by Blake Banner
I had the valet bring my car round and led Alice out into the balmy night. She slipped into the passenger seat, I climbed behind the wheel, and we took off toward the Avenida Fernandez Juncos bridge and, following San Juan’s crazy one-way system, took the Calle Olimpo, made a big loop north along Manuel Fernandez Juncos, and then dropped down south again to her villa on Calle José Martí.
The house was a big, rambling 19th-century affair with a gable on top and sloping roofs slanting over the first floor, where a patio skirted the left of the house among tropical gardens. The whole thing was fenced off behind a low wall with white, wrought-iron railings in the shape of spears. It wasn’t bad for the center of town and I figured intelligence officers must make a decent living at Cobra. I killed the engine and the lights and we climbed out. The attack came while she was fishing the keys out of her purse.
The streetlamps were few, a dull amber and largely concealed by the foliage of the abundant trees on the street. That meant the road was mainly in shadow and dark. It was also narrow, with a lot of parked cars lined up on each side. What little light there was reflected orange off the black windshields and the hoods. Alice stood before the white, wrought-iron gates, holding her purse open, and I stood looking up and down the road, searching only half-consciously for movement, anything that seemed wrong.
The sound came first. The opening and closing of car doors, four almost simultaneously, then four more. Eight men. My hand reached automatically for my Sig, but it wasn’t there. It was fifty miles east of Trinidad, at the bottom of the Atlantic.
I didn’t think. I stepped forward, snatched Alice’s purse from her hand, selected the most likely key and shoved it in the lock. I could hear feet, shifting fast from a tramp to a run. Alice was saying, “What the…?” I heaved the gate open, shoved her in with my left hand, ripped the key from the lock and slammed the gate closed. There was no time for anything else. I threw the keys over the gate and turned to meet my attackers.
I could hear Alice screaming, “Harry! No, no, no! Harry!” but I was too busy to answer. There were eight of them, they were pros and they were not about to give me time to think.
When you are under severe attack, there is only thing you can do: straight blast. Throw everything you’ve got at your opponent with as much explosive energy as you can find deep, deep within your reserves. A wise warrior once said that life’s battles do not always go to the stronger or the faster man, but sooner or later the man who wins the war is the man who believes he can.
I charged at the biggest, ugliest bastard I could see. I feinted with a straight right to his jaw, withdrew as he tried to bat it away, gave a small jump and crashed down with my heel on his knee. I felt it crunch and he screamed in pain, but already I could feel three hands grappling at me and bodies pressing in all around.
A face, ugly and snarling, loomed in front of me. I stabbed my fingers in its eyes. Blood spurted and the ugly mouth cried out. It was half a second and as I yanked my fingers out I smashed my elbow into the face behind me. Powerful arms gripped my waist and chest. A giant loomed in front of me and drove a massive fist at me. I weaved left, gripped a finger from the arms that were crushing me. The fist skimmed past me and grazed the owner of the finger. I yanked and twisted and snapped the joint of the finger. The owner screamed through gritted teeth in my ear. Some part of my brain was counting either three or four down, and for a tenth of a second I dared to hope. Then the big fist came back and smashed into my jaw, and there was darkness.
I awoke in pain. My head was in pain. It felt like a blunt cleaver had been wedged in my skull. But there were other pains too. My hands felt swollen, and there was a sharp, raw pain in my wrists. My back ached, and there was a numb rawness on my ankles. Slowly I became aware I was barefoot, and there was the sticky wetness of blood on my feet. Then I became aware that I was upright, and the pain in my back was from hanging forward, suspended by my arms.
I really didn’t want to open my eyes and for a moment I wondered if I could drive myself back to sleep. But the increasing throb of pain said that wasn’t an option. I opened my eyes.
I was in a small room, maybe nine by twelve, with a dirt floor and bare concrete walls. There was a bare bulb overhead. I figured I was in a cellar.
Ten feet in front of me there was a guy on a bentwood chair reading a holiday brochure. At his right elbow, a Glock 19 lay beside a mug of coffee on a small trestle table. From his belt hung a bowie knife with a twelve-inch blade.
It took me a moment to figure out that I was upright, attached by my wrists and ankles to the bedsprings of a double mattress. The bedsprings, I deduced, were attached somehow to the wall. Beside the door there was a plug, and a thick, white wire running across the floor to where one stripped negative wire was attached to the springs beside my head. The red, positive one was hanging loose, bent away from me. I shifted my eyes slightly to my wrist and saw it was bound with string.
