by James Hilton
After stripping Bush’s corpse of weapons, Danny turned back to Clay. “Is Andrea still in the house?”
Clay shrugged. “I woke up hog-tied in here. I haven’t heard her voice so I just don’t know.”
Danny worked the slide on the pistol he’d taken from Bush’s holster. “Well, we’ve got two options. We can go down the stairs or out the window.” Neither choice was ideal. Clay said nothing. Danny motioned with his chin. “The stairs, then. Stay behind me.”
Clay hobbled after his younger brother, resting his weight on his heels as much as he could manage. The pain in his feet was so sharp he was now sure that several of his toes must be broken.
* * *
Hugging the wall, Danny rounded the doorway and moved fast and low onto the landing. He peered down the stairs, and saw Andrea’s stricken face staring back at him from the bottom step. He could see white all around the blue of her irises. She was handcuffed and gagged, and being dragged backwards by her collar by the man with the big Calico pistol. Lincoln.
Danny sighted with his pistol, hoping for a headshot, but in less than a second both the man and his hostage were out of the front door and in the rain.
For a split second he wasn’t sure where the shots were coming from but as Danny stepped onto the stairs numerous rounds ripped through the wooden steps from below. He only avoided the second barrage by throwing himself bodily back onto the landing. Clay stumbled and crashed into the chest of drawers. Battered, bruised and bleeding, the brothers exchanged a glance. A very British phrase sprang to Danny’s mind: Fuck this for a game of soldiers.
He returned a couple of shots, aiming down through the stairs and hoping for the best. The result was another sustained burst of automatic gunfire from below. Chips of wood exploded like confetti. Then a second barrage erupted, but from a different angle. These bullets tore up the wall above Danny’s head. He pointed down the stairs, one finger indicating the shooter below him, then another finger to the one somewhere off to the left.
Clay followed the hand signals. He grabbed the heavy chest of drawers as if they were made of nothing more than balsa wood and heaved them over the banister edge. The resulting crash of breaking wood was immediately followed by an ear-piercing cry of agony.
Kennedy appeared at the foot of the stairs, an M4 carbine blazing in his hands. He corrected his aim. Then he looked down at the knife hilt and three inches of blade that protruded from his stomach. He scowled in defiance and raised the M4 again. Danny’s single shot caught him full in the face sending him sprawling backwards. The carbine clattered to the floor.
Danny stalked down the stairs, weapon trained and ready. He made it to the bottom of the stairs without dodging any more bullets. Kennedy was dead. No doubt there. But the second man was still a threat. He saw the other man from the basement, Washington, lying on his front, trying to claw his way to his assault rifle. The chest of drawers had scored a heavy hit and a wide gash on the top of his head was now streaming blood. The piece of furniture lay across his lower back and one arm. Danny stepped heavily onto the man’s outstretched hand.
“Where are they taking the woman?”
Washington glared up at Gunn with hate-filled eyes. “Should have killed you when I had the chance.”
“Damn right about that.” Danny ground his heel into the bones of Washington’s outstretched hand. “One last chance, and know this: I don’t walk away halfway through.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Danny moved his foot just long enough to put a round through the back of Washington’s hand. Flesh proved no match for the kinetic energy of the bullet and a third of his hand and his pinkie finger flew away in a crimson rainbow. Now both arms were incapacitated.
“Again: where are they taking the woman?”
Stifling a scream in defiance, Washington tried to pull his ruined hand back to his chest but Danny kept it pinned to the floor.
“Last chance to share.”
Washington spat out a glob of crimson saliva in Danny’s direction. It fell short but brought Gunn’s attention to a discarded cylindrical object on the floor.
“Well, now, have you ever heard of the Roman Candle?”
Clay had retrieved Kennedy’s M4 from the bottom of the stairs and was now covering Danny’s rear. Danny heard him let out a short grunt of amusement as he began to haul the injured man’s trousers down around his ankles.
