Atlantic City,
New Jersey

 

“No time to switch seats,” Mercer shouted. “Punch it, Harry.”

Harry mashed the clutch and forced the car into first gear, laying on the horn, which sounded a majestic, almost apologetic tone. The Rolls didn’t exactly shoot from its mark, but in seconds they were outpacing Poli and his men. Mercer watched as the gunmen reached the head of the queue of waiting cars. Poli snatched a young woman out of the seat of her Geo Metro, the next car in line to pull away from the hotel. The gunman with a limp lowered himself into the passenger seat, waving his pistol at the second tattooed young woman who had been about to settle in for their drive home. Poli mouthed an order to his third man and gunned the little car. The three-cylinder engine screamed and the front wheels squealed as Poli took off after the Silver Wraith.

“He’s following us,” Mercer said and smashed out the rear window with the butt of the automatic. He checked the magazine, and was startled to find only two rounds.

Harry glanced into the rearview mirror. His eyes widened slightly when he realized the tiny blue car was what Poli had stolen. “He’s driving that thing? Braver than I thought.”

“Just for the record I’ve got two shots left, so if I don’t get lucky you’re going to have to outdrive him.”

“No problem,” Harry said breezily as he turned onto Atlantic Avenue. “You forget Tiny and I come up here whenever you’re out of town.”

“And take my car,” Mercer added.

While Mercer hadn’t been impressed by Atlantic City’s boardwalk, with its T-shirt shops, psychic readers, and saltwater taffy stands, it was infinitely better than the rest of the city. Just a block from the glitzy multimillion-dollar hotel-casinos the neighborhoods were some of the poorest in the nation. Abandoned houses were covered in graffiti, yards were choked with weeds, and teens loitered in hunting packs like wild animals. Smashed bottles littered the gutters and few of the streetlights still worked. The pall of apathy and despair was overwhelming.

“Cali, honey,” Harry said as they flashed through an intersection. “I need you to focus on the road about a hundred yards ahead. My night vision isn’t what it used to be.”

She nodded grimly and tightened her seat belt.

They had enough of a head start that Harry could keep one turn ahead, but the Rolls was so slow on acceleration that he couldn’t shake the little Metro. He broke out onto a long street and revved the engine, winding out the old six-cylinder until it shrieked and managed to gain a few precious yards.

Mercer watched the Metro wheel around the corner, side-swiping an abandoned sedan. The range was too much for him to waste one of his precious bullets, but Poli’s man had no such shortage. He steadied his pistol out the passenger window and cycled through the magazine. Most of the rounds went wild thanks to the potholed macadam, but two hit the Rolls. One blew off Cali’s side mirror and the other slammed into the trunk, burying itself in a pair of matching Louis Vuitton suitcases that the valet hadn’t had the time to remove.

There was a convenience store on the next corner. Many of the lights in the metal canopy above the gas pumps were out but the place was still open. Neon signs hung in the store’s windows and a tricked-out Honda Del Sol was pulled up to the curb.

Though Mercer had never smoked, he had developed the habit of always carrying a couple of disposable lighters in his pocket. It was the old Boy Scout training, and having them with him had saved his life more than once.

“Harry, get ready to cut through that gas station.”

Mercer pulled the stopper from the decanter of liquor, and stuffed one of the linen napkins that the highball glasses were sitting on into the mouth.

“Hey, I smell booze,” Harry said. “Save me some.”

“Sorry, old boy.” Mercer upended the bottle, soaking the napkin in what smelled like a very good single-malt Scotch. “When we drive through the gas station, I want you to take out one of the pumps.”

“Are you crazy?” Cali shouted.

“Like a fox,” Harry said with delight. He had supreme confidence in Mercer, so he was actually enjoying himself.

Harry slowed slightly to lure the Metro, and then jerked the wheel to the right. The big car bottomed out as it shot over the crosswalk, kicking up a shower of sparks. Cali screamed as he nearly ran over a homeless man sitting on the curb drinking from a large bottle of malt liquor. Like a juggernaut the Rolls raced across the lot, Harry aiming unerringly at the second pump in line. Mercer lit his improvised Molotov cocktail. The alcohol-soaked linen caught fire instantly.

