The two men dropped their rifles on the tarp, walked to the ropes at the east end of the roof, clipped on, zipped to the ground, and trotted down the alley heading east.
Fisher lay prone on the street beneath the bed of the pickup, listening to the rounds ripping through the cap on the truck and thudding into the bags of sand he had set across the bed. Methodical fire, rounds walking down and across the truck bed. Then the firing stopped.
He looked up toward the church. He saw Detective Lynch stumble from the church porch, dive off the porch, and then start toward the truck. Behind Lynch, a young priest walked through the door. Not one of the priests Fisher had seen during his recon. The priest pulled a hand gun from the slit in his cassock and began to raise the weapon toward Lynch.
No time. Fisher snapped the Dragunov into position and fired.
Lynch got to his feet and staggered to the church doors, leaning on them and pushing them open, his head still fuzzy. Manning was flat on her back, arms splayed, the entrance wound center chest, just like Marslovak and Riordan. The top of her coat was open. It looked like she had a vest on under it. What the hell?
Up the street, he saw the first of the SWAT units squeal around the corner and angle in toward the curb in front of Manning’s place, the assault team scrambling out. He heard shots coming from inside the building.
He heard Ferguson in his comm. “Lynch, you asshole — you didn’t even save the girl.” Then he heard rifle fire from Ferguson’s position. Lynch hit the cement on the church porch and rolled off the south edge, thinking Ferguson was after him, but he heard no rounds hitting. He looked up. More fire from Ferguson’s position. Ferguson and Jenks were shooting up the red pickup parked across the street from Manning’s condo.
Had to be Fisher’s hide. Lynch got to his feet, stumbled down Sheridan, and then he heard another rifle shot, saw a muzzle flash underneath the truck, felt the round zip past him, left of his head, heard a shot immediately behind him, pistol, felt a tug and a burning on his left arm, heard a grunt. Lynch span around. The young priest who had been hearing confessions was sprawled in the street, a big chunk of his head gone, a Glock on the asphalt near his right hand.
Lynch dove to his right, rolling behind a parked car. He didn’t know if Fisher was trying to kill him or save him, but if it was the former, he wouldn’t miss twice. He looked at his arm. A chunk was missing along the side of his left triceps. He remembered the pistol on the pavement next to the dead priest’s hand. Fisher’s shot had gone past his head, so Fisher hadn’t shot him in the arm. That meant the priest had. Which meant Fisher had saved his life.
Cunningham was soaked in sweat, but he’d freed his left hand. He reached across his chest, rotating his trunk as far as he could, and unbuckled the cuff on his right wrist. No way to get to his ankles in the box.
He unclipped the leather wrist cuffs from the sides of the box. Heavy bastards, big buckles. He looped one cuff through the other, and buckled them tight. He held the cuffs in one hand, snapped his wrist a little. All together, maybe two feet long, good heft, decent leverage. He fiddled with them a bit so that the heavy buckles were right where he wanted them.
Motherfuckers would have to open the damn box eventually.
Weaver held on to the door grip as the van spun out of the spot behind Manning’s condo and south down the alley toward the church. Never set up a mission without a back door. Weaver had four rental cars in the basement garage of a building three blocks east.
The three guys in the van were all long-time InterGov pros. They knew the drill. At this point, it was get away or get dead.
Just as the van neared the end of the alley, a PD truck pulled into the alley from the south, blocking their exit.
The InterGov driver swung the van hard left into the parking lot on the north side of the church, barreled through the church lot out on to Sheridan on a diagonal, clipping the front end of a car as it made the turn east.
A Chicago squad car shot out an alley on their left, trying to cut them off. Weaver’s driver swerved to give Weaver an angle. Weaver already had the M4 out the window. No aiming for legs now. He put most of a clip through the windshield of the squad as the van shot past it, two wheels up on the curb, pedestrians diving out of the way. The cop car swerved, slowed, bounced up the curb and crunched into the brick three-flat across the street.
Weaver couldn’t believe it, but they just might get clear. One more block. He could hear sirens, but nothing in sight. He hit the button on the door opener and the van shot down the drive into the garage, pulling up next to the rentals. Weaver put the door down behind them.
Weaver turned to the guys in the back. “Do me a favor. Open the box and shoot the cop. We won’t be needing him.”
Cunningham heard the first latch on the box flip up. Box would open from his left. He tightened his right fist around the linked cuffs and tensed his torso. As the lid swung up, Cunningham jackknifed up with it, his right arm already swinging the linked cuffs even as he spotted the target. One of the guys who had dressed him.
The cuffs caught the guy right across the eyes, the heavy buckle ripping into one of them, blood spurting. The man’s head snapped back against the side window of the van, and his hands flew to his eyes, the automatic he had been holding clattering to the floor of the van next to the body box.
Cunningham was already twisted toward the gun. He reached down, snapped it up off the floor, and swung it back around just as the man on the other side of the box tried to push the lid back down on him. Cunningham squeezed off a round, not aiming, just looking for an edge, the noise in the van deafening. The man behind the box ducked down, losing his leverage on the lid. Cunningham reached up over the lid and shot down at the man twice — hitting him first in the shoulder, then in the head — and the man flopped dead to the floor.
Cunningham felt the man he had whipped with the cuffs grabbing him now, an arm locking around his neck. He could see the older guy in the passenger seat trying to get a M4 turned around on him, but the muzzle caught in the shoulder belt. Cunningham shot him through the back of the neck and kept the pistol tracking left toward the driver, who had his pistol out and was swinging it toward Cunningham. They fired simultaneously, Cunningham’s round hitting the driver high in the center chest, knocking him back, just as Cunningham felt his right hand jerked away, the pistol knocked loose by the force of a round hitting the edge of the barrel. The pistol bounced off the lid of the box to the floor to Cunningham’s right. He tried to bend, to reach for it, but the man behind him held him back.
The man he had whipped with the cuffs tightened his right forearm against Cunningham’s throat, had his left hand locked on his right wrist for leverage. With his feet still strapped in the box, Cunningham couldn’t use his legs to move. He jerked his head to the side, trying for a head butt, just catching the edge of the man’s chin. Gave him a feel for where the guy’s face was at least. Cunningham grabbed the man’s forearm with his left hand, levered around it, swinging with his right. The blow caught the man on the side of the head, but there wasn’t enough to it. Cunningham couldn’t get his legs into anything, the arm across his throat closing tighter, tighter, Cunningham beginning to feel the panic as his body ran out of oxygen. He reached back again, fingers extended, felt the other man’s face slick with blood streaming from the ruined left eye. Cunningham’s fingers found the right eye. Cunningham dug in, his middle finger digging in, finding the corner of the eye socket, pushing, pushing, and suddenly something giving, the man screaming now, but still holding on, still the crushing pressure on Cunningham's throat. Cunningham dug harder into the eye socket, felt the finger sliding in, curled it toward him and pulled, some resistance, then it giving, something ripping loose.