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The call came in some time after dark. It wasn’t the police this time, but Lisa and Charlotte, the young couple from my apartment building, on the phone. Emily hadn’t wanted to wake me, but the girls had been insistent.
“Mr. Wilson. It’s Lisa. We heard about the shooting at the park, so we figured it was safe to return home. Charlotte’s boss was ragging on her to get back to work. So, anyways, we’re hearing noises from your apartment, like whimpering—but the cops still have it taped up.”
I sat up straight and fumbled my glasses on as her words broke through my fog of sleep. Emily could see alarm on my face and her eyes grew wide as she mouthed the word, “What?”
“Listen, Lisa. Get out of there. Don’t wait. Don’t pack. Just get out! I’ll call the police. This is not over.”
“Okay, Mr. Wilson,” she said, her voice shaking with fear.
“Call me back when you’re safe.”
“Where should we go?”
“The police station on Chestnut.”
“Okay.”
“Call me.” I broke the connection. To Emily, I said, “Get Mack.” I immediately called 911 and explained who I was and that there might be someone in my building. Told them to contact Torres or Nguyen.
A couple of quick phone calls assured me that my other tenants, the Ziegler’s and the Wong’s were still safe at the hotel that Simon had put them up at. They would stay put until they heard back from me.
A rushed trip to the building, and then Mack, Mateo, and I waited in tense silence in the shadows cast by the trees that lined the park. Mack had a second car join us with four teammates parked further away but in radio communication. Across the street, a line of heavily armed police officers were stacked on either side of the main entrance to my building.
I fidgeted in my seat as pain in my pelvis competed with agony in my back. Pain was becoming worse, and I would soon have no choice but to reach for stronger pain killers than oxycodone. My biggest fear was these heavy drugs might make me oblivious not only to the pain, but to everything else around me. With my clock ticking down, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about addiction. Emily had assured me that wouldn’t happen anyhow, but with the news constantly talking about the opioid crisis in this country, it scared the hell out of me.
It had surprised me at how fast the police had organized themselves. They weren’t taking any chances after the shootout in the ballpark. Russell had injured or killed several of his own people, and now they too were looking for some payback.
Lisa and Charlotte called me back while Mateo was driving us towards the apartment building. Both were at the police station, giving statements of what they’d heard. I breathed a sigh of thankfulness once I knew they were out of harm’s way.
Although I had my pistol secure in its compartment in my wheelchair, I felt an urge to feel its weight. I felt resentment at the thought of anyone other than me finding and putting an end to this evil son-of-a-bitch. Maggie would have scolded me, and our old priest would have thrown his arms up at my focus on retribution, but I couldn’t help the way I felt and all the do-gooders in the world could pound sand. It was time for Russell to die. And I had to do it.
But as long as I had all these cops around and Mack and his crew, there was no way.
At some unheard command, the assault group moved into the entrance of my building. Before the exterior door closed behind them, a pair of blinding flashes like welding arcs emanated from the apartment windows. Hollow thumps of flash grenades accompanied them.
And then silence.
My heart thumped in my throat as we waited in the dark. For what felt like an eternity, nothing on the street moved; but then a group of detectives and forensic personnel began moving from around the corner, where they had lain in wait. They must have been given an all-clear from the interior group.
The front door opened, and a line of SWAT members emerged to make room for the investigators. The shaking of heads told me right away that they had not found Russell. I could see Torres and Nguyen had their heads together with one of the assault group, and figured they were getting the lowdown on what the team had encountered. I watched Torres enter the building as Jamie Nguyen began walking towards our vehicle.
Mateo opened the door at her approach, and she spoke in a voice loud enough that we could all hear. “Russell was definitely here. There was a ton of blood and you’re not going to believe it, but he lost an arm.”
“What...?” Mateo said for all of us.
She was nodding; her motions exaggerated, as if she didn’t believe the news herself. “The team found a severed arm. Either Russell amputated his own arm, or someone helped him do it. We knew he’d suffered a significant wound during the attack at the field and this only proves it. Forensics will collect DNA and prints from the hand to ensure it belonged to the suspect, but he’s badly hurt and it’s only a matter of time before he bleeds out or someone reports seeing him.”
