"How do you know this?" Alex Vaughn asked.
"I have a man tracking the situation."
Vaughn stared at him for a second and then said, "Of course. It makes perfect sense."
Agent Price looked at him and asked, “Really? You believe him?"
"The Russians have Rafael. Of course they're trying to track them." Before he finished Agent Price was shouting to her men to load up and running back to the vans with Alex Vaughn close on her heels. In the blink of an eye they were squealing tires and speeding away from the property. The guards at the entrances looked over at the two men, utterly confused. The Pope waved them back to their posts with a shout, “Get back to work and try not being totally useless tonight."
He looked over at the Don who was starring at his slippers.
"How's it feel to be an honorable citizen?" he asked, trying to keep the strain out of his voice.
"Like a death sentence." The Don looked up and spit bits of his cigar onto the ground. "Come on in and get some coffee. Maria will still be awake."
"I'll be right in." The Pope watched him slowly walk inside and then dialed a number on his cell. "Hey. Yeah it's me. I suspect you’re outside the old Bethlehem Steel factory.
The voice came through in quiet but clear Italian, "Yes. Elimination?"
"Yeah, we don't want our guy leaving that building alive."
"Which one?" the man asked.
"Which one?"
"Yeah, Ivan is there too."
Fuck. I forgot about Ivan.
"Yeah. Him too." Then he pressed the end button and slowly made his way inside. He felt weak all of a sudden but ignored the dizziness and grabbed the handle. He pulled the door open and saw a light coming from the back of the house, towards the kitchen, and then he remembered Nuncio. He turned in the doorway thinking to go and get him, and then he collapsed to the floor and saw the light at the end of the hall collapse around itself into a pin point of light before disappearing completely.
Chapter 20
Rafael Rontego pulled the car over on the side of the road on Ridge Road and N. Gates Avenue. To the west loomed the shadowed corpse of old factories bitten by the rabid disease of decades of decay. He looked out over the grey landscape as the long tooth of the night hung in its darkest moment before the promise of a brighter morning. Kira watched his face, beaten and swollen. He was expressionless as he gazed over it all and towards the Skyway strafing the horizon in front of them. The roadway followed the shore of Lake Erie in the foreground of the blackened buildings. Dots of light beckoned outward from their posts only to be swallowed by the surrounding dark.
She touched her own face and felt her skin bite at her in protest. Her eyelids felt heavy and thick and her lips hurt every time she so much as twitched her cheeks. Her wrists were sore from the binds that she had struggled against but they worked and she supposed she had the assassin to thank for the bit of freedom she currently enjoyed. He had been silent since their last exchange and at first she was furious at him. She blamed him for destroying any chance at a normal childhood, she blamed him for her father going to jail, for not protecting her mother, and for thwarting her own long dreamt revenge.
But he saved my life.
Uncle Dick betrayed her. Her father asked for Rafael Rontego’s help. Everything she knew seemed to be less true or less definitive with each passing breath. The morning had started off so simple and normal and now she was in the backseat of a car with a renowned assassin, bloodied, tired, and somehow losing her taste for revenge against the very man she had hoped to see in pool of blood just a day before. Bobby and his goofy grin crossed her mind and she wondered if things might have been different if she’d taken him up on the offer to hang out and if she’d ignored the Russians’ request to meet.
Uncle Dick would have found some other way to deliver me to them.
Rafael looked at her. “I have business to take care of in there.”
He gave a slight nod in the direction of the abandoned steel plant.
“I’ve got two options for you. You can either wait here in the car for my return, or you can take the car and go home. I’ll bring your old man to you when I’m done and we can all three have a nice little chat about what happened that night he went away. Either way, your role here is done.” He took the car keys and threw them on the seat next to him. He pulled his pair of silenced pistols out, loading a bullet into each chamber with a metallic click. He lowered a black felt hat onto his head. The fedora tilted slightly cocked to the side, he opened the car door. After exiting the vehicle, he let the door rest to a close without securing it and looked into the window at Kira before turning and walking into the gloom.
