Rattlesnake

by Andy Maslen

  Discharge type: Resigned commission, honourable

  Along with the textual information were contact details, next of kin and, crucially, a high-resolution digital photograph of the subject. Christie printed it all off.

  27

  Members Only

  TERRI-Ann needed time alone. Gabriel could see it. She was exerting herself mightily to be a good hostess, and he was trying equally hard not to be a burden. But she was a grieving widow, and from their conversations about Vinnie, he’d seen that they had been one of those married couples who loved each other with a passion that would have sold millions of self-help books. So he caught a cab into town to spend a few hours on his own and give Terri-Ann a little breathing space.

  “You from England?” the cab driver asked, within seconds of pulling away from the kerb.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Pretty much. I heard you back there as y’all were talking.”

  “What can I say, you got me bang to rights.”

  Gabriel turned his head to stare out of the side window and let the driver’s chatter wash over him. He watched as the smart, well-maintained houses sped past, each sitting proudly in its own quarter-acre lot of land, big lawn at the front, presumably even bigger yard at the back, shiny cars and trucks on every driveway, American flags flying from poles, kids riding bikes or throwing footballs or Frisbees. Had he turned round completely to look out of the rear window, he would have seen a black Lincoln Town Car about two hundred yards back, cruising along in the taxi’s wake and making the same turns as Gabriel’s driver. Two voices, both his, argued inside his head.

  What am I doing here? I’m not a detective. She should put pressure on the cops. Or the FBI.

  You know why you’re here. You promised. You swore. In blood.

  Yes, and it always comes back to blood, doesn’t it?

  Oh, Jesus, not that again.

  Yes, that again. Death follows me.

  Then run faster. Turn around and confront it. Shoot back, Wolfe.

  “Sir?”

  Gabriel jerked around. His eyes had closed and he’d slipped into a brief, dreamless sleep.

  “Are we here?”

  “Yes, sir. Downtown, like you asked. You going to a bar?”

  “That’s the plan. I might have a walk around first.”

  “OK, well if you want a recommendation, try Catfish Charlie’s on South Alamo Street. Great blues bands every night and real frosty beers.”

  Gabriel paid the man, adding a decent tip, and left the air-conditioned interior of the car for a hot and muggy San Antonio evening. All around him, people were out for the night, laughing, hugging, kissing, walking hand in hand along the river, chatting, arguing, bending to listen to children asking for ice creams, roller-blading, queuing for river taxi trips, taking selfies, checking their Facebook pages. No, not all around him.

  One couple among the hundreds on the Riverwalk were only pretending to do those things. They were young and attractive, but not flamboyantly so, just another pair of young lovers strolling in the evening heat before finding a restaurant or a bar. They tracked Gabriel along the Riverwalk, pausing now and then to stare across at the opposite bank, where a long-haired dude carrying an acoustic guitar nodded back.

  There had been a time when Gabriel would have been on high alert, walking in an unfamiliar city. On patrol in the SAS, he was hypervigilant, alive to ‘the presence of the abnormal or the absence of the normal,’ as the instructors called it. This feeling had served him, and his men, well on active service. It had helped him stay alive since, on missions for Don Webster in Estonia, Kazakhstan, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. But the events of the previous year, and his self-imposed exile in Hong Kong, had dulled it.

  Four more people mingling with the crowds had more on their mind than dinner or how many people had liked their latest Instagram post. A middle-aged man in cargo shorts, a plain white T-shirt and boat shoes walked ahead of Gabriel, turning from time to time to admire the architecture or inspect a wall-mounted plaque on a riverfront building. A young Chinese-American woman with black bangs and a cute plaid mini skirt joined the throng from a side street and began taking pictures with her phone, holding the pale pink device in front of her face as she swivelled this way and that. And two black men, one fortyish, the other ten years younger, slickly dressed in suit pants and white, button-down shirts and carrying briefcases, left their riverside table outside a bar and, still chatting about some deal or other, fell in behind Gabriel.

