Guilt Kills
Chapter Three
By Cory!! Strode
When O'Ryan got into Peoria, it was after eight in the evening, and as such, the streets were mostly dark. Mercy had rested in the back seat all the way from the small town to the outskirts of Peoria, but when O'Ryan slowed down at the city limits, she was up and looking out the front window, her head next to O'Ryan. He drove while looking for the streets he had been told to look for, and it wasn't long before he found the downtown area. He could tell, even in the dark, that it was near the river, and the few streetlights that lit the sidewalks showed a street limed with short warehouses and office buildings. After he drove up a long hill, he reached a spot where the main street ended, but he'd been told to turn left, which took him by a college and down in a series of more warehouses.
He could see the river from the street he was on, and it was covered with barges, moving crops and other items down river. From Peoria they would go to the Mississippi and then down to southern cities where it was either shipped out or made into food. O'Ryan found it amazing that people would grow food and send it away to made into other food. He supposed it was a system that evolved over time, but coming from a place where they grew everything they ate, and sold the excess to people who came by for fresh food, it just didn't make any sense to him. Especially when so many people were starting to eat things that didn't even seem like actual food.
He found the warehouse he was supposed to go to down by the river, and when he and Mercy got out of their car, the first thing that struck them was the smell. It smelled like spoiled corn and rotting flesh. He looked out at the river, which was black in the pitch of night, and wondered how much of the waste of the city was just dumped into it. That had been the first thing that had surprised him about Chicago, how poorly everyone treated the rivers. It was as if they thought that the river would just wash away everything, without thinking of the things that lived in it or the people who drank from it.
The building had a single light over a small door on the river's side, and when O'Ryan knocked; a pair of men opened the door and asked who he was. He explained that Nitti had sent him, and he heard a man call out "Is that Nitti's guy? Send the son of a bitch in!"
He came into the main office and saw that there were two other men with the two who had shown him in, and another little man behind a desk. This one, however, looked as if he had been able to fight his own fights. He was wide, and O'Ryan could see his bulk through the man's sharply tailored pinstripe suit. He wore a stylish black hat, even inside, and was getting up to greet O'Ryan as he was brought into the office.
The man shook his hand, and had a powerful grip, as if he was testing O'Ryan's strength. He laughed as he shook hands and said, "Nitti was right, you ARE a lot stronger than ya look. Which is good, we got us a situation here, and we need someone who's got a lot of muscle."
He offered O'Ryan a seat and said, "My name is Richard Wyddian, but the people I work with either call me Rick or Boss. You can call me Rick. I'd hate to have Nitti think that I'm trying to take one of his people.'
"I thought you worked for Capone, like we do," O'Ryan said, feeling a bit uncomfortable in the chair with all five people watching his every move.
"Nah," Rick said, reaching into his desk and pulling out a container of gum. He offered some to O'Ryan who politely nodded his head, and then Rick popped two sticks in his mouth. "Beeman's. This stuff is great. I don't think I'd want to live in a world without Beeman's gum. Anyway, I work with Capone, but not for him. He lets me sell to other distributors out west, as long as I meet my quotas with him. The problem is.."
"Mr. Nitti said that you were having trouble with people down south selling merchandise in your area and taking away from his control," O'Ryan said, watching Rick closely to see how he reacted.
"Mr. Nitti only told you part of the story kid. He knows that those hillbillies are trying to break into his market, and he's accusing me of working with them. That's pretty damn far from the truth, really. The truth is that Nitti's been kept out of the loop by Capone because Capone doesn't trust him a whole lot since Valentine's Day. Since then, Nitti has been talking to people without telling the Boss, telling them that if the boss falls, he'll be the one to take over, so they had best get right with him.
"I told him I wasn't going to do that. My allegiance was to Capone, and if it came down to having to choose between the two of them, I would choose Capone. So, Nitti sent you down here, saying that I'm not doing business the right way. The good thing is that some people who work under Nitti know who still has the power in the organization and let me know why you was being told to come down here."
O'Ryan glared at him. He didn't know if the man's story was true or not, but what he did know is that Nitti sent him down here to enforce a contract. He hoped it wouldn't turn into another battle like the one he had gone through a few days before. His shoulder and leg still ached from the gunshot wounds.
