The Chain(96)

Pete’s wound looks terrible, but his dark eyes still have fire in them. Death is going to have to deal with a force that is shamanic, strong, inimical.

Embers are falling onto the remains of the abattoir’s roof.

“Guys, we may have to get out of here,” Marty says.

Rachel looks at the ferocious blaze taking hold of the entire west side of the house.

“Can we move Pete?” she asks.

“I think we need to,” Marty replies.

Flames engulf the house’s upper story and send the wooden deck crashing to the ground.

Snow and embers mingle in the slaughterhouse, drifting down from the black sky.

“I think I hear them coming,” Rachel says as the sound of sirens comes out of the night.

Kylie smiles and Stuart nods and Rachel tightens the tarpaulin around them. It will be hard to ever let her daughter go again. Impossible. Rachel kisses Kylie on the top of her head.

Pete is glad to see it.

He blinks slowly.

He tries to say something but there are no words now.

He knows he’s going into shock. He has seen it a million times. He’ll need a medic soon if he’s going to survive.

Marty is speaking to him, but he needs the—where is it?

His fingers search the ground until they touch his grandfather’s Colt .45, supposedly fired in anger at a Zero heading for the USS Missouri.

Pete somehow manages to lift it.

His grandfather’s .45…the lucky charm that kept the old man safe through the Pacific and kept Pete himself safe through five combat tours.

Pete hopes there is just one ounce of luck left in it.





74



Ever since he was little, people have called him Red. They’d christened him Daniel, after his father, but the old man is a little too free with his fists to be popular with the boy.

In the service they call him Red. Or Sarge. Or Sergeant Fitzpatrick. Red he likes.

The army is good for him. The army teaches him his letters.

There’s Red in the remedial reading class. Red skimming the funny papers. Red digging the comics. A swollen red Krypton sun. Superman walking the red road.

The army sends him overseas.

Red in the jungle.

Red in the delta.

Red in a whorehouse in Nha Trang.

Red in a whorehouse in Saigon.

He knows the whores are scared of him. The whores don’t like his eyes or the fish-scale birthmark on his neck. The whores don’t call him Red or Daniel or Sergeant. Behind his back they call him ?ng ma quy, which means “sea demon.”

Red in a chopper.

Red in a firefight in the Ia Drang Valley. Red keeping cool as mortars come in. Red getting recommended for the Silver Star.

Red back in America being presented with a baby boy by his Southie girlfriend.

Red joining the Boston PD.

It’s the mid-1960s and there are a lot of opportunities for a young man on the make. Sometimes you have to smack a few people around.

Sometimes you have to do a lot worse.

Red stains on the floor of a Dorchester shebeen.

Red all over the walls of a snitch’s basement apartment.

Red the hands. Red the eyes. Rooms full of red.

Red’s wife runs off with another man to Michigan. Red footprints in the snow outside a house in Ann Arbor.

Red’s boy grows up and follows his old man into law enforcement.

Glory days.

Red-letter days.

Before the fall. Before that hippie bitch comes into his boy’s life.

He is an old man now. His hair is white. But the old Red is still there.

They think they can kill me?

I’m hard to kill.

Red picks himself up off the linen-closet floor where he has been recovering. He limps to the room next to the library. Smoke is everywhere. The house is on fire. He finds the first-aid kit. He looks at the shotgun wound in his side. He’s had worse. Worse in that gun battle with hoods in ’77. Worse when a collection went wrong in Revere in ’85.

A younger man then, though. A much younger man.

He’s bleeding bad. Red the bandages. Red the lint. He limps to the gun rack. There’s yelling and shooting coming from the old abattoir outside.

He gets himself an M16 with an underslung M203 grenade launcher.

The only weapon to choose when you need something more convincing.

He staggers to the kitchen, coughing in the thick black smoke.

The hurt is incredible. At least four broken ribs and probably a punctured lung. But he’ll get through it. Red would get through it and he’s still Red even if his hair is white.

He staggers out into the blizzard and shuffles toward the back of the old slaughterhouse.

One step at a time through searing pain.

He blinks the snow out of his eyes.

It’s only fifty feet but it might as well be fifty yards.

He is reduced to crawling. His outbreaths are frothing blood. Definitely a punctured lung.

He reaches the rear door of the abattoir. The death entrance.

Red on the dirt. Red the handrail and the snow.

Breathing is hard. He has only one working lung and that is filling with blood too.

He climbs the last concrete step and peers over the lip of the back door.

The arc light is on and he can see everything.

There are his two beloved grandchildren dead on the floor. The kids he’d rescued all those years ago. The only ones who ever really loved him or understood him. Olly and Ginger in the world of red.