Buffalo Soldiers (An Upstate New York Mafia Tale Book 2)

by Nicholas Denmon

  Clear!

  The hand came back across in another backhand.

  Clear!

  A closed fist, but not his father’s, this time a drunk at a college bar. Fighting him over a girl.

  What was her name? She was a skank anyway.

  “Clear!”

  A jolt burst into his body and his eyes snapped open. He felt them twitch involuntarily and he tried to blink through the spasms and the tears as he drew in a deep breath from a mask strapped to his face.

  He followed the hands clutching a pair of white paddles to the blue sleeves of the EMT jumpsuit. A worried set of eyes looked down on him and just beyond on a bench to the side sat Don Ciancetta still in his bathrobe.

  His hand felt like a brick and it shook in tiny trembles but he tried to remove the mask so he could speak. The EMT tried to stay his hand but the Don slid over and moved it for him.

  “What? What’s so important Chris?” His brow was creased and he looked a bit pale.

  Jesus I wonder how I look.

  His voice sounded small in his ears but he mustered up enough strength to ask. “That girl, in the bar in college. The one I fought over…”

  “Who, the skank?” The Don’s brow creased and his left eyebrow raised half an inch.

  “Yeah. Her. What was her name?”

  The Don mulled it over for a second. “Rachel, I think. The blonde.”

  “Yeah.” He tried to smile but judging by the look on the Don’s face he was doing something much more grotesque. “Yeah, fuck her.”

  “I think we all already have Chris.” He grinned and grabbed his hand with one of his own stronger hands and with the other placed the mask back on.

  The Pope smiled and leaned back to enjoy the free ride.

  Chapter 24

  She led them through the tunnel and the shadows of combatants rolled over them as they made a run for it. The metal cylinder stood only four feet high so they ran with their backs hunched over. Kira waved at the cobwebs that had settled across the path over decades of disuse. They stretched away from her, riding the rolling wave of heat from the furnace in swaying strands of translucent and opaque silk. Rust and dust invaded their nostrils as they tried to move unnoticed beneath the miniature explosions of bullets exiting from their dormant repose inside the chambers of the guns that held them. Automatic weapons pitter-pattered in multiple bursts of noise while the louder singular retort of hand guns made their presence known.

  They had to clear the building in order to feel the security of solid metal and earth above them. While they were still scurrying beneath the action above, the grating provided a line of site at intermittent intervals to potential hazards. She had no idea if anyone saw them leap into the tunnel but she was pretty sure that with that many eyes trained in their direction someone must have seen them. To make matters worse, she had no clue where the passage would take them.

  After what felt like an eternity they reached the edge of the building and the battle raging overhead. They ran past the grate she pried open earlier and kept going in an attempt to leave the fray behind. She glanced back and noticed that Rafael Rontego was the closest one behind her. After him was the man they kept calling Eddie. He was bleeding in a steady stream that left a clear path of red droplets in a trail behind them. He was moving too slow, but Ivan, her father, was pushing him along and muttering words of encouragement.

  The world was on fire and she had just met her father for the first time in over eleven years. She turned her head and focused on leading the way out of the tunnel. She bit into the side of her cheek and forced her legs forward as the small of her back began to burn from the constant crouch. They ran under sections of grates that allowed faint beams of moonlight to stream in and they used these like beacons to guide them along the tunnel’s length, one section of light to the next.

  “Where does this lead?” Rafael Rontego asked, his voice a husky whisper.

  “How the hell do I know,” Kira breathed. “Look like I’ve been trolling abandoned parts of Bethlehem Steel?” She ran under another grate and stumbled into an opening that was three times bigger than the tube they were running through and stopped so fast that Rafael Rontego nearly slammed into her back. She groaned. The path split into three directions. Two sections split left and right while one kept going straight forward. She spun around, “Which way?”