Washington divulged Andrea’s exact destination—an abandoned estate at the other end of the island—before the road flare had burned halfway down its length. Danny was very familiar with the smell of burning flesh. He didn’t hesitate. Not as an act of mercy, but with a keen sense of the need to move, he blew a hole in the back of Washington’s skull.
As the brothers stepped out into the neglected garden the torrential rain stung their battered frames. Danny pointed to an SUV parked out front. “Lincoln must have taken Andrea in that minivan they ran us down in. I’ll check those two for keys to that car.” Clay nodded and kept a vigil at the front door, the M4 ready at a moment’s notice. When Danny returned he was dressed in Washington’s shirt and boots. He held out a set of keys like a trophy. “Found these in the kitchen.”
“You didn’t happen to see my boots or shirt in there did you?”
Danny raced up the stairs, ignoring Bush’s zombie-like face resting in a gelatinous pool of red. Clay’s boots and shirt lay in the bathtub in a loose tangle. Despite the dire events he found reason to smile. He returned to the front door and handed the items over. Clay held up his shirt, which had been cut into three strips; only the collar was intact.
Danny winked. “I hear cloaks are in this year.”
“I’d offer it to you as a bandanna but I don’t think there’s enough material.” Clay tossed the ruined shirt aside and struggled into his boots. He grimaced in pain. “If I don’t put them on before my feet swell up, I’ll be barefoot till Christmas.” Danny handed Clay the jacket he had salvaged from Kennedy. It was a very tight fit across the shoulders and the seams stretched in protest. But it served its purpose. Then both men made for the SUV.
Clay left the driving to Danny, preferring to brood silently in the passenger seat. He rested the M4 across his lap, muzzle pointing away from his brother.
“Don’t worry, we’ll catch up and end it for these fuckers,” said Danny. His brother’s face reminded him of old Frank Frazetta illustrations of Conan the Barbarian. Clay’s hair was plastered to his furrowed brow, scars vivid white lines against his weathered skin, ice-blue eyes seething pits of impending violence. His mouth was a tight line.
“Do you think Crom will hear your prayers?” he said.
Clay smiled for the briefest of moments, despite his anger. “On a night like this? Crom’s down here with us.”
Danny could just about believe that. He couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of the SUV, such was the force of the relentless rain. The fictional Cimmerian deity may well have stepped down from his mountain of power to lash the world with his wrath. As if in affirmation, a jagged sabre of lightning split the sky. Danny allowed himself a moment of jubilation. With this weather all flights and boats out of the Keys would be grounded.
Time to reverse roles. Time for the hunters to become the hunted.
50
Chad Casey cursed the squall that had rolled up from the Caribbean with sudden venom. Being a native Floridian, hailing originally from Jacksonville, he knew that late summer storms could last for an hour or a couple of days. The wipers were doing little to keep his Dodge’s windshield clear. For a couple of seconds his mind drifted back twenty years to thoughts of going through the carwash in his father’s old Buick. That was before dear old Dad decided to leave his wife and two sons to shack up with a pole dancer from Miami. Candi—with an i. A real class act. Still, at least her tattoos were spelled correctly. Chad had dated a dancer himself, Arlene. The tramp stamp she sported, nestled just above the cleft in her buttocks, was a downward-pointing arrow declaring fock this
.
But Arlene was pushed back into memory-ville as the pilot’s wife clambered out of a taxi, a magazine held ineffectually over her head in a futile defence against the rain. The woman trotted up to the front door, fished in her purse until she found her keys, then let herself into the house.
Chad was parked in the same place he had watched the house from earlier. Before he left the warmth of the vehicle he worked the slide on his pistol, chambering a round. He was almost sure the house was empty apart from the woman. The pilot was dead. But he waited another ten minutes just to be sure there were no visitors to disturb his work.
Flicking up the collar of his jacket, he stepped out into the rain.
