Shock Waves(51)

The soldier was about to move when shadowy figures stirred behind the French doors and someone pulled back the drapes, opened the latch and swung the portal back. He raked the windows with a burst, waist high, and threw the grenade inside.

He ran into the blast, bullets snapping at his heels, and launched into a headlong dive that carried him through the shattered doors to the littered carpet within. Concussion rocked him, squeezed the wind from his lungs. Broken glass was everywhere, its sharp fangs ripping at his hands, his face, his clothing. Unmindful of the pain, he wriggled through the rain of shrapnel and plaster clinging grimly to the stutter gun. He glanced around, seeking temporary haven from the gunners who were closing in behind him like a pack of hungry dogs.

He had perhaps only a moment left to meet them and turn their charge around before it overwhelmed him, carried him away.

A moment to determine if he would live or die.

Either way, the dying there was far from over.

In fact, it was only beginning.

* * *

The wheelman brought the car to a halt outside the gates as Tommy Fiorini concentrated on the gateman. There were others hanging back behind him in the darkness, watching, and the crew chief could have sworn he caught the glint of moonlight on their weapons as they jockeyed for position.

Frowning, he wondered what the hell was going on with so much iron around the gates. Security would be important, sure, with all the dons inside, but after Jules had made his call...

A graveyard breeze blew down the open neck of Tommy's shirt.

Suppose the call had been about these guns on the gate? Suppose Minelli had taken it wrong... or Jules had been trying to alert his troops, but couldn't come right out and say that he was under house arrest? Suppose the families were already at war, and Jules was dead? What then?

The crew chief reined in his grim imagination. His palms were moist and clammy. He did not want to die out there, so far from home.

"Heads up," he told the boys in back.

The gateman was approaching, and Fiorini beckoned him to the passenger's side and cranked down the window. He put on a friendly grin, but in the darkness of the car, his fist was wrapped around the Army-issue .45 he wore beneath his armpit, ready if the stranger made an unexpected move.

"Excuse me, sir. Were you expected?"

"Well, I couldn't really say," Ducks replied, grinning. "My boss, he's in there with the others, for the sit-down, 'kay? I get this call, an' he says hop the next flight out. Some kinda party goin' on, I guess."

The gateman shot a glance across his shoulder toward the watchers in the shadows.

"We weren't expecting anybody else tonight," he said. "Who was it made that call again?"

Tommy Fiorini let his smile slip a notch, the barest touch of ice edging into his voice.

"Don Patriarcca, from Seattle. Hey, we been a long time in the air, a long time drivin' out. There can't be any beef if we just find a place to park, some coffee, hey?"

"I'll have to call the house and get it cleared."

"You do that."

Tommy Ducks was staring at the gateman's back, beginning to crank the window up, when an explosion sounded. Muffled by distance, it sounded to the crew chief like a small grenade or the world's biggest cherry bomb.

"Hey, what the fuck..."

The wheelman reached inside his coat for the .38 in his belt, and Tommy had his Army-issue ready as the gateman stiffened, freezing in his tracks. The automatic-weapons fire was unmistakably from the mansion, and something sure as hell was coming down around their ears.

And Jules was in there!

Holy shit!

His piece out the window, Tommy Ducks sighted on the gateman's shoulder blades and fired, the autoloader bucking in his fist. The straw man flopped on his face. The others dodged farther behind the tall gates, out of sight.

"Let's hit it!"

The driver pressed the pedal to the floor, and the Continental slammed against the gates, breaking through, the other crew wagons close behind. Tommy Ducks had a fleeting impression of other cars behind those sleek shadows, sharklike, closing fast — and one of them was turning on its red light, announcing its occupants for what they were.

The cops, for cryin' out loud!

"Keep going, dammit!"

Tommy Ducks still had a job to do, and if the frigging cops got in his way, he'd have to step on them. Just like at home, and never mind that he was now three thousand miles away from safety, from the cops he knew.

They didn't make 'em bulletproof in old New York, and Tommy Ducks could still match slugs with any man alive, given half a chance.

Which was, the crew chief thought, almost exactly what they had.

* * *

Crouching in front of the woman with pliers in his hand, Lazarus froze at the first sound of gunfire outside. He hesitated, glancing back and forth from her battered face and shredded, gaping blouse to the man stationed at the door to guarantee his privacy.