Still, O'Ryan thought there was a ring of truth to what the man said. He's heard Nitti himself saying that he was getting himself ready to take over if Capone went to jail, and explained it to him that someone had to keep things running if the crooked cops and G-men got their hands on Capone. Someone had to run things, and Nitti, being Capone's enforcer, had to be ready to take that position. O'Ryan had also heard about what happened on Valentine's Day, but Nitti had told him not to pay any attention to it. So he didn't.
"What if I told you that I was sent down here to lean on you?" O'Ryan asked, "If Nitti said you were breaking an agreement and I was to come down here and make sure that you met the terms you had agreed to. He said that you are supposed to be making a certain amount of merchandise from him, and that you weren't holding up your end."
Rick smiled, "And did he tell you that we were having trouble meeting our quotas because we were getting hassled by those hillbillies?"
"That's right. And that I was to do whatever it takes for you to start getting us the proper amount of whisky," O'Ryan's eyes grew cold, "No matter how I had to do it."
Rick looked as if O'Ryan's implied threat had done its job, scaring him and letting him know that O'Ryan meant business.
Rick motioned to one of his men who leaned over and listened as Rick whispered into his ear. He talked for almost a minute as O'Ryan watched, unmoving. The man left and took another of the men with him. Rick turned back to O'Ryan and said, "Like I said, Nitti doesn't have the whole story. The people who are hassling our producers aren't just the southerners, but some of Nitti's own men. He thinks that if he can slow down my production, he'll have the right to come in and take over my business, consolidating his power. You've been sent here let him know that you did your best, but that I'm a screw up, and then he can get the order from Capone to shut me down. Problem is for him, Capone won't give that order. He knows what's going on, and he wants you to stop the southerners from messing with us, and find out if they are working with Nitti, or if Nitti has his own guys down here."
O'Ryan stood up, "I think you are asking me to break my word to my boss." He slowly moved his hand to his side, ready to draw one of his guns if it turned into another fight.
Rick looked tense but didn't get up. He held a hand out to keep him men from answering O'Ryan's threat, "We both work for Capone at the end of the day. Capone told me to get you a place to stay, let you talk to him and then get back to me tomorrow. I've got an apartment just three blocks from here with a phone and a decent bed. You do what you have to and we'll talk tomorrow morning. If everything is on the up and up, I'll take you down to meet the man in charge of making the best god damn whisky in the country."
"And if everything isn't on the up and up?"
"Then we'll probably find out if you are as good as Nitti thinks you are, won't we?"
* * *
The apartment was nice, four rooms, one of which was its own bathroom, which O'Ryan had never had before. There was a bedroom, a kitchen with a small dining table and a living room with a huge radio as the center of the room's attention. The man who had shown him the place had been a bit nervous about letting Mercy in the room, but when O'Ryan said that he wouldn't stay there unless Mercy was allowed to, he let them both in.
He left O'Ryan with the key and showed him where the telephone was. Once he was alone , the problem he had was who to call. Nitti had told him that this man was having trouble meeting his quota, and was claiming that people were trashing his operation. The man was saying that the problem he was having was that Nitti was trying to keep him from meeting his quota, and Capone wanted him to find out why Nitti was doing that.
The problem was, if he called Capone and the man's story wasn't true, Capone would think he wasn't good enough for this kind of assignment. On top of that, Nitti said that Heenan may have something to do with this, and if he didn't, he would have a line on Heenan when he got back.
What was more important, finding out the truth here, or finding Heenan and getting revenge?
He looked at Mercy, who was laying next to the radio and watching the door, ready to spring into action if anyone came in without O'Ryan giving the "safe" signal. He wondered if he was just like her, trained to do certain things, but not knowing the big picture around him. It puzzled him, like so much of the world had since he had left home to find Heenan.
Unbidden, his mind drifted back to Belinda, and how she looked as she had sat on the porch swing, drinking a glass of soda and talking about the stories she had read. She confided in his that she wrote her own romance stories, but didn't think they were good enough to be in a magazine or anything. He had listened to her talk until he could see that the sun was starting to go down.
He cleared his thoughts quickly and looked toward the window, looking out at the lights of the city. He didn't know if he should call Capone, but one thing he did know. He had to find out if Heenan was in the area.
