Carlin Romano: Philadelphia Noir

He looked away, his bitter tears mingling with the rain. In that instant, the grief she’d spent months helping him to overcome rushed back. A moment later, the grief was gone, and it was replaced with an emotion he knew all too well-anger.

Richard checked his pockets. He still had the phone. He had his Ruger, and he had the Glock with a silencer he’d taken from the dead man in the kitchen.

He looked out from behind the tree once more and saw dome lights whirling outside his house. If he were anyone else, he could’ve tried to make his way back to the house. He could’ve told the police that the same people who’d killed his wife had tried to kill him. He could’ve clarified that he’d acted in self-defense. But Corrine was right. Richard had something to hide, and it all began with the scar on his chest.

Chambering a round in the Glock, Richard stuffed the Ruger into his waistband. A second later, his phone buzzed and his pocket glowed as he received another text message.

For a moment, he considered ignoring the message and leaving the phone behind, but he wanted his pursuers to use the phone to track him. That would bring them closer, and make them that much easier to kill.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the phone, cupped it in his hand, and read the message while the rain pelted the screen.

We know what happened in the mountains at Tora Bora , the text said. Surrender and you might live .

A chill went through Richard’s body as he reread the message and checked the source. The text had come from a phone number with a 202 area code, which meant they weren’t trying to hide their identities anymore. They were CIA, just like the teams he’d fought alongside in Afghanistan.

He’d learned two things about those teams during the war: the only thing that mattered to them was the objective, and they didn’t care how they reached it.

Pocketing the phone, he crawled through the slippery, leaf-strewn grass to the edge of Reservoir Drive-the road that snaked through the park from 33rd Street. Then he limped across and climbed a rain-slicked hill until he reached a chain-link fence.

The faded sign on the fence said, No Trespassing. Property of the Philadelphia Water Department. He ignored it and scaled the fence, squeezing past the barbed wire that topped it. There was a reservoir on the other side of the fence, and the water inside was rapidly rising.

Richard lay on his stomach on the reservoir’s concrete embankment and held onto the fence with both hands. He was flat on his belly and the rain pelting his wounded leg felt almost soothing. Then the fence rattled, and any comfort he felt disappeared.

Sliding into the water, Richard flipped onto his back and allowed himself to float while holding the Glock he’d stolen from the dead body. When the first of two men came sliding along the slippery embankment to see if he was alive, Richard remained still. When the man got closer, Richard opened one eye. When he was almost upon him, Richard sprung into action.

He flipped over in the water, raised the Glock, and fired, hitting the man three times. Before his victim fell into the water, Richard submerged and swam hard to his right. Ten bullets bored into the water around him, but none of them found their target. By the time he surfaced, he was nearly fifty yards away, and the man who’d shot at him was frantically searching for him in the darkness.

Richard climbed the gate and fell on the sloping grass, wincing at the pain in his leg as he rolled to the bottom of the hill. He looked up and saw the man who’d shot at him climbing the gate about forty yards away. Then he heard footsteps running around the bend.

He’d lost the phone and the second gun in the water, but there was no time to lament. Richard got up and hobbled across Reservoir Drive, heading toward the old mansion at Smith Memorial Playground. He crouched as he passed orange construction barriers near the massive house that was buttressed by scaffolding.

Richard’s limp was more pronounced than it had been just seconds before, and when he reached the mansion, bullets struck the metal scaffolding. Richard aimed his gun at the lock on the door and fired a shot of his own. A second later, he was inside.

He could see the dim outlines of tricycles and hobby horses strewn about the floor, and the shape of a giant sliding board in the back. The newly painted walls bore pictures that were barely visible in the darkness.

Richard crouched low and ducked into a room thirty yards ahead, knowing that the trail of blood from his wound would lead them to him. But he wanted them to find him now. He wanted it to be over.

The doorknob twisted and three men moved in, spreading out to either side of the room.

“We’re here!” said the leader. “Are you?”

Richard recognized the voice now. It was Joe Miller, the same man who’d led the CIA team in the mountains of Tora Bora. Miller was the kind of man others followed. It wasn’t because he was especially intelligent or threatening. Nor was it the fact that he’d been a Special Forces major prior to joining the agency. There was just a force about him-a feeling. He had only to speak in that world-weary, cynical growl, and it was enough to make lesser men submit.

Richard was not a lesser man, and he had no intention of submitting. “You know I’m here, Miller,” he said as he slid along the wall, his legs even weaker than his voice. “And you know all of us won’t be walking out.”

Miller used hand signals to point to the area where Richard’s voice had come from and his men moved in that direction. “It’s hard to know anything when it comes to you, Richard. We thought we knew where you were in the mountains, and we were wrong, weren’t we?”

Richard moved toward an opening in the wall that led to another room. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said as his pursuers moved closer.

“I’m talking about Afghanistan, Richard. I’m talking about the reasons you kept going back.”

“I wanted to fight,” Richard said, sliding down the wall and easing the gun around the corner.

“That’s what we all thought at first,” the squad leader said as he got down in a prone position and turned on his weapon’s laser scope. “And with all the intelligence we gathered and got to you guys in Delta Force, we figured the fight would be easy.”

“It should’ve been,” Richard said. “But it’s hard to fight a war with the CIA in the way.”

“It’s even harder when one of your best soldiers is a traitor,” he said in an effort to hold Richard’s attention. “I have to admit, it took us awhile to figure out how you did it. The simplicity of it was pure genius.”

Suddenly, one of the men flew around the wall. Even with his bleeding leg and dimmed senses, Richard was too fast to be caught off guard. He turned and fired one shot from the silenced gun, hitting the agent in the temple. The man was dead before he stopped moving.

Another flew around the wall and was upon Richard, who grabbed his arm and twisted it until it broke. There was a scream and a muffled gunshot, and the agent’s last breath came out along with the contents of his bowels.

Richard pushed the body away with a grunt, and when he did so, Miller was standing over him with his gun pointed at Richard’s head. His face was just as Richard remembered it-red and pockmarked with a bulbous nose and a mouth that was fixed in a scowl.

“Drop the gun,” Miller said, his tone low and angry.

Richard did as he was told. With the blood he’d lost since being shot in his leg, and the energy he’d expended fighting them off, he was too tired and weak to do otherwise.

“I should kill you right now,” Miller said.

“Yeah you should. So why don’t you?”