by Connor Mccoy
“Well, he’s not quite by himself….” Liam began.
“Yeah, but that Tom fellow didn’t sound like a big he-man from what you told me,” Camilla replied. “Conrad’s a good man, a strong man, but he’s never fought for his life like you’re talking about.” She looked at the table. “Did he ever shoot anybody?”
“He was shot at,” Carla said, “but we never took anyone out.”
Camilla shook her head. “Conrad’s not a killer. He’s a much gentler man than he might appear.” She slowly raised her head. “I don’t doubt he’d do anything to save his family, but this world turned a lot meaner in one day. I just don’t want him to die alone out there.”
Liam sat back. “We want to do all we can to help Dad get back here safely. But, I’m not sure Carla and I can play a direct role in it. We didn’t explain exactly why he sent us back.”
Camilla raised an eyebrow. “Really? Well, I definitely want to hear this.”
Marco stormed through the wooden hallway that ran through the men’s barracks with one of the men, Barry, at his side. “So, what does Maggiano want with me?” Barry didn’t say what it was when he met up with Marco to bring him in. That was weird. Maggiano always made his wishes clear in advance.
“You’ll find out.” Barry kept his gaze at the exit door as they approached it.
“I’ll find out?” Marco scowled. “What is this, a surprise birthday party or something?”
Barry rolled his eyes. “Look, I was told to bring you to Maggiano, okay? I don’t ask questions.”
“And who told you not to do that?” Marco asked as Barry reached the iron door of the barracks.
Barry turned around and looked Marco in the eye. “You did.” Then he flung the door wide open, permitting them both into the warehouse’s main storage area.
As Barry closed the door, Marco’s skin started itching. He had a bad feeling about this. He thought of the gun on his belt, under his jacket. He brought his right hand close to it.
Barry led the way again. The front office loomed just ahead. The tiny window in the door made it impossible to see exactly who was inside, though Marco was sure Maggiano was in there.
This better be damned important, Marco thought. If Maggiano was just calling him in to do something menial when one of these brutes could do it, he might finally do the old coot in once and for all. Again, he thought of the gun under his jacket.
But once Barry opened the office door, Marco was stunned to find not just Maggiano, but four armed men standing in a semicircle. Jack was also there, arms folded, reclining against the back wall.
“Maggiano,” Marco said as pleasantly as possible. “What’s going on?”
Maggiano sat behind the steel table, his elbows propped on its surface, the man eyeing Marco with a frown that chilled him to his bones. “We’re having a little trial here, Marco. Nothing too fancy.”
A fresh bead of sweat dropped down Marco’s face. “What trial?”
Barry then shut the door—hard, and turned the door’s lock.
“The charge is defrauding the Maggiano Empire,” Maggiano replied. “The penalty is death. Seems you’ve damaged one of my girls.”
“What are you talking about?” Marco asked, “I haven’t done anything to any of the women.”
Maggiano snapped his fingers. One of the men brought forward Molly, her legs exposed, showing off the bandages.
“Now, where’d that come from?” Maggiano asked.
“I don’t know!” Marco retorted. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“She says you did this,” one of the men said.
“That’s a lie!” Marco’s blood boiled. This girl was setting him up! “I never did that to her! She cut herself to screw me over!”
“With what?” Jack asked mildly, “You think we’re dumb enough to give the girls knives? They don’t have anything sharp to cut themselves with.”
“Shut up!” Marco shouted. “I didn’t cut her, and you can’t prove it worth a damn!”
Jack pointed to Molly. “But you do admit you assaulted this woman?”
“I don’t admit to shit.” Marco turned to Maggiano. “What did she tell you? She cried rape just to get sympathy? To have you kill me? C’mon, these bitches lie. They’ll do anything to get free, or have us turn on each other. Who are you going to believe, me or some tramp I grabbed off the street?”
Maggiano sat back. “Well, we do have a problem, don’t we? You’re right, Marco. We have worked together very closely, and loyalty counts for at least a damn in my book. I’d hate to punish you by mistake.” Then he leaned forward. “But fortunately, we do have a way to clear your name.”
