Desperate Ground

by L J Morris

  The text message Carter sent to Kinsella had invited him to the hotel bar for a drink and a chat. There was no need for a clandestine meeting, no need to hide; they were family. If anyone did see them, it was easily explained.

  When Carter walked out of the lift, Kinsella was just coming through the main door into reception. He was a tall, slim man who always dressed well. A designer suit and expensive watch and shoes helped him fit in with his clients in the City. He strode confidently over to Carter, arms outstretched and a big smile on his face. ‘Simeon. It’s great to see you.’

  The two men embraced warmly. ‘Good to see you too, son, how’s your mum?’

  ‘She’s great. I’ve moved her into my house in the country. She asks about you a lot.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear she’s okay, I’ll have to pay her a visit.’ Carter pointed towards the bar. ‘Shall we?’

  Kinsella put his arm around the older man’s shoulders as they walked through the door. ‘I’ll get these, you have a seat.’

  Carter picked a booth by the window and sat down. It was far enough away from the other drinkers that they wouldn’t be overheard but it wouldn’t look like they were trying to be secretive. Kinsella brought two drinks and joined him at the table. ‘Haven’t seen you for a couple of months, Simeon, where’ve you been hiding yourself?’

  ‘You know I don’t like London, I’m happier out in the sticks.’

  Kinsella looked at their surroundings. The bar wasn’t anything special. A multicoloured patterned carpet under a scattering of small round tables and wooden chairs, with booths along the far wall and under the window. The window seats had rectangular tables and bench seats with wood and stained glass partitions. Old photographs of the local area hung from just about every inch of wall space, it looked like it hadn’t been decorated for some time. ‘What brings you here? You could have stayed at my flat. I’ve got plenty of room.’

  ‘I know that, but this is work.’

  ‘You old bugger, I knew you couldn’t stay away from it, retirement my arse. What is it? Anything exciting?’

  ‘It’s something big, Danny, something I need your help with, but if we get caught it’ll plunge us into a whole world of shit.’

  ‘Sounds like my kind of project. When do I start?’

  Carter pulled a brown envelope from his jacket and slid it across the table. ‘Right away if you’re up to it. I need background info on the people and the company in that envelope. I’ll be getting intell from the field and I’ll need you to tell me the significance of it, quickly.’

  Kinsella picked up the envelope. ‘Not a problem. Might mean accessing some government databases.’

  ‘We’ll need that anyway. I want you to keep an eye on any mention of this by MI6. It’s not that I don’t trust Edward Lancaster, I just don’t want any bombshells from Vauxhall Cross.’

  Kinsella nodded. ‘Understood.’

  ‘Lancaster said he picked me for this job because he didn’t want an electronic trail leading back to them. They must be covering for someone, see if you can find out who.’

  ‘Will do. I’ll set up some disposable email addresses for us to use to communicate, it’s not the most secure way but the risks are minimal.’

  ‘Whatever you think is best, Danny, you’re the expert.’ Carter knew he could rely on Kinsella to get him what he needed. His godson had spent years building up multiple fake, online identities. If one was compromised, he simply walked away from it and used another. He could have the security agencies chasing false trails for years. ‘The people I’ve got in the field could use some fake identities, one each for this job in the States, and another as a fall back. There are pictures and details in the envelope.’

  ‘Okay, I’ve a friend in the US who can hook them up, no questions asked, and I’ll work on something more watertight for the backup.’

  ‘Good, I promised I’d help them out. They’ve both had a rough time of it.’

  ‘Just like us, eh, Simeon.’

  ‘Yeah, birds of a feather and all that.’ He finished his drink and slid the empty glass across the table. ‘Now, get the old man another drink and you can fill me in on what you’ve been up to.’

  Chapter 6

  McGill pulled into the car park of a small motel in southwest Houston, just south of Route 59. The only other vehicle there was a burned-out wreck in one corner. The building itself was a two-storey, rundown, concrete box, with a row of doors along the front of each floor and a main door to reception. It wasn’t the sort of place you brought your family for a holiday.

