by James Hilton
32
The noise from the twin jet engines was enough to make Edith Bell turn away and pull down the ear protectors she wore perched on her head like a novelty party hat. Her ebony skin was slick with sweat, partly due to the humidity and partly physical exertion. When not working alongside her husband of twenty-one years, Edith tried to fit in regular weights sessions. She’d come late to the world of competitive fitness but now her arms and shoulders were honed to near perfection, a fact that had helped her win the Miss Fitness Florida title two years in a row.
She held a hand low over her eyes and watched the Hawker 400 slow and taxi towards the hangar in which she stood. A face that still made her tingle inside smiled down from the pilot’s window. The mirrored aviator glasses hid some of his face but not his wide grin. She’d met Garnett Bell in a bar while on vacation with her sister in Cancun. She had been a different woman back then. Plump and in need of some serious corrective dental work. Yet Garnett had seen past all that and had taken an instant shine to the shy twenty-something from South Carolina. She had been initially wary of him, thinking his attention some sort of ploy to rob her. Yet Garnett had met her for dinner and drinks five nights in a row. They quickly discovered many shared interests: books, black-and-white films, jazz music and strawberry margaritas. They’d spent the last night of her vacation in his hotel room. It had been her first real time with a man. The drunken fumblings of her native South Carolina’s boys didn’t rank in the same league as the skilled and patient Garnett.
With the vacation over, she and her sister returned home. Never expecting to see him again, she was dumbfounded when he turned up on her front doorstep three weeks later with a bottle of vintage Bollinger and that same winning smile. They had moved first to Fort Lauderdale then later further south to Key West, both locations serving as depots for his growing private jet hire business. Their wedding in Antigua surpassed her teenage fantasies. Garnett had turned out every bit her prince. Yet he referred to himself as a “diamond in the rough”. For Edith, this underlying roughness made him even more lovable.
Edith had accepted his criminal lifestyle with an open-mindedness that surprised even her. Maybe it was his brutal honesty. He had never tried to sugar-coat his business dealings. He had flown marijuana into the States along with guns, counterfeit currency and illegal immigrants because it paid handsomely.
The engine noise had abated to a bearable level so she slipped the ear protectors off and gave Garnett a wave as he appeared at the door hatch. Still lean and muscular, he cut an imposing figure despite heading to the wrong side of fifty. Flecks of grey now peppered his short, cropped hair. Garnett was eleven years older than Edith yet they looked good together.
“There was a call for you. That big guy from Texas—Clay. He wanted to charter a ride from Vegas. Seemed to be very keen to get here.” Edith planted a kiss on her husband as he drew close. “Sam Whittaker just did that drop-off in Reno, so I told him to swing by. Figured you wouldn’t mind.”
“Damn, woman, you got a licence for that?” Garnett smacked her playfully on the ass. She knew her tight Lycra exercise trousers displayed her legs and buttocks to perfection.
Edith posed theatrically for a moment, flexing into a classic muscle spread. “You don’t need a licence for a force of nature.”
The co-pilot emerged from the Hawker jet. “Would you two get a room? You give normal-shaped folks an inferiority complex.”
Garnett grinned back at him. “Jealousy is so unbecoming on you, Pete.”
Peter Latham hoisted his considerable stomach with both hands then let it drop with a resounding wobble. “I’m working on a six-pack. Well, a six-pack of Coors, anyway.”
“See you tomorrow, Pete.” Garnett waved him away. Despite Pete’s constant self-deprecating humour, he was a fine pilot and a friend of many years. He’d never missed a day of work in the sixteen years that he’d flown for Garnett’s firm.
“You say Clay called, huh? Haven’t heard from him in a while. Wonder why he wants to get here so bad?”
Edith paused. “He said it was urgent.” She had only met Clay a couple of times but remembered him well. His old-fashioned manners and hulking appearance gave him a semi-melancholy air. Garnett was a big man in his own right but next to Clay he looked almost diminutive. While Edith had fashioned her body into shape with long sessions in the gym, she could tell that Clay’s Conan-the-Barbarian stature was due as much to genetics as lifting weights.
