back like one of them. Trying to think, I pushed up at the lid with everything I had. It moved up two, three inches, but that was all.
The dirt kept raining down.
The sound of it was muffled and I knew my coffin was covered now. If I was going to do anything, I’d have to do it before too much dirt piled up on top. I flicked my lighter and saw that the lid was roped shut. At least it wasn’t chained or nailed. After some squirming and banging my knees and head, I got my switch out and began sawing through the ropes. It took less than a minute, but a minute was a lot when you were running out of air.
When the ropes were free, I began putting everything I had into getting that lid up. The dirt was still loose above, but it was still heavy as all hell. I got it up enough to start forcing myself through and then I was free, trapped in that cocoon of shifting black earth. I was able to draw air from pockets. I began clawing my way up real slowly, making progress, but not wanting to come bursting out of there before the gravediggers were done. But soon enough, the air was getting harder to breathe and I had to strain it through my teeth, drawing in ranks clods of dirt. That soil was rich and black and wormy. With everything I had, I clawed my way up. About the time black dots were dancing before my eyes, my fingers broke free. Then my head and shoulders.
The gravediggers were gone.
My throat and chest aching, I gulped in lungfuls of fresh air. When I could think again, I looked around. I was in a stand of trees out back of Varga’s Tudor. In the distance I saw retreating shadows and figured they were my gravediggers. From the way they walked I could see that they were zombies.
Pulling myself to my feet, I checked my watch.
Less than fifteen minutes until showtime.
15
When I’d brushed myself free of dirt, I made my way around front.
Varga was just climbing into his Mercedes and the others were getting into their respective vehicles. I dashed from shadow to shadow and came right up to Varga’s door. Before his driver even knew that the shit had hit or what it smelled like, I had his boss’s door open and I dragged that fat gob out onto the grass. A couple kicks to the ribs and the fight drained out of him like piss through a leaky drainpipe.
I threw him up against the car just as the troops moved in.
But I already had my knife against his soft, white throat. “Tell them to fade or I’ll slit your throat,” I ordered him.
He made a few pathetic wheezing sounds. I pressed the knife home until a trickle of blood ran over my fingers. “Do it,” I said. “Tell ‘em all to get back in the house. The dead ones, too. Everyone.”
“You stupid-”
I kneed him in the kidneys and he yelped. “INTO THE FUCKING HOUSE!” he cried out. “ALL OF YOU!”
I watched them file in. Marianne’s little club…what was left of it. Then all of Varga’s hoods, at least twenty of them. Finally Quigg and the zombies carrying the bodies of Marianne and her boyfriend. In they went. The door closed.
“Any of ‘em come out of there,” I hissed, “and you die, understand?”
He shook his head carefully. “They won’t. Not until I come for ‘em.”
“You sure?” I said, pushing that cutter against his pipes.
“Yeah, I’m sure, tough guy.”
I dragged him up the drive and over to the wall.
Maybe my timing was a little off, because we’d barely made the wall when the fireworks began. There was a huge, rending explosion that pitched us to the grass. And the Tudor came apart like a house built of Popsicle sticks. Great sections of it vaporized as gouts of fire and rolling clouds of flame blasted through the windows and engulfed the roof. The air was raining charred wood and missiles of glass and burning fragments. They showered down all around us.
Varga sat up and just stared at his house, slowly shaking his head. “You sonofabitch,” he said, sounding like he needed to cry. “You dirty sonofabitch.”
I started laughing and couldn’t stop. “It’s all over, asshole. All of it.”
But then I wasn’t so sure. A huge figure stumbled out of the burning wreckage, lit up like Roman candle. He made it a few feet and fell into a blazing heap. You could’ve roasted wieners off him.
I figured it was Big Tony.
A few minutes later the fire department arrived along with dozens of nosy neighbors. There wasn’t much to do but watch it burn to ashes. They asked me and Varga questions, but we had no answers.
Finally, Tommy arrived. “Jesus H. Christ, Vince,” he said. “What in hell’s name did you do this time?”
He dragged me away to his car after warning the mob boss not to move. He gave me a belt of bourbon from his pocket flask, stuck a cigarette in my mouth, and waited. Just waited. It was going to be good and he knew it.
“Well?” he said. “You wanna tell me about it?”
“Depends,” I said, blowing smoke.
“On what?”
“On whether you like horror stories or not.” I took another drag. “Because if you do, Tommy, boy, have I got a beaut for you.”
MORTUARY
Weston said his people were ready to kick ass and take names and Silva knew the moment had come. A lot was riding on what he did in the new few minutes. The decisions he made now-or didn’t make-could haunt him for years.
“We’re going to do this right, understand?” he said to Weston. “This operation is not going to become another Waco or Ruby Ridge. I’m not about to become the subject of a Senate investigation.”
And now that it was time to break the standoff between the FBI and the religious crazies down in the compound, Silva was wondering for the first time in his career if he was the right man for the job.
Using a nightscope, he was looking across that open stretch of field, thinking the complex looked like something from an old prison movie. A sprawling, flat-roofed collection of rectangular buildings quarried from a dirty gray stone. The windows were tall and narrow, set with iron bars. The grounds were barren, the perimeter wrapped up in a high chain-link fence topped with coiled barbwire. A very utilitarian sort of place. About as cozy as a Victorian madhouse.
A helicopter buzzed overhead, a mounted searchlight scanning over the darkened, interconnected buildings.
Silva didn’t like it. Didn’t like the feeling twisting in his belly.
And he liked even less what was going to happen within the next ten minutes or so.
Things went well and nobody got hurt…well, careers were going to be made here tonight. But, if on the other hand, the whole thing went south…somebody’s ass was going to get hung out to dry. And Silva pretty much figured whose ass it would be.
Silva was an FBI Assistant Director for the Critical Incident Response Team, the CIRT. He was in direct charge of the Bureau’s elite Hostage Rescue Team. The HRT was a Tactical Support Branch of the CIRT, a highly- trained paramilitary force used in every delicate situation from hostage rescue and high-risk arrests to mobile assaults and the search for WMDs.
One of their specialties were raids against barricaded subjects.
Something they were going to be practicing real soon now.
Down in the compound were members of the Divine Church of the Resurrection, a shadowy cult led by a psychotic messiah name of Paul Henry Dade. Dade’s specialty was kidnapping new recruits, brainwashing them and
