The sound was the catalyst for the death struggle to resume.
The Latino grunted and cursed as he contested for the gun, and McTeer’s language was equally colourful. The third man in the room, a white kid with a scraggly beard and beanie hat settled low on his brow, danced back and forth looking for a clean line on his target. The revolver spun from the Latino’s grip, skidded under the bed somewhere out of reach. McTeer jostled with him, then headbutted him savagely. Resistance went out of the Latino’s knees, and he sank, almost dragging McTeer down with him, but they spilled apart, and now McTeer was an open target. The beanie-hatted kid fired.
Blood freckled the side of McTeer’s chin. He glimpsed down at a spewing wound on his left shoulder. ‘Fuckin’ punk-assed little junkie,’ he snarled at the kid.
The kid fired again, and this time with better aim. The bullet took McTeer in the gut, and he stumbled back, his knees colliding with the bed, and he sat down heavily. He looked down under heavy eyelids at the Latino, who was scrabbling around, one arm beneath the bed in search of his dropped gun. McTeer was tempted to kick him in the ass, but he couldn’t lift his leg. He looked down at his belly. The puncture site was a small puckered hole, but it pulsed blood, sopping his boxer shorts and upper thighs. Internally the damage would look more significant. It didn’t hurt yet, but if he were spared a few minutes more the pain would be coming in spades.
McTeer wasn’t ready to die – he hadn’t seen the end of his picture, goddamnit – but it didn’t look as if he had much choice in the matter. The only thing buying him a few precious seconds was that the kid looked as equally stunned by what he’d done. He wasn’t as keen on pulling the trigger a third time. But the Latino was incensed and had given up on his gun, was reaching to grab the one dropped by their dead pal. As soon as he got his hands on it, it’d be goodbye, cruel world.
McTeer shook his head, begged the question: ‘What the fuck did you do, Hunter?’
As the Latino spun on him, mouth open, saliva sewing together his exposed teeth, he paused at McTeer’s words. His expression changed to gloating as he eyed the two pulsating wounds painting McTeer crimson. ‘You fucked with the wrong people, asshole!’
McTeer grunted at the irony: the Latino thought his question had been introspection. ‘Dickwad,’ he announced, ‘you don’t know the fuckin’ truth of it.’
The connecting door burst inward, even as another figure hurtled in through the open door from the hall and slammed the beanie-hatted kid into the Latino.
9
‘Stay down, Trey,’ I whispered harshly, ‘and don’t make a sound.’
Her eyes were directly in line with mine, reflecting my features. My face was set in a rictus. I pushed up off her, then grabbed the bedding off the mattress and dumped it over her so she was concealed in the narrow space between the divan and wall. Next door the shit was going down and it was deadly.
I didn’t have time to plan, so went on instinct. I swept up the nearest weapon to hand even as I padded silently to the connecting door and pressed my ear to it, just in time to hear a voice tell McTeer he’d fucked with the wrong people. It was the kind of thing that cowards tell a victim they have at their mercy. McTeer wasn’t going to die in cold blood if I could help it. I drew the privacy bolt, decided that there’d be similar bolts on McTeer’s side, so reared back and smashed my heel in the door below the handle. The door hurtled open, and I was a split-second behind it into the room.
The tableau imprinted on my senses in the next millisecond. McTeer sitting bleeding into his shorts, a gangbanger with a gun a foot from his face, another young punk in a woolly hat with his gun down by his side, and a corpse splayed on the floor alongside a spilled box of beer bottles.
Time snapped taut in my mind, then accelerated forward, and my mind caught up to my actions as I lunged for the gunman, even as Velasquez hurtled in from the corridor and hammered both clasped fists between the woolly-hatted guy’s shoulders, who slammed his pal sideways. The young guy went down with Velasquez on top, still hammering, now on the back of the guy’s neck.
