Chapter 163: Dreadful Encounter

The moment forty heavily armed Dusters stepped out of Jack’s waterfront warehouse, the column split into two equal forces. Red took twenty men up toward Christopher Street, while Sullivan took his twenty along Barrow Street, both intending to carve a wide arc through the western edge of Greenwich Village.

​The plan was simple, loud, and brutal. They weren’t using their guns yet—powder smoke and rifle reports would bring the precinct coppers too fast before the real target showed up. Instead, they relied on iron crowbars, ash-wood clubs, and boot heels. They meant to tear the district apart until the masked vigilantes were forced to step into the light to stop them.

​On Barrow Street, Sullivan marched down the center of the road, his double-barreled shotgun tucked casually under his arm while his men swung iron bars into every shop window they passed. The sharp, shattering crash of plate glass echoed off the brick tenements like pistol shots. A butcher’s display was smashed to splinters; a dry-goods cart was flipped into the gutter, its sacks of flour bursting open across the dark cobblestones.

​"Bring ’em out!" Sullivan barked, a mean grin splitting his wide face as he kicked through the splintered frame of a small bakery door. "Let’s see if your masked protectors can clean up this mess!"

​Inside the bakery, a middle-aged baker and his wife cowered behind the flour-dusted counter, clutching each other in terror. Beside them stood their twenty-two-year-old daughter, her eyes wide with panic.

​Sullivan stepped over the broken glass, grabbed the young woman by the arm, and yanked her violently out onto the sidewalk. She let out a sharp, terrified shriek, stumbling over her skirt onto the cold pavement.

​"Please! God in heaven, leave her be!" her father screamed, scrambling out the door on his hands and knees, his wife sobbing hysterically behind him. "Take whatever money is in the register! Just don’t touch our girl!"

​Sullivan ignored the old man entirely. He dragged the struggling girl up by her collar, hauling her back against his chest as a human shield while he watched his goons batter down the door of the cobbler shop across the street. The girl twisted and fought against his grip, but Sullivan squeezed her tighter, his rough, dirty hand sliding callously over her chest and waist as he laughed down into her ear.

​"Keep squealing, sweetie," Sullivan sneered, his breath hot against her neck as he tightened his grip. "Maybe if you yell loud enough, those white-masked angels of yours will drop out of the sky and try to save ya."

​Two blocks north, on Christopher Street, Red’s detachment was causing similar havoc. A pawnshop window yielded to three quick blows from an iron pipe, and two young Dusters tumbled inside, grabbing watches and brass mantle clocks from the display.

​"Don’t linger in the shops!" Red roared, pacing the middle of the street with his lever-action rifle held high. "Keep moving! Kick down every door between here and Hudson! Make enough noise to wake the dead!"

​A goon named Theo laughed, hurling a heavy cobblestone through the upper window of a tailor shop. "Hey, Red! I don’t think these masked bastards are coming! They’re probably hidin’ under their bedsheets—"

​CRACK-BOOM!

​A flat, distant thunderclap rattled the windowpanes across Christopher Street.

​Before Theo could finish his sentence, his head snapped violently backward. A heavy, high-velocity rifle bullet tore straight through his forehead, dropping him flat onto his back in the center of the road.

​A split-second later, a second heavy gunshot echoed from a rooftop across the avenue—at least three hundred yards distant—and the goon standing right beside Red collapsed with a wet thud, clutching his shattered chest as blood burst over the cobblestones.

​"ROOFTOPS!" Red shrieked, diving sideways behind the heavy iron wheels of a parked coal wagon. "THREE HUNDRED YARDS UP! THEY’RE ON THE ROOFS!"

​Down on Barrow Street, Sullivan barely had time to hear the distant reports before the night air shattered around his own position.

​CRACK-BOOM!

​A sharp, searing blow struck Sullivan’s left shoulder like a swing from a sledgehammer. The kinetic force spun him half-around, ripping his hand off the young woman. He gasped in sudden, blinding shock, dropping his shotgun onto the pavement as blood immediately soaked through his wool coat.

​The young woman didn’t hesitate. She scrambled across the bloody stones, diving into the open doorway where her father yanked her inside and slammed the heavy oak door shut.

