by Chris Ryan
‘Greg Tilson,’ said Hauser.
‘Pleasure, Greg.’ Rudy patted Hauser on the back like they were friends from way back in the day. ‘I knew from the moment I saw you. I thought, now there’s a guy who knows what’s really going on in this country of ours.’
Hauser looked down the booths, waited for a lull in the gunfire and dropped his voice. ‘I hear you boys like to go out of a night. Stopping those wetto motherfuckers from crossing the border.’
Rudy grinned and revealed a set of teeth that were mostly coffee-brown and bent except for one silver tooth on the upper ridge. ‘Well, someone’s got to stop those sneaky sons of bitches coming over here—’
‘Taking our jobs—’ said Hauser.
‘And our women—’ said Rangers.
‘Freeloading off honest taxpayers,’ said Marine Corps.
‘Know what?’ said Rudy, slinging a bare arm around Hauser’s shoulders. It was coated in sweat and Hauser could feel it sticky and cold against his neck. ‘We’re heading down to the border tonight. Word is, it’s gonna be a big crossing tonight. I’m talking beaners coming out of your frigging asshole. Why don’t you come along? Have some real-life target practice for a change.’
Hauser smiled.
‘I’d love to,’ he said.
nineteen
Texas–Mexico border. 2332 hours.
Too easy, thought Bald as they reached the northern bank of the Rio Grande and he hoisted himself up onto American soil. The swarthy illegals broke the waves and cheered and cried at making it over to the other side. Bald reckoned their celebrations were premature. His training told him it was unwise to relax.
Texas looked despondent. A full moon over a stubbled desert, receding dry grass and scrawny mesquite shrubs impervious to the heat. Bald took his first steps in Uncle Sam territory and sucked in the night air. It was freezing. The kind of cold that had no taste, no texture, no scent, because wherever the hell it came from was too cold for life.
For a moment Bald watched the illegals trot east along Ranch Road 1472, a stretch of blacktop linking one hotpotch of distant town lights to the next. Then he slung the gym bag over his shoulder, gave his back to them and started pacing north towards the desert plain. He made the first ten metres in eight strides and clicked the clicker he was visualizing in his head. His clothes were drenched through. Icy water needled his bones. Bald was midway to twenty metres, his second mental click, when a voice called out to him from the pack.
‘Let me come with you, ese.’
Bald stopped the clicker in his head on six strides, and turned around. The voice belonged to Felix, a grubby-faced sixteen-year-old with even grubbier hands and a face like a burnt matchstick. During the six-hour drive from San Hernando to the border he’d been the only one to strike up a conversation with Bald.
‘Got shit to do, lad. Watch yourself.’
‘But I’ve got nowhere to go,’ the kid said.
Bald didn’t reply. He was already setting off again. Seven, eight . . . ten metres. Felix started along the trail. The kid had a stride like he was doing the run-up to a triple jump and he kept up with Bald effortlessly, much to the ex-Regiment man’s annoyance.
‘What about the others?’
‘Fuck them,’ said Bald.
He didn’t add that the other eleven illegals were doing him a massive favour by handrailing the Ranch Road. By sticking so close to the border they would attract the attention of any nearby patrols. Leaving Bald free to carry on undetected along his planned route. The nearest town was ten miles east but Bald decided he’d hike it north to Eagle City, twice as far away. Figured the locals in Eagle would be less attuned to the movements of illegals.
‘You’re just gonna leave them like that?’
‘They wouldn’t understand a word I fucking said anyway.’
‘They all speak English. They heard you killed Padre Nelson in San Hernando.’
San Hernando, Mexico. Twelve hours ago a guy in a white dog collar by the name of Nelson had pointed a gun at the back of his head and asked in his diesel voice where his daughter was. The short answer was, Bald didn’t fucking know. But Bald didn’t bother telling the guy this. He had simply jerked his head to the left and reverse-jabbed his elbow into his solar plexus. Put the gun to the fat priest’s face and ignored his desperate pleas not to kill him. Sent that son of a bitch on the fast track route to join his Jesus buddies up above.
Now he was trampling through a patch of thick buffalo grass and trying to get Felix off his fucking case.
