Feast Day of Fools - James Lee Burke [206]
The shooting stopped as quickly as it had begun. The air was filled with smoke and lint and dust and tiny pieces of fiberboard. In the light from the hallway door, he could see two of Sholokoff’s men standing in the drift of smoke, one with a revolver, the other with a semiautomatic carbine that was fitted with a skeleton stock. He realized that Pam Tibbs was down, somewhere behind several crates of wine bottles that were broken and draining onto the floor. He could not see either Krill or Anton Ling. He found his shotgun among the cardboard boxes and propped the butt against the floor and used it to raise himself to one knee, his side and back on fire.
He saw the silhouette of a small man go across the doorway at the head of the stairs. “Frank?” a voice with a Russian accent said. “What’s happening down there?”
“We nailed the sheriff and his deputy,” Frank said. “I’ve got everything under control.”
“Are they dead?” the man with the Russian accent said.
“I’m not sure, sir.”
“Then be sure. Kill them. I want to see their heads.”
“You want to see their—”
“I want you to bring me their heads,” the man with the Russian accent said.
“Where’s Collins, sir?” Frank asked.
“Somewhere in the house. You finish down there and come around behind him. This is your opportunity to redeem yourself. Do not disappoint me, Frank.”
Frank raised the carbine with the wire stock to his shoulder and began firing at random all over the cellar, the bullets notching the stone walls, whanging off the cell doors, splintering the cases of wine that were bleeding pools of burgundy on the floor. With one knee for support, Hackberry raised the twelve-gauge and fired at the two men who stood at the bottom of the stairs. Most of the pattern struck a wood post, and the rest of the load flattened harmlessly against a wall behind the stairs.
Hackberry tried to work the pump and hold the shotgun with one hand, but instead of ejecting the spent shell, the mechanism jammed, and the spent shell was crimped sideways between the bolt and the chamber. In the gloom, he saw Pam sitting flatly on her buttocks behind a stack of rubber tires, her legs stretched out straight in front of her. There was a bullet wound in her back and what appeared to be an exit wound in the top of her left arm. She was trying to free her .357 from her holster, but her hand kept fluttering on the grips and the leather strap fastened at the base of the hammer.
“Throw out your piece, Sheriff Holland,” Frank said. “I’ll talk with Mr. Sholokoff. He’s a businessman. This doesn’t have to end badly. Our common enemy up there is that smelly son of a bitch Jack Collins. Why take his weight?”
Hackberry’s side was throbbing, his face breaking with sweat. He could hear glass crunching under the boots of Sholokoff’s men as they began working their way carefully toward the pile of tires behind which Pam Tibbs had taken cover.
“Think about it, Sheriff,” Frank said. “The people you’re trying to rescue down here are killers. They murdered a guy who tried to treat them in a kindly way. Yeah, that’s right. Mike was his name. He was a good guy. He’s lying dead on the floor now, with shoestrings wrapped around his throat. How about it, Sheriff? How many guys get a second chance like this?”
Frank had grown cavalier about Krill and the Asian woman. When Anton Ling gathered herself up from the floor with the Air-weight .38 five-round Smith & Wesson in her hand, Frank’s expression seemed amused, taking her inventory, his eyes sliding over her blood-streaked shift, the bruises on her face and arms and shoulders, the gash in her lower lip.
“I had a Chinese bitch of my own once,” Frank