  They walked through the main door and up to the hole in the wall that passed for reception. There was no one about so McGill rang the bell. A young man appeared from a room at the back. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘How much for a room?’

  ‘It’ll cost you twenty bucks for an hour, on top of what you’re payin’ the hooker.’

  McGill pulled two ten-dollar bills from his wallet and threw them onto the desk. ‘A piece of advice, my friend, watch your fuckin’ mouth.’

  The receptionist handed over a door key and winked at Sinclair. ‘See you later.’

  They walked back outside and along the front of the motel to their room.

  The room was typical for this kind of motel: bed along one wall, TV on the other. McGill checked the bathroom, water dripped from every appliance and the ripped shower curtain looked like something out of Bates Motel. The room had two doors, the one they had used from the car park and another that opened towards reception at the back. The door to the inside was damaged. The lock had been replaced and the frame repaired. It looked like it had been kicked in at least once.

  Sinclair sat in the room’s only chair and switched on the TV. There were only three channels: sport, music and porn, obviously catering for a specific clientele. She switched it off and looked out across the car park. ‘What time is the meet?’

  McGill checked his watch. ‘Any time now.’

  ‘Whichever direction he comes from, we need to be ready to back out the other way if it goes pear shaped. Okay, Frank?’

  He nodded. ‘If anything happens I’ll keep them busy, you start the van.’ The throwaway phone in his hand vibrated and he pressed the button to answer. ‘Yep ... room seventeen.’ He put the phone in his pocket. ‘He’s here.’

  Sinclair put one eye to the gap in the curtains. A tall black man was approaching their door from across the car park. ‘Here he comes.’

  McGill opened the internal door to check for anyone trying to come at them from the corridor. He gave the all clear and closed the door but stayed next to it, listening. Sinclair let their visitor into the room and stood at the window, checking for any movement.

  The man who entered the room wore jeans and a hoodie. He was just over six feet tall, middle-aged and had a strong, muscular physique. He looked every inch the ex-Marine Corps captain he was. His shaved head glistened with sweat, which he dabbed at with a white handkerchief. ‘Okay, I don’t know your real names and you don’t need to know mine, you can call me Bob.’

  McGill nodded to him. ‘What have you got for us, Bob?’

  Bob put the large holdall he had brought with him on the bed and placed an envelope on top of it. ‘In there you’ll find UK identity documents for you both, courtesy of your friends in London. They’re good enough to fool any local law enforcement and, if anyone checks your details, we’ve put back-stories in place that’ll hold them up for a while. If the feds, or anyone else, look deeper, they won’t hold up. It’s all we could do at such short notice.’

  Sinclair opened the envelope and took out a passport. ‘It says here that I’m Alison Sutherland. It’ll do I guess. The picture’s definitely shit enough to be genuine.’

  Bob unzipped the holdall. ‘I was sent a shopping list of kit you might want. Night-vision, radio, sat phone, it’s all in here. The bottom of the bag unzips, the weapons are in there.’ He zipped up the bag and turned to walk out. ‘Have fun.’

  McGill held out his han
d. ‘Thanks, Bob, from one ex-marine to another.’

  Bob took McGill’s hand and gave it a firm shake. ‘You take care now.’ He opened the door and walked out.

  Sinclair closed the door behind him and watched through a crack in the curtains as he got into his car and drove off.

  McGill picked up the holdall from the bed. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Sinclair was still watching through the curtains. ‘Wait. I think we’ve got company.’

  On the other side of the car park, the guy from reception was talking with three young men. They were all gang members from the look of them – same colours, matching tattoos – fucking cockroaches. The reception cockroach pointed towards room seventeen then scuttled back under his rock. Sinclair watched as the remaining three split up, two inside, one outside. ‘We’ve been set up, two coming your way.’