In a maneuver that taxed both his strength and dexterity Harry tweaked the wheel to miss one of the steel columns holding up the canopy, drove the car up onto the island curb, and sent the front fender crashing through one of the old pumps.

The deceleration was brutal. Cali snapped forward, her head missing the dash by inches. The pump was sheared off at its base, tumbling end over end while the gasoline still in the lines splashed to the ground in a dark stain. Mercer pulled himself from the floor where he’d sprawled, the Molotov cocktail held high as if he were an outfielder clutching a ball he’d dived for.

The Metro was twenty yards back and coming on hard. He could see Poli’s one eye shining with hatred. His partner had reloaded and was just reaching out to open fire again. Harry regained control of the car and brought it off the curb, aiming for the next cross street. Mercer shoved himself half out the side window, took aim, and heaved the fiery bottle back toward the pump. It hit just in front of the hole in the concrete island where gas was fed to the pump from a huge underground tank. The cut crystal shattered and for a sickening moment he thought the Scotch hadn’t caught fire. But it had, burning with a clear flame that quickly reached the flash point of the pulsing waves of gasoline fumes spewing from the tank.

Like a rocket motor, the gas ignited, sending a coiling jet of fire fifteen feet into the air. It licked, then blackened, the underside of the canopy. Poli had closed the gap to twenty feet from the back bumper of the Rolls when the gasoline detonated. It exploded almost directly next to the Geo, forcing him to crank the wheel hard over. His car smashed into the rear of the lime green Del Sol, kicking the sports car across the pavement and tearing off its rear fairing. The Honda’s alarm shrieked over the combustive roar of the flames.

Harry accelerated away from the conflagration, shifting smoothly through the gears. Built in an age long before airbags and automatic seat belts, the Rolls’ thick metal skin had protected the engine’s vital areas, and other than a wrinkled fender the luxury car was none the worse.

“That ought to buy us some time,” Mercer said with satisfaction.

“I see a sign for the Atlantic City Expressway,” Cali said.

“Where?” Harry asked, peering through the windshield.

“Straight ahead.”

“What, that green blur above the road?”

Cali smiled. “Yeah. It’s actually the right-hand green blur.”

In moments the big car made its grand entrance onto the expressway, the main artery out of Atlantic City and back to the mainland. The Garden State Parkway was only a couple of miles ahead. Traffic on the inbound lanes was heavy but fortunately there were very few people leaving the city. Harry edged the Rolls up to seventy.

Mercer continued to glance behind them in case Poli somehow managed to get the Geo running again. He was about to dismiss a fast-approaching vehicle until he noted the distinctive paint job. The Honda Del Sol had to be doing a hundred and twenty as it barreled down the expressway, cutting through traffic with the effortless grace of a slalom racer.

“Will this guy ever quit?”

“What is it?” Cali asked. She looked over her shoulder and saw the fast-approaching sports car. “Jesus.”

“What do you want me to do?” Harry asked. They were outgunned and were no match for either the Honda’s speed or its agility.

Before Mercer could come up with another plan, Poli’s teammate began firing again. Unlike before, the smooth asphalt gave him a steady shooting platform, and rounds found their mark.

“Cali, do you speak French?” Harry growled.

“Huh?” She wasn’t sure if she’d heard right, or if Mercer’s friend had lost his mind.

Harry kept one eye on the rearview mirror as he drove. His jaw was set firm and there was the barest trace of a smile on his lips. He kept watching the Del Sol edge up to within ten feet of the back bumper. “I want to know if you speak French because I’m gonna ask you to pardon me using it.” He paused for another second, judging angles and speed, then shouted, “Fuck you, buddy!”

Standing on the brake pedal didn’t have the dramatic results Harry had expected. As if ignoring the driver’s wishes, the heavy car merely rocked forward on its suspension in what could be described as a stately deceleration. The maneuver forced Poli to apply the Del Sol’s brakes, tricked out discs that could have stopped the nimble sports car on a dime. Sensing an opening, he raced alongside the Rolls to give his partner a clear shot into the Silver Wraith.

