“Let’s check all the windows and doors, Romeo.”
“Right, Bro,” Romeo said, and after wagging his finger at Ethan, he followed Tanner.
12
The Great War
THE WESTERN FRONT, AUGUST 1918
While in the army, Keane O’Connell met the first Englishman he ever had any use for.
That man was John Stone, and Stone was a sniper who trained other snipers. O’Connell discovered that he was just as adept at killing from a distance as he was at killing up close.
Being a sniper also gave him the opportunity to work alone, which was more suited to his nature. He could have worked with a partner, as most of the other men did. But O’Connell worked best when alone, and the officers respected his abilities. He also received a promotion to Corporal.
Along with the sniper training came the art of camouflage, and O’Connell became a master at it. Being a sniper wasn’t all about killing.
A camouflaged soldier could also work as a scout and determine the enemy’s troop movements and artillery placements.
Keane O’Connell was so bold that he had taken to infiltrating enemy trenches and killing the men within them while they slept. He would also take officers prisoner when possible, and much intelligence was gained by questioning the men under duress.
As fearless as O’Connell was, there was one in his company who was braver, or perhaps he was just foolhardier.
His name was Michael Waller, a farm boy from the Midwest.
Waller was as tall as O’Connell but had lied about his age to join the army. In truth, Michael Waller was only sixteen, but the intrepid boy ached to have a life of adventure, and what better place to begin such a life than to fight in what was being called The Great War.
Despite his age, Waller was a deadly soldier. Like O’Connell, the boy routinely snuck across enemy lines. He once stayed there for an entire day while dressed in the uniform of a German soldier. During that day, Michael Waller had killed six men. For proof, he had taken the men’s dog tags.
He was praised for his valor, but several men criticized him for removing the dog tags.
“How’d you like to be lying dead in a trench, boy, with no way for the officers to inform the folks back home?” asked one soldier.
From that point on, Michael Waller left the dead wearing their dog tags.
Regardless of their age difference, O’Connell and Waller became friends, and O’Connell taught the boy all he knew about camouflage.
Despite his interest in learning the skill, Waller wasn’t accepted into the sniper program because the Englishmen John Stone thought the boy lacked patience. O’Connell had agreed, and an impatient sniper was a dead sniper. Once the enemy knew your position, all hell was sent your way, including artillery shelling.
O’Connell saw in Waller a quality that he’d recognized in himself. It was a stoic nature that allowed him to think and remain calm in situations where most men panicked or froze up.
During the numerous gas attacks, when the men needed to don their masks, O’Connell saw grown men whimper as their faces wore expressions of terror.
He simply placed his mask on and waited for the wind to disperse the mustard gas. If his mask was defective, or if tendrils of the gas were to reach him before he could secure it over his head, then he would suffer the effects, such as painful blisters, possibly followed by a lingering death.
Being terrified and letting your imagination run away wouldn’t change those outcomes. Panic might even make things worse. Life was what it was, and you had to deal with it as best as you could.
During one such attack of gas, O’Connell and Waller found themselves in the pit of a trench with five other soldiers.
Most of the men were young, although not as young as Waller. Perhaps it was inexperience, perhaps temperament, but all five of the other men were in various stages of distress from the fear they were experiencing over their terror of the gas.
O’Connell looked over and saw Waller staring at him with a calm expression. Then, the boy’s eyes crinkled, and O’Connell could tell he was smiling beneath the mask. Waller gestured at O’Connell, and then back at himself.
O’Connell nodded once in understanding. The boy was telling O’Connell that they were the same. They went through life, not unafraid, but unbowed, by either circumstance or the hobgoblins of fear. It was the quality that made them both exceptional soldiers.
In O’Connell’s case, it had also aided him in becoming a skilled assassin.
Waller could read, but not at a level O’Connell deemed acceptable.
He took it upon himself to school the inquisitive boy in history while also improving his literacy skills. Waller couldn’t get enough. In fact, he seemed to have a knack for learning other languages as well.
Waller picked up French with ease, and taught O’Connell enough of it to get by when they had a three-day leave in Paris.
A sixteen-year-old virgin, Waller had spent his last day on leave with a girl he’d met at an outdoor café. Her parents were away, and they had the house to themselves.
He was still wearing a silly grin a week later.
O’Connell returned at daybreak from a successful scouting mission to discover that no one had seen Waller in two days.
After reporting in and delivering the intelligence he’d gathered, O’Connell was expected to rest up for his next mission. Instead, he refilled his canteen and ammo pack, cleaned his rifle, and went out to search for Waller.
A heavy rain had fallen the previous day and the sky was still full of clouds. O’Connell made good use of the mud and slathered himself with it, to blend in with the drab landscape around him.
Two hours later he was well into enemy territory when he heard cries of pain coming from the fire-damaged remains of a French farmhouse.
It was Michael Waller, and he was being tortured.
The three soldiers tormenting the boy were Hungarians. One of them was an officer.
