Hitman Damnation

THIRTY-SEVEN



Helen jerked her hand out of 47’s grasp and leaped to her feet. “Get away from me!”

The hitman clasped her by the waist to keep her from running. “Stay with me! It’s not safe to—”

He pointed the Silverballer over her shoulder and fired at three New Model Army men headed in their direction. Two militants dropped, but one was still alive; although wounded, he crouched and took aim at 47 with an assault rifle that would have mowed down Helen and the assassin. 47 shoved Helen away, spun, and blasted a hole through the man’s head. By then the immediate space around 47 was crowded with people running and dodging bullets. He turned to take Helen’s hand again, but she had fled into the multitude.

“Helen!”

She slipped through a clump of Church members who were rushing toward him with terrified, panicked expressions on their faces. NMA soldiers behind them fired, and several victims fell to the grass. Enraged, 47 drew his second Silverballer and fought two-handed. He was forced to dart about to avoid being hit, but he managed to wound or kill six men in the space of three seconds. Then he looked back but couldn’t see Helen anywhere.

Sirens blasted throughout the mall. The D.C. police had bolted into action, but it was unclear to them what the hell was going on. If the National Guard was shooting at civilians, then their targets must have done something terribly wrong. They began to chase down the Church members too, without realizing the phony Guardsmen were the enemy. Meanwhile, the real National Guard was busy all over the mall, attempting to control the mad dash of humanity trying to escape the mêlée. Confusion and pandemonium reigned, producing a fog of misinterpretation of every single action. The result was that many more rally attendees besides the Greenhill volunteers were being attacked, wounded, or killed.

The tear gas came next. Grenades sailed through the sky in arcs, landing amid clusters of civilians.

The disaster was completely out of control.

Agent 47 frantically searched for Helen while simultaneously defending himself and aggressively attacking the enemy. It was ultimately terribly difficult to pinpoint which Guardsmen were NMA men. Washington city police now mixed with them, firing blindly at uncertain targets. One D.C. policeman spotted 47 wielding two weapons, took aim, and fired, clipping the outside of 47’s right thigh. The assassin fell and rolled to his stomach, placed his elbows on the ground, and instinctively blasted the patrolman with both barrels. He hadn’t wanted to waste bullets, but the situation had become so perverse that it was impossible to keep anything straight. The blanket of cloudy gas made visibility even worse.

While on the ground, the assassin took a few seconds to examine his leg. The wound was superficial but would most likely need a few stitches. 47 got to his feet, winced at the pain, and rejoined the mayhem. Then, out of the corner of his eye, a moving blue blur flashed through the smoke.

Helen’s blouse. Twenty-five feet away.

“Helen!”

She turned to him. He held out his hand, but she hesitated.

“It’s all right, Helen!”

Terrified, she knew of nothing else to do. Helen ran to him.

But gunshots echoed through the murky air and bullets littered the ground between the couple. Helen’s body jerked and she faltered. Her eyes grew wide in shock.

“No!”

She fell forward and collapsed on the grass.

Agent 47 fired both Silverballers at the two New Model Army men who were responsible for the barrage. Bulletproof vests protected their torsos but not their faces—47 hit the targets dead-on.

Helen rolled and lay on her back. 47 crouched beside her, laid his guns on the ground, and took her hands. Her blouse was covered in crimson wetness, and her eyes were glazed over, focused on the sky. Her breathing was labored. The hitman saw that she had been shot through the lungs, and he knew she wouldn’t survive.

“Helen,” he whispered.

She choked as blood gushed from her mouth. 47 rolled her to the side, but the maneuver was useless. She had maybe a minute of agony left before she was gone. The hitman chose to spare her that torment. He picked up one Silverballer and held the barrel to her chest, exactly in position over her heart.

“Helen, I’m sorry.”

For once, Agent 47 squeezed the trigger as an act of compassion.

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed at her side. It might have been a few seconds, or it could have been ten minutes. The turmoil raged around him, but he shut it out for those precious moments. Then he reached out with a bloody hand and closed her eyelids.

The hitman retrieved the other weapon and stood.

Now he was really angry.

It didn’t matter if they were authentic National Guardsmen or the New Model Army in disguise. 47 started blasting at anyone wearing the uniform. He carried extra magazines in his jacket pocket, and within the next five minutes the hitman went through six of them. Ejecting a used magazine and inserting a new one took all of 1.6 seconds, a feat he’d learned when he was only twelve years old.