​"I’M HIT! CHRIST, I’M HIT!" Sullivan roared, stumbling back against a brick wall. He clutched his bleeding shoulder with his right hand, his face pale with sudden sweat, but he realized the bullet had missed his neck by inches. He was still standing. "FIND ’EM! RETURN FIRE!"

​Looking up, Sullivan caught the lingering ghost of a muzzle flash high on the three-story roof of a tenement corner across Barrow Street.

​"THERE!" Sullivan screamed, pointing a shaking finger. "ON THE CORNER ROOF! SHOOT ’EM!"

​His men scrambled into the middle of the street, raising their newly acquired revolvers and lever-action rifles, firing wildly toward the dark rooflines. Muzzle flashes flickered orange across the dark street.

​It was a fatal mistake.

​Standing directly beneath the warm, yellow glow of a gas lamp post, three Duster collectors hammered away with their revolvers. High above in the shadows, two white-masked marksmen racked their bolt-action rifles with cold, mechanical speed.

​CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

​In three consecutive seconds, all three collectors under the lamp post were struck down, their bodies collapsing into a heap at the base of the iron pole.

​"GET AWAY FROM THE LIGHTS!" Sullivan shrieked, backing into the pitch-black mouth of a narrow side alleyway. "OUT OF THE LIGHTS, YOU FOOLS! INTO THE DARK!"

​The remaining fifteen Dusters scrambled into the shadow of the brick alleyways, pressing their backs flat against the damp walls. But as soon as they raised their weapons to return fire, the sudden orange flashes of their own gun barrels betrayed their exact positions in the dark. Every time a Duster pulled a trigger, a precise, heavy round snapped back down from the roofs, striking the brickwork right beside their heads or tearing into their limbs.

​Two blocks away, Red was coming to the same grim realization. Pinned behind the coal wagon with twelve surviving men, he watched the rooftop muzzle flashes through the spokes of the iron wheels. The long range made their own handguns and shotguns useless, while the snipers’ high-caliber military rifles punched through wood and brickwork with terrifying ease.

​"They got us locked down from above!" a goon screamed beside Red, his hands shaking violently as he tried to reload his revolver.

​"Shut up and think!" Red snapped, his mind racing through the tactical field. "They’re fixed on the front street! They can’t see the back lanes!"

​Red grabbed his lieutenant by the collar. "Take five men through the side alley! Go around the block, get behind that three-story tenement, and take the fire escape up to the roof! Cut their throats from behind while we keep ’em looking at the street!"

​"Right!" the lieutenant yelled. He motioned to four goons, and the five of them broke away from the wagon, sprinting into the narrow, dark alleyway that cut behind the storefronts.

​They moved as fast as their boots could carry them, running through the pitch-black gap between two tenements. But as the five men rounded the corner near the rear fire escape, they didn’t find empty shadows.

​Waiting in the narrow passage were three figures dressed in dark coats, their faces obscured by stark white masks. They didn’t yell. They didn’t call for a surrender.

​Before the Duster lieutenant could even raise his revolver, the center masked figure stepped forward with fluid, terrifying speed. A heavy trench shotgun roared in the confined space—BOOM!—the blast tearing through the lieutenant and the man behind him in a cloud of smoke and flame.

​The remaining three goons panicked, dropping their weapons and trying to scramble back toward the street, but the other two masked men closed the gap in seconds. Heavy, weighted trench truncheons smashed down with brutal, practiced precision. Bone cracked sharply against the brick walls, followed by short, stifled groans as the flanking team was wiped out in under thirty seconds.

​On Barrow Street, Sullivan’s situation was devolving into pure slaughter.

​The Faceless Men were no longer just shooting from the roofs; they had moved down through the fire escapes, cutting off the alley exits. Shadows seemed to detach themselves from the brick walls.

​A Duster goon swung his club into the dark, only for his arm to be caught mid-air, twisted violently until the joint popped, and slammed face-first into the cobblestones. Another goon was seized from behind, a flashing blade slipping between his ribs before he could even draw a breath to scream.

​The Faceless Men fought with a cold, terrifying discipline—moving in pairs, using close-quarters combat techniques that the street-brawling Dusters had never encountered. They didn’t waste words, they didn’t boast, and they didn’t show an ounce of mercy.

​Sullivan, clutching his bleeding shoulder with his hand slick with crimson, watched three of his veteran collectors get systematically dismantled in the span of ten feet.