She sat there for several heartbeats trying to figure out if it was a joke. She looked out the window for any sign of the assassin but he’d melted into the shadows. Leaning forward over the center console, she reached for the set of keys on the seat; her hand found them, but also something heavier which brushed against her knuckles. She grabbed it and felt the cool steel in her hand. Clutching the pistol, a third option occurred to her.
She pocketed the keys and held the pistol loose in her right hand. She turned off the dim overhead bulb just in case the assassin was watching from the shadows and slipped the car door open just far enough to squeeze her thin body through. Then, without hesitation, she padded on light feet in the direction the assassin had taken towards the factory.
The smell of rust blowing on a wet wind greeted her as she knifed into the night. The assassin had been walking so she checked her speed, being careful not to inadvertently overtake him. She used the lighted beacons along the Skyway coupled with the black shadow along the night sky to guide her. She felt the adrenaline course through her veins and despite her battered and weary body; she found her footing to be sure and nimble. She crossed underneath the Skyway after a hundred yards, leaving what little light she had behind her as she scurried headlong into the unknown. She heard a whisper of noise ahead, and thought it to be the wind until she heard a light thud a moment after. She hurried towards the noise, her eyes failing to adjust quickly to the dark and the faint bit of moonlight that hung over the landscape. She quickened her pace, not wanting to lose the assassin and almost ran headlong into a fence surrounding the old compound. She looked frantically at it, too tall for her to leap and grab the top. Scanning the fence’s perimeter, she came across a small tree, a sapling that grew in the shadow of the barrier.
It was only three feet tall, but more than enough to give her a boost. In a flash, she was up and over without even a whisper as she hit the ground in a crouch. The moonlight bathed the area before her and she couldn’t be sure if her eyes adjusted or if a cloud had drifted away from the silver orb. In either case she was grateful; spying a shadow picking a path over the debris littered ground. Old pieces of metal and dead grass carried over patches of brown dirt and rock. The land looked like someone had scorched the life out of it. Kira sucked in her breath, tasting the oxidation of the air as she did so, and made her way forward ever careful to maintain a safe distance from the assassin.
A worn out building with more broken windows than intact grew from the earth in front of her. The assassin spun around, throwing his back to the doorway, and Kira hit the deck. Her lungs contracted, sending a hiss of air between her teeth. Rontego’s head snapped up and for a moment she thought he could see her, but he looked down and checked his weapons. The assassin slipped the door open and held it ajar with the toe of his boot and looked down the barrel of his pistol as he pointed it into the inches wide crease of the doorway.
Kira stifled a gasp. From her belly, looking towards the building, she could see two teams of men converging on the building from either side. Several of the silhouettes carried long barreled weapons that looked like automatic weapons or shotguns, she couldn’t tell from her distance. Three men moved in from the assassin’s left and two from the right. They climbed winding sets of metal stairs, similar to fire escapes, which lead upward on each side
of the building. One of the men separated from the others and continued to walk towards the door, his weapon held protectively in front of him.
She wanted to yell out at Rafael Rontego, but didn’t know who was who or how it would all play out. Besides, just as she opened her mouth, the assassin slipped inside. He shut the door just as the lone gunman rounded the corner and marched slowly but surely for the exact same entrance. At the same moment, the other men reached the top of their stairwells and slipped inside the building, their shadows disappearing inside as if the very building had consumed them.
Kira felt her chest constrict. She didn’t know why.
I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t.
She looked left and right and once she was sure there were no more shadows, she inched towards the building. As she neared the rusted structure the hair on the back of her neck stood up with a prickling sensation. Instinctively, she crouched just as light exploded out from the building with a roar. A reddish orange glow pulsed outward from the building with a wave of heat and Kira dropped to the ground, again, to avoid being seen. Her cheek landed against something metal, and from the newfound light flowing over her, she was able to track the path of two-foot long sections of gridded metal grating that traveled under the doorway of the building and, she hoped, further along into the interior.
