The Devil's Laughter

by William W. Johnstone

  “We’ve got to do it,” George Keenan said, his voice shaky and his face very pale. “If we lose, we all go to prison and the electric chair for sure.”

  “Get a hold of yourself, George,” Dr. Bradshaw told the man.

  “Yeah, but he’s right,” Dick Marley said. “We got a federal man down there at Link’s place. And two Louisiana Troopers. We got no choice in the matter.”

  “A lot of us are going to die.”

  “For a little while,” Jack said with a smile. “Remember that. Only for a little while.”

  That made the coven members feel a lot better, and Satan howled with unheard laughter. A deal was a deal, but the Dark One had never spelled out to them exactly what type of eternal life it would be. The coven leaders huddled together and laid out plans.

  “They got to come in here, on these grounds – if they can get through more’un a hundred men out yonder, that is. This is where we’ll win. Right here. Get into position.”

  “I forgot where my position was,” Waldo said.

  Chapter 14

  Link held off firing until he knew he could no longer wait. He had bypassed several men in the brush and timber, but now that was becoming dangerous; it might put him in a box. His position was tenuous enough without adding to it.

  Two men reared up in front of him and he cut them down with a quick burst, then changed positions swiftly and silently. Even with that move, the returning fire came very close to him as he hugged the cold ground. He belly-crawled forward, moving as silently as possible over the dead grass and rotten branches that littered the ground.

  Someone very close stepped on a dry twig and it snapped under the weight. Link froze as the man’s face was outlined in the dim light. Dewey Ventress. Link knew him only slightly.

  Dewey waited motionless for a moment, then he waved a hand and another man joined him. Link could not ever recall seeing the second man. A third and fourth man joined them; then another one. Link carefully worked a grenade from the pouch at his side and silently pulled the pin. He rolled over on his back and flipped the Fire-Frag.

  “Shit!” one of the men hollered about two seconds before the grenade blew.

  The grenade didn’t kill all the coven members, but it did put all of them out of action.

  “I can’t move my legs,” one man moaned. “Oh, Lord, Harry’s guts is blowed out. Oh, shit.”

  Link crawled away, the moaning and crying covering any slight noise he might make. He pulled up short, not realizing he had covered so much ground. He was very close to the road but still a long way from the plant complex. Across the rutted old road, he could just make out the shapes of running men. But they were running south, away from him and toward where the young priest was working.

  Once Mark got his temper up, he had turned into a gutsy fighter.

  Another explosion ripped through the night. That was followed by a lot of hollering and some painful screaming. “He’s a-throwin’ dynamite!” the faint call drifted to Link.

  Link headed straight north, toward the buildings that loomed up silent and dark in the distance. He stayed near the road, just inside the timber, working his way from tree to tree, bush to bush.

  He almost got his ticket punched. He had lifted his foot and then paused, slowly pulling his boot back. He looked down. A thin black wire was stretched taut about four inches off the ground. Without moving his head, he cut his eyes. He was looking directly into the muzzles of a double-barreled shotgun tied to the side of a tree, in a fork. The trip wire was rigged to the triggers.

  Cute, Link thought. You people are finally learning how to play this game.

  He carefully stepped over the wire and moved on. He paused often to stand by a tree and listen. He heard a whisper of fabric against tree bark. The sound was plain and very near. Link stood motionless, waiting. He’d played this game in ’Nam many, many times, and it was a testimony to his skill that he was standing here on this night.

  The man hesitated, then moved back away from the road. Link watched him fade into the pines and the brush.

  “I got him!” a voice shouted from Link’s left. “I got the old fart priest. I – ” The words changed to a painful screaming. “Oh, no!” the coven member bellowed in pain. “Oh, sweet Jesus, help me, help me. My skin’s a-bubblin’ off my head! Burnin’, burnin’!”

  Link held his position and heard the screaming man lumbering and lurching up the road. He came into sight, both hands pressed to his face. He tripped and fell heavily onto the roadbed. He lay kicking and screaming, calling on Jesus to help him.

  Link doubted the Son of God would have much sympathy for the coven member. And if He did, his Father would probably tell him to cool it.

  Link moved on just as Mark let fly another batch of dynamite. The explosion was loud and it trembled the earth under Link’s boots. This toss must have landed directly in the middle of a bunched-up group of devil-lovers. The squalling and wailing and screaming was loud even at that distance.

  He paused and looked back toward the road. Father Lattier was nowhere in sight. But Link knew the old priest was behind him, somewhere. The holy water was a nice touch, Link thought. Lattier knew his business.

  A bullet hit the tree beside him and bits of bark ripped into his cheek, stinging and bringing blood. Link immediately dropped to the ground, facing north.

  “I got him!” a man shouted. “I killed the Christian puke. I killed Link Donovan!” He jumped up and ran through the pines, half a dozen others with him.

  Link held his fire until the coven members were very nearly on top of him, and then he burned half a clip.

  The men went down like cards in the wind. One man stopped cold under the impact and squeezed the trigger of his shotgun. The blast took the man beside him in the head and made a big mess in the woods. Smokey the Bear would be very unhappy with this night’s litter.

  Behind him, a shotgun roared.

