Mikhail had tasked him with discovering the identity of Jared Rington. He could check that off his list. Mikhail had also told him he wanted Rington dead… that was still to be seen. Latterly, after Cahill shared the news that the police divers had failed to discover their bodies in Indian Creek, they had to assume that their original targets were still at large. Mikhail had been displeased. Actually, that was a supreme understatement: he’d been apoplectic, and most of his rage had been directed at Cahill. For the briefest moment he was tempted to go along with StJohn’s suggestion and put a bullet in Mikhail’s head and take over the moneymaking empire that his old friend had built, and was about to topple. But putting aside his misgivings about personal beliefs – moral, political or religious – he was still a man of his word, and he’d sworn to serve alongside Mikhail after being dragged from the rubble of a Taliban compound devastated by a US drone strike. Perhaps in hindsight it had proved a kneejerk reaction but, for saving his ass, Cahill had sworn his life to his rescuer. Mikhail had called him on his promise on a number of occasions since, but in return he’d made Cahill wealthy, shown him a life far removed from that which he’d known as the son of an immigrant who’d fled Ireland with a price on his head. Shooting his old friend dead would be ungrateful, an untenable idea.
His pistol had remained in its holster, he’d taken the enraged berating, even kept his cool when Mikhail furled his hands round his shirt collar and slammed him against a wall. Mikhail’s hot spittle had rained on his face, yet he took his scolding calmly. Then assured Mikhail that he’d personally continue to oversee the hunt for Trey, Hunter and Rington. Mikhail’s temper was soothed and he’d even made an apology of sorts for taking out his frustration on his dearest brother. Cahill had then convinced him that he should lie low until their enemies had been stopped, and after the weapons had been moved to an alternative vehicle and on to their final destination StJohn had been tasked as his personal security detail. Cahill didn’t fear StJohn taking the initiative and shooting Mikhail dead as he’d counselled, because StJohn would never betray his trust. All members of his team – even those who’d been killed by Hunter – were highly efficient warriors, but his second in command was the best of them. He’d failed in his first confrontation with Rington, but StJohn wouldn’t make the same mistake a second time: Mikhail was in safe hands.
Alone in the deserted restaurant, Cahill again rubbed at his fatigued face. He exhaled deeply. Then he shook out his tiredness, mentally tightening his bootlaces. He began placing calls on his cell, pulling on numerous contacts he could bring into the search. He thought barking like a dog was a waste of assets, so why do the boot work when dozens of street-level workers could do it for him?
27
My second evening in Miami found me in a bar at the eastern fringe of the Little Haiti neighbourhood. The drinking hole was on the bottom floor of a three-storey building that also housed a welfare hotel and a pizza shop. The front window commanded a view over a railway track and an unofficial parking lot where cars were drawn up on the verge alongside 4th Avenue, where the last vestiges of foliage had been crushed into the white sand and railway ballast. Rink had briefly parked his Chrysler out there to drop me off, before moving the car around the side of the building. He’d elected to wait outside, as he was too distinctive to show his face inside the bar. He couldn’t be certain that Jeff Borden hadn’t got a look at him after his tussle with StJohn at the port earlier.
