Wasteland

Wasteland Page 4

by Keith Crews

  Part of Marty’s ability to survive involved a keen talent to dish out insults as well as take them. It was a skill that he had developed over the years, and as a result he had become a world class put down artist. He had an incredible insight into people’s personalities with otherwise very little information to go on. This gift allowed him to isolate and then apply pressure onto a person’s psychological weak point, crushing them in an exchange of harsh words.

  Although no one had told Marty that Angelo was an orphan, Marty had nonetheless tasted blood in the water as it pertained to the kid’s parents. Marty didn’t know what it was exactly, but he could smell the pain on the boy like the Old Spice cologne off of Romulus’s ample body. There was no rational way to explain the strange gift, it was just a psychic twinkle, and right now it was shining like crazy.

  “I guess your old man didn’t have any balls either,” Marty said as he tossed back his head and laughed loudly. “Maybe your whore of a mother swallowed them when she was sucking his dirty old rod.”

  The words slammed into Angelo’s heart with devastating efficiency, shook its foundations to the core. For an instant murderous rage burned through his mind, consumed all semblance of intelligent thought, but strangely enough that inferno quickly succumb to an ice cold calculating reason which Angelo never knew he possessed until that moment.

  Suddenly, Angelo’s fists went limp, his adrenaline cooled into a calm collective frost. A smile even managed to touch the kid’s lips, one so genuine and sincere in appearance that it had stolen Two Tone Marty’s thunder with preternatural speed. Yes, Angelo’s mind’s eye could still see Marty with a bullet between his brown eyes, his shady neck choked off with a knot of piano wire, but Angelo let the fire cool. After all, there was a bigger agenda here, and in order to achieve the goal, he needed to think, not react to some idiot with sensitivity issues.

  “It’s a sad state of affairs really,” Angelo said with a somber hint of melancholy which further threw Marty off balance.

  “What do you mean?” Marty asked in a voice that tried to sound demeaning, but came off uncertain.

  Suddenly, Marty felt a chill radiate throughout his bones. A strange kind of cold came off the kid and touched Marty’s two toned flesh with eerie precision. No one turned emotionally on a dime that quick, no one who was of their right mind that is. There was something wrong with this kid they’d sent him, something unnatural.

  “I was told that you would be the greatest of teachers…a man of inspired and unimagined genius…yet here I find an angry defensive soul so caught up within the mundane pettiness of life that enlightenment escapes him.” Angelo bowed and shook his head. “If I offended you, forgive me. But even in so saying, I fear that my apology will only find deaf ears, for a man with a serpent’s tongue will only taste poison whenever he listens.”

  Marty blinked, smiled wanly, frowned, hunched his eyebrows for he was at a loss for an articulate response.

  That’s when Angelo finally dropped his A-bomb.

  “You have my pity.”

  Angelo turned his back and walked towards the Donatello’s back door, when he unexpectedly felt a hand gently take hold of his shoulder. The kid turned, fully expecting a set of knuckles to the jaw, but what he found was a face sewn together from two shades of flesh lit up with a peculiar smile.

  “Get the hell out of here,” Marty laughed, still unnerved by the kid’s sudden change. “Where the hell you learn to talk like that? Shakespeare in the park?”

  Surprisingly, Angelo found that he too was amused with what had just been said. “That my friend, was divine inspiration.”

  Marty narrowed his eyes cunningly and smirked. “I still think you’re screwing with me, but I’ll say this…you’re the smartest monkey they’ve sent me in a long time.” Marty almost blushed and perhaps he had, it was hard to tell because of his condition. “I love to read Shakespeare…love the English language…right after numbers that is.”

  “I butcher English at every occasion,” Angelo confessed. “Environment can have huge impact on the vowels and consonants we pronounce.”

  “Ain’t that the goddamn truth,” Marty joked. “Listen kid, we got off to a bad start. You kind of got me on a bad day…I’m sorry.” He extended his multicolored hand and Angelo received it without hesitation. “Name’s Marty Pallini. But these idiots got it in their heads to call me Two Tone cause of my skin…idiots.”

  “Marty,” Angelo returned with respect. “I’ll be honest, it caught my attention, but it don’t bother me none. Besides, haven’t you heard? Beauty’s only skin---“

  “---shut the hell up!” Marty laughed. “Before I bitch slap you.”

  Angelo laughed and nodded in understanding. He couldn’t imagine how many times Marty had heard such pathetic euphemisms over the course of his life. Angelo would spare him from bearing any more in the future.

  “Well, I can see that we’re off to a fabulous start,” Marty said. “If we keep up at this rate we’ll be having a knife fight by lunch, and dueling with pistols by supper.”

  “Sorry, left my knife at home. As for the pistols, they’re being held in an evidence locker in relation to a case where I shot and killed a previous employer.”

  At this Marty laughed most sincerely. “Oh, lovely. Then I guess a reference from said employer would be out of the question.”

  “Well, not without a Ouija board or some really strong smelling salts.”

  This time they both shared laughter, and it was good, disarmed the residual hostility between them with relative ease.

  “Okay wise guy,” Marty nodded. “Today’s lesson will be on how to run a bar. Money drops, ordering supplies, arranging security, and being seen and not heard.” At this Marty placed a finger to his mouth and made a shush noise. “You’re going to hear a good many things spoken around the tables of this fine establishment, but you don’t ever speak of them to anyone. You’re like a priest now and the bar’s the church confessional. What happens in the Donatello, stays in the Donatello.”

  Angelo nodded. “Got ya.”

  “You’re job is going to be doing everything from serving drinks to delivering goods,” Marty explained. “Do a good job and keep your mouth shut and you’ll make good coin. Be slow or worse…loose with the lips…” To this Marty only shook his head, which implied the most dire of consequences, and no, getting fired wasn’t it.

  “Understood,” Angelo nodded. “I’m new, which means I’m the lowly gopher and obedient chauffer.”

  “Don’t sweat it kid,” Marty assured with an easy laid back attitude. “You’re smart, you’ll do fine. In time, you’ll be one of those morons out there scheming a job over a few drinks, that’s if you play it straight with the house. Just be careful which crowd you fall in with though. Some of those guys are just born losers. Trouble sticks to them like crud to a blanket. Those kind of guys aren’t long for this world. They have no common sense. They’re unnecessary risk takers. Trust me…that kind of dead wood is only good for one thing…the fire.” He shook his head in amazement. “End up before a grand jury where they’d sing like canaries in order to negotiate lighter prison sentences.” He then fixed the boy with a knowing stare and winked. “And of course Gambaro can’t allow that.”

  “No…I guess they can’t.”

  “Deadwood, Angelo…mind the deadwood…men such as those end up in shallow graves. Greed and foolishness are a dangerous mix in this game.” Marty laughed softly. “Dumb idiots would light a match inside a gunpowder shack to see better I’d reckon.” And then added. “Screw me.” Marty studied Angelo with deep curiosity. “Earlier…when I said some disrespectful stuff about your family.”

  “Yeah?” Angelo felt a spark of annoyance touch his heart but he immediately doused it.

  “I’m sorry. But I’ve got to ask. How did you throw that crap off so easily? I mean, I’ve made a career out of getting under people’s skins…no pun intended.”

  Angelo thought, couldn’t find an a
nswer, so shrugged. “Not sure…just felt a cold ease fall over me.”

  At this Marty looked somewhat worried. “There’s only one thing more dangerous than a man who can’t control his temper, and that’s a man who can. Especially one that can turn rage stone cold.”

  Angelo’s eyes narrowed as he considered the wisdom. “That may be so, but what I know is that I’m here to learn the business…not get into a pissing match with you. Besides…I’ve got bigger plans than this gig…bigger game to hunt.”

  Marty grinned with a shrewd effort. “Ah, my young apprentice has a hidden agenda.”

  Angelo kept cool for he knew he had said too much. “No Master Jedi, no agenda, just ambitions.”

  Marty tilted his head and pursed his lips as an act of acceptance. “Nothing wrong with wanting to get up in the world. So I guess your ability to let’s say…compromise anger for ambition makes you a pragmatist.”

  The look inside Marty’s dull brown eyes insinuated much to the contrary. That he thought Angelo was as much of a pragmatist as he was a born again Christian. No, the kid definitively had a secret plan, and that stuff was cool with Two Tone. What he wanted Angelo to know was that the kid wasn’t pulling any fast ones while Marty was on watch.

  “Yeah,” Angelo replied with a smart ass smirk. “I guess that makes me a pragmatist.”

  A subliminal understanding took place between them, each aware that a lie of omission had just been spoken, and that an underlying truth had yet to be discovered. Still, Marty offered no effort to pursue it, nothing more was said on the topic, nothing challenged.

  And then with that bit of ugliness and casual deception behind them, Angelo began his first day of work.

  (14)

  That meeting with Marty had been three years ago, and today as the Donatello prepared to wish Bianca a happy birthday, Angelo couldn’t help but wonder where the time had gone. Much had happened over those three years, many lessons learned under the odd tutelage of Two Tone Marty, everything from running a wet-vac to doctoring receipt books. As a result, Angelo had become an alumni of the Gambaro school of hard knocks.

  Or so he had thought.

  The final lesson would actually be today, although Angelo had no idea what was to come and what that last bit of education would entail.

  “Jesus Christ in a side car,” Two Tone Marty muttered as he walked up beside Angelo. “You gonna stand there all day and pretend not to look at that goddamn picture or are you going to help me with the kitchen staff?”

  Blinking, Angelo then turned and looked at Marty with an innocent expression. “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh screw off you little bastard,” Marty grinned as he punched Angelo in the shoulder hard enough to rock the kid on his heels. “I’ve been watching ya. I was wondering when you were going to haul out your pecker and start whacking off for Christ’s sake.”

  At this remark, Angelo couldn’t help but smile. “Would you rather I had a fondness for boys, Marty?”

  “If that meant you’d get cracking and help me organize the staff, then yeah, that’d be just peachy.”

  Angelo regarded Bianca’s picture once more and sighed. “It’s a damn shame you know. She’s probably going out with some jerk, completely unaware that the man of her dreams is right here under her nose.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that about me, Angelo, I’m touched. But I don’t think big daddy Romulus would approve of my patchy snake nesting inside his daughter’s virtue.”

  This time Angelo was the one to punch Marty, and he hit the guy hard enough to make him turn a faint shade of red.

  “Little mother,” Marty grunted.

  Truth told, Angelo had felt an unexpected wash of jealousy come over him at the thought of Two Tone Marty having his girl. It was a vulnerability that Marty would pick out of Angelo’s steel gray eyes and then peck at if Angelo didn’t cover up that feeling really quick.

  It was just in the man’s nature.

  “Come on,” Marty urged. “Let’s rally the cooks and waiters before you get a chance to embarrass yourself again.”

  (15)

  The staff had been thoroughly whipped into action. Shiny steel pots and silver trays dished out hot helpings of food and sweets while busy waiters worked the room efficiently from one end to the next, making sure that everyone got their order. The atmosphere in the dining hall was electric and Angelo couldn’t help but be infected by it. For years he had dreamed of meeting Bianca in person, and in a short while he would finally see her in the flesh. He had daydreamed all kinds of scenarios when he’d heard the Donatello would host her birthday party, fantasies that involved a love at first sight encounter on the dance floor, a meeting at the bar in which Angelo said all the right things and swept Bianca off her feet, and of course a passionate romp in the back coat room. He was a guy after all, and healthy males tended to confuse love with sex at the best of times. But still, Angelo felt different when it came to Bianca. She’d been placed upon a pedestal, and once a man did that, then he assigned the woman a position of supreme power. A woman worshipped was often seen as a virginal goddess. This appeased the male ego for awhile, but would ultimately fall apart once the guy found out how many boyfriends the woman had before they met.

  As far as meaningful relationships went, Angelo was as innocent as a newborn babe in the woods. If lucky, she would cut him quick, and then the damage would be done. If not, well, there was always the chance that he might get lucky. One thing was certain, Angelo was in the falling stage, and that was a dangerous place to be. If someone suggested Bianca could walk on water, the kid might very well believe it. Although seasoned beyond his years and experienced on street smarts, Angelo’s romantic heart was still twenty-one years old. That heart had never been in adult love before, and so it had never been broken, and until it was, it would be defenseless, and as such, would be left foolishly unguarded.

  The clock above the bar read five minutes to twelve when the Donatello’s front door opened and in strolled Romulus with his beautiful daughter, Bianca on his arm. They were trailed by a procession of six goons, bodyguards of which Uncle Vincent just so happened to be one. This starter line football team of thugs tried to look like casual business associates, but the more they tried to look relaxed, the more tense they appeared to be.

  Why was that?

  It didn’t matter, because such trivial details were inconsequential to Angelo at the moment. If the goon patrol sported pink ballet tutus and oversized clown shoes he wouldn’t have blinked an eyelash, because his attention was fixated solely on one person: Bianca Gambaro.

  In fact everyone’s attention was centered on Bianca.

  The dining hall erupted into applause as the crowd stood and cheered happy birthday. Bianca beamed a perfect smile, her high cheek bones a glow with merriment. Even Romulus’s ugly mug seemed to take on handsome features as if the light cast from his daughter’s aura illuminated him within a radiance of grace.

  Angelo felt his heart begin to race, and it was then that he realized just how much trouble he was actually in.

  If only he knew.

  (16)

  Shattered glass from the Donatello’s front windows accompanied dark choking smoke on the heels of an explosion. For a second, Angelo’s ears rang with a high pitched trill before they dulled down to the muffled tone of screaming guests. In the second it took Angelo to realize what had happened, he was already feeling through the hazy smoke for Bianca and Vincent. Three years of working at the Donatello helped him to move through the fog, but still he was disorientated.

  From a sore spot upon Angelo’s forehead, hot liquid dripped onto his soot covered face in generous streams. The condition along with the sharp pain within his ribs was ignored. Cries of anguish filled the dimly lit recess of the Donatello with chaos, but from within the wall of panic came a foghorn clarity: Vincent’s powerful voice coordinating disaster relief with his team.

  “Cover Romulus! Cover the girl!”

&n
bsp; A thug replied to Vincent’s charge, but the goon didn’t sound too healthy. In fact, his voice sounded eerily wet and soaked on a thick fluid which did not belong there. Angelo reached forward, eyes squinted, lungs burnt on acrid smoke. The fingers on his right hand contacted with a wooden column which he immediately recognized. From that landmark, he mentally retraced Bianca’s and Vincent’s location in relation to his immediate position. Gingerly, Angelo stepped forward, almost stumbled over something that felt like a sandbag which turned out to be a goon’s body minus its head and arm. Whatever type of explosive had gone off, it had been goddamn powerful. Shuffling ahead, Angelo discovered two more bodies: another dismembered bodyguard and a kid minus a leg who couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. The disgusting site of death stirred an ire within Angelo, and he swore on his parents graves that he would avenge this cowardly act. God help those responsible if Angelo discovered Vincent or Bianca in a bloody pile of guts!

  From within the fog emerged the shape of a big man covering over another big man’s body. Vincent lay atop an unconscious Romulus with his trusty Archer Howitzer drawn, searching for an enemy target to lock onto.

  “Vincent!” Angelo called in the throes of a dry cough.

  Vincent aimed at Angelo, adjusted his eyes as best he could and grinned. “Thank god! Now get the hell out of here, Angelo!”

  Angelo knelt next to his uncle and appraised Romulus’s condition. The big cheese had a nasty head wound, but his breathing appeared to be regular. As for Vincent, he didn’t seem to have a scratch on him, and such was Angelo’s relief that he almost shed a tear of joy.

  “Go you dumb fool!” Vincent bellowed. “And for god’s sake, keep your head down!”

  “Not without, Bianca,” Angelo muttered.

  Inside the rolls of thick smoke, Angelo crawled along the restaurant’s cluttered floor. Broken glass, chunks of fractured drywall, shattered brick, pink snarls of dusty insulation and one of Bianca’s giant portraits lay tossed upon the splintered pinewood.

  The poster of her riding horseback.

  Angelo crept across the hardwood, hands and knees sliced by bits of glass and jagged slabs of fractured wood. Despite his disbelief in the Almighty, Angelo whispered a prayer for God to help him find the girl as he combed through the blast wreckage. And it was beside a blown over dining room table, tattered wrapping papers and cracked dishes that the prayer was answered.

  Unfortunately, that’s when the gunfire erupted.

  (17)

  At first it didn’t register, the sudden sound of sharp cracks in the company of ricochet whistles, but soon enough Angelo knew that someone outside was using the Donatello for target practice. Angelo covered Bianca with his body, pulled a stylish high back chair down to shield them from the direction of the gunshots, mindful of just how vulnerable they were. If a high power caliber round hit the table or the chair, they would most likely be killed.

  He had to get them out of here.

  Shards of plaster and chipped brick spat debris across the room as hundreds of rounds punctured the Donatello’s dining hall with steel rain. A hail of building materials showered down upon Angelo as he continued to use his body as an umbrella to shield Bianca. Amidst the turmoil of gunfire, he couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she was, even as dusty and damaged as she might be. This was their first meeting, nothing at all like Angelo had imagined it, but still, despite the dire circumstances, there was an odd comfort to be had lying here, to finally be so close to her, to actually touch that which he had only dreamed about for so long.

  Did he love this girl of which he knew absolutely nothing about?

  The answer was absolutely yes.

  Angelo had never been more certain of anything in his entire life. And as he protected her with his very flesh, he couldn’t help but think that only fate could be so cruel as to allow this injustice. First death had stolen the love of his parents, and now death would claim that which Angelo dared not dream to love: Bianca.

  A burst of glass shattered beside them while a wall of transparent jagged shards fell down upon them. Angelo hunched, shifted his body, covered Bianca over as best he could from the fallout. He could wait no longer. He had to get her to safety.

  But where?

  Floor schematics flashed into his head. The best way out would be through the back, but who was to say that gunmen didn’t lay in wait out there as well. Besides, the smoke was too thick to find the way. The fire was beginning to roar out of control within the dining hall. Soon the entire Donatello would be an inferno and then there would be no escape for anyone.

  It felt terrible to be so goddamn helpless.

  How had this happened?

  Rage boiled Angelo’s blood. If only he had a gun then he would make challenge, charge out of that front door and unleash hell upon the sons of bitches that had done this to them. But he was unarmed, except for the jet-blade knife inside his back pocket. Hardly a match for a group of morons with automatic weapons. Angelo didn’t pack heat at work, guns made Two Tone nervous. Marty didn’t like the idea of an employee carrying a piece, however well-liked that kid might be. It offset the balance of things, especially when raises were due. But at the moment, Angelo couldn’t help but curse himself for not having lied to Marty about holding fire, because if he had, then they would at least have a fighting chance. But here he was, impotent as a broken pecker, and what good was a broken pecker to him or the girl he loved. He had failed her, there was no other way to say it. Angelo was supposed to be the dashing hero and here he was nothing more than a sitting duck in a carnival shooting gallery. If he survived this ambush, he swore never again to be caught in such a compromising situation unarmed.

  If he survived.

  As Angelo lay atop Bianca, he noticed she was unnaturally still. Immediately, he pressed an ear against Bianca’s nose to which no breath offered a reply. Angelo let his fingers search Bianca’s delicate neck for a pulse: there was no rhythm.

  She was quite dead.

  (18)

  Their first kiss wasn’t anything like Angelo had expected, Bianca as dead as Marilyn Munroe while Rome burned amidst a firestorm of arrows. Romantic perhaps, but a wilted flower nonetheless sown in a vineyard of tainted soil. Mouth to mouth resuscitation was a medical procedure best performed by trained technicians, not some nervous kid who caught the general gist of it from a few movies. Still, Angelo gave it his best, blowing life giving air into Bianca’s quiet lungs between hand pressed pumps upon her resting sternum. Repeatedly, he performed the CPR routine, but each time he checked her pulse there was nothing to be found. It was during these routine inspections that a stark realization invaded his thoughts: the human brain could only go without oxygen for a short while, four minutes if he wasn’t mistaken. Anything after that then brain damage would most certainly ensue.

  How much time had actually passed since the explosion?

  Thirty seconds?

  Fifteen minutes?

  There was just no telling how much time had passed when you were under the gun. For all Angelo knew, Bianca may very well be far beyond that critical threshold in which case the girl would be a complete vegetable and better off dead. That idea sent shivers through his soul, welled tears into the corners of his eyes. Again, only fate could be so cruel as to allow something this terrible, and it was that sour truth alone which made any of this horror real for Angelo.

  Still, he struggled on, performing the CPR ritual without pause, mentally willing time to slow down, well-aware that each fresh breath that went into her lungs kept her brain from becoming a turnip.

  An array of emotions played through him like wild music on a broken instrument. The Donatello was in total anarchy and so too was Angelo Marchetti. The flames continued to grow, the bullets continued to whistle and Bianca continued to imitate a corpse. It was here, while Angelo thrust weight down upon her docile breastbone that he began to understand that the girl was far beyond his reach.

  There was only o
ne thing he could think to do.

  (19)

  The gunfire was loud, but intermittent. The roar of fire a steady drone that amplified its tone with each piece of fuel it ate. There was a chance, albeit slim, that his message might get through. That perhaps on some level Angelo’s words, or prayer might transcend the corporeal and discover that junction where the soul parted ways with the living world.

  Despite the urgency of the moment, Angelo laid his lips aside Bianca’s delicate ear and whispered with a voice that was deceivingly calm.

  “Bianca…I’m Angelo…you need to wake up…you need to fight to come back home…please…there’s a lot of people down here that need you, Bianca…there’s a lot of people who love you, so please…come back.”

  Angelo closed his eyes and stole a sniff from her silky brown hair. At that moment if a bullet had cut him down, he would’ve died happy. Despite the tragic circumstances, he was close to the woman he would never have.

  If this was the end, then so be it.

  In Bianca’s presence, there was peace. Vengeful thoughts of Deluca fell into abandonment, lost to the closeness of two human beings who had come to journey’s end.

  She would not die alone this day. Angelo would see to that.

  A soft cough gasped out of Bianca’s mouth, but her eyes remained closed. Angelo bolted up and felt her neck: a pulse, faint but predictable.

  For a second he almost gave way to tears, for he had dared not dream to hope, but alas she breathed. He wanted to cradle her in his arms and hold her close, but this was not the time nor the place for such expressions. The first battle for survival had been figuratively won, but the war was far from over. If he was going to claim that glorious prize, then he needed to get mobile.

  Carefully, Angelo scooped Bianca up into his arms, aware that a hail of bullets could strike them down at any second. In the urgency of the moment there was only one thing he could think to do: set boot to heel and run deeper into the Donatello where the fire burned strongest.

  (20)

  “With me!” Angelo cried to Vincent as he hurried past.

  “What the hell!” Vincent protested.

  “No time!” Angelo screamed as he disappeared into the smoke. “Come now or die!”

  A strafe of bullets tore up part of the floor close to Vincent and Romulus which covered them both in jagged splinters.

  “Screw me!” Vincent cursed as he climbed onto his feet, hoisting Romulus over his shoulder like a wounded soldier.

  Running into that fire went against every instinct in both men’s fibers. Dumb horses ran back into a burning barns, and that’s what they looked like, stupid animals with no common sense. But into that blazing inferno both men did go.

  The heat from the flames penetrated quickly into the skin, burnt the upper epidermis to a pinkish red that would blister in a few short seconds to come. Angelo thought to Bianca’s physical state and wondered what kind of injuries she had sustained during the attack. If only he could’ve kept her in place until the paramedics arrived, but unfortunately the gunmen outside had left them no other option but to retreat. If they were very lucky, then this bumpy trip to the kitchen wouldn’t aggravate her condition further. If they weren’t, then Bianca would bleed to death from internal injuries.

  “Ah!”

  “Vincent!” Angelo cried.

  If it weren’t for the heat pushing them forward, Angelo would’ve most certainly froze in mid-step, but there was no time to dawdle. The heat would peel their skins off soon if Angelo didn’t get Bianca and himself into the kitchen. Then, god willing, if the fire didn’t construct an impassable wall, Angelo would go back for Vincent.

  The thick black-gray smoke had become impenetrable. It scorched Angelo’s lungs into a convulsive cough, dried the membranes of his nasal passages into cinder ash. All he had to go on was his knowledge of the floor layout and the familiar way the hardwood felt beneath his leather biker boots. In his mind’s eye he could see the bar counter to the right, see the corridor that led to the black double doors that swung out into the kitchen.

  He was twenty feet from the finish line, maybe thirty.

