layoffs or mergers or takeovers or competition or shrinking profit margins. It’s a socialist Utopia. These people and the suburbanites who provide goods and services to them are Democrats: big government pays their wages and they believe in it with all the fervor of Jesus clinging to the cross.

“The second group, the smallest, is made up of the movers and shakers, the elected and appointed officials who make policy. This is official Washington, the Georgetown cocktail-party power elite. These people are the actors on the national stage: their audience is out there beyond the beltway. They’re in the city but never a part of it.

“The last group are the inner-city residents, who are seventy percent black. This group only works in federal office buildings at night, when they clean them. The city of Washington is the biggest employer; forty-six thousand jobs for a population of about 586,000 people in the district.”

Jake whistled. “Isn’t that high?”

“One in every thirteen people works for the city. Highest average in the nation. But major industry dried up in Washington years ago, leaving only service jobs — waiters, maids, bus drivers, and so on. So the politicians create jobs, just like in Russia. The inner-city residents, like the suburbanites and the residents of every major inner city in the country, are also Democrats. They cling to big government like calves to the tit.”

“So what the hell is wrong?” Jake Grafton asked.

“Depends on who you ask. The black militants and the political preachers — that’s all the preachers, by the way — claim it’s racism. The liberals — you have to be rich and white to have enough guilt to fit into this category — claim it’s all the fault of a parsimonious government, a government that doesn’t do enough. I’ve never met a liberal yet who thought we had enough government. This even though the district has one of the highest tax rates in the country and the federal government kicks in a thousand bucks a head for every man, woman, and child every year.”

Jack Yocke shrugged grandly. “To continue my tale, the schools in the suburbs are as good as any in the country. The schools in the inner city are right down there with the worst — fifty percent dropout rate, crime, drugs, abysmal test scores, poisonous race relations — by every measure abominable. The average inner-city resident is ignorant as a post, poor as a church mouse, paranoid about racial matters, and lives in a decaying slum. He collects a government check and complains about potholes that are never filled and garbage that is never hauled away while the local politicians orate and posture and play racial politics for all they’re worth and steal everything that isn’t nailed down. He’ll vote for Marion Barry for mayor even though he knows the man is probably a drug addict and a perjurer because Barry uses the white establishment as a scapegoat for all his troubles.

“Speaking frankly, the District of Columbia is a Third World shithole. The local leaders are quacks, demagogues, and outright thieves. Public schools and hospitals are appallingly bad, tens of millions of dollars of public funds have been stolen or squandered, charges of racism are endemic. The Washington Monthly magazine said the District has ‘the worst government in America,’ which is probably true. A U.S. senator called it the most corrupt and most incompetent urban government in America. With me so far?”

Their food came. The waitress asked if they needed anything else and they both shook their heads. When she was gone, Yocke continued:

“Except for tourism and government, the District has no other economic base, nothing to create middle-class jobs. Its people don’t believe in self-help or education. They blame all their woes on the U.S. government. If this place were in Central America or Africa, Barry would have proclaimed himself ‘maximum leader’ or ‘president for life.’ Since they have the misfortune to be surrounded by the United States, however, they want this sixty-four-square-mile banana republic to become the fifty-first state.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

With his mouth full of a bite of BLT, Jake said, “Being a state won’t help.”

“Of course not. But Marion Barry can be governor and Jesse Jackson can be a senator. The Democrats will get a bigger majority in the House and Senate and three automatic electoral votes. What more do you want, for Christ’s sake?”

“You really are a cynic, aren’t you?”

“Oh, come off it, you overpaid nincompoop in a sailor suit. I’ve been a reporter in this town for three years. I go out every night and look at the bodies. I spend evenings at the emergency room of D.C. General with the abused kids, the wives beat half to death, the overdoses, the gunshot victims who won’t tell who shot them, the rape victims. I stand in the courthouse halls and watch the attorneys plea-bargain, selling their clients’ constitutional rights for a reduced sentence or probation. I go to the jails and look at the same old faces again and again and again. I talk to the victims of muggings, robbery, burglary, auto theft. Human carnage is the name of my game, mister. Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Three years,” Jake Grafton sighed. “It’s too long, yet it’s not long enough.”

The reporter suddenly looked tired. No doubt his day had been as long as Jake’s. He said, “No doubt you’d feel better if I had said ten years. Let’s change it. Ten years’ experience it is.”

