Carrion Comfort (67 page)

The pilot glanced to his right, rotated the he li cop ter, and nodded. Tony Harod almost screamed as the machine dropped like a cableless elevator. Streetlights seemed to rush up at them, there was a glimpse of something burning a block to their left, and the helicopter flared out and settled gently onto brick and asphalt in the center of the street. Haines was out immediately, running toward the sidewalk in a graceful crouch.

“Up!” shouted Colben and jerked his thumb at the pilot. “No!” shouted Harod. He nodded to Maria Chen and both of them fumbled at their lap straps. “We’re getting out too.”

“The hell you are,” said Colben over the intercom.

Harod pulled his headset off just as Maria Chen brought the Browning out of her purse and leveled it at Colben’s chest. “We’re getting out now,” shouted Harod.

“You’re a dead man, Harod,” Colben said softly.

Tony Harod shook his head. “Can’t hear you, Chuck,” he shouted.
“Ciao!”
Harod jumped out the left door and ran for an alley in a direction opposite of that Haines had gone. Maria Chen waited another thirty seconds and then slid toward the door.

“You’re both dead,” said Colben and smiled. He glanced at the rifle set in clips on the starboard bulkhead and then relaxed.

Maria Chen nodded, jumped out, and ran. “A hundred feet,” Colben said into the microphone.

The helicopter cleared the wires and rooftops, rotated left, and hovered ten stories above the Avenue. Colben slid the .30 caliber Colt rifle into the firing brace and swept the alleys with the nightscope. Nothing moved. “Too many fucking overhangs,” muttered Colben. The tactical channel filled his earphones with urgent chatter. He heard Haines’s voice demanding a response from the sniper team at Green One.

Colben shook his head. “Back to Castle Two,” he snapped. “We’ll deal with this shithead later.”

The helicopter spun and pitched forward as it gained altitude and headed east.

N
atalie Preston lay on her back, hands raised against Vincent’s knife, when something exploded against Grumblethorpe’s front door six feet down the hallway. Splinters flew into the confined corridor. There was a second explosion and Natalie looked left, through the doorway to the small parlor, to see a street door shatter and fly open.

In the sudden silence, Vincent’s head went up and back, swiveling like a poorly programmed robot’s. The knife glinted in his right hand. Natalie did not move or speak or breathe.

There was a second series of explosions, more distant this time. Suddenly a dark figure came hurtling into the parlor, rolling once into the wing chair by the fireplace. A shotgun skittered across bare boards and clattered against the legs of a table.

Vincent stepped over her and strode into the parlor. Natalie caught a glimpse of Marvin Gayle’s wide, blue eyes as Vincent lifted him, and then she was scrabbling on her knees toward the rear of the house. She almost screamed at the pain in her ankle, but she bit her lip until she tasted blood and stayed quiet. There were more shots from outside the front of the house, and she heard crashes from the parlor as Marvin and the honky monster struggled. Natalie pulled herself up to stand on her left leg at the entrance to what must be the kitchen. The long room had shuttered windows, a huge fireplace, two candles burning on a long table, and a heavy bolted door. There was a pump shotgun leaning against the wall by the door.

Natalie let out a soft noise and hopped toward the weapon. She was almost to it when three blasts in rapid succession slammed into the door from the outside. The fourth and fifth explosions shattered the iron lock and wooden bolt, sending splinters into her left leg and arm. Natalie jumped aside, put her weight down on her right foot, and tumbled into the table, pulling it over and hitting the stone floor hard. Two more blasts hit the door, knocking it visibly inward. Six feet in front of Natalie, the door to the pantry where she had been imprisoned gaped open, offering some concealment. She scrabbled forward, tumbling into the darkness just as someone kicked the kitchen door in from the outside.

A boy whom Natalie recognized as one of the twins in Marvin’s gang came in fast, followed by another youth. Both carried shotguns. Both jumped behind the overturned table.

“Don’t shoot!” screamed Natalie. “It’s me!”

“Who’s that?” shouted the twin. He rose swinging the shotgun in short arcs.

Natalie slid back into the pantry just as Marvin Gayle staggered into the kitchen. His arms and chest were streaked with blood and he dragged the stock of his shotgun along the floor as if he was too tired to lift it.

“Marvin! Fuck, man, how’d you get in here?” The twin stood up and lowered his weapon. The other boy raised his head from behind the table.

Marvin swung the shotgun up and fired twice. The twin was knocked backward into the cold fireplace. The second boy rolled into the corner, shouted something, tried to rise. Marvin swiveled and fired from the hip. The boy struck the wall, tumbled forward, and simply disappeared into a hole that had been invisible in the shadows.

Natalie realized that she was crouching, still holding her torn bra in place. She peered through the crack in the pantry door and saw Marvin walking woodenly to the fireplace to inspect the twin’s body. He turned and strode over to stare down into the entrance to the tunnel. Then he lowered his shotgun into the hole and fired again.

