by Erik Carter
John hadn’t been to the cabin in many years, and he couldn’t have imagined a stranger set of circumstances in which to find himself back. The cabin was small and simple. A shared living and dining space with a kitchen in the back, separated by a pony wall. There were two bedrooms and a bath to the side.
John’s arms were behind him, tied at the wrists to one of the chairs from the dining room table. As he looked up, he saw Lee and Beau Lawton on the other side of the room. Lee stood with a gun aimed at Lawton, who sat on the opposite side of the table. In front of Lawton was a notepad, and in his hand was a pen.
“I won’t do it,” Lawton said.
“I said write.”
Lee slapped Lawton hard.
“Hey!” John yelled out.
Lee’s attention turned to him. His eyes were bloodshot and seething with rage. There was sweat on his brow. He kept his gun aimed at Beau as he stomped over to John.
“You’re still awake?” he said through his teeth.
Still with the gun aimed at Lawton, Lee reached into his back pocket and grabbed a cloth, the same one he’d used on him earlier. He shoved it onto John’s face, clamped down hard.
John felt Lee’s fingers digging through the cloth and into his cheek. He struggled. A cool, pungent smell filled his nostrils.
His head teetered. He felt light, airy, cold.
Lee removed the cloth and went back to the table.
John’s vision faded. Everything was turning white. In the haze, he saw Lee pull a butcher knife from the block on the counter, yank Lawton’s left hand onto the table, and position the knife over one of his fingers.
“Now write this down,” Lee said. “‘I, Beau Lawton…’”
The rest of the words faded out as John’s head fell to his chest.
Chapter Forty-Six
“Turn here,” Jane said.
Dale followed her instruction and pulled onto a gravel road. Enormous trunks surrounded them on either side, climbing hundreds of feet into the moonlight.
“It’s not much farther.”
The road curved around another massive trunk then Dale saw the shape of a small cabin in the distance.
And parked outside was a Chevette.
“You were right!” Jane said. “They’re here.”
Dale brought Arancia to a stop and pulled the parking brake. They were several hundred feet from the cabin.
Jane turned on him. “What are you doing?”
“Putting some distance between you and the cabin. In case something should happen. Bullets go pretty darn far. Lie down, okay? Across the seats. Below the dash.”
He was essentially telling Jane to use Arancia as a shield in case hot lead started flying. Even the vaguest notion of Arancia getting struck by bullets made a small piece of Dale’s soul wither up and die.
He noticed a look of trepidation on Jane’s face. He put his hand on her shoulder.
“I’ll bring your brother back safe.”
He opened the door.
Dale sprinted down the road toward the cabin, the gravel crunching beneath his boots.
Whereas it had been a touch warm earlier in the day, it was now very cool, almost cold. The shirt he wore kept him a bit warmer than a T-shirt would have, but still he could feel his eyes beginning to water as he sprinted toward the cabin.
All around him, he could see the sheer mass of the giants. There was an eerie quietness, amplifying the sounds of his heavy breathing.
As he drew closer to the cabin, he saw just a bit of light escaping the two draped windows behind the porch, which spanned the whole front side of the building.
It was an A-frame cabin, a perfect triangle, the roof angled all the way to the ground on either side. The giants framed it majestically. There was a door in the center, a draped window on either side, and a tall, thin window above the door, at the peak of the triangular shape.
Dale slowed as he reached the porch. He drew his Model 36 and slowly took the two wooden steps onto the porch. He crept to the door, carefully monitoring the sounds of the boards creaking beneath his feet.
He approached the window to the right of the door. There was a small gap in the drapes, and he looked in. On the other side of the window, only a couple feet away, was Jonathan Fair, tied to a small, wooden chair. Slumped over.
Motionless.
Dale feared the worst. But then Fair stirred.
He was alive, at least.
Farther back was a table where Beau Lawton sat with Lee Kimble standing over him, pointing a gun and saying something. While Kimble continued to speak, Lawton was hunched over the table, writing on a notepad. Dale couldn’t hear what Kimble was saying, but two words were audible as Kimble suddenly screamed them out.
“Hurry up!”
It was a perplexing scene, nearly impossible to decipher.
Lawton finished writing and dropped the pen.
Keeping his gun pointed at Lawton, Kimble pulled a second, smaller gun—a tiny snub-nose like Dale’s—from his waistband and put it in Lawton’s hand then shoved the barrel under Lawton’s chin.
Oh, shit.
No matter how confusing the scene was before Dale, one thing was clear. Kimble was going to force Beau to shoot himself.
Dale didn’t even try the doorknob.
He just kicked the door in.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Jane awoke with a jolt. Her cheek was against something cool. Glass. She was cold. Skin covered in goosebumps. It was dark. There was an earthy smell in the air. Sounds of insects.
She remembered. She was lying across the seats in Dale Conley’s De Tomaso Pantera. Her face was against the window. She quickly used her sleeve to wipe away the smudge. Dale seemed like the type who would flip his lid at the sight of a single speck of dust in his car.
