This must be heaven, Wes thought. You ain't alive, but you ain't dead. Up here in the clouds and the wind and the quiet, but then there was that other sort of quiet, that other high place, those other clouds . . .
Aloud he said, "I won't talk much about the Korengal Valley, if you've been though that kind of shit you don't discuss the way it was. Not with people who'll never get shot at. I'll just say we were scared kids, hungry and skinny and beating off six times a day from the sheer terror, you know? Some lazy Taliban fuck, he sits on his ass on a blanket and gives orders. They'd pay one dumb ass kid with a rusty Russian rifle ten bucks to climb to the top of a ridge and shoot down at our camp all day. Every couple hours. Scare the Jesus out of us, maybe wing one, or even kill somebody. You'd be going to take a shit, POW a near miss, sitting there reading a book, BANG another one. Got so we hardly paid any attention to it, you were gonna get hit or your weren't."
She squeezed his arm, the message unmistakable, don't stop talking. Rosa knew men such as this, men who needed something drained out of them, and it wasn't just sexually. Young men who had seen and done too much. The ghost of her father, a bitter 'Nam vet, floated nearby like a wisp of fog.
Wes laughed dryly. He took a sip of booze. "Finally Top would get pissed off enough and order up some ordinance, maybe a Predator fly over. They'd blow the shit out of that side of the mountain and the firing would stop for the day. Of course, the kid knew that was coming. He always had plenty of time to leave the rifle, scramble down the hill and go back to herding sheep. So in the genius of the United States Government, we'd end up pissing away about three million dollars in ordinance just to miss a scared kid taking pot shots at us with a ten dollar rifle."
She waited. Wise. Sister eternal.
"The corruption, babe. Jesus. Those contractors, such arrogant assholes. Bribery everywhere, the construction projects that never got finished, the cement cut with sand, the bad wiring that killed guys in the shower. And then we wonder why folks around the world don't just automatically follow us, after they see that kind of shit. The sheer greed. The way those Blackwatch dudes acted with their big salaries and Kevlar vests and buzz cuts. All of those pricks."
The wind ruffled her hair as the parachute swung them from side to side in a world devoid of rage or pain. Rosa just listened.
And then Wes said, "In the mountains, we went out looking sometimes, hiking those funky trails, couldn't breathe for shit, and sometimes there would be a firefight. Mines. People who just . . . evaporated."
"God."
He paused for a minute. "And when we found the enemy, it was that snot-nosed kid from the village, or some barefoot old man in rags. They picked us off one by one, we picked them off one by one, and nobody won or lost or even moved much up or down those hills, not for an entire year. Some things never change."
"So you came home."
Wes nodded, "I got a hole in my leg. Could have stayed in by complaining less, but I wanted out. The whole mission was running cold, clear as ice. It was all cursed from the word go. If you see you can't win, you walk away."
"And Cal?"
"Dad got in too deep. He couldn't win. He didn't know how to just walk away. Guess somebody decided the example was more important than getting their money back. I tried to play for him, to see if I could get some of it back to take the heat off. . . ." His voice broke. Wes stopped talking.
"Maybe you need a lawyer to talk to them for you, Wes."
"A lawyer? These guys don't care about the law."
"A lawyer who works both sides can broker a deal. Try Pearlman, he works both sides of the game."
He grinned. "Heard you the first time."
"You'll talk to him, say I sent you?"
He pondered his lack of other options, except for taking people out. Killing in cold blood wasn't the best. "Yeah."
They floated along in heaven for a while, listening to a foghorn miles away and faint bells from parked yachts.
"Can you hear the waves and what's in them?"
He did. "It's like life happening and happening, stopping and starting again, the way it's supposed to. Over and over."
"Yeah."
"That's nice."
After a moment, Rose slid her fingers to the front of his jeans. She rubbed him hard. "Let's go back down."
He didn't argue. Rosa flashed her light twice. They felt a jerk as the winch started pulling them back down toward the speed boat, the wind resisting a bit like a greedy relative holding on after a holiday party. Wes figured he loved this girl as much as he could love anybody, with a kind of grudging respect and a protective feeling. Maybe Catalina wouldn't be such a bad place to live. Work hard in the sun, sweat a lot and party hard at night. Screw. Just let the years go by at whatever pace they wanted without trying to fight it much. What could be wrong about that?
