Rattlesnake

by Andy Maslen

  Back at the hotel, he put the plug in the hand basin then dumped in the chuck steak. Blood spatters on white porcelain. I’ve seen that before. From a pocket, he pulled out a bottle of Xanax, a gift from Terri-Ann, whose doctor had prescribed them to help her cope with the stress of bereavement and who had taken exactly none. The instructions on the bottle stated that the dose for an adult was one 0.5 mg tablet as required up to three in a twenty-four-hour period. Exceeding the recommended dose could cause drowsiness, irritability and loss of appetite. The list of side effects exerted a fascination on Gabriel and he read on, marvelling that anyone would risk ingesting something that could cause chest pain, nightmares or suicidal thoughts. He had enough trouble in those departments without taking something that might increase them.

  He shook out a dozen of the oval, white tablets into the mortar. Working methodically, he ground them against its rough-cast sides with the pestle. The resulting pile didn’t look much, and after a moment’s consideration, he added a further six tablets and worked them into the mix until he had an even, grainy powder.

  The mortar, though small, was heavy. Not wanting to drop it onto the counter and crack it, he lifted it with both hands and emptied the powdered tranquilisers onto the meat. He wiped out the mortar with his thumb and then mixed the meat in the sink until the powder had all turned pink and he was sure every chunk was coated. Then back the Mickey-Finned meat went into the supermarket’s carrier bag.

  He closed the curtains, lay down on the bed and turned the lights off. Setting his alarm for 3.00 a.m., he closed his eyes.

  He opened his eyes.

  Sat up.

  Picked up the bag of meat.

  And slipped out of the room on silent feet.

  The drive out to Macreadie Demolition was smooth. No cops, hardly any traffic apart from a couple of big rigs hauling lumber in a ponderous convoy. The moon was full, not ideal, but not to be helped, either. Gabriel had run plenty of ops under the white light of starry skies. It was just another factor to build in.

  He turned into the business park a little after 3.45 a.m. Ahead he could see the Macreadie Demolition facility. It took up most of the block on a deserted business park lit by the pinkish-orange light of sodium streetlamps. He drove past at a steady thirty, took a left at the end of the block, and carried on for a mile through light woodland, leaving the business park behind him. The road petered out to be replaced by a gravelled track that led away into scrub. The developers hadn’t bothered lighting this far out, so the moon was the only source of illumination. He loaded the backpack with the meat, water, spare rounds and the rest of the stuff he’d picked up earlier. Then he climbed into the coveralls. He belted on the Desert Eagle in its holster, and strapped the KA-BAR to his right leg. For now, he kept the gloves and ski mask in his pockets.

  “Right then, Wolfe,” he muttered to himself. “One-mile tab across woodland. Let’s get it done in ten minutes.”

  As if in answer, a coyote howled from somewhere behind him. Some primitive part of his brain responded instinctively, and the short hairs on the back of his neck erected.

  He shuddered despite the warmth emitted by the hard ground and set off back towards the business park.

  55

  Add Burglary to the Charge Sheet

  ON his belly, Gabriel crawled to within a hundred feet of the chain-link fencing at the rear of the Macreadie facility. A breeze had sprung up and he’d adjusted his approach so that it was blowing towards him and carrying his scent away towards the woods. As he’d expected, the owners of the business had taken great care to protect it. The fence was ten feet tall, and topped with coils of glinting razor wire. No floodlights, though. He expected there would be security cameras mounted on the buildings themselves, but there were no pole-mounted units facing outwards. He waited.

  “There you are,” he whispered.

  Two dark forms had just appeared round the corner of a windowless block. Four-legged forms. In the moonlight, Gabriel could make out two-tone pelts, pointed ears and the stumps of docked tails. Dobies. One approached the fence and looked in his direction, lifting its snout. He knew it couldn’t smell him, but maybe it was picking up some other sensory impression. In the days when his own dog, Seamus, had been alive, he’d often wondered whether the brindle greyhound possessed some kind of sixth sense. Barking at dogs passing beyond a double-glazed, curtained window. Or jumping up from his customary berth on a worn sofa to greet Britta at the door, way before Gabriel had heard her car.

