The Book of 21 (19 page)

It was then that John realized what the priest was painting on her—the red cross of the Templars. John sat, transfixed for a second, until he saw the priest produce a long dagger.

Whatever John was going to do, he had to do it
now
.

He whispered to Mezzalura without turning, “One of you move out to each side. I’ll go in straight ahead.”

He heard no movement.

Turning right, he found Mezzalura about twenty feet away; she had her gun pointed at him and a large smile on her face. Close to him, on his left, Asif pointed the magnum at him and smiled as well. He heard Otorru walk into the field, and turned to see the Asian man waving his arms and talking to the group of “worshipers.” They all began to laugh.

If he lived long enough to see a dictionary again, he was sure that his picture would be next to the definition of the word “idiot.” The most irritating part of the situation was that he suspected this was a trap all along, and he still let them get the drop on him.

“I’m so happy you enjoyed our little play, Mr. McDonough,” said Mezzalura, trying not to laugh. “I hope you
really
didn’t think we would dress up in goat heads and sacrifice your little girlfriend. I mean, really, who
does
that?”

John heaved a sigh of disgust.

The priest untied Amy and then began to pull her naked form across the field by her arm, while she squealed through her gag.

Mezzalura looked at Asif and fought back laughter as she said, “Don’t worry, Asif, Abdul is fine.”

John furrowed his brow, trying to figure out what she meant.

She seemed to notice John’s confusion, and said, “You remember Abdul, don’t you? He wears a red turban.”

John shook his head. The whole thing was a set up. Everything was a lie.

Mezzalura’s voice became firm. “We’ll take the Beretta now, Mr. McDonough.”

John tossed the gun limply toward her and it landed a few feet away. He stared at the ground and put his hands on his hips.

“I hope you don’t try anything stupid. I would hate to tell these men to gut your little girlfriend in front of you,” Mezzalura laughed.

“Would it make a difference? I’m sure we won’t see the light of morning anyway.”

“No, you probably won’t. A cop out of his job, and so depressed. I’m surprised you waited this long before you committed suicide in your apartment.”

“Oh, that is a fine way to go if you like the
obvious
choice,” John sniped.

“It’s gotten me this far,” she replied. She stuck out her bottom lip and, with a mocking pout, said, “I would ask you for your service revolver, but we both know you don’t have that any more, don’t we?”

His face went blank. She was rubbing it in, and he hated it. In addition, she just made a mistake. For that, he would make the cocky little bitch pay.

“Asif, get his gun,” Mezzalura barked.

Since Mezzalura was too busy gloating to pick up the gun, Asif had to walk past him to get the Beretta. Amy and the priest were only about thirty feet away and closing. All the while, Mezzalura’s arrogant smile broadcasted that she was looking forward to capping him in his apartment.

Based on the situation, John knew a few things. First, after Asif walked by, he would be behind the little cabbie’s back. Second, Amy was a lot closer to him than the crowd of laughing worshipers. Third, Mezzalura might hesitate to shoot him out here, rather than in his apartment, for just one second.

Most importantly, from her snide little comment, he knew she was clueless to the fact that Peluno’s revolver was in his leg holster. That meant she felt he was less dangerous than he was. That was an underestimation. That was his chance—his
only
chance.

With Asif between them, he knew neither Mezzalura nor he would have a good shot at the other. When Asif reached for the Beretta, John dropped to one knee behind the cabbie and brought out Peluno’s revolver.

Mezzalura snapped a shot that brushed past Asif’s jacket and buzzed past John’s ear.

When Asif turned toward him with wide eyes and began to raise the magnum, John had the license he needed. He squeezed off three rounds, and the cabbie’s chest erupted in a shower of blood.

Asif fell to the ground, giving John a glimpse of Mezzalura’s cloak as she fled into the woods. John heard her scrambling away through the underbrush. He squinted to see where she was, so he could provide her with a well-deserved bullet, but her black cloak intermingled with the shadows beneath the trees. John lost her in the darkness.