When he had left home, he was able to do a ritual to discover what direction Heenan had gone, but he hadn't done it in a while, since Nitti had told him that he would take care of the search. Now, he was starting to question if Nitti was really helping him.
O'Ryan set up the room for the ritual, closed the window shades and sent Mercy to wait in the bedroom, but after a quick start, he was knocked to the floor and the candles he had put in the proper places around the room went out, leaving him in darkness. He'd been blocked. Something out there was so powerful that it was able to stop him from even seeing if there was a lot of power being used. Which meant only one thing to him.
Heenan was involved in all of this. Which meant that Nitti wasn't lying to him, and Rick was. There wasn't much he could do about it that night, so he decided to get some sleep and then head out to Havana early the next day to see if he could find out what exactly he was in the middle of. And he knew he would have to have all of his weapons ready.
* * *
That night, for the first time in months, he didn't dream of being buried in stone, seeing the ghosts of his friends or being unable to wash the blood off of his hands. He dreamed of being with Belinda. Feeling her soft skin under his touch. Kissing her the way he'd seen couple on the street kissing each other when they walked arm in arm. The dream was so vivid that when he woke up, he spent an extended period of time in bed, committing the dream to memory, and hoping again that he would see her again as he had promised her.
* * *
An hour after he awoke, there was a knock on the door. It was the man who had shown him to the apartment the night before. He asked O'Ryan to call him Johnny D, but O'Ryan called him sir, since he was older than O'Ryan was. All of the elders deserved respect, even if they were not from the same order as he was. Especially in this world, where life ended quickly and violently. Before he left the home, and before Heenan's betrayal, there had only been one death at the home that he could remember, and it was one of the elders who had died in his sleep.
It had taken him weeks of questioning to finally understand death, and while he had grasped it at the time, it didn't make as much sense outside the home. The fact that all people were part of the same consciousness experiencing itself sequentially made sense when all men worked together toward a common purpose. In the outside world, it seemed more that life was sheer chaos, with things happening for no real reason.
He and Mercy followed Johnny D without saying much. O'Ryan was wearing his suit, which allowed for two guns, and he had a knife in each boot in case he had to fight in close quarters. Mercy was a weapon unto herself, but O'Ryan had been sure to feed her properly so that she would be paying full attention to his commands without the distraction of hunger. When they got outside, O'Ryan paused, allowing Mercy to run into a small grassy area to relive herself.
While she was doing that, Johnny D spoke, "I'm supposed to drive you down to meet Luger and look over his plant. You'll be staying there to protect the place." When Mercy came back, Johnny D opened the door to the car that was parked in front of O'Ryan's, but O'Ryan ignored it and went to his car.
He opened the back door, and Mercy jumped in and paused on the back seat, looking as if she was ready to pounce with no warning. O'Ryan looked back at Johnny D, who said, "Fine. Just make sure not to lose me. If you don't make it down there, the boss will have my guts for garters."
With that, O'Ryan shut the back door and got in himself, sliding behind the wheel. He checked the car to see if anyone had put anything in it while he had been sleeping, but so no sign of entry. As Johnny D's big Ford pulled away from the curb; O'Ryan started up his car and followed. The ride was a short one, and within minutes they were out of the city and driving past farm fields again. Most of them were barren, too early in the year, but the wheat field had been planted the previous fall, and the wheat grass was starting to show itself to be a lush green, finishing its growth. Here and there, a field was marked off with barbed wire, and a herd of cattle were lazily grazing.
Within a half hour, they were pulling off of the highway into a dirt road with huge ruts worn in it from tractors and trucks tearing it up after a rain. The day itself was clear and bright, very few clouds in the sky, and seemed like it was in a different world than Chicago had been in. They drove another ten minutes, much slower, until they pulled off on what looked to be a barely worn path that led into a grove of trees. The path was dry, but here and there were ruts that could have been from people getting stuck in the mud and spinning their tires until they were able to dig deep enough to get traction. The grove of trees turned out to be more of a forest, but not like the ones back home. This one had a few large trees, a lot of trees that had trunks only as big around as O'Ryan's arm, and thousands of tiny trees that looked more like sticks stuck into the ground than actual trees.