She snapped her head away from the grate as she heard the roar of a furnace and the unmistakable growl of fuel being gobbled by flame. Above it all she heard clapping. Two loud hands slowly came together in an eerie echo, and then above even that, a voice said, “Welcome. Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly.”
I know that voice.
Her hands trembled and she couldn’t tell whether it was from nerves, excitement, anger or all of it combined. She placed the pistol on the ground and rubbed her hands together. Taking a deep breath she gripped the grate and gave it a yank dislodging the metal from the turf. A spray of dry dirt exploded outward in protest. Kira glanced left and then right to make sure she didn’t see any more men outside and then leapt into the tunnel, sliding the grate back in place above her.
Chapter 21
Two black government issued SUVs raced along Harbor Drive. Three black and blues followed in their wake, lights out and sirens off. The Skyway would have been quicker but the route ran right above the steel plant and Alex Vaughn advised they take Harbor Drive and then go around the facility along the old Ship Canal Parkway, aptly named for the canal that cut inland and was used to ship millions of tons of steel in Bethlehem’s heyday. Nobody wanted to be seen before they located the suspects and cast their net around them.
Sydney could hear the faint twirl of chopper blades in the distance. Special Agent Simmons had given the approval and she gave silent thanks for that. Searching the thirteen hundred acre site with a small team would have been problematic without the aerial support provided by the chopper crew. The Coast Guard deployed a few vessels as well but she had no way of knowing where they were. Agent Moreland organized their role, but according to Moreland, asshat-in-charge Todd Simmons had usurped naval and aerial command of the operation. Todd Simmons might be great at sucking up but he was never considered a field tactician.
“Why didn’t Special Agent Simmons allow us more personnel?” Briggs asked with a trademark scowl.
“Because he doesn’t want to divert any more resources than necessary on the word of a gangster.” Sydney glanced at Briggs who rode in the back with Agent Conrad. He just wasn’t acting like he had anything to hide. Director Randall Smith was certain that the calls outbound had come from Brigg’s station.
But what does that really mean?
“It doesn’t make sense,” Sydney said under her breath.
“What doesn’t?” Briggs asked.
Damn his good hearing.
She turned to Alex Vaughn in the passenger seat. “Why bring you back into this? Why would the Russians be at your house? Why? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“I don’t know yet.” Alex Vaughn’s brown hair fell in front of his eye and she couldn’t see his expression. “But when we find Rafael Rontego I bet he’ll know.”
“You don’t think he is working with the Russians, do you?” Briggs injected.
“I don’t know that either.” Vaughn said. “I don’t think that is how this guy operates though. He might switch allegiances within the family but he made his loyalties known during the Ciancetta civil war.” He gripped the door handle as Sydney took the SUV through a sharp turn around the edge of the canal. As she rounded the corner she dimmed the headlights and slowed the vehicle down to a crawl. The rest of the caravan followed her lead.
“Loyalties can change,” Briggs said.
“It isn’t just loyalty for these guys. It’s a way of life. For some of them since the moment they were born.” Alex Vaughn looked back at Briggs. “It’s them against the rest of the world and the rest of the world is anyone not in their Family.”
“Like us,” Sydney said.
“Like us. Like the Russians. Like the other Families.” Vaughn pulled out his 9mm Beretta and checked the chamber.
“Your earpiece and microphone are set, ma’am,” Agent Conrad said, handing over the tiny piece of electronic equipment. “You have the helicopter pilot on line one, click the button to go to line two where the rest of the team is on stand-by.”
She stopped the SUV on the corner of Hanna and Commerce Drives. The canal closed them in from the north and as she exited the vehicle she could smell the stale water caught in the manmade trench. The Skyway cut across the east directly in front of them and based on the map of the area on her tablet, courtesy of Agent Conrad, she knew fifteen hundred feet of open field lay beyond the Skyway where the cluster of old factories and warehouses lay. Her men piled out of the vans and the Buffalo men in blue that were providing support followed. As they approached, Sydney turned away and faced the looming darkness beyond. The night air was filled with the smell of stagnant water and rust, but she breathed it in anyway as she steadied herself for the task at hand.