He turned back to the field. There, he saw Amy and the priest trying to pull each other in opposite directions. She was pulling the man to the right, while he tried to pull her to the left. It was like a game of tug-of-war with their arms becoming a taught rope suspended between them.

The priest brought out a gun from his belt and pointed it in John’s direction. Just as he fired, a panicked tug from Amy caused the shot to go wide.

John took aim at the priest as the man continued his tug-of-war with Amy. Even though Amy was losing, the taught rope of arms meant their bodies were five or more feet apart, and that was all the separation John needed. He and squeezed off the last three rounds in Peluno’s revolver.

The priest grabbed his chest and dropped to the ground. Amy squealed through the gag as she felt herself coated by the spraying blood. In the distance, most of the men were scrambling into the woods, but two, Otorru and one of the worshipers, were running in John’s direction with guns drawn.

John tossed the empty revolver aside, scrambled for his Beretta, and raised it to dispatch Otorru with two shots to the torso. The accompanying worshiper stopped at the sight of Otorru’s crumpling form, and John fired again. The man grabbed his throat and fell to the ground. With three dead bodies at her feet, Amy began to teeter weakly, and dropped to her knees.

Even though the others had fled into the woods, John knew there was no time to waste. The other men would soon regroup and come after him. He ran out into the field, put his left arm around Amy’s waist, and lifted the sobbing girl off the ground. As soon as he had her securely over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, he started running up the slope.

She cried hysterically through her linen gag. Even if John had time to stop and remove it, he would have left it on; it kept her somewhat quiet. Unfortunately, the gag did not keep her quiet enough; he was sure that they could hear her.

As they neared the crest of the ridge, John found Amy’s most redeeming quality, at this time, was her weight. She weighed only ninety to ninety-five pounds, and if she kept crying like this, he thought she might shed a bit more water weight by the time they reached the cab.

John then felt his left foot slip sideways and his ankle roll. By twisting his body on the way to the ground, he avoided landing on Amy.

She hit the ground with a thud and lay there crying uncontrollably.

John could hear Mezzalura and her men yelling to each other, closing in behind him. He got back on his feet and shuffled over to Amy. After holstering the Beretta, he hoisted her up again and threw her naked body back over his shoulder.

John’s ankle repeatedly sent wisps of fire up his leg and Amy’s muffled bawl was like a homing beacon in the crisp night air. John resisted the urge to stop by realizing that he had a choice between pain and death. With those two options in front of him, he decided to suck it up for now.

Chapter 22:
The Ride

Even with Amy draped over his shoulder and the ankle slowing him down, John knew he would make it to the cab before Mezzalura and her goons could catch him. When he reached the bottom of the slope, he opened the passenger door and tossed Amy onto the seat. He then rolled across the hood of the car toward the driver’s side, grabbing Amy’s purse along the way.

He brought out his Beretta and pumped a slug into the left rear tire of Otorru’s cab. By the time Mezzalura’s group went back to get their cars, or changed Otorru’s tire, John figured he would be long gone.

John slumped into the driver’s seat, turned the key, and heard the engine roar to life.

The cab tore onto the moonlit road. There were several tense minutes, in which his eyes darted between the rear-view mirror and the road. Searching for any familiar name, he finally saw a sign for Jenkins Road and realized that he could be back on the Schuylkill Expressway in a matter of minutes.

During that time, Amy had pried her gag away and stopped sobbing. Now, she was staring blankly at the dashboard of the car. She looked distant, and John wondered if she had snapped.

“Are you OK?” he asked.

She looked down at her body. Her gaze wandered over the red cross painted on her, and the blood that had sprayed onto her from her now-dead captors. She tried to wipe off the gore, but it simply smeared across her flesh. The girl looked back at him, and her lip began to quiver.

With a shaky voice, she answered, “Do I look OK?”

John knew the answer was no.

He reached across the cab and opened the glove compartment. There, he found a fist-full of napkins labeled “Dunkin’ Donuts,” and he handed them to Amy. She took them and slowly began wiping off the mess.

