Aim True, My Brothers

by William F. Brown

  When he finally reached the second-floor landing, he stopped for a few moments to rest and mop his brow on the sleeve of his coat. As he did, he pulled his .38-caliber “Official“ Colt Police Special revolver from his rear pants pocket and checked the cylinders. The Colt was his “blood gun.” It had always shot straight for him and he only used it when he was deadly serious. It got him promoted back in Belfast, and was one of his prized possessions. When he was only nineteen years old, he had taken it from the hand of a Protestant RUC detective he gunned down in the man’s own kitchen in front of his family during “the Troubles.” With a five-inch barrel and a 200-grain bullet, it weighed well over two pounds loaded. It could stop anything on two legs, but Murphy had not carried it around for several years. After the business with Teraki at the hotel, he began carrying it again. This too was a blood matter, he decided, and there would be no more surprises.

  Glancing down, he tucked the tails of his shirt in around his large gut, slipped the pistol in the hollow of his back behind his belt, and hitched up his slacks before he walked over to apartment 2-B, and gave the door a firm, playful knock. As much as he detested the strenuous exertion, Murphy’s eyes went wide when a drop-dead, buxom brunette answered the door. She was dressed in a revealing silk bathrobe and obviously wore little else underneath it.

  “You must be Sean Murphy,” she said as she leaned seductively against the doorway and eyed him up and down, from crotch to lips. In that instant, Murphy forgot everything else. “I’m Lilah,” she said. “Come on in.” Lilah licked her lips, but was having a hard time keeping a straight face. This pale, fat Irishman was worse than she had expected, leaving her pleased that the woman wasn’t making her do him. After all, she had her standards. A good romp might kill this one, but do nothing for her.

  Murphy stepped forward and grinned. “My pleasure, darlin',” he said in a voice loud enough to be heard over the loud music from the bar below. “Lord, but how can you even think up here with all of that?”

  “The band?” Lilah asked, motioning for him to come inside. “Well, I’ve been known to get a little loud at times, myself, and now there’s no nosey neighbors to complain about me.”

  “So, you get loud, eh?” he asked.

  “When I get really excited,” she said as she closed the door behind him and ran her hands down his chest, coming on to him like a sexual volcano.

  Murphy was not quite that stupid, however. “There’s plenty of time for that, darlin’,” he said as he grabbed her wrists and pressed her back against the wall.

  “You like it rough, huh?”

  “Sometimes, but first, let's you and me have a little chat about our Middle Eastern ‘friend.’ You’re sure you haven't seen him around here lately?”

  “Him? Everything was arranged by phone, honey.”

  She tried to kiss him, but he pushed her away. “I think you know a bit more about him than that, ‘darlin’. Now, help me out here. Where is he?”

  Lilah stepped back and bristled. “Look, I don’t…” but Murphy wasn’t listening. He spun her around and twisted her wrist behind her back. “Hey! I ain’t into pain.”

  “Well, I am,” Murphy hissed as he grabbed her hair with his other hand, pulled her head back and twisted her arm again. “You're gonna tell me where I can find that Wog bastard, or I'll break your arm; and I'll keep breakin' things, until you run out of bones or I run out of time. I swear it, darlin'. Now, where is he?”

  Murphy grinned until he felt something hard press against the side of his head. He glanced sideways and saw a petite blonde woman at the other end of a large semi-automatic pistol with a silencer attached to the end of the barrel. “So, Lilah has a friend, eh?” he said as he felt a very professional hand pat him down and take the revolver from his belt. He tightened his grip on Lilah's hair and snarled, “Back off, bitch, or I'll snap her neck!”

  Rachel Ullman pressed the pistol even harder into Murphy's temple. “You may be into pain, Murphy,” she said, “but I do not think you are into stupid or dead, now are you?”

  “If you know who I am, you know you just made the biggest mistake of your life, girlie.” The Irishman glared fiercely at her, but when he saw it had no effect, he finally released his grip on Lilah's hair and turned on Ullman. “All right, all right, what do you want?”