O’Connell raised his rifle, but then lowered it. The booming of the 1903 Springfield rifle might bring others on the run. O’Connell concealed his rifle in the branches of a tree, then headed toward the farmhouse while unsheathing his knife.
He came up behind the men undetected and slit the throat of the officer, then was aided by chance when the man’s spurting blood blinded one of the other soldiers. The third man was reaching for the gun on his hip when O’Connell shoved the dying officer at him, making the soldier lose his balance.
With no time for finesse, O’Connell slashed away with his knife like an animal raking at prey.
When he was done, the officer was dead, while the two soldiers were bleeding from numerous wounds. They lay on the floor moaning in agony.
Their moans mixed with those of Michael Waller’s cries of pain. Waller had been hung by bound wrists from a roof beam and beaten severely. There was also a gash in his side that dripped blood. It had likely been caused by a bayonet.
The boy’s eyes were both swollen shut, and so O’Connell wasn’t certain he could see. However, he could hear, and when O’Connell spoke to him, a smile crept across Waller’s puffy lips.
“Can you walk, lad?” O’Connell asked, and received a nod.
After finishing off the two wounded soldiers, O’Connell led Waller to the tree where he’d left his rifle. When he climbed up to retrieve his weapon, O’Connell spied four more men headed toward them.
There was no way the men would miss them, and if they hid, the men would soon come upon the dead inside the damaged farmhouse.
It was foolhardy to use the rifle, as its sound was distinct and could bring others running, but O’Connell weighed the risk and decided to fire.
The four men died one after the other as O’Connell fired and worked the bolt on his weapon. Afterward, he dropped to the ground, got Waller to his feet, and spoke with urgency.
“We need to move fast.”
“I can barely see, Keane,” Waller said.
“Then take my hand
.”
They ran at a jog, occasionally seeing the enemy, but only at a distance. The two hours spent crisscrossing the landscape while searching for Waller was far more time than they would need to get back into their own territory. Nonetheless, the enemy was active, and they had to hide several times to avoid capture.
O’Connell smiled when he saw signs that they were nearly back across the line, but he screamed in pain as a bullet struck him in the left leg.
He toppled to the ground, with Waller following him there. The pain of his wound had brought tears to O’Connell’s eyes, but he had maintained his grip on his rifle.
The soldier who’d shot him must have thought he’d killed him, because the fool was running toward them and shouting in German.
“Keane?” Waller whispered, as he stayed still.
“I’m alive,” O’Connell said, his words twisted by agony.
O’Connell tried to push aside the pain, but the pain pushed back, and he found that he could barely hold on to his rifle. After bracing himself again, he swiped at the tears blurring his vision, then took aim.
The German’s head erupted in a mist of red, but there were other uniformed figures coming closer.
“Where’s your injury, Keane?” Waller asked.
“My left leg.”
When O’Connell tried to stand, he found that he couldn’t, then felt himself being lifted by Waller and draped over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
“Tell me which direction to run,” Waller said. The words were squeezed out between teeth clenched in agony. O’Connell was amazed at the boy’s stamina.
“To the right, Michael. I see a group of our men there.”
Waller ran for all he was worth, but it was slow and jerky due to O’Connell’s weight, the sucking mud, and his own injuries.
Waller collapsed just yards shy of a trench. When O’Connell looked at him, he saw that the boy had reached his limit and passed out.
O’Connell dragged himself and the boy into the trench as his comrades traded shots with the enemy soldiers who’d been on their trail.
As he took in gasps of cold air at the bottom of the trench, O’Connell looked over at Waller.
The boy wasn’t dead, but his color was unnaturally pale due to blood loss.
O’Connell shouted for help, as his own wound dripped blood into the muddy belly of the trench.
13
Back In The Game
After being wounded while saving Michael Waller, O’Connell met another Englishman he would come to have fond thoughts about.
The man was a doctor named Richardson, and it was his skill and knowledge that saved young Waller’s life.
“What’s that box for?” O’Connell asked the doctor. The man had rushed inside the bunker where O’Connell and Waller had been taken, while carrying a small wooden box. Upon spotting the box, O’Connell, who was lying on a cot, had raised himself up to one elbow.
“What’s in this box may save that soldier’s life,” Richardson said, as he proceeded to remove a glass bottle, some tubing, and an assortment of odd looking pieces.
The doctor performed a quick inspection of the bandages covering the bayonet wound on Waller and made a grunt of satisfaction over what he’d seen. Afterward, he checked on O’Connell’s wound, then frowned.
“The medic who dug the bullet out of you could use some more training. You’ll have quite a scar there once it heals.”
“It hurts like hell too,” O’Connell said. He then gestured at the contents removed from the box. “What is that?”
“It’s a blood transfusion kit, and we’re damn lucky to have one.”
“I’ve read about that, you can use that to give Waller blood, yes?” O’Connell asked.
“Yes, and it will be your blood. You two are the same type.”
