Black Violet

by Alex Hyland

  Then silence as French turned off the flame.

  I gazed at Lizzie. There were no words for the hatred in her – for the darkness that had twisted her.

  She gestured for the butcher to strap Ella in. My skin tore as I tried in vain to squeeze my hands out of the cuffs. As the redhead took hold of me, the butcher picked up Ella like she was nothing and dragged her toward the second gurney. She struggled against him, her eyes fixed on mine as he hauled her onto the gurney’s base. He placed a thick arm around her neck and pulled her down to one side.

  As the butcher kept hold of her, French tugged her cuffed hands toward a leather wrist strap hanging from the end of one of the armrests. He tied the strap around one of her wrists, then cut the plastic cuffs from her hands with a pair of cable cutters. He forced her other wrist onto the second armrest, strapped her in, then secured her ankles with a leather belt.

  He threw me a look as he grabbed the torch and ignited it again. I couldn’t just stand here – any death was going to be better than this. I barged the red-head back against the wall, then ran at Lizzie. The red-head chased after me and wrestled me to the ground. As we writhed around, I head-butted him in the face – he crumpled to the floor. I tried to get back to my feet, but the butcher descended on me and closed his arm around my neck. I twisted and kicked – but he was too powerful.

  ‘Strap him in,’ said Lizzie.

  The butcher dragged me toward the gurney. I stared at Dillon’s body – his face nothing more than charred bone. French unstrapped the body from the gurney and rolled it onto the floor like it was garbage. The butcher then hauled me over to the gurney and pushed me down onto the damp base.

  French dragged my cuffed hands toward one of the arm rests. I stared at Ella – the desperation in her eyes.

  As French tied the leather strap around my left wrist, I glanced at his pistol. I kept my eyes on it, and tried to remember the fight we’d had at the hotel. As the butcher kept a firm hold around my neck, French cut the plastic cuffs from my hands. My left arm was strapped to the gurney, but for a moment my right arm was free. I reached weakly for French’s pistol – clumsily. He saw it coming and knocked my hand to one side.

  He smiled. ‘You want this, do you?’ he said.

  He grabbed the pistol, tossed it to the floor, then shook his head at me.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I replied.

  He eyed me for a second, then glanced down at his belt. He looked for the crescent shaped blade that he’d cut my neck with at the hotel. He didn’t have it. I jabbed the blade deep into the butcher’s throat, his blood pouring over me as he collapsed backward.

  ‘Kill him!’ said Lizzie.

  French ran for his gun. I sliced open the leather strap that held me to the gurney and raced after him. He grabbed the gun, turned and fired – the bullet zipping past me as I dived at him. I plunged the blade deep into his chest. The fucker went still. I leaped off him and looked for Lizzie – she was gone. Just the red-head still reeling on the floor. As he scrambled for his holstered gun, I grabbed French’s pistol and shot him in the chest.

  I ran over to Ella and cut her free from the gurney. She sat up and threw her arms around me – holding on to me like I was all that there was in the world. I ran my hands across her hair and listened to her breathing. As I checked the wound in her arm, the sound of heavy gun-fire erupted from high above us. We glanced upward as an explosion rocked the upper decks – the lanterns in the ceiling shaking and crashing to the floor.

  Cooper’s team were here.

  Ella leaped from the gurney, the strength flooding back into her – her eyes alive as she grabbed the butcher’s gun.

  We ran out into the passageway. Machine gun fire from the upper decks. We scaled a winding staircase, then tore down a torn, smoke-filled passageway. We cleared a corner, then ground to a halt – two crew members were at an open window, firing Uzis out toward the sea. One swung his gun toward us. I ducked back behind the corner – but Ella was in no mood to be patient. She dived headlong onto the floor and emptied her pistol into them – both guys collapsed. We sprinted over to them, grabbed their weapons, then slowed as we caught sight of the view from the window.

  It was nothing short of war outside. A dozen members of the crew were on deck, firing heavy machine guns at a large trawler about three hundred feet away. Two rocket trails flew out from the trawler and exploded against the yacht’s bow. A bone-jarring impact – the deck shook beneath us.

