LETHAL SCORE

by Mannock, Mark

  I knew I couldn’t wait for them either way. Using the tree as support, I clawed my way up its trunk until I was standing, if you could call it that. Hunched over with acute pain striking lightning bolts through my body, I took a first step. It didn’t kill me. I then began the slow stagger through the bushes toward the asylum.

  At least now I had a knife and a gun.

  Chapter 41

  Both times I had tried to enter the asylum building I had been compromised. That couldn’t be coincidence. Now I clung to the shadows, sheltering in their protection. I moved slowly and carefully until I came to the doorway with the precariously hanging wooden doors.

  I stopped at the door. Through the moonlight and shadows, I couldn’t spot any cameras or laser intrusion detectors. Getting down on to my knees, I started feeling around in front of me for anything that didn’t seem to belong. A minute later I found it. My hand had touched a rubber LED sensor mat under a light layer of dust and gravel. Previously, I’d walked straight over it. I may as well have rung the doorbell.

  Running my hand lightly around the edge of the mat, I identified a narrow pathway, about six inches wide, between the edge of the sensor mat and the wall. I hoped pressing myself against the stone wall and following that track with my feet would allow me to enter the building undetected. Once through the doorway, I stayed on my hands and knees, sticking to the perimeter walls and sweeping the ground ahead of me with my palm.

  At the chapel entrance I detected another sensor mat in the doorway. Again, I felt my way around it and crawled toward the trapdoor at the far end of the room.

  I could think of no safe or effective strategy for entering a room full of armed soldiers through a roof. I likely wouldn’t descend the ladder before being cut in half by a hail of bullets.

  I would have considered alternatives, but there weren’t any.

  I couldn’t see how this could end well, but neither could I just walk away. If I did, I was committing an untold amount of people to an early grave.

  The only way I could figure this was to make an outright one-man assault.

  I ran my hands around the trapdoor’s perimeter. There were no wires and no sensor pad on top, but Ascardi may have been using LED sensor tech on the approaches to his control room. I needed to be able to drop down through that hole in the floor quickly. The few seconds it would take to open the door after giving him warning of my presence could make all the difference between a successful infiltration or a futile death.

  As I pulled the knife out of my pocket with my right hand, I gently lifted the trapdoor with my left, just enough to run the knife around the perimeter. Halfway along the opposite side of the hatch, I felt it with the blade’s tip: a small sensor button that when released would probably trigger an alarm if I lifted the trapdoor any higher. Trying not to move the door any more than I had to, I eased the blade over the button to hold it down.

  Now: to move in one quick advance or go the stealth route and try and get down the ladder unnoticed? Success depended on where people were looking when I entered. I decided to try the stealth approach first. I could always change strategy mid-stream.

  Keeping the knife on the sensor button, I cautiously lifted the trapdoor open, trying to minimize the metallic scraping of the hinges that I had heard earlier. The workers below made enough noise that the door’s quiet creaking went unheard. The darkness of the chapel also meant that no light would be noticed from inside the control room. I risked a look down into the room. It appeared to be populated, as before. If anything, the tension and focus of work in the room had increased. Ascardi’s deadline was looming, so everyone was hunched over the computers with conversation kept to a terse minimum. While I was thankful for their distraction, their heightened level of activity also reminded me that time was an issue.

  I pulled my head up. Stealth it would be. Swiveling around while still keeping my knife on the sensor button, I placed my first foot on the top rung of the ladder, pausing nervously to test the waters. There was no reaction. I lowered myself another step down, focusing entirely on keeping my movements slow and noise to a minimum. I continued step by step, biting my tongue to avoid crying out in agony from bolts of pain generated by the knife wound as I stretched my torso to pull the trapdoor back down. As the door came down, I slid the knife quietly back off the sensor switch.

  When I reached the floor, I lay down flat so I wouldn’t be seen over the banks of computers. There was no sound, no alarm. I had a chance.

