Massacre

by Steven Henry

  Then came the waiting. Erin had never served with an ESU tactical team. She’d kicked in her share of doors, sure. She’d been in gunfights. But she hadn’t hung out in the back of a BearCat with a bunch of guys with assault rifles, dressed like dystopian Stormtroopers. She couldn’t understand how they did it. She knew most tactical operations didn’t end with people getting shot. But every bit of the operation felt military. It was enough to make her wonder if the world made any sense at all.

  One of the guys, whose nametag said Madsen, passed around a pack of chewing gum. Erin gratefully took a stick. Her mouth was dry. Rolf, close by her side, was tuned in to her emotional state. His nose twitched ever so slightly, his ears were perked, and his muscles were as taut as high-voltage powerlines. A single word from her would make him explode into action.

  And they waited. They waited a year, two years, ten maybe.

  Erin checked the time. Ten minutes had passed.

  “Yankees look good this year,” one of the team commented.

  “The Yankees always look good,” Madsen replied sourly.

  “Mads is a Mets fan,” the first guy explained. “Someone’s gotta be on the side of the losers.”

  “That’s funny,” Madsen said. “I talked to your wife last night. She told me the same thing.”

  Erin’s phone buzzed. It was a text from an unknown number, probably yet another new burner from Carlyle. All it said was “Now.”

  “We’re on!” she snapped, her voice cutting through the banter.

  The ESU team was instantly all business. Dead silence fell. In that silence, she heard Twig’s voice over her headset.

  “Back door’s open. Got a woman coming out. Long hair, looks like our target. Moving south. Got a car, stopping in front of the alley. Mercedes sedan, dark color, maybe gray.”

  “That’s our cue,” the commander said. “Execute.”

  The BearCat’s 8-cylinder Power Stroke engine roared. The armored car leaped into motion, swinging around the corner. In the back, unable to see where they were going, Erin lurched sideways and grabbed for a handhold.

  Then, without a single screech of the brakes or squeal of the tires, the ESU vehicle smashed into another car. The crash was earsplitting, the shockwave of impact running straight through the BearCat from front to back. Erin was pitched out of her seat into Vic, who sprawled against the guy next to him. Metal screamed. The BearCat kept rolling forward, slowly now.

  “Go! Go! Go!” the ESU commander shouted.

  Someone flung open the BearCat’s back door. As the first two ESU guys dismounted, guns at their shoulders, shouting, Twig called out something else.

  “Two bad guys coming out! Gun! Gun! Gun!”

  Erin had no idea what was going on. She pulled herself upright and poured herself out the back of the vehicle onto the street. Vic was right behind her, Rolf at her side. Everyone was shouting at once. A car horn was jammed, bleating a pointless protest. She saw a cloud of steam gushing toward her from a ruptured radiator.

  “Drop it! Hands in the air!” several officers yelled. Several others were repeating Twig’s words. “Gun! Gun! Gun!”

  Erin saw a dark gray Mercedes, its front end crumpled. She looked down the alley and saw a pair of men, pointing guns her direction. She hurled herself back behind the BearCat, hauling Rolf with her. She didn’t see Siobhan. Maybe the Irishwoman had been sensible and hit the pavement.

  Down the alley, one of the gunmen fired a wild burst. Bullets ricocheted off the BearCat’s armored side, whining and skipping in all directions.

  The response was immediate and devastating. Half a dozen ESU guys opened fire. Both gunmen went down. It was over in a matter of three seconds, maybe less.

  “Clear!” one man shouted, and was echoed by two others.

  “Where’s the girl?” Madsen called.

  Erin, acting on impulse, looked at the wrecked Mercedes. She saw the driver’s side window was broken. That struck her as odd, but she couldn’t think why until she remembered it had been intact when she’d first gotten out of the BearCat. Car windows didn’t spontaneously shatter after an accident was over. She saw bits of safety glass strewn across the pavement in an outward fan. That meant it’d been broken from the inside.

  “Vic!” she shouted. “On me!”

  He was there at her back, holding his rifle. She, Rolf, and Vic moved in on the Mercedes, slow and careful.

