Liberation Day - A Thorn Byrd Novel Read online

A plume of white mushroomed around Tommy O’Malley’s head as he stood in place, bouncing on the balls of his feet in the cold night air. Part of it was cigarette smoke from the filtered Marlboro he clutched between his fingers, the remainder his warm breath meeting the cold Boston night.

  “Christ Almighty,” he muttered, pulling his pea coat collar higher around his neck. On his hands he wore knit gloves with the fingers cut out. A thick ski cap covered his head.

  Combined, they did little to shield his body from the icy air enveloping him.

  “I thought you bastards said it was supposed to be eighty degrees in two days!” he yelled at the radio perched inside the guardhouse. In a huff, he snapped his cigarette out into the darkness and returned inside, closing the door behind him. He pulled his gloves off and blew warm air through his fingers, his head bobbing along as U2 came on over the ancient receiver.

  Tommy had started working nights at the Dorchester docks just over two years before to help get through college. One semester at UMass was enough to tell him he wasn’t going to be a Congressman, so he traded in the books and went to the docks full time. His class schedule had dictated he work the night shift and over time, he grew to like it. After the classes fell by the wayside, he didn’t see a reason to change.

  Most nights he sat in the guard booth and listened to the radio, talked on the phone, occasionally flipped through a girlie magazine. Every once in a great while he’d bring in a flask of something or nod off for a bit, though those nights were rare and hadn’t occurred in quite some time.

  The men he worked for were fair to him and he tried to do the same by them.

  The digital clock on the wall said it was a quarter past two when a shiny black sedan turned in off the street and made its way toward the guard post. The crunch of the tires biting into asphalt and the low purr of the engine cut through the still night air, alerting O’Malley long before it arrived. Out of habit, he flipped the radio off on the desk and waited as the low beams moved toward him.

  O’Malley checked the appointment schedule on his clipboard and found it clear, just as it had been several hours before when he arrived. The implied rule on the docks was that anybody wanting to access their cargo after hours needed a reservation, though the maxim was never explicitly stated. Many of the people that used the docks weren’t the type to be bothered with strictures and if firm enforcement was implemented, they’d take their business elsewhere.

  O’Malley had been through it enough times to know that if someone showed up at two o’clock in the morning wanting access, he gave it to them and reported it up the line. If a suggestion for compliance needed to be made, it would be from someone a lot higher in the pecking order than him.

  “Here we go again,” O’Malley muttered as he pulled his hands through the fingerless gloves and went out into the night. The temperature had dropped another few degrees and it grabbed at his throat, sucking the air from his lungs.

  Stepping away from the guardhouse, O’Malley made a circular motion with his arm for the driver to roll down his window. The car pulled even with him as the glass slid down accordingly.

  “Evening,” O’Malley said, his thick Irish accent the only sound on an otherwise deserted dock. He remained a few feet back from the car so he could stand erect and still see inside.

  The driver wore a black fedora tilted to the side, his face hidden from view. He made no attempt to uncover his face, or even glance in O’Malley’s direction.

  “Evening.”

  O’Malley noticed the hat and the black driving gloves, his nerves on edge. He also noticed the lilt of the voice, something far removed from what he usually encountered on the south end of Boston. “What brings you by tonight?”

  “You do,” the driver replied, rotating his head and allowing O’Malley to look him full in the face. With his right hand he raised a Heckler & Koch P7, a noise suppressor screwed onto the end, elongating the barrel by several inches.

  “What the hell?” O’Malley asked, raising his hands and taking a step backwards, his face twisted up in surprise.

  He made it only three steps before the first round slammed into him, followed by another, and another. Together they formed a small triangle on his chest, the force of them driving him back into the guardhouse before his legs gave out, his body toppling to the ground.

  The driver’s side window was already up, the sedan moving forward, by the time O’Malley came to a stop face down on the pavement. It pulled ahead to a pair of large metal containers halfway down the dock and stopped long enough to allow five men to slide from the car.

  Dressed in the same suit, gloves, and long jacket as the driver, they moved in complete silence as they removed the locks from the targeted containers and disappeared inside. Less than a minute later the sound of car ignitions could be heard rumbling from within, reverberating off the metal walls.

  One by one a 1967 Ferrari, two Lamborghini Testarosas, and two classic Corvettes, all painted bright red, filed out, rolling past the sedan and disappearing into the night. When the last one was gone the sedan shifted back into gear, moving slow as it passed the guardhouse and returned the way it had came.

  Behind it O’Malley’s body remained face down on the pavement, nobody making any attempt to cover up what had just taken place.

  Chapter Two

  Washington, D.C.