F Paul Wilson - Novel 03 (38 page)

           
 
"No
me jodas."

           
 
He wouldn't dare, she thought. He's got to be
bluffing.

           
 
"All right," she said. "I gave
you your chance."

           
 
Still they didn't move, so she filled her
lungs and—

           
 
She saw the flash at the tip of the silencer,
saw the pistol buck in his hand, heard a sound like
phut!,
felt an impact against her chest, tried to start her scream
but she was punched backward and didn't seem to have any air to scream with.
And then she was falling. Darkness rimmed her vision as a distant roaring
surged closer, filling her ears, bringing with it more darkness, an
all-encompassing darkness. . . .

           
 
Emilio stood frozen with his automatic still
pointed at where she had been standing as he watched her fall and lay twitching
on the marble floor, the red of her life soaking through the front of her habit
and pooling around her.

           
 
"Christ, Emilio!" Mol gasped beside
him.

           
 
"Carrie!" the priest cried, dropping
to his knees beside her and gripping her limp shoulders. "Oh, God,
Carrie!"

           
 
I'm sorry, Emilio thought. I'm so sorry!

           
And that shocked him. Because he'd
killed before without the slightest shred of guilt. Anyone who threatened him
or stood between him and what he wanted didn't deserve to live. It had always
been that simple. But here, now, in this place, before that old woman's body on
the altar, a new emotion, as unpleasant as it was unfamiliar, was seeping
through him.

           
 
Guilt.

           
 
The priest looked up at him, tear-filled eyes
wild, rage and grief distorting his features almost beyond recognition. With a
low, animal-like growl he hurtled himself at Emilio.

           
 
A bullet in the head would have been the
simplest, most efficient response. But Emilio couldn't bring himself to pull
the trigger. Not again, not here, with . . .
her
here. Instead he dodged aside and slammed the Llama's butt and
trigger guard hard against the priest's skull, staggering him. Before the man
could shake off the blow, Emilio hit him again, harder this time, knocking him
to the floor where he lay still with a trickle of red oozing from his scalp.

           
 
Mol had already started back down the center
aisle.

           
 
"Where are you going?"

           
 
Mol turned and looked at her, fear in his
eyes. "I—"

           
 
"Shut up and stand still. Listen!"

           
 
Emilio strained his ears through the silence.
And as he'd hoped, it remained just that: silence. None of the noise in here
had penetrated the heavy oak front doors; the cop outside had no idea there was
anything going on inside.

           
 
"All right," Emilio said, gesturing
toward the altar. "Let's get moving."

           
Mol hesitated, glanced once more at
the front doors, then shrugged and hurried toward the altar. Emilio directed
him toward the head of the body while he took the other end.

           
 
But as he reached to take hold of the feet, he
hesitated. He hadn't believed in this church-priest-God-religion bullshit since
he'd been a little boy in Camino Verde and watched his older sister screw the
neighborhood men in the back corner of their one-room shack. Any guilt he'd
felt a moment ago had been a leftover from the times his grandmother would drag
him off to church before he was big enough to tell her to go to hell. And yet
... a deep part of him was afraid to touch this mummified old woman, afraid a
lightning bolt would crash through the ceiling of the church and fry him on the
spot.

           
 
"Bullshit!" he whispered and gripped
the body's ankles.

           
 
Nothing happened.

           
 
Angry with himself for feeling relieved, he
nodded to Mol, who had her by the shoulders, and together they lifted her off
the altar.

           
 
Surprisingly light. They each got a
comfortable grip on her, then hurried down the center aisle, Emilio leading,
carrying her feet first. Through the vestibule, down the steps into the
locked-up soup kitchen in the cellar, through the tunnel, and back up into the
rectory. All still quiet there. Decker would have been inside if anyone had
come in. They eased the body out the side door, slipped her into the back atop
the grocery bags, and locked the doors.

           
 
Emilio climbed into the cab next to Decker and
slapped the dashboard. "Let's go."

           
 
"Any trouble?" Decker said as he
nosed the truck into the street.

           
 
"Not really," Emilio said.

           
 
Mol snorted. "Like hell!"

           
 
"What happened?" Decker said.

           
 
"I'll tell you later," Emilio said.
"Just drive."

           
 
He wanted Decker cool and calm for the drive
back past the police and through the crowd, but he needn't have worried. The
police waved them by, and even made a path for them through the horde of
Mary-hunters.

           
 
Once they were free of the crowd and rolling
toward the
FDR Drive
, Emilio allowed himself to breathe a little more easily. And he'd
breathe even more easily when they ditched this rig and switched the body to
the Avis panel truck he'd rented earlier. But he knew he wouldn't be able to
relax fully until they had it aboard the
senador's
waiting jet and were airborne over LaGuardia.