Borden obviously enjoyed a beer or two after getting off shift. We’d followed him directly from the port to the bar without him making any diversion home. His beaten-up pickup truck was abandoned on the hardpack alongside the railway track, left parked askew in his haste to wet his whistle. After Rink disturbed his clandestine meeting with Viskhan and his goons, Borden had probably done a lot of dry swallowing. In the ten minutes since he’d entered the bar he’d downed two beers and was onto his third. He still wore his security company uniform underneath a thin canvas jacket, but had unsnapped his clip-on tie. In the sultry warmth of the bar his features glowed with a thin sheen of sweat. His uniform hadn’t attracted the attention of anyone else in the bar, so I guessed his attendance after work was a regular occurrence. Then again, it was my first time there and I hadn’t risen as much as an eyebrow from any of the drinkers, or the two young Hispanic guys playing pool. Even the bartender had largely ignored me since delivering my Corona. I sat quietly at the end of the bar nearest the exit door – in view of Rink – while I drank measured sips of beer. Unless Borden had a bladder the size of a beach ball he couldn’t keep up drinking in such quantity much longer. Even as I watched him in my peripheral vision, he chugged down his third beer and signalled for a fourth. I wondered if this was the norm after getting off shift, as it went some way in explaining the beaten-up aspect of his truck if he regularly drove back to his house after a skinful of beer. More likely was that the current overconsumption of alcohol was about calming his nerves. Was he aware of the impending terrorist attack, and was he anticipating being brought in on conspiracy charges? He was certainly drinking like a man who suspected his next beer might not be until many years hence, or with his final meal if he was given the lethal injection.
The two young Hispanics finished up their game, laid their cues on the beer-stained baize and left for parts unknown. At the same time, Borden pushed off from his bar stool and headed for the rear of the bar. As he passed the pool table, he unconsciously reached for the nearest ball, gave it a shove, and it ricocheted off the side cushions a few times before settling. By then Borden had pushed through the door into the men’s room. Trusting that Rink observed me, I got up and followed Borden. As I passed the pool table I also reached for the nearest ball. But I didn’t roll it away.
Before entering the men’s room, I checked out the rear exit. It was a fire door with a push bar. But I needn’t open it: the door was wedged open by a mop and bucket, allowing a draught to cool the stifling air in back. Through the open exterior door I heard the squeak of rubber on hardpack. I shoved inside the men’s room. Borden studiously ignored me as he took a leak at a trough on one wall. A stall stood open beyond him. I moved towards it, and Borden was aware of my presence but didn’t give me as much as a glance. He leaned with the flat of one hand supporting him on the wall: emptying his bladder was proving both strenuous and satisfying, judging by his grunts of relief. I slipped my recently acquired Glock from under my shirt and pressed the barrel to the nape of his neck. Borden’s stream cut off mid-flow. He gave another grunt, but this one held no relief.
‘You know what that is, right?’ I whispered in his ear as I dug the gun barrel into his neck.
‘Wh-what’s this about, buddy?’ His voice was a sibilant croak.
‘Zip up,’ I commanded him. ‘Literally. Put your old man away, and stay quiet.’
I could feel him trembling through the gun. He zipped up, then held his hands out to his sides.
‘Good,’ I told him. ‘If you want to stay alive you continue doing exactly as I tell you. Nod if you understand the severity of the predicament you’re in.’
He nodded, but not enough that he escaped the pressure of my gun.
‘Good,’ I repeated, intent on cementing our relationship of captor and captive. ‘Now put your hands behind you, palms out, and shove them down inside your belt.’
‘I… I’m not wearing a belt,’ he croaked. He was speaking the truth; he’d taken off his equipment belt before leaving the port.
Nevertheless I bumped the gun barrel on his skull. ‘I told you to stay quiet. Shove your hands down the back of your pants.’
He tensed at the sudden pain in his head, but he nodded again, didn’t comment. He inserted his hands into the back of his trousers as instructed.
‘Now open up.’ With his back to me he didn’t quite understand my order. He stirred and was in danger of facing me. I gave him another rap of the gun barrel. ‘Your mouth, open it wide.’
He followed my instruction, and I wrapped my hand
round him and inserted the pool ball between his teeth. It was a struggle for him to open his mouth wide enough for it to go in, but I shoved it and it popped behind his teeth. ‘That’s just so you don’t try anything stupid like shouting for help while we leave,’ I told him. I transferred my grip to his collar, and aimed him at the door. ‘I’m going to be right behind you, Borden—’ using his name was a deliberate ploy to breed further fear ‘—and will shoot you if you do anything stupid. Are you going to behave?’
He nodded, and garbled out an affirmative around the pool ball.
