Dan O'Shea - Penance

Brown walked back into the kitchen.

“You got the player?” Weaver asked.

She pulled the small digital device from her pocket and waved it at him. Weaver looked her over one last time. She was dressed in Manning’s clothes, hair matched perfectly. With the make-up, she was almost a dead ringer.

“You ready?”

Brown nodded. “Let’s rock and roll.”

Weaver clicked on his comm unit. “Brown is rolling. Ping me as soon as she’s in the church and we’ll fire up the radars.”

Through his scope, Ishmael Fisher watched Andrea Manning leave her condo and walk toward the church. It was almost over now. They were near, he had seen signs, but it didn’t matter. He was not where they would expect him to be. He would get his shot. After was after.

He felt an intense love for Manning as he watched her walk toward the church, grateful that he would be the instrument that would deliver her to paradise. His right hand worked the beads of his rosary. The Joyful Mysteries.

Cunningham lay in the body box working his left wrist. Most of the last two days were a blur at best. But the drugs had worn off that morning, and they hadn’t shot him up again. Came to strapped to a bed in his shorts, leather cuffs lined with wool on his wrists and ankles. Somebody didn’t want to leave marks. Four guys had come down shortly after, carrying some camo gear.

“Time to get dressed, big boy.” It was the FedEx guy.

They only loosened one cuff at a time, slipping his arms and legs into the fatigues, rolling him around on the bed. Worst thing about it was that they’d done it before, they had a process. Cunningham tried to fight, but it was no good. They pulled his boots on him one at a time. They unfastened the wrist cuffs from the bed, clipped them together. Did the same with the leg cuffs. Someone came in with a dolly, a big packing box on it, the thing FedEx guy had had in the lobby of his place. They set that down on the floor and flipped up the lid. It was foam lined, with clips for the restraints attached to the sides.

“Time for a little ride.” FedEx guy again.

They lifted him by his arms and legs, set him into the box, then clipped the restraints to the sides. When they snapped the lid shut, Cunningham knew they hadn’t spotted their mistake. While they were dressing him, he’d bent the fingers on his left hand and grabbed the sleeve of the fatigue shirt, pulling the fabric up over his wrist. The fabric was fairly thick. It was trapped between the wool lining of the cuff and his wrist. Not much, but probably enough. Cunningham kept working the wrist, feeling a little more give each time.

Ferguson and Jenks were under the big AC unit on the roof of the building across from St Mary’s, covered by a tarp, their rifles barely protruding.

“Here she comes,” said Ferguson, watching Manning leave her building. Manning walked into the church. A couple of minutes later, Jenks’s radar detector started to peep. He looked at the screen, moving it back and forth slowly. First reading was south. He got the line, put his eye to the scope, and looked at the building. The box was on the third floor, balcony on the right, sliding door cracked open, vertical blinds almost closed. Shooter.

“West negative thirty-three,” Jenks muttered into his comm unit. He swung the detector back north, repeated the process. Window box. Slight shadow two windows over. Shooter number two. “West sixty-one.”

“You sure?” Ferguson asked. “Doesn’t make sense.”

“West sixty-one,” Jenks repeated.

Chen popped up in their earpieces.

“Where the hell is Lynch?” she said.

Lynch sat in the back pew of the church, watching the door. Manning came in. He got up, walked toward her, but she took a hard left into the first confessional. Lynch moved to stand between the confessional and the door to the church. He’d have to catch her on the way out.

Lynch waited, that weird feeling where you lose concept of time. Over the comm unit he heard Jenks give the radar locations. West sixty-on? What the hell? That was Manning’s place.

Then Manning stepped out of the confessional.

Captain Starshak sat in the back of one of the SWAT vans lined up two blocks west, still not believing that all the shit Lynch had told him over the past ten hours was actually going down. Lynch had gone over maps with Starshak, explained the location codes, given him the comm frequencies that Ferguson would be using. Starshak had briefed the leads in all the other units. Now they were listening in, waiting for Ferguson to name the locations, ready to roll. Only thing Lynch hadn’t said was where Ferguson and this Jenks guy would be. Said he didn’t know. Starshak had let that go. Knew the line Lynch was walking. Hell, if he were in Lynch’s shoes, he’d be walking it himself. Things worked out right, it wouldn’t matter. Things worked out wrong, well, it wouldn’t much matter then, either.

The SWAT guys weren’t thrilled with Starshak being CO, but Starshak had been SWAT before, and with what Lynch had on the mayor, Lynch was calling the shots. The circle of people Lynch trusted was closing in, and he wasn’t going to have anybody outside of it in charge of anything.

The SWAT guy in the front passenger seat said, “Roger that,” and then turned back to Starshak. “Manning just left her building.”

Then the radio tuned to Ferguson’s frequency went live. “West negative thirty-three.” A pause. “And west sixty-one.”

Starshak keyed the command channel.

“Go, go, go!”

As the van lurched forward, Starshak ran his finger along the map, counting down the buildings. West sixty-one was Manning’s place. What the fuck?

Starshak keyed his mic. “We’re taking west sixty-one.”

Fisher watched Manning on his monitor and listened to her confession. The priest ordered no penance. Fisher cursed the priest’s weakness as he set the monitor and his rosary down and brought the stock of the rifle up to his cheek, his eye behind the scope, the doors of the church as clear as heaven.

Lynch watched as Manning walked toward him.

“Ms Manning, my name is John Lynch. I am a detective with-”

The eyepatch killed Lynch’s peripheral vision. He barely saw the kick coming. Manning’s left foot flashed up toward the right side of his head. He only managed to turn with the kick a fraction before the boot hit his head and he hit the floor, his vision narrowed to a small tunnel, his ears ringing. Manning was rushing past him to the doors of the church. The doors were pushing open. Lynch was just up to his hands and knees when he saw her stagger and drop to the ground, the door closing behind her.

Ferguson and Jenks didn’t have time to think about west sixty-one. They saw the church doors open, saw Manning drop, heard the report to the north. Close. Real close. Both fired at the radar units.

Weaver heard three things almost at once. A rifle shot from right outside the front of the condo, the radar box being hit by a bullet, and a loud screech of tires. He snatched his M4 off the table and ran up the hall to the front window. Cops in raid gear were piling out of a big Chicago PD truck. Fuck this, Weaver thought. The president was on his own. Gotta slow things down just a tad, get to the van, get out of Dodge, live off the money in the Caymans.

Weaver fired a long burst from the hip through the front window and into the line of cops running from the truck. Aiming low, going for legs. Didn’t need to kill anybody. And they’d be armored up anyway. A few of them dropped. That ought to keep them away from the door for a few seconds. Then Weaver put a three-round burst into Uri, who was crouched at the window looking back at him. He didn’t need any of the lend-lease guys Clarke had dug up swapping stories for plea deals.