A bullet hit one of the Chinese in the throat. Instinctively he lifted his hand to his neck in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Screaming like a stuck pig, he crumpled to the ground and started thrashing about, trying to hold off the hand of death.
“Gaah!” he moaned before drawing his last breath.
Dry, sharp whistles cut through the air. Volleys of bullets whipped the ground.
Zhang covered his eyes and curled up, trying to make himself as small as he could. He leaned on the fence, desperately looking for some protection from the rain of bullets.
A third shot from somewhere opposite the farmhouse.
A couple of the Chinese turned in that direction, swearing and exchanging quick nods.
“Die, you fucking yellow scumbags!”
Tripe’s voice cut the air like a siren. His .50 Desert Eagle barked. A couple of bullets ended up in the leg of a Chinaman ahead of him. The gun kept clicking.
Next to him Polenta got nailed by a volley of .9mm bullets that literally lifted him from the ground and knocked him backwards. His body, hit repeatedly, spasmed as if someone had installed cables under his skin and turned on an electric current.
The courtyard looked like the OK Corral in Tombstone, where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday shot the Clanton brothers dead. But this wasn't the Wild West. It was the countryside just beyond Badia Polesine.
With a last-gasp leap, Pagnan jumped behind the door. Splinters of wood exploded all around him from the Uzis.
“Boss!” shouted the Newbie from inside the house while a hailstorm of broken glass tore at his clothes and unprotected skin. His voice reached a ridiculous pitch, even higher than the whistle of the bullets. He moved towards the entrance of the house to assist Pagnan’s retreat and found himself in front of the doorway for a second. Unfortunately for him, the door was open.
He stood there like a hero.
Or a dumbass.
And was hit by an avalanche of bullets that butchered his chest. Red holes gaped on his white shirt. His feet started moving in a kind of a frantic breakdance.
Then he collapsed. First onto his knees, then his belly.
“No!” Pagnan shouted.
From on top of the old furnace Mila kept the bullets mercilessly raining down. Her shots were accurate. Steady. Undodgeable. Harvesting the lives of Guo’s men like ears of wheat. Deadly trails cutting through the air and lodging between the shoulder blades of their victims. Fresh blood soaked the earth.
An apocalypse of violence. Screams, agony, broken lives. One after another. One next to another.
Caught in the middle, the Triads couldn’t turn the situation around. Targeted by the crossfire of Pretty Boy’s Mossberg and Mila’s Beretta, they had no chance of finding shelter.
Two of them had tried to get back to the car but Mila hit them from above. Stars of blood and brain matter burst out of their heads.
Miraculously, Tripe was still standing. He was bleeding from an arm that had been grazed by a bullet.
Guo was crawling towards Zhang, who was still curled up near the fence. Each movement Guo made was a struggle. Each yard a jolt of pain shot through his entire body, making him shudder. A dying rat with no way out.
Zhang lifted his head and saw him a few yards away. A handless puppet, Zhang was crying big-time, heavy tears running down his pale near-blue cheeks. His jaw had been clenched for over fifteen hours, and now seemed to give his face an expression that suggested the desperation of a life slipping away.
That woman is a devil, he thought.
She had humiliated them and torn them to pieces. Again. And now there was nothing to be done except watch his uncle crawl towards him like a worm, bloody and exhausted.
He held out his arm, or what was left of it, tried to stretch as much as the rope around his neck allowed. The muscles in his neck were tighter than ever.
“Forgive me, uncle,” he managed to whisper.
“Za... ng,” Guo whispered back. A second later the White Paper Fan of the 14K Triad, leader of the Talking Daggers, lowered his eyes. For the last time.
Pagnan picked up the Newbie’s Mossberg and drilled the back of the last Chinaman standing. The man fell forward, his arms spread out, a Christ crashing onto the hard, cold ground in a stew of red blood.
“Yahoo!” shouted Pagnan, happiness in his eyes. The eyes of a child whose grandfather had just given him the bar of chocolate he demanded.
