No Mercy

Chapter Forty-four

Dom entered the sanctuary through the side door and locked it behind him. He made a beeline for the space behind the confessionals where a semiconcealed door led to the concrete stairway into the basement. As intimidating an underground space as Dom had ever seen, the cavernous basement under St. Kate’s had been blasted out of solid rock during construction back in the thirties, and as far as Dom knew, it still contained every item that had ever been deposited there. Boxes of old bulletins and stacks of broken furniture lined the walls, and in the middle, stoutly constructed metal shelves held all manner of old toys, tools, gardening equipment, and even three cases of beer that might have dated back to Prohibition. Even with the overhead lights turned on, you needed a flashlight to find anything. Over the years, Dom had considered assigning children to the task of cleaning the place up as a form of particularly aggressive penance, but always backed off in the end.

He hurried to the far side and pushed an ancient Nativity scene out of the way to gain access to the mostly blocked heavy door that would take him into Jonathan’s tunnel. A crooked picture hid the keypad, which was recessed into the concrete wall.

Dom settled himself before entering the code, knowing that he only had three shots at getting it right. He punched the 14 numbers carefully, using the ridiculous mnemonic that he’d never shared with anyone. “TRA HELEFUNT BOX” produced the numeric code, 8-7-2-4-3-5-3-3-8-6-8-2-0-9, an entirely random cipher. He pressed Enter, listened as the locks slid out of place, and then pushed the heavy panel open. Using the green glow from his cell phone, he found the light switch. Fluorescent light tubes flickered to life, revealing the passage.

Once inside, he didn’t bother to close the door on his end. Instead, he took the eight steps to the tile floor in two strides, and ran the distance to the other end, where another heavy door stood between him and the basement of the firehouse. As he entered the identical code, it occurred to him that he’d never passed through this portal without Jonathan at his side. In fact, be believed that this was the first time he’d even been in the tunnel alone. What would be the point? When the locking pin cleared, he pushed on the door to open it.

It resisted him. It felt as if something on the other side was in the way. He pushed harder, and when the door still pushed back, he gave it everything he had. The door gave way, and as it did, Dom realized what had been holding it back.

He’d forgotten about the empty oil tank that Jonathan used to ca angry look at Venice, but whatever it was had startled her, too.

He snatched his cell phone from the desk and pushed a button. “What the hell was that?” he asked. He spoke into it as if it were a walkie-talkie.

“What was what?” a voice asked.

“That bang. I heard a big bang.”

“I heard nothin’ out front,” the voice said.

“What about you, Garino?” Charlie asked.

A different voice said, “I didn’t hear anything either.”

Charlie scowled. “You seen anything unusual?”

“I’ve seen nothin’,” the first voice said. “Not even any people, for Christ sake. This is one dead town. Only thing I saw was a priest out for a night stroll.”

Venice’s heart jumped.

Charlie’s eyes narrowed as he looked straight through her. Into the radio, he said, “Garino, I want you to come in through the back and check out the downstairs.”

“What am I looking for?” Garino wasn’t being difficult; his question sounded heartfelt.

“Anything,” Charlie said. “A priest, maybe.” As he said that, he watched Venice and smiled. “And if you see one, shoot him.”

“You want me to shoot a priest?” He sounded horrified.

“A little late to worry about hell, don’t you think?” Charlie jabbed. “Let me know whatever you see.”

Thomas fell hard onto the wooden porch, and as he did, the tree line became a light show of flashing strobes. Bullets slammed all around him, pulverizing the wall and the floor and peppering him with shredded wood. Moving faster than he knew he was capable of, he rolled two times to his left and dropped from the porch onto the ground, where a long divot caused by years of rainwater erosion along the front edge of the porch provided some shelter.

“Thomas, get in here!” his mother shouted.

“Jesus, Mom, shoot!”