  “You! In the car!” Erin called. “Throw your weapon out the window!”

  There was a pause. It was too dark to see into the Mercedes. Erin’s skin crawled. There was a man with a gun inside the car. She knew it, but couldn’t see him. He could be pointing it at her right now, through the windshield, and she wouldn’t know until she saw the muzzle flash.

  “You’ve got three seconds!” she shouted. “One!”

  A small dark shape hit the pavement. It looked like an automatic pistol.

  “Okay!” she said, moving closer and sidestepping toward the broken window. “Now open the door. Slowly!”

  The driver’s side door swung open. A few bits of glass jarred loose from the window frame and tinkled to the ground. In the alley, Erin heard the ESU guys securing the scene. She ignored them.

  “Now get out of the car, hands in the air!”

  Hands raised, Ian Thompson stepped out onto the asphalt. He was looking at Erin with a face of quiet calm. Erin, in spite of the adrenaline, felt a moment of whiplash relief.

  “Turn around!” Vic shouted. “Hands against the car. Now!”

  Erin realized she’d hesitated when she’d recognized Ian. She was embarrassed Vic had needed to pick up her slack.

  Ian obeyed without question, laying his hands on the Mercedes. Vic stepped forward, slinging his rifle across his shoulder and taking out his cuffs. Erin kept covering Ian, out of habit more than anything, though he showed no signs of resisting.

  Vic frisked him with quick, professional skill. He came up with a pair of spare magazines for a nine-millimeter pistol, along with a folding knife. Erin retrieved the gun from the pavement. It was a Beretta 92. She smelled the wisps of spent gunpowder that drifted from the barrel. It’d been fired within the past few moments.

  “Shooting at cops?” Vic said, roughly pulling Ian away from the car by the shoulder and shoving him toward the BearCat. “Mistake, buddy. Big goddamn mistake.”

  Erin looked at the car window. Ian had been shooting out the side, not the front. He hadn’t been firing at the BearCat. And it was the wrong window. The alley was on the passenger side of the car. He’d been shooting the opposite direction. What the hell had he been doing?

  It was possible he’d been disoriented when the ESU vehicle had rammed him, and he’d just fired in a random direction. But she knew Ian. He was a veteran of two tours with the Marines, Iraq and Afghanistan. He’d been in dozens of firefights. He didn’t panic, and he didn’t shoot wildly.

  She stood next to the Mercedes, crouched so her head was at the same height his had been, and pivoted, looking across the street.

  It took a second to see the body lying between the parked cars on the opposite side of the street. All she saw was an arm, sprawled next to the hood of a Buick.

  “Got another body!” she called, sprinting across the street. “Twig! You hear me?”

  “Yeah, I copy,” Twig said. “I don’t see him, though. I’m on the roof right above you. The angle’s bad. I didn’t know anyone was there.”

  Erin and Rolf got there and found a man lying on his face. He was wearing a long coat and a stocking cap. A sawed-off shotgun lay next to one of his hands. Erin kicked the gun away and crouched beside him. She rolled him partway over. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing a thing. He’d been shot twice that she could see, a pair of holes neatly punched through the breast of his jacket. The holes were less than an inch apart, both straight into the man’s heart.

  “That’s some good shooting,” commented Madsen, coming up behind her.

  “Yeah,” Erin said. She�
��d been right about one thing. Ian was definitely an excellent shot.

  “Who’s this mope?” Madsen asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But he shot Twitchy Newton earlier this evening, and he shot at me.” She flexed her bandaged knuckles.

  “He dead?”

  “Yeah. The other two?”

  He nodded. “No sign of the girl, though. What’s her name, Finneran?”

  Erin stood up. “No sign? That’s impossible.”

  He shrugged. “Got me. She was there, she hit the ground, then she was gone. I’m telling you, she’s not there now.”

  Erin flexed Rolf’s leash. “We’ll see about that. Rolf, komm!”

  They weren’t done yet.

