THIRTEEN

Maria was on the beach, running after Will’s errant throw— short this time, as opposed to the last one, which had been way, way long, so long that it had tumbled into the surf and she’d gotten the legs of her pants wet fetching it—when the men came out of the jungle. Four of them, in black T-shirts and black pants, all wearing sunglasses.

Wrong party, she thought, and was actually about to yell that information up to them when the two in the lead raised weapons—all of them were carrying weapons, she suddenly saw, why were they carrying weapons?—and a split second later, she had the answer as all four started firing. Firing at the people gathered around the tables from last night’s party, people eating breakfast, people just sitting around talking . . .

People dancing. Betty and Tommy, who both crumpled to the ground and lay still.

Maria made a noise halfway between a moan and a whimper.

“Mom?” Will stood frozen in place, eyes wide with shock. “Mommy?”

Frank had told her what to do in situations like this. They’d gone over it, time and time again. How to handle yourself in an emergency.

But when she opened her mouth to speak, no words came out.

Quentin Glass stepped out of the jungle and smiled.

Not ten seconds into the attack, and full-fledged panic had erupted already. People were screaming, shouting, begging, crying, in general running around like chickens whose heads had been cut off.

Glass shook his head. He hoped if he had the misfortune to die by violence, he would at least go with his dignity intact. These Castles . . . he was surprised, frankly. Supposedly, there were military men in the family. They, at least, should know the proper way to meet your maker.

Movement to his left caught his attention. Glass turned, and saw a half-dozen people had burst out of the compound, heading toward a group of vehicles parked near the road.

Dante and Spoon stepped out from their positions then, directly in front of the would-be escapees, and raised their weapons.

Shooting fish in a barrel, Glass thought, as the sound of automatic weapons fire filled the air again.

John Saint stepped up alongside him.

“How’s your headache?” Quentin asked.

“Good. Much better, thanks for asking. Any sign of him?”

“Not yet. But—”

There was a sound like thunder. It came from a small bungalow set back perhaps fifty feet from the party area.

A split second later, one of Shusheim’s men flew out of the bungalow door and landed flat on his back, a gaping hole in his chest.

“I suspect that’s our Mr. Castle now,” Glass said.

“Yeah. I suspect you’re right.”

Glass and John Saint raised their weapons then, and stepped forward to join the party.

He would not allow himself to think who, or why. There would be time for that later—recriminations, retribution, all of it. He would call in every favor he was owed, use every connection he had, pick the brains of every junkie, criminal, and terrorist on the planet to find out who had done this thing.

Right now, Frank Castle had only one thing on his mind: survival. Maria’s, and Will’s, and whomever else he and his father could rescue.

Neither man had spoken a word since Betty Castle had fallen. His father had simply blinked, then turned away from the window to the weapons case he’d locked only seconds earlier. He’d handed Frank a shotgun and a box of shells, taken the same for himself, and then joined his son at the window.

Only seconds had passed since the first shots had been fired, but the massacre was in full swing. Frank saw Donal McCarey get shot in the back as he tried to start the motorcycle he’d rented in Boqueron, saw Donal’s daughter, Rachel, and his wife, Kathleen, executed as they cowered underneath the party tables, saw Tommy Castiglione’s little brother, Dom, cut down as he ran toward the beach.

It was too much. He gritted his teeth and raised his weapon.

His father tapped him on the shoulder and shook his head. Frank Sr. pointed. Two men were moving up the path toward them. When the first cracked the door, and then took a tentative step inside, Frank blew him away.

His father, at the window, fired at the second man. Frank heard that assailant scramble backward, the scuff of his boots against stone, and leaned out the bungalow door.

Weapons fire raked the side of the frame. He stepped back.

“By the grill,” his father said, taking up position alongside him. “The propane tank.”

Frank nodded, fixing the target in his mind. A second burst of weapons fire came. The instant it stopped, he was moving, the barrel of the shotgun coming up, his finger tightening on the trigger as he stepped forward again and saw the man was just where Frank Sr. had said he would be, the sole of one boot peeking out from behind the propane tank.

He fired.

The tank went up in a ball of flame, taking the screaming, burning gunman along with it.

Castle bent to reload.

“Good start,” Frank Sr. said, stepping past him.

Her paralysis had lasted only an instant.

Maria had moved then, tackling her son, taking him down to the sand, putting a finger to her lips even as they fell, making sure he understood that they had to be absolutely quiet, absolutely still. Habit, from the things Frank had taught her, though in this instance there was little danger they could make a sound loud enough to attract the attackers’ attention, loud enough even to be heard over the constant chatter of gunfire.

