by Matt Hilton
‘You punk-ass,’ Po called him. ‘Quit blubbering like a child and get on your goddamn knees.’
‘Please don’t shoot me,’ Harry bleated. ‘I wanted no part of this! Jesus, man, it was those Menons. They made me do it. Rory! Rory, tell him, man! Zeke threatened to bury us if we didn’t do as he said.’
Rory squinted sideways at his pal, disgusted by his cowardice, but he didn’t offer any resistance. He kneeled and interlocked his fingers at the back of his neck. Still weeping, expecting his execution to be swift and resolute, Harry dropped to his knees in the dirt, but he clasped his hands in front of his chest and prayed.
‘Hypocritical son of a bitch,’ Po snarled. ‘Where in the Bible does it say it’s OK to kidnap and murder women?’
‘Po. Don’t torture him.’ Tess held the two men under guard with her Glock. She had no sympathy for them, except Harry was probably telling the truth. ‘These guys are just flunkies. It’s Zeke and Cleary we really want.’
Po looked keen to torture Emilia’s location out of them, but Tess’s point was valid. They’d been drafted in by Zeke at the last minute and probably didn’t have a clue to what ends he intended using them when they’d answered his summons, but were too scared to defy him. They had once professed to being terrified of Cleary’s retribution, and things probably hadn’t changed in the few hours since last they’d spoken.
‘Jean Chatard?’ Po called out. ‘You can come out now. We’ve got these two under control.’
Twenty feet away, Jean’s head rose tentatively over the top of a backhoe. He had taken shelter inside the steel bucket after his shotgun ammunition had run out. Unbeknown to both parties they’d pinned each other down with the threat of useless weapons. He came forward still cradling the sawn-off: if nothing else it was useful as a club. ‘Where are the others?’ The young man’s face was grazed; he’d caught a ricochet or piece of flying shrapnel during the gunfight but was otherwise unharmed.
‘Hoped you could tell us,’ Po admitted.
‘I’ve got this puke-ball,’ a voice announced. Francis Chatard led Tyson from between the machinery. Tyson was abject in his failure, face down, eyes hooded. Blood dripped from both nostrils and his usually immaculately combed hair stuck out in tufts. A bald patch in his beard glistened redly. Apparently when Francis took him prisoner, he hadn’t been as lenient as Po and Tess with their prisoners. He forced Tyson to kneel alongside the other two. His gun was enough to ensure they behaved themselves. He searched Po’s damaged face.
‘Where’s my father?’
‘Last we saw him he was cruising around in the Dodge still looking for Emilia.’
‘She hasn’t turned up yet?’
Po shook his head, and Francis cursed. But Tess held up a hand, stalling them. Her cellphone was ringing in an inside pocket. She dug it out. The others watched her expectantly as she answered.
‘Pinky? Thank God you’re OK. You have her?’ She looked at her companions and exhaled as hard as they did at the news. ‘Emilia’s safe. Pinky has her.’ Pinky was speaking again. ‘Oh, and we needn’t worry about chasing down Cleary … Pinky says he’s roadkill.’
‘He’s dead?’ Po was conflicted. He wanted to pay back Cleary for everything the man was responsible for, no less his physical abuse of Tess earlier.
Tess continued to relate Pinky’s rushed words. ‘Emilia rammed him with the Toyota. She’s OK, Pinky’s looking after her.’
Francis and Jean wanted to go to Emilia immediately, But Po halted them. He gestured at their prisoners. ‘Take these punks back up to the entrance with you. Don’t let them out of your sight. Tess?’
Tess hung up her call with Pinky, and looked at him expectantly.
‘Call the cops. Get them out here. If any of us is going to stay out of jail we need to hand these idiots over.’
‘There are still two of them out there.’ She meant Zeke and Jim Croft, whose name they were yet to learn. Croft wasn’t a priority to Po, but if the guy was still out there, and armed, he might try something stupid like try to free his captured friends.
‘Give Jean your gun,’ said Po.
‘Like hell,’ Tess said. ‘We still have to capture Zeke and I’m not doing it unarmed.’
‘Zeke’s mine,’ Po told her. ‘I can’t have you shooting him dead before I square things away with him.’
‘I’m not leaving your side.’