  McGill pulled a nine-millimetre Glock from his jacket and screwed on a suppressor. ‘We can’t negotiate with these pricks. They must be planning to rob us and do god knows what to you. Take them all out, no warning.’

  ‘Looks like number one is head roach, he’s coming to the front.’ Sinclair took a butterfly knife from her pocket and opened it with a flourish. ‘Ready?’

  McGill drew back the slide on his Glock. ‘Do it.’

  Roach number one approached the door while pulling a chromed semi-automatic from his waistband. Sinclair stood behind the door and McGill stepped back into the bathroom. The roach didn’t even hesitate. He walked up to the door and, without breaking his stride, brought his foot up against the lock. The doors weren’t designed to withstand any kind of onslaught and the wood around the lock splintered. Their attacker strode into the room expecting to catch them with their pants down; he barely had time to register what happened next. Sinclair stepped out from behind the door and thrust the blade of the butterfly knife into the base of his skull. With his spinal cord severed he dropped to the floor like a broken mannequin.

  The other door burst open at the same time. McGill, standing in the bathroom, fired two silenced shots. Roach number two took one in the chest and one in the forehead. He fell forwards, dead, onto the carpet. Number three, following close behind, tripped over his gang buddy onto his face. McGill came out of the bathroom and fired a single shot into the back of the final roach’s head.

  McGill closed the door while Sinclair stood back beside the window, watching for more attackers. ‘There’s two more getting out of a car, heading this way.’

  McGill grabbed the holdall. ‘Let’s go.’ He opened the inside door and they hurried down the corridor to reception. The reception guy saw McGill coming and knew something had gone wrong. He brought up a weapon from behind the desk but, before he could use it, McGill shot him, knocking him back into his hole.

  Once in the car park, they ran for the camper. The two remaining cockroaches came out of room seventeen and gave chase but McGill dropped them both. Sinclair took the holdall and loaded it into the van. She jumped in and turned the ignition. McGill checked for any witnesses, but in this neighbourhood gang shootings were commonplace. No one ever saw anything. He unscrewed the suppressor from the barrel of his Glock and climbed in the van.

  Sinclair put the van in gear and they pulled out of the car park. ‘We don’t need any shit like that. If the cops get involved, I’ll be winging my way back to Mexico before you can say illegal immigrant.’

  ‘From here on in we don’t need to involve anyone else. We’ve got all the kit we need and we can sleep in the van.’

  ‘Sounds like the best idea. Which direction do we go from here?’

  McGill pulled a road map out of the glove box. ‘Route 59 will take us out of Houston. We’ll stay away from the interstates, it’ll be safer. Quinn’s ranch is southwest of here.’

  ‘Okay, let’s get there and do this. I need to go home.’

  * * *

  At the motel in Houston the local police department had cordoned off the car park and emptied the building. There were only four remaining guests and, as usual, they hadn’t seen or heard anything. There were no witnesses across the street, or driving past, and no survivors to interview. The Houston Police Department normally marked these shootings down as inter-gang rivalry, but Sergeant Maria Rodriguez had the experience to realise that this was something different. This was no drive-by or normal gang shootout. Whoever had taken out these six men had done it before the gang-bangers could fire a single shot. They’d done it without firing any stray bullets and, in one case, killed an armed man with a knife. This wasn’t some local disagreement. She’d have to bring the fed’s task force in on this one.

  Chapter 7

  The Quinn ranch occupied three thousand acres of South Texas, one hundred miles north of the Mexican border. The family home, enclosed within a twenty-acre compound in the southwest corner of the ranch, was built in the style of a Mexican hacienda. A sprawling, square, whitewashed building with red, terracotta roof tiles above simple, square, framed windows that ran along three sides of the building. Each window was set into a stone archway, with the windows on the upper floor opening out onto individual balconies. Several of the balconies had potted plants that twisted between the surrounding, ornate, iron railings. The front of the house had the same arrangement of windows but in the centre, there was a large, arched entrance that led through to a central courtyard. The floor above the entrance extended upwards into a clock tower that housed a sundial on its front face.

