City of War (52 page)

Out of the corner of my left eye, I saw the fist coming, and I fought my instincts. Instead of jerking away, I tilted my head forward, and as the blow glanced off the back of my head, the steel blade went by my face where my eye would have been.

Bruzzi laughed, not even slightly out of breath. “Bravo, Mr. Black.”

Tino wasn’t as cool. He lunged at me. Now he’d made a mistake. I grabbed his wrist, and like the pro he was, he let his arm go limp and went with the pull. But as soon as I felt him coming, I jammed my foot into the carpet and changed direction. Bruzzi had moved in, and we banged against him,
which could have been fatal if he’d been ready, but I was already falling and rolling, and I felt Tino’s arm dislocate at the shoulder.

If I was expecting him to scream, it didn’t happen. He sucked in his breath, reached across with his free left hand and took the knife out of his dead right one, backslashing a ten-inch gash across my chest on the return. The heavy nylon fabric saved my skin, but not the next jab, which went into my right thigh and cut something loose I didn’t think I wanted cut. The little fucker was not only good, he was fearless. He was also going to get my throat. I let go of his arm and grabbed my windpipe with both hands, then rolled over him. The razor edge of Corsican steel tore open the backs of both my hands, but then I was gone.

I kept rolling until I was back in the bedroom, then got to my feet and determined that despite the blood and a searing pain in my thigh, I was okay. But if I survived, I was going to have a long talk with the guy who decided not to bring a gun.

Tino came through the French doors first, low and wary. His right arm drooped lifelessly, but his left held the knife with enough competence that I wasn’t going to get careless. He might not have been as eager as he had been, but he was still dangerous.

When Bruzzi appeared, I feinted at Tino, and when he took a half-step back, he bumped into his boss. I lunged forward and caught the Hyena with a straight right to the jaw. It wasn’t enough to put him down—not even enough to stun him—but bullies don’t like getting hit, and he threw Tino out of the way.

I backed up and took a couple of punches off my forearms before I saw an opening and jammed him in the forehead. His eyebrow split, and blood began seeping down into his left eye. As he wiped it away with the back of his fist, I hit him on that side again, this time in the temple, and he suddenly didn’t seem so anxious to get at me.

Bruzzi moved out of reach, dropped his arms and shook
them. He’d been hitting the heavy bag for a while, and now he was working on adrenaline, still a bull, but a tired bull. I closed in so he’d have to continue to work, and he caught me with a right to the liver that sucked the breath out of my future grandchildren. But I managed to get him in the lips, and the upper one split against his teeth.

He spit a gob of blood on the Oriental rug and hissed something in Sicilian that sounded like “Fuck your village,” which didn’t have the effect on me it might have had in Palermo. Then he grabbed Tino and literally threw him at me. I hit the slightly built Corsican with a forearm shiver that elevated him into a side table and sent wineglasses and a decanter of port flying.

I expected him to get up and come at me again, but he just lay there on his back. Then I saw why. The decanter was one with a wide, flat bottom and a long, delicate neck, and in the collision, a vertical section of the stem had sheared off, turning it into a lead crystal spike, which had impaled Tino at the base of his skull. He was very much alive but afraid to roll in either direction, and with a nonfunctioning arm, unable to push himself straight up.

Bruzzi had moved to the center of the room and was busy rubbing blood off his face. I calmly walked over to Tino and looked down. His eyes reflected panic, the kind he was more familiar handing out than experiencing, but he didn’t say anything. It wouldn’t have mattered. I placed my foot on the bridge of his nose and pushed down. Just before the jagged glass severed his spine and exited his mouth, I said, “This one’s for Walter Kempthorn.”

Meanwhile, Bruzzi had armed himself with a replica of Rodin’s
Iris
. It was the size of an anvil and probably weighed as much, but the Hyena handled it like balsa. Normally, the only requirement for taking a blunt object away from an attacker is the willingness to accept a blow in a nonessential part of the body; then grab the weapon and break the guy’s arm. However, when it’s being wielded by somebody maybe six-seven and three hundred pounds, there’s no such thing as
a nonessential body part. So you go to Plan B, which means stay clear and hope the guy wears himself out.