“You’re floating down a sewer in a glass-bottom boat, Yocke. Sooner or later you have to get in and swim.”

“You think I’m to blame for some of this?”

“I read the paper. I haven’t seen any of this with your byline.”

“You ought to read the paper more carefully,” Yocke said. He rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “There’s a whole bunch of very talented people who think their mission in life is to write all of it — the good, the bad, and every subtle nuance in between. They put all of it in the paper. The hell of it is nobody pays any attention. It’s like tossing pebbles into the Atlantic Ocean. Doesn’t even disturb the fish.”

Jake took a sip of coffee, then helped himself to another bite of BLT. After he’d chewed and swallowed, he said, “You’ve heard about the National Guard deal. How will that go, in this city you describe?”

Yocke took his time. He drank some coffee and slathered the remainder of his sandwich with more mustard. “I don’t know. If the troops are just going to stand around public buildings looking spiffy and the shooters stay home, everything will go swimmingly. Absent a charge of child molestation, Quayle will be our next president.”

“Why’d you say if?”

“You’d be home in bed, Captain, if that was all there was to it. Neither of us rode in yesterday on a hay wagon.”

Grafton caught the waitress’ eye and held his cup aloft. She brought the pot and gave him a refill.

After swallowing his last bite of sandwich, Yocke continued: “A lot of people in this town are fed up to here with these dopers and politicians. They’ve been demanding action and getting politics as usual. Something is going to give.”

“What’re you saying? There’s going to be a revolution?”

“Packed emergency rooms, innocent people slaughtered, children starving and neglected and abused, jails packed full as sardine cans, cops fighting for their lives. Now I’ll tell you, a lot of little people are sick and tired of going to funerals. They’ve had it. And you know what? I don’t think the political cretins have a clue. They’re dancing between the raindrops blaming the big bad Colombians and the white establishment and the National Rifle Association.”

Jack Yocke threw up his hands. “Ah well, even Fidel Castro got the message finally, just before they shot him.”

Jake nodded. “Yeah.”

A few minutes later, Yocke asked, “Why’d you stand up today when they shot at Quayle?”

“Stupid, I guess.”

“Captain, whatever you are, stupid isn’t on the list.”

“Wondered where the shot came from. Took a look.”

Yocke’s eyebrows went up and down once. “Well, thanks for the sandwich.” He shoved the check across toward Grafton.

“Any time.”

Approaching Freeman’s house, for the first time in a long time Harrison Ronald did not feel the dread. He didn’t drive by, of course. After the fracas earlier this evening over at Teal’s Freeman would have a squad of men in front and another squad of men in back, some of whom would inevitably recognize Sammy Z.

Harrison parked two blocks away and walked.

The streets were silent and empty. Amazingly quiet. A gentle breeze made the tree limb shadows cast by streetlights stir and shake.

He was behind a car, crouching, when he got his first look at the end of the alley. A streetlight was on the pole. But there was no one in sight. No guard.

Odd.

Using the cars for cover he worked his way to the alley and looked down it. He couldn’t see anyone.

He went down the alley with the automatic in his hand, flitting from shadow to shadow, pausing occasionally to look and listen. Nothing.

Even Freeman’s backyard was empty.

Nobody home. Okay, where would he be? Three or four possibilities suggested themselves, and as he mulled them Harrison Ronald tried the back door. Locked. He pounded loudly on the door with the butt of the pistol and stood to one side.

Thirty seconds passed, then a minute. He put the muzzle of the silenced pistol against the lock and pulled the trigger.

Inside the lights were off. He proceeded slowly, warily. The house was empty.

In the weapons room he wiped the prints from the automatic, even popped the magazine out and wiped that off on a handy cleaning rag, and tossed it into the box with the others. He selected another automatic with a silencer already attached, loaded it, and helped himself to a couple more loaded magazines. He was about to leave when a silenced Uzi caught his eye. Why not? He took it and four magazines of 9-mm ammo.

Leaving the Uzi inside the back door, he pulled the door shut behind him. He trotted down the alley and the two blocks to the car, then drove it back.

He maneuvered it into the parking area and dragged Vinnie from the car. God, the body was heavy! The corpse hadn’t been this heavy when he loaded it into the car. Or perhaps he had been too pumped to notice.

He put Vinnie in the easy chair in front of the television, then turned the set on. The rest of the lights he unplugged.

