Havoc (15 page)

CHAPTER 40

The attacker’s eyes opened even wider as Alton stilled his breath and began to tighten his grip on the Beretta’s trigger.

“Wait! Okay, chum,” replied the Brit. “I’m going down, see?”

“Throw the club against the wall over there,” said Alton. “Then lie flat on your stomach.”

The man tossed the weapon with a flick of his wrist. It landed with a clatter against a stone wall. He then lowered himself onto his hands and knees.

Alton stole another glace at Mallory. Had her head wound stopped bleeding? He thought so but couldn’t be sure. Needing to get a better look, he moved toward Mallory, closing to within a few feet of both her and the attacker. “On your stomach. This is the last time I tell you.”

“All right,” said the Brit, lowering himself onto his elbows.

Alton glanced down at Mallory. She was so still. He kneeled and felt her pulse. It was rapid and faint. As he leaned down, Alton noticed the attacker turn his head to peek in their direction. While remaining on his elbows, the man shifted his weight onto one leg. Alton recognized the tactic from his “combatives” training, the Army’s instruction in hand-to-hand combat. The man was sizing him up for a spinning pivot kick from the ground.

As the attacker rolled and began the sweeping kick, Alton swiveled the Beretta and fired. The round impacted the assailant’s leg, sending him crashing flat onto the stones with a thud.

“Bloody hell!” said the attacker, grasping his thigh. The site of the injury bled a little but appeared to be more of a flesh wound than a solid penetration.

“The next one will be center mass,” said Alton. “Now listen…I have to summon medical attention for my girlfriend. If I have to worry about watching out for you while I’m taking care of her, guess how I’ll solve that problem?”

For the first time, the assailant lowered his eyes to the floor.

A noise from the entrance drew the attention of both men. Two policemen ran into the grotto, pistols drawn. Alton wondered how they had arrived so quickly until he noticed the embroidered “Giardino di Boboli” patches sewn onto their uniforms. They must be a special police contingent permanently stationed in the famous gardens.

“Police—thank God! Help me!” cried the attacker. “This man tried to kill me. Look at my leg.”

“Wait—that’s not true,” exclaimed Alton. “This thug attacked my girlfriend and tried to attack me when I went to help her.”

The policemen glanced at each other.

“You, drop that handgun to the ground,” said the tall one in a thick accent. “Both of you, put your hands in the air. We take you both to the station until we know the truth.”

“Officer,” said Alton. “Please call an ambulance. My girlfriend is hurt. I don’t know how badly, but she has a head injury. It could be serious.”

“Oh, now you’re worried that it’s serious,” said the Brit. “You should have thought of that before you attacked her.”

“What?” said Alton. “Officer, this man is lying. I wouldn’t harm a hair on her head. She’s the love of my life.”

“That’s what he said, all right. ‘You’re the love of my life,’ just before he shot at her. She kept telling him that it was over, for him to leave her alone, but he wouldn’t. He said if she didn’t stay with him, she wouldn’t stay with anyone. After he missed with his first shot, she kicked him pretty hard in the leg. Then he hit her, and she fell down. You don’t have to believe me. He’s still limping from where she kicked him.”

“I didn’t hurt her,” said Alton. “I stopped this man from attacking her. And I still need you to call an ambulance.”

“Yeah, and call one for my bloody leg.”

The officers held the two men at gunpoint until reinforcements and medical staff arrived. The police separated Alton and the attacker. The two original officers handcuffed Alton and seated him inside a police car that had been driven through a maintenance entrance. Alton couldn’t be sure, but the body language of the arresting officers suggested they assigned greater credibility to the attacker’s version of events than his own. At least the attacker had been handcuffed to the gurney when EMTs had loaded him into an ambulance.

How was Mallory? Alton had felt nearly frantic with worry until he saw her mumble as medics loaded her onto a different ambulance. She really hadn’t been out too long. Alton prayed the injury was only temporary.