  After twenty minutes of strolling, and feeling his thirst mounting, Gabriel checked his phone and made a right turn, heading for Catfish Charlie’s.

  The bar was dark inside, not empty, but not crowded, either. Comfortably full with a decent buzz of conversation. The furniture was mainly plain wood with the odd red leather club chair. At the far end of the room, on a small raised stage, a trio – bass, drums, guitar – were doing a competent job on Stevie Ray Vaughan’s song “Pride and Joy.” Gabriel normally drank wine, white Burgundy for choice, but instinct told him beer would be the better choice here. Surveying the long row of ornate-handled taps in front of him, he ordered a Freetail San Antonio Pale Ale. He took it to a corner table just vacated by three young women who were giggling as they argued about where to go next. One glanced at him and smiled flirtatiously, but he only gave a her a social smile in return. He took a long pull on the beer, which was frosty, just like the cab driver had promised. It tasted good: fruity and slightly bitter.

  The band had just moved into the Elmore James tune, “Dust My Broom," when Gabriel’s view of the narrow stage was blocked by two men. Both were six foot at least, and muscular beneath their polo shirts and jeans. Gabriel looked at the feet. Boots. Not sneakers, boat shoes or dress shoes.

  He put his beer down. Pulse up a few bpm. Interesting.

  Straightened in his chair. Keep the breathing regular.

  And spoke. Confident, but not aggressive.

  “Excuse me, you’re blocking my view.”

  The men turned. Gabriel got his first look at their faces. Hard. Implacable. Touched by the experience that gives fighting men a stare that makes others back away. Here we are again, he thought.

  The man on the left spoke.

  “This is a members-only bar, son. Time for you to leave.”

  “I didn’t see a sign. Anyway, my cab driver recommended it, and he was a local. Maybe you’re mistaken.”

  “There’s no mistake,” the second man said. His arms were loose at his sides. To a casual observer, the pose might have looked unthreatening. But Gabriel recognised the preparatory stance of a fighter. “Get up.”

  Gabriel shook his head.

  “I don’t think so, boys. I like blues and these guys are good.”

  What happened next happened very fast.

  Acting in unison, the two men reached down, flipped the round-topped table out of the way, grabbed Gabriel by the upper arms and hauled him off his feet. A couple of women screamed as the struggling trio careered towards a side door. Other patrons were trying to get out of the way, and Gabriel could see some already reflexively reaching for their phones. He went limp, and heard one of the men curse as his deadweight jerked on his arms.

  “SAPD, folks,” the other yelled. “Guy’s a drug dealer. Stay cool.”

  As he finished this instruction, he kicked at the safety bar of the side door, throwing it back onto itself with a bang before it bounced closed and latched from the inside.

  They’d emerged into an enclosed asphalt yard, squat aluminium beer barrels stacked against the back wall of the bar, a couple of cars parked next to these. The band was muffled by the walls so that what emerged into the evening air was a steady thump of bass and drums.

  “OK, buddy, like I said, it’s members only, and we don’t like your attitude.”

  Gabriel felt clear-headed; any trace of buzz from the beer had vanished. The men were tough and experienced. That was clear. But the odds were fine. He wasn’t built on the bigger-
is-better principle, and many assailants both in and out of uniform had learnt to their cost the penalty of underestimating him. Then the odds changed. From around a corner in a dimly lit part of the yard, two more figures emerged. Both male, not as tall or muscular as the first two. One carrying a baseball bat, the other a slim-bladed knife. Unlike his captors, these two were grinning. Makeweights, Gabriel immediately concluded. Amateurs. Professionals never smile.

  He felt rather than saw the first blow and sank beneath the roundhouse punch swinging in towards his nose, bending over backwards before pivoting on his left foot to deliver a brutally effective kick with his right into the puncher’s left knee.

  The man’s cruciate ligament sheared, and he collapsed sideways, screaming with pain.

