"I asked you a question."
"Charles Adams, M.D. I've been hunting this woman, Laura Kincaid, because I think she and her associates killed a friend of mine."
"Hmmmph! Well yer not alone in that department, Doctor, we can tell you. The question is, shall we have to kill you?"
"No,"' said John.
"And why not, assuming of course a couple of brigands like ourselves should be listening to you, O'Shaughnessey?"
"He's not one of 'em, I'll swear it," replied John, rising to his feet.
The second thug moved back over to the doorway again.
"Come on!" he whispered hoarsely. "There's two more upstairs we didn't get; let's go out this way."
"Did he have a gun?" the big man asked John.
"Not when he ran out, I don't think. But knowing him, he probably has one by this time, and you bloody well don't want to be on the receiving end of it either. It'll hit you, tear you in pieces before you hear it."
There was a faint stirring above us. I heard what sounded like a slamming of a door.
"That's probably Hartzos returning," I said.
"Naw. Hartzos is no longer among the living."
"We've got to move now" said Thug Number Two.
Almost as these words were spoken all of us heard the sound of feet on the metal stairway. From the noise, there was more than one person on them.
"Where does that tunnel lead?" the big man asked John.
"It's an old cartway back to the main factory building. It goes underneath ground level."
"Then that's for us. Is he in there waiting?"
"I would imagine he's as far away as possible by now, and still moving."
"Just so, you two will go first." He prodded the gun in our direction. "Move," he said.
O'Shaughnessey saw the Walther on the floor and started for it, but the big man saw him and kicked the pistol into the hole.
O'Shaughnessey and I went through the narrow doorway. It was black on the other side. I felt myself beginning to trip on something very hard raised up about two inches. A rail. Then another rail. Then a brick wall. It was a narrow-gauge railway… a miniature railroad in which carts ran, very reminiscent of the type used in old mines. O'Shaughnessey seemed to know his way about, and lost no time in turning to his left and moving quickly along between the rails. I followed. Had I any choice? Thug Number One had his silenced Luger pointed at my kidneys. If Schilling were indeed waiting for us, we'd go down first. It was just tough luck. Of course after what I'd been through I could scarcely gripe.
Still I found it excruciating to walk. Until the past few minutes the fear and shock had held the pain at bay. But now I HURT. I hurt very, very much. I had received two hard kicks to my Sport Section and scores to my belly and back. My right testicle was aflame. I had taken Laura Kincaid's belly kicks well because I had managed to tighten my stomach muscles just as the blows landed. But my back had no such protection. I would probably piss blood for a week or two if I were lucky and it was nothing more serious than a bruised kidney.
"Coont!" growled Thug Number One as he gazed back into the dreary chamber before joining us in the dark tunnel. I
"Yah coont yah!"
"I entirely agree," I murmured, and felt the encouraging prod of the big man's Luger.
We walked quite fast, knowing that remnants of the Kincaid Schilling staff were at our heels. I heard a grunt of pain in front of me, and a metallic screaking. O'Shaughnessey had bumped up against an old cart. It was a low wooden platform used to haul spools of wire and cord, but had a metal handle like a supermarket cart running along the back side, and he had run into it, knocking his breath away. When Number One Thug caught up with it and saw-with his flashlight-that the front end of the carriage was piled with old spools, he directed us to push it along the rails. Thus, under this crude armor, we advanced, with the two of them-well protected from Schilling should he be lying in wait-bringing up the rear. But as I leaned into the load I saw movement behind me. Number Two Thug whirled around, his leather coat flaps swinging outward with the spin. A yellowish rectangle of light showed behind us where the doorway was being opened.
A dark figure blocked out a large part of the rectangle. I turned my head still farther back, and could see he was flapping his arms up, as if directing a concerto. His elbows stuck out to the side. Funny looking. No it wasn't funny. He was aiming a pistol with both hands. I dropped to one knee and spun over until the wall stopped me.
"Down, everybody!" I said.
I saw two things at once: the orange-white burst of flame from the dark figure's chest, and that same figure flung backward against the opened door as if hit by an express train. Some recoil his pistol must've had. But no-
The figure slumped down like a dishrag, and my ears were splitting, bursting with pain. The retort from Number Two Thug's pistol thudded into my chest cavity like a funny heartbeat. It must have been a. 44 magnum. In the closeness of the tunnel the noise was unbearable.
And was he a pistol shot.