Another trip to the car for Vinnie’s twelve-gauge, which he laid across the dead man’s lap. The empty brass casings in his pocket he tossed around the room after wiping them.

When he started the car, he thought for a moment, trying to decide if there was anything else he wanted to do.

Yeah. Come to think of it …

Standing in the door to the living room, he sprayed a magazine of 9-mm slugs from the Uzi. Above the guttural buzzing of the silenced weapon the sound of the television shattering and the slugs slapping the plasterboard was plainly audible.

That magazine spent, he loaded another and went into the bedroom. Three bursts there, then into the kitchen where he finished out the magazine on the refrigerator and oven and dishes in the cabinets. He put another magazine in and emptied it in Freeman’s bathroom into the toilet and the bathtub and the mirror and sink. The shattered porcelain and glass flew everywhere.

This was like pissing on Hitler’s picture. Somehow it just wasn’t enough.

He went back to the storeroom and got some more magazines for the Uzi. He looked around. Under the couch where the boxes of ammo were stored was a cardboard box half full of grenades. Harrison helped himself.

What would you have to do to make Freeman McNally pay enough? For what he did to the Ike Randolphs, for what he did to all the people he peddled his poison to, for all the unspeakable misery and pain this man gave the world so that he could line his pockets—for what he did to Harrison Ronald Ford—what would you have to do to McNally to even the balance in the ledger?

The filthy fuck would have to scream until his soul shattered.

Seven cars were parked outside the Sanitary Bakery warehouse, including Freeman’s big Mercedes. No guards in sight outside. Maybe they were all inside having a snort and a drink, still celebrating the big party at Willie Teal’s.

Sitting here in the green sedan looking it over — this was really weird — Harrison Ronald wasn’t scared. Not the least. He felt good, real good, like he had had a snort. He had never told the FBI agents of course, and would never tell anyone else, but he had had to snort the stuff in front of Ike and Billy Enright, and a couple times in front of Freeman and his brothers, just to prove his bona fides. Feds and cops would never touch the shit, according to street wisdom.

It had been tough leaving the stuff alone after he had used it more or less regularly for several months. Excruciatingly difficult. But that wasn’t the hardest part. He had been nervous, scared, all along, but after doing the coke he had his first real attacks of paranoia, and they hadn’t ceased, no doubt because he had plenty to be paranoid about. All he had to fight it had been grit and determination. They weren’t enough.

But now all those waves of panic and loose-boweled terror were gone. He had made up his mind. He was going to attack. Maybe die.

And he felt good, real good.

He parked the car on the north side of the warehouse by the chain-link fence where the garbage trucks were kept and locked it after he got out.

The neighborhood was quiet enough — only traffic sounds coming across the railroad tracks from New York Avenue. That and the low guttural snarls of the two Dobermans on the other side of the fence. He stood looking between the garbage trucks at the slab-sided black bulk of the building. There was a door over there somewhere. He had seen it before during the daylight.

He used the silenced pistol on the dogs. Two shots each. The Dobermans went down like they were sledge-hammered.

The gate through the ten-foot-high fence was held together by a big chain with a padlock on it. Two shots for the padlock, then sixty seconds to unwrap the chain, squeeze through, then wrap it again.

The door was nailed shut with a two-by-six across it. No doubt there was other timber on the other side. He tried to remember if he had noticed this door in his many walks through the interior. If he had, he would remember, but he didn’t. Still, there was undoubtedly concrete and steel in there somewhere for the bullets to ricochet from. The sound of the full-metal-jacketed 9-mm slugs spanging through the old warehouse would certainly announce his arrival. And his intentions.

Well, here goes nothing.

He sawed the board in half with half a magazine from the Uzi, then kicked at the center of it with all his strength. It gave.

He kicked three or four times. The noise was loud here. It was probably echoing all over that huge mausoleum. Yet apparently something was holding the upper part of the door on the inside. He used the rest of the magazine on the point of resistance and kicked some more. It sagged.

Empty magazine out, new magazine in, Uzi ready, he gave one last mighty kick and the door flew open. Harrison Ronald dived through and rolled sideways, right into a wall.

He lay there for a second, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. He was under a stair that led up to the second-floor balcony. The main stairwell that led to the upper levels was off to his left. The room that the guard was in — that the front door opened into — was off to his right on the other side of the building.

He heard someone running.