‘It was me or him. His fucking mistake,’ Bald said. Then he spun around and grabbed Felix by his spindly neck. ‘And you’ll end up the same way if you don’t fuck off right now.’
‘Please, ese. I got no one.’
‘I don’t give a shit. You’re on your fucking own.’
He left Felix trailing in his wake and had made another two clicks north when an ocean of white light flooded the desert floor. The grass and the rocks disintegrated into a blinding lather. Bald stopped dead in his tracks and looked across the bow of his right shoulder at his three o’clock.
Two mounted spotlights were careering down the road and heading straight towards the crowd of illegals eighty metres away. The spotlights were accompanied by the growl of two pickup trucks and a much stranger noise. A yee-haw that sounded like a cross between a battle cry and a wolf’s howl.
Rednecks. He remembered what Antonia had told him in Mexico. ‘If you’re caught crossing that line, the rednecks will kill you.’
Bald clocked a muzzle flash from the passenger window of the truck on the left. The whiplash of a rifle shot came a split second later. Then an old man dropped simply in the middle of the road, like a sigh. The rest of the illegals screamed and scattered.
‘Get the fuck down!’ Bald said to Felix, hunkering the kid down beside him in a shallow scrape. Gunshots ker-rumped through the night around them. Sounds generally carry faster and clearer at night and Bald could make out two different weapons being discharged. One was a rifle. The other was a pistol. He could hear the clink-clink of spent brass bouncing on the ground. The pickup on the left, a blazing-red Toyota Hilux, encircled a group of five illegals. Dust plumes spiralled behind it like a mini-sandstorm as the shooter leaned out of the passenger window and picked off his targets one by one. Three of the illegals quickly went over to the dark side. The remaining two, a chubby bloke in his forties and maybe his old man, began fleeing north.
In the direction of Bald and Felix.
The pickup on the right was a black Dodge Ram with a quad-cab body, raised suspension and a spoiler. Kind of thing you might spot at a rodeo. The driver was clambering out of the Ram. He was dressed like a combat veteran in camo trousers, black T-shirt and Texas Rangers baseball cap.
His eyes locked on a heavily pregnant woman faltering off the road onto dusty ground, beating a retreat back to the Rio Grande. He casually took aim with his pistol. His upper body jerked. The muzzle starred. Blood erupted out of the woman’s belly, like champagne out of a heavily shaken bottle.
The driver returned to the Ram, cranked up its turbo-petrol engine and accelerated towards the chubby guy and the old man, the twenty-two-inch Pirelli tyres eructing dust clouds over the dead illegals. Directly in the vehicle’s path were the two men, scrabbling over the flat, barren land as fast as their stubby legs could carry them. But the V10 Ram was one of the world’s fastest pickups, with a top speed of 154 mph, and the twenty-metre gap between it and the men was rapidly shortening to nothing.
‘Not this fucking way,’ Bald hissed to himself as the two illegals frantically raced towards his position. The gym bag was lying next to Bald, between him and Felix. Peering above the scrape, he noticed a figure standing on the back of the Ram. He was clutching an FN Five-Seven pistol with a red-mil-dot attachment. The mil-dot traced lines over the chubby guy. Two quickfire shots and he was pawing at the penny hole in his Adam’s apple. The old man made it a few steps further before the figure double-tappe
d him in the back of the head. He dropped fifteen metres shy of the scrape. Thirty-five metres behind it the Hilux was encircling the remaining four illegals. Picking them off one by one.
The Ram stopped.
Bald froze.
The spotlights lit up the area surrounding the scrape. Bald killed his breath. Felix was whimpering prayers in Spanish and suddenly Bald regretted losing the Smith & Wesson revolver he’d acquired in Mexico. Meaning he had no weapon.
The mil-dot abruptly vanished. Like an eye blinking shut.
The rednecks still haven’t spotted us, Bald was thinking.
Then Felix’s head exploded.
Blood and gristle slicked over Bald. Bits of mucus-like eyeball slopped down what remained of the kid’s jaw. Bald shoved him away. The body rolled lifelessly onto its side. Bald picked himself off the ground, grabbed the gym bag by the strap and darted towards a patch of cactus twelve metres away at his eight o’clock.