This was a really, really bad idea. He was in the middle of a war without a weapon, with the whole world trying to shoot him. Paralyzed by terror, he tried to figure a way to move either backward or forward without getting torn to pieces. Pressing himself into the ditch, he inchwormed backward, parallel to the porch, until he was even with where he thought the now-silent screaming man had fallen.

Suddenly the man’s gun and ammunition seemed less important. With remarkable clarity, he decided that he was fucked. The moment he raised his head, he would die.

Then he heard the rapid fire of a machine gun from behind him, and his father’s voice yelled, “Go get it, Thomas! I’ll keep their heads down.”

It was his best chance. Thomas closed his eyes, made himself as skinny as possible, and hoisted himself out of the trench onto his belly. He kept his butt low as he crawled like a frightened lizard toward the lump that was the fallen attacker.

A giant crescendo of incoming gunfire made him cringe, but the piercing impact of a bullet never came. In fact, the bad guys’ aim seemed to have worsened. His dad’s distraction was working, drawing fire away from him toward the front window.

Quickening his pace, he dug his fingers and toes into the cold hard ground, filling his sinuses with the smell of dirt and his own fear. Then there was something else, a horrific stench that brought images of rotted dog shit. The ground grew damp, and within a few feet, it became wet and slipperfinally was upon the body-and that’s clearly what it was now, with its open eyes and lolling tongue-he realized that he was lying in the man’s spilled intestines.

The horror of it hit Thomas hard. Without thought or preamble, he vomited all over both of them.

Jesus God, what had he done to this man?

Two bullets slammed into the dead man’s side, and two more whizzed past Thomas’s head, their supersonic whip crack pounding his eardrums.

Fuck this. Now was not the time for reflection or regret. It was time to load up with ammunition and make more of these bastards look like their friend here.

The dead man’s rifle-an M16, Thomas remembered from the History Channel-lay on the ground next to the body. He snagged it by its sling with his right hand, and pulled it in close. But a rifle by itself was no good without the ammunition to feed it, and this dead man carried his ammunition all over his body, the way that Scorpion did. Thomas started to remove the man’s vest, until another near hit changed his mind. Grabbing the man by his collar, he dragged him back toward the shelter of the divot. He ignored the long rope of entrails that snaked along behind them.

Jonathan tried one more time to raise someone on the radio, and cursed at the continued silence. He considered that the Hugheses might be dead, but if so, then who was everybody shooting at up there? Given the heat of the battle, he was willing to forgive Stephenson for losing track of his radio, but there was no excuse for Venice leaving her post like this.

He crossed the final rise and saw the scale of the assault being mounted against the lodge. This really was a war.

Ivan’s strategy was obvious. The attackers had formed a wide V-shaped formation, coming at the lodge from its front and right. He imagined that there were attackers in the rear, as well, but that part of the house was invisible from his angle. Jonathan cursed himself for having underestimated his opponent. There wasn’t much he could have done differently, short of reading Ivan’s mind, but that didn’t change the fact that their tactical situation sucked.

He keyed his radio. “Hey Box, are you close?”

“Right behind, you,” he said, inches away from Jonathan’s ear.

He damn near shit his pants. “Goddammit, don’t do that.”

Boxers laughed. “This doesn’t look good for the good guys,” he said.

“Yeah, well, just wait.” He explained what he wanted to do.

To Dom’s ears, the crash of the oil tank was louder than an explosion. It reverberated off the concrete walls, echoing like a gunshot in the Grand Canyon.

Running was out of the question. If Venice was in trouble, he had to help her out. And staying put was out of the question, too. The words of a long-forgotten football coach bloomed in his memory: If you’re not moving forward, then you’re going backward. Reborn in the acid bath of panic, he heard the advice as, If you don’t get out of this basement, you’re going to die.

Again using the light of his cell phone as a guide, he navigated through the assembled junk and glided up the stairs into the old hose tower, and from there, through the utility room. He held his breath as he cracked the door to the living room open an inch and looked around. Everything looked as it always did: neat, organized. In the glow of the street light that painted parallelograms of light through the old bay doors, he could make out the outlines of the furniture. There continuhovrom the end of the porch you can run around-”

A fusillade of bullets ripped at the floor of the porch just above Thomas’s head. They’d locked in on his position. He needed to move. Now. His only viable plan was to emerge from the trench as fast as he could, then dash around back and hope that there weren’t a thousand bad guys waiting for him.

