see that it was darker to the sides than it was straight above me. We were in one of the big courtyards that opened off the main factory roadway. In a while the other two came up behind us, and we moved on. I assumed the Provos wanted out of Cordage Park as badly as I did, perhaps to slink back to their car and skedaddle. Plymouth was only minutes away from Southie, where an Irishman down on his luck could find a haven for as long as he needed it. And then there was Charlestown. Talk about rough. I believe I would rather parade around in Harlem on a Saturday night dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit than hang around some sections of Charlestown. If they elected to hide there until this thing blew over nobody could pry them out. Not even the Marine Corps.
I was saying all this to myself in my mind to take it off the fact that at any instant I could have a whole handful of lead slugs thrown in my direction. And there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.
We had bunched together now in a tight square of four men. Stephen and I were in front, the two thugs right behind us. All hell broke loose when we reached the roadway. The first thing I heard was a popping behind me. I realized later that the sound must have been from the big. 45-caliber slugs tearing into the factory wall. It was more a cracking-pounding than a popping; it had a hard, staccato timbre to it. Just as I turned, I could see that the wall was smoking. Only it wasn't smoke. It was all the brick dust and powder that had been blown off the old wall and hung like a faint gray curtain in the half-light of first dawn.
The tight group exploded, flung away in different directions by the blast like a clump of tightly racked billiard balls on the break.
I found the ground and rolled over and over, keeping my arms straight down at my sides. There had been no sound except the slugs hitting the wall. Nothing. But on the next burst I heard it. It commenced with a low whistle of almost electronic purity, and with it a sound like sheet metal being ripped behind a thick felt curtain. And then the loud pounding drowned out the weird sound, and it was as if I were in the middle of a buffalo stampede.
I heard a long, drawn-out groan coming from across the roadway.
'Hssssst!' came a whisper. 'Adams!'
'Over here. O'Shaughnessey?'
'Naw lad. It's him you hear. My friend's caught a couple too. Come over here… now!'
The whisper had the ring of authority. I had a feeling Thug Number One, the big guy in the Aitec ski mask, meant business.
'No. I can't. He'll kill me.'
His reply was swift and direct. I heard the whang of a slug two feet above my head against an iron steam pipe I couldn't see. .'The next one will go through you. I don't have time to fook around, Adams.'
I flung myself out from my little nest of safety and rolled along the ground to the opposite wall. I knew this was the safest way to do it. All Schilling would have a view of would be my clothes and my navy watch cap. And not rising higher than a foot above the ground, there would be no way he could detect a flicker of my silhouette. Rolling is also much quicker than belly crawling. When I hit the opposite wall I inched forward. Number One Thug was hunched behind a concrete abutment that sloped out from the wall, providing about two feet of immunity from those big bullets. He half-cradled a limp form in his left arm while he held his silenced Luger in the other.
'Check him.'
I pushed my fingers into the man's neck under his jaw. I felt a faint and irregular bumping of the carotid artery.
'Well?' whispered the big man.
'Bad.'
'Thought as much.'
I pulled open his coat and drew up his sweater. There were four mean entry holes, dark and very wet and as big as dimes, that snaked their way up and around his trunk spiral fashion. He had caught the brunt of the quick burst, with four of those miniature shot-puts hitting him within the space of a tenth of a second. I was amazed he was still alive, and knew he wouldn't be for long. The first hole was in the left side, near the spleen. Then he'd taken one in the lower chest, one definitely in the lungs, and the last one up near the right armpit. He gasped, and I thought I heard him say something but I couldn't understand it. Then Number One leaned over and put his hand on the side of his head, as one does to a child who cannot sleep, leaned over, and said something very soft in the man's ear. It was Gaelic. I don't know what he said. The man whined a little, and I thought I heard a sob or perhaps it was just pure pain. The shock was wearing off now, the enormous energy-like getting hit by four defensive linemen at once-that had stunned him was ebbing. And so was his life. Then he shuddered and relaxed. He said.
'Ahhhhhh… '
I put my hand back into his neck.
'He's gone now,' I told the big man.
He turned for a second, made the sign of the cross over the man's head, and said something else in Gaelic.
'Take the medal from around his neck and give it to me. Hurry.'
He dropped the small chain and medal into his coat pocket. Then he asked me if I could use a pistol and I answered yes.
'Go get your friend, Adams. He's only about eight feet away. I'll cover you.'
I heard O'Shaughnessey groan again and knew that if I didn't manage to get him pulled back behind the concrete he'd be cut in two by the next burst. I crawled around the abutment and hunkered down low. I saw a dark form on the ground, which told me how much lighter it had gotten. I grabbed the fallen man by the arms and dragged him back behind the shelter faster than I thought possible. Fear of getting blown away makes you amazingly strong and quick. I saw then how badly hit he was; there was a dark wet trail sliding out behind him..
We propped him up against the wall. He was conscious, but spilling lots of blood. Way too much blood too fast. That told me a blood vessel had been. severed. Not an artery that would pump and squirt crimson, but a big saphenous vein.
He'd taken slugs from the beginning of the burst that had killed the other man, the burst that had raked across them both, sending each successive round higher as the tiny gun had bucked upward with recoil. O'Shaughnessey was hit square in the left thigh and had a deep crease along the small of his back. An inch farther inward would have taken away both his kidneys and his spine. The thigh hit was bad; the femur was broken clean in two with perhaps an inch missing. The main problem with a. 45 is that it makes such a goddamn big hole.
They had taken away my knife, so I asked Thug Number One for his. With it I slit the pant leg and rigged a tourniquet with my shirt sleeve and an old piece of metal window frame I found after several minutes of feeling around in the dark. It stopped the flow pretty well, although I was also certain his blood pressure was down by this time too.
The big man worked in the dark, studying me. I heard metallic clacking and guessed he was reloading the big revolver. Then he made up his mind and handed me the. 44 magnum belonging to his fallen comrade. It weighed slightly less than a washing machine.
'This will just about take yer hand off when ya fire it… and break yer wrist, too. Hold it with both hands, and tight.'
I heard a brisk chatter, and ducked. But it wasn't the chatter of an automatic weapon; it was Stephen O'Shaughnessey's teeth. He was freezing to death.
'Now you hear me good, Doctor. I'm going to move around behind him, slow like. If we stay here we'll stay pinned down, don't yah know. You keep that cannon pointed right where the corner of that building is. Do you see it now? Give me ten minutes, then fire a few shots at it, hear? And listen, the both of you: any fookin' around and yer dead, quick as a wink, hear me?'
'Yes,' I answered. O'Shaughnessey moved his head back and forth in pain and didn't answer.
'What time have you?'
'Four-thirty.'
'At twenty of the hour I'll expect to hear the gunfire. Then I'll come on him like blazes-' He turned to go.
'And good-bye Stephen O'Shaughnessey. May you repair yourself. But, may we not meet again. Stay out of me fookin' business.'
He was gone. And for a big man he moved with utter silence. He had removed the hood from the dead man