‘Didn’t ask you to. But give Jean the gun in case the other asshole tries something.’
‘Zeke could be armed,’ Tess argued.
‘If he had a gun, he’d have shot Darius. He has a blade. He’s in my arena now.’
Tess stared at him in disbelief. Po only looked back: he wasn’t for changing his mind.
‘We’ve got this.’ Francis was still armed, and his gun was threat enough to get their three prisoners off their knees and moving. ‘My bet is the other sumbitch has run off and hid someplace.’
As the Chatard cousins led the trio of prisoners away, Jean used the stock of his shotgun to prod them to greater speed, while Francis kept an eye out for Croft. Tess called the police. She described the situation as briefly, but concisely, as possible, and gave directions to the responding officers to rendezvous with Pinky at the end of the service trail. She iterated that they were the good guys.
Once she was done, she turned to Po. ‘You’re on the clock now, lover boy. If you’re going to do this before the cops arrive, you’d best get moving.’
He moved. She fell in step a few yards behind him, guarding his back, the Glock held in a two-hand grip as she swept it from side to side. All trace of Po’s limp had disappeared. Actually, her pain had left her too, because she was still riding the wave of nervous energy, but she suspected that soon she would crash and burn. It had been the longest of days, and the night promised to stretch eternal before her. The sooner they found Zeke and handed him over to the police the better.
Except it was Zeke who’d found them, and he’d been hiding close enough to overhear their discussion and the fate of his brother.
He dropped ten feet from the boom of the crane he’d scaled, landing heavily behind Tess. Alerted by the impact in the dirt, she whirled, her gun sweeping round, but as fast as she was, Zeke was faster. He lunged deep inside her arch of fire, looped his left arm over both of hers, jamming them under his armpit. Her Glock was ineffective against him, as he sent his blade towards the hollow of her throat.
FORTY-FIVE
‘Don’t do it, Zeke. It’s not her you want … it’s me.’
Hearing the impact of boots on the ground, Po had also pivoted to face the ambush. But Tess was between him and their assailant, and she’d made the mistake of swinging her gun around at arm’s length. Zeke had her arms locked, the barrel of the gun aiming beyond him and his knife at Tess’s neck before he could snatch her out of harm’s way. If he were to rush in and engage, Zeke need only jab the point into the soft flesh, slash open her windpipe and Tess would die. He stepped back instead, holding up his hands, but didn’t drop his knife. Zeke was practically face to face with Tess, though he loomed tall enough to glare over her head at the person he really wanted dead. He ignored Po’s words, in favour of his own.
‘Drop the gun, bitch, or I swear to God I’ll cut you wide and long.’
Tess wasn’t the type to give in easily, and the rule of any law-enforcement officer was to never relinquish her weapon. But she wasn’t a law-enforcement officer any more, and her throat could be slashed long before she managed to juggle the Glock into a position where she could shoot. She didn’t want Zeke to lay his hands on the gun either: she chucked it away, and it landed alongside the caterpillar tracks of the crane Zeke had just jumped from.
‘I’ve done it,’ she told him. ‘I’ve dropped the gun like you said.’
Zeke was loath to take his attention off Po, but he glanced quickly at her empty hands. Confident that she was unarmed, he wrenched her around so she faced Po, his left arm tight around her chest, knife hand under her ch
in. The blade he held flat against her skin, sharpened edge uppermost. It would take a tilt of only a few degrees for it to slice her open. He growled directly into her ear. ‘I should cut off your damn head for the trouble you’ve caused me. That stunt with the fucking truck, you almost crushed me to death.’
Tess could have appealed to him, explained she was desperate only to save a man’s life when she rammed the panel van, but it would never appease him. Besides, she’d felt him stiffen as he spoke those last words; as though he’d sensed an echo of the fate his brother Cleary had suffered. She said nothing, just stayed as calm as she could with a knife at her jugular, and played a suitably cowed hostage.
‘It’s me you want,’ Po said again. ‘Let her go.’
‘I do want you. But once I’ve killed you, I won’t stop until all of you bastards are in a hole in the ground. I’m going to cut off the head of your faggot nigger buddy, and those Chatard fuckers one after the other for what they did to Cleary. Then I’m going to kill Emilia nice and slowly, the way Cleary would have, then …’ he grunted in disgust at the weakling in his arms, ‘I’ll do this bitch. Even slower.’
