“Hold on,” Cole said. “I haven’t slept in two days, and these things take time. They know me there. I can’t just barge in through the front door. At a minimum, I’m going to need three days.”
Julius sat back, eyeing Cole and seeing the lies on his face. He then looked at his watch. “You got thirty-four hours.”
It was not lost on Cole that was exactly how long the temporary stay of execution had left. It was an added incentive that he didn’t need.
After a grunted goodbye, he was ushered out by the four guards. Two walked in front, while two strode behind him, treating him like the dangerous animal he was. Julius Fantucci had torn his life to shreds and if Cole thought for a second that he had a chance against the guards, he would’ve taken it. He imagined this would be the one and only time he’d be allowed to walk down these halls. If he ever came back, it would be in pieces but only if he was lucky. If he wasn’t, he would come back bound hand and foot.
Before they reached the parking garage, the elevator was stopped, and Cole was given a minute to change into a rumpled, ill-fitting suit. The pants were an inch too short and five inches too wide around. The jacket draped on him like a poncho. It at least hid the Forino holstered to his belt. The Mega had a shoulder holster and even as big as Cole was, it looked like he was trying to shoplift half a loaf of bread beneath his arm.
The same driver was there waiting for him. “We’ll be going back to Grand Central. I drop you off, you go into the station and disappear. Got it?” When Cole nodded, the man went on, “Don’t look back, don’t try to talk to me and don’t be a dick. You’ll be watched. And don’t come back here, ever.”
“Where’s my ammo?” Cole demanded.
“When we get to the station.” What should have been a ten-minute drive took thirty-five as the driver meandered all over the place, possibly trying to lose a tail that wasn’t there. Eventually, Grand Central loomed, looking strangely brighter than it ever had. Cole was just craning his neck up to see through the windows when the driver slung a battered piece of luggage over the seat. “This is your stop, Mr. Younger.” He paused and Cole expected him to say, good luck, instead he said, “Get out.”
“Fuck off,” Cole muttered, giving him a hard stare, memorizing the man’s face: the long nose, the scar beneath his left eye, the little tuft of black hair sprouting like weeds between his thick eyebrows.
Then Cole was out of the car, blinking against the brilliant morning sun. Once more, he muttered, “Fuck off,” this time to the sun. He hadn’t expected to see another sunrise and now that he had, he wasn’t particularly happy about it. His head thumped from lack of sleep, lack of water, lack of food, and the residue of the two blows that had leveled him a day and a half before. He was tired and cranky and wanted nothing more than to go home and curl up in bed for a week with a bottle or four of gin.
But there was no time for that. His first priority was to find Corrina. He was sick over what might be happening to her and/or what she might be doing. He had left her with a few nickels to her name and she was a girl with a hearty appetite.
Grand Central was the perfect place to lose oneself, and Cole didn’t bother to watch out for a pursuer. He knew the station and he knew how to disappear.
There were tunnels within tunnels that he had spied out as a boy when he should’ve been in class getting religion pounded into his head. Although a deep abiding faith in God had settled in his heart, it hadn’t been able to breach his thick skull. He knew the commandments and “love thy neighbor,” and that Jesus had been born in a barn, something he could relate to, but knew little else.
The subway system was a different story. He boarded the Number 4 train when it pulled in, walked through the cars to the last one, pulled open the doors opposite the platform and dropped down, careful to avoid the wide, third rail. From there, he crossed four sets of rails before hopping up on another platform. Five minutes later, he settled in on the 6 Train, which took him west to Penn Station.
As he rode, he clicked open the small piece of luggage. Inside was his bounty hunter ID, seventy dollars in small bills, and fifty rounds of ammo for each gun. The cash went into his pocket with another muttered curse. It was too little to set Corrina up for anything better than a temporary place. Father James wouldn’t help her for so little. Cursing under his breath, he loaded the guns, drawing some wide-eyed stares, all of which he ignored. What did he care what the little people thought? They weren’t even pawns in this game. They were spectators, not realizing that he could be the only thing keeping the city from being destroyed from within.