The kid reeled them in. They landed clumsily on the slick, rolling surface of the speedboat. It was a stupid move in the dark, they could have broken something, but Wes loved Rosa for the romance of it, the physical recklessness. He felt purged somehow, and knew that was her intention all along. The kid, Vigo, ran them back to the dock straight as an arrow, bow thrusting and bouncing on choppy waves. Wes figured the kid had already tuned them out. His mind was bellied up to a bar munching fish and chips with a tall glass of German beer and one arm around a beach bunny. Wes rode that boat bareback across the bucking ocean, wind shrieking in his ears, face freezing solid like some Halloween mask.
They slowed and Vigo slid into their allotted slot. He started whistling. The kid didn't even look up as he tied off the boat.
Rosa and Wes walked down the nearly empty dock, arms around each other. He was still feeling the booze, but not as much. He just felt a little less anxious and angry. Wes wondered, not for the first time, what this outgoing girl got from him, with his coming and going and relentlessly self destructive ways. The idea that Rosa envisioned a good man under the scars embarrassed him in a way he could not have explained. As if Wes McCann didn't deserve to be seen that way. As if a woman's perception held more value than a man's, and that if she saw deeply enough into his soul, saw the sad truth about his weaknesses and vulnerabilities, the exposure could prove fatal. Wes wanted to have rough sex with her tonight, then step away and go it alone. Get loose and then do something to create a chasm to compensate for the terrible, looming presence of his mortality.
"Where you going?"
He had stepped away from Rosa and was walking zigzag for no particular reason, an unconscious response to his own thoughts. The main drag was emptying out as tourists returned to their hotels or packed restaurant bars. Once the sun went down, Catalina offered little more than rooms to fuck in, extra calories and a hangover. The night pressed down like a winter quilt. It smothered the moon and stars momentarily as cloud cover drifted west from the mainland. Wes did not answer Rosa. He turned to take a shortcut through a courtyard where several shops had been closed down.
For some reason, Wes suddenly didn't care to be around other people. Part of him hoped Rosa wouldn't follow. Maybe that she would save herself by going back to the room she rented for the summer, just a bed and a sink and a toilet near the crowded beach.
But she did follow him into the darkness.
Wes felt a flash of irrational resentment then, annoyance that she hadn't taken the hint. Well, fuck her then. She'd get what she deserved. He turned in the darkness and kissed her roughly. Instead of pulling away, Rosa sensed his urgency. She returned it, clutching at his body, shifting his clothing. Wes felt something soften again deep inside, something he didn't want to lose control over. He thought of his father and fought back a sob.
The first man came up the steps lightly, almost on tiptoe, a black 9mm pressed tightly against his right thigh. His eyes glowed white in the faint light of the cloud-covered moon. Wes saw him and stopped breathing. Instinct took over. Wes moved his body so that Rosa was behind him. He pressed her back in an alcove. Two of them were closing fast, light on their
feet, their intent clear. His mind was processing rapidly, straining to find a way out of the rapidly escalating situation. The second man was coming out of the shadows. He'd been ahead of them in the dark, hiding next to a closed espresso shop.
Wes took a deep breath and Rosa reacted to his tension. She looked up. Wes stared and noted that both men wore dark clothing. They had ski masks on. How could this be? Why put a team on him and his father both. Over such a small amount of money for Christ's sake? There had to be more to it, things he didn't know. Had Callahan triggered all this? The two men braced them like efficient predators.
"You can have every cent we've got," Wes said. He was just trying to buy some time. His voice sounded higher than normal.
Rosa gasped. She grabbed the back of his right arm and held on tight. There was a third man behind Wes, he could feel it. Now she knew this wasn't a robbery. It was something worse, perhaps a hit. Had these men killed his Dad? Wes felt his leg bump a metal barrel of some kind, jammed next to a stack of gardening tools. He risked a peek down and to the left. The moon glinted off maybe a foot or two of dirty water. Now the three pros had them in a perfect, tight triangle. And Wes had no weapon. Rosa pressed tight behind him, cutting off any attempt at retreat. This was a bad situation.