Four years at the range with small-bore weapons and I thought I was pretty damn good, But this guy, whoever he was, was in another league entirely. I heard John's heavy breathing next to me. I leaned forward close as I dared and asked him the question sotto voce:
"Who are these guys?"
"Shhhhhh! IRA Provos. The best they've got, kiddo. They'll kill us in a wink if we give them any trouble. Now mind, do what I do-"
"Who are you?"
"I am Stephen O'Shaughnessey of the Garda Siochana, the Irish National Police. 'John' is a pseudonym."
"Uh, which Ireland? The south?"
There was a pregnant pause, during which I heard a very distinct sigh of disgust and a slight smacking of lips which told me that my question had not registered favorably with the law officer. I felt an iron grip on my upper arm, and the growly grunt of his voice extremely close to my head. "There is only one Ireland, Doctor Adams. The Repooblic of Ireland. If you learn nothing else out of all this shite, let it be that. Yah twit! " He shoved me away, hard.
"Move! Move on with yah!" called a hoarse whisper, and we began again to push the cart. No, said Number One, it was too slow. Leave it to slow the others down. We crept around it and jog-walked the rest of the way through the transport tunnel, the two thugs (and one, at least, a superb shot with a big-bore handgun) at our heels., We kept up the pace until I saw a faint rectangular square of very pale blackish gray. Two seconds later, we were emerging from the tunnel, and looking up a gradual incline of old granite cobblestone.
The two men stood directly behind us.
"Why don't you two lads go on up and see if it's safe?" demanded Number One. So we did. I had it in mind to spring like hell as soon as I reached the top. It was still too dark to see well. After all I'd been through, all I wanted was to run, find the fence (any fence), and scale the sombitch.
"Up yah go now! Goddamn me, I say!" said the Number One Thug in a very persuasive tone. "I've got six rounds left and will kill the both of you. The only sound they'll be ahearin' is an ounce of lead squirtin' through yer guts like a jet plane. Now up!"
We reached the top of the ramp and didn't get our heads taken off. Gee, tonight was my lucky night. I could see that it was darker to the sides than it was straight above me. We were in one of the big courtyards that opened off the main factory roadway. In a while the other two came up behind us, and we moved on. I assumed the Provos wanted out of Cordage Park as badly as I did, perhaps to slink back to their car and skedaddle. Plymouth was only minutes away from Southie, where an Irishman down on his luck could find a haven for as long as he needed it. And then there was Charlestown. Talk about rough. I believe I would rather parade around in Harlem on a Saturday night dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit than hang around some sections of Charlestown. If they elected to hide there until this thing blew over nobody could pry them out. Not even the Marine Corps.
I was saying all this to myself in my mind to take it off the fact that at any instant I could have a whole handful of lead slugs thrown in my direction. And there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.
We had bunched together now in a tight square of four men. Stephen and I were in front, the two thugs right behind us. All hell broke loose when we reached the roadway. The first thing I heard was a popping behind me. I realized later that the sound must have been from the big. 45-caliber slugs tearing into the factory wall. It was more a cracking-pounding than a popping; it had a hard, staccato timbre to it. Just as I turned, I could see that the wall was smoking. Only it wasn't smoke. It was all the brick dust and powder that had been blown off the old wall and hung like a faint gray curtain in the half-light of first dawn.
The tight group exploded, flung away in different directions by the blast like a clump of tightly racked billiard balls on the break.
I found the ground and rolled over and over, keeping my arms straight down at my sides. There had been no sound except the slugs hitting the wall. Nothing. But on the next burst I heard it. It commenced with a low whistle of almost electronic purity, and with it a sound like sheet metal being ripped behind a thick felt curtain. And then the loud pounding drowned out the weird sound, and it was as if I were in the middle of a buffalo stampede.
I heard a long, drawn-out groan coming from across the roadway.
"Hssssst!" came a whisper. "Adams!"
"Over here. O'Shaughnessey?"
"Naw lad. It's him you hear. My friend's caught a couple too. Come over here… now!"
The whisper had the ring of authority. I had a feeling Thug Number One, the big guy in the Aitec ski mask, meant business.
"No. I can't. He'll kill me."
His reply was swift and direct. I heard the whang of a slug two feet above my head against an iron steam pipe I couldn't see. ."The next one will go through you. I don't have time to fook around, Adams."