  Rafael Rontego looked past her and felt the air down each path and tilted his head to one side listening for something. He mumbled a word she couldn’t hear but before she could ask what it was, Ivan supported Eddie like a human crutch and the two of them stumbled into the opening and lay down breathing hard. Eddie’s face was pale and his eyes carried the bloodshot look of the damned. Both of his wounds were so close together that they looked like one and the back of his shirt was purple from the thickness of the blood attaching itself to the threads of his shirt. He lay clutching his AK-47 as if he would slip away from the world of the living if he let it go.

  Maybe he will.

  As if he read her mind he spoke through chattering teeth, “I’m fucked.”

  Ivan crouched over him and clearly wanted to tell him that he wasn’t but his eyes couldn’t hide the truth of it and he just shook his head instead.

  The Mexican looked at him and gave him his free hand. “Help me sit up and point me towards the other end of the tunnel.” He grimaced as Ivan pulled him forward and the pressure no doubt tore at the shredded parts of his chest and back.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Ivan said. “It’s my fault you’re here.”

  “Fuck off. It’s not your fault. I made a decision to play with the big boys. I don’t think either of us knew that meant Chechen rebels.” He gave a small grin and then turned serious. “Just make sure you do right by my daughter when you get free of this fucking place.” He held the stare until Ivan nodded. “Besides, if it’s cops that come down this tunnel maybe I’ll get a damned medic. If it’s the Russians, well, they can meet their fate from the barrel of their own craftsmanship.”

  The metal under their feet vibrated with an impact and Rafael Rontego snapped his bruised and battered face in the direction from which the four of them had just come. His eyes looked almost black in the dim lighting but Kira saw them flash with the hungry look of a hunter, or the hunted, she couldn’t decide.

  Survival. They gleam with a thirst for survival.

  Rafael Rontego stooped over Ivan and grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him through the metal tube in the middle of the conjoining apertures. “Take her and go. I’ll catch up.”

  Ivan grabbed her by the arm. The callous on his hand felt rough on her soft shoulder but the grip reminded her of his embrace when she was a child. She shook her head. That was eleven years ago and now was the time to focus on survival.

  “How do you know it’s the right way?” Ivan whispered. His eyes darted back down the dark tunnel where echoing voices rebounded off of the steel and rustled past their ears like inaudible rasps of so much wind.

  “I can hear the waves,” Rafael Rontego said. His voice was a low rumble and again the eyes flashed. “Now go.”

  Without further questions Ivan grabbed her by the arm again and led her down into the tunnel. When she looked back she saw the assassin pulling Eddie into a sitting position against the side of the tunnel. In between looking at her feet to make sure she didn’t trip and trying to remember to breathe, she had another chance to look back and saw several movements in the distance beyond the assassin and her father’s wounded friend. Shadows flickered past beams of moonlight and several shouted words she didn’t understand. She saw the assassin pull his pistol and fire several shots down the tunnel. The first bullet struck the lead man and dropped his silhouette to the ground with a hollow thud. The rest of the men stopped in their tracks and hit the deck with startled shouts and calls to their fallen compatriot. There were several loud explosions that burst from leaping flames in the hands of the men lying on the tunnel floor and then flashes of light as
bullets bounced around the assassin’s shoulders and torso, igniting small sparks on the metal surrounding him. He took a step backwards and fired another shot, the flames illuminating the area just in front of his face, shadows bouncing off of the bulbous and puffy skin.

  Why isn’t Eddie shooting?

  Rafael Rontego was almost through the center passage when he stumbled from an invisible impact; the force threw his back against the metal cylinder and elicited a sharp hiss of air from his mouth. The assassin fell to his knees, tried to stand up, and stumbled down again. Kira stopped running and turned around, the sound of the waves loud behind her. She could smell the fresh water and a blast of night air swirled around her head. The scene played out in front of her almost thirty yards away and her lack of a weapon left her feeling as if she were doing wind sprints naked in front of her entire school.