He ducked to make himself as small a target as possible. With the peripheral vision of his right eye he caught another glimpse of the figure from the back of the Ram. The guy had debussed. He didn’t look like a redneck. Too thin around the neck and shoulders. His hair was grey. He was dressed in a plain white shirt and grey trousers. And he seemed to be limping heavily on his right leg. He was packing a Knight’s Armament Company Stoner SR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle. He tucked the Stoner into his right shoulder and aimed directly at Bald.
Three rounds slapped into the dirt a few centimetres from his feet. Bald was ten metres from the cactus. Now eight. Another three-round burst cut through the air, fizzled into the ground. Just wide of Bald. Getting closer. Now Bald darted to his left, moving away from the cactus. He was putting more distance between himself and the guy shooting at him.
The shooter took a time out. Bald glanced over his shoulder. The Ram was revving its engine, the guy with the Stoner struggling back onto the rear cargo bed, his right leg dangling uselessly as he hauled himself up. Bald looked forward again. He could feel the electric heat of the mounted spotlight tanning his back. The Ram was gaining on him.
No cover. No weapon. No fucking way out.
Then he spotted a rock a couple of metres in front of him. It was the size of a kettle bell, smooth and round. Bald ducked lower as he ran, his chin touching his chest. He scooped up the rock in his right hand and in the same move spun around to face the Ram. He could see the shooter on the back of the Ram. Now he sprang up from his crouching stance and threw the rock overarm at the front of the pickup. It skimmed through the air and landed smack on the spotlight. The light dulled. The left headlight was busted and the other one cast only a weak beam of light across the desert floor.
Bald broke to his left, north, running into the dark. The shooter unleashed three rushed shots. Bald heard them thwack into the ground metres to his right. He ran along a winding route across the sand, careful to steer clear of the road. After a hundred metres he looked back across the undisturbed desert: the Ram was reduced to a pair of faintly glowing buttons.
He carried on a northward bearing towards Eagle City. He didn’t feel bad about the illegals getting it. There were more important things to worry about. Like staying out of trouble. And finding himself a gun and a set of wheels so he could get the fuck across to Clearwater and link up with the CIA handler. He pulled the gym bag, containing the fake passports and $7200, over his right shoulder. In forty-eight hours’ time, he would be £5 million richer, and the cash in the bag would seem nothing more than beer money.
No one could fucking stop him now.
twenty
0219 hours.
Eagle City was hardly a town, let alone a city. It was a carcass of deadwood houses and a few humdrum stores stalling for time, trying to ignore the foreclosure signs that hung from every third property on Main Street. There were no street lights. A stifling backdraught blew across the street. Bald’s clothes were still drenched through. Not with river water but with sweat.
It was the dead zone, the time when every decent tax-paying civvie was sound asleep, leaving Bald free to roam Main Street like he owned the fucking place. He guessed less than a thousand people lived in Eagle. He counted two gun shops, both heavily padlocked, three repair garages, two mom-and-pop diners, a pharmacy and a thrift store. No library and no vegan shop. If the place had included a couple of strip clubs, Bald might even have been tempted to relocate.
His burner buzzed in his jeans pocket. He flipped it out and hit the answer key without looking at the display. There was, after all, only one prick who had this number.
‘There’s a message waiting for you,’ said Cave. ‘Check your email when you get a chance. Some interesting facts about our birthday boy.’
‘Great,’ Bald said dryly as he paced up Main Street.
‘Have a bit of enthusiasm, John Boy. Rachel can’t wait to meet you.’ Cave sounded fucking smug on the phone. That was the act, Bald knew. When agents talked in code in the movies they were always so fucking serious and fake, but in the real world you had to sound authentic. You had to sound excited about a birthday party that only existed in your head.
‘I think you’re going to like her,’ said Cave.
‘She can’t be as big a cunt as you,’ said Bald.
Cave laughed weakly and said, ‘I hear she’s got a thing for Scottish men.’
Images of a Miss Florida with a fetish for kilts played out in his head.
‘She’ll be waiting for you.’