  As he moved forward the heat died down to an annoyance, but the acrid smoke kept him blindfolded and smothered on toxic fumes. In a few more seconds he would succumb to smoke inhalation, drop Bianca onto the floor and there they would eventually roast. But something inside Angelo kept him walking.

  It was either love of Bianca or hate toward their attackers.

  Whatever was responsible, it gave strength to Angelo’s feet and he used that momentum to move Bianca and himself steadily onward.

  (21)

  The double door burst open into a kitchen that was relatively clear of smoke. Angelo staggered inside on failing feet with Bianca slung between his arms like a limp hammock. Angelo eased her onto a stainless steel kitchen counter where he once again checked her vitals.

  She was alive, but still unconscious.

  Angelo collapsed onto his knees and fell into an uncontrollable fit of coughing which saw him vomit out a large breakfast onto the kitchen floor. The room spun before his eyes as the threat of unconsciousness tried to wrap up his mind inside a smoky towel. Darkness lulled and deceived him with lies that said it was okay to lay down and take a breather. At any other time he would’ve gladly gone down into that soft deaf oblivion if not for the memory of his uncle’s cry and Bianca’s condition.

  Somehow, Angelo’s legs found strength, and before he knew it, Bianca was in his arms once again and they were heading out the backdoor into the parking lot.

  It was here that he ran into an unexpected friend.

  (22)

  Two Tone Marty stood inside the door with an Archer Longbow held within his jigsaw puzzle of a hand. He watched with nervous apprehension as Angelo lumbered forth with Romulus’s only daughter in his arms. She looked near death, and given their current circumstances that was probably close to the truth.

  Angelo was relieved to see a friendly face. There had been the real worry that perhaps the gunmen had surrounded the Donatello and lay in wait for anyone to blunder out the backdoor where they would be cut down in a wave of metal jackets. But Marty’s presence implied an avenue of escape, and that alone gave rise to a hope that perhaps it wasn’t Bianca’s or Angelo’s time to die.

  “Angelo! How the hell did you get out?”

  Angelo offered Marty a weak smile that showed a small degree of humor between gasping coughs. “Good to see…you…too,” Angelo panted. The smoke had stolen most of Angelo’s oxygen, and as a result it felt like he had just run a marathon across a scorching desert.

  Marty nodded and then crooked a grin. “Should’ve known you’d make it out kid.”

  “Too tough…to kill…to stub…stubborn to die.”

  Marty turned his head to the side and examined the girl. “How is she?”

  “Hurt bad…got to go…back…Vincent!”

  Marty let his eyes glance over Angelo’s shoulder towards the dining hall. “He still alive?”

  “Yeah…hurt though…got to go…back.” Angelo coughed so hard he nearly dropped Bianca. “Look, no time to talk…take girl.”

  Marty frowned, examined Bianca and Angelo with eyes that were on the verge of tears.

  It was at that moment that Angelo knew who had set off the bomb in the dining hall.

  Angelo quickly measured up the situation: the Archer Longbow was an awkward handgun that was built for power, lots of kickback when it went off. It held seven huge rounds, any one of them capable of dropping a charging bull.

  Angelo would only have one shot.

  Angelo took an intense coughing spell, slipped to his knees and then gently lay Bianca on the kitchen’s bright white linoleum as not to drop her. He crouched before Marty, hand covering his mouth as he honked and gasped for air. It was in that instant of apparent vulnerability that Angelo used a tactic from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War.”

  Hide strength within weakness a
nd then strike!

 

  (23)

  Angelo’s knuckles found the soft folds of Marty’s scrotum with devastating speed and force, while his other hand snatched the Archer Longbow from the jigsaw puzzle of a hand. As a result, Marty collapsed onto his knees, both his hands cradling his jewels as if his balls had been spiked like a pin cushion. Immediately, Angelo cocked the hammer back on the longbow and placed the muzzle of the gun against Marty’s patchy forehead.

  “Why? Why did you do it?”

  Somewhere amidst his throes, Marty regarded Angelo with eyes that weren’t deceitful or malevolent, but rather remorseful. “I…no, Angelo…I wouldn’t do that…I---“

  “---Why goddamn you! Why’d you do it!”

  Angelo twisted the gun into his friend’s forehead until a bead of blood had begun to wander down between Marty’s dull eyes. Angelo wanted to beat the answer out of him, but reminded himself that time was of the essence. Bianca needed medical attention and somewhere back inside the dining hall Uncle Vincent needed help. t was here that another terrible feeling overwhelmed him, one that easily rivaled this betrayal, and that said Uncle Vincent was probably already dead.

  “I…I’m so sorry, Angelo…I had no choice…I swear I didn’t want to hurt you…please forgive me!”

  “Is there anyone out back behind the building!”

  Marty slowly shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know, Angelo! I don’t know! I’m just a pawn. I’m so sorry…please…!”

  “Who’s responsible? Who planned this?”

  At this part, Marty clammed up tight, as if to speak that name invited a fate far worse than death. Angelo could read it in Marty’s lackluster eyes. Angelo was certain he could beat the information out of this back stabber, but there was no time. Angelo thought to leave Bianca in Marty’s care, but knew the moron couldn’t be trusted. If he let Marty go, he might come back with reinforcements and cut them all down.

  No, there was only one choice, and both Angelo and Marty knew it.

  “Goodbye old friend,” Angelo said with surprising little emotion.

  “No Angelo! Don’t do it! Don’t!”

  Marchetti’s eyes narrowed as his heart hardened. They had once been good friends, but now they were enemies.

  How had they come to this place?

  In the end it didn’t matter, they were here, although not by Angelo’s choice, Two Tone Marty had made that fateful decision for both of them.

  Still, there was little solace to be found in that realization.

  Angelo pulled the Long Bow’s trigger.

  Despite Angelo’s feelings towards his good friend Marty, that didn’t change the fact that there was killing to do, and Angelo was apt to see that it got done proper.

  (24)

  The explosion had been deafening, the longbow’s kick legendary. A bright orange flame spat out of the barrel to which Angelo’s arm recoiled upward as Two Tone Marty’s head disintegrated in a messy haze of blood and bone fragments. Drops of scarlet red splattered up against the wall, dripped from Angelo’s soot covered face and tarnished Bianca’s soft smooth skin.

  It was murder at its worst: cold and malicious, but well-dispensed nonetheless.

  The longbow dropped beside Angelo’s hip as he examined the girl with the greatest of care. Bianca remained unmoved, and for that Angelo was eternally grateful. The sight had been gruesome, not something a twenty-one year old girl should be witness to on her birthday, nor any other day for that matter.

  Angelo climbed onto his feet and then peeked out the back door into the parking lot. He could see his car and the two meter wooden fence that penned in the lot. Beyond these lay the plush greenery of trees and bushes which would make excellent cover for a spying gunman.

  Angelo did the math in his head. Thirty feet to the car translated into ten seconds of travel. Three seconds to unlock the door, three seconds to place Bianca inside and ten seconds for him to drive the hell out of here.

  Almost half a minute to escape.

  Plenty of time for a sharp shooter to fill them both with lead. No, he wouldn’t risk carrying Bianca out into a possible ambush, that or leave her unattended inside the car. But still, he needed to protect her, not to mention that Uncle Vincent needed his help. There weren’t enough hours in the day to do what he needed to do, and the longer he thought about it the less likely Uncle Vincent would survive the flames.

  He needed to take a chance, gamble the Marchetti mettle on a long shot.

  If he was correct, then the fire department would be here in a few more minutes. Until then, Bianca would be safe inside the kitchen. When the rescue teams showed up, there would be a commotion, perhaps enough to scare those wolves outside off. Of course there were no guarantee, but as far as Angelo’s gut was concerned the idea carried a reasonable amount of water to the well.

  And just like that it was decided: Angelo would leave Bianca here in the relative safety of the kitchen so he could focus on saving Vincent.

  The longbow’s barrel slid into Angelo’s waistband as he quickly gathered up a dish towel and soaked it down with water from a nearby sink. He then tied the rag snugly around his face, making sure to cover his nose and mouth thoroughly. He kind of looked like an old west train robber: Jessie James or Bill Miner.

  Before heading off, Angelo once again checked on Bianca: her pulse was good, breathing regular.

  “Please god…keep her safe.”

  Outside the sounds of emergency sirens shrieked and honked as they closed in on the Donatello. Remarkably, sporadic gunfire was still to be heard from the restaurant’s front side, and that could only mean one of two things: either Romulus’s goons had a few morons pinned down, or those trigger happy sons of bitches didn’t know when to get out of Dodge.

  That latter option unnerved Angelo most of all, because such a daring act of aggression surely courted those who neither feared nor heeded consequences. If that were the case, that meant Angelo and company were in very deep trouble.

  It also begged the question: To whom then did such men heed?

  Perhaps later there would be time for such conjecture, but as for now Uncle Vincent needed help.

  Quickly, Angelo ran back through the kitchen’s double doors and out into a wall of solid smoke.

  (25)

  Angelo’s eyes were instantly rendered useless, even the water soaked rag over his nose and mouth did little to discourage the toxic fumes from stinging his lungs.

  How then could he possibly hope to find Vincent let alone stay alive?

  The longbow was placed in hand while Angelo dropped to his belly and searched for a gap below the smoke, a buffer zone where the air wasn’t so poisonous. There was one, about half a foot high, barely enough to crawl through, but clear enough to plot a course back across the dining hall.

  “Vincent! Vincent!”

  A stray bullet tore through what must’ve been part of the ceiling.

  How long would those idiots continue to take potshots at this place?

  Angelo shimmied across the floor, eyes on the hunt. He spotted some bar stool legs and a pile of broken glass splayed out upon the floor before a bar fridge. Further across the room, he spied some dining room chair legs, but still no Uncle Vincent. Where the fired burned hottest, orange flames illuminated the smoke like a stellar nebula. If Vincent were close to that spot, there’d be no reaching him.

  In fact, he’d probably be quite cooked by now.

  No, if the big goon had any chance of being alive he would’ve probably---

  “Angelo!”

  Angelo’s attention shot to the left and towards the bar he’d just crawled past. “Vincent!”

  “Angelo here!”

  How could Vincent be by the bar? Angelo had looked right at it when he crept past.

  “Vincent!”

  “Here! We’re here!”

  Backtracking, Angelo shimmied quickly across the hardwood planks towards the pile of glass from the fridge’s
broken door. As he crawled nimbly around the bar counter’s corner he saw something he never knew or noticed before: a cellar door hatch.

  Uncle Vincent’s wide anxious eyes peeked out from beneath the heavy wooden lid, his hand making a hurry up gesture. Beside the cellar door laid a piled up rug which explained why Angelo had never noticed the hatch before. It had been concealed beneath the rug, but just what the door concealed was another question.

  “Vincent! Are you okay?”

  “What the hell do you think?”

  By this time, Angelo had clambered beside the door and could see just how glad his uncle was to see him.

  “I’ve been shot at and almost blown up!!” Vincent grumbled.

  “It’s good to see you too!” Angelo grinned.

  Vincent nodded and then let his big mitt of a hand wrap around Angelo’s neck. “We’re Marchettis…survivors!” He then glanced over his nephew’s shoulder. “Where’s the girl? Where’s Bianca?”

  “Kitchen! Where’s the big guy?”

  “Sub basement!”

  “What are we doing? Is there a way out of here through the sub basement?”

  “Yeah…maybe! What about the kitchen?”

  Somewhere in the background a large section of the building collapsed under the roof’s weight. Now the roar of fire sounded like a giant waterfall.

  “Jesus Christ!” Vincent shouted. “In or out!”

  “Screw me! Vincent, is there a way out of the basement! Yes or freaking no!”

  The big galoot’s eyes darted back and forth and then he finally nodded. “Yeah, there’s a way!”

  “Wait here! I’ll get Bianca!”

  “For god’s sake, hurry Angelo!”

  (26)

  Angelo stood up and ran back into the kitchen using his memory of the floor plan as a guide. He nailed something solid on the sprint, hooked a knee on something sharp and as a result had torn the skin wide open.

  The pain was ignored.

  Scooping Bianca caringly up into his arms, Angelo carried her quickly back towards the dining hall. But as he kicked open the kitchen double doors, he heard the sound of someone else kicking in the kitchen’s back door behind them.

  Immediately he turned and saw three goons armed with Archer Longbows and 357 magnums.

  (27)

  There was something very different about this unholy trio and Angelo spotted it right away. They weren’t your usual good fella wise guy crowd. They looked more anal, clean cut, well-dressed and that’s when it occurred to Angelo who they were probably up against.

  The men outside weren’t from a rival crime family, but rather government thugs that had been sent here on official duty. That was why they had dared to hang around so long, dared to be so bold. They weren’t afraid of getting pinched by the cops, because these guys had some sort of legal immunity to such things. These wolves wore an armor of the law which came with a license to kill. And when the dust of this terrible deed finally settled, when the bodies had been buried, and the burnt ruins of the Donatello were carted off to the landfill, then these guys would sit safely at home, reading about their handiwork in the newspaper and watching the gory details on broadcast news.

  This was just another day at the office for these morons, and shortly after they killed off these last few stragglers, then they would break for dinner and talk about their day over a tall cold one.

  In that all too telling instant, Angelo had looked into his enemy’s face and saw their commitment. There were no mistaken intentions between them, just the clear cut lines that saw you on either one side of the battle line or the other.

  One of the goons, a guy with bright red hair, flinched and drew his weapon on the decapitated body of a guy who had once been known as Two Tone Marty. This distraction was short lived, and a second later he and his posse had trained their ammo on a young man carrying a pretty young lady back into a burning inferno of choking black smoke.

  (28)

  Angelo ducked as bullets blew wide gaping holes through the kitchen’s double doors. A hot piece of shrapnel nicked his ear, cutting and cauterizing it in one quick slice. Smoke blinded his eyes, but there was no time to slow down and feel his way along the floor. When those goons got to the door, they would spray a wide swath of metal into the haze without hesitation.

  Angelo had to get to the cellar door fast.

  He cradled Bianca’s face into his chest, mindful that the smoke would fill her lungs within seconds. He didn’t know exactly how bad off she was, but he knew well enough that the smoke wouldn’t help her condition.

  With eyes closed tight, Angelo shuffled madly across the floor, hoping to kick the trapdoor with a foot as he ambled along or to have Vincent’s big mitt of a hand grab hold of his ankle. With luck, there would still be a gap in the smoke against the floor big enough that Vincent would see him coming.

  Thankfully there was.

  Vincent noticed Angelo’s black leather biker boots scampering across the hardwood and immediately called out directions. Angelo followed that voice blindly, and when he felt Vincent grab hold of his foot, Angelo wasted no time handing Bianca off to Vincent.

  By this time the gunmen had found the double doors, and as predicted, they had begun to fire round after round aimlessly into the black roiling smoke. Amidst the inferno’s roar was the distinct sound of plaster being torn, wood splintering, glass shattering and brick cracking into dust particles. The entire web of smoke moved with sharp teeth, like a demon in search of a tender morsel to chew upon. Angelo dropped to his belly, stuck his head down into the cellar door hatch and opened his eyes. His eyes still stung, but he could nonetheless see that Uncle Vincent had carried Bianca safely down into the basement. From down below Vincent looked up at his nephew with wide anxious eyes, waving for Angelo to hurry up and climb down.

  Angelo moved like a snake, a wiry twenty-one year old man in peak physical condition. In one fluid motion he had swung his legs down onto the ladder and then shut the door above. But as the kid began his rapid descent, he suddenly stopped.

  “What are you doing?” Vincent yelled.

  Angelo regarded his uncle with a cold steel gaze, an expression that would temper his disposition in years to come. There was unsettled business to take care of and Angelo was apt to see that it got done proper.

  Angelo withdrew the longbow and then drew back its sturdy hammer. He climbed back up and cracked the cellar door open just enough to see out and take aim. Within the last few inches of clear buffer zone between the smoke and hardwood floor, Angelo could see half a dozen feet which belonged to three treacherous gunmen.

  They continued to blast blindly into the smoke, emptying cartridge after cartridge without pause. Angelo took aim, pulled the trigger, to which a loud report replied. The recoil kicked the longbow back so hard that the cellar door bounded briefly upward from the jump. Still, despite the jolt, the round had found its mark.

  A set of feet gave out from beneath one of the gunmen, dropping him heavily down onto the floor as his foot exploded into a mound of shredded flesh. A hoarse scream of agony cut through the inferno’s gruff voice, which was followed by a second blast from the longbow. Angelo scored another direct hit on the second gunmen, and the first set of fallen feet was joined by yet another. The third victim followed in rapid succession and fell down where he joined the other two in shrieks of pain as he too cradled bloody strips of torn flesh that had once been a foot.

  (29)

  With the trio fallen, Angelo wasted no time and slid back down the approximate twelve foot drop of the ladder to the basement’s cobble stone floor. There, Vincent regarded his nephew with a hint of mild awe and deep seeded pride. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Vincent couldn’t help but offer a curt laugh.

  “Look at you. Mr. Bad Ass.”

  Angelo grunted, nodded and then let his hand gently touch Bianca’s neck. The pulse remained but she looked ghostly pale.

  “Okay, where’s the exit?” Angelo asked as
he slowly and easily took Bianca back into his own arms.

  “Through the sewer grate,” Romulus murmured.

  Angelo and Vincent both regarded Romulus. The Big Greasy was barely conscious but cognizant enough to realize what was going on.

  “Bianca?” Romulus inquired, the worry evident in his voice.

  Angelo moved towards the big chief who laid propped up against an old concrete pillar. “She’s alive, but she needs a doctor,” Angelo explained.

  Romulus smiled, and for the first time in perhaps years he wept for both heartbreak and joy. Yes, his little girl was hurt bad, but she was alive. “Thank you, Angelo. Thank you for staying with my little girl.”

  Angelo offered the man who had once wanted to have him beaten like a mangy dog a crooked smile and a quick decisive nod. “We need to get out of here sir. Where do we go?”

  Romulus tried to find his feet, but was unable. Seeing this, Vincent quickly swept in and placed an arm around the boss and helped him into a haphazard stand.

  “Back beyond those crates,” Romulus gestured with a weak motion of his head. “There’s a steel gate…behind is tunnel…beyond is metal door that leads to sewers.”

  At this bit of news, Angelo could see the old man visibly slump as if aware of a defeat yet to come.

  “What is it?” Angelo asked.

  The group had already began their injured crawl to the gate.

  “Gate’s locked with the chain and the padlocks,” Romulus explained. “You shoot them off good, but door is burglar proof. Can’t get open without proper keys is like you say…difficult.”

  Angelo felt his blood pressure damn near shoot through the top of his skull. After all they’d just been through: the bomb, the gun shots, the fire, Two Tone Marty, the three thugs in the kitchen, after all that, they were finally going to be done in by a locked door. If this had been any other situation, Angelo would’ve most certainly laughed, but to laugh now would be to concede defeat, and Angelo was not ready to lie down and die just yet.

  “So that’s what you meant when you said you weren’t sure about the exit,” Angelo noted, not in sarcasm, but in a genuine need to explore their options.

  Vincent grunted, muttered some incoherent sentence and then spat on the floor in anger.

  Angelo looked down on Bianca, marveling at her beauty and how peaceful she looked. That kind of easy lain smile put him too much in mind of a corpse in a coffin. “I’ll get you out of here,” Angelo whispered. “I promise.”

  (30)

  A thick chain rope kept the rusted gate tied to the foundation via a jagged hole that had been plasma torched through a wide steel column in the foundation’s concrete partition. Angelo gently laid Bianca next to a wooden crate and then withdrew the Longbow. Skillfully, he cracked open the weapon’s cartridge chamber and performed a quick check of its inventory: three bullets remained in the quiver.

  “What’s your situation?” asked Angelo of Vincent.

  Vincent eased Romulus into a sitting position next to his daughter and then withdrew his Archer Howitzer along with a smaller Archer Crossbow which had been strapped around his sweaty ankle.

  “Eighteen rounds in total,” Vincent replied.

  “The Crossbow,” Angelo nodded.

  Vincent understood, approached the gate, took aim and then blasted two rounds into a rusty chain link from the Crossbow. The weapon’s report was loud, but tinny, a gun that could kill at close range, but for the most part lacked impact. Still, it had been enough to shatter the linkage and as a result the old chain fell away into two limp pieces. As for the gate, it slowly swung open without need of assistance as if it understood what was to be expected of it.

  Beyond laid a dark tunnel that reeked of stale dampness and bacterial mold.

  “Wait here,” Angelo instructed.

  Vincent gave his nephew a look which suggested that a social slight had just been committed, one that said youth consulted experienced age before setting off on a course of action. Still, the big goon offered no protest and fell into line with no coaxing. That alone told Angelo the big lug not only respected his nephew as a man, but that he also believed in his ability as one, too.

  (31)

  Water dripped in chorus to the sound of biker boots shuffling across cracked concrete as Angelo felt his way forward through the dark. Rats and spiders moved silently within the dim lit shadows, vermin that Angelo’s imagination could see with perfect clarity. There was probably an overhead light within this musty tunnel, but Angelo suspected it had probably burnt out months if not years ago. It wasn’t like someone came down here on a regular basis. The basement, let alone this tunnel, were the kinds of places people only ventured when something went wrong: a broken pipe, a worn electrical wire, a rodent infestation, those were the only issues that warranted a human presence down here.

  The Longbow within his slender hand offered a modest sense of security, although it wouldn’t be of much use if he couldn’t see to aim. If a diseased rat decided to lunge at his throat, then he’d have to club the thing to death, not shoot it, and that kind of a struggle would not only be frantic, but messy and prone to the kinds of injuries that always left scars.

  Angelo clenched his teeth, cursed and then focused on finding the damn door.

  Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the dimness. The dull light from the exterior chamber where Bianca and the others waited leaked into the drab grayness in meager sums, but nonetheless allowed enough ambience to expose that final obstacle.

  The door was the color of ebony and set within a blackish frame which in itself was surrounded by a thick wall of gray cinderblocks. The knuckles on Angelo’s free hand rapped upon its surface to which the door replied with a dull recognizable thud. Angelo had heard that kind of noise before inside the Silver Fox casino when he and Vincent had gone to collect a kickback for Romulus. When Vincent’s big mitt had knocked upon that cash room door, Angelo had noticed how peculiar the tone had sounded. Dull, muffled, as if the cool smooth surface didn’t like to give sound back. That casino door had been fabricated from the same cutting edge carbon composites as this one, which any burglar could tell you were the toughest materials to break through. But to make matters worse, even the door’s two deadbolts had been crafted of similar construction.

  It was a formidable barrier, an obstacle that had all the makings of a dead end.

  Angelo looked down on the Longbow as if it were a toy gun and whispered, “We’re screwed.”

  (32)

  Angelo’s return into the exterior chamber was met with an equal share of optimism and apprehension. Romulus comforted his unconscious daughter while Vincent paced wildly back and forth like a caged lion. Both large men regarded the young man with anxious silence, reading that demoralized look upon Angelo’s blood stained face like a terminal diagnosis.

  Vincent wound up his fist and hammered it into one of the crates with such force, that the two hundred pound plus box shifted half a foot. “Screw me!”

  “I’m sorry uncle…it’s a composite door…bullet proof.”

  Romulus examined Angelo with a weakened effort, his usual dull brown eyes lit up with a mixture of tears and a glimmer of hope. “You get us out, yes…you think hard…you think now…you save my baby.”

  To hear such a sincere plea spoken by such an intimidating personality was emotionally moving. Here, this big mean son of a bitch was begging for Angelo Marchetti, the kid who sometimes served his greatness drinks, washed his car and picked up his dry cleaning, to perform a miracle on behalf of a girl that Angelo himself would gladly die for.

  “Okay,” Angelo nodded. “I’ll think of something.”

  Somewhere overhead a loud crash announced that a sizable chunk of the Donatello’s roof had just collapsed onto the floor above. It was a race now.

  Would the flames eat up their oxygen, or would the burning debris come crashing down onto their heads and kill them first?

  It was a morbid competition with only one conclusion in
which they lost either way.

  Angelo needed another option.

  “What’s inside those boxes?” Angelo asked of Romulus.

  “Sump pump parts…damaged beer kegs…a few burnt out electrical motors…maybe a few other things.”

  Angelo looked at the crate Vincent had just punched. For some reason it reminded Angelo of the cashbox inside his uncle’s bedroom, the one that had housed the key to the metal security door inside the brownstone’s living room. Angelo doubted very much that one of these crates had a key stashed inside or anything else that could open a carbon composite door, but perhaps it just might---

  ---and that’s when it dawned on Angelo.