  Chapter 16

  Madsen was right. Siobhan wasn’t in the alley. However, that was insane. She hadn’t gone back inside the Barley Corner; the Colombians had been close behind her and would’ve shot her. ESU officers had been at both ends of the alley. There were a couple of other doors, which led to other buildings, but those were all locked, and the cops swore she hadn’t gone through one of them.

  Erin scanned the alley. It was clean and well-kept, especially compared to some back streets she’d seen. Besides the bodies of the two gunmen, she saw a couple of dumpsters and a manhole. Not many places to hide. Her eyes went back to the manhole lid as she remembered Rojas’s hiding place.

  “Tell me again,” she said to Madsen. “You saw her, right?”

  “Yeah. She was standing right there. Twig, you getting this?”

  “Copy,” said their spotter. “I saw her. Red hair and all, just like you said. She came out the back and started jogging toward the street, right at the car you wrecked. When you rammed the car, she dropped and rolled sideways, behind the trash bin. If she’s not there, I got no idea where she is.”

  “She couldn’t have gone into the sewer?” Erin asked.

  “Not a chance,” Twig said. “I’d have seen her. That lid stayed closed.”

  Erin checked it anyway. It was solid cast iron, heavy, and didn’t look to have been moved recently. She took Rolf over to the dumpster in question. A woman could’ve hidden back there, but the other three ESU officers had already entered the alley from the far end and would certainly have seen her. All Erin saw was a basement window, at ankle height, with a wrought-iron grille over it.

  “Check inside the dumpster?” Madsen suggested.

  “It’s not a real investigation until somebody wades through the trash,” she agreed sourly.

  They flipped the lid open. All they found was the rancid smell Erin expected from the trash behind a bar and restaurant, along with a few bags of garbage. Madsen poked gingerly among them with the barrel of his rifle, finding nothing.

  “No,” Erin said, denying the evidence of her own eyes. She pointed to the space behind the dumpster. “Rolf, such!”

  The K-9 dutifully started sniffing around. Any dog on Earth would be delighted by the smells of half-rotted food, but Rolf was trained to ignore the more interesting odors and concentrate on human scent. Without a particular smell to trace, he went for the freshest one he could find. The sweat left by tense, excited humans had an especially strong odor, and he was good at picking it out.

  He whined and scratched at the window grate.

  Erin dropped to one knee beside him and tugged on the grate. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Here, let me try,” Madsen said. He was six inches taller than Erin and much heavier, with a shaved head and enormous shoulders.

  “Knock yourself out, caveman,” she said. Macho posturing left Erin unimpressed. She didn’t think this was a brute-force problem.

  Madsen grabbed the bars and heaved, grunting with effort. He muttered a curse and tried again, with no result. He stood up and put his hands on his hips.

  “This thing feels pretty solid to me,” he said. “I swear, it’s cemented into the brick. We could rig the winch on the Cat, but that’d tear a hole in the wall. Then the city would probably get sued.”

  Erin looked the grate over. It looked every bit as solid as Madsen said, but Rolf was insistent, and she trusted Rolf’s nose more than her own eyes.

  “Give me some space,” she said. Madsen obediently sidestepped. Erin crouched down and ran her hands over the grate.

  She was missing something. People didn’t just evaporate into thin air. The grate was old and coated with rust. Hell, it’d probably been there for decades. The Barley Corner was an old building, at least a hundred years old.

  Erin paused, remembering something Carlyle had mentioned. He’d told her the Corner’s basement had been used as a speakeasy back in the Twenties, with secret passages. That way the bootleggers could smuggle their goods in and out, along with themselves if they ever got raided.

  She felt it then, a metal lever hidden behind the grille, almost invisible. She squeezed. There was a metallic click. The whole window, frame, and grille swung inward on well-balanced hinges, revealing a low opening.

  “Whoa,” Madsen said.

  Vic had finished loading Ian into the back of the BearCat and had come to see what Erin was up to. Piekarski was right behind him. He echoed Madsen.

  “Whoa.”

  “Follow me,” Erin said. She had to crouch low to get through the opening; it was less than three feet high. Rolf, tail wagging eagerly, hurried in alongside her. The other three were close on her heels.