After they were in the woods long enough that O'Ryan could no longer see how they had gotten there, he could see a large building hidden away in the trees. There were a few trucks outside and a pair of cars, neither of which seemed familiar to him. The car in front of his pulled into a small clearing and parked, with Johnny D staying in until O'Ryan got out. Once O'Ryan was out, Johnny D got out, grabbing a shotgun from the back seat of his car, and slinging it over his shoulder as if it were holding a hobo's knapsack. O'Ryan let Mercy out, who stayed next to him, alert and tense, but walking in exact step with him.
O'Ryan opened his trunk while Johnny D waited by his car, and pulled out his own shotgun, which he carried in much the same way.
"You got an arsenal in there?" Johnny D asked when O'Ryan made it over to his car.
"You mean you didn't search it last night?"
"Of course not," Johnny said and then turned to walk toward the door of the building.
"I would have," O'Ryan said loud enough for Johnny D to hear.
"That's the difference between us," Johnny D said, his heavy steps crushing twigs and leaves as he walked, "You live in Chicago where people would rather kill than do business. Down here, everyone knows each other. We'd rather do business than kill. That's why the raids on this operation are so bad. We know it's not someone from around here, because if it was, we know someone would talk."
They got to the door, and Johnny D knocked on the door. A small metal slot opened, and a pair of cobalt blue eyes peered out at them. From inside, O'Ryan heard, "That the muscle?"
Johnny D nodded and the door was opened. Inside were the same men as last night, including Rick, with a single addition. It was an older man, probably in his early 50's, but not thick as most men that age tend to be. He was wiry, and his hair was short and close to his bumpy skull. His complexion was dark, as if he had spent him whole life in the sun, and he had a bushy mustache that looked more like he was too lazy to shave under his nose than any sort of affectation.
Rick shook O'Ryan's hand again and then moved him over to the older man, "Glad ya made it. You must have talked with Capone last night, right?" O'Ryan didn't respond, so he continued, "This is Victor. He's first generation immigrant from Germany, so he knows how to make good hooch, right Victor?"
They all laughed but O'Ryan who just stood, waiting for the small talk to be over.
The problem was, the small talk wasn't over for quite some time. O'Ryan waited, observing, listening but not paying attention to what was said, but instead how it was said. They chatted for over an hour before Victor turned to O'Ryan and said, "Mr. Quiet, would you like me to show you want we would like you to do?"
O'Ryan nodded and Rick said, "I heard you were all business, but I had no idea how right they were. How long can you go without talking?"
Rick was joking, but O'Ryan said, "There have been times when I have gone for months without saying anything. If nothing needs be said, why pollute the air?"
"Because that's what we do, kid," Rick said, "We pollute. We pollute people's bloodstream with alcohol, we pollute the politicians with our money and we pollute the countryside with the smell of fine mash whisky. It's a rough life, but it sure beats workin' legit."
Rick smiled and slapped O'Ryan on the back, which would have gotten him dropped to the ground two months before, when O'Ryan did not know that it was a gesture of friendship. It was an odd gesture, but O'Ryan had learned to deal with a lot of odd things since he's left home.
Victor waved him toward the door, and from there they went deeper into the woods. There were other buildings, some were simple grain storage, but one was a very large building that seemed so big, it would be impossible to hide. However, the woods were so thick by that point that O'Ryan could see that you would literally have to be looking for the building and have a lot of time to search before the building could be seen. It was also at the bottom of a small gully, which would have made it ever harder to find. There were no vehicle tracks up to the building, which Victor explained by saying that anyone who came out here had to hike, and anything they brought here had to be carried by hand.
When they went inside, the building was filled with devices for distilling the alcohol from corn and other grains. There were a mass of people in the building, carrying bags of grain, checking fires, and other tasks that had to do get done. There were bottles being filled in one part of the building. It all looked very efficient, but the people who worked in the building looked like the living dead to O'Ryan.
They were thin, so thin as to be called emaciated, and the only thing that made them look human was that they were dressed as people. Their skin was several shades darker than Victor or O'Ryan's, and when O'Ryan looked quizzically at Victor, he finally started talking, a slight thickening of his speech betraying a slight accent, "Mexicans. They came up here looking for work and we gave it to them. It works out pretty good for us, since they can't very well complain about the wages or what they do, since they are here illegally. They owe us their lives, and in return, we work them as hard as we can until they go back to Mexico. You'd think they'd eventually quit showing up, but I guess we pay a hell of a lot better then they can make down there. They come here for migrant farm labor, but send too much of the money back home and can't afford to go back. That's when we get them."
