Squall

by Sean Costello

  Sanj rose from his crouch, the 9mm aimed at Dale’s face, then bent to feel Sumit’s wrist for a pulse, even though it was clear the man was dead.

  “Something you may not know about Sumit,” Sanj said to Dale with an eerie calm, rising now to his full height. “He’s my baby brother. Apart from Ed, you’re the only person in this country I’ve ever told that to. Even Copeland has no idea. Given the nature of our work, we thought it best to keep our relationship private.” He glanced again at Sumit’s body. “And now you’ve killed him. Fitting, I suppose, even ironic, considering the task Ed sent us here to complete.”

  While the maniac talked, Dale felt around in the tub for the splinter that had pierced his arm, knowing it wouldn’t do him any good but believing he’d feel better about dying with a weapon in his hand. His fingers fell instead on an empty syringe and he wished he could do one last hit, the drug his only refuge from a life that had never fit him. He saw Tom on his feet behind Sanj now, pressed against the wall in fear, and felt a dull regret for the man, with his wife and kid and another one on the way, all of that gone now. Sanj would leave no loose ends.

  Dale braced for the bullet he knew was coming, but then the crazy fucker holstered his gun and drew a switchblade from his belt, the snick of the blade making Dale’s skin crawl as Sanj moved toward him.

  Sanj said, “Your brother told me to make it quick and painless. Fuck him.”

  Then Sanj lunged and Dale threw Trang’s gun at him and tried to squirm down into the tub, but Sanj caught him by the wrist and pulled him back up, sweeping the blade toward his neck. “No you don’t, you little—”

  And Tom hit the man in the back of the head with a broken stud, the sound like a baseball being struck, Sanj slamming to the tile floor like a felled tree.

  The two men stared at each other for a long moment, Dale in his hole, Tom standing over the bodies, then Tom tossed the board aside and knelt next to Sanj, feeling his neck for a pulse. “Oh, Jesus. I think I killed him. I fucking killed him...”

  Dale whooped. “Fuck him, Tommy, you saved my life.”

  Startling Dale, Tom rose up and bellowed at him: “It’s Tom. And why the fuck didn’t you stay out of sight? I had them out of here.”

  “Don’t even sweat that piece of shit, Tom. These pricks have killed more people than cancer. It was us or them.”

  “I had them out of here.”

  “Look, it’s done. Nothing we can do about it now. Help me out of this gopher hole and we’ll take their vehicle.”

  “Oh, no. No way. We’re going to wait right here for the rescue team and when they get here you’re going to tell them exactly what happened. This is your fucking mess, not mine. I’ve got a family, a new baby on the way. I can’t go to jail.”

  “Tom, listen to me. You don’t know me from Adam, right? But we’ve been through the ringer together here. If I don’t get out of here, and I mean right now, I’m a dead man.” He took a deep breath, desperate to make this man understand. “My ex, she killed some guys, stole some stuff, but they’re blaming it on me.”

  Tom said, “If it wasn’t your fault, you’ll have police protection.”

  “They got the cops on their payroll. Trust me, my only chance is to vanish.”

  “And what about me?” Tom said, pointing at the wreckage. “That’s my plane. No way to hide that. How do I explain all this?”

  Dale was silent for a moment...then he had it. “You tell them this was the way you found the place. Whatever happened, happened before you crashed. You found the bodies, helped yourself to the keys and got the fuck out of here. Who wouldn’t?” Dale could see him considering it and said, “It’ll work. You get me to a bus station on your way home, I’m in Mexico before my brother even finds out these bastards are deceased.”

  “Your brother?”

  “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you all about it on the way. Now please, get me out of here.”

  Tom picked up the 2X4 he’d struck Sanj with and wedged it under the fuselage, using the rim of the tub as a fulcrum. He heaved on it and the aircraft shifted enough for Dale to clear some of the debris and wriggle out of his bolt hole.

  Tom saw him standing there naked, shivering in the cold, and looked away, saying, “I must be insane. But we’re going to my place first. My wife and son must be worried sick.”