           
 
She is
gone!

           
 
Kesev violently elbowed his way through the
crowd near
St.
Joseph
's,
leaving a trail of sore and angry Mary-hunters in his wake. Let them shout at
him, wave their fists at him, he didn't care. He had to reach the church, had
to know if his suspicion was true.

           
 
During the past hour he had felt a dwindling
of the Mother's presence, and then suddenly it was gone.

           
 
Finally he reached the front of the crowd, but
as he squeezed under the barricade, two blue-uniformed policemen, one white,
one black, confronted him.

           
 
"Back on the other side, buddy," the
white one said.

           
 
"You don't understand," Kesev told
him. "She's gone. They've stolen her."

           
 
He heard the crowd behind him begin to mutter
and murmur with concern.

           
 
"Now don't go starting trouble,
mister," the black one said. "The lady's fine. We've been out here
all night and nobody's been in or out of that church."

           
 
"She's gone, I tell you!" Kesev
turned to the crowd and shouted, "They've stolen the Mother right out from
under your noses!"

           
 
"You shut up!" the white policeman
hissed in his ear.

           
 
But Kesev wrenched free and began running
toward the front of the church.

           
"Come!" he shouted to the
crowd. "Come see if I'm not telling you the truth!"

           
 
That was all the crowd needed. With a roar
they knocked over the police line horses and surged onto the street, engulfing
any cop who tried to stop them.

           
 
The lone policeman stationed in front of the
church backed up to the front doors but decided to get out of the way as Kesev
charged up the steps with the mob close behind him. A few good heaves from
dozens of shoulders and the doors gave way and they flowed through the
vestibule and into the nave.

           
 
And stopped with cries of shock that rapidly
dwindled, finally fading into horrified silence.

           
The altar was bare. And near the end
of the center aisle two figures huddled on the floor. Kesev recognized them
immediately—the nun and the priest from the El Al plane back in July.

           
The priest was kneeling in a pool of
red, weeping, his deep, racking sobs reverberating through the church as blood
from a scalp wound trickled down his forehead to mingle with his tears. In his
arms lay the limp, blood-soaked form of the nun.

           
 
Kesev, too, wept. But for another reason.

           
 
CHUCK
SCARBOROUGH
: "This just in: the object in St. Joseph's
church in Lower Manhattan, believed by many to be the remains of the Virgin
Mary, has been stolen. Sister Carolyn Ferris, beloved by the thousands who have
visited the church since the object first appeared there, was killed during the
robbery, apparently while trying to prevent the theft. The devotees of the
object, known as Mary-hunters, have gone on a rampage in the area around the
church, demanding immediate capture of the killers and the return of what has
come to be known as the Manhattan Madonna.

           
 
A camera crew is on the way to the scene and
we will bring you live coverage as soon as it is available.

           
 
To repeat . . ."

           
 
"Do you remember me?"

           
 
Dan forced his eyes open. He was cold, he was
sick, he was emotionally drained and numb; his head was pounding like a
cathedral gong, and his scalp throbbed and pulled where it had been stitched
up. But the greatest pain was deep inside where no doctor could see or touch,
in the black void left by Carrie's death and the brutal, awful, finality of her
dying.

           
 
He looked up from his seat in the Emergency
Room of Beekman Downtown Hospital. For a rage-blinded instant he thought the
black-bearded man with the accented voice standing over him was the bastard
who'd shot Carrie. He tensed to launch himself at him, then realized this was
someone else. Just as intense, but much too short. He'd seen this man before
but his grief-fogged brain couldn't recall where or when.

           
 
"No," he said.
And I don't care to.

           
 
"At Tel Aviv airport last summer . . . I
was questioning your nun friend and you—"

           
 
Now Dan recognized him. 'The man from the Shin
. . ." He fumbled for the word.

           
 
"Shin Bet. The name is Kesev. But I'm
here unofficially now."

           
 
"I wish we'd never gone to
Israel
," he said, feeling a sob growing in
his chest. "I wish you'd arrested us and jailed us. At least then Carrie
would still be alive."

           
 
Carrie . . . dead. Dan still couldn't believe
it. This had to be a dream, the worst nightmare imaginable. A dream. That was
the only logical explanation for all these fantastic, unexplainable events, the
most unbelievable of which was Carrie's death. Life without Carrie ... a
Carrie-less world . . . unthinkable.

           
 
But it had seemed so real when he'd held her
limp, cold, blood-drenched body in his arms back there in St. Joe's.

           
 
So
real!