Judgement

by Fergus Bannon

  The corridor was not wide. The two rows of men sitting on either side left little room for newcomers. Passing by in single file they had to dip their heads to avoid the bank of TV monitors that hung from a gantry just in front of the conference room. The corridor looked fresh and new and smelled of paint.

  He recognised some of the others on his side of the corridor. He nodded to these then turned to stare at the scumbags. Cartago and Vaupes had not yet arrived.

  Everyone sat in silence for another ten minutes, glancing frequently up at the monitors. Cartago and Vaupes entered at 9:55. Cartago reminded him of a corner-store Hispanic, the kind of unassuming businessman who would walk ten miles on an ice-cold morning to avoid trouble. Which just showed how wrong you could be: he shuffled between the two lines of soldiers without raising his head.

  Vaupes didn't look the part either. Columbians were supposed to be languid and indolent, with lazy eyes that needed a sinus full of powder before they would light up. Especially those from the Caribbean coast, blacker with a funny kind of slurring accent. But not Vaupes, Barranquilla boy that he was, not that vicious wind-up toy who strutted and marched like something out of a bad martial arts movie.

  Bari found the little stick-man absurd and he hated him. In common with most of the Mob he had no great respect for other races and was not used to being shown contempt by them. Yet this filthy little spic looked at him like he was a nigger.

  After Cartago had been safely installed, Vaupes came back to sit opposite Bari and immediately locked eyes with him. Bari's stomach churned and he burned to get his hands on Vaupes' bird-like neck, but instead he beamed and waved. Vaupes jerked back and whispered a few harsh syllables under his breath. Gratified, Bari reached into his inside pocket, seeing Vaupes stiffen and jerk a little monkey arm to the jacket of his grey business suit. Bari casually withdrew his cigarette packet and smirked. Vaupes looked like his arteries had imploded.

  Bonham, his back to the corridor, was saying something to the meeting. Then he backed out, closing the door behind him, leaving it unlocked. He nodded to the soldiers and made his way quickly to the exit. Some of his men, armed with automatic weapons, would wait outside, ensuring no one else got into the basement area.

  Bari checked the screens and noted a vacant seat on the Mob side of the long table. He didn't need to catalogue all the other faces to work out who was missing. Firò from Chicago was a fiercely proud and independent man. He was never going to make a deal with anybody. It was a brave gesture, but also stupid and a waste.

  The meeting started. He could hear nothing but he guessed that the New York contingent would be spelling out the meeting protocol. It would be either this afternoon or tomorrow, when they got down to specific cases, that things would start to liven up.

  Coffee was brought in at eleven o'clock. The Scumbo's kept a wary silence, but one or two of the white guys struck up guarded conversations with their neighbours. Bari exchanged a few words with the dark little man called Fredericks on his left. Baseball and fishing, nothing important.

  The morning wore on until nobody was bothering to hide their boredom. Nails had been inspected, rings toyed with, trousers smoothed, legs crossed and uncrossed, again and again and again. A crushing sense of gloom and frustration seemed to descend and Bari started to count down the minutes to the two o'clock lunch. He stopped thinking about life and work because it was all tainted by the man opposite who had spent the last two hours trying to psych him out with his baleful stare. Memory just brought more of that anger which was agony to contain.

  With an almost palpable sense of relief he saw a speck of dust on his trousers down by the knee. He pounced on it, pincering it between thumb and forefinger, lifting his forearm like a crane, swivelling it until it was well clear of his body, then dropping the speck into the void between him and Fredericks.

  He sighed. It had been over too quickly. He glanced across at the sneering Vaupes then up at the monitors.

  To his surprise he saw Cartago rising to his feet, speaking and gesticulating angrily. He swept one arm round to indicate his side of the table then, teeth bared, he stabbed a finger out to point at Scipio. Instantly, as though by magic, a round little hole appeared in the middle of Cartago's forehead and he flopped backwards onto his chair, his head hanging loosely to one side.

  Bari blinked once and felt all the air whoosh out of his lungs. He looked quickly across at Vaupes who, probably alerted by gasps from the others, was turning to look up at the monitor.