  Ullman said nothing. With a lightning-quick move, she backhanded the Irishman across the face with his own pistol and knocked him to the floor, stunned and bleeding. As he lay there, Mouse stepped into the room and pulled Lilah aside. Ullman handed her the five hundred-dollar bills as Mouse draped her coat over her shoulders and steered her out the front door.

  “Remember what I told you,” Ullman warned her, her eyes cold and menacing.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Lilah whispered as she looked down at Murphy and quickened her pace down the stairs.

  Mouse closed the door behind her, and then looked at Murphy. The Irishman sat up, wiping the blood off his chin as his tongue explored the inside of his mouth for missing teeth. “You crazy bitch, you knocked out…”

  “Shut up,” Ullman answered as she stepped even closer, his Colt dangling from her left hand and her Jericho automatic in her right, the barrel pointed unwaveringly at the bridge of his nose.

  Murphy had looked into some hard eyes in his day, but this little bitch’s sent a shiver down his spine. “They got laws in this country, you know,” he glared up at her, trying to get some of his old bravado back. “You FBI bastards can’t just come in and knock a fellow around like this. I’ll have my lawyer on you first thing in the morning, and then…”

  Ullman kicked him in the ribs with a short, violent snap of her leg that Murphy never saw coming. It took his breath away, silencing him, and leaving him curled in a ball on the floor. She bent over him and said, “These are my favorite shoes, Murphy. They have steel toes and I just love how they break bones. Now, get up and shut up or I’ll really put them to work,” she ordered in a calm, cold voice. When he did not move quickly enough, she gave him another kick in the same spot, and then a third, until she felt something crack.

  “Oh, Lord, stop it, will you,” he moaned.

  “We are not the American FBI, Murphy, and your lawyer cannot help you — not here and not now. You have stepped into something way out of your league this time. If you do not tell me what I want to know, it is a priest and mortician you’ll be needin’, Mate.”

  Mouse stood in the doorway watching Ullman work. He was terrified of her, even if the Irishman was not. Murphy had her by nearly a foot and well over a hundred pounds, but it did not matter. She reached down, grabbed him by the ear and pulled him screaming painfully up to his feet. Giving him no time to gather his thoughts, she dragged him quickly down the hall to the kitchen, bouncing him off the walls, until she shoved him into a cheap dinette chair in front of a Formica table.

  “Sweet Jesus, you broke me ribs you crazy bitch,” Murphy groaned as he slumped forward holding his sides, his face wracked in pain.

  “And I’ll break a few more of them, if you don’t do what you are told. Now put your hands out, flat on the table.”

  “What? Yeah, anything, just stop poundin' on me, will ya?” he said as he laid his hands flat on the table.

  Ullman dropped a photograph of Al-Bari and one of Arazi between them. “Are these your Middle Eastern friends?” she said as she walked around behind him. “Tell me about them.”

  That was when Murphy detected a slight accent in her voice and a wave of nauseating fear passed through him. “Look, I was just clowning around with the girl. She made the big come-on, so I played along to get her in bed. I don’t know these guys, I was just putting her on. You see…”

  Before he could finish the lie, Murphy’s head exploded in excruciating pain as the palms of Ullman’s cupped hands slammed into his ears, pounding his eardrums. Murphy screamed and his head crashed forward onto the table in agony. Ullman let him stay like that for a few moments, glancing over her shoulder toward the Egyptian as if
she were an instructor in a master class demonstrating to a hopelessly backward student. Turning away, she walked around to the front of the kitchen table, leaned forward, and studied him.

  Murphy raised his head and looked at the photos again. “All right, all right, gimme a chance to think here,” he begged, but he thought for a second too long. Ullman hit him in the face with the barrel of his Colt revolver again, harder than the first time, and the Irishman toppled sideways out of the chair onto the floor.

  Ullman looked at Mouse, who stood in the doorway, wide-eyed. “Pick him up,” she ordered in a calm, unemotional voice.

  “This is all wrong,” Mouse said as he struggled to lift the big Irishman and shove him back in the chair. Ullman glared at him, but said nothing. She grabbed Murphy's hands and slapped them flat on the table once again, palm-down.

  “Look at me, Murphy,” she said as she leaned forward so their faces were only inches apart. “I do this for a living. If you do not start telling me exactly what I want to know, I will give you pain like you have never felt before. Your pals in Belfast are complete amateurs compared to me. So stop the bullshit. This is your last warning.”