  A back screen door to a bank vault.

  Vincent had spent a good deal of money on such a high tech door, but in the end he had left its key inside nothing but a flimsy little cashbox that any idiot could open with a credit card. It made as much sense as having a screen door on a bank vault. Thus its security was fundamentally flawed, as was the composite door at the end of the basement’s dark tunnel.

  A crooked grin broke out upon Angelo’s lean face to which Vincent and Romulus both began smile.

  “What…what is it?” Vincent asked.

  “We’re getting the hell out of here,” Angelo replied confidently.

  (33)

  Angelo ran back behind the crates and retrieved a rusty pry-bar that had been leaning up against a wooden box. Angelo returned and then handed the tool to Uncle Vincent.

  “You’re not going to smash that door down with just that,” Vincent objected.

  “I know,” Angelo replied. “But I’m betting…”

  Bianca made a sudden gasp for air and as a result everyone else stopped breathing.

  Angelo felt his stomach constrict, the strength bleed out of his knees as if he might swoon. She couldn’t die, mustn’t!

  Romulus placed a thick sausage of a finger onto her delicate throat and felt for a pulse.

  It was dangerously weak.

  The big cheese then snapped a glance at Angelo, one that said he had better not let him down. “Do now! Go do!”

  Angelo immediately took heed, not out of fear of Romulus, but out of concern over Bianca’s deteriorating condition.

  If she died, he would never forgive himself.

  “Give me your guns!” Angelo yelled to Vincent. “Hurry!”

  Vincent passed over the Howitzer and Crossbow without hesitation.

  Loaded down with a tiny arsenal of weapons, Angelo ran blindly back into the black tunnel, letting his intuition guide him back to the security door.

  (34)

  Angelo stopped just a few inches short of colliding with the door. He dropped the pry-bar onto the concrete floor where it bounced with a metallic twang. The weaponry was laid next to the bar while Angelo’s hand traced the door’s edge. Quickly he plotted its dimension in relation to the cinderblock bricks. It would be a gamble that the designing engineer or architect may have made a structural oversight which Angelo could exploit as a strategic weakness.

  As he bent down and felt for the crossbow, he could hear Bianca once again gasp for breath. The sound blew through his ears like a cold arctic wind.

  Angelo’s fingers scraping across the damp cement sounded too much like raspy breathing and he couldn’t help but fear that the girl would die while he was busy working a miracle. He forced the idea into submission, but its effect lingered on within his heart just the same.

  Crossbow in hand, Angelo stood, calculated his position in proximity to one specific cinderblock, took aim and then fired. The usual tinny report of the Crossbow was amplified by the arched passageway of the tunnel. Now it sounded more like a mortar shell striking a fuel depot. There had been a brief flash from the muzzle, enough to dazzle Angelo’s eyes and blind him temporarily in the spark’s aftermath. The fingers on his hand wasted no time and immediately felt the brick for damage. A jagged hole had been torn through the cinderblock and as a result it now bled sand granules. The bricks surrounding the door had been filled in with common beach sand, and as such, were vulnerable to gunfire.

  The question was how much firepower would it take to blast out an opening.

  Again, Angelo fired off another round to which the tiny hole widened. This continued until the Crossbow had been effectively emptied of its cartridges.

  Now it was the Howitzer’s turn to take a kick at the can.

  The Howitzer’s report was deafening as a bright orange flame spat out of its barrel like a dragon’s fiery tongue. Shards of mortar exploded in every direction, effectively cutting Angelo’s hands and face with shrapnel. The whole tunnel seemed to shake from the gun’s recoil, but never once did the Howitzer kickback. The weapon remained inside his firm grip like a warm handshake, completely under his control.

  It was an excellent weapon.

  It took only one round for the Howitzer to blow the remainder of the brick into tiny pieces. Angelo knelt, peered through the opening and saw a crisp ray of sunlight escalating downward from a narrow seam inside a street sewer grate. Wasting no time, he dispensed the Howitzer’s last ten bullets into the disintegrated brick’s neighbors, opening a passage big enough for a small child to climb through.

  Still, the portal would have to be bigger if he was going to get two big men like Romulus, and Vincent out of here.

  Angelo shot off the last two rounds inside the Longbow, but the fissure still wasn’t large enough to accommodate them. It was here that he set the gun down, picked up the pry-bar and began to wail on the hole’s outer edge with everything he had. The vibration from the pry-bar rang like a tuning fork, sending the energy through his hands and up into his arms and shoulders with painful efficiency. Yet he never let up, kept banging away on the cinderblock, that hoarse gasp of air from Bianca’s delicate mouth driving him on like a salted whip across his back.

  His ears screamed and ached with each strike. The previous gun roars coupled with this latest bit of makeshift demolition had the skins on his eardrums wound so tight that they were close to snapping.

  “Angelo!” Vincent shouted.

  “Almost there!” Angelo yelled as he continued to pound on the cinderblocks.

  Angelo looked possessed, an insane prospector infected with a serious case of gold fever.

  “Jesus Christ! You’ll break your arms off!” Vincent shouted as he brushed his nephew aside and strong-armed the pry-bar out of Angelo’s aching hands.

  Angelo was briefly disoriented, confused as to why Vincent had stopped him. Soon however, it was apparent that the big goon had a far greater talent of swinging the persuader than his smaller nephew. Chunks of concrete gave way under Vincent’s mighty chop and for an instant Angelo was reminded of the childhood tale of Paul Bunyan.

  Vincent the lumberjack and his blue ox named Babe.

  “Go get the girl!” Vincent grunted between thrusts.

  Angelo immediately set off to retrieve Bianca, the tune of the pry-bar still singing its metallic song within his ears and upon his sore arms.

  (35)

  By this time, the hatch-door on the ceiling had collapsed under piles of smoldering debris from the Donatello’s fallen roof. Black smoke now poured freely into the basement through the exposed opening in thick toxic bales, while flaming embers rained down upon the basement floor like scarlet hellfire.

  Angelo fixed Romulus with a stare that sought an assessment of Bianca’s condition.

  “Is she…?” Angelo couldn’t bring himself to ask it, feared what the crime boss’s reply might be.

  “You carry her,” Romulus ordered as he climbed into a tipsy stand. “I walk myself…we go now, yes?”

  Angelo nodded. “Yes sir, we go.”

  Angelo gently and carefully scooped Bianca up into his arms and made tracks towards the tunnel, mindful not to jostle her about lest he aggravate her injuries. On the short trek toward the door, Angelo kept glancing back to see how Romulus was holding up. The big cheese was a tough o
ld bird, shaken but still able despite the obvious concussion he must’ve received from the blast. If the old guy was lucky, he might be asleep inside his own bed tonight, Bianca however---

  Angelo shuddered to think what her diagnosis might be, tried not to dwell on it. Instead, he gave thanks that he got to hold her once more and that maybe, just maybe, when all this was over, he’d get a chance to tell her just how he felt.

  “Romulus! Are you still with me compadre?” Angelo asked.

  “Si.”

  “We’re almost there!”

  No sooner had Angelo said those words when Uncle Vincent’s huge lumbering shape rolled into view. The goon stood before a strange web of background twilight, and it was here that Angelo could tell that Vincent had taken out more than enough bricks for a doorway.

  It was an impressive feat of strength, one not easily duplicated. If the job had been left solely to Angelo, he would have still been hammering away with minimal effect.

  “Let’s go!” Vincent barked. “Come on…move!

  Angelo crouched slightly with Bianca in his arms as he stepped through the arch and out onto a walkway platform which ran beside a slow meandering stream of excess ground water and human waste. The smell was rancid but bearable just the same. Romulus emerged next, his lumbering weight pressed against the sturdy shoulder of Vincent for support as the Bear aided the crime boss to move.

  In their tail’s wake drifted the pungent odor of acrid smoke, but its choking vapors could no longer harm them.

  They had made it out.

  (36)

  They had traversed the simple labyrinth of sewer canals and had exited out onto a busy street thru a metal service grate. There, they had called upon a pair of ambulances which had arrived amidst the tooting of horns, as a blocked procession of traffic patrons gawked and stared at the curious quartet that crawled out and onto the street.

  The arriving paramedics quickly appraised Bianca’s and Romulus’s status and then swiftly loaded them into the bandage wagons which subsequently sped them off thru blocks of congested traffic on route to the hospital.

  Vincent rode with Romulus, while Angelo rode with Bianca.

  The trip took forever.

  While on route, the paramedic worked on Bianca: blood pressure checks, pupil dilation exams and an exotic blend of I.V. tonics was administered. The medic bantered back and forth with the driver as they discussed medical terminology and a potential diagnosis with technical words that sounded dire and grave to Angelo’s attentive ears. The medics quickly concluded that Bianca had suffered serious head trauma, in which case the brain was bruised and potentially bleeding internally.

  Angelo wanted to hold Bianca one last time for fear she would pass into the hereafter in the few short moments ahead, but he dared not interfere with the paramedic as she tended to her patient. So Angelo suffered in silence, his fingers wrapped tenderly around Bianca’s foot in comfort and reassurance.

  The ambulance skidded to a halt in the emergency center’s parking lot. Bianca was whisked into the trauma unit The hospital was a buzz of activity, its brightly lit rooms burdened down with both gunshot and burn victims from the Donatello restaurant. Doctors shouted commands while skilled nurses rallied resources like battlefield soldiers. It was coordinated chaos at its best, a choreographed training simulation made real thanks to a bunch of crazies with automatic weapons and a motive to act upon.

  Presently, Gambaro was in the fallout stage of the attack, that frantic aftermath state in which the Family assessed its loses, licked its wounds and plotted retribution.

  But who had masterminded the attack?

  Was it another crime family?

  A power struggle from within Gambaro’s signature ranks?

  Or was it someone else?

  At this stage of the game no one knew. All they had was Two Tone Marty’s decapitated body, and at last check it wasn’t talking.

  In every corner stood a wise guy gabbing into a cell phone, goons trying to get to the bottom of the sordid mess by networking with both internal and external sources. Tonight would be a night of long knives, an evening when the movers and shakers got shook down for information. Limbs would be broken with hammers, heads dunked into grungy toilets and guys hung upside down from lofty balconies as the goon patrol searched for those responsible for the attack. And somewhere within all that pain and terror someone would eventually crack, and when they did, the chase would be on. Then the Gambaro bloodhounds would sniff out the trail and take the war to the guilty culprits.

  And it would be a messy war, too.

  Slow and agonizing the way Romulus would insist. Blow torches, pliers, acids, live electrical wires and rubber hoses would be the tools of choice, everything from the medieval toolbox for the man who absolutely positively had to get things fixed.

  In the end a strong message would be sent to the criminal underworld, one which would eventually come to be a tale of legend.

  The Evil Wrath of Gambaro.

  As for the massacre itself, it had already made international news and the headline caption had already named the tragedy with a cheesy title---Death at the Donatello! According to news figures, the Donatello had suffered a very bloody day: out of a hundred and fifteen guests, thirty four had been shot and killed, sixteen had perished in the initial bomb blast, while twenty-five had succumbed to the ensuing fire.

  In total that accounted for seventy-five dead and seven wounded.

  And as for one of those seven wounded, he sat on a blue vinyl chair, white gauze bandages taped to a head that had escaped with just a few minor lacerations. Medically, he was pretty much peachy, but other than that, he was an emotional train wreck.

  (37)

  Angelo’s skull seemed to throb in time with his heartbeat, but despite the pounding migraine he couldn’t think of anything else aside from Bianca. Occasionally, there were brief flashes of anger, a need for retribution against those responsible for this betrayal, but for the most part, his mind had settled into a kind of weird pocket of prayer.

  And there it was: Angelo Marchetti the heathen atheist, praying for a goddamn miracle. Surely a bolt of lightning would strike him down for such an outlandish request, he who cursed the lord’s name with every second breath and gave rise to the wicked through a rally of misdeeds. He was sinner, trespasser, malefactor, scoundrel, wrongdoer, yet despite his failings he nonetheless redeemed some degree of quality with his love for the girl. Still, for the blasphemer to place a prayer upon the altar of the lamb was nothing short of desecration to the lord’s noble sacrifice. Angelo felt his hypocrisy, spiritual unworthiness, but continued to pray anyways.

  “Angelo,” Vincent said.

  Angelo looked up and saw the tired worn face of Uncle Vincent. A single bandage laid askew over the Bear’s bushy eyebrow, a gauze saline wrap taped to a nasty burn upon his left hand. His designer clothes were stained with black soot as were Angelo’s, but other than that, Vincent seemed to move along well-enough---no broken bones or internal injuries to offer a hindrance.

  Vincent took a seat next to Angelo, where he placed that big mitt of a hand upon his nephew’s muscular shoulder. “You did good today. I’m real proud of you.”

  Angelo focused on his uncle’s words, trying to push those concerned thoughts of Bianca aside just enough to communicate. “We both did.”

  A weak smile touched Vincent’s thick lips, and for a second it looked as though he might swoon. He was obviously exhausted, they both were. “Romulus wants to speak to you.”

  “How’s he doing?” Angelo asked.

  “A slight concussion, that’s all.” Vincent offered a short quiet laugh. “He’s got a head like a granite rock.”

  “And Bianca…what about her?”

  At this, Vincent pursed his lips and shook his head. “She’s in surgery…ruptured spleen, and some internal bleeding in the brain…they’re giving her even money on surviving.”

  The beat of Angelo’s heart quickened. Suddenl
y, he was on his feet pacing back and forth, hands rubbing his wounded forehead for an idea. But there was nothing he could do, he was helpless to do anything aside from wait.

  “Goddamn it!”Angelo grumbled.

  Vincent stood, regarded his nephew with a peculiar expression, one that retraced history back to that eventful day when Angelo had first met Romulus, or moreover, the incident with Bianca’s picture.

  “Jesus H Macy,” Vincent said with half a smile. “You’ve really got a thing for her, don’t you?”

  Angelo stopped pacing and studied Vincent with eyes that were lost for direction. “I…love her.”

  Vincent let a slow easy whistle pass through his teeth. “Screw me.” Vincent stood and then let those powerful hands of his find Angelo’s shoulders. “You don’t even know her, Angelo…she’s a total stranger…snap out of it.”

  “I know, but I can’t help what I feel Vincent…I can’t change…” Angelo was at a loss as to what to say next.

  “Romulus would never let you near her,” Vincent said, but then the memory of their recent adventure flooded his thoughts. Angelo had saved the girl and Romulus knew it. If ever there was a debt to be repaid by the big cheese, it was to this young man who had acted so bravely in the face of such danger.

  But would Romulus actually allow this young gangster an opportunity to date his daughter? If karma truly dictated the flow of things, then Romulus dared not deny this man anything until his debt be repaid.

  “I’m sorry Angelo…you’re a grown man... sometimes I forget,” Vincent said in a soft subdued tone. “If you say you love her, then I believe you.” A concerned sigh passed off Vincent’s lips. “Fate has dealt you a dirty hand my young friend...that your first meeting should be like this.” The Bear touched the side of Angelo’s face with a rarely expressed act of affection. “You have my sympathy and my prayers.”

  Angelo took hold of that hand and squeezed it tight. “Thank you.”

  For a moment they stood in silence, both fraught with a lifetime of tragedies. They had both paid fate with more than their share of blood and it would be unjust for fate to continue to collect on that hefty fare with such steep interest. And if fate should claim Bianca’s young life this day, then what would become of the young man named Angelo?

  Would he ever dare to love someone again?

  The future balanced on the tip of a bullet.

  Vincent released his nephew’s shoulder, the worn features on his face hardening ever so slightly. Business demanded a certain professional protocol, and the business they had to discuss was of paramount importance.

  “Romulus wants to see you,” Vincent said.

  “About what?” Asked Angelo.

  Vincent’s eyes narrowed as he took on a stance that suggested deep rooted pride, a soldier saluting their national flag as he replied with just one word.

  “Elitario.”

  (38)

  Angelo had heard Vincent speak of the Elitario when they used to live together in the brownstone. An Elitario was a very special unit of mob soldier, their inception early twenty-first century. They’d been originally created by Sicilian Gambaro to deal with the menacing threat from Russian Mafia Hitmen who were killing off Gambaro members at an alarming rate. The Elitario were rumored to be the best in the business, the group responsible for bringing the title and prestige of Mafia back to its Italian origins.

  At one time it was almost like a goddamn trophy cup, a matter of national pride within an organized crime syndicate where the players didn’t get penalties, they got whacked. Those historical battles had been messy, many worse than the Donatello on a far grander scale. Thousands had died over a period of seven years during that legendary mob war, that was until an uneasy truce had been negotiated between the crime families. Ever since then the international lines had been drawn, each side keenly aware that to breach the border would be an immediate declaration of war. So the peace remained provisional, but in times of peace one prepared for war, and that’s what Elitario did: they trained with the understanding that at any moment their incredible skill may be called into action. Gambaro Elitario was the equivalent of military special forces, for therein laid the source of its training.

  Ex CIA, KGB, NSA, British SS, each branch had been recruited from around the globe to train Gambaro Elitario, and each of these tutors had filled their pockets with Gambaro cash in exchange for the forbidden knowledge of how to be the most effective killing machine. And that’s what Gambaro Elitarios were: killing machines. Not hitmen, not assassins, not hired guns, they were cold calculating killing machines that lived for one purpose and that was to protect Gambaro with death.

  One of the qualifications to be a Gambaro Elitario had to do with bloodline, namely its purity. There were no mutts permitted within the ranks, no half breeds. If you weren’t a Sicilian through and through from balls to bone then you could never pledge the fraternity.

  And it didn’t end there either.

  Not only did you have to be a thoroughbred Italian, you also had to have been born on Italian soil. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. So to hear Uncle Vincent say the word Elitario to Angelo as though his nephew even had a remote chance of being considered for such an exclusive membership, went against everything Angelo had ever heard about the organization.

  “Elitario,” Angelo repeated.

  Vincent nodded.

  “What about them?” Angelo asked.

  Although intrigued, Angelo couldn’t help but think about Bianca.

  Vincent shrugged, but his eyes suggested a hint of possibility. “Not sure…Romulus asked me if you had ever heard about the Gambaro Elitario. I said yes, then he sent me to fetch you for a chat.”

  Angelo blinked, tried to imagine what relevance such a request might have, but his thoughts were too muddied down with worry over Bianca. He then thought to Romulus, of how this situation must be playing out in his mind. Here, his only daughter’s chance for survival was now in question, flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. To a man like Romulus nothing was more important than family and loyalty. But today he had not only been betrayed by a former employee, but was now in danger of losing the one person he loved more than anything else in the world.

  “Okay then,” Angelo acknowledged. “Let’s go see the old man.”

  (39)

  The private hospital room was guarded by a dozen inconspicuously armed goons. The group was obviously on edge. All and all it was the kind of security entourage reserved for kings and rock stars, a gauntlet of strong arms that’d shoot first and ask questions later if given proper inclination. No one who wasn’t a trusted confidant would get close to Romulus tonight, tomorrow or for the foreseeable future. But as for Angelo Marchetti, he had been granted an all access backstage pass for a single engagement.

  Thoroughly frisked by a pair of angry faced thugs with no necks, Angelo was eventually allowed to pass. But before he entered into that quiet hospital room, he paused briefly to glance back at Uncle Vincent. The big lug leaned casually against the corridor wall, his eyes lit with pride. It was almost as if Vincent were watching Angelo graduate from wise guy college, or accept a medal of honor for battlefield heroics. But then it was more than that, as if the big lug were imagining himself in Angelo’s place, living vicariously through his protégé like a loving parent who genuinely aspired greater things for their beloved child. And despite Angelo’s concern over Bianca’s health, and the uncertain path that unfolded before him, he couldn’t help but offer Vincent a sincere smile, however wan it might be.

  They had both lived hard lives, seen and done much together, and Angelo couldn’t help but feel as though his uncle should be at his side, to stand as family and be recognized for their accomplishment. But this was not the time for such indulgences. Gambaro was at war on western soil for the first time in more than twenty years. Ceremonies and celebrations would come in a time of peace, and those lucky enough to survive this latest clash would relish in its glory. But until the entire group respo
nsible for orchestrating the Donatello attack were dead and buried, then no one would be eating cake and drinking champagne.

  Vincent winked, Angelo nodded, and with that done, Angelo quietly slipped into Romulus’s room.

  (40)

  Romulus lay on an adjustable bed which had been set into a sitting position. He looked at the ceiling, eyes scheming. Vengeance was obviously on his mind, it exuded off of him like the strong Old Spice cologne he always wore. Angelo politely cleared his throat which broke Romulus’s singular fixation with an invisible spot in midair.

  “Angelo,” Romulus said with a troubled smile. “Come sit my amico fidato. You honor me with your presence.”

  Angelo took a seat beside Romulus’s bed. “Thank you for seeing me sir.” Angelo thought to ask about Bianca, but knew Romulus would be in the dark about her condition as much as he was. They would both have to suffer the desolate emptiness of time in their own way, until either death claimed Bianca’s soul, or God graced her with a continued existence.

  Romulus laid his bandaged head to the side and blinked slowly as he regarded Angelo’s features. IV lines ran into his burly forearms delivering a pharmaceutical cocktail of medical remedies, but nothing that would ease the anguish within his heart.

  “My baby…she…sick.”

  Angelo’s lips pursed, his eyes moistened, but still they managed to hold onto their fire. “Yes, I know.”

  “My work…dangerous for me and...family.”

  Angelo nodded, understood that Romulus was shouldering an incredible amount of guilt.

  “Protect best I can, yes. But sometime…sometime wolves get through…attack sheep.”

  Angelo watched as a syrupy tear slid from Romulus’s eye. The old man was torn apart inside, jumping from anger to sorrow like skipping from rock to rock across a raging river.

  “You a shepherd…you like your father…Marchetti…killers.”

  Romulus whispered this last part, which drove the point home in a way no other tone could. Still, Angelo felt divided by the assertion, as if it weren’t so much a character assessment as it was an accusation. Angelo’s thoughts drifted briefly to Alfonso Marchetti and the father he never knew.

  What kind of man had Alfonso been?

  Obviously one with a sinister skill, so much so that Gambaro’s top dog was well aware of that dark talent and revered it. How then was Angelo to feel about such a man, let alone to be measured in comparison to him?

  The answer surprised him.

  To be assessed with such value purchased strength, and to purchase such strength wielded thunder and lightning, and a man endowed with such quality could release the storm and rain vengeance down upon the wicked. For the first time ever, Angelo couldn’t help but feel the description suited him to a T.

  “You helped Bianca…you helped me.” Romulus reached over and took hold of Angelo’s hand. Surprisingly there was remarkable strength to be found therein. The old man would soon recover from this sucker punch and when he did there’d be hell to pay. “Grazie.”

  “You’re welcome,” Angelo replied in modesty.

  “Forgive me Angelo, but a favor I must ask, yes.”

  Angelo sat forward, eyes locked with Romulus, two men with a deep understanding that difficult things would soon be required of them. “Yes Romulus…I’m listening.”

  “You go Sicily…tonight yes…train Gambaro Elitario.”

  It was just as Vincent had suspected: Angelo would be trained to be a professional killer, a goddamn Gambaro Elitario. Under any other circumstance he’d have been blown away, but given the current situation the honor felt tarnished by Bianca’s blood. He’d gladly renounce this appointment if it meant that Bianca could be spared harm, but that kind of negotiation had long since past. The only thing left to do now would be to use the knowledge he would gain in Sicily to strike back at her attackers, a lesson he would generously dispense when the moment came.

  “Why me Romulus? Why have you chosen me for such an honor?”

  Romulus crooked a smile. “You save Bianca…you save family…now I give your family justice in payment, yes…I give…Deluca.”

  (41)

  At the sound of Deluca’s name the hair on the back of Angelo’s neck immediately stood at attention. Those keen eyes of his let their pupils dilate to full aperture, the young strong heart within his toned chest sped up to a steady gallop. This body language did not go unnoticed by Romulus. After all, the boy’s family had been denied justice for too many years, and in the light of Bianca’s delicate condition, Romulus’s guilt for having allowed such an unforgivable transgression to elapse made him feel like a gutless worm.

  Yet despite Angelo’s overwhelming lust for vengeance, he could not set aside his feelings for Bianca. She was injured, close to death, and although Angelo had dreamed of this moment for so long, to finally be let loose upon his archenemy, this too felt tainted by her blood. If there was to be justice, then let it not be Bianca to herald its coming at the cost of her flesh. No deed could warrant such an oppressive tax, not to Angelo, and certainly not to her father.