‘A nod is sufficient. Once you’re out the door, turn immediately to the right and through the fire exit. My friend will meet you.’
Reaching past him, I opened the door, then took a brief look down the short corridor towards the bar. Its patrons astutely ignored us. So I shoved him out and propelled him towards the fire exit.
I held back a pace so I’d block any view of him should the bar man or a customer glance our direction. Borden followed my instructions to the letter, and stepped outside. Rink met him, slapping a strip of duct tape over his mouth before Borden indicated any recognition. Then he spun Borden around so he could see the gun I aimed at his chest, and made him ease his hands out of his pants. Rink wrapped more duct tape around his wrists. Borden looked sufficiently terrified, but apparently he hadn’t got a look at Rink at the port, because his expression was bewilderment.
Rink had already positioned his rental car up against the fire exit alcove, with the trunk standing open. He shoved Borden towards it. ‘Get in, and make yourself comfortable. We’re going for a ride.’
The corrupt security guard was resistant for a moment. His head shook from side to side. He probably pictured the car’s trunk as his final resting place.
‘It’s your choice, Jeff,’ I said. ‘You can get in the trunk and live, or you can die right here.’ For emphasis I jammed my gun into his spine. Truth was, killing him was the last I wanted, but he couldn’t know that. I pushed, and he went forward, climbing gracelessly into the trunk: a difficult task with his hands tied behind his back. Rink grabbed him, jostled him around so he could get on his side in a foetal position. ‘Where are the keys to your truck?’ I asked.
Borden peered up at me, stricken by his predicament.
‘Your keys,’ I repeated.
He nodded in the general direction of his right hip. I dug in his pocket and took out the truck’s keys. Bounced them on my palm. ‘Enjoy the trip, Borden,’ I announced as Rink closed the trunk on his bewildered stare.
I followed in Borden’s pickup as Rink took him north, then west away from the residential areas along the Biscayne Bay coast and into an old boat yard. When I say old boats, I mean the boats were aged, and probably unseaworthy. The yard was surrounded by chain-link fencing, long ago trampled down in places. One of the boats had been set alight by an arsonist. Weeds surrounded its blackened husk. Two sheds had also been burned, but not so badly that they’d collapsed. One of them had retained some integrity, and still boasted a tin roof and singed walls. Borden was pulled from the Chrysler’s trunk and led towards it. Both Rink and I had earlier scouted an appropriate location before beginning our stakeout at Miami-Dade County Seaport. We knew what to expect when going inside the shed, but Borden faltered at the threshold when we entered the dim and stinking place. Burnt trash and old rusting bits of equipment littered the floors. The evening light found its way inside through chinks in the walls and roof, slanting like daggers towards the earthen floor. Motes of dust hung in the glowing beams. The interior of the shed had taken on an eerie, unreal quality since our earlier visit. It was the ideal stage for a snuff movie.
Rink sat Borden down on an old office chair positioned towards the back of the shed. He had our captive hang his arms over the back, and used the remainder of the duct tape to wrap around his chest and arms, securing him to the chair. Then Rink took out his KA-BAR and showed its keen edge to Borden. ‘I’m going to take off your gag. You’re going to be allowed to speak now. But if you shout…’ He wagged the blade and didn’t need to expound. He untied the gag and hung it over his hand for Borden to spit the pool ball into.
My gun was out of sight in my belt. Instead I wielded a small GoPro camera supplied to me by Harvey Lucas from the bag of equipment he’d brought with him from Arkansas. Harvey was currently babysitting Trey at a safe house in Flagami, a neighbourhood a hard stone’s throw south of Miami International Airport. Together they were collating an evidence bundle we could hand to the authorities, alongside the more tangible proof we intended on getting out of Jeff Borden.
‘OK,’ I told the security man as I switched on the camera and pointed it at him. ‘It’s confession time. Now, you can later argue that your testimony was forced from you while under duress, but the plain and simple fact is I don’t give a fuck if you get off on a technicality. You are going to tell the police everything you know about Mikhail Viskhan’s plot to launch a terror attack on US soil.’
