The Forgotten Holocaust

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Ritter ran back across the hall, Finn behind him still clutching the handgun. Everyone in the other room was on their feet and staring either at the shattered window overlooking the front of the house, or at Mike Corcoran who was standing there with the pump-action levelled towards the broken glass, smoke oozing from its barrel.

‘What happened?’ Ritter said.

Corcoran wet his lips with his tongue, still pointing the shotgun at the window. ‘I saw something. Outside. A movement.’

‘You thought you did.’

Corcoran shook his head. ‘No, man. I saw it. A shape. Just for a moment.’

‘Could’ve been some animal,’ O’Rourke muttered.

Ritter drew his pistol and stepped to the window, carefully drew aside the shredded blind and peered out through the jagged remains of the pane. He could see nothing out there except darkness. Maybe they were just jumping at shadows. Maybe not.

The silence outside was disconcerting. If Hope was here, he could be anywhere around the house.

‘What was the shootin’ in there?’ O’Rourke asked, pointing towards the other room.

‘Forget it,’ Ritter told the chief with a sharp look. ‘And keep your voice down.’ O’Rourke was no longer in command, if he ever had been. Ritter took charge as effortlessly as breathing. ‘Dave, hit the lights. You, you and you’ — pointing at Corcoran, Wylie and Duhame — ‘I want you at the front of the house. Spread out, keep to the shadows, shoot anything that moves. It starts to kick off, do not leave your position.’ He turned to Meagher, Lukas and Strickman. ‘You three cover the rear.’

‘I’ll stay here,’ O’Rourke whispered, taking up position near the window. ‘In case he tries to get inside.’

Meagher switched off the lights. The milky light filtered in through the blinds, the sudden darkness turning them all into dark silhouettes. Ritter liked the dark. It was his element. He turned and gestured to Moon, an unspoken command that was clearer than daylight between them. It meant ‘go check on the woman’, and it was music to Billy Bob.

Moon tapped Coyle on the shoulder. ‘You come with me, copper.’

Corcoran, Wylie and Duhame picked up their weapons and headed outside to guard the front, while Moon led Coyle around to the rear.

Ritter led McCrory aside, speaking low. ‘I can’t stay with you, boss. Is there someplace you can close yourself in?’

‘The old man’s study.’ Finn was shaking with nervous excitement, not even so much because of Hope, but because of the realisation sinking in of what he’d just done. The thought hit him that it was his study now.

‘Show me the way,’ Ritter told him.

Finn led Ritter up the hall to the broad wooden staircase, then up it and through the rambling house to the south-facing study at the far end. The moonlight from the window shone dimly on the old man’s desk, the fireplace behind it and the six-point deer antlers that hung on the wall above.

‘Lock yourself in,’ Ritter told him. ‘You hear shooting, stay put. Anyone comes through that door …’

‘I have this.’ Finn patted the holster on his belt. It was the same gun he’d shot Blaylock with. Ritter knew he wasn’t afraid to pull a trigger.

‘Keep the light off,’ Ritter said, and left.

‘Kill him good,’ Finn called after him.

The ranch house was filled with a silence that could almost be touched. Like a chill, thick mist had descended on the place, shutting it off entirely from the outside world. Ritter was tingling with the thought of what was coming. The seconds counted down like chimes inside his head.

As he reached the bottom of the stairs, the silence finally ended. The triple gunshot came from outside. A pause, then two more blasts.

Front of the house.

Ritter moved fast up the hallway to the door. Outside, he found Wylie and Duhame standing under the shadows of the oak trees, guns waving left and right as if every pocket of darkness held a threat. Ritter saw the Remington 870 pump lying on the ground. Corcoran’s.

‘Mike’s gone,’ Wylie said, breathing hard. ‘He was right there next to me, and then he was gone, just like that.’

‘Didn’t you see anything? You must’ve seen something.’

Wylie’s eyes glistened in the darkness. He swallowed audibly. ‘I didn’t see or hear a goddamned thing. He was there and then he wasn’t.’

‘Like a fuckin’ ghost took him,’ Duhame muttered.

Ritter glanced around him into the deep darkness. The cop wouldn’t be far away, dead in the bushes. Ritter didn’t believe in ghosts. He knew what had taken Corcoran, and Hope was already somewhere else.

Ritter had hunted men all his life. Nobody could escape him.

His eyes narrowed. Was that a movement up along the side of the house? He stared hard, at the darkness. He was certain that part of the shadows had shifted. Black moving on black. Ritter didn’t want to use a flashlight and betray his own position. The dark could work for you as much as against you. That was why he loved it.

Ritter turned back to Wylie, and whispered close in his ear, ‘Behind me. Single file, three yards apart. Not a sound.’

They moved up the side of the house towards where Ritter thought he’d seen the movement. Ritter led the way, light and quiet as a panther, then Wylie, then Duhame. Ritter could almost hear Wylie’s thudding heart a few steps behind.

He flinched as the crunch of a snapping twig came from the rear. All those times he’d led US Special Forces patrols through enemy territory in the total confidence that none of his men would leave the slightest sign of their passing; now he was in charge of a bunch of keystone cops who advertised their presence with a sound trail like a fuckin’ rhino. He glared back in anger, and saw Wylie’s pallid face behind him in the darkness. Ritter put his finger to his lips. Wylie shook his head, as if to say ‘it wasn’t me’.

Ritter’s eyes narrowed. He peered past Wylie’s shoulder, at where Duhame had been tagging along behind them just a moment ago.

Duhame was gone.

Ritter spun back, brushed by Wylie, then stopped after five yards and looked down.

Duhame was lying sprawled out with his face in the dirt. Ritter dropped into a crouch and rolled the cop over. His larynx had been crushed and his neck was broken.

Ritter felt himself go cold. That was a feeling he hadn’t had in a long, long time. He looked into the shadows and felt them looking back at him.

I know you’re there.

Wylie saw the body and drew in a sharp intake of breath. ‘Jesus Christ. What the fuck—?’

‘He’s hunting us,’ Ritter said.

Then the lights came on inside the house.

Ritter ran back to the door, not even caring if Wylie was with him or not. The front hallway was lit up, as was the room with the blown-out window where they’d all been waiting earlier.

O’Rourke had never left it. But it wasn’t him who’d put the lights on. He was sitting in an armchair with a Cherokee tomahawk buried in his skull. The blood pool at his feet was still slowly spreading, catching the lights’ reflection.

Ritter sensed Wylie enter the room behind him, heard the gasp of shock. Wylie just wasn’t used to this kind of stuff. He was going to have to learn fast.

‘Don’t move,’ Ritter told him, and left the cop standing there open-mouthed while he moved quickly back out of the room and up the hallway to the stairs, turning off the light as he went.

He reached the door of the study and rapped with his fist.

‘Who’s that?’ came the nervous voice from inside.

‘Just checkin’, boss. Stay tight.’

Before McCrory could reply, Ritter’s head whipped round at the percussive single boom of the gunshot downstairs. He sprinted back down the staircase, back down the hallway and into the room.

Wylie had moved, but only as far as the shotgun blast had blown him. He was sprawled backwards over the bar with half his head gone. Blood was drip-drip-dripping off the edge of the bar and into the spittoon on the floor.

Ritter whirled around at the sound of approaching footsteps in the hall, raised his rifle to point it at the door, then lowered it as Strickman, Lukas and Meagher came into the room.

‘Yeugh,’ Lukas said at the sight of the dead cops.

‘Told you not to leave your positions,’ Ritter said. ‘Where’s Moon?’