Surprisingly to Tess, Po threw aside his knife. What the hell was he doing? His knife was his only defence if Zeke killed her and then went after him. She tried to import how insane his action was through the fixed expression she wore, but Po wouldn’t look at her. He kept his gaze on Zeke, latched on with laser intensity.
‘Everything’s gone to shit for you, Zeke. You must see that. Your brother is dead, your pals are rounded up like dogs, and Emilia’s safely out of your way. The cops are coming. You were listening; you know I’m not bluffing. They’ll be here soon. Time’s short. You think you’re going to be able to kill anyone before a sniper puts a round through your stupid-looking head?’
‘I heard. Thing is, if the cops get here before I’m done, I can still kill this skank. Whaddaya say, Villere? Should I kill your girl and then you?’
‘Harm her,’ Po said, his voice barely above a whisper, ‘and it’s the last thing you’ll ever do.’
‘Tough words coming from an unarmed man.’
‘I don’t need a weapon to kill you.’
Zeke’s laughter was full of scorn. He had taken in Po’s swollen eye, the dried blood, and older bruises, and decided he wasn’t as tough as he once was. ‘I was a boy last time we met and you broke my collarbone; things’ll be different this time.’
‘You can bet your ass they will. This time I won’t spare you.’
Again Zeke laughed bitterly. ‘I know what you’re trying to do, Villere. You’re trying to goad me into a fight … so I’ll release your little whore and she can escape.’ He shook his head. ‘Where’s the fun in that? When I can goad you into an even tougher fight by slitting her throat in front of you.’
Tess wasn’t prepared to stand idle while Zeke cut her open. She would fight, and go down fighting if she must, if it gave Po an opportunity to avenge her. She tensed slightly, began raising her hands beneath Zeke’s line of vision, about to snatch down on his forearm to yank the knife from her flesh. She poised her other elbow to ram it into his solar plexus: her strategy was a long shot, but better than nothing. Yet before she did either, she sensed Zeke stiffen again, and this time it was in disappointment.
‘Yes, dat’s a gun to your head, you sumbitch,’ Darius Chatard announced. ‘Now let the girl go free or I’ll blow your brains out.’
Before Darius could pull the trigger, Zeke could easily cut Tess’s throat as a parting shot. Before he was executed he could still win a small victory over his enemies. But at heart he was controlled by the survival trait intrinsic to all living things: he lowered his arms, held them out to his sides. He didn’t let go of his knife.
Immediately Tess ducked out of the way, going left so she was beyond a last-second stab and she backed up against the huge tracks of the crane. From her position she had a good view. Darius stood with his feet planted one in front of the other, his right arm extended, the Glock 20 she had recently thrown down pressed tight to the back of Zeke’s skull in the hollow between the dome of his scabrous baseball cap and the size-adjustment strap. Darius glanced over at her, and nodded. She’d saved him, now he’d returned the favour. Po still faced Zeke.
‘Don’t shoot him, Darius,’ Po said.
‘Whaddaya mean? Of course I’m gonna shoot dis fucker. I’m gonna put one right through his skull for fuckin’ wid my family.’ Darius jabbed the barrel harder against Zeke’s head, prodding his point home. ‘You hear me, butt-wipe? You fucked wid my girl, you fucked wid me, now I’m gonna fuck wid you!’
‘Don’t worry, he won’t be walking away without punishment.’ Po egged Zeke forward, directing his next words at him. ‘You have an old score to settle. Well I’ve more than one. You just threatened my girl’s life, and I’m not gonna let that go.’ He briefly glanced at Tess, and she knew the unavoidable had arrived. ‘What you don’t know is that Emilia is my baby sister. For what you planned to do to her, I’m going to hurt you bad. Your choice, Zeke: a bullet from Emilia’s father, or you can try your luck with me.’
A smile squeezed its way onto Zeke’s mouth. ‘What’s to stop the old man shooting me after I fuck you up?’
‘What’s to stop me shooting you now?’ Darius snapped and seemed a fraction away from doing so. ‘But where’s d’ fun in dat when I can watch you fight for your life first? Trust me, though, asshole, I swear I’m gonna put a bullet through dat stinkin’ cap before I’m done.’