“Thomas, did you-”

“I heard you!” he shouted. And so did everybody else, he thought. Where the hell was Scorpion?

He rose to his knees, with his elbows still pressed to the ground, butt up, then raised his head to take a look. The flashes in the trees had become people now, and they were moving toward him in a wide line that ran parallel to the front of the cabin. With the distorted vision, he had no idea how far they were, but it couldn’t have been more than forty or fifty yards.

On impulse, Thomas brought his new rifle to his shoulder, rested the forestock against the ground, and picked a target. He squeezed the trigger just as he’d been taught, and jumped as the muzzle spit out a long burst in full-automatic mode. The target he’d picked flopped like a rag doll onto the ground, and the four or five attackers closest to him dove for cover.

His hidey hole became the battleground’s most popular target. Bullets shredded the wood and churned the turf at the edge of the porch. Thomas heaved himself out of the trench onto the open ground, falling forward into the grass and eating a mouthful of turf. Behind him, the section of ground he’d just left was consumed by a sustained burst of incoming fire. Scrambling to get his balance, his feet found traction and he ran for the nearest corner of the house.

Three steps later, a sharp jolt slammed him hard and he yelled in horror and pain as his leg hinged up at mid-thigh and his own foot kicked him in the face.

Venice could see the fear in Charlie Warren’s eyes and hear it in his voice as he tried unsuccessfully to raise his people on the radio. He glared at her. “What’s going on?”

Completely immobile, and at the whim of this man who seemed intent on killing, Venice opted to say nothing.

“Do you know a priest?” Charlie asked.

“We live next to a church,” she said. “This is a small town.”

“What would he be doing here?”

She shook her head. “I have no idea.”

“Call out to him. Tell him that you’re busy and can’t be disturbed.”

That didn’t even make sense, she thought. Why would she say such a thing?

“Say it,” Charlie repeated. This time he pressed his pistol to her head. “If I see anyone, I’m going to shoot.”

“Dom!” she shouted. “Is that you?” If nothing else, maybe she could save his life.

No one responded.

“Is that the priest’s name?” Charlie asked. “Dom?”

Venice nodded.

“Tell him to stay away.”

She took a breath. “Dom, if that’s you, I don’t have time for you. I’m busy.”

Again, no reply.

“Maybe the noise was nothing,” Venice offered. “A picture fell off the wall.”

Charlie flashed her an angry look. “Pictures don’t scream,” he said. He moved away from her, closer to the door. He adjusted his grip on the pistol. “Whoever it is, is about to be shot.” He placed his hand on the kn›

Even in the cacophony of the gunfire and above the piercing sounds of Stephenson’s shouting, Gail heard the bullet hit Thomas, a wet snapping sound. They all heard it. Julie screamed, “Oh, my God! Thomas!”

Stephenson scrambled for the window.

Gail yelled, “Steve! No! I’ll get him!”

“He’s my son,” Stephenson said. And that said everything. He heaved himself over the window and onto the porch with a clattering thump.

Julie reached for his ankle, but he was already gone.

The volume of fire outside crescendoed. But for the heavy timber walls, they’d have all been torn to pieces.

Gail started to crawl across the cabin to Stephenson’s window, then realized that a chance to hit a second target at the same spot would spell disaster for her. Acting on pure impulse, she turned and vaulted out of her own window into the tall grass that still rimmed the foundation in the backyard.

She braced herself for a brutal fusillade.

Alone now inside the cabin, Julie felt blinded by a terror she’d never known. Thomas and Stephenson both were out there being raked by bullets. She couldn’t lose both of them.

Where was Scorpion? And his obnoxious sidekick? How could they leave her like this? Even her own family had left her. She didn’t want to die.

