Killer Instincts v5 (33 page)

The boy let out a cry and staggered. I looked down and saw that Jamie had rolled onto his back and had driven his knife through the boy’s thigh. Staggering, Adam brought the pistol around and fired a shot point-blank into Jamie’s chest, my uncle spasming from the gunshot.

I finally managed to get the Glock clear of its holster, the long suppressor making the draw awkward while on the floor. I brought the pistol up and fired twice into Adam’s 10-ring. The boy jerked back, but remained on his feet, and the magnum swung back around towards me. What was the line from
Dirty Harry
? Six shots, or only five? I didn’t want to find out. I fired twice more, both shots catching the boy in the face. He flipped backwards and sprawled across Jaime’s legs, then lay still.

I rolled over and got to my feet. Jamie was trying to get himself out from under the boy, but he was too weak. I could tell he had been badly wounded. I grabbed Adam’s ankles and dragged him off of Jaime’s legs, then tried to examine my uncle. There was blood sheeting his lower abdomen and groin, and I saw another wound in his thigh, but the shot to his chest looked to have punched into an Uzi magazine, finally stopped by the body armor underneath.

“Jamie, you’ve been shot, let me take a look,” I pleaded.

Jamie was pale and clammy, his eyes glassy and unfocused. He tried to push me away.

“Finish it. Finish the mission. Clear the target area.”

Jamie pushed his Uzi towards me. I picked it up, checked the breech to make sure it was clear, and then holstered my Glock.

“I’ll be back for you.”

“Finish it boy. Finish them all,” he said.

I stepped over my uncle and walked into the next room, Uzi at the ready. It was a large bedroom, the master bedroom of the house, with a bureau the size of a Buick, an armoire over in the corner, an end table with a lamp and a couple of sitting chairs, and a massive king-sized bed dominating the room. A small bathroom was visible off to the side, the door open. A number of slugs had made it through both rooms and punched holes in the walls, shattering a mirror and destroying a few objects of finery; a porcelain vase here, a jade statuette there.

There were two people on the bed, an elderly man and woman. The woman was clutching her belly, a crimson stain soaking through her nightgown. She lay across the lap of the man, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, next to the nightstand. A small, vintage-looking automatic was in his hand, but his arms were wrapped around the dying woman, tears streaming down his face.

Dominic and Maria Paggiano.

Dominic looked up at me.

“The boy?” he asked.

“Dead.”

“Johnny?”

“Dead. Mary too,” I said.

He was wracked by a sob, then another. The old woman lifted her head.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

“William Lynch.”

It took a moment to sink in, but finally, Dominic nodded in understanding. The old couple looked each other in the eye, each giving the other a soft, sad smile.

For a man of seventy-nine, Dominic Paggiano was surprisingly fast with a gun.

Unfortunately for him and his wife, I was considerably faster.

When it was done, I walked back into the study. Jamie lay on the floor, a pool of blood around his lower body. I dropped the smoking Uzi onto the floor next to him.

“It’s finished,” I said.

Jamie nodded, his eyes rolling around in his head.

“I can’t move my legs,” he said.

I knelt down and rolled him over. I saw immediately what was wrong. There was an exit wound the size of a silver dollar in the small of Jamie’s back. The bullet had come in right at the bottom edge of the vest, below his belt, and shattered his spine.

I rolled Jamie back over and he saw my face. He gave me a weak smile.

“I’ve seen that face before. Often made it myself. I’m a dead man.”

“The bullet severed your spine.”

Jamie nodded.

I moved to stand up and grab his arms.

“I might be able to carry you out, but we’ve got to hurry,” I said.

Jamie shook his head.

“I’m staying here,” he replied.

“Let me at least get you down to the lawn. The police will find you and take you to a hospital. Otherwise you might bleed out before they clear the house.”

Jamie shook his head again. Feebly, his hand reached into the satchel and he drew out the incendiary grenade. He handed it to me.

“Get out. Pop this on the first floor. It’ll burn the house down quick. I’m not going anywhere. When they find me, I’ll be just a lone, whacked-out vet who took the law into his own hands. Go back to my cabin, get your story straight, and you’ll be fine.”

