“Thank you, Frankie, for pointing that out,” said Tommy. “What other teenager you or Reno know that would have kept it together in the face of what Duke was facing? Would Lucky have pulled that off? Would Carmine? Would my boy? Hell no,” he said. “Duke’s got it. He’s born with it. He instinctively knows what to do when he has to do it. All that other shit he’ll learn in due time. Give the kid a break shit!” Tommy, who was normally Mister Cool, was getting animated. “His parents would have died if he hadn’t come to their rescue. What more you want from the kid?”
It was a truth that both Reno and Sal had to cop to. And Reno, overall a fair man, nodded his head. “You’re right, Tommy. For once in your life you’re right,” he added, and Tommy smiled.
But Alex and Marcellus glanced at each other when nobody still didn’t tell the kid what it meant. Even Marcellus,who was new to the family because his half-brother Oz was married to Mick’s daughter Gloria, knew what it meant.
Monk smiled, too, when none of them explained it either. So Monk told Duke. “The ghost protocol is when an attack happens and because it was so severe, and so damaging, we try our best to go radio silent. We keep the circle of knowledge so tight that many family members don’t really know what’s going on until they’re on their planes heading to wherever they need to go to shelter in place. Nobody outside of the family can have any knowledge of what went down. We avoid any major hospitals because there’s too many chances that somebody could still get through, as medical personnel, and harm the person already injured. They could be on the surgeon’s staff. Whatever. That’s why we all invest in a hospital like this one. It’s cloaked in secrecy. That’s the ghost protocol. It should never be invoked unless it has to be. That ambush in that little town made it a necessity. Your mother was right to invoke it. She couldn’t trust anybody but you to get your father to this hospital while they called for the surgeons and nurses assigned to him to get here too. Which they were waiting when you guys arrived.”
“What’s the game plan concerning that town anyway?” Trevor Reese asked. “Do we go in with all barrels blazing and take all of their asses out?”
“Not so fast,” said Reno. “Sal’s got a couple going in undercover with Iowa license plates as if they came off of the interstate to get gas. They’ll scope out the place before we go in.”
“We’re going in without Mick giving the okay?”
Reno exhaled. He looked to Sal to answer that. “No,” said Sal. “We don’t know enough to hit anybody yet. I hate the delay, but we have to have intel or what the fuck we’re doing?”
“What’s the name of this town anyway?” Alex asked.
“Fangen,” said Sal. “Fangen, P.A.”
“F-A-N-G-E-N?” Marcellus asked, spelling it out.
Reno looked at Duke. Duke nodded. “Yes sir, Uncle Alex. That’s how it’s spelled.”
“That’s strange,” Marcellus said, and they all looked at him.
“Strange how?” Tommy asked.
Marcellus was a manufacturer of aircrafts and was a brilliant man. He was an actual rocket scientist. “Fangen is German,” he said.
“It’s German for what?”
“To catch,” Marcellus said, “or to capture.”
They all were stunned. “You got to be kidding me,” said Reno.
“Are we to think that that ambush in that nothing town could be that diabolical?” asked Tommy.
“That can’t be no coincidence,” said Sal. “I know that.”
“No way,” agreed Monk.
But Tommy Gabrini, known for his analytical mind too, was thinking it through. “It’s almost as if somebody found this small town, near Philly, with that odd meaning behind their name, discovered that the police chief or whomever ran that police department could be bought and paid for. With that pay check undoubtedly worth millions, that police chief could have gotten his cops together to attempt the assassination of the century. Could it be that choreographed?”
“Damn that’s deep,” Amelia said.
And Duke, who had been standing the whole time, realized the enormity of what he went through too. He finally sat down beside his Uncle Reno. And tears suddenly welled up in his large eyes. “Is Daddy gonna be alright, though?” he asked them all, looking at them all.
The room felt his pain. It was ton-of-bricks time for Duke.
That was why Reno quickly pulled him into his arms, and answered his question. “You bet cha he’s gonna be alright. He’s Mick the fucking Tick. Of course he’ll be alright. What are you talking? Your old man is legendary for being alright.”
But when Reno glanced at Tommy and Sal with that look of doubt in his own eyes, they both knew he was just comforting their grieving nephew, but was full of shit too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The SUV pulled to a stop in front of the New Orleans hotel where Nikki had her reservation. But as soon as they walked in and were heading for the reservation desk, Marco placed his hand on Teddy’s arm and stopped his progression. “Pop look.”
Teddy looked where his son was looking and saw Nikki sitting at a table inside the hotel’s bar. But she wasn’t alone. Teddy looked intensely when he realized she was having a drink with a man.