This is what Harry had been waiting for. He spun the wheel in an attempt to crush the light Honda between the Rolls and the guardrail. He could see Poli almost smile at the vain attempt, as he applied more brake to tuck in behind the Rolls-Royce once again. But Harry had another trick up his sleeve. He reached for the hand brake and gunned the engine to build up enough RPMs to slam the transmission down into third gear. The big car shuddered at the insult to its machinery, but it complied. This time the deceleration was almost instantaneous, as the big in-line six-cylinder engine quickly lost power. Poli was also quick, but not quick enough. The Rolls pinned his Honda against the guardrail and held it there effortlessly. A shower of sparks, torn metal, and fiberglass spewed from the Del Sol as it was remorselessly smeared against the metal barricade. Its right front tire blew and its steel belt ripped through the fender like a grenade going off, and still Harry kept up the pressure, all the while laughing demonically.

“Harry,” Cali screamed. “Gun!”

Poli’s partner had recovered enough to try to fire into the Rolls while Poli fought to keep the disintegrating car from climbing the railing.

Harry shoved the hand brake back into its recessed slot and swerved away from the Del Sol. He slid the transmission back into fourth and watched in his rearview mirror as the little Honda slid to a stop in a cloud of smoke. There was a lick of flame from the blown tire, and steam erupting from the crushed radiator. Harry caught Mercer’s eye in the mirror and repeated what Mercer had said moments earlier. “Now, that ought to buy us some time.”

Mercer squeezed Harry’s bony shoulder. “You drive my Jag like this and I will kill you.”

Harry chuckled. “I have a confession to make.”

The tone made Mercer nervous. Even Cali picked up on it. “Yeah, and what’s that?” Mercer asked with trepidation.

“Tiny and I have been pulling your leg about me driving when we come up here. I haven’t been behind the wheel of a car in years.” He craned his head around to look at Mercer. “But, hey, it’s like falling off a bike. Do it once and you never forget.”

“Eyes on the road please.”

“I don’t think we should use the Garden State,” Cali said. “Even though the police are going to be busy at the Deco Palace, there’s sure to be a description out of a stolen Rolls-Royce.”

“Good thinking,” Mercer said.

“So where are we heading?”

“Get onto 9 North. We’re going to have a chat with a guy named Erasmus Fess about a safe his father claimed fell from the Hindenburg not long before it exploded.”

It took forty-five minutes to reach Waretown and locate the home of Erasmus Fess. The sweep of the Rolls’s only working headlight revealed that the property had once been a farm. There was a one-story farmhouse with a shed roof overhanging a sagging porch. At some point the original support columns had been removed, and now the whole affair was supported by unpainted two-by-fours. The sofa on the porch was the bench seat of an old car mounted on a metal stand. The forlorn house was covered with a fur of peeling and cracked paint. Flickering blue light spilled from the front window. The Fesses were home watching television.

Behind and to the right of the house was a metal-roofed barn that looked even more neglected than the yard. There were half a dozen cars parked randomly around the house. Most were rusted heaps sitting on flattened tires, with smashed windshields and rumpled fenders. A flatbed tow truck stood watch over the vehicles, “Fess Towing and Salvage” written on its door above a phone number. Behind the barn was a corrugated metal fence that stretched out into the darkness. The gates were open, and inside was a sea of abandoned cars lined up in meandering rows. A large forklift sat just inside, its steel tines thrust through the side of a Volkswagen like the lance of a knight through the armor of an enemy.

“Jesus,” Harry breathed as he shut off the engine. “If we see a kid playing the banjo or someone comments on how pretty my mouth is, we’re outta here.”

“Amen, brother, amen.” Mercer stepped from the car and tucked the automatic pistol behind his back. A cat raced off the porch and vanished under one of the dilapidated cars.

With Harry and Cali behind him, Mercer mounted the sloping porch. A screen door hung awkwardly from its broken hinges. The torn screen was loose and showed signs of being clawed by the cat. Mercer shouldered it farther aside and rapped on the main door. When there was no response he hit it again, a little louder.

“Get the goddamned door,” a male voice shouted from inside, almost loud enough to rattle the windows.

“I’m busy,” a woman shouted back. From the sound of it, both were seated in the front room no more than a few feet from each other. Harry hummed the theme from Deliverance.

“Jesus, woman! I’m watching Wheel. Go see who it is.”

“Fine.”