  These two looked an altogether more serious proposition than the last two guard dogs he’d dealt with. War dogs, not noise dogs. But he was betting they’d be just as susceptible to a midnight snack as any other.

  He lifted the bag of meat clear of the back pack and then, with measured strides, closed the distance to the fence. Both dogs pricked their ears up. No mystery now. They simply heard his boots crunching on the grit and leaves. No barking either. Just low, threatening growls from the backs of their throats.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, reaching into the bag and grabbing a handful of steak. “I brought takeout.”

  Then he lobbed the meat over the fence so it landed a few feet behind the dogs. They turned in unison and ran back to the bloody chunks before returning to the fence and resuming their growling, as if to say, “It’ll take more than that to buy us off.”

  Which was fine.

  Which was the plan.

  And even if it was accepted military wisdom that a plan could survive everything except first contact with the enemy, this plan, at least, was working.

  He threw over two more fistfuls of meat, and while they ran back for it, pushed more through the chain-link. In seconds, they were back, only now their resolve appeared to be weakening. The meat beside the foot of the fence disappeared, then they looked at him, long tongues lolling from their mouths.

  “More?” he crooned. “You boys want some more of Uncle Gabriel’s all-you-can-eat special? That’s OK. That’s fine. Here you go. Eat up.”

  He shoved more meat through the wire, and they gobbled it almost out of his hand, though he was careful to use his palm to do the pushing. He really didn’t want to have to explain to a harassed emergency room doctor how he came to lose a finger at four in the morning.

  He stood, scooped the last two handfuls of meat out of the bag and tossed it over the fence, aiming for a spot about twenty feet back into the yard.

  The dogs ran after it, but something was off about their gait. The left-hand dog stumbled and collided with its mate, who yelped then staggered off to the right. They reached the meat and scarfed it down then turned back towards Gabriel. They were panting loudly, like two miniature steam locomotives, and reached the fence with long strings of drool hanging from their lower jaws. Gabriel stood and observed them. They were swaying, and whining as the Xanax messed with their alertness. It took a further two minutes, but in the end, they collapsed sideways into the dirt with soft thumps. Their glossy flanks were heaving, but their eyes were closed. Out for the count.

  Gabriel retrieved the tarp and shook it out. Taking a few steps back, he grasped it by one edge then spun back towards the fence, so that it flared out like a matador’s cape. At the last moment, he flung it outwards and upwards and watched, gratified, as it whirled high into the air before catching on the razor wire and settling over the coils like a blanket.

  He put on the gloves and the ski mask, threw the backpack into the yard, backed up a few paces, then ran at the fence, hands outstretched. He was up and over the tarp in a few seconds, landing on his toes on the inside of the fence. With the backpack secure once more, he trotted towards the nearest building, scanning for security cameras. There. Tucked beneath the eaves, a single white camera. Flattening himself against the side of the building, he edged along beneath the camera, out of its field of view.

  Continuing to skirt the building, he rounded a corner and found himself in a roughly square courtyard, marked with white lines for car parking. Still no exte
rnal lighting, although there was an office window shaded by Venetian blinds from which yellow light was seeping. A security office, was his guess.

  The office had a door let into the outside wall. No need for its occupant to enter the main building. Gabriel approached on the balls of his feet. He pulled the Desert Eagle from its holster. Reaching down, he gripped the door handle, took a breath, then pushed down and forwards, stepping through with the pistol at chest height.

  The guard inside, a middle-aged white guy with a doughy complexion and red-rimmed eyes, was halfway out of his chair when the sight of the half-inch diameter muzzle aimed at his heart took the strength out of his legs and he sagged back down.

  “Hands where I can see ’em,” Gabriel said, adopting the Texan accent he’d practised with Terri-Ann.

  The guard was already raising his hands when Gabriel spoke, but the words added impetus and his arms shot towards the ceiling.

  “Don’t shoot!” he said. “I got kids. You can take whatever you want.”