  Erin found herself in a dark storage room. She played her flashlight around the room. The place was made of brick, the floor concrete. Boxes were stacked against the walls, all of them bearing the labels of different brands of whiskey and beer. A single bare bulb hung from the ceiling with a string dangling from it. She pulled it and the room was flooded with light. Rolf was pulling against his leash, aiming for the one door that led out of the room. She let him lead the way.

  For all the dozens of times she’d been in the pub, Erin had never seen the basement before. It really did feel like something right out of the Roaring Twenties. She saw all kinds of old bar furnishings: art deco stools and railings that’d been pulled out when the place had been remodeled; an ancient jukebox; crates of empty bottles; sheets of wood paneling. There was a musty, dusty smell in the air.

  Rolf led the way through one room after another, taking no notice of the antiques. They passed several closed doors. The K-9 came to another door and scratched at it.

  “Ready?” Erin asked.

  “Ready,” Vic said. His rifle was at his shoulder, ready for action.

  She pulled the door open to find a staircase, leading up.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  They went up the steps quickly, as quietly as possible. At the top, Erin put her hand on the knob. She glanced back. Vic, Madsen, and Piekarski nodded. Rolf snuffled at the door. He was sure his target had gone through it. Erin took a deep breath and yanked it open.

  They spilled out onto the main floor of the Barley Corner, behind the bar. Erin was face to face with her friend Danny, the bartender. He stared at her, eyes wide. Erin looked around and saw dozens of patrons, all of them looking at the four cops and one K-9. The police officers were in full tactical gear, two of them wearing helmets, all of them in vests and with guns in their hands. There’d been a car crash right outside, followed by gunfire in the back alley. She wondered what these guys were thinking. Many of them were O’Malley associates, some probably armed, all of them visibly nervous. The worst of them had likely already skipped out the front door and the rest looked like they might stampede at the slightest provocation.

  “NYPD,” Vic said.

  “No shit,” said a man from somewhere in the crowd. “In case you forget, it says POLICE right there on your chest.”

  There was a ripple of tense laughter.

  “Hey,” another voice said. “Ain’t that O’Reilly and her mutt?”

  “Rolf, such,” Erin said quietly. There was nothing to do but keep going. The Shepherd went around the end of the bar and started across the room, snif
fing busily. He was completely unaware of the social awkwardness of the moment. The crowd of Irishmen parted to let them pass.

  As they went, she looked around for Carlyle. She saw him near the door, standing next to Caitlin Tierney, one of the Corner’s waitresses. He looked outwardly calm, but his face was very pale. Corky Corcoran was next to his friend, hands in his pockets, watching the proceedings with a slight smile on his face.

  Rolf led Erin straight to the front door. Carlyle nodded politely to them.

  “Evening, officers,” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

  “We’re looking for a fugitive,” she said. “Siobhan Finneran.”

  “Miss Finneran is not on these premises, I assure you,” he said.

  “Knock it off, wiseguy,” Madsen snapped. “You’re covering for her.”

  “Of course he is,” Vic growled. “So don’t waste time on him.”

  There were a dozen things Erin wanted, needed to discuss with Carlyle, but she could hardly do it here and now. Instead, she opened the front door and followed her dog out into the cold night air. She glanced to her right and saw the BearCat and the wrecked Mercedes. She also saw the flashing lights of several squad cars and an ambulance that had arrived on scene. Rolf snuffled his way around the corner, out of sight of the crash. He went to the curb, stopped, circled briefly, and looked up at her.

  His meaning was clear. Siobhan had gotten in another car. She was gone.

  “Son of a bitch,” Erin said. She looked up and down the street, as if there was any chance of picking out a particular vehicle from the thousands of cars in Manhattan. It sounded like the only thing to say, so she said it again, the summation of this whole lousy case.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Nobody had seen anything, of course. Questions addressed to the Corner’s patrons about a redheaded woman met with shrugs and mutters. When Vic pressed them, a couple of guys allowed that they might’ve seen a girl who looked kind of like that. She’d gone outside. When? A couple minutes ago. What car did she get into? Shrug. A taxi? Maybe.