Rick Boyer: Billingsgate Shoal

We propped him up against the wall. He was conscious, but spilling lots of blood. Way too much blood too fast. That told me a blood vessel had been. severed. Not an artery that would pump and squirt crimson, but a big saphenous vein.

He'd taken slugs from the beginning of the burst that had killed the other man, the burst that had raked across them both, sending each successive round higher as the tiny gun had bucked upward with recoil. O'Shaughnessey was hit square in the left thigh and had a deep crease along the small of his back. An inch farther inward would have taken away both his kidneys and his spine. The thigh hit was bad; the femur was broken clean in two with perhaps an inch missing. The main problem with a. 45 is that it makes such a goddamn big hole.

They had taken away my knife, so I asked Thug Number One for his. With it I slit the pant leg and rigged a tourniquet with my shirt sleeve and an old piece of metal window frame I found after several minutes of feeling around in the dark. It stopped the flow pretty well, although I was also certain his blood pressure was down by this time too.

The big man worked in the dark, studying me. I heard metallic clacking and guessed he was reloading the big revolver. Then he made up his mind and handed me the. 44 magnum belonging to his fallen comrade. It weighed slightly less than a washing machine.

"This will just about take yer hand off when ya fire it… and break yer wrist, too. Hold it with both hands, and tight."

I heard a brisk chatter, and ducked. But it wasn't the chatter of an automatic weapon; it was Stephen O'Shaughnessey's teeth. He was freezing to death.

"Now you hear me good, Doctor. I'm going to move around behind him, slow like. If we stay here we'll stay pinned down, don't yah know. You keep that cannon pointed right where the corner of that building is. Do you see it now? Give me ten minutes, then fire a few shots at it, hear? And listen, the both of you: any fookin' around and yer dead, quick as a wink, hear me?"

"Yes," I answered. O'Shaughnessey moved his head back and forth in pain and didn't answer.

"What time have you?"

"Four-thirty."

"At twenty of the hour I'll expect to hear the gunfire. Then I'll come on him like blazes-" He turned to go.

"And good-bye Stephen O'Shaughnessey. May you repair yourself. But, may we not meet again. Stay out of me fookin' business."

He was gone. And for a big man he moved with utter silence. He had removed the hood from the dead man before he left, presumably so the police wouldn't think of him as the terrorist murderer he was. I was shocked to see the face of a boy, perhaps only nineteen or twenty. Tony's age. He had pale skin but dark, bushy eyebrows. It was now light enough out to see that his eyes were open.

"Oh shite! Ohhhhhh," said Stephen O'Shaughnessey.

I realized that if help didn't come soon he'd probably die. Four-thirty. Was DeGroot awake? Had he seen the note? Couldn't count on it. I had to get out and make a phone call-flag down a car. Anything.

"Adams."

I went over to him.

"How bad is it?"

"What's bad is you've been losing blood by the quart. You've also got a broken leg but I'm not worried about that."'

"Now listen," he gasped, "I bloody well can't move and you know it. If I take the gun and cover you, could you find yer way out?"

"Yes."

"Well go. It's better than us sitting here and me bleeding to death, tourniquet or no our-ahhhhhh!"

He shivered with pain, but took the big. 44, then aimed it square at my heart.

"Go, Doctor. These are orders. Head straight back and make a wide circle around the both of them-"

I pressed my back up against the wall and sidestepped along it. Ten yards. Twenty yards. Forty yards. I was home free. I began a slow quiet walk. At the next corner I would turn right and head for the old sea wall, then drop to the beach. and wade the shallow water right up to the road. No problem with fighting even the outer fence this time. Then heard it. A boat was coughing to life out on the pier. It was a smallish gasoline engine. A cruiser engine. It went into high revs right away and groaned into the distance, toward the mouth of the huge harbor. My watch said quarter to five. It was past the time Number One said he'd put the rush on Schilling. Had he been waiting for my shots, or had he taken the boat? My guess was the latter; he'd sensed the situation had gotten far enough out of control so that his capture was imminent. And now I worried even more about O'Shaughnessey's safety.

A big boom sounded behind me. It could only be the heavy. 44 magnum. Almost immediately afterward I heard the hoofbeat sound of pounding slugs hitting brick. Then the deep boom of the pistol again. Then running feet and a scream. Unarmed, it would do me precious little good to hang around. I only hoped the scream was Schilling's, not O'Shaughnessey's. I ran fast now for the corner of the building. I heard a flight of bees off to the side of my head, and my legs almost turned to water from fear. Those were. 45 slugs sliding by me, hunting me.

I rounded the corner full tilt. Once I reached the sea wall and swung over it I was probably safe.

But as I ran the next twenty yards it got darker up ahead, not lighter. Another twenty yards confirmed it, and I could hear the hollow echo of my feet against the walls. And then I saw the windows, six rows of them, looming up ahead of me. I had turned one corner too soon. The way to the beach and the sea wall lay one more building past where I had turned. I was in the last courtyard. Oh God, I thought. Why now? Why this way, after all I'd been through? Why now, when I'd been a1most-.

There is no panic as great as that which follows a sense of relief, no despair so acute as that which comes back after renewed hope. I ran to the end of the enclosed courtyard. I yanked at two window. They were barred. I searched madly for a ramp, a door, a fire-escape…

"Adams!"

I turned and looked at the dim figure standing on the roadway at the open end of the courtyard. It was still quite dark. He was leaning a bit too much. He took two quick steps forward and bowed in my direction slightly, like a Japanese houseboy. He'd been nicked by O'Shaughnessey before he'd killed him. But even a nick from a. 44 was serious. So God bless Stephen O'Shaughnessey. The late Stephen O'Shaughnessey. But a lot of good it would do me.

The man made two fast twists of his body, back and forth. A swarm of locusts sang above my head, and then came the terrible pounding and popping sound above me as pieces of old brick and mortar exploded out from the wall. They fell to the ground in clacks and tinkles, like old flowerpots, and fine dust sat in the air. But the gun was quiet.

He started walking into the courtyard. I heard a distinct, clean clung of metal hitting the ground and then saw him reach back with one hand into a hip pocket. New clip. Thirty more rounds. And at least one of them would finish me. He walked again and I could almost hear the scraping feet, the throat snuffle and sniff of Mr. X. He had failed once but not this time. He had a machine pistol and I didn't have a goddamn thing.

Including, most especially, a way out or a place to hide.

I don't know what made me go looking in the far comer, except plain old bloody desperation. The same thing that makes a trapped rat hug the sides of buildings, or gutter pipes, or old cellarways…

In the very corner of the courtyard, behind a big dumpster bin and several discarded oil drums, was a fire ladder. Not a fire escape, an escape ladder. Vertical, with rungs and such. And it went all the way up the building: six stories high. It also had a barred metal casing around it-a cylindrical cage of steel strips to prevent people from falling off it backward. It was a way out, but not a good one. Inside the ladder cage I would be a sitting duck. A duck at a shooting gallery. And Jim Schilling, besides being a good shot, had a gun that couldn't miss. The rooftop was a long climb away, and time I was very scarce. But the ladder was truly invisible; it snaked up the side of the old building in the farthest, shadiest corner of the dank place, and the bottom rung didn't come closer than about nine feet from the ground. It was the ladder or nothing.