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Chapter 99
Shit.
I stared helplessly at Lorenzo. He lay on his back, choking on his own blood as a dark stain spread out beneath him on the gravel.This is property © of NôvelDrama.Org.
Lorenzo had fought alongside me, Lars, and Adriano back in Florence.
He was a good man –
And now he was dying.
One of the other guys, Rocco, moved to help Lorenzo –
“NO!” Lars yelled as he flung his arm out and stopped him. “That’s just what the sniper wants. You go out there and you’re dead.”
Rocco watched in anguish as Lorenzo lay twitching on the ground. “But – h-he had on a bulletproof vest – ”
“The sniper’s using rounds that can get through our armor,” Lars warned us.
Our foot soldiers looked at each other in horror as they realized that nothing they had on would protect them.
Adriano’s voice spoke through my earpiece. “What happened?”
“Zollner shot Lorenzo,” I said dully.
“Mother FUCKER,” Adriano swore.
“Everybody, listen up,” Lars said as he gripped his rifle. “I’m splitting off from the group like we planned. Follow Massimo – and always keep something between you and that bell tower. If you can see IT, then the sniper can see you.”
The men all glanced at Lorenzo in fear.
“Good luck,” I said to Lars.
“You, too,” he replied, then went right. He kept close to the wall and disappeared around the corner three seconds later.
“Everybody – behind me,” I said as I lifted my shield and stepped out from behind the wall.
Our entrance into the cemetery was a tree-lined walkway.
Unlike a traditional graveyard with tombstones in the ground, this section had white marble walls lining a straight path. The marble walls were basically crypts where coffins were kept, with individual compartments stacked five high on top of each other. The area was reserved for the wealthier citizens of Venice who could afford something a bit fancier for their final repose.
We didn’t run – we didn’t want to run headlong into a group of mercenaries waiting for us – but we walked as fast as we could. We also took cover behind trees and whenever horizontal pathways broke up the main boulevard.
One odd thing about the marble walls was that each crypt had a picture of the deceased along with their name. The tiny circular photographs were covered with plastic to make them weatherproof.
The grim irony did not escape me:
Hundreds of the dead watched as four dead men walked past.
Don’t think like that, I chided myself.
It’s going to be fine – it’s going to be –
CRACK!
To my left, Emilio – another man who had fought alongside me in Florence – fell to the ground as blood sprayed across the white marble walls and the smiling photographs of the dead.