I flung myself out from my little nest of safety and rolled along the ground to the opposite wall. I knew this was the safest way to do it. All Schilling would have a view of would be my clothes and my navy watch cap. And not rising higher than a foot above the ground, there would be no way he could detect a flicker of my silhouette. Rolling is also much quicker than belly crawling. When I hit the opposite wall I inched forward. Number One Thug was hunched behind a concrete abutment that sloped out from the wall, providing about two feet of immunity from those big bullets. He half-cradled a limp form in his left arm while he held his silenced Luger in the other.
"Check him."
I pushed my fingers into the man's neck under his jaw. I felt a faint and irregular bumping of the carotid artery.
"Well?" whispered the big man.
"Bad."
"Thought as much."
I pulled open his coat and drew up his sweater. There were four mean entry holes, dark and very wet and as big as dimes, that snaked their way up and around his trunk spiral fashion. He had caught the brunt of the quick burst, with four of those miniature shot-puts hitting him within the space of a tenth of a second. I was amazed he was still alive, and knew he wouldn't be for long. The first hole was in the left side, near the spleen. Then he'd taken one in the lower chest, one definitely in the lungs, and the last one up near the right armpit. He gasped, and I thought I heard him say something but I couldn't understand it. Then Number One leaned over and put his hand on the side of his head, as one does to a child who cannot sleep, leaned over, and said something very soft in the man's ear. It was Gaelic. I don't know what he said. The man whined a little, and I thought I heard a sob or perhaps it was just pure pain. The shock was wearing off now, the enormous energy-like getting hit by four defensive linemen at once-that had stunned him was ebbing. And so was his life. Then he shuddered and relaxed. He said.
"Ahhhhhh… "
I put my hand back into his neck.
"He's gone now," I told the big man.
He turned for a second, made the sign of the cross over the man's head, and said something else in Gaelic.
"Take the medal from around his neck and give it to me. Hurry."
He dropped the small chain and medal into his coat pocket. Then he asked me if I could use a pistol and I answered yes.
"Go get your friend, Adams. He's only about eight feet away. I'll cover you."
I heard O'Shaughnessey groan again and knew that if I didn't manage to get him pulled back behind the concrete he'd be cut in two by the next burst. I crawled around the abutment and hunkered down low. I saw a dark form on the ground, which told me how much lighter it had gotten. I grabbed the fallen man by the arms and dragged him back behind the shelter faster than I thought possible. Fear of getting blown away makes you amazingly strong and quick. I saw then how badly hit he was; there was a dark wet trail sliding out behind him..
We propped him up against the wall. He was conscious, but spilling lots of blood. Way too much blood too fast. That told me a blood vessel had been. severed. Not an artery that would pump and squirt crimson, but a big saphenous vein.
He'd taken slugs from the beginning of the burst that had killed the other man, the burst that had raked across them both, sending each successive round higher as the tiny gun had bucked upward with recoil. O'Shaughnessey was hit square in the left thigh and had a deep crease along the small of his back. An inch farther inward would have taken away both his kidneys and his spine. The thigh hit was bad; the femur was broken clean in two with perhaps an inch missing. The main problem with a. 45 is that it makes such a goddamn big hole.
They had taken away my knife, so I asked Thug Number One for his. With it I slit the pant leg and rigged a tourniquet with my shirt sleeve and an old piece of metal window frame I found after several minutes of feeling around in the dark. It stopped the flow pretty well, although I was also certain his blood pressure was down by this time too.
The big man worked in the dark, studying me. I heard metallic clacking and guessed he was reloading the big revolver. Then he made up his mind and handed me the. 44 magnum belonging to his fallen comrade. It weighed slightly less than a washing machine.
"This will just about take yer hand off when ya fire it… and break yer wrist, too. Hold it with both hands, and tight."
I heard a brisk chatter, and ducked. But it wasn't the chatter of an automatic weapon; it was Stephen O'Shaughnessey's teeth. He was freezing to death.
"Now you hear me good, Doctor. I'm going to move around behind him, slow like. If we stay here we'll stay pinned down, don't yah know. You keep that cannon pointed right where the corner of that building is. Do you see it now? Give me ten minutes, then fire a few shots at it, hear? And listen, the both of you: any fookin' around and yer dead, quick as a wink, hear me?"
"Yes," I answered. O'Shaughnessey moved his head back and forth in pain and didn't answer.
"What time have you?"
"Four-thirty."
"At twenty of the hour I'll expect to hear the gunfire. Then I'll come on him like blazes-" He turned to go.
