Penance

by Dan O'Shea

  “Leg hurts, but not too bad. Head itches. Listen, thanks for last night. Hope I wasn’t too much of a wuss.”

  “I don’t think you’ve got much wuss in you, Lynch.”

  “Still, bawling in your lap. Not my usual move on a third date.”

  “I give all my boyfriends a pass when they get shot.”

  “Wasn’t the getting shot. Second time I’ve had to kill somebody. Doesn’t sit too well with me.”

  Johnson reached across the table and took his hand. “You might have a little wuss in you after all. But it’s the good kind.”

  Lynch pushed his food around on his plate.

  “What are you going to do with yourself today?” Johnson asked.

  “Figure I’ll visit my mom, then I need to get over to her place. She’s been in Resurrection for better than a week. Better start getting shit in order over there. Not sure if she’s going to get back home again, but she hasn’t been able to keep on top of things for a while. Doesn’t feel right letting the place go.”

  “Well, don’t push things. You did get shot last night, in case you forgot.”

  “Shot’s when you get a bullet in you. I just got peppered with some shit.”

  “Guess you’re not a wuss after all.”

  “Don’t worry, I have to move any furniture or anything, I’ll give you a call.”

  After breakfast, Johnson looked at Lynch and made a face. “We’ve got to do something about your hair.” The emergency room staff had shaved off three patches of hair on the right side of Lynch’s head to get at the bullet and cement fragments.

  He gave her a lopsided smile. “You think?”

  She took him into the bathroom and draped a towel over his shoulders. She trimmed the hair back to stubble with scissors, then used his razor to shave it off. She carefully peeled the gauze from over his eye. She opened a fresh gauze pad, spread ointment on it, and taped it down.

  “I’ve got a present for you,” she said, opening the white bag she had brought back that morning. She pulled out a black eyepatch, and Lynch laughed. She lifted the towel off his shoulders and shook it out into the bathtub. Then she wiped his scalp with a warm washcloth and, stretching the elastic over his head, fitted the patch over the gauze pad on his eye. Lynch stood up and looked in the mirror.

  “Won’t Bernstein be thrilled,” he said. “I look like Moshe Dayan.”

  CHAPTER 26 – MORIAH, ILLINOIS

  Fisher finished fueling the truck. The line was established. The electronics were in place, and Weaver would know to look for the signal by now. With each sacrifice, Weaver would know more. It was time.

  Fisher pushed the nozzle of the gas pump back into the pump housing, walked into the station, and placed the American Express card on the counter. The attendant ran the card through the machine and passed it back.

  “Thanks, Mr McBride,” the attendant said. “Come and see us again soon.”

  Fisher just smiled.

  CHAPTER 27 – ABOVE KENTUCKY

  The Gulfstream was cruising over eastern Kentucky, and Weaver had settled into the starboard seat in front with a glass of Macallan’s and a Cohiba. Technically, smoking was forbidden. Of course, technically, he wasn’t supposed to be in a plane full of armed thugs plotting a murder, so he lit up the cigar.

  Things were looking up. Chen had gotten a call from Kankakee. They had a positive ID on Fisher. He was holding the line. Still didn’t know what he was driving, though. But the Moriah thing felt right. And it was a small town. Population 328. Shit, Fergie’d packed enough hardware to take it right off the map.

  Weaver finished the scotch and was thinking about a nap when someone tapped his shoulder. Chen.

  “Yeah?”

  “The McBride identity has surfaced, sir. Fisher just used the American Express card at a gas station.”

  “Where?”

  “Moriah.”

  Weaver smiled. He could smell blood. He stood up. “Gentlemen, listen up. We have confirmed that Fisher is on the ground in the target area. Fergie? You seen the map?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And he’ll have more hides than crab lice on a crack whore, boss.” Some general laughter with that one.

  “Tough terrain, Fergie, I’ll grant you that. Everybody be ready to roll when we touch down. We are not loitering in the LZ. Chen, you’ve got recon. Check the church for electronics then take a drive around, see what you can pick up. Richter, Capelli, you’ve got the trail maps for the state forest. Give me a sweep around that ridge. Fergie, you and me and Lawrence are gonna work up some tactics. Big day tomorrow, boys and girls, and not a lot of sleep tonight. We’ve got ninety minutes before landing. I’m sacking out.”