The four men plus Barry closed in on Marco. “What are you talking about?” Marco asked.
“This girl has given us a detailed description of her attacker.” Then he glared at Marco. “So, it’s very simple. You show us what you got, and we’ll see if she’s telling the truth.”
The four men quickly closed in. “What are you talking about? Show you what?” Marco asked.
Barry pointed at Marco’s abdomen. “Drop ‘em.”
Marco’s eyes widened when he realized what Barry was telling him to do. “Shit! Have you lost your minds? You think I’m going to expose myself? Forget it!”
“Stop wasting time, Marco. Do it,” Maggiano said.
“Like hell!” Marco shouted.
Marco’s hand flew for his gun, and might have reached it had one of Maggiano’s men not grabbed his arm and pulled it away. Barry and the other three quickly seized Marco and wrestled him to the ground. Marco erupted with a long string of expletives that drowned out the sound of ripping clothing.
“Get off me!” Marco screamed, “You’re dead! You’re all goddamn dead!”
In the back corner, Jack folded his arms and smiled at Marco’s humiliation. Seeing this spectacle alone had made his plans worthwhile.
Looks like I got the royal flush, Jack thought.
Chapter Seven
Conrad looked at his watch. “Five seconds,” he whispered.
This was it. He lay down low and covered his head with both hands while pinning his ears. Then…
The tanks blasted open in a loud explosion that quaked the ground under Conrad’s belly. Even with Conrad covering his ears, the bang was so loud he yelped.
Fire lashed the side of the warehouse. The heat was incredible, even from this distance. It was enough to sting any part of Conrad’s skin that was exposed. Suddenly, he heard a loud pelting sound all around him. Conrad feared he was being shot at.
Then, a smoldering metallic fragment bounced off the concrete next to him. It was flying shrapnel from the tanks. Conrad cursed himself. Of course the explosion would tear off debris and fling it all around. Shouldn’t he have thought of that?
He continued to lie down as flat as possible. A piece of flaming metal soared past. The hairs on the back of Conrad’s neck stood up. That was close, too close.
While still on his belly, he glanced upward. Fire covered the side of the building. The sound of pelting metal had ceased, along with the explosions. Only roaring flames remained, unless there were pockets of gas the fire had not ignited yet. If so, Conrad had to move, and quickly.
As Conrad rose to his feet, he took note of the rising column of smoke. The thick smoke was climbing ever higher, enough that it could be seen from great distances. This was no small fire.
Forget the people inside the warehouse, he thought. This will be noticeable for miles. Conrad had hoped he could flee with Sarah and Tom while the city slept, but if the bang of the explosion didn’t rouse some of the city’s inhabitants from their slumber, the continuous smoke certainly would. This ruckus could draw in gangs, arsonists, looters, or just desperate people.
I’d have been better off fleeing under the cover of night, Conrad thought. At least then the smoke, in a city with no working street lights or lampposts, would have been obscured. Had he made a fatal blunder by setting off this blast in broad day
light?
“Shut the hell up, Conrad,” he said to himself, “It’s time to do what you came here to do.”
And that time had arrived, for Conrad could hear voices coming from the building. Conrad held tight to his gun. They were coming.
Jack fought the urge to laugh. Things couldn’t have gone better.
In the center of the floor, Marco lay on his knees, stripped of everything except his shoes and his boxers, which he was tugging back over his privates frantically. His shirt and pants lay on the floor next to him, while Barry had collected Marco’s gun.
Marco wiped his face with the back of his hand. Blood dripped down his bottom lip. A bruise marred his cheek from where he was slammed to the floor. Barry and the other men all had guns drawn on him. Disarmed and almost naked, Marco didn’t dare make a move.
Maggiano cracked his knuckles. “So, she was telling the truth.” He flashed a look at Molly. “You were pretty damn accurate, kid.”
She swallowed, while trying to blink back tears. On the ground, quaking, Marco turned to his victim. “You…bitch…” Then he coughed.