  “You dumb son of a bitch!” a man yelled. “You tripped the war that was meant for Donovan. Hell’s far, Wilbur. Wilbur? You all right, boy?”

  “Wilbur’s dead, you idiot,” another replied. “He took both barrels in the head.”

  “I ain’t likin’ this a-tall, Josh. Ain’t nothin’ workin’ out like ’at woman said it would. And I’m gettin’ skired. I’m gettin’ out of here.”

  “You can’t leave. If any of them are left alive, the police will hunt us down and put us in the electric chair, if they don’t just shoot us right off the bat.”

  Link felt sure he had the two men pinpointed, but the distance was too great for the short-barreled Uzi. He left them arguing over the dubious merits of the hunt and moved on toward the plant buildings.

  Behind him and to his right, someone started screaming hoarsely, obviously in intense pain. Father Lattier had struck again.

  Link knelt down beside a tree. He was still a long way from the darkened complex, and he felt sure that the closer he got, the more guards he would encounter. He also knew that he had been very, very lucky so far, but to continue to count on luck would be foolish.

  And, he concluded, to concentrate on doing battle with the followers of the coven, instead of the leaders, was also a bit on the foolish side.

  But how the hell was he to get to the complex?

  He looked up. Clouds had suddenly appeared and were sliding over the moon. Link watched in amazement, then shook his head in wonderment. “Thanks,” he whispered, thinking that it never hurt to be grateful.

  Link ran hard for a hundred yards, straight toward the complex, then stopped and bellied down, catching his breath.

  “I’m telling you I seen something out there,” the voice came to Link as he lay on the ground.

  “And I heard something,” another man said.

  “Then check it out,” a woman said. “Move.”

  The voices were very close to Link. Not more than ten or fifteen yards away, to his right. He crawled forward, inching along silently, not wanting to use either gun or grenade and let them kn
ow he was this close. The only thing that worried him was the hump on his back caused by the pack.

  He froze rock-still as flashlight beams began searching the area. The hell with this! he thought. He rose to one knee and burned half a clip in a left-to-right sweeping motion. Then he was up and running as hard as he could.

  He ran right into a man, the impact knocking both of them sprawling. Link struggled to his boots and kicked the man in the face just as hard as he could. The man fell back to the earth, if not out cold, then at least stunned and hurting. Link ran for the road, crossed it, and then cut north, heading straight for the plant.

  His boot caught in a root and sent him crashing to the ground, rolling into a depression in the earth. The impact knocked the wind from him and he lost his Uzi. When he recovered his wind, he felt around until his fingers closed on the submachine gun. He pulled it to him and brushed it off.

  The bullets really started flying then. Link stayed low in the hole as the slugs whined and cracked and popped wickedly over his head.

  When the guns shifted to another location and the lead was no longer cracking over his head, Link crawled out of the depression and began worming his way toward the old fence that surrounded the complex.

  What was he going to do once inside the old plant?

  He didn’t have the vaguest idea.

  Except to try to kill his mother and do his best to stay alive, although the latter was on the second rung of priorities.

  He knew he did not have to worry about floodlights, since there was no power to the plant. Then the thought came to him and it chilled him to the core: What if those inside had parked their vehicles facing out and all turned on their headlights?

  Shit! he thought. He scrambled toward the south side of the plant. He recalled seeing some old rusting equipment piled around there, close to the fence.

  He crawled up under a huge old pile of rust that had once been some sort of earth-mover. And he was just in time.

  “Hit the lights!” came the shout, and fifty vehicles cut their twin beams on high.

  “Bastards,” Link muttered as light filtered through the framework of the old machine. But he was flat on the ground and not moving, so Link figured his chances of being seen were very slight. Had that thought not come to him – and he was pretty sure who had put it there – he would be dead cooling meat.

  “Here’s Marty over here!” a woman shouted. “Someone kicked him in the mouth and busted his jaw. Donovan’s got to be inside the fence.”

  “No, he isn’t.” Link recognized the voice as belonging to Jack Matisse. “We got this place covered like fleas on a dog’s back.”

  “Well, the son of a bitch has got to be out there somewhere. He didn’t vanish into thin air. Has anybody heard how our people are doing down at Link’s house?”

  “No. Maybe he went back there to help out.”

  “No. His Bronco’s still parked up north of here. He’s hiding out here somewhere. There’re ditches and holes all over the place. Hell, he may have ducked back into the timber.”

  “Fan out. Find him, kill him! He must die!”

  “Up yours, too,” Link muttered. He inched around and found that the engine was gone from the earth-mover. He pulled himself up into the engine compartment and made himself as comfortable as possible. Now they could shine their lights under the earth-mover and still wouldn’t see him.

  And two men did just that only a few minutes later.

  “Damn,” one said, shining his light all around. “I just knew he’d be under here.”

  “Well, he ain’t,” his partner replied. “Come on. We got to find him.”

  Snug in the empty engine compartment, Link smiled. Keep on looking, boys, he thought. I’ll just wait up in here, if you don’t mind.

  But where was Father Lattier and Father Palombo? Had they been killed or captured? No, Link rejected that. Someone would have shouted out the news.

