Digger

Book by Flynn Joseph

Chapter One

The church was dark until John Fortunato struck the match.  The point of light revealed rows of votive candles in red glass sleeves.  John touched the  match to a wick.  

"God keep you, Jamie Doolan," he murmured.

He blew out the match and watched its wisp of blue smoke curl upward.

The vast blackness of the church seemed to swallow the flicker of light from  the candle.  But as a cloud passed away from the moon, the stained-glass figure of a resurrected Christ was illuminated high above him.

John had intended to light the candle and go.  Now, cradling the camera he'd  brought with him, he took a seat in a pew and regarded the image of the risen  Savior.  He never tired of looking at it.  The mosaic of leaded glass was  what he held on to: his image of God.

Of redemption.

His grandfather, Michelangelo Fortunato, had created the window.  Had built  the Church of the Resurrection.  Then the immigrant artisan had gone on to  construct a fair part of the town of Elk River around the limestone church.

John had likewise left his mark--not upon the town, where all could see, but  somewhere none would ever know.  
John stepped out of the church.

Another cloud bank rolled in, drawing a curtain across the moon.  The loss of  its light didn't bother him.  Darkness was an old friend.  But he felt a sudden chill, a sense of menace, in this night that made his heart beat  faster.  To his surprise, long-dormant combat instincts came bristling back,  and he wished he had his M-16 in his hands again instead of the Nikon around  his neck.

John knew his hometown as well as he knew the lines in his face and the scars  on his soul, and every instinct he had told him that something was very wrong  that Sunday night.

He began to walk east from the church.  He stayed on the park side of  Riverfront Drive.  The expanse of Riverfront Park on his right was dark and  peaceful: a chorus of cicadas provided the respiratory buzz of a landscape at  rest.

But to his left, toward town, something was definitely wrong.  A predator was  waiting out there .  .  .  waiting to spring.  As he drew even with Lincoln  Avenue, the town's main commercial street, John stepped behind the statue of  the Great Emancipator that dominated the park.

From behind its pedestal, he let his eyes follow Lincoln's bronze gaze out  over the sleeping town.  He didn't see a soul on the street, but still his  uneasiness grew.

In any normal time, he would have felt foolish, peeking out from shelter as  if he expected to be attacked.  Elk River, Illinois, was Heartland America,  the kind of picture-postcard small town where you could walk the streets at  night and not be afraid.

Or it had been until just last week.

Now, the town was entering the second week of a strike against its major employer, Pentronics Systems.  Over 3,500 workers, 95 percent of the  company's workforce and a fifth of Elk River's population, were off the job  and on the picket line.  Negotiations had broken off the first day of the  walkout and showed no signs of resuming.  If anything, the dispute promised  to become uglier.  The possibility of violence was on everyone's mind, had  people on edge, watching their backs.

Staying in the shadows, John continued on to the next street, Washington,  then turned north, quickly crossing Riverfront Drive.  His destination was  the storefront office of the Brotherhood of Manufacturing Workers, Local 274,  at the corner of Washington and First, and the closer John came to the union  office, the stronger his feeling of foreboding became.

The Pentronics walkout was being led by Tommy Boyle, the president of Local  274 and John's closest relative.  John was on his way to talk with Tommy about creating a photographic record of the strike.  Even though it was late,  he knew Tommy would still be on the job.

He was edging up to the corner of Washington and First when he heard a voice  curse.

"Fuck." A male voice.  Angry.  Maybe anxious, too.

John stopped dead in his tracks.

He heard a door being rattled forcefully, and another curse.  Then soft  footsteps moved off to the west along First Street.  John stole a look around  the corner.

A large man dressed in dark clothes was moving toward Lincoln Avenue. The  man walked swiftly and silently, turning his head from side to side as if  looking to see if he was being followed.  John was sure that the man had been  trying to get into the darkened office of Local 274, but he didn't know why.   Or which side he was on.

John ducked back around the corner just before the man turned to look behind  him.
Tommy would want to know what he'd seen, John knew.  So he turned and made  his way back toward Riverfront Drive.  Since Tommy wasn't at the deserted  union office, John thought he'd have to be with his picketers on the line  outside Pentronics Systems.

The plant was a half mile west of the Church of the Resurrection.  He'd have  to retrace his steps.  But just as he'd turned onto Riverfront, John heard  the sudden mechanical roar of an engine.  He knew it was a car, but the image  that immediately came to mind was of a Cobra attack helicopter coming in for  a strafing run.

Ahead of him, the man he'd seen walking away from Local 274 came running out  of Lincoln Avenue, turned the corner onto Riverfront, and headed straight for  John.  Just behind the man, like some dark, snarling monster torn from a nightmare, a lights-out black sedan raced out of the soft April night.

John did the only thing he could.  He flicked on his flash unit and its  battery pack, and heard the capactitator whine as it powered up the unit.  He  pulled off his lens cap, and raised his motor-driven Nikon to his eye.

The car overtook the runner with predatory ease, veering up onto the sidewalk  to block his path.  The runner desperately reversed his direction, dashing  back the way he'd come.  The car slammed to a stop with an assist from the  brick wall of Riverman Savings.  Before it stopped rocking, the back doors  flew open and two hulks pounded after the runner.

No one had yet noticed John.  If he went now, he could slip away unseen.   Except he'd never be able to explain flaking out to Doolan.

He tripped the shutter.  To his ear, the Nikon on full automatic screamed as  it drove the 1000 ASA film through the camera.  A fusillade of searing white  light erupted from his flash unit.  He caught one of the hulks cutting the  chase short with a silenced handgun.  The weapon's noiseless flash left the  runner writhing on the ground.

John snapped frame after frame, wondering if he'd capture the moment when a  man was murdered.  A movement at the edge of his lens drew his attention back  to the black sedan.

The front window on the passenger side was sliding down, and the first  thing--the only thing--John saw was the barrel of the gun pointed at him.  He  aimed the Nikon at the car, keeping the camera stationary while he ducked  down and to the left.  His flash unit popped off another series of electronic  firecrackers.

The idea was to draw the gunfire to the light and blind the shooter at the  same time.

Some idea.  The SOB shot the strobe unit off his camera.  The Nikon spun from  John's grip, but the strap looped around his arm and he pinned it at his elbow.

The next two shots missed.  Badly.  The shooter had caught the glare  from the strobe.  John sprinted across the street toward Riverfront Park.   Behind him, he heard heavy footsteps followed seconds later by car doors slamming, the snarl of an engine, and screeching tires.

Now, he'd become the runner.

But he was into the trees--and the sheltering darkness--before the car could  catch him.  He heard footsteps crashing through the bushes behind him, and  shots were fired blindly, some of them coming chillingly close.

He needed a hole in the ground, and he had one.  He raced down a path to a  shadowy stand of trees and shrubs where he bent down.  Even in the dark his  fingers quickly found the release that secured the camouflaged lid to the  tunnel entrance.  He lifted it, slithered into the hole he'd dug years  before, and lowered the lid from below.

He was safe--as long as his tunnels stayed secret.
Chapter Two

The sniper lit up Davey Morowski.

One minute poor little Mo was walking point, and the next you could see  daylight through him.  Seemed he never should've been able to stand up to so  many rounds for so long.  That fu...