  Keeping the pistol trained on the guard’s chest, Gabriel shrugged off the backpack.

  “There’s a bottle of water in there. Use it to take three of these.”

  He held out the bottle of Xanax with his left hand.

  The guard’s eyes widened revealing pale-blue irises.

  “Oh, man. What is that, cyanide?”

  “Xanax. You’ll be fine.”

  “We have them at home. You’re not supposed to take more than one at a time. It’s—”

  Gabriel cocked the hammer with his thumb.

  “They’re a lot easier to swallow than one of these,” he growled.

  The guard extended a trembling hand and took the bottle of tranquilisers. Then he rooted in the backpack and brought out the bottle of Texas Crystal.

  The child-proof cap on the Xanax bottle gave him difficulty, and he dropped it before getting it open. He shook out the tablets and swallowed them in one go, emptying half the water over his shirt front, darkening the pale-blue material.

  “Turn away from me,” Gabriel commanded.

  “No! You’re going to shoot me in the back of the head.”

  “You can turn away or I’ll shoot you in the face.”

  Slowly, eyes rolling in their sockets like a frightened horse’s, the guard propelled himself round using his heels.

  “Hands behind your back.”

  Gabriel brought out a cable tie and lashed the man’s wrists together. He knelt and pulled his ankles back against the chair’s base and secured them to the gas-piston with more cable ties.

  When he spun him round, the man was still awake, and aware. No doubt adrenaline was fighting the effects of the Xanax.

  “I need some explosives. Detonators. Where d’y’all keep ’em?”

  “Uh, you, er, I mean, in the stores. It’s the building opposite. Got a sign on the front. It’s locked, though. You need the keys.”

  “Where are they?”

  The guard jerked his chin at a steel cabinet mounted behind him on the wall.

  “Key’s on my belt,” he said.

  Gabriel looked down. Beneath the man’s belly, a chrome retractable keychain was clipped to his belt. He grabbed the key and yanked it free then opened the cabinet.

  “Which one?” he asked.

  “Third from the right.” It came out as thir frumm ri’.

  The man’s eyelids were drooping, and his slurred speech told Gabriel the Xanax had kicked in hard. He turned and left, not bothering to gag the guard. After all, who’d hear him?

  Once inside the stores, Gabriel hit the light switches. Fluorescent strips plinked into life some twenty feet above him. He was standing in a typical store room, racked out with grey steel shelving. Each product was neatly labelled on a shelf-edge in black capitals. He strode up and down the aisles, like he had in Home Depot. He stopped at a white shelf-edge reading Senatel Powerfrag.

  “OK, we’ll have one of these,” he said, taking the white-and-blue, shrink-wrapped sausage of plastic explosive and stuffing it into his backpack.

  The rest of the aisle was taken up with more explosives, so he turned back and tried another. More explosives, dynamite this time.

  He walked to the end, turned left and saw, straight ahead, a steel cabinet marked “DETONATORS.” It was secured with a heavy padlock: brass body, steel shackle. But it was no match for the bolt cutters.

  From a box marked Electric Matches, he took two packages.

  “And two of these, just in case one fails.”

  He checked in on the guard, who was snoring loudly, and dribbling from his half-open mouth. Gabriel snipped the cable ties with the wire cutters and stuffed everything into the backpack.

  He looked at the computer monitor on the desk. The screen was divided into grainy black-and-white quadrants. He shook the mouse on its pad and a set of controls popped up across the top of the screen. He clicked on the REVERSE icon and switched it up to 16x speed. His eyes flicking from one quadrant to the next, he saw only the Dobermans, making their rounds. He flipped to FORWARD, slowed the speed to 8x and watched the playback until it caught up with the live feed. Then he simply reached round to the back of the computer and pulled out all the cables. Even if he did cross a camera’s field of view, the images would have nowhere to go.

  Then he left, returning the way he’d come.

  The dogs were where he’d left them, puddles of saliva beneath their snouts. They were snoring, too. He leapt for the fence and climbed over the tarp. Standing with his toes wedged into gaps in the wire, he pulled it free, using the KA-BAR to cut it away from the razor wire’s double-pointed blades.