Up, moving to his right along the wall, the Uzi ready. He could see the light coming from the doorway to the guard room. The door was open. The only other light in the place came from a naked bulb on the third-floor landing on the east end of the building. But it was so high and far away the light seemed to get lost in the cavernous space.

A flash and a loud report came from behind a box against the far wall. The bullet hit near Ford’s head. He scuttled toward the darkness, away from the open door.

Another shot. And another.

He used the Uzi. A three-shot burst. Little flashes against the masonry where the jacketed bullets hit. He fired again, not trying to aim in the semidarkness, just walking the slugs in. The third burst drew a scream.

Ford was up and running for the stair at the east end of the huge room when two wild shots from the screaming man sailed by. He kept going, running hard, and was in time to see the vague outline of someone coming down the stairs.

Harrison Ronald triggered a long burst at the stairway as he ran. The figure slumped and went down. From fifteen feet away he triggered a short burst into the body, then took cover beside the stairway, breathing hard.

His heart was thudding like a trip-hammer, yet he felt good, oh, so good. He should have done this six months ago.

The first man he had shot was still screaming. And cursing, the high-pitched wail of a man in agony. Like Ike Randolph in his final moments.

Someone above him on the balcony fired at him and a shard of something struck his face. It stung. He wiped at it. Wet. Blood.

Whoever was up there was moving — he could hear him.

Harrison dug a grenade from his coat pocket, got the pin out, and holding the Uzi in his left hand, came out of the darkness running and lofted the grenade upward with a basketball sky-hook shot.

The damn thing might come bouncing down before it popped, but what the hell. End it here.

It didn’t. The grenade went off with a flash and boom that was painful in this huge masonry echo chamber. A big piece of the wooden balcony rail came crashing down, the gunman in the midst of it. He landed with a splat a dozen feet from Ford and lay where he had fallen as the dust and dirt settled around and on him.

“Hey, down there!”

The shout came from upstairs.

“I don’t know who the hell you are down there but you’d better stop this shit, man!”

It sounded, Harrison decided, like Billy Enright. Maybe at the head of the stairs.

The stairs were pretty conventional. They went upward to a landing against the outer wall, then turned 180 degrees and went on up to the second floor, the balcony level. And so on, a landing between each floor, up to the fourth floor. If Ford could gain the balcony everyone above him was trapped. This was the only exit from the higher floors.

He tiptoed up the stairs and stopped on the step prior to the landing. He took out another grenade and pulled the pin. Then he stood, listening and waiting.

“There’s five of us up here, man, and we’re all armed.” It sounded like Billy was right around the corner at the head of the stairs, standing on the balcony. His voice was tense, wound tight. “I think,” he continued, “that you’re only one—”

Ford leaned around the corner and tossed the grenade.

“Fuck! You fuck—”

The concussion of the explosion was intensely painful in this confined space. Some of the shrapnel ricocheted against the wall and bounced off Ford, too spent to penetrate.

Harrison Ronald rounded the corner with the Uzi spraying and charged up the stairs two at a time.

Billy Enright sat with his back to the waist-high balcony rail, trying to hold his guts in with both hands. In the center of his ripped-apart face his eyes widened in recognition. He opened his mouth, but only blood came out. Then he slowly toppled sideways.

Ford heard a laugh. From someplace. Where? He moved back into the stairwell and scanned the balcony, trying to see.

“You get him, Billy?”

Freeman McNally.

“Naw, Freeman. Billy’s lying here trying to hold his guts in. Maybe you got a cheerful word for him. He could use it right now.”

Another laugh. “Well, well, well. If it ain’t our good buddy the fucking stoolie, Sammy Z.”

“I ain’t a stoolie, Freeman. I’m a cop. The FBI put me in to get the goods on you. And I got ’em. Ten fucking months worth. They got it all. You’re gonna be in jail until you’re too old to get it up, Freeman, if you make it through tonight, which is very doubtful.”

McNally laughed again. It sounded like he was somewhere above, maybe on the fourth floor, talking out of one of the interior windows.

“This ain’t your night, Freeman. You get lucky and kill me, you’re going straight to the butt-fuck house. I hear all those homos got AIDS, man. They’ll be delighted to see your tight little cherry ass.”

“Well, you got one thing right, Sammy. I am sure as hell gonna kill you.”

