Omega Dog - 01

by Tim Stevens

  ‘We have orders to terminate both of you,’ he said.

  Chapter 72

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Corcoran,’ the man said.

  It was difficult to read from his flat expression if he meant it.

  ‘There are only half of you here,’ said Corcoran.’Where are the others?’

  ‘They wouldn’t do it,’ said the man. ‘Refused to obey the order. But this is a matter of national security. It’s vital to the interests of the Defense Department, and the United States of America, that you not betray secrets.’

  He raised his rifle. So did the two other riflemen.

  The three guys with shotguns did likewise, ratcheting the slides with that unmistakeable ch-chak sound.

  Venn considered the odds.

  He was on a narrow wall, a ledge, overlooking an eight-storey drop. Handcuffed to another man, and with a bomb strapped round his leg which a simple jerk of his right arm would trigger.

  And six combat-trained armed men were drawing a bead on him.

  Nope. Venn didn’t rate his chances all that highly.

  But his survival wasn’t all that important anymore.

  He’d done what he’d promised. He’d successfully protected Beth, and Professor Lomax, and had prevented them from being killed.

  He’d obtained a detailed confession from Corcoran, who was if not the ringleader of this whole affair then certainly one of its key personnel.

  A confession which would blow the lid off the attempted cover-up of the carcinogenic effects of C-77. Which would open to national scrutiny the black ops division in the Pentagon which had engineered the cover-up.

  Yes. All told, it had been a good day’s work.

  Venn had never been much of a reader of poetry, but years earlier, back in high school, his class had been required to study a certain poem by the Welshman, Dylan Thomas. The verse had stuck with Venn over the years. Mainly for its opening line.

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  The poem was a call to arms against passively accepting things, especially death. It was a rallying cry to do something, anything, no matter how crazy, in the face of impending doom.

  The row of gunmen tensed, in that unmistakeable second before they squeezed down on their triggers.

  At Venn’s side, Corcoran began to whimper and babble.

  Venn looked back down over the sheer drop to the sidewalk below.

  He looked back at the gunmen.

  Pulled the crutch out from where it was jammed in between his ankle and the tag bomb.

  And jumped into the night.

  Chapter 73

  An independent observer of what happened next, somebody who was somehow magically able to visualize the situation from every angle, would have seen the following:

  Venn tumbling backward, his arm jerking the cuff chain taut and pulling Corcoran off balance and over the edge with him.

  Corcoran’s look of utter horror and panic as he vainly tried to keep his footing and stay on the wall.

  The six armed men letting loose with their weapons in almost perfect unison.

  The deadly hail of shotgun buckshot fanning out to cover a broader area than at the point of origin.

  The higher-velocity rifle bullets streaking ahead.

  Two of the rifle slugs striking Corcoran in the chest and smashing straight through, the other one tearing through his left arm, almost severing it at the shoulder.

  The two men, Venn and Corcoran, flailing down through space, manacled together.

  The floors flashing past as the men fell: eight, seven, six, five...

  Venn’s facial expression, one of grim resignation. Acceptance.

  The rushing of the awning over the entrance to the apartment block as it hurtled up toward them.

  The impact of Venn’s pinwheeling body against the canvas of the awning, and the buckling of the poles holding the awning up.

  Corcoran dropping past Venn, his fall unbroken by any such obstacle.

  His momentum dragging Venn off the awning to continue his own fall.

  The sickening thud-crunch as Corcoran hit the sidewalk on his back, blood spraying from his mouth in a crimson sheet.

  The second thud as Venn himself hit the ground, half on top of Corcoran, his legs smacking against the cement sidewalk in a blast of pure white agony.

  Chapter 74

  Above Venn, there was the night sky.

  There was no cloud, but there were no stars either. The millions of lights of New York City saw to that, their luminosity extinguishing any contribution from the heavens.

  The shock of the agony in his legs had given way to an icy numbness. Venn could feel the firmness of the sidewalk under his back, but otherwise there was no sensation at all.

  Except that Venn had the impression that there was something very, very wrong with his chest. He didn’t know why. It just seemed... wrong, somehow.

  For the first time in his life, Venn understood that he was dying.

  In the distance, he heard sirens. So he’d have somebody with him when he died.

  But they might not get here soon enough.

  Then he became aware that there was already somebody with him. Somebody who could share his death with him.

  A comrade. A buddy.

  Venn managed to turn his head to the left.

  And saw, inches from his, the white, sepulchral face of Corcoran. Bloodied and dark-eyed.

  He stared. Was the guy dead?

  There was movement there, he noticed. Death spasms, maybe. The final wild firings of electricity in the brain before it gave out.

  But then Corcoran’s eyes swiveled to lock on Venn’s.

  And his left, uncuffed hand moved, inch by painful inch, toward his hip.

  For a moment Venn didn’t understand.

  Then it hit him.

  The detonator. He had the key to the electronic tag on him. But he also has the detonator for the bomb.

  Corcoran’s dying mouth moved. Venn couldn’t possibly hear what the man was trying to say.

  But he believed the guy was attempting a smile.

  His hand reached his side, the fingers beginning to fumble there.

