by Tim Stevens
And, unbelievably, there was something familiar about him.
His phrases were like sharp jabs form a needle, one after the other so that she barely had time to register the shock of one before the next came.
CIA…
There’ll be more of them…
They would have killed you…
And then the one that stuck, lingering: I have a connection with your father.
Somewhere in the middle of it all he’d asked something about her childhood, but perhaps she’d imagined that; imagined she was undergoing therapy of some kind.
The highway droned by outside, the monotonous beat of the windshield wipers like a pendulum lulling her under.
‘What connection?’ she heard a thin, distant voice say. Her own. ‘Did he send you?’
‘No.’ Was there the trace of a smile in his voice? ‘Not exactly. Though indirectly I suppose he did.’
Their exchange was too elliptical, too many-sided, for Nina to find a clear way in. She sat in silence once more.
He said, softly, ‘When you were eleven, Nina, you lived on an island, didn’t you?’
She blurted, almost cutting him off: ‘I know you.’
This time he looked across at her, and did smile; though the smile was touched with sadness.
‘In a sense, you probably do.’
*
It’s an afternoon, clear and bright, mountains of cumulus (she’s learned about clouds this week; her mother’s taught her) towering overhead. This is a few weeks before that night when she heard the screams and went out to look under moonlight.
She’s playing alone on the lawn outside the house. Her mother’s inside, resting. Her father’s at work, his car gone. There are no other girls or boys on the island. When will they be going back to their real home, she wondered again this morning. Soon, honey, her mother whispered in her hair.
The gate’s closed but the wall’s easy to climb. Bored, she shins over it, dropping to the dirt. Across the road, the Box sits in the heat like the brownies her mom bakes.
In the daylight, when it’s silent, it doesn’t frighten her.
She crosses the road (looks both ways carefully first, as she’s been taught, though there are no cars) and approached the Box. She’s never been this close before. Her mom and dad have told her never to go near it.
A voice, loud and angry as an animal’s roar, makes her leap in the air and freeze at the same time. She turns, her heart like a drill. It’s the tall man, the one her father calls Taylor. She doesn’t like him. He’s always bad-tempered, even when he laughs. He’s not laughing now.
He’s running over to her from around the side of the Box, yelling. Using words her mom told her she should never say, words with F and Jesus’s name. He even calls her a little B. She’s too scared to run. He grabs her shoulders and shakes her.
‘Get away from her.’
She remembers the words, and the voice, clearly. The words because they’re so calm; the voice, because it sounds a little odd, like he’s not American or Spanish. He’s standing behind Taylor. She doesn’t know his name, but she sees him around sometimes. He doesn’t look angry.
Taylor turns round and starts using that sneering voice, asking the other man who the F does he think he is. He stands close to the other man (she thinks it’s called “getting in his face”). The other man says something so quietly she can’t hear. Taylor Fs and MFs some more and goes away.
The man whose name she doesn’t know comes over to her. She’s not tall yet, though she’ll grow in the next year. He hunkers down on his heels and asks her if she’s okay. She says yes. He helps her back to her home, saying a lot of other stuff which she doesn’t remember.
What she remembers is his eyes. She sees something there she’s never seen in anyone’s before. Not her mom’s, and certainly not her dad’s.
*
‘He was angry for me. Not at me, but for me.’
Pope hadn’t said a word. How long had she been talking for? She stared at him, his face again in profile. He was utterly unreadable.
It struck Nina suddenly that she had no idea where they were going. They weren’t on the Interstate any more.
Before she could ask, Pope said, ‘What are your feelings towards your father?’
It really is like a therapy session, she thought, and that crazy reckless giggle threatened to erupt again. She swallowed it, hoping to seem as if she was finding difficulty organising her thoughts.
