A Quiet Man (Victor Book 9)

by Tom Wood

  Several more nets weighed with rocks hung from the boat, but Victor made no third descent. He was too weak now. He was exhausted. He had been seconds from unconsciousness, seconds from the certain death that would follow, and he had failed.

  He had not been strong enough to recover the rifle. He knew he would die for sure the next time he tried.

  Victor sat on the narrow bench and dried himself with the towel he had brought along. A slow, laborious process because his fingers were so stiff he could not fully close his hands to grip the towel with any dexterity.

  He was hypothermic, he knew. His core temperature had fallen so far it could not warm itself back up again. He needed an external heat source for that or it would keep falling and his organs would fail.

  Expecting this, he had the camp stove, but his unresponsive fingers could not manipulate the dial to turn it on. The dial was too small. He should have anticipated this problem but he had believed himself stronger, his fitness better, his constitution hardier.

  Overconfidence.

  An amateur error.

  The worst of errors.

  He pulled on thermal clothing as best he could and collected up the oars. They were thick enough that his hands could grip even with their limited function.

  He rowed with a slow, awkward rhythm. His back, wide and thick with muscle despite his lean silhouette, was still strong, but his coordination poor. He was unable to work both oars in synchronisation and unable to keep the boat in a straight line. The weighted sacks of rocks made this more difficult, and yet he could neither untie the knots nor use a knife with his semi-paralysed fingers.

  Progress was difficult, although the exertion generated energy and that energy warmed him. Little by little, he shivered less. When he heard the swoosh of oars through the water – because his teeth had ceased chattering – he knew he would make it to the shore.

  He knew he would survive.

  He was even sweating beneath the thermal jumper by the time he was dragging the boat on to the muddy beach.

  He paused, resting against the boat, chest heaving until he got his breath back.

  Standing again, Victor paused to look back out at the lake and the rifle lying useless on the bottom.

  He gazed out at his failure and the problem it created.

  He needed it if he was going up against the bounty hunters. They were no civilians. They weren’t a biker gang who let themselves lose a fight against a single man.

  Garrett and his crew were different.

  Eight to twelve men.

  Trained. Competent. Coordinated. Armed.

  That wasn’t the kind of battle for Victor to throw himself into without a weapon.

  But he would because no one else was going to do so in his place.

  The sucking mud of the beach was tough to traverse. His feet sank into it with every step, leaving behind deep footprints where the lake water didn’t reach to cover them. He saw the path he had taken out of the forest, the footprints becoming more pronounced as the ground became wetter and softer.

  He saw a second set of footprints. Bare feet.

  Much smaller than his own, and shallow prints, a shorter distance between them.

  A woman.

  Same height and weight as Jennifer Welch.

  Of course.

  He had convinced her to back off because he said he would be gone soon. Gone before now.

  He broke the arrangement.

  He should be gone. There was no sensible reason for him to still be here and every reason not to be here.

  Yet he was going nowhere.

  The prints didn’t reach as far to the water as his own. Victor pictured Welch taking off her shoes before stepping on to the muddy beach and following his own footprints until she stood just shy of the shore, gazing out at the lake and seeing his boat drifting on the water. At that distance, Victor would not have been able to see her in return against the backdrop of the trees.

  How long had she stood there?

  Not long, he decided, because even when remaining in one spot people rarely stood still for more than a few seconds. Had Welch remained on the shore for any length of time there would be signs of her having shifted her weight, shuffling, or shorter steps back and forth.

  She had stood just long enough to see the boat, to picture him on board or in the water, and then she had returned to …

  Where?

  There were no signs of her nearby but there was no reason for Welch or her crew to be close.

  They knew where he had been, so they knew how he had come here and where he would be going next.

  Had things been the other way around Victor would have waited near the shore to take advantage of the moment of awkwardness of climbing out of a boat and dragging it on to the beach.

  An easy kill.

  The Chicago crew had not done so because Welch hadn’t thought about the footprints in the mud. They were also organised crime enforcers used to operating in an urban environment. The outdoors wasn’t their thing. They didn’t like the idea of hiding in the undergrowth. Maybe they didn’t want to ruin their suits. Maybe they didn’t like the idea of being uncomfortable for an indeterminate period.

  Each one might be a crack shot, but they didn’t have the patience to kill someone like him.

  Victor was patient.

  He took his time to gather his things, ate an energy bar, and set off into the trees.

  SIXTY-THREE

  The truck lay fifty metres from the beach, parked off a narrow track that led from the highway. The trees were dense all around it, visibility cut short by trunks and foliage to less than five metres. There was no straight line from beach to truck; it would take Victor only a few minutes to reach it going along a direct route.

  He took thirty minutes.

  He approached in a wide circle, clockwise to keep his dominant hand and arm closest to any threats. He had no weapon beyond a small knife, but it was protocol nonetheless.

