‘Yeah, by a couple of crackheads with blades. I’m betting they don’t know the name of the guy who sent them, but before he died Albert told me it was down to Sean Cahill, on Viskhan’s instructions.’
‘You said both his attackers survived? I’m surprised.’
‘They weren’t in a fit state to talk when I left them.’
‘I wasn’t criticising,’ I said. ‘I really meant I’m impressed. Are either of them able to identify you?’
‘One of them got a glimpse of my face before I threw him off the balcony, but what’s he gonna say? He won’t admit to bein’ caught in the act of murdering Albert. He’s going to plead the Fifth.’
‘Let’s hope so. It keeps you in the clear for now.’
Rink took us down Biscayne Boulevard, through the Upper East Side and towards downtown. As we spoke, Trey was silent in the back: probably absorbing everything we were saying with a mild sense of shock. Rink began relating the details of his recent activity at the port, and how he’d been forced to abort that mission too when surprised by one of Viskhan’s men.
‘He was skilled,’ he added. ‘Almost got me with his blade before I took it off him and knocked out his lights. In fact, I don’t mind admitting I might’ve ended up dead if he’d wanted to kill instead of capture me. He was a dangerous enemy to leave behind. Was tempted to finish him off, but it would have forced a gunfight with Viskhan and Cahill and that wasn’t the right time or place. I might’ve punked out of the fight but sometimes retreat is the better part of valour.’ Rink gave due credit to the knifeman, which meant we were up against another potentially deadly foe. He described how he’d escaped from the secure area of the port to his car, and how he missed out on following the refrigerated van Viskhan had been so interested in. ‘Sure would have liked to have had a look inside.’
So I told him about what I’d learned from Trey, and that something spectacular was planned for during the 4th of July celebrations.
‘Spectacular is terrorist speak,’ he said for Trey’s sake.
I’d already made the connection. It was code for an attack that guaranteed massive destruction and loss of life. Usually involving a soft target – aka unarmed civilians. I hadn’t related my fear to her that Viskhan was planning a terror attack akin to those in Europe, but I think she’d already made the connection herself, especially considering the cities that Viskhan had reeled off.
‘This guy that you beat up,’ I said, ‘was probably one of Viskhan’s inner circle. Maybe even one of the bastards with Cahill when they ran us into Indian Creek. Military background?’
‘Yup. And he was a Brit like you. A southerner, though. Spoke more like one of those gangsters out of a Guy Ritchie movie than Ned Stark.’
‘That sounds like Dan,’ Trey offered. ‘He’s originally from London. He’s a friend of Sean. He’s only recently come to work here in Florida… but from what I heard they go way back and have worked together before. Mikhail doesn’t like him much, and I think the feeling’s mutual.’
‘D’you know his full name?’ Rink asked.
‘Daniel Saint-something-or-other.’ She mulled it over for a few seconds. ‘StJames… no, it’s StJohn.’
Both Rink and me added StJohn’s name to the roster of bad guys. Rink aimed a finger at the glove compartment. ‘Check it out. I took those off Danny Boy for you.’
There was a combat knife and a Glock 17 Gen-4 chambered for 9x19 mm NATO standard rounds. Both were British Army issue, but not exclusively: the Glock was one of the most popular and widely available pistols in the world. A quick check over the gun confirmed it held seventeen rounds, one already chambered, a practice once forbidden for British troops armed with the Browning sidearm, but permissible due to the Glock’s modern safety mechanisms where a misfire was practically impossible. I preferred my trusty Sig Sauer P226 to the Glock – as much through familiarity and nostalgia than anything else – but the gun had just raised our defensive capacity from the Stone Age I’d relied on last night to the modern era.
‘Seems as if Viskhan’s pulling in PMC operatives,’ Rink said, and told me that Harvey Lucas had dug up intelligence on Viskhan and Cahill’s backgrounds. ‘I’ll have him check out this StJohn dude once he arrives. Strikes me as unusual that Viskhan’s hired pros to do his dirty work like this, unless…’
‘The pros are there to train the patsies who are going to take the fall for them,’ I concluded. Again I glanced at Trey for confirmation, and she watched me with wide eyes. ‘Viskhan traffics female sex workers into the US, but I’m betting that isn’t the extent of his human trafficking business?’