Pretty Boy stared at him in disbelief. On the ground next to them was the dead body of the Newbie. Riddled by a dozen gunshots.
Tripe was coughing.
“Are you all right?” Pagnan asked him.
“Yes boss! Fuck! There's nothing we can do for Polenta.”
“Shit, I know! The Newbie's gone too...”
“He died saving your ass,” remarked Pretty Boy.
“Hey, I know, don’t think I don’t! Yes, he saved my ass. And I won't forget. Anyway, better the Newbie than me. What, you want me to write a song for him?”
“Pfff!” replied Pretty Boy, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his right forearm. The tension that had been building up had exploded in a huge adrenaline rush.
Tripe looked around. “Fucking hell! It's a bloodbath out here!”
It felt like he had gotten back in touch with reality after a mental short circuit a few minutes long. After the blackout, his thoughts had immediately turned to the wound on his arm.
He'd examined it and judged it not too serious. He'd taken off his jacket and his shirt and torn the latter to pieces, ripped it into strips and tied them together to make a long bandage which he'd then wrapped around the wound.
Pagnan saw Zhang bent over his uncle’s lifeless body. He picked up his mobile and called Mule, who answered after three rings.
“You see that, boss? The babe here's slaughtered them!”
“Yes, she has. Where were you?”
“What do you mean, boss? I was here with her, on the roof of the furnace. Without a zoom lens and with all the carnage down there, I'm not entirely sure what the fuck exactly happened.”
“Those bastards killed Polenta and the Newbie.”
“Shit. Sons of bitches.”
“I know. Certainly could have gone better. Or worse. Listen,” said Pagnan, “get your ass into gear. There's a stack of corpses to tidy up.”
“Cool, on our way.”
Mule ended the conversation and turned to Mila. She was busy taking the zoom lens off the rifle with precise, robotic movements. Unfaltering, emotionless. She could have been forged in iron.
“How do you do it?” Mule asked.
“How do I do what?” replied Mila.
“I mean... you just caused a massacre with that fucking alien-killer of a space gun and... well…”
“What do you think I should be doing?”
“I don’t know... maybe sighing a little or something. But no reaction? Nada? I'd love to know how the fuck you do it.”
“Huh. Those were criminals, not nurses.”
“OK, OK, forget about it...”
“A little late to get all sentimental, Mule, don’t you think? You should have thought about it earlier. Anyway, they're the ones who started this war.”
“True that. Hey, I wasn't criticising you. Actually I have to admit you did an awesome job. Don’t be pissed off.”
“You know your whinging's pretty insufferable?”
“Oi, kid, you're the one who's insufferable!” replied Mule wiping his forehead, soaked in a cold sweat.
Once she'd finished taking the rifle apart, Mila put everything back in the two bags. They shouldered them and climbed down the crumbling staircase. Around them, what had once been the rooms in which bricks were heated now looked like ancient stone relics. Simulacrums destroyed by time, silent witnesses to future events.
Mule stood behind Mila and unholstered his Desert Eagle while she removed the tarpaulin hiding the Ford Focus and opened the boot.
Something darted through the air. Initially Mul
e couldn’t work out what that long stick that was about to hit him might be. By the time he got it, it was too late.
He felt a blinding pain in the pit of his stomach and bent forwards, looking up at the girl, his eyes screaming in pain. He felt his strength leave him, his legs start to bend.
One more whistle through the air.
Diagonal upwards blow, right to left.
Crack.
Mila had taken a hockey stick from the boot, where it had lain hidden under a blanket. Sixty-five inches of seriously hard wood. A white inscription in the cobalt blue of the stick: Bauer.
The stick was now stained with Mule’s blood.
“God!” he shouted. Lying on his back, he moved his arms and legs like a flipped-over tortoise. Mila was pressing on his stomach with her leather boot, staring at him with her green eyes, as if trying to hypnotise him. “Fuck you.”
