The Betrayer (45 page)

John Coyle had reached the back door as those final two shots rang out.

From behind him Dickey said, “I’ve got this.”

John Coyle stepped aside. Dickey raised his right foot and stomp-kicked the rotted door with all his weight, landing his foot just below the lock.

The door flew open and off one hinge.

Stepping over the door, connected by only its now-twisted bottom hinge, Dickey rushed in. John Coyle was behind him, lowering the M4, which was strapped to his shoulder, and removing a Colt .45 from the pocket of his mackintosh.

A better weapon for close-quarters combat.

He pulled back and released the slide, chambering a round. He was still only one step behind Dickey, following him as he bolted through the dark kitchen toward the door straight ahead.

Fearless — but that was Dickey. As fearless now as he had been when they were boys running wild through Hell’s Kitchen.

Beyond the door there were voices, a number of them — shouting, some pleading, some ordering.

A woman was saying, “Call an ambulance.”

John didn’t recognize the voice. Its tone was more urgent than angry.

Another woman was shouting, “Put the gun down. Put it down.”

This one he recognized immediately. It was Cat’s voice.

Commanding, full.

The third voice was a male’s — Smith’s, saying calmly but cautiously, “It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m on your side, I’m with your father.”

John picked up his pace, placed his hand on Dickey’s back to signal for him to pick up his.

They were feet from the door to the living room when the first gunshot sounded.

It was quickly followed by two more.

These weren’t coming from behind the door, but rather from just feet to their left.

Dickey grunted hard, as if he’d been hit by a baseball bat, and immediately crumbled. John Coyle dropped into a crouch and spun in the direction from which the shots had come.

All he saw was a dark, narrow hallway.

He got off three shots, then three more, heard the instant he paused the sound of running — heavy footsteps all but stomping upon the plank floor. This was followed by a door closing.

His Colt still trained on the dark hallway, and still in his crouch, John Coyle moved to Dickey.

A pool of blood was already spreading on the floor, but Dickey was still conscious.

He was looking up at John Coyle, gasping for air, his eyes blinking.

John skimmed his free hand over his friend’s torso and found the entrance wound on the man’s left side, between the third and fourth ribs. He searched Dickey’s right side for an exit wound but could not find one.

“Shit,” he whispered.

“Go,” Dickey said. It took all he had to speak.

But he locked eyes with his old friend, then nodded.

Go.

John told him to hold tight, then stood and went after the shooter.

The Colt’s magazine capacity was seven rounds, and he had fired six, so as he made his way to the dark hall, he stuffed the Colt into his belt and reached for the M4 hanging at his side.

Raising it, he headed down the hall, found the only door, kicked it open, and took cover beside the door frame.

When he looked inside, he saw that the room was empty.

But one of its three windows was open.

He approached it, briefly took cover beside it before peeking out.

The shooter was bolting for the woods.

John Coyle pulled the M4 tight against his shoulder and took aim.

He waited till he had the running man square in his sights, then squeezed the trigger, holding it just long enough to get off a three-shot burst.

The man dropped just as he reached the woods.

The way his arms had jerked up as he fell told John Coyle that he had hit his target between the shoulder blades.

Exiting the back room, John made his way toward the front of the house, where the voices were coming from.

Where the exchange between Cat and Smith was getting more heated, on the verge of flying out of control.

John moved through a dining room and entered a living room, saw Fiermonte right away, on the floor.

Flat on his back, dead.

John saw Cat, too. Her back was to him, the gun in her left hand aimed at Smith, who was standing in the doorway.

Standing over someone who had fallen.

Someone who was bleeding.

John looked and saw that it was Johnny. Unconscious, with a redhead in a raincoat kneeling beside him.

Smith was holding his hands up in a calming gesture, gripping his weapon, aimed at the ceiling, with just his thumb and forefinger.

Smith’s eyes went past Cat to the man behind her.

Catching that shift in attention, she half-turned immediately, putting her right shoulder toward Smith and her left toward the man Smith was looking at.

And then she cautiously stole a look at that man.

And saw her father.

John Coyle raised one hand as he lowered his M4, then raised the other.

“It’s okay,” he said, nodding. “It’s okay.”

Cat stared at him, unable to move.

Still looking at Cat, John Coyle said to Smith, “How bad is Johnny?”

Smith had lowered his arms and was kneeling at Johnny’s other side. “Bad.”

“Where’s Morris?”

“He’s cuffed, right here on the porch.”

“Dickey’s been hit. Get his vehicle, drive up to the door. Don’t let Morris out of your sight.”

Smith nodded, rose, then was gone.

Cat still hadn’t moved, still had her gun raised.

John Coyle stepped to her side and eased her gun hand down till the weapon was pointed at the floor.

“It’s okay,” he repeated. “It’s okay.”