At Penn Station he exited once more from the wrong side. He was only a few blocks from the orphanage, and he thought it safest to approach it from beneath. After a few dark twists and turns he found the door that led up to the church. It was barred, something that had never stopped him as a child. Above the frame was a thin length of metal which he slid through the crack and used to fulcrum the wood beam from its seat.
His sudden appearance in the doorway to the chapel, his face a bruised mess sent one child racing from the room in terror. “She here?” Cole asked as Father James eased forward.
“I haven’t seen her. You okay? You don’t look well.”
Cole knew he looked like crap; James looked guilty. Cole pulled the Mega from its holster and discovered that it had another use besides killing cops. It was a vastly intimidating weapon. He pointed the gun at his onetime friend. “Who’s been here?”
James licked his lips and swallowed loudly before answering, “The taxmen came first and then some gangsters. I’m supposed to call them when you show up. Are you screwing up again?”
“Yeah, something like that.” Cole slid the gun away. “But she isn’t a part of this. I’m going to need you to watch her. Just for a couple of months so she can get…” James was already shaking his head. Cole was tempted to pull the gun again, but knew it would do little good. They both knew he probably wouldn’t shoot a priest.
He would punch one and had before. He considered it for a few seconds staring at James. “You’re not going to help?” James shook his head. Cole’s fist began to bunch once again. “You want to hear something funny? The Fantuccis told me they would burn this place down if I didn’t walk the straight and narrow for them.” Seeing James’ mouth come open in shock was more enjoyable than Cole had expected. They both knew he had never walked a straight path in his life. “So good luck with that,” Cole said, tromping up to the priest’s private office.
“Straight and narrow,” James said. “What’s that supposed to mean, exactly?”
Cole looked in at the study. The same black plastic phone that had been there when he was a boy sat on the same paint-chipped end table. “I’m not sure,” he said. He then threw the phone against the wall, where it exploded. Grinning in satisfaction, he said, “Oops, now I guess you can’t make that call. Have a good one, James.” He pushed past the priest, heading for the tunnels once more. From there, he went to a number of places that he and Corrina had been to: Mick’s diner, a gin-joint on 20th, the flophouse they had stayed at a few days before. He even went to his apartment, or rather, he went close to his apartment. He stalked the crumbling old building, never approaching too closely.
She was too smart to think she could just waltz into their apartment. No, she would work around the edges of the block, never getting too close, ready to speed out of there at the first hint of danger. And there was danger. Corrina was a weakness of Cole’s. Somehow, she had wormed her way into his life, and he hadn’t been able to let her go, despite all her many faults.
The Fantuccis knew it and so did the police. There was a cruiser parked down the alley across from Cole’s building. It was entirely expected. Hamilton would want Corrina as leverage; the only question was if he wanted her for Fantucci or for himself. He was getting a piece of the pie from Fantucci, but maybe he wanted more, or maybe he was on the take from more than one player.
“Games within games,” Cole muttered, dark
ly. The cruiser was sitting in almost the same spot that Eddie the Axe’s Rambler had been a few days before. It had clearly been there a while since the locals were going out of their way to avoid it. The only ones who weren’t were the morning-after drunks who were still sloshed from the night before, and the addicts who were too high to even realize their danger. They stumbled down the empty street, squinting against the bright light.
Smoking a cigarette from a pack he had bought on the way, Cole watched from the ruins of a deserted building half a block away. It’s where he had expected to find Corrina, perhaps curled up in one of the rooms overlooking the street, or down below where the foundation was riddled with tunnels. There was no sign of her. He smoked cigs, one after another, waiting and watching, telling himself that he would leave just as soon as he finished the next.
If he had a destination in mind, he would have left already. But Corrina could be anywhere. She could be dead or in police custody or high in some slag-hole deep beneath the city.