  Still in motion, Gabriel leapt at the second heavy, aiming for his throat. He cocked his wrist, curling his fingers to harden the muscles in the heel of his hand and struck with pinpoint accuracy, driving the man’s larynx back towards his spine. Gasping and croaking, eyes bulging, the man backed away, scrabbling at his rapidly closing throat.

  Gabriel saw his hand twitch towards an inside pocket. He tensed and recalculated, readying himself to deal with a shooter. Then the hand moved away again, empty. Puzzling.

  He didn’t have time for a more detailed assessment.

  Here come the amateurs.

  The man with the bat swung wildly.

  Gabriel timed his move then snapped his hands out like a snake striking and took the bat off him with a sharp twist and pull.

  Whirling round, he brought the handle down on the knifeman’s wrist. The joint snapped with a trebly crack that was clearly audible above the bassy rhythm section pounding through the brick wall of the bar.

  The knife spun away and bounced off a wall before landing in the shadows with a clink.

  He spun the bat in the air, catching it by the handle before bringing it round and down onto its owner’s left shoulder. More bones parted company, and a thick bundle of nerves known to anatomists and surgeons as the brachial plexus took the full force of Gabriel’s swing.

  The man blacked out from the pain and collapsed in an untidy heap, legs twisted beneath him, arms outflung.

  From behind, Gabriel heard a grunt of effort and jumped away from an incoming punch from the man whose knee he’d ruined. Somehow, he’d levered himself to his feet and was taking all his weight on his undamaged leg.

  Another kick to the same knee would probably mean a replacement. Gabriel took pity on the man. Pity in the form of another stamping kick to the other knee. With a high-pitched squeal the man went down, clutching the newly battered joint with both hands.

  The choker was back on his feet, and he delivered a glancing punch to the back of Gabriel’s head before kicking out and hitting him in the centre of his right hamstring. It was a solid blow, and Gabriel grunted with pain as he was thrown off balance. Then the man was on top of him, hands around his throat, eyes just inches from Gabriel’s own.

  “You fuck!” he croaked. “I ought to kill you.”

  Gabriel tensed his whole body, then in a move taught to him by Master Zhao – the ‘landed fish’ – he focused all his energy, both mental and physical, into his spine and arched it in a convulsive jerk that threw his attacker off to one side. The hands came loose, and before he could react, Gabriel grabbed the right index finger and bent it back until it broke.

  In went his right elbow, catching the man on the bridge of his nose.

  With the blood spurting, and the pain receptors in the sensitive tissue screaming, the man was finished. For security – better safe than sorry, Wolfe – Gabriel jerked his knee down into the man’s solar plexus, driving every last scrap of wind from his chest and leaving him moaning and gaping like a landed fish himself, as every instinct, muscle and nerve fibre in his body obeyed the primal command to drag some air into his lungs.

  Gabriel hauled himself upright and walked over to the knifeman, who was clutching his smashed wrist and repeating, “Oh, fuck it hurts,” like a mantra.

  He squatted beside him.

  “Who sent you?”

  The man’s eyes opened wide in terror, oddly pale in the shadows beneath the wall.

  “Nobody sent me, man,” he whined. He raised a trembling hand and pointed at the heavy with his hands over his throat, moaning in pain on the ground. “That guy over there found me and Lonnie in a bar across town. Said we could make two hundred bucks each if we came and helped him out with some business.”

  “What business? You normally hire yourself out to beat up strangers?”

  The man shook his head wildly, his face a taut mask.

  “No! I swear to God. But we’re short on cash, man. Got debts to pay, you know?”

  Gabriel suddenly felt a great revulsion at this specimen of humanity.

  “I don’t think God’s much interested in your swearing.”

  Then he chopped the blade of his right hand down across the man’s neck and was upright before the light in the man’s eyes had even faded.

  He stalked across the ten feet that separated him from the choking heavy who’d apparently hired the two extras, bending once to retrieve the knife that had skittered across the asphalt during the fight. Placing his hands under the man’s armpits he dragged him into a space between two blue plastic rubbish bins and the far wall of the yard. He shoved him hard against the wall, not minding that the back of the man’s skull made solid contact with the bricks. The man was still struggling to breathe normally, not helped by the blood clots in his nostrils.