A moment later the front porch light, actually a naked bulb hanging from its wiring, snapped on. In seconds it had attracted every insect within a five-acre area. The woman who opened the door had a cigarette dangling from her slack mouth, and a bovine expression. She wore a housecoat that showed off her thick, blue-veined calves. Her feet were shod in slippers and Mercer could see that her toenails were cracked and yellow, more like horn or the rough body of a beetle. Her eyes were watery behind the cigarette smoke, an indeterminate color, and small. She was as thick as she was wide and probably tipped the scales in the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound range. The shadow of a mustache on her upper lip was inky black.

Behind her was a short hallway and the kitchen. The old metal sink was piled with dishes, and the fly strips above it were blackened with their victims.

“Mrs. Erasmus Fess?” Mercer said, hiding his revulsion. He put her age anywhere between fifty and a hundred.

“That’s what it says on the marriage license.” Her high-pitched voice and brusque manner made her sound like she was screeching rather than talking. “What do you want?”

“I would like to speak with your husband.”

“Who is it, Lizzie?” Erasmus Fess shouted from the living room just off the entrance.

She turned to face her husband. “How the hell should I know? He wants to talk to you.”

“Tell ’em we’re closed. Come back in the morning if he wants a car or a tow.” He then cajoled the contestants on his television. “Come on. Big money. Big money!”

“You heard him. Come back tomorrow.”

She began to swing the door closed but Mercer shot out his foot to stop her. She continued to press on the door for a moment, not understanding why it had stuck.

“Mrs. Fess, this isn’t about a car or a tow job. My name is Philip Mercer and this is Cali Stowe and Harry White. I’m here because of the safe your husband once offered to Carl Dion.”

At that, a furtive look flashed behind her close-set eyes. “You’re here about the Hindleburg safe?”

Mercer didn’t bother correcting her pronunciation. “That’s right. We came up from Washington, D.C. Does your husband still have it?”

“Have it? Hell, he don’t get rid of nothing. He’s still got the bite marks from his first case of crabs.” She turned to yell at her husband again. “Ras, they’re here about the Hindleburg safe.”

“Ain’t for sale,” Erasmus Fess shouted back.

“Yes it is,” Lizzie said hotly. “I told you back when to just give that damned thing to the feller from Colorado.” She turned to address Mercer and the others again. “Ever since Ras’s father found it we’ve had nothing but bad luck. After he dragged it home ain’t been no kids born in the family. I got seven brothers and sisters and Ras had eight. Don’t make sense we never had children.”

“Could be the crabs,” Harry muttered.

Cali silenced him with a look. “How about cancer?” she asked Lizzie Fess. “Does your family have a history of cancer?”

“Sure do. Ras’s daddy and younger brother both died of the cancer. And me and one of his sisters had our titties cut off ’cause of it.”

Given the amount of fat she carried and the shapeless coat she wore, it was understandable that no one had noticed she’d undergone a double mastectomy.

“Had they lived in the house after the safe was found?” Cali asked.

“Sure did. That’s why I said the safe brought bad luck. Ras’s oldest brother didn’t get along with his father none and moved away before they found the safe, and he’s fit as a fiddle and has twelve kids and a whole mess of grandkids.”

Cali whispered to Mercer, “Sounds like we’re on the right trail. Elevated cancer rates, sterility. Remind you of anywhere?”

Mercer’s mind had already cast back to the isolated village along the Scilla River in Central Africa. Chester Bowie must have brought a sample of the uranium ore with him on his return to the United States, but just before the Hindenburg met its fateful end he had tossed it from the airship in a safe. What astounded Mercer even more than the sample’s bizarre odyssey was how it had remained radioactive enough to cause cancer at the farm and sterilize at least one if not both of the Fesses.

The Wheel of Fortune theme music reached its crescendo and then the television was shut off. A moment later Erasmus Fess approached the door. Unlike his wife, he was rail-thin and raw-boned. He wore a pair of oil-stained coveralls with his name stitched over his chest. His hair was sparse and gray and he had dandruff the size of Corn Flakes. He wore thick glasses that magnified his bloodshot eyes and he sported five days’ worth of silver stubble. He belched a cloud of beer breath and held out a ropey arm to Mercer.

“Erasmus Fess.”

“Philip Mercer.” They shook hands.

“Why are you interested in the safe?” Fess asked.

“What difference does it make?” Lizzie hollered at her husband. “He wants to buy it.”

