Chapter 7 - Firefight in the Graveyard
The high-intensity halogen beam cut through the darkness of the mausoleum, painting long, frantic shadows against the stone walls.
Roman moved with explosive speed.
He grabbed Grace by the collar of her jacket and hauled her down behind the massive marble sarcophagus of Vittorio Moretti.
"Shut off your flashlight!" Roman commanded in an urgent whisper.
Grace clicked the button, plunging their corner of the vault into absolute blackness.
She clutched the steel lockbox against her stomach, her arms wrapped around it like a mother shielding an infant.
Outside, the heavy engine rumbled to an abrupt halt, its transmission clunking into park.
Car doors slammed open against the howling wind.
Footsteps splashed through the muddy gravel—heavy, disciplined, and coordinated.
"Check the perimeter!" a rough voice barked from the stone steps outside.
"The lock on the main gate was sheared off!"
"They’re inside the tomb!"
Grace recognized that voice.
It wasn't Captain Walsh.
It was Lieutenant Raymond Briggs, Walsh’s former precinct bagman who had retired three years ago to head Walsh’s private corporate security contracting firm.
"Boss wants the girl alive if possible," Briggs shouted through the rain.
"The ledger and the tape are the primary targets."
"If Moretti raises a weapon, put two in his chest."
Roman leaned close to Grace’s ear, his breath warm against the freezing chill of her skin.
"There are at least four of them," Roman whispered, his voice deadly calm.
"They are wearing body armor and carrying submachine guns."
"The marble of this tomb will stop pistol rounds, but rifle fire will splinter the stone."
"Stay pressed flat against the floor behind this pedestal."
"No matter what happens, do not stand up."
"What about you?" Grace whispered, terror gripping her throat.
"I am going to change their math," Roman replied.
He reached down to his ankle and pulled a spare magazine from his boot, clicking it into his belt pocket.
He racked the slide of his suppressed pistol with a muffled click.
The bronze doors of the mausoleum were kicked fully open with a violent metallic bang.
Two tactical flashlights swept across the interior, cutting through the swirling dust and rain mist.
"Moretti!" Briggs’s voice echoed off the high granite ceiling.
"Come out with your hands where we can see them!"
"You’re out of your jurisdiction, Briggs," Roman’s voice echoed back, bouncing off the curved stone so effectively that his exact position was impossible to pinpoint.
"This is private consecrated ground."
"You take one more step forward, and you will be buried here."
Briggs laughed, a dry, mocking bark that carried no humor.
"Consecrated ground don't mean much to a ditch full of dead men, Roman."
"Your grandfather is rotting under that marble."
"Your grandmother is trapped in her bedroom with four of my men holding the hallway."
Grace felt a jolt of horror shoot through her spine.
Agnes was captive.
The old woman who had shielded her for weeks was currently at the mercy of Walsh’s thugs.
"You touched my grandmother?" Roman’s tone didn't rise, but it turned into something terrifyingly feral.
"Not yet," Briggs sneered.
"Walsh is having a polite tea with her right now."
"He’s giving you ten minutes to surrender the Bennett girl and whatever Michael left in that box."
"If you don't walk out of here with your hands behind your head, Walsh is going to toss your grandmother down the front marble stairs of your own estate."
A flash of blinding lightning struck the willow tree outside the mausoleum, instantly followed by an ear-splitting crack of thunder.
In that exact fraction of a second, Roman leaned around the side of the sarcophagus.
His weapon fired three rapid, muffled shots.
Phut. Phut. Phut.
The first mercenary walking behind Briggs took two rounds to the neck and chest, collapsing onto the marble tiles with a wet thud.
His flashlight rolled across the floor, spinning violently and casting chaotic shadows across the vault.
"Return fire!" Briggs roared, diving behind an arched marble pillar.
Instantly, automatic gunfire erupted inside the enclosed tomb.
The deafening roar of submachine guns tore through the silence, echoing like endless cannon shots against the stone ceiling.
Rounds chipped violently into the marble sarcophagus, showering Grace with sharp fragments of cold stone and plaster dust.
Grace pressed her face against the floor, choking back a scream as concrete dust filled her nostrils.
She hugged the metal lockbox tighter, her fingernails scraping against the cold steel.
Roman shifted positions immediately, moving low along the shadow of the altar to avoid being pinned down by crossfire.
He fired twice more.
Another mercenary cried out in pain as a bullet shattered his shoulder, sending his weapon clattering into an open burial niche.
"Flank him from the east colonnade!" Briggs ordered desperately, realizing Roman’s close-quarters tactical efficiency far outmatched his men's expectations.
A third mercenary moved swiftly along the right-hand wall, raising his weapon toward the altar where Grace lay hidden.
He saw the hem of Grace’s gray dress beneath the stone lip.
He leveled his submachine gun directly at her head.
"Found her!" the man yelled.
Grace looked up into the black muzzle of the barrel.
Her breath stopped.
Time slowed to a crawl.
She could see the mercenary's finger tightening on the curved trigger.
Suddenly, from the open bronze doorway behind the mercenary, a blinding flash erupted.
A deafening gunshot—unsuppressed, booming like an artillery shell—tore through the tomb.
The mercenary's head snapped sideways, his helmet flying off as he dropped lifelessly onto the tiles.
Briggs spun around in utter shock, raising his weapon toward the entrance.
"Who the hell is that?!" Briggs screamed into the smoke.
Standing framed in the bronze doorway, soaked in rain and holding a standard-issue department service pistol in a steady two-handed grip, was an unexpected figure.
He was a man in his late thirties, wearing a soaked detective's trench coat over an unbuttoned blue shirt.
Around his neck hung a gold shield dangling from a beaded steel chain.
"State Police Major Crimes Division!" the newcomer roared with thunderous authority.
"Drop your weapons immediately!"
"Drop them now, Briggs, or I will put a hollow-point through your forehead!"
Briggs stared at the detective in furious disbelief.
"Vance?!" Briggs hissed, his face twisted in venomous shock.
"What the hell are you doing here?!"
"You were supposed to be reviewing cold case files in the basement of headquarters!"
"I reviewed the files, Raymond," Detective Marcus Vance answered, his voice icy and completely steady.
"And then I followed your black sedans from Walsh’s private marina."
"Lower the gun, Briggs."
"It's over."
Briggs knew he was outmatched, trapped between Roman Moretti’s lethal precision in the shadows and an active State Police detective holding the only exit.
Briggs snarled, tossed a smoke canister onto the marble floor, and dove toward the side service window of the tomb.
The canister erupted in a thick cloud of white chemical smoke.
Roman fired three rounds through the vapor, but the sound of breaking glass signaled that Briggs had leaped through the stained-glass window into the darkness of the graveyard.
The remaining wounded mercenary groaned on the floor, holding his shattered shoulder.
The tomb fell into a ringing, smoky silence, broken only by the crackle of burning gunpowder and the drum of rain outside.
Detective Marcus Vance did not lower his weapon.
May you like
He slowly swept the flashlight on his service rail across the bodies on the floor, then turned the beam directly onto Roman Moretti, who stood by the altar with his pistol leveled straight at Vance’s chest.
Between them knelt Grace Bennett, covered in dust and gripping the steel box of her father’s legacy.