Natalie hopped quickly down the hallway, letting the bra fall and feeling the goose bumps break out all over her upper body. There was a tremendous sound of firing from outside.

This is all a bad dream
, thought Natalie.
I will make myself wake up
. The intense pain from her broken ankle told her otherwise.

Vincent stepped into the hallway, legs apart, the long knife held loosely in his right hand.

Natalie stopped, holding on to the wainscoting for support. The steep stairway to the second floor rose to her left.

Vincent took a step toward her.

Natalie jumped to the left, screamed as her ankle struck a step. Sobbing, she pulled her way up the stairs even as she heard Rob Gentry’s voice calling from the kitchen.

Saul Laski had proposed the idea of the strike at the control center as a harassing raid, hit fast, cause as much confusion as possible, and get out. Ideally there would be no casualties, preferably no shots fired. Privately, he hoped to find Colben or Haines there. Now, as the bulldozer covered the last twenty yards to the trailer, he wondered if his theory made any sense.

There was a sudden concussion to his left and flowers of flame blossomed twenty feet into the air as Taylor and the others tossed their Molotov cocktails into the parked cars. The field was briefly illuminated by the flames as a man in a white shirt and dark tie stepped out of the door of the main trailer. He stared at the flames and then at the two advancing bulldozers, yelled something inaudible, and pulled a pistol from a small holster on his belt.

Saul was ten yards from the trailer. He elevated the blade as a shield and realized that it effectively blocked his view. He did not hear the shots over the engine noise and the sudden krup of another Molotov cocktail, but something dinged against the blade twice and a louder thump came from the grill. The bulldozer did not falter. Saul raised the blade a foot and peered through the crack in time to see the man dodge back into the trailer.

“Here where I get off!” called Catfish and jumped over the right tread, rolling away in the darkness.

Saul considered jumping, shrugged, and grabbed metal to brace himself. He pulled the blade up another foot.

The last ten feet to the trailer were slightly uphill and the bulldozer blade went into the trailer about eight feet above the ground, just to the right of the doorway. The wooden entrance platform splintered and twisted aside as Saul bounced forward, bit his tongue, and settled back in the thick seat as the treads dug in to the real business of toppling the long mobile home.

The entire complex shuddered and then shuddered again as Jackson’s bulldozer made contact about twenty feet to the left of the door. The thin aluminum twisted and tore away in strips. An entire window assembly popped out and was ground under the tread of Saul’s machine. For several seconds, Saul was sure that the blades were going to plow straight through the trailer, but then the steel blade contacted solid metal, both bulldozers strained, and the center trailer separated itself from the other two with a great screeching of flanges as the long box began to tip backward.

The main door opened a few feet from Saul’s left shoulder and a man’s upper torso emerged, a revolver swung searching for a target, and then the trailer found its center of gravity and went over. The arm stuck straight up, fired two shots into the air, and fell out of sight.

Saul put the bulldozer in neutral and jumped down. Jackson was walking away from his machine and the two looked at each other in tired silence as they crouched behind the fender of one of the FBI vehicles.

“What now?” asked Jackson after a minute.

Men were crawling out of the tumbled wreckage of the torn trailer. Saul saw a woman being helped through a rip in the roof. Most of them acted dazed, sitting on the cold ground or moving directionless like victims in the aftermath of an auto accident, but a few had drawn pistols. Saul knew it would be foolish to remain where he was. Taylor and the others were not to be seen and Saul assumed they had returned to the truck. “I’m hunting for someone,” said Saul.

Saul waited until the last of the agents crawled from the trailer like ants boiling from an overturned anthill. There was no sign of either Charles Colben or Richard Haines. Saul tasted the disappointment like bile in his mouth.

“We better move,” whispered Jackson. “They’re beginning to get it together.”

Saul nodded and followed the bigger man into the shadows.

Leroy saw G. B.’s body lying on the curb and caught a glimpse of muzzle flashes from the third floor across the street before he had to drop and roll right toward the gate. High velocity bullets tore through the fence to his left. It sounded to him like some of the brothers were returning fire from the west side of the house and from down the avenue, but he knew that their assortment of handguns and few shotguns would be no match for the rifles that the federal pigs were using. Leroy pressed his face to the cold ground as more shots tore through the fence. “Fucking wild, man,” he whispered.

There was a body lying next to the stone wall ten inches from Leroy’s right arm. He rolled the heavy form over, hearing bottles clinking in the cheap thrift store rucksack. There was a sharp smell of gasoline.