  Venn felt his strength ebbing.

  But at the same time, a faint flame flickered somewhere deep inside him.

  Do not go gentle into that good night...

  If he was going to die, he was going to do it on his own terms. Not anyone else’s. Certainly not this jerk’s.

  With the final burst of manic, superhuman power that sometimes allows a mother to lift the weight of a car off her trapped child, Venn heaved his almost unresponsive body over and on top of Corcoran.

  His face was up against the other man’s. The bloody stink of Corcoran’s breath was on Venn’s face.

  He sank his teeth into Corcoran’s chin, biting down with all the force he could muster.

  Corcoran gave a horrible, hissing yell, like a distant voice through a sea of static from a radio. His left hand reversed its direction and came flopping up, trying blindly to bat at Venn’s face.

  Corcoran’s right, cuffed hand was trapped beneath Venn’s body.

  Gradually Corcoran’s breaths became fainter, quieter. More halting.

  Then they stopped.

  Venn raised his head with extreme difficulty, and stared into the man’s eyes.

  There was no response. They held the blankness of death.

  Venn heaved himself back so that he was gazing up at the sky again.

  By God, he wasn’t going gently.

  He felt his focus narrowing into an ever-shrinking dot, like the one on old TV sets when you switched them off.

  This was it. The end.

  Omega.

  The dot dwindled, then winked out.

  Chapter 75

  The shots tore through the night sky, and as soon as she heard them, Beth knew they had come from up on the roof.

  She craned her neck through the open car window, but couldn’t see anything happening up there.
>
  Beside her, Prof Lomax said: ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Beth, gripped by indecision.

  A few seconds later she heard the wailing of a siren.

  That was quick, she thought. Too quick. There must have been cops in the area, and they’re responding to the shooting of their own accord.

  A squad car tore round the corner and stopped. Two cops got out, their weapons drawn.

  Another car pulled up behind them. The pair of uniformed officers who got out of the second car spoke to the first two, then moved round the side of the building.

  Beth heard yells, and the two cops in the front quickly ran after their colleagues.

  She waited. Listened.

  Voices carried, but there was no shooting.

  Beth opened her door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked the Prof.

  ‘Venn,’ she said. ‘Something’s wrong.’

  ‘Beth, it’s too dangerous –’ Professor Lomax began.

  Beth didn’t hear the rest of it. She was already sprinting across the street, toward the corner round which the cops had disappeared.

  She saw the four cops in a knot up ahead, on the sidewalk. Two of them were crouched down over what appeared to be a pair of bodies. The remaining two cops were staring upward, as she had done, trying to see what was going on up on the roof. One of them was shouting into a radio.

  Beth ran toward them.

  One of the cops swung his gun to aim at her. ‘Stop right there!’

  Beth held her hands away from her body as she approached. ‘I’m a doctor,’ she said. ‘I was nearby and I heard the shooting, saw the bodies here.’

  The two kneeling cops straightened, looking doubtfully at her. ‘Guys are dead.’

  She stared down.

  Two men, both on their backs. Handcuffed together. One was thin, bloodied, with gaping wounds in his chest and face. His eyes were open, and glazed in death.

  The other man was Venn.

  His eyes were closed. There was blood at his mouth, and his legs were twisted at awkward angles.

  Venn. No.

  Beth knelt, put her ear to his face.

  Was that a whisper of breath, or her imagination?

  With expert fingers she probed the side of his neck, for the carotid pulse.

  Nothing.

  She forced back the swell of emotion that threatened to engulf her. Steeled herself. Went into full professional mode.

  As she tilted Venn’s head back to clear the airway, she said to the cops, ‘You called an ambulance?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said one of them. ‘ETA four minutes. You think this guy might make it, doc?’

  ‘He’s going to make it. Yes.’

  More police cars were screeching to a halt in the area. Beth ignored them.

  She began the breaths into Venn’s windpipe, the chest compressions to get his heart beating in a normal rhythm once more.

  And there it was. A pulse, faint but distinct, in his throat.

  All the while, beth was assessing. Evaluating.

  Venn didn’t seem to be bleeding significantly. But his chest, which she’d exposed by ripping open his shirt, was massively bruised.

  Blunt chest trauma.

  The lights of an ambulance swept across the scene. Two EMTs leaped out.

  Without looking up at them, Beth gave them a quick summary of her findings.

  There on the sidewalk, they hooked up an EKG monitor. As they did so, Beth checked Venn’s blood pressure.

  It was alarmingly low.

  In his neck, the veins bulged like purple ropes.

  Beth recognized the signs.

  ‘Cardiac tamponade,’ she said to the EMTs.

  The trauma Venn had suffered to his chest – presumably from falling off the roof – had caused a buildup of blood in the sac around his heart. It had caused the cardiac arrest, which she’d successfully aborted, but it was going to kill him soon in any case.

  ‘Syringe,’ she said.

  ‘Doc, you can’t do it here –’

  ‘Give me a damn syringe!’ she yelled.

  The paramedic handed her a large syringe with a massive needle on the end.

  She uncapped the needle, felt under Venn’s breastbone at the midpoint.