Her gaze fell on the detonators. The clackers. Giant shotguns. Their last resort. Their Alamo position.

The only way to save her boys’ lives.

But Scorpion might be out there among the attackers.

“Don’t do anything unless you hear me say…” Whatever. Something. How was she to know if Scorpion was even alive anymore?

She didn’t care.

Dom knew from her voice alone that Venice was in distress. Her message was out of character. She needed him.

Yet here he stood, paralyzed by indecision. He knew it was a trap. If he walked through that door, God only knew what might come next. He’d get shot, probably. But to stay out here while Venice was in danger in there was…cowardly. How could he-

The turning doorknob settled it. Dom darted to the hinge side of the door and waited. When the tongue of the latch cleared the strike plate, he launched his full weight against the heavy panel.

As he’d hoped, his explosive entrance caught the intruder off-balance. He backpedaled to keep from being propelled to the floor, but unlike the man downstairs, this one was agile and light on his feet. As Dom clutched fistfuls of the man’s suit jacket and tried to drive him to the floor, the intruder effortlessly pirouetted free. His hands were empty, though.

The intruder struck a martial arts pose, and Dom knew right away that he was in trouble. Army training notwithstanding, Dom could not prevail in a hand-to-hand confrontation. He prayed for a weapon, and in that instant saw the intruder’s pistol on the floor. That was his only hope.

The intruder moved first. He seemed to have read Dom’s mind as he struck like a snake to throw a punch at the left side of the priest’s head-the side closest to the weapon on the floor. Dom dod his knees and sent him tumbling to the floor. He knew without doubt that his jaw had been broken. And he knew that the pistol was still on the floor. He could see it. If his arms were four inches longer, he could have touched it.

If only he could move. But he had to move. He had to save Venice or die trying. Rolling to his side, he stretched his arm to its full length and beyond, a lunging reach stretched his shoulder nearly to dislocation. He might even have made it but for the kick to his forehead. Lights flashed behind his eyes, and he felt himself balanced in a sickening nether-world between consciousness and coma.

When his vision cleared, he saw the pistol in the intruder’s hand.

Then he heard the gunshot.

The Green Brigade advanced on the lodge. They moved out of the tree line, shooting constantly, laying a deadly volume of fire on the cabin.

There was nothing nuanced or subtle about Jonathan’s plan. He and Boxers split left and right and came at the line fast and hard from their right flank. Jonathan circled to the left to come in from behind, while Boxers circled to the right to hit them on an oblique angle from the front. If the plan worked, they would close in on the attackers in a quickly advancing V-formation and roll them up to their left.

He advanced in a walking crouch, his weapon to his shoulder and set to fire three rounds with every trigger pull. When he saw a bad guy, he shot him, center of mass, and moved on to the next. No time to confirm the kill or worry about him hopping up again.

There are rhythms to war, ebbs and crescendos that no one plans, but that nonetheless give audible clues about what was happening. Presently, as he closed in for his third undetected kill, Jonathan heard a shift in the action, a peak in shooting that seemed less random, more focused. He looked to his right, through the trees, in time to see someone dart out from the cabin, only to be cut down.

He spat an obscenity and nearly turned back to reacquire a target, when more movement from the front of the cabin triggered an even more intense fusillade. Jesus Christ, one Hughes was trying to save the other.

Jonathan needed to support them. He brought his rifle to his shoulder, sighted on a muzzle flash, and fired a three-round burst. A weapon spiraled off into the darkness.

A brilliant flash near the lodge startled him, followed by the distinctive wham of a claymore. Whatever lay in the woods to the left side of the lodge was now torn to bits.

In his earpiece, Jonathan heard Boxers’ shout, “Who the fuck-”

The fusillade never came. Even as Gail was airborne, tumbling out of the window, she’d expected to be torn apart by incoming fire, but somehow she was still here.