“Never learn, will you? You're too old for me, Mule. Thought I'd already told you.”
The man coughed. “Dirty bitch!”
“You're a bitch in heat, a cocksucking slut who likes to get fucked,” added Mila with a strange tone to her voice.
“What?”
“You're a bitch in heat, a cocksucking slut who likes to get fucked. You remember those words, you bastard?”
Mule still didn’t understand. He kept blinking.
“Those are the words you grunted in my ear while you raped me. After you murdered my father.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“What the fuck am I talking about? Tell me, you remember that policeman you and three other of your boss' fucking underlings killed twelve years ago while robbing a restaurant in Padua? You went to jail for that job, wouldn’t think you'd forget about it.”
Mule’s eyes lit up. “Ah, the little girl...”
“Yes, the little girl.”
“That... That was you?”
As he spoke the words he realised with absolute certainty that he was going to die.
Mila didn’t reply. Her eyes narrowed to cracks. She raised her clenched fists to her hips in an instinctive action, born out of the rage that the memory still caused in her. But she didn’t speak. She kept staring at her father’s murderer.
“You remember it so clearly. Sounds like maybe you enjoyed what I did to you,” said Mule chuckling and trying to get back on his feet. He thought he was making some headway; the girl seemed to be in a trance.
Enraged, Mila grabbed him around the hips, shoved him against the Focus and started going to work on him. Her punches hammered Mule’s chest with a steady rhythm that knocked the wind out of his lungs. She kept hitting him methodically, making sure that each and every one of his ribs had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with her knuckles.
Then she paused to allow him to catch his breath. She crouched in front of him and stared right in his eyes.
“Now I want to know one thing.”
“Ask away, bitch.”
“Before you croak, tell me who ordered you to kill my father.”
“You already know.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
“Why? What for?”
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll start again.”
Mule breathed in slowly and summoned up the last of his strength.
“Rossano Pagnan.”
“What a surprise.”
“I'd never seen him as upset as he was back then.”
“I can imagine.”
“He kept saying he had a problem with a cop. A problem as big as his fucking fat belly.” Mule managed a smile. Then he coughed and wiped his lips with an arm, trying to remove the red drool that was slurring up his words.
“What did he tell you? I mean, what did he say when he ordered you to murder my father?”
“It was the four of us with him. Myself and the three who're still in jail.”
“Forget about them. Go on.”
“Well, he told us that a police detective was on his back. His name was...”
“Giorgio Zago.”
“Exactly. He said that Zago was a tough nut, one he couldn’t make a deal with. And that Zago was getting too close to his business. We were running the risk of having to shut up shop...”
“Then what?”
Mule spat. Talking was becoming a torture. But Mila was looming over him.
“He told us he'd tried to give him one of his ‘care packages’, one of those offers you can’t refuse, full of money.”
“But it came to nothing, right?”
“Right.”
“So he sent you to that restaurant, Da Renzo. To kick the owner’s ass and kill my father.”
“Yes.”
“Anything to add?” said Mila. “Because I have to tell you, you'll be gone very soon.”
“Fuck you.”
“So be it.”
Mila lifted her gaze to the sky. She took one of the two .45s from the boot of the Focus and screwed the silencer on it.
She looked at Mule one last time.
“Have a nice trip, Lover Boy.”
Clunk!
A lead slug went into his forehead.
File closed.
16.
It was getting cold.
The grey land was preparing to get frosted over. A barren plain except for a few clumps of grass poking through the ground in the area surrounding the furnace, the soil rock-hard beneath the darkening sky.
Mila had worn her leather jacket and her yellow specs. Five foot seven of muscle primed to join the action. The Colt .45s jiggled on her hips. Her red dreadlocks looked increasingly like fiery snakes on the head of a third-millennium Medusa.
A Queen of Death ready for her final mission.
Four hundred yards.
The shadowy plain was now a combat zone. In front of her, Pagnan’s farmhouse.