‘He also supplies immigrant workers to other industries,’ she confirmed. ‘From South America and Mexico primarily, but recently he’s been dealing with Eastern European and Middle Eastern traffickers.’
‘It’s all it takes,’ Rink said. ‘Some homegrown sympathisers and a bunch of brainwashed or coerced slaves, and you’ve got yourself a dangerous sleeper cell, ready to blow themselves up at the drop of a hat.’ He looked dourly in my direction. ‘This is getting kinda serious, brother.’
‘Too serious to sit on?’ I knew my next suggestion wouldn’t go down too well. ‘Serious enough to call Walter?’
‘We should let someone know.’ He skirted away from involving Walter exactly as I suspected he would. ‘But it’s going to be difficult getting anyone to take us seriously if you and Trey are still in the wind.’
I understood where he was coming from. An anonymous tip-off to the local police might be ignored as the usual ravings of a lunatic reading conspiracies coded in their alphabet soup. Before the police took our warning seriously they would need proof, but at that moment in time all we had was snippets of overheard conversations related to us by Viskhan’s estranged wife. In fairness, Trey had no reason to lie to us, but to anyone else she could be deemed as someone with a hefty chip on her shoulder, who might concoct a story in order to make a monster of her husband. The fact that Viskhan was behind the spate of violence occurring throughout the previous night could be a matter of conjecture. Even if we were able to convince the cops he’d been behind those attacks, they didn’t bear any connection to a forthcoming terrorist attack. He might be investigated, but it would not be enough to derail his spectacular from going ahead if other respective players were already in position.
‘We can warn the cops,’ I suggested, ‘but Trey can’t surrender to them. On her own, I trust she could convince them that Viskhan and Cahill need arresting for their other criminal activities. But that wouldn’t get the result we need quickly enough. The cops will take their time building rock-solid cases against them, and by then the fourth of July will have come and gone. It’d be too late to halt the planned attack.’
‘Unless she fingers them for the murders last night,’ Rink argued.
‘True. But I don’t trust them to protect her long enough to stand witness. Viskhan hasn’t gotten away this long without having some guys on the inside. If Trey surrenders to the police I’m betting she’d be dead before the day was out.’
For a moment I’d almost forgotten that Trey was sitting in the back of the car listening to everything we said. I turned to regard her. ‘Don’t worry. We’re not going to let that happen.’
Rink exhaled deeply. He glanced in the rearview mirror to catch Trey’s attention. ‘Tell me you don’t hold on to even the tiniest bit of love for your husband.’
‘You mean my pimp, my jailer, my abuser?’ she responded, and it was all that was necessary to confirm her hatred of him.
Rink nodded slowly then transferred his attention to me. ‘OK. We tell the cops nothing about Viskhan’s plan yet,’ he said. ‘We’ll rendezvous with Harvey, get Trey somewhere safe, where they can work together on finding some tangible proof we can offer to the cops. While they’re doing that we’ll go after Viskhan and Cahill.’ It was obvious why he’d checked with Trey first before suggesting his plan. By go after, he meant kill the fuckers. ‘If we don’t stop them in tim
e then we’ll call Walter. You know I don’t trust the old bastard, but he does have his uses. Someone with his influence could prove helpful if we need to rally the troops.’
‘Having him in our corner beforehand will help too,’ I said. ‘It’ll help our cases if we intend dodging the lethal injection.’
My friend fell silent. Our plan to halt a possible mass murder was to conduct one of our own. Under certain aggravating factors the capital crime of murder was punishable by death in Florida, and what we planned ticked a number of boxes on the list. If we could show that our actions were motivated by the necessity to stop a worse atrocity then we might just survive the legal aftermath. Waiting until after the deed before bringing in Walter Conrad would be too late to help us. Finally Rink turned down his mouth. It was a precursor I recognised. ‘Do what you need to do, brother,’ he announced, ‘but I don’t care what he asks for in return, it doesn’t get in the way of us avenging Mack.’