She didn’t pause to wonder why, or to thank God, or to even give it much of a thought. One of her team was dead, two were wounded, and she had to bring them to safety. She didn’t think any of these things, she just knew them; sensed them as her duty.

Gail belly-crawled on elbows and knees to the back corner of the house, and then around to the left-hand side. In the near distance she saw Thomas on the ground writhing in agony, screaming curses to the night while his father covered him with his body. They were alive. Beyond them, she saw the attackers closing in. They were char’d been raining covering fire in the rear to mask the joining of the two skirmish lines.

But there was even more to it than that, she realized. They were protecting the true target of their assault. “Oh, my God,” she said aloud. “They’re-”

A blinding, white-hot flash took the world away.

The echo of the first claymore was still rolling across the yard when a second one erupted, this one on the left side of the front of the house. Ahead of him, through the green light of his NODs, Jonathan saw people and vegetation shredded by the high-velocity pellets as they shrieked through the night, destroying everyone and everything.

In his three decades as a warrior, he’d never been on this end of a claymore, and it was orders of magnitude louder than he’d expected. If you hear the explosion, you’re okay.

But not for long. Since he was just outside the arc of that claymore, he could count on being just inside the arc of the next.

He slapped the transmit button on his chest. “Box, get-”

The last word was cut off by the explosion.

Inside the lodge, Julie had nearly forgotten that it took three clicks to detonate a mine. On her first try, she’d squeezed the initiator only once. When nothing happened, she quickly squeezed it twice more, and was again disappointed. Third time, she squeezed it three times rapidly and screamed as the explosion ripped the night.

She’d thought it through as best she could. She remembered that the danger zone behind the mines didn’t allow you to be very close. If she didn’t shoot them now, she didn’t know when the attackers would be behind the kill zone or when Steve and Thomas might be in front of it.

Moving without pause to the second detonator, she did it right on the first try, and this time, the detonation flashed within her peripheral vision: a brilliant light, then a cloud that obscured everything. The punishing concussion came an instant later.

She moved to the third, wrapped both hands around the clacker and cowered behind the timbers as she squeezed and counted aloud. “One. Two. Th-”

This blast was a hundred times louder than the first two, but only for an instant before her ears shut down from the pounding. The inside of the lodge erupted in splinters and broken glass.

Then she felt nothing.

Dom thought he was dead. He had to be dead. How could the killer have missed? He felt a pair of strong hands on his shoulders, and a vaguely familiar voice saying, “Father? Father! Jesus, are you all right?”

The voice crystallized before the images did. It was Doug Kramer.

“I’m alive?” Dom asked.

“Are you shot?” the chief asked.

As much as he hurt, he might have been, but he honestly didn’t know. He was on the floor of Venice’s office, on his back, and to his left, he could see the contorted face of his attacker flush with the carpet, twisted in obvious pain. “I can’t feel my legs,” the man cried, but Kramer seemed unmoved. On the far side of the prone intruder, Dom saw that Venice was still bound tightly to her chair.

“I got your message,” KramerVenice wriggled against her bonds, making her chair jump. “Cut me loose,” she said, and then, as if catching herself, she added, “Please. Digger needs me to be at the computer.”

Kramer cocked his head, then looked around. “Digger.”

“You gotta help me,” Charlie whined.

“Ambulance is on the way,” Kramer said. “Digger’s here?”

Dom scooted across the floor to tend to Charlie’s injury. He pushed the man’s tie out of the way and ripped open the front of his shirt. He found the exit wound first, just above and to the right of his navel. The entrance wound was square in the spine. “Can you tell them to hurry?” Dom slurred through his fractured jaw. “He’ll bleed out without help.”

“I can only call ’em, Father. I can’t drive for ’em.” In the distance, sirens grew louder. A lot of them. A shooting in Fisherman’s Cove was the biggest of big deals.

Kramer pulled a Swiss Army knife from his pants pocket and slit the tape on Venice’s arms first, and then the loops on her ankles.

She leapt back to her keyboard. “Please let there be something left to do,” she prayed under her breath.