Billingsgate Shoal (37 page)

I was saying all this to myself in my mind to take it
off the fact that at any instant I could have a whole handful of lead
slugs thrown in my direction. And there wasn't a damn thing I could
do about it.

We had bunched together now in a tight square of four
men. Stephen and I were in front, the two thugs right behind us. All
hell broke loose when we reached the roadway. The first thing I heard
was a popping behind me. I realized later that the sound must have
been from the big .45-caliber slugs tearing into the factory wall. It
was more a cracking-pounding than a popping; it had a hard, staccato
timbre to it. Just as I turned, I could see that the wall was
smoking. Only it wasn't smoke. It was all the brick dust and powder
that had been blown off the old wall and hung like a faint gray
curtain in the half-light of first dawn.

The tight group exploded, flung away in different
directions by the blast like a clump of tightly racked billiard balls
on the break.

I found the ground and rolled over and over, keeping
my arms straight down at my sides. There had been no sound except the
slugs hitting the wall. Nothing. But on the next burst I heard it. It
commenced with a low whistle of almost electronic purity, and with it
a sound like sheet metal being ripped behind a thick felt curtain.
And then the loud pounding drowned out the weird sound, and it was as
if I were in the middle of a buffalo stampede.

I heard a long, drawn-out groan coming from across
the roadway.

"Hssssst!" came a whisper. "Adams!"

"Over here. O'Shaughnessey?"

"Naw lad. It's him you hear. My friend's caught
a couple too. Come over here. . .now!"

The whisper had the ring of authority. I had a
feeling Thug Number One, the big guy in the Aitec ski mask, meant
business.

"No. I can't. He'll kill me."

His reply was swift and direct. I heard the whang of
a slug two feet above my head against an iron steam pipe I couldn't
see.

."The next one will go through you. I don't have
time to fook around, Adams."

I flung myself out from my little nest of safety and
rolled along the ground to the opposite wall. I knew this was the
safest way to do it. All Schilling would have a view of would be my
clothes and my navy watch cap. And not rising higher than a foot
above the ground, there would be no way he could detect a flicker of
my silhouette. Rolling is also much quicker than belly crawling. When
I hit the opposite wall I inched forward. Number One Thug was hunched
behind a concrete abutment that sloped out from the wall, providing
about two feet of immunity from those big bullets. He half-cradled a
limp form in his left arm while he held his silenced Luger in the
other.

"Check him."

I pushed my fingers into the man's neck under his
jaw. I felt a faint and irregular bumping of the carotid artery.

"Well?" whispered the big man.

"Bad."

"Thought as much."

I pulled open his coat and drew up his sweater. There
were four mean entry holes, dark and very wet and as big as dimes,
that snaked their way up and around his trunk spiral fashion. He had
caught the brunt of the quick burst, with four of those miniature
shot-puts hitting him within the space of a tenth of a second. I was
amazed he was still alive, and knew he wouldn't be for long. The
first hole was in the left side, near the spleen. Then he'd taken one
in the lower chest, one definitely in the lungs, and the last one up
near the right armpit. He gasped, and I thought I heard him say
something but I couldn't understand it. Then Number One leaned over
and put his hand on the side of his head, as one does to a child who
cannot sleep, leaned over, and said something very soft in the man's
ear. It was Gaelic. I don't know what he said. The man whined a
little, and I thought I heard a sob or perhaps it was just pure pain.
The shock was wearing off now, the enormous energy—like getting hit
by four defensive linemen at once—that had stunned him was ebbing.
And so was his life. Then he shuddered and relaxed. He said.

"Ahhhhhh. . . "

I put my hand back into his neck.

"He's gone now," I told the big man.

He turned for a second, made the sign of the cross
over the man's head, and said something else in Gaelic.

"Take the medal from around his neck and give it
to me. Hurry."

He dropped the small chain and medal into his coat
pocket. Then he asked me if I could use a pistol and I answered yes.

"Go get your friend, Adams. He's only about
eight feet away. I'll cover you."

