"Good. I'm glad to hear that. Because I want this weapon and I want something else from you."
"What's that."
"I want to check the action myself. I have some serious work ahead of me and I don't like to work with a cold piece just out of the shop."
"How can I help?" asked Lloyd Darton.
"Just stand still," said the other man and split Darton's sweat-shiny forehead with a single shot. The floral bedspread behind him suddenly developed an extra pattern. In red.
"I don't like people telling me my business," said the man to himself. He disassembled the Beretta, slipped the pistol into a spring-clip holster, helped himself to extra clips, and quietly left the room with the attachments nestled in a briefcase Lloyd Darton had thoughtfully planned to throw into the bargain.
Walking down the steps, he thought of the work ahead. Detroit was a new city for him. A new start and maybe a new life. It all felt strange to him.
But he had work to do and that was the most important thing. In his pocket was a list. Four people. And the contractor wanted them hit in public places. Imagine that. Wanted the whole thing done out in the open. It was crazy, but the money was even crazier and that made it worthwhile. Even if he didn't know the name of his employer.
As he walked through the lobby, he thought of Maria. Lately, she had been on his mind a lot.
He hadn't wanted to kill her. But he was a soldier, a soldier in an army that wore no uniforms, belonged to no country, and yet had invaded almost every civilized nation. There were those who referred to the Mafia as a family but that was a myth, like claiming the Holocaust had never happened. The Mafia was no family; it was like an enormous occupying army.
As his capo, Don Pietro Scubisci, had once told him:
"We own the banks. We own the courts and the lawyers. We own pieces of the government. And because we don't dress like soldiers," he had said, tapping his chest with palsied fingers, "because we deny everything, people don't know. Our hands are at their throats and because we smile and talk of 'business interests' and donate to the Church, the fools pretend we're not there. Their foolishness is our greatest strength. Remember that. And remember, we always come first."
"Always," he had agreed.
"Your mother, your father, your wife, your children," Don Pietro had said, ticking them off on his fingers, one by one. "They come second. If we ask, you will deny them. If we tell you, you will leave them. If we order it, you will kill them."
It was true. He believed it so deeply that when it came down to his honor as a soldier and the woman he had loved, he made the right choice. The only choice. He had acted instantly, ruthlessly. Like a soldier. Maria had planned to talk, and to protect the Invisible Army of the Mafia, she had had to die. And he had come here, to Detroit, to begin a new life.
As he got behind the wheel of his rented car, he could not stop thinking of Maria and the last words she had spoken to him.
"He will know your name and you will know his. And that will be your death warrant."
"This time, Maria," he said half-aloud, "you're wrong." But he thought he heard her tinkling laugh somewhere in the night.
Chapter 4
Remo Williams smelled the fumes even before the jet skidded to a stop. He glanced up and saw the trickle of smoke insinuating itself between two of the wall panels. It was all unnaturally quiet. People were still in their seats, hunched over, stunned from the carnival-ride impact of the plane's crash landing.
Remo heard something sparking. It was an electrical fire and he knew it would start small but could spread through the cabin as if it were lined with flashpaper.
And even before that, the deadly acrid fumes of burning plastic would kill everyone aboard.
All six emergency exits were blocked by the bodies of unconscious passengers and Remo found the place in the ceiling where the hijacker had fired the warning burst that had depressurized the cabin and tossed the giant craft out of control. He could see sky through the pattern of bullet holes. Remo balanced on the top edge of a seat, inserted his fingers into as many of the holes as he could, and made two fists. The aluminum outer skin gave under the pressure of his hands, hands that instantly sensed weak points, flaws in the alloy, and exploited them. The ceiling tore with a harsh metallic shriek.
Remo ran with the tear, racing the length of the cabin from tail to cockpit, peeling the metal as if it were the lid of a sardine can.
Now the hot Utah sun filled the cabin. People were beginning to stir, coughing into their oxygen masks. He started to free the people from their seat belts in the fastest way possible, grabbing a handful of seat belt and ripping it free from its moorings.
"Okay," Remo called as he moved along the rows. "Everybody up for volleyball."
He had to get them moving. But some of them, he saw, would never move again. Their heads hung at impossible angles, their necks snapped on impact.
Behind him, the sparking of the electric fire turned into a hissing sputter. Remo turned and saw Lorna, the stewardess, turning a red fire extinguisher on the galley. The chemical foam beat down the licking flames but also sucked away the breathable air.
The young blond woman fell to her knees, her face, purpling.
Remo hauled her back and boosted her up to the roof. "Catch your breath," he called up. "I'm going to start passing people up to you."
She tried to speak but could manage only a cough. With red eyes, she made an Okay sign with her fingers.
Remo hoisted a man up out of his seat and over his head in a smooth, impossible motion. He felt Lorna take the man from his grasp.
Other passengers began to revive. They pulled off their oxygen masks and with a few quick words, Remo organized them. The strong lifting the weak. The first ones to reach the top of the fuselage pulled those who came after. In a few minutes, only Remo remained in the cabin. Even the dead had been removed.
"That's everyone," said Remo. "I think."
Lorna called down, "Make sure. Look for children on the floor."
"Right." Remo checked every seat. At the very rear of the plane, he found the hijacker, huddled under his seat. "Oh, yes. You," Remo said. "Almost forgot about you." He grabbed the man by his collar, took hold of his belt, and swung him like a bag of manure. The hijacker screamed as Remo let go, and the man sailed up and out the hole in the roof.
Remo started to reach for the ceiling but a faint sound made him stop. He opened the rest-room door. There was a little girl inside, perhaps five years old, crouched down under the tiny sink, her thumb in her mouth and her eyes squinted shut. She was moaning softly; that was the sound Remo had heard.
"It's all right, honey. You can come out now." The little girl shut her eyes more tightly.
"Don't be afraid." Remo reached in and pulled her to him and carried her from the plane just before the flames exploded into the cabin.
An hour later, the aircraft fire had burned itself out, leaving a smoking, gutted hulk lying in the coral-pink sandstone desert. The sun was starting to go down in the sky.
Lorna finished splinting a woman's broken arm. She stood up and brushed dust from what was left of her uniform. She had been using scraps of the skirt and sleeves as makeshift bandages.
"That's the last of them," she told Remo. "Have you seen anything?"
"Just flat desert in all directions," Remo said. "But there should be rescue here soon. Radar should have picked us up, right?"
Lorna shook her head. "Not necessarily," she said. "Sometimes you get in between the two radar coverages and you're in a dead spot. But when we don't show up on time, they'll start tracing us backward. They should get here. "
"You did good work, Lorna," Remo said.
"You did too. The others think the cabin split open on impact, you know."
"And you?" Remo said.