Again. Dammit. Again she’d fallen asleep. Jane was disgusted with herself. How could she have dozed off right now of all times? When her brother’s fate hung in the balance.
She saw something. Movement. A dark figure outside the window, stalking through the trees.
Oh, god, no.
No.
Not sleep paralysis. Not now.
The figure continued forward, stealthily. Like a cat.
Jane’s breathing became labored. Soon the figure would be upon her, ready to take the rest of her breath.
But then she thought of something…
She’d already moved. She’d wiped the window clean. This wasn’t sleep paralysis.
That was an actual man slipping through the trees.
And he was heading toward the cabin.
The man crossed through a beam of moonlight, and something on his neck shined for a moment. A scar.
Jane knew who she was watching. The whole criminal world had heard the whispers of this man.
This was no sleep paralysis shadow figure. It was “The Shadow” himself.
It was El Vacío.
The assassin.
He carried a rifle in his hands. There was another gun on a strap around his back, something boxy and wicked looking.
Jane took in a shaky breath. And quickly made up her mind.
She stepped out of the car.
Chapter Forty-Eight
The Rolls-Royce came to a stop.
Paulie stole a glance back—seeing all the cars idling behind his, the combined forces of the Fairs and the Alfonsis—then he turned back around and looked between the front seats, through the windshield.
The gravel road snaked its way through the huge tree trunks. There were two cars on the road, lights out and parked a good distance from the cabin—the Pantera they’d followed, gleaming in the moonlight, and behind it, a Cordoba with massive damage to its rear end.
For a while, Paulie had wondered why Janey and the cop were going so far out of the city. But once they reached the Avenue of the Giants, Paulie understood that for some reason Janey was taking the man to the old family cabin.
The Cordoba was a mystery. But only for a moment. When Paulie h
ad gotten the photographs of the bloodshed that had occurred after his men followed El Vacío from the airport, he had seen that his men’s car had been severely damaged; the assassin had rammed them before he finished them off.
With a highly damaged mystery vehicle parked in front of him, there was no question to whom it belonged. El Vacío. He was here at Paulie’s family vacation cabin.
To kill his boy.
This meant that assassin had followed the Pantera too. And now he was about to finish the job.
“Keep going!” Paulie shouted at the driver. “Go around them. And hurry!”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Dale looked at the barrel of a gun.
Kimble was waving his weapon back and forth between Lawton and Dale. The man’s skin was flushed, his eyes crazed and registering utter confusion at who Dale was and why he’d just burst into the cabin brandishing a gun.
So Dale made it perfectly clear for him.
“Federal agent! Drop the weapon, Kimble!”
Dale kept the Model 36 leveled at him. He slowly crept toward the table.
Beau looked to Dale, pleadingly. His hand holding the gun beneath his chin shook violently.
“What’s the plan, Kimble?” Dale said. “Have Beau Lawton write a suicide note and force him to blow his brains out? Get your revenge and make him look as unstable as you on his way out.”
Lawton shouted out to Dale. “No! He—”
Kimble slapped him. “Keep your mouth shut!”
He turned to Dale as he continued swinging the gun back and forth.
“Unstable? Because I was sent to a mental hospital? I committed no crime. I was framed. This man planted evidence.”
“Is it true, Lawton?” Dale said as he continued toward the table.
Lawton started to speak.
Kimble fired his gun into the floor. A tremendous roar. Across the room, Jonathan Fair stirred in his slumber.
“I said stay quiet!” Kimble screamed at Lawton.
Dale stopped in his tracks. Kimble really was unstable. And more so than Dale had thought.
Dale had to choose his next move extremely carefully. He’d been in more than a few standoffs. But never one this unhinged.
Before he could devise a plan, though, he heard something.
Footsteps on the porch behind him.
Chapter Fifty
Jane had heard the crack of the gun shot, and while it had made her jump, it also motivated her to sprint the remaining distance to the cabin.
She bolted up the steps, onto the porch, and to the window. She peered inside.
Right in front of her—just on the other side of the window—was John, in a chair, slumped over. Unconscious. But breathing.
She steadied herself. Gathered her resolve. And scanned the rest of the cabin.
Standing in the middle of the living room was Dale. He had his gun aimed toward the table in the back where Beau Lawton sat. There was a gun in Lawton’s hand as well, pointed under his own chin. Another man stood by the table, swinging yet another gun between Dale and Lawton. It was the man she’d seen in Chinatown with her brother.
An absolutely bizarre scenario. And a dangerous one.
One in which her unconscious brother was in mortal danger.
So Jane opened the door.
Chapter Fifty-One
El Vacío continued to watch with amazement as the bizarre Mexican standoff played out before his eyes. And just when he thought the situation couldn’t get any weirder, Fair’s twin sister swung the door open and entered the cabin.
It was an incredibly brave move on her part. From his studies, he’d gathered that she was nothing if not determined.
The cop glanced at her, stunned, keeping his gun pointed at Kimble. “Jane, what the hell are you doing here?”
The cop had done a good job mediating the strange situation to this point. Again, El Vacío was impressed with him. And for some reason, the cop had forsaken his fake beard. It was another layer of curiosity in this perplexing scenario.
