Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [201]
“OORAH!”
Suddenly Danny appeared from behind a partition near the back, his wheelchair in deep shadow. Harry saw him push off with both hands. Disappearing into a circle of ultra-bright sunlight streaming through the high windows.
“OORAH!” Harry yelled back. “OORAH!”
“OORAH!”
“OORAH!”
Kind saw nothing but blinding light in front of him! Then Harry began walking toward him.
“OORAH! OORAH!” he chanted, his eyes fixed on the terrorist. “OORAH! OORAH!”
Suddenly Kind swung the machine pistol at Harry. At the same time Danny rolled forward in the wheelchair. There seemed to be flame in his lap.
“OOOO RAHHHHHH!”
Danny’s Celtic yell thundered off the hardness of the marbled walls, and the wheelchair moved into view.
“NOW!” Harry yelled.
Kind swung the machine pistol toward Danny, just as he hurled the last of the beer bottles. One. And then two. And they crashed flaming at Thomas Kind’s feet.
For the briefest moment Thomas Kind felt the jump of the machine pistol in his hand and then he couldn’t see. Fire was everywhere. Turning, he started to run. But to run he had to breathe, and without realizing, he inhaled the burning sear, sucking the flames deep, igniting his lungs. There was pain like nothing he’d ever experienced. There was no air to breathe either in or out, not even to scream. All he knew was that he was on fire and he was running. And then time itself began to slow. He could see the outdoors. The sky above him. The looming open gate in the Vatican wall. Curiously and despite the terrible pain that now seemed to exist in every part of him, he felt a deep peace. Never mind what he had done with his life or what he had become; for Thomas Jose Alvarez-Rios Kind, the disease that had ultimately usurped his soul was being terminated. That the cost was enormous didn’t matter, in a matter of moments he would be free.
THE TRAIN WHISTLE still sounding, Scala and Castelletti ran down the track. The gunshots, the train whistle with no train appearing. The hell with it, they were going in. Then they stopped. A man on fire was running through the open gates coming down the tracks toward them.
The policemen watched as the man ran on. Another ten feet, fifteen. Then he slowed, stumbled a few feet more and collapsed on the tracks. He was no more than a hundred feet into Italy.
162
HARRY HEARD THE MASSIVE IRON GATES THUD closed in the wall behind. In front of him an ambulance pulled in through a sea of blue-shirted, heavily armed Swiss Guards and drove rapidly onto the dock beside the station. Backing up, it stopped next to the work engine. Then the paramedics and the doctor with them rushed to where Elena knelt with Hercules. In no time they had inserted an IV and moved him onto a stretcher; and then the dwarf was lifted up, put in the ambulance, and it was gone, driving off through the army of Vatican soldiers.
Watching it go, Harry felt as if some part of him were leaving with it. Finally he turned away only to find Danny watching him from his wheelchair. The look in Danny’s eyes told him he knew they had been seeing the same thing; the déjà vu of someone they cared for deeply, put into an ambulance and driven away as they stood helplessly by and watched. It had been twenty-five years since that terrible Sunday when their sister’s body had been taken from the icy pond, put blanket-wrapped into the ambulance by the fire chief, and driven away in the shivering semidarkness. The only differences now were that quarter century and that they were in Rome, not Maine, and that Hercules was still alive.
Suddenly Harry realized in the confusion that he had forgotten Elena. Turning, he saw her standing alone, her back to the work engine, watching them both, all but unaware of the force of soldiers around them. It was as if she understood something of great significance was going on between the brothers and was hesitant, even afraid, to intrude. In that moment she became the dearest person he had ever known in his life.
Automatically, and without the