I groaned, but hung my head like I was semiconscious. I sensed him raise his head, but I didn’t look up. I groaned again and mumbled. There was a rustle of paper as he put down the magazine and stood. Then there was the sharp stab of pain as he grabbed my hair and lifted my head to look into my face.
“Que pasa, gringo? Te duele?”
I was half expecting the punch to my belly, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. The second one made me retch. After that it was mainly backhanders to my face that left my head ringing and dizzy. It went on for maybe three or four interminable minutes. Then he grabbed my face in a filthy hand, squeezed hard and breathed rank breath at me.
“We can do this easy or we can do this hard, gringo. You wanna talk to me, or I call my pals down from upstair? We jus’ wanna know one thing, who you fockin’ workin for?”
I stared at him with unfocused eyes and muttered, “No, no electric…no…”
“Who you fockin’ workin’ for, gringo?”
“I can’t tell you, but please…no electric…”
He laughed, “No electric? You don’ like electric?” His eyes went wide with a manic grin that revealed teeth corroded by sugar and nicotine. “You don’ like bzzzz! Bzzzzz!”
I twisted my face into fear and grief and sobbed, “No, no, please…”
He reached for the positive wire, stepped a little closer, leering into my face, “You don’ like? Bzzzz! Bzzzz!”
I sobbed and shook my head some more. Timing was going to be everything. I stared into his crazy eyes. His breath was foul. I could see the individual pores in his skin. His leering mouth sagged open and he brought the wire to within a millimeter of the bedsprings. I sobbed and shook my head and as his ugly face twisted into triumph, as he connected the wire, I wrenched my hand forward. The springs provided enough give and I seized his wrist with my hand, clenching it hard into place. The current passed through me and into the son of a bitch with the corroded teeth. He clenched those teeth hard now as his hair stood on end, his eyes bulged and smoke started exuding from his skin.
But now I had a different problem. If I let go of the son of a bitch the current would stop flowing into him and start flowing into me. But fortune smiled on me and he started falling back. Our combined weight pulled the springs partially free from the wall, and the plug out of the socket. I let him go and he fell, stiff and twitching, on his back, leaving me suspended, half-crumpled, from the wall, still tied to the springs.
I could see his bowie knife attached to his belt, and using my legs as levers, I jumped and heaved, jumped and heaved. Every time I did, the bonds on my ankles and wrists bit deeper into my flesh. The pain was excruciating, but at the fifth attempt I wrenched the springs away from the wall and fell, twisting my body so that my bound right hand was a couple of inches from his belt.
Then it was the agonizing, claustrophobic process of inching closer and closer to the knife until I could wrap my finger around the hilt. What came next was the grotesque, exhausting process of crawling like a caterpillar over the dead man, with the bedsprings on my bac
k, one heave after another, until I could pull the knife free from its sheath.
Then, as I lay panting and in pain, the sound came to me of voices approaching outside, feet tramping down stairs. There was no time to rest, not even for a second. I pressed the razor-sharp blade against the string on my wrist and felt it snap as the warm blood oozed down my arm. My left wrist and feet were faster, easier, and I rolled out from under the springs as the door opened and a man stepped in demanding, “Que coño pasó?”
What the hell happened? I let the bowie do the talking and smashed it through his sternum. His body went into spasms and I wrenched the blade free. A stream of blood gushed from the wound and hit the wall where the springs had been. That was somehow perversely satisfying. The door burst all the way open and there were two guys there with guns. They looked startled. I leered at them.
“Hello, fellas.”
I dropped to one knee as I threw the knife. It thudded home in the nearest guy’s chest and he fell back choking, trying to breathe but dying. The other guy was having trouble reacting. I exploded from my kneeling position and charged him. He fired but I had already ducked inside his guard and the shot went wide. I threw a straight right at his chin but he managed to weave and smashed his semiautomatic into the side of my head. The pain was intense and dangerous and I knew I had to ignore it, pierce it with my mind and keep attacking.
He swung the pistol again, trying to get enough distance to pull off a shot. I trapped his wrist with my right, snatched the barrel with my left and wrenched the weapon out of his hand. He screamed with pain and kicked me hard in the shin. I staggered back and he rushed me with two more savage kicks. One I avoided, the other caught my hip and I stumbled backward over the body behind me. As I fell the pistol spun across the floor. The guy kept coming, looming over me. I hooked my left leg behind his and kicked his knee with my right foot. It didn’t do a lot of damage, but he fell backward onto the trestle table and smashed it. That gave me time to scramble to my feet, while he reached frantically for his pal’s Glock. I saw his hands close on it under the glossy travel brochure.