O'Ryan though that that did not seem right, as if it was a kind of slavery, but he kept the thought to himself. Both the masters before him, and Nitti himself said that silence was always the best way to get through life.
Still, if this sort of thing was how the whisky got to Chicago, maybe, just maybe...
The thought left his head as a large, barrel chested man with a thick, black mane of hair and a beard came up and said, "Who's this guy, Victor? He don't look like no worker."
"He's Nitti's man. He's here for guard duty, I guess. I'm showing him where everything is," Victor said.
The big bear of a man held his hand out and said, "I'm Lex. I make sure the work gets done around here. You and I should talk."
O'Ryan looked at him quizzically, "Why?"
"First, because I want to know all about the Chicago boys from someone what knows them instead of the dime novels and newspapers. Second, because if Nitti thinks you can get rid of those bastards and I can't, you must be one sneaky son of a bitch. Lastly, because I just want to talk to someone who knows American. The only Mexican I know is this," and with that, Lex held up a big bullwhip, which O'Ryan could easily tell had been used on people recently. The end of the whip was stained with blood, and when he looked at the workers, he was able to see that some of them were wearing shirts that had been torn in the back by what could have only been a particularly hard whipping.
He forced down a shudder and turned back to Lex.
Victor motioned for the two of them to go outside and then led the way.
When they were outside the building, Victor said, "Far as we can tell, they are leaving this building alone. Probably because they know if they wreck it, they won't be able to steal as much of the booze as they can if they just mess up the offices and warehouse."
"They are stealing the whisky? Nitti told me that they were trashing the place," O'Ryan said.
"Yeah, well, if the boss is right, it's Nitti doing it. I don't by the story that it's a bunch of hillbillies trying to run us out of business. They would kill to supply Capone, but they also know that if Capone don't like you, he sends a bunch of his men with a Valentines Card made out of lead," Victor said, "They haven't even come near here, but they've killed the guards we put on the warehouse the last few weeks. We only put a guard there when we've got a shipment stores there. The rest of the time, we keep the guards here, and they say no one has come this deep in the woods. It could be that they don't know where this is, but with all the smoke we put out, it wouldn't take Elliot Ness to find us in the winter."
O'Ryan twisted his wrist, and Mercy went from sitting by the door to his side, standing and ready to move. He looked around the area, seeing that the leaves were starting to form and green was starting to show through the brown of the fading winter. He started walking back to the warehouse, and said over his shoulder, "Why don't one of you show me where the men have been killed, and where they have come from when they hit the warehouse," barely concealing his contempt for them. He walked on, not bothering to turn and see if they were following.
* * *
O'Ryan had felt immense relief when they were done showing him everything and giving him all the details they had about the guards who had been killed. They had been raided five times in the last month, always when they had a shipment ready to go, which was why they suspected Nitti. O'Ryan scouted the area after they left, and while he found a lot of places someone could sit and watch the building without being detected, he didn't find any evidence that anyone had been doing so.
Which meant that no one was casing the place, they were good enough to clean up after themselves, or he hadn't found their hiding place. The reason Nitti had sent him down was because a shipment was supposed to be moving out the next day, and the warehouse was full of wooden boxes filled with bottles of whisky. They had told O'Ryan that he could have a few bottles to keep him warm that night, but O'Ryan declined, instead asking where the wood for the stove was.
Before the raids, they had only kept a couple of men around at night when they had a shipment. Two guards at the warehouse and two at the distillery. After the first raid, they brought out four guards, who were also all killed at the warehouse. Then six, and the same thing happened. Finally, they had only been able to get two men, since everyone else in the organization had heard about the killings and wouldn't take the assignment. They had been able to talk two of the Mexicans into doing it, but the next day, they didn't even find their bodies.
O'Ryan surmised that they ran away as soon as the sun went down and everyone was gone.
He was going to ask why they didn't have the whole gang out here, but after talking with them and getting to know them, it was easy to tell that they didn't give much of a damn. They had told their boss they got ripped off, worked the Mexicans harder and didn't lose any money, since they took the first load of booze to their own speakeasies. They were just losing out on Capone's money, and with their deal with him, they figured he would send someone down to take care of it.
