Chapter 10 - Retribution Beneath the Cross and the Disarmed Catastrophe
The maintenance tunnel led upward through a spiral service stair that emerged behind the great pipe organ in the cathedral’s main sanctuary.
The massive church was dark, illuminated only by the faint glow of red sanctuary lamps and the towering stained-glass windows catching the city light outside. Above the altar, the great stone cross loomed over the empty pews like a silent witness to a century of human sin.
Victor Vance was limping down the center aisle toward the grand bronze doors of the main entrance, clutching a bleeding shoulder where one of my earlier rounds had grazed him. In his right hand, he held a secondary wireless detonator.
"Vance!" my voice boomed through the cavernous rafters of the cathedral, echoing like thunder off the six-story vaulted ceilings.
Vance spun around, raising his sidearm, but I was already moving.
I fired a single three-round burst from the hip. The heavy rounds shattered his right elbow, sending his pistol clattering across the marble floor into the front pews. Vance let out a guttural roar of agony, falling to his knees at the foot of the baptismal font, clutching his ruined arm against his chest.
I walked down the center aisle slowly, the barrel of my rifle smoking in the freezing draft of the church.
"You're a businessman, Salvatore!" Vance gasped, his face twisted in a mixture of pain and desperate calculation as he backed up against the heavy marble basin. "We can settle this! The commission... those old bastards in the basement were going to push you out anyway! Marco told me! I have fifty million in an escrow account in Zurich! Take half! Take the whole damn thing! Just let me walk out those doors!"
I stopped five feet from him.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the charred, half-melted purple sneaker that Bruno had pulled from the burn barrel in Queens. I tossed it onto the marble floor between Vance’s knees.
Vance looked down at the tiny, burned shoe, his eyes widening with a sudden, dawning terror that money could not buy off.
"Do you know what that is?" I asked quietly.
"Salvatore... it was just a kid... collateral damage—"
"Her name was Elena Vasquez," I said, raising the rifle until the heavy steel muzzle was pressed directly against the center of the serpent tattoo on his neck. "She was seven years old. She liked purple sneakers and drawing horses. And she brought down your entire empire with a twenty-dollar box of crayons."
"The override code," Vance choked out, his eyes darting frantically toward the floor. "The code for the bomb is 9-9-4-2! I swear to God! 9-9-4-2!"
I didn't lower the rifle.
"I believe you," I said.
I pulled the trigger.
May you like
The gunshot echoed through the sacred silence of the cathedral like the crack of doom. Victor Vance slumped sideways against the marble font, his blood pooling around the tiny purple sneaker on the floor.
I keyed my radio collar. "Tony. Code is 9-9-4-2. Disarm the charge and get the medic down here right now. If Bruno dies, none of us are leaving this church."
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