  Ascardi and one of his henchmen were a good twenty feet away from where I lay. It was too great a distance to cross without being seen. The four computer operators were closest. Elena was at the nearest bank of computers with her back to me, looking over one of the operator’s shoulders.

  My biggest threat was Ascardi’s henchman. He would be a professional, trained to react in emergency situations. I would need to take him out first. Then I’d go for Ascardi and deal with the computer operators as required. It was my own weakness that I couldn’t really judge how much of a threat Elena was.

  I quietly maneuvered myself to an upright position, holding my newly acquired gun in front of me. I paused to gauge my chances. The knife wound in my side was causing me grief as spasms of pain invaded my body without warning and my arm throbbed consistently where the bullet had grazed it earlier. I was also so far beyond physically exhausted that I couldn’t trust every message my brain was sending me. Perfect.

  Ascardi’s man began to turn around. Act now or give it up.

  I leaped to my feet and fired. My bullet took the man straight through his heart. Ascardi turned and spat out one word: “Sharp!” I turned toward him and began to squeeze the trigger a second time.

  Another of Ascardi’s men stepped out of the shadows on the left-hand side of the room. He was holding a pistol pointed directly at me. I had no time to re-aim. This was it. Then Elena, who had turned to look at me when I shot the henchman, turned back to the man with the gun and screamed “No!”

  I braced for the impact of the bullet, but then Elena, the unpredictable enchantress, stepped between the gunman and me. She was too late to stop him. I heard the sound of the gun firing, but I felt nothing. For a second Elena just stood there with her back to me. The gunman must have missed. But he hadn’t. Elena slowly started to buckle and then fell to the ground.

  Ascardi lost it completely. Before I could react, he had produced a pistol from his pocket, turned to the gunman while shouting “You fool,” and then shot him between the eyes.

  I looked up to see that the four men who had been sitting at the computers were now all on their feet. Each held a small revolver aimed at me. I hadn’t counted on them being armed. They didn’t fire, but they didn’t flinch either. I put my gun down.

  Both Ascardi and I ran to Elena. I got there first. She was struggling to breathe, and blood wept from her mouth. I looked down at the wound in her chest. Too much dark blood pouring onto the stone floor.

  She looked at me; those deep Atlantic-green eyes were fading. “Nicholas, I’m so sorry.” She tried to smile, but all she could do was flinch.

  Ascardi kneeled next to her, cradling her head in his arms. “Tony,” she gasped.

  And with that, she was gone.

  It was a surreal picture, Ascardi and I kneeling on the ground next to her. Then he looked up at me, his face contorted with rage. “This is your fault, Sharp,” he snarled.

  He looked around, obviously realizing he’d dropped his gun as he rushed to Elena’s side. He got up, walked over to one of the armed computer technicians and grabbed his revolver.

  I knew what was coming, but despite having nowhere to go, I wasn’t going to stay there and wait for it. I sprang to my feet. I couldn’t outrun four armed men, but I might have a chance to take Ascardi out before I went down.

  The man closest to me hesitated, as if waiting for orders. I knocked him out of the way and lunged for Ascardi. I was too slow. Ascardi raised his weapon and aimed. I was still eight feet from hi
m; I’d have no chance. Still, I would die trying.

  It was then that the earth shook. An explosion echoed through the room, so loud that it felt like my ears were imploding. The roof started to collapse. Stone and wood showered down upon us.

  Ascardi lost his footing and fell to the floor, disappearing under a cloud of dust and rubble. I fell and rolled, barely making it to the shelter of a computer desk before a huge wooden beam smashed down where I had just been standing.

  Every one of us in that room lost our bearings as the wreckage came down. You could see virtually nothing through the dust and smoke. I had no idea what had caused the explosion, just that I had to survive long enough to take Ascardi out.

  The dust began to clear. I couldn’t hear much, but I saw two figures approaching out of the haze. They were more of Ascardi’s oversized henchmen. I felt the space around me close in while I tried to reach for some sort of weapon. The men had seen me. I was surrounded by wreckage with nowhere to go. In desperation I wrapped my hands around a heavy piece of stone—that would have to do. I raised it in the air.