  Time went weird, seconds wracking out into hours. Bari's hand seemed to be pushing its way through treacle as he shoved it into his jacket, groping for his gun. Tipping the safety catch with his forefinger, he felt the roughness of the hammer nudge against his thumb. The Scumbo's eyes were widening like something out of a cartoon, then he was grabbing for his own weapon.

  Bari's options evaporated. Cartago's shooting had come as a big surprise but that was too much information to convey in a few hundredths of a second. He drew the gun, cocking the hammer as it cleared his lapel, and fired point blank into Vaupes' chest.

  The little man jerked back as though startled by the gun's terrible noise. But there was no blood, no spatter across the wall behind despite the full power load.

  Alarmed and unsatisfied, Bari controlled the bouncing gun and brought it down to fire at the centre of Vaupes forehead. Snatched too quickly, but it didn't matter. Vaupes caught it in his left eye, half his head vanishing in an instant.

  The corridor reverberated with the blasts from the Smith and Wesson. Everyone was on their feet. For a split second, Bari felt naked and vulnerable as his cupped hands were jerked up above head level by the gun's recoil. The Columbian opposite Fredericks already had a gun in his hand. The Spic took one quick step forward, shoved his gun under Bari's raised arms and fired twice into his chest.

  It was like being hit by ball bearings the weight of medicine balls. Staggering back, he tripped over his chair and fell to the floor but had enough sense left to roll on to his front. He closed his eyes as the war raged over him, the loud crashes of discharging firearms echoing off the walls in an almost continual roar. Several times he felt liquid spatter across his hands and face. His chest ached like hell and he was grateful. It meant his vest, hi-tech chainmail, had held.

  The fusillade of shots continued, the corridor becoming thick with the reek of gun smoke. Centuries came and went before the last sporadic shots died away. Hating the time it took, dodging thoughts of Scipio, Bari slowly cracked open his right eye. He was facing down the corridor away from the conference room. He saw only twitching, moaning bodies tangled up together like for a full-dress orgy.

  A fraction at a time he rolled his head to the left, opening his eye in a narrow slit. Only Fredericks was still standing. He swayed slightly and Bari saw three powder burns across his jacket. Vests had been standard issue, he thought.

  Fredericks' eyes were wide with shock and terror, and he was back hard against the wall. His knuckles were bright white against his olive skin as both hands clenched his gun.

  For a second Bari was perplexed. If he so much as opened his mouth Fredericks would shoot him out of reflex. How long before Bonham's men burst in? Minutes, if they had any sense.

  Just then, fast as a cobra striking, a Scumbo lying at Fredericks' feet jerked up his gun hand and fired into the man's groin. Fredericks yelled, a muscle spasm lifting him a foot into the air. The Columbian flicked up his second hand to steady the first, firing up at where Frederick's jaw met his neck.

  Fredericks, suddenly boneless, collapsed like a rag doll onto the Columbian's legs; blood and brains dripped from the ceiling onto both of them. The Columbian kicked and scrambled his way out from under, flicking his gun around the room looking for signs of life.

  Bari counted to thirty. Maybe someone else was playing possum. Then he waited until the Scumbo stole a glance at the monitors: thanking God he was left handed, he raised the gun and fired into the back of the man's head.

&nbs
p; Even before the Scumbo had hit the floor, Bari was up and running. No time for the monitors, or for anything bar rushing the door and smashing it open with his momentum. Rolling, he came up into a firing position.

  Bodies; piles of them, covering floor and table. No sound, no movement. He shuffled back to get a solid wall behind him. Dropping down to check under the table, he saw only death.

  He gulped hard when he made out Scipio's spiky white hair resting in a pool of blood under the table. He sagged against the wall and felt like he was going to vomit.

  When it came, the shot was so loud it felt like it was in his ear. It seemed to catch him a glancing blow, whipping his head round on his neck, suddenly making everything dark. 'Up' and 'down' shifted and stretched. There was no surprise when his face hit something hard and flat.

  As if in a dream, he struggled to bring up a spastic hand to feel the back of his battered head. Instead of a carpet of thick hair, he felt a rim of something hard and jagged enclosing a soft, wet centre.