I looked incredulously at my uncle. “You can’t tell me you planned this from the beginning? Getting shot and dying here so you can take the blame?”

Jamie smiled and shook his head.

“I never planned on this, no. But it looks like Fate improvised.”

I knelt there for a moment, holding my dying uncle’s hand. To have lived through so much, only to meet his end at the hands of a teenage boy. Of course, it could have been a Viet Cong teenager with an AK thirty years ago, but the thought wasn’t very comforting.

We both heard it, the sound of a siren off in the distance. Jamie gave my hand a feeble squeeze.

“Get going. Get to the fence. Remember the ladder. Stay low, slip away before they can see you. Get to the cabin. Get your story straight. A letter under the turntable. Everything you need.”

I nodded. Leaning over, I drew my uncle’s Glock and put it in his hand. He said nothing, but nodded. A warrior shouldn’t meet his end without holding a weapon. I picked up the functioning Uzi - someone might ask questions if they found two of the same weapon in the ruins - and looked at my uncle one last time. He waved the muzzle of the Glock towards the doorway.

“Go on...move...damn you...” His eyes wandered away from me and his head sagged and lolled, dazed from the shock and blood loss, his speech slurred.

“The chopper...won’t wait forever. Get to the...”

Jamie trembled once, then went still. His eyes remained open, staring into a jungle half a world away and a lifetime ago.

I stood and left the room. I walked past the corpse of Mary, down two flights of stairs, past the corpse of John. I pulled the pin on the incendiary grenade and dropped it into his lap as I walked past. Instead of heading for the front door, I went out the kitchen entrance, shutting the door behind me just as I heard the
whump
of the grenade as it showered the inside of the mansion with burning fragments of white phosphorus.

I walked to the edge of the house and peeked around the corner. Down at the end of the drive, I could see police cars lined up along the street outside the gate, and about a dozen flashlights shining all around. Too close and too many. I’d be spotted for sure if I tried for the ladder. I might be able to find a board or some other means of getting to the top of the wrought-iron fence, but I’d have no way to put it back, and it would be completely obvious that someone left the scene of the crime.

“Y’know, this here ladder sure ain’t going to climb itself.”

I peered into the darkness. On the other side of the fence, the rope ladder hanging next to him, stood Richard. He’d dressed as he did when we raided the meth lab, a black-clad commando out for a stroll in the wee hours of the morning.

“Well fuck me,” I said.

“You’re a handsome kid, but not really my type. Come on, before they park a police helicopter with infrared over us and the whole gig is up.”

So away we went, off into the night, as the Paggiano mansion burned to the ground behind us.

TWENTY-FOUR

It was a long, miserable summer.

Richard drove me back to Maine in an airport rental. He had decided to fly in right after getting off the phone with me, and set himself up in an observation point to watch and see what happened. When he saw the police were closing in and we hadn’t made our escape, Richard grabbed the rope ladder and waited for us.

When I emerged alone from the house, Richard knew what must have happened, but he focused on the mission, and at that moment, the mission was to escape without being caught. I went over the fence, we cut across a couple of lawns, and we reached Richard’s car, parked in the same driveway as Jamie’s Jeep.

Before hitting the road, I changed into a fresh set of clothes and shoes, while everything - clothes, guns, gear - went into a trash bag in the trunk. Before we left, Richard broke into Jamie’s jeep, grabbed something from underneath the driver’s seat, and then planted a little “present” in the glove compartment: a timed thermite charge.

“It’ll look like Jamie planned on torching his own car if he knew he wasn’t making it back in time. This way, there’ll be no evidence left that you were ever in the vehicle.”

Richard had rescued Jamie’s pistol from under the driver’s seat. It was the gun he had used to kill Julian, a slightly customized Colt 1911 .45 automatic. Richard handed it to me while we drove away.

“That pistol has a long and distinguished pedigree. Hold onto it, for his sake at least.”

I just nodded.