* * *
Edith changed quickly into dry clothes and towelled her hair dry. She had been busy all day. First she had dropped off some corporate leaflets to the printers. Then she had doubled back to the office and worked on the monthly accounts. A late lunch followed by an hour in the gym and she was ready for home. Then the heavens had opened. She often walked between errands, considering it part of her daily cardio but the storm had sent her sprinting for a cab. She was glad to be home.
She tried phoning Garnett. She hadn’t heard from him all day. The call went to voicemail. “Where are you, you big lunk? Call me when you get this.” Then as an afterthought she added, “If you’re all in Sloppy Joe’s without me there’ll be trouble. Love you. Bye.”
She made a sandwich and settled down in front of the television. Suddenly the hunk of bread she’d just bitten off stuck in her throat as she registered the strange man in the doorway. He looked like a typical Conch barfly, loose clothing, summer colours, badly bleached hair. Harmless apart from the pistol that was pointed directly at her chest. An icy spider of dread crawled its way down her spine as she noticed the suppressor fitted to the pistol. She knew instantly that this was one of the men sent after Andrea. Her mind whirled. Garnett had a pistol but it was locked in a drawer upstairs. There was no way past the man. She looked around for some avenue of escape, tears filling her eyes.
The man spoke, his Floridian twang slow and easy. “You try to scream, I’ll put a bullet through your throat.”
Edith believed him.
“The people that stayed the night—did they use a computer? I need the flash drive they were using.”
Edith began to shake her head to explain she didn’t know anything about that, but the man’s expression stopped her. “We have a laptop,” she said.
“Where?”
“It’s normally in here.”
The man scanned the living room. Edith wondered where the computer was. “Get up. I need to check the bedrooms.”
Edith stood on shaky legs but did as she was ordered. In the second bedroom the man found the laptop.
“Where’s the flash drive?”
Her voice trembled. “I’m telling you, I don’t know!”
Without warning the man punched her hard in the face with his free hand. Her teeth snapped together painfully, her head leading the way to the carpet. Purple spots of pain danced across her diminishing field of vision as she crawled across the floor.
* * *
His punch had failed to knock her fully unconscious but a savage kick to the side of the woman’s head finished the job.
Chad began to search the room. He had rifled through the bedside cabinets and the dressing table before his phone vibrated in his pocket.
“Casey here.”
“It’s Lincoln. Chambers says the flash drive is on the top shelf of the cabinet in the bathroom. Go check.”
Chad did as he was told. “Got it.”
Lincoln gave him directions to the rendezvous point. “I’m meeting a TSI interrogator, handing off the woman. You’re to hand over the flash drive. Then we’ll go back to the others at the safe house and find out what the hell went down.”
“What do you mean?”
“At least one of the Gunns got free—I didn’t wait around to see what happened. My men will have dealt with it by now, but they may need help with clean-up.”
“The pilot’s wife is out cold. You still want her clipped?”
“Quickly and quietly. I’ll meet you in thirty.” Lincoln’s voice held no emotion. Business as usual.
Chad stood over the unconscious form. The woman was a damned beauty. He pulled the trigger. Two bullets to the chest and one in the head.
Before he left the house he picked up the laptop from the bedroom and the sandwich from the living room. He inspected it briefly. There were only a couple of bites missing. Sweet. “To the victor the spoils,” he said, to no one in particular.
51
Stewart Strathclyde looked across the restaurant at the woman sitting in a booth. She was with a man, probably her boyfriend.
He had chosen the mid-market pizzeria specifically because it wasn’t his usual scene. He didn’t want to risk a chance meeting with someone he knew. The times he’d been bothered by some casual acquaintance while dining out were too numerous to count. Civil servants were the worst kind of insects in his opinion. All too ready to kowtow and flash a false smile at one of the privileged crowd among which he could now be counted. And this place had an acceptable menu.