“Well I guess we’ll find out when Sam brings them in. Actually, screw that, I’ll find out now.” Garnett walked towards the office space built inside the spacious hangar. He greeted George and Hector Ramirez as they passed, two cousins who worked as ground crew and performed maintenance on Garnett’s small fleet of aircraft.
“Fill her up and check under the hood, right?” George quipped as they passed. Garnett gave him the thumbs-up. The cousins looked suspiciously like Cheech Marin but they certainly knew their way around the twin Pratt & Whitney engines of the plane.
In the office, Garnett radioed Sam Whittaker. Ten minutes later he walked over to where George and Hector were busy performing a series of checks on the air-intake valves of the Hawker’s starboard engine. “Hey guys, I need to be back in the air tomorrow or the day after. That okay?”
Hector nodded down from the stepped platform on which he was perched. “No problem boss. This bird will be ready to fly when you are.”
Edith had changed her clothes and returned from the hangar’s locker room. She now wore a simple yellow dress that contrasted perfectly with her dark skin. “You find out what’s going on?”
“Seems they are in a bad place and need to disappear for a while.” After a long and understanding look had passed between them, he added, “Been there an’ done that.”
33
“How the hell did this happen?” asked Lincoln, as much to himself as his team.
Washington spat out a blood-coated chip of glass. “He must have snagged the grenade from Roosevelt’s vest while they were fighting.”
“I figured that part out. What I meant was how the hell did a bound prisoner just nearly end us?” Lincoln tried not to show his inner fury. “He can’t have gone far. He’s losing blood. Bush pegged him with two to the chest. Let’s get on it.”
“What about Roose?” asked Washington.
Lincoln wanted nothing more than to lift his friend in his arms and transport him home. Organise a funeral service with full honours as befitted a warrior. They’d been comrades-in-arms for over a decade. Roosevelt had survived blistering warfare in Angola and dozens of missions since. Where’s the justice in the world when a man like Roosevelt dies in an oriental shitkicker’s living room? “We’ll come back for him once we’ve got the dead man walking.”
Lincoln’s cell phone rang. He plucked it from his pocket. Kennedy’s voice seemed a million miles away. “Hey what’s going on down there? Looked like a frag went off, you all okay?”
“No. Roosevelt is gone. The Gurkha is loose. Scope up. Did he go out of the back?”
“Negative, Linc. No one left the building, at least in my line of sight. Roosevelt’s really dead? You want me down there?”
“No stay in position. If we get any more visitors just cap them. I don’t care if it’s SWAT or Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
“Roger that.”
As Lincoln ended the call, Washington helped Bush back to his feet. A deep purple bruise had begun to swell beneath Bush’s left eye, courtesy of the collision with the kitchen unit. With reverence they placed a towel over the face of their dead companion.
Lincoln scanned the ruined living room. A single picture frame remained unbroken. It held a badge of rank—three chevrons adorned with crossed kukri knives. A small plaque below declared “Havildar Tibrikot”. So the fucker was a sergeant. Lincoln sneered, and turned to his men. “Find him.”
“He can’t have gone out the front or Kennedy would have spotted him from the ridge. He’s still in the house or hid
ing out back somewhere,” Washington said.
Lincoln nodded. “You two clear the rooms and start out back.” Washington and Bush moved through the door that led to the bedrooms, weapons raised and ready, hyper-alert for any sign of danger.
Lincoln crouched, the smell of cordite and burned flesh strong in his nose. Where would I go? Out the back and run for it? Injured… wouldn’t get far. Hide in the house? But where? Hide in the outbuildings? Maybe.
He made sure the tubular magazine was still secure on the top of his weapon then followed his men out into the rear yard. Bush and Washington were twenty yards ahead. Lincoln called to them, “Five minutes and we’re gone.”
Both men replied with curt nods, but Lincoln knew that they wouldn’t be happy leaving without exacting bloody retribution. “Check the outbuildings. I want this fucker split open and left for coyote feed in five minutes.”