"Do you want my wallet?" Stalling, knowing the answer in advance. One of the men, the largest, stood on their right. He raised a silenced hand gun, something smallish for close up, maybe a .22 or a .38. It was in a plastic bottle to muffle the noise. Wes felt his blood freeze up. This was a hit for sure. He thought of his father again, wondered if this team killed Dad, and rage began to take him.
"Where did you put it?"
The man in front of Wes said. He had stocky shoulders, a wrestler type. Black jeans, black tee shirt, mask showing eyes and bared teeth. "No fucking around, kid. Make things easy. Where is it?"
"We lost it," Wes said. "I blew almost every dime, in Vegas, trying to get even. Look, let the lady walk, man. This shit has nothing to do with her. I haven't even been talking to her about it."
Behind him, Rosa's entire body trembled. She stood there, twitching like a branch in the wind, an adrenaline-fueled shaking. The three men exchanged glances. Without pausing to reflect, the man on the right leaned in, stretched forward and pressed his silenced weapon against Rosa's skull. Wes felt the world reel as he heard a POOF sound. In the moonlight he saw some of the hair lift from the side of Rosa's head, enough to show the slug had rattled around in her skull. It puffed her temple out a bit. Wes screamed silently.
Rosa dropped like a puppet, just as if someone cut her strings, and like that she was meat cooling on cement. Of course Wes had seen death before, felt its icy tendrils stroking his skin. He'd experienced revulsion mixed with a lot of guilt and the shameful, intense joy of still being alive. But, this was Rosa. The dead woman was Rosa.
His body exploded without conscious thought. He spun and ducked and rose up fast as the wind. A silenced bullet ripped through the fabric of his shirt but missed. The heel of his hand came up into the larger man's nose and crushed it flat. Wes yanked down on the gun hand and spun the killer's body in front of his own. The man was highly trained. He'd shaken the pain and was already fighting back, so Wes used his weight, rode him down, feeling slugs slam into the Kevlar vest under the guy's black tee shirt, fumbling for control of the 9mm in the guy's hand, and he got it, got his fingers into the trigger guard and raised it up. Wes cut loose with three rounds, POP POP and POP; two at the killer, starting high trying for a head shot, saw brain matter splatter up the wall in a dark mist. The third shot was back at the other man half in the shadows, but that guy had just stepped to one side and disappeared from view. So Wes was down behind the guy on his knees, holding the dying man as a shield. The second man was dead just a few feet away. Rosa was gone too, now silent forever like his dad.
And for what? What did Callahan do to trigger all this blood? Over a gambling debt? Why?
Sick and furious, Wes eased the dying man to one side. He kept his eyes glued to the alcove where the third man had disappeared. He looked around carefully. The streets were still emptying out. No one had responded to the minimal noise.
Wes clutched the 9mm. He stepped carefully past the small rain barrel and around the bodies. He wanted this third man. Wes wanted to send a message back. He had to score one for Rosa and Cal and his own broken heart. These guys were pros, like some of the over-paid, steroid junkie mercenaries he'd seen strutting around in Iraq and Afghanistan like they owned the fucking place. Killing civilians, handing out death like Halloween candy, knowing they couldn't be prosecuted. He hated the bastards.
Wes figured the guy would run, one on one now and both armed and crowds of people maybe a hundred feet away. It was a paid hit. That motherfucker Roth must have really opened his bank account wanting to make a statement. The guy would beat feet to make some kind of a report. Wes had the shape of the man's body in his head now. He figured to nail him crossing the open street in the moonlight, dressed in black but with the mask gone, hair all mussed up or cut super short. He'd be trying to walk normally but a bit too quickly. Wes didn't even worry about nailing the wrong man. What were the chances?
He came around the pillar rapidly in a modified Weaver stance with the 9mm ready. An arm came down like a sledge hammer and he almost lost the weapon. An elbow tried for his temple but caught him in the jaw instead and glanced off. He hit back, the gun went off and the guy jumped, dropped something and then came at him again. The big guy wrestled with Wes, grunting quietly, trying to slam a knee into the nuts, gouge the eyes, street fighting to end it fast. This was as hard core as it got. Wes fought back the same way. He kept his mind cold and clear and did his best to inflict as much damage as possible. His nails tore flesh from the man's face, and he thumbed an eye.