  If the Chicago crew didn’t have the patience to wait at the beach they might not have the patience to wait in the woods either. Still, Victor had to assume they were there. With four, they could have the truck surrounded, each member of the crew covering a different angle of approach. If he were Welch, that’s what he would have done.

  Victor circled around to approach the truck from the far side.

  He moved from tree to tree, low and slow. He paused every few metres. He peered through the foliage. He listened hard.

  By the time he could see the truck, he had seen and heard nothing to suggest anyone was near.

  He remembered a time in Russia, on the Black Sea coast near the town of Sochi. In those woods he had believed himself to be alone as he waited to kill a target with a seven-hundred-metre rifle shot. He had been there for days, waiting for the perfect moment. He had not seen enemies hiding in the undergrowth and waiting to kill him. They had been wearing ghillie suits and had blended into the forest as might chameleons.

  Welch’s crew would have no ghillie suits. They were city people. Competent. Professionals. But not military.

  He saw none of them because there were none present.

  Which was interesting.

  There were no footprints here, yet there were signs of their presence: crushed leaves on the forest floor and bent branches in the undergrowth.

  No ambush at the beach.

  No ambush here.

  They didn’t want a direct confrontation. They didn’t trust themselves to remain hidden. They figured he might spot them as he had done before. They wanted this done without a firefight. A grievous error on their part, given he had no gun.

  So, no ambush, no direct confrontation. Which meant it had to be a trap.

  Victor lowered himself into a push-up position alongside the truck. He didn’t need to roll on to his back and slide under to see there was something in the undercarriage that didn’t belong.

  It was nothing sophisticated. No custom-made bomb. Just a Claymore anti-personnel mine rigged with
a remote detonator in the form of an old cell phone. They had secured it to the truck with duct tape, right beneath the driver’s seat.

  A regular Claymore was detonated by a clacker connected to a long wire that had to be unspooled far enough away that the soldier using it wouldn’t be caught in the blast radius. Contained within a curved plastic shell was a strip of plastic explosive packed with steel ball bearings. The curvature directed the explosion and the resulting cloud of ball bearings in a sixty-degree arc to cover as wide an area as possible. The killing zone went all the way out to thirty metres with the ball bearings capable of going all the way to two hundred metres.

  Detonated directly under the driver’s seat, the truck would be ripped in half and Victor turned into a pink haze.

  They weren’t going for a clean kill but a certain kill. No comeback either, because there wouldn’t be enough left of Victor ever to be traced to the Chicago job, the new head of the conglomerate, or Welch and her crew.

  The Claymore had been designed way back in the fifties and been used in every US conflict since. There had to have been tens of thousands made, maybe hundreds of thousands. There was little to no chance one could be traced, Victor figured. He couldn’t see any markings even to suggest when this one had been constructed.

  He disconnected the cell phone from the detonator. Without an incoming call to send a current to the detonator, the plastic explosive inside the mine was quite safe. Years before, in the backstreets of war-torn Kabul, Victor had seen children playing with C4 to sculpt crude figurines while their parents smoked nearby.

  He realised those children would be adults now.

  Maybe with children of their own.

  What were they playing with now, he wondered.

  Victor slipped the phone into a pocket and tucked the mine under his arm so he could flex his hands. They were still stiff from the cold.

  If Welch and her crew had set a remote-detonated bomb beneath his truck, then they would only set it off when they knew for sure he was behind the wheel and above the Claymore.

  Which not only meant they had to see him.

  It meant they were waiting for him where they knew for certain they would see him.

  Victor was going to make sure they did.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  Welch wasn’t good at waiting. She wasn’t patient. Patience as a virtue was overrated. What did it ever really achieve? If you were patient, you just advertised to people that they could take advantage of you. No one took advantage of Welch.

  Her guys were bored.

  One in the passenger seat of their ride. The other two in the back. She was behind the wheel, of course, which gave her the best view because they were parked off the shoulder of the highway, a way back, but facing the turnoff to the track.

  Overhanging branches cast shadows across the windshield and the hood. Those shadows drifted back and forth in a sleepy rhythm as the breeze pushed and pulled at the trees.

  The car was no off-road beast. They were from Chicago, after all. Welch had to be careful where she took it up here in the wilds. The track that led to the little muddy beach, for example, was a no-go. Even where she had parked was a risk, with all the slick grass and undergrowth.

  Given she hadn’t wanted to push their luck, the car was not hidden. When the truck rolled out to the intersection and he looked right he would see them. Maybe not straight away, but a second or two later tops.

  It wouldn’t make a difference.

  It wouldn’t make a difference because if he could see them then they could see him.

  The guy in the passenger seat had a cell phone in his lap, ready.

  Welch wasn’t as bored as her colleagues. There was a tinge of excitement teasing her spine, causing her to be restless. She was picturing the moment the red nose of the truck appeared out of the treeline. She was picturing the driver glancing right to check the traffic.

  She was picturing his face when she smiled at him.