I heard O'Shaughnessey groan again and knew that if I
didn't manage to get him pulled back behind the concrete he'd be cut
in two by the next burst. I crawled around the abutment and hunkered
down low. I saw a dark form on the ground, which told me how much
lighter it had gotten. I grabbed the fallen man by the arms and
dragged him back behind the shelter faster than I thought possible.
Fear of getting blown away makes you amazingly strong and quick. I
saw then how badly hit he was; there was a dark wet trail sliding out
behind him. .

We propped him up against the wall. He was conscious,
but spilling lots of blood. Way too much blood too fast. That told me
a blood vessel had been. severed. Not an artery that would pump and
squirt crimson, but a big saphenous vein.

He'd taken slugs from the beginning of the burst that
had killed the other man, the burst that had raked across them both,
sending each successive round higher as the tiny gun had bucked
upward with recoil. O'Shaughnessey was hit square in the left thigh
and had a deep crease along the small of his back. An inch farther
inward would have taken away both his kidneys and his spine. The
thigh hit was bad; the femur was broken clean in two with perhaps an
inch missing. The main problem with a .45 is that it makes such a
goddamn big hole.

They had taken away my knife, so I asked Thug Number
One for his. With it I slit the pant leg and rigged a tourniquet with
my shirt sleeve and an old piece of metal window frame I found after
several minutes of feeling around in the dark. It stopped the flow
pretty well, although I was also certain his blood pressure was down
by this time too.

The big man worked in the dark, studying me. I heard
metallic clacking and guessed he was reloading the big revolver. Then
he made up his mind and handed me the .44 magnum belonging to his
fallen comrade. It weighed slightly less than a washing machine.

"This will just about take yer hand off when ya
fire it. . .and break yer wrist, too. Hold it with both hands, and
tight."

I heard a brisk chatter, and ducked. But it wasn't
the chatter of an automatic weapon; it was Stephen O'Shaughnessey's
teeth. He was freezing to death.

"Now you hear me good, Doctor. I'm going to move
around behind him, slow like. If we stay here we'll stay pinned down,
don't yah know. You keep that cannon pointed right where the corner
of that building is. Do you see it now? Give me ten minutes, then
fire a few shots at it, hear? And listen, the both of you: any
fookin' around and yer dead, quick as a wink, hear me?"

"Yes," I answered. O'Shaughnessey moved his
head back and forth in pain and didn't answer.

"What time have you?"

"Four-thirty."

"At twenty of the hour I'll expect to hear the
gunfire. Then I'll come on him like blazes—" He turned to go.

"And good-bye Stephen O'Shaughnessey. May you
repair yourself. But, may we not meet again. Stay out of me fookin'
business."

He was gone. And for a big man he moved with utter
silence. He had removed the hood from the dead man before he left,
presumably so the police wouldn't think of him as the terrorist
murderer he was. I was shocked to see the face of a boy, perhaps only
nineteen or twenty. Tony's age. He had pale skin but dark, bushy
eyebrows. It was now light enough out to see that his eyes were open.

"Oh shite! Ohhhhhh," said Stephen
O'Shaughnessey.

I realized that if help didn't come soon he'd
probably die. Four-thirty. Was DeGroot awake? Had he seen the note?
Couldn't count on it. I had to get out and make a phone call—flag
down a car. Anything.

"Adams."

I went over to him.

"How bad is it?"

"What's bad is you've been losing blood by the
quart. You've also got a broken leg but I'm not worried about that."'

"Now listen," he gasped, "I bloody
well can't move and you know it. If I take the gun and cover you,
could you find yer way out?"

"Yes." 

"Well go. It's better than us sitting here and
me bleeding to death, tourniquet or no our—ahhhhhh!"

He shivered with pain, but took the big .44, then
aimed it square at my heart.