The drive north to Jamie’s cabin took about five hours, and we pulled in around 8:30 in the morning. The battered pickup was there, parked next to the shed, and everything looked just as it did when I left over two months ago.

Except, of course, that nothing was the same. Jamie was dead, the Paggianos were dead, and I’d killed over a dozen people in the last month. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, to thank my uncle for helping me or damn him for not stopping me cold the moment I suggested the idea back in Calais. I sat in Richard’s rental sedan and simply stared at the front door.

“You’re going to have to get out sometime. I’ve got to return the car,” he said.

“I have absolutely no idea what to do with my life from this moment forward,” I replied.

Richard pondered for a moment. “You’re going to be approached by the police, probably the FBI. They’re going to ask you a lot of questions, but the most important thing to remember is that you’ve never had anything to do with this, officially anyways. No fingerprints, no paper trail, no money with your name associated with it. Jamie paid me for your training out of his own funds, assuming he’d be able to recoup the costs as the life and home insurance policies and family assets became available.”

“But what about an alibi?” I asked.

“Your gardener has been coming up here once a week since you left, long enough to go out boating with Jamie, be seen at a distance by some of the locals, drive by some houses or through town in Jamie’s truck. As far as anyone knows, you’ve been grieving in seclusion for the last two months. If you’re asked about your uncle’s whereabouts, just tell them that he would drive down to Providence now and then for a few days to take care of family-related business, or at least that was the case as far as you know.”

“Do you really think they’ll buy that?” I asked.

Richard shrugged.

“At the end of the day, they’d not only have to suspect you, they’d have to prove you were involved. What is the more likely scenario? A white-collar college kid goes on a shooting rampage and wipes out an organized crime family, or the reclusive Vietnam veteran, ex-Green Beret? No one is going to miss the Paggiano family, and your uncle has already given the FBI the suspect they’ll want in order to pin this on someone. Play it cool through the rough patches, don’t make any stupid mistakes, stay out of the media as much as you can, and you’ll be fine.”

I nodded and climbed out of the car. Leaning in at the door, I offered my hand to Richard.

“Thank you for coming here. I don’t think it would have gone well for me if you hadn’t.”

Richard turned the engine over and put it into gear.

“That would have been a piss-poor way to protect my investment.”

“Investment?” I asked.

Richard just smiled.

“Be seeing you,” he said.

I watched the rental back down the driveway, and soon it was out of sight among the trees. I acquired Jamie’s hidden key and let myself into an empty home.

My empty home.

The FBI, when they arrived a day later, were surprisingly polite. A team came into the house, carefully and thoroughly went through everything they could find with a fine-toothed comb, including the shed and the surrounding property. They boxed up a number of items, but I could tell that they were somewhat disappointed. They kept asking me if I knew any other place where my uncle kept things, or if I ever saw him leave with documents and not return with them, but in all honesty I told them no. A number of my uncle’s guns were taken away, but none of them, I knew, would be part of the criminal investigation, and they were all eventually returned to me.

Jamie’s Colt automatic, along with a number of other weapons, documents, and souvenirs, was now buried in a sealed plastic container half a mile into the woods, on a piece of land that was owned only by the state. The morning I arrived, I read the letter Jamie had hidden under the turntable. The contents were fairly simple, just directions to his cache. I found not only the .38 revolver we used during my visit, but a Russian Tokarev pistol and a couple of other guns, about fifty thousand dollars in cash, some gold coins, survival gear, packaged food and bottled water, several alternate identities, and information on how I could access two different offshore bank accounts, each of which carried a balance well over half a million dollars. Between that and the insurance money, I found myself, at the age of twenty-one, a multi-millionaire.

After several stupefyingly long interviews and a detailed written statement, all I had to endure was several weeks of unpleasant media scrutiny. The news vans and the helicopters swarmed, as I knew they would, but I stayed inside, phoned the local grocery store to have my food delivered, and waited it all out. I gave no interviews, I made no statements, and I barely showed my face through the door when the grocer arrived. After a while, pressure from the locals towards the media to leave me alone did its work, and the reporters dwindled away, happy enough to feast in the carcass of my uncle’s reputation, which they tore apart.