  Weaver sank back into his seat and, in the habit of soldiers everywhere, was out in seconds.

  Chen pulled her rented Toyota in the lot in front of St Holy Angels just before 5pm, parking just long enough to let her cell phone run through the frequencies Paravola had programmed in. In a couple of seconds, she picked up some video from inside the church. Fisher had been here. He was ready.

  The ridge around the church concerned her. Too much ground and too many potential hides for Fisher. They’d have to wait until Fisher took the shot and be ready for a counter-sniper action. That could get ugly.

  Capelli and Richter parked at one of the trailheads north of the church and walked through the woods to the top of the ridgeline that overlooked the parking lot. Sight lines through the woods varied but were not as bad as they could have been. A fair amount of low brush grew in clumps, but the trees were well established, oak and maple mostly. There wasn’t much secondary growth, and the ground evidently got some traffic. The state maintained an extensive network of marked trails through the area, and numerous other footpaths were worn into the ground. The late sun drilled down through the bare trees, dappling the ground. Richter and Capelli didn’t expect Fisher to be in the woods now, but they both wore silenced H&K MP5s on slings under their coats. They worked up the back of the ridge abreast, fifteen yards apart. Richter would move forward while Capelli provided cover, then Capelli would leapfrog him and work ahead.

  At the crest of the ridge, they fanned out, Richter taking the ridge as it curved north and east, Capelli following the ridgeline south. Both took range readings to the church from likely spots along the ridge. The ranges from the top of the ridge varied from seven hundred and fifty to nine hundred and twenty meters. They marked on the map spots from which Fisher could not shoot. The northeastern end of the ridge provided no angle to the church’s main doors, and there was no door on that side. Just south of the center of the ridge, a copse of tall oaks blocked a clean shot at the front of the church. Capelli found an area toward the south end of the ridge that was heavily overgrown. It would be an excellent hide if the shooter didn’t have to move quickly. Of course, if you got in there and took fire, it would suck big time. A handful of other locations were bad – too steep, trees blocking sight lines, no cover. By the time Richter and Capelli got back to the trailhead for the drive back to Effingham, they’d eliminated almost half of the ridgeline and targeted fifteen likely hides.

  Weaver, Ferguson, and Lawrence drove the Suburban up I-57 to the west end of Effingham, where most of the hotels clustered along Fayette Avenue. Chen had booked six rooms at the Days Inn.

  Ferguson unfolded a large-scale US Geological Survey map on the round table in his room, and the men clustered around it.

  “Got to figure he’s going to park north at one of the trailheads and walk in,” said Ferguson. “He comes from the south here, he’s either got to park at the church or in this mess of homes here. Either way, people are going to see him.”

  “So we stake out the trailheads?” Lawrence asked.

  Weaver shook his head. “Too many. You got four on this stretch right behind the ridge, which would leave you guys one-on-one. Get up around this curve here, there’s three more. If he’s willing to hump it a-ways, Christ, then he could park anyw
here.”

  Ferguson nodded. “I’d do the trailheads if I had, say, fifteen guys. No. We’re going to have to get him at the church.”

  “Gonna be a bitch,” said Lawrence. “Got, what, almost a mile of ridgeline up there? All of it wooded?”

  “We’ll see what Capelli and Richter find. You know some of it will be shit,” said Weaver.

  Lawrence ran his finger along Hill Street up to the church and along the south verge of the church lot. “Can’t take him from the south. Nothing there,” he said. “Be looking right into the sun that time of day.”

  “Too close to the houses anyway,” said Weaver.

  “Church got a tower or anything? Best bet is to be on his line,” said Ferguson.

  “Too risky,” said Weaver. “Odds are we aren’t going to get a read on his position until he takes his shot. So we got a body out front and cops on the way. Even if we suppress one of the Remingtons, somebody out front would hear it. Even if they don’t, we’d have somebody stuck up there until the cops got done. Maybe they decide to take a look. We gotta stay mobile.”