  He landed on bent legs then rolled the tarp into a fat sausage, which he stuffed down on top of the explosives. Without a backwards glance, he trotted away into the woods, mentally adding burglary to his internal charge sheet. Though as a faint inner voice with a southeast London accent reminded him, Boss! You topped a couple of spooks and a fuckin’ charity director. I ’ardly think boosting some plastique’s gonna make things any worse.

  “You’re probably right, Smudge,” Gabriel said.

  Then he laughed, a crazed, cracked sound in the silence.

  56

  IED

  HAVING extended his stay at the Marriott, Gabriel returned to his room with another set of purchases. It was just after midday. He’d visited the Macy’s next to his hotel and gone on to Intertex Electronics on West Hildebrand Avenue. This time, his shopping bags disgorged onto the bed a cheap, black vinyl briefcase, a disposable phone, a nine-volt battery, a rolling pin, a tube of Gorilla glue, a soldering iron and a handful of electronic components including a couple of switches and a digital timer.

  Sitting at the desk, curtains drawn once more, he lifted the fat sausage of explosive from his backpack and placed it in front of him. He slit the wrapper with the tip of the KA-BAR – sledgehammer to crack a nut, he thought, drawing the combat knife’s point along the thin plastic film.

  He used the rolling pin to flatten out the Powerfrag until he’d formed it into a rectangular sheet, sixteen inches by twelve and a quarter of an inch thick.

  He sat on the bed, popped the cheap, gold-effect catches on the briefcase and opened the lid. Using the KA-BAR as carefully as a surgeon might wield a scalpel, he slit the lining along three edges of the case’s interior and lifted it away from the hinges. He peeled it back, then fetched the putty-coloured sheet of Powerfrag and pressed it down against the compressed cardboard innards of the case. He unwrapped both of the electric matches and poked the bare metal detonators into the explosive.

  Next, he repeated the process on the lining covering the latches. With the cardboard exposed, he carved out a small rectangular compartment next to the left-hand latch. The recess was just an eighth of an inch deep and an inch square. He sat at the desk again.

  “OK,” he said, blowing out his cheeks. “It’s been a while since I made one of these. Let’s see if I can remember my training.”

  Soldering iron sm
oking, releasing the acrid smell of molten solder, Gabriel went to work, building a circuit with three breaks in it between the battery and the electric matches.

  The first break was simply two bare ends of wire. These would be fixed to each part of the left-hand latch. The second, he soldered into a three-stage, current-supply relay: dormant, activated, armed. The third was for the digital timer, which he fitted with crimped connectors.

  He tested the switches using a red LED, which he inserted into the place he’d marked for the electric matches, setting the timer to five seconds each time. It lit ten times out of ten, then a further ten out of ten. Careful to avoid placing any stress on the soldered joins, he lifted the whole circuit inside the case and glued components and wiring into place under the lining. With this stage complete, he glued the lining back into place, pushing the cut edges into the corners with the KA-BAR’s pommel.

  If you knew what you were looking for, you might, just, detect where the release of tension in the beige vinyl lining had allowed the material to pucker ever so lightly. If. Given the low-rent materials the manufacturer had used elsewhere, it seemed unlikely that a wrinkle in the lining would occasion more than an eye-roll. In any event, he was betting its recipient would be far more interested in its contents than its build quality.

  Opening the case again, he pulled the LED out and closed the lid. He set the timer for five seconds and ran through the open-close routine again. It lit.

  Gabriel wiped the sweat from his forehead. The next stage was usually the one where terrorists ended up blowing themselves to pieces. Connecting the detonator and power source to the explosive. He took a deep breath and opened the case.

  Working slowly and methodically, he soldered, crimped and twisted until the circuit was ready. All it would take now was a series of one mechanical connection and two digital ones and the circuit would trip, sending the current into the C-4 at the speed of light. For safety, he removed the timer from the circuit before stowing the briefcase at the bottom of the wardrobe.