Mercer hadn’t come out and said that he wanted to buy the safe, but he nodded anyway.

A speculative, almost feral look came over Erasmus Fess. “Twenty thousand. Cash.”

Fess wanted five thousand more than he’d offered Carl Dion, but that wasn’t an issue for Mercer. He would have bought the safe, and its contents, for anything Fess asked for. The problem was he just didn’t have that kind of money on him. He could write a check for that amount easily, but he knew Fess would never accept it, and there was no way the scrap man would want the paper trail from a credit card transaction. Mercer hated that they’d have to wait until morning for a bank to open, but he saw no alternative. Then he remembered Harry’s winnings. He shot his friend a look. “Easy come, easy go, old boy.”

“Huh?”

“Empty your pockets.”

“What?” Harry finally got what Mercer wanted and his face turned red. “Forget it. I won that money fair and square.”

“Relax,” Mercer said soothingly. “I’ll pay you back when we get home.” He would then turn around and present a bill to Deputy National Security Advisor Lasko.

Lizzie and Erasmus Fess’s eyes bulged when Harry withdrew two thick bundles of hundred-dollar bills from his windbreaker. He handed the stacks to Mercer. “I should ask for a receipt.”

Mercer presented them to Fess but didn’t hand them over. “I want to see the safe first. And I want you to throw in a working car. We sort of borrowed that Rolls outside.”

Fess peered out into his driveway at the elegant car. He cast a practiced eye over the luxury car, paying particular attention to the ruined fender and dented doors. “I’ll give you a car so long as you forget where you parked that one.”

Mercer had hoped to return the Silver Wraith to its rightful owner and thought he could call the police as soon as they were safely back in Washington, but he knew the Rolls would be a bundle of parts by the time they hit the Maryland border. Tomorrow would just have to be a bad day for some insurance company.

“Deal.”

“You should give him the papers too,” Lizzie said to her husband.

“Papers?” Cali asked. “What papers?”

“Ras’s father had the safe opened back in the fifties. Don’t know what else was in it, but there were a bunch of papers. A note or something. He made a copy of it and locked the originals back inside. Ras, where did they get to?”

“God, you talk too much, woman,” Fess groused. He ran his fingers through his hair and unleashed a blizzard of dandruff. “They’re in the office file. Bottom drawer. Behind the paperwork for them airplane engines I bought five years ago.”

Mercer wasn’t surprised that Fess knew where the papers were. He suspected that the salvage yard owner could put his hand on any piece of scrap in his sprawling yard.

“Let’s go,” Fess growled. Harry said he’d wait on the porch, and he’d talked Lizzie into giving him a drink by the time her husband grabbed a flashlight from the tow truck’s cab.

“You ain’t no collector like that writer fella from Colorado,” Fess said as he unlocked the chain link gate guarding his scrap yard. “What do you want with the safe?”

“There’s a chance it belonged to my grandfather,” Cali said before Mercer could come up with a lie. “He was returning from Europe on the Hindenburg. He always carried a safe with him. He was a jeweler.”

At that Fess stopped short and shone the light in her eyes. “Ain’t no jewels in the safe, I can guaran-damn-tee you.”

“Do you recall what was in it?” Mercer asked.

“I was fightin’ in Korea when my pappy had it opened. He said there wasn’t nothing in there but the notes and a shot put.”

“A what?” Cali and Mercer said in unison.

“A shot put. Like athletes use. Said it was nothing but a round ball o’ metal.”

He led them deep into the salvage yard, past ranks of demolished automobiles and trucks. Mercer spotted a burned-out fire engine, several boats, and the boom of a large crane. There were countless tarry patches of oil dotting the sandy ground, and a tire pile that had to be twenty feet tall. Night animals scattered at their approach, and shiny eyes watched them from the darkness.

Near the back of the yard was a metal shed. Fess used another key from his jangling ring to open the door. He stepped inside and pulled the chain to a single bulb dangling from the ceiling. Why the junk on the shelves that lined the shed needed protection from the elements was something Mercer couldn’t understand. Most everything looked like valueless hunks of rusted metal.

“I keep the good stuff in here,” Fess said.

Mercer wasn’t going to ask what exactly qualified this to be “good stuff.”