  Hazy puzzlement gave way to the pleasure of strange and vivid dreams. He felt his life ebbing away, but it hardly seemed to matter any more.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Allegheny Mountains

  Five miles northwest of Harrisonburg the road became a deeply rutted track and was hard going even for Morgan's four-wheel drive Mitsubishi. At one point, jouncing over a section where two tracks met, Leith's head hit the roof with a sickening thump.

  Morgan's wife, Eve, turned round in the front seat holding her head. 'Ohh, I felt that myself,' she said, all overbite and mischief.

  'Oh, no you fucking didn't,' moaned Leith holding the crown of his head, elbows touching.

  Eve and Morgan laughed. She ran a hand through her boyishly cropped hair and turned back as Morgan swung the jeep in a tight turn round a clump of pine trees. He slipped the jeep down into first as the upward incline of the track sharply increased.

  The telltale signs of civilisation had vanished miles back when surfaced roads had given way to freshly churned tracks. Morgan had struck his chest with his fist then flung his hand out to indicate the way ahead. 'Many four-wheel drives pass this way, one, maybe two days, Kemosabe.' Leith could only shake his head sleepily, still not recovered from the early start.

  Weekends were usually sacrosanct; that meant unconsciousness until midday, a leisurely browse through the papers, then an amble down to the local bar. He felt he needed that kind of downtime to recharge his batteries. His work at Langley required, and got, total concentration. Intricate and challenging, it seemed to suck his consciousness in, trapping it until he was suddenly released blinking and muzzy, the afternoon or morning gone.

  He knew it was the same for the others in his section. Intense, analytical minds, when faced with complex tasks, were easily consumed by them. Lively and garrulous at the beginning of the day, by the end they were often shadows operating on autopilot. Most of their minds would still be engaged with the structures and models and cascading permutations their work had revealed.

  They all had their own ways of dealing with the pressure. Morgan went climbing or backpacking or sailing, physicality and fresh air serving to blow the crud out of his neural pathways. DeMarco submerged himself in his family. Slattery warred with her lawyer husband: their weekends were like campaigns, with friends and colleagues marshalled for support and covering fire during their fabled dinner parties. Stimulating and imaginatively acrimonious, these affairs were unfailingly interesting, usually initiating delicious little melees amongst the guests. People thought it was fun, though few put in regular appearances. Leith had gone once and resolved never to do so again. He found nastiness, however wittily tailored, unpleasant to witness.

  He rubbed his rumbling stomach and looked out at the woodland. The day was still mainly overcast and the autumn colours of the trees were subdued but still beautiful. The trees were spread higgledy-piggledy over the untamed ground, here dominated by oaks, there by larches. He imagined the woodland on a kind of botanical fast-forward: roots and branches splitting, stretching, multiplying to stake out their worlds of air and soil and exclude their rivals. Failure meant starvation over decades. Woodlands, he reflected, were war-zones, made peaceful only by mankind's frenziedly compressed time frame.

  His stomach rumbled again. He leaned forward between the front seats. 'God knows, Ted, I'm not trying to be rude. I appreciate you inviting me along and everything, but do you have any idea where the hell we are?'

  Morgan glanced across at Eve. 'I think he's on to us,' he sounded sad.

  Eve shrugged. 'So what, we'll just do him here. Did you remember to bring the chainsaw, hon?'

  Leith sat back. 'Laurel and Hardy and a chance to break my neck My cup runneth over.'

  He had done some climbing back in Denver while he was at college, but that was back in his younger days before he'd developed a central nervous system. In retrospect, he realised he'd got more fun out of the robust company of fellow climbers than he ever had from grasping a wet and crumbly rock face. Everything had been soured when two close friends were killed in the Sawatch Range: He hadn't climbed or even followed the sport as an observer since.

  Morgan had caught Leith off guard the weekend before: he had been staying over at their apartment in Georgetown after an unhappy time at a mutual friend's engagement party. He often spent weekends with them, or they with him. He’d long since guessed there had to be money in Morgan's background: the apartment was big and in a good neighbourhood, and would have been beyond his salary. Eve, big boned with the same ruddy outdoor complexion as her husband, worked as an assistant curator at the Smithsonian and so earned a pittance.

