“That’s one of the things that kept us together, all these years. We’re not a gang, we’re more like a… family, maybe. And Roy, he’s the father.”
“And you, Lymon, you’re his brother, then?”
“And my name should be Cain, that’s what you’re saying?” Lymon snarled, his voice thick with fury. “You fucking swore there was to be no blood. I came to you-”
“You came to me to betray your brother,” Shalare said, pronouncing judgment. “And now it’s time for you to fulfill your contract. I want the exact layout of the-”
Lymon lunged for Shalare, an unsheathed hunting knife in his right hand. Shalare took the first thrust on his left forearm and rolled to the floor as he lashed out with his boot. Lymon sidestepped the kick, got in one of his own to the ribs, raised his knife, screamed, “You won’t make dirt of me, you-” And then Brian O’Sullivan had him from behind.
1959 October 11 Sunday 16:22
Mickey Shalare’s white Chrysler slowed at the guardhouse. Seth strolled to the lowered window, shotgun in hand. When he saw Brian O’Sullivan behind the wheel, his face opened in a smile of greeting. A man in the back seat shot Seth in the chest, the silenced pistol inaudible past twenty yards.
As the Chrysler sped forward, four more vehicles followed. Armed men spilled out, shooting.
Return fire from the house sent Shalare’s men running for cover. Two didn’t make it. Brian O’Sullivan leaped from behind the Chrysler and ran to one of the fallen men. Udell cut him down with a single shot to the chest, worked the bolt on his deer rifle, and put another round into the man he had wounded. From his perch on the second floor, Udell calmly scanned the scene, then began firing methodically at the scattered cars, hunting for gas tanks.
Faron slithered around a corner of the stone house, dropped to one knee, and aimed his rifle at a clump of three men crouched behind one of the cars Udell was firing at. The men bolted for a safer spot. Faron dropped the first two; the third made it.
An armored car suddenly roared up to the front door. The small-arms fire from inside the house bounced harmlessly off its reinforced steel plating. A small, runty man with three fingers missing from his right hand jumped out of the driver’s seat and ran back toward Shalare’s men, his body hunched over. “Down!” he screamed.
The truck mushroomed. The entire front of the stone house crumbled, replaced by a wall of fire.
As Shalare’s men charged, Luther walked through the flames, a pistol in each hand, no expression on his slack-mouthed face. The first three men who saw him died.
A shot tore the sleeve of Luther’s gray flannel suit. A pistol dropped from his useless left hand.
“They’re after Roy!” Faron shouted to Luther. “Go back and cover him.”
Luther turned his back on the gunfight and ran through the house. When he got to Beaumont’s office, he yelled, “They’re all around!”
“Come on, Beau,” Cynthia said, calmly. “We have to get to the car.”
“No!” Beaumont said, as Cynthia reached for his wheelchair. “There’s no time to push this goddamned thing out the long way, and it won’t fit through the escape hatch. Go out the back way, like we planned.”
“We can carry you-”
“Not a chance. Luther’s only got one arm. Now, get going!”
“Not without you,” Cynthia said, grimly.
Beaumont turned his iron eyes on his childhood friend. Luther’s beloved gray flannel suit was dark with blood; one arm dangled at his side, useless.
“Stay with her, Luther,” he ordered. “No matter what, understand?”
“Yes, Roy,” the slack-mouthed man said.
“Beau! Come on!” Cynthia pleaded.
“Get out!”
“No!” she cried.
“Yes, honey,” Beaumont said. He took a revolver from his desk drawer. “I love you, Cyn,” he said, stuck the pistol into his mouth, and pulled the trigger. The wall behind him turned red.
Cynthia stumbled toward her fallen love.
“Roy said!” Luther yelled. He grabbed Cynthia by the hand and pulled her toward the escape door.
1959 October 11 Sunday 22:12
The field phone sounded in the warehouse.
“Team One,” the man behind the binoculars said.
“Subject RV fifty-six minutes. Behind the abandoned building at 303 Drexel. Copy?”
“Roger.”
1959 October 11 Sunday 23:06
“We’re not done,” Harley said. “Shalare knocked off the roof, but he can’t touch the foundation, like Roy always said.”
“What’s our move?” Sammy asked, his question passing the torch as no ceremony could have.
“For now, we stay low and we wait. We have to see if Shalare already got what he wants. If he just wanted Roy, because of that whole election thing, well, he got that. So he may lay back for a while. But it doesn’t matter. Tomorrow or ten years, he’ll never take what’s ours.”
“That Irish fuck should have finished us when he had the chance,” Udell swore. “Now he’s going to have to deal with some dangerous damn hillbillies.”
“Mountain men,” Harley told him, his voice pulsating with the strength of command. “We’re mountain men.”
1959 October 11 Sunday 23:08
“Sixty yards,” the spotter said, peering through his scope, then glancing at a photo in his right hand. “But that’s not our man.”
“It’s not time yet,” the sniper said, glancing at the luminous dial of his watch.
Mack Dressler came around the corner of the abandoned building, walking toward the figure waiting in the darkness.
“Yes?” the sniper said.
“Confirming… Yes.”
“There’s two, then.”
“We only got orders on-”
“The man said ‘RV,’ right? ‘Rendezvous,’ that’s a meet. More than one.”
As the shadows of the two figures merged, the sniper’s rifle cracked. Mack Dressler dropped. The other man immediately dove for cover, but a second shot caught him between the shoulder blades. Procter reached for his reporter’s pad, Have to write… headlining through his mind. Then the sniper’s next shot spiked his last story.
1959 October 11 Sunday 23:29
“Where are you going at this time of night, Carl?”
“I thought you were asleep, Mother.”
“I suppose I was,” she said from the darkness of her bedroom. “I can’t imagine what would have awakened me-you didn’t make a sound.”
“Go back to sleep, Mother.”
“But you haven’t told me where you’re-”
“I’m going to work,” Carl said. “There’s something I have to do.”
1959 October 11 Sunday 23:31
“This is our time,” Rufus said, urgently. “White men killing each other like it’s a war zone out there.”
“Our time to do what?” Darryl asked. “Lay in the cut?”
“No, brothers,” Rufus said, addressing everyone in the room. “Our time to cut the cord.”
“What’s that mean, Omar?”
“The guns, K-man,” Rufus said. “We got another shipment coming. The biggest one yet. Those crackers we’ve been buying from? They’re the only ones who can connect us to the guns we’ve been sending out to all the units.”
“Gonna kill white men, now’s the time,” Moses said, casting his vote. “Couple more bodies in this town won’t even be noticed, the way things been going.”
“That’s right,” Rufus said. “And I got just the man for the job. Don’t I, Silk?”
1959 October 11 Sunday 23:47
“It’s the Mercedes again,” the spotter said.
“Huh!” the rifleman answered. “You think the other one went in the back way, like before?”
“Let’s go see.”
1959 October 11 Sunday 23:48
“I did not order it,” Wainwright said into the phone. “I did not authorize it. I did not sanction it. I did not know about it.”