As the gangbanger stumbled to find his balance, my left hand grasped the barrel of his gun and thrust it skyward. The guy’s finger squeezed the trigger and he wasted a round in the ceiling: it didn’t stop him pulling the trigger again, and more bullets zipped through the air and buried themselves in the furniture and walls as we momentarily tussled. I didn’t want the gun off him, just away from McTeer. I didn’t need it. I battered one of Trey’s stiletto heels into the man’s neck, yanked it out and then buried it deep into his incredulous left eye. The heel didn’t reach his brain, but again that wasn’t my intention; for what he’d done to McTeer I wanted the bastard to suffer before he bled out through his severed carotid artery. As he sunk down, moaning in abstract terror, one hand patting at the body of the shoe embedded in his blinded eye, I held his gun hand aloft until weakness assailed him and his finger slipped free from the guard. I let him fall back unceremoniously on the carpet alongside his dead friend, even as I watched Velasquez stomp his heel repeatedly on the back of the young punk’s neck. The hat had come off during the tussle and lay wadded alongside his shaved head on which had been etched swirls of tattoo ink.
Velasquez returned my gaze. His fatigue had fled, and he now looked wired. His normally olive skin was the pallor of a fish’s belly.
‘What the fuck just happened?’ he intoned. A minute ago he had been sound asleep, now he’d killed a man by shattering his vertebrae. It was unsurprising that he looked at me as if he was still caught up in a nightmare.
It was a nightmare, and it wasn’t over yet.
We both raced to McTeer and helped him lie flat on the bed. The shoulder wound wasn’t life-threatening, but the one low in his abdomen was. I slapped a palm over it, but staunching the blood flow wouldn’t save him, not when he was probably leaking pints of the stuff internally. ‘Val,’ I commanded my friend, using his nickname, ‘call an ambulance, then call Rink.’
‘What the hell, Hunter? What the hell?’ Velasquez was almost as shocked as McTeer.
‘Get a grip, Val,’ I shouted. ‘Do as I told you. Ambulance!’
He snapped out of it, but was still in flux. I stabbed a hand at the telephone on the counter opposite the bed. Velasquez stumbled towards it, while I went back to tending to McTeer.
‘An ambulance won’t help, may as well send for a priest.’ McTeer’s voice was reed thin, but he found humour in his words and he chuckled at them. Bloody saliva popped between his lips.
‘I won’t let you die,’ I promised him.
‘Don’t think you have much say on the matter. I think that’s between me and my God.’
‘Since when did you find religion?’ I asked, trying to keep his mood jovial. ‘Don’t go bothering God now, not while I’m around, we might end up in another fistfight.’
‘I’m a good Catholic boy, a pure angel,’ he told me, which, when I thought about it, was unsurprising. ‘I guess I’ve just let my halo slip now an’ again, huh? Wonder if St. Peter will let me in?’
‘I won’t let you die!’
He smiled up at me. ‘Hunter, you’re a good man, a good friend, but even you can’t do miracles. I’m going, buddy, and if it happens to be downstairs, well, so be it. Can take up with these three assholes again where we left off.’ He craned for a look at the trio of bodies littering his floor. ‘They’re all dead?’
‘Every last one of them.’
‘Good. Fuckers deserve it for shooting up my beers.’ He laughed again but this time it was pained and more blood frothed between his lips. I maintained pressure on his wound, but was fighting a losing battle. I searched for Velasquez. He’d downed the phone, had finished his call and I hadn’t heard a word of it.
‘Are the medics coming?’
He nodded.
‘Rink?’
‘I couldn’t get him.’
‘Try again,’ I told him, ‘but use your cell. He probably just ignored an unknown number, but w
on’t with yours. Get him here, Val.’
‘I… I shouldn’t leave you alone.’
‘I’m not alone. I’m with Mack. Go on, Val, get Rink here.’
Velasquez eyed his friend – he was closer to McTeer than I was, had worked alongside him and Rink long before I joined their motley crew a few years ago – and it was probably right that he was the one to hold McTeer’s hand while he died. But I didn’t want to put that on Velasquez. I’d caused this, because I couldn’t keep the promise I’d made to McTeer to keep my hands to myself. Velasquez had to dodge around the corpse of the man he’d stomped to death to return to his room, but his gaze never left McTeer’s until he spun away and across the hall.
‘He won’t be the same after this.’
McTeer’s voice was now so faint I could barely hear it.
‘Val isn’t cut out for this shit,’ he went on. ‘I told Rink, Val ain’t suited to this, not any more. He’s going to take this badly, Hunter, going to need help getting over it.’
