It Was Only on Stun!

by Declan Finn

“…I remembered you said they’d have to pry the gun from your cold dead—”

  The cartel member drew his gun.

  As he drew down on the aging actor with the rifle, he had clear and distinct knowledge that he would survive this, as well.

  He was clearly, distinctly wrong as he felt his teeth knocked in by the impact of a rifle bullet.

  Unlike all of the other men he had killed in such fashion, the actor had aimed.

  The actor cocked the weapon once more and stepped forward, gun still leveled. “ ‘Hand’; you’ll have to pry the gun from my cold, dead hand.”

  Diaz’s eyes were blank as the gun fell from his fingers. He fell immediately after.

  The dignified old actor nodded firmly and placed the gun on the floor. At the sight of blood, the other actors swarmed in to assist. The hero of the evening knelt beside Claudia, smiling benevolently. She peered into his aging eyes. “Thank you. How—?”

  “The breaking glass told me there was trouble,” he twinkled. “Although if you’re wondering why I still have a gun, let’s say I haven’t lost enough marbles to have it taken away yet. Come, let’s get you off the floor.”

  ***

  “Let me patch you through,” Inna told Sean.

  “Thanks for the new boyfriend,” said the next voice on the line.

  Sean closed his eyes and sighed a prayer of thanks. “Who’s the new boy toy, Claudia?”

  “Philippe Nero,” his sister told him. “He helped clean up your mess. We now have two dead bodies.”

  He smiled. “Let me guess, you took both of them out.”

  Claudia laughed. “No, the next door neighbor helped.”

  Sean furrowed his brow, trying to remember who it was. “Do I know him?” Sean’s eyes lit up as she told him. “Son of a bitch. I guess the NRA might get respect now.”

  “Dream on, destructo-boy. The hostess wants to sue him for ruining her rug with blood, and she’s tempted to sue me and Nero for bringing armed gunmen to her home.”

  “Why should she bother? All she needs to do is hold a fundraiser for the poor, blighted souls suffering from guns, and she can pay for her Persian rug. Don’t worry, she should be worrying about me should she sue you. Trust me, I’ve got enough dirt on that town to make J. Edgar Hoover seem mild in comparison.”

  ***

  Middle Earth’s Most Wanted Elven Assassin felt Something Amiss. Galadren raised his head atop the Rockycreek Sport Center—what he referred to as Gondor—and narrowed his eyes. Someone was charging out of the building. He straightened, drew his bow and arrow, and traced the target’s path, releasing an arrow as a warning shot.

  The man below twitched as the arrow scraped his arm. He turned and glared at the elf, then threw himself to one side, grabbed a stone, and hurled it. Even though Galadren was nearly three stories up and almost a hundred feet away, the stone dashed against the elf’s stomach, bouncing off and bruising the tight abdomen muscles. The rock threw off the elf’s aim, which was unexpected—he had trained to shoot accurately while being knocked around. When he drew his next arrow, his target had disappeared.

  And the next figure coming out of the building seemed… familiar.

  ***

  Sean Ryan slinked back across campus, his body creaking at every step. He couldn’t remember the last time he had had such a thorough working over.

  “Dunedain Ryan, are you hurt?”

  Sean groaned and looked over his shoulder. “No, not really. Just annoyed.” He turned to face the elf. “You’re still here? It’s got to be two in the morning.”

  The elf looked at his watch—a solid silver diver’s watch! “Three.”

  Sean nodded. “You’re wearing a modern watch. Isn’t that non-Middle Earthen?”

  Galadren smiled. “We must all keep with the times, even the immortal. And it doubles as a weapon.” He slipped the watch over his fist—makeshift brass knuckles.

  “I do the same. I learned it from…” Sean cocked his head, curious. “Have we met before?”

  He shook his golden head. “It only feels like that because we are kin in spirit.”

  Sean blinked and smiled. “Probably right. We’re both nuts. And I, at the very least, am dead tired. How about we get back to the hotel and sleep?”

  “An excellent idea, I have been sitting upon the roof all night, following your orders to keep my eyes and ears open.”

  Sean rolled his eyes. “By the way, we should coordinate a few things…”

  ***

  Sean opened his door cautiously, half-expecting to be apprehended and beaten silly…it was that sort of day.