‘He abandoned me when I was eleven. Gave me to my grandmother and never tried to make contact again. No birthday or Christmas cards, no letters or emails. So I feel betrayed by him. Betrayed, hurt, and confused. I want to know why he did it. More than almost anything else in the world.’ The words started rolling out, beyond her control. ‘I mean, if he wasn’t up to being a single dad, I can understand, you know? He was an incredibly busy man, wrapped up in his work. Awkward with kids, from what I recall. But even if he felt my gramma was the best person to look after me – and she probably was – he could at least have called or written me from time to time. Or now that I’m grown up, made contact to explain to me why he did what he did.’
As though sensing she was saying more than she’d intended and wanting to save her from embarrassment, Pope cut in: ‘How do you believe your mother died, Nina?’
She took a breath, slowed herself deliberately. ‘She was killed in the storm. The big one that hit the island and the rest of Honduras that year.’
‘Your father told you that.’
‘Yes. And my gramma.’
‘And your grandmother heard it from… whom?’
‘My father, I guess.’ She stared at the side of his face again. ‘You said, how do I “believe” my mom died.’
He glanced across. This time there was sadness without the smile.
‘Your father killed her.’
Twenty-Three
Sussex County, New Jersey
Monday 20 May, 8.15 pm
There were four of them, spilling out of a black Range Rover that had pulled up past Nakamura’s Taurus on the driveway. Men in camo trousers and flak jackets hauling an assortment of weapons with them, the ratcheting clicks audible through the glass of the window.
Purkiss ran to the wall with the racked shotgun and hunting rifle. Kendrick had beaten him to it. The FBI agents stood at a crouch, handguns emerging smoothly from their jackets.
‘Four of them, armed,’ said Purkiss. Berg and Nakamura didn’t waste time going to the window. Instead they positioned themselves kneeling, guns aimed, Berg’s at the door and Nakamura’s at the window.
‘Where’s the ammo?’ Kendrick snarled at Crosby, who was rocking on the couch, head bent, muttering. Kendrick strode over to him and tapped his forehead with the stock of the rifle.
‘Where’s the fucking ammo?’
‘Sideboard drawer,’ Crosby whispered.
Purkiss said, ‘Got any more guns?’
‘No.’
‘Told you we should have been given guns,’ Kendrick yelled at Nakamura and Berg.
Purkiss hefted the shotgun. It was a Remington 870, a model he’d handled before. Shotguns weren’t his preferred weapon. He caught the handful of cartridges Kendrick tossed at him and thumbed them one by one into the tube magazine. Six in all.
The men wouldn’t come knocking at the door. They’d have seen the Taurus and realised Crosby had visitors. In any case, they hadn’t come in dressed suits, for a chat or even to threaten him. This was a hit.
To Crosby he said, ‘The back entrance,’ and Crosby indicated the doorway to the living room, curving his fingers to the left. Purkiss racked the Remington’s slide mechanism and stepped out into the corridor beyond, swinging to his left.
A short passage ended in a door with a pane of opaque glass through which the evening was visible. A dark silhouette rose into view, blurred by the glass but clearly raising its arms. Purkiss recognised the two-handed grip.
He pulled the triggers. The shotgun bucke
d in his hands as the pane erupted, the smashing glass a high counterpoint to the roar of the blast. From beyond there was a yell, then the emptiness of a back garden through the ruined gap.
Purkiss moved quickly to the door, pumping the gun again. He swivelled left, then right, peering through the remains of the door. A man lay on his back on the concrete of the back porch, a pistol several feet from his outflung hand. His flak jacket had absorbed some of the blast; so had his face. He was gone.
Behind him Purkiss heard hammering and yells. He ran back down the passage to the living room. Crosby sat, arms wrapped around his bony chest, rocking. Berg, Nakamura and Kendrick were fixed on the front door, which Kendrick had locked but which was taking a pounding.
‘The window,’ he yelled. Berg reacted quickly, spinning and raising her gun as the man’s head and arms appeared above the sill and the glass exploded as he fired. Berg fired back at almost the same moment. The man’s bullet smashed into the couch a few inches from Crosby’s legs. He flinched and wheezed.