‘And you’ll be around to help him,’ I said.
‘Cut the crap, Hunter, we both know I’m done. Fuck me, man, I should be pissed at you.’ He reached trembling fingers and placed them over the hand I had on his wound. He patted me gently. ‘But I’m not. If it was me in that bathroom I’d have knocked that pukeball on his ass just the same. Those punks, they said they were sent by that asshole you told me you hit… Viskhan, but they weren’t sent after me, brother.’
‘I know.’ My throat thickened around my words.
‘That girl you’ve got hidden in your room, she’s this Viskhan’s wife, right?’ He snorted in pained humour. ‘You don’t have to hide it, I heard you guys speaking. Don’t let her go back to him, don’t let him take her.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Promise me you’ll protect her.’
‘I already did.’
He nodded at that. Then he grimaced, and the contortions didn’t stop. He moaned and his legs squirmed. They looked oddly pale and thin, hairless above skinny little ankles. Impending death was cruel, making a robust tough guy like Jim McTeer appear pathetic in his final moments. I wished that I had time to pull on McTeer’s trousers for him, to gain him a little humility. He settled slightly, and his hand again found mine, this time turning it over so our bloody palms were cupped.
‘Any of… those beers… unbroken?’ he asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Get me one, will ya?’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mack.’ I was hoping the medics would miraculously arrive in time, and the complications of alcohol in his system wouldn’t help.
‘You worried about me damaging my liver?’ He laughed, but it ended in a sob.
I slowly backed away from him, and stooped for the box. I’d to pull back the lid to find an undamaged bottle. I popped the cap and returned to the bed.
McTeer was gone.
Not physically. His body was exactly where I’d left him, but of his spirit there was no sign. His open eyes were as dull as the sense of aching loss that filled my chest.
‘To you, Mack,’ I whispered, and tilted the bottle to my lips.
Velasquez was back in the room.
He charged over and almost flung himself on McTeer. He shouted hoarsely, shaking McTeer, trying to rouse him. I let him. He had to get it out of his system. But after a short while I put a hand on Velasquez’s shoulder and squeezed gently, and he rested back into me. Sobs racked his frame. But when he turned and looked up at me, he’d gotten a grip on himself.
‘You have to go, Joe,’ he said.
I shook my head.
‘You have to. This isn’t finished. You know that as well as I do.’ He indicated the woman standing in the open doorway between my room and McTeer’s. Trey had disobeyed my instructions and had come to inspect the fallout. She leaned against the frame, looking tiny and forlorn, and little of her stature was to do with missing her shoes. ‘Those bastards killed Jim because of her.’ There was no recrimination in his words, just plain truth. ‘When they hear they missed her, more of them will come. You need to take her somewhere safe.’
He was right, but I had no intention of leaving.
‘Rink’s coming,’ Velasquez reassured me. ‘But so are the cops. I had to tell the nine-one-one operator about the shootings, so the cops will be sent too. You can’t keep that woman safe if you’re locked in a cell.’ He leaned in conspiratorially. ‘Nobody knows you were in here—’ he cast an arm around at the three dead men ‘—I’ll tell the cops this was all on me, buy you some time.’
‘I can’t let you take the rap for this, Raul.’
‘You can, you will, because I’m not doing it for you. I want to do it for Jim. I heard you promise him you’d keep that woman safe, and you better well keep your promise too. And, Joe—’ he reached out and gripped my wrist tightly ‘—if you get the chance you’re gonna avenge him. You get me?’
I stood, his grip tightening on my wrist. I offered the tiniest of nods. ‘I get you.’
‘Good.’ He took the forgotten beer bottle from my hand, then tilted it in a silent dealmaker to his own lips and drank. ‘Now move it.’ He almost pushed me towards Trey.
I grabbed Trey as I passed, scooped an elbow around her waist and almost hauled her across the room with me. When she’d come out from hiding she’d pushed the bedclothes back on my bed. I snatched up my bag of belongings and headed for the door with her.
‘Wait,’ Trey said. ‘My shoes!’
‘Leave them.’ I had no desire to go back and yank the heel out of the dead gunman’s eye socket.