  “Who are you?” Gabriel hissed.

  The man looked up at Gabriel with the dead black eyes of a shark.

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “Once more, big guy. Who are you? Who do you work for?”

  “Starbucks. We need new baristas.”

  Gabriel tipped his head a little to one side. Then brought the knife into the man’s eyeline.

  “You have a car?”

  “What, you think I walked here? You fucking British. Of course I got a car.”

  Gabriel stuck the point of the knife into the flesh on the left side of the man’s stomach.

  “OK, good. I have a choice for you. Would you like to take me for a drive or see what your own intestines look like?”

  The man glared up at Gabriel for a second. Then jerked his chin towards a gate in the wall.

  “That way,” was all he said.

  “We’re both professionals. So you know I’ll unzip you if you fuck around,” Gabriel said as he levered the man to his feet. Then he reached inside the man’s jacket and removed a Glock already fitted with a suppressor. “Or I might gut shoot you instead.” Then he tucked the pistol into his waistband.

  Gabriel led the man to his car, left arm wrapped around his waist as if keeping a drunk upright, right tucked away beneath his jacket, holding the point of the knife hard against his side.

  Inside the Town Car, Gabriel turned to the man, training the Glock on his midsection.

  “Drive out of town.”

  “Where to?”

  “The desert. You fuck it up, you’re dead, understand?”

  A nod.

  28

  Enhanced Interrogation

  THREE hours later, they pulled off a county road into a moonlit patch of desert. Gabriel ordered the man out of the car and followed him. The air was cooling rapidly, and Gabriel could smell medicinal aromas from the desert plants.

  “Kill me, and you won’t leave Texas alive,” the man said.

  “Really? I think I could shoot you in the head, stick you back in your car and torch it and be out of the country before anyone found you.”

  “You’re making a big mistake.”

  No, you are. Empty threats mean you’re out of ideas. Now, I’m in charge.

  “Who do you work for?”

  “Like I said before. Fuck you.”

  The report from the Glock was still loud, despite the suppressor. But without a building to bounce off, the blast
wave simply shot away from the muzzle at the speed of sound to bother some distant family of gophers or twitch a bobcat’s whiskers.

  The man swore as dust from the ground in front of him flew up.

  “The next one’s for your right leg,” Gabriel said. “I’ll try to miss the femoral artery, but I can’t promise anything,” Gabriel said in a level voice.

  “You wouldn’t dare. I—”

  Crack.

  As the second suppressed explosion from the Glock streaked out into the desert air, the man screamed and fell sideways, clutching a bloody crater in his thigh.

  Gabriel came closer and poked at the wound with the toe of his boot.

  “I missed the artery. But you’ll still bleed out. It needs a tourniquet.”

  He bent and in a single, swift movement, slit the man’s belt with the knife before yanking it free of the belt loops. He spoke again.

  “This’ll do it. Although tying it off’s much harder than using the buckle.” The man’s eyes, wide like a stunned calf’s, pleaded with Gabriel. “But now you will answer my question. Unless you’re ready to die for your country”

  “OK, OK, you win. Tie the fucker off and I’ll tell you.”

  “You tie it off. It’s your leg.”

  After fifteen seconds of frantic activity, the tourniquet was in place, close to the groin, and cinched tight around the meat of the man’s thigh. Gabriel waited then asked again.

  “For the last time. Who are you?”

  “I’m with the Federal Government. A security agency.”

  “Which one? Homeland Security? FBI? CIA? NSA?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Gabriel knelt by the bullet wound and lowered the tip of the knife towards the shredded flesh. He spoke very softly.

  “It matters to me.”

  A beat.

  “CIA. And you are getting in between some very powerful people and what they want, my friend.”

  “Good. We’re working together. This could still end well for you … name?”