  Goran and child were asleep in their room. He smiled and walked to the connecting room. Moira McShane and Matthew Kovach were seated on one bed, and Mira with Inna on the other. Lounging in a desk chair next to the bathroom was Maureen McGrail, using the bed as a footrest; her omnipresent raincoat hung off the back of the chair, quite fetching in her cat suit. Seated next to the windows facing the door was Detective McGauren, pistol in her lap. Next to her was Mitch Scholl, the squat old Jew dozing lightly in an armchair, flash-bang grenades on one side, smoke grenades on the other, and a large Stechkin on the coffee table next to him.

  “Nice to see you weren’t off guard while I was away,” Sean smiled, leaning against the doorframe. “Where’s ’Thena and Edward?”

  “They’re securing the hotel perimeter.” Maureen McGrail lifted a ruined, shredded book from the floor. “Is there a reason you’re keeping this Eielson book?”

  Sean smiled. “As evidence. It’ll match the weapon that made it.” He raised a shopping bag he’d taken from a vendor’s booth. “The knife Zorro tried on Mira. Oh, and I found a man with an axe who had a problem with my head. He kept trying to cut it off, but I gave him a stern talking-to.”

  “Is he still breathing?” Matthew asked casually.

  Sean shrugged. “Even Middle Earth’s Most Wanted missed him.”

  Maureen choked out a laugh. “Who?”

  Inna looked at him closely. “You aren’t hurt?”

  “A few bruised ribs, nothing more.”

  Moira cocked her head. “Then why’s there blood on your chest?”

  Sean looked down. There was the red-and-blue of his costume, as well as the black netting across the body…except for a faint red line through the spider in the center of his chest. “Wow, really must have been sharp. I didn’t feel it.”

  He took a step forward, and faltered a bit. McGrail and McShane reacted, both flowing quickly to his side. They each took an arm, and spared a glance at the other, noting how each of them moved. They smiled in understanding, and then proceeded to park him next to Matt Kovach on the bed. Kovach moved aside, noting the smiles, almost chuckling himself.

  Sean caught all of this and said, “What’s so darned funny?”

  “Long story, friend,” Kovach told him. “Exceedingly long. You’ll have to read about it one of these days, assuming I live to write it down.”

  Sean looked at them, saying, “Enough! It’s nothing serious, just—”

  “I wouldn’t,” Kovach warned. “I can tell you, resistance is futile, and stupid.”

  Sean sighed, closed his eyes, and he had the answer to the whole puzzle. He fell asleep.

  ***

  Matthew Kovach looked at the passed-out bodyguard and shook his head. “Inna, darling, where the heck did you dig up this guy?”

  Moira smiled. “It’s obvious you don’t go for the strong, quiet type.”

  Mira nodded. “I believe Americans would call him ‘a real pistol.’”

  Kovach chuckled. “He just needs a silencer.”

  McGauren nodded. “Then again, you shouldn’t talk, Matt.”

  McShane leaned back in a chair. “So, Maureen, where’d you learn how to cripple people?”

  Detective McGauren cocked her head. “What’d I miss?”

  Even Mira smiled. “She means they both move like Sean.”

  “So they both have the ability to leap over tal
l buildings in a single bound,” Kovach added. “Or at least break people in half with their big toe.”

  “Little toe,” Maureen coughed. “I learned in Dublin—you’d be surprised who we have moving in.”

  Mitch Scholl opened an eye. “What’s a pretty girl like you doing around a bum like Sean?”

  “I’m chasing down two of the lads. Nowadays, it's almost any two idiots who play poker together. But these two… Well, one of them is a personal mission for me.”

  Inna turned on the couch to face her. “Which one are you after?”

  “Technically, both of them,” the Interpol agent said, “but O’Riordan is the one I want. He’s a drug dealer who got a dozen of mine shot in the middle of the Falls awhile back.”

  The entertainment agent blinked. “O’Riordan deals drugs? He does not seem that bright.”

  “He was bright enough… He spotted men put on his house for surveillance, and called the local Orangemen about a ‘Catholic plot to corrupt Protestant youth.’ By the time our men arrived in force, so did the Orangemen, and there was a three-way shootout between the men in Orange, in blue, and the crack house. He disappeared in the confusion, even after I took out his bodyguards, and he killed one of my men. Then he joined Boyle and McCullough in that ridiculous IRA ‘splinter cell.’”