The bashing on the door stopped. In the sudden silence the hissing from Crosby’s oxygen cylinder was startlingly loud.
They’re regrouping, thought Purkiss. They’ve seen how many of us there are in here.
He ducked his head back into the passage but there was nobody at the back door. A creak in the timbers made him look up. They could come from any direction: front, back, the roof.
Kendrick was advancing at a stoop towards the front window. He crouched below the sill, then stood quickly, aimed the rifle, and loosed off a shot, ducking down again immediately.
‘They’re back at the car,’ he said.
Berg said, ‘All of them?’
‘At least three.’
‘What’re they doing?’
Kendrick mouthed a countdown - three, two, one - and stood again, fired, and ducked.
‘Ah shit,’ he said. ‘Down.’
He dived to the floor, barging into Berg who was crouched behind him. Nakamura sprawled a second later. Purkiss, at the door, hurled himself across to the sofa and knocked Crosby off the end, then rolled off himself and dropped to his knees and hunched his back.
The barrage was like the grinding of an impossibly vast engine, the shots ripping through the log walls and screaming through the living room, smashing furniture and shattering ornaments into cascades of glass and porcelain, sizzling like bees above Purkiss’s head beneath his clasped hands. He felt something wet spray across his back and heard a scream and opened his eyes to see Crosby upright and doing an odd dance, jerking and spinning like a fish on a line. He stood up, tried to make a run for it, and even as Purkiss watched, Crosby’s head burst sideways and his scarecrow’s body was flung across the sofa and over the back.
The gunfire went on, and on, and Purkiss tried to flatten himself on to the floor because some of the slugs were coming through very low now, either knocked off course by the log wall they had to pass through or because they were being fired deliberately low, which meant the men were advancing. He saw in his restricted, floor-level world Nakamura crawling in the direction of the front door, Berg haplessly wanting to sit up but unable to risk it, Kendrick squirming like a salamander towards the cover of an armchair which was itself a blooming tree of ripped and puffed upholstery and wood chippings.
The back door, Purkiss thought. None of them would be coming in there because they’d risk getting hit by friendly fire from the front.
He shouted at the others but the cacophony was too great. Grabbing the shotgun he crawled on his elbows towards the doorway. On the way there he saw the oxygen cylinder, half-hidden under Crosby’s body behind the sofa.
He slid across on his belly and grasped the ring at the top of the cylinder and dragged it free, Crosby collapsing hard on to the floor. Purkiss heaved both cylinder and shotgun through the doorway and sat with his back against the frame. The gunfire was coming in five-second bursts now, one gun keeping the momentum going while the others were reloaded.
Into the relative quiet Purkiss shouted, ‘Kendrick.’
Kendrick looked round, disorientated, saw Purkiss at the door.
Purkiss tapped the oxygen cylinder.
Kendrick stared for a second, then nodded once, getting it. Purkiss stood, lifted the shotgun in one hand and hoisted the cylinder across his other shoulder, and ran.
The back door, ruined by the blast from the shotgun, gave way to a kick. A scrubby back yard was bordered by the high forest. He stepped over the body of the man he’d hit with the Remington earlier ran close to the wall, following it to the right of the door. At the corner, a narrow concrete path ran along one side of the house to the front.
Purkiss reached the front corner and, keeping low, risked a glance round. Across the scrap of lawn the remaining three men were clustered between their Range Rover and the front of the house. They were spread out and advancing unhurriedly, each holding an assault rifle. Armalites of some variety.
Purkiss gauged the distance. Ten yards. Perhaps twelve. He gripped the oxygen cylinder by the ring, hefting it. Because of the angle he would have to use his left arm, his weaker one.
He waited until all three of the uninjured men had reloaded and stood spread out before the cabin, one kneeling and two erect, firing again in what was clearly meant as a final, punishing assault. Then he stepped slightly beyond the corner of the building and swung his left arm up and over his head.