“He’s here!” Jane Fair said to the cop. “I saw him in the trees.”
“Who’s here?”
Before she could answer, more people burst through the cabin’s door. A dozen men. All with guns. Mobsters. At the front of the pack were Big Paul Fair and Angelo Alfonsi. With Alfonsi were the man’s sons, one of whom was El Vacío’s client.
Marco Alfonsi.
El Vacío noticed a strange look on the Fair woman’s face. An expression of shock as she and her father looked upon each other.
El Vacío dropped back below the pony wall, planted his back against it, concealing himself in the kitchen. He needed a moment to think.
This situation had been bizarre and indecipherable before the gangsters had entered. But now that the new men were there, not only was El Vacío confused, but he had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach—the feeling of betrayal.
He never should have trusted Marco Alfonsi. The man was a creep. A weasel.
He assessed the situation. He had tracked his supposed target to a cabin in the trees, hours away from San Francisco. And now, the heads of both crime families had suddenly arrived along with a small army of muscle. A dark realization came to El Vacío.
They’d trapped him.
Somehow, somewhere he’d pissed someone off among the two rival families. And they brought their forces together. They’d used the Jonathan Fair escape madness as an elaborate plot to draw him out of Colombia.
He heard Angelo Alfonsi speak from the living room.
“Do it, Marco. Be a man.”
El Vacío continued to listen, and another voice called out. It was Marco.
“El Vacío. I’m calling off the hit. You will still be paid. Show yourself. Please.”
The thoughts in El Vacío’s mind became torrential. Anger rarely came to him. Usually he remained cool and centered. But he was seething now. At Marco Alfonsi.
He tried to think calmly, rationally. Maybe he was wrong about being set up. Maybe this really was simply a farce wherein Marco had never received his father’s authorization to contract a hit. A misunderstanding. But why was Beau Lawton being forced to kill himself? Why was El Vacío’s original target unconscious and tied to a chair?
None of it made any sense, and being confused only furthered El Vacío’s rage.
He took the MAC-10’s strap off and transferred it to his custom sniper rifle, which he then slung over his back.
Whatever the truth of the situation was, El Vacío knew that there were over a dozen armed people in the next room.
And he was getting out of the cabin alive.
He made up his mind.
Two massacres had been attributed to El Vacío. A series of explosions in Sudan leaving thirty-seven dead in 1961. Several years later, fourteen people died in a shootout in Lisbon—the police report noted that the only survivor slipped into a crowd of onlookers and was never located.
El Vacío would survive at any cost.
He hoisted the MAC-10 and took a deep, cleansing breath.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Dale recognized the weapon immediately and knew he was in one hell of a dangerous situation.
The assassin had popped up from behind the pony wall separating the kitchen from the living room, and in his hands was an Ingram MAC-10 machine pistol. It bore the Sionics two-stage suppressor, a popular accessory that not only quieted the weapon but gave the shooter a grip in the front—which was helpful, because the MAC-10 was a vicious piece of engineering known for its poor precision. This wasn’t a precise scalpel like the man’s custom sniper rifle; this was just the opposite. This was a weapon that sprayed rounds at an insanely high rate—1,250 rounds per minute for the 9mm variety, which was what the assassin appeared to be wielding.
21 rounds per second.
By the look on the assassin’s face, it was evident that he intended to clear the room.
And with a weapon like that, Dale didn’t have even a single second to hesitate.
He turned and bolted toward Jane, lowering his shoulder and pushing through the men.
The shots started behind him, so fast they sounded like a steady hum.
The man in front of Dale took a bullet.
Men around him returned fire. So many shots and so loud. The smell of gunpowder.
Blood sprayed Dale’s cheek.
Jane in front of him, crouching over Jonathan.
Someone fell into Dale, almost knocked him over.
Nearly to Jane.
A bullet hit the floor in front of him.
More blood.
Jane, a couple feet away from him.
Dale jumped right at her, arms extended.
He crashed into her.
Hard.
He knew he’d hurt her bad. But he’d gotten her and Jonathan—unconscious and tied to the chair—to the floor.
A body fell next to Dale as he wrapped his arms around Jane, covering her and her brother.
The sound was tremendous, so loud that Dale couldn’t even hear it. No longer noise. It was a presence. An engulfing presence.
He felt vibrations, the impacts of bodies throughout the room falling to the hardwood floor.
Everyone shooting guns. Debris fell on Dale’s head as he pulled Jane and her unconscious brother as far beneath his body as he could get them. But with the chair that Jonathan was tied to, it was impossible.
He had to find another way of protecting them.
Another body landed right beside Dale. An arm fell on his back. Warm blood oozed through his shirt.
Dale glanced up. A credenza, a foot away from him. He gave a quick look to Jane, whose face was frozen with fear, then pulled himself away from her for a moment, leaned up as more debris fell on him, and gave the credenza a sharp pull. It fell to the ground with a crash.
Dale tried to yell, “Come on!” at Jane, but his voice was lost in the deafening madness. But she got the point.
