by Matt Hilton
Guarapo didn't expect anyone to survive the bomb.
He certainly wasn't prepared for when Rickard grabbed him, spun him and wrapped a hand round his jaw. A quick jerk back on the man's head and a swipe of the blade and that was all it took.
Next on his checklist was that Guarapo's indiscreet betrayal had killed Joe Hunter when the honour should have been his. Rickard might have come here to murder his employer, but it didn't mean that he wouldn't have seen the job through. A deal was a deal, the way he viewed things: only Jimena Grajales broke contracts.
Alvaro Silva was another point of anger. Had he ordered Rickard murdered or was that solely Guarapo's plan? Maybe he'd been harbouring a plan for revenge since they first met and Rickard had tickled his balls with the tip of his knife. That was something to think on later. There was something far more pressing on his mind.
Alisha.
The way Jimena made it sound, his wife hadn't betrayed him at all. She hadn't led men to his apartment. Not killers sent by Jimena. But the fact remained, Alisha had conspired against him with the men he'd killed in Miami. Any way that he looked at it, the bitch needed punishing. Maybe it was as simple as that Alisha had been having an affair with the man he'd surprised in the elevator and the man had come back with some friends to do away with the competition. In retrospect Rickard recalled thinking that they weren't very good when he'd killed them, not professionals. Proof of his theory of Alisha's infidelity was the way in which she'd run off, seeking solace and protection in the arms of another man. Rickard had never learned the name of the cocaine dealer in Liberty City, but he didn't doubt that he'd been screwing Alisha when Rickard was out of town.
Bitch!
The thing that angered him most was that Alisha hadn't died. He believed Jimena's words. There was no reason for her to lie. She knew she was going to die, so why mention that his wife had survived? Unless it was to anger him, to throw him off while she positioned the gun she had hidden in her bed. Perhaps she thought he'd be so stunned that he wouldn't notice what she was doing and would not react in time. But he didn't think so. Jimena wasn't afraid to die; in fact it looked like she had fully embraced the idea. She'd only intended taking him with her. She'd told him that Alisha was still alive to score some points on him before she died. One up for the girls!
Yeah, we'll see about that.
And after he finished with Alisha he had a date with that other cow, Imogen Ballard. He'd promised her that things weren't finished.
No woman would ever fuck him over again.
First things first, though. He had to get away from this battleground, avoid the opposing armies and get himself back to the States.
Armed with the gun he'd taken from Guarapo's dead body and the knife sheathed once again at his belt, he felt he was up to it. He wouldn't let the wounds he'd picked up stop him. They required medical attention, primarily the gunshot in his shoulder and the one that had creased his ribs, but they could wait until he was safely away from here.
He used the window he'd shattered to climb outside, where he crouched next to some flowering shrubs as a tall black man raced towards the front of the house. He was followed a moment later by a muscular Asian-American. Rickard blinked in confusion, but when he thought about it he wasn't that surprised. They were the two men that had been with Hunter when Jimena's hit team had failed to take Hunter out at the Miami diner. The Japanese dude, he recalled, had also been there when he had riddled Alisha full of bullets.
Maybe these two men would be as relentless as adversaries as their friend had proved. Or maybe when they found his eviscerated body down in the bombed chamber, they'd just give up.
He thought about following them back inside the house, killing them, but then decided, what the hell. Why tempt fate? Once Alisha and Imogen Ballard were dead, he could always track them down later.
Romeo, his one-eyed pilot, had mentioned staying on a couple of nights at the village where he'd delivered him. Couple of young senoritas he was going to hook up with. Apparently he wasn't known as Romeo for nothing.
Gunfire still echoed through the valley, but it was sporadic now, Silva's troops mopping up the last resistance. The shots were single cracks: more executions than they were all-out gunfights. Silva would be pleased. Calle's home was now Silva's, and so was his niche in the drug market.