“Until I see his corpse,” I said, leaning forward in the seat to look at her, “Russell is still a threat.”
“You won’t hear me disagree, Mr. Wilson. But I gotta say, the blood loss is supposed to be significant.”
I leaned back into the leather seat and Mack caught my eye and nodded his agreement. He knew something else, too: a wounded animal is the most dangerous.
I had to believe that. I moved again to relieve the pain from my hip, this time I tasted blood as I bit down on my lip with a breathless grunt.
Simon’s hand touched my arm, but I just nodded.
“We have to get Donald back to bed,” I heard him say, and I was in no condition to argue.
Mack and Nguyen exchanged a few more words, but I was beyond that as I surrendered to my growing agony. With my eyes closed, I felt the vehicle pull away from the curb and, like a kid past his bedtime, allowed the motion to lull me to a restless sleep.
***
I AWOKE TO FIND EMILY reading a paperback in the chair beside my bed. Seeing me awake, she slid a piece of paper to mark her place.
“Morning,” I muttered.
“Good afternoon,” she said with a smile. “You have to start keeping better hours, Donald. You’re only hurting yourself needlessly.”
I closed my eyes and nodded obediently.
“Simon says you were in a lot of pain last night.”
“Yes, it’s becoming more intense and fairly steady now. There’s no real let-up, except when I’m asleep.”
“Diarrhea?”
“Some,” I said not feeling comfortable with the topic.
“Do you recall anything about the stool. Was it loose? Color?”
I thought back. “Yeah, it was strange. Nothing sunk. It all floated and I had to flush a few times. It was the color of pale cream.”
She sighed.
“That can’t be good.”
“It sounds like your bile duct might be blocked. The pancreas breaks down the fat in our food. If it’s not working the fat passes through the digestive system unprocessed, causing diarrhea. And being made of fat, floats. The color confirms it.
“So, it’s getting worse?”
She nodded, her face a mask of compassion. “It’s time for you to accept that you’re at the next stage. Home remedies and diet can only help so long. Although they are still going to be important, you’re going to need stronger pain killers than I can offer. That means a doctor.”
I nodded but said nothing.
“I’ll speak to Simon to see if he has any friends who make house calls.” She laid a hand on my shoulder.
Lying there, now afraid to move in case the pain reasserted itself, I could hear murmurs of voices in the house, but nothing concrete. I could faintly hear traffic on the road and the odd neigh from the horses.
I had almost fallen back to sleep when I heard a loud bang as if something heavy had struck the building. A scream followed it. I lay there, ears straining against the silence to ensure I’d actually heard it and not dreamed it, when a crash of glass and the far-off report of a rifle echoed through the house.
Ignoring the pain that coursed through my lower body, I sat upright and swung my legs off the bed. One hand reached for my pistol that sat in its holster on the night table, while the other pulled my wheelchair closer to the bed. In a lurch, I heaved my old, near-naked carcass onto the chair, landing with a painful thump that made my eyes water with pain. I fumbled my glasses from nightstand to my nose, and then I pulled my pistol from its sheath and chambered a round.
Glancing down at my body, all skin and bones with crepey skin hanging limply, I’m sure I wouldn’t scare off a flock of pigeons, let alone Russell and what was left of his friends.
Awkwardly, using my left hand to twist the doorknob, I swung the door, holding the .45 in my right, ready to fire at any threat. Not seeing anyone, I pulled my chair forward slowly.
More shots came from the front of the house, and it sounded like someone was taking out all the windows from a distance. There was return fire, and I knew that Mack’s team were still in the fight.
Turning left towards the kitchen, I found Emily’s limp form on the ground. Her kind face was relaxed, but a stream of blood dripped down the side of her face from a cut at her temple. A small puddle was growing. It relieved me to see the swell of her chest and knew that for now, she was alive.
There were multiple shots from around the corner, but I wouldn’t venture that way in case I was mistaken for an assailant.
