Hooligans

He went down like an elephant stepped on him. The other one started to scramble. He didn?t have

time to yell; he made a dash for the trees. Stick squirreled a burst into the sidewalk, twenty meters in

front of him. A dozen rounds whined off the walk and tore through his legs. He went down on his face.

The second burst finished him.

Stick jumped ashore and ran toward the house. He blitzed the two big lights as he ran. The chopper

was getting louder but Stick was committed. He didn?t need any air for this one. This one was a piece

of cake. Piece of fuckin? cake.

He dropped behind a tree, twenty yards from the door to the main room, swung the M-16 up, and

checked the kitchen and the living room one more time. Bronicata was leaning over a large pot,

sipping something from a spoon. The other two were standing next to him.

The five were still in the living room, gabbing. No women, thank God.

He swung the M-16 around and launched a grenade into the center of the big room.

It happened fast. Chevos opened the door and said, “There?s a helicopter coming in from the bay,

flying pretty low.”

“Probably some businessman coming home late for dinner,” Costello said.

I could see through the door into a bedroom. Nance was sitting on a large, round waterbed, holding an

icepack against his jaw. Beyond that there was a large, high-ceilinged room with half a dozen or so

goons, and beyond that the kitchen. Bronicata was cooking something. Just a nice domestic gettogether. The boys? night out.

Suddenly the living room erupted in a garish orange flash. The explosion followed an instant later and

blew the room to pieces.

After that, everything happened so East, I remember it almost like a series of still pictures.

Sweetheart Pravano was lifted four feet off the ground and thrown against the wall. His face was

gone.

Another hoodlum went out the back window head first as if he had been bounced off a trampoline.

Another fell to his knees in the middle of the room, clutching a bloody mess that had been his chest a

moment before, and fell forward screaming, “Mother!”

Bits and pieces of furniture were thrown around the room like dust.

In the kitchen Bronicata was almost knocked into his soup pan.

The explosion blew Chevos? face forward into the room.