PART THREE: THE LAST STAND

Chapter Seven: The Rapture

I pulled the car up on a slow rise above the harbour. Down below, like a glowing white showboat from heaven, was West's private yacht, glittering on the black waves. The Rapture, laden with New York's rich, powerful and righteous. Waiting for dawn and the end of the world as we know it.

I'd spent the last hour in a twenty-four hour diner, downing cold cups of oily coffee, getting myself sharp. Getting focussed.

The fuzzy television that hung over the greasy counter, a grey screen only half-watched by the other two customers – truckers, looked like, and an aged waitress – broadcast NYNN News, telling me all the stuff I already knew. Simon Grant and a few others had been slain in a shooting in their own building, seemingly motiveless. Shots had been fired at a downtown hospital. Fire had gutted Senator West's stately suburban home – a few casualties. Cases of miasma had gone up over the course of the night. Pushed right to the back was the old news of the deaths of Jim Bravura and the rest of the precinct. And at the end, a short piece on the celebrity-laden party taking place in the bay. Something I didn't know.

I'd crushed out my cigarette, downed the rest of my coffee and headed for the car, a thousand thoughts rushing through my head.

This was it. The more I thought about it, the more I figured my whole life had been leading up to this moment. That all the rest, the nightmare that had taken over my life since I found Michelle dead, was just training, just a precursor, a build. This wasn't some mafia chief or shady corporate honcho I was about to kill.

This was the man who would be President.

In the Beretta that sat on the dashboard was the bullet that would change history forever. I'd be infamous. Right up there with Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirrah Sirrah, John Wilkes Booth. It'd destroy the path of history, send ripples through America and the world. And it would be the end for me. There could be no more running now.

I had no regrets. One time to put paid to all.

And now I stood, the harbour below me, West sat in his lair, surrounded by a small squadron of goons. Waiting for me.

I yanked back the safety on my gun and began to walk down the hill.

West's private pier sat behind a small roadblock. Two security guards were stood around it, smoking, chewing the fat. Just chaff, I thought grimly. Dispatch them and get moving.

"Hey," one said as I approached. "Sorry, dude, this place is off-limits." As I approached him, he attempted to block me off. "Listen, buddy, you on goofballs or something? I said…"

I shot him twice in the chest, two blasts of hot fire rupturing his guts and sending him slumping to the ground. His colleague barely had a chance to register what had happened before I terminated his existence with a bullet to the head.

Just chaff, I thought bitterly. Just chaff.

I hopped over the road barrier and walked along the pier, probably friendly and inviting in the daytime, with its quaint old steamers and hordes of Japanese tourists. But on a night like this it looked dark and intimidating, and the river slurped against the harbour wall like a slumbering beast. Inviting me in with its armies of the dead and forgotten.

I shook away those thoughts. All I had to fear was directly in front of me, on the deck of the Rapture. The boat sat at the end of the pier, a few goons waiting around outside. Probably heavily armed.

This is it, Payne. Better get sharp.

There was a flash of a red light, the green glow of night vision from the other end of the pier. Cries out.

Suddenly a fireball was rushing towards me like ball lightning.

I leapt to the side as the oil drums I'd been waiting behind exploded, hurtling rusty steel high into the air and flaming nets out over the river. Fire roared high above my head, heat so hot it singed my hair. And there were footsteps, moving towards me. The sound of guns being loaded, safety catches released. Heavy duty stuff.

They were barely visible when the first volley of bullets rushed past my head, leaving puffs of dirt in the gravel. A shot caught me in the shoulder, knocking me backwards, spraying blood high up into the air. I winced. Ignore it.

Reached for my Beretta.

As I rolled out the way, another bullet punched a hole through a stray end of jacket, leaving a smoking hole and, miraculously, nothing but a flesh wound. I winced and began to return fire.

A goon nearby fell to the ground, clutching his knee. The others opened fire again, bullets whacking through the ground and the flames. Someone shouting "There!"

Blood oozed out of my shoulder wound and down my chest. I winced and choked back a few of the painkillers I'd managed to acquire from the hospital. Then began to return fire.

Another goon took a shot to the chest and fell back, then carried on moving, a little slower. Body armour, I thought hopelessly. Kevlar.

I rolled out from behind the flaming wreckage and began to shoot at the advancing goons. Down the other end of the bay a number of ship-hands were casting away the Rapture and it was slowly drifting away. Making a getaway.

I was running out of time.

I opened fire, slamming hard on the trigger, aiming for heads. The nearest exploded in red mist and the goon slumped to the side. Another took a bullet in the throat, fell to the ground and died. A third ducked out of the way, took a bullet to the gut and stumbled helplessly over the edge, into the churning black waters of the Hudson.

I stood up, continuing to fire, taking down all in my path. A goon fell to the ground as a volley of bullets punctured his armour, flailing like an eel before lying still. Another screamed as his ear was blown away and fell on his knees, clutching at his bleeding stump. I pumped another bullet into his gut and he fell dead.

Finally, the goon with the rocket launcher stood near the drifting boat. He slammed the hefty steel cannon hard against his shoulder. Night-vision, flashing green, flickered across the black churning waters. I leapt forward, opening fire.

He slammed hard on the trigger.

A wall of heat rushed past my head, singeing my hair and leaving my jacket smoking. I hit the floor, shooting hard. Behind me the sky lit up and flames roared high into the sky, hurtling debris and nets out into the water with flames trailing behind.

The goon took a volley of shots to the chest and slumped down dead, the rocket launcher unspectacularly hitting the ground with him.

Behind him the boat was drifting from the pier edge. I broke into a run, reached the edge of the pier wall, leapt out into darkness with the lights just inches away… and then I was falling, tumbling into the waters below.

To be continued…