And he had.
So in that way, they were pretty smart, making sure they didn't have to take any risk at all.
The warehouse had a door next to the big door where trucks could be brought in to load up, and it looked as if it held about five truckloads worth of crates. They had left with two truckloads when they left him, taking their own load back to Peoria. O'Ryan had hidden his car soon after they left, but had moved a lot of his weapons into the warehouse, where he set up a small campground near the stove, which did very little to heat the whole building. But, it kept the area he and Mercy were staying in warm enough that he wouldn't freeze in the crisp, early spring air. It still got cold enough to put frost on the ground at night, and once the sun went down, O'Ryan had to get out a jacket when he walked the grounds around the building. There weren't any windows, which would make it hard for him if he stayed inside all night, but it also meant that the only way into the building was through the door.
He and Mercy ate a little while after sundown, both eating something from a can. He had a kind of stew, which tasted thin and metallic and Mercy ate a can of corned beef hash greedily as O'Ryan forced down the lumps of potato and beef. It was enough to get him through until morning, he thought. He did his exercise and martial arts routines while waiting for night to grow late, both to loosen up and to keep warm.
He would go outside every hour or so and look around the building, looking for signs of intruders, but finding none. He would always bring in another load of wood when he came in, and kept the stove running fairly hot. He also had the gaslights on in the warehouse, even though they did little to illuminate the areas where the crates were stacked.
After exercising, he trained with Mercy for an hour, running her through different commands, making sure that she was ready to respond quickly and without hesitation. He rewarded her with small pieces of beef jerky he kept in his jacket pocket.
The night grew late, and after the moon set, it was very hard to see anything out in the woods. Mercy, however, would walk with him, alert to any noise that seemed odd, and O'Ryan trusted that she would be able to tell if someone was coming. He wished that the men who had died had been able to leave some clue as to when they were attacked.
Hours passed, and until around three thirty in the morning, it was peaceful.
It was around that time that Mercy stirred, and O'Ryan closed his eyes to try and hear what she was listening to. She didn't bark, or even get up, but her lifting her head and moving it in the direction of the door was all the information that O'Ryan needed.
There wasn't time to douse the lights, if they were right outside, so O'Ryan simply picked up his two pistols, made sure his knives were slotted properly, and putting a sai in a specially made slot in the back of his pants so that he could draw it out if he needed it.
Mercy watched as he prepared and when he was suited up, she slowly crept toward the door. O'Ryan listened for a bit and when he heard nothing, he looked at Mercy. She glanced at him for a moment and then turned her attention back to the door. O'Ryan decided that it meant that she wanted him to go outside. He raised his eyebrows at her, as if to ask, "are you sure?" and she kept looking at the door, in a slight crouch.
O'Ryan took his cue from her and opened the door, and she ran outside quickly. He followed her, and she crept through the woods, moving slow and sure enough that she made very little noise. In fact, O'Ryan, who was following and trying very hard not to make any sound, was making much more noise than her. She crept up the hill, with him following closely behind, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. There was very little light from the few stars that were out, and the moonless sky made it nearly impossible for him to see what he was stepping on.
So, of course, he tripped over a tree branch that he had been unable to see, and hit the ground, breaking twigs and making a massive amount of noise.
Mercy stopped exactly where she was and hit the ground, going as low as she could while O'Ryan tried to jump up by forcing all of his weight onto his back and then springing to his feet, but when he got ready to jump, he could hear footsteps rushing toward him. Rather than take the chose of being off balance when they arrived, he lay on the ground. He could tell by the sound that they were coming from the office area, so he grasped his two pistols and got ready for their approach. He couldn't tell how many there were, but he decided to take a chance and slowly rolled onto his stomach in the direction of the footprints, trying hard not to make any more sound. When he finally got onto his stomach, he saw that the woods were too dark and dense for him to see much of anything.
He held his breath, trying to hear better, but there were too many to try and get a good idea of exactly what was going on. Suddenly, they stopped and the woods became eerily quiet, with just the sounds of the last few leaves from the pervious fall being blown around by the slight breeze surrounding him. He strained, but it was too dark to make out more than just shadows.
Then, all of a sudden, the woods erupted in light.