It was Deeter Coleman, a junior at Germantown High and a new member of Soul Brickyard. Deeter had dated Leroy’s sister a couple of times. Leroy knew the boy had been more interested in the school drama club and computer lab than in the street, but he had begged Marvin for years to get a chance at joining the gang. The gang leader had given him a chance only a week earlier. The high velocity bullet had removed most of the boy’s throat.

Leroy pulled the corpse back over and tugged at the backpack straps, all the while muttering to himself. “You’re just fucking dumb, Leroy babe. Stupid shit, man. Always doing the dumb stuff.”

He pulled the straps tight, felt the gasoline from the broken bottle already soaking his back, and shook his head. He tucked the useless little.25 caliber pistol in his belt, and without giving himself time to think about, swung the gate open and ran hard.

Two shots rang out and something tugged at the heel of his sneaker, but Leroy did not pause. He crashed through a row of garbage cans at the entrance to the alley and then was jumping for the fire escape ladder. “Goddamn stupid idea to start with,” he muttered as he clambered up the fire escape.

There were no windows on the alley side of the third floor, only a locked metal door without an outside handle. “Stupid, stupid,” whispered Leroy and crouched to the right of the door. He patted his pant and coat pockets. He had no matches, no lighter, nothing. He was laughing out loud when the three shadows ran into the alley from the rear of the building. From his vantage point thirty feet above them, Leroy could see their white faces and hands as they looked up at him, weapons raised. “Nowhere to go, man,” he muttered.

He pressed his face and stomach tight against the brick wall as the first bullet screeched through the grating with a flash of sparks. The second one tore through the sole of his right sneaker, kicking his leg a foot into the air. Leroy felt the sudden numbness and stared at the black exit hole in the top of his white sneaker. “You shitting me?” he whispered.

The steel door opened and a man in a dark suit stepped out onto the fire escape. He was carrying a weird-looking rifle. Leroy took the rifle away from him and hit him in the throat with it, bending him backward over the railing, using his numb right leg to keep the door from swinging shut. There were no shots from below, but Leroy could see white faces moving to get an angle of fire. The man squirmed and sputtered under him, one hand clawing at Leroy’s face, the other pulling at the rifle breech embedded in his throat.

Leroy got his weight and shoulder into it, pushing the man farther over the railing. “Got a match, man?” he whispered. There were footsteps in the room behind them. Leroy got his left hand in the agent’s suit coat pocket and came away with a gold cigarette lighter. “Thank you, Jesus,” Leroy said aloud and let the man drop, rifle and all, to the alley thirty feet below. He stepped into the room just as the shooting from below started up again.

“Did you get . . .” began another honky with a drawn pistol. Three others stood by the window where fancy rifles and telescopes were mounted on heavy tripods. Leroy caught a glimpse of folding chairs, card tables with food and pop cans, and a bunch of radios against the wall.

“Freeze!” screamed the honky and leveled the pistol at Leroy’s chest. Leroy’s hands were already rising. His thumb sparked the flint; he felt the heat from the tiny flame near his right ear. “My luck. Lights the first fucking time,” said Leroy and dropped the lighter into his open pack of gasoline-soaked bottles of Shell unleaded premium.

Anne Bishop was half a block from Grumblethorpe when the explosion occurred. She continued driving at a steady fifteen miles per hour, hands clenching on the wheel of the DeSoto, eyes straight ahead and unblinking. Every window on the third floor of the building across from Grumblethorpe flew outward in a thousand pieces. Glass glittered and shimmered as it fell like snow across Germantown Avenue. Thirty seconds later, the flames appeared. Anne Bishop pulled to the curb in front of Grumblethorpe and shifted the transmission lever to park. Working from reflexes a third of a century old, she carefully set the parking brake on.

The flames from the burning building were much brighter now, casting an orange glow on Grumblethorpe and this entire section of the avenue. There came a scattered rattle of gunshots. Fifty yards down the block, half a dozen long-legged figures sprinted across the street. Just beyond the right wheel of the DeSoto, a boy lay facedown near the curb. A small, black pool had appeared under his shattered head and run down into the gutter.

The burning building across the street made a loud crackling noise, as if hundreds of heavy twigs were being snapped. Occasionally ammunition would go off, sounding amazingly like popcorn being popped. Someone screamed in the distance. There came the wail of sirens. Anne Bishop sat in her 1953 DeSoto with her eyes straight ahead, hands on the wheel, waiting.

Gentry had come through the open rear door quickly, Ruger ahead of him. An overturned table offered shelter and he took it, dropping heavily to one knee and looking around.

The old kitchen was illuminated by a candle on a countertop and another burning on its side on the floor. The twin named G. R. lay dead in a huge fireplace six feet behind Gentry, his goose-down coat shredded from throat to crotch. Feathers covered the face, torso, and legs of the corpse. The rest of the kitchen was empty. A narrow door to the pantry or small room hung open near the entrance to a hallway, obscuring the view.