Michael Walsh: Early Warning

The firing stopped.

Devlin rose, the KA-BAR in his hand, grasping it by the handle this time. The Judge was still with him, but he wanted to impart one last lesson.

The heavy knife got Raymond right below the breast-bone. “Mama!” he cried.

A pro would know to lie down. A pro would know it was time to die, the way Milverton had done when he’d bested him. A pro would show some respect.

All these things young Raymond Crankheit still had to learn, and never would.

Devlin was hardly surprised when the kid, with four of the KA-BAR’s six inches stuck inside him, tried to pull it out. He was not surprised when the kid tried to bite him as he approached. Nothing this punk did would surprise him now.

“Last lesson, Raymond,” he said, pulling out the Judge. “When you shoot at somebody, make sure you don’t miss.”

Raymond’s face was a bloody, grotesque mask as he spotted Devlin, looking down at him. Whether he saw the gun was hard to say, but he surely knew what was coming. “Give it back to me,” he hissed.

“What?”

“The hair. My girlfriend’s hair. She’ll be mad at me if it gets lost.”

“I’ll make sure she gets it back, kid,” said Devlin. He thought a moment for an appropriate valedictory. “They say there but for the grace of God, and you know what-they’re right, if you don’t take the God part too seriously. But when I look at you, Raymond, I don’t see just another misspent youth, a life that went nowhere. I see something else. I see a kid that’s going to be saved, not cursed. You’ve got talent. You’ve got moves. You’ve got heart.”

“Thanks, pop,” Raymond said. “I wish you were my dad.”

“That’s why I’m not going to let you grow up, so that you can be like me. So they can make you into another version-maybe a better version-of me. Look at me, Raymond. Look at me.”

The boy turned what was left of his face to Devlin’s.

“Here, but for the grace of God, might have gone you.”

He fired two.45 rounds in Raymond’s heart. That got that part of the pain over with. He’d never feel another pang of love or lust or anger or hatred again.

Devlin looked down at the mess that had been Raymond Crankheit. Some woman bore this creature, some man had fathered him, whipped him, beaten him, turned him into the sniveling wreck he’d become, a pit bull that cringed in front of its master but attacked the neighbors. Somewhere there were the two people who were Raymond’s parents, and whether they still loved him or despised him, or whether they were even still alive, since Raymond might have killed them first, Devlin saw no point in having their son’s final, horrific misdeeds come back to haunt them. If he could not grant absolution to the son, then let him do it for the parents.

The third round in the Judge’s chamber was a shotgun shell. He pointed the gun at Raymond’s head, and blew it off, in the hopes that someday, someone might do the same for him.

The quickest way to the river was back the way he came. There he could wash off both the shit and the stench of Raymond’s martyrdom, cleansing himself of all the sins and getting ready for one more kill.

The East River

Kohanloo’s boat slipped in and out of the traffic. He kept radio silence, which was something he didn’t intend to break until the last possible second, to locate his contact in Red Hook.

All things considered, the operation had been a success. They had struck a mighty blow at the Great Satan. Certain financial investments he had placed both for himself and for the mullahs would now pay off handsomely. There was the matter of the score he had to settle with Skorzeny, but that could wait until after the hero’s welcome he was undoubtedly going to get when he got back to Tehran.

He looked at the radio. It didn’t look like much, but he had to assume that it was state of the art, that it would do its job, that it would make the contact as promised and planned. He almost lifted the receiver and cranked it, just to see if it was working, but decided against it. Patience was one of the great virtues, and curious, sinful man had such a hard time understanding that.

He was lost in these thoughts for a moment until he gradually became aware of the thwack thwack thwack of an approaching helicopter, the beats growing louder. He did his best not to panic immediately. New York was filled with helicopters-police helicopters, private helicopters, news helicopters, sightseeing helicopters, now even military helicopters. Perhaps all the Brothers had been killed; perhaps the city was being reopened.

He glanced skyward. No visual, but the sound was growing louder. It was also growing lower…

“What a fucking moron,” said Lannie Saleh. “I mean, come on, it’s not like he’s obvious or anything.” He finished assembling the Barrett and got ready to hand it to Byrne.

“First rule of police work, Lannie,” said Byrne, moving into position. “If criminals weren’t stupid, the cops would never solve any crime.” He shouted over at “Martin Ferguson”-“Can you take us down a little lower? I want to get a visual on him if possible.”

“We’ll spook him.”

“I don’t know what area of law enforcement you’re in, pal, but I’m a New York City cop, with a real live NYPD badge in my pocket and a formerly regulation.38 sidearm. I shoot some civilian and even under a state of emergency my career is meat and I’m lucky to be pulling down half-pension on Fire Island. Lannie?”

Lannie angled the computer toward Byrne’s field of vision. They’d downloaded all known pictures of Kohanloo, and their mysterious benefactor had sent them a ton of surveillance photos as well, and had kept them coming until the transmission had suddenly gone dead a few hours ago. No matter, with enhancements, they knew every inch of his face the way his mother would. With other software, they could calculate his body mass, his weight, his height, then do a full-scale mockup of what he would look like in various positions, measured against objects they all knew. There was no chance, zero, that in person he would turn out to be shorter than they thought, or fatter. They’d know him in a dark alley. All they needed was one good visual and…pow! He’d be sleeping with the fishes.

They had taken off from the Pan Am Building-everybody still called it that-and circled across the river, wheeling over Queens to come around over Randall’s Island, with the whole sweep of the river heading south before them. They were over a place where the ocean tides and the waters of the Long Island Sound collided with and the estuarial waters of the Hudson River and its effluent, the Harlem River. Sailors had long hated this part of the riverway, with its treacherous eddies and rocky outcroppings. No wonder it was called Hell Gate.

“Take us down,” ordered Byrne.

“Over or under?” asked Danny.

“The bridges, you mean?”

Danny nodded. “Under is better. You want to see his face, I can let you shake his hand.”

“That’s what the scope is for,” said Byrne, patting it.

“You’re the boss.”

The chopper rose almost straight up in the air as it neared the Queensboro Bridge and both Byrne and Lannie almost lost their lunches. “Under’s better. A little trickier, but leave that to me.”

Kohanloo saw the chopper suddenly peel off and shoot into the air as he approached the Queensboro Bridge. He breathed a little easier when he shot beneath it and didn’t see the damn thing. So it was a false alarm after all. Good. At the speed he was doing, Red Hook was less than 45 minutes away. He was going to make it.

Danny rocked the chopper hard to the left as he ascended, then leveled off and headed straight across the river for Manhattan and the buildings of the East Side.