"And good-bye Stephen O'Shaughnessey. May you repair yourself. But, may we not meet again. Stay out of me fookin' business."
He was gone. And for a big man he moved with utter silence. He had removed the hood from the dead man before he left, presumably so the police wouldn't think of him as the terrorist murderer he was. I was shocked to see the face of a boy, perhaps only nineteen or twenty. Tony's age. He had pale skin but dark, bushy eyebrows. It was now light enough out to see that his eyes were open.
"Oh shite! Ohhhhhh," said Stephen O'Shaughnessey.
I realized that if help didn't come soon he'd probably die. Four-thirty. Was DeGroot awake? Had he seen the note? Couldn't count on it. I had to get out and make a phone call-flag down a car. Anything.
"Adams."
I went over to him.
"How bad is it?"
"What's bad is you've been losing blood by the quart. You've also got a broken leg but I'm not worried about that."'
"Now listen," he gasped, "I bloody well can't move and you know it. If I take the gun and cover you, could you find yer way out?"
"Yes."
"Well go. It's better than us sitting here and me bleeding to death, tourniquet or no our-ahhhhhh!"
He shivered with pain, but took the big. 44, then aimed it square at my heart.
"Go, Doctor. These are orders. Head straight back and make a wide circle around the both of them-"
I pressed my back up against the wall and sidestepped along it. Ten yards. Twenty yards. Forty yards. I was home free. I began a slow quiet walk. At the next corner I would turn right and head for the old sea wall, then drop to the beach. and wade the shallow water right up to the road. No problem with fighting even the outer fence this time. Then heard it. A boat was coughing to life out on the pier. It was a smallish gasoline engine. A cruiser engine. It went into high revs right away and groaned into the distance, toward the mouth of the huge harbor. My watch said quarter to five. It was past the time Number One said he'd put the rush on Schilling. Had he been waiting for my shots, or had he taken the boat? My guess was the latter; he'd sensed the situation had gotten far enough out of control so that his capture was imminent. And now I worried even more about O'Shaughnessey's safety.
A big boom sounded behind me. It could only be the heavy. 44 magnum. Almost immediately afterward I heard the hoofbeat sound of pounding slugs hitting brick. Then the deep boom of the pistol again. Then running feet and a scream. Unarmed, it would do me precious little good to hang around. I only hoped the scream was Schilling's, not O'Shaughnessey's. I ran fast now for the corner of the building. I heard a flight of bees off to the side of my head, and my legs almost turned to water from fear. Those were. 45 slugs sliding by me, hunting me.
I rounded the corner full tilt. Once I reached the sea wall and swung over it I was probably safe.
But as I ran the next twenty yards it got darker up ahead, not lighter. Another twenty yards confirmed it, and I could hear the hollow echo of my feet against the walls. And then I saw the windows, six rows of them, looming up ahead of me. I had turned one corner too soon. The way to the beach and the sea wall lay one more building past where I had turned. I was in the last courtyard. Oh God, I thought. Why now? Why this way, after all I'd been through? Why now, when I'd been a1most-.
There is no panic as great as that which follows a sense of relief, no despair so acute as that which comes back after renewed hope. I ran to the end of the enclosed courtyard. I yanked at two window. They were barred. I searched madly for a ramp, a door, a fire-escape…
"Adams!"
I turned and looked at the dim figure standing on the roadway at the open end of the courtyard. It was still quite dark. He was leaning a bit too much. He took two quick steps forward and bowed in my direction slightly, like a Japanese houseboy. He'd been nicked by O'Shaughnessey before he'd killed him. But even a nick from a. 44 was serious. So God bless Stephen O'Shaughnessey. The late Stephen O'Shaughnessey. But a lot of good it would do me.
The man made two fast twists of his body, back and forth. A swarm of locusts sang above my head, and then came the terrible pounding and popping sound above me as pieces of old brick and mortar exploded out from the wall. They fell to the ground in clacks and tinkles, like old flowerpots, and fine dust sat in the air. But the gun was quiet.
He started walking into the courtyard. I heard a distinct, clean clung of metal hitting the ground and then saw him reach back with one hand into a hip pocket. New clip. Thirty more rounds. And at least one of them would finish me. He walked again and I could almost hear the scraping feet, the throat snuffle and sniff of Mr. X. He had failed once but not this time. He had a machine pistol and I didn't have a goddamn thing.
Including, most especially, a way out or a place to hide.