  Doubts began to assail him. If Lynette Jackson was really in league with the devil, couldn’t she just use some voodoo and locate him? Or why couldn’t the devil see him and tell her where he was hiding? Were there, as Father Lattier had said, rules in this contest? Rules between God and Satan? There were rules in Vietnam, too. And look where that had gotten the United States. You can’t fight a war with rules.

  “Cut the lights!” someone yelled.

  The area went dark.

  From somewhere out in the darkness came the sounds of praying. The voice belonged to Father Lattier. The voice was firm and the words clear. Link had no idea where the old priest might be hiding.

  “Kill that old son of a bitch!” Jack Matisse shouted. “Open fire!”

  The night rocked with gunfire, the barrage lasting a full minute and hundreds of rounds expelled. The call for a cease-fire came and the guns fell silent.

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil ...”

  “I said kill that bastard!” Jack shouted. “Kill him! Throw everything you got at him.”

  Gunfire once more split the night for a minute.

  “... Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies,” came the calm voice of Lattier.

  “Goddamnit!” Jack screamed.

  From behind Link’s position, Father Palombo prayed, in the timber. “I will fear no evil, for thou art with me ...”

  “Get that other Psalms-shouter!” Jack yelled.

  “Save your bullets,” the voice of Lynette sprang from out of the darkness of the plant. “Go after them physically. Find them and destroy them.”

  Many men and women rushed past Link’s hiding place, screaming and cursing and praising Satan as they ran toward the pines.

  “You’re in for a very painful surprise,” Link said under his breath. “Just about ... right now.”

  The coven members ran right into a trap. When they entered the timber, Mark detonated the dynamite and the explosion shook the earth. It was the largest blast the priest had set off yet, and while Link had no way of knowing how many men and women died in it, the charge must have killed or maimed quite a number, for only about a dozen came staggering back, and they were cut and bleeding and several were holding broken arms.

  Link slipped out of his hiding place and joined the group. In the darkness, no one paid any attention to him as he walked through the hole in the old fence. As he walked past a vehicle, Link ducked down and slipped away from the group, bellying down in the parking lot.

  No one missed him.

  He slipped up under the rear of a pickup truck and, using his fingers to find the number he’d indented in the explosive, placed a block of C-4 between the frame and the gas tank. He flipped the toggle switch on. He had five minutes before it blew. He slipped to another vehicle and placed more explosives. Four minutes. He exhausted his supply of plastic, then made his way into the walkway between the buildings and stepped into a stoop. He figured he had about one minute before the entire front of the complex was going up with a very loud bang. Anyone standing close to the line of vehicles was going to be turned into a human torch.

  Fathers Lattier and Palombo were still in their hiding places in the darkness, praying calmly and firmly.

  “I can’t take no more of that shit!” a woman shouted. “Stop it, damn you both. Stop it.”

  “He’s in the plant area!” Lynette shouted from the second floor. “I can feel him. His presence is very strong to me. Find him. Find him. He’s here.”

  About thirty seconds, Link thought. Thirty more seconds and a lot of you are going to be history.

  Link about jumped clear out of his boots when a voice, not more than three or four feet from him, said, “Did you hear about them that attacked Donovan’s place?”

  “No,” a woman replied. She was directly across from where Link was pressed against the building.

  “They got slaughtered. Only a few come back. Gerard and them others threw everything they had at them and beat them back. I’m gettin’ the hell gone from
here. We can change our names and start over somewheres else. We’re finished here.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” she said. “You don’t think he will let us leave, do you? We wouldn’t get-”

  Whatever else she said was lost in the roar, as about twenty pounds of C-4 blew. Link had timed it just about right. The building trembled as the charges blew the gas tanks and vehicles were tossed into the air like toys. The complex was lit up as bright as day.

  The man and woman who’d been talking looked square at Link, their faces dirty and pale and their mouths hanging open at the sight of him.

  Link shot them. The rattle of the Uzi was lost in the noise of the inferno. Burning men and women were running and screaming in pain, their clothing on fire. The fires reached other vehicles and set them on fire, the gas tanks exploding, spewing liquid fire from one end of the complex to the other. The stench of burning flesh was strong in the night air.

  “You prayed to the Dark One and you wanted the fires of hell,” Link muttered. “You damn sure got it, folks. Enjoy it. It’s yours for eternity.”

  Link could see men and women running out of the plant complex and away, up the old rutted road toward the parish road. They had thrown down their weapons and were running in blind fear and panic. Some of them were still on fire, their shrieking and screaming fading as the flames consumed them. They fell down and were still. Tiny blazing specks of light in the darkness.

  Link put in a fresh clip and stepped across the sidewalk and up to the door of the main building. He tried the doorknob. It turned under his hand. He stepped in and quickly moved to a pocket of shadows.

  “Hey, Mommy!” he shouted. “It’s your baby boy, Link. I’ve come to kick your ass back to hell, you witchy bitch!”

  Chapter 15

  Gerard and the others began roping, chaining, and handcuffing the survivors of the attack against Link’s place and putting them in the barn. They were a beaten and sullen bunch. Some of them were so badly wounded they would not last the night.