  A hatch in the yacht’s main deck then slid open. A gantry rose out of the depths – a colossal anti-aircraft gun. Its barrel swung round and fired a glowing beam of lead at the trawler. The beam tore effortlessly through the trawler’s wooden cabins.

  Ella ran for a staircase at the end of the passageway.

  ‘They won’t last against that,’ she said. ‘You find the necklace!’

  ‘Ella!’

  She slowed, then glanced back at me. I held her look for a moment – the longing in me for her to stay safe.

  She nodded.

  I watched as she disappeared down toward the main deck, the yacht shuddering as another rocket hit the bow.

  I turned and scanned the passageway, looking for the quickest route up to the Bragers’ private deck. Tully had used a passkey to get in. I stared at the crew members’ bodies lying at my feet, then rolled them over and searched for one. Their pockets were empty. Nothing hanging around their necks. I checked the deck around their bodies – then paused. I gazed at the floor for a second. Something wasn’t right. A couple of empty shell casings lying on the floor beside me. They were beginning to roll to one side.

  The yacht was listing.

  Lizzie and Marcus wouldn’t stay now – they’d head for the escape boats. I tried to remember. Sam had said that there were three escape boats – one in the bow, two in the stern. But the bow had been hit – they’d be heading for the stern.

  I scrambled toward the staircase, the marble passageways shaking around me as I headed back down into the depths of the yacht. The escape bays would be just above the water line, maybe three decks beneath me. I gripped the Uzi tightly as I hurtled further down.

  The marble walls then gave way to steel and aluminum – thick pipes running the lengths of the corridors. The engineering decks. The bays would be here somewhere. I scurried down the winding corridors, searching every corner, every cryptic shadow – the heat growing thick around me. As I cleared another junction, the yacht juddered violently – an explosion on the decks way above me – I toppled against a corridor wall.

  The lights in the corridors then flickered and went out.

  Pitch black. Not even the faintest glow to guide me.

  I placed a palm against the wall and cautiously felt my way forward. The deck shuddering beneath me – the wall trembling against my palm like some fairground horror-house. I felt my way through the dark, my fingertips brushing against door frames and intercom panels, conduits and cable boxes. Every noise ahead ringing alarms in me. My fingers traced their way along a riveted steel panel, and I slowed – I could feel a corner just ahead of me. I stopped and listened.

  No sound beyond the corner – just distant gunfire echoing way above me. But there was something else. The temperature was dropping. Icy air streaming past my fingertips. I carefully glanced around the corner. In the darkness ahead of me, a faint green glow emerged from a half-open hatch at the end of the passageway.

  I eyed it intently, then began edging my way down toward it. I could hear voices on the other side. The crystal clear sound of lapping water. I crept further, steadying myself against the wall until I could see through the gap in the hatchway. I went still. On the other side was a steel bay the size of a large garage. A small white powerboat sat on a hydraulic platform. Just beyond it, a thick steel door in the hull was wide open – the aurora-lit sea beyond it. In the ghostly light I could see three people moving as they loaded the boat.

  I gripped the Uzi tightly, then pushed the hatch wide open. Lizzie and Marcus�
�s silhouettes turned to face me. The crew member who was with them reached for a weapon – I squeezed the trigger and cut him to the ground.

  Silence as I stepped into the bay. The Bragers standing motionless in front of me. I gazed at them, and the rage rose in me like a wave. This was the moment I’d prayed for – just the four of us – them, me and a big fucking gun.

  ‘The necklace,’ I said. ‘The disk.’

  Marcus eyed me for a moment, then nodded toward the powerboat.

  ‘Step back,’ I said.

  He and Lizzie moved away from the boat and stood by the door in the hull. I carefully approached the powerboat, keeping the Uzi aimed squarely at them as I stepped up onto the hydraulic mount. I reached an arm inside the boat. A metal briefcase lay on the seat – I snapped it open. Inside were the disk and the necklace.

  I grabbed the case and stepped back down off the mount.

  Gun-fire in the distance as Lizzie and Marcus kept their eyes on me.

  ‘What now?’ said Marcus.

  A simple question with a simple answer.