Fess shoved a transmission from out of a corner and bundled up a filthy piece of canvas to reveal the little safe. It was about a foot and a half square and made of dark metal, with rust on the prominent hinges. On the single door were an offset dial and a small handle.

“Be right back,” Fess said and scuttled from the shed.

“The shot put has to be an ore sample,” Cali said as soon as Fess was out of earshot.

“No other way to explain it,” Mercer agreed. “Remember the old woman said Chester Bowie sent crates of dirt away by river, but he must have kept some ore with him. He refined it and must have put it in the safe to block the radiation.”

“But enough has leaked to affect Erasmus and Lizzie.” Cali thought for a moment. “I’m going to have to report this site to my bosses at the Department of Energy. We need to get a NEST team down here right away. We need containment.” She looked around the shelves. “God knows how hot all this junk is.”

“Might have a turf battle with the EPA,” Mercer quipped, “considering all the oil that’s leached into the ground.”

A moment later Fess returned to the shed with a gardener’s cart. The tires were flat, but it would be easier using the rusted handcart than to try and carry the safe. Mercer manhandled the safe into the cart, pausing as he heard the distant beat of a helicopter. His senses were hyperacute from the adrenaline overdose, and he became suspicious.

“Any flight paths around here?” he asked Fess.

“That chopper’s nothing. Hear ’em all the time. It’s big shots from New York going down to Atlantic City.”

The explanation seemed reasonable but Mercer remained on edge. The quicker they were on their way to Washington, the happier he’d be. He settled the safe toward the back of the cart and swung around to take the handles. It took considerable effort to get the flattened tires rolling, but once he had a little momentum it became easier. Fess didn’t seem to be in any great hurry, so Mercer ignored him and made his own way out of the salvage yard, relying on the map he’d unconsciously drawn of the facility.

“Sure you know where you’re going?” Cali asked as she paced him with her long legs.

“God, you talk too much, woman,” Mercer said with a dead-on impression of Fess’s redneck accent. Cali pantomimed smoking a cigarette and blowing the smoke in his face.

They reached the gates and Mercer set down the cart’s handles. He didn’t know which vehicle Fess would give him, so he waited for the irritable scrap man. “Why don’t you go check on Harry?” he asked Cali. “I’ll load the safe once our pal Erasmus ambles along.”

She stepped onto the sagging porch and knocked on the door. A second later she was inside. Fess finally emerged from the salvage yard. He locked the gates and motioned Mercer over to a late-model Ford sedan. The tires looked bald and the right front fender was dented but otherwise the car would be fine. Fess opened the rear door and grabbed the keys from under the back bench seat.

“Thieves always look in the sun visor or under the driver’s seat. Never in the back.” He used the key to pop the trunk and stood far enough back to let Mercer know he wasn’t going to help him lift the safe into the car. Mercer braced his legs and lifted what had to be a hundred pounds of dead weight. He balanced the safe on the rear bumper then rolled it inside. He clearly heard a heavy metal ball rattle inside the safe as it crashed into the trunk.

“There,” Fess said, holding out his calloused hands. “You got your safe and car. I want my money.”

Mercer handed him the two bundles of hundred-dollar bills. “Twenty grand.”

But Fess didn’t hand over the keys. He turned and started back for his house, mumbling, “I gotta count it.”

Without realizing it Mercer balled his hands into fists as he felt his blood pressure spike. It was a struggle to keep the anger from his voice. “Mr. Fess, we’re in a bit of a hurry.”

The old man whirled. “Listen, sonny buck. I don’t know who you are or what you’re really after but I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you. So you’re just gonna have to cool your heels until Lizzie and I count the money.”

If Mercer wasn’t sure he’d give the codger a heart attack, he would have pulled the pistol still tucked behind his coat. “Fine,” he said and seethed. He was about to follow Fess into his house when he became aware of the helicopter again. It sounded much closer. Too close.

Someone flying from New York to Atlantic City would surely stick to the coast or run along the barrier islands. They wouldn’t be five miles inland. Then Mercer willed himself to relax. He’d left Poli stranded on the AC Expressway, and the rest of his team was still back at the Deco Palace. There was no way they could have tracked the three of them to Fess’s house or known about the call to Carl Dion that led them here.