  “Take it easy, Rambo,” said a muffled voice.

  I wiped the dust from my eyes.

  As the figures cleared the smoke, I could slowly make them out. They were big men, walking with purpose and aggression. As they neared, I decided I was all right with that. They came right up to where I was half-lying-half-crouching and looked down.

  To anyone else they would have looked like monsters—not to me. “About freakin’ time,” I said as Jack Greatrex and Joe Santoro reached down and pulled me to my feet.

  Chapter 42

  I knew there was a story behind what had just happened, but there was no time to hear it.

  “Sit-rep: there are four armed men plus Ascardi somewhere in this room,” I said. I realized I was probably shouting the words. The effect of the explosion on my hearing made my voice sound like I was talking through a wet sponge. “We’ve got to find them. Until we do, Ascardi is still a danger.”

  “Got it,” said Greatrex.

  Joe Santoro was already searching the room. There was some dim light, most likely from an emergency generator, but it revealed little. Suddenly, a man appeared out of the shadows behind Joe. Unsurprisingly, the figure appeared shaky on his feet. Before I could warn the giant, the outline of a gun appeared in the shadowy figure’s hand.

  “Joe,” I finally managed to half yell, half cough.

  Joe began to turn around when the sound of a gunshot resonated around what was left of the room. Joe seemed to flinch, but he never lost his footing. He then reached toward the man who had shot at him, grabbed him by the collar, hoisted him in the air and swept the gun out of his grasp with a powerful backhander. The man continued to struggle in Joe’s grip, but it was pointless. One powerful punch from Joe’s clenched fist, and he fell backward onto the rubble. He lay there in an unconscious heap.

  The brief altercation had sharpened our senses. The danger was still very real.

  Greatrex and Santoro searched the rubble, upending beams, furniture, and piles of stone.

  It was a noisy process. The sound of crashing debris being dislodged and cast aside vibrated around the room. I was on the job but still in a daze. Pain and fatigue fought for my undivided attention.

  I don’t know how I heard it amid the noise, but I did hear it. It was the sound of rock scraping harshly against rock. Then a quiet thump as rubble was being gently shoved aside, but not where Greatrex and Joe were searching. The grating sounds came from behind me. I turned and squinted into the dust-filled semi-darkness. At first I saw nothing, but my senses had sprung into alert mode. Someone was there.

  A second later another shadow arose hesitantly from the smokey rubble. For a moment, the figure stopped. I could make out enough body language to see him—and it was definitely a male—scan the room. He was well out of my reach, with piles of rock laying between us. As quickly as the figure rose, he disappeared again behind some rubble. A few seconds later he reappeared, this time hunched in a crawling position. I couldn’t work out what he was doing until his whole body appeared above the rubble. He was climbing steadily along a heavy wooden beam that had fallen at a forty-five-degree angle to the floor. It extended up into an opening in the ceiling.

  “Jack, Joe,’ I yelled. “You cover whoever is alive here, and watch your backs. We’ve got a runaway.”

  By the time I had taken a single step, the figure had exited through the gap in the ceiling. Willing my own body into action, I climbed over the mess of stone, wood, equipment, and shattered furniture and reached toward the angled wooden beam. I must have grasped the top of the beam only seconds after the figure I had seen had disappeared through the hole, yet sticking my head cautiously out of the gap, I saw no one.

  The shadow of the old clock tower loomed over me as I laboriously pulled myself up through the hole. My first reaction was to soak in the fresh air. My second was to fix my gaze on a room that no longer existed. Any structure that was here had been destroyed in the explosion, turning the building into an open-air ruin. Nothing but stone and concrete debris lay strewn across the space. Not knowing which way the figure had gone, I decided to head for the tower building.