​A cold, sickening dread washed over him. They weren’t fighting a rival street gang. They were fighting trained killers who treated them like animals in a slaughterhouse.

​"Fall back!" Sullivan wheezed, his voice choked with fear as he backed away down the narrow alley toward Washington Street. "FALL BACK! MOVE!"

​He didn’t check to see who was following him. He just ran, his boots slapping frantically against the wet stones as he left sixteen of his men pinned down and bleeding in the dark lanes of Barrow Street. When he finally broke out into a side lane, only four battered goons stumbled out behind him, breathing heavily and covered in bruises and blood.

​Back on Christopher Street, Red saw the writing on the wall. His flanking team hadn’t returned, the gunfire from the roofs hadn’t slowed down, and the alleyways around his position were growing eerily quiet—a quiet that meant his men were no longer alive to fight.

​Only three goons remained huddled beside Red behind the coal wagon. The rest lay scattered across the cobblestones of Christopher Street, motionless under the dark sky.

​Red looked at the three terrified young men staring at him for orders. His heart pounded like a trip-hammer against his ribs. He knew if he stayed here another two minutes, they would all be dead.

​"Listen to me!" Red lied, his voice sharp and convincing as he gripped his rifle. "Hold this gap between the wagon and the stoop! Keep firing at those rooflines!"

​"We’re out of ammo, Red!" one of the boys sobbed, clutching a empty revolver.

​"I know! I’m running down to Washington Street right now to get Sullivan and his twenty men!" Red urged, slapping the boy on the shoulder. "We’ll hit ’em from the south side and pinch ’em in the middle! Just hold this alley for two minutes! Two minutes!"

​The three goons nodded desperately, turning back to point their empty or low-caliber guns toward the street corner, completely buying the lie.

​Red turned around and ran.

​He didn’t look back. He sprinted down the narrow passageway between two four-story tenements, his heavy coat flapping behind him, his heart hammering in his ears.

​As he reached the end of the passage, fifty yards away, Red stole one brief glance over his shoulder.

​In the faint light at the other end of the alley, he saw a dark-clad arm extend from a roof ledge above the three goons. A small, heavy cylindrical object—a dark metal stick wrapped with a short cloth tail—was hurled down into the narrow corridor.

​It clattered against the cobblestones, rolling right between the feet of the three Duster goons.

​One of the boys lowered his gun, frowning down at the strange object smoking on the stones. "What the hell is that—"

​BLAM-CRACK!

​A violent, blinding flash of orange fire erupted in the confined space between the brick walls. A concussive shockwave slammed down the alleyway, throwing a cloud of pulverized mortar, smoke, and shattered iron fragments into the air. The force of the explosion blew out the lower windows of the adjacent tenement, sending a deafening roar echoing across the entire block.

​Red felt the blast wave hit his back, shoving him forward onto his hands and knees in the dirt.

​He scrambled back to his feet in sheer terror, not bothering to look at the wreckage behind him, and bolted out onto Washington Street.

​Panting violently, his lungs burning and his face covered in soot, Red rounded the corner of a dark warehouse on Washington.

​Standing against the brick wall, gasping for air as he pressed a blood-soaked handkerchief to his left shoulder, was Sullivan. Beside him stood three ragged, terrified Dusters—all that remained of his twenty-man crew.

​Red stopped, resting his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath, staring at Sullivan in horror.

​"Where... where are your men?" Red managed to choke out.

​Sullivan looked at him with hollow, bloodshot eyes, his chest heaving. "Dead," he rasped, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the pavement. "All of ’em. They ambushed us in the dark. They... they aren’t human, Red."

​Before Red could answer, a series of sharp, heavy detonations—THOOM-CRACK! THOOM-CRACK!—echoed consecutively from the deep alleyways behind them.

​The concussive blasts were not large enough to tear down buildings, but in the quiet, dead-of-night air, the sharp, thunderous explosions rattled the iron streetlamp frames for miles around.

​Red and Sullivan stood frozen on the corner of Washington Street, listening as the violent, rhythmic detonations systematic cleared the dark alleys of Greenwich Village, signaling to every gang boss and Tammany politician in Manhattan that the war for the Ninth Ward was no longer under their control.