The Forgotten Holocaust

Chapter Forty-Eight

It was hot and sultry down by the lakeside, only the slightest of breezes from the north whispering over the water. An owl hooted from somewhere in the dark fringe of trees that hugged the shore. Clouds of moths danced in the glow of the cabin’s veranda lanterns and the warm light that pooled out from its curtained windows. The front door was slightly ajar, as if to welcome the expected visitors. Music was playing softly inside the cabin: Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, Andante, the only thing Ben had liked from the McCrorys’ CD collection. It was good music for waiting to.

At three fifteen, quarter of an hour ahead of schedule, headlights appeared on the single track that led towards the cabin. They weren’t those of Finn McCrory’s Mercedes, but of a van. The lights bobbed and jerked as it came lurching down the track. Another white GMC commercial panel van, just like the other. It drove up close to the cabin and pulled up next to the car that was parked there, with the engine running and the headlamps flooding the entrance on full beam.

As expected, McCrory hadn’t come alone.

He hadn’t come at all.

At the same moment that Matt Ritter and Billy Bob Moon jumped down from the cab, ready for war, the van’s side and rear doors opened and another six of their accomplices clambered out. They all knew the plan. There was no talking, just the clacking of automatic weapons being cocked. They’d come extremely prepared. Every team member was equipped with a brand-new KRISS Vector, and between them these good ol’ boys were carrying enough ammunition to spark off a rematch of the Civil War, one the Union would have lost for sure this time.

The men positioned themselves in a line facing the cabin, casting tall, bent shadows under the glare of the lights. There was a crackle of nervousness in the air. Despite Ritter and Moon’s best efforts to stifle it, a certain amount of talk had been circulating among them about this badass mofo they were going after tonight. How he’d taken three of the gang down like skittles at the mall parking lot shoot-out and blown the crap out of a dozen cars, maybe even more; how he’d cut off Quincy’s arm to take his gun. How sick and twisted was that? The man had even managed to evade Ritter and Moon not twice, but three times: a feat that nobody had ever, ever pulled off before. But if this Hope guy was swiftly becoming a legend, it would be a short-lived one after what was in store tonight.

Still, they were nervous.

Ritter walked a few steps towards the veranda, holding a megaphone that he’d brought from the van. His amplified voice cut through the stillness.

‘All right, Hope. You know what we’ve come for. Toss out the goods. Then come out with the woman. Nice and easy. Hands on your heads where we can see ’em. No tricks. We get what we want, then nobody else gets hurt.’ Nobody else, apart from Erin Hayes. That had been the deal.

There was silence from the cabin. The half-open front door creaked slightly in the breeze. The piano concerto tinkled faintly from inside.

‘Hear me, Hope?’ Ritter said into the megaphone. ‘No messing around. You got five seconds.’

There was still no response from the cabin.

‘What the hell’s he doin’ in there?’ muttered Kurzweil on the far right of the line, nursing his gun.

Another of them, Meagher, laughed uneasily. ‘Guess we caught’m screwin’ the merchandise.’

‘That is one hardcore dude,’ said someone else.

Ritter silenced the chatter with a hard look, then exchanged glances with Moon. ‘I don’t think the sumbitch’s comin’ out,’ Moon whispered.

Ritter gave a shrug. ‘Fine. Wouldn’t’ve done him any good anyway.’ He tossed down the megaphone. He didn’t show it, but he was a little disappointed in the boss’s orders. He’d really wanted to kill this guy face-to-face. Moon was thinking along the same lines, but about the woman. Shame. But you had to do what you had to do. This was the second time they’d been sent to wipe out all trace of Hope and the evidence. Ritter was determined that there wouldn’t be a third.

‘All right, boys,’ Ritter said to the lined-up team, unslinging his KRISS Vector. ‘Let’s rock and roll.’

Safeties were set to FIRE. Weapons were shouldered, fingers twitched on triggers. Then the tranquil night air erupted into a wall of noise, sending a panicked explosion of night birds flapping from the trees. The concentrated mass of firepower hammered into the front of the cabin, the pretty varnished oak planking shredded into splinters as more than a hundred and thirty rounds a second punched and tore through the wood. The porch railing blew apart. Windows shattered and fell in. The traditional-style lanterns Angela McCrory had gone all the way to Houston to buy for the entrance were blasted into a thousand pieces.

