Henry changed positions every two shots. In three seconds, he emptied three pairs of revolvers and dropped all thirty-two of the exposed guards.
"My God, the devil can see us!"
"He's a demon! Lord, save us!"
"Blake, are you alright? Stay with me!"
Henry threw two 5-pound TNT charges, then four more, wiping out the men who had taken cover. The rear courtyard was now clear. From the moment he had left the warehouse, less than a minute had passed. From the moment he had first stepped out of the clubhouse, less than four.
He began to loot the bodies, his eyes fixed on the two staircases at the rear of the building. The one on the left led to the upper floors; the one on the right, to the basement.
The fire in the first-floor warehouse was now raging, the flames licking up the side of the building. The stairwell was acting as a chimney, pulling the smoke and the heat upward. The guards on the third and fourth floors, choking and gasping, finally broke and fled for their lives.
Henry was waiting in the darkness thirty meters away. As they poured out of the stairwell, he opened fire with his twin revolvers. They were running from a firestorm, directly into a hell of his own making.
In under three minutes, he had cut down fifty-eight men. There was no sign of Morrison, the boss.
A minute later, a man with the authoritative bearing of a leader charged out. Henry shot him in the leg.
"Are you Morrison?" he asked, his voice a cold whisper in the darkness.
He waited a second, and when there was no answer, he shot the man in the other leg.
"I'm not!" the man screamed. "Morrison goes to his own estate at night!"
"Where is it?"
"Oak Grove Manor, in the western suburbs, about six miles from here. There's a giant oak tree at the entrance."
Henry put a bullet through the man's head.
He put on a miner's respirator he had taken from the factory, then dealt with the twelve men who came charging up from the basement.
He then ran up the stairs to the third floor. The doors were all open. He rushed to the archives and, in two minutes, filled ten cubic meters of his storage space with every file that looked important.
He ran for the fourth floor. The smoke was now thick and black, the heat intense.
The men on the second floor and in the basement had been trapped. The fire was spreading, and the main exit was a wall of flame.
At the direction of one of the security captains, a group of a dozen gamblers, all of them regulars who no longer bothered with masks, used a long oak table as a battering ram and charged the burning door.
On the fourth floor, Henry blew the locks off two doors with his Sharps rifle and found two more massive safes. He was just leaving Morrison's office when he heard the sounds of the men charging the main door below. He grabbed a grappling hook, secured it to the massive oak desk, and rappelled out the window.
He landed in the rear courtyard, then sprinted for the front gate. He came around the corner and saw them: a mob of over three hundred men, all of them trying to cram their way through the narrow side gate, their faces masks of pure terror.
He opened fire.
He shot the thirty-three uniformed guards first. Then, he took out eight 5-pound TNT charges and, in a single, terrifying second of accelerated time, threw them into the heart of the crowd.
The series of deafening explosions cleared a path. He then walked forward and, with his twin revolvers, methodically executed the survivors.
Who are these men, he thought, who spend their nights in a place like this, watching men beat each other to death for sport? He felt no remorse. He had just lowered Chicago's murder rate by at least ten percent. He hadn't even started his real work, and he was already making a great contribution to the city's safety.
He looted the bodies as quickly as he could.
In his manor in the western suburbs, Morrison was listening to the frantic report of two of his men.
"...the bunkers and the gatehouse were destroyed... the building is on fire... twenty-four of our snipers, all of them taken out... he's a devil, boss... he killed a dozen men and then charged the rear guard..."
Morrison's blood ran cold. It's him. He's here.
He had given them no time to recover. The attack must have come the moment the party in New York had ended. He looked at the thirty-two guards he had left at his own estate. Against Henry, they were nothing.
"Dennis," he ordered his butler, "pack my valuables. Keith, Scott, get the guards ready. We're leaving in five minutes!"
In the city, the police and fire departments were on their way, but they were slow. The two officers who had been sent to investigate had stopped for a cigarette, their faces a mask of shared, unspoken understanding.
Henry finished his looting, his primary objectives achieved. He slipped away into the shadows of the surrounding buildings, summoned a horse, and rode for the western suburbs.
It was just after midnight on August 1st. He had gained a massive haul of pearls from the night's work, enough to upgrade his Constitution to LV 4.
Twenty minutes later, he found Oak Grove Manor. The gate was wide open, the grounds dark and deserted. He searched the house. It was a mess; they had left in a hurry. He found the secret room, but the safe inside was already open and empty.
He went to the warehouse and helped himself to sixteen cases of brandy and whiskey, and a thousand cigars.
Then he rode on, into the night.