My father didn’t die in vain. Those people at the mall are not forgotten.
She turned around and saw that Briggs had rolled out a map on the hood of the SUV and the team gathered around it. A voice cut in on her earpiece, muffled a bit by the rotating helicopter, “Agent Price, this is Captain Ortiz.”
“Go ahead, Captain.”
“Ma’am, we’ve picked up a large reading of infrared in one of the old factories. There are three hotspots in play on your route. We have one hostile outside the main entrance gate directly to your south and west. We have another in the field outside the position of the factory marked building B. But this is where it gets weird. Building B is lit up like a birthday cake. We can’t make out how many personnel are inside. From your position you should be able to see the light being generated by what appears to be a controlled fire.”
“Thanks Captain.” Sydney looked out across the field and saw nothing but darkness until her eyes scanned a bit further south. There against the horizon was a flickering light of orange.
“No problem, ma’am. I’ll mark the positions on your tablets and notify you of any changes picked up from the air; over and out.”
Sydney clicked over and walked up to her men as well as Dr. Tolbert. Briggs was pointing out positions and various lines of sight for potential sentries as well as the best paths across the field on a satellite image of the area.
“Intel has two sentries that are marked on your tablets.” Dr. Tolbert pulled hers up as everyone gathered around.
“What is this hot spot?” Briggs asked.
“It looks like whoever is inside reactivated one of the old forge lines and the heat generated is hotter than the bodies, if there are any, inside.” Sydney looked at the map and pointed at a small line running from the cluster of buildings. “What is this?”
Agent Conrad spoke up. “That is an old tunnel system that runs into Lake Erie. They would pull water in from the Lake t
o quench the steel.”
“Any access points?” Sydney frowned.
“Yes, all over the line actually. But only one exit point that wouldn’t be covered by a sniper line of sight and that’s on the Lake.” Agent Conrad stood back and placed the exit point on his tablet with a flick of his finger across the surface, which lit up on each of the other devices carried by the team.
“I already notified the Coast Guard, ma’am, and their shuttle is on standby over there with a two man team,” Agent Moreland said.
Sydney pulled her gun and said, “We have to assume the hostiles are armed and dangerous. You know your assignments. Carry them out and remain disciplined. Remember, Moreland and Timms will have sniper fire in support. Timms from the northeast inside building A and adjacent to building B. Moreland from the south on this small incline at about fifty yards.” She pointed at a small rise in the landscape. “Conrad, you run logistics from here. Vaughn, Briggs, and our counterparts from the BPD, on my hip until we reach sentry one. At that point Vaughn, two officers, and I will take him down and the rest of you go to sentry two. Take that one down and wait there until we meet up with you outside building B. Any questions?”
Each one of them looked back at her with grim and determined faces. Briggs’ eyes flashed but Vaughn looked past them and she wondered what ghosts danced in his memories. They made their way to a fence line just on the edge of the facility and Agent Timms took a pair of bolt cutters to it, opening up a hole large enough for them pass through one at a time.
“Remember to keep channel two clear. I’ll be bringing the chopper in on line one as soon as we are in position for real time updates on hostiles.” She paused, “Okay, since there are no questions, snipers out first, communicate via the headset when you are in position.”
Timms took off to the northeast in a quiet sprint, his rifle in both hands. She watched him make his way toward the abandoned building just over a small rise in the lifeless landscape. Moreland, meanwhile, picked his way through a cluster of old steel parts and luminescent brown grass catching drifts of moonlight as clouds opened up intermittent patches of light. He climbed the small incline just as Timms disappeared into the abandoned building marked “B”.
Buffalo Soldiers (An Upstate New York Mafia Tale Book 2) Page 22