  “Who are you?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. “Special Branch? RUC? MI5? I got friends in this town, big friends, and…”

  “You aren’t listening, Irishman. I am not with your damned Special Branch, RUC, MI5, MI6, the FBI, the CIA, or the Boston dogcatchers. I’m your worst nightmare — a woman who gets off on hurting terrorists, and I can keep this up all night long. Can you? Now tell me, which one of them was in charge?”

  “Him, him,” Murphy pointed to Al-Bari’s photo as he slumped forward. “Teraki, the nasty bugger on the right.”

  “That’s what he called himself, Teraki?”

  “Yeah, Teraki. That’s the name he used.”

  “All right. You got something for him, didn’t you? What was it?” Ullman asked as she turned away and reached for something in her large purse on the counter top behind her.

  Murphy’s eyes followed her, wary and afraid, but he did not answer.

  “Are you thinking again, Murphy? You know you’re not very good at that,” she said as she turned back around swinging a ball-peen hammer. Before he could move, it crashed down on the back of his left hand as it lay on the table, with a sickening Crunch!

  Murphy’s eyes went wide as he looked down at the broken hand and screamed.

  “Scream as loud as you want. With that rock band downstairs, no one will ever hear you.”

  Murphy’s face turned white with pain. Tears ran down his cheeks as his screams faded into a gut-wrenching moan. He raised his hand and cradled it to his chest, shaking and trembling.

  Mouse stepped forward, but before he could say anything, Ullman silenced him with those cold, hate-filled gray eyes. “Not a word from you, Egyptian,” she whispered as she yanked Murphy’s head up so he could look into her eyes. “Put your hands back on the table,” she told him. “Both of them.”

  “Are you crazy?” Murphy screamed. “My hand!”

  “Crazy? Yes, I guess I am,” Ullman answered with a laugh. “And I'll lay this ball-peen hammer across your head if you don’t do it. Now!”

  Murphy looked up at her, pleading and whimpering. His hands shook, but he slowly put them back down as if the cheap Formica was on fire. “Please, don’t…”

  A very hard look crossed Ullman’s face. “Last chance, Irishman,” she said through her clenched teeth. “What did you get him?”

  “Guns. He needed some guns.”

  “Guns? Do not make me laugh. He already has an arsenal.”

  “All right… he wanted something… a weapon… this particular weapon, so we stole one for him from an Armory. He paid us a hundred thousand to get it, and that wasn’t something I could refuse. You gotta understand that,” he pleaded. “Belfast woulda’…”

  “What was it!” Ullman demanded as she raised the hammer again.

  “No, no, wait… a mortar, a really big one, one of those Four-Deuces the Americans call it — a four-point-two-inch mortar.”

  A stunned silence filled the room. “A mortar?” Ullman finally asked. “What does he want it for?”

  “Christ, I don’t know; I swear I don’t.”

  “What about ammunition? Did you get him some shells, too?” Mouse asked.

  Murphy’s eyes darted back and forth between them. “Yeah, the mortar and a dozen rounds to go with it.” His eyes were pleading now.

  “Good Lord!” Mouse groaned as he leaned against the cabinet behind him. “That is a very large weapon. It is like artillery, like a howitzer.”

  “I know exactly what it is, Egyptian.”

  Terrified, Murphy looked at Ullman and at the hammer. She slammed it down on the tabletop again, several inches from his right hand, but the effect was the same.

  “All right, where is he?” Ullman demanded as she feinted with the hammer again.

  “I don’t know! I swear I don’t. I told you, I’m looking for the bastard, too. That’s why I came here, to beat it out of that whore he sent,” he moaned as she raised the hammer again.

  Ullman stared into his terrified eyes for a moment. “Yes, but you do know something more, don’t you Murphy? Oh, yes, you do know more.”

  “Wait! Who are you? You aren't Brits, and I know you're not Americans,” he said as he looked at Ullman and Mouse and back again. “That accent. You're Israelis. That's why you want him, isn't it? By God, you're Jews, Israelis.”