  ‘You killed my brother,’ I said.

  The words sunk into me like a blade. I aimed the Uzi at them – my finger quivering against the trigger. The hurt coursed through me as their silhouettes stood in the line of the gun sight. I wanted to watch their bodies fall to the ground. I wanted it more than anything.

  But I just stood there.

  I stayed absolutely still.

  All I could think about was Jon. If he’d seen me standing here. Those thief’s hands that had hurt him so much, were now those of an executioner. It would have been the greatest hurt I could have inflicted on him.

  My brother. He wouldn’t have wanted this.

  I picked up a rope from the bay floor and threw it at Marcus.

  ‘Tie her hands,’ I said.

  He stared down at the rope.

  ‘Now!’ I said. ‘Do it!’

  As he reached down for the rope, a huge explosion shook the stern – I fell against the powerboat and lost hold of the Uzi. Lizzie ran for a metal case beside her. She swung it open, pistols and grenades spilling out across the floor. She grabbed a pistol and fired at me. I dived to the deck. She fired again – the bullets shearing an electrical cable attached to the hydraulic mount. It sparked as it slithered across the floor among the grenades – a blinding flash then throwing me across the bay.

  I was dazed. A harsh ringing in my ears. Blood dripping from my face. I dragged myself back to my feet and looked around for the Bragers. As I peered through the dense clouds of smoke, I heard footsteps running toward me. I frantically reached around, trying to find the gun. I froze as a figure hurtled toward me.

  ‘Michael!’ said Ella.

  She took hold of me and wiped the blood from my face.

  ‘Michael! Cooper’s taken the yacht! Where are the Bragers?’

  I just stared at her for a moment.

  ‘Where are they?’ she said.

  I glanced around the bay, then peered through the drifting smoke at where they’d been standing – at the open door in the hull. I stumbled over to it and stared at the icy waves outside. In the spectral glow of the aurora I could see Marcus lying in the sea. He was struggling to breathe – a gaping black wound down the side of his face. Lizzie was in the water just below me, scraping her hands against the hull. She gazed up at me as she breathlessly tried to pull herself out of the freezing sea.

  Ella watched them for a moment, then reached for a length of rope lying on the floor. As she approached the hull door, I held out a hand and stopped her.

  She eyed me intently.

  ‘This isn’t what Jon would have wanted,’ she said.

  I shook my head. I may not have killed them when I had the chance, but I certainly wasn’t going to save them.

  ‘They have to answer for this, Michael.’

  As I stared back down at Lizzie, Ella stepped forward with the rope. I stopped her again.

  ‘You can’t do this,’ she said.

  I stayed silent.

  ‘You’ll be no better than they are,’ she said.

  I nodded.

  I took the rope from her and let it fall to the floor. It may not have been right or just, but I didn’t care. I could have had the Ten Commandments tattooed on the inside of my eyelids, I wouldn’t have known what was right or wrong any more. I gently sat myself down on the edge of the hull door, and gazed at Lizzie and Marcus in the sea.

  It didn’t take more than a few minutes. Marcus’ exhausted attempts to stay afloat faded to nothingness. Lizzie’s struggle against the side of the hull became ever more weak – ever more silent – until she finally went still. Her frozen eyes fixed skyward.

  And I just sat there and watched. Cool as the air around me. And content with it.

  Their bodies drifted out to sea – and soon they were little more than shadows lost in the waves. I nodded to myself, then glanced at Ella.

  She couldn’t look at me.

  15

  It felt as if I wasn’t really there. As if everything was being projected onto a screen that I was watching from way back in an auditorium. The images just drifted across me. The bow of The Warren Gate disappearing under the sea. The island appearing beneath the glowing Arctic sky. The silent silhouettes of Cooper’s team as they picked up Geary’s body from Salvesen Point.

  I stood alone on the trawler deck as we continued south. I hadn’t seen Ella since we’d boarded the trawler, and wasn’t sure that I wanted to. The disappointment in her eyes. I didn’t want to see it.

  As I stared at the sea, the cabin door behind me opened and Cooper stepped out onto the deck. The rings on his fingers gleamed in the light as he offered me a cigarette. I shook my head.