“Officer,” called Alton to the tall policeman. “You can’t take Mallory to the same hospital as that man. I’m telling you, he’s already tried to kill her once. If he has the chance, he’ll try again.”

The officer looked at his partner.

“What harm will it do to take them to different facilities?” urged Alton. “If I’m lying, it won’t be a problem that they’re in separate hospitals, right? But if I’m telling the truth, and that bastard sneaks down the hall and kills her, what will happen to your careers after you were warned yet still took them to the same facility?”

The two policemen leaned their heads together and consulted in quiet tones. The tall one marched over to the first ambulance, while his partner visited the second.

They returned to the police car in which Alton sat cuffed. “Okay, the woman—Mallory, right?—go to Maria Nuova. Is close this hospital. And the man go to Careggi. Is hospital further away. You happy now?”

Alton experienced immeasurable relief at the news, yet waves of frustration still coursed through his mind. The attacker—their link back to the ambush in Pompeii—lay a few dozen yards away, yet Alton was powerless to follow up that lead. If he could just interrogate the wounded man, he might discover who had organized both attacks. Once Mallory awoke, the question of his guilt would be resolved within moments, presumably leading the police to question the attacker more thoroughly.

The police transported Alton to the local
Polizia di Stato
station and left him alone in a locked conference room for upwards of fifteen minutes.

As a man in a jacket and tie entered the room, Alton blurted out, “How is Mallory Wilson? Is she all right?”

“She has not yet woke up, but we think it will not be long,” said the man, taking a seat in a chair across the table from Alton. “I am Lieutenant Donati. What is your name?”

“Alton Blackwell. I’m her boyfriend.”

“That is what we heard.”

Alton stared the inspector in the face. “I know that other guy said I hurt Mallory, but that’s not true. I returned from a trip to the bathroom to discover that man kicking her. He had some sort of club and was about to strike her again when I stopped him.”

“Yes, he said the baton was yours.”

“That’s another lie. You won’t find my prints on it. I never touched it. But you will find his. In any case, I was leaning down to check Mallory’s pulse when he tried to use a martial arts move, a sweeping leg kick. I shot him, and your men arrived after hearing the sound of the shot.”

“Why would this man attack your girlfriend?” asked the inspector.

“I can’t know for certain, but I believe he was contracted by the same person who hired a gang of Mafia lowlifes to try to kill us down in Pompeii. That’s why I had the gun with me—for protection in case the same people struck again.”

“Why would someone chase you around Italy to kill you? You and your girlfriend are tourists, no?”

“Yes, we are, but we witnessed a murder in Rome, inside the Colosseum. We suspect the assassin fears we have information that can expose him.”

“And do you?”

“No,” said Alton. “None that we can think of, at least.”

The inspector leaned back in his chair. “So here is my problem, Mr. Blackwell. I have your story that a bunch of Mafia and gangster guys are chasing you and your girlfriend all over Italy. Not something you hear every day, right? And I have another story that says you and your girlfriend got in a fight and you were jealous. This is something I see all the time. So you tell me: which story do you think I should believe?”

“What if I gave you proof my story is true?” asked Alton.

“What kind of proof?”

“That man—what did he say his name is?”

“Arnold Smith. He says people call him Smitty.”

Alton shook his head at the obvious pseudonym. “Smitty said I shot at Mallory. But check my weapon. I’ve only fired one round, and it’s in his leg.”

“Maybe he thought you fired when you hit your girlfriend with your hand. There is echo in the grotto. Is hard to tell what you hear. And what about your injured leg? How did Mr. Smith know about that if your girlfriend didn’t kick you?”

Without ceremony, Alton stood up and dropped his pants, revealing the scars of his combat injury. “I’m a veteran of the United States Army. My limp is a result of a terrorist explosion in Afghanistan. Here’s the scar to prove it. The US Embassy can verify my combat injury, too. Why would Smitty lie about the source of my limp unless he’s lying about the whole story?