A sigh escaped him as he went to light another, the sigh turned into a cough as he choked on the smoke. There, not fifty yards away, was the world’s smallest drunk. “Christ!” She was approaching the apartment building from the opposite way, which put the squad car between them.
Dropping the cig, Cole went flying down the stairs, which kept cracking beneath his weight. Eventually they collapsed beneath him and he fell along with the final two flights. It was a slow-motion fall as parts of the prefab stairs held and others twisted. He found himself half-buried and covered in dust. Forcing himself up, he bulled his way to the door and charged out into the street just as a siren blared and an engine roared.
Corrina stopped in the middle of the street and looked blearily around as if the siren wasn’t quite penetrating her drunken fog. By the time she recognized the squad car for what it was, she had no time to run. Instead she turned an odd one legged circle, her mouth hanging open. Then one of the officers was clambering out of the car. He moved quicker without his rifle and was on her so quickly she barely had time to pull the .32 Crown.
Just pointing the gun at a policeman was grounds for execution. When she fired it, she signed her death warrant. It was a waste of a bullet. No round that small could penetrate the polymer armor. She had no understanding of armor and had fully expected more from the gun. With squinting eyes she peered at the small hole in the cop’s shirt and wondered why it wasn’t spitting out red. Thinking she needed to give him another go, she lifted the pistol a second time, only to have her wrist caught in a crushing grip.
With a brutal twist, the gun fell from her hand and in the next second she was flung against the side of the squad car. She twisted, almost dislocating her own arm, and was able to line up a good shot with a hawked-up hunk of snot. It went right through the cage and smacked the taxman in the eye. The officer was more furious about the spit than being shot.
He had laughed when her popgun had gone off, but now he snarled and raised his mailed fist.
“Don’t!” Cole barked, pointing the Mega at the man’s face from the other side of the squad car. “Let her go or I will fire.” He had reached a point where this was not an idle threat. The cop, a rookie named George Wheatley, seemed to understand this and his hand opened. Corrina dropped and although her head was clearing rapidly, she was still too drunk to stand straight. She fell against the car and had a perfect view of the driver hauling a rifle around in the cramped vehicle.
“Cole! The driver!”
The door next to Cole’s left elbow opened and the first six inches of a semi-automatic rifle was shoved out. Cole danced back just as it burst into life. The rounds missed him by inches, getting closer with each shot as the door opened wider and wider. Cole flailed backward, firing the six-shot Mega. The first two bullets pounded into the armored door, but did not penetrate it completely. The next one holed the heavy glass window and the fourth singed the air a foot over the top of the cruiser.
The kick from the Mega was outrageous, while the pull of the trigger was far heavier than he had expected, causing the barrel to jerk with each shot. The sound the gun made was equally fantastic. Each shot came with a deafening thunderclap, which had the driver hesitating just as he was about to step out from the car. His name was Eric Gothier and, although he’d been a police officer for ten years, nothing he had ever faced sounded like the Mega, and for the first time he doubted his invulnerability.
Had Gothier stepped out decisively, Cole would’ve been a sitting duck as he tried to rein in the Mega. Instead Gothier paused, giving Cole enough time to clap his left hand to the grip, aim and fire. The .70 caliber copper-sheeted round went through the window, turning it to crystalline dust before pounding into Gothier’s vest with enough force to send him into the car’s frame.
The vest held, though Gothier felt as though he’d been hit with a baseball bat. “George!” he screamed to his partner as he tried to yank his carbine up to fire through the broken window. He should have used his .480 service piece strapped to his thigh, which most taxmen thought of as only a backup piece. He was too slow with the rifle and Cole finally found the right combination of squeeze, aim, forward pressure and relaxed grip to make his last shot count. The huge slug drilled through seven layers of polymer armor tearing Gothier’s heart to pieces.
Even as Gothier’s legs buckled beneath him and he fell, Cole was dropping the Mega and pulling the Forino.