O’Connell laid back on his cot.
“Do whatever you have to but save that boy.”
The blood transfusion worked. The next day, both O’Connell and Waller were ferried to different French hospitals.
O’Connell had expected to be back at The Western Front within days, but his leg wound had other ideas.
The wound became infected, the infection spread, and O’Connell was in danger of losing his life.
O’Connell left the battlefield in September of 1918, wounded, but strong and vital. By October, he was thirty pounds lighter and walking with the aid of a cane.
His struggle with the infection had been a long one, while his leg wound progressed slowly.
He’d been informed that Michael Waller survived, and had been promoted as well. O’Connell had also had his rank increased. He was a Sergeant and in line to receive a medal, his third.
O’Connell worked hard to regain his strength and had replaced ten of the pounds he’d lost by the time his birthday rolled around in early November.
He soon learned that he was to return to the fighting within weeks. All that changed days later when the Germans signed an armistice agreement with the Allies and brought the Great War to an end.
O’Connell was among the first wave of soldiers discharged and found himself on a ship home on Thanksgiving Day.
He stepped off the ship in New York harbor in the first week of December, having lost four of the ten pounds he’d regained, due to sea sickness.
After spending days reveling in the prodigious history section of the New York Public Library, O’Connell boarded a train and returned to Chicago just days before Christmas. He still walked with a limp, but his leg was on the mend and he had stopped needing the cane.
When he entered the office of Recti Construction wearing his uniform, Sergeant stripes, and medals, he could tell that it took Frank Recti a few moments to place him.
“Damn, Tanner, you look like hell.”
“The war left me a little worse for wear, but I’ll be my old self in no time.”
“Let me know when that happens.”
“You have work for me?”
“The Chicago Outfit has grown since you’ve been gone, and one of their men, Bruno Albertini, he’s been bumping off my guys like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Pay me three grand and I’ll clip him for you.”
Recti laughed, and his wild hair seemed to move in all directions, as if he were standing amid a windstorm.
“No offense, Tanner, but Albertini and his guys would eat you alive in the condition you’re in. He’s got bodyguards around him at all times.”
O’Connell grinned.
“I’ve developed a new set of skills since you last saw me. Tell me where I can find the target and he’ll be dead by the end of the week.”
Bruno Albertini died four days later while seated in a booth at his restaurant, with his six bodyguards and other mob soldiers around him.
Blocks away, in the fourth floor office of an insurance agency, O’Connell packed away his Springfield rifle and scope.
Tanner was back in town, and deadlier than ever.
14
A Hit Man’s Paradise
America during Prohibition was a breeding ground for many things. Among them, crime, fast money, and fear of a man named Tanner.
By the spring of 1920, Keane O’Connell had regained his full vigor and was offering his services to anyone with the money to pay him. There were many who availed themselves of his skills, as rival gangs formed to control the distribution of the illegal alcohol trade.
Twice, O’Connell was offered hits on Frank Recti, and he declined them both.
It wasn’t as if O’Connell felt he owed Recti anything, and the two of them were far from being friends, but Frank Recti had given him a lot of work over the years, and O’Connell thought that should count for something.
The year 1920 had not been kind to Frank Recti and his fellow Black Hand members, as the Chicago Outfit became dominant among crime organizations.
By October of that year, Recti’s territory had shrunken to almost nothing, and he was down to less than a dozen men. Desperate to regain po
wer, Recti turned to O’Connell for help.
When O’Connell met privately with Recti in the mob leader’s office and heard him out, O’Connell stared at the mobster as if he’d gone mad.
“You want me to bump off a man’s family?”
Recti nodded.
“And the man, and his top guys and their families too. A guy like you, I figure you could make it look like an accident, you know, a fire or something.”
“I’m not a butcher and I don’t kill innocents,” O’Connell said.
There was a metal box sitting atop the desk. Recti pushed it toward O’Connell.
“There’s one-hundred thousand dollars in that box, Tanner. That’s a hell of a lot of dough. It’s all yours if you take care of this problem.”
O’Connell pushed the box back toward Recti.
“I’m going to give you some advice, Frank. Take that money and leave Chicago. If you don’t leave soon, The Outfit will kill you.”
Recti’s face reddened.
“Is that a threat? Has someone hired you to clip me?”
“I’ve already turned down people who want you dead, but there are other hitters, and if you were to do something like this… hell, man, even the bleedin coppers might bump you off.”
Recti waved a hand at O’Connell’s last statement.
“I own more cops than you can count.”
“Maybe, but others own them too. Get out while you still can, Frank. I hear it’s real nice down in Florida.”
Recti stood in a rush. His face was still red, but his knuckles had whitened from the fists he was making.
“Get out of here, Tanner, and don’t you dare warn The Outfit.”
O’Connell stood and pointed a finger at Recti.
“I don’t give a damn about The Outfit, but if you or any of your men slaughter children you’ll answer to me.”
One Hundred Years Of Tanner Page 6