26
Sean Cahill paused to pick grit from the corner of his eye. He inspected the accumulation of orange gunk on the tip of his finger before flicking it away. He hadn’t slept since the night before last and was beginning to feel the effects of fatigue in his bones as the day began segueing into evening. Viskhan expected a lot from his right-hand man, but this was taking the mick. He chuckled too hard at the irony of his thought, and realised he was going a little nutty through lack of sleep. He stopped laughing, and returned his attention to the more serious act of organising his people for tomorrow. As did Dan StJohn, some of his men were feeling uneasy about following Viskhan’s latest scheme, and it was on Cahill to convince them to stay with the programme. Even for hardened mercenaries like them, launching an attack on US soil was dangerous, risky and, let’s face it, he thought, immoral, but reminding them of the promise of a multi-million dollar payday would reignite their incentive to get the job done.
He was standing inside a deserted Chinese restaurant two streets back from the main strip on South Beach. Dan StJohn wasn’t there, but four other PMCs were. Ernest Monk sat with his bony butt perched on a dinner table, taking the weight off his sore ankle: luckily for him, when he’d been struck by the fleeing van his ankle hadn’t been broken, only twisted painfully against the joint. Omar Hussein leaned his elbows on a countertop, his thick, hairy wrists crossed beneath his chin, supporting his large head as he peered at Cahill. The other two men were called Jed Frost and Craig Parkinson – the men who’d assisted in chasing Joe Hunter and Trey Shaw in the early hours of the morning. Along with StJohn, the four were all that remained of the mercenaries under Cahill’s command. Three of their number – Waller, Sierra and Harris – had been slain by Hunter, and their loss had added to all the survivors’ workloads. By now the cops would have identified their deceased comrades, and it wouldn’t be long until they were all subject of manhunts. Both Monk and Parkinson had already voiced the idea of booking out of the US before the heat came down on them, but Cahill was having none of it. Viskhan’s motive for lashing out at the US might be personal to him, but they’d signed on for the operation and it mattered not that it was the plot of a madman to rain terror on his adoptive country; their agreement based on massive reward was their bond. If they reneged on their word, their careers as professional soldiers-for-hire would be in dire jeopardy from then on: they’d be lucky if they could secure tenure minding a punk-assed drug dealer in some backwater Third World country.
Neither did it matter if the job they’d accepted from Viskhan went against the grain and sensibilities of some of his team; a job was a job, and they couldn’t allow their personal morals, politics or religious beliefs to get in the way of a weighty paycheck. Nor should they allow private vendettas, but Cahill was aware that his team hoped for payback against the bastard that’d killed three of their number, and it now looked as if they would get their opportunity. After the failure of the emergency services to recover any bodies, it was probable that Joe Hunter had survived crashing the van into Indian Creek. Admittedly, Cahill too wanted to end things finally for Hunter. Even if they didn’t have a personal reason to want him dead, Hunter had to be dealt with. Allowing him to live might jeopardise the success of their operation.
‘If Hunter survived, then it’s likely that Trey did too,’ he announced. ‘Mikhail wasn’t always careful around Trey and she knows too much about the op to allow her to live. Hunter and Trey were both marked for death and that order hasn’t yet been rescinded. But we have to handle the situation without it having a negative impact on our other responsibilities.’
‘Everything else is in order.’ Ernest Monk’s tiny eyes glittered like volcanic glass in the subdued light. ‘Viskhan doesn’t need us to hold the hands of his volunteers. We’ve got them in place, and equipped them for the op, like we promised: I don’t see why we have to babysit them any longer when Viskhan’s own guys can do it.’
‘You know why, Monk.’ Cahill didn’t expound. Not all of Viskhan’s volunteers were willing volunteers: they could cut and run for the hills if they weren’t continuously reminded of what backing out of the deal would mean for their families. Viskhan’s hired thugs were OK when it came to standing guard, but not in motivating reluctant suicide attackers, or in stalling those too eager to strike against the Satanic West: a preemptive attack would place the security services on high alert and effectively stop the main operation from going ahead.
Cahill brought out his smartphone and hit buttons. ‘Check it out,’ he announced. ‘I’ve sent you all an extra target.’
‘Who is this dude?’ Jed Frost squinted at the image on his cell phone’s screen.
‘Jared Rington,’ Cahill said. ‘I got his name from Greville-Jones last night before everything went to shit; he’s the head of the outfit hired to bolster security at the event where Mikhail first came into conflict with Hunter. He wasn’t at the hotel when I first sent those gangbangers after Hunter, but apparently he’s made himself busy since. He followed us to the port earlier, and beat the shit out of Dan – Dan has since confirmed the man on your phones is the same one he fought with. I’m happy Rington didn’t get a hint of what we were doing there, but it doesn’t matter. From what he told Dan, he’s got a boner for Mikhail. He’s on some revenge gig on behalf of his buddies, you ask me.’
