Nevada Run

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Don Giorgio!” Ozzi blurted out.

Don Giorgio entered the chamber, Sacks right behind him. The Don carried his Weaver Arms Nighthawk in his left hand. Sacks was armed with a pump shotgun.

Giorgio gazed at Ozzi’s face. “What the hell happened to you? You look like you lost a collision with a cement truck.”

Ozzi wagged his Bushmaster at the Warrior on the floor. “Hickok,” he said simply.

Giorgio frowned as he looked at the Warrior. “Is he dead?”

“No,” Ozzi said. “Just unconscious.”

“Then we’ll finish the son of a bitch off before we leave,” the Don stated.

He shifted his attention to Mindy. “I want her alive.”

“I want to waste her!” Ozzi protested.

“We need her alive,” Don Giorgio reiterated. “She’s our ticket out of here. Don Pucci’s men are in the casino. They’ll be here before too long.

We’re leaving while the leaving is good.”

“Where will we go, boss?” Sacks inquired.

“I have hideouts Pucci doesn’t know about,” Don Giorgio replied. “He hasn’t won yet! I’ll reorganize and throw everything I have at him.”

“Where can Kenney be?” Sacks asked.

“We’ll worry about him later,” Giorgio said. “Right now, I need to grab my papers from my safe. You two stay put.” He walked to a door on the left side of the chamber and went into the next room.

Ozzi glanced at Sacks. “I want the honor of snuffing the Warrior.”

Sacks shrugged. “Suit yourself. He means nothing to me.”

Mindy gazed from one hit man to the other. “You two are despicable!”

“Listen to who’s talking!” Ozzi retorted.

“I hope I’m around when Blade catches up with you,” Mindy taunted Ozzi. “I want to see the look on your face.”

“Shut up!” Ozzi barked.

Mindy’s loathing and resentment supplanted her caution. “Big, tough man, huh?”

“I said shut up!” Ozzi growled.

“We have babies at the Home who are more manly than you’ll ever be!” she mocked him.

Ozzi took a step toward her, scowling in fury. “Keep it up, bitch!”

“Ozz!” Sacks said. “The Don needs her alive.”

“But he didn’t say I couldn’t rearrange her face a bit,” Ozzi hissed. He jabbed the Bushmaster stock at her face.

Mindy instinctively raised her hands to screen her head.

Which was the reaction Ozzi wanted. He smirked as he rammed the stock into her stomach instead.

Gasping, Mindy doubled over.

Ozzi laughed. “Want some more, scuzz?”

Mindy looked up through tears of anguish. She saw Ozzi cackling, and near the doorway Sacks was staring in disapproval at the younger button man. Sacks started to open his mouth, to say something, but the words never came out.

There was a swishing noise from behind Sacks, and a scintillating, streaking, metallic object swept into the rear of his head.

Sacks arched his back and uttered a choking, inarticulate, panting sound. His eyes bulged, his arms dropping loosely to his sides, the shotgun falling to the floor.

“Sacks?” Ozzi said in surprise.

Sacks took a single step, then keeled over, his head bending downward as he fell, revealing the rear of his cranium; his head was split open from neck to crown.

Mindy straightened in amazement as her gaze alighted on the person responsible for Sacks’s demise. “Mom!” she cried.

Helen stood in a martial-arts stance, jodan-no-kamae, her bloody machete held in the same manner as the traditional katana. Her amber hair was disheveled, her black leather vest and pants spattered with gore.

Blood caked her right cheek and chin, and her right shoulder was awash in crimson.

“She’s your mom?” Ozzi blurted out, and tried to swing the Bushmaster around.

Helen was faster. She closed on the hit man and swung the machete, her blade deflecting the Bushmaster barrel to the right. With the deadly proficiency born of years of practice, she employed a reverse strike, slashing the machete across Ozzi’s chest, the keen edge cleaving several inches into his flesh.

Ozzi screamed and frantically tried to back away.

Helen wouldn’t let him. She took a measured stride and swung the machete with all her strength, catching the hit man in the throat and nearly decapitating him.

Ozzi was dead on his feet. His head flopped to the left as blood gushed from his ravaged neck, and he sank to the I floor in lifeless silence.

Helen glared at the mobster for a second, then moved to Mindy.

“You’re hurt!” Mindy exclaimed in alarm.

“It’s nothing,” Helen said. “A scratch.”

For a moment mother and daughter gazed into each other’s eyes in mutual love and devotion, and then they embraced in a hug.

“Oh, Mom,” Mindy said, sniffling.

“It’s over,” Helen stated. “You’re safe. No one will hurt you now.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” commented a sarcastic, gruff voice.

Helen spun in the direction of the voice, putting herself between Mindy and the man in black six feet away. She raised the katana.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” the man remarked, pointing his Nighthawk at Helen.

“Don Giorgio!” Mindy declared in stark terror.

“How nice of you to remember me,” Giorgio mentioned bitterly. He held the Nighthawk in both hands. On the floor to his right was a brown leather briefcase.

“You’re the one who kidnapped Mindy!” Helen stated.

“Give the woman a prize,” Don Giorgio taunted her. He looked at Sacks and Ozzi. “You Warriors are more trouble than you’re worth.”

Helen took a step toward him. “You deserve to die!”

Giorgio’s grip on the Nighthawk tightened. “Don’t be stupid, woman! You’ll be cut to ribbons before you can get within two feet of me.”

“You’re going to kill us anyway,” Helen noted.

Don Giorgio grinned. “True. So which one of you wants it first? Mother or daughter?”

Helen was girding herself for a desperate lunge.

“No answer?” Giorgio scoffed. “Well, then, I’ll kill both of you together.

What can be more appropriate?”

“How about if you go first, cow chip?” interjected someone in a distinctly familiar Western accent.

Mindy glanced to her right.

Hickok was lying on his stomach on the floor, the Henry snug against his shoulder, sighting down the barrel. He was smiling, his left temple coated with blood.

Don Giorgio froze, the Nighthawk still trained on Helen. He knew Hickok would drill him if he so much as blinked.

“Go ahead,” Hickok said. “Make my year!”

Giorgio released the Nighthawk and the gun fell to the carpet. “I’m not an idiot.”

“You could have fooled me!” Hickok retorted.

Smiling smugly, Giorgio held his arms up, palms outward. “I know all about you Warriors. You’re real spiritual types. You live by some asinine code of honor.” He chuckled. “You would never shoot an unarmed man.”

“Do you know something?” Hickok asked, raising his chin from the Henry.

“What’s that?” Giorgio responded arrogantly.

Hickok’s features became an iron mask. “You’re wrong.”

In a startling flash of insight, Don Johnny Giorgio recognized he was staring death in the face. He took a step backward, fear flooding through him. “No!”

“Yes,” Hickok said, and fired.

The heavy slug from the 44-40 lifted Giorgio from his feet and hurled him over a yard to crash onto his back. He pushed himself into a sitting posture and gawked at a gaping hole in the center of his chest. Whining in despair, he stared at the gunfighter.

“Say hello to oblivion for me,” Hickok said softly, and squeezed the trigger.

Mindy heard the deafening retort of the Henry even as the top of Don Giorgio’s head exploded over the carpet and he was knocked flat. This time Giorgio didn’t move.

Hickok slowly stood and walked over to the Don.

“Is he dead?” Mindy queried hopefully.

“They don’t come any deader.”