Bald killed the call. He arrived at the northern end of Main Street. To his right was an army surplus store and to the left the Alamo Bar N Grill, a simple red-brick structure built like a military compound, with a flat roof and a rusting metal door with a shutter at eye level. A couple of neon Budweiser and Coors signs lit up the darkened windows. Three cars stood in the parking lot. A Cadillac with a warped hood like a crushed Coca-Cola can, a prehistoric Lincoln and a white Buick ’93 Roadmaster.
Bald trudged past the Alamo and did another circuit of Main Street. Confident that there was nobody about to ID him to the cops, he trudged back to the Alamo and crept up to the Buick. The rear bumper was stickered with Dixie flags, GOP elephants and a photo with the slogan ‘SARAH PALIN FOR PRESIDENT’. Bald didn’t do politics but now he thought about it he’d definitely smash Palin.
He drew level with the driver’s side door. Then he pushed himself up on the balls of his feet until he could see through the window into the cab. There was a bunch of junk inside. Pack of Lucky Strikes on the dash, Gatorade bottles littering the footwell and a silver ocean of quarters and dimes in the storage space by the gearbox. Toll booth money. There was something else on the dash. Bald pressed his nose against the glass and scoped out the stainless-steel semi-automatic proudly on display. He recognized the weapon as a Colt Delta Elite. Next to it was a box of HSM bulk 10mm ammo. Cops favoured the shortened-down .40 S&W round, but the 10mm still did a lot of damage. Bald said a silent prayer to whichever genius had invented the Texas state gun law that stipulated that firearms must always be overt rather than concealed. Then he stood back, lifted his right leg and launched his boot through the window. No protective sheet over the glass. Just glass. One kick was enough. The window obliged; glass fountained onto the seat, shards piercing the worn fabric. Bald loved old cars. No alarms. No computer-chip locking systems. No voice ID. Just a boot and a knack for hot-wiring engines, and you were away.
He reached in and grabbed the gun. Then he heard the Alamo’s heavy door swing open with a crash.
Laughter erupted from the bar. Hoarse and rustled. Bald squatted low behind the front wheel of the Buick, which was parked twenty metres from the bar. He heard the uneven scrape of shoes on gravel. The faint afterglow from the flashing beer signs revealed a couple of mottled shadows in the doorway. One of the guys was pretty lit. He did that drunk thing of walking like he was balancing on a high wire, every movement deliberate. He was dressed in holed jeans, a logger shirt and scuffed trainers.
The g
uy hiccupped. A bottle smashed on the ground.
‘Jesus, Pete, you drunk son of a bitch.’
‘I ain’t drunk,’ Pete slurred.
‘Aw, hell,’ his mate joked. ‘How stupid of me. Course you ain’t drunk. You way beyond that, fella.’
‘Fuck you.’
Pete dumbly assessed the shattered glass around his feet. He blinked, then stooped low, as if trying to touch his toes. He was trying to pick up his broken bottle of beer. His face was illuminated by the red and yellow rays from the beer signs. Then he straightened up and staggered uneasily towards the Buick.
Bald flexed his fingers around the grip of the Colt. He gently slid back the barrel and inspected the extractor hole. Could see the brass nugget of a chambered round. The drunk was now five metres from the Buick. Bald hadn’t reckoned on things getting messy this quick. This could fuck up his plans big time. But if the guy came one step closer he wouldn’t leave him with any choice.
‘Hey!’ the other man shouted to his mate. ‘Uh-uh, no way.’
‘What?’
‘You planning on driving back home tonight?’
‘Don’t you fucking tell me what to do,’ Pete drawled.
‘Come on, you big dumb asshole. I’ll shout you a ride.’
Pete mumbled something that Bald didn’t quite catch. Then he about-turned and wandered off down Main Street with his buddy. Bald relaxed his finger on the trigger. He opened the door of the Buick, swept glass off the seat, sat down, then reached under the steering wheel. There he located the wires he needed to strip to hot-wire the engine.
Tap-tap-tap.
Bald froze.
Someone was rapping their knuckles on the window. Bald stared dead ahead.
‘Hey, Pete,’ the guy slurred. ‘You gonna give a buddy ride home?’
Bald continued eyeballing the road. He could make out the guy out of the corner of his left eye. He was grizzled, unshaven, pupils glazed.
‘Fuck’s sake, Pete. Open the goddamn door.’