Cat was trembling — from the cold and adrenaline, yes, but from the shock, too.

Unslinging his M4, John Coyle removed his mackintosh and draped it over his only daughter’s shaking shoulders.

Her eyes remained locked on his face.

It took Cat a moment to speak, and when she did, what she said sounded as much like a gentle recrimination as a sincere inquiry.

“Where the hell have you been?” she said.

John Coyle smiled.

“Waiting,” he answered.

She looked at him as if to ask, waiting for what?

Reading her expression, he said, “For this day to finally come.”

There were tears now in Cat’s eyes.

Her father pulled her close, embracing her.

Smith had maneuvered the Mercedes SUV up the incline to the door of the farmhouse, and he and John Coyle quickly carried their wounded out — first Johnny, and then Dickey — and placed them inside the vehicle.

There was no time to sweep the house for the countless pieces of evidence tying all of them to it. Nor was there time to check on the dark-haired woman Haley had told them was upstairs.

And no one gave a second thought to the assistant federal prosecutor lying dead on the living room floor.

They’d deal with all that later.

All that mattered now was their fallen.

Still, prior to their leaving, John Coyle had run back inside and hurriedly emptied Donnie Fiermonte’s pockets of their contents.

Intelligence-bearing contents.

Just as he’d done to every enemy combatant he had killed four decades ago.

Killed behind enemy lines as a member of the legendary LRRPs.

He found a wallet, compact digital camera, and not one but three cell phones, two of which were cheap, disposable.

He also found two sets of house keys — to this place and Fiermonte’s apartment, he assumed. He found, though, no car keys.

Taking both sets of house keys, he ran back to the Mercedes. Cat was in the backseat with Dickey, holding a makeshift compress to his wound, silent. Haley was in the back compartment with Johnny, doing the same but talking to him in a soft voice, telling him to hang on, just hang on.

Johnny was unresponsive, but Haley kept her fingers on his wrist, tracking his pulse.

A dangerously slow pulse — slow, and getting slower.

As he drove down the gutted road, Fiermonte’s possessions on the seat beside him, John Coyle made a call on his own cell phone.

“We’re on our way with two more,” he said.

He identified the injured and their wounds — Dickey with a gunshot through the ribs, and Johnny with a gunshot to his abdomen.

No exit wound for Dickey, but a clean one for Johnny.

It seemed, though, he added, that Johnny had lost a lot of blood, and fast.

Too fast.

Ending the call, John Coyle checked the rearview mirror to make sure that Smith’s vehicle was following.

It was, Smith behind the wheel and smoking, Morris lying down in the backseat, handcuffed and blindfolded.

Twenty minutes later John Coyle was pulling into the well-lit gravel driveway of a large house.

Tree-lined, leading to a large circle at the house’s front entrance.

Cat saw Richter and several men waiting for them in the rain. They came rushing toward the SUV even before it came to a stop.

One of the men was carrying a shopping bag. He handed it to Smith, who handed it to Cat. It contained two pairs of running shoes, for her and Haley.

Johnny and Dickey were carried inside by Richter’s men, John Coyle close behind them and Haley and Cat behind him. He was greeted just inside the door by an athletically built man with longish gray hair. Cat didn’t recognize him, but it was obvious that he and her father were friends.

The man immediately pulled John Coyle aside and spoke with him softly.

“I can only operate on one at a time, John,” he said.

John Coyle and the man looked at each other as if they had a decision to make.

That was all Cat heard. A beautiful woman appeared and ushered Cat and Haley to a guest room upstairs. The woman was in her early thirties and pregnant — so either the man’s daughter or his young wife, Cat thought.

The woman didn’t seem put off by the fact that the hands of her two guests were covered with blood. She seemed accustomed to handling the loved ones of gravely injured people. Cat concluded that this woman was, or had been, some kind of a medical practitioner as well.

A doctor, maybe.

But no, the gray-haired man had said he could only operate on one at a time, so that made him the only doctor present.

A nurse, then.

The guest room had two single beds and an adjoining bathroom. The woman retrieved towels from the bathroom for Cat and Haley, then left the room and returned moments later with changes of clothes in two neat piles.

The woman said she was going to bring coffee, then was gone again.

Neither Cat nor Haley touched the clothes, or the coffee when it finally arrived. They didn’t even attempt to wipe the now-dried blood from their hands. Once the woman left them for a final time, they simply sat on the edges of their respective beds and looked at each other.

Two survivors in silence — what needed to be said?

And with nothing to do now but wait.

Cat thought of the waiting she had done the night their father was taken.

She and Johnny and Jeremy and Donnie Fiermonte, all gathered at the house in Ossining.

A house that, without the presence of their father, had seemed so empty.

So helpless back then, and so helpless now.

Haley thought of the hours she and Johnny had waited for their flight out of Vietnam.