  Kovach blinked. “Wasn’t that a Tom Clancy game?”

  Maureen smiled. “So, what goes on with this Middle Earth’s Most Wanted fella?”

  Mira, Moira, and Mathew looked at each other.

  “Who wishes to start?” the actress asked.

  Kovach smiled. “He’s a kook who thinks he’s an Elvish assassin, hunting down Orcs, and thinks Mira is an Elf Queen; which is funny, she looks nothing like Liv Tyler.”

  Maureen laughed. “Yup, sounds like one of those days.”

  Mira nodded. “There is, however, one more thing we know about him.”

  Moira laughed. “I wondered when you were going to explain that.”

  Kovach looked to his wife. “Which part?”

  “I spoke with him in his own language,” Mira told him. “It’s Croatian.”

  Chapter 10: Another Day, Another Holler

  Sean Ryan slowly awoke only five hours later. He let his eyes drift to the woman at his side, noting Inna where she had been after the others had finished examining him. They had applied a little gauze, a lot of tape around his bruised—if not slightly cracked—ribs. He scanned the room, making absolutely certain Kovach and his significant other had departed. Detective McGauren and Mitchell Scholl had also retreated to their hotel rooms. Mira was in the next room with her husband and son. Maureen McGrail…was certainly somewhere; where was anyone’s guess.

  Sean slowly sat up and slid his legs to the floor. He tapped the digits on the hotel phone and rang Scholl. “Mitch, it’s Sunday, I need your help to get dressed for church.”

  ***

  The church nearest to C-Con was at St. Athanasius Catholic University across the road from Rockycreek. This Sunday service looked like an intergalactic invasion force had come to celebrate Mass. The Long Island parish had not seen so many vivid colors since a group of Malabar Indian Catholics had come to town, the women wearing exotic, brightly colored saris with glittering gold trim. However, the illusion of invasion was broken once the participants removed their head coverings in church.

  Sean Ryan smiled. It would be interesting to see Darth Vader receive communion; trying to pour wine through the mouth grate is one thing, but the wafer is a whole other issue. Though, now that I think of it, this is the original blood wine.

  Ryan swept into an aisle seat, next to Mira, Goran on the other side of her. Sean wore a long black duster and a wide-brimmed black hat. On either side of his chest, he carried a shoulder holster with a Stechkin. In his belt, he had eight guns—a Stechkin on each hip that passed as replicas of Han Solo’s laser; one gun to be drawn Western-shootout style; the other drawn like a professional FBI agent, reaching across his chest. In front of his waist were two Glock 18s with fully-extended thirty-round clips, which formed a V on his stomach. Another two Glocks were at the small of the back, making it hard to sit. Add the Stechkins on his hips and the Firestars in ankle holsters, he could fire 302 bullets before he had to reload.

  Mira had looked at him before Mass started and laughed. “What are you supposed to be?”

  He tipped the wide-brim hat. “Antonio Banderas in Desperado.”

  “But a hat in church?”

  Sean looked around at people wearing masks and helmets, and said, “I'm trying to blend in.”

  She glanced at a Stechkin. “And that?”

  He told her. “A Russian .9mm that can fire a twenty-shot clip on full automatic.” He smiled. “I didn’t get you one because the recoil would knock you on your back.”

  Ryan glanced around, making sure there wasn’t anyone ominous sitting in the pew behind him, and found Dennis Boyle and Francis O’Riordan.

  He slowly, uncomfortably, leaned back. “If you cause trouble, I swear to God, I will drill you both.”

  Boyle smiled and nodded.

  Sean faced forward, only to spot a head of red hair, and a head of blond right next to it—Matthew Kovach and Moira McShane. He sighed. I’m surrounded by Catholics. Why does every lunatic have to be Catholic? Hell, the only thing not Catholic here are the Serbs. I mean, even the damn Cartel is…

  Sean stood and frantically looked amid the congregation as it continued to pour in. Anyone who could read knew Mira was Catholic, and it didn’t take much imagination to figure out where she would go for Mass. He looked at people coming up the aisle. He had problems believing anyone would wear T-shirts in church, never mind those like “Earth First! We’ll strip mine other planets later,” or “I love animals—they taste great.”