  “Must I go tonight?” Angelo asked. He did not wish to leave Bianca behind, not without knowing her ultimate fate.

  Romulus smiled weakly, his eyes offering up their sincerity and years of wisdom. They could tell the young man was infatuated with Bianca, and for that, Romulus couldn’t help but love Angelo like a son, the boy who had carried his daughter through the fires of hell.

  “You go…see girl…she remind you why you go, yes…her…” At this thought another tear slid down the length of Romulus’s rough cheek, as if in the crime boss’s heart his baby girl had already passed into the hereafter. “Her memory will remind you of why you fight.” He coughed, his old lungs still bothered by the amount of toxic smoke they had ingested this day. “In time you come back…you stand beside Gambaro…Gambaro stand with you…together we both find justice…together we both have revenge.”

  Angelo’s eyebrows hunched sharply. “Romulus, do you know who’s responsible for the attack?”

  Romulus closed his eyes. “Go now Angelo…see Bianca…Gambaro collect you soon enough…then Sicily…be the Elitario, yes...grazie.”

  (42)

  “Well?” Vincent asked with a curiosity that was borderline ravenous. “What’d he say?”

  “I’m off to Sicily tonight,” Angelo replied with a certain measure of emotional distance.

  “Jesus H Macy,” Vincent whispered. “The old man actually did it…got a mutt inside the big boys club.”

  “Must’ve had to beg, borrow and steal to work that kind of a miracle,” Angelo assumed.

  “Freaking hey,” Vincent agreed. “But you’re in…the first mutt to ever bridge the divide…va-voom!”

  “Yeah,” Angelo nodded somberly. “I’m in…but it isn’t on scholarship…it’s on karma.”

  Vincent thought about that for a moment before his hard features shaped around the idea with a clear understanding. “Capisce…truer words never spoken.”

  “Vincent, I’m kind of on the clock here,” Angelo said in an apologetic voice. “I’m going to visit Bianca before I go. If you wouldn’t mind I’d---“

  “---Say no more compadre,” Vincent replied. “I know how you feel about her. It’s cool. Go.”

  Angelo wrapped his arms around Vincent in a manly embrace, both men slapping the other on the back for good measure.

  “You take care over there, Angelo. Watch your back, capisce,” Vincent said.

  “You too,” Angelo replied.

  They separated and regarded each other for a second, both with the understanding that in the breadth of a few short hours, Angelo Marchetti had proved himself as a man. The baptism had been by fire, but the guy with the steel gray eyes had come through it in style.

  (43)

  Bianca’s room was secured by four knuckle dragging goons and three shifty eyed cops. They regarded Angelo with a peculiar curiosity, perhaps aware of the great obligation
he was expected to fulfill. The strange feeling emanating from the group was palpable, and as they carefully studied him, their eyes betrayed their intent. Yes, he was not yet a Gambaro Elitario, but someday he would be, and as Angelo walked through the gauntlet of mafia strong men, he knew they could smell that designation upon him like a potent musk. It was a strange yet familiar feeling, like being back in Mount Hope when the bigger stronger kids had showed him a sort of provisional respect, one that suggested that perhaps their mettle should be pitted against Angelo’s if only to remind themselves of the order of things. That’s how these goons looked to Angelo, as if to say what makes you so damn special, that perhaps the old man had in fact made a mistake and should’ve chosen one of these Cro-Magnons for an Elitario position instead.

  Whatever their stance on the matter, it didn’t change the fact that Angelo was the monkey with the banana, but he’d willingly trade it in exchange for a clean bill of health on Bianca’s part.

  Angelo stood in the doorway chest tight on shallow breaths of air.

  Bianca had just come out of surgery.

  Three nurses tended to the young woman while a tall thin doctor scratched details down upon a medical chart. The doc’s lips pouted, the expression on his face brooding, an educated man whose thoughts were professionally troubled. It was not the easy laid back face Angelo had wanted to see, but rather a precursor to a messenger who delivered bad news.

  Angelo entered the room, to which the dutiful staff took notice of him with mild annoyance. It was obvious they didn’t want him in here, they were too busy to deal with visitors, but they nonetheless understood that the young man had been granted special permission by the father, a man who just happened to be one of the most powerful crime bosses on the entire western continent.

  Angelo slowly approached the foot of Bianca’s bed, mindful to keep out from underfoot while the medical personnel performed their duties. The girl looked peaceful, eyes closed, soft brown hair shaved off beneath a white cap head bandage, a breathing tube had been shoved down her throat via the mouth. By all outward appearances she looked to be simply resting, a deceptive façade that misled the eye to the seriousness of her condition. Beside the bed a computer screen displayed bio stats, none of which Angelo could decipher. What he did gather from the readouts was their dismal tones. The clicks and hushed air of the respiratory system sounded too much like an old clock winding down, its cogs and wheels thirsty for a precious drop of oil. Bianca too looked thirsty despite the cocktail of IV solutions being fed into her forearms.

  Was the heart beneath her modest bosom slowing to a halt?

  Memories of the Donatello flooded Angelo’s thoughts: the smoke and fire, finding Bianca’s injured body amidst the debris and the betrayal by Two Tone Marty. It was supposed to have been a celebration, not this abomination.

  Angelo’s hands squeezed into fists that had to be content with strangling empty air. Marty had acted alone in planting the bomb, but who had arranged the massacre? If only there’d have been more time inside the Donatello to explore that topic, then Angelo could’ve beaten the information out of Marty, would’ve enjoyed it despite their previous kinship, but limited time had left Angelo with no choice but expedite Marty’s departure into oblivion.

  Now it would ultimately be up to Romulus and his bloodhounds to shake the trees to see what fell out, not Angelo. After all, business had him assigned elsewhere: Sicily. Still, it felt like he was deserting his comrades in the middle of a fight, and not just Gambaro, but Bianca as well.

  Who then would look out for her while he was gone?

  Of course Angelo knew that Romulus would protect her far better than he could, that any other suggestion would surely be nothing more than romantic vibrato. Although if not for Angelo, Bianca would’ve most certainly have died back at the Donatello. That alone proved that Gambaro was not all seeing and all knowing. That fact also bothered Angelo deeply, placed doubts within his thoughts that Gambaro might falter at a critical moment.

  What if Bianca desperately needed him and he was stuck in Sicily?

  It wasn’t going to be easy, but Angelo would have to let go and trust that the Gambaro’s leg breakers wouldn’t mess up and in turn accidentally allow some bastard to kill off the mafia princess. Then again there were no certainties that Bianca would survive this night, no assurances that Angelo would become an Elitario, and no promises that said Deluca would die by Angelo’s hand. There was just a future of unseen darkness which offered little solace, but more than an ample supply of fear.

  “Hey,” Angelo whispered.

  The trio of nurses turned briefly, realized they were not being addressed and then returned to their tasks.

  “I’ve gotta go away for awhile,” Angelo continued. “Your father is sending me to Sicily. He seems to think I’ve got what it takes to be a…” At this piece of classified information, Angelo opted to abstain from such a boast given the present company. “An executive.”

  Bianca remained unmoved, either asleep or oblivious.

  “I’m sorry this happened to you. I wish I’d have gotten you out of there sooner, but…” Angelo felt an explanation at this point would only sound hollow, although nothing could be further from the truth. “Please fight…please live…remember what I said back at the restaurant? I said you had a lot to live for, and you do.” His hands relaxed, fingers caressed the bed sheets where her feet lay cool and motionless beneath the thin covers. “I know you don’t know me…that we’ve never actually met, but…” Angelo regarded the nursing staff, wished that he could have this forum with Bianca in private, but alas that was not meant to be.

  It would seem a great deal of things were not meant to be.

  “I…” A slow tense breath was drawn in to carry those precious words he absolutely positively had to say. If he left this night and things went astray, if Bianca succumbed to her injuries or an assassin’s designs, then he’d never get a chance like this again.

  No, these words dare not find the smooth polished epitaph of cemetery granite, they had to be declared in the living flesh.

  “I love you.”

  At this statement, the three nurses briefly regarded the young man with a warmth generally reserved for such romantic proclamations. Surprisingly, Angelo felt a slight flush redden his cheekbones with mild embarrassment. Such gentle sentiments were a rarity in his world. To be so genuinely sincere in such a public situation exposed just how vulnerable he truly was to Bianca’s charm. In the end, he was every bit as defenseless as the girl in the coma, more so, for his heartbeat was a slave to hers, not vice-versa.

  “Angelo.”

  Angelo turned and spotted a short man in dress pants, dress shirt and a tweed dinner jacket. He had seen the guy around before, recognized him from the tax office where Two Tone Marty had sometimes did creative bookwork. Anthony was his name, the type of wise guy who carried a pen and a calculator instead of a forty-five.

  “We have to go now,” Anthony explained in an anxious tone. “The plane is waiting.”

  It was obvious today’s business had Anthony unnerved, because no one knew who had done the Donatello deed, nor when or where they might choose to strike next. For the time being it was best to grow eyes in the back of your head, especially since word of Marty’s cowardly betrayal had leaked out onto the street.

  It’s the night of the Long Knives, Angelo thought. Can you feel them cutting?

  Angelo regarded Bianca one last time, then reluctantly turned and walked out the door, his education in the matters of Sicilian strategy officially under way.

  (44)

  Carlos was the biggest prick to ever walk the planet: mean, sadistic, selfish, arrogant and those were his good traits. Most of that sour disposition had to do with twenty years of Sicilian tradition having been broken on account of one little snot nose punk who couldn’t speak a lick of Italian. That social slight pissed Carlos off to no end. It wasn’t just an insult to Gambaro law, but to the racial purity of the co
re Elitario itself. How dare Romulus send such a miserable recruit to be trained, a goddamn mutt! The entire outrage stank of political patronage, a favor lobbied on behalf of a corrupt man endowed with the soul of a pig.

  If only Carlos could get Romulus’s little abomination to wash out, then the core could legitimately get rid of him. But the little puke turned out to be damn tough, and that tenacity had allowed the little maggot to endure the rigorous training and daily hardships inflicted by the cruel tutelage of Carlos. But then there was even more to it than that, and that something stirred Carlos’s ire as nothing else could.

  Angelo Marchetti was the best Carlos or anyone else in the core had ever seen, a goddamn prodigy. If the kid had been born on the proper side of the ocean in God’s country and spoke the native tongue, then he would have been heralded as a hero. Honors would’ve been generously bestowed upon him, ceremonies conducted in celebration of his talent. But alas, he was just a mutt, a desecration to the Elitario’s order, and no one no matter how graced with an unnatural ability could ever hope to change that.

  On a nightstand beside Carlos’s bed sat a hollow tip bullet with Angelo’s name on it. Every morning when Carlos awoke, the butcher debated whether or not to end Angelo’s education with an act of cold blooded murder. It would save time, save face and restore the thoroughbred bloodline of the organization as it should be. But that extermination would be taking the easy route out, admitting defeat by an act of cowardice. No, in time the little bastard would meet his end in the village square, and in that fatal end, Romulus and all those after him would understand that if you weren’t a thoroughbred Italian with Sicilian dirt beneath your fingernails, then you were a lesser mortal incapable of the title of Gambaro Elitario.

  There were two days left in Angelo’s training, just enough time for Casa Diavalo to work its divine miracle. As always the Diavalo was the last resort for weeding out the undesirables, and come two days from now, Angelo Marchetti would come to his end before the old bell tower of the village church in time honored tradition.

  (45)

  So far Marchetti had repeatedly endured days without sleep, the psychological warfare and the intense physical duress which in actuality felt like acts of torture. For two years he’d been beaten like a mangy dog, starved, burnt, cut, bruised, electrocuted and almost drowned. But still, he had held on, learned the deadliest martial art combat moves known to man, studied a wide selection of weaponry, everything from knives, to swords, to guns and explosives. He practiced these skills with zealot like dedication and to the point of near exhaustion. But despite his triumphs, Carlos always found something to complain about.

  Nothing was ever good enough, and Angelo understood why.

  Marchetti was a mutt, an embarrassment to the Elitario, and in an organization like this, if your commanding officer didn’t like you, then they found a way to kill you. There were no transfer orders to contend with, there was just a shallow hole in the woods where they would invariably toss the body. Many a night Angelo expected Carlos to sneak into the barracks and slay him while he slept, and that wasn’t just paranoia, but rather a genuine concern grounded in a stark reality. And as the calendar counted down to that final day when Angelo finally got to go back home, he was acutely aware that Carlos had become ever more exacting when it came to discipline. Angelo knew he was ultimately being set up for an accident that would see him dumped into a shallow grave.

  Suffice to say, Angelo had to come up with a plan to survive.

  Romulus couldn’t have known what misery he had condemned Angelo to when he’d sent him here for training. Hell, even Uncle Vincent had acted as though Angelo were simply going off to scout camp for the summer.

  Did they not know what this place was like?

  Of course not, no one except a Gambaro Elitario knew what went on here, and as far as Angelo’s take on the program was concerned, his experience was extremely unique. The mutt that had broken ranks and had been brutally punished for it.

  If only Angelo could talk to Romulus or to Vincent, but communication with the outside world was forbidden. No letters to or from home: those were the rules. That aspect of the training was perhaps the most difficult, to be so completely cut off from society and Bianca.

  Constant thoughts of her dogged Angelo from sunup to sundown.

  Had she survived the night of the Long Knives?

  Was she happy and healthy?

  Had Romulus spoken to her about him?

  Had she heard Angelo speak that night in the hospital?

  The not knowing was nearly unbearable, and to make matters worse there was the real possibility that he would never have those answers, because he would soon be dead.

  “Two more days and you can go home,” Angelo whispered into the barrack’s stolid darkness.

  Angelo’s head rolled restlessly upon a canvas pillow stuffed with rough straw. There were no creature comforts here, no running water, electricity, soft down cushions or orthopedic mattresses to ease a body’s aches. There were just the bare essentials which were barely enough to begin with. Angelo’s cot was constructed of knotted hardwood, its bedcover a gray woolen blanket with the itchy coarse texture of sandpaper. The floor was dirt, the ceiling leaked whenever it rained, and the wind drafted in through cracks in the walls with little resistance. Drinking and bathing water was gathered from a rusty old bucket from a stream that ran nearby.

  As for the compound, it was geographically remote, located in the mountains, surrounded by coniferous trees and a hard rugged soil that was laden down with snarls of unyielding bedrock. Snow covered the hill most of the year, beautiful to the eye, but raw to the touch.

  Not twenty miles away laid a lavish ski resort, one that Angelo had once considered visiting a few years back. But those earlier days of leisure existed in another lifetime and in a world of trivial concerns.

  What he wouldn’t give to have them back.

  Now those former carefree concerns worried about things like starving to death, getting shot during a training exercise, being irreparably maimed in hand to hand combat, or freezing to death in the dense forests.

  Life along with its priorities had changed.

  Angelo’s clothing was limited to a humble dull white garb consisting of canvas pants and a sleeveless poncho. Sandals woven from tough strands of leather served as uncomfortable footwear year round. Rags acted as insulation for the feet and hands which had to be bound skillfully together lest they fall off during morning calisthenics or wilderness training. Those tattered rags were your life, the difference between losing fingers and toes to frostbite. Meals consisted of the exact same things daily: combinations of water, rice, fish, a slice of lime at supper to ward off scurvy, and a whole wheat bread roll to fill the pit inside an empty stomach with fiber. Angelo had lost twenty pounds of fat and gained fifteen pounds of toned muscle since he’d come here. Still, he looked malnourished: pronounced cheek bones, skin wound too tight across his stern angular face, dark patches beneath a wolf’s glare of cold steel eyes.

  He’d been a lump of soft flesh that had been worked over on a blacksmith’s anvil until it had become iron: defined abs, efficient lungs to carry thin traces of oxygen, heightened combat reflexes and the psychological conditioning to utilize them in an instant. Angelo had become the tip of a goddamn spear, sharpened by severe discipline and the harsh regiment of strict routines.

  As for those routines, they were often interrupted by what Angelo called “the shock drills.” Alertness and readiness to fight were always being put to the test. Sometimes it would be a simple case of a sucker punch while Angelo was distracted with another task, while other times the bullet would graze the flesh just enough to let him know that in the real world, he’d have been a dead man.

  Truth told, there were days when Angelo wished those sniper bullets had found their mark and put him out of his misery. But he was close to the end now. There would be no accidents if he could help it. Like it or not, Carlos would have t
o accept the fact that Angelo Marchetti was going to walk down this mountain as a Gambaro Elitario, and if Carlos tried to stop him, then Angelo would gladly kill him.

  Angelo however, had learned over the past two years that Carlos was a sneaky bastard who was sadistic by nature. Carlos would be creative in Angelo’s demise, construct a plan worthy of a true blue butthole.

  The question was: would Angelo see it coming in time?

  Whatever Carlos had in mind, it would be the ultimate sucker punch, a cowardly act by a racist man with little to no honor to speak of.

 

  (46)

  The night dealt out drafty chills that made Angelo’s shack of poorly tacked together boards creak and moan in the company of bitter temperatures. It was the kind of weather that helped to mask approaching footsteps. If Carlos decided to come like a thief in the night and steal Angelo’s young life, then Angelo dare not sleep. But if Angelo didn’t get some much needed shuteye, then he’d be useless for his last two days of training.

  This was a typical dilemma.

  At night Angelo would place a bucket by the door with a small rock beneath it to keep it precariously off balance. If anyone opened the door, the bucket would fall over and make enough noise to wake him. As for the wooden flap shutter in the shack’s glassless window, he would bind it shut with one of his hand wrappings and then set a series of tiny stones along its edge so that they would fall onto the floor if the binding was cut, or the flap was suddenly forced open. Of course there was no guarantee that Carlos might just kick the door in and then spray the room down with bullets. That in mind, Angelo always slept beneath the cot with the hope that perhaps the bed’s boards might provide enough shelter for him to mobilize a counter attack if Carlos came a calling.

  Each night had been spent like this, but then this wasn’t like most nights.

  There were two days left on the clock, two days left for Carlos to fill that shallow hole in the wilderness with Angelo’s mangy hide. It was certain that the royal bastard would not allow a mutt to graduate his exclusive academy, and if Angelo didn’t wash out tomorrow, or the next day, then Carlos would have only one option: termination.

  As usual it was a roll of the dice for Angelo: close his eyes and sleep, or lay awake and listen. Angelo realized that this too was another form of Carlos’s strict training and a form of sadistic torment, something to keep Angelo frosty and off balance. Carlos knew that if Angelo lost enough sleep, then he’d wash out for sure, because fatigue was the kind of adversary that dogged you like a shadow, always at your heels and forever in your thoughts. Yet despite those concerns of a late night raid, Carlos had never once stormed into the humble barrack the entire time Angelo had been here. Yes, the butcher had barged into the other recruits shanties, which belonged to three other inmates, but never Angelo’s.

  Angelo had been deliberately segregated from the other recruits, at least until it was time for combat training. Only then would Angelo get down and personal with his small community of neighbors, men that would come close to killing him on a regular basis, or vice versa. Angelo was forbidden to speak with them, not that they would have understood him anyway. Those Sicilian candidates only spoke Italian, where as Angelo’s grasp of the language was still quite wanting. And as for that mysterious trio of Elitario undergrads, they were an interesting bag of mixed nuts. Two of the recruits looked like brothers: flat noses, round chins, thin sandy hair, rolled shoulders which Vincent referred to as a boxer’s hump, and the same eerie green eyes. They were both Angelo’s height, perhaps a smidgen taller if they didn’t slouch. The brothers were never pitted against one another in combat, which further suggested that they were relations, not to mention that they fought with the same predictable dirty moves. Angelo had picked that out the first day they’d stepped into the courtyard to do fist to cuffs. Gambaro Elitario had wasted no time throwing their newest cadets into combat. On that particular day, Angelo exchanged blows with the brother he affectionately referred to as Tweedle-Dee. Angelo had easily defeated Dee with little effort, despite Dee’s attempt at sneaky crotch shots and dirt slinging.

  As for brother number two: Tweedle-Dumb, Angelo faced off against him three days later, at which time a similar style of fighting quickly revealed itself with more sneaky crotch shots and more thrown dirt.

  Dumb had gone down even faster than Dee.

  The brothers may not have been fraternal twins, but they sure as hell worked on the same wavelength.

  As for resident number three: he was unusually tall, six-seven, had a barrel chest, and dark raven hair that sat atop his otherwise smooth pale complexion, a faint five o’clock shadow covered his very square jaw. As for three’s remarkable eyes: they were pearl black, both pupils lost to the oily pools of the surrounding iris, a medical condition which was the product of a rare genetic disorder called, Aniridia. The condition was usually associated with poor vision, or sometimes blindness, but as for contestant number three, who Angelo referred to as Ghost, his vision appeared to be flawless.

  Eight days after their arrival into the compound, Angelo finally met Ghost in open combat. Ghost gave nothing away in regards to intention or emotional presence through his eyes. They were dead eyes, mute and courted by an equally vacant expression. Ghost was a strategist. He did not telescope when he threw hands, barely flinched when struck, waited patiently for the right opportunity to counterstrike, and was only predictable in one regard: he always made the first move. Perhaps that in itself had shown a lack of patience, but Angelo doubted it. Ghost was a cool customer when it came to doing anything. If he initiated combat, then surely it would be a tactical decision to do so, not an emotional one.

  As for that first altercation on the grounds: Angelo had lost royally, and had been beaten into unconsciousness in less than two minutes without so much as leaving a scratch on Ghost’s smooth face. Since that day two years ago in the courtyard, Angelo had managed to give Ghost much more of a challenge in their subsequent engagements. But never once had Angelo beaten Ghost in those dozens and dozens of painful grudge matches that followed.

  Ghost was the compound’s undefeated champion except when it came to weapons.

  Put a gun, bow staff, or knife in Angelo’s hand, and not even Ghost could hope to compete. Sure, Ghost was more than able with a gun, but when it came to coordination and agility with a sidearm, or manual weapon, Angelo was the undisputed king.

  Upon graduation, Angelo imagined a man like Ghost would most likely serve his masters as an expert leg-breaker or the type of goon who worked guys over with such brutality that it would make him the subject of gothic legend. As for Tweedle-Dee and Dumb, they were bomb makers, the idiots that’d spike your drink with cyanide or wire your toilet with C4 just to get a few lowbrow laughs.

  The brothers were crud on a biscuit, easy to prepare, but hard to stomach.

  The one thing each recruit had in common was that they’d each slid a little bit down the evolutionary scale since coming here. The program did that, brought out the baser nature and honed the killer instinct.

  They were becoming Elitarios.

  A strong breeze blew out of the east and the window shutter rattled enough to make the stones shake. Perhaps Carlos would send the entire group to partake in Angelo’s execution tonight, in which case sleeping under the bed would be of little use. He reminded himself that there was no point thinking about such morbid outcomes. After all, the valiant only ever tasted of death but once, and Angelo so very much wanted to be valiant. So Angelo decided to do as he always did since the first day he had come here.

  He closed his eyes and let fate decide if he should live to see another sunrise.

  (47)

  Dawn had come and gone and not one sound had heralded its arrival. The mental alarm clock inside Angelo’s head had roused him from a restless sleep plighted with dreams of frozen wastelands and bitter aftertastes. They were the kinds of dreams that evaporated in daylight, lost to a form of amnesia that no doubt shie
lded the mind from horrors best left forgotten in the netherworld. Dreams however, were the least of Angelo’s concerns. It was the stolid silence that had hold of his attention, that dead quiet which was quite out of place in an organization of strict rituals.

  Why hadn’t the compound’s morning buzzer gone off?

  Was it broken?

  Angelo listened for some sort of earth shattering crash to fill in the noiseless void, but nothing came. He held his breath in anticipation and still nothing stirred. No gunfire, nor bombs, nor screaming maniacs filled the dawn’s pallid air, just the calm bitter cold of an empty morning.

  Two more days was all he had to survive, just two more days.

  Seconds ticked into moments.

  Angelo allowed himself to breathe again, certain that Carlos would hear that soft exhalation and pounce down upon him like a rabid beast. But again, nothing came.

  Slowly, he crawled out from beneath the cot and untied the wrappings from the window’s shutter. These worn garments were quickly and skillfully wound around his calloused hands and fingers like a boxer’s wraps. Next, the bucket was removed from its shaky perch and then placed quietly beside the bed. Angelo’s hand rested upon the barrack door latch, uncertain if he should exit this way, or out through the window. In his mind’s eye he could see Carlos standing outside, a sadistic smirk plastered across his homely face as he waited with a machinegun in his wart riddled hands.