She’d been in shock then; despite all that her father had taught her, she’d never seen a person killed, let alone three.

And despite all that Johnny was capable of, she had never seen him up to that moment as anything other than gentle and loving and funny.

That was a year ago, though — a long time.

Now she was the one who had fought her way out of a room — fought for her life, and the life of another.

But she was just as helpless as Cat.

Johnny’s fate was out of her hands.

It wasn’t long before John Coyle appeared in the guest room doorway. Cat and Haley looked at him. By the expression on her father’s face, Cat knew that something was wrong.

“What?” she said.

He thought for a moment, as if trying to figure out how to say what he’d come to tell them.

Finally, he said, “Apparently, Johnny’s spleen was ruptured recently. He’s been bleeding internally.”

Cat and Haley looked at each other.

Haley recalled the car crash in Brooklyn — relived it, really, and briefly, Johnny flying into the front seat from the back, colliding with the dashboard.

Cat said to her father, “That’s why he lost so much blood so quickly.”

He nodded, seemed to Cat to be baffled, almost bewildered. “Dickey was the one who called it, actually,” he said. “He noticed that Johnny’s collarbone had been bothering him. It seems that’s one of the symptoms of a ruptured spleen.” He paused, then added, “If Johnny hadn’t been shot, he could have bled out and died.” He paused once more, then shrugged at the irony and said, “By trying to kill Johnny, Donnie may have saved his life.”

The three were silent for a moment, and then Cat spoke.

“I heard your friend say he could only work on one at a time.”

John Coyle nodded again.

Just like a moment before, he seemed to have something to say now but didn’t quite know how to say it.

Despite his long absences during her childhood, and his complete absence for these past three years, Cat knew her father well enough to know that he was on the verge of tears.

Moved by something, touched — and, again, just a little baffled.

“What is it?” Cat said.

“Dickey told us to take Johnny first.”

A chill ran down Cat’s spine.

“Your friend is working on Johnny now?”

John Coyle nodded. “The bullet passed through without hitting any organs. His spleen needs to be removed. As long as he can come back from the loss of blood, he should be okay.”

Cat looked at Haley again. She saw tears in the redhead’s eyes — tears of relief, clearly.

“I can give blood,” Cat said to her father.

He nodded again, but absently, as if distracted by his thoughts. “Richter gave again. Good thing he’s a big guy.”

Cat thought about that — Richter’s blood now in both Jeremy and Johnny.

“Is Dickey going to make it?” Haley asked.

John Coyle didn’t answer at first. Finally, he shook his head. “One lung has already collapsed. His wounds are more critical, but he insisted that Johnny go first.” He took a breath, then let it out. “Richter’s with him now.”

Cat never thought she would feel sorrow for Dickey McVicker or his son.

But she knew what it was like to lose a father.

“Maybe he’ll hang on long enough for your friend to get to him,” Cat offered.

Again, John Coyle shook his head doubtfully. “I’ve seen chest wounds before. In men a third his age. He doesn’t have long.”

Cat could see tears in his eyes.

She had never fully realized till this moment that her father and Dickey were, in effect, brothers.

Even as a young girl she had viewed Dickey through the eyes of someone who wanted to grow up and go into law enforcement, like her father.

It had never before occurred to her to see Dickey for who he was to her father.

The wayward kid he and his own father had taken in so long ago.

“Is Jeremy here?” Cat said.

“Yes.”

“How is he?”

“His surgery went well.” He paused. “We’re waiting for him to come around, but it looks good.” John Coyle thought for a moment, then shrugged yet again and said, “He always was the strongest. Physically, anyway.”

Cat had never seen her father like this before — distracted, scattered, almost indecisive.

Nearly crippled emotionally by the carnage around him.

Carnage he had wrought.

Carnage, Cat understood, that he had gone into hiding in the first place to prevent.

His two sons shot, his only daughter battered and broken.

It was as if the man had awoken
into
a nightmare — and who wouldn’t be thrown by that?

Cat immediately wanted to lessen her father’s anguish, and the only thing she could think of that might do that was to suggest they go see Jeremy.

Sit at his side together, talk to him as they waited.

Maybe, just maybe, Jeremy would hear the sound of his father’s voice and strive toward it with all his strength…

She said that, and John Coyle nodded.

But Cat once again read the look on his face.

“You have something else to tell us, don’t you?”

“Maybe you should come downstairs with me, Cat.” He glanced at Haley and said, “Would you be okay on your own here for a few minutes? You could take this opportunity to clean up and change clothes.”

Before Haley could object, which she was clearly about to do, Cat said, “She’s with me, Dad.”

Cat’s father looked at her, was himself about to say something, but before he could, Cat spoke in a tone that said there would be no need for further discussion on the matter.

“Haley’s one of us,” Cat said.