  ‘How is she?’ I asked.

  ‘I sedated her,’ he said. ‘She’ll be fine. The wound’s clean.’

  ‘She say anything?’

  ‘Just Tully.’ He shook his head and lit a cigarette. ‘The motherfucker.’

  He toyed broodily with the rings on his fingers for a moment, then stared at the island. He gestured toward the coast.

  ‘There’s security at the airport,’ he said. ‘We can’t risk landing the trawler. A guy’s going to come out by boat and pick you up. There’s a plane waiting, it’ll take you back to San Francisco.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘We’re splitting the team up,’ he said. ‘The Bragers...too much fallout. We’re going to stay low for a while.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just until the heat dies down. A few months maybe.’

  ‘But Ella’s coming back to the US?’

  He eyed me carefully as he took a deep pull on his cigarette.

  ‘You need to take the disk back home, Michael. That’s what you came here for, right?’

  I couldn’t believe it – they were edging me out already.

  ‘I need to see her,’ I said.

  ‘She’s out.’

  I turned and headed for the cabin door.

  ‘Michael, forget it,’ he said.

  I headed down into the trawler’s cramped lower decks – the hull torn and burnt all around me. The smell of gun-smoke still heavy in the air. Four of Cooper’s team were packing away weapons, talking on satellite phones. Another was sitting by a small blue cabin door – a black guy in full body armor. He got to his feet as I approached. He glanced at Cooper standing just behind me.

  Cooper nodded at him. ‘It’s OK.’

  The guy stood away.

  I stepped into a cramped wooden cabin – its bullet strewn walls overlooking a tiny oak cot. Ella was lying asleep under a heavy blanket, her head resting gently to one side.

  ‘She’s fine,’ said Cooper.

  I nodded.

  I watched her breathing for a moment, then sat down on the cot beside her. She didn’t stir. But I don’t know what I’d have said to her even if she had. I knew that I’d let her down – a small-time thief, turned killer. Jon probably wouldn’t have been proud
of what I did either – but Ella was here, and it felt like I’d done at least one thing right.

  I took hold of her hand. The narcotic warmth of her skin. I brushed my fingertips against her palm – the delicate ridges and lines. Her sleeping fingers curled against mine. I don’t think I’ve ever been in love, but as I held her hand, the pain of it felt real to me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this would be the last time that I’d see her. If I knew her at all, she’d disappear back into the shadows. I wouldn’t find her even if I looked.

  One of the team stepped toward the cabin. ‘The boat’s approaching,’ he said.

  ‘That’s your ride,’ said Cooper.

  I glanced at him. As I did, the other guys in the team slowly drifted into view and stood behind him. No aggression – but they were closing ranks. Whatever I was, I wasn’t one of their kind.

  ‘Time to go,’ he said.

  I nodded. And I let go of Ella’s hand.

  I zipped the necklace and the disk into my jacket pocket, and headed up onto deck. Back into the night. And out in the cold again.

  It was probably going to be the story of the year. The coded disk, and the video footage that it contained.

  The footage starts with a boy in a smart, New England-style hotel suite. Fresh-faced, he’s seventeen or eighteen years old. He’s immaculate – dressed in a crisp blue shirt. Expensive shoes. Perfect black hair combed in a neat side parting.

  He may look like a parent’s dream, but he can’t focus his eyes. He’s stoned out of his skull, laughing to himself as he hides a small video camera between the paperbacks on a bookshelf in the bedroom. He adjusts the camera’s aspect slightly, then steps toward the bed. He tries to restrain his laughter as he peers toward the bathroom door.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he asks.

  There’s no answer.

  ‘Miranda?’ he says.

  ‘In a minute,’ comes a woman’s voice from the bathroom.

  He sits on the bed, places his hands on his cheeks, and playfully rocks his head from side to side as he waits. He jumps to his feet as the bathroom door then opens. A woman in her late thirties strides into the room. Long black hair, she’s wearing white stockings and underwear. She’s attractive, but in a tired, weather-worn way. Shadows beneath her deep brown eyes. The boy giggles excitedly, and the woman smiles to herself.