  There was a knock at the door. Weaver pulled a slim automatic from the inside-the-pant rig beneath his right kidney and walked over to check the peephole. When he opened the door, Capelli and Richter walked in with three large pizza boxes and a bag full of water bottles. They pulled out their maps and gave them to Ferguson, who started transferring the markings onto his map.

  “Gimme a minute here,” he said. He sat at the table and rested his chin on his hands while the rest of the crew ate.

  After ten minutes, Ferguson sat up straight. “OK, I think we got a plan. We go in at him from behind. Capelli, Richter, tell me about this shit in here.” Ferguson pointed to the area at the back of the ridge that ran downhill toward the trailheads.

  “Got a sort of funnel,” said Richter. “Pretty open for woods up the middle, not a lot of secondary growth. North and south here it gets shitty. Steep, more brush.” Richter ran his finger up the ridge on the map. “You can see where the trails coming in bunch up about halfway up here, then fan out again.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” said Ferguson. “After the shot, he’s hauling ass. Ain’t gonna be like Chicago, locals are going to know the shot came from that ridge. Still, he’s not gonna bang through that shit on the sides like a fucking greenhorn. He’ll come down that funnel, not on one of the paths, but through that funnel. Figure on the verges, right or left.”

  “So how do we set it up?” Weaver asked.

  “Me and Lawrence take the top of the funnel, either side. We should hear the shot, so we’ll have a line on him. Capelli and Richter get in the shit on either side of the narrow part. Let him get halfway between our positions, then they start hosing. Maybe they get him. They don’t, either he heads back up the ridge into me and Lawrence and we take him out, or he’s gonna try to get cover between him and Capelli and Richter, which is gonna leave his ass open to us and we take him out anyway.”

  Weaver looked at Lawrence. Lawrence nodded.

  “Could get loud,” Weaver said.

  “What do we got across that narrow part, Capelli? Looks like fifty, sixty yards?”

  “Something like that,” Capelli said.

  “Have Richter and Capelli stick with the H&Ks,” Ferguson said. “They’re suppressed, and they’re accurate for that distance. Lawrence or I take a shot, probably only be the one, and we’re shooting down the ridge and we’re a good couple hundred yards beneath the ridgeline anyway. Sound ain’t gonna be much back by the church. Oughta be OK.”

  “What time do we insert?” Weaver asked.

  “Chen said this confession shit at the church starts at 3.00, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Weaver.

  “Gotta figure Fisher is going to set up early. We want to make sure he’s in position before we move in. Be a real clusterfuck if we all walk in at the same time. Lawrence and Capelli can insert at this trailhead on the right, work up the right side. Richter and I will work in from the left. Say we start making our move around 1pm. We’re going to wanna go in real slow and real quiet.”

  “How about extraction?” Weaver asked.

  “Chen can take the Suburban, cruise the area starting around 2.00. We’re going to have to pack Fisher’s body out. We can call her in when we’re ready.”

  Weaver looked at Capelli. “Good by you?”

  “Hey, Fergie’s the man. He says it’s the plan, then it’s the plan.”

  “Richter?” Weaver asked. Richter had taken out a combat knife and was running a whetstone along the blade.

  “Whatever, man. Tag em and bag em. It’s all rock and roll to me.”

  “Richter,” Ferguson said. “Gets to where you gotta show Fisher your knife, you might as well cut your own throat with it. Because he will take it away from you and open you up like a tuna can.”

  Weaver was wishing he didn’t have to use Richter. He was good, former SEAL, but he wasn’t as good as he thought he was. Weaver was thin on ops guys, though. Had a couple of teams in Europe taking out Al-Qaeda targets the Agency pukes couldn’t get enough shit on for arrests, another team in South America.

  “You guys need to understand what you are up against,” Weaver said. “Fisher is good. He is very, very good.”

  “He’s old, and he’s nuts,” said Richter. “And we’re good, too. And there are four of us.”

  Ferguson looked Richter in the eyes. “Fisher is better now than you are ever going to be, Richter. Nuts or not, old or not. I’ve worked with him, you haven’t. He’s better than I am – way better. And I’m better than you.”

