Frank Zafiro - And Every Man Has to Die

The water in the bathroom shut off.

There was another knock at the door, no harder than the first.

“Don’t answer that!” Leeb called from the bathroom.

“I wasn’t going to,” Battaglia snapped. “I’m just going to look.”

He leaned forward and put his eye to the peephole.

As soon as Val saw the peephole darken, he fired three times. The.44 erupted, bucking in his hand with each shot. The wood splintered and tore with each blast.

Val stepped aside to make room for Black Ivan.

Battaglia’s world exploded. Concussions buffeted his chest. Sharp wood chunks bit into his face and throat.

He staggered back, staring stupidly at the door. Then he reached for his gun. As his hand came to rest on the handle he veered awkwardly to his right. His legs felt heavy, then suddenly weak.

He collapsed toward the wall as if in slow motion. His mind screamed out at him: “Let go of your gun and brace yourself!” But he couldn’t force his body to obey.

He crashed face-first into the wall and slid down sideways.

Black Ivan took a giant stride toward the door, a twelve-gauge shotgun clutched in his huge hands. He drove his foot into the door just beside the handle.

“Go!” Val ordered, but he didn’t have to. The large Russian was already through the doorway. He gave the wounded cop a brief look, then walked right past him.

Oleg Tretiak had moved into the far corner. Black Ivan raised the shotgun.

“Wait!” Val ordered, following Ivan inside. Shots rang out before he could give a further order. Hot zipping sounds flew by him like angry hornets. Val didn’t hesitate. He turned his.44 on the bathroom door and returned fire. He emptied the revolver, moving deeper into the room as he fired.

Another shot answered his own, then two more.

Val flipped open the cylinder and reloaded. He caught Ivan’s eye and jerked his head toward the bathroom door.

Ivan fired at the door. The shotgun’s sharp booming filled the room, followed by the menacing racking sound and another shot. The rounds tore fist-sized holes in the flimsy bathroom door. Val heard the heavy thud of somebody falling into the shower door.

“Keep that covered,” he ordered.

Ivan nodded, keeping the shotgun trained on the bathroom door.

Val turned his attention to Oleg Tretiak, the traitor.

Battaglia saw red, then black.

He blinked.

The world became a hazy, bright fog. He saw a giant shape pause in front of him, then rumble past. He drew in a rasping, gurgling breath.

I’m shot.

Panic started to seep in. He tried to control it but it was like an avalanche. The sensation enveloped him. For a moment he thought it would grab onto him and drag him down into darkness. He could feel the constant pull at the edge of his consciousness, an insistent tug toward blackness.

He wanted to draw his gun and return fire, but he couldn’t move his hand. He couldn’t move at all. He could barely breathe.

Then the pain hit, fiery and pounding. He tried to cry out, but all he could manage was a wheezing whisper. What did all the training say? He forced his mind to focus on those in-service days, sitting in the academy classroom, watching videos about critical incidents, reading all of the officer-killed summaries. What did all of that tell him?

Simple. If you knew you’d been shot, you were still alive and would probably survive.

Survive, he thought. I have to survive.

More shots rang out, but he didn’t feel any impact. Maybe he was too far gone to feel the bullets hitting him. No, that couldn’t be it. The shots were missing him. Or they were meant for someone else.

He focused on his left hand. It dangled off his hip, just a few inches from his radio. He willed it to move. First, twitch the fingers. It seemed to take forever, but finally his first two fingers responded. He forced his hand upward to the radio on his belt. He fumbled blindly for the notch near the antenna. His index finger found it, skipped over the top, then dropped back inside.

Push the button , he told himself. Call for the cavalry.

He twitched his finger and pressed downward.

The huge booming sound of a shotgun erupted.

An alert tone came over the police radio. Chisolm immediately turned the volume up.

“Signal 98,” the dispatcher said, her tone elevated. “Signal 98, Officer Emergency.Officer Battaglia at the Quality Inn on North Division. Room 420.”

She repeated the broadcast a second time, but Chisolm was no longer listening. He engaged his lights and siren and punched the accelerator.

Val savored the moment as he took two steps toward Oleg. He flashed the traitor a cold, hard smile.

“Did you think we wouldn’t find you, musor ?” he asked, his tone conversational.

Oleg shook his head. “I knew you probably would.”

“Why would you betray your own people?” Val asked.

“Sergey is a fool,” Oleg said. “He is too ambitious. He was going to cause all of us to go to prison.”

Val shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But that doesn’t explain why you would skim money from us.”

“Fuck Sergey, and fuck you,” Oleg snarled. “You barely even missed what little extra I took. You drive BMWs while my wife must work at the laundry. Why should I be loyal to that?”

Val raised the.44 and pointed it at his head. “Because we are your people,” he said simply.

“My family is my people.”

Val pressed his lips together. “Come with us now, if you want to live.”

Oleg spat on the carpet in front of Val.

He had to admire the man. He knew that a more painful, torturous death awaited him if he left the motel room. But most men would trade that death later for a few more moments of life now. Oleg had a warrior’s heart. A black, traitorous warrior’s heart.

“ Stukach ,” he said, and squeezed the trigger.

Oleg’s head jerked backward. Blood and brain matter speckled the wall behind him.

Val turned away before the body had even hit the ground. Ivan followed him out of the room with his weapon trained on the bathroom door, acting as a rear guard, just like so many times before.

In the hallway Val pulled down a fire alarm. A loud clanging bell filled the motel. He and Ivan took the stairs down to the first floor.

Clockwork , he thought. Now just out the side door to the sedan where Sergey and Yuri are waiting.

2211 hours

Chisolm broke the light at Francis and Division, barely slowing for cross traffic. He glanced in his rearview mirror and saw a pickup truck skidding through the intersection. One second difference and he’d have T-boned Chisolm. Or the other way around.

The thought flit through his mind and was gone again. He focused on the motel that was still eight blocks ahead.

Carson drove faster than she ever imagined possible. She could hear sirens all around her.

“Fire is responding to an alarm at the Quality Inn,” the dispatcher announced.

Fire?An alarm? Carson didn’t have time to think about it as she approached an S-curve on Maple. She steered through the turn using both lanes.

High, low, high, she recited automatically, just as she’d done during emergency vehicle operations training at the academy.

She took a hard right onto Francis and headed east. She saw a fire truck rolling out of the station ahead of her at Jefferson. In what seemed like less than a second she was right up on the rear of it.

Carson dropped her foot onto the accelerator and whizzed around the huge fire engine without a second thought.

Val opened the car door and slid into the back seat while Ivan clambered into the front.

“How did it go?” Sergey asked, his voice a little strained.