The man slammed his arm again, kneed his groin a glancing blow but one that really hurt, then slapped the arm one final time. Wes felt his gun slip away as an elbow caught the side of his throat. He gagged, struggling to breathe. The man shoved hard. Wes was tossed off balance by the bigger, stronger force. He felt himself being run clumsily backwards, stumbling into the dark. Wes tripped on one of the bodies. He fell to his knees near the rain barrel.
Wes dimly registered that the man had him with both hands. Neither man had a weapon now. Both pistols were somewhere in the shadows. They struggled for a few seconds, gripping each other tight, evenly matched. But it didn't last long.
To his horror, Wes felt his head being forced back. He couldn't get traction to defend himself. Wes could see the killer's eyes in the moonlight now, as some clouds opened up. One eye was bloodshot. The man's teeth were gritted and gleaming. His muscles bulged. Wes felt the cold water against the back of his neck, leaves sticking like needles. He grabbed a deep breath just before his head was forced underwater. He kept his eyes open as he fought back and saw the silver moon above the rancid water, the shimmering outline of his murderer.
Wes was drowning. He struggled, his hands slapping at the pavement, water splashing, his nose burning. He was drowning in filthy water over a gambling debt. Drowning. The pain was excruciating. His lungs and sinuses burned and finally the bad air blew out in a spray of bubbles. Wes prepared to inhale death. And that's when the guy, a mercenary for sure, yanked him back up again. This was someone experienced at water boarding prisoners.
"Where is it?"
Wes hung limply, acting weak and helpless, which wasn't much of a stretch. He was already sobbing and mumbling. He found himself saying anything and everything. Saying whatever it would take to make this stop, to not go through that suffering again. He babbled about gaming tables, bets he'd made, what his dad had said, And poor Rosa. Wes wanted a moment to tell her how sorry he was.
"Where is it?"
"What?"
The killer in black pushed his head back again. This time Wes didn't have time to fill his lungs. He thrashed and panicked, snot running from his nose, wetting his pants, terrified and enraged and
humiliated all at once. Whatever it was this guy wanted to know Wes wanted to tell him, would tell him, just please bring me up and let me breathe, it hurts it hurts . . .
Wes moaned. His hands fumbled around for any kind of purchase, fingers felt twigs and a beer bottle, but he couldn't quite grab the beer bottle and it rolled away. He could hear it on the cement, far away and fading. Everything began to go black. Wes figured it was over, and then his right hand bumped the guy's tense leg and slid down to the cement. And then he felt it. That hard plastic grip. As the world began to spin away, Wes clutched the gun and raised it to what he guessed would be center mass. He fired three times, low, middle and high to get around any body armor. The man roared and let go. Wes shoved him off, gasping for air. The mercenary was rolling on his back, clutching his thigh, but blood was also pooling near his right side. Two hits, one under the Kevlar at close range.
Wes crawled over, raised the weapon. The killer stared back.
"Why, man? Why did you do this?"
The man groaned. "Nothing personal. Just a job."
"No, it was personal. That was my dad. My girl."
The assassin grimaced in agony. His teeth began to chatter. He was rapidly sliding into shock.
Was said, "Tell me what you were looking for. I'll make it stop."
No answer. The man's eyes rolled up in his head. He stopped clutching at his thigh and groaned. The pool of blood expanded in a rush.
"Fuck you, then."
Wes grabbed the man by the hair, jabbed the gun under his chin and blew off the top of his head. The mercenary went still. Wes looked down at his hands. He was still wearing gloves from the parasail flight. No fingerprints. He crawled over to Rosa to make sure she was gone. Wes sat there crying, but not for long.
This had to be about something far more important than any gambling debt. Mick Callahan might have the answers.
The city had emptied out and closed down for the night. The mess might stay unnoticed for quite a while. Wes snuck down to the water and cleaned up a bit. Then he stayed in the shadows to avoid the small night patrols on golf carts. He got his stuff from Rosa's place and found some cash money she had stashed with her underwear. He quickly changed clothes and left for the dock.
Running Cold (The Mick Callahan Novels) Page 16