George Wheatley had spent the seven-second battle scrambling for his rifle. In his armor George was slow and clumsy, and was just grabbing the rifle’s grip when Cole started firing through the car. With the Forino, he couldn’t miss the hulking target that filled the entire passenger side doorway. Cole fired over the top of the dying driver and put four rounds into the mass. His grouping was perfect…perfectly useless. None of the bullets made it past the armor.
Quickly, he took a fifth shot just as George stood. The bullet winged off his helmet.
Now the tables were turned. George fired back through the car and Cole had nothing but a borrowed suit to stop the bullets. He threw himself to the side and rolled, coming up in a crouch next to the car. He had the Forino aimed, ready to kill George when he came around the front of the car. Cole would have one shot and if he missed, he would die. The cage covering George’s face was the one fatal weakness in his armor. If Cole failed to hit it on his first try, he’d be blasted to goo in the next second.
George was no idiot. He came around the car with his rifle held up and aimed, giving Cole only a tiny square that centered around George’s squinting left eye. Cole fired first and the bullet tinged harmlessly off the edge of the cage. Then George was shooting. The near miss had caused him to flinch, sending his first few shots off to Cole’s left, but then George began to walk the rounds back towards him.
It felt like slow motion as Cole lined up a last shot. Unlike the previous one, Cole was tense and stiff. The dreadful hiss of bullets coming nearer and nearer, made his shoulders hunch and his stomach knot. Cringing, he fired and missed once more, this time completely. His bullet raced to the left of George’s head and did nothing to stop the arc of the rifle as it finally came to center directly on Cole’s chest.
Chapter 13
Hitting an inch-wide target took precision, and as Cole was cringing as he rattled off bullets, hoping to get lucky, he missed.
Bullets, like shooting stars whipped at him, closer and closer, and then just as they centered on him, George suddenly jerked and flung his arms up. Then, like a tree falling, he went stiff and fell forward, his eyes already empty and unseeing. Behind him stood a tiny, woozy figure in red. During the fight, Corrina had been all but ignored and as George stomped around the car to kill Cole, she had retrieved her gun.
As he walked around the car, she fired it at the cop, but the sound of it going off had been swallowed up in the vast explosion of one of Cole’s shots, and the light punch it gave to George didn’t even register. “What the fuck?” she had said. In her drunken state, she was sl
ow to realize why it had failed to kill the cop. At first, she thought that it was a matter of distance and that it would work if she could get right up on him. It wasn’t until she was standing behind the mountain of metal and flesh that she remembered the armor.
“Oh,” she said. Like her earlier gunshot, the word was drowned out as George started shooting, raking his rifle from right to left. Even from behind, the police officer was armored from head to toe. But no armor ever invented was perfect and as George crouched over his rifle, aiming down its length, his head was tipped forward, exposing a gap between his helmet and the armor at the back of his neck. It was a narrow gap and had she been any further away—or shorter—she might have missed.
Standing on tip toe and reaching up got the barrel within four inches of the back of his neck. Even a drunk twelve-year-old couldn’t miss at that range. The bullet blasted through the base of his skull and shut him off like a switch had been thrown.
There was only a little gore, just a fine spray of red that hung like a mist. Still, it and the scene in front of her was too much for her. She fell to her knees and puked up what was left of the last three gin-fizzes she had knocked back an hour before. They had been cherry fizzes and what came up in a bright red gush added the final touch that the battle scene was missing.
“Shit,” she whispered, making the length of red drool that hung from her mouth, dance up and down.
“Are you alright?” Cole was suddenly next to her, tall and broad, blotting out the sun.
“Huh?” The fight had briefly righted her mind, but now that ship was once more beginning to capsize. For some reason her eyelids wouldn’t raise past half-mast, and her head felt heavy. “Is there a chicken on my head?” She reached up to see if there was and hit herself with the Crown. “Ow,” she muttered.
Dead Eye Hunt (Book 2): Into The Rad Lands Page 12