47 knew the best strategy was to keep moving; thus, in the heat of battle, he found himself moving backward, heading north toward the school buses. It was there that he encountered Cromwell. The man saw him and aimed an M16, the standard issue for the U.S. Marines, directly at 47. The assassin leaped sideways as the militant spray-fired, hitting several innocent people who were cowering near the buses. He completely missed the hitman. 47 rolled onto his back and pointed his weapons backward over his head for a rapid-fire assault at Cromwell, but the man had already jumped into the open door of one of the buses and shut it. The vehicle pulled out of its space just as 47 got to his feet. Cromwell drove the bus like a maniac, turned south, and mowed over anyone in his way.

There was only one thing to do. Agent 47 bolted into one of the other buses. Gratified to find the keys in the ignition, he used the manual handle to close the door, revved the engine, and took off after the first bus.

Both vehicles had been riddled with bullets, but the tires were sound. Cromwell had a good lead, but 47 quickly switched gears and slammed the gas pedal to the floor. Both drivers were forced to swerve and dodge masses of pedestrians, but Cromwell took less care—his bus invariably hit horrific-sounding bumps as it zoomed across the mall.

At last 47 caught up to Cromwell. He held steady on his prey’s left side as both buses sped neck and neck. The militant turned to grimace at his pursuer through his window, intent on making it to the stage first. 47 grabbed the manual handle and opened his door. Then, with his left hand on the steering wheel and a Silverballer in his right, the assassin carefully aimed the gun and squeezed the trigger. The bullet went through the open door and shattered the driver’s window of the other bus. Cromwell’s head exploded as the slug penetrated the man’s skull and exited the other side.

The militant’s bus swerved wildly out of control and veered to the mall’s western edge. Police unloaded a firestorm of ammunition at it, not realizing the driver was already dead. The bus made a final careen, tipped over thirty degrees, and plowed into a food vendor’s stand. The vehicle crashed onto its side and slid another twenty feet before it came to a screeching, sickening halt.

Agent 47 ignored all that and focused on getting Wilkins. He headed full speed toward the stage. Crowds parted like the Red Sea in front of him as he blasted the bus’s horn.


Charlie Wilkins stood frozen on the stage, watching with revulsion what he had wrought.

Oh Lord, I didn’t mean for it to be like this!

The plan had been for Cromwell and his men to shoot a few of the Church members, disappear into the crowd to mingle with the real National Guard, and eventually get away to safety. But Cromwell got carried away. The man who was once an American hero—he had attempted to save lives in Iraq—had become a monster willing to massacre his own countrymen. He had ordered the New Model Army to slaughter everyone in sight. Just as Darren Shipley had lost any semblance of humanity, Wilkins, too, had fallen into depravity.

And it had become … this.

“Charlie! Get down!”

Wilkins thought he heard a voice calling him, but he wasn’t sure. He kept staring at the carnage that spread across the mall in front of him. And then there were the two school buses. One crashed; who was driving it? The other one—it was speeding straight at him, on a collision course with the stage.

“Reverend!”

Wilkins looked down. Mitch Carson was on the ground, his hands out.

“Jump, damn it! Jump! We can take the limo!”

For the first time in his life, the Church leader couldn’t speak. He was immobile. Wilkins reached into his soul to find the Will, but it wasn’t there. Everything he had learned, all he had taught, was nothing but a void.

The Will had failed him.

Finally, Carson grabbed Wilkins’s ankles and jerked. The reverend fell on his back, which jolted him to his senses. Carson continued to pull the man’s legs until he had the reverend on the stage apron.

“Come on, Charlie!”

Wilkins, dazed and in shock, nodded and whispered, “Show me where to go.”

Carson helped him to the ground and led him by the arm around the side of the stage. They ran to the limousine, the doors of which were already open. Wilkins ducked into the back while Carson got in the driver’s seat. The doors slammed shut, and they were off. Carson turned the car around and drove south toward the edge of the mall and Independence Avenue.

* * *

Agent 47 lost sight of the reverend, but he also knew the man’s limousine was behind the stage. There was no time to steer around the flimsy structure. The bus was sturdy enough. He hoped.

Fifty feet until impact.

The hitman glanced in the right side mirror. Police vehicles were hot on his tail, lights flashing.

Thirty feet.

He glanced in the left side mirror.

The Faceless One stared back. Death.

47 averted his eyes and stared straight ahead.

Ten feet.

Two feet.

The bus tore into the stage, ripping right through it as if it were made of paper. The sides collapsed and the WILKINS–BAINES! banner floated down and crumpled limply on top of the wreckage. The police cars were forced to swerve to the right and left to avoid hitting the ruins.

And the chase continued, with the limousine in front and 47’s bus trailing closely behind.