  Dale said, “Whatever you say.” He pulled the sleeping bag out of the tub and draped it over his shoulders. Then he squatted next to the bodies, taking the guns and the keys for the Mercedes. He jingled the keys at Tom. “We’re set,” he said. “Let me just find my clothes.”

  * * *

  Tom followed Dale out of the bathroom, not wanting to be left alone with the dead brothers in their overcoats. He remembered it was his birthday and felt that hysterical laughter welling up in him again, except this time it wasn’t about escaping death, it was about causing one. When he’d swung that 2X4 he’d intended only to knock the man out, then tie him up and let the cops deal with him; but as he wound up for the strike, something snapped almost audibly in his brain and he backed the swing with every ounce of force he could muster, a flat and fierce voice inside him saying Kill him; and no matter how he felt about it now, that was what he’d wanted, to kill this man who’d come into his life through no fault of his own and would almost certainly have taken the knife to him when he got finished with Dale. And if a plane crash hadn’t managed to take him away from his family, there was no way he was going to allow that shark-eyed motherfucker to do it. No way.

  Still, he’d killed a man, and in the aftermath of the act he thought he might vomit. He slouched into a chair in the kitchenette while Dale got his clothes on, wanting only to get home, get back to his wife and son and hold onto them for dear life.

  Dale was standing over him now, fully dressed, resting a hand on his shoulder, saying, “You okay, Tom? You’re white as a ghost.”

  Yeah,” Tom said. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” He got to his feet, his legs still wobbly from the motionless hours in the cockpit. “Ready to go?”

  “Yeah, man, let’s book.”

  * * *

  The winter air felt good against Tom’s skin and he unzipped his jacket to let more of it in. The worst of the storm had passed and now he saw the moon through a rent in the cloud cover, it’s silver light showing him the ruts in the embankment from the Cessna’s skis, showing him the tail section of the aircraft framed in the window and leaving him to wonder how in the name of God he’d survived.

  Walking to the Mercedes, Dale said, “Man, did you ever clip that crazy fucker. Caved that thick skull all the way in. I’ve always hated those guys.”

  Tom said, “Give me the keys,” and Dale did.

  They climbed into the GL, the cab still warm from the drive in, and the engine turned over on the first try.

  Dale said, “We’re golden.”

  Tom said, “Don’t talk to me, okay?”

  “I can do that.”

  Head throbbing, Tom steered the Mercedes onto the roadway, thinking only about getting home.

  25

  Sanj believed he was dead.

  He felt as cold as the dead, numb and detached from himself, and it made him think of how foolish he’d been all these years to dismiss out of hand the possibility of life after death.

  Reincarnation.

  Was that where he was now? In the midst of his transformation?

  He remembered his grandmother telling him scary stories of bad little boys coming back as cockroaches and gutter rats....

  But could the dead feel pain? Like the metered throbbing in his skull?

  He remembered being struck and thinking as his legs gave out that never in his life had he been hit so hard, the blow feeling mortal.

  He thought, My fucking head, and sent a command to his body to move, but the command was ignored. Even his eyelids refused to obey.

  Now he heard a noise, a dragging sound, and a harsh rasp of breath. His own, yes, but that of another as well, rapid and stra
ined.

  Demon or god?

  With what seemed like a gargantuan effort, Sanj opened his eyes. It took him a few seconds to bring the world into focus, then he saw that he was lying face down on the tile floor—Ed’s brother shooting Sumit, the crashed plane, the pilot coldcocking him with a piece of lumber, all of it coming back to him now—then he registered movement at the edge of his vision.

  He shifted his head and saw Sumit’s python-skin cowboy boots jerking past his face with Sumit still in them. He raised his gaze and saw Sumit’s head slung forward on his chest, a cougar with blazing yellow eyes tugging him inch by inch through the doorway, its teeth buried to the gumline in Sumit’s shoulder.

  Sanj slid his hand down to his ankle and unholstered his backup piece, raised it in a grip that was weak and unsteady and jerked the trigger. The slug went wide and the flat report panicked the wildcat, the animal turning tail and darting out of sight. Sanj held his aim for a while, smelling that gamey reek of damp pelt, then let the gun sink to the floor.