"Go, Doctor. These are orders. Head straight
back and make a wide circle around the both of them—"

I pressed my back up against the wall and sidestepped
along it. Ten yards. Twenty yards. Forty yards. I was home free. I
began a slow quiet walk. At the next corner I would turn right and
head for the old sea wall, then drop to the beach. and wade the
shallow water right up to the road. No problem with fighting even the
outer fence this time. Then heard it. A boat was coughing to life out
on the pier. It was a smallish gasoline engine. A cruiser engine. It
went into high revs right away and groaned into the distance, toward
the mouth of the huge harbor. My watch said quarter to five. It was
past the time Number One said he'd put the rush on Schilling. Had he
been waiting for my shots, or had he taken the boat? My guess was the
latter; he'd sensed the situation had gotten far enough out of
control so that his capture was imminent. And now I worried even more
about O'Shaughnessey's safety.

A big boom sounded behind me. It could only be the
heavy .44 magnum. Almost immediately afterward I heard the hoofbeat
sound of pounding slugs hitting brick. Then the deep boom of the
pistol again. Then running feet and a scream. Unarmed, it would do me
precious little good to hang around. I only hoped the scream was
Schilling's, not O'Shaughnessey's. I ran fast now for the corner of
the building. I heard a flight of bees off to the side of my head,
and my legs almost turned to water from fear. Those were .45 slugs
sliding by me, hunting me.

I rounded the corner full tilt. Once I reached the
sea wall and swung over it I was probably safe.

But as I ran the next twenty yards it got darker up
ahead, not lighter. Another twenty yards confirmed it, and I could
hear the hollow echo of my feet against the walls. And then I saw the
windows, six rows of them, looming up ahead of me. I had turned one
corner too soon. The way to the beach and the sea wall lay one more
building past where I had turned. I was in the last courtyard. Oh
God, I thought. Why now? Why this way, after all I'd been through?
Why now, when I'd been a1most— .

There is no panic as great as that which follows a
sense of relief, no despair so acute as that which comes back after
renewed hope. I ran to the end of the enclosed courtyard. I yanked at
two window. They were barred. I searched madly for a ramp, a door, a
fire-escape. . . .

"Adams!"

I turned and looked at the dim figure standing on the
roadway at the open end of the courtyard. It was still quite dark. He
was leaning a bit too much. He took two quick steps forward and bowed
in my direction slightly, like a Japanese houseboy. He'd been nicked
by O'Shaughnessey before he'd killed him. But even a nick from a .44
was serious. So God bless Stephen O'Shaughnessey. The late Stephen
O'Shaughnessey. But a lot of good it would do me.

The man made two fast twists of his body, back and
forth. A swarm of locusts sang above my head, and then came the
terrible pounding and popping sound above me as pieces of old brick
and mortar exploded out from the wall. They fell to the ground in
clacks and tinkles, like old flowerpots, and fine dust sat in the
air. But the gun was quiet.

He started walking into the courtyard. I heard a
distinct, clean clung of metal hitting the ground and then saw him
reach back with one hand into a hip pocket. New clip. Thirty more
rounds. And at least one of them would finish me. He walked again and
I could almost hear the scraping feet, the throat snuffle and sniff
of Mr. X. He had failed once but not this time. He had a machine
pistol and I didn't have a goddamn thing.

Including, most especially, a way out or a place to
hide.
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I DON'T KNOW what made me go looking in the far
comer, except plain old bloody desperation. The same thing that makes
a trapped rat hug the sides of buildings, or gutter pipes, or old
cellarways. . .

In the very corner of the courtyard, behind a big
dumpster bin and several discarded oil drums, was a fire ladder. Not
a fire escape, an escape ladder. Vertical, with rungs and such. And
it went all the way up the building: six stories high. It also had a
barred metal casing around it—a cylindrical cage of steel strips to
prevent people from falling off it backward. It was a way out, but
not a good one. Inside the ladder cage I would be a sitting duck. A
duck at a shooting gallery. And Jim Schilling, besides being a good
shot, had a gun that couldn't miss. The rooftop was a long climb
away, and time I was very scarce. But the ladder was truly invisible;
it snaked up the side of the old building in the farthest, shadiest
corner of the dank place, and the bottom rung didn't come closer than
about nine feet from the ground. It was the ladder or nothing.