Bush gave him an amen to that and they moved off. But two hundred and sixty seconds later they were back, faces grim. “Not a trace of this asshole. The guy’s a ghost. Disappeared into the bedrock.”
Lincoln could not afford to spend any more time on the fugitive. They needed to regroup and get back on the trail of the woman. She was the real target. He huffed air out of his nose in annoyance. “Let’s get Roo in the van. We need to move on. We’ll come back for the coolie another day.”
They hoisted Roosevelt’s corpse into the luggage space at the rear of the vehicle and covered the body with jackets and a thermal foil blanket from the van’s breakdown kit.
“What about the cop?” asked Washington.
“Leave him. Not our concern.” Lincoln activated his cell phone and rang Kennedy, still on his sniper’s perch. “We’re moving out. We’ll pick you up in two.”
As they stood at the tailgate of the SUV, Lincoln squinted at Washington, the sun an unforgiving glare behind him. “Get back on the laptop and see if the sat-phone has pinged any new data, now we know the target is carrying it. We need to get back on their asses pronto. This was a waste of fucking time.”
A couple of taps on the touch-pad and the tracker program sprang to life. Like images from a time-lapse camera, red dots began appearing on screen. They traced a winding path from the ranch house back through Castillo and on to Las Vegas. A large cluster of the dots centred on an area east of the main strip.
Washington’s voice was thick with tension. “There’re multiple readings coming back from Spring Valley. They went after Clinton.”
Lincoln felt a vein throbbing in his temple. “Are they still there?”
“No they’ve moved south-east, right to the outskirts of town. The phone has pinged for a couple of hours from this point.”
“Can you zoom in on that?”
Washington clicked on the icon of the magnifying glass. The page blurred then cleared to show an enhanced view of south Las Vegas.
“Where is that?”
“Give me a second.” Washington tapped on the legend panel on the screen and a series of tiny pinheads appeared on the map. “It’s a motel—the Aces High. It’s out in no man’s land. They’ve been there for over two hours.”
“They still there?” Lincoln’s hand crept to his Calico pistol as if he could fire off a few shots via the computer screen. Washington studied the most recent entry. “As of seven minutes ago, yes.”
Lincoln checked his email. Nothing from any of his contacts. Hopefully that meant the target hadn’t taken a plane, train or automobile out of the state yet. They might be able to catch up.
Bush joined them at the vehicle. “We shipping out?”
Lincoln nodded in the affirmative. “Call the doc’s house. Make sure Clinton’s okay.”
Bush pulled out his cell phone, rang a number and put it on speaker. After thirty seconds of ringing he ended the call. “No answer, Linc.”
“Shit. We have to presume he’s out of the game for the time being. We’ll confirm later. Right now we go full speed after these fuckers. I want that woman hog-tied by suppertime.”
“Give me a minute. A place this isolated… no mains gas supply…” Bush trotted back towards the house. Lincoln watched as he opened a small shed under the kitchen window, revealing three gas cylinders. Two stood unconnected, while one was hooked up, clearly serving as the main supply to the house via a hose and regulator. Bush let out a grunt of satisfaction and dragged the two free canisters into the house. Through the kitchen window Lincoln could see him turning on all four gas rings on the cooker, igniting only one.
Washington, who was bent over his laptop, gave a snort of triumph. “We’ve got an identity on one of the men who are likely with the target.”
Lincoln leaned in to look at the screen. There was a rolling news clip showing a photograph of a large man in military uniform. “Clay Gunn. Ex-Ranger. See what you can find out about him. We were right to think these guys were trained.”
As he rejoined Lincoln and Washington, Bush gave his leader a wink. “Better vamoose. I’ve set the house to barbecue.”
Lincoln, normally less inclined to wanton destruction than some of his team, glanced at the makeshift shroud covering Roosevelt’s corpse. “Right.”
Bush mounted his Harley and Lincoln took the wheel of the SUV, Washington riding shotgun. He drove back towards the main road, pulling over to pick up Kennedy. A sudden explosion made the sniper pause, his hand resting on the handle of the vehicle’s door. Lincoln turned in his seat.