  Rafael Rontego climbed to one knee as the emboldened men slowly came forward in low crouches and army crawls. One took a shot at the assassin and he lifted his gun and returned fire striking another of the advancing me. The rest hit the deck again and the assassin whirled and stumbled through the opening towards Kira and her father, one hand clutching a pistol and the other under the fold of his jacket clutching his side. He waved them forward and her father grabbed her hand, spinning her around.

  That’s when she saw the padlock on the grate.

  Her heart sank for a moment until her father grabbed the pistol out of his belt and brought the butt of it down directly on the padlock, smashing it open in one strike. He dislodged the remnants, leaned back and with a grunt, kicked the grate out onto a sandy and sharp decline where it landed with a thud, inches from the cresting water of Lake Erie. He jumped down and reached up for her. She noticed a twinkle in his eye she remembered as a small child and despite the desperate situation, felt the creep of a blush on the edges of her cheek. She was about to jump when she heard the wheezing breath of the assassin bearing down on her and turned for one final glimpse of the scene.

  The assassin hobbled towards her, no more than ten feet away, but she looked past him, over his shoulder. Between him and the now encroaching mass of men lay an unmoving Eddie, his dormant AK-47 planted butt first on the ground. The group of Russians, for that must have been the language she didn’t understand, were now picking up speed and were nearly on top of the dead Mexican.

  “Is he dead?” Ivan asked.

  “Not yet,” the assassin said, his normally husky voice settling somewhere between a rasp and growl.

  When they were mere feet away, Kira saw the barrel of his weapon drop and the Mexican’s head snap up.

  “Fuck you!” Eddie screamed. His voice echoed in the chamber causing the Russians to pause and consider their mistake. Then came the roar of the AK-47 and a foot-long burst of flame blazed from the tempered steel. One of the men had the front of his face explode in a cloud of black dust and then immediately fell. Another took several rounds in the chest; his body pulsating like it was attached to a series of electrodes.

  Her father yanked her by the hand almost at the same time Rafael Rontego gave her a push and she tumbled out of the dank enclosure and into the crisp night air. Ivan placed her on the ground and then reached a hand out, giving the assassin some leverage as he grimaced and eased himself over the ledge as the gunshots continued in the tunnel.

  They stood in a low crouch on the water’s edge as the gunfire slowed down to intermittent bursts as the Mexican was either bleeding out or running low on ammunition. In either case, Kira knew they couldn’t wait to figure it out and the low hum of chopper blades in the air somewhere closer to the factory reminded her that they were nowhere near out of the rat-trap. Red and blue lights rode along the waves as police boats rushed around the mini peninsula in an effort to cut off a waterway escape. They were still hundreds of yards out, but were closing fast.

  “We have to split up,” Kira yelled above the din.

  Both men turned to regard her, and then nodded.

  “She’s right. I’m wounded. I’ll drag you down. We have a better chance if we pick different directions and just go.” Rafael Rontego pulled his hand from under his jacket and dark globs of blood settled on his knuckles and in the creases of the palm of his hand.

  The shadow of a hundred-foot propeller blade from the wind turbine cut across the moonlight.

  “Fine,” Ivan looked south. “But let’s run south for a while and then go in three directions. We’ll meet at Root 5 Bar.” They started running. “If no one shows for an hour, you leave. Get as far out of town as you can.” He spoke into the wind but his eyes kept locking with Kira’s. “I’ll find you.”

  The gunfire ended, casting an eerie silence over what was left of the evening. A second later there was another crack that sounded different from the pitter-patter of the AK-47. Rafael growled and said, “Now he is.”

  “Is what?” Ivan asked between breaths.

  “Dead.”

  Shouts came from behind them and Kira couldn’t tell if they came from inside the tunnel or just outside of it. “F.B.I! Put down your weapons!” Her chest felt numb from the constant battering her heart was giving it, but she pumped her legs past the point of burning and ran over the uneven landscape.