“It’s already been tried tonight, Freeman. I hope you didn’t waste any money on Vinnie and Tony. They won’t ever be able to pay you back.”

Ford heard a noise above him, in the stairwell. Someone was coming down. “I’m gonna kill you slow, real slow,” McNally said, “like I did ol’ Ike. You’re gonna fucking beg for a bullet, boy.”

Ford ascended the stairs, both hands on the Uzi. He was four steps up when the top of a head peeped around the corner. Ford pulled the trigger and held it down.

The body plopped out from behind the wall onto the landing. Brains and blood were scattered all over the wall behind.

“Little hard to tell, Freeman,” Ford called, “but I think you just lost a brother.”

He paused and changed magazines, then stepped over the corpse and kept going. Ahead of him was the glare of the naked bulb on top of the landing. He shot it out. The pieces of glass fell with a tinkle, leaving the stairwell in total darkness. All he could hear was the moans of the guard on the warehouse floor.

Harrison Ronald waited for his eyes to adjust.

Finally, when he realized he could see all he was going to see, he eased his head around the corner and looked. It was like looking into a coal mine at midnight. Nothing. Same the other way.

He got out two grenades. Pin out of one, he tossed it down the hall to his left, then the other to the right. He had no more than got his hand back in when the first one went off. Then the second. Like two thunderclaps.

Silence.

Total silence. Like a tomb.

He wanted to talk, taunt Freeman about Ike, make the bastard suffer before he died. But he knew better. He stood silently, listening and trying to breathe slowly and noiselessly.

He was standing like that when he heard the explosion just behind him and felt the numbing shock of the bullet rip into him.

Harrison staggered. He dropped the Uzi and went to his hands and knees.

Something grabbed his throat and squeezed viciously. McNally had come down the staircase from above.

“I got him, Ruben, I got him!”

His neck — he couldn’t breathe …

Ford reached back, groping desperately. His hand found its target and he grabbed all he could get and pulled with all his strength.

Screaming, Freeman McNally released his neck hold as Ford twisted and squeezed and tore, trying to rip his balls off. Screaming high and loud in unbearable pain as Harrison Ronald filled his lungs and physically lifted the man with his right hand as he levered himself up.

Harrison got his left hand on McNally’s neck and pushed him back against the wall, then smashed his head again as he tried to literally rip the man’s testicles from his body.

The scream was choked off in McNally’s throat. Another smash into the wall and Ford lost his grip. He spun the man to a better angle and drew back his right hand to smash his larynx, just as someone arrived and fired a weapon.

Ford threw Freeman aside and lunged. The weapon flew and his fist connected with something soft. He struck savagely, again and again and again as hard as he could until the man he was pummeling went limp.

He was losing blood. He could feel the wetness. And he was weakening.

Neither of the other two men moved.

He fumbled in his pocket for the little penlight he had taken from Tony Anselmo. When was that?

Ruben McNally was apparently dead, his nose bone rammed up between his eyes.

Freeman’s eyes stared at nothing, refused to focus.

Harrison Ronald felt Freeman’s carotid artery. No heartbeat.

Furious, he rolled him over. A bullet dead center in the back, right between the shoulder blades. Shot by his own brother!

“You … you … you …”

Ford was also hit in the back and he knew it. Unless he got medical attention quickly he would probably bleed to death, hemorrhage into a lung or something.

“You …,” he told Freeman’s frozen face, then couldn’t think of anything to add. A wave of pain and nausea swept over him.

“Oh God, help me.”

He got to his feet and started down the stairs, then tripped and almost fell. The flashlight hit the concrete and broke. It wasn’t much of a light anyway. He kept going.

“God, forgive me for … for … please forgive me.”

He tripped over a body and fell down the last flight of stairs. He lay there in the darkness with death creeping over him.

“No!”

Somehow he got to his feet and saw the light coming through the door to the guard’s office a hundred feet away. He staggered in that direction.

The man behind the equipment box against the south wall was silent. Unconscious or dead. At least Ford didn’t hear him as he shuffled by.

He got the phone off the hook and punched 911. “Sanitary Bakery warehouse,” he told the operator as he threw the switch to electrically unlock the front door.

“The address and your name, please!” she said. His legs were shaking and he was having trouble seeing. “Send the FBI and an ambulance. Better hurry. FBI…” The phone slipped out of his grasp and he was falling. “I’m dying,” he said. Then the blackness swept over him.