  “Good morning!” Carlos would yell, and then a fountain of spent cartridges would fall onto the frost bitten ground as a barrage of metal cut Angelo’s guts to ribbons. “You didn’t think I’d let a mutt like you graduate from my academy did ya? Ha ha!”

  It felt like a setup, the kind of cheap prick shot that Carlos would be famous for.

  Angelo’s muscles tightened as the latch clicked into the open position.

  (48)

  Marchetti dove out through the barrack door and into a roll as he made speed across the compound’s damp mud in search of cover behind an old latrine.

  The morning was penetrating cold.

  A heavy downcast bale of clouds shook off the remnants of a light snow with some sparse flurries, while a flock of high flying birds sang a song of faint squawks. The compound’s dozen barracks along with its main building sat silent, either vacant, or occupied with sleeping residents. The perimeter of heavy logged paddock fencing and rusty barbwire that surrounded the grounds showed no sign of activity. No guards on patrol along the watchtower. The outside shooting range sat quietly next to the chicken wire combat dojo. But most notably of all was the absence of a sadistic butthole with an automatic weapon waiting to cut Angelo in half. Still, the lack of movement felt every bit as dangerous as a maniac with a machinegun.

  What kind of game was this?

  Eyeing the fence, Angelo entertained the idea of making a break for it. Suddenly, he felt more like a P.O.W. than a recruit, and perhaps that description was truer to this stark situation than any other. This had to be a test, some sick twisted scheme that Carlos had dreamt up, something to tempt Angelo into flight so Carlos could say that Marchetti had washed out. No, he wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction of running out into the wilderness where Carlos and company would be waiting to dump his body into a shallow grave.

  It wouldn’t be that easy.

  Angelo would either leave here tomorrow as an Elitario, or in a body bag: one or the other. Still, where was everyone? Should he go knocking on barrack doors like a concerned neighbor? Should he inquire at the main building?

  Angelo’s breath hung in the frigid air like a gray web as he devised a plan of what to do next.

  (49)

  “Rise and shine beautiful,” Carlos said as he aimed a polished nickel plated Archer Howitzer at Angelo’s face. “Time to meet your maker you miserable stinking mutt!”

  The trigger was pulled, the hammer clicked, but no explosive report followed.

  The gun was empty.

  Of course that was to be expected. Even Carlos wouldn’t be stupid enough to shoot the camera that recorded this video message. Besides, the sight of the howitzer was enough to remind Angelo just how much damage a weapon like that could do. It was the type of gun hitmen called a ‘fire and forget,’ because nobody ever got up after being shot by a howitzer.

  Forget about it.

  That shiny howitzer always hung off of Carlo’s hip as if were a goddamn gunslinger. The sight of it put Angelo in mind of those early Clint Eastwood movies, the spaghetti westerns shot by Italian production companies under the direction of Sergio Leone. Angelo imagined Carlos was probably a big fan of that genre, that he probably posed with the howitzer in front of his bedroom mirror as he quoted memorable dialogue from those cinematic classics gone by.

  The idea of that always made Angelo smirk, a grin that Carlos had seen and punished on more than one occasion. Still, to imagine the butcher that way was a form of retaliation. And as such, Angelo would continue to see the Elitario’s headmaster in that silly way to remind himself that no one controlled his personal thoughts.

  “By now you’ve explored the compound and have discovered that you’re all alone,” Carlos said with a pompous grin. “No fellow students on campus nor teachers drinking gin in the school’s lounge.” Carlos pointed the howitzer back at the camera. “Your last day in the course approaches. If you live till noon tomorrow.” At this idea Carlos offered a sarcastic laugh. “Then you’ll become an Elitario.” Carlos cracked open the gun and withdrew a single hollow tip bullet. “If only you knew how many times I wanted to shoot this into your brain Marchetti.” Carlos then made a clicking noise with his tongue and shook his head with a note of regret. “But alas, that would be cowardly, an unfitting end for even a mutt such as yourself.” Carlos took his attention off the camera and then let his dull eyes wander around the room, which of course was the very room in which Angelo now stood. “On the wall there is a map of this mountain. You’ll notice I’ve taken the liberty to mark on it. There are three ways out of here Marchetti. To the north is a rugged mountain pass that would take you to the heights of this mountain and over to the other side. If you take that route, you’ll either freeze, or fall to your death seeing as you don’t have the proper equipment to undertake such a perilous journey. The second route is along the glacial river. It’s a rushing train of whitewater rapids, a wide gully of jagged rock and steep embankments with no narrow point at which to safely cross. Again, you don’t have the necessary equipment to traverse such an obstacle.” The expression on Carlos’s face then became one of great anticipation like a fiend relishing a sinful pleasure yet to come. “The third route leads straight down the mountain through a well-worn trail to a small village in the foothills: Casa Diavalo.”

  Angelo recognized the name, had overheard Carlos speak of it with one of the compound’s martial arts instructors, an Israeli Krav Maga expert known as Saul. As far as teachers went, Saul was Angelo’s favorite, not because the man treated him any better than the other instructors, it was because Saul was damn good at what he did.

  Saul was lethal, and Angelo had learned a great deal from that skilled master.

  “This route is by far the most dangerous,” Carlos continued. “It is tradition that one of the students be selected as the fox while the others act as the hounds in a game to the death. That fox is to be you, Marchetti.” A sick smile trembled the corner of his mouth, as if he had a nervous disorder. “Here are the rules of the game.” Carlos leaned closer to the camera, dull eyes lit with a perverted fascination. “Survive by all means possible.” He then backed away from the camera and became much more business minded. “To graduate you will have to locate an item that is hidden somewhere in the village. Find it before high noon tomorrow, and you will be a Gambaro Elitario.” Carlos then cleared his throat and smiled broadly. “Oh…by the way…in order for the other three recruits to graduate, they must find and kill you before noon, or they themselves will be put to death. It’s what I like to call an added in
centive. You know….weed out the cows from the bulls so to speak.” Carlos holstered his gun and then placed his wart covered hands upon his wide hips. “Goodbye Marchetti. May God see fit to at least let a mutt like you die well.

  Now…let the Trial of Daggers commence.”

  The video ended.

  (50)

  “Bastard!” Angelo exclaimed as he ripped down the video monitor and spat on it.

  Angelo looked around the wide open room which was relatively empty. A modest dining area with old cooking appliances sat in one corner. Its cupboards and refrigerator doors had been left open intentionally to show they were barren of food. An open concept washroom with two stall partitions sat in another. In the third corner an ammunition closet along with several rows of gun racks had been looted of armaments. In the room’s center floor a grandfather clock with a trio of gold faces ticked and tocked. As for the corner where Angelo stood, the inventory consisted of a few wooden desks, a floor globe with a crack near its equator, and of course the large wall map of which Carlos had spoken. Angelo stepped over the fallen monitor and stood in front of the map, tempted to rip it down in spite. Three trails were clearly displayed in colorful shades of ink: the mountain pass to the north was marked with a brown jagged line---the path to the glacial river was indicated with a brush stroke of scarlet red----lastly the trail to Casa Diavalo was represented by a twisty black line.

  They were a gauntlet of deadly choices, but of course there could only be one decision.

  It would take hours to get down to Diavalo, and once there, Angelo would have to confront the Three. Not good odds considering he had no weapons and his opponents were probably armed to the teeth. It was obvious that the Trial of Daggers would be terribly one sided.

  In the background, the grandfather clock chimed six bells.

  It would be dark in another fourteen hours or so. If Angelo was going to get down to Casa Diavalo, he would have to leave soon. Travelling at night would be hazardous, not to mention that he would need a good rest before he went up against the Three. But before he got moving he would need to scavenge the compound for anything he could use on the journey.

  He considered the map once more.

  The geographical layout of Diavalo offered little in the way of fortification. It basically rested upon on an open foothill plain amidst a dense forest of deciduous wildwood, a narrow peninsula closed in by a glacial river tributary, which flanked the town to three sides. The stream itself offered no obvious resources. Thirteen structures had been drawn upon the map in pencil, the furthest building upon the solitary street was marked with a cross which signified a church. The town followed the angle of the peninsula, which would limit Angelo’s advance to just one possibility. If he approached at dawn from the east, the sun would be at his back and thus shine into his opponent’s eyes. That’s if the sun was not shrouded by overcast skies. It would be a modest advantage, if any, but if Angelo was going to win this battle, then he would have to draw upon every little scrap of help he could hope to scrounge up. He decided it would be best to bring the map, for if graced by inspiration he could consult its topography in real time. But as his hands reached up to tear it off the wall, he was suddenly overcome with a disturbing feeling.

  The colors!

  It had something to do with the goddamn colors Carlos had used to mark the trails.

  Brown, red and black.

  Something about their shades was familiar, but what?

  A sudden dizzy spell clouded Angelo’s eyes, and for a second he almost swooned, but managed to hold onto his feet.

  “Boondocks…scarlet red,” Angelo said in little more than a whisper.

  Spinning quickly, he reached under both arms and withdrew---nothing.

  Something important was missing, something crucial!

  The eyes inside his head cleared but they didn’t trust what they saw. The world felt every bit as cracked as the floor globe, a world that spun upon an axis of smoke and mirrors. Angelo rubbed his lean ribs and felt an unexplainable emptiness there. It was then that the three faces of the grandfather clock stopped ticking and began to chime a strange melody. The tune was hypnotic, soothed the part of his mind that questioned reality, and although he tried to hum in chorus with the clock, he found he was unable to duplicate the oddly strung notes.

  When the clock finished its short seductive song, Angelo tore down the map and folded it up for transport. He then began a systematic search through the building for supplies, unaware that anything was out of the ordinary.

  (51)

  The sun had begun to set, although in the mountain’s shadow it felt closer to night than dusk. It was cold, damp, close to snowing, even though the sky had cleared to reveal a rich tapestry of stars. Judging by the map’s lines, Angelo was close to Diavalo, an hour’s hike, perhaps two. He would make camp for the night and then get an early start in the morning.

  He rested in a massive crevice of rock which served as his shelter and an improvised command center. It was here that Angelo inspected several items of value salvaged from the compound: a blanket, a nine volt battery, a razor blade, some steel wool and a pair of one inch diameter wooden dowels that were half a foot long and sharpened to a piercing point at either end. The dowels had once been ladder rungs. They were plenty tough, and would serve as excellent fighting sticks if he ever managed to get in close enough to one of the Three. The purpose of the blanket was obvious: warmth. The two inch razor blade would help shave kindling, thus making it easier to start a fire. As for the fire starter, the nine volt battery when rubbed across steel wool would ignite to flame. Initially, Angelo had thought it unwise to make a campfire, but doubted he would be in much danger tonight. Tomorrow would be the Trial of Daggers in Casa Diavalo, not out here in the wilderness. The fox and hound game was an old ritual, and Angelo doubted that even a miserable pig like Carlos would violate that time honored tradition. No, Diavalo was where the fight would go down, nowhere else. Besides, Casa Diavalo and the Trial of Daggers sounded like a spaghetti western movie title, and Angelo knew a bastard like Carlos would have a real hard on for something like that.

  For a second, Angelo not only smiled broadly, but burst into a boisterous fit of laughter. He could see Carlos in his mind’s eye, swaggering across the village square, Archer Howitzer holstered against his wide hip, a cigarillo perched between his thin wormy lips, eyes squinted like Clint Eastwood’s. Yes, he would be quite the comical sight, Mr. Cock of the Walk out for an evening stroll. Good evening ma’am. I reckon a young filly like yourself should get out of town. It’s not safe here. There’s killing to be done, and I reckon I’m the one to do it.

  Sticks gathered from the forest were shaved with the razor and then piled together like an Indian teepee. Angelo rubbed the nine volt against the wool and the resulting flame was touched to the carved splinters. In a matter of minutes a blazing campfire lit up the crevice and filled the night sky with the sweet scent of wood smoke. The smell made Angelo’s stomach grumble and he couldn’t help but wish that he had some wieners and marshmallows to roast. He hadn’t eaten since last night, and the hole in his gut needed to be filled on something soon. The last thing he needed was a stomach growl that could potentially give away his location at a crucial moment.

  Several white birch trees stood at the forest’s edge. He recalled that Native Indians used to eat the inner bark in times of starvation, and if he wasn’t mistaken, the Indians may have even made flour from it. He wasted no time stripping off large sections of bark which he ravenously wolfed down as he sat next to the fire. The soft inner layer was sweet, but far from delicious. Still, it would suffice for now, and hopefully give him enough strength to fight the Three tomorrow morning.

  With his hunger pangs gone, he laid back beside the campfire and allowed himself to relish the heat. His body hadn’t felt this kind of warmth in awhile, and for a moment it felt as though his bones were like branches snapping after the lift of a heavy frost.

  What a
sight he must have been to behold: a feral animal wrapped in dirty canvas clothes, skin soiled, eyes as wild as a wolf’s. But he was strong, well-trained and anxious to meet the Three in combat. And as much as Angelo hated to admit it, Carlos had done a fine job at instructing his pupil. As a result, Angelo had become a piece of iron with knuckles that could easily break both board and bone.

  What a waste it would be to discard all of Angelo’s hard work for the sake of a contaminated bloodline, or in Angelo’s case, his birthplace. It was insane, cruel, but then that’s what Gambaro Elitario was. Carlos may have drank champagne and ate caviar when in Rome, but in his heart the bastard was nothing more than a savage barbarian.

  As Angelo had become.

  “What’s the old saying,” Angelo whispered. “When you dance with the Devil, you don’t change him, he changes you.”

  Suddenly, Angelo felt racked with regrets.

  What part of his humanity had he given up to become this monster?

  And why had he done it?

  To kill Deluca?

  If Carlos was indeed the devil, then Angelo had sold him his soul, and come tomorrow, Carlos would send the Three to collect on that debt.

  What kind of a man would Angelo be after tomorrow?

  Whose feet would touch home soil again if he survived the battle of the Three?

  Surely not the Angelo Marchetti who left two years ago as a naive soldier. No, this man would be harder, meaner and a genuine killer.

  He thought of Bianca.

  What kind of woman could love him now?

  Perhaps the kind of women that corresponded with prison inmates, but not Bianca Gambaro, for she was fashioned from finer silk. Marchetti would be nothing more than a pit bull when he got back home, Romulus’s guard dog with the nastiest of bites. That kind of animal could never be domesticated. Those beasts always slept outside in a cage.

  “Got to let her go,” Angelo muttered, uncertain that she was even still alive.

  Fate had decreed Angelo Marchetti’s mission long ago, and that task involved a miserable son of a bitch named Franco Deluca. Vengeance was the engine that made Angelo’s heart pump, not love. To think otherwise courted confusion and that risked certain failure. No, if Angelo was to fulfill his destiny, then he had to do it with a clear mind. Love was clutter, divided the path with options. There could be no alternative choices, just the one.

  Angelo drew in a deep breath and sighed. “Forget her Marchetti…the Three…focus on the Three.”

  It wasn’t easy, but Angelo managed to put Bianca out of mind so that he could concentrate on the task at hand.

  How could he ever hope to counter such unfair odds?

  By now the Three would have surveyed the best spots in Diavalo. They would possess firsthand knowledge of the town’s topography and structures. They also would have had time to rig booby traps and secure weaponry. Their bellies would be full of food and maybe even wine. They may have even had time to rest on down filled pillows and spring coil mattresses.

  Yes, there was no doubt that the Three would be fresh for the fight. This fox and hound game would be a joke, it was more like the eagle and the worm, cowardly and woefully one sided. But then that was to be expected of a miserable son of a bitch like Carlos. Courage wasn’t exactly his strong suit, but pride was. No way was he going to risk having a mutt graduate the Elitario, and the best way to secure that end was to fix the game in favor of the hounds.

  Yet despite the Three’s obvious advantage, Angelo nonetheless believed he could win the battle.

  And what exactly justified that arrogance?

  Superior motivation.

  Failure was not an option. After all, Angelo had places to go and people to kill. As for the Three, they would just be the first on that hit list, nothing more. Marchetti had an appointment with a man named Deluca, and come rise of Rome, or fall of Saigon, Angelo intended to keep that date. So he settled in to a restless sleep beside the fire, mindful that only one course of action had been afforded him: improvisation.

  (52)

  Darkness along with a light frost greeted Angelo when he awoke. The campfire remnants were a dull mess of spent embers. The fire’s heat had kept his canvas clothes and wrappings dry, and the remaining birch bark helped to quell his stomach growls. His body now fed on adrenaline which heightened his alertness. He was as combat ready as he could be and eager to put his mettle to the test. Soon, he would meet the Three in Diavalo, and there, fate would decide who lived and who died.

  Travelling quick and light, Angelo easily navigated the forest’s well-worn trail all the way to Diavalo’s outskirts. Trees and bushes flanked the town on most sides which made for excellent cover. From these hiding spots, Angelo assessed the battle theater with a tactician’s eye.

  Dim starlight revealed a small village of traditional Italian design: modest pastel homes and businesses constructed from sandstone and clay brick with terracotta pan tile roofs. It was picturesque quaint, a veritable holiday post card backdrop. But in a short while its peaceful atmosphere would be disturbed with violence.

  A community well with a canopy trellis stood in the village square, a wooden bucket hung from its wrought iron spindle, a historical attraction that was more decorative than functional. Along the village’s solitary street were a dozen buildings in total: a mercantile, blacksmith shop, post office, butcher’s shop, bank, motel, eating house and sawmill. Behind the mill the rush of white water from the glacial tributary could be heard to roar, its racing current captured in part by a sizable waterwheel. As for the few remaining buildings, they were two story homesteads, except for the church which sat at street’s end.

  The cathedral’s tall white steeple loomed against the early morning stars like a religious cenotaph, its moderate sized bell tower sat quiet beneath the shadow of a dark cross. A large antique clock with wrought iron hands hung above the church’s beamed doors. The weak glow of candle and lantern light radiated from within the frost paned windows which gave the small town an eerie ambiance.

  A shudder suddenly painted a coat of gooseflesh upon Angelo’s thick hide.

  This village reminded him of some place he’d been before.

  But where?

  Déjà’ vu preoccupied Angelo’s thoughts. He tried to ignore the strange sensation, but could not dismiss the feeling’s relevance. Whatever its connection to Diavalo, he knew it was of extreme importance.

  If only he could remember.

  Overhead, the stars began to slowly fade from sight. Dawn would be here soon and with it would come the challenge of the Three. The sun would be up, and in its waking glare he might have been able to move toward a building without being detected, but on the horizon a bale of storm clouds closed in on the breath of a phantom breeze.

  He would need another plan.

  If only there were a way he could get on top of one of those rooftops without being seen, preferably the mill’s, then he would have an element of surprise, for surely the Three would be expecting him to be limited to a ground approach. But in order for him to get up onto a rooftop, he would have to fly.

  But then again, there might be a way, although it would be extremely dangerous.

  The pointed dowels were squeezed inside his cold hands as he weighed a critical decision. There were no practical alternatives, and the idea was so crazy that Angelo doubted anyone, even Carlos would have thought to counter it.

  He eyed the church steeple, that eerie feeling of déjà vu saturating his bones like icy embalming fluid. His body felt unnaturally cold, out of synch with the surrounding temperature, and he understood that too was relevant to this situation.

  But why it was he could not explain.

  Angelo tucked the dowels into his leg wrappings and slipped back into the woods, preparing to risk everything on a wild stunt that no sane person would dare attempt.

  (53)

  The water was colder than cold, it numbed the mind of rational thought and threatened both h
ypothermia and cardiac arrest. Angelo tried to breathe steady, but found his lungs were a flutter of short rapid gasps. Soon the whitewater would drown him, bind his limbs in liquid ice and drag them down into the swift current where death would bury him in a watery grave.

  Seconds were all he had to work with, a single miscalculation in timing and he would be swept away forever. There would be no second chances, no battle with the Three nor appointment with Franco Deluca.

  The water’s voice ran as deep as a bottomless chasm, an animalistic roar driven by a mindless rage. The river was a tempest at war with everything in its path, and Angelo had willfully stood before that campaign. White water boiled, wound its way around jagged rapids in great frothy bales. Eddies spun like dark tornados. The water tried to drag Angelo deeper into the slipstream, but he fought off the undertow with help from the dowels.

  The sharpened sticks scraped along the river’s rocky edge, anchoring him to the shoulder between sporadic bursts of motion. If the dowels strayed too far from the rim, then Angelo would quickly succumb to the river’s torrent. He had to keep control, ride out the wake until he reached the waterwheel. But the current was much quicker than he thought it would be, and much colder, too. Already he could feel the strength bleeding out of his hands, and if his fingers let slip that precious dowel, then Angelo would be gone within a matter of seconds.

  There would be only one chance to get this right.

  But with a single haphazard stab of the dowel stick, Angelo slipped and began to drift towards the river’s violent center. In that brief instant all hope had been lost. It was everything for him not to cry out in anguish. To have been so close and then to suddenly fail was absolutely heartbreaking. After all he had been through just to die like a cat drowned inside a potato sack seemed a cruel and unusual fate. Justice denied by a fraction of a second, and as a result the proceeding dominos would not fall accordingly.

  Angelo had lost.

  (54)

  The impact had been hard, but it nonetheless offered Angelo another opportunity. With what strength remained inside his frozen legs, he pushed against the slippery rapid and propelled himself back toward the river’s edge. There, the dowel wasted no time dragging him along the rim as it had before, guiding Angelo on a direct collision course with the fast spiraling waterwheel.

  It was close now, the glistening buckets bailing out large scoops of water before tossing them back down into the river’s fury.

  He would have to time this perfectly.

  Angelo gulped in a breath of air, ducked his head beneath the raging current in a shallow dive. All was black, a storm of garbled chaos. The coldness drove icy nails into his skull and threatened to unhinge his sanity, but he held on, hands reaching blindly into the darkness for that one bucket that would lift him heavenward.

  (55)

  Contact with the waterwheel’s bucket had been perilous. The rectangular box was slippery, dragged him further into the icy depths, tried to drown him, but then hauled him upward and out of the water in one rolling motion as it spun him out onto the other side.

  It was a Ferris Wheel from Hell.

  Angelo’s lungs sucked in air, his frozen fingers struggling to hold his weight as the wheel pulled him up unto its ever turning summit. He would have to roll off before the bucket dragged him back down the other side where it would most certainly kill him. Within the faint light of an encroaching dawn, he could see the wheel’s service ledge as he was pulled up towards it. The service walkway was narrow, wedged between the mill and the wheel. The mill’s wheel didn’t use a sluice, but rather a lift platform that could raise the wheel up and down on a dove tail column in order to accommodate the river’s seasonal levels.

  As the waterwheel quickly reached its apex, Angelo prepared to lunge for the warped planks of the crude gantry. Using the momentum of the waterwheel in chorus with a push from his arms and legs, Angelo twisted his weight so that the wheel would eject him out onto the platform. The calculation had not been perfect, but close enough that Angelo hit the mill’s wall and then bounded down onto the maintenance scaffold in relative safety.

  The impact with the walkway was mostly absorbed by the pliable floorboards, but the slam against the mill’s wall would probably leave a bruise on his shoulder about the size of a ripe orange. Still, his muscles were rigid from cold, and the shock with the gantry registered as an off the top rope body slam.

  For a second he was dazed, eyes lost for direction. He had lost a dowel, but the other remained tucked within his leg wrapping. This utility was immediately clasped onto with both hands and he held it close to his chest. Angelo wasn’t a religious man, but at that moment he couldn’t help but thank God that he had survived the wet and wild thrill ride.

  Shivers rattled his bones and chattered his teeth. His heart ran at full gallop and his lungs anxiously gulped in air. It had been an amazing feat of physical strength and agility, but Angelo nonetheless understood that the waterwheel had been the easy part of this task. The Three waited in Diavalo, and defeating them would be far more difficult than riding out a carnival big wheel.

  A cold wind began to blow out of the east in the company of an approaching dawn. It was an added misery, one more hardship Angelo’s rugged body would have to endure. If this had been two years ago, he would’ve succumbed to hypothermia by now. But the Elitario had made him hard and toughed his hide into burlap. It would take more than a spot of bad weather to kill Marchetti, it would take nothing less than the Three working together.

  (56)

  From the mill’s rooftop beside a brick chimney, Angelo spied the street.

  There was no sign of the Three.