Above me, on the second floor, I heard a heavy tread of boots, followed by the thunder of a rifle, and assumed Mateo was using his Remington R11 RSASS to good effect. The firing at the front of the house died down after he threw a couple of .308 shells that way. I could hear him moving from room to room as he searched for other threats from their windows, and I thanked God he was on my side.
I wheeled out of the kitchen towards the dining room and ran into a stranger, a wide-eyed man holding a bayonet in his right hand. He was around thirty-years of age with a red MAGA ball cap pulled down over a head of long hair that challenged the dark full beard. He wore a white shirt with the Norse Valtnot over his right chest, three interlocking triangles that identified Nazi followers willing to die for their cause.
Two other men stood behind him, one carrying a pump-action shotgun, while the other held a nickel-plated Walther P-38 that might have been the sidearm of an actual Nazi officer.
Without hesitation, the young idiot in front of me stepped forward and drove the mean-looking blade into my stomach. “Die, Jew lover!”
The blade went deep, but I hardly felt anything. Maybe it was because of the pain I was already dealing with or because the edge was so sharp. Either way, I lifted my pistol, flicking off the safety as I did.
“You first,” I told him and squeezed the trigger. The bullet caught him high in the chest as he was leaning over me. The heavy slug lifted him off me, tearing the blade from my gut, and threw him backwards towards his friends and the kickback nearly took my hand off.
My left hand went instinctively to the hole in my stomach as I tried to lift the .45 towards the shotgun-toting inbred now swinging the business end of his weapon towards me. I extended my pistol to take aim—my damaged hand doing its best—and fired off a shot that went wide.
The man smirked as he saw the Colt I was holding fall to the floor as this time its weight and the pain in my hand making it unbearable to hold. I figured that this would be it, when the big guy’s head suddenly evaporated in a cloud of red mist. Before I could even register it, his body tumbled away to land in a heap beside the wannabe Nazi with the P-38. That man’s head snapped in time to catch two rounds to the chest as Mack fired from a classic shooting stance. The man joined his comrades in death.
Not wasting time, our ex-soldier-turned-bodyguard re-holstered his Berretta. Then he pulled the tablecloth from the table with a snap, rolled it into a ball around his one arm, and placed the ball into the hollow of my stomach. He told me, “Press down on the wound.”
I gasped at the burning sensation that quickly overwhelmed my long-standing pain from the cancer. I had seen many abdominal wounds during my war years and knew that most were not fatal if treated. The biggest threat was infection.
Mack was calling his people through his wrist mic, trying to get a handle on the enemy, and how they’d got in. It was a one-sided conversation. Before long, members of his crew began closing in on the dining room. Mateo guided Simon down from his bedroom on the second floor. Upon seeing me, Simon rushed over, staying low like he was dodging a barrage of gunfire.
“Donald,” he said, his eyes wide. “You’re bleeding.”
I motioned to the dead Nazi in front of me. “He thought his knife could outmatch my Colt. Grab my gun for me, will you?”
With disgust, he picked up the weapon as if it were evil and handed it to me wordlessly. I could barely hold its weight with my damaged right hand, and let it settle on top of the cloth bandage. Just having it made me feel more secure.
“Mateo, could I get you to check on Emily? She’s out cold in the kitchen. Make sure she’s okay, please.”
He nodded and left to check on her. Minutes later, he returned with her leaning heavily onto him, a dish towel held to her forehead. Seeing me hunched over, holding the cloth to my stomach, she tried to stagger to my side, and would have fallen if not for Mateo.
“It’s okay, Emily,” I said, to ease her mind. “With luck, the knife might have stabbed that fucking tumor.” She rewarded me with a weak smile and took the seat the wide-shouldered sniper had guided her to.
“Keep your eyes peeled,” Mack was saying into his mic. “Cops should be here and then we’ll do a recon to flush out any stragglers.”
“Where the hell did those guys come from?” I asked aloud.
“They had a couple of shooters on the road while they charged down the driveway with a pickup truck,” Mateo explained. “They rammed the front entrance to keep us pinned and came through the side door.” He pointed at the three corpses in front of me.
“Two more out back,” Mack said. “Fortunately, they only clubbed Emily, before they found me.”
“Any one-armed shooters among the dead?” I asked.
Mack shook his head.