He closed his eyes just a bit too late, and even behind his closed eyes, the brightness made it impossible for his to see anything but the red afterimage. He cursed to himself as he heard people rushing all around him, as if they were surrounding him. He hoped against hope that the fact that he was laying on the ground had given him a bit of cover.
He heard nothing behind him, so he assumed that Mercy was simply waiting as well. He opened his eyes, and while the afterimage was still clouding his vision, he could see that there were faint images of people scurrying around about fifty yards away from him. The light had been caused by some kind of fireworks, because there were small patches of fire in the leaves near the shapes. He made sure to slowly move his guns into position, and went back to waiting. The fires actually took hold in the leaves, and were spreading, slowly, giving the area more light.
O'Ryan could make out five shapes, clearly, but there may have been more. It was hard to tell, since the shadows gave excellent cover, and the people were nowhere near the small but growing fires. He could also see that the door to the warehouse was open, and he had no idea how many of them could have gotten in there during the time he had to let his vision clear.
He made the decision to wait until the first figure was a specific distance away, and he trained his vision on that spot, a small tree root that was exposed from the ground about ten yards away. It was hard not to leap up and start firing when they were scouting around for him, but he knew that the only way he would be able to beat the numbers game was to wait and get as much surprise as he could muster. The thing that worried him, however, was that none of them were saying anything.
They were all silent, yet working as a team. Somehow, they knew what they had to do without communicating. O'Ryan had heard of some of the more gifted masters doing that, but they were all dead. Master Heenan was good, but there is no way he could have trained people to speak without words in just a matter of months.
One of the men was walking through the woods in almost a sweeping motion, going back and forth, looking as areas that were illuminated by the growing fires, holding a rifle. He tried to see what weapons the other men had, but all he could tell was that some of them had rifles and most of the others looked as if they were carrying pistols. That ruled them out as people working for Nitti, since they liked to use Tommy guns.
The man approached, slowly. Carefully. Deliberately.
His foot touched the tree root and O'Ryan pushed himself up from the ground and used his momentum to spring into the air, only a couple of feet, but enough to surprise the man looking for him. Since his leap had been relatively quiet. He changed direction in midleap and forced his foot out, trying very hard not to give out a cry to put fear into his opponent and landed next to him, missing a flying kick by a couple of feet. Before the man was able to raise his rifle and react, O'Ryan had grabbed the barrel and forced it backwards, knocking the man off balance.
Before he could regain it, he was on the ground, the victim of two of O'Ryan's blows to the head with the butt end of his pistols.
The man dropping got the attention of the other four men, and they turned toward O'Ryan. Standing, he was able to see that they all had guns of some kind, but only one of them had a rifle. The other gun he had thought was a rifle was actually a Tommy gun. Knowing that the man would spray bullets at him, he ran toward the closest man, hoping that his proximity would make it harder for them to shoot at him.
And, since their attention was all on him, he shouted, "Heel!" at the top of his lungs.
He heard a rush through the leaves and knew that Mercy was on her way to attack the closest man to her, and he trusted that she would take care of herself. The man closest to him was aiming his pistol at O'Ryan, and when O'Ryan got close enough, he dropped to the ground in a roll, and somersaulted into the man's legs, knocking him to the ground.
O'Ryan continued his roll and used his momentum to roll to his feet where he trained one gun on the man on the ground and the other on the man with the Tommy gun. He was just watching the man on the ground out of the corner of his eye, but when the man with the Tommy gun swung his weapon around and looked as if he was going to fire, O'Ryan had no choice.
Too many people around to leave anyone able to attack.
In the heat of battle, decisions were made quickly, without questioning, but in his mind, he flashed back to Master Alliston, who was the Master in charge of teaching how to use guns. He taught, as did all of the other masters, that it was better to be killed yourself than to allow an innocent to be killed. With the gunshot, O'Ryan had already decided that the man was not innocent. He had a weapon, was involved in stealing, and would have killed O'Ryan if given a chance.
O'Ryan shot the man on the ground. Not having to look closely, since he was so close. He didn't watch as he shot, but he could tell by the blood spray on his clothing and the sound of the man's head breaking apart that the shot had been true.
He didn't even have to think as the Tommy gun sprang to life, he hit the ground and rolled behind one of the bigger trees as the bullets tore up the ground where he had been standing. He also noticed that if he hadn't already killed the man on the ground, the Tommy gun would have done so.