The ranch house was almost obscured by a mushroom cloud of black smoke. Then debris began to fall—a rain of wood fragments, glass shards and roofing tiles. The front wall toppled slowly at first, then crashed to the ground like a boxer who had walked into a heavy right hand.
Bush, steering the Harley alongside the SUV like a police escort, pumped his fist.
* * *
Tansen Tibrikot, bleeding profusely from more wounds than he had hands to cover, leaned heavily against the door of the concealed panic room beneath his bedroom.
Once a cellar, he had converted it into a bunker. It had not been out of fear; it was a novelty, little more than a nod to the action movies he liked so much. Like so many of what he considered his “Americanisms”, the panic room was there because he could have one.
The bedrock provided natural protection from the elements and potential home invasion. The half-inch reinforced steel door, hidden from view by the full-length mirror in the master bedroom, could only be opened from the inside once occupied. A small video monitor linked to multiple mini cameras in each of the rooms. The panic room was twelve feet square, with wire racks holding bottled water and food supplies, enough for two weeks.
Wincing, Tansen pulled a medical kit from a rack and fixed a large self-adhesive gauze pad across his right shoulder and pectoral. One round was a through and through, just above the collarbone. The other… he could feel the blood spreading even as the gauze did its best to absorb the steady flow.
Tansen had watched the video monitor as the men searched for him, moving like actors in a silent film. Their faces were grim as they removed their dead companion. Several minutes later, one of them returned, dragging two gas canisters. He had no time to act, to think, before the picture on the viewing screen turned to snow. Even through the thickness of the door, the noise of the explosion made him clap his hands to his ears. He closed his eyes, his emotions a swirling mix of sadness, shock and anger.
They had blown up his house. He had nothing left. His antique books, his Americana. The pictures of his beautiful Raj. His friend, Jimmy. All gone.
He sat down heavily. A debilitating weariness spread through his body. He inspected his blood-soaked clothes. He tried to stand again, reaching for the lock of the panic-room door. But his legs would not obey him.
As darkness clouded his senses, Tansen Tibrikot wondered how long it would be before his body was discovered in his little hole in the ground. His eyes closed and he felt himself slide slowly sideways.
34
Stewart Strathclyde watched his
assistant leave his plush office, her hips swaying just enough to be provocative, his eyes drawn to the curves of her body for just a second longer than he cared for. He knew he had to be careful when dipping into the hired help. He didn’t intend ever to fall foul of the “Clinton syndrome”. No, better to give that little blonde Miss a miss.
But he was not completely immune. He knew that Sonia Birkett-Brown had tried the modelling game while at university. He’d found the pictures. She was nice to look at but probably more trouble than she was worth. She might be the kind to kiss and tell to get her face in the papers. And while he could live with being labelled a womaniser, he certainly did not want any reporters digging into his carefully screened love affairs. He’d barely escaped some murky facts being exposed during the phone-hacking debacle that had done for some of his colleagues but he’d been saved by his then low position in the political pecking order. No one cared about an unknown MP when there were real celebrities to write about.
He leant back in his five-thousand-pound leather chair. Not that he would ever have been so careless as to discuss his extra-extra-curricular activities over the telephone. He had learned the hard way not to record any more of his “acts” on film. It was only due to his close relationship with an agent within the ranks of the CHSS that the situation was being dealt with. The press was right. Those with connections really did run the country. He had met Charles Banks at university, and the two men had discovered certain shared proclivities. Now they had a friendship based on mutual assured destruction. Strathclyde was not surprised that Banks had chosen a career that allowed him to indulge his inclinations.
That someone had stumbled across one of only three videos he had ever recorded was an unfortunate event. He’d thought all the copies had been destroyed years ago. His cameraman had some tough questions to answer. But he knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. The desire to show off one’s handiwork—even if that was only capturing someone else’s artistry on film—was too much temptation for some. At least he had always worn his homemade mask. Not one frame of film existed where his face was identifiable. He’d always been vigilant about that; almost as vigilant as in the selection of his victims. But yes, he’d have to talk to his cameraman.