  Behind the house was a long, single-storey row of wooden stables and, to the left, a guest bungalow that mirrored the Mexican design of the main house. A large patio and rectangular swimming pool, between the two buildings, kept them separate but connected. One hundred metres beyond the smaller building, the green painted walls of a large corrugated steel barn were partly obscured by a row of bushes, rendering it almost invisible from the front of the house.

  A gravel driveway, lined with palm trees, cut its way between two manicured lawns from the main entrance to the wrought iron gates that hung between two stone pillars. Either side of the pillars was ten metres of matching stone wall, with the rest of the compound surrounded by eight-feet-high iron railings. Cameras on top of the stone pillars monitored the gates and more cameras, mounted on poles along the fence, covered the whole perimeter. One of the cameras panned around to track the approach of a beaten up pick-up truck that rattled and coughed its way along the road outside.

  The vehicle pulled up at the gates and Sinclair climbed out, grabbing a bag from the back. She thanked the driver for the lift and waved to him as he drove off. She walked up to the gates and, after looking through them to check for any sign of the occupants, pressed the button on the intercom box that was mounted on one of the pillars.

  A disembodied voice crackled through the speaker. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’d like to see Jo Quinn please.’

  ‘She doesn’t want to see anyone, go away.’

  ‘Please tell her I’m here.’

  There was no reply. Sinclair pressed the call button again. The crackly voice returned, this time sounding annoyed. ‘You can’t see her, leave now or we’ll call the police.’

  Sinclair was pretty sure they weren’t going to phone the police. ‘Tell her it’s an old friend from Mexico, and I’m not going anywhere till she speaks to me.’

  The speaker fell silent. There was the whirr of an electric motor as the camera above her head turned and zoomed in to get a closer look. She threw her backpack on the ground and sat down on it; she sensed she was in for a long wait.

  Twenty minutes passed, Sinclair took a bottle of water from a side pocket of her bag and took a drink. The heat was stifling, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the only sound was the hiss of the sprinklers that kept the lawns well watered and green. A sharp contrast to the sundried, brown vegetation on this side of the wall. She took off her baseball cap and wiped the sweat from her face and neck with a bandanna.

  The intercom sparked back into life and a different voice, a
woman’s, crackled from the speaker. ‘Hello, who’s there?’

  Sinclair stood up and brushed the dust from her jeans. Moving back over to the box she pressed the button, and at the same time looked straight up at the camera. ‘Hello, Jo, it’s me.’

  After a few minutes a golf buggy appeared and made its way down the drive, stopping just in front of the gates, which opened with a metallic clunk. The two men who got out were dressed identically in black trousers and polo shirts. They were armed with handguns, not an unusual sight in this neck of the woods, and both carried radios. They looked just like the thousands of other security guards who patrolled high value properties across the US.

  Guard number one pointed at the backpack lying on the floor. ‘I’ll need to check your bag.’

  Sinclair picked it up and threw it to him. ‘Help yourself.’

  Guard number two was carrying the same type of handheld metal detector used at airports. He motioned towards her. ‘Arms out to the side.’

  She did as she was told and the guard waved the detector over her whole body. Nothing. He looked over to his colleague. ‘All clear.’

  Number one closed the flap on the bag and threw it back to Sinclair. ‘Okay, get in.’ He pointed towards the buggy with his head.

  With all three of them now aboard, the buggy made its way back up the drive as the gates closed behind them.

  They drove through the archway at the front of the building and onto the paved surface of the central courtyard. A large fountain sprayed cool water into the air and seemed to keep the temperature in this part of the house more bearable. The surrounding architecture matched the style of the outside of the house with one difference; the arches round the windows on both floors connected together to form upper and lower walkways. Sinclair got out of the buggy and scooped some water from the fountain onto her face and neck while her two new friends drove back out to the drive.