  Just as it was impossible to find me in the undergrowth a short time ago, it would now be impossible for me to see anyone else. I raced through the trees to the edge of the tower building. I knew my way along here from my previous search, so I made good time. Soon I was out in the open, running along the stone path between the buildings and the water. I saw no one ahead of me. The only possible plan was to circumnavigate the island on foot and try to locate the missing man. If the figure I had seen was Ascardi, I knew he would have a pre-planned escape route. It was in his innate, meticulous nature. There was a lot of ground to cover and not much time to do it.

  As I rounded the southern corner of the building at a full run, a bullet flew past my ear, impacting the stone wall beside me. A geyser of shattered stone spewed into the air. Had I been moving slower, I would have certainly been shot. Crashing hard down onto the path, I heard another bullet hit the ground next to me. More shards of shattered stone flew into the back of my neck and head. I risked provoking the gunman with a brief glance ahead. By now, the fog had disappeared completely and the figure firing at me was clearly outlined in the moonlight.

  I could see him, and his accuracy meant he could see me as well. I wouldn’t last long in such a vulnerable position, but I was unable to move, pinned down by the gunfire.

  Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the pistol. Without aiming, I held it in front of me and fired indiscriminately. I missed, but my shot had served its purpose. The figure turned and ran down the pathway.

  I jumped to my feet and ran after him. I had no idea whether I was chasing one of Ascardi’s henchmen or the man himself. I just kept running.

  A minute later the man ahead of me disappeared from sight as the pathway ahead veered to the right. Remembering my near-death experience as I rounded the last corner, I knew caution was warranted. Not happening.

  I rounded the corner at full speed. To my relief, there was no gunshot. My comfort proved to be short-lived: the figure leaped out of the bushes on my right. His left hand was raised high above his head. In the shadows I didn’t see the large piece of wood in his hand until just before he connected with the side of my head. I tried to avoid the blow, but I had no chance. Once again, my world spun out of control as any sense of balance deserted me. I collapsed onto the ground, dazed but still conscious. Pain was no longer a sensation; it was the essence of my being.

  My attacker didn’t hang around. One second, he was standing over me, the next he was gone. Though my vision was blurred, there was no mistaking the furious face of Antonio Ascardi.

  As debilitated as I felt, the fact that Ascardi was still alive spurred me on.

  I staggered to my feet and tried to run. It wasn’t happening. The best I could do was an erratic limp. I tried to refocus, concentrating hard to make
sure I didn’t go over the edge of the path. Why hadn’t Ascardi finished me off with a bullet? He probably thought there was no need and that escaping was his priority. The way I was feeling, he may well have made the right decision.

  I made it to the end of the pathway, where the trail stopped at a boat shed. I was about to search the building when I glimpsed movement to my right. It was Ascardi, just past the structure’s northern end, advancing along the edge of the canal that cleaved the island. The man was disappearing from view. I had to slow him down. I didn’t know how many rounds I had left in my gun, and I didn’t want to waste any.

  To hell with it. I figured he’d be out of view within a second, so I fired twice in his direction. He was running too quickly, and my shots went wide. At least he now knew I was still behind him; that might make him more cautious.

  I held back what pace I had at the far end of the boat shed. I had learned my lesson. There was no clear path along the channel at this point, just a lot of undergrowth and a few ruined buildings. This had just become a very dangerous game between Ascardi, myself, and the random slivers of light provided by the moon.

  I moved as silently as I could through the bush and stone landscape. Every footstep seemed to advertise my presence as twigs and rocks snapped and rumbled under my feet. I stopped every thirty seconds or so to listen for any sign of Ascardi’s location. On my third stop, I heard rustling. I pushed toward the sound and then stopped again. Nothing except the gentle breeze over the water.

  I saw the flash from the muzzle at the same time I heard the shot. A bullet embedded itself in a tree trunk about an inch from my head. Without thinking, I fired back at the source. When I hit the ground and listened, there was no response to my shot. I struggled as I climbed to my feet, every muscle and tendon in my body screaming.