Mercer looked into the darkened sky but could see nothing but a few stars. The sound of the helicopter continued to rise. It was coming fast. Despite what logic was telling him, a sense of urgency swept through him. He started sprinting after Fess when the dark chopper cleared a copse of pine trees fifty yards from the farmhouse. Mercer caught a glimpse of the open side door an instant before autofire rained down from above. The gunman first concentrated on the Rolls-Royce. The right side tires were shredded and a steady stream of rounds shot through the grille until radiator fluid poured from the car like its lifeblood.

Mercer reached Fess just as he was about to mount the steps onto his porch. He tackled the old man and together they tumbled through the front door an instant before the porch caught the second volley from the chopper. The money had come loose from its paper strapping and littered the floor.

“Sweet Jesus Christ,” Fess roared over the deafening fusillade.

Mercer ignored him and peered around a grimy window, not recalling that he’d drawn his weapon, but it was in his hand nevertheless. How? he thought. How in hell did Poli find them? It was impossible. Poli hadn’t had time to put a tap on the phone back in Mercer’s room at the Deco Palace and Mercer was certain no one had followed them from Atlantic City.

The chopper came lower, its blades mere feet from the trees. Four figures jumped from the open door and the pilot pulled up. A fifth person remained in the helo with an assault rifle in his hands.

Mercer pulled his cell phone from his jacket and flicked it to Cali. “Dial 911,” he ordered. “Tell them the men who shot up the Deco Palace are here.” He then grabbed Fess by the collar of his overalls. Lizzie was holding her hands over her ears and screaming in the living room. “Do you have any weapons?”

Mercer had to give Fess credit. He quickly gathered his wits, his eyes losing their manic glint. “Goddamn right I do. I’m an American, ain’t I?”

“And there I was thinking you were barely sentient,” Harry remarked and took a swig of whatever liquor he’d coaxed out of Lizzie.

The entire house rattled as the chopper hovered overhead. The precarious pile of dishes mounded in the kitchen sink crashed to the floor, and pictures danced and blurred on the walls. Erasmus Fess went to the back of the house and returned a moment later with a semiautomatic rifle, two shotguns, and an enormous revolver tucked between the buttons of his overalls. He handed Mercer one of the pump-action shotguns. Cali took the other.

“They’re both loaded.” He placed the box of shells he’d tucked under his arm on the coffee table and checked the extended magazine of his Ruger Mini-14, a civilian version of the weapon the army had used during the early years of the Vietnam War. “Lizzie,” he shouted. “Cut your wailing and get the ammo from the dining room.”

Mercer was back at the window. He recognized Poli leading his team as they slowly advanced on the house. They moved like seasoned professionals, never exposing themselves for more than a few seconds as they crossed the yard. When Poli reached cover behind the big flatbed tow truck, he motioned for his men to take flanking positions. He spoke into a walkie-talkie and the chopper banked away.

“Can you hear me?” the mercenary then shouted.

Mercer said nothing, watching as two of Poli’s men took positions to the left and right of the house. He could take out one of them, but the other had gone far enough around the building that Mercer could no longer see him.

“I know you can hear me, Mercer,” Poli yelled. “Tell me why you came out here and I might let you live.”

“He’s here for a safe that fell off the Hindenburg. It’s in the trunk of that Ford Taurus out there,” Fess shouted back before Mercer could stop him. “You just take it and leave us be.”

“Shut your mouth,” Mercer hissed at the junk man. Fess remained defiant.

One of Poli’s men broke cover and ran to the brown sedan. He peered into the open trunk without slowing, then found cover behind another wrecked car. “It’s in there,” he yelled across to his team leader.

A shadow flitted across the window where Mercer stood. One of Poli’s men was on the porch. The front door wouldn’t last a second under the onslaught of their automatic weapons. Mercer craned his head to see the gunman, but he must have flattened himself against the wall. Mercer looked out toward the flatbed, knowing Poli would give the signal at any second.

Mercer wasn’t going to wait. He had only one chance to catch the man on the porch by surprise. He aimed carefully and fired. The twelve-gauge bucked in his hand and he had another round chambered before he knew if he’d hit the target. The fully choked barrel prevented the steel shot from spreading more than a couple of inches at close range, so the full load ripped through the two-by-four propping up one end of the porch roof. The piece of lumber disintegrated and its partner on the other end of the porch quivered, then snapped with a sound heard over the nearby chopper. As if hinged, the entire porch roof pivoted downward. The gunman wasn’t quick enough. He’d tried to lunge off the deck but the roof smashed into him, tossing him back against the house until the section of plywood and shingles crushed his body against the stout wall.