You're welcome to it, Rickard thought. He headed for the jeep in which he'd originally arrived. The windscreen was shattered and the driver dead inside, but otherwise it was still driveable. He tugged the dead man out, allowed him to crumple to the ground, then climbed inside. The keys were still in the ignition. He spun the jeep round and away, heading off in search of Romeo.
In his mirrors he saw Metzger running towards the front of the house, a machine gun in his arms, like the indestructible lead in a Schwarzenegger movie.
He looked the part.
Perhaps the big German would kill Hunter's friends and save him the trouble.
Chapter 38
Lifting my Heckler and Koch, I was intent on firing. My damaged hand rebelled against me though and my twitching finger couldn't exert the required pressure. It was well that it failed to do so.
The silhouetted figure at the head of the stairs materialised into my friend, Harvey Lucas.
He came down the stairs, the sheen of perspiration on his bald head reflecting the light behind him as if he wore a halo.
'Jesus, Hunter, you look like crap.'
Harvey grabbed hold of me, supporting me under an elbow. I didn't realise that I'd almost gone to my knees until he hauled me upright and held me against the passage wall.
'Believe me,' I croaked. 'I feel much worse than I look.'
'Damn.'
Swaying, I took a quick glance down at myself. My clothing was shredded in places, covered in dust, and I was plastered with blood. Not all of it belonged to me, thankfully. There was even a chunk of shrapnel embedded in the toe of my right boot. Another half-inch higher and it would have taken off my toes. I reached down to tug it loose and almost fell on my face, but Harvey took control of me and pulled me towards the stairs.
'Gotta get outa here, Hunter, this place is a goddamn hell-hole.'
I wasn't arguing. Harvey hauled me up the stairs and I don't think that I got a steady foot on one of them. At the top he propped me against a wall while he checked the way was clear. Then I was being hustled along again.
My friend questioned me as we went. But I was concussed and not a little out of it. His questions were rapid-fire, but I had only one answer for him.
'Rickard got away.'
Harvey stopped and looked at me.
'He was here?'
'Got away.'
We both glanced around, expecting the killer to jump out from hiding. Then I shook my head. 'He thinks I'm dead. Thinks the grenade got me.'
'He's damn right it got you.'
I laughed. It sounded a little insane.
Harvey cursed under his breath and then pulled me on.
Rink materialised out of a doorway beside us. When he saw me his face said it all.
'I'm OK, buddy,' I reassured him.
'Hunter, my great-uncle Jim looks better than you an' he's been buried for fifteen years.'
Transferring his H amp;K to his left arm, he grabbed me under my other elbow. Now I had the support of my two best friends and it was a good feeling. Made me want to sing that old brotherly song by the Hollies, but I guessed that I'd probably get a slap from Rink. So I kept the words to myself.
Distantly there came the crack of a rifle followed by silence. Sounded like the battle was over with, but whoever turned out the victors here they were still our enemies.
My friends continued hauling me towards the front of the house.
'Goin' to be difficult gettin' out without being seen,' Rink said.
'Nunez and Charles are still out there. They'll cover for us.' Harvey took a quick glance out the door. 'But we're going to have to get around the back before they'll know we're co
ming.'
'Window at the side,' I said. 'Where I came in. We can get out that way.'
In silent agreement my friends turned along the passage past the living rooms. I lifted my chin, indicating the room I'd entered the house by. Both Rink and Harvey looked where I was nodding at the same time. It was a mistake, and I cursed myself for compromising us. The crunch of a boot was followed immediately by a barked command.
'Drop your weapons.'
We came to a halt, but none of us complied.
'Drop your weapons and turn around. Slowly. No sudden moves or you all die.'
The accent was guttural, nothing Spanish about it. Sounded German. When we turned I wasn't surprised to see the muscular fair-haired man I'd noted earlier. He was holding an assault rifle wedged to his shoulder, threatening us with the barrel. He looked the business, standing there as solid as a rock with the cold light of intensity in his eyes.
'I will not say it again.' The mercenary's finger was white on the trigger, and I could swear I could hear the tendons creaking like rigging on a sailboat. He wasn't fucking around with us.
We allowed our H amp;Ks to drop to the floor.