  Normally this was done in hospital, under the guidance of ultrasound. But Beth didn’t have that luxury. Or any time.

  She inserted the needle, hardly daring to breathe.

  Pulled back the plunger.

  And saw the syringe fill quickly with blood.

  She drew off a syringeful, emptied it in the street.

  Drew off another. And another.

  She paused, used the stethoscope the paramedic had provided to listen to Venn’s heart.

  The heart sounds were there. More muffled than they should be, but there.

  And in his neck, the veins were less prominent.

  ‘Let’s get him out of here,’ she said to the paramedics.

  They found the keys to the cuffs in Venn’s trouser pocket and unsnapped them, freeing him from the dead man. Then they hoisted Venn onto a gurney – at least one of his legs was clearly broken, possibly both – and Beth climbed into the rear of the ambulance with him.

  She drew off more blood from around his heart, depositing it in a bowl the EMT provided.

  And more still.

  The ambulance sped through the streets, its siren howling.

  Beneath Beth’s hands, Venn lay still. Not responding.

  Beth put her face to his.

  In his ear she whispered: ‘Please don’t die...’

  Chapter 76

  The first wave of arrests began at around two AM.

  Rosetti was woken by a pounding on the door of her office. As often happened, she’d gone to sleep in her wheelchair at work.

  But she’d barely slept. Not after the snafu that day. The fuckup to end all fuckups.

  Fifteen men were dead, from both New England and her own crew. Including Vincenzo, who’d led the so-called raid on the cabin up in Maine. Shot up like a bunch of wild turkeys.

  And the Colby bitch had gotten away. Again. Again.

  It was Zach Infante at the door, his face pale, his hair wild. ‘Boss! Marky DeLeo and his boys have just been busted. Feds.’

  Rosetti sat up in her chair, grimacing in pain. DeLeo was her lieutenant covering the Bronx. One of her main guys.

  Infante’s phone trilled. He took it out, dropped it, picked it up again. After listening, he lowered it slowly.

  ‘What is it?’ snapped Rosetti.

  ‘The Feds are outside,’ he whispered. ‘Outside this building.’

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ snarled Rosetti.

  And as she tried to process the information, tried to start devising a plan that would get her out of the situation, she heard the crashing and shouting from below. The bootsteps heavy on the stairs.

  The door burst open and a bunch of armed men in flak jackets swarmed in, the letters FBI on their backs.

  ‘Freeze!’ they yelled, unnecessarily.

  Rosetti swore and spat at them as they cuffed her hands in front of her in the wheelchair. One of their guys, the boss, stood before her.

  ‘DeeDee Maria Rosetti, you’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder. You have the right to remain silent...’

  So this was it. The big one. The one from which there was no going back.

  She watched the Feds cuff Infante and read him his rights.

  One of the Feebs started wheeling her toward the door. As she passed Infante she glared up at him, as if it was all his fault.

  Infante stared back down at her. She thought he was going to start blubbing.

  Then he hawked and spat stickily right in her face.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to do that, boss,’ he said.

  They wheeled her away without even giving her something to wipe her face with.

  Chapter 77

  Six months later

  A chilly November wind sw
ept through the graveyard. Beth pulled her coat around herself, tightened her scarf.

  Five more minutes. Then she’d call it a day.

  She gazed down at the grave. It was a simple affair, a plain rectangle of earth with six months of grass now grown on it. The headstone too was straightforward. Gray marble with name, dates of birth and death, and In Loving Memory carved into it.

  Even now, a half year later, Beth couldn’t stop the tears coming each time she visited.

  As she was about to turn away, she saw a figure in the distance, coming up the path toward her.

  The figure walked with difficulty. Its silhouette was made bulkier by the greatcoat it wore.

  Beth watched the figure approach. When it was only a few yards away, she broke into a smile.

  And ran toward it, flinging herself into its arms.

  ‘Easy,’ Venn grimaced, but he was smiling too. ‘I’m still a bit fragile.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She stepped back, but only a little, and studied him.

  He was thinner than when she’d first met him on that terrible night, and his stride was less confident. Breaking your femur on one side and your ankle on the other tended to take the spring out of your step.

  And those were some of the more minor injuries Venn had sustained.

  They’d got him to the hospital and into the OR with incredible speed. The hospital staff had to bodily steer Beth away, explaining that she couldn’t be present in theater, and that she needed to let the surgeons do their job.

  Besides, they said, she’d already done enough. She’d saved his life.

  The cardiac tamponade had been cleared, the fluid removed, and Venn’s heart had emerged relatively unscathed, apart from a slight arrhythmia which he was likely to have for the rest of his life, but which he probably wouldn’t notice. The surgeons had also discovered blood in his abdominal cavity, and it turned out he had a torn spleen. That had to come out, too.

  He’d been incredibly lucky, as he later told Beth. The awning had broken his fall on the way down, and Corcoran’s body had provided something of a cushion. There’d been no head injury.

  Professor Lomax had found her at the hospital – she’d completely forgotten that she’d left him behind in the car – and she’d wept combined tears of fear and relief on his shoulder.