Bruzzi’s first swung was murderous, but wild, and I managed to get one of the bedposts between us. Rodin went through it like an axe, as it did a second. The next sixty seconds became step—step—duck—crash, until the only things left standing were the Hyena and me. He was gasping and wheezing and mumbling unintelligible curses. I was exhausted too but better at hiding it.

I waited for him to drop his head just a little, and when he did, I rushed him. Bad idea. He turned slightly and took the charge on his shoulder. Then, quick as a cat, he got me in a bear hug from behind. My ribs weren’t completely healed, and the pain turned the world red.

For the next few seconds, I used every move I had to try to dislodge his grip, but he’d read the same book. Tired of being whipped around like a rag doll, I got my feet under me, and, with all my strength bent forward until I had him draped across my back. Then, with a burst, I started running backward. I had to guess where the stairway began, and I was a little early when I launched, but our momentum carried us past the top step.

I sledded Bruzzi down the fifteen steps to the first floor in roughly two seconds, and even though I was on top, it was a bumpy ride. Bruzzi’s head took the full force of the stop on the marble foyer, and he groaned once, then was out.

I disentangled myself and checked his pulse. Fast, but strong. I taped his wrists together, then ran the roll around his neck a few times to pull his hands up to his chest. It was a bitch getting his sweat-slick body off the stairs and turned over. When I finished, I made a stop at the fireplace, then found a bathroom and cleaned up my wounds as best I could.

A pitcher of ice water brought the Hyena around, and when he regained his bearings, I told him to get up. I got the response I expected, so I went back to the fireplace, where I had the business end of a straight poker baking in the
embers. When I returned, I saw his right eye following me, but if he was waiting for a threat, he was disappointed.

The hot tip went through his expensive slacks like they weren’t there, and I smelled flesh burning about the same time I got six inches of searing steel up his ass. He bellowed and bucked and tried to roll, but I held him in place with a handful of ponytail in my free hand while I recited the names of the people whose lives he’d destroyed, giving the poker a rough twist for each. He vomited until he hit dry heaves, and when I thought he could stand without collapsing, I used his hair to pull him to his knees, then up the rest of the way.

“Now we’re going to take a walk,” I said and thrust the poker up a couple more inches to get him moving. Outside, I heard gunfire below. Kalashnikov bursts mostly, but interspersed with the solid thump of a .45. Julien was still on the job.

I knew there had to be a service stairway between the penthouse and the kitchen. The Marseilles photographers wouldn’t have thought it important enough to document, but logic said that the way I’d come up was too far to travel when a pope—or a Hyena—wanted a hot meal. I found it in a corner of the roof, and it led to a small landing just off the pantry.

Though the gunfire was close, the kitchen was still empty. We had almost reached the door that led back to the Knights Quarters when a flash of white exploded out of nowhere, and Tiziano buried a cook’s cleaver in his brother’s shoulder. He jerked it free and was going for Gaetano’s head when I managed to get hold of his shirt and throw him across a counter, taking out cookware and china in a colossal crash.

Blood poured down Bruzzi’s back and chest. Already in shock, it wasn’t going to be long before he passed out. Tiziano scrambled to his feet, found his weapon and started at us again. I stepped in front of him. He stopped, a look of confusion on his face, like he was trying to figure out who I was. I didn’t want to hurt him, and if anybody had a right to
kill this son of a bitch, it was his brother. Maybe that was the best thing to do. Just walk away.

Tiziano and I locked eyes, and we stood for a minute, neither moving. Then his face softened. As the wildness disappeared, I saw what he might have been a long time ago—a delicate, vulnerable man. Tears started to run down his cheeks. And then he turned and ran.

I found the light switch in the cavern this time. Bare bulbs brought it up to semidarkness, but it was enough to make our way back to the steel lift. With only a flat piece of metal to stand on and no handholds, it was a treacherous place for the unsteady, and Bruzzi resisted getting on. I hit him in the back of the neck, and he went down face forward, which allowed me to kick his legs far enough past the railing to clear the walkway. He lay sprawled, part of him dangling over the edge, a study in indignity.