  Nothing moved, save the tree branches pushed by a growing wind. In fifteen minutes or so there would be enough daylight to read by, at which time movement between structures would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

  At a forty five degree angle to the mill stood the church. Angelo eyed the steeple with its thin peak tower. He recalled Carlos’s message that an item had been hidden within Diavalo, an object Angelo must possess before noon or he would not graduate the Elitario. Angelo would bet money that Carlos had hidden the mystery item within the church, and the reason for that deduction had to do with those Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns. Carlos would see Diavalo as a movie set, use it like Sergio Leone would have done in one of his motion pictures. The item would be either on the altar, inside a confessional, or stashed inside the bell tower.

  It would be more dramatic that way.

  It would also probably be rigged.

  No mutt would graduate the Elitario while Carlos was regent, and if he had to cheat to secure that end, then so be it.

  When Angelo got inside the church, he would have to be careful.

  A flicker of light shot into his eyes and he immediately ducked his head.

  Had he just been spotted by a flashlight?

  His ears listened intently for footfalls along with the eruption of gunfire. But what his ears heard instead was quite unexpected.

  It was none other than the delicate sound of thunder.

  A storm was blowing in.

  (57)

  Another flash of lightning lit up Diavalo to which a distant rumble of thunder replied. Judging by the speed of the approaching thunderheads, the storm would reach town shortly after sunrise. The wind had already begun to ramp up into a strong gale, soon the river’s roar would be swallowed by it.

  Lightning would come to blind eyes and deceive sight with shadows. Perhaps the storm would even the odds out against the Three. Still, the church would be watched closely, and if the Three already waited inside, then all the bad weather in the world wouldn’t be of much use to Angelo. If only he could smoke them out of hiding. Perhaps if he lit the entire town on fire, then that would do the trick. But he would never succeed with such a bold plan. The Three would easily spot and then kill him for the effort. No, despite the elements, today would be an exercise in stealth and patie
nce.

  If Angelo waited until noon, then the Three would be compelled to organize a search, lest they themselves be summarily executed. That rule of the game served in Angelo’s favor. The Three would be eager to kill him so that they might save their own skins. If pressed for time the Three would take greater risks and that would be their undoing. Angelo could then bait them, lead them into traps, but where would he set such snares?

  Ultimately in chess someone had to make the first move, and that person would have to be Angelo. So far he had snuck into Diavalo without being seen and now occupied an elevated position without having set foot upon village soil.

  That was damn impressive.

  It was the kind of maneuver an adversary would never have suspected, so the Three wouldn’t waste energy searching the surrounding rooftops.

  Why would they?

  The Three would’ve prepared for the expected, not the impossible. They would’ve set booby traps and alarms around the village, took position in the best observational vantage points. The Three would be armed for war, dug in, but also able to redeploy with little notice if need be. They had expert training and the best motivational need to drive their success which was survival.

  Another flash of lightning pulsed across the sky and on its heels a deep resounding bellow of thunder. The storm approached with the coming dawn, and so too did the battle with the Three.

  (58)

  The mill’s loft was bedded down with yellow hay. A mess of old junk lay scattered about. Rusty tools and wooden mallets hung from boarded slots on the wall. A dozen empty rum barrels sat to and fro. Thick spiny lengths of hemp lay piled upon the straw. A tall shelving cabinet stood alone, its double doors swung wide open to reveal a series of closely stacked shelves that would be ideal for holding small items.

  The scent beneath the beamed rafters was of age and sawdust.

  Angelo had snuck into the mill through a loose air vent, mindful that one of the Three may have been waiting inside. Obviously that had not been the case. The upper level of the mill was vacant, save its forgotten treasures.

  He’d been lucky.

  Another volley of thunder rumbled in the distance, louder and closer this time. Soon it would be on top of Diavalo where it would dump gallons of rain and blow with gale force winds. Angelo waited on its arrival, but until then, he would utilize the time efficiently.

  The equipment in the loft held no practical use. However there were a few corroded bale hooks, deadly if swung at the correct anatomical body part. The tips were dull, but more than able to get good penetration into flesh if wielded with sufficient force. They would work better than the dowel, so Angelo discarded his stabbing tool for something with a bit more zing.

  He held the bale hooks within his frigid hands, swinging them powerfully through the air to which they replied with a soft swooshing sound. They weren’t guns, nor throwing knives, but they would work well if he could get in close enough to an opponent.

  Across the loft descended a staircase. Below on the mill’s ground level, the sound of large machinery turning cogs and crankshafts was easily heard. A slight vibration could be felt through the floor from either the heavy equipment or nearby river, either way the effect was still the same: a palpable flow of energy.

  The wrappings around Angelo’s legs and hands dripped continuously as did the rest of his canvas attire. The dampness was worse than uncomfortable, it impaired mobility, robbed precious heat and served as a constant distraction. Placing the bale hooks on top of a rum barrel, he tore off the wrappings and then hid them beneath a patch of hay. Concerns of frostbite gave him pause, but the climate, although chilled, was nonetheless warmer at this altitude than that of the Elitario compound. Besides, the adrenaline in Angelo’s system helped to warm his bones, although there was a real danger that he could develop pneumonia.

  At that idea he couldn’t but crook a smile.

  To die of pneumonia would be a far preferable fate than dying at the hands of the Three. If he was fortunate this time tomorrow, he would be as sick as a dog, in fact he’d welcome it.

  He eyed the stairs, weighed the odds that one of the Three might be hidden down below. The sounds of industry on the ground level would mask the sound of footsteps on creaky stairs, but it wouldn’t render Angelo invisible. Suddenly, the image of the church flashed into his mind, its tall steeple along with its black wrought iron bell. It was the town’s crowning jewel, the monument at the end of the road. Inside would lay Angelo’s redemption, a diploma of sorts, but would it be rigged? As always in the matters of developing strategy, everything hinged on good intelligence. Improvisation could only take him so far. It couldn’t tell him where the Three were hidden nor could it show him where Carlos had stashed the item. Improvisation, albeit incredibly useful, was nonetheless blind to certain things. Intelligence was the key to devising a good plan, and as Angelo studied the stairs he couldn’t help but realize just how deaf and dumb Carlos had left him.

  Admittedly that was a defeatist attitude which did nothing to boost Angelo’s confidence. In such dire situations it didn’t pay to be a pragmatist, but rather an optimist.

  Angelo would have to be a gambler if he was to win this war.

  Proceed with care, but do so daringly.

  (59)

  Angelo’s foot stopped at the top step when he realized something was wrong.

  Why was the saw equipment running this early in the morning? It was obvious Casa Diavalo wasn’t an actual community, but rather another Elitario training compound. Diavalo was an elaborate test range, like a military base mockup for urban warfare. That meant the Three had flipped on the mill’s power switch intentionally, not some Johnny Punch Clock. And if they’d done that, then what other modifications might they have performed downstairs?

  Paranoia had Angelo second guessing himself, but with good reason: the Three would kill him if given the opportunity.

  The bale hooks in Angelo’s hands would be little more than air rifles if met by gunfire. Again, he appraised the loft for a useful weapon. The hammer if thrown like a tomahawk would give him distance, but those mallets were awkwardly proportioned, dead blow hammers with big pitted heads that had no balance with their awkward handles.

  They were useless.

  The rum barrels if pushed down from above would flatten an opponent. The loft however, was closed in, and the odds of getting one of the Three to stroll beneath a waiting barrel bordered on the ridiculous. Unfortunately, the bale hooks were the only realistic weapons available. And so Angelo gripped the bale hooks tightly with the understanding that they were all he had for protection, and together he and the hooks would have no choice but to descend those miserable stairs together.

  (60)

 

  The bottom step eased out onto a floor of hardened mud. The sound of the mill saw and its medieval engine had grown considerably louder. Down here a person would have to shout to be heard. The steps had led Angelo to a relatively remote corner of the mill. Stacks of pine crates and burlap bundles shrouded the loft stairs with a makeshift wall. It was warmer downstairs, a fire gave off heat from nearby. The sensation was orgasmic, worked magical fingers into Angelo’s frozen hide until a shudder of delight wormed through his brainstem. To pull that energy around him like a blanket would be paradise. Every cell in his body wanted to seek out that flame, but he knew the warmth had been laid as bait.

  Someone else was definitely in here.

  He would avoid that temptation, retreat to the drafty edges of the mill, for there the hunter would be hiding.

  But how would he proceed?

  Angelo crouched, cautiously peeked round a pine crate before retreating back behind the relative safety of the makeshift wall. In that all too brief glance he had seen an elevated platform with a large rotating saw blade---pulley belts turned gear shafts and cams with the power generated by the waterwheel---a table cluttered with tools and replacement parts sat next to a set of barn doors that had been ba
rred shut with a thick beam which hung between two iron hooks. The scene put Angelo in mind of a castle dungeon’s, except this pit came with a wide sectional plate window that gazed out onto Diavalo’s solitary street.

  Still, he hadn’t seen one of the Three, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  Angelo looked ahead, spotted a rum barrel similar to the ones upstairs, except this one had been converted into a scrap can. It was wedged into a corner beside a cabinet that was identical to the one up in the loft.

  That corner would offer him shelter from view.

  There was just enough room for him to squeeze between the barrel and the wall with the shelf to one side, a temporary hiding spot from which to calculate his next move. It wasn’t the best place to hold up, but it would do for now.

  His leg muscles tensed, ached from the cold, but launched him swiftly and quietly towards the adjacent landmark. No gunshot resounded, just a flash of lightning followed shortly thereafter by a boom of thunder. Angelo’s breathing remained a steady rhythm, a soft sigh lost amidst the clank of gears and the whine of a saw blade. The mill was relatively dim of light, but the dawn had nonetheless set upon Diavalo. Despite the grim shadows of billowy thunderheads, the masked daylight would soon illuminate the buildings and alleyways with its lackluster shine. Hiding in the open would be impossible, save an act of clever ingenuity.

  Angelo let his eyes cross the floor to a side wall and to a hearth mortared together with gray stone. A potent fire burned within. The firelight was strong, but pale in comparison to the waking day. It threw weird shadows into the mill’s corners and across its dirt floor with a dance of faded scarlet. It deceived the eye, invited the imagination to make false assumptions.

  Eyeing the overhead beams that ran along the ceiling, Angelo calculated the height in relation to the distance from the main door. If he went topside, climbed the rafter and shimmied along overhead, he might get a drop on one of the Three. Problem was the ceiling was high, not to mention too well lit for that kind of a fancy maneuver.

  The bale hooks shifted within his hands as he plotted.

  Angelo’s eyes slowly eased above the rum barrel. The saw’s cutting table sat empty, nothing for its razor like teeth to chew upon, the blades circled mindlessly, biting at air. The idea of sabotaging the saw came briefly to mind but then departed. The commotion would no doubt summon the Three’s attention, but then they had been trained to anticipate such blatant diversions. Naturally, they would be curious as to what had happened to the saw, but then they would conclude that Angelo had been responsible, in which case he would’ve merely alerted the Three of his presence and thus lose the element of surprise. No, the Three wouldn’t poke their heads out to see what had happened to the saw, they would sit tight, watch and when they felt it was time to move, they would.

  Angelo tried to get inside his opponents heads, tried to anticipate their location. Behind the saw would be a good place to hide. From there you could keep an eye on the street, the front door and the fireplace. Even on the remote chance that someone came down from the loft, as Angelo had, they would still have to pass between the fireplace and the front doors and into plain sight, and then wham! You’d have them.

  That’s where one of the Three had to be camping, behind the saw.

  Angelo stood at the ready, mindful of his surroundings. He briefly glanced inside the rum barrel he’d been hiding behind and performed a quick inventory. There was a bunch of narrow boards stained with spots of oil and a mixed hodgepodge of small mechanical parts. There was nothing of any real use, except for a jagged tooth gear that was approximately the diameter of a soup can. He fished it out and then cinched it into the crude canvas belt of his wet pants for safe keeping. The gear could be used as a ninja throwing star if need be, perhaps not enough to kill, but more than enough to injure.

  Angelo took in a deep breath and prepared to move.

  If spotted, he would lunge toward the front end of the saw platform and throw the rusty gear cog while in mid flight. Then, if he was lucky, climb up on the far side of the saw, leap over its spinning blade, and attack whomever was on the other side. Of course there were no guarantees that he’d make it to the saw alive, but at this point his choices were limited.

  Slowly, he inched round the rum barrel, eyes on the hunt. And as he circled to face that dark nook behind the saw, he realized he had just made a huge mistake.

  (61)

  The alarm inside Angelo’s mind shrieked. Here, the answer had been under his nose the entire time and he hadn’t seen it. He felt like a fool, to have been so damn stupid as to miss such an obvious clue.

  What had he been thinking?

  But then there was no time to think, only time to react.

  At the first realization something was wrong he had already begun to turn. In his peripheral sight, Angelo could already see the cabinet doors opening. Normally, there would be no way that a man could fit inside such a thin narrow cupboard, but if a man took the time to rip out those numerous tightly packed shelves, then with a little bit of effort he could easily squeeze inside.

  That’s what Tweedle Dumb had done, and as Angelo spun on his heels, bale hooks slicing through the air, he couldn’t help but curse himself for not having recognized that discarded shelving inside the rum barrel immediately.

  If he survived this encounter he vowed it would never happen again.

  The long sleek barrel of an Archer Long Bow rose upward, hammer cocked, trigger poised as Dumb emerged from the cabinet and took aim. In the rush of adrenaline, time distorted, wound down into a slow motion movie reel of heightened sounds and senses. Angelo could count the thick matted hairs on the back of Dumb’s knuckles, read the manufacturer’s engraving on the bow’s revolver chamber, hear his heart beat like a bilge pump.

  The bale hooks swooshed as they raced gunpowder to an inevitable explosion, in which case all bets with Deluca would be called off. Dumb’s homely face was a mask of concentration, jaw muscles tight, brow pulled down towards a set of unruly eyebrows. The red branch of veins within his eyes made him look pumped up on methamphetamine. Dumb was possessed, an Elitario that had eaten too much hardship and strict discipline that any semblance of the man he had once been was lost to the man he had become. He was a killer from balls to bone, a core assassin with the mindset to follow through on what must be done.

  To Angelo it felt like looking into a mirror.

  One bale hook collided with Dumb’s Longbow, the other his left cheek. The Archer flew across the room where it came to rest beside the fireplace. The bale hook had torn a wide gash into Dumb’s face, leaving behind a bloody shine of crooked teeth and a receding gum-line. The jagged flap of flesh hung from a patch of scarlet bone. Dumb’s hands instinctively cradled the gash, but the blood continued to pour between his trembling fingers in generous jets.

  An opportunity had afforded Angelo a chance to land-base the first of the Three with an expert side kick to the sternum. As a result, Dumb flew backward into the cupboard, cracking its wooden spine neatly down the center with a rough line of splinters. With an upper cut, Angelo drove the bale hook’s pointy tip up into the soft nest below Dumb’s chin where the rusty steel nailed the man’s jaws shut.

  Dumb’s screams of agony were muffled between teeth that had been jammed together by a rugged hook.

  Angelo yanked Dumb forward like a fish impaled on a gaff and then drove him down onto the floor. The force of the fall coupled with the bale hook’s hold, broke Dumb’s jaw with an audible snap. Dumb’s feet kicked aimlessly while his body squirmed and his eyes watered streams of wet pain. Dumb’s hands clasped onto the rusty bale hook, seeking to relieve that awful hot pressure that was ripping his face apart, but Angelo offered him no reprieve.

  It was a sadistic sight to behold, enough to make a person’s knees turn to jelly, but Angelo remained rigid. The Elitario had taught him well, desensitized him to such horrors through various harsh measures. The Elitario had taken away a vital
part of his humanity and had replaced it with the necessary tools to survive. Still, there was no need to continue this torment. Dumb was of no practical use, in fact he was a liability.

  Angelo would end this quick.

  Skillfully, Angelo punctured Dumb’s jugular with the remaining bale hook, and then watched as the life slowly bled out of the first of the Three’s glossy, but otherwise unremarkable eyes.

  (62)

  The Archer Longbow felt good inside Angelo’s hand. It still had seven bullets inside its sturdy chamber, more than enough ammo to inflict serious damage upon what was left of the Three. Dumb lay dead upon the mill’s muddy floor, the blood from his wounds congealing into a dull crimson within the snarled mats of straw. Angelo scavenged an eight inch dagger from a sheath on Dumb’s thigh, a wrist garrote wire spool and perhaps most wonderful of all, a few dry articles of clothing. Tweedle Dumb was smaller than Angelo, a medium in garment size by comparison to Angelo’s large, but the fit, while quite snug, was well-worth the plunder. It had been two years since Angelo had worn a pair of socks. They were wool with reinforced stitching at the toes and heels and had wrapped around Angelo’s cold feet like paradise personified. The cotton boxer shorts, while tight, felt exquisite. Even the simple long sleeve undershirt, which Angelo had managed to wriggle into felt as though it had been woven by heaven’s looms.

  Angelo found that after two years of wearing canvas sacks the thing he missed most of all was his snakeskin boots, the ones with the low heels and pointed toes. He loved the sound they made whenever they touched pavement, and the way they had molded to the shape and curves of his feet. They were like a baseball mitt’s well-worn pocket, and as any athlete could tell you, that kind of shaping took time. Angelo had been everywhere inside those boots, got more mileage out of them than the snake had, and here they had been callously burnt to ash in exchange for a lousy pair of leather sandals. That alone was worth a bullet to Carlos’s head.

  As much as Angelo would have loved to have traded in his rugged sandals for Tweedle Dumb’s hiking boots, there was just no way his larger feet would squeeze into them. However, Angelo could stuff his limbs into Dumb’s black denim pants and wool coat, and he did so eagerly.

  Angelo regarded Dumb’s naked body with a fair measure of bitterness. Carlos had adorned the Three in fine clothes, given them food to eat, weapons to use and a soft place to sleep.

  What had he ever given Angelo except for a kick in the ass?

  It didn’t really matter, because Tweedle Dumb was dead and Angelo was alive. Soon Angelo would have all the fine clothes he could ever hope to wear, the best cuisine to dine on, and maybe even more.

  He checked the Longbow once again. It was in fine condition, ready and able, and so too was its master.

  (63)

  Thunder and lightning made their exchanges with loud booms and bright flashes. The storm had grown intense in a very short time. Angelo peeked out the mill’s rain splattered window and recalled that somber morning with Uncle Vincent, the day when Angelo’s entire life had changed. Back then he had learned of a terrible man called Franco Deluca, and today he would learn if he would become an Elitario.

  Diavalo was a natural peninsula, which meant the only way Angelo could hope to approach the village was to do so by way of the mountain trail. That meant that he would have to enter the village from the east side, which just so happened to be the beginning of Diavalo’s solitary street. If Carlos wanted to keep the item away from Angelo, then he would hide it in the furthest place from that entrance, that being the church. That way Marchetti would have a longer walk and thus be more aptly killed by the Three, or by the Two as they had become recently.

  But Angelo had gotten the drop, snuck into Diavalo via the river, which meant he had an element of surprise. True, Tweedle Dumb had almost dusted Angelo’s sorry ass, but that didn’t mean Dumb had expected Angelo to show up where he had. That cabinet had faced out towards the front door and the street. Dumb had obviously been waiting for Angelo to approach from the building’s forward veneer, but here Angelo had come in from the loft, and that had to be unexpected. Of course there were no guarantees in the game, just gut feelings that were either bang on or off by a country mile. In the end, Angelo would still have to hazard guesses that could easily get him killed if he got them wrong.

  Across the road stood a mercantile---beside that a bank---next door to that a wood shop followed by a jailhouse. It was Carlos’s idea of a spaghetti western town, an imported boondocks recreated one board at a time on a mafia budget. Except in this one horse town cowboys didn’t say, “howdy partner,” they said “forget about it,” and on rare occasions maybe even, “va-voom.”

  The church location was symbolic of Angelo’s struggle for salvation, that’s if the Trial of Daggers followed a movie script, or at least that’s how Sergio Leone would have drafted it. But metaphors aside the question remained: were the other Two holed up inside the Lady of Perpetual Peace? Dumb hadn’t been, but that didn’t mean the other Two weren’t scattered about also. Strategically, it would be best to divide the team in order to survey a greater amount of Diavalo’s rugged acreage.

  But would the Two follow such a logical course of action?

  The map’s layout played over in Angelo’s mind. He had committed every detail to memory. There were thirteen structures with thirteen probabilities to sift through. If Angelo were to organize an ambush, he would stagger their positions in relation to one another. Given that realization meant that one of the Three had to be stationed across the street. It would also be likely that the Three would’ve positioned themselves so that they could keep an eye on one another. Thus the distances between the buildings in relation to their angle of observation narrowed the probability to a few choices.

  The mercantile, bank and of course the church.

  Angelo eyed the church steeple through a wash of rain. Outside the world shook in the throes of a sudden storm. If the rain pelted just a bit harder, then perhaps it would be enough to mask Angelo’s identity as he moved about the street. Of course that would be a long shot seeing as Angelo had a bigger physique than Dumb, and the standing orders between the Three most likely consisted of keeping in place until a mutually agreed upon time. There would be no logical reason for Dumb to be out gallivanting around the street, and if such a situation was to arise, he would most likely be shot on sight for his trouble.

  It was time to roll the dice once more, but not without an element of insurance. Angelo would plot the next step and try to anticipate the unexpected. First and foremost he would have to defy the laws of physics. To cross the street without being detected would take a goddamn miracle. Angelo would have to be invisible to manage a ruse like that. No amount of thunder, lighting nor rain could ever hope to accomplish an illusion of that magnitude. Perhaps Harry Houdini might be able to perform a vanishing act to that degree, but not Angelo Marchetti.

  But then again, there might be a way.

  (64)

  If it didn’t get bogged down in the mud, then it just might work. Of course as soon as Angelo opened the mill doors the remainder of the Three would start blasting away. He’d be like a duck in a carnival shooting gallery. Angelo doubted very much that the Three had armor piercing rounds, but if they got lucky and hit the same spot twice with a Longbow’s bullet, or with its sniper cousin, the fifty-caliber Archer Talon, then Angelo would be done for.

  Still, what other choice did he have?

  Angelo had to take the offensive, because if he camped here, they would eventually conclude where he was and what had happened to Dumb.

  He needed to keep mobile.

  Angelo kept low by the window as he checked out the area. He didn’t dawdle, promptly assessed the situation and then pulled back into the shadows. Outside a brilliant neon lightning flash was accompanied by an immediate burst of thunder. The storm was directly overhead and posed another element of danger to Angelo’s already risky plan. If a lightning bolt touched down whil
e he was on the move, then he’d be burnt toast. However, the odds of a lightning strike were remote, somewhere up there with being hit by a meteorite as far as Angelo was concerned. The real danger would come from a Talon, especially if its scope crosshairs came with an infrared heat sensor. Angelo reminded himself that men such as General George Patton never dug in, and that Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” said something to the effect that when in a position of weakness---show strength,----that deception would be an essential key to securing a victory here. Such wisdoms made it clear that Angelo was to act bold, embrace the military philosophy with the understanding that in order to win you must be prepared to lose everything.

  If he was going to do this, he couldn’t doubt nor second guess himself. In a moment of crisis he would trust reflex over reflection. And maybe, if he was lucky, Dame Fortune would reward those labors with the hardest of sevens.

  (65)

  The sawmill blade was six-foot in diameter with diamond coated teeth designed for roughing out lumber. It was old, dull, rust covered most of its lackluster shine of narrow tool steel. At its center lay a small hole with a drive-pin slot to accommodate a spindle. It leaned against the wall, just one of four others of equal size and quality.

  In a corroded angle iron rack, Angelo spotted a small inventory of bar-stock: two inch diameter rods ranging from half-foot to five-foot lengths. A quick search located a bar that would serve as a makeshift axle, plus it would help damn up the hole from incoming gunfire. Shrapnel however, could be like beach sand and find its way into just about anything. Still, it would be a difficult shot to hit a moving sawmill blade dead center in a rain storm. Not so much for Angelo, for he had a special gift with firearms, but as for Tweedle Dee and Ghost, they’d have a tough go nailing that mark, even on a sunny day. But anyone could get lucky, and if a bullet smacked into the bar stock, then the foot pound impact alone would be enough to send the axle flying out of Angelo’s hands and possibly even break them.

  Although the sawmill blade was thin it was quite heavy: at least three-hundred plus pounds. Fortunately, Angelo wouldn’t have to carry it, he would only have to roll it. But it would take strength to move it and balance to keep it from falling over, especially if he came under gunfire. The ground itself was muddy, but the layer beneath the slop would be hard on a season’s worth of frost and thus sturdy enough to support a rolling wheel if it kept mobile.

