Mercer looked into the darkened sky but could see nothing but a few stars. The sound of the helicopter continued to rise. It was coming fast. Despite what logic was telling him, a sense of urgency swept through him. He started sprinting after Fess when the dark chopper cleared a copse of pine trees fifty yards from the farmhouse. Mercer caught a glimpse of the open side door an instant before autofire rained down from above. The gunman first concentrated on the Rolls-Royce. The right side tires were shredded and a steady stream of rounds shot through the grille until radiator fluid poured from the car like its lifeblood.
Mercer reached Fess just as he was about to mount the steps onto his porch. He tackled the old man and together they tumbled through the front door an instant before the porch caught the second volley from the chopper. The money had come loose from its paper strapping and littered the floor.
“Sweet Jesus Christ,” Fess roared over the deafening fusillade.
Mercer ignored him and peered around a grimy window, not recalling that he’d drawn his weapon, but it was in his hand nevertheless. How? he thought. How in hell did Poli find them? It was impossible. Poli hadn’t had time to put a tap on the phone back in Mercer’s room at the Deco Palace and Mercer was certain no one had followed them from Atlantic City.
The chopper came lower, its blades mere feet from the trees. Four figures jumped from the open door and the pilot pulled up. A fifth person remained in the helo with an assault rifle in his hands.
Mercer pulled his cell phone from his jacket and flicked it to Cali. “Dial 911,” he ordered. “Tell them the men who shot up the Deco Palace are here.” He then grabbed Fess by the collar of his overalls. Lizzie was holding her hands over her ears and screaming in the living room. “Do you have any weapons?”
Mercer had to give Fess credit. He quickly gathered his wits, his eyes losing their manic glint. “Goddamn right I do. I’m an American, ain’t I?”
“And there I was thinking you were barely sentient,” Harry remarked and took a swig of whatever liquor he’d coaxed out of Lizzie.
The entire house rattled as the chopper hovered overhead. The precarious pile of dishes mounded in the kitchen sink crashed to the floor, and pictures danced and blurred on the walls. Erasmus Fess went to the back of the house and returned a moment later with a semiautomatic rifle, two shotguns, and an enormous revolver tucked between the buttons of his overalls. He handed Mercer one of the pump-action shotguns. Cali took the other.
“They’re both loaded.” He placed the box of shells he’d tucked under his arm on the coffee table and checked the extended magazine of his Ruger Mini-14, a civilian version of the weapon the army had used during the early years of the Vietnam War. “Lizzie,” he shouted. “Cut your wailing and get the ammo from the dining room.”
Mercer was back at the window. He recognized Poli leading his team as they slowly advanced on the house. They moved like seasoned professionals, never exposing themselves for more than a few seconds as they crossed the yard. When Poli reached cover behind the big flatbed tow truck, he motioned for his men to take flanking positions. He spoke into a walkie-talkie and the chopper banked away.
“Can you hear me?” the mercenary then shouted.
Mercer said nothing, watching as two of Poli’s men took positions to the left and right of the house. He could take out one of them, but the other had gone far enough around the building that Mercer could no longer see him.
“I know you can hear me, Mercer,” Poli yelled. “Tell me why you came out here and I might let you live.”
“He’s here for a safe that fell off the Hindenburg. It’s in the trunk of that Ford Taurus out there,” Fess shouted back before Mercer could stop him. “You just take it and leave us be.”
“Shut your mouth,” Mercer hissed at the junk man. Fess remained defiant.
One of Poli’s men broke cover and ran to the brown sedan. He peered into the open trunk without slowing, then found cover behind another wrecked car. “It’s in there,” he yelled across to his team leader.
A shadow flitted across the window where Mercer stood. One of Poli’s men was on the porch. The front door wouldn’t last a second under the onslaught of their automatic weapons. Mercer craned his head to see the gunman, but he must have flattened himself against the wall. Mercer looked out toward the flatbed, knowing Poli would give the signal at any second.
Mercer wasn’t going to wait. He had only one chance to catch the man on the porch by surprise. He aimed carefully and fired. The twelve-gauge bucked in his hand and he had another round chambered before he knew if he’d hit the target. The fully choked barrel prevented the steel shot from spreading more than a couple of inches at close range, so the full load ripped through the two-by-four propping up one end of the porch roof. The piece of lumber disintegrated and its partner on the other end of the porch quivered, then snapped with a sound heard over the nearby chopper. As if hinged, the entire porch roof pivoted downward. The gunman wasn’t quick enough. He’d tried to lunge off the deck but the roof smashed into him, tossing him back against the house until the section of plywood and shingles crushed his body against the stout wall.
Poli and his men opened fire, spraying the front and sides of the house with a continuous barrage. Windows vaporized and Lizzie’s cheap curtains were torn to shreds. Mercer tried to return fire, the shotgun roaring over the staccato cracks of the assault rifles, but the fire was pouring in too heavily. The high-powered bullets bored through the farmhouse’s aluminum siding, through the rotted insulation and the lath and plaster, with barely a check in their speed. Plaster dust and bullets filled the air in the living room. Everyone dropped flat as the air seemed to come alive.
Many of the lights were blown out, plunging the living room into near darkness. The couch took a long fusillade, stuffing and fabric spilling like cotton waste. A bullet found an electrical outlet in the kitchen and started a fire that quickly grew.
The sound was hellish, unworldly, a continuous din that pounded at eardrums and threatened sanity. And there was no letup. As soon as one of the gunmen drained his magazine he inserted a fresh one, seemingly without pause. Chunks of plaster were falling off the walls and the fire in the kitchen grew so Mercer could feel its heat through his clothes. A round found the television and it blew with a searing pop.
Smoke was growing thick. Pressed flat to the floor by her husband, Lizzie Fess began to cough.
Mercer caught Cali’s eye. Her face was ashen with fear, her beautiful lips parted as she tried to draw precious oxygen from the reeking air. He peered over his shoulder toward the kitchen. The entire room was engulfed in flame. He didn’t know if the Fesses cooked with natural gas, but if they did it was only a matter of time before the heat or a bullet ruptured the gas line and blew the house off its foundation.
And just as quickly as the barrage had started, the firing ceased. Mercer’s ears rang so loudly and the fire roared so powerfully that he only knew Poli had stopped firing because there were no new holes appearing in the walls. As his senses returned, he heard Poli’s chopper once again. The heavy beat of the rotors told him that the Jet Ranger was taking off.
Poli had used the cover fire so he could grab the safe and radio the helicopter for a quick evacuation. What Mercer couldn’t understand was why Poli and his men were leaving before making sure everyone in the house was dead. It was the first mistake he could see that Poli had made.
Fearing a trap, that Poli had left behind a sniper, but pushed by the urgency to get out of the burning building, Mercer crawled across the broken glass and debris littering the floor and approached one of the ruined windows. He tossed Erasmus Fess’s singed copy of TV Guide outside, and when there was no gunfire he chanced a momentary peek. He saw nothing out of the ordinary and gave the yard a longer look, peering as deeply into the shadows as he could.