  They ran in silence then for about a hundred yards, the waves of Lake Erie lapping at their right and then as if reading each other’s minds Rafael Rontego and her father split to the east and ran at a near forty-five degree angle from her. She almost stumbled in a small hole, but flailed her arms as she fell forward and somehow maintained her balance. She ran until her lungs bit at her and until the only sound she heard was the gentle shuffle of her feet through the grass. When she looked back she saw that Ivan and Rafael were far apart from each other, but that the wounded assassin was slowing down and lagging behind.

  She looked forward and almost went head over heels into a canal that loomed large in front of her like a dark and angry abyss. She skidded to a halt, throwing rocks over the little incline and into the water. She looked back one more time and saw the red and blue lights of a police cruiser cutting through the field and sending up a cloud of dust in its wake. It knifed between the assassin and her father, Ivan hit a second gear and disappeared into the darkness but the cruiser made right for Rafael Rontego who stumbled and fell to the ground as the car came to a dusty halt alongside him.

  Fuck.

  Kira spun, took a look at the dark and uninviting water, and dove into the canal.

  Chapter 25

  “Agent Price, we have another one over here.” One of the BPD officers crouched over a body in the tunnel.

  “That makes five.” Three bodies were piled around a fourth who still clutched an AK-47 assault rifle. “He must have been popped early in the fight.”

  Dr. Tolbert leaned over the body and moved the flap of the Russian’s jacket to the side with a pencil. “Judging by the size of this wound it appears that this one was shot with a handgun. Not like the other three who were all hit with rifle rounds.”

  “Except the AK shooter. He was done with a handgun, too.” Agent Price looked at the man they had in custody. The black spider tattooed on his hand with the red diamond marked him as the Black Widow. She apprehended him a second after he pulled the trigger and he had dropped the gun as cold as a bag of ice and turned around with a grin plastered across his Eastern European face.

  “Get Todd Simmons on the phone and get a forensics team in here with a full kit.” She touched a place where blood splattered the wall. It was still wet on her plastic glove. “I want samples of…well, everything. Cordon this off and get the living upstairs.” She pointed to one of the officers. “Except you. I want you to stay here and make sure that nothing gets tampered with. No one comes into this crime scene, got it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She touched her earpiece and said, “Agent Conrad, I need that satellite imagery like yesterday, why isn’t it on my tablet yet?” She glanced over at Alex Vaughn, still gripping a Glock. “Third time I’
ve asked for it.” She touched her earpiece again. “Timms, go check on Conrad and see if his com-unit is down.”

  “On it, leaving my perch now.”

  They began the trek along the thousand-foot corridor and left the wreckage behind. Another Russian prisoner would be there with Briggs who was still catching his wind from the force of the bullets to the Kevlar on his chest.

  Along with another six bodies.

  As she walked she let out a long hiss of air. She felt like she had forgotten to breathe since the moment they infiltrated the building. But with the Russian in custody and no fatal causalities on the side of the good guys, she was quietly relieved.

  Even Todd Simmons won’t be able to deny that we pulled it off in a big way.

  And they would need it too. Giving away pardons and cutting deals to mobsters required nothing less than success. Alex Vaughn slowed his pace and she realized he was waiting to walk with her.

  When she caught up to him he hardly turned her way before asking, “So what do we do now? Rafael Rontego and a couple more of these people are out in the open.”

  “As much as I want to capture everyone, especially the piece of shit that will make over a year of my life worthwhile, the Black Widow was the priority tonight. The Coast Guard guys showed up a bit too late to patrol the coast and the waterways but the helo team saw a squad car chasing down a pair of heat signals before they had to circle back down for a landing.”

  “Too much wind?” Alex frowned.

  “Gas.” She studied his face and the wrinkle line that seemed to roll from the corner of his left eye down to the frown of his cheek. “C’mon. You don’t miss it a little bit?”

  “Miss it?” He blinked. “Oh hell yeah I miss it. I mean, when we came through that door, guns blazing, I felt alive.” He frowned again and looked at the floor as they navigated the rest of the tunnel. “It just reminds me that she might not be here tomorrow and how I promised her I was done with all this shit.”