He jerked the barrel of his gun between us. Choosing his targets. 'Now your sidearms.'
To give up our guns was giving in to the inevitable. I was under no illusions: this man was only stripping us of our weapons so that there was no chance of resistance when he finally gunned us down. He was a stone-hearted killer by trade, but I recognised something in him that maybe even he wasn't aware of. To kill you must be prepared to die. Concern yourself with covering the eventuality of your own demise and you start making mistakes.
'Give them up, guys.'
Rink and Harvey didn't argue with me. They just unsnapped their handguns and dropped them on the floor.
The mercenary jabbed his rifle directly at me. 'You as well, asshole. Do it.'
I was hanging on to my friends' shoulders. 'Back pocket.'
'You do it then.' The mercenary indicated Rink. 'Fingertips only.'
Rink reached a hand behind me, pulled my damaged SIG from my waistband and tossed it on the floor. The merc nodded, a smile creeping on to his lips. Rink allowed his arm to loop round my back again, and I felt his fingers dig into my hip pocket.
'I don't know who the fuck you are, but you should not be here.' The merc's words were a final indication of our fate.
'We came here to kill you,' I snapped. My words covered the faint click from behind my back.
They also served to focus the mercenary's attention fully on me. He sneered, aimed the gun directly at my head. 'You are in no shape for killing anyone.'
Rink is right-handed. But he has trained to use his left when in a pinch. As I dipped away from him, shoving against Harvey with my shoulder, the mercenary's gun followed. Rink's left arm had clearance and it came up in a blur. He launched the switchblade like some sort of Ninja move, a weird underhand flick that sent it unerringly at the mercenary's gut.
The man reacted, trying to avoid the missile. His bullets churned a line through the ceiling even as Harvey and I ducked low. The knife jabbed into him just below his left ribs. Not a fatal wound by any stretch of the imagination, but Rink was already moving.
Ten feet had separated us, and Rink covered it in less than a second. He got an arm under the machine gun, ramming it higher in the air. Wasted bullets blasted plaster from the ceiling a second time. He got his other hand on the hilt of the knife and he ripped sideways. The man's gut was laid open, but Rink wasn't finished. He tugged the blade loose, then jammed it into the meat of the man's neck just below the lobe of his left ear.
Now that wound was fatal.
The German dropped face down. Rink stood over him, then reached down to pluck the knife free and wiped it clean on the man's shirt. He turned to me with a cold smile, waggling the knife. 'Bet you're pleased I gave you this now?'
I'd almost forgotten about the knife that Rink took off Wetherby's henchman back in Miami. It had just been one of those things that I'd transferred from my pockets with each change of clothing, along with cash and wallet and a couple of other oddments.
Harvey ran a palm over his slick forehead. 'Jesus, you guys, I wish you'd warn me when you're going to go all Shogun Assassin on me.'
We laughed. Sometimes I forget that Harvey didn't spend all those years fighting alongside the two of us. Together Rink and me are finely tuned and can work as though symbiotically. But Harvey was getting there. Couple more situations like this and he would be part of the hive mentality we shared.
'Wasn't no samurai move.' Rink grinned at Harvey as he joined us. 'Got that one from West Side Story.'
We gathered up our weapons. Harvey was muttering at Rink in good nature, eliciting an even wider grin.
'You want this?' Rink showed me my damaged SIG.
I took it from him. It was an old friend, and you never left a friend behind. 'I'll fix it.'
Rink went out the window first and covered while I negotiated the space. I didn't want to feel like a hindrance, and when he offered me his elbow, I showed him I was OK by lifting my H amp;K to cover the opposite direction. Life in the old dog yet.
Harvey clambered out and we pepper-potted back towards the cleft in the cliff. Nunez scrambled down the rocks and then dropped to a knee, covering our retreat. Above him, Charles also covered us, his adrenalin-pale face looking as solid as the boulders surrounding him.