10
Everything had gone to hell. But that was what came of using untried assets for any operation. There was always the possibility that one or more of the men Sean Cahill sent to complete the hit would be injured, but not all three and not fatally. The deaths of the three gangbangers was no great loss, not personally, and their link back to Mikhail Viskhan and himself was tenuous, but that was always dependent on them killing their target outright and getting clean away. Useless bunch of shits! He’d done the hard work for them, had set up a feasible approach for them to gain access to the target’s hotel room through Albert Greville-Jones. The head security guy owed favours to Mikhail, and Cahill had called one of them in. Greville-Jones supplied the names of the team he’d subcontracted out to during the gala event that Mikhail and Trey attended, and between them they’d identified the guy who knocked Mikhail on his butt as Joe Hunter. Greville-Jones set up the in for Cahill’s hit team by ringing his contact, James McTeer, and identifying where the team was staying while in Miami, and offering to send over a token of his appreciation. Hell, he’d even supplied a box of quality beers to add authenticity when Cahill’s bogus couriers turned up. All the useless hitters had to do was wait until the door was opened, and then shoot dead everyone in the room. They had no way of singularly identifying Hunter, so the collateral damage was a necessary precaution. Cahill had even driven the useless punks to the hotel, supplied the untraceable weapons they needed to get the job done, more or less pointed them at the correct door and told them, ‘Go get ’em, boys.’
They killed one guy, but not the right one, and paid a heavy price. Cahill didn’t know the specifics yet, but none of the three had survived the encounter. Maybe, considering the alternative, that wasn’t such a bad thing. If they were dead, they couldn’t talk, or lead the cops back to him. The surviving members of the team from Tampa would easily piece together Greville-Jones’s betrayal; the head of security was a loose end that needed tying up. He fully suspected Greville-Jones would fold under interrogation, and in hindsight he’d bet the security man wished he hadn’t been as generous in supplying the top end beers; if the gangbangers had carried an anonymous empty box up to the hotel room door it would have sufficed for their disguise, and would have left an evidence trail Greville-Jones could easily squirm away from. All he need do then was send a crate of beer over by a reputable courier and he could swear his innocence: bu
t largely that idea was fucked, because the uniquely labelled beer was traceable back to the six-star hotel he worked at.
The job had been rushed, and had gone down the toilet because of the lack of forethought. Cahill wasn’t overly surprised, and it was why he’d warned Mikhail about trying to run two separate operations when they were on such a tight schedule. That he’d been warned wouldn’t mean a damn thing to Mikhail. He had placed Cahill in charge of the second op, and it was his responsibility to fulfil his duty. Mikhail wasn’t a forgiving boss: in fact, Cahill could expect punishment if he didn’t pull something out of the bag and achieve a speedy and satisfactory result.
Perhaps driving the hit team to the hotel had been the lesser of his mistakes, because it meant he was in position when all hell broke loose and was able to take stock of the immediate aftermath. Feigning the image of a concerned hotel guest he’d been able to mingle with others milling around outside the hotel foyer as the medics and police arrived, hearing excitable chatter about McTeer’s murder, and how he and a colleague had managed to turn the tables on their attackers before he perished. It also meant he was in position when Trey Shaw – accompanied by a man he suspected was Joe Hunter – slipped unnoticed by the authorities from a service exit and stole away across the cultivated gardens adjacent to the hotel. Had he not been watching for them he wouldn’t have noted their furtive escape either. Because the hotel was the scene of a multiple homicide, the police would soon set up a cordon, and all guests and hotel employees would be held pending questioning and clearing of any involvement. Cahill couldn’t allow himself to be caught up in the noose, so he too slipped away, returning to his car, which he’d fortunately left a block away from the hotel. The job had gone to hell, but at least fortune favoured him. From his car he could still see Trey and her protector as they crossed Ocean Drive and hurried along the sidewalk fronting Lummus Park. To all intents and purposes the couple could be any returning from a late night party: Trey even looked the slightly inebriated girlfriend with the guy’s jacket slung over her shoulders and her bare feet padding timidly along the concrete, his arm wrapped protectively around her waist to usher her safely home.
Marked for Death Page 6
