Act of Revenge by Robert K. Tanenbaum

Author:Robert K. Tanenbaum
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc.
Published: 2011-05-31T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

MARLENE DROPPED THE PHONE, LEAPED up, and made for the door of Mattie Duran’s tiny office, where she was knocked back against a filing cabinet by the incoming proprietor, who did not interrupt her violent Spanish cursing to make an apology. The woman raced to her desk, leaned over it, jerked open a drawer, and came away with her family heirloom, a Colt Peacemaker .44 caliber revolver, like the ones cowboys shoot in the movies, but this one was real and it worked. More shots sounded; above, a child began to shriek in terror. Marlene got out a feeble “Hey, wha—” but Mattie had already gone off at a run, the sound of her steps echoing in the narrow hallway. Marlene ran after her, unlimbering her own weapon, yelling for Mattie to for chrissake wait up.

A nice little firefight was under way in the shelter’s reception room. Marlene could not see anything much because Mattie had halted in the doorway, but she could hear the sound of a heavy pistol firing and the snap and thunk of bullets flying and striking the walls and floors and furniture. A man was yelling obscenities in the entrance hallway, beyond the door with the glass window, now shattered. Mattie raised the big Colt and took aim.

Marlene felt the rage rise in her; these morons, and Mattie Duran not the least of them, were going to keep shooting until someone was dead or a stray round traveled up into the building and struck some kid. Unlike most people, Marlene when enraged did not start shaking and doing irrational things. Instead she became preternaturally cool, steady, and calculating. Scholars who study men in combat have discovered that this anomalous condition is present in about two percent of soldiers, who make up the vast majority of both heroes and the perpetrators of atrocity. An odd gift to bestow on a Sacred Heart girl from Queens, but there it was, and Marlene used it now, first throwing a solid body check into Mattie, knocking her against the door frame and, not incidentally, ruining her aim. The Colt boomed in Marlene’s ear, deafening her. Then she was past Mattie and into the anteroom. Vonda the guard, she noted in passing, was crouched behind the thin protection of her steel desk, her face a ghastly greenish-tan, trying to clear the round jammed in her shotgun, while confronting her from the doorway were two obvious Mafiosi, one shooting, the other crouched low, changing magazines on a large chromed pistol. Marlene strode directly up to the two amazed men, firing rapidly, every shot finding its mark in a disabling but non-lethal place, the guy on the left going down with two through the shoulder and one through the other bicep (his gun rattling onto the floor) and the second taking a bullet through his raised kneecap; he went over like a ninepin, howling. Marlene kept moving, kicking their guns out of reach, passing the shattered inner door and up to the shouting man in the hallway.

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