He saw a sign for the Schuylkill Expressway and turned onto the ramp. While he allowed the car to coast up the slope to the highway, he slipped off his jacket and handed it to her.

After she pulled the sport coat tightly around her body, her face began to tighten, and a tear rolled down her cheek. She leaned forward, put her head in her hands, and started to cry again. Her sobbing was only interrupted by an occasional gasp for air.

When John reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, she jerked away. The reaction was a lot like rape victims he had seen, and he knew she needed space. He waited a while before he spoke, and kept his voice low.

“I’m sorry Amy.”

Amy lifted one of the napkins to her nose and blew. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. Her voice crackled out, “Two hours ago I was happy just to hear an exciting story. Now I’m in one that’s
so
bizarre… This is just too much for me.”

“I understand what you are saying, but we have some things to do.”

“I don’t want to do anything. Can you just take me home?”

Taking her home was out; they knew where she lived. John thought about Mezzalura’s comment regarding Sanford, and knew that going in to the Roundhouse was out of the question as well. He remained quiet, unsure of what to do next.

“John?” she prodded.

“They know where you live, so we can’t go there,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. “We also can’t go to the station.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone is working for them—one of the cops. If we go in, it’s like going back to the people we just ran from.”

Amy stared through the windshield.

John squinted from the glare of headlights in his rear-view mirror. Some idiot in a big red pickup truck was tailgating him. It was just what he did
not
need right now.

“We’ll have to get you some clothes. We can’t go to either of our apartments; they know enough to look for us there.”

John again squinted from the reflection of the headlights in his rear-view mirror and looked back at the idiot tailgating him. Just then, the orange glow of the street-lamps caught the silhouette of the truck’s passenger, and John knew it was Mezzalura. He swallowed hard, realizing that he had screwed up. Taking the Schuylkill was, as he jibed earlier, the obvious choice. Though they left the wooded hills behind them, it was clear they were not out of the woods yet.

“Fuck.”

Amy frowned at him, and asked, “What?”

“Hold on.”

John jammed the accelerator to the floor. The cab’s engine roared, and the vehicle lurched forward beneath him. The burst of speed snapped Amy’s head back.

The pickup truck responded and began to match their speed. After a few seconds, it was keeping up with them and perhaps slowly gaining. Amy looked back and forth between the pickup and John.

With the pedal to the floor, he could ask little more of the cab before the engine simply blew up. John weaved through the slower cars and wondered if the big pickup behind them had the same strain on its engine. He figured the answer was probably no; the truck had an engine built for towing, and he guessed that it could probably drag a boat along the highway and still match his speed. The cab could accelerate and corner better, but on a limited-access highway, the truck had the advantage.

He tried to think as he dodged the other cars. The Manayunk exit was coming up; he remembered that the ramps at that exit tilted away from the highway at a gentle angle, and sloped downward to eventually end at the cross street below. It was a classic diamond interchange. Since there was no sharp corner there to make him roll the cab at this speed, it would be a good place to slip off the expressway and leverage the advantages of the cab.

The fault in that plan was that the pickup would simply follow him.

As he debated whether he wanted to exit the highway just yet, John saw an eighteen-wheel semi ahead in the right lane. He flew up alongside of it and hit his breaks, keeping the nose of the cab slightly ahead of the tractor-trailer. The pickup flew up behind them and slowed, trapped between the semi’s trailer and the dividing wall. It was exactly what John wanted.

John saw the signs for the Manayunk exit coming up, and began to slowly edge further ahead of the semi. After a few seconds, his back bumper was just in front of the nose of the huge metal beast. The exit came into view as they rounded a corner.

The pickup closed on them, its engine growling as it headed for their bumper.

When they were almost on top of the exit, John stomped on the accelerator and cranked the wheel to the right, heading for the exit ramp. While the semi’s air-horn blared behind them, they cut the big rig off and careened onto the ramp. John watched the collision barrier that separated the ramp from the highway pass by—only inches away from the cab’s left side.