He was too far for me to reach his hand. With an animal roar I jumped and stamped on his thigh. My foot slipped and I heard the crack of wood under my sole. The guy screamed with pain but he didn’t stop. He was whimpering and fumbling, turning to get me in his sights. I didn’t think. I bent, stepped on the cracked, splintered table, wrenched hard and pulled away one of the slats. For a timeless tenth of a second I was looking down the barrel of the Glock. I let my legs go limp and lifted my feet from the floor. I saw the flash of an explosion and felt the hot rush of searing lead skim past my head. Then my body hit his and with both hands I drove the wooden stake through his chest. His face twisted into an agony of pain and disbelief as he convulsed, and thick blood gushed from his mouth.
I staggered panting to my feet, staring at his horror-stricken face.
“Ride with the devil, pal, the only destination is Hell.”
I looked down at the Glock and thought about taking it, but some kind of instinct told me that silence was important here. I had no idea where I was. We might be in the middle of the jungle, or for all I knew we could be in a quiet suburb of San Juan. Either way, the last thing I needed was cops in the pay of Bloque Meta knocking on the door to find out what all the shooting was about. So I moved to the door, reached down and pulled the big bowie knife from the dead guy’s chest and moved slowly and painfully up the stairs.
The door at the top was closed, but there was an old Chubb key stuck in the lock. Under the door I could see a strip of light, and I could hear the faint sound of a TV. I took hold of the round, Bakelite handle and pushed. The door swung silently open and I stepped out into a suburban kitchen that was modern when Afghan coats and flares still seemed like a good idea. The light was on and there were four empty beer bottles by the sink.
I edged past a pine table and four pine chairs into a short corridor that led to a staircase, and a front door. The front door had glass panels in it. They were black in the night, but there was also fractured orange light in them which told me outside there was a street with streetlamps. To the right of the front door there was another door. Light seeped out from underneath it, and now the sound of the television was louder.
I approached the door and caught a glimpse of myself in the tall mirror in the hall. I was barefoot, my shirt was torn and so were my pants, and my hands, my shirt and my face were smeared with blood. I moved on, opened the door and looked in. There was just one guy. He was staring at me, astonished. He had a tray on his lap with beans and rice in it, and a forkful of food halfway to his mouth. I smiled.
“Hello,” I said.
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Also by Blake Banner
Up to date books can be found on my website: www.blakebanner.com
COBRA THRILLER SERIES
Dead of Night (Book 1)
Dying Breath (Book 2)
The Einstaat Brief (Book 3)
Quantum Kill (Book 4)
Immortal Hate (Book 5)
DEAD COLD MYSTERY SERIES
An Ace and a Pair (Book 1)
Two Bare Arms (Book 2)
Garden of the Damned (Book 3)
Let Us Prey (Book 4)
The Sins of the Father (Book 5)
Strange and Sinister Path (Book 6)
The Heart to Kill (Book 7)
Unnatural Murder (Book 8)
Fire from Heaven (Book 9)
To Kill Upon A Kiss (Book 10)
Murder Most Scottish (Book 11)
The Butcher of Whitechapel (Book 12)
Little Dead Riding Hood (Book 13)
Trick or Treat (Book 14)
Blood Into Win (Book 15)
Jack In The Box (Book 16)
The Fall Moon (Book 17)
Blood In Babylon (Book 18)
Death In Dexter (Book 19)
Mustang Sally (Book 20)
A Christmas Killing (Book 21)
Mommy's Little Killer (Book 22)
Bleed Out (Book 23)
Dead and Buried (Book 24)
In Hot Blood (Book 25)
Dead Cold Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (SAVE 33%)
Dead Cold Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (SAVE 25%)
Dead Cold Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (SAVE 25%)
Dead Cold Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (SAVE 25%)
Dead Cold Box Set #5: Books 17-20 (SAVE 25%)
Dead Cold Box Set #6: Books 21-24 (SAVE 25%)
THE OMEGA SERIES
Dawn of the Hunter (Book 1)
Double Edged Blade (Book 2)
The Storm (Book 3)
The Hand of War (Book 4)
A Harvest of Blood (Book 5)
To Rule in Hell (Book 6)
Kill: One (Book 7)
Powder Burn (Book 8)
Kill: Two (Book 9)
Unleashed (Book 10)
The Omicron Kill (Book 11)
9mm Justice (Book 12)
Kill: Four (Book 13)
Death In Freedom (Book 14)
Endgame (Book 15)
Omega Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (SAVE 33%)
Omega Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (SAVE 25%)
Omega Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (SAVE 25%)
Omega Box Set #4: Books 13-15 (SAVE 33%)
* * *
[1]
See Quantum Kill
[2]
See Cobra 5, Immortal Hate