He ordered a large glass of Peroni and a salad and considered the couple. It was a real case of beauty and the geek. The young man was trying hard to work the hipster look, in a fitted waistcoat, red trousers and ironic black-rimmed glasses, but his large Adam’s apple and pitiful beard ruined the effect. He was wearing a badge on the waistcoat—no doubt also ironic—with the moronic legend BANG TIDY emblazoned across it. Strathclyde had no idea what it meant and didn’t much care. Many years earlier he had raped, tortured and skinned a woman who had been wearing a shirt that declared FRANKIE SAYS. The memory of his repeated taunts, “What does Frankie say now?” as he slowly dissected the girl brought a smile to his lips.
He dismissed the young man as unworthy of further study. But the woman was a different matter. Where the boy was as white as the underside of a fish, the woman was dark and beautiful. Her mocha-coloured skin was flawless and her eyes were dark pools. The honey-blonde curls that framed her face were obviously dyed but that added to rather than detracted from her allure.
Familiar stirrings began deep inside Strathclyde. After all, wasn’t that why he was here? First would come the sexual test, breaking down her spirit as much as her body. Then the real fun would begin. Most of his previous guests slipped into a state of near catatonia after repeated rapes. But not for long. That’s when the patient work began. The skilful application of the blade brought them shrieking out of their mental hidey-holes.
He watched her lips move as she wasted words on the wannabe hipster. Strathclyde could feel his penis grow in his trousers as his hand clenched involuntarily around the hilt of an imagined knife.
“Is everything all right with your meal, sir?” The waitress smiled, a look of concern on her face.
“Yes.” He answered a little more sharply than he intended. “Why?”
“You looked a little… uncomfortable.”
“What? Oh yeah, just thinking about work. The stress can get to you if you let it.”
She nodded in understanding. “Can I get you another drink?”
“No I’m okay with this one.” He waggled the glass of Peroni. As the waitress smiled again and walked away he gave her a quick once-over. Skinny as a rake. Face as plain as woodchip wallpaper. Not worth even considering. Part of the fun was picking the self-assured ones and breaking them.
Strathclyde allowed his focus to settle back upon the mocha-coloured skin of the woman he’d been watching. For reasons that were unfathomable to him she seemed to be genuinely enjoying her time with the hipster. They were finishing up their drinks and desserts. Strathclyde signalled for the waitress to bring his bill. He paid up, leaving a very average tip. He then crossed the street, positioning himself in a shop doorway fifty yards down from the restaurant, near to his vehicle.
After five m
inutes the couple stepped out into the street, arm in arm. He watched them walk towards him, then stop at a parked car. He was unsurprised when the woman took up position in the driver’s seat—clearly she was the grown-up in the relationship. The car was a new-model silver Ford Focus. Nothing remarkable, but a decent enough ride.
Strathclyde climbed into his own car, a Mercedes SL Class convertible. The paintwork was a midnight blue, the interior finishes kid leather. The car was a thing of beauty and Strathclyde held it in much higher regard than most of the people he had ever known. The engine growled as he pulled out of his parking space and followed the Ford.
He allowed the car a lead of fifty or so feet but felt confident that he would not be noticed. He followed for ten minutes, letting a black cab slip in between the two cars. When the Ford pulled over and parked at the kerb, he pulled in on the opposite side of the street. The Ford’s interior light turned on, and he could see the woman lean over and kiss the hipster. Strathclyde’s upper lip curled involuntarily. He smiled as he imagined her delicate features in a rictus of unendurable pain. That would come later.
The man left the car and after a brief wave to his girlfriend, entered a large house. Strathclyde noticed a gleaming BMW in the driveway. A smaller Fiat Punto sat alongside the bigger car. “Still living with his parents. Fucking loser.”
The woman drove another mile or so into a north London suburb, clearly ignorant of the shark in her wake. Eventually she parked outside an upmarket apartment building. Strathclyde watched as she entered through the front door, and was pleased when he saw lights go on in one of the two ground-floor flats. That would make things easier.
He watched the windows of the flat for nearly an hour. Only the woman’s silhouette could be seen through the curtains. It was a safe bet she lived alone. He clenched his fists until the knuckles turned white. He would google the address later from an Internet café and get all the information he needed. Then he would arrange a little tête-à-tête.