Poli and his men opened fire, spraying the front and sides of the house with a continuous barrage. Windows vaporized and Lizzie’s cheap curtains were torn to shreds. Mercer tried to return fire, the shotgun roaring over the staccato cracks of the assault rifles, but the fire was pouring in too heavily. The high-powered bullets bored through the farmhouse’s aluminum siding, through the rotted insulation and the lath and plaster, with barely a check in their speed. Plaster dust and bullets filled the air in the living room. Everyone dropped flat as the air seemed to come alive.

Many of the lights were blown out, plunging the living room into near darkness. The couch took a long fusillade, stuffing and fabric spilling like cotton waste. A bullet found an electrical outlet in the kitchen and started a fire that quickly grew.

The sound was hellish, unworldly, a continuous din that pounded at eardrums and threatened sanity. And there was no letup. As soon as one of the gunmen drained his magazine he inserted a fresh one, seemingly without pause. Chunks of plaster were falling off the walls and the fire in the kitchen grew so Mercer could feel its heat through his clothes. A round found the television and it blew with a searing pop.

Smoke was growing thick. Pressed flat to the floor by her husband, Lizzie Fess began to cough.

Mercer caught Cali’s eye. Her face was ashen with fear, her beautiful lips parted as she tried to draw precious oxygen from the reeking air. He peered over his shoulder toward the kitchen. The entire room was engulfed in flame. He didn’t know if the Fesses cooked with natural gas, but if they did it was only a matter of time before the heat or a bullet ruptured the gas line and blew the house off its foundation.

And just as quickly as the barrage had started, the firing ceased. Mercer’s ears rang so loudly and the fire roared so powerfully that he only knew Poli had stopped firing because there were no new holes appearing in the walls. As his senses returned, he heard Poli’s chopper once again. The heavy beat of the rotors told him that the Jet Ranger was taking off.

Poli had used the cover fire so he could grab the safe and radio the helicopter for a quick evacuation. What Mercer couldn’t understand was why Poli and his men were leaving before making sure everyone in the house was dead. It was the first mistake he could see that Poli had made.

Fearing a trap, that Poli had left behind a sniper, but pushed by the urgency to get out of the burning building, Mercer crawled across the broken glass and debris littering the floor and approached one of the ruined windows. He tossed Erasmus Fess’s singed copy of TV Guide outside, and when there was no gunfire he chanced a momentary peek. He saw nothing out of the ordinary and gave the yard a longer look, peering as deeply into the shadows as he could.

Light caught his eye and he understood why Poli had retreated. He glimpsed the flashing red and blue lights of a string of police cars through the pine trees. They were racing for the salvage yard, and the lead vehicle was only seconds away.

Unable to use the front door because of the ruined porch roof, and with the back engulfed in flame, Mercer led everyone out the window, making sure that Erasmus and Lizzie went first. Harry demurred to going next, so Cali could throw a long leg over the sash and duck outside. She helped Harry onto the ground and Mercer slithered through after him. He herded them to the far side of Fess’s tow truck, and there he and Cali fell into fits of coughing as they gulped at the fresh air.

For some reason Harry and the Fesses weren’t as affected. Harry took out his pack of cigarettes, lit three, and handed one to Erasmus and one to Lizzie.

Through a wreath of tobacco smoke, Harry said, “Years of building up my immunity finally paid off.”

The New Jersey State Police cruiser slid to a stop, kicking gravel across the yard. The officer threw open the door and emerged with his pistol drawn, making sure he was protected by the bulk of his car. “Hands up where I can see them, assholes!” he shouted, hopped up on adrenaline and the thought of a promotion in his near future. “Anyone move and you’re dead.”

The five of them did as ordered, while more cars careened into the driveway.

Before the next officer could cover them, the back of the house collapsed in a shower of sparks and the flames danced ever higher. Lizzie turned to her husband and said matter-of-factly, “Ras, we’re movin’ to Florida.”