The shooters reloaded their guns and kept up a continual fire as they spread out around the cabin, peppering it from a wider angle. Now the outer walls were beginning to disintegrate as over sixty kilos of copper-jacketed lead per minute poured into the building, destroying anything in its path. The music stopped abruptly as a bullet found the CD player. Bits of planking reduced to shredded tatters fell away from the structure. One by one, the interior lights went dark, until the cabin was illuminated only by the headlamps of the van. Nothing inside could possibly survive. Wherever Hope and the woman were desperately trying to take cover right now, they simply stood no chance against such a relentless unleashing of brute force.

Ritter ceased fire and held up his hand for the rest of the men to do the same. In the sudden heavy silence, something was fizzling from inside the shattered wreck in front of them. A bullet-riddled length of guttering swung loose and then dropped down onto the veranda, in the very spot where Kirk Blaylock had died crawling on his knees for mercy. After tonight, there’d be no more killing here. Because there was virtually nothing left of the place to kill anyone in.

Soon, there’d be nothing left at all. It was time to finish the job and go home.

Ritter turned and walked quickly back to the van, where a steel-lined box four feet long by two wide lay in the back. He flipped open the lid and took out one of his latest acquisitions, another toy that came courtesy of his special connections in the military. It was the new lightweight version of the M-32 forty-millimetre rotary grenade launcher, exclusively designed for the US Army Special Ops Command and capable of firing anything from non-lethal riot control rounds to chemical warfare munitions to high-explosive stuff, pumping out six shots in under four seconds. This would be a good opportunity to test it out before the first batch was sold on to their eager clients south of the border.

Ritter worked the trigger as fast as it would go. All six grenades slammed into the ruins of the cabin and detonated together in a fiery blast that lit up the sky and made the ground tremble. The force of the explosion lifted off the roof. Remnants of wooden walls and fragments of furniture and household fittings and wiring and pipes were blown upwards and outwards, raining down in a flaming circle that made several of the men step back; then the disintegrated roof collapsed into the furious blaze.

Ritter didn’t need to reload. The destruction was total, the cabin’s remains almost completely razed to the ground. Building demolition was getting to be a habit.

‘Yeah!’ Moon crowed, punching a gleeful fist in the air and forgetting all about his previous designs on Erin Hayes, now reduced to a smouldering corpse somewhere under all that wreckage, along with a certain Ben Hope who truly wasn’t going to be a problem any more.

‘That oughta do it,’ Ritter said in satisfaction, his straight-faced composure slipping for just a moment. ‘You know what, those trigger-happy beaners are sure as shit gonna love this baby.’ Just the thing for taking out entire convoys of DEA agents. Oh, to be properly at war again. His grin vanished as quickly as it had appeared. ‘All right, boys, party’s over. Let’s get out of here.’

A few looks and nods of relief were exchanged as the men gathered by the van, clutching their warm weapons, faces lit by the glow of the fire. Mission accomplished, and not a shot fired at them in return.

‘That was something, huh?’ Meagher said.

‘Hey, where’s Kurzweil?’ someone asked suddenly.

Ritter turned to look around. Kurzweil had been on the end of the firing line and Ritter had last seen him moving around the right-hand flank as they’d all spread out. He scanned the group, counting five excluding himself and Moon. Eight men had got out of the van. Now it was only seven. No Kurzweil.

‘Anyone see him?’

Shaking of heads.

‘He was standing right by me, coupla moments ago,’ said Torres.

‘Well, where’d he go?’

‘Beats me.’

‘Probably takin’ a piss,’ Moon said, peering towards the trees. ‘Yo! Kurzweil!’ he hollered, cupping a hand around his mouth. ‘Get your retarded ass back over here now, you hear?’

Ritter looked hard into the shadows, but all he could see was the flickering outline of branches and leaves in the glow of the flames. ‘Kurzweil!’ he shouted. ‘You wanna be left behind?’

But Kurzweil wasn’t there. He was already several hundred yards away, totally unconscious and being carried off through the darkness of the forest.