  “Wheels,” Angelo muttered as he associated the irony.

  First a waterwheel had plucked him from the river and now a sawmill wheel would shield him from a steel rain. He wondered when his next encounter with a wheel might occur, perhaps inside the church in the form of a prayer circle.

  One never knew.

  The saw blade was pulled into a delicate balancing position. It’s heavy weight dug into the floor, but not so much that it could not be moved. In fact, Angelo was surprised by how easily it rolled once it got going. The bar stock fit snugly into the axle sleeve but turned freely, allowing just enough resistance to serve as an adequate control arm. If he really pushed it, he could probably cross the street in less than ten seconds, that’s if he didn’t run into trouble along the way, which would almost certainly be the case. However, what really worried him was being able to aim the Longbow while on the move. The gun would be awkward to hold onto as he ambled across the road. Controlling it and the blade at the same time would be a juggling act, and apt to get him killed if he couldn’t find a balance between the two. He would need to cater to the gun’s limitations, and the best way to do that would be to narrow his opponent’s line of sight. Angelo would have to lure one of the Three into a predictable position. But in order to do that he would have to make his opponent greedy for the kill.

  But what kind of bait could make one of the Three chance such a careless confrontation despite everything they’d been taught over the past two years?

  When the answer finally dawned on Angelo, he couldn’t help but feel like a complete and utter monster.

  (66)

  Dirty trick was the only way to describe it, something a bastard like Carlos would do in order to get a rise out of you. The idea reminded Angelo of the puppies, the Rottweilers assigned to each recruit after their first month inside the Elitario compound. Carlos had said the pups would be trained as attack dogs, and that each student was to hone their killer instinct as well as that of their designated canine. Angelo had thought it to be an odd instructional tool at the time, but then who was he to argue such matters. He was there to learn and if that meant they wanted Angelo to scrub the latrine with a toothbrush then that was the drill.

  However, Angelo would soon come to discover that the actual motive behind the man/animal pairing was far more sinister in nature than he had ever anticipated.

  After a month the students had begun to bond with the dogs, had even given them names. Angelo had called his Vincent, in honor of his beloved uncle. Tweedle Dumb had named his Menace, Tweedle Dee had christened his Max, and Ghost had knighted his Fang. The masters and their beasts had become teams. And as much as Angelo hated to admit it, he had begun to regard his dog not just as a weapon, but as a pet. Vincent was a trusted friend and offered companionship. It was when these intimate bonds had been forged between man and animal that Carlos had ordered the dogs summarily executed.

  And who had done the killing?

  None other than the new recruits themselves.

  Carlos had ordered the students to use their bare hands to dispatch the dogs.

  But then there was more to it than just that.

  The murder of the pets was to be performed in a specific manner: the legs were to be broken first, then the animal was to be spun by its tail, then the eyes were to be plucked out, the jaws pulled apart and then if the animal still wasn’t dead, it was to be strangled.

  The execution of the pups had taken forever, and Angelo had almost wept openly, but he kept that merciful compassion along with its moral revulsion to himself lest Carlos devise some other sadistic activity in order to strengthen Angelo’s resolve. The episode with the pups had probably been one of the worst days of Angelo’s life. The senseless cruelty towards an innocent creature in order to desensitize the students to any semblance of kindness was barbaric. And Angelo didn’t know which was worse: the fact that someone had come up with the sick idea in the first place, or the fact that it had worked.

  It had taken time for Angelo to adapt to the tortures and mutilations. In total he must’ve slaughtered hundreds of kittens, rabbits and puppies, but in the end he had gotten use to their screams. And when he did, Carlos took Angelo to the next horrific level. As for that escalation in terror, it had involved a holy nun and a handicap child in a remote mountain abbey.

  Angelo put that episode out of mind and focused on that task at hand.

  Angelo picked up Tweedle Dumb’s severed head and studied it for what it was: a tool. Its purpose was to get an emotional response, and when Tweedle Dee saw his only brother’s head laying in the street, he would go ballistic. Dee would be intellectually off balance, given over to revenge instead of rational thinking. Dee would feel compelled to avenge his brother, and as such would be greedy for the kill. That kind of energy was something Angelo could use, and that kind of strategy owed its inspiration to none other than Carlos.

  (67)

  The mill’s double doors banged open, Tweedle Dumb’s head flew through the air, the bloody skull plunged into the muddy street with an audible smack.

  The gauntlet had been figuratively thrown down.

  Rain spattered down onto Dumb’s matted hair in drops the size of dimes. An intense split of thunder and lightning opened yet another hole inside a storm cloud. Streams of waters rushed down the street. The gale force wind picked up noticeably, but the decapitated skull remained stuck inside the slush like a stubborn boulder.

  If only a laser sight’s red dot would touch Dumb’s head, then Angelo could get a location on one of the Three’s firing positions. In this much
rain the light stream would hold a solid line straight back to its source, but nothing stirred.

  Had anyone seen the head?

  Of course they had, at least the gun in the church should have. Still, no targeting light marked Dumb’s skull. But then these guys were Elitario. They would not make such an amateur mistake, they were pros after all, and they wouldn’t use laser sights nor would they shoot unless they knew what the target was.

  Yet that wasn’t just any guy’s head out there lying in the street, that was Dee’s brother, and professional or not, that was bound to get Dee’s blood up good. Dee was a short fuse type, and as Angelo could tell you, a man who could control his temper was far more dangerous than a man who couldn’t.

  Dee would soon put that saying to the test.

  Angelo drew in a deep breath, braced the saw blade against his left shoulder and grasped the axle with one strong hand, the Longbow was clutched in his other. Angelo adjusted the wheel’s angle and then pushed forward, teeth clenched as the strong muscles inside his legs worked for leverage. The wheel lumbered and rolled as Angelo and shield stepped out of the mill and into the pounding rain.

  (68)

  The bet was that Dee would be inside the bank. Soon, Angelo would find out if that wager would pay off. There was a chance that Dee had not yet seen his brother’s skull rotting in the street. But when he did, the emotional suddenness of seeing his murdered sibling would send him over the edge. In that brief moment, Dee would let his guard down and then make challenge. Guns would blaze and Dee’s retribution would be swift. But Angelo would not grant Dee satisfaction. After all, Angelo had his own vendetta to attend to. There would be nothing sadistic in Marchetti’s actions, he would kill Dee mercifully, and as such, eliminate an adversary that would’ve hunted him relentlessly until vengeance had at last been satisfied. Angelo could sympathize with such a cause, for after all, Angelo had Deluca to contend with.

  There had been nothing personal in Dumb’s beheading, the body had merely been a tool to leverage against the Three. A hollow sentiment to a brother, but nonetheless the purpose behind the desecration. Still, Dee would be blood drunk, anxious for the kill, given over to a state of madness, and as a result, be sloppy.

  It was that kind of irrational abandonment that Angelo was counting on.

  In order to be effective, Angelo had to narrow the location potentials of his adversaries down to a minimum. By cutting diagonally across the street, the saw blade would shield him from the church, mercantile, as well as from the bank’s left front window and front door. That would leave the bank’s right window in Angelo’s direct line of sight. There, he would concentrate his firepower. That intentional opening would bait Dee, corral him into a narrow corridor as to engage Angelo in a head-to-head firefight.

  And when that happened, Dee would come to suffer the hard spike.

  (69)

  The first bullet sounded like thunder, except this boom came with a powerful kick. As a result, the saw blade wobbled, vibrated like a tuning fork, but continued to roll forward unabated. The dent from the bullet strike turned over Angelo’s shoulder and then down into the mud as the saw-blade circled. The shot had come from a Longbow, not a fifty-caliber Talon. Another hit in the exact same spot might get penetration. However, the wind and rain were heavy, and helped to distort perception. It would be a lucky shot to repeat that hit again, and not likely to reoccur in the time allotted to cross the street.

  The wind blew a powerful gust, pushed on the saw blade, and for an instant, Angelo thought his feet might slip out from beneath him. A crosswind however, helped to steady the blade, and even pushed against Angelo’s back as if to assist him across the street.

  Another explosion twanged off the blade, this one much closer to the center. The impact had left an impressive dent. It had also left a sizable split close to Angelo’s wrist. If that shot had hit his shoulder, it would have fractured the bone, perhaps even toppled him over beneath the blade’s cumbersome weight.

  Angelo braced his gun hand and set his eyes upon the bank’s corner window.

  Two shots fired in rapid succession, both hitting close to the saw-blade’s center. Angelo’s weight shifted, compensated and quickly recovered as he trudged on. The journey was half-over and still no sign of Dee. Three quick shots blasted the mud before Angelo’s feet, to which three sizable divots leapt into the air. The mud had almost blinded an eye, but instead fell short and settled upon his cheek. Angelo was now three-quarters of the way across the road and Dee still hadn’t shown up. Perhaps Dee was inside the church taking pot shots, but somehow Angelo doubted it.

  There was no emotion in that gunfire, just cold calculation.

  Ghost was obviously in the church, so where the hell was Dee?

  A crazy idea suddenly occurred to Angelo, one that almost made him pause mid-step. With one great effort, he pushed the wheel as hard as he could until its momentum was sufficient enough so that it could roll on its own without assistance. He then spun round and aimed the Longbow behind him.

  A strange man with a long narrow face and graying hair watched Angelo without the slightest semblance of concern. He put Marchetti in mind of a pirate. But this bandit did not belong here, not today nor any other, he wasn’t one of the Three, he was part of the supernatural.

  But just how did Angelo know that.

  It’s a goddamn hex! The son of a bitch hexed me!

  Thoughts of Diavalo along with its Three fell into abandonment. There was no danger from the Three, it was the thing that stood in the rain, grinning its fiendish grin that was the true threat. The thing’s eyes captivated, radiated an energy that went beyond the corporeal, but there was also something else: the thing looked surprised as though it hadn’t expected Angelo to notice its presence at all.

  The figure was a distracting sight to behold, but Angelo understood that right now he had other game to hunt. Perhaps later there would be time to mull over the strange figure’s origins, but as for now, Angelo needed to be elsewhere.

  With that realization, Angelo spun round upon damp heels and fired blindly.

  The boom of the gun was deafening, kicked back as hard as it had that day inside the Donatello. It was an amazing shot, intuitive in a way that was almost psychic. Dee had been standing in the bank window, prepared to fire, when Angelo unexpectedly got the drop. As a result, Dee had suffered the hard spike to the forehead.

  Dee was quite dead.

  The saw-blade kept rolling and Angelo moved with it. There was maybe ten feet left until it collided with the bank. More than anything he wanted to look back, to see if that stranger with the owl eyes still stood there, smirking, but Angelo kept to the game plan. He followed the wheel to the edge of the building, where he quickly ducked into the relative safety of the alleyway between the bank and a carpenter’s woodshop. Six final shots rang off the saw blade, knocking it over onto its side with a dull plunk. Two of those six rounds had ricocheted into the alley, buried deep into the woodshop wall, but neither one had not come close to striking Angelo.

  He had made it.

  Angelo ventured a glance back out into the street. Dumb’s head remained stuck in the mud, but as for the whereabouts of that unnatural stranger, he was nowhere to be found. Angelo wasn’t surprised, expected it to be so as a matter of fact. But just how he knew that, he could not explain. Perhaps it had something to do with that strong sense of déjà’ vu he was experiencing.

  Had he done this before?

  His keen eyes looked skyward, fluttered in the spit of rain. There was no time to question such conundrums, the church waited and so too did Ghost. Afterwards there would be time to mull over such peculiarities, but not now, there was killing to be done, and Angelo was apt to see that it got done proper.

  (70)

 

  Unlike the bank’s solid rear wall, the mercantile had a back porch with a screen door. The mercantile also had a window that looked in upon an open concept shopping area which was compil
ed of empty mason jars, bolts of raw sewing material, and various handmade farm tools. Nobody moved within, but then that was to be expected. Ghost was holed up inside the church, and both Tweedle Dee and Dumb were dead.

  The rain continued to pelt Diavalo, Angelo was soaked to the marrow. Still, the wetness was warmer than that of the glacial runoff, and Dumb’s clothes were much more forgiving to the skin than the canvas had been. Angelo held the Longbow in the ready position, braced against his shoulder. The church was not in view from his angle, which also meant that Angelo was hidden for the time being. As for Ghost, he would no doubt be busy figuring out what to do next. It was still anyone’s game. The question was who would make the first move?

  Angelo smashed out the mercantile’s glass with an elbow and then carefully stuck his head inside. There appeared to be no booby traps, but then there was no guarantee. Ghost was inside the church, Dumb had been inside the mill, and Dee had settled into the bank. That left a gap in their defenses: the mercantile. The best way to close that opening would be with a bit of added protection. At least that’s what Angelo would’ve done had their roles been reversed.

  The mercantile’s door would likely be rigged, that’s why Angelo had avoided it, but it probably wasn’t the only danger. He surveyed the store’s interior, noting how many potential spots could cause him harm.

  He would not chance to go inside, it would be too risky.

  Angelo thought on his adversary. Ghost would be a wildcard, unpredictable, versatile and possibly mobile. If Ghost snuck out of the church and managed to flank Angelo, then the advantage would fall to Ghost. No, Angelo had to contain Ghost, and the best way to do that would be to eliminate his avenues of escape. The best place to do that would have been from inside the mercantile, where he could have observed the street and the back woods with a fair degree of shelter. Problem being, the mercantile would most certainly be booby trapped. Besides, Angelo couldn’t camp there indefinitely. Come noon, Ghost would be euthanized by Carlos for having failed to kill Angelo, and if Angelo hadn’t secured the item by noon, he too would be summarily executed. Suffice to say, neither Ghost nor Angelo could afford to play the waiting game, they needed to finish this quickly.

  (71)

  Angelo glanced back over his shoulder, sensing that unexplained stranger on the street had returned. However, coniferous trees and a sharp elbow in the glacial river was all he found. Chills made the hairs on his body stand at attention. It was as if Casa Diavalo basked inside the residual energy of an evil poltergeist. Angelo tried to shake the sense of foreboding, an impression that suggested that he might already be dead, but the feeling remained.

  The church bell rang with crystal clarity, a note of beauty amidst the ugly uproar of a savage storm. It was a message from Ghost, but what was he trying to say? But then Angelo knew exactly what Ghost wanted, and that was to lay down their weapons and meet face to face in hand to hand combat.

  Angelo regarded the callused knuckles on his rugged hands with due concern. The Elitario had turned him into a piece of iron, tough and resistant to pain. Still, Ghost was a master of the combative arts, a goddamn prodigy. Over the past two years, Angelo had become an expert fighter, but still paled in comparison to Ghost’s unnatural ability. If He and Ghost were to meet in a sidearm showdown, Angelo would easily be the victor. But if they met in a street fight, Ghost would most certainly triumph. Ghost would realize that as well, and if his ringing of the church bell was indeed a personal challenge, then Ghost would want their final battle to be settled on his terms, not Angelo’s.

  How many times had Angelo stood toe to toe with that goliath with the black pearl eyes? Seventy, perhaps ninety times. And in each instance, Angelo had felt the cold hard earth across his backside. Ghost was freakishly strong and quick to the point of supernatural ability. He seemed devoid of emotion, which left Angelo to conclude that there was either something wrong with Ghost medically, (aside from his eyes of course) or that he was one step up on the evolutionary ladder.

  If that were indeed the case, did Ghost’s nervous system register pain the same as everyone else’s?

  The question felt more than relevant when in the heat of combat, for what man could take a knockout blow to the skull and still remain alert. No one human could do that, unless there was something very unusual about their physiology. Whatever the case, there was no denying that Ghost was an oddity, a three-ring-circus sideshow and worthy of a chapter in “Ripley’s Believe it or Not.”

  The church bell rang again, followed by an explosion of thunder. It felt as though even the heavens were calling Angelo out to fight. In the moment, Angelo’s sensibility felt more like cowardice. After all, there was honor in Ghost’s challenge, although Ghost’s superior fighting ability no doubt added to his sense of nobility.

  But what else was Angelo to do?

  As far as ideas went, Marchetti had hit the wall.

  Their current situation was obvious: Ghost had Angelo pinned down and Angelo had Ghost pinned down.

  It was a stalemate.

  Ghost however, held an elevated position in the church steeple which gave him greater visual acuity. Such a vantage point would give Ghost a fraction of a second lead over Angelo when it came to the draw, and in such a tight race that marginal leverage could prove fatal for Angelo. Level to level, eye to eye, Angelo could outdraw and outshoot Ghost, but that superior skill could fail Angelo given their present positions.

  Angelo looked skyward, a thick spatter of rain made his eyes flicker. The mercantile’s interior offered little in the way of inspiration. There were no large sawmill blades to hide behind, nor waterwheels to ride out, just a thin wall that divided two killers.

  Angelo tried to fend off a defeatist attitude, but doubts nonetheless crept into his thoughts. Ghost’s gracious offer would no doubt be provisional, so if Angelo was going to accept, he would have to do so soon. The Longbow felt like the ace up Angelo’s sleeve, to discard it now would be to throw away his only advantage.

  The church bell rang for a third time and Angelo understood that it would not ring again.

  Ghost demanded a response.

  Angelo cracked open the Longbow’s chamber and examined its six remaining bullets. To set the gun aside now was comparable to suicide. He closed the gun up and bowed his head as if in prayer.

  Where was his third option?

  Where was that improvisational maverick that had carried him this far?

  If Angelo back trailed, searched through the other buildings, he doubted that he’d find anything useful. Giant saw wheels only worked when you “crossed the T” as they said in battleship terminology, on a direct approach vector such a device would be useless. Besides, that card had already been played. What Angelo needed now was a goddamn tank or battle armor, neither of which would be laying about a spaghetti western town.

  Noon drew closer.

  If Angelo were to locate the item, he would need time to find it. There was no assurance that Carlos had left a trail of bread crumbs leading to its location, in fact the miserable bastard may have hidden it where Angelo might never chance to find it. Regardless of that potential, it was still in both Ghost’s and Angelo’s best interest to finish this trial once and for all.

  Thunder and lightning crashed overhead while the wind continued to scream through the trees with a mindless rage. Reluctantly, Angelo had to concede to just one choice. The Longbow aimed straight up into the air and then fired off a single round.

  The challenge had just been accepted.

  (72)

  Angelo stood in the street, unarmed.

  Ghost stood in the steeple tower, unarmed.

  They regarded each other through a torrential downpour of cold rain, two warriors with an unspoken agreement that they were to settle this matter old school style. Suddenly, Angelo felt as though he were back in Mount Hope Orphanage and Ghost was none other than Patrick Shea. Except this time, Angelo wouldn’t have a roll of dimes to fall back on.
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  It was hard to see Ghost through the gray sheet of rain, but Angelo was certain that he had seen his opponent nod in understanding.

  Ghost slowly stepped back into the bell tower. After a few minutes he reappeared in the church’s double doors. He moved down the steps with deliberate caution, his brown duster flowing loosely at his heels. His large impressive hands were empty and remained by his sides as he walked. The downpour had matted his dark mane of hair to his skull, stained his duster with pools of water.

  For all Angelo knew there could have been an arsenal laying beneath that full length coat, but Ghost never hinted any sign of deception. Of course to do that would be to display an emotion, which Ghost to date had yet to do. Still, Angelo braced for a rapid retreat at the first indication of betrayal.

  Thunder and lightning lashed out another jab, split the sky with a fractured bolt of neon violet. The wind droned through Diavalo’s eaves and alleyways as if it reveled in the violence to come. The storm churned the dark energy of Diavalo like a witch’s caldron, and Angelo couldn’t help but feel once again as though the he’d been hexed. The idea of that sent a cold wave of blood coursing through his veins. His heart almost stopped. It was like being back inside that glacial tributary, drowning inside the freezing dark current.

  He felt colder than cold, he felt corpse cold.

  Ghost approached with a slow easy gait, his dark eyes emerging from the rain like two smooth rapids in a gray stream. He held all the cheerful charisma of a cemetery undertaker. Ghost stopped twenty-feet from Angelo, his posture neither tense nor relaxed. As usual, Ghost was somewhere in between, and perhaps that’s what made him neutral, emotion free, a state of perpetual uncertainty that always kept you guessing. Still, those black pupils surrounded by those black irises radiated malicious intent. Ghost had serial killer eyes, empty eyes that denoted nothing substantial behind them. They perceived the world with a predatory attraction, broke decisions down into black and whites which were invariably colored in gray. He was Mr. In Between, and although such a presumption held no professional merit, it was nonetheless how Angelo felt.

  Actual names had been forbidden knowledge to exchange amongst the recruits, but Angelo felt a need to explain himself in at least some limited fashion. After all, he had nothing personal against Ghost, this war was not of their choosing, but rather the Elitario’s.

  “Nice weather we’re having,” Angelo nodded.

  Ghost remained silent, motionless, a statue with unblinking eyes.

  “My name’s…”

  At this bit of news Ghost quickly raised his hand in silence. “No names…no need.”

  Ghost’s accent was not Italian, but rather Russian.

  But how could that be?

  How could a mutt from Russia be inside the Elitario?

  Russia had their own Mafia, a powerful one with lots of resources.

  So why was Ghost here?

  “To the death,” Ghost said in broken English.

  With that statement uttered the reason for Ghost’s defection no longer mattered. As it had been since day one inside the Elitario compound, it was all about survival.

  Angelo’s feet slowly twisted into the mud for traction as his hands came up and closed into two tight clubs. Angelo’s stance was boxer traditional, but his form of combat would be freestyle. He would use a dozen different fighting techniques in order to strategically offset Ghost, but the man with the ebony eyes would counter Angelo’s efforts with masterful efficiency.

  It was here that Angelo realized that perhaps he had made a big mistake by accepting this challenge, and he couldn’t help but wonder if Dee had left any change inside his jacket pockets.

  Two rolls of dimes worth.

  (73)

  Ghost stepped forward, went to Angelo’s right in a slow easy circle, his shark like eyes offering no hint as to what tactic he would lead with. Together, they had performed this un-choreographed dance dozens of times inside the camp’s chicken wire dojo, and every time it had ended the same way. Today however, things would be different, they had to be, because if Angelo lost, he wouldn’t be punished with a regiment of difficult calisthenics, he would die.

  Angelo adjusted his angle, drew back a step, shifted his stance into a right hand jabbing position. Ghost kept moving, his knuckles cracking as his hands balled up into a pair of fists.

  The game was on.

  Ghost’s first punch was lightning quick, but blocked just as quickly. Despite being cold and wet, Angelo was in good fighting form. Ghost dropped a tae-kwon-do axe, which Angelo slid out from under. Ghost’s long leg crashed down into the mud. The strike would have easily broken Angelo’s collarbone had it made contact. Angelo’s counter attack was a left side kick with an inside crescent which Ghost skillfully redirected. For the next two minutes they fenced and parried with dozens of lightning fast kicks and punches, each gauging the other’s response while battling the slippery terrain.

  The storm added an element of difficulty to the battle, blinded the eyes with brilliant flashes of lightning and distracted the senses with ear pounding thunderclaps. The storm was the third opponent in this death match, and both Angelo and Ghost were having difficulty dealing with it.

  Suddenly, Ghost rushed inward. Angelo countered by retreating backwards. Angelo dropped down, spun a low kick that sought to steal Ghost’s balance. The goliath responded by hopping into the air with catlike reflexes. Ghost’s defensive action was transformed into a powerful counterattack, in which he flew through the air, knee projected forward as he dove down towards Angelo. Angelo rolled to the side. Ghost collided with the ground, his knee driving deep into the cold dank mud.

  Had Angelo received that hit, it would’ve have split his sternum like dried kindling.

  Again both men were on their feet, circling, looking for that one opening that would assert a crushing victory. The wind blew rain into their eyes, dumped buckets of water down their necks. It was ice cold but the temperature failed to register. They were given over to the heat of the moment, but nonetheless, Angelo felt colder than he should, and that realization had to do with the stranger he had seen in the street earlier, that goddamn pirate with the long stringy hair.

  Ghost was airborne with a side kick to Angelo’s chest. Marchetti slipped aside, rolled with the impact, but the kick had delivered most of its force into Angelo’s ribs.

  A break could be heard beneath the rumble of thunder and the splash of rain.

  Angelo’s left arm dropped slightly as part of his skeletal structure gave way. Ghost spotted that injury immediately and wasted no time taking advantage of it.

  That devastating blow Angelo had worried about had finally come.