“Here’s more proof. You can call Inspector Tito Rossi in the Roman
Polizia di Stato
. He’ll verify that Mallory and I helped him investigate the murder of Duncan Wells, a tourist, in the Colosseum. He can also verify the attack on us in Pompeii.” Alton restored his pants to their usual position.

Lieutenant Donati took out his cell phone and placed a brief call.

“Inspector Rossi will call me back,” he told Alton. “For now, we wait.”

A quarter-hour later, the lieutenant’s phone rang. After answering, Donati listened for a good two minutes.  “
Figlio di puttana
!” he said, followed by a stream of commands in Italian. He ended the call with another exclamation.

“What’s happening?” asked Alton.

“Well, we know your story is true. We are sending a unit out to Careggi, the hospital where Mr. Smith is a patient.”

“Don’t you already have men there, guarding him?”

Donati looked at the ceiling. “Your story didn’t seem very likely, did it? Plus the man is injured. Where is he gonna go? So we didn’t put guards in the room with him.”

“But he was handcuffed to the ambulance gurney.”

“Yes, but he’s in a hospital bed now. We removed the handcuffs to move him into the bed.”

Alton shook his head. “How soon will you know if he’s still there?”

“Not long. Maybe fifteen minutes.”

Alton and Lieutenant Donati waited nearly half an hour before the policeman’s phone finally rang.

Donati snatched his cellphone from the tabletop. “
Pronto
?”

He listened for a couple of minutes, then ended the call with a grim expression. “Mr. Smith, or whatever his real name is, isn’t in his hospital room anymore. My men found an orderly who had been knocked out and dragged into Smith’s bathroom. The orderly’s hospital uniform is gone, and a patient’s gown was on the floor next to him.”

“So Smitty escaped dressed as a hospital worker.”

“Yes.”

Alton smacked the tabletop in frustration. “We were so close to ending this. Now he’ll have time to regroup.” His breath caught in his chest as a realization shot through his mind. “Lieutenant, you need to put extra guards in Mallory’s hospital room. We can’t take any chances if he goes looking for her.”

“We don’t need to do that,” said Donati.

“But I’m telling you—”

The lieutenant raised both hands. “We don’t need to post more guards because she isn’t in the hospital anymore.”

Was she dead? Alton felt like he had been punched in the gut. “What? Where…?”

Donati must have sensed Alton’s alarm. “Don’t worry, my friend. She is doing better. In the phone call, my man said she is awake now and talking like normal. They gave her some medicine for the headache.”

Did words exist that could do justice to Alton’s relief? He thought not, although such a swing from utter despair to overwhelming gratitude in a matter of seconds had to reduce his lifespan, Alton felt sure.

“That’s awesome,” he said, “but if she’s not in the hospital, where is she?”

“She is coming here right now. One of my men is giving her a lift.”

“Where will she arrive? Can you take me to meet her?”

“Sure, I take you,” replied Donati. “But first, let’s go by the custody office to pick up your possessions.”

“Including the Beretta Inspector Rossi gave me, right? Today’s events proved I need it for my protection.”

“Yes, I give it back to you.”

Alton and Donati had just arrived in the police station’s lobby when Mallory, accompanied by a burly sergeant, walked through the main doors. Alton didn’t consciously decide to run. His feet made that decision on their own. The resultant pain in his leg didn’t last long, since Mallory also broke into a trot and fell into his arms within seconds.

Alton held Mallory in silent relief and gratitude. She grasped him with equal tenacity.

“You’re already out of the hospital?” he asked. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

She leaned her head on his chest. “Yeah—I’m good.”

“What did the doctors say?”

“A mild concussion and a doozy of a headache. They gave me some prescription-strength Tylenol and advised me to return if I experience any of the usual concussion symptoms: memory loss, vomiting, that kind of thing.”