  Must be Morrie’s crowd…and I shouldn’t talk, I’m wearing enough weaponry to take out a biker gang.

  Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He looked down to see McShane, who smiled. “Don’t worry. We talked last night while you were out. Cops are parked outside.”

  Ryan’s eyes widened. We? This…girl, and that child beside her planned the event before I did? This…God…blast…son of a…damn it!

  Most people in his position, usually strongmen who made the Terminator look small, would have been offended. For Sean Ryan, even though he couldn’t have been more than five years older than McShane or Kovach, he was ready to explode because he would have planned an almost-totally secured church at least a month in advance, but had been beaten to it by amateurs! He had never in his life considered himself proud; just someone who was just good enough to keep himself and those around him alive. Now, whatever he had that could be considered pride disintegrated like a meteor burning up on entry into the atmosphere.

  Ryan bared his teeth in the semblance of a smile and nodded, sitting down quietly.

  Up in the empty choir loft, the assassin calmly took a seat, staring out at the congregation, looking for his target. That blond in front of Mira looked familiar. Had he seen him before? Oh, yes, a novelist. Amusing little stories. He had gotten the man’s autograph; who was that marvelous slip of a thing next to him? Probably the inspiration for the redhead in his books. Who were the two yahoos behind him? One blond, the other with brown hair. Oh, yes, Hekyll and Jekyll, the Irish version.

  Wow, the view’s really good from up here. Hell, I don’t even think a rifle is necessary. I could do it with a handgun! Security hacks, they think they know it all. The cops, too! What sort of idiot would have cops secure a building for him? Why bother!

  He looked down to grab some cigarettes when he remembered smoking was forbidden in places like this. Darn puritans.

  He turned his attention back to the audience and blinked. Sean Ryan was gone. Freaking ghost. Not bad for a kid. He’s quick, but his charge might soon be—

  “You’re dead if you breathe wrong,” came a whisper from behind, nothing soft about it at all. “This gun will blow a hole in you big enough for the su
n to shine through. Move a millimeter, I’ll send you to Hell so fast, you’d think you were born there.”

  He blinked. Nicely done. “Be a shame to have to reconsecrate the church.”

  “That’s only for murders, not if I drag you outside to bleed to death. Might I ask what you’re doing here, Mr…Gresham, is it?”

  “The same thing you are, I suspect. Great vantage point for someone to shoot Nikolic; makes just as good a place for a spotter. You can see practically the whole building without being seen yourself. I thought I’d at least be good for a warning before someone kills her, and I could stop anyone who tried to come up here.”

  Ryan nodded. “And what makes you think I won’t take you out, right here and now, on the assumption you’re it?”

  “My charming personality?”

  “How’d you get in?”

  “White cloth looks like white cloth. They thought I was an acolyte.”

  Sean Ryan blinked. “Don’t you mean a Deacon?”

  “Is that what they’re called? I’ll take your word for it.”

  Ryan almost laughed as the procession moved into the church, down the nave, or center aisle. “You know the clothes and not the title? Wow, you’re so ignorant, you must be Catholic.”

  Gresham laughed softly. “An old army buddy taught me, but I could never match clothing to title. I’m still trying to figure out what those wafers are.”

  “The Eucharist, the body of Christ, the Host, pick one. Army buddy?”

  The mercenary shrugged. “When you’re in a tent waiting to blow someone to Hell, you’d be surprised what comes up.”

  Ryan sighed and put his gun away. “Move over, I’ll join you.”

  Eric Gresham smiled. “You sure it’s safe?”

  Sean Ryan sat next to him, and Gresham felt a poke in his ribs with a knife point. “No.”

  He nodded. “Good boy. You may yet die of natural causes.”

  ***

  At the end of Mass, Sean was first at the door, watching the congregation disappear into their shuttles.

  “I did not even see you at Communion, Mr. Ryan,” Mira said jokingly as soon as she saw him, Goran at her side.

  “I decided to bow out when the priest said, 'May the force be with you,' and the congregation answered, 'And with your spirit.' ”