It was tough scaling the rocks up to the cleft. My right hand was alternating between numb and screaming in pain. I couldn't decide which I preferred. When it was hurting I could at least use it. In the end, Rink swarmed past me, grabbed hold of the back of my jacket and dragged me up and past Charles. Harvey followed, and then Nunez came up as fleet as a cat.
The cleft was no place to linger. Not because there were sentries up on the cliffs any more: Rink and Harvey wouldn't have joined me without finishing them first. Anyone – with the exception of Luke Rickard – who'd seen any of us was now dead. However no one down at Cesar Calle's house was aware of our presence and it was better to keep things that way.
We hurried through the cleft, climbed down at the far end and got back on the trail where we followed the river upstream. We didn't slow down for a mile. Then Rink called a halt. He was concerned about me.
'Keep going, guys. I'm not so bad now that I've shaken off the effects of the explosion.' I caught glances from the Jungla troopers. Neither one of them were party to how close I'd come to being shredded by the frag grenade. Now they were studying me like I was a walking miracle. Maybe I was.
Nunez handed me a flask. 'Drink.'
It wasn't in me to say no. I swallowed noisily. The bottle contained distilled water, glucose, electrolytes. I needed them all.
No one followed us from the valley.
We were pretty sure, but Charles fell back to keep rear guard while Nunez went ahead. As we moved along the trail, I brought Rink and Harvey up to speed with all that had gone down and what I'd overheard.
'The woman was behind all this? She ordered the hits on Bryce's team?' Rink shook his head. 'Goddamn…'
'I couldn't save her.'
'Why would you want to?' Harvey had the same hatred for men who hurt women as I did, but he wasn't thinking of Jimena Grajales in the same way as me. 'She's responsible for more murders than Hannibal freakin' Lecter.'
'She was hurting…'
'She was insane.'
'Yeah,' I nodded. 'But maybe we would've been the same if we'd seen our child murdered.'
The silence that followed my words was interrupted only by the flap of a bird's wings as it broke cover. We had already paused in our march, but the bird's frantic flight now made us crouch and scan the forest for whatever had disturbed it. In the end I decided that it was most likely only the weight of our words and I gave the all-clear sign. We moved on.
'So what do you make of Rickard turning up here?'
Glancing at Rink, I lifted my shoulders in a shrug. 'Revenge? Fro
m what I heard, he blamed Jimena for sending a team to kill him. He was talking about Del Chisholm and his men.'
'He didn't know that they were only there to take Alisha to safety?'
'Jimena told him she'd nothing to do with that, but it made no difference. Rickard came here to kill her, and nothing she said was going to change his mind.'
'The guys that were with Rickard,' Harvey said. 'Who were they?'
Harvey, I recalled, hadn't been party to the conversation I'd had earlier with Nunez when he'd recognised those attacking Cesar Calle's stronghold. I kept it simple.
'A rival outfit. Jimena mentioned someone called Silva. It looks like Rickard changed sides but my guess is he was only using Silva's resources so he could get at Jimena.'
'Looks that way,' Rink said. 'You think Rickard has run back to this Silva dude now?'
'No. I think he's done what he came here for. If he was going to stick around, he'd just have waited at Calle's place for Silva to arrive.'
'So what's your best guess?'
'He's on his way back to Miami.'
'You sound pretty sure about that.'
'I am. Jimena told him that Alisha survived.' Scrubbing a palm through my dusty hair, I could feel gobbets of blood sticking to my scalp. 'And knowing what he is now, I think he'll want to put that right.'
'First chance we get, we should warn Walter.'
'We'll do that once we're back at the staging post. The Junglas have satcom: I want Walter to pull a few strings and organise us a fast pick-up and get back there before Rickard does.'
'You're planning on using Alisha as bait?' Harvey rolled his head.
'Rickard's going after her. It's best that it's under controlled circumstances when he makes his play.'
'She's in a hospital, Hunter,' Harvey said. Not that I required reminding. I just nodded. The logistics were troubling, but there was one good thing going for a showdown at the hospital. Rickard wouldn't have far to travel if we met again: the hospital also had a morgue.