  Richter sat back. This was not a community in which anybody admitted second-class status. “Yeah, well, still. Four of us, one of him. Is he four times better?”

  “Guess we’ll find out,” said Ferguson.

  At 12.15am, Weaver was alone in his room, still looking at the maps, turning Ferguson’s plan over, trying to find something he didn’t like. Seemed solid. He heard a tap at his door. He pulled out the Walther again, checked the peephole. Chen. She was still wearing her black pantsuit, looking like she got dressed fifteen minutes ago. Weaver opened the door and waved her into the room.

  “What’s up?” Weaver asked.

  “Contingency plan, sir.”

  Weaver nodded and sat back down at the table. No matter how much he liked Fergie’s plan, it was still Fisher they were trying to take out. Which meant there was still a decent chance that this time tomorrow, Fisher’d be headed for points south and Weaver’d have a state forest full of dead guys to explain.

  “OK, Chen, what do you have?”

  “I have placed traces of crystal methamphetamine and fifteen thousand dollars in cash in one of Richter’s personal bags. A number of crystal meth labs have been discovered in rural Midwestern communities. Paravola is ready to replace NCIC files on four known crystal meth dealers with the ops team’s data.”

  CHAPTER 28 – CHICAGO

  As soon as Lynch walked into his mother’s hospital room, he knew death had spun out of the final turn and gone to the whip. Her complexion had gone from pale to waxen to almost corrupt. Her breathing was the sound of a rasp on cheap plywood. He pressed his lips to her cheek, and it felt like something from the deli counter.

  “Johnny,” she said.

  “It’s OK, ma.” He brushed a strand of hair away from her mouth.

  “Hurts,” she said.

  “I know,” he answered. “I know.”

  He remembered the bungalow up on Neenah. Summers, his mom in the plaid Madras shorts she liked and the sleeveless blouses, the smoke from the grill, the neat row of rose bushes along the chain-link fence between their yard and the Garritys’s. Mom singing show tunes as she flipped the burgers. Dad in the dark chinos and the Dago T, the nylon web yard chair sagging beneath him, a gold Miller High Life can in his massive paw. Lynch’s sister, maybe three or four, climbing up the old man’s legs and into his lap. Mom still something of a looker, like Jackie O, the
way she’d sit on the wood stairs in the back, legs crossed, one sandal just dangling off her toes. The sound of the neighborhood kids – the Garrity twins, Tony Campanaro, Sean Haggerty getting up a whiffle ball game in the ally. Wandering across the yard to the gate to join them, his ma’s voice strong and high and sweet behind. Knowing supper was coming and there was no better place in the world.

  “You made us a good life, ma,” Lynch said. “Couldn’t have done any better. I love you. I’m going to miss you.”

  Lynch watched one tear roll down his mother’s desiccated cheek, then saw her eyes roll up. It wasn’t sleep anymore. Lynch wasn’t sure what it was, but it wasn’t sleep. The rasping went on and on.

  After a while he couldn’t listen to it anymore, and he left.

  Lynch went to his mom’s, cleaned out the fridge, collected the mail. Grass was starting to grow. He went out to the garage, but there wasn’t any gas for the mower. Might be a little much today anyway. Trying not to give in to the leg too much, but it was barking at him some. He looked up at the little attic his dad had made in the rafters, plywood nailed over the cross members. Knew there was some shit up there, old Christmas lights, scrap. Knew it was coming, the day he’d have to clean all that out. The house didn’t bother him – he had a whole history with his mom in the house after his dad. But the garage felt a little like a mausoleum.

  On the way back to his place, Lynch drove past Sacred Heart and found Father Hughes sweating through a Notre Dame sweatshirt next to a pile of flagstones. Lynch could see where the priest had dug out the outline of a walk leading to the Marian grotto. He’d laid down a crushed limestone base and had just started laying in the fieldstones.

  “Tell me this is some kind of new Lenten penance, Father, and I’m turning Baptist,” said Lynch, coming up the walk.

  “I like the eyepatch. You OK?”

  “Itches some. Otherwise I’m good.”

  “I was just ready for a lunch break,” said the priest. “Care to join me?”