Borden’s stricken expression was enough to make even me believe he’d no knowledge of such a plot, but it mattered not. He could deny any involvement in a terror plot, it made no difference, but not in assisting the acquisition and importation of illegal weapons to be used in the attack. To save his ass – and hopefully to later cut a deal with the cops – he immediately began babbling about having no idea what Viskhan wanted with the guns, and promised to co-operate fully and willingly with the authorities to halt an attack. To listen to him, anyone would think he was a patriot instead of an avaricious scumbag who didn’t actually give a crap where those illegal firearms were destined or to what terrible use they’d be put, as long as his pockets were suitably lined.
28
Rink drove the battered pickup back to downtown Miami while I followed in his rental car. His destination was a five-storey building on 2nd Avenue, a victim of atrophy if ever I’d seen one; erected in the mid-1970s, it was in an early state of collapse long before it had begun looking anachronistic. Nonetheless, it was still the headquarters of the Miami Police Department, where the chief of police kept his office. We could have gone to any of the satellite police stations, and in particular the one in South Beach, but we wanted our package to be taken seriously, so it was best to go direct to the top man.
Rink found a parking spot adjacent to the steps leading up to the main entrance, gave Jeff Borden a fateful squeeze of his shoulder, then got out of the truck and walked swiftly to where I waited on a perpendicular side street. As soon as he was in the Chrysler I pulled out from the kerb and took us away from the police station. Not too far before I stopped, took out my burner phone and made a 911 call. I told the stunned emergency operator that the truck parked outside contained both a would-be participant of a terrorist plot named Jeffrey Borden and evidence of his guilt could be found in the glove compartment of said truck, and also in the sworn testimony of a witness winging its way to the chief via email. I’d have loved to see the faces of officers responding to the call when they found Borden trussed, gagged and blindfolded in the passenger seat, but we couldn’t hang around. Borden would probably claim that he was the innocent victim of abduction, but he wouldn’t be released before the cops discovered his confession on the GoPro camera I’d left along with Borden’s cell phone in a plastic bag in the glove compartment. Hopefully, once the gears of officialdom began turning, resources would be poured into South Beach to confound Viskhan’s planned spectacular. I had to ditch my burner, which I did with little finesse, simply chucking it out of the car window. Somebody would find it, probably pocket it, and if the cops traced its signal then fair enough: I wouldn’t be the one they found it with. Rink used his phone to call Harvey and put him on speaker.
‘Email the package, brother,’ Rink announced.
In the safe house in Flagami, Harvey was poised to send the witness statement Trey had recorded to the same police office, and had been awaiting our signal.
‘On it,’ Harvey announced. ‘That’s it, it’s done.’
‘Be back with you soon,’ Rink assured him. ‘Everything OK at your end?’
‘All’s good.’
‘How’s Trey holding up?’ I asked.
‘She’s doing fine, Hunter,’ Harvey replied. ‘She’s showering and then going to take a nap.’
I wouldn’t have minded a nap myself, but didn’t envy Trey getting some sleep. She’d been awake for almost as long as I had. Staying on my feet, and busy abducting and forcing a confession from Borden, had kept my head clear. I felt sorry for Trey: collating a witness statement with all the necessary facts would have been a mind-numbing experience, I bet.
‘She say what we needed from her?’ I asked.
‘Even more so. She gave a full account from when she was first abducted in Eastern Europe and forced into the sex trade, how she was coerced into marriage for fear of her parents’ lives, up until the point where Viskhan sent those gang members to the hotel to kill you both. Man, I’m not sure I’ve ever typed so many words in one sitting. I was thinking of turning my hand to writing novels in my spare time, not sure I’ve got the stamina for it now. I might have to take a nap myself.’
I grunted at his levity. I really needed to sleep, but such a luxury could be a long time coming. ‘What did she say about the terror plot?’
Marked for Death Page 17