The oxygen cylinder spun almost in slow motion, describing a high parabola and dropping just as one of the men spotted Purkiss at the corner and yelled, bringing the spewing end of his rifle to bear. Before the seam of fire could stitch its way across the corner of the cabin the cylinder landed in front of the guns.
Purkiss heard the chink of bullets against its side and actually heard it hit the ground a split-second before it exploded, the sucking whoosh propelling fragments of its casing outwards like a starburst, one whipping into the timber above his head. A sheet of flame surged and dwindled as suddenly and the screams began, terrible even to Purkiss’s ears. He’d dodged back to avoid the shrapnel but glanced back and saw one man on his back on the ground, clawing at the dancing sprites of fire eating away his chest and belly and nipping at his hair; another man stumbling aside, his rifle still gripped in one fist, his other arm brushing in confusion across his eyes. The fourth one had landed on his belly on the lawn and kept his wits about him and was crawling forward like a commando, grasping his weapon.
Along the front of the cabin from Purkiss, he saw Kendrick lean across the sill of the shattered front window and take aim with his rifle. The stumbling man had orientated himself once more and raised his rifle. Kendrick loosed off two shots, hitting the stumbling man in the chest and knocking him off his feet, and the screaming burning man on the ground who convulsed and then stopped his shrieks. Kendrick ducked out of sight as the crawling man on the lawn pointed his rifle upwards at the window. As Purkiss stepped out the man swung the gun to aim at Purkiss. Purkiss racked the shotgun and fired, but he was too far away for a clear shot and was already diving back behind the corner as the muzzle of the rifle erupted again.
Pressed against the wall, Purkiss counted the seconds: on three he’d swing round again and use the shotgun. Into the silence he heard Kendrick’s voice. ‘Purkiss? You okay?’
He’s coming out the front door, thought Purkiss. He thinks I hit the crawling man.
‘Stay back,’ yelled Purkiss, and stepped back past the corner, levelling the shotgun.
Kendrick was staring at him, halfway through the doorway. Behind him, below the front window, the crawling man had the rifle aimed.
Kendrick saw Purkiss’s eyes and began to turn. It was too late.
The shots came, two, three, and Purkiss almost closed his eyes against the scream.
Kendrick had turned and dropped to one knee. Past him, the crawling man sprawled, blood gouting from his chest. Nakamura leaned through the front window, his Glock still trained on the man.
For a full si
x seconds nobody moved, the tableau frozen in the sudden silence.
Twenty-Four
Sussex County, New Jersey
Monday 20 May, 9.20 pm
‘We call it in.’
‘We don’t.’
The argument had been raging between the two agents for ten minutes. The four of them were roving about the property, Purkiss and Kendrick in silence. There was nothing useful among any of Crosby’s possessions, nothing by way of identification on any of the dead attackers.
It was time to go.
Berg and Nakamura stood facing off like a bickering couple.
‘I could pull rank here, Danny.’
‘We’re way out of line,’ said Nakamura. ‘We’re acting without authority. Rank doesn’t come into it.’
Berg pulled out her mobile phone. Nakamura took a step closer.
‘Berg, god damn it –’
‘I’m calling it in anonymously, okay?’ she snapped. Nakamura raised his hands in a whatever gesture.
Purkiss walked down to the Taurus and gave it a once over. No bullet holes, and the tyres looked intact.
As Kendrick approached Purkiss saw his hands were shaking a little. He said, ‘You okay?’
‘Yeah. Christ, it hits you, doesn’t it? Afterwards.’
In the car, Nakamura at the wheel once more, Kendrick said, ‘Kind of liked your shooting back there.’
‘Huh.’ But Nakamura looked pleased.
Nakamura took the driveway quickly and turned on to the hillside road, heading back the way they’d come. It was an isolated location but not so remote that the noise wouldn’t have attratced attention. The emergency vehicles began to flash past them after five minutes.
Purkiss said, ‘We need access to your database again. As soon as possible.’
*
They found access at a diner in the first small town they reached on the way back towards New York. It had a light evening crowd, mainly student types.