Her eyes scanned the beach, looking for shelter. There. A rowboat turned over in the sand.

She pointed the boat out to Will. He shook his head.

“You can do it,” she whispered. “Come on.”

They ran, staying low. It was only fifty feet from where they’d dropped to the boat, but it felt like a mile, the longest mile she’d ever run.

They reached the overturned craft and scrambled behind it. There was a thick crack in the bottom: Maria peeked out and saw the massacre continuing.

“Mom. What’s happening? Why—”

“Shhh,” she said. She couldn’t afford to stop and think now, the absolute insanity of the moment would catch up to her and she might lose it. She didn’t want Will thinking about it either.

What they had to do was get out of here.

Someone screamed. She looked up and saw little Dom Castiglione, five years old, with the same stupid bowl haircut Tommy insisted on giving all his kids, running from the bungalows toward the beach, running directly toward the boat.

A gunman appeared behind him and raised his weapon.

And then all at once, little Dom wasn’t running anymore, he was flying through the air, and the top half of his head was missing.

He landed in the sand, flopping down inches away from the hull. Will’s eyes went wide, and he made a gagging noise in his throat.

“Shhh,” Maria said. “Oh, honey, God please be quiet.”

She covered his mouth with one hand and turned his head away from the bloody mess. Two more men stepped forward from the jungle.

She knew instantly from their posture, the way they carried themselves, that these two were in charge, the brains of the operation, if mindless slaughter like this could be said to have any brains at all.

One of them—a younger man, his hair slicked back in an almost comically typical Guido hairstyle—raised a hand to his brow and scanned the area. Then he shook his head.

“Find his wife and son!” he shouted.

At which point Maria’s heart leapt into her throat, and she thought: Frank. Oh God, Frank, wherever you are, please help me.

Castle ran, a step behind his father, through the awful, blood-soaked landscape.

He forced his eyes not to linger on any one corpse, except to identify it, to make sure that neither his wife nor son lay among the dead. He’d seen them last heading for the beach— maybe, he thought, they’d managed to escape already. Maybe the attackers had gone right by them, and Maria and Will had snuck past. Maybe . . .

“Frank.”

His father’s voice brought him back to the here and now.

“Careful,” Frank Sr. said.

He nodded, suddenly aware that the gunfire had stopped and that they were out in the open, dangerously vulnerable. Stupid. They weren’t going to be able to rescue anyone if they were dead. Stupid of them to charge right out, he should have—

He sensed movement behind him then, and spun around just as a man stepped out from behind the cinder-block firepit Mrs. Gutierrez’s husband had built last night, for the dinner that already seemed to belong to another lifetime, and the man already had his weapon out and aimed not at him but Frank Sr., and—

Gunfire exploded.

The elder Castle screamed and went down.

“No!” Frank yelled, and started to squeeze the trigger of his own weapon. Then he heard a sound from his left, and he swung his shotgun around just in time to smash the barrel full force into the skull of another man who was charging at him, knife drawn, but even as that man fell, he heard footsteps from behind.

Something thin and unbearably sharp cut into his throat, and, all at once, he couldn’t breathe.

Wire. Steel wire, slicing into his neck, cutting off his oxygen.

He gasped and slammed his right elbow back into his attacker’s gut and caught bone, not the soft solar plexus he’d been going for. He drew his elbow forward again, and felt the man behind him shift position slightly, anticipating the blow. Castle shifted his own weight then, intending to throw the man over his shoulder, but as he turned, his foot slipped in something, blood he supposed, and his knee buckled; the man pulled the wire even tighter around his neck, digging his elbows into Frank’s back for leverage.

Damn it. Castle choked, and saw stars.

What to do.

“You’re dead, motherfucker,” the man whispered in his ear, and then exhaled sharply.

All at once the pressure on his neck let up.

His attacker slumped over, a dead weight on Frank’s back. Castle pried the man’s fingers loose from the wire, and he slid to the ground.

There was a knife in the man’s back.

Frank Sr., one arm hanging limply at his side, the other pressed to his chest, where blood—ungodly quantities of dark red blood—stained his shirt, looked into his son’s eyes, and smiled.

“Okay,” his father managed. “Okay, Frankie. Go get the rest of ’em.”

And he toppled to the ground then, eyes suddenly vacant.

“Dad!” Frank Castle screamed. “Dad!”