  After a while he managed to get to his feet, feeling the boggy wet split in his scalp, seeing the blood on his fingers, and steadied himself against the vanity. When his head was clear enough he went down on one knee to kiss his brother’s forehead, then rolled him out of his overcoat and covered him with it. “I’m sorry, little brother,” he said.

  Then he climbed back onto the wreckage.

  26

  The idiots in the pickup truck were cousins, both of them welders who came in here every night to get shitfaced and take a run at the local poon, which, from what Ronnie could see here tonight, couldn’t be much of a challenge. She let the boys buy her a drink because she needed one, then told them she was going to powder her nose, which she did, sitting in a stall that stunk of piss and cheap perfume to snort a few lines of coke. Cocaine was her ON switch and Ronnie surrendered herself to it now, holding her breath as the drug sketched a course of action in her mind. When it was vividly clear, she came out of the stall at a brisk march, heels clocking the filthy floor, the half-dozen skanks preening at the mirror shrinking away from her.

  She shouldered her way through the drunks on the dance floor and went outside with her coat open, heading for the convenience store. She saw a long-handled iron ice scraper leaning by the front door and seized it without breaking stride.

  Sanj had parked the Ram well back in the shadow of the building, and Ronnie walked around to the passenger-side window and used the ice scraper to smash the glass, getting most of it with her first swing. She leaned the scraper against the truck and reached in to unlock the door.

  The guns she’d taken off the Asians were still under the seat and she stuffed them into her bag. Then she used the ice scraper to shatter every window in the Ram, just for the hell of it. From a secret pocket in her bag she took out a folding knife with a 4-inch Bowie blade and used it to puncture the sidewalls of all four tires, the hiss of compressed air and the smell of expensive rubber making her laugh out loud. “Take that back to your boss,” she said. “Cocksuckers.”

  Then she returned to the bar. She needed a new set of wheels.

  27

  Sanj unclipped a photograph from the sun visor in the cockpit, an image of an attractive blonde woman—early thirties, natural looking—pushing a dark-haired boy of maybe four on a backyard swing set: the pilot’s family, Sanj knew. He flipped the shot over and read the inscription, written in an elegant script: With love, Mandy and Steve.

  He found a flat leather pouch behind the visor with the man’s pilot license in it, his name—Tom Stokes—and the address of his aviation business, which, Sanj could see now, was also where the fucker lived.

  He tucked the photo and the pouch into his coat pocket. He noticed a bunch of keys hanging from the ignition and took those, too.

  He got to the floor and sat on the edge of the tub, his head pounding, blood still trickling from his scalp wound. He felt foggy, the pain making it difficult to think. He had to determine how the fuck he was getting out of here...but his gaze kept drifting to his brother’s body, lying there under his coat. They had no family in this country, their parents both dead, and the rest—aunts, uncles, cousins—all back in India and long since estranged. There was no one that cared whether they lived or died. No one but himself and a few sullen criminals to attend Sumit’s funeral.

  Still, he hated to leave his brother like this, so exposed. Every time he blinked he saw that cougar trying to drag Sumit’s body out to feast on later, like Sumit was an animal instead of the smartest, funniest, most fiercely loyal human being Sanj had ever had the privilege of knowing. And by far the craziest.

  He bent over Sumit’s body and started going through his pockets, making sure there was nothing left on him the cops could use to identify him. When he found Sumit’s cell phone he checked it for a signal, then did the same with his own, but there was nothing on either one.

  An idea of such perfection came to him then that he knew Sumit would approve: he’d siphon some gas from the plane wreck and use it set the building on fire, destroying any evidence, keeping that fucking wildcat at bay, and giving his brother a proper cremation all at the same time. And even this far out in the boonies a blaze of such size would almost certainly attract some attention, providing him with a ride home.

  He found a length of clear plastic tubing in a storage closet by the back door. There was an empty five gallon gas can in there, too, and Sanj brought both items back to the bathroom.