  “And you are holding out on us, Murphy, I can smell it all over you,” she said as she hit him across the side of the head with a backhand blow from the hammer. Murphy’s head snapped sideways and he crumpled on the floor.

  “If you kill him, you will never learn anything,” Mouse raged as he picked him up again and dropped him in the chair.

  “Don’t worry. He is a long way from dying, Egyptian. Get me a glass of water.” When Mouse finally handed it to her, she threw it in Murphy’s face. His eyes fluttered open as blood ran down the side of his head.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Murphy mumbled as he tried to clear his head.

  “They can’t help you, Murphy. Mother Mary doesn’t give a damn about you Irish or your silly little island, and neither do I. I will kill you right here, piece by bloody piece if you do not tell me what I want to know.”

  “No, stop. Okay, okay, I’ll come clean and tell you everything. I’ll even tell you how you can catch the bastard, if you stop hitting me.”

  “Where is he? In Washington?”

  “I don’t know where he is now, but last night he was further south in Virginia, a town called Gloucester, near Williamsburg and Yorktown.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I didn’t trust the Wog bastard, any more than he trusted us.”

  “I cannot imagine why.”

  “I wanted some protection in case he double-crossed us. He was always so damn smart, so superior. He shot one of me boys, he did, messed up his leg good, and he shouldn’ta done that.” Murphy’s eyes got a beaten, faraway look, so Ullman let him continue, knowing the Irishman had reached the point where it would all flow out without any further prodding. “He stole my wife’s car and the U-Haul trailer we had the goods in. But I expected something like that, so we put a GPS transmitter in one of the boxes, in a little carved out spot in one of the boards. Nailed it all back together, so he’d never find it. Two of my boys followed him on down to Virginia. They drove all night, with my boys tracking them. In Gloucester, he put the stuff in a self-storage shed.”

  “What did he do after that?” Mouse asked quietly.

  “Well, the boys had to be careful, so they held back, and Teraki gave them the slip after the storage shed. I told them that was okay. I knew the bastard would come back and get it, so I told them to stay there and wait for him so we could figure out what he was up to, maybe get something on the bastard. Sure enough, when the Wog went back to the storage shed last night, my boys got the d
rop on him. They phoned me on a cell phone and told me they had him. They were going to fix that bastard good, but then it all went to hell.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. They were good boys — two of my best — but I think the bastard got the best of them, ‘cause they ain’t answerin’ their phones. That was last night. I was talkin’ to Mike and Danny on the phone, when there were a bunch a’ screams. Then the Wog got on and said he was gonna kill me. If I didn’t hear somethin’ from Mike or Danny today, I was gonna go down there tomorrow…”

  “Enough. What does he want the mortar for?” Mouse leaned in and asked.

  “I don’t know; I don’t. For a hundred thousand, though, it must be damned important.”

  Ullman turned and stared down at the Irishman for a moment, thinking. “For once, I suspect you are telling us the truth, Murphy.”

  The Irishman slumped back in the chair, numb from the ordeal. When he looked up again, he found himself staring down the barrel of his own Colt revolver. Murphy barely had time for an agonizing groan before she shot him in the forehead. In the small room, the Colt went off like a cannon, but the gunshot could barely be heard over the drums and booming bass guitar in the club below. The bullet blew the back half of Murphy’s head off, splattering the kitchen cabinets and the sink with his blood, bone, and brains; and the impact knocked him and the chair over backwards onto the floor, very dead.

  “You… Why?” Mouse stammered. “You had no reason…”

  “I had every reason, Egyptian,” she replied, her voice dripping with contempt. “You are as naïve as Barnett. What would you do with him? Let him go?”

  “No, but…”

  “Many people may die because of the new toy Murphy acquired for Al-Bari. You should remember that,” she said as she unscrewed the silencer from the barrel of her Israeli 9-millimeter Jericho automatic and dropped them and Murphy’s revolver into her purse. “Now shut up, and wipe down everything we touched.”

  She turned away in disgust, pulling a black Magic Marker from her purse. In big letters, she scrawled, “Death To All Informers,” and "Ireland Lives, Traitors Die," on the kitchen walls. “That should have them at each other's throats for a while. Let's go.”