He didn't hear Mercy, but he was able to hear a man screaming and begging for help, so he knew that Mercy must be on one of them. That meant that the two men he remaining that he knew of were the man with the Tommy gun and one of the others. The fire was spreading, and the area started to take on a light yellow glow. Even if he was able to hide from them for a while longer, the fire may actually be of more danger to him.
The man with the Tommy gun quit firing, and he could hear them saying something, but we was unable to make it out. He heard Mercy yelp and wanted to leap from behind the tree to see what was going on, but when he heard one of the men say, "Where the hell is that damned dog at?" he knew that she must have taken a blow and gotten away.
At least that is what he hoped.
"He's behind that tree, get him," one of the men yelled.
O'Ryan could hear two men coming, one on each side of the tree. He looked up, but there weren't any decent sized branches anywhere low enough for him to grab on to. He looked around, but there wasn't any cover.
He had to choose. Since they had split up, he had to hope that he would get enough of a surprise on one of them to take him out. That would bring the odds down a bit, and maybe even get the drop on the man with the Tommy gun.
It was a big risk, though.
He closed his eyes and hoped for some kind of sign. All he got was the sound of the man walking toward the tree on the right stepping on a twig and making a large snapping sound.
O'Ryan spun out from behind the tree and fired at where he thought the man would be. The man with the pistol went down, and the other two, were still there. The man with the rifle swung his around to aim at him, and O'Ryan could see that he was the one that Mercy had attacked, as his clothing was torn and shredded. The man with the Tommy gun saw him as well and got ready to fire, and then suddenly stopped.
O'Ryan didn't have time to try and figure out why, but instead leapt into the air, taking the injured man down with a savate kick. O'Ryan adrenaline was so high that he nearly missed the man by jumping over him, but he was able to land a foot into the man's chest, knocking him to the ground and knocking the rifle out of his hand. O'Ryan landed with one foot on either side of the man's neck.
He looked down at the man, whose face was covered in a ski mask; black, probably to help him hide in the darkness. The only feature O'Ryan could see was the man's eyes, wide with fear. O'Ryan remembered the yelp he had heard from Mercy and the rest was easy.
He twisted one leg around while leaving one in the same place, locking the man's neck between his legs, and snapping it quickly with the twist. The look on O'Ryan's face was one of strain, as it took all of his strength and concentration to finish the job. He never looked up while he did it, keeping his eyes locked on the man's fear filled eyes as his life ended.
O'Ryan trained his pistols on the man with the Tommy gun, and moved so that he would be a few steps away from the dead man's body. The fires were starting to go out, having consumed most of the dry leaves, and not hot enough to dry out the ones that were covered in frost or in mud patches. O'Ryan could just barely see that there was another figure next to the man with the Tommy gun.
Before O'Ryan could say anything, a shot rang out, and the man dropped to the ground, exposing the figure behind him. It was a man who looked to be in his early 50's, wearing a long black trench coat and no hat carrying a pistol.
He trained it on O'Ryan and said, "I think since they were trying to kill you, we might be on the same side."
O'Ryan kept both of his pistols trained on the man and whistled, trying to call Mercy. He could hear something moving toward him, and he looked in the direction of the movement, and it was Mercy, who looked unharmed, except for a slight limp affecting her right front leg.
"I'm going to reach slowly into my pocket and get my badge. I'm a cop," the man said.
O'Ryan didn't move a muscle, but could feel his fingers wanting to twitch. It was bad enough there were men out here who wanted to kill him., now he would have to deal with a cop? He didn't know the cops here. Were they actual protectors, like the ones back home had been, or were they corrupt like the ones in Chicago.
The man pulled his badge out and showed O'Ryan, even though eh couldn't see anything on it. "I'm John Stewart. I was following these bastards, since it's pretty obvious that six men driving through downtown Havana at three in the a.m. is not typical."
"Did you say six?" O'Ryan said.
"Yeah, why?"
The answer came a second later as a spray of gunfire came out of the door of the warehouse. Both O'Ryan and Spencer hit the ground, with Mercy hiding behind O'Ryan.
"That's why," O'Ryan said when there was a pause in the gunfire.
©Solitaire Rose Productions 2003