Chapter Forty-four

Dom entered the sanctuary through the side door and locked it behind him. He made a beeline for the space behind the confessionals where a semiconcealed door led to the concrete stairway into the basement. As intimidating an underground space as Dom had ever seen, the cavernous basement under St. Kate’s had been blasted out of solid rock during construction back in the thirties, and as far as Dom knew, it still contained every item that had ever been deposited there. Boxes of old bulletins and stacks of broken furniture lined the walls, and in the middle, stoutly constructed metal shelves held all manner of old toys, tools, gardening equipment, and even three cases of beer that might have dated back to Prohibition. Even with the overhead lights turned on, you needed a flashlight to find anything. Over the years, Dom had considered assigning children to the task of cleaning the place up as a form of particularly aggressive penance, but always backed off in the end.

He hurried to the far side and pushed an ancient Nativity scene out of the way to gain access to the mostly blocked heavy door that would take him into Jonathan’s tunnel. A crooked picture hid the keypad, which was recessed into the concrete wall.

Dom settled himself before entering the code, knowing that he only had three shots at getting it right. He punched the 14 numbers carefully, using the ridiculous mnemonic that he’d never shared with anyone. “TRA HELEFUNT BOX” produced the numeric code, 8-7-2-4-3-5-3-3-8-6-8-2-0-9, an entirely random cipher. He pressed Enter, listened as the locks slid out of place, and then pushed the heavy panel open. Using the green glow from his cell phone, he found the light switch. Fluorescent light tubes flickered to life, revealing the passage.

Once inside, he didn’t bother to close the door on his end. Instead, he took the eight steps to the tile floor in two strides, and ran the distance to the other end, where another heavy door stood between him and the basement of the firehouse. As he entered the identical code, it occurred to him that he’d never passed through this portal without Jonathan at his side. In fact, be believed that this was the first time he’d even been in the tunnel alone. What would be the point? When the locking pin cleared, he pushed on the door to open it.

It resisted him. It felt as if something on the other side was in the way. He pushed harder, and when the door still pushed back, he gave it everything he had. The door gave way, and as it did, Dom realized what had been holding it back.

He’d forgotten about the empty oil tank that Jonathan used to ca angry look at Venice, but whatever it was had startled her, too.

He snatched his cell phone from the desk and pushed a button. “What the hell was that?” he asked. He spoke into it as if it were a walkie-talkie.

“What was what?” a voice asked.

“That bang. I heard a big bang.”

“I heard nothin’ out front,” the voice said.

“What about you, Garino?” Charlie asked.

A different voice said, “I didn’t hear anything either.”

Charlie scowled. “You seen anything unusual?”

“I’ve seen nothin’,” the first voice said. “Not even any people, for Christ sake. This is one dead town. Only thing I saw was a priest out for a night stroll.”

Venice’s heart jumped.

Charlie’s eyes narrowed as he looked straight through her. Into the radio, he said, “Garino, I want you to come in through the back and check out the downstairs.”

“What am I looking for?” Garino wasn’t being difficult; his question sounded heartfelt.

“Anything,” Charlie said. “A priest, maybe.” As he said that, he watched Venice and smiled. “And if you see one, shoot him.”

“You want me to shoot a priest?” He sounded horrified.

“A little late to worry about hell, don’t you think?” Charlie jabbed. “Let me know whatever you see.”

Thomas fell hard onto the wooden porch, and as he did, the tree line became a light show of flashing strobes. Bullets slammed all around him, pulverizing the wall and the floor and peppering him with shredded wood. Moving faster than he knew he was capable of, he rolled two times to his left and dropped from the porch onto the ground, where a long divot caused by years of rainwater erosion along the front edge of the porch provided some shelter.

“Thomas, get in here!” his mother shouted.

“Jesus, Mom, shoot!”

This was a really, really bad idea. He was in the middle of a war without a weapon, with the whole world trying to shoot him. Paralyzed by terror, he tried to figure a way to move either backward or forward without getting torn to pieces. Pressing himself into the ditch, he inchwormed backward, parallel to the porch, until he was even with where he thought the now-silent screaming man had fallen.

Suddenly the man’s gun and ammunition seemed less important. With remarkable clarity, he decided that he was fucked. The moment he raised his head, he would die.

Then he heard the rapid fire of a machine gun from behind him, and his father’s voice yelled, “Go get it, Thomas! I’ll keep their heads down.”

It was his best chance. Thomas closed his eyes, made himself as skinny as possible, and hoisted himself out of the trench onto his belly. He kept his butt low as he crawled like a frightened lizard toward the lump that was the fallen attacker.

A giant crescendo of incoming gunfire made him cringe, but the piercing impact of a bullet never came. In fact, the bad guys’ aim seemed to have worsened. His dad’s distraction was working, drawing fire away from him toward the front window.

Quickening his pace, he dug his fingers and toes into the cold hard ground, filling his sinuses with the smell of dirt and his own fear. Then there was something else, a horrific stench that brought images of rotted dog shit. The ground grew damp, and within a few feet, it became wet and slipperfinally was upon the body-and that’s clearly what it was now, with its open eyes and lolling tongue-he realized that he was lying in the man’s spilled intestines.

The horror of it hit Thomas hard. Without thought or preamble, he vomited all over both of them.

Jesus God, what had he done to this man?

Two bullets slammed into the dead man’s side, and two more whizzed past Thomas’s head, their supersonic whip crack pounding his eardrums.

Fuck this. Now was not the time for reflection or regret. It was time to load up with ammunition and make more of these bastards look like their friend here.

The dead man’s rifle-an M16, Thomas remembered from the History Channel-lay on the ground next to the body. He snagged it by its sling with his right hand, and pulled it in close. But a rifle by itself was no good without the ammunition to feed it, and this dead man carried his ammunition all over his body, the way that Scorpion did. Thomas started to remove the man’s vest, until another near hit changed his mind. Grabbing the man by his collar, he dragged him back toward the shelter of the divot. He ignored the long rope of entrails that snaked along behind them.

Jonathan tried one more time to raise someone on the radio, and cursed at the continued silence. He considered that the Hugheses might be dead, but if so, then who was everybody shooting at up there? Given the heat of the battle, he was willing to forgive Stephenson for losing track of his radio, but there was no excuse for Venice leaving her post like this.

He crossed the final rise and saw the scale of the assault being mounted against the lodge. This really was a war.

Ivan’s strategy was obvious. The attackers had formed a wide V-shaped formation, coming at the lodge from its front and right. He imagined that there were attackers in the rear, as well, but that part of the house was invisible from his angle. Jonathan cursed himself for having underestimated his opponent. There wasn’t much he could have done differently, short of reading Ivan’s mind, but that didn’t change the fact that their tactical situation sucked.