Zeke rolled his neck, flexed his shoulders. The gun had risen to a point higher up his cap. Zeke looked unconcerned, as if his grungy old cap were made of Kevlar. He purposefully took a step forward, confident in its impregnability.
Darius chewed his lips in frustration. Tess suspected what was going through his mind: right there before him were the two men he hated most and he had a full clip he could empty into them. He looked tempted, but then he caught her eye, and the sternness of her visage – her unspoken promise – and the indecision slipped from him, and he lowered the gun.
Zeke glanced back at him, made a subtle adjustment of the brim of his hat. But then he all but dismissed the old man, centring his attention on Po.
‘Pick up your blade, Villere.’
But Po didn’t move to retrieve his knife. He waved Zeke forward. ‘Like I said: I don’t need a knife for a punk like you.’
Zeke barked in laughter.
He lunged, going for Po’s throat.
Po had predicted the attack.
He pivoted and brought down another blade; this one was the stiffened edge of his hand. His move was akin to a karate chop, short and sharp and directed to Zeke’s wrist. The impact sent an electric shock to the ends of Zeke’s fingertips, and he could only gape as his deadly weapon flew from his grasp, neutralized.
‘What now?’ Po asked.
Zeke screeched in fury and swung at Po with his other fist. Po bobbed aside, struck again with the blade of his hand, this time across Zeke’s cheekbone. The sound of his face breaking was sickening to Tess, but also strangely satisfying. Po struck again, blindingly fast, both hands slashing and chopping with such rapidity the individual blows were hard to follow. Zeke was overwhelmed, but not out of the fight entirely. He grappled Po, but while he was holding on he wasn’t delivering any counter-strikes, and he left parts of his anatomy vulnerable to further attack. Po’s elbows and knees pounded him, and Zeke cried out and staggered backwards. Po slashed downward, and the edge of his hand smashed through the same clavicle he’d broken years earlier in prison.
Crying out, Zeke went to his knees in the dirt. His arm hung limp, cupped across his abdomen. He blinked up at Po through tears of agony. ‘You bastard!’ he croaked. ‘You broke it again!’
‘I’m not finished yet.’
Po’s hand scythed down, and the resulting crack! signalled the breaking of Zeke’s opposite collarbone. Zeke screamed, and both his arms flopped in his lap.
‘You won’t be hurt
ing anyone else from now on,’ Po told him.
Zeke howled. Unlike when he’d joined in with Cleary on a hunt, this was a cry of frustration and torment.
Po had heard enough. He powered a knee into Zeke’s chin, and Zeke collapsed backwards, his feet trapped beneath his backside, floppy arms flung wide. His hat had fallen off. Even from where she spectated, Tess could see why he always covered his head. His pate was bald but for a few tufts of greyish hair, laced among dozens of interlocking scars and a raw wound on his right temple. One older scar was dominant on his forehead: a ragged Nazi swastika. It wasn’t a case of self-mutilation; the scar had been cut into his head years earlier by the same Aryan Nation heavies who he’d failed to serve to their satisfaction. Little wonder he hated Po with a passion, because it was he who’d thwarted Zeke and his friends’ orders to gang-rape Pinky Leclerc. For years Zeke had concealed his shame beneath his hat, and carried it in his heart. His hatred wouldn’t have been curtailed by this latest punishment.
Po stared down at the defeated man. Then he stepped closer, head cocked to one side as air bubbled wetly between Zeke’s flaccid lips. His hands flexed.
‘Po. That’s enough,’ Tess said. ‘Let it go.’
Po was a second from ending Zeke Menon’s life. Yet he listened to her words of reason, though not through any sense of compassion. If he slew Zeke, he would not escape justice. When the cops arrived he’d struggle to explain the man’s grievous injuries as it were.
Darius wasn’t as concerned with the consequences of breaking the law. He limped in, planted a foot either side of Zeke’s head, and aimed the gun directly at the swastika.
‘Darius, don’t be stupid,’ Po warned.
The gun barrel came up, and now it was aimed directly at Po’s chest. ‘When I swear an oath, I keep it.’
