Johnny loved to shoot and he shot well, as did his whole crew. He babied the carbine, locked it into his shoulder, his other arm braced on his knee, he steadied and waited and then popped off a shot. To his surprise, the carbine fired full automatic; a spray of five bullets launched themselves toward the target in the brief time that Johnny had his finger on the trigger. The burst was sewing-machine fast, a taptaptaptaptap that stunned everybody.
'Yikes,' Vince said. 'The fuckin' thing's a machine gun.'
'It's the M2 carbine,' said Herman. 'It goes full auto. It's supposed to fire that way. Did you hit anything?'
Johnny looked through the scope again.
'One of them cans is gone. By Jesus, I must have hit the bloody thing.'
He fired four more bursts from the curved thirty-round magazine, and in the dark, even with the echo of the shots, they could hear the paint cans tossing and splashing and banging as the bullets tore through them.
'Lights,' said Herman.
The lights came on. Johnny had hit all four cans, and the paint, red, exploded out of them, spattering across the corrugated tin walls of the warehouse.
Smoke floated in the air and faraway holes winked as they admitted outside light from the bullet punctures in the tin wall. The stench of burned gunpowder lingered. A red mist floated.
'Looks like bloody Chicago on a St. Valentine's mom,' said Johnny.
Much fiddling and experimentation remained. Eventually, Johnny and Herman got the scope zeroed to the point of impact: the infrared lamp had a range of about one hundred yards, but at that range Johnny could put four shots into a target in a second, because his trigger control was so superb and the heaviness of the weapons system dampened the already light recoil of the carbine.
'They got a lot to work on with this thing,' said Herman, his brilliance ever practical. 'Needs to be lighter, tougher, stronger, with a longer range. They've got to mount it on something more powerful than a puny little carbine. They get it all jiggered up right, goddamn, they are going to have a piece of work!'
'Yeah, well, we can't wait till they get around to that. We go with what we got.'
'Johnny, I'm just saying that?'
'Yah, ya big Kraut, you're thinking of them good old days mowing down people with your BAR in the trenches.'
'Actually, it was a piece of shit called a Chauchat. Finally we got the BARs but not until?'
'Herman, concentrate, you bloody genius, on the night's work. Tomorrow we'll have a nice good visit with them wonderful old days in the AEF, all righty?'
The five men gathered around a plan of the railyard that Owney Maddox had supplied. It helped that they'd worked the same yard exactly six years earlier, although Jack and Vince weren't on the crew then. Quickly enough they came up with a sound plan, based on Johnny's cunning and Herman's sense of infantry tactics.
'We want them in a bunch,' said Herman. 'We want this over as fast as possible. It can't be a hunt, you know, a goddamn man-on-man running gunfight through the rail-yard. Get 'em into the zone, let Johnny hose 'em down, move in, mop up, dump a bunch of carbine brass and a few guns, and get the hell out of there. Get our money, go back to Miami.'
'Owney'll be there too,' said Johnny. 'He wants to celebrate the finish.'
'Damn, Johnny, that'll slow us down,' said Herman.
'But you see, Herman, you smart fella, in this town, Owney owns the coppers. That means they ain't going to be responding to calls from people who hear the gunshots until we're out of harm's way. All right?'
Yes. It was all right.
Johnny Spanish's crew rallied at the deserted railyard canteen at about 10:00 P. M., under cover of dark. They looked like a commando unit, with faces blackened, in blue jeans and dark shirts and watch caps pulled low. They checked the weapons a last time, made sure all magazines were loaded and locked and that they had plenty of quick reloads. Vince had secured one of the larger old one-hundred-round drums for his Thompson 1928 from the Grumleys, who had plenty of drums but no more guns, and was busily cranking the spring?not easy?and inserting rounds to get the thing topped off. Herman and Johnny double-checked the infrared apparatus.
At 10:15, a scuffling announced the arrival of another player, an<i it was Owney himself, accompanied by his new Best Friend, Frenchy Short. Owney had no long gun, but carried a Luger in a shoulder rig.
'How do you know they'll come from west to east,' said Owney. 'Maybe they'll set up on the east side of town and come through from that way.'
'Uh-uh,' said Johnny. 'Know why?'
'No.'
'The dogs.'
'The dogs?'
'All them black families live close up to the track over in the east side nigger section. They all got dogs, and them dogs set up such a racket when they're annoyed. Parker and Swagger are smart boys. They'll know that. They'll come like red Indians, from the west, I tell you. He'll read the land, Swagger will, and he'll see where our government train will have to be and he'll move from west to east, across the gap in the tracks, and that's where we'll hit him. Oh, it'll be a pretty thing. Caught a Brit squad in the open just like this, I did, yes sir, 1924, with me Lewis gun, and you should have seen them feathers fly that night!'
'Yeah, right,' said Owney.
'Owney, lad, Til want you on the flatcar with us. But you stay put once the fun starts, as I don't want to lose track of you and put a hot one between your beauty eyes. What a terrible pity that would be.'
'That's encouraging,' said Owney, 'coming from an Irishman.'
'You got any last comments, Judas Junior,' Johnny Spanish asked Frenchy.
'The truth is, you should hit Earl first. If Earl goes down, the rest will lose their will to fight. He is the spirit of that unit. Without him, they're just Boy Scouts.'
'Odd, but I think I understood that already,' said Johnny.
A last watch check: It was now 11:00. The Grumleys had obediently set a bridge afire in Traskwood and the train?it was actually leased, at Owney's insistence, by his great customer, Jax Brewing, of New Orleans, Louisiana?would pull into the railyard around 1:00. Presumably at that time, Earl and his boys would move from their secret quarters and into the railyard, wait for the suggestion of mayhem, and then spring, only to realize in their last horror that they had been sprung.
'Think we'd better be goin', fellas. Good hunting to the lot of you; meet you back here at three and it's champagne for everybody, on his lordship Maddox.'
But as Johnny prepared to lead his team out and Owney was consumed in some drama of his own, Frenchy took a moment to speak to the Irish chieftain.
'Yes, lad?'
'Earl? He's?he's actually a?'
'I know, boy. He's a hero. He's the father you never had. Could I cut him some slack? Could I take him in the legs, say? Could I just put him out of action? I've seen the lovesickness in your eyes, boy. But the answer is no, can't do it. As you say, he's the best. Kill the head, the body dies. He has to go first. I'll make it clean. A shame, in another life Earl and Johnny could be the best o' friends, and repair to a pub every night to talk over the gunfights of yore. But no, sonny: he goes first.'
'Yeah,' he said. 'You're right.'
'Look at it this way,' said Johnny. 'Bugsy Siegel has sworn to kill this fine fella. He even sent his girlfriend out just to get the name. Bugsy's still mad. If we don't do it cleanly, Bugs might do it messily. That would be too sad an ending for a hero, eh? At least tonight he goes out like the man he is, a braveheart till the end, no?'
Chapter 46
The word came around 5:00; exacty as had been predicted, a bridge had caught fire up near Traskwood, and