‘Says here he was an Army Ranger,’ Craig Parkinson pointed out as he went over the attached intelligence file. ‘Currently runs a PI outfit out of Tampa. But I see a black hole in his service record. Only one reason I can think of for him to have his military record sealed. Special Ops?’
‘Could be,’ said Cahill. ‘Does that concern you, Parky?’
‘Why should it?’
‘Brothers-in-arms and all that honourable bullshit?’
‘My only brothers-in-arms are right here in this room—’ Parkinson nodded to each of the others in turn ‘—and on slabs down at the county morgue. I feel no affinity to Rington just because he’s another ex-Ranger. I was only wondering what kind of skills he brings to the fight.’
‘He kicked Dan’s arse in about three seconds. That should tell you something.’
Parkinson shrugged, as if unconcerned. But he still exchanged a glance with Frost, whose eyebrows had arched to his hairline. Dan StJohn was a hard bastard, and neither of them was his equal in a blood and snot fistfight. Therefore Rington’s skills should be respected.
Cahill offered an unfounded theory. ‘I sent a couple of punks over to deal with Greville-Jones. Before they finished him off, somebody kicked their asses too. I’m guessing that Rington did a number on them, and then got Mikhail’s name out of Greville-Jones before he died. Explains why Rington knew who to come after.’
‘It’s more likely he’d have gotten your name,’ Frost said.
‘Yes,’ Cahill agreed. ‘I don’t like the idea that there’s a pissed-off soldier out there who could be after my blood.’
For the first time since he arrived at the restaurant, Omar Hussein entered the conversation. He rose from the counter, fr
eeing up his hands so that he could cock and point an imaginary pistol. ‘Doesn’t matter how good this soldier is, he’ll die when I put a bullet in his skull.’
‘Yes,’ said Cahill, and offered a mocking smile. ‘Good luck with that, Omar. Perhaps your aim will be better than it was last night when you missed Joe Hunter.’
Hussein’s imaginary gun took on a fresh configuration as he parted his thumb and forefinger by a whisker. ‘I came that close to shooting him in the face,’ Hussein said, ‘even when he was driving that van directly at me.’
‘Chill, Omar,’ Cahill told him. ‘I’m not doubting your shooting skills. Just reminding you all that you can’t take anything for granted. I’ve seen Hunter in action, and it sounds like Rington’s equally as dangerous an enemy.’ He thought briefly about his recent pursuit of Hunter, and how he’d held back from a direct confrontation, and how his reticence had now come back to haunt him. ‘You see either of them, you take no chances. You put them down fast, hard and permanently.’
Viskhan owned the restaurant, although an employee managed it on his behalf: Viskhan’s involvement strictly kept to an invisible capacity. As a business it was a front through which Viskhan moved some of the workers he brought via illegal channels into the country. It had been closed since just after the Chinese New Year celebrations, and hadn’t yet reopened to the public even though South Beach was full of vacationers. The premises acted instead as a base of operations for Cahill’s team. The meat lockers in the kitchen served them as multi-purpose lock-ups, sometimes containing those recalcitrant sex workers in need of reminding of their duties. Cahill would have liked to fetch both Hunter and Rington to the restaurant, string them up in those lockers and butcher them like the annoying pigs they were. But he would obey his own instruction: next time they met, there’d be no messing around, no trusting to a watery grave for anyone. He would ensure that both men were dead this time.
He ordered his men to gear up and ship out. He gave each one specific directions to follow a channel to discover the whereabouts of any of their targets, including Trey Shaw. Now she, he thought, he’d love to get alone in one of those meat lockers. Mikhail was done with her, and Cahill didn’t mind sloppy seconds, though he’d no interest in her femininity. He’d kill her as instructed by his boss, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t have a little fun with her first. He couldn’t think of a better way to spend his final night in the US than in the company of a beautiful woman, one whose beauty he’d like to strip away inch by inch of flayed skin. No, he corrected himself. Sleeping would be the best way to spend the night, except there was little hope of that.
Marked for Death Page 16