I heard them coming before they appeared. The hyenas had returned from their run down to the gate, and they could sense something unusual was happening. They gathered under the lift, looking up, saliva dripping from their muzzles. Bruzzi was panicking now, but I ignored him.

I considered removing the poker but decided to leave it up to the last guy who’d made this trip. “What do you think, Gaetano? Did Andre have a sense of humor?”

Bruzzi began sobbing. “Good,” I said, “then let’s give him his money’s worth.” But for a second opinion, I asked the hyenas. One of them began a high-pitched laugh that obviously meant, “Don’t go to any trouble on our account.”

And so I hit the green button on the control panel, and the lift began its last descent. I was impressed by how smoothly it ran. Proper maintenance is important.

Truman York knew a shortcut to the crypt. The guy was scum, but he’d been in combat, so he didn’t rattle. And he didn’t ask unnecessary questions—even when he heard the gunfire. I was seven minutes past the deadline, and I expected to find Julien either gone or dead. He was neither.

He’d managed to barricade the door leading down from the residence, which had forced his pursuers outside, where they’d had to slide down a steep, grassy bank to get to the foot-thick, hinged vehicle doors. But Julien had stopped them there too by pulling one of Bruzzi’s wine trucks against them. Now Remi and crew were trying to shoot their way in.

After wading through a foot of water in a medieval tunnel that smelled of rot and rat shit, Truman and I came up through a grate in the crypt floor. But now we were just as trapped as the bad guys. We were going to have to go back up the stone steps and through the house, and running wasn’t going to work.

Truman had never ridden a motorcycle before, so that meant Julien was going to have to find the strength for one more push. He looked about as pale as a human being can look, but he forced a smile and got one of the Triumphs started. With my .45 back, I went up the steps to the iron interior door. I leaned against it, but with the gunfire downstairs, I couldn’t tell what was on the other side. My bet, however, was that Remi would have it covered.

I slowly raised the thick security bar. Its hinge squeaked as it disengaged, and immediately two gunshots hit the metal from the other side. I counted to three and jerked the door open, double tapping right to left until my clip was empty. There were two grunts, and a pair of bodies hit the floor.

I waited but heard no reinforcements, so I retreated back down the steps and mounted the other Triumph with Truman sitting behind me. We blasted up the stairs, past the two dead sentries, then up two more long flights that were so narrow the bikes’ handlebars barely cleared the walls.

I’d given the .45 to Truman along with an extra clip, and as we rounded the corner into the vast living room, he took out two more headband-clad shooters. Another riddled the walls and ceiling with Kalashnikov fire as we crashed through a wall of floor-to-ceiling leaded windows onto a wide porch, then down more stairs and finally onto level ground.

We were on the town side of the property. The driveway led right, but I had no intention of taking the long way home. Julien was even with me, the side of his blood-soaked jump-suit visible in the moonlight. I pointed to the high wall in front of us, and he nodded.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw the headlight of Remi’s Triumph emerge from the garage, a member of his crew holding onto his waist with one hand, a
lupara
in the other.

“We can’t get out that way,” Truman yelled in my ear.

I ignored him and opened the throttle onto a narrow footpath. It ran straight at the wall, then turned sharply left into an arbor of overgrown roses. In the dark, at speed, it was impossible to avoid the thorned tentacles reaching across the divide. Fortunately, most were below eye level, so I wasn’t going to be blinded, and my ops gear kept them from slashing anything vital. My passenger, wearing light cotton clothing, wasn’t as lucky. He leaned into my back as far as he could, but he still got raked, and I felt more than a little pleasure each time he grunted.

At the end of the path, there was a man-made stream that had probably been conceived as a place of meditation. Neglect had long since ended that function, and only a trickle of brown water now ran among the thick rocks in its bed. I steered into it.

The bike bumped and jerked and almost went over a couple of times, but I managed to hold it, and Truman didn’t try to help me lean. A hundred yards later, with the wall still high on our right, we came to a place where the streambed had crumbled away completely. Over the years, water runoff from the mountain had eaten away the bottom of the wall, and at some point, a rockslide had come along and taken out a wide section, leaving behind boulders and rubble as high as the wall had been.