Mila savoured the moment she'd been waiting for.
The final showdown. After more than ten years.
Two hundred yards.
She could now see the Chinamen's cars clearly. Big, empty Jaguars, the doors wide open.
One hundred yards.
She was drawing closer with all the boldness of a predator that had just smelled fresh meat.
Fifty yards.
Now she could make out more details of the massacre. Pools of blood, bodies torn apart. Proper carnage.
Twenty yards.
In front of her, a man. That man.
Rossano Pagnan looked at her with his dark, piggy eyes. Next to him, Tripe and Pretty Boy.
Mila and Pagnan stared at each other. His hair was a tangled mess, black streaked with grey; his almost-white goatee reminded her of an old wolf about to attack.
“You're alone, are you?” said Pagnan. “You think I wasn’t expecting it? Think you surprised me? Expect me to be speechless because you took out Mule, that useless halfwit? Is that what you think?” He pointed the Mossberg calibre .12 at her.
“What I think doesn’t matter much. And what you think matters fuck all. As usual, while you're wittering away you're missing the important stuff. Typical of a dipshit like you. You never realised who I was. And that condemned you right from the off. You were already dead before you got here and you didn’t know it. You're an asshole, Rossano Pagnan.”
“My God, I'm quaking in my boots. Right, guys? You lads shitting your pants too?” replied Pagnan, his voice a couple of notches too high. It reached Mila’s ears cracking with tension, even though he was trying hard to keep it steady.
“Sure, boss. My legs are shaking,” said Pretty Boy, his long hair in a tangle with dust and sweat, his blue apron stained with blood.
“I'm scared too!” added Tripe.
“Fuck off, old man,” said Mila.
The Colt .45s sprung out of their holsters.
Four blasts ripped the air. Two from each gun. Supersonic speed.
A pair of red stains appeared on Pretty Boy’s chest; he spun around like a bowling pin and crumpled over, his flesh torn apart. A spasm,
then nothing more. Smoke curled out of his torso where the bullets had entered.
Tripe had a hole near his heart and he just couldn’t believe it. He was trying to staunch the wound with his hand but the blood was gushing out.
“Shit... aargh!” he grunted, already on his knees.
An instant later he crashed face-first into the mud.
The fourth bullet had shattered Pagnan’s right kneecap. He'd gone down and was gasping like a fish that's jumped out of its bowl.
“Mila... you fucking bitch...” He tried to raise his Mossberg but she kicked it away.
“Why the fuck are you doing this to me?” he shouted.
“You want to know now? Too late! Did you think you had me in your pocket? You didn't have a chance in Hell, you poor old idiot.”
“I'm not old...”
“You destroyed my life, you old fuck.”
Pagnan couldn’t avoid looking at Mila’s hair. It was flashing red against the evening sky.
“You killed my father, got your men to rape me, ripped out everything good I had inside me and left me with nothing but hate.”
Mila started to cry. She felt the weight of the world slowly leave her as the tears fell. A dark pain she'd kept chained up for too long started to leak through the cracks in her armour. And she was already beginning to feel the disappointment of realising that the moment she'd been waiting all this time for wouldn’t give her the relief she'd hoped for.
Rossano Pagnan, weak and desperate, looked at her through his own tears, and muttered, “It's not true... Why are you saying this? Who was your father? Who are you?”
“Twelve years ago your men robbed a restaurant in Padua. It ended in slaughter. I was there too, dining with my father. They riddled him with bullets, showed no mercy. He was a policeman, and you had him killed because you were afraid he’d nail you.”
“Christ!” said Pagnan. “That fucking restaurant robbery!”
He remembered, sure. And now, with his life in the balance, he also recalled the big, green eyes of that little girl staring at him, terrified, during the trial. That’s where he'd seen her before.
“I had nothing to do with it,” he tried to say. “I wasn't even there...” He coughed. “Believe me, Mila. Even the judge confirmed that, don't you remember?”
The Ballad of Mila Page 13