  Leith had been hitting the sauce, and had unaccountably started boasting about his climbing experiences.

  'You never mentioned you could climb, not in all these years.' Eve had put her arm round Morgan's shoulders as they lounged together on the sofa. They were almost the same height and shape and made a pleasing symmetry. Eve, big for a woman, had mannish hips and unpronounced breasts.

  'Oh sure,' said Leith expansively. 'And that was in the Rockies, not those pissy little Appalachians you scramble over.'

  'And where did you learn to talk through your ass? That's quite a trick,' Morgan asked big-eyed. He always looked relaxed and comfortable, whether in a smart suit while facing down a disgruntled point man or stomping up a mountain in shorts and a baseball cap while Mother Nature tried to blow him off.

  Leith ignored him. 'Around here we're really talking only hillwalking. — a stout pair of boots and a good breakfast, that's all you need.'

  Eve and Morgan were looking at each other. Morgan was pushing his tongue into his cheek. Eve looked back at Leith.

  'Perhaps you'd like to show us, teach us poor dumb hillwalkers a thing or two? In fact, there's a solo contest this weekend. Up in the mountains, sorry, hills.'

  Oh shit, thought Leith.

  'It’s okay,' Eve was giving him a disingenuous smile. 'We're not suggesting you go solo. We'll bring all the gear and do it old style after the contest is finished.'

  'Sure.' Offer someone the chair, he thought, and a life sentence suddenly doesn't sound so bad.

  A sudden bump brought him out of his reverie. Clearing another incline they found themselves confronted with an almost vertical limestone cliff rising out of a dark green meadow dotted with cars and tents. Several small marquees had been set up, and he could see smoke rising from cooking fires.

  Morgan pulled into an empty area of grass and they eased themselves stiffly out of the vehicle. Leith's eyes narrowed as he gazed up at the rock face. It was about five hundred feet high with an overhang at two hundred feet making a small ledge. A couple of spindly trees had managed to get a precarious hold here. They grew out diagonally from the rock for the first few feet of their lengths before curving upward. The cliff flared out into a final forbidding overhang as it reached the top.

  Leith furrowed his brow and looked at Morgan, who nodded his head.

  'Yup!
That's what they're gonna climb.'

  The climbing was to be free. Back in college, climbing had been more conventional: ropes, pitons and stout boots had been de rigeur. Even the hardened mountaineers who would think nothing of hanging upside down over a one thousand foot drop had dismissed freestyle as absurdly dangerous. He'd had a taste of it himself on indoor practice climbs, hauling himself up walls with manufactured holds bolted into position and cushioned matting at the bottom. Trivial stuff, compared to this.

  Morgan had heard through the climbers' grapevine that an unofficial freestyle event was about to take place. Secrecy was important: it helped discourage the kind of ghoulish onlookers who feasted on death and disaster. Freestyle was banned as too dangerous in this and other National Parks.

  While Ted and Eve unloaded their two-man tent, saying they could put it up just fine without his help, Leith wandered across the meadow to the marquees. The weather had been sunny and dry for several days but it was starting to get a little cold in the evenings as autumn drew to a close. But right now the temperature was rising, the sky was clearing and the light wind had a bracing feel to it. Suddenly invigorated, he leapt a small stream in one clumsy bound, not quite making it. When his leading foot hit the stony shallows, icy water sprayed up his leg.

  An entrancing smell of steak barbecued on an open fire wafted across from a green marquee over to the right. He checked his watch. It was only 9:45 but he'd had an early start. He changed course towards the tent, heading past a row of U-haul trailers. At the end of these, several tents were pitched in a disordered fashion. A woman was bent over, tugging at the zipper of a tent flap and displaying a dainty rear.

  He stopped. 'Need a hand?'

  The woman straightened and turned. She looked barely five feet tall, slender framed but with a good muscle tone. She wore a tee-shirt cut-off at the midriff and ragged denim shorts. Hands on hips she stared up at him with a pinched little face.