  As he siphoned the gas, he remembered the years he and his brother had spent living on the streets in the holy city of Varanasi after their parents died—ironically, in a small-plane crash. Their father was a chest surgeon, their mother a nurse, and they’d been flying out to do some missionary work when they got caught in a typhoon and the plane was lost in the jungle. Their parents had been wealthy, but had disowned their two sons when they were still in their early teens, just months before the accident. “If you want to run wild in the streets,” their father had told them the last time they saw him alive, “you can live in the streets, too.” It was Sumit who’d kept them going. Fearless, resourceful, violent Sumit.

  He remembered the funeral pyres burning on the banks of the Ganges, each blaze tended by a rail-thin man in a white dhoti sitting on his haunches, using a long bamboo pole to prod the sizzling corpse, the man standing every once in a while to restack the burning logs with his pole or to slam it down on the half-incinerated body, shattering the skull or splintering the long-bones, sending up plumes of red embers and greasy smoke. He recalled the stench of burning flesh, the sizzle and pop of human fat and Sumit saying how the smell always put him in the mood for barbeque.

  He’d have to stay well back from the fire once it got going. He didn’t think he could bear the smell of his own brother cooking in here.

  Maybe he’d light up Mandy and her brat once he caught up with them, do it in front of the pilot, see if the smell put that blindsiding chickenshit in the mood for barbeque.

  When the gas can was full, he removed the hose and let the fuel continue to drain from the aircraft into a spreading puddle on the floor. He stepped over his brother and made his way through the remains of the cottage, sloshing the gas on anything that looked like it would burn: couch, curtains, throw rugs, a worn-out easy chair.

  Sanj wasn’t a smoker, but he found some wooden matches strewn by the open hearth. He struck a couple on the decorative rockwork but couldn’t get a flame, the match heads damp from sitting out in the open. He thought of Sumit’s lighter, always in his right-hand coat pocket, and retrieved it without looking at his brother’s face; he didn’t want to remember him this way.

  The lighter was a tarnished Harley Davidson Zippo Sanj had given him for his birthday when they were kids; he’d stolen it from a street vendor who’d seen him take it and had given chase, screaming after him in some mountain dialect Sanj didn’t understand, swinging a rusty old machete over his head. Crazy fucker probably would have chopped off his hand if he�
��d caught him.

  It took a couple of tries, the wind gusting through the shattered walls to snuff the eager flame, but then he had it.

  Cupping the flame with his free hand, Sanj bent to ignite his brother’s gas soaked overcoat—then he heard something that stopped him cold.

  Helicopter rotors.

  With a last glance at Sumit’s body, motionless on the cold tile floor, Sanj made his way back to the living area, the chop of rotors much louder now, their hurricane force pelting him with ice crystals as he squinted through the demolished picture window to watch the aircraft ease into a hover not fifty feet away. As it began it’s descent to the frozen surface of the lake, floodlights blazed into life on its underbelly, bathing the spirals of snow it raised in a harsh noon glare.

  In bold red letters on the chopper’s flank was all the information Sanj needed: RESCUE.

  He had his ride out of here.

  28

  Ronnie got back to the bar in time to see the younger of the welder cousins leading a hunched platinum blond twice his age into the men’s room, the two of them grinning like they shared some delicious secret. She found the other cousin, the one with the truck keys, pouting over his beer at the bar, the man lighting up like a carnival ride when he saw her approach.

  “Hey, sweetlips,” he said, already slurring. “Thought you run out on me.”

  “Now why would I do a thing like that?” Ronnie said, cozying up next to him on the stool, thinking, Scrawny redneck, smells like mouse shit. She turned her gaze on the men’s room door. “Looks like cuz’s gonna get his wick wet,” she said and almost gagged when the asshole laughed, wafting the reek of digesting beer and tooth decay into her face. She said, “Cunt looks like a long stretch of rough road, though, don’t she?” and the dummy nodded. “Play your cards right, you’re gonna do one hell of a lot better.”

  “Do tell?”

  “Well, call me a cowgirl—sorry, Cuz, your name again?”