  (74)

  In an instant the world was overcome by a vibrant explosion of bright orange sparks. Angelo’s feet were like helium, balloon ball light. It was almost a pleasurable experience, sleep tending to a state of exhaustion. But still, that inexplicable cold remained, its teeth gnawing upon his bones, its frosty gums sucking out his marrow. Yet the cold helped to sober Angelo’s wits, stirred him back into consciousness.

  His backside had not yet met the muddy street, but it was well on its way. He staggered, regained footing, but this recovery was not entirely of his design. Something had propped up against Angelo, something hard, but before he could figure out what it was, Ghost had landed a reverse roundhouse kick which connected square to Angelo’s jaw.

  Once again reality teetered.

  The sky split into a bright neon of tangled branches, a loud roar seemed to come from the center of his head, the sound of high tensile steel succumbing to stress. And then Angelo’s feet were helium again, and as they flew silently through the air, the world and all its fervor was swallowed up inside a tunnel. But these sensations were not hallucinations, but quite real. Angelo’s feet were indeed flying. No---not flying---but rather falling. And as for that tunnel, it was in actuality a corridor built of smooth stones that had been fit together i
nto a crude jigsaw puzzle.

  Angelo had just fallen into Diavalo’s solitary well.

  (75)

  For a few seconds, Angelo remained underwater, lost and disoriented. The water was shallow, but had been deep enough to absorb most of the impact. Still, his left shoulder blade had taken a good hard smack, although the injury had not come from the ground, or the water, but rather from something else. The wound burned and throbbed, more so than his broken rib. He wanted to cry out in pain, but the water muffled his voice and threatened to drown him if he so much as uttered a single plea.

  From beneath the shallow pool, he could see the dimensions of a rectangular object floating on the surface. It had been a piece of wood that had given him a good hard thump, a sturdy piece of board probably from the sawmill.

  Quickly, Angelo found his feet, his lungs gasping for air as he broke the surface. He looked upward toward the well’s canopy and a wooden bucket which hung from a frayed length of flaxen rope.

  How could he ever hope to get topside again?

  Ghost would now go back inside the church and emerge with his Longbow where he would then proceed to shoot Angelo like a trout inside a barrel. Angelo needed to get out of this well before that happened, but given his injuries coupled with the difficult climb, there’d be no way he’d make it out on time.

  Ghost’s pale face appeared from atop the well. The goliath looked down on his handiwork with neither satisfaction nor complacency. There was still work to do, and as his empty face slowly drew back and disappeared from sight, Angelo knew that Ghost would soon be back to finish it.

  Angelo had a minute to live, maybe less.

  Ghost would not scurry to get the gun, but he would not dillydally either. Emotionless or not, Ghost would move efficiently.

  The pain inside Angelo’s shoulder blade was on fire and running with the kind of warmth that accompanied a gaping wound. Even if Ghost didn’t return, Angelo would probably die down here from his injuries. There was no way in Hades he could ever hope to scale the slick walls in such poor physical condition. He had one, maybe two broken ribs, a fractured shoulder blade, and potentially a broken jaw as well.

  Ghost would be doing Angelo a favor by sparing Marchetti a slow arduous death. Still, Angelo liked breathing, had grown used to it as a matter of fact. He had no desire to lie down like an old dog and take one behind the ear.

  But what options did he have?

  He glanced at the board he had fallen on with piercing eyes that were loaded with hate. If only he hadn’t hit that damn thing he might have been able to shimmy up the well, even with a broken rib. There was Longbow sitting on the mercantile’s back step with five rounds chambered.

  If only he could get to it.

  A brilliant flash of lighting lit up the well for an instant, just long enough to let Angelo notice that the miserable piece of wood he had fallen on was in fact a wooden box.

  (76)

  The latch was awkward to open with wet fingers, but Angelo had managed it just the same. In his mind’s eye he could see Ghost walking back down the church steps towards the well, Longbow at his side. In less than thirty seconds, Ghost would return, and when he did it would all be over.

  Angelo’s eyes strained to see inside the well’s dimness. There was a small object, faint, but shiny. His finger traced it carefully before picking it up.

  It was streamline smooth---a bullet jacket!

  Angelo recognized the gauge by its feel. The bullet went into an Archer Howitzer. Again his hands searched the case to discover the dimensions of not just one, but two such guns.

  This was the item Carlos had hidden.

  Here, the bastard hadn’t stashed the item inside the church, but rather dropped it down the well. Normally, Angelo would’ve cursed Carlos for hiding the item in such an unlikely spot, but given his current circumstances, he couldn’t help but praise him for it.

  Angelo had a chance now, remote, but a chance nonetheless.

  That’s if he could load the gun before Ghost got back, not to mention if the blessed thing would fire. Angelo knew a gun could fire wet, but there was always a chance for mechanical failure. Perhaps there had been a micro-fissure within the shell casing that had allowed water to leak in and effectively soak the bullet, in which case it would not fire.

  But there was no time to contemplate that potential, in his mind’s eye he could see Ghost, twenty feet away from the well, maybe fifteen and closing.

  Angelo hurried.

  A long sustained flash of lightning lit up the well. He could see the twin howitzers inside the wooden box, and knew intuitively that they were empty of ammo. He understood Carlos well enough to know that the son of a bitch had left him just one bullet for a reason: symbolism. Perhaps this hollow tipped beauty had at one time been set aside to end Angelo’s life.

  It didn’t matter what the significance the bullet’s deeper meaning meant, what mattered was surviving. And so Angelo chambered the single round into the howitzer, released the safety and then drew back the bolt. The gun aimed upward, Ghost glanced over the edge.

  It was time to end this once and for all.

  (77)

  Ghost had afforded Angelo a clean head shot, but Angelo had hesitated. It had occurred to Angelo that if he killed Ghost, then he would still be stuck inside the well. If Angelo had any chance of getting out of here, he would have to time this just right. Too soon and he would blow it, too late and he would be dead.

  Ghost’s eyes would take a second to adjust to the dimness, not that he would have to be accurate to kill Angelo with a Longbow, but like any professional killer, Ghost would want to make sure that his opponent was indeed dead.

  And sure enough, that’s what Ghost did.

  By the time Ghost’s eyes caught sight of the gun looking up at him, it was too late. The howitzer blasted and the bullet penetrated Ghost’s forehead.

  The gun’s report bellowed with an enormous boom, echoed off the walls, and for a second, Angelo thought he had gone deaf.

  It felt like standing inside the belly of a cannon.

  A mist of blood and brains drifted down onto Angelo, and so too did the reason for his hesitation: the Longbow. The weapon fell out of Ghost’s dead hand and down into the well where Angelo caught hold of the gun before it fell into the water.

  It was a good catch, worthy of an Elitario, which is what Angelo was.

  (78)

  Angelo had realized that he would need Ghost’s Longbow to get out of the well. If he had fired before Ghost brought the weapon into view, then the gun would have been lost. But with the Longbow drawn as to aim, Ghost would be in a good position to drop the gun down into Angelo’s waiting hands. And that’s exactly what had happened. Now, Angelo had his dead adversary’s weapon, and with it there was a chance for escape.

  The revolver opened to reveal seven bullets. Angelo locked the chamber back up and then gave it a quick spin, the bearing clicked like a rattler’s tail. The gun aimed, blasted a hole the size of a bowling ball through the thin decorative roof. Debris fell into the well and so too did the rain. The wooden bucket below the canopy quickly filled with water, and as its weight grew heavier with each droplet, it gradually dropped down into the murky depths of the well.

  Angelo placed the gun box along with its howitzers inside the bucket. The Longbow was cinched into the waist of his pants. The climb upward was arduous, each pull on the rope an exercise in agony. Angelo’s ribs screamed and his shoulder sang in chorus. But he was determined to make that ledge, even if it killed him.

  If this had been two years ago, he never would’ve been able to endure such physical hardship, but the Elitario had made him strong, fast, tough. They had physically and psychologically torn him down and then built him back up again, forging his flesh into an Elitario’s, and as Angelo reached that coveted ledge, he could not quell a personal sense of pride for the accomplishment.

  It was official: he had finally defeated the Three.

&
nbsp;

  (79)

  The bucket along with its armaments were hauled topside and sat on the well’s stone ledge. But before Angelo retreated into the shelter of the church, he paused to regard Ghost. The man with the black pearl eyes was a mystery, and the fact that he was a Russian only served to deepen that mystery.

  How had he come to be here of all places?

  Regardless of his origins, Ghost had fought fair and met combat in good form. He had been a warrior in the proudest sense of the tradition, both courageous and noble in battle.

  If anything, Ghost had Angelo’s deepest respect.

  “To the mutts,” Angelo said with a slight nod, as if offering up a toast.

  Angelo then moved into the church with the gait of a man who had seen better days, although not many.

  (80)

  Rain hammered the stained glass windows with blunt fists, but the church interior remained blessedly warm and dry. A pillar stone altar stood upon a pulpit of oak with an alabaster Christ hanging in the background, his head tilted, eyes closed, brow spotted with a torment of sins. Oil lanterns dangled from brass fixtures, but lay dim for lack of flame. A pair of confessionals stood in the corner with wine colored drapes for doors. A set of pinewood stairs rose up to a modest choir theater and again into the bell tower.

  The church was vacant, as though even God understood that this position of worship hadn’t actually been built to praise him, but rather to appease the ego of a Sergio Leone fan. Diavalo was nothing more than an elaborate village of smoke and mirrors, a Hollywood stage backdrop where the actors got paid in blood, in which case Angelo had been well compensated. The village had been appropriately named, for who better than the devil to create such a theatre of deception. Yes, the business that went on inside the town’s tiny borders was indeed the devil’s work, and Carlos worshipped his master with a dedicated zeal. Yet despite the true purpose behind Diavalo’s creation, Angelo couldn’t help but feel that the church still represented a sanctuary.

  But why did he feel as such?

  It didn’t matter, although exhausted he was nonetheless elated, for he had survived the Trial of Daggers.

  Soon he would go home.

  He was empowered now, a walking weapon with a definite purpose. And maybe, just maybe, if he was lucky, after the gun smoke settled and Deluca had paid his restitution, then there might be a future with Bianca.

  If she was still alive.

  Admittedly, that was just a dream, but Angelo didn’t care. He’d been through the fires of Hades these past two years, and he deserved his dream if only imagined.

  He looked upon the gun case with eyes that hinted a smile. There would be no graduation ceremony, nor pats on the back to recognize his achievement, but that was fine. He didn’t need the insincere hoopla, what he needed was to go home.

  Come this time tomorrow, his tight belly would be stuffed on steak and wine, his muscular body bathed in rich scented soaps and then buried deep inside a soft hub of warm blankets. It would be absolute bliss and a deserving reward for a job well-done.

  The church clock gonged the first of its twelve midday chimes.

  The Trial of Daggers was officially over.

  Soon, someone would come to retrieve and then transport him to the nearest hospital, most likely in Rome, where a doctor would attend to the injured Elitario before shipping him back home, or so he presumed. There had been no official instruction afforded Angelo as to what to do in lieu of a victory over the Three. However, common sense dictated a certain logical flow to things.

  Surely, Carlos would not abandon Angelo to his fate---would he?

  Suddenly, Angelo’s expectations were thrown into question:

  What was to become of that, which had been setup to fail?

  The answer, if anything, felt ominous and courted more than its fair measure of justifiable concern.

  He regarded the box which held the Archer Howitzers: a common case, no monogram nor special engraving on its dull flat surface to suggest any particular significance, a pauper’s box. He cracked open the lid and let his cold wet fingers examine the guns. Despite the box’s bland exterior, it nonetheless housed a treasure. The guns were of exceptional quality, field worthy weapons, skilled tools of the killing trade. The Howitzers were perfectly balanced, their sleek dark bodies forged from carbon composite castings---almost indestructible.

  A single gun alone would be the equivalent of an average working man’s salary for a year, and here Angelo had been gifted with two. Despite his supposed lowly mutt status, he had nonetheless achieved their worth, and as such, had come to show his quality.

  A second gong from the clock rang while the storm continued to pound upon the church rafters. Angelo set the box on the pew and withdrew the Howitzers. The guns felt fitted to his hands as if tailor made for him personally. He could not have chosen two finer companions, and felt that such an exquisite pair of ladies should be graced with a name. He was in a church after all and what better place than this to have a christening.

  A third gong was followed by an eruption of thunder and lightning which shook the church upon its cobblestone foundation and lit up the stained glass windows with a brilliance not easily endured. A faint smile touched Angelo’s lips as his razor sharp eyes examined the pistols with a certain understanding.

  “Thunder and Lightning,” Angelo whispered.

  And with that said the guns were graciously anointed.

  (81)

  By the fourth gong, Angelo had begun to feel increasingly uncomfortable.

  Something was wrong.

  The memory of the figure in the road came to mind, that which should not have been.

  Was it still out there in the storm?

  The memory evoked a feeling of disquiet.

  The Howitzers were exchanged for Ghost’s Longbow.

  Angelo stood and appraised the church with wary eyes. His ribs screeched with pain as did his shoulder blade, but they were mild in comparison to the voice inside his head that screamed with warning. The fifth gong sounded and still the sensation of doom would not yield.

  Was he just being paranoid, or was there an imminent danger?

  Something wasn’t adding up with this scenario and it had to do with Carlos’s offering of the Archer Howitzers. Angelo regarded the guns: sleek and deadly, but quite harmless without ammunition.

  As the sixth gong was swallowed up inside an explosion of thunder, Angelo was reminded of Two Tone Marty. Marty had been a friend, but still the bastard had betrayed them all. Carlos was no friend, and for Angelo to believe that the son of a bitch would bequeath such fine cutlery to an abomination such as Angelo, flew in the face of common sense. No, Carlos definitely had something planned, something worthy of the world’s biggest prick shot.

  But what?

  But then Angelo knew that it had something to do with the guns.

  Angelo wedged the Longbow into his pant’s waist and picked up the Howitzers. The seventh gong of the clock chimed throughout the church. He dumped the gun magazines and inspected them with professional care: they were clean, nothing out of the ordinary.

  Angelo sat the guns back down upon the pew and then lifted up the box. The box interior was nested down with a black velvet cloth. Carefully, his cold damp fingers worked the material away from its bed. Hidden beneath the dark fabric was a molding of C4 Factor X, an incredibly powerful explosive, enough to level the entire church.

  It was obvious the guns were meant to distract and bait Angelo with their magnificence. With the Howitzers in hand, Angelo would let his guard down, believe that he had won the Trial of Daggers, and when the clock struck twelve.

  No more mutt!

  Carlos had never meant for Angelo to win, and this discovery confirmed it.

  Angelo had to get rid of the case, but how?

  If he ran now, he would never get far enough away before that twelfth gong coincided with what would undoubtedly be an impressive explosion.

&nb
sp; Unless---

  Despite a hindrance of injuries, Angelo moved quickly down the aisle with the box in hand. He emerged from the church doors out into the storm’s fray where the wind and rain lashed at him like a salted whip.

  The clock’s eighth chime bellowed overhead.

  His sudden movements made his bones feel like split kindling. Fire lit up his nervous system and stabbed daggers into his mind, the pain was torturous. Still, he lumbered though the motions, ignored the body’s miseries so that he might commit his last act of redemption.

  Through the strong push of wind and the agonizing groans of severe wounds, Angelo drew back that cursed box and threw it with as much precision as he could muster under current circumstances. The case sailed through the air. The wind caught hold of its smooth flat surface and shifted its trajectory. As a result, the box had not fallen down into the well, but rather landed upon the well’s stone ledge beside the corpse of Ghost.

  If the bomb went off there, Angelo would be done for. If only he could run down and push the box into the well, but he would never make that distance before the clock struck twelve.

  Angelo removed the Longbow from his waist, raised the powerful weapon and then took aim. The effort to hold the gun steady was arduous, but the Elitario stepped up to the challenge with focused determination.

  The gun’s report was deafening.

  The well-stone beneath the box shattered into dozens of jagged shards. The bomb however, failed to plunge into the well. Angelo continued to blast away the wall, and as the Longbow’s recoil pounded his injuries into submission, its huge powerful bullets also pounded the well-stone into dust.

  At eleven gongs the box finally succumb to gravity and plummeted down into the dark passage of the well. The massive explosion that followed the twelfth gong was almost immediate.

  Diavalo’s well spat out a giant column of fire into the storm. A shock wave rippled through the ground. The village windows shattered into pieces. Well-stones catapulted high into the air. Debris rained down across the square. Rocks pelted off the steeple bell, smashed holes through roofs and thudded down into the greasy mud.

  The blast wave tossed Angelo back into the church and clear up to the altar. The protests of his body upon impact were fervent. His shoulder and ribs cried out for the kind of care that only a vial of morphine or an unconscious mind could subdue. His wounds had been severely aggravated, but still he was alive.

  Regardless of what would happen next, Angelo was at least certain of one thing.

  The Howitzers were his to keep.

  (82)

  Rain poured in through several large gaping holes in the roof. Stones from the well had crashed down into the choir theater, tearing out fissures big enough for a man to fall through. One such stone had landed beside the altar where it was wedged into the hardwood floor, but not so deep as to penetrate into the basement. The rock was in a state of limbo, up to its figurative waist inside a skirt of splinters.

  But the stone and how close it had come to killing Angelo were of little interest to him. What mattered was the rain that fell in thereafter. He was desperately thirsty. His tongue felt like a dry slug. If only he could have a bit of that rainwater to swish over his gums, something to soothe that parched plain between his jaws. The bitter thirst was a sure sign that he had lost a lot of blood. If he didn’t get medical attention soon, he would be dead before sundown.

  Slowly, Angelo rolled onto the side of his body which hadn’t sustained broken ribs. It was a strenuous effort, comparable to operating on your own spleen with a dull spoon. He was unbelievably cold, shivering, but in the same measure his wounds were like hot seething coal fires. Like the rock next to the altar, Angelo too had landed in a strange state of limbo. Shock would soon take him, and when it did there would be nothing else for him to do except to lay down in the cold obstruction.

  Angelo positioned his head back and opened his mouth to receive that blessed gift of rain. He would need to keep his fluids up, but more importantly his wounds need stitching. The water would help, but only on provisional terms.

  The rain poured over his parched tongue and down the dry chimney of his throat in a steady stream. However, there was nothing soothing to be had therein.

  A strong stench of sulfur filled his nostrils as that blessed water betrayed him, scolding his tongue like napalm. Quickly, he jerked his head aside but it was too late. A few corrosive drops had managed to spill down his throat and into his stomach, effectively transforming his intestines into a steam boiler.

  Dry heaves knotted Angelo’s muscles into cramped spasms, pulled on his skeletal frame with taut ropes of tendons that made his bones feel as though they might snap. He gagged, tried to eject that poison but it would not depart him. His vision blurred and the church transformed into a glass menagerie of distorted shapes and figures, entities of pure evil.

  This was not Diavalo’s wretched church, but somewhere else, somewhere further down the road, somewhere far removed from the land of the living. This netherworld of phantom silhouettes spoke with an indecipherable whispering, a coven of black robed witches and warlocks attending a dark cauldron, their voices together in a demonic incantation as if to say:

  “Feed us Angelo…feed us your sins…feed us your pain…feed us your poison…feed us your soul death merchant!”

  Suddenly, Angelo remembered everything.

  His soul was locked inside an enchanted mirror. Thunder and Lightning sat with him on a barstool in a place called the Last Chance Saloon in a small frozen town named Boondocks. Somehow, Angelo had peeked beneath the looking glass, and had snatched the tiniest glimpse of Boondocks’ hidden secrets.

  The imagery was disjointed and liken unto an abstract painting. The number of figures was indeterminable, their faces built upon shadows that were without proper form or substance. Spots of colors flickered within the gloom which he recognized as the serpent candle light he had seen after drinking Brown. These decorative orbs of rainbow floated upon a listless breeze and Angelo knew intuitively that they were a collection of lost souls.

  “Feed us Angelo…feed us your soul!”

  The residents of Boondocks were consuming him, but not in the carnivorous sense of the word, but rather milking him like livestock. They fed on his dark experiences and the emotions they induced like parasitic organisms, tapping his spiritual energy in order to sustain theirs.

  He regarded the glowing orbs with an eye for numbers, some lights brighter than others, some so faint that they barely registered, their combined sum was beyond vast. It was like counting all the stars in all the galaxies, a number so grand that it bordered on the infinite.

  Those lost souls, like Angelo’s, had fallen into this purgatory-like-world’s trap.

  If only Angelo could fight back somehow, kick, run, anything to escape being bled further, but his soul was adrift upon the dead breath of the coven’s dirge. There was nothing to ground him, no physical body to call upon, it was like being suspended in midair.

  Angelo concentrated on the aspect of himself that sat on a Boondocks barstool, and on what he believed might serve as a set of spiritual anchors:

  Thunder and Lightning.

  (83)

  The interlude ended with the re-materialization of Diavalo’s damaged church. That gaping hole in the rooftop now allowed cool water to flow within---just as it had so long ago. The storm raged outdoors with blasts of thunder and sparks of lightning---just as it had so long ago. And as for Angelo, he remained in bad shape---just as he had so long ago.

  Except something had changed, something critical had shifted in Marchetti’s favor:

  He could remember.

  And as memory served him, he was dead, and holed up in a small town called Boondocks having a drink with an old pirate. None of this was real: Diavalo, the storm, or the Three. This reality was built on smoke and mirrors, and especially one mirror in particular: the barroom mirror of The Last Chance Saloon. Scarlet red was working
its deceptive magic on Angelo’s soul with enchanted dreams. Unfortunately, his aches and pains felt too real, and with each labored breath his body protested its displeasure with convincing realism.

  Yet despite the suffering, Angelo staggered into a stand that wobbled on loose heels and made his way back to the pew and to the Howitzers.

  They were still there---just as they had so long ago.

  The logical side of Angelo’s mind said he should seek out the Longbow, seeing as it had ammunition, but this wasn’t about logic, this was about securing a firm foothold inside reality, or at least into a preferable state of one.

  Reaching for the guns was almost unbearable, but he had managed to pick them up just the same. He stood center aisle, guns at his sides, eyes closed, soul searching for that banged up vessel he had once called his body.

  “You are inside the mirror,” Angelo whispered. “This isn’t real…any of it…so wake up.”

  Had the guns just vibrated slightly, or was it his imagination?

  He recalled how the guns had felt inside Boondocks, and how they seemed to sing for lack of a better word. When he had been alive, they had never done such a wondrous thing, but on this side of the rainbow they had spoken in their own unique voice. But as for now, they remained silent, and doubt began to cloud his judgment, suggested that the guns could do no such thing, because they were in fact deader than he was. They were after all, two hunks of composite material that had been handmade by some skilled craftsmen in Germany. Guns did not speak nor sing, the only noise they ever made was bang. But he could swear they had spoken to him inside of Boondocks by vibrating against his cold ribs like tuning forks.

  “Sing to me,” Angelo whispered. “Please…sing to me.”

  If this dream continued down the old familiar path it was heading, the powers that be would soon feed on an exceptionally painful part of Angelo’s history, which was an era that he had no desire to relive. He would not willingly feed them the intimate knowledge of future things to come. Would not let them dine on the death of Uncle Vincent, nor sup upon the bitter heartbreak over Angelo’s loss of Bianca, nor feast upon the bones of those innocent souls he had sent to an early grave during the Gambaro Turf Wars. That bed of sorrow was for Angelo alone to lie down in, not theirs.

  This stroll down memory lane had to end.

  Outside, the wind groaned, spoke with a breathy voice as if to say:

  “Feed us sin…feed us death merchant…feed us your soul!”

  Had the guns just given a slight tremor that was almost too faint to feel?

  “Sing to me,” Angelo said clearly. Then despite the pain burning inside his ribs, he drew in a deep breath of air and shouted at the top of his lungs. “SING TO ME!”

  The bell in the tower gonged, collapsed through the damaged church steeple and then down the front steps into the muddy street where a bolt of lightning scorched its iron surface with a deep groove of scarlet red.

  “SING!” Angelo shouted again, to which the guns replied in kind.

  Their song was beautiful, crystal clear chimes that sounded like angelic harps. And although Angelo had no idea why the guns sang as they did, he didn’t care. All that mattered was that they had, and their song was glorious.

  Then suddenly, there was no more pain, no more cold wet clothes, nor vicious storm tearing through the village square. Diavalo was gone, fallen out from under foot like a gallows trapdoor, and Angelo was falling back through time and space.

  But just where he would land this time was something only the guns would know.

 

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