“Unfortunately, I have little use for damaged goods.” Maggiano then pulled out his pistol and aimed it at Molly’s face. She only had time to widen her eyes in fright before Maggiano pulled the trigger.
Bang.
Molly dropped to the floor. Two of the men looked at each other, communicating unspoken shock between them. Even Jack was startled. He figured Maggiano wouldn’t bother with such an extreme action as offing Molly, as Jack took care to leave the woman’s face unharmed. Jack also emphasized that the cuts would heal soon. But Jack forgot Maggiano was not a man who liked to lose. When things didn’t go his way, no one would be spared Maggiano’s wrath.
“Now then.” Maggiano turned his gun onto Marco. “You’ve really pissed me off, Marco.”
Marco’s breathing grew louder. “I didn’t cut her. That’s a setup!” he cried, “Fine. I had my way with her. I needed to blow off some steam. You’re going to tell me you don’t enjoy one of these bitches every now and then?”
“If I do, it’s my call, not yours,” Maggiano replied.
Marco now was hyperventilating. “But this is all a trick! Somebody else slashed her up. You kill me, you don’t find out who’s been playing you! And then it’ll happen again!”
Marco then turned around, and caught Jack in his vision. “You.” Jack turned around. “You did this. You set this up, didn’t you? You knew I raped her. You had her fix me up!”
Jack shook his head. “Marco, why don’t you just face the fact that you screwed up? You’ve always had a short fuse and now you broke one of Maggiano’s girls. Your…” He grinned. “Your manhood confirmed it.”
“You’re a dead man, Jack,” Marco muttered coldly.
“The only person who decides who dies is me.” Maggiano rose from his seat and leveled his gun.
But whatever action Maggiano was about to take was cut off when a loud bang suddenly rocked the office. A chunk of the wall high above abruptly tore off and fell down, impacting right on top of Maggiano. The impact and rising dust and smoke instantly made it impossible to see.
The explosion slammed Jack into the back wall. He shouted in pain. His ears rang badly, and his vision blurred. He felt along the wall. His limbs quaked so badly it was almost impossible to get up. “Damn!” he cried out, “What the hell!”
Finally, he managed to climb onto his feet and prop himself up, but just barely. The office floor was impaled by a pile of smoking metal, with a small fire burning on top. Barry was flat on his back, his eyes wide open, blood trickling from his mouth. Shrapnel had impaled his chest. Another of Maggiano’s men was buried under wreckage. He did not move. Maggiano himself was not visible at all, but Jack recalled he was directly under the debris when it fell. He was likely struck and killed on impact. There was no sign of the other three men, but they could be buried under the wreckage as well.
Jack then looked up. A hole had been blasted in the wall up above, with smoke gushing out. Small orange flames poked from the orifice, and they were growing bigger and hotter by the second.
Jack braced his head. He feared he had been seriously injured, but he was in no sharp pain, only feeling battered. He looked down at his body. No blood trickled through his clothes.
“Hey!” Marco’s voice cried out.
Jack’s vision finally stabilized. He spotted Marco on the other side of the room, against the wall. A small piece of debris pinned his leg, but otherwise he had escaped the crash of the wreckage.
“Hey!” Marco shouted, “Get me out of here!”
Jack glanced up at the growing flames in the wall.
“Hey, asshole!” Marco yelled, “I’m talking to you!”
Jack spread his arms. “Hey, what’s the problem? You’re a big man. You can climb up and over that shit.”
Marco pushed on the metal pinning his leg. It moved, but not by much. “Dammit, this hurts like hell! Give me a hand! Maggiano’s gone. This empire ain’t his anymore. You want to divide it up? Get me out of here and we’ll talk!”
“Thought you said I was a dead man.” Jack laughed. “Looks like you’re the one who’s dying today, Marco, just not in the way I thought! And why should I save your ass when I can rescue the pretty ladies under this roof?”
“You did set me up! This was your goddamned plan!” Marco shouted, spit shooting from his mouth.
“Yeah.” Jack pointed to the smoking hole. “Well, I didn’t plan that. Still, it looks like I’ll be running this operation from here on out. I guess I just played my winning hand!” He turned, but then stopped and looked at Marco. “Oh, by the way, the ladies will be throwing themselves at me when I’m done. I’m not so impotent I had to force myself on a woman.”
Marco’s face quaked. “You bastard! I’m going to gut you like a goddamn fish! You hear me?” His string of threats was cut off as he choked on the growing smoke.
Jack coughed himself. He beat it out the door, leaving Marco to his fate.
As soon as Jack approached the iron door to the women’s barracks, one of Maggiano’s men, tall with a shock of tall dark hair, dashed up to him. “What the hell happened?”
Jack unlocked the door. “Something outside exploded. Took out Maggiano. Marco’s gone, too. I’m in charge.”
The man looked back in the direction of the main offices. The rising smoke made it hard to see back there. “Damn. What blew up? A gas line?”
“Got me.” Jack flung the door open. “Get the men and check around the building.”
Three more men approached. “You!” Jack called to them. “Arm up! Get some rifles, now! We’re going to clear the women out until we can find out what’s going on outside!”
As the men hurried off, Jack hurried inside. In all likelihood, there had been some kind of accident. The propane tanks were just outside. However, Jack couldn’t discount the possibility that somebody might be attacking the facility. Maggiano did have his enemies. Or maybe the authorities finally had got their act together and were taking the cities back.
One of the men approached with a rifle. Jack grabbed him by the shirt and whispered, “Keep it quiet about Maggiano. We don’t want the women to know. They may try something.”
The man nodded. “Good.” Jack released him. “Follow me.”
The first room he hit was Sarah’s. “Hey,” Jack said, “Up and at ’em. We’re going outside for a little suntan.”
She rose. “What was that bang?”
“Nothing you need to worry about. Now get going.” Jack stood back, letting Sarah out of the room. She had changed out of those spandex clothes. Too bad. Now that Jack was king, he’d make some permanent changes to these ladies’ attire.
He hurried toward the end of the barracks, shouting orders. It’s good to be the king, he thought.
Tom’s heart raced as he climbed back to his feet. Conrad’s little “distraction” proved to be a mighty one, as the bang rang through the air and shook the g
round hard, enough that Tom had to cling to the car he was taking cover behind. He braced himself to keep from falling over.
Once his initial shock had passed, he looked from one exit to the other on the west side of the building. They should be streaming out of the building like rats fleeing a sinking ship. His hope, perhaps in vain, was that the blast took out a lot of Maggiano’s men and enabled the women to escape. But the cynical part of Tom jibed that he never could be so lucky.
They’ll come out with the women, Tom thought. The only question was how many.
Three windows were within easy viewing range. From where he stood, Tom easily could spot moving shadows through the glass. Unfortunately, he could not make out actual people. He couldn’t tell whether women or men were rushing by, if prisoners of Maggiano were dashing by, or if they armed henchmen.
Then, they started to emerge. It was sporadic. A man dashed out of a side entrance and ran off around back. Another sprang from a second-story door, near a loading door. The warehouse escapees were just a man here, a man there. Where the hell were the women?
The warehouse’s back door sprang open. Tom tensed up.
Three men poured out of the back entrance. So, that’s where they were coming out. Tom leaned a little closer. Those three brutes were carrying high-powered machine guns. It wouldn’t be a shocker if Maggiano had those babies squirreled away before the power went out.
Another man rushed out, nearly bumping into the armed man. Tom instantly recognized him. Jack Sorenson. So, one of the bigwigs was coming out. He looked a little disheveled, with unkempt hair and a brown tint on his clothing that could be dust. Perhaps he had been too close to the blast and had been roughed up by it.
Then, a woman followed. She was dressed in pretty ordinary clothing—blue jeans, a white shirt and a pink buttoned shirt that was fully open. Her hair was limp, clearly unwashed and untreated.
Another woman followed. She was dressed quite differently, in a tight fitting red dress and even heels. Tom couldn’t believe it. Why the hell would she go through the trouble of dolling herself up like that? And where’d she get the dress from? Was it hers? Then Tom spotted Jack walking a little closer to her as she approached.