  She was no sadist, but she owed him that much. They had made a deal and he had broken it. He had made Welch look like a fool. Thank goodness her boss didn’t know any better and believed the task had been completed because that’s what Welch told him. She wasn’t just here to right a wrong, but to save her skin.

  The guy in the passenger seat knew explosives and had rigged up the bomb. She didn’t have a clue how those things worked; that was why she only ever hired good people, the best people.

  She just hoped they wouldn’t all fall asleep waiting.

  It had been for ever since she had stood on the muddy beach in her bare feet and gazed out across the lake. It had been for ever since she had assured her crew they had plenty of time to set the bomb before the fisherman returned.

  Turned out she was correct.

  Plenty of time had become too much time.

  Welch wouldn’t share it with her crew, but she was growing concerned he wasn’t coming back at all.

  That wouldn’t just be embarrassing but humiliating. She wouldn’t be able to live it down.

  Figuratively and literally.

  The latter because her boss would have her killed if he so much as suspected that she hadn’t done the job she had been sent to do and then lied about it. If the fisherman escaped, Welch would have to kill her entire crew to ensure no one ever told of her mistake, her deception.

  It would be quick. She already had it planned out in case she ever needed to do it. It was a simple plan but an effective one. She would have the newest member of the crew killed by the two others. Then, the longest-serving member of the crew would kill the next, leaving only one alive for Welch to handle herself.

  Then what would she do?

  Hire a new crew.

  Back in business with no chance of comeback before the week was out.

  ‘There he is,’ one of her guys said.

  Deep in thought, she had not been paying attention, but there he was at the intersection.

  The nose of the red truck emerged from the trees and the rest of the vehicle came into view, coming to a pause at the stop sign.

  ‘Be ready,’ she told the guy in the passenger seat.

  ‘I am,’ he said, sitting up, taking the phone in both hands.

  Welch watched as the fisherman looked right, checking for traffic.

  She watched as he looked her way.

  Their eyes met.

  She smiled. ‘Do it.’

  The guy in the passenger seat hit the send button.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  Did she fall asleep?

  Welch wasn’t certain, despite the relative ease of answering such a question. Had day become night or had she been dreaming? She couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t be sure of anything. Her mind was fragmented and disjointed, and it took an enormous effort of will to drag those disparate pieces back together long enough to form coherent thought.

  She was drunk and hung-over and awake and asleep all at the same time.

  She saw nothing.

  She heard … something. Noises.

  A strange crackling sound. Hissing. Roaring?

  She moved.

  Cried out.

  Pain in her legs made tears well in her eyes. She opened them, realising she hadn’t been able to see because they had been shut.

  She opened them to see asphalt inches away. Dark road surface specked and smeared with blood.

  Her blood.

  It ran down her face and dripped from her chin. There was a wound on her head, somewhere at the crown. She crept fingers along her skull until she found a sliver of metal buried in her scalp. A single touch of it sent out shockwaves of agony so she left it there.

  She was on her front, prostrate in the road.

  Her arms worked but not her legs. They were a constant source of unrelenting pain.

  She managed to turn her head far enough to look back over her shoulder.

  Welch didn’t see her legs. Not at first. Instead, she saw the burning wreckage of the car and the eviscerated corpses of her crew stil
l inside. One might have been moving, still alive, but she couldn’t see enough to know. There was too much smoke and too much fire.

  Her legs were a mess. Shredded trousers, glimpses of bloody skin and bright bone. She wasn’t sure her feet were still attached.

  Fragments of chassis, bodywork and glass lay scattered across the highway. She saw a door peppered with perfect spherical holes.

  Then she understood.

  The bomb. The Claymore.

  It had detonated as planned but not where it was supposed to have exploded. It had been slipped beneath her car and they hadn’t seen. Under the back, which is why she had survived. Sitting in the driver’s seat, she had been furthest away from the explosion.

  He must have crossed the road far behind them, crept up on them through the trees while all their attention had been set the opposite way.

  The target.

  Welch saw him approaching through the rippling heat haze as a dark apparition manifesting out of the liquid horizon. He seemed no longer human but pure malice.

  Death himself had come.

  ‘I’ll do you a deal,’ Death said.

  Welch struggled to see him. She had blood in her eyes. Smoke and pain made them water.

  ‘I need guns.’

  Welch blinked and stared and said nothing.

  ‘If you have one on you or have some nearby, I’ll call you an ambulance. The paramedics might be able to save you. At the very least they can make your passing less agonising.’

  Welch coughed blood. ‘The car … ’

  She tried to gesture. She tried to say more but it was too hard.

  ‘All your weapons are in the car?’ Death asked.

  She nodded. ‘Help me.’

  Death stood there for a moment longer, peering over Welch to the inferno raging behind her.

  ‘Too bad,’ Death said.

  He drifted back towards the heat haze, entering the rippling